A sense of place: The legacy of Fitch Mountain

Dressing in my sweats, high-top shoes, hooded jersey and cap, I leave the house to meet the morning  cold. As my father would say, “No one is tougher than the weather!” I am going to meet an old friend— wild, steep, dense stands of redwood, oak and madrone— the forested path of the Fitch mountain fire trail. Hiking it brings understanding and awareness of life’s connectedness, of oneness with the Earth.
I sometimes refer to my hike as “taking out the trash”— getting rid of yesterday’s stresses and toxins that have built up inside. In my busy technology-driven work world, using wireless Internet, email, online search engines and cell phones distracts me and competes for my limited time to think and feel. Hiking helps keep me balanced and centered, so I don’t blow body fuses like pulled muscles, become a nervous wreck, or empty-hearted. At the end of my hike, no matter the mood I am in when I began, I will feel renewed, both in energy and attitude.
Hiking is a process, a sequence of thoughts and actions linking body, mind, and spirit, or inner strength, leading to a conclusion. Such can be found in wilderness; such can be found on this mountain: Nature’s Classroom. The fire trail hike takes almost two hours and never are two days on the trail the same.
In the early morning darkness, hearing the soothing sounds of the river running past, I walk the twisted mountain road that follows the Russian River to the trailhead. Such sounds must be music to the animals, as they are to us. I feel the cold wind blowing through the trees; it seems to be welcoming me on my hike. Several stars remain visible against the dark black sky, and a full, bright moon spotlights the trees and roadway. “Good morning, Mr. Moon! You’re crystal clear after last night’s rain.” I drink in the cool richness of the early morning with the full moon’s soft light showing the way. Feeling refreshed by a new day, I think of another morning’s beginning: lovemaking. Greeting the morning by feeling alive, celebrating a new day.
The sun’s eyelid hasn’t opened yet, and the birds are quiet, except for two owls hooting at each other in the dark. The hooting of the owls grounds me to the earth, like the smell of skunk reminds me of my boyhood days in northeastern Ohio. I notice dark, moving shadows on a small house, silhouetted by the only streetlight on the mountain road. Shadows intrigued me as a child. They could be the outlines of a spooky trespasser, or curious animal. Thoughts of childhood wonder accompany me on my hike.
Fitch Mountain, rising alongside the scenic Russian River and its vineyard-covered valleys, centers the small town of Healdsburg. The Russian River supplies the town’s drinking water and irrigates its vineyards and orchards. The river flows year-round and waits for no one.
During my boys’ growing-up years, they knew the river’s special swimming holes, rope swings, fishing spots, “rites-of-passage” bridges, and often went tubing and canoeing down the river. The mountain provides our sense of place; we are drawn to this river, these valleys, and this mountain countryside. This area grows in me, feels like it’s a part of me and me a part of it, my identity, my mental DNA. All seem to promise greater freedoms, and the opportunity to live in harmony with and gain quiet strength from my surroundings.
At last, I reach the fire trail to begin my ascent. Suddenly, I hear water running beside the steep trail from a winter creek, a seasonal stream working its way to the larger river below. The creek sings with its splashing sounds, glorying in the recent rains, raising a sigh of relief for every living thing. Everything is washed anew by the seasonal rains. Time for life’s cycle to help feed Mother Earth. Green ferns dress up the forest floor like flower arrangements at a banquet, planted and displayed by Nature in her endless workings.
The skeleton of a great blue heron lies on the trail. The heron has now become part of the forest food, as everything else here will be. I am reminded of the herons’ deep, harsh, guttural croaks in treetop rookeries, and their clacking sounds as they feed their young. Fitch Mountain is a natural habitat reserve for the great egrets, scrub jays, robins, turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, mergansers, thrushes, California quail, and many other species of birds. I often think of birds as greeters, carriers of the human spirit. They inhabit the mountain as overseers, as caretakers, always alert, crying out warnings. “The policemen of the forest,” my mother calls them. Birds warbling in the rain sound like they are singing in the shower, as I occasionally do.
My breathing becomes heavier with the increasing steepness of the mountain trail. Another half-hour to the top. The gravel, leaves, and dead branches crunch and snap under my feet as my pace quickens. The trail is hooded by the trees, creating a still, dark forest in the early morning. Through the fog’s mist, I see large redwood stumps of yesteryear. Other, younger redwood trees— sprouts—now grow around them. Amazingly, a toyon grows out from the top of one redwood stump.
This forested wilderness is steep and dense, covered in coastal redwood, California native oak, Pacific madrone, toyon, Douglas fir, maple, California bay laurel, California buckeye and dozens of other tree species.
The trails lead to three-hundred- year-old groves of redwood and oak. Hiking this trail makes me breathe deeply into the forest that also harbors many varieties of shrubs and flowering plants: yellow forsythia, red rhododendron, white photinia with its red and green leaves, violet vinca ground cover, red-berry holly, blue iris, red shooting star, Scotch and French broom, blackberry and many more. The mountain is home to countless types of shrubs, with pollen, berries, and foliage, housing and feeding the wildlife.
Continuing my ascent, I see green shaggy moss on the vertical sides of the fire trail where nothing else grows; to the touch, it feels like coarse horsehair. The deer, fox, twenty-plus varieties of migrating butterflies and other fauna species live here in Nature’s balance. I imagine their hundreds of eyes watching me as I continue my climb. I haven’t seen any damp-looking banana slugs yet today. I wonder how they even survive.
The wind is coming around the bend, shaking the branches. It teases me, plays hide-and-seek; now it is gone. The wind accompanies me and becomes my companion. Iridescent green moss grows on many trees. I see small saplings, that for some reason have died, reminding me of young lives that have been snuffed out. Blackened, charred, burnt stumps show where there was a fire long ago, yet renewal continues to occur.
The forested wilderness of Fitch Mountain teaches us about life’s ongoing cycle: feeding, growing, harvesting and dying. It is autumn. The fallen carpet of yellowing rust-colored leaves will feed and help preserve this forest. The fallen leaf shows us that the stages of growth and decay are the same for us as for our surroundings. We, too, will fall and return to the earth. Nothing lasts forever; Everything has its season. We are only visitors— guests for a brief moment— striving to make our visit worthwhile, to self and others.
Looking up from the steep hillside trail to my left I will be passing the well-hidden hut visited by high school students who etch their names in the wood, where they remain until, eventually, Nature erases them. Here they do much “growing-up.” (Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would be impressed-see page 43). I see wooden survey stakes with red marker ribbons off to my left. I wonder what they mean.
This hike is vigorous exercise. Sweating or cleansing is part of the process. I unzip my hooded jersey. Rarely do I see anyone on the trail. Occasionally cyclists ride their mountain bikes up and over the mountain trails; they smile as they pass me. It looks difficult to me, but they say it’s all in the gears. They make it look like a walk in the park. Amazing but true. I push against the hill’s steepness — resistance, the give-and-take of life.
The mountain’s rocks on the trail are being worn down, stone by stone, some of it becoming sand for the river below, a slow erosion. Perhaps in 10,000 years this mountain will be but a small hill. Everything in its time. Scientists state there was an ice age 12,000 years ago. Will there be another, a new beginning?
I’m now about a third of the way up the mountain. The trail’s first one-third is but a warm-up. I make a ninety-degree turn. Here are branches that look pulverized, broken down to shreds. Soon they will be powder. Herbs and man-made pills are in powdered form to help sustain us; the forest branches, leaves and foliage decay to a powder, to replenish the forest. We are one with the earth.
Look at this huge Pacific madrone tree! It must be four feet wide. Let it feed the forest with its leaves and limbs. Another madrone, burnt out in its hollow center from the 1945 Fitch Mountain fire, sustains four trees standing together like brothers, growing out of the burnt trunk, surviving. Spanish moss is on the oak trees, growing, thriving again from the rains. It hangs like tattered, aqua-green curtains. Mysterious. Foreboding.
I am breathing more deeply now, as the trail winds tighter to the top. It’s near daybreak. I can see the valley floor from this “high-as-a-birds-eye” view. The fog and mist rise in patches against the mountainsides, giving me a sense of living in the clouds. Some mornings, there’s a sea of fog or low clouds, making the mountaintops into islands. I go to my favorite spot: looking north toward the tiny town of Geyserville, then east to Mount St. Helena, down at the Russian River, framing the view between a Douglas fir and an oak tree. I want to share this open vista with everyone below. This seems to me to be a special place to live.
I start back in a southeasterly direction toward another top of Fitch Mountain, to the patriarch of the forest— a grand old oak standing alone. Its great, gnarled limbs look ancient and noble. Its huge low limbs stretch out and seem to say, “Come, sit down on me. I will hold you. I’ll comfort and settle you.” I see someone has cleared the ground around it, taking away its forest food. The oak’s magnificent vista opens up toward the Pacific Ocean, and the valleys, coastal rolling hills and haze beyond. I feel on top of the world, filled with a quiet strength. This is a comfortable spot to just “be.”
I zip up my jersey to keep warm on the descent (I once caught walking pneumonia by not covering up when cooling down). I enjoy the rambling rhythm and pace going downhill. Off the side of the trail is a steep vertical plunge, yet trees and shrubs are growing even on this mountainside, providing natural erosion control. New wild iris are starting to sprout green life from the autumn rains; food for the deer.
When the wildflowers blossom, I will craft spring bouquets from them. Below, the river glistens. (On an afternoon hike, the sun reflects against the water with diamond-like, blinding brilliance.) The mountain’s underground springs constantly spill and flow into the river year-round. The river peeks in and out between the trees, running every day out to sea, to its Pacific Ocean home some thirty-five miles away. Downstream flows carry Steelhead in their run to the sea; returning, cycling a few salty years later, transformed into freshwater steelhead trout, or “silver bullets.”
Steelhead run upriver to spawn (their sense of smell finds their home rivers) around December through April. Coho and Chinook salmon runs in September or October—depending on the river’s water level— are another ecological phenomenon of Nature.
There are thousands of bright red berry clusters boldly displayed upon the hundreds of toyon “Christmas-berry” trees. It seems the forest is decorating itself for a holiday season. In late December and early January, thousands of cedar waxwings and other birds fly in, wave after wave, sweeping down to gobble up the fruit from this natural birdfeeder.
I now see an old trail covered with thick growth—another joy of wilderness: the newness of discovery that heightens the awareness of life. There are hundreds of ferns, and the ground is covered with moss. No one has been here for some time. Thinking of the food value to the forest, the foliage must be like caviar to the flora around. The forest is sustained, enriched, and preserved through decay and death.
I continue down the winding trail, down to the mountain road, down to my house. I see a purple haze against other distant mountains. Sometimes, while hiking Fitch Mountain, you bring unsolved problems with you. Yet, it seems that when you come down from the mountain, some of those problems now have answers, and some of them aren’t as big as when you began. I have been hiking now for an hour-and-a-half, with another twenty minutes to go. I feel more energized than when I started. My body talks to me, toning and filling me up with renewed energy and strength— an endorphin high.
On the mountain, in wilderness, you can find knowledge, physical rejuvenation, solitude, healing, personal or spiritual growth with the great out-of-doors. I’ve learned that hiking Fitch Mountain gives you an identity with Nature, its surrounding community— and the human family.
Smelling the pungent smoke from wood-burning stoves and fresh coffee brewing from the houses below warms me, even though I’m not inside. I smell the forest, too. All my senses are more on the surface, creating a heightened awareness to being alive. I feel the autumn coldness in the air. I am not yet in the autumn of my life, but I imagine that when it comes, I’ll be thinking about the autumn of the seasons— of leaves falling, falling to the ground, back to the earth, to help feed and sustain life’s cycle. And I’ll thank this mighty mountain for teaching me the oneness, through Nature, with Mother Earth, our home.
Ted Calvert is a Healdsburg resident. The above excerpt was included in his book  “Healdsburg Chronicles.”