Jane Merryman

Length: 9.4 miles round-trip, out and back (four to five hours).

Difficulty: Moderate.

Best season: You choose: Late summer is elk mating season, but the hills look desolate from the summer drought. Winter and early spring offer a greener, less stark landscape. Wildflowers are abundant in June.

Highlights: The great views and bird watching where the Pacific Ocean swirls into Tomales Bay. The quiet—no airplanes, no road traffic, no chain saws. And the tule elk—stags with their harems, newborn calves, gangs of males who hope someday to be king of the hill.

How to get there: Take Sir Francis Drake Highway to Inverness, then drive about 4.5 miles to Pierce Point Road. Turn right and proceed 9 miles along a narrow, winding road past dairy ranches, Abbott’s Lagoon, and Kehoe Beach. At Pierce Point Ranch, which looms up at a sharp left turn, drive straight ahead into the parking lot in front of whitewashed historic ranch buildings. Information boards illustrate the history of this old ranch and the ecology of the point. No water is available. A short way down the hill at McClure’s Beach you’ll find rest rooms.

The trail: The day I have chosen for this hike is a painter’s day. As I start on the trail, which curves around the left side of the barns, I look down on Tomales Bay to the east, shimmery and misty in the morning light—a composition reminiscent of California’s early-twentieth-century impressionist painters. This soft, monochromatic landscape is a watercolorist’s palette—a narrow range of browns, olive greens, and pale yellows. The yellow comes from bush lupine, at its most glorious at this time of year, filling the air with a subtle perfume. Against this backdrop I spot dollops of white yarrow, diminutive blue lupines, pink erodiums, and the deep violet of blue-eyed grass.

            It’s mid-June and wild radish grows everywhere. Its four-petalled flowers can be two-toned—the colors of butter and wild roses—or single hues such as mauve, lavender, white, and many gradations of yellow. Usually I don’t give radish a second look, but today I think it’s elegant. Dandelions and wild oats edge the trail. The ocean is French ultramarine blue and seems to go on forever—blending easily with the sky, only slightly smudged at the horizon. I can’t see the surf, but its roar climbs up over the steep cliffs. Song sparrows, the wind, and my footsteps on the sandy trail are the only other sounds. Ahead, I glimpse the rocky coastline to the north, inaccessible sandy beaches, and the long line of the ridge where I am headed.

            The wind is always present, tugging at my hat and jacket. The landscape is always in motion. Velvetgrass undulates across the slopes in dusky purple swathes. Swallows zip around a stand of venerable cypresses, goldfinches flit among the drying thistles. The trail dips and then chugs up to the top of the ridge, where I see turkey vultures riding thermals and a lone hawk flying low—it’s gray, a male northern harrier.

            I hear squeaking in the dry grass and bend down to find its source. A garter snake, its red and yellow stripes vivid against the dun-colored soil, has clamped its mouth onto the face of a fat vole. The rodent cries out in its struggle, the snake contorts and whips around fiercely. The vole’s fur is silky, gray and brown, so alive and lustrous in the sunlight. A smear of red spreads over its face. I turn away and walk on quickly.

            This trail, an old dirt road, leads into the seashore’s tule elk reserve, home of one of the largest herds of a rare native species. I see small groups of females and calves. Many of the adults are collared. They are curious about me, wary and skittish. I count seven young ones before their mothers move them out of sight.

             For my first visit to Tomales Point many years ago, I chose an August day because I had heard end of summer was the rutting, or mating, season. Signs posted along the highway confirmed this and warned visitors to keep their distance. As I approached the bottom of the first long downhill of the trail, I heard an odd huffing sound. Suddenly, twenty or thirty feet in front of me, several elk, much larger than I had anticipated, ran across the road. After a few seconds, four or five more elk galloped by. Then more and more, and they kept coming. I jumped into shallow ditch and hunkered down. Hundreds of elk pounded across the road and disappeared into the folds of the cliffs above the surf.

              It was all over in a few minutes, and then there was just me standing, dusty and shaken, in the empty road. As I started to brush myself off, one female came running back, bleating the wimpy little call of her species. As she passed me, a calf trotted up the hill and they ran toward each other. The mother herded the little one across the road and they were gone.

              Despite this encounter, or perhaps because of it, I feel safe hiking here today among unfenced large mammals. I am able to watch these large animals going about their business and they don’t acknowledge my presence.

              At the top of the ridge I find two fenced game enclosures, empty except for hedge nettle, brodiaea, and poppies scattered among the dry grasses. From this height I look down on the narrow finger of Tomales Bay and across the hills all the way into Napa County—Mt. St. Helena is a blue gray mass on the horizon. Much nearer, silver ranch buildings glitter amid dark patches of eucalyptus and oaks.

              Islands of huge boulders strewn across the ridge evoke ancient ritual sites. The world seems immeasurably wide, a vast playground for the wind. I recall a passage from a Vedanta text about the wind of desire pursuing man. I had thought that humans did the running after desire, not the other way around. Up here I understand the relentless, implacable hounding the Hindu sage described.

              A gathering of male elk with huge racks munches serenely on a hillside. These cool guys are only mildly attentive to me and don’t move away. The trail leads down to a rectangular pond where a large herd of females grazes, supervised by one stag. I don’t see any calves. Another rutting season, I witnessed a face-off between two males at this spot. They strutted, advanced, retreated, feinted. The harem’s guardian had little trouble calling the bluff of the brash interloper, but one female tried to run off with the newcomer.

              Along the road I find myriads of pink and white linanthus, as well as scarlet pimpernel, plump clover, bracken fern, and purple vetch. A row of derelict cypress and eucalypts dips into the hillside. Here, out of the wind in this bowl of warmth, small birds dart and titter among the trees. So tempting to sit here for the rest of the day and enjoy the view of the surf boiling at the mouth of Tomales Bay, the wide sandy curve of Dillon Beach, and its little houses climbing up behind.

            Beyond the pond, a steep, eroded downhill crosses a veritable mud pie—there must be a spring nearby. After this, the trail becomes rolling ups and downs. A rocky beach glistens below the cliffs and in the hazy distance Thirteen-Mile Beach marches south to the lighthouse.

            Soon the broad road turns into deep sand—walking is like wading through molasses. This is where I begin to question whether I need to go all the way to trail’s end today. Then I discover wildflowers I haven’t spotted yet today.  One is lizard tail—what a name for a plant—a small shrub with grayish foliage and yellow flowers, not at all reptilian.

            I trudge the sandy track as it narrows and winds among the lupine and its wonderful perfume all the way to land’s end. Tomales Point ends in a dizzying drop off, steep cliffs plunging to a stark meeting of land and water. On three sides of this pencil of land, brown pelicans, cormorants, and gulls ride the wind, now settled down to a soft breeze. Colors seem to pop—pink armeria and pale cream cups bloom among red- and green-leaved ice plant, breakers spread white foam across turquoise water, the rocks are slashed with burnt ochre and gold. The occasional muted clanging of a buoy and the velvety yellow green of the hills above Dillon Beach keep me sitting here oblivious of time.

            On the way back, the uphills seem very long, but the slow pace allows me to find the buttercups, wild strawberries, and goldfields that I missed on the way out. The arena of the vole and snake struggle is silent and peaceful, empty and innocent. On the ridgetop the wind blows fiercely at my back, cutting across my right shoulder. Could this be the wind of desire? It is insistent. I submit and let it push me along.