Tomales Bay

The trail name says it all. This is the way-a very pleasant way-to Tomales Bay. Tomales Bay Trail usually escapes the notice of Point Reyes hikers for two reasons: it’s one of the very few footpaths on the east side of the bay, and it’s overshadowed by the similarly named and much more famous Tomales Point Trail to the north. But don’t overlook this modest outing: it delivers a front-row seat to geologic upheaval and an aviary’s worth of bird life.

Tomales Bay is essentially a flooded arm of the San Andreas Fault. Here the earth once wrenched and heaved so violently that entire landscapes were split. The long, narrow estuary that remains is striking in its symmetry-twelve miles long, one mile wide-and striking in its contrasts. You’ll be standing on the North American Plate, a land of gentle pastures, while gazing across at Inverness Ridge, jagged and forested, riding the Pacific Plate northward inch by inch. A walk here is a walk across continents.

Then there are the birds. Tomales Bay hosts more than a hundred species of waterfowl and shorebirds. Herons stalk the shallows, pelicans plunge headlong into schools of fish, and in fall and winter rafts of migratory ducks bob in the calm water. The mudflats and marshes that edge the bay (less than 10 feet deep in places where the trail passes) shelter clams, crabs, and the oysters that today support a lively aquaculture industry.

The landscape could easily have been lost. In the 1970s, developers dreamed of a resort and golf course along the bay’s southeastern shore. The National Park Service stepped in, bought the ranchland, and preserved this little pocket of quiet-leaving us a trail where the loudest sound is often the cry of a gull.