FINDING SAN FRANCISCO PART V: MUIR WOODS

 

If San Francisco is an East meets West of architecture, culture and even history, Muir Woods is, if only superficially, a taste of the northeastern forests for the West Coast. This is, of course, biologically untrue. The park’s proximity to the Pacific Coast gives it a perpetually wet undergrowth. Nonetheless, the western counterparts of many of the familiar plants and animals that inhabit our woodlands will make East Coast visitors feel at home. Pileated woodpeckers make both coasts their home, Sonoma chipmunks are, unlike their eastern cousin, limited to a very small range (specifically the chaparral regions north of San Francisco), instead of white-tailed deer the forest boasts the larger eared mule deer, and the western grey squirrel fills the niche of our most populous native rodent, the eastern grey squirrel. Black bears have since been extirpated from the area (though a healthy number still exists throughout California), but a lone wanderer was spotted around the park in 2010.

Where Muir Woods National Monument is a distinctly Californian natural wonder is in the giant redwoods. Being in the presence of these giants of the Pacific forests never fails to inspire awe or remind that nature never needed the help of man to achieve its majestic perfection. Redwoods are a testament to the visual splendor that untouched earth creates on its own. Perhaps because the dryer, wider spaces of Yosemite and Sequoia national parks allowed for a clearer singular view the overall effect was stronger there, but the spell they cast on travelers to the Muri Woods is no less humbling.

Nature offer reminds visitors of her control even before reaching the park. In many ways, the gateway from the city to the forest is the spectacular Golden Gate Bridge, the architectural marvel that, despite the odds of securing funding early in the Great Depression, saw funds (thanks to Bank of America founder Amadeo Giannini) and construction (led by visionary chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss) plow through and by the time it opened in 1937 became a symbol of a nation’s perseverance and imagination amidst an economic crisis. In a different way than the redwoods, the story of the Golden Gate Bridge, what it meant to a city and a nation as a whole on its knees, and the sheer beauty of the thing, is as moving a sight. And yet the fog of Frisco often engulfs the entire structure, rendering it invisible sometimes from the very top to bottom. Fog is, obviously, as much a part of San Francisco as its sea lions but the way it blankets its most iconic man-made structure is a reminder that nature works on her own and crossing that bridge away from the city takes you into her undisturbed domain.