Epperson – footprints of precision and passion
Roger Epperson in May of 2006, standing where his ashes would be scattered, on the Ridge that would be given his name. Photo by Scott Hein.
I bequeath myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love; if you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles. – Walt Whitman
Mt. Diablo was a mere silhouette, a tower of ragged black beneath a charcoal sky. Diamond Sirius glinted low in the west, but against the shore of the eastern horizon washed a thin wave of dawn – a ripple of blue above pale bronze. The sun would rise in an hour.
I was sitting on a stone monument anchored in Morgan Territory’s Roger Epperson Ridge. The inscription chiseled into the rock reads “In memory of Roger Epperson (1954-2008) in recognition of his significant and lasting contributions to the East Bay Regional Park District and the landscapes he loved.”
I never met Epperson, a deficiency that shielded me from the pain of his passing. He died on December 8, 15 years ago, in a kayak accident in Hawaii, leaving behind wife Carol Alderdice plus friends and admirers beyond count.
I never met Epperson – but I’ve seen his footprints all over the place. As supervisor of EBRPD’s Round Valley, Morgan Territory and Black Diamond Mines preserves, he bequeathed a body of work that I and thousands of Bay Area hikers, runners, cyclists, equestrians and campers enjoy on a regular basis.
Have you crossed the bridge that spans the deep arroyo in Round Valley? Have you pitched a tent in the maternal enfolding of Morgan Territory’s campground? Ever notice, after a drenching downpour, how fast the trails in Black Diamond shed water and firm up? If so, you’ve also spotted the track of Roger Epperson.
Epperson earned a reputation for devoting an artist’s eye and a bricklayer’s muscle to our access to splendor. “Roger would go out with the fire trail grader or the culvert excavator,” said Alderdice, who served for three years as one of Epperson’s rangers. “You had to let him tell you how he wanted the culvert headwall to look, or grade around a tree or down a slope.
“And while a pond was being built or rehabbed, Roger was on site. ‘I want a swale here; I don’t want too much of a lip there,’ he’d say. It was meant to look like wilderness – not like a machine had pushed dirt up against a tree. He wasn’t a park supervisor who’d say, ‘Go do it and tell me when you’re done.’”
The late Jim Rease (aka “Roger’s other wife”) described Epperson as a man whose mind was always on the job: “When we camped and hiked in Prairie Creek Redwoods (in Humboldt County), he’d stop and notice trail work that impressed him. ‘That’s nice!’ he’d say and take a picture of it. ‘That would work over in Morgan Territory.’”
Hiker Leia Hartje stands by the brace that Roger Epperson designed to save the limb of this old valley oak at the Morgan Territory campground.
An avid art collector and photographer, Epperson marshaled his aesthetic sensibility to extract maximum beauty from the landscape. Whether creating a trail or wielding a camera, “He framed things like a painter,” said Rease. ‘That’s just the right pitch,’ he’d say, ‘just the right angle. You see this vignette when you sit here.’ And he’d refer to landscapes as ‘a Francis Gerhardt’ or ‘a Yoshida woodblock.’”
Former EBRPD General Manager Bob Doyle, a close friend of Epperson since high school, admired the fearlessness of Epperson’s work ethic: “A lot of staff sees land acquisitions and thinks, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to take care of that?’ Roger would get an assignment and take it to the next – three or four times – level. He never complained about a new acquisition. He had this uncanny ability to look at a piece of trashed property and enjoy converting it.”
Alderdice echoed Doyle’s impression: “When Roger was told there was no funding for a pavement project or to put up a house at a staging area, he found a way to make it happen. He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The new bridge at Round Valley was something Roger started. The district followed through on it because of his insistence.”
“Everything Roger built was heavy: ‘built for bear,’” said Doyle. “He worked in Shell Ridge Open Space before he got a park district job, and I can still find things he built. They’re 8x8s, not 2x4s. They’re big pieces of rock with a board on top. Heavy and strong – heavier than an engineer would need.”
Those who love the massive valley oak standing sentinel on the Morgan Territory campground have Epperson to thank. Faced with amputating a major limb or installing a tall, heavy iron brace to save it, take a wild guess which option Epperson chose.
Epperson’s perfectionism reflected no stern and stony personality. “He was Puck in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’” said Doyle. “Lighthearted. Not just fun loving; he was the creator of the fun. He’d walk into my office, blow past the secretary, come in and do whatever he wanted. He’d sit at my desk with his feet up on it – muddy shoes – completely inappropriate. I really miss that.”
Spring sunrise at Roger Epperson Ridge, Morgan Territory Regional Preserve.
Epperson’s playfulness extended to his love of language, including a parody of his own fastidious personality. “Roger wouldn’t say ‘that hit the nail on the head,’” said Alderdice. “He’d say ‘that hit the head of the nail on the head with the head of the hammer.’ He was forever changing the words in songs: Elton John’s ‘count the headlights on the highway’ became ‘count the head lice on the highway.’”
The urge to tinker with words also permeated Epperson’s work as supervisor. Doyle remembers Epperson’s coinage for “overgrazed” as “cow burnt.” And following a saturating rainfall, Epperson would say “that was a real pond filler.”
Despite Epperson’s physically short stature, his commitment to excellence exerted a tall influence on those around him. According to Rease, “Roger’s obsession with details influenced me in my own attention to detail. Before we’d take a trip, he’d research the back roads – always a very circuitous, less-traveled and scenic route. The routes were as good as our destination. That didn’t mean an overbearing pushiness, but a direction that increased everyone’s enjoyment – a game plan with thoughtfulness, which I still strive for whenever we do things with our friends.”
Back at the monument in Morgan Territory, dawn had finally overcome darkness. As the top of the sun’s disk flared above the Sierra and lit the beacons of Diablo’s twin peaks, I read a secondary inscription on the Epperson monument: “All things must pass.” And another line in the George Harrison song came to mind: “Daylight is good at arriving at the right time/It’s not always going to be this gray.”
Ahead lay a morning of communal panoramas and private ravines, the screech of golden eagles and the silence of coyotes – all beneath a sky scoured by the light that had arrived at the right time. I faced the etched rock, pinched the brim of my hat and turned away, sensing the presence of Roger Epperson, one hand my shoulder, the other pointing down the sunward trail.