It Really Was A Dark and Stormy Night

Fire road on Bolinas Ridge in the daylight

Many years ago, I took up Ultrarunning. I began running to get off Lipitor, but I quickly came to realize that I just enjoyed the peace, freedom, and challenges running provided. However, long-distance running is a time-consuming and self-centered endeavor. One of the greatest challenges I faced was how to find the time while raising two young children and being an active member of our family life.

The solution I hit upon was to do my long runs on Friday nights after work. One needs to recover after excessive running, and by finishing my long runs in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the weekend would become my non-workout time and totally available for the family. Every Friday after work for a few years, I would head to the Marin Headlands and run from about 4:30 in the afternoon through early Saturday morning, logging anywhere between twenty and fifty miles.

This is the story of one particularly eventful nighttime run.

It was a wet March evening as I pulled in to park at the Pantoll ranger station above Stinson Beach. The mist was extremely thick, and maybe there was one other car in the lot. My plan that night was to run out Bolinas ridge on the Coastal Trail to the Bolinas Fairfax road, cross over to the dirt fire access road, and continue north until I reached the Randall Trail, then follow it down to the trailhead at route 1, and then return. The round trip would clock in at right around twenty-five miles.

This is a fantastically beautiful route, usually offering views looking down on the evergreen forest to the beach town of Stinson Beach, across the muddy bay to the quirky hamlet of Bolinas, and then to the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean beyond. The route offers a single-track trail through the golden fields along the ridge. The fire road undulates up and down through a thick forest and beautiful, quiet stillness. The return trip faces the bay and San Francisco, all of humanity lit up beneath one’s feet. All the years I have run this, either training or racing the Miwok 100K race, it has never grown old. On this particular night, however, views would be few and far between. It was cold, wet, foggy, and just to top it all off, it was a new moon.

I truly do not mind running in the rain. The body creates enough heat that one does not get cold. But I hate starting in the rain. Clothes get sticky, wet, and chilly before any worthwhile heat exists. The body shivers, the fingers are numb. And getting ready from a car takes even a few more minutes at the hatchback, allowing a cold trickle to slide down the back.

Quick as I could, I put my Camelback on with all my food and water. I grabbed my hat and my gloves. I made sure I had several gu's and other munchies to stay fueled and headed off across the road.

The trail was wet and muddy. The water courses were in full flow, tumbling down the rocky hill face as I sprang from rock to rock. Visibility was only about thirty feet ahead due to the mist. I ran along as if in some Stephen King novel through the fields above Stinson Beach, knowing it was there but unable to see it. Eventually, I entered the forest as I reached the Bolinas-Fairfax road. Drips of water fell from the trees, and my footfalls became silent on the bed of pine needles. Dusk was coming, but the magic hour light was non-existent due to the fog; instead of deep oranges and browns heralding into the evening, the grey just dimmed.

I crossed the asphalt and began running on the fire road. The trees were more spaced out, and the forest became more melancholic. I receded into my thoughts. Two hours in, I hadn’t seen a soul on the trails. Clearly, the Marin Watershed District had been working. A few tractors sat silently by the side, and there were deep tire ruts on the road filled with water. I spent a great deal of effort trying to keep my feet from submerging in the swampy mud of the fire road and avoiding the endlessly long tire tread puddles that only disappeared at the crest of hills. But there was no avoiding the soaking foot baths at the troughs.

I made it to the yellow gate on the left an hour or so later, where the Randall Trail drops down to Route 1 just north of Bolinas Lagoon. The two-mile drop to the bottom passed relatively quickly, but by the time I reached the road, it was getting dark. Quickly, I turned around and power walked back to the gate at the top of the hill.

And that is when it got interesting.

I took off my Camelback and reached in for my flashlights as it was now very dark. My hand dug around past my extra gloves and hat. I pushed aside my phone and wallet. I felt the keys and the gus.

But no flashlights, not the headlamps, not the handhelds.

I realized suddenly that I had left them in the back of the car some ten miles away.

You may recall that I was standing in a pine forest, in the fog, at night, with a new moon. And it was getting very very dark. I couldn’t make out the trees on the side of the fire road or even the road itself. It had now become so dark that I literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I tried. I held my hand up in front of me and couldn’t see it. And I wondered, how the heck was I going to get back to the car? Visions of being lost in the woods, in the rain, all night, crowded my thoughts.

Then I remembered the long track puddles. I walked forward from the gate until my foot hit the puddle. I aligned my shoes with the track, the water coming in over the tops, soaking my feet. And then, for the next two hours and four miles, I blindly shuffled ever so slowly along the road, knowing as long as my feet were submerged, I was on the right path.

It was an amazing experience to be ambulatory in the dark forest. It was silent. I could hear every drop hit the ground. There was almost no breeze whatsoever. Each drop that landed on any exposed skin (hands, face) became the center of my attention at that moment due to the sensory deprivation. It wasn’t painful, it just was everything. No animals stirred. The serenity of that night was one of the most peaceful moments I have ever experienced. The sense of moisture on my feet became my eyes as I slowly scraped my toes forward through the muddy trough.

Occasionally, I was reminded that I could, in fact, see. The first time, I thought that I was still deep in my mind, as slightly off to the left I thought I saw tiny green neon lights. I stopped and stared before continuing on. Shortly thereafter, it happened much closer on the right. I could look without leaving the safety of my puddle. I pulled out my flip phone (there was no signal by the way) and let the green LED screen light up the area, and saw a rock with lichen on it. When I closed the phone, I saw that the lichen had a faint green phosphorescent glow. I then appreciated it several more times along the slog as it gave me something to look for.

At times, I would reach the top of a rise, and the puddle would disappear. That was the other way in which the phone was useful. I would flip it open, lean down, and slowly move along, making sure I didn’t cross the edge of the road until I found where a new puddle track began.

Tediously continuing, I finally reached the Bolinas-Fairfax road. At this point, I had a choice: follow the asphalt down to Route 1, walk all the way to Stinson Beach, and then either find someone to drive me to my car (at midnight, in the middle of nowhere) or continue hiking back to the car directly on another hilly road. Fortunately, there is a paved road that runs along the ridge from this intersection back to Pantoll, Panoramic Drive, a little east of the trail I started on. It wouldn’t be hard to stay on a paved road, so I decided to make straight for the car.

This road runs through the Mount Tamalpais State Park and is closed by a gate at night. The gate is not right at the junction but around a small knoll. I began to jog slowly, expecting to crash into the round crossbar of the gate at any point.

WHAM!

It wasn’t the gate.

I doubled over the truck of the car as I ran into it.

In the dark, a woman’s voice yelled out, “Are you okay, DON’T HURT ME!”

“I’m fine, DON’T HURT ME,” I quickly replied.

The dome light came on, and I saw a pile of stuff on the seat. Two eyes were looking at me,  frightened. I realized that a homeless person had discovered this out-of-the-way spot hidden by the hill. It was a great place to spend the night unbothered (except for the occasionally crazy runner). Quickly, I scooted by the car, around the gate, and continued down the road, now out of the forest and into the hillside meadows. Heart pounding, I just hoped no one was following me. Soon, I was away by myself.

The rest of the run was uneventful. Out of the forest, there was enough ambient light for me to make out the road and actually jog the last few miles back to the car. The clouds also lifted a bit. As I rounded the turn below the summit of Mount Tam, I could see the welcoming warm lights of the city and the bay out before my feet, cold and shriveled though they were. Around one in the morning, I finally made it back to my car and found my flashlights sitting on the back seat, right where I had left them.

This was originally published on Substack March 7, 2024