The fog burned off in the late morning, and by 3pm it was sunny and in the upper 50s. I decided on an hour’s walk around the neighborhood.
I tried McPeak Road. On the map, it starts just the other side of the Hacienda Bridge and winds up Hobson Creek.
I was aiming for some late-afternoon sunshine, but I didn’t get that. The creek is in a fairly deep canyon and it was wet and gloomy in there, although the creek was roaring and burbling, still high from the past week’s rains.
I was also hoping for some woodsy peace, but I didn’t get that either. There was a profusion of “No Trespassing” and “Keep Out” signs everywhere, and those always put me on edge. Like I’m feeling these folks don’t want outsiders walking up their road.
Even though it’s a public road.
I walked on, deciding that those signs were referring to the land on either side of the road, even though they were kind of aimed to be seen by someone coming up the road, like me. As I walked further up the canyon, I passed the last of the reasonably well-kept houses, and pretty soon I was traversing what seemed to be someone’s personal garbage dump, with disused recyclables and rusted equipment scattered all the way across a yard, to the edge of the road, and then piled on the other side of the road, leaving only a narrow passage to get through.
Soon after I came to what looked like a standard county gate, something that would be installed by a public agency, except that it had a “keep out” sign right behind it. So I kept out, and walked back down the road toward home.
There wasn’t any sign that said “end of county maintained road.” Since I’ve been living part-time in Sonoma County I’ve noticed instances where someone had staked out a portion of the public right-of-way (between their fence line and the pavement edge, for instance) for their private use. So I’m left wondering where McPeak Road ends, and if the public right of way continues beyond that gate, and whether I’m curious enough to go look at official county maps and records to find out.
And I’m also shaking my head at the decrepitude of these properties, here in the midst of a lot of wealth and a critical lack of housing.
