Parents, do you remember your child’s first bike ride, when
they pedaled away from your steadying hands? Or the first home run, or the
first goal? Remember your feeling of pride and joy in sharing their achievement?
It’s not unlike following your boy or girl on a first hike to the top of a
mountain peak, anticipating not only their sense of accomplishment, but their thrill
and revelation at seeing the world from on high.
I had one of these rare “peak experiences” when son Riley
and I were returning home from a Mother’s Day weekend visit. I pointed out a mountain
I knew would have special meaning to him (it shared the name of his garage
band.) “Dude, let’s climb it!” he said. Sunset was drawing near, but we couldn’t
resist. It had meaning for me, too; I’d wanted to stand on that peak since I
was his age. To my surprise, he was in great shape (thanks to his PE class.) We
powered straight up the steep trail, pausing only to pick up litter (and
getting every piece!) The summit pulled him like a tractor beam. When he
reached the top he stepped onto a boulder and turned to accept the prize…
It was a remarkable afternoon, the pre-storm atmosphere
absolutely clear beneath baroque clouds. He spoke to me of the landscape before
him, with wonder and delight, as if he was solving some great puzzle. One
hundred miles away, his hometown Sonoma Mountain was little more than a ghost
image on the edge of the earth. Riley is fifteen, and in the ninety minutes of
our mountain detour I came to see him no longer as a boy but a young man, my
equal in many respects. Climbing a mountain together was a transforming event,
a rite of passage.
Ten years ago my daughter was fifteen, and we had a similar
experience walking up Sonoma Mountain on Lafferty Ranch. Above the clutter and
clatter of the city, she heard her calling, and set a direction in her life
that she follows to this day.
Now I hear that there might again be an effort to sell
Lafferty. *For what reason?* Can you imagine visitors in our new downtown,
after a Saturday of shopping, museums, outdoor music, art galleries, fine
dining and film, asking to spend Sunday afternoon hiking on top of Sonoma Mountain,
and being told the City sold it to accelerate the street paving schedule by a
few years…*but*, if you signed up on Monday, you could come back for a guided
tour in three months. Ball fields are critical (and we’re getting more), but if
you someday want to take your disheartened bench-warmer up for a different
perspective on life, you would be out of luck… *if* we let a few mega-NIMBYs convince our politicians to convert this priceless mountain
property into coins that will soon enough be spent and forgotten. Petaluma
won’t be the Bay Area pothole capital; it will be the only town *without* a
park on its peak.
Ten years ago, we formed Citizens for Lafferty Ranch and a
Regional Park. We argued it wasn’t necessary to sell or trade Lafferty to get a
regional park, and in less than two months we gathered signatures from 5600
registered voters to make our point. We were right. Tolay
will be our new regional park. With its lake and wide, open valley, Tolay will complement (but not substitute for) Lafferty’s forested
mountaintop and year-round stream.
If the City Council and County Supervisors think getting Tolay justifies dumping Lafferty, they’re mistaken. Rather,
by raising nearly $20 million from a variety of public and private sources, and
by the application of *reasonable* standards for road, fire and environmental
constraints, the Tolay success shows what can be
accomplished with some political leadership. Apply a fraction of that to
Lafferty, and our forty year-old plan for a mountaintop park will be realized.
Securing Lafferty for a nature park (and link in the trail
to Sonoma Valley) has been demanding. Just like climbing peaks. But we don’t quit
when we are tired, because we know what’s waiting for us at the top.