Jane Merryman

Chimney Rock

                        Point Reyes National Seashore

It’s a long, slow drive to the point at Point Reyes National Seashore. For wildflowers, wildlife, and views, I can’t think of a better place than Chimney Rock, a finger of granite and conglomerate that juts out from the headlands into Drakes Bay. Chimney Rock is the largest of the sea stacks that cluster around the tip of the point, but the name applies to the windy uplands as well as to the inner and outer beaches. Every year I mark my calendar for the wildflowers, at their height April. Year-round, elephant seals in various social configurations haul out here. From January to April whale watching brings many people to this lonely part of the park.

It’s a long drive—about twenty miles from the Bear Valley Visitor Center—and this journey is part of the allure of a Chimney Rock visit. From State Highway One just south of the town of Pt. Reyes Station, I turn onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and follow this winding road, past the reedy inlets at the bottom of Tomales Bay, north through Inverness Park with its bakery, art gallery, and boatel. In a few miles I pass through the block-long commercial district of the village of Inverness, where I find a café, restaurant, art gallery, grocery store, public library and post office. The Inverness Yacht Club is posted Members Only. Manka’s Lodge, up the hill, has been noted for fine dining for almost a century.

I continue on the boulevard as it leaves a quiet scattering of homes, lodges, and sandy coves, ignoring the turn-offs that lead to other beckoning hiking trails in this corner of the park.

The road narrows as it sweeps through a low forest of bay trees, alders, and willows and passes Historic M Ranch, established in 1865. Beyond the oyster farm, the land becomes almost treeless. In the spring, yellow mustard and pink and purple radish dapple the gently rolling terrain.

Close to G Ranch, acres of tall radio antennas come into view. These belong to a high-seas radio telephone station that once provided two-way voice communication between ships in the Pacific and telephones on land, at sea, and in the air. I’ve heard that station KPH, established by the wireless radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi in 1913, was considered the best receiving station on the West Coast. These antennas picked up transmissions from the entire Pacific Ocean. The facility was closed in 1999 and the station now operates elsewhere. The park service opens the buildings to the public one day a year for a nostalgic peek at communications technology of an earlier era, not so long ago. The seashore’s Web site posts information about open days.

After passing the radio station, I see signs for Historic Ranch E and F. Long ago I began to wonder about this agricultural alphabet and a bit of research solved the mystery. Soon after the 1849 gold rush brought thousands of people to San Francisco, a real estate developer bought up most of the land on this mist-shrouded peninsula and established dairies, naming them by the letters of the alphabet and leasing them to European immigrants. They provided first-class butter and cheese to the restaurants of the new city. Later, when rail transportation made its way out this far and decreased travel time to market, these ranches supplied milk to Marin County and San Francisco homes. Point Reyes became one of the largest areas of industrial-scale dairying in California and the industry still ranks as the largest in the county. Some of the ranches have disappeared, but a number of them continue to flourish as family concerns. Before I arrive at Chimney Rock, I will pass C, B, and A, all established around 1859 and still in business. I just need to remember to watch for herds of cows lumbering across the road.

The route continues past North Beach, shielded from the road by low dunes covered with grasses whipping in the wind. A wash of yellow poppies, buttercups, and bush lupine splashes across the landscape. At the fork I go right, toward the lighthouse. Although the wind and the absence of trees make this land seem inhospitable, the climate is moderate, with a long growing season. Expansive views open up as I near South Beach—mountains and sea appear in all directions, but mostly there is sky.

Immediately after driving through the workaday clutter of A Ranch, I turn left at the sign for Chimney Rock onto a narrow one-lane road, often with cows standing placidly in it. They distract me from the bright green pasture embroidered with yellow buttercups. The black and white beasts look as fat, clean, and contented as their sisters in the TV commercials. These might be those very animals.

I make it a point to arrive early in the day, because space for cars here is limited. On weekends January through April I can’t drive this far; I have to take a shuttle bus from South Beach, which I passed a couple of miles back.

From the Chimney Rock parking area, I look across the wide sweep of Drakes Bay to Drakes Beach and its white cliffs and even farther south to the breakers at Limantour Spit. Before heading out to the bluff, I make a short detour to follow the trail on the bay side to the overlook above a sandy elephant seal gathering place. An information kiosk in the parking lot explains that elephant seals hang out here all year, but the huge males, the mothers, and the pups take turns with the turf. In November and December adult males claim the territory. From December to March the females arrive and give birth. The beach is the province of females and immature in April and May, in June and July for males, and from September to November for yearlings and subadults.

Along the path that heads out from this kiosk, a wind-sheared stand of cypress trees hides small chirping birds. Flowers appear in the grasses at my feet, tiny blossoms of pink, blue, and yellow. From a crumbling overlook, reached by a side trail, I spot more elephant seals. The males have deep calls, like throaty oinks, and they look and move like giant brown slugs.

A short, steep climb on a dirt path brings me to the top of the bluff. Then it’s flat the rest of the way out to the sea stacks. I wear my heaviest coat, gloves, and a close-fitting, ear-covering hat. It always blows a gale out here. The twitching grasses, constantly in motion, reflect the sun like polished metal. The whole landscape is alive and full of energy.

Now the wildflowers appear in their legions, mostly the low-growing kind. Only sturdy-stemmed cow parsnips rise up into the fierce wind. I find rings of blue iris and swathes of pink mallow and white chickweed. Red and yellow paintbrushes, lomatium, erodium, oxalis, and mimulus weave among footsteps-of-spring, suncup, checkerbloom, and violet. Wild cucumber and blackberry twine everywhere. On a recent April day, I identified fifty different species.

At the end of the point I wander through a carpet of chickweed, goldfields, pink mallow, cream-colored wallflowers, buttercups, and blue-eyed grass. Looking back, I can see three of the historic dairies. There is no beach access here, only treacherous rocks and pounding surf. Birding, whale watching, and photography are other reasons to make this journey, as well as the opportunity to lose myself under the sky.

Besides the main trail, several narrow paths worth investigating snake along the cliffs.  On the way back, I take the faint track to the right down to the historic lifeboat station and follow that road up to the parking lot. Near the cars I find a dry, rocky patch of ground harboring a whole slew of tiny flowers to add to my list. Then I take another look at the elephant seals before heading back to the welter of houses, traffic, and malls that I left behind so far from this wind-scrubbed land.