You’ve probably seen autumn’s colors all over the Bay Area’s streets and hillsides. Seeing the season from the window of a car or house is a pleasant distraction from life’s demands.
You can take autumn’s invitation a step further with a walk on the ridge sides of Henry Coe Park, where the reds, tans, oranges, yellows and greens of fall can put you in touch with the deeper rhythms of the earth. In less than a mile from the Coe Visitor Center, you can wander woodlands and deep forests, find a log to sit on, and tune in to the flow of the woods.
Pine Ridge, on which the visitor center is located, is clothed on its east side with a mix of woodlands and forests, which you can experience from the Forest Trail.
Certain trees dominate the landscape here – blue oaks and grey pine thrive on rocky, shallow soil; manzanita and madrone also partner on well-drained but perhaps less rocky soils; bay laurels need lots of water and so live in the creases and small canyons.
You can discover “benches,” flat places where the earth has sagged from being saturated and where a black oak or valley oak has created a good spot to sit.
The colonizing trees cast a strong presence, but there is one tree here that never dominates yet stands out and makes its presence felt, especially in fall. That is the black oak. Black oaks are seen all by themselves usually, like islands among the madrones, pines and oaks.
Sighting a black oak enlivens Pine Ridge’s east side with a vibrant charge.
The black oak’s leaves look like oblong green or yellow stars. In spring and summer they are shiny, long, and bright green, with a texture similar to fine leather. The edges of the leaves are both deeply indented and outward turning in many points of varying heights, thus the star look. The trunk’s bark shades from a medium grey when it is young to a rich charcoal that is salted with pale grey lichen when the tree matures.
Under a darkening sky in the fall when the other trees bestow an aura of solitude on the forest, the luminous black oak shimmers in curtains of green, yellow, and orange.
Black oaks drop their leaves and the trunks and limbs rise starkly above the decaying leaf litter. If you have the pleasure of walking in the forest during a fall shower, you’ll see the tough chunks of the black oak bark glossed under rivulets of rain water, and know the feeling of softened leaves underfoot and catching the scent of fresh earth.
Black oaks are often seen with the madrone tree, which keeps its leaves year-round. Walking under a canopy of these trees is another multi-colored experience – the good green of the overstory (a slightly lighter shade than the black oak’s), the salmon tint of the bark, and the color-pure pale yellows and pinks of the fallen leaves across the forest floor can be a delight to the senses.
The Forest Trail can be traversed in an easy 40 minutes – it’s just a mile long. At its southern end, you can swing across the ridge top to the Springs Trail which traverses the ridge’s upper west side through wide expanses of open savannah and oak grasslands. In fall, these huge meadows are colored a white-gold, testament to the summer sun’s absolute parching of the grasses. You also have a wonderful view of the next ridge to the west, Cordoza, with all its bright and variously colored black oaks and maples.
Grasslands are home to ground squirrels, meadow voles, and jack rabbits; and these citizens attract coyotes and bobcats. Wildlife pathways wind in and out of the grass all along the Springs Trail. The trail also passes from the savannah into forests of pines and oaks. On this sunnier side of the ridge, the forest shade gives relief from the sun on a warm day. The live oak forests are especially cool because of their thick masses of leaves and their closed overhead canopy of branches.
The Springs Trail enters one of these live oak forests just beyond the Lion Springs turnoff. You notice a huge difference from the east side of the ridge, with its woodland shrub and plant cover, when you walk down among the trees of the live oak forest where there is no undergrowth. The trail winds like a snake through the grey trunks and golden leaf litter spotted with small specks of sunlight.
You might think the lack of ground cover implies a corresponding lack of wildlife because there are no places for animals to hide.
But a little checking in the library or on one’s belly with a magnifying glass proves this wrong.
Coastal and canyon live oaks shed all their leaves over a two-year period, thus leaving a heavy layer of leaves on the forest floor.
Within the leaves lives a world of insects – termites, beetles, fly larvae, millipedes.
One insect, the flea-like springtail, which feeds on the pollen of the oaks’ fallen catkins, can number more than 100,000 in one cubic yard of leaf litter.
The abundance in the oak debris results in a far-reaching chain of life, which is testament to the importance of oaks in our ecological system.
For example, lizards feed on the insects in the leaves and soil. Salamanders, who can explore far from their home creek or pond, eat earthworms. These creatures are two of the key links in a live oak forest.
And, small snakes are another – they prey on all of it – the salamanders, lizards, and insects. King snakes and gopher snakes make their homes in the downed trunks and limbs of the live oaks. But they also are prey – bobcats, crows and hawks hunt them.
And, we can’t forget the deer who browse on the ends of the oak branches and attract the mighty mountain lion.
The live oak forest may look like a sedate affair when you walk through, but just know that life pulses as strongly here as anywhere.
When the rains finally come, you’ll hear its beginning accumulations as water rolls down and drops fat and heavy on the dry old leaves.
Soon, the crunching underfoot gives way to near-silent passage. Then, a whole new set of effects awaits the hiker.
Whether it’s autumn colors, the scent of the rain-soaked earth, the chill in the air, or the ever-present web of life that attracts you, you’ll find it all on an autumn walk in the woods in Coe Park.
Mike Meyer is a Coe Park volunteer. Contact him through the park at (408) 779-2728.
