Van Damme State Park
Where peaceful nature brings you back to the present
Turning around to come back down the trail, I had to stop at this particular little spot to just absorb how beautiful a morning it was.
You know those instances when your mind slowly turns off the clamor of everyday worries without you even realizing it, and you begin to taste afresh how beautiful it is to simply be in the present moment? Maybe such instances come in that blissful state right before sleep, or while focusing on a complex puzzle. Maybe it’s in the middle of an earnest, intentional conversation with someone you care about, or while sipping on that morning’s first fragrant cup of coffee. For me the other day, just such a moment came while I was out running through Van Damme State Park.
Whimsical bridge in the upper part of the park
It had been a few months since the last time I ventured out along the aptly named Fern Canyon Trail winding its way up the lushly green gorge of the park. I had fond memories of solitary morning runs and rambling hikes with friends, of quiet contemplation and happy laughter along that path. For one reason or another though, I just hadn’t made it out there in a while, an unfortunate circumstance that I decided to change on Monday.
Early morning on Van Damme beach
I pulled into the parking lot at Van Damme State Beach, across Highway 1 from the entrance to the park. A seagull swung low over the two or three little fishing boats that bobbed in line a stone’s throw out from the sand. A cool breeze wafted the mildly salty scent of the bay’s gentle waves under my nose as I stretched beside my car. The air was still soft with the wakening light of dawn, painting the world around me in mellow undertones. My watch beeped out its readiness to get going, and I started out in an easy lope across the road, a weather eye on the car turning the corner up the hill.
Threeleaf foamflower spangles the sides of the trail during late August and early September.
The current continuous loop of work details and weekend plans and various logistical tangles tumbled through my brain as I nodded to the park ranger in the entrance kiosk and made my way through the stretch of camp sites that lay between the coast and the trail head. Staff schedules at the inn arranged and rearranged themselves before me as I puffed up the first real incline. Previous and anticipated arguments and discussions rehashed their stronger and weaker points in my ear as I squelched across the partially submerged network of branches and wood chunks threading through one perennially muddy section where a spring fights its way down to the creek.
As I breasted a redwood needle-carpeted rise of the trail and looked up, all the jumbling thoughts of work and life began to wash away in the drifting moats of dusty golden light filtering down through the towering redwood trees. My ears started to listen, and I began to hear the sounds of the forest around me over and through the regular rhythm of my breathing and my shoes striking the ground. The stream gurgled and tinkled across stones and under overhanging ferns and branches. Lively birds sang out intermittent morning songs from the canopy above. A squirrel skittered up a nearby tree trunk. A hidden deer broke a twig in the underbrush up the hillside. Leaves crinkled. Trees creaked ever so slightly.
Another calming, peaceful vista crossing one of the many bridges in the park.
As the trail narrowed and I entered another section of the trail, I found myself focusing on the feel of the plants brushing up against my legs, on the variation in color on the leaves of the different plants, on the scent of the damp earth. I reached my turn-around point and paused. My mind was in a totally different place than it had been when I started out, and I realized how beautiful a morning it was, how glad I was to be out there on the trail, how wonderful it was to simply be there in that moment and feel the slow and steady pulse of nature beating in my heart.
Augh! Can’t get enough of these charming bridges!!!
Looking at the last time we wrote about Van Damme State Park, it seems as though we really love the peace that abounds along this trail. More people tend to go to Russian Gulch because of that park’s lovely little waterfall, leaving this path a bit quieter most days. It feels a tad more open and lushly green than Russian Gulch until you get to the upper reaches, where you get to explore the interesting differences in ecological strata that are uniquely apparent in the pygmy forest at the top.
If you start at the beach parking lot and go all the way up to the pygmy forest and back, you’ll log about 9.5 miles. If you start at the trailhead and go all the way up to the pygmy forest and back, you’ll log about 8 miles. You can, of course, turn around earlier if you prefer a shorter kind of stroll. If you want to start at the trailhead, you’ll need about $8 cash for your parking pass.
If you are intrigued by the sound of the pygmy forest, continue south past Little River and turn east on Little River Airport Drive. A few miles out you’ll pass the Little River Airport and then shortly thereafter see the small sign for the pygmy forest. Park in the small dirt parking lot there and explore a different side of Van Damme.
Words & pictures by Laura Hockett