Wind In a Valley: Wildlife in Lockdown
From most hilltops where I live, at least the popular ones here in the center of the county, more often than not look out to the cities…
From most hilltops where I live, at least the popular ones here in the center of the county, more often than not look out to the cities, towns, and highways interspersed within the hills that make this place livable for people, that make this county residential. This place I go to doesn’t look out to the cities.
I hike up to this hill, where it’s easy to find veins of quartz crystals, in order to look at everything that isn’t the town. I go there for peace, yes, but also the quiet where the roads aren’t as loud, and where I can feel completely alone yet fully surrounded by the lives that live in these hills and valleys. This hill doesn’t have a name.
In the spring, tree and violet green swallows nest on this hillside beside jutting rocks, and I sit in peace, usually listening to other people on the trails down below, usually the echo of a pileated woodpecker, and the slight breeze that exists out there. The faint sound of traffic, or maybe a leaf blower, is the only marker of the town along with a building on the side of Mount Tamalpais.
But today, as I walked out to that patch of rocks where the violet green swallows were flying, I heard only the wind, the calls of the swallows, and saw only oak and bay savannah mixing with conifers in the valley. It was quiet, except for the wind, a silence I am only used to heard very late at night. There was no sound of traffic. I couldn’t hear a single car. It was as though the valley returned to a past that it hadn’t known in many decades, perhaps centuries. No sound of motors, leafblowers, or chainsaws cutting up debris beside trails,. No sound from people, not a single person on the trails below this lookout. Just the sound of the wind. And such blue skies.
I like this place because, only a ten minute bike ride and a half an hour walk, I get the sense that this place is out there, far away from town, my own little backcountry trail where I know no one will be.
On top of that hill that has no name I can fall into the illusion of an inhuman expanse. Though, for most, if not all places on earth, this is just an illusion. From the chemical contaminants in the air like CFCs, oil spills still swirling vast expanses across the globe, air pollution clouding mountain ranges, and plastics like PFOs in many bodies of water, human made waste is everywhere. We are intertwined in the globe, a part of the eddying flow of ecology, regardless of our illusions.
But things are different, at least for the time being. Roads are quiet at home. The air quality across India is showing signs of clearing, with some places just miles away from the Himalayas, now for the first time in a generation, can see those snowy peaks. The leatherback sea turtles are taking over empty beaches for nesting. The streets of cities, an illusion of purely human terrain, are encroached by coyotes, foxes, and goats crossing the streets.
And from the top of this hill I can see it all, hear it all — the difference of the landscape when we are quiet. The silence in the coastal ranges directs me into the place that we seem so inclined to other, what we call nature, when in fact these wild places hold our neighbors. And I mean that literally. Those violet green swallows come back to nest on this hillside every year. The vultures fly overhead year-round. The coyotes roam streets and trails we walk in the daytime. And this is true outside of lockdown. These are our neighbors. I wonder if things have changed for them in our absence. Do the elk go out to the coast and rest there under trees where people would normally go to picnic? Do the mountain lions now use our trails more often for ease? Do the foxes rest on empty streets soaking up the sun?
I walked back, a woman showed me two spotted owls resting in a young redwood grove. They stood on their perches, idly looking at us and they groomed themselves. They appeared comfortable, like they’ve grown comfortable with our absence. But I’m probably projecting. All I can do is wonder what they think about how quiet we’ve become as I listen to the sound of the wind.