April showers bring May flowers. Atmospheric rivers bring mud. Lots of mud. Still, those of us from California who have spent the last few years amid fire and drought have been eagerly scanning our weather apps for a break in the record-breaking rains. Time to try out our newly webbed feet on those blessedly water-logged trails!
At the first indication of a clear weekend my husband Jonathan and I headed out to Point Reyes National Seashore and Marsh Cottage in Inverness. We first visited Marsh Cottage 35 years ago, our last trip before we had kids–I was hugely pregnant with our first daughter, born less than a month later on Mother’s Day. Nowadays I believe that kind of outing is called a babymoon, but to us it was just plain glorious–a sweet, rustic very private cottage overlooking the southern marshes of Tomales Bay, and close to Point Reyes hikes filled with wild iris and purple lupine.
We’d been back to Marsh Cottage a few times since, but the pandemic and a housing crisis banning short-term rentals had made it available only as a long-term rental. Friends of ours from Santa Cruz, whom we’d introduced to Marsh Cottage years before, decided they needed a pied-a-terre farther north on the coast for six months, and said we were welcome to use it when they weren’t there.
It’s still glorious–timeless (though updated with wifi) and charming. Three sunny days of hiking awaited us. Also glorious, if a bit muddy, the wildflowers only just emerging after months of rain and chill.
The ranger had warned us that there was a bit of standing water near the crest of Laguna Trail. By which he meant a body of water somewhat smaller than the Pacific Ocean visible beyond the crest. We met hardy backpackers heading home from Coast Camp, describing their night there in a bog as a bit windy and cold. One truth-teller allowed as how it was awful. But knowing we had a cottage to return to, we were undaunted, and trampled through brush to avoid the standing water. We saw a father and daughter merrily wading through in bare feet, boots dangling from their hands. That struck me as a bit rash, until my own poison oak rash started itching like crazy three days later.
The Coast Trail was much drier, and so green, except for the fire-ravaged tree trunks on the distant ridge line. We had been on this same trail on an August morning in 2020. Later that day, the whole central area of Point Reyes National Seashore was a conflagration. But nature is resilient, even more so than barefoot dads and daughters traipsing barefoot through mud.
Since gale-force winds were predicted for the next day, we altered our route from the most exposed point on the coast and steered clear of mud by walking up through residential streets to Inverness Ridge, then on to Mt. Vision, site of a 1995 fire from an illegal campfire not quite doused by the local teenagers who’d spent the night there. In an early act of restorative justice, the community embraced the remorseful teens even though the fire devastated thousands of acres and destroyed 45 homes. Although I’m sure the Mount Vision fire left scars, there’s little sign of it today–just a lot of beautiful ceanothus on the slopes heading down to the estuary.
Then down, down, back to town on the Perth Fire Road, where the huckleberry was in full bloom amid the stars–man-made and those perfected by nature. A weekend of mud-shiny bliss!
