Earth Day at the Top of Mount Tamalpais

Earth Day celebrations start early this year and take place at various locations around Marin County. I took the opportunity to celebrate this special day at one of my favorite places in the world: the top of Mount Tamalpais. The California State Parks Foundation, together with Friends of Mt Tam, sponsored a volunteer work day at East Peak, a fitting place to commemorate Earth Day. About 100 people took part in the event, coming from all over the Bay Area.

There were a number of different tasks that needed to be done, including trail maintenance, trimming vegetation, fence repair, graffiti removal, and painting the Visitor Center. Each task was assigned a label to identify it, and each label was associated with a bird or animal, a nice way of showing the importance of wildlife to Mount Tamalpais. The groups were given the names of Egret, Anna's Hummingbird, Red-Tailed Hawks, Tree Frogs, and Harbor Seals. These creatures can be found on and around Mount Tamalpais, from the skies above to the shores of Rocky Point, where the ridge of the mountain falls off into the Pacific Ocean. Taken together, the first letter of each creature spells out E-A-R-T-H.

I joined the Egret Group, which was assigned to work on the Plank Walk, the trail that leads from the East Peak parking lot to the top of the mountain. What better place than the top of Mount Tamalpais to see the beauty of the Earth, and to see such a large part of it from one vantage point. The Plank Walk gets its name from the railroad planks that form the lower part of the trail. The planks were salvaged from the old Mount Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railway in 1930, shortly after the railroad went out of business.

Our task was to trim vegetation and smooth out the trail by removing rocks that had become wedged in between the planks. Armed with a large pair of loppers, I headed up the mountain with my teammates, looking for bushes that were extending their branches out onto the trail. Coyote Brush is the most common bush on this trail, along with the exquisitely twisted and blood-red limbs of Manzanita. The spectacular California lilac is also prevalent, with its deep purple flowers in full bloom right now. The foliage is so beautiful on Mount Tam at this time of year, it seems a shame to trim it at all, even if it is blocking half the trail. I continued all the way to the top of the mountain, a necessary pilgrimage for a nature lover such as myself.

Earth Day is officially designated as April 22, but a number of events are happening around Marin throughout the month. Stinson Beach will host a Create-with-Nature Earth Day Celebration on April 20, which will be a combination of beach cleanup and creativity on the beach. Participants will build works of art using sand, driftwood, shells, and other items found on the beach. The event starts at 11:00 AM and is open to volunteers of all ages. For more information, visit Earth Day Stinson Beach.

The Earth Day Marin 2013 Festival will take place on Sunday, April 21st at Redwood High School in Larkspur.  The event will run from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM and will feature entertainment, food, children’s activities, special exhibits, and a number of speakers. Outreach tables will host nonprofit groups that support the environment, including Friends of Mt Tam, Friends of China Camp, and the Marine Mammal Center. At the end of the day, a special screening of the documentary Do the Math will take place, part of the nationally-coordinated premiere of this film about climate change. For more information, visit Earth Day Marin, which also lists many other Earth Day events.

An Earth Day volunteer work day will take place on Saturday, April 27 at Patrick’s Ridge in China Camp State Park. Sponsored by Marin Releaf, this event will focus on tending oak trees that were planted as acorns in 2001. The project is being monitored by UC Berkeley as a test plot for possible survivors of Sudden Oak Death, hoping to find trees that are resistant to the disease. Volunteers will meet at the park gate at the end of McNear Drive at 9:45 A.M. For more information, visit Marin ReLeaf.

It is heartening to think that events like these are taking place all over the world. At a time when it seems like plastic filled oceans, climate change, and environmental degradation are overwhelming our ability to cope, people are coming together to do something. John Muir spoke so eloquently about how connected we all are, stating that "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."