Hiking Water Dog, 1

One day last winter, during the first and scariest height of the covid-19 pandemic (I refuse to say 'so far'), I was hiking in Water Dog, a natural area near my house. I hiked Water Dog nearly every day that winter, on sunny, rainy and bitter cold days, when the temperature dropped below 50. Bay Area people are silly about temperature variation. They’re also silly about rain. Now I am one, having lived here twice as many years as I lived on the east coast.

I started hiking Water Dog daily as a way to remain sane while the pandemic was raging and while I, a Boomer, was very sourly adjusting to working from home. The dirt paths and oak trees and beehives and murky greenish pond worked their miracles on my stress level. I also accidentally became fit. In the American sense, not the British sense.

On that day I was feeling strongish and lightish of heart, and I had a few extra minutes before I had to get home for another zoom meeting. So I took the rougher, more challenging hiking trail. That one goes around the far side of the murky greenish pond, has two big hills, rocks, and mud that can become treacherous when a rainstorm is active or recently was. That day was dry.

The alternative to the rougher hiking trail was Lake Road. Running from the lower entrance of the park to the top, a gain of some 300 feet, Lake Road is a fire road, a relatively smooth dirt road wide enough for Leland Stanford, Sr. to negotiate in his horse-drawn chariot, back when Lake Road was the main thoroughfare through the area. It was a good road for the time, good enough to enable him to focus on the details of his railroad empire and building a fancy junior college for his son, instead of having to worry about the ruts and rocks that might bump the wheels of his chariot and tip hot tea into his lap. Now it’s the hiking path of choice for people and dogs who don’t want to go on the more challenging trails. Sometimes that’s me, but it wasn’t that day. I took Lake Road up past the murky pond to the top of the park, then turned left onto the rougher, narrow trail to head back.

The other sight you see on Lake Road, only on Fridays, is a white city pickup truck driving slowly along the trail, stopping to move the bigger branches that have fallen across the path. The driver always slows down even more when he sees hikers, as if they might be startled by a pickup truck going seven miles per hour, while comfortable with the same truck going three.

Hiking Water Dog was my exercise of choice because the beginning of the pandemic was so uncertain and new and scary that the national parks, the state parks and the county parks were all closed. Water Dog is a city park. It stayed open, though we had to wear masks for a few months. Also, there was a rule for a while that you couldn’t drive somewhere to get your outdoor exercise. You had to walk from home. The entrance to Water Dog is 1.1 to 1.4 miles from my front door, depending on whether or not I take the extra loop past the nursing home with the “Heroes Work Here” sign. I usually do. It adds a good-sized hill and it’s quieter than the shorter route. Also I get to think about heroes as I pass by.

I came to know Water Dog very well. I had a favorite tree and a favorite stand of trees. I gave the six bends in Lake Road names, names that alliterated with their ordinal number. I got to recognize the regular hikers and the regular dogs. I gave them names too. That’s not always a good thing, because sometimes you learn their real names later, and you struggle to remember which name is the real one.

There was an older woman I’d see often, near the lower entrance to the park, who would walk back and forth carrying something in a baby carrier against her chest. I don’t think it was a baby. It never moved or cried, ever. She was oddly dressed in a long skirt and socks, but of course, we all were oddly dressed during the early pandemic. She had long unkempt hair, streaked with gray, but see the previous sentence. She nodded with recognition and smiled under her mask as I passed. Maybe it was a doll in there. I hope so.

On that day, I didn’t see that woman. I did see the neatly-dressed silver-haired woman with the beautiful and well-behaved Australian shepherd (off leash! not strictly allowed!) jogging uphill together, the woman slowly and steadily and determinedly and the dog in bursts. I saw the two young men who often strode rapidly and powerfully past me, loudly discussing business plans that I sort of wanted to listen to just so that I could file disruptive patents. They annoyed me just a little. I’m pretty sure they missed the reverence of the coastal live oaks and the bay laurel trees.

At the top of Lake Road, I turned left and started down the first steep hill of the rougher trail. Clouds had gathered, rain threatened half-heartedly, and the wind picked up. The temperature was dangerously close to the lower 50s. I zipped my light jacket higher.

I hiked down the first hill and up the second, the biggest hill in Water Dog. From the top you can see the San Francisco Bay in the distance. You can also see the big white tent from the new private middle school across the canyon, the tent allowing the privileged students to attend school in person, while the public school students, further up the road, were stuck at home, and might or might not have had working internet and zoom-savvy teachers. From the top of that hill you can’t see the murky pond. It’s obscured by oaks and manzanita and other greenery and grayery.

I hiked down the second hill and up the last big one, and it was there I saw him. We weren’t near any of the entrances to the park, so he had to have already hiked a few miles. He drew my attention at once, and not only because he was the only other person in sight.

Slightly hunched over, with a long gray beard, he hiked down the steep, rocky hill very slowly and carefully using a cane for support. In his other hand he was carrying an acorn squash.

I’ve been thinking about him ever since.