Double grace on miraculous mountain
Fog blankets San Pablo Bay at sunrise, viewed from Mt. Tamalpais’ East Peak.
The sun would rise in less than an hour. I was six miles from the coast, motoring through fog so dense that oncoming headlamps burst into view only 30 yards ahead. The saving grace: not much traffic – oncoming or otherwise. Only a foolhardy day tripper would venture to navigate the acute angles of the Panoramic Highway in thick fog at 5:15, plowing through the marine layer smothering Mt. Tamalpais.
I was headed for the one unsmothered spot – the top. My goal: the 2,571-foot spike of East Peak thrust above the marine layer like a volcanic island above the surface of the sea. I’d hoped to gaze from that perch down to San Francisco, to the ribbon of the Bay Bridge and sawtooth spire of the Trans Am building and its retinue glinting in the gold of sunrise. But I’d checked the fog forecast and figured that vista would be a longshot. The fog wouldn’t dissolve till noon at best.
“The coldest winter I ever saw,” wrote Mark Twain, “was the summer I spent in San Francisco.” It’s a fair bet Twain meant more than the mercury level; he also meant moisture. But it was precisely low Fahrenheit and high water vapor that I was stalking that morning. Home lay 45 miles east in Contra Costa County, baking in the driest January-through-May stretch since 1920. Marin County, on the contrary, was a marvel of mist – just what my system craved.
Behind me a veil of pale violet would soon glide upward from the east: first light. But not for my eyes. Fog devoured my headlamp beams as I groped my way down the road to where it splits at Pantoll Station, elevation 1,500 feet. The left fork falls to Stinson Beach; the right rises to the mountain’s pinnacle. I hooked right, and that’s where the trip came to a screech. The gate to East Peak was shut. A sign announced that it wouldn’t swing open till 7 a.m. The clock read 5:45.
I parked in the Pantoll lot, strapped on my pack and made a beeline for the trailhead. I wouldn’t chalk up the 6 trail miles and 1,000 feet of elevation to East Peak by sunrise, but I was in no mood to abort the mission. I’d rolled out of bed in Brentwood at 3 a.m. to do Mt. Tam at sunrise, and whatever my elevation when the Sun did rise, I’d be somewhere on the mountain to witness it.
But before I stomped out of earshot of the area, something miraculous happened. Somewhere in the opaque grey a vehicle rolled to a stop, a door slammed shut, a padlock rattled and a gate creaked. I hustled back to the trailhead.
Fog drifts through the ravines surrounding Alpine and Bon Tempe lakes.
A park ranger had opened the road to the peak. Seems the 7 a.m. opening time was more a ballpark figure than a policy. I thanked the ranger, unhitched my pack and hopped into my car. One road mile and 300 vertical feet later I sailed through the fog’s ceiling. Far ahead on distant ridges in the east, the silhouettes of Douglas firs were etched against a crystalline sky. In the space of seconds I’d been delivered from the blear of night to sharp-edged dawn.
The ranger’s arrival was only half the miracle; the other half was my departure 105 minutes earlier. I’d planned to leave at 4 a.m. I left at 4:06. Had I left on time, I’d have been long gone on the trail and out of earshot of the gate creaking open.
When plotting an adventure requiring a 3 a.m. rising time, you’d best set a worthy goal. My goal had been sunrise on the top of Mt. Tam. Goal achieved. The strange and miraculous thing is this: no matter what particular thrill I seek on a particular outing, I’m nearly always given something else. Something greater. East Peak would be only half the gift.
A northwest wind stiffened as I sat on the ancient serpentine rocks of the summit and watched the sun crest the horizon. Mission accomplished. Behind me, toward the wind’s teeth, tendrils of mist slithered down ravines spilling into Alpine and Bon Tempe lakes. I took shelter from the wind farther down the peak’s southeast face. Thirty-seven miles across the marine layer rippling above San Pablo Bay rose the twin peaks of another mountain – Diablo, deep purple against a sky burnished in red and gold.
Crepuscular rays radiate from a coast live oak on Mt. Tam.
My senses sufficiently shellacked by a sunrise of utmost beauty – and a vicious wind – I drove down from the peak. Just before plunging back into the murk, reluctant to bid the sky farewell, I veered left into a small gravel parking lot swept by wisps of the fog’s ceiling. A path led south from the gravel to a tall coast live oak standing sentinel on a knoll. I was halfway up the path when a wave of fog rolled in; the tree disappeared.
When a moment later the fog’s core cleared, I found myself enveloped in an aura so alien and angelic it took my breath away. The knoll had exploded in shafts of light radiating from a spectral corona behind the tree. As the breeze drove tufts of fog through the tree, the shafts fluctuated in intensity. I was surrounded by a kaleidoscopic pageant of god rays.
For a moment I was caught in a riptide of bliss and fear. Not having penciled “otherworldly ambush” onto the agenda, I tried to keep my composure, blindsided as I was by what Whitman felt striking out from Paumanok: “Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me ... Vistas of glory, incessant and branching.”
I’m not suggesting the phenomenon can’t be explained in physical terms. The Sun supplied the light. Gaps between leaves and branches conspired with light and moist air to form crepuscular rays that appeared to emanate from the tree. The spectral orb crowning the Sun was produced by the diffraction of sunlight through the fog’s tiny water droplets. The rays were no supernatural event. But my presence in that place at that precise moment? That was miraculous: a collusion of the chance and providence hardwired into our universe.
If a tree radiates rays and no one sees them, do they produce a vision of glory? “Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them,” wrote Annie Dillard. “The least we can do is try to be there.” So I stood there – not having tried to be there – savoring the convergence of light, mist and tree: my unexpected gift from the world.
Much later – for the spectacle lasted graciously long – I descended the knoll, took a final look back, and drove down through the grey to the world I called my other home.