Two college students leap among the branches of a coastal redwood canopy, with no safety equipment other than their sense of balance. A woman gives her testimonio of the day in 1846 when boisterous men in coyote skins raised a hand-painted bear flag above her home. A beginning surfer--derogatorily termed a "kook"--ponders the grassroots activism in the surfing community that saved an estuarine beach from development. Freewheeling Beat writers drink wine and meditate on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais. James Marshall tells us in his own words what it was like to come upon the nugget of gold that sent the world rushing into California.Wallace Stegner wrote that "no place, not even a wild place, is a place until it has had that human attention that at its highest reach we call poetry." Writings by explorers, poets, and novelists confirm that our parks are indeed a great convergence of landscape and the human spirit. Trail Posts gives a new appreciation for the abundance and vitality of the land, and our artistic engagement with it.

Includes writings by Isabel Allende, Joan Didion, Jack London, John Steinbeck, and Mark Twain, as well as writers you will be glad to meet for the first time.