Junipero Serra Park: A Mycological Wonderland?

  

   

I’m thankful for large unruly parks in urban settings, but I had hoped this one was truly wild. “What is that buzzing?” I said and swiveled around. Ah, the freeway. Still, Junipero Serra Park was a fine place for a mile and a half loop, taking my husband, our baby, and myself from a soggy flatland to the peak of a hill with awesome views. We explored the Quail Trail Loop, wishing to see a variety of landscape, which we did: snaggled, twisted limbs of oak trees branching over the trail, patches of grassy meadows, a forest of blue gum eucalyptus, a copse of redwoods. Almost immediately we saw scads of mushrooms.

Marshall, like our good friend Brett who introduced us, loves mushrooms and the hunting of them. Old World blood flows in their veins, the sensibility of foraging and gathering, of sustaining themselves with things of the soil. And rainy season is a delight to hike in for these men, given the quantity of mushrooms.

“It’s a mycological wonderland!” Marshall exclaimed about Junipero Serra, grabbing the camera to take a macro shot of antennaed, alien spores swiveling off a pile of dog poo. Then he was off, pointing this way and that at the mushrooms he saw.

There were Amanita muscaria galore, those awesome fairytale mushrooms with large red caps and white splotches, poisonous for sure, but pretty cool to look at. As a high school student fascinated with the history and lore of psychedelics, I read that Siberians made a tea of this mushroom from which they'd hallucinate, then pee out most of the liquid, and then drink the pee, which apparently retains up to 80% of the psychoactive compounds. Who knows if this is a babushka tale or not. I didn't experiment, by the way, with Amanita muscaria, and don't recommend it.  

There were mushrooms that looked like turkey tails, others like shelves. Some were like rotten piles of blackened snot, others like tiny perfect brown mushrooms, another like a white penis rising out of the mulch. Another was like a big, ugly, exploded, orange colored football, twice the size of my shoe.

Marshall loves culinary mushrooms but doesn’t eat them without a friend around who really knows his stuff, yet he did jump off trail, baby bouncing in the carrier strapped to his chest as he sought proximity to the endless display of fungi.

“Please don’t touch that,” quickly became my mantra.

Junipero Serra Park is 108 acres and nestled so close to the 280 freeway that one can hear the persistent hum of cars and human activity for a ungoodly portion of a hike. It is awfully close to Millbrae and San Bruno, so you get the best view of the SFO airport you’ll ever have on terra firma. (“Airplanes are cool!” Marshall tells me as we gaze at a UNITED AIRLINES hangar in the distance) There weren’t too many people about, just a group of teens ready to get drunk and fall down the slides built into the hilltop. 

Virtues of Junipero Serra Park include a diversity of flora, as mentioned earlier, which in turn create homes for the bird population. We saw hawk and maybe vulture above, heard the jabber-jaw of blue scrub jays, and noted a flock of unidentified birds that looked like chubby mice with wings. Trees in the park include Monterey pine, Coast Live oak, Monterey cypress, madrone, laurel, and willow, which had bright yellow leaves for the season. Soap plant with heavy raindrops on their long leaves hugged the trail edges, and poison oak webbed through the bushes just off the path. We walked virtually alone. Two playgrounds look fabulous for kids with sturdy state-of-the-art structures.

It was a good jaunt. Worth the $5 parking? Sure, I’m definitely in support of California parks. And if you know your culinary mushrooms and can pick as you walk, a bag of chanterelles in the organic market costs a goodly amount more than five clams.

Victuals: No stores seen between freeway and park entrance. Pack it in and out.

Facilities: The loo is at the parking lot, and there’s even one at the playground near the peak.

 

Directions:

--Southbound on 280, exit Crystal Springs Road

--Right onto Crystal Springs Road

--Proceed a half mile to the entrance on the left

--Northbound on 280, exit Skyline Blvd 

--Right at the stoplight onto San Bruno Ave

--Right onto Crestmoor Dr. 

--Park entrance on the right

Last Hiked: Early January 2010

Sawyer Camp Trail

Just before New Year’s eve, my friend Brett and I, with baby Genevieve in sling, ended up at Sawyer Camp Trail alongside the Crystal Springs Reservoir in San Mateo County. It’s probably one of the easiest hikes as it is simply a meandering paved trail that runs alongside the water, one of the prettiest manmade lakes, made pretty by the simple, ironic fact that humans are not allowed to swim, boat, or bathe in its slate blue Hetch Hetchy waters.

If it weren’t for the cyclone fence topped with barbed wire, I could imagine great things, like being in the wilderness. (I wholeheartedly appreciate the lack of boat pollution, or the big summer bodies covered in coconut oil, flounder-swimming and making a racket, scaring the bejeezus out of fish, fowl, and doe.)

As it was we walked with other joggers and bikers and strollers of babies beside the rusty fence that kept us from the water and the thick forest along the western shores. Deer nibbled grass on both sides of the fence and looked askance at us like the trespassers we were.

            Sawyer Camp Trail is 6 miles long, and apparently was once the main wagon trail connecting San Francisco and Half Moon Bay before cars existed. A fellow named Leander Sawyer used to live along here back in the 1800s, and kept a little place with beds for rent and hot meals for wayfaring strangers heading north or south (he was a man of multiple talents, raising cattle and training circus horses on the side).

            One great aspect to this particular walk is the fact that Brett is in love with mushrooms. He was like a hog on the scent of a wily truffle, scrabbling through rusty barbed wire, jumping forward to grab a chanterelle that sadly turned out to be curled orange peels someone dropped. He knows his stuff, he read his mycological guides by David Arora, he attends fungus festivals, and one of his best friends has taught him much in the ways of mushrooms and the careful picking of them. (In fact, when Brett showed up at my house before the hike he gifted me a big bag of dirt-covered chanterelles that he found in the Oakland hills.)

Brett identified a plethora of milk caps alongside the Sawyer Camp Trail “but they were the poisonous ones,” he tells me. “You can tell this by breaking off a piece and seeing what color latex it exudes. The poisonous ones start by exuding a white latex, but this turns yellow after a few moments. I believe the common name is yellow-staining milk cap. The genus name for milk caps is Lactarius.” Sure enough beads of milk formed on the mushroom where the gills broke in Brett’s hands.

“I think we also saw a member of the Suillus genus (very spongy on the bottom with holes instead of gills),” Brett continues. “Most of them are also really slimy on top. We probably also saw a few russulas, but I don't remember the exact species.”

            It was a fun to walk after a recent rain with a mycological enthusiast; I see fallen leaves and big-eyed deer, the baby sees fuzzy shapes of bicyclists retreating into the distance, and Brett sees the fruits of the mycelium-webbed soil.

Brett, the baby, and I didn’t get too far, maybe a mile and a half out max, what with evening plans and an unavoidable late start to the day. Next time I return to Sawyer Camp I want to make the three miles to the Jepson Laurel, the biggest darn laurel tree in all California, I’m told. It’s a whopping 600 years old; it was a seedling when the Plague continued to ravage Europe. 

And if it’s a rainy, misty day, I just might keep a look out for mushrooms thanks to Brett's mycological teaching.

Driving Directions:

--Take 280 (aka “The World’s Most Beautiful Freeway”) and exit at Bunker Hill

--Go west and turn right at Skyline Boulevard

--Proceed over the Crystal Springs Dam

Victuals: There are no stores here. Pack it in and out.

Bathrooms:  Port-o-potties are located at the start and subsequent points on the trail.

Last Hiked: Late December 2009

The Nearly Secret Hike: Bayview Hill of San Francisco

           Anyone cruising north into San Francisco on the blighted 101 freeway will notice a wind-swept, semi-wooded hill pressed against the bay, shadowing Monster Park Stadium, looking desolate, wild, and unexplored. This is the forty-four acre Bayview Hill in the too often-overlooked southeastern quadrant of San Francisco. Some of its best features are the panoramic views of the city, sweeping from Twin Peaks to downtown to the Bay Bridge, Mount Tamalpais, Mount Diablo, San Bruno Mountain, and the glistening expanse of the bay. Given its isolated location—although ironically in plain view of thousands of passing motorists—and a single access road, Key Avenue, this is a truly secret hike; since it is not a popular walkway, it is one of the most diverse natural resource areas in the city.

The Baby Factor

      There is a one-mile hike that circles the top of the hill; the “trail” is an old paved road that a chunky-wheeled stroller could manage. Although you’ll begin with a steep uphill for a quarter mile, my husband and I hiked it with a thirteen-day-old baby in a sling. Sport strollers with chunky wheels could manage just fine. We encountered a small family with a six-year-old girl (intensely curious about peeking at our baby!) who hiked like a champion. Given the isolated location of the park and its infrequent visitors, I recommend that at least two adults hike together. People tend to allow their dogs off leash, but the two dog owners we encountered leashed their pooches when they saw my husband, baby, and I coming up the trail.

History

Bayview Hill is made of broken bedrock and silica rich mud interlayered with beach sand buried and baked to form chert and sandstone layers. Before the Spanish arrived, this was the stomping ground of native Ohlone people and home to grizzlies, elk, wolf, and deer. Tenuous reminders of these days are evident in native bunchgrasses that have survived the centuries, like California brome (Bromus carinatus) and June grass (Koeleria macrantha), which elk and deer ate. The hill became a park in 1915, but the city has sliced and diced it, shoveling away large sections for Monster Park, the football stadium to the east, and the dump to the west across the freeway. Current erosion from the days of rock quarrying continues to threaten certain sections of the park, mostly in the northern area.

Your Day Begins

Start your day by packing picnic food, water, sun protection, and hiking gear since you won’t find stores, restaurants, or restrooms up there. The closest public bathroom is in Candlestick Point Recreation Area (drive down Key Avenue, turn right on Jennings Street, right on Jamestown Avenue, driving along the football stadium until reaching Candlestick Point on the other side) or at Gilman Playground.  My husband and I merely changed diapers en route to the top of Bayview Hill, sitting in the shade of blue gum eucalyptus.     

There is one paved, circular road (which I call the “trail”), accessible by car for park officials but traversable by foot for others. Access it by driving up Key Avenue to the car barrier, park, and start your hike. You’ll go uphill for a quarter mile or so; stop to look over your shoulder at the unfurling view, take photos, notice the solitude, the blue scrub jays in the oak trees. You’ll reach a forest of blue gum eucalyptus and pines on the crest, and there’s a three-quarters of a mile loop around the apex of the hill. On the south side you'll find a snag, a large, dead tree on the top of a rise; this is a good opportunity to discuss with an older child how dead trees provide vital habitat for many insects and birds like woodpeckers and nuthatches. Watch for the relics of old staircases and retaining walls built by the WPA decades ago, while being conscious of the fragile plant and animal species, and treading carefully through the different habitats of grassland, forest, and scrub. If you charge down unofficial trails with eyes half-shut, you could bowl into patches of poison oak.

Animals

            Bayview Park is home to many animals, including the typical San Francisco raccoons, mice, pocket gophers, striped skunks, and Virginia opossums. Lizards and salamanders slither about, and you might see several harmless snakes basking in the sun, or eeling through the grasses like garters—maybe even the Pacific ring-neck snake, which diets on earthworms and the like, and whose tail corkscrews when it is threatened. If lucky, you might see the endangered Mission Blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides missionensis), with blue or brownish wings bordered in black, fluttering on one of the lupine plants it needs for survival. More common is the small Acmon Blue butterfly with black spots and an orange splash on its delicate, silvery-blue wings.

            Bird watching is quite good with the likelihood of spying various raptors, including great horned owls, noisy scrub jays, and kestrels. A positive aspect of the plentiful blue gum eucalyptus trees on the apex of the hill is that they provide nesting for several species of hawk.  There are also smaller birds such as sparrows, meadowlarks, and wrens; goldfinches and nuthatches breed here.

Vegetation

There is plenty of plant life to appreciate. Besides the ubiquitous, invasive blue gum eucalyptus trees, you can find Coast live oak, mostly in the southeast part of the park. Seek out the native, sensitive Islais cherry (pronounced is-lay, the Ohlone word for cherry) with coin-shaped, serrated-edged leaves.

If you adventure here in the spring or summer, keep watch for the rare coast larkspur (Delphinium patens), a sun-loving perennial with violet colored, star-shaped blossoms. According to San Francisco Recreation and Parks, Bayview Hill is the only place left in the city where you can find it. Also look for San Francisco collinsia (Collinsia multicolor), the San Francisco Blue-Eyed Mary, an endemic plant that has been destroyed in other local habitats. It’s a shade-loving herb with serrated leaves and clusters of pale lavender, multi-lobed flowers which bloom in the spring. You find it in the southwestern section of the park. At the trailhead on Key Avenue, there is a waterproof chart of wildflowers that bloom in the spring here. 

Bayview Hill is a wonderful place to hike and picnic; you can imagine yourself in an eagle’s aerie, lifted above the traffic and chaos of the city. Hopefully the native plants and animals will survive and thrive in the future; for now, appreciate them with meditative awareness and share this park with people you love. Come here seeking open land, plants, and animals—not people or conveniences.

What and Where?

Bayview Park Brochure:

http://www.parks.sfgov.org/wcm_recpark/Volunteer/Brochures/BayviewHill.pdf

San Francisco Recreation and Parks Natural Areas Program:

http://sfnap.org/n_area/locator/se.html 

Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (where you’ll find a public restroom):

http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=519
Gilman Playground:
(Giants Drive at Gilman, across from Monster Park)

Directions 

Heading south on 101:

-Exit towards Cow Palace / 3rd Street

-Follow signs for 3^rd Street / US 101 N / Bayshore Blvd N

-Stay right at the fork, follow signs for 3^rd Street / Bayshore Blvd S

-Left on Bayshore Blvd

-Continue on 3^rd Street

-Right at Key Avenue

Heading north on 101:

-Exit 429B / 3^rd Street

-Right at Key Avenue