Gambolin’ Man doesn’t post often, but when he does, I always check it out. He thoroughly explores the human and natural history where he hikes, and he provides lots of beautiful photos.
He just wrote about his latest ramble on the hiking trails in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park in the East Bay Regional Park District:
Once a land ‘o plenty teeming with inexhaustible salmon runs, cornucopias of shellfish and acorns; once the wild stomping grounds for grizzly bear, elk, bald eagle, and mountain lion; once home to Ohlone and Miwok hunter gatherers for tens of thousands of years – in other words, Paradise on Earth — today, Wildcat Canyon, set on the ecotone of the urban and the wild, where East Bay metropolitan sprawl meets Mother Nature’s organic green blanket, covers more than 2400 acres of pretty valleys, modest peaks and roller-coaster ridges, attractive meadows and healthy woodlands, tropical-like riparian corridors, chaparral sage-scented hillsides, and a rich aquatic biota composed of ponds, marshes, lakes and creeks. In other words, it is still, relative to, say, nearby industrial Richmond, Paradise on Earth.
Animal tracks in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. Photo by Gambolin' Man.
