I began writing this column nearly five years ago. Since then, when I meet someone new, while we are shaking hands, they sometimes say, “Oh, you’re the guy who likes to hike.” I smile and nod in agreement, but in the back of my mind, I realize that’s not quite true.
Hiking is okay, but it is not exactly a day at Disneyland. In fact, it is often a lot of work. And with a pack, it can be a toilsome, huffing and puffing, sweat-dripping pain-in-the-everything.
So, why hike? The answer is simple: It is the only way to get to where the magic is. Mother Nature does some lovely things in our backyard and at vista point, but it is on the trail that she astounds us and leaves us breathless. I do not hike for hiking’s sake. I do it to reach the original world. Vast panorama or intimate setting, out there our noisy world turns silent, and there is uncluttered time to connect with something fundamental and transcendent.
Several weeks ago, at the annual fund raising event for the Committee for Green Foothills, I heard a talk by John Muir Laws. Here is an ambassador for the outdoors perhaps surpassed only by his famous namesake. This remarkable man overflows with a contagious enthusiasm for the natural world – an enthusiasm he would like all of us to feel. Law’s is a Research Associate and the California Academy of Science, and has authored several field guides illustrated with his own drawings and paintings.
Jack, as he prefers to be called, has latched onto a practice designed to slow us down and observe nature more carefully; field sketching. He is the founder and host of the Bay Area Nature Journal Club, and gives free family-friendly drawing classes (no drawing skill required – yay!) all to give you a deeper connection with nature (www.JohnMuirLaws.com). “Give me one year,” he said over and over. If you do, he promises you will be hooked, and you will see the natural world in a whole new way.
Anything I draw, whatever it is, ends up looking like a stick man. Undeterred, I recently took my new pad and pencil into the field. Looking for some place easily accessible, I headed for Los Alamitos Creek. Fed by its tributary, Calero Creek, Los Alamitos Creek follows Camden Avenue and Almaden Expressway down the Almaden Valley to Almaden Lake Park where it joins the Guadalupe River. Bike and hiking paths follow the course of these streams close to residential neighborhoods.
I parked at Harry Road and Camden Avenue and started up a dirt path along Calero Creek. Fed by Calero Reservoir, the creek was rushing. At any time of year – green-leafed, winter-naked, or gilded in fall color – California sycamore trees are beautiful. Their smooth gray and white trunks twist in the most artistic ways. Backlit by the low sun, the fall leaves were beautiful along the rushing creek.
I turned downstream and followed Calero Creek along an uninspiring stretch adjacent to Camden Road. The dense shrub-like coast live oaks blocked any access to the creek. The show picked up when I reached the confluence with Los Alamitos Creek and turned up that fork. The dense undergrowth was replaced by a spacious sunny corridor of sycamores and cottonwoods.
I sat down amid a bed of yellow cottonwood leaves, picked one up, and began to draw. When I was finished, I realized my drawing looked exactly like a stick man. That’s okay. It was the first time I really saw the shape and intricate vein pattern of a cottonwood leaf.
