I silently slip past the trailhead and onto the trail the same way a very hungry person walks into his favorite restaurant, or a tired toddler falls into the arms of his mother. The words of John Muir come to mind, “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” I sometimes feel Muir’s writings are a bit heavy on the superlatives, but today I couldn’t agree more. How right you are, Mr. Muir.

I’m heading for a sunny hillside a half mile up the Northridge Trail. I haven’t been on Northridge for awhile, so I walk across some lingering snow at the bottom of the Devil’s Dribble drainage and take a right at the T. Wild Nature begins to envelop me. The woods are alive with the sounds of birds. I hear a spotted towhee’s percussive song, repeating about every 15 seconds. It reminds me of many early spring mornings waking up to the same sound in a particular redrock canyon of southeast Utah, a place that is special to me. I notice I’m smiling.

Except for many blooming spring beauties, spring seems to be unfolding rather slowly among the park’s wildflowers. Just as this thought enters my mind, I casually glance to my left and see my first pasque flower of the season. I step off the trail into a grassy opening in the ponderosas for a closer look. The lavender petals (technically, they are petal-like sepals) have not yet fully opened to reveal its busy yellow center.

I hike up a red dirt section of trail. Several years ago, I spotted that year’s first bear sign, a perfect five-toed track, indicating that our neighborhood bears had awakened from their winter’s slumber. Any day now, I’ll find a track, or a scat, or a bear itself, saying that hibernation is over for Ursus americanus this year.

I arrive at my hillside destination and find a downed log to sit against. A startled lizard scurries away as I get comfortable. The sun feels warm on this still-cool morning. I hear nothing but non-human sounds. Another towhee song. Dried grasses and oak leaves rattling in the breeze. Several chickadees calling. The squawk of a Steller’s jay. The squeak of a woodpecker. A stronger breeze humming through the tall trees down the hill behind me. A towhee, but this time, not its song but its call that sounds a bit like a screaming monkey (at least according to fifth graders I’ve worked with). The nasal honk of a red-breasted nuthatch.

The wildness of this place is further revealed by the view right in front of me. The farthest ridge still boasts lots of white snow along with the green of a million conifers. A few bands of gray just below a saddle are aspen, still leafless in their winter mode. Closer in are the crumbling (geologically speaking) granite rocks that make up Devil’s Canyon, a few patches of snow saying that spring is still young. My eye catches some movement off to my right. A small raptor with an obvious white rump (northern harrier, I think) gracefully glides low over the naked shrubs and disappears into some trees.

To borrow a phrase that my 4-year-old grandson Jude said often yesterday, on his first fully self-powered hike to the Fire Tower, “Is this cool or what?” We tasted sprigs of emerging textile onion, were surprised by and then sat and watched a beautiful 18” green snake (“It’s my favorite color,” said Jude, “light green.”), climbed to the windy top of the tower three times, ate our lunch in the warm sun – a perfect place for a boy and his grandpa to enjoy Nature, and each other. To think, this mountain park, with thousands of acres of wild federal lands just behind it, right here for all of us to experience wild Nature, and for Nature to carry on its wild ways. You are so right, little Ranger Jude, this place is cool!

~ Dave Van Manen
April 6, 2008