Empty Bench
            A weather-bleached bench on a windblown bluff, lone icon facing the infinite Pacific horizon. A wobbly wooden bench, hidden under a copse of trees on an unnamed trail, looking across the Golden Gate toward the San Francisco skyline. A new plastic bench sitting primly in its place along a small pond off a forest trail, waiting for someone.
            Benches are an invitation to sit, to look, perhaps to chat with a companion.
            They stir the imagination when they sit unoccupied.
            I see an empty bench and remember people who are gone. I’ve lost several loved ones in recent years, and have come to sense their absence as a group.
            I imagine them floating together somewhere in the ether, and yet I feel their spirits here.
            Next time I find a welcoming bench, I will invite the essence of those loved ones to sit with me for a while, and remember.
            This week’s Hike Notes, Windy Hill-Hamms Gulch and Spring Ridge Trails, takes readers on the descending leg of a loop hike in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve, these trails highlighted by leafy shadows and tree tunnels that lure walkers onward.
            Check the Home page for the broader background story. Click Insights/Hike Update News for inspiring reflections. Browse hikes on the main Hikes page or on the Hike Search by Area page, and scroll to the bottom of each hike page to see full photo galleries.
            If you’d like to support HikingAutism, check out the Support/Shop page! Check out selected articles and interviews under Media. Click World Walks to see or share favorite family-friendly walks! Stay in touch with Lisa Louis and HikingAutism via Contact. The Links page lists a loose collection of helpful information links. Feel free to share and follow on Facebook at HikingAutism, follow on Twitter at @HikingAutism and Instagram at lisalouis777
New this week:
Hike Notes 198: Windy Hill-Hamms Gulch and Spring Ridge Trails

Talking About the Weather
            If I find myself blathering on about the weather with someone, I figure it’s time to wrap up the conversation. And yet, weather can bring good things, and is worth talking about.
            I grew up in an era when my friends and I actually sang, “Rain, rain go away, come again some other day!” during long rainy stretches of our Upstate New York summers. Plenty of Adirondack camping trips in my youth were spent trudging around under a rain poncho. After a week of only bathing in cold lake water, my brothers and I carried the mixed aroma of sweat, campfire smoke, and the damp-induced mold and mildew of the canvas tent fabric we slept under.
            Here in California, we often have the opposite complaint, suffering varying levels of drought for decades. During the driest stretches, the weatherman mentioning even a ten percent chance of rain was enough to get people excited, only to be disappointed again.
            Climate change has brought greater rainfall in the last couple of years, which is great for countering the drought, but it would be nice if it didn’t fall all at once. Atmospheric rivers that blast through one after another wreak havoc.
            One benefit of rainfall is that waterfalls flow again. I’ve been on many a hike in the Marin Watershed to visit waterfall sites, only to see barely a trickle, and sometimes dry creek beds.
            With greater rainfall this season and more storms on the way, I know the local waterfalls will be flowing at full blast.
            Staying warm, dry and safe during the storms is a comfort, but going out after the rain to feel the freshness of the air and see the bright post-rain colors is always uplifting. Check out a local waterfall if you can. Keep putting one foot forward, whatever the weather!
            This week’s HikingAutism Hike Notes from the archives is Tucker Trail, featuring the Tucker Trail and Tucker Cutoff Trail in the Marin Watershed. These trails offer special pleasures of their own, but also connect to the wonderful Bill Williams Trail and Eldridge Grade (see Bill Williams-Tucker Trail Waterfall Hike and Eldridge Grade-Windy Ridge Hike Notes.) These lesser traveled trails offer some of the best treats the Marin Watershed has to offer.
 
This week’s Hike Notes from the Archives:
(Original Hike Notes 117): Tucker Trail
 
            Click Insights/Hike Update News for inspiring reflections. Browse hikes on the main Hikes page or on the Hike Search by Area page. Check out selected articles and interviews under Media. Click World Walks to see or share favorite family-friendly walks! Stay in touch with Lisa Louis and HikingAutism via Contact. See products with inspiring designs that support the efforts of HikingAutism under Support/Shop. The Links page lists a loose collection of helpful information links.
            Check the Home page for the broader background story. If you’re not able to take one of these Northern California hikes, hopefully you can enjoy the photo galleries at the bottom of each hike page! Feel free to share and follow on Facebook at HikingAutism, follow on Twitter at @HikingAutism and Instagram at lisalouis777

Gnarled Wisdom
            Rising along a tree-covered trail, I stepped from leafy canopy to bright blue sky over an open ridge, with distant mountains in view beyond blue bay waters.
            Another short turn of the trail, and I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t seen a mountain lion. I didn’t stumble over a rattlesnake.
            I saw a gnarled old oak tree bending its arms over the trail. The heavier branches were black against the intense blue sky, like an old paper silhouette.
            Smaller nearby trees featured similarly twisted branches, but the big old tree had clearly earned its crooked limbs.
            My grandmother used to stand at her cat claw wooden table, mixing dough for her perfectly crisp-yet-chewy chocolate chip cookies. She cradled the ceramic bowl in one arm, fingers sticking out feebly below, while awkwardly grasping the wooden spoon handle with the other hand. Her fingers and knuckles were so distorted by arthritis that I thought of them as bird claws. It was a mystery how she gripped anything.
            Despite her contorted joints, her hands still did the work she wanted them to do, and she had wise insights to go along with the cookies.
            I was fascinated by my grandmother’s hands, not afraid of them. The serpentine curves of ancient branches have always entranced me. We will never know all the twists and turns that made a branch or a hand look the way it does over long years, but there are many stories behind those shapes.
            May we all honor time spent with trees and people who have gained the wisdom that comes in tandem with aging bodies.
            This week’s Hike Notes, Windy Hill-Betsy Crowder and Meadow Trails, takes readers on the ascending leg of a loop hike in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve, a place that mixes forests of fir, oak and redwood with open ridgetop views.
            Check the Home page for the broader background story. Click Insights/Hike Update News for inspiring reflections. Browse hikes on the main Hikes page or on the Hike Search by Area page, and scroll to the bottom of each hike page to see full photo galleries.
            If you’d like to support HikingAutism, check out the Support/Shop page! Check out selected articles and interviews under Media. Click World Walks to see or share favorite family-friendly walks! Stay in touch with Lisa Louis and HikingAutism via Contact. The Links page lists a loose collection of helpful information links. Feel free to share and follow on Facebook at HikingAutism, follow on Twitter at @HikingAutism and Instagram at lisalouis777
New this week:
Hike Notes 197: Windy Hill-Betsy Crowder and Meadow Trails

Worth Repeating
            Edged by towering trees, blue sky and puffy white clouds, a grand lawn is dotted with people lounging as if posing for a pastoral landscape painting. Giant pink petals framed by geometrical branches blaze against a blue sky. The fuzzy bud of a magnolia blossom-to-be is backlit by the sun. A river of pink and white blossoms flows toward us from above.
            These are things I see every year at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Each year around January and February, the impressive petals of magnolia blossoms put on a grand show at scattered locations around the garden grounds.
            We don’t write it down on a calendar. Driving around town, we spot magnolia trees blooming here and there, and are reminded to make our annual magnolia visit to the Botanical Garden.
            The trees continuously grow and change. The weather and lighting is different for every visit. Some years many trees blossom all at once and others there’s a trickle of one variety blooming to the next.
            My fellow hiking/nature/disabilities blogger friend Marjorie Turner Kuhl Hollman often shares posts marked, “Worth repeating,” I make sure to stop and take a look. Sure enough, she’s found something worth appreciating, thinking about, and remembering.
            The magnolia trees are always worth making a repeat visit for, even for a quick half hour stroll. Though I like to try hiking at new places as often as I can, I also love going back to old favorites. There’s a comfort in mixing the familiar with the new.
            Enjoy opportunities to repeat things that lift your heart. Smell that favorite flower, read that favorite book, drink your favorite tea from your favorite cup! Keep putting one foot forward!
            This week’s HikingAutism Hike Notes from the archives is Magnolia Stroll-San Francisco Botanical Garden (reshared each year), highlighting the Botanical Garden’s collection of 200 magnolia trees representing 63 species. The magnolias are just a fraction of the wonderful plants on view at the garden, but are a special treat in the early months of the year.
 
This week’s Hike Notes from the Archives:
(Original Hike Notes 46): Magnolia Stroll-San Francisco Botanical Garden
 
            Click Insights/Hike Update News for inspiring reflections. Browse hikes on the main Hikes page or on the Hike Search by Area page. Check out selected articles and interviews under Media. Click World Walks to see or share favorite family-friendly walks! Stay in touch with Lisa Louis and HikingAutism via Contact. See products with inspiring designs that support the efforts of HikingAutism under Support/Shop. The Links page lists a loose collection of helpful information links.
            Check the Home page for the broader background story. If you’re not able to take one of these Northern California hikes, hopefully you can enjoy the photo galleries at the bottom of each hike page! Feel free to share and follow on Facebook at HikingAutism, follow on Twitter at @HikingAutism and Instagram at lisalouis777