In Which I Return to Mt. Diablo
Apr. 15th, 2017 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aToday, I returned to Mt. Diablo. Or, rather, I trekked further south this time, had lunch in Rudgear Park, then headed up into the Diablo Foothills Regional Park.
The Rudgear Park was quite busy with people picnicking and walking and following their children riding in electric toy cars. I find that the more affluent an area is, the better used its parks are, and the Rudgear Estates area of Alamo seemed quite busy.
Yet when I got over to the regional park, the people mostly disappeared. I can kind of understand, because the paths in from the west were almost non-existent, just like out by Howe Homestead Park last week.
But from what I can see, people don't walk into these parks (as these western entrances allow). No, they drive in (going to other trailheads, deeper in).
Meanwhile, in Berkeley, pro-Trump and anti-fascist supporters are literally clashing.
Ironically, the police are siding with the fascists. At least philosophically. They've banning pocket knives and signs with poles from the protests.
Yes, Berkeley cops, those could be used as weapons to assault other people. But you haven't suddenly been anointed as the Minority Report police, tasked with preventing FutureCrime(tm).
No, you're supposed to be guarding our home and our rights. And, after long years of absolutely failing to guard our home town because of your cowardly fear of the aging hippies who might squawk if you hurt an anarchist who is breaking windows and burning businesses, now you've failed at protecting our rights too, in fact have preemptively taken them away.
Good job, you.
It appears that Trump has even normalized fascism in Berkeley.
Fortunately, just like Trump's fascism, our cop's fascism is probably illegal.
I do know about this, because I check in with my mail while resting on an uphill hike and get the local police alerts. But I read that the protest is confined to Civic Center Park, and so I opt not to call Kimberly, who I know is in North Berkeley, to suggest she come home by cutting through the campus.
Later, the protest does spill out onto the streets. No word if the police again idly stood by while peoples' lives and livelihoods were destroyed.
But Kimberly opted to cut through campus on her own.
(Though she was shaken by the third instance of Berkeley rioting in three and a half months, and hours of buzzing, hovering helicopters. I hate those things too.)
Things are much quieter out in the Diablo Foothills. I'm circling eastward.
Kimberly commented to me after my last trip this way that she remembers Mt. Diablo being pretty barren, and that's pretty true. There are trees here and there, but for the most part, you're not walking through trees: you're walking from one tree to the next, with barren grasslands around you.
Coming up on one of the several small, dirty ponds I pass over the course of the day, I notice a man talking to a woman. (Yeah, there's a few people now, as I get deeper into the park, and closer to one of those parking lots in the interior.) She explains she doesn't have a map, but gives him directions. He runs off, a dog trotting behind him.
As I circle the pond, he returns and heads off down another path.
And then a few minutes later he comes back from that direction and passes me again, this time heading the same direction I am.
He remarks that these paths are confusing, and I smile.
I tell him I have a map if he'd like to see it, but he says he has his phone.
And I think, "Yes, and it's working so well."
When we're coming up on Old Borges Raunch, I pass him, and it's because he's standing staring at his phone. Clearly lost once again.
I think he'll probably ask me to see that map now, but he never does.
Old Borges Ranch has some animals and a barn and about a half-dozen tractors on display, one with gear work wheels, and some other farm-y stuff.
I remember the farm-y stuff at Howe Homestead Park, and don't really understand this obsession with the area's farming heritage. Maybe it's just more recent there than it is here, on the other side of the hills.
Man-with-dog passes me again as I'm exiting the Ranch area. With a single path before him, for the moment, he seems a lot more confident.
Though he sure walks a lot for a runner.
Eventually he and the dog disappear, never to be seen again.
Soon, I make it out to Castle Rock, another regional park.
There's yet another entrance here, past an Equestrian Center. There are also piles of picnic areas, including one having a very loud DJ constantly announcing prizes for people from across the country.
I keep an eye out for precog psychics, rabid Saint Bernards, and dead bodies, but don't see any.
The prizes seem to be for runners competing in some sort of hill run.
I see the first of them about a quarter mile past the loudspeakers. A couple sitting there shout encouragingly to her that she's just a quarter mile or so from the end.
She says, "A quarter mile? No, it can't be!" And there's such hopeless despair in her voice that I can't really figure out how long she thinks a quarter mile is, but it seems really, really long.
A bit further on, I offer some encouragement to runners too. But I pointedly don't tell them distances.
I use weasel words like "close" and "almost there".
And as we get further and further from those loudspeakers, and as the runners look more and more tired and less and less fit, I stop doing that.
I'm astounding to discover that Castle Rock doesn't refer to a Maine town after all, but instead to huge rocky outcroppings that are rising up to the east of me.
They're utterly awesome. Beautiful and cool, and I want to hike up and around them, but not today because it's coming up on 2.30 pm, which is when I wanted to make sure I was circling back to my bike, abandoned out by Rudgear Park.
Which is just as well because Castle Rock is closed from February to July due to falcon nesting or something.
So I'll have to try and remember to head out there in fall after it cools down over the hills and before it starts raining.
(And I'll have to figure out how to get closer to Castle Rock with my bike, so I don't have to hike two or so hours to get there.)
Some of the paths I come back in are horrible. Totally, entirely destroyed by cows. I see one bicyclist trying to come up one of these paths, and even though most mountain bicyclists are determined to never show weakness in the face of adverse terrain, even he finally admits defeat and starts walking.
His bike still is going BUMP-BUMP-BUMP and looking like it's going to shake out of his hands.
Later I take one of my cutbacks to get back to where my own bike is. I'm, by the by, feeling increasingly smug about not bringing it into the park — especially when I find that Stonegate Trail is barely extant. And it's all muddy or dried hoof prints.
Bleh. But brief.
My favorite hiking of the day is actually after I leave the park proper.
I walked about a block through fancy-dancy houses, but then there was a path that cut back to where I started.
At first, it was another heavily overgrown path.
But then I got down to a creek bed and it became very pretty.
And then I turned a corner and there were beautiful and vibrant flowers in a variety of brilliant colors off to the side.
Totally, not the sort of thing you ever see on a hiking trail. But there was a house just about the flowers and it had some sprinklers to keep them alive.
A wonderful bit of joy at the end of about 10 miles of hard hiking.
On the way home I stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some emergency supplies to offset the trauma back in Berkeley.
The Rudgear Park was quite busy with people picnicking and walking and following their children riding in electric toy cars. I find that the more affluent an area is, the better used its parks are, and the Rudgear Estates area of Alamo seemed quite busy.
Yet when I got over to the regional park, the people mostly disappeared. I can kind of understand, because the paths in from the west were almost non-existent, just like out by Howe Homestead Park last week.
But from what I can see, people don't walk into these parks (as these western entrances allow). No, they drive in (going to other trailheads, deeper in).
Meanwhile, in Berkeley, pro-Trump and anti-fascist supporters are literally clashing.
Ironically, the police are siding with the fascists. At least philosophically. They've banning pocket knives and signs with poles from the protests.
Yes, Berkeley cops, those could be used as weapons to assault other people. But you haven't suddenly been anointed as the Minority Report police, tasked with preventing FutureCrime(tm).
No, you're supposed to be guarding our home and our rights. And, after long years of absolutely failing to guard our home town because of your cowardly fear of the aging hippies who might squawk if you hurt an anarchist who is breaking windows and burning businesses, now you've failed at protecting our rights too, in fact have preemptively taken them away.
Good job, you.
It appears that Trump has even normalized fascism in Berkeley.
Fortunately, just like Trump's fascism, our cop's fascism is probably illegal.
I do know about this, because I check in with my mail while resting on an uphill hike and get the local police alerts. But I read that the protest is confined to Civic Center Park, and so I opt not to call Kimberly, who I know is in North Berkeley, to suggest she come home by cutting through the campus.
Later, the protest does spill out onto the streets. No word if the police again idly stood by while peoples' lives and livelihoods were destroyed.
But Kimberly opted to cut through campus on her own.
(Though she was shaken by the third instance of Berkeley rioting in three and a half months, and hours of buzzing, hovering helicopters. I hate those things too.)
Things are much quieter out in the Diablo Foothills. I'm circling eastward.
Kimberly commented to me after my last trip this way that she remembers Mt. Diablo being pretty barren, and that's pretty true. There are trees here and there, but for the most part, you're not walking through trees: you're walking from one tree to the next, with barren grasslands around you.
Coming up on one of the several small, dirty ponds I pass over the course of the day, I notice a man talking to a woman. (Yeah, there's a few people now, as I get deeper into the park, and closer to one of those parking lots in the interior.) She explains she doesn't have a map, but gives him directions. He runs off, a dog trotting behind him.
As I circle the pond, he returns and heads off down another path.
And then a few minutes later he comes back from that direction and passes me again, this time heading the same direction I am.
He remarks that these paths are confusing, and I smile.
I tell him I have a map if he'd like to see it, but he says he has his phone.
And I think, "Yes, and it's working so well."
When we're coming up on Old Borges Raunch, I pass him, and it's because he's standing staring at his phone. Clearly lost once again.
I think he'll probably ask me to see that map now, but he never does.
Old Borges Ranch has some animals and a barn and about a half-dozen tractors on display, one with gear work wheels, and some other farm-y stuff.
I remember the farm-y stuff at Howe Homestead Park, and don't really understand this obsession with the area's farming heritage. Maybe it's just more recent there than it is here, on the other side of the hills.
Man-with-dog passes me again as I'm exiting the Ranch area. With a single path before him, for the moment, he seems a lot more confident.
Though he sure walks a lot for a runner.
Eventually he and the dog disappear, never to be seen again.
Soon, I make it out to Castle Rock, another regional park.
There's yet another entrance here, past an Equestrian Center. There are also piles of picnic areas, including one having a very loud DJ constantly announcing prizes for people from across the country.
I keep an eye out for precog psychics, rabid Saint Bernards, and dead bodies, but don't see any.
The prizes seem to be for runners competing in some sort of hill run.
I see the first of them about a quarter mile past the loudspeakers. A couple sitting there shout encouragingly to her that she's just a quarter mile or so from the end.
She says, "A quarter mile? No, it can't be!" And there's such hopeless despair in her voice that I can't really figure out how long she thinks a quarter mile is, but it seems really, really long.
A bit further on, I offer some encouragement to runners too. But I pointedly don't tell them distances.
I use weasel words like "close" and "almost there".
And as we get further and further from those loudspeakers, and as the runners look more and more tired and less and less fit, I stop doing that.
I'm astounding to discover that Castle Rock doesn't refer to a Maine town after all, but instead to huge rocky outcroppings that are rising up to the east of me.
They're utterly awesome. Beautiful and cool, and I want to hike up and around them, but not today because it's coming up on 2.30 pm, which is when I wanted to make sure I was circling back to my bike, abandoned out by Rudgear Park.
Which is just as well because Castle Rock is closed from February to July due to falcon nesting or something.
So I'll have to try and remember to head out there in fall after it cools down over the hills and before it starts raining.
(And I'll have to figure out how to get closer to Castle Rock with my bike, so I don't have to hike two or so hours to get there.)
Some of the paths I come back in are horrible. Totally, entirely destroyed by cows. I see one bicyclist trying to come up one of these paths, and even though most mountain bicyclists are determined to never show weakness in the face of adverse terrain, even he finally admits defeat and starts walking.
His bike still is going BUMP-BUMP-BUMP and looking like it's going to shake out of his hands.
Later I take one of my cutbacks to get back to where my own bike is. I'm, by the by, feeling increasingly smug about not bringing it into the park — especially when I find that Stonegate Trail is barely extant. And it's all muddy or dried hoof prints.
Bleh. But brief.
My favorite hiking of the day is actually after I leave the park proper.
I walked about a block through fancy-dancy houses, but then there was a path that cut back to where I started.
At first, it was another heavily overgrown path.
But then I got down to a creek bed and it became very pretty.
And then I turned a corner and there were beautiful and vibrant flowers in a variety of brilliant colors off to the side.
Totally, not the sort of thing you ever see on a hiking trail. But there was a house just about the flowers and it had some sprinklers to keep them alive.
A wonderful bit of joy at the end of about 10 miles of hard hiking.
On the way home I stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some emergency supplies to offset the trauma back in Berkeley.