The Magic of Ring Mountain

Every now and again, I find myself in a place that makes me feel like I’m in a fantasy novel. In this case, the nomenclature of the land, Ring Mountain, added to the feeling. I didn’t think I’d find the Ring here, but walking along the open meadow with boulders strewn about, I imagined a race of giants playing Jacks. They took stones in their hands, shook them like dice, and then tossed them across the landscape.

The land jutted out like a peninsula into the Bays, and I imagined villages set up here, overlooking the water.

As we crested the hillside along the path, the view of San Francisco in the distance made me feel like we were Dorothy and Toto seeing the Emerald City for the first time.

I wondered if before the skyscrapers, one could have seen smoke coming from the chimneys of homes and neighborhoods of the first peoples’ abodes.

Here, the land around us seemed to shift and change with each new view, as if the rocks were alive and moving when we weren’t looking.

Coming upon a particularly large boulder, far from any path, there was a sign for those who had ventured this far.

The art of the ancients was etched in stone.

The comment that they did know their meaning made me wonder: did it have to have meaning? What if someone came across an old school desk a century henceforth, and finding a child’s scribbles pondered, “What great meaning doth this hold?”

Looking out from the rock, we could see that Emerald City, and I wondered if the artists drew what they had seen so many ages ago.

Turning back to the land, it was pure Nature, these jewels of stone tossed here and there to give character and depth to the meadowland.

Even the trees took on a character of magic. They grew in harmony with the land’s slope, shaped by the winds.

The energy of this magical place was palpable. The silence made the feeling even louder. Despite the views, no human sound entered this sacred place.

Tucker studied the rocks, as if trying to find the source of magic.

He looked across the vast meadow, and I wondered if, in his mind, he too saw giants or a village of humans, their homesteads busy with life. I felt as if I could see through time as I gazed across the land.

I wondered if the stones littering the pathways were rising from the earth, or if they had fallen from above, rolled away from a glacier sliding through millennia ago.

Did the blue Bay once cover those gentle hills?

One day, could the bay fill again, and leave that Emerald City in the depths of the ocean, a new Atlantis?

We reached the end of the trail, and it was time to head back along the loop, giving us a new perspective. The trail took us to a prominent boulder, that, from afar, looked to be the head of a canine.

Up close, it took on another visage. It was no longer a dog head, but an intricate design, frozen in time.

I wondered if this was once molten lava.

Or the trunk of a fallen mammoth tree.

We travelled back down the hillside, the city no longer in view, and found even more beauty beneath the canopy of trees still standing.

Tree and stone were connected here, adding to my thought that many of these rocks were actually petrified trees.

The trees held as much magic as the stone and the earth, their character rising outward from the roots, beyond their branches’ reach.

This land was established as a preserve within my own lifetime. When I was born, it was not protected. In fact over 300 acres had been sold to a housing development company wanting to put 2100 homes and apartments on the hill. But one woman (it’s almost always a woman), Phyllis Ellman, led a movement to stop the development, buy the land, and protect it for centuries hence. It took over a decade, but in 1984, she accomplished it.

The land is still here because of her. It is not buried under buildings, or dug up and thrown elsewhere for underground parking garages. I am so grateful to her and to the community of advocates that she led, and I appreciate all those who are still this land’s stewards.

The energy here exudes of a sacred space—although every space on this planet is sacred. The magic held within the layers of earth, sprouting through the trees and emanating from the stones, is an ancient magic. Although the mountain is named for a Marin Supervisor from the turn of the 20th century (George E Ring), the nod to Tolkien seems appropriate.

Much like intuition, I cannot say whether these boulders and their energy come from within or without; but their intensity, their magic, and their sacred wisdom is the same regardless.

I suppose the same could be said of my canine guardian: his innate magic, whether from within or without, leads us on our magical explorations, and I am so thankful that he chose to share his journey with me.