Windy Hill

I took myself on another Sunday afternoon excursion. This time it was a four mile hike to the top of Windy Hill in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve just down the way in Portola Valley. It was a terrific hike, just the physical challenge I’ve been needing since starting a desk job. Sun shining, breeze blowing – heart pounding, thighs blazing. I kept my sights on the summit, or what looked like the summit until I turned a corner, and saw more mountain ahead me. Eventually, I made it to the top of the 1600 climb and ate my tangerine. Behind me was a view of more coastal mountains and the ambiguous blue-gray fog that obscures the ocean in the horizon. Ahead of me was this view, the peninsula and its rambling towns, the shadowy purple hills beyond the East Bay.

I missed hiking while away from California. Minnesota is mostly prairie. I love the mild adventure of it – conquering a climb, exploring the environment – a perfectly admirable way to spend three hours.

Gone coastal.

I packed a sandwich and a blanket in my basket and drove Woodside Road 84 West out to the coast. A winding road, canopied with redwoods and moss drenched live oaks, peppered with brightly jerseyed cyclists pumping up the hills. The Coastal mountain towns like La Honda and Skyline Blvd. are inhabited by beatnik retirees in homes they built after their San Francisco exodus in the 70s. Funky, earthy, hideaways now worth millions.

The road T’d into Highway 1. The left Santa Cruz. To the right Half Moon Bay. Straight ahead  San Gregorio State Park. The parking fee was $8 (thanks Arnold) but when I rolled down my window at the booth the handsome park ranger said I had a ‘sexy smile’ and for that I could park for free. It’s nice when your looks work out for you this way, though if my boyfriend had been in the car I’m sure we would have paid the $4 each.

Because it was Sunday and the kind of weather that makes you feel wasteful to be indoors, there were plenty of visitors to the park – families picnicking, couples clasping in the wind, kids digging heels into sand,  – but people tend to give each other their own space at the beach and don’t interfere with your desire to be there, however mutual it may be. To each his own day-trip.

I found a perch up on a sea cliff, spread my blanket, opened my book and munched my PB&J. Four hours of tender spring sunshine and twirling bluff breezes.  Of contemplative thoughts and pages turned. Blades of fuzzy grass plucked and braided. Gulls gliding effortlessly by at eye level. A call to a faraway friend.

And then, with Bob Dylan howling out his harmonica, I drove out my free parking spot, waved at my benefactor, and drove down to Half Moon Bay for some ceviche and a glass of white wine.

Home before dark – so nice to have the light linger again.