Panoramic photo by Joshua Hirsch

Trione-Annadel State Park: Obsidian and Moss

I have been going to visit my mom at Oakmont Gardens Senior Living in Santa Rosa since she moved there five years ago. I go for a walk most days I’m there. For the first three years, I would simply walk around the surrounding residential neighborhood. I could see forested, wild-looking hills nearby, and tried driving into them a few times, but the roads always turned private before long.

Then one day, I looked at a map and saw that the hills are part of Trione-Annadel State Park. It looked like there might be a spot where you could enter the park on foot, and it was only two blocks from Oakmont Gardens. How could I have missed it?

I found the answer the first time I followed the map. It led me to the driveway of the Star of the Valley Roman Catholic Church, an attractive wood and glass building that doesn’t look like any Catholic church I remember seeing. But there was no signage about the park. So I cautiously walked down the driveway and through the church parking lot.

Star of the Valley Roman Catholic Church. Photo by Joshua Hirsch. In those days, I overused the sharpness feature of my iPhone photo editing app. You can see that in this and some of the subsequent photos.

At the far end of the parking lot was the entrance to a footpath — again, unmarked.

Panoramic photo by Joshua Hirsch

On the left side of the path is a creek that feeds into Santa Rosa Creek; on the right is a meadow. On that occasion and many occasions since, I saw deer and wild turkeys there.

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

Here is where the path eventually led me into the park.

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

There’s a lot of obsidian in the park.

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

From Wikipedia: “The Southern Pomo and Southern Wappo peoples inhabited these lands in prehistoric times. This site was valuable to the Native American tribes as a source of obsidian, which they used to make scrapers, knives, arrowheads, and spearheads. Archaeological evidence suggests they used the area as a quarry at least as far back as 3,000 years.”

There’s also a lot of moss.

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

Photo by Joshua Hirsch

I thought this last mossy photo would be a good one to end on. I took it for an assignment in my photography class focusing (no pun intended) on juxtaposition. I don’t know what’s in the box, but I assume it belongs to the Park Service. Next time I’m there, I’ll peak through the hole.

Photo by Joshua Hirsch