When you head up (and up) the road to Jacks Peak Park, right before the gatehouse you'll see a simple wooden sign (as shown above)—yellow lettering on a plain brown background. A promise? I believe so. A statement of fact, calling things as they are and have been for quite some time: this is a natural area and as such it is protected.
The dictionary defines protect this way: "todefendorguardfromattack,invasion,loss,annoyance,insult,etc.;coverorshieldfrominjuryordanger."
All the natural things that receive our protection there: the oaks and Monterey pines, the little wing-ed insects, the red-shafted flicker that stopped long enough upon a branch yesterday for me to see the speckles on its chest, even that pervasive poison oak, protected. All deserving of our care and regard, our devotion to Jacks Peak Park, a natural place.
If you pull into the east parking area at Jacks Peak and start walking along Sage Trail on a cold winter morning when the sun is out, and if you're like the sun on your face when the air is brisk, you may not get too far along the trail before you have to stop, before nature calls your name. And if you like to look at nature's unfettered beauty, to catch sun on trees and hills, to hold an untampered vista in your eyes, to witness a flock or two of birds whose feathers nearly sparkle in the light as they sail on the currents, you may find your feet planted quite awhile on Sage Trail before you can convince them that, really, there's more to see, that the beauty of the dark canyon also compels.
Jacks Peak Park is a public place and that means you and I have the right and obligation to be a part of the process, to inform the decision makers of our thoughts and how we feel, what we want for our park. There are many reasons I’m opposed to a zip line at Jacks Peak. Here are a few of them:
* Jacks Peak Park is the largest stand of native Monterey Pines.
* Raptors and other birds nest in the trees that would potentially be cut down to put in the zip line.
* It’s been proven, human beings need quiet, natural places where there aren’t towers overhead and wildly yelling and excited people whizzing by suspended from wires between those towers as if on an amusement park ride.
* The animals whose home is the park need it to remain as it is.
* We are stewards of this land; and not everything in our world ought to be about money.
If you are opposed to the zip line proposed for Jacks Peak, here are a few VERY important (and easy) things you can do to voice your concern:
* Contact David Lutes of the Monterey County Parks 755-4911 x4911 or email him lutesd@co.monterey.ca.us. By making contact you will show your concern as well as receive more information.
* Contact the park commissioners: email parks@co.monterey.ca.us or P.O. Box 5279, Salinas, CA 93915. If you email, ask the clerk to give a copy of your letter to each of the five Monterey County Parks Commissioners. (Each commissioner is appointed by a supervisor. See below.)
* Contact your county supervisor
* Contact supervisor Dave Potter, as Jacks Peak is in his district.
* Write letters to the editor of the Monterey Herald and the Monterey Weekly and the Carmel Pine Cone.
When I began this blog, in 2010, it had a very clear and timed purpose—to share my year of walks in the forest at Jacks Peak, to bring readers into the woods with me, at least in spirit, and to write about my life, how it came with me into the forest and how walking influenced my days.
Now, I'm bringing the blog back but for a very different reason. The beautiful wilderness of Jacks Peak Park as we know and love it is in danger. Today I offer an initial post to begin the refocus of this blog to inform those interested about the current situation.
Monterey County Parks (www.co.monterey.ca.us) is considering putting a zip line at the park. This would radically change the forest as we know it. Last weekend, my husband, Michael and I took a walk with the proposed zip line map in hand. If built, the zip line would having towers and zip lines running from the park to Carmel Valley. (I will scan this map and have it here soon.) Though it would be fun for the riders, it would drastically change the natural character of the park. Zip lining is anything but a restful and quiet experience. It's more like an amusement park ride.
Many local citizens are opposed to this project because we want the park to stay just as it is! We're actively working tto encourage the parks department to put the zip line elsewhere. It's not that there's anything wrong with a zip line; it's that it doesn't belong in Jacks Peak Park. Stay tuned for further details. Feel free to write me at patrice@patricevecchione.com, if you've got questions.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
On January 1st, 2010, Michael and I took a walk at Jacks Peak. I’d been off my bicycle for too long due to problems my back. The gym wasn’t doing it for me. Everything in me needed OUTDOORS. The very first time I came to Jacks Peak was by bicycle. It’s a steep climb and, after circling the parking lot, I came to the wrong conclusion—that it was just a picnic area. It took several more visits to learn that this was no mere slip of a place but that a whole world lay at my feet.
I decided to spend a year walking, wanted to walk every trail, to know the lay of the land, to get a good feel of the place. I asked this question: What does it mean to befriend a place?
A year later, I still like that question, but am not certain I have an answer. I know that if, when I die, I’ve got any money, I want it donated toward protecting this park and increasing its acreage. And I’d like my ashes sprinkled in these woods. I gush about the place, wanting those I love to love Jacks Peak. Making art pieces from this nature and then showing them to people, is another kind of celebration, an extension of my love, another way of saying, “You come too.”
Most of all I’ll walk away, on this last day of the year, with two things in the deepest of my pockets: greater joy and far less fear in walking alone and a feeling of boundless curiosity sated and, simultaneously, unsated.
Also these tidbits of knowledge: owls do, occasionally, hoot at midday; if you want to hear the smaller birds converse, keep walking, don’t stand still, because, if you do, they’ll stop singing; but if you want to see the deer who come close, stand very still and barely breathe, and, if you’re lucky, they won’t run away immediately; mountain lions aren’t going to eat me; most creeps don’t come here; fear runs its course, and when it realizes you’re not going to play along, it gives up its death grip; the woods will never shut its gates on me or you.
I love walking with others but walking alone I love most of all. That wasn’t true for the first several months when fear was an all too frequent companion. Out in the woods, alone, something happens to me, I get a feeling that’s a mix between rapture and inspiration, an elation my body feels too small to contain.
Nature is never the same. If you’re attentive it will give you this and more: the look of the tip of one fern leaf touching another, bits of ceanothus blossom carpeting the ground like blue snow, the year’s first dandelions, the sound of two tiny birds chatting up in a tree, the feeling of wind traveling right up to me, the look of darkness just past where the trail bends, sunlight hot on my back, my breath, my lungs, my strong heart while climbing up hill, walking for two hours and not seeing another person, raindrops on my face, banana slugs eating mushrooms, the look in the dying woodrat’s eye.
Though I’ve walked almost every trail, I know, for certain, there are two I’ve not set foot on, probably more. The desire to walk every path lost its hold on me after I’d walked enough of the park to have a sense of the place, to carry a map in my mind.
The other day, I wrote that seeing begets seeing; the same is true for walking in the woods and learning about the place. My desire to walk is unabated, my hunger for knowledge about the nuances and intricacies of the natural world blossoms yet. On the morning of January 1st, 2011, you know where I’ll be.
Thank you for reading these notes, for being my companions. With the hope that someone would be reading, I’ve written to you. Today’s the final entry. Tomorrow, though, there’ll be a little something here, an offering to the new year. I'll begin writing the first half of the year and moving toward a book about this past year of walking, of befriending Jacks Peak.
Though I won’t write this blog into the future, it will stay online for anyone who might care to read it. My plan is to soon begin another, very different blog. Stay tuned.
I'm the author of a book of poems, Territory of Wind, a nonfiction book, Writing and the Spiritual Life and, most recently, a play, A Woman's Life in Pieces, which I've been performing in Monterey and Santa Cruz.
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