Winter Solstice is a powerful time. I love to go hiking around the solstices, and especially during the potent day of December 21st, where we observe the embarkation of winter. Fall has sunk in deep; the leaves have changed with dramatic purpose. Much of the foliage has gone barren, leaving only remnants of their former selves.

A great place to go observe the changing of the seasons is a place we like to call Microwave Hill. Its government-sponsored name is China Camp State Park, and resides just east of the city of San Rafael in northern California. Locals have referred to it as Microwave Hill because of the ominous presence of a Microwave Beam Tower that used to reside there. This tower is a remnant of the eighties and all that ludicrous Cold War propaganda. Those dark Reagan days that we seem to be heading towards again with our current administration allowed nuclear missile silos to be installed in the Marin Headlands, as well as the construction of a tactical weapons tower that resembles a giant golf ball sitting on top of East Peak on Mt. Tamalpais.


If you can ignore the allusions to holocaustic warfare, the park is actually a very peaceful place. Deer roam quite boldly all over the grassy covered hillsides. Red berries cling to fraying gray and green leaves that branch out from catacomb-like sections of trail that never see the sunlight. The canopy is so omni-present that the ground seems to be breathing water into the air. Oxygen is literally pouring out of the plant cells from 360 degrees. Any hiker who ventures through the wide single track that wraps around Microwave Hill will encounter some of the freshest air available on this biosphere.


The vistas from the lazily rolling hills gaze out upon Richardson Bay and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Odd, egg-shaped islands covered with carpets of clover, pop out of the tinted grey-blue smooth surface of the calm waters of the bay. Boats navigate the shoals hoping to snag a sturgeon.


It is hard to imagine, but this picturesque park that contains 1,640 acres of natural wetlands, was once a Chinese immigrant fishing village. The salt grasses that used to thrive in the area before pollutants from mining and increased industry muddied up the bay were perfect for a local species of shrimp to prosper.


Many families emigrated from Canton, China during a time of massive poverty in the mid-19th century, and as luck would have it they found that the San Pedro point area in this state park was similar to their ecosystem a half world away. By 1870 there were an estimated 77 Chinese shrimpers harvesting the shrimp for exportation and sale to restaurants in San Francisco.


When I close my eyes I can imagine Microwave Hill in various guises: as An unblemished wonderland of nature during the times of the Miwok; An out-of-the-way shrimping community of Chinese immigrants during the post-Gold Rush years; And finally a state park hemmed in by prize homes of wealthy Marin county families complete with golf course and a marina.

ER Harris

http://www.sfgate.com/getoutside/1997/may/cc_history.html