Milllions. Yes, millions of them. Millions of butter-yellow coast tarweed (Hemizonia corymbosa) clothed the sunny hillsides along Rift Zone Trail today. The theme for the whole day was yellow: dandelion, bird's-foot trefoil, and hill lotus lined the trail. Other colors had to take a back seat, but they had their parts to play, if only in minor roles. In one field, pure white bindweed gathered in clusters among the grasses and I found several clumps of a sweet pink and white variation. Here and there, purple-y blue-eyed grass, light blue forget-me-not, deep rosy California bee plant, pale pink hedge nettle. The white flowers of buckeye and poison hemlock are in profusion this year. The many species of grass were in seed, sparkling in the sun and always moving. In the woods I spied a doe in the shadows, and a saucy Sonoma chipmunk scampered across the trail. I was startled by a frantic scrambling in the bushes and saw an equally startled raccoon peering out at me. He immediately leaped for the rugged trunk of an old bay tree and scurried up into the leaves. Bird song and chatter filled the woods: winter wren, Swainson's thrush, junco, chickadee, rufous-sided towhee. I passed a noisy family of young chickadees pestering mama for lunch. Stellar's jays flitted through the dim forest and a raven cruised overhead. I had lunch at the pond at Five Brooks in the company of a great blue heron and a bull frog. Thousands of pretty pink Centaurium umbellatum congregated by the path from the parking lot. I met no hikers on the 9.4-mile in-and-out hike, but I did pass four women on horseback.
Most of this hike passes over land owned by the Vedanta Religious Retreat, whose signs I see along the trail. They ask that hikers help preserve the silence of the land and it is truly a peaceful hike. Every year on the Monday of Memorial Day weekend Vedanta offers a free open house. This year the principal speaker was a monk from Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France. Stationed now in San Diego, Brother Phap Ho is Swedish, speaks perfect English, and exudes a humongous aura of serenity. He spoke on the wisdom and practice of Zen Buddhism, and Swami Ishtananda of the Vedanta Center of St. Petersburg, Florida, spoke to the Vedanta aspect of the same subjects. Lunch and dinner were served—home cooked and delicious, and the bookstore, featuring literature from all religions, hummed with activity. To learn more about Vedanta and the annual open house in Olema, check their web site.
For more about Rift Zone Trail, see the "Nothing Special" Hike under Hiking Descriptions.
