Since most of my ultra-long training runs are done solo, there are many mornings when cattle are the only living souls I see on the trails. Sometimes when I'm lacking motivation to get out of bed early, I'll imagine that the cows are expecting me - like they're holding me accountable to get my mileage in.
And if that sounds a little weird ... OK, yeah. It's weird. So be it.
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One of the first things they teach you in elementary school English classes is that every good story needs a beginning, middle, and end … but this post goes against convention in some regards, in that I really don’t know how the story begins. I’d love to find out someday, though.
This much I know: the story involves a small airplane - one that met with an unfortunate fate. The ending is clear, but the beginning and middle of the story are something of a mystery. Every now and then I visit the airplane and try to piece together the rest of the story, either factually or in my imagination. And by “visit”, what I really mean is “take a pretty cool trail run and make up crash theories to mentally preoccupy some of the long miles”, but you probably already guessed that.
The location of our story is Toro Regional Park (click to enlarge any of these pictures), home to rugged hills, steep canyons, beautiful vistas …
... and cows. Lots and lots of cows.
Most of the outbound trail is a gradual uphill climb that takes you past remnants of the old rancho days of Monterey County, such as this corral where early settlers kept livestock and lived off the land, but now is little more than a vacant echo of a time gone by.
The trail continues up to a high meadow where, after a rainy day …
… these kind of tracks are pretty common. A few weeks ago, several people pointed out my lack of expertise in confusing cougar prints with coyote paws – but there’s no mistaking these kind of tracks …
… especially when the owners are relaxing just around the next bend in the trail. These are the pastures of heaven that Steinbeck described so eloquently, and the fact that I can find myself here with a relatively short trail run is a continual source of amazement for me.
And whatever the ranchers were serving for breakfast that morning must have been pretty good, since no one seemed particularly bothered by my presence.
I bid goodbye to the cows on the high meadow, and started a long descent down the opposite side of the ridge …
All the way to the base of Harper Canyon, where the open vistas are replaced by thick tree cover, and the trail narrows to a meandering single track climbing into the steep valley …
… and back and forth across a seasonal stream. I did this run just a couple of weeks into our rainy season, so the ground wasn’t quite saturated enough to run off into the stream bed – but in another month or two, several sections of this trail will be submerged in a few inches of water.
Despite its shoddy appearance, this bridge is actually fairly safe. I know this because the first time I ran on this trail, I had my training partner go over it first. Partners are great, aren’t they?
The trail eventually splits between a saddle that leads to the top of the ridge, and the generally unmaintained Airplane Trail. Maybe this is just me ... but if you were in the middle of a steep, narrow trail, miles removed from any roads and saw a sign labeled “Airplane Trail”, you'd pretty much have to see where that leads, right? I thought so.
Shortly after the trail juncture, the first sign that something is out of place: instead of a standard wooden footbridge, you cross the stream on what looks to be a metal floorboard from a single-engine aircraft. A little further up the trail you notice something that is definitely out of place:
Part of the airplane fuselage that came to rest in this little clearing. What’s especially interesting about this fragment is how far removed it is from the rest of the aircraft …
… which lies another tenth of a mile or so up the trail.
There are conflicting local theories about what exactly this plane might be. Some think it was a piloted single-engine aircraft that ran into trouble shortly before approach or after takeoff from Carmel Valley’s rural airstrip a few ridgelines away from here. Others think it was an unmanned military-type drone from the nearby Fort Ord Army base that crashed and was conveniently forgotten.
I honestly don’t know which way I’m leaning; it seems awfully small for a person to have fit inside, but canary yellow isn’t a color I normally associate with military aircraft. One thing I’m certain of, though: regardless of how the story might have begun, it darn sure didn’t end well.
After gawking at the wreckage for a while, you have to retrace your steps to return to the trail junction and climb out of the canyon, leaving the mystery of the airplane shrouded under the canopy of oak trees behind.
A few random notes about this picture at the top of the canyon …
1) Yes, I’m fully aware that in the last couple of self-photos I’ve published, I appear to be carrying a few extra pounds than in my crazy ultra-racing days of last spring and summer. All I can say in my defense is, it was January, and I’m working on it now. (Um … sort of.) 2) I’m wearing one of the first-ever logo shirts from Wilderness Running Company, which I’ll review here as we get closer to spring. You’re probably not going to believe this, but at one point I thought the shirt might literally kill me. And now I love it; I’ll explain it all later. 3) Vibrams, baby. Vibrams.
By this point of the run, you’ve earned your mileage, and the only thing left is to enjoy a long gradual descent back towards the Salinas Valley, with one half of your mind absorbing all the killer views, and the other kicking around crazy airplane crash scenarios. Or maybe that’s just me.
Although the story of the airplane isn’t properly told without a real beginning, I find it fairly compelling anyway - it’s one that I find myself returning to from time to time, perhaps hoping to glean some piece of information or cobble together some theory that I didn’t have before. Either way, it keeps me interested, which should always be the goal of good storytelling – whether my former English teachers agree or not.
In the fall of 2000, the California Milk Advisory Board launched an advertising campaign with the intent of getting more Californians to purchase locally produced dairy products. In hindsight, the ads might be considered a precursor to the whole locavore movement, but that’s probably giving the Advisory Board too much credit; more likely, they were just concerned with boosting their bottom line.
The campaign exceeded their wildest expectations, and nine years later, is still going strong. The commercials are funny and clever and have fun with some cherished tenets of life in California. And since I encounter so many cows while I’m out running the trails of Monterey County, several of the 30-second clips play on a continuous loop in my subconscious while the miles are clicking away.
However, because the campaign was initially meant to run only in California - it didn't go nationwide until 2007 - it occurred to me that, even in the YouTube era, many of those early classics might be unknown to the majority of the country. So today’s post is basically a retrospective of California Cheese’s greatest hits.
The theme of the campaign was equal parts absurd and brilliant: it was built around the notion that “Great cheese comes from happy cows, and happy cows come from California.” They played heavily on the endearing, highly prevalent sentiment of most Californians that our quality of life is far better than anyplace else in America. To local residents, it was an easy sell.
I mean, most of us here honestly do think that life in California makes us happy:
And if you have the right frame of mind, even the dangers can be fun:
We romanticize our laid-back California lifestyle …
… and poke fun at folks from other states. It’s almost too easy for Californian cows to tease “rival” Midwestern cows – either because of the weather:
Or the way they speak, doncha know:
We love the idea that California girls are the greatest babes in the world ...
(Incidentally, for several years after seeing this commercial, I would yell “Hey ... you workout?” whenever I passed a cow on the trail, even in the company of other runners who didn't know what the heck I was talking about. Honestly, that line still cracks me up. By the way, I'm nearly 40 years old.)
... and that they aren’t easily impressed by some faux-French sophistication:
I could go on and on with these, but by now you get the idea. The commercials are wonderfully funny; they highlight the positive side of living in California; and they have lots of cows. You can see why I love them so much.
Finally, I’ve saved my favorite ad of the campaign for last; it unites the sheep (and sheepdogs) I encounter in Fort Ord with the cows I adore in Toro Park. No matter how many times I watch this one, the sight of sheep speaking in thick Scottish brogues and making like Braveheart warriors never fails to crack me up.
Hopefully now you can appreciate why I have visions of cows dancing in my thoughts so often while running the trails, and why those thoughts always make me smile. From my experience, great running comes from happy runners - and this happy runner lives in California.
Wildflowers have been exploding like fireworks in Monterey County lately, which is as good a reason as any to create little photo tour and share some of the scenery I get to enjoy on a regular basis. It’s also a nice opportunity for me to polish my photojournalism skills in preparation for the races I’ve got coming up - the first of which is this coming weekend. So let's get right to it ...
Our tour begins in Toro Regional Park between Monterey and Salinas, which I wrote about in a photo post from last year. It’s literally right across the street from the Fort Ord open space that I described in the sheep post earlier this month. In other words, if you’re an ultrarunner, this is a pretty sweet place to live.
The wildflowers are so abundant right now that some of the smaller ones are easy to miss. For example, from a distance, these little guys aren’t dense enough or large enough to color the hillside from a distance – but when you look closely, they’re all over the place. I sometimes wonder if they’re jealous of their bigger, more splashy relatives.
These guys always remind me of one of those drinking bird toys … so I call them “drinking birds”, because I have no idea what their real name is. (I know, I could look it up – but I kind of like my drinking bird name. It fits, don’t you think?)
Purple was kind of the theme of the day out here, as these lupines can attest. At least, I think they’re purple - more on that in a second.
Having dense lupine on either side of a steep trail doesn’t necessarily make the climb any easier … but sometimes it helps make the pain more enjoyable. If that makes any sense.
Here’s what I mean about the color ambiguity: my wife is convinced that my blue and purple wires are crossed somewhere in my optic nerve. We’ve had probably a thousand disagreements about intermediate shades like this, where I’ll say something is blue, and she’ll say purple – or vice versa. This lupine picture hasn’t been altered; I say it looks purple. But if you call it blue, I guess we can still get along.
Further up the hill, the yellow flowers (they’re definitely yellow, right?) start muscling out the purple/blue ones. This is also where the 1600’ of climbing it takes to get here really starts paying off – as evidenced by the killer view of the Salinas Valley in the background.
Of course, runners always have to share these pastures of heaven in Toro Park with the land’s namesake residents, who also seem to have a knack for lounging around the prettiest spots with the most breathtaking views. Really, can you blame them?
Every time I see the cows in a setting like this on a beautiful sunshine day, I half expect them to break out in song, like these gals:
(The clip above is from one of the funniest ad campaigns of all time – which I’ll write more about in my next post).
Unfortunately, I can never tell if the cows are really happy or not. Take Cow 84 here – what emotions does her face reveal? Contentment? Peace? Indifference? Irritation from the annoying clown trying to take her picture? She certainly doesn’t look ecstatic – although perhaps that #84 tag has something to do with it. That’s probably not a lotto ticket on her ear.
After a few minutes, it’s time to bid my bovine friends farewell and venture back down the hill. I must say, the cows never seem to miss me when I’m gone.
It’s totally spoiled to say this … but by this point of the run, scenes like this start blending together. More purple, more yellow, more beauty, yada yada yada. Just another run in paradise.
Off of the hilltops and into the canyons on the descent, the prominent flowers give way to the little guys again, such as these purple sweeties. (They are purple, right? Just checking.)
Eventually I make my way back to the car and head off for the rest of my day, which inevitably seems mundane compared to the experience I’ve just enjoyed. I’m not sure what it says about me that all it takes is a short run amidst a few flowers and cows to make me happy for the rest of the day … but whatever it is, I hope I can stay this way, and enjoy these moments, for a long time to come.
