Flashlight Hike 2009

This year's flashlight hike was the route along the north edge of Rodeo Lagoon, where I and many other Cathedral alumni have gone for our 6th grade week at a nature program (I should still have a proto-journal of that week somewhere). We gathered in the parking lot before we started up the hill to Battery Townsley. The hole in the battery, which once was a black pit of water, has been covered up for safety reasons. The world becomes "safer", but less interesting, every year; staring into the Stygian pit was a highlight of this route. We ascended the "mini-Half Dome" staircase, as somebody put it, and admired the views during a snack break. The ascent to the radar station seemed shorter than usual (perhaps because we had not spent too much time at the Battery), but the nearer tower had collapsed like a section of the Bay Bridge; someone had defaced the largest slab with a giant black heart. If that has a particular significance, I would like to hear from you.

After we had dined while looking at the lights of our beautiful city, which I appreciated more after attending Lost Landscapes 4, we continued along the trail, which has improved markedly since the park banned mountain bikers on the Miwok Trail. There was a lesson in astronomy, which has become easier since the days of pretending you can tell where someone's finger is pointing. The final descent coincided with a sudden drop in temperature, and then single file along the north side of the lagoon. I remember one year where we walked along the south side of the lagoon and across the sandbar to the parking lot, but that took place earlier in the day and was quite a slog. It's entirely possible that the south trail has collapsed into the lagoon. There was a supply of hot cocoa and donuts, as usual, and a sophisticated telescope for seeing the Galilean moons.