Article

Story and photos by Bridget Lyons

I’ll admit: I am one of those Santa Cruz residents who has the tendency of dismissing San Jose as a sea of urban sprawl. I forget that, in addition to being bordered by copious Santa Cruz Mountains open space to its sounth and west, the city provides access to all sorts of green areas on its eastern borders.

Recently, I needed to do an up and back drive on I-680, so I committed to doing a trail run in one of those east side preserves on my return leg. I honed in on the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve, thinking I’d cruise up Sierra Road and access trails from there. But when I got to the base of that long and winding road and saw a sign that said, “Parking lot full,” I pivoted and drove around to Alum Rock Park. This was my first indication that San Jose folks are using their public lands—especially on sunny Saturdays in January.

I did manage to snag one of only a few free parking spaces at Alum Rock Park, so I laced up my shoes, opened my trail app of choice, and plotted a route that had me heading up the Penitencia Creek Trail. This lovely creekside meander started in a grove of lichen-encrusted buckeyes and made its way into shady oak bottoms with sprawling patches of ferns. It conveniently delivered me to another parking lot and the bottom of the North Rim Trail, which started climbing uphill and into the sunlight—exactly what I was looking to do.

At this point, I had to stop for a moment and simply take in the color around me. It was green, as expected. But the shade of green was downright electric. Our Christmas rains had clearly invigorated large portions of this landscape. I had to smile as I thought about how this East Coast-born girl would never really get used to the presence of skeletal winter trees growing out of neon-bright grass.

From the North Rim Trail, I veered onto the west side of the Todd L. Quick Trail and then the west side of the Boccardo Loop Trail, where property ownership transitions from Alum Rock Park into the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve. The crowds had thinned out by this point, and I was mostly alone on this rolling two-track ascent, doing a mix of walking and running as I moved through the open terrain. The climb had me facing east, so I was looking into the rest of the preserve and the extensive Calaveras and Alameda Watersheds beyond—parcels of land with no obvious signs of human development. There is a lot of terrain up there.

Its expansiveness became even more visible at the top of Boccardo Peak, a rounded, grassy summit with sweeping 360-degree views that are well worth the grunt. In addition to seeing the open space from there, I could also see the entire urban megalopolis of the South Bay Area—from Morgan Hill all the way up to the Dunbarton and San Mateo Bridges. The contrast between these two views was striking: On one side of me, I was looking into metropolitan San Jose, a complex business, residential, and transportation infrastructure that supports millions of people. On the other, I was looking into California chaparral, an equally complex (though in ways we don’t always understand or appreciate) ecosystem that supports millions of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, plants, fungi, and algae. I hung out there and took that in for a while, turning my head and body a few times to register the juxtaposition, then took off downhill.

As though on cue, the descent along the other side of the Boccardo Loop offered me a few glimpses of this ecosystem’s residents. First, I spotted a kestrel perched in some dried cattails, presumably scanning their surroundings for the wide variety of rodents, insects, and invertebrates they feed upon. Shortly after that, I ran past a mushroom—maybe a Cortinarius—peeking up through the ground cover as through thrilled to finally be checking out the aboveground world after a vigorous rain. Then, I came around a corner and surprised a black-tailed deer—not exactly a rare species in our area, but still one to be appreciated as they continue to survive and even thrive in the face of our slow but steady elimination of their natural habitat. To top it off, the final part of the descent had me on the east side of the Todd L. Quick Trail, which happens to have a series of interpretive signs that identify plants and trees next to the trail.

Finally, I joined back up with the North Rim Trail and reversed my path back through the parking lot and Penitencia Creek, completing my roughly 8-mile circuit. Later, I learned that I missed the opportunity to run a little farther east on the North Rim Trail, which would have enabled me to check out what, from the photos, looks like an interesting stone bridge across Penitencia Creek. But the sun was setting and the temperature dropping on this short January day. And I needed to drive home through that big urban sprawl I’d just gotten a bit of perspective on. 

As I did so, I was left to think about how these two wildly different worlds exist side by side—for now anyway—and how this juxtaposition is made especially obvious in Alum Rock Park and the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve. Like many of us, I fear the seemingly tireless advancement of the human world towards the remaining parcels of land in which nonhumans can still live without our interference. Still, I now know that there’s more of this kind of terrain near San Jose than I thought. And plenty of people, including me, are touching base with it.

ridget Lyons is a writer and editor living in Santa Cruz. To learn more about her work and explorations, visit www.bridgetalyons.com.