Rebecca Bond is a graphic artist with a get-out-under-the-trees bent. Just last Friday she was haunting Redwood Regional Park, one of the few big Bay Area parks I have yet to check out.

Starting out on a ridge at the Skyline Gate staging area, across the street from multi-million dollar bay-view homes, you wouldn’t quite understand why this park is called Redwood Regional as you mostly see pine and eucalyptus trees ahead of you. And continuing down West Ridge Trail, you enter oak woodland filled with lots of California hazelnut, bay laurel trees, madrone trees, oak trees, huckleberry bushes, pine (not sure if they are Monterey or knobcone, but definitely pine) and many others. But descend farther, and the oak and madrone trees become older, the underbrush sparser, and the sunlight dimmer. As you get closer to the bottom of the ridge it gets much darker, and suddenly, you are amongst those giant conifer trees—Sequoia sempervirens a.k.a Coast Redwood, hundreds of feet tall, blocking out the majority of light. It feels as if you’ve entered a fairy-tale forest—moist, dark and cool.

Redwood’s higher on my list now, for sure. Rebecca also stopped in on Tomales Point to check out the elk awhile back. Looks like I’m about the only hiker in the region remaining who hasn’t been to Tomales Point this year.