Rebecca Hikes

We were desperate to get outside for Memorial Day weekend. I had not gotten to see some of my closest friends for an extended period of time in months. In some ways the distance has made us closer than before -- whether over the phone, by email, or on someone's doorstep, I have found it easier to tell my friends that I love them. In all other ways, the physical distance makes it more difficult to share in the day to day of each other's lives. With other close friends I have drifted apart. The puzzle was to figure out where to go, and how to do it within the growing patchwork of mis-matching inter-jurisdictional regulations. Alameda County still has its shelter in place order, but Mendocino National Forest was opening up, and had even allowed camping. We agreed we would travel separately by car, camp separately, not share equipment or food, and hike 6 feet apart. We would choose a remote, non-developed campsite that would probably not attract too many visitors. T suggeste...

My commute for the past two years before Shelter in Place was to an east bay city south of Oakland, to a low slung administrative building adjacent to the Hall of Justice. Several decades ago the building served as a sheriff's holding cell; the tell tale sign is that the windows start 7 feet above our cubicles, and require a special instrument available in the office break room to reach and open.  The main purpose of the agency that I work for to provide money to support housing projects, both rental development and homeownership. Some of the money is locally raised bond funds, and some of it is state or federal money that passes through to us. We have to manage the contracts that we provide to make sure that the money gets used in the way that it is intended. One of the contracts that I work on is with a national nonprofit that specializes in home building but is administering a home preservation program for us. The program was originally intended to provide low interest lo...

Last Sunday we chose a trail run around the perimeter of the Briones Reservoir. The trail is about thirteen and a half miles of gently sloping ups and downs through grassy fields and oak trees, with some openings into valleys with views of the delta to the north. My legs felt leaden and heavy, and it was warm out. There were clouds of black flies in some of the more shaded sections along the trail, and a sign warned of ticks. We had to choose something different this time, because I could not handle a third weekend in a row base to summit run of Mt. Diablo. But just the same, every so often, there to the east, looming, we could see Mt. Diablo. The reservoir is just east of Tilden and we could just make out the ridge where Inspiration Point meets Wildcat Canyon Road, where the day before we had walked from that parking lot on a grassy East Bay MUD trail down probably fifteen hundred feet to San Pablo Dam road. We were sometimes on part of a contiguous stretch of trail that star...

I had been planning to hike the PCT this year. I had gotten a real good spot in the online lottery to request permit dates to start the trail at the Mexico border -- my start date was April 21st. I mostly like my job, and in many ways I love my life here. But I knew that hiking the trail for five months would make me happy in a way that the constraints of normal life cannot. My partner would take time away from his doctoral studies to join me. And I know that there aren't many opportunities for taking out the kind of time needed for a journey like that. My partner and I had hiked a couple of months on the trail in 2016, from Idyllwild in the San Jacinto mountains to Tuolumne in Yosemite. That experience was one of the hardest things that I have done. We walked from deliberately chosen places in California, carefully chose for sentimental reasons. It made me fall in love with California again, after having been away for so many years -- a seriously misguided decision to live in...