A Place Like No Other

I first came to Marin County at the end of the 1960s.  Its profound natural beauty was more than captivating, it was like a magnet, a force like no other, arising out of a place like no other.  Like most other young people, I pretty much took for granted this wonderful grace of Nature, not having any real knowledge of the efforts underway to preserve it.  In the meantime, I have gotten a lot older and have realized that preserving such a bounty of natural Grace requires eternal vigilance.

My first encounter with this occurred at the beginning of the 2000s, about 12 years ago, when the National Park Service floated the idea of what they called a "Parking Intercept Facility" at Manzanita Junction.  What they had in mind was to build a large park and ride facility at the entrance to our community and compel all the visitors to the parklands of West Marin to park their cars there and take government shuttle buses from there out to the various locations in both the National and the State Parks.  At the time this facility got up and running, they planned to close all the parking lots in the parklands serviced by their shuttles.

This would have been a catastrophe for the folks living both
in Tam Valley, Mill Valley and Sausalito, as the traffic impacts of the congestion created at Manzanita would literally stop traffic flows everywhere in Southern Marin.

Quantifying this impact caused me to mobilize, get out of my "take it for granted" mindset, and do something about it.  What I did was to write a commentary called "Manzanita Madness" that provided my analysis of what the Park Services proposal entailed and the effects it would have on the safety and happiness of us folks living here.  I then made hundreds of copies of this commentary on a single double sided sheet of paper to hand out to the local folks who attended the numerous meetings held over a period of three years by the Park Service and other interested governmental agencies, including the Board of Supervisors, the City Council, etc.

This help mobilize a very large number of people living in our communities, and brought together people living in Mill Valley, Tam Valley, Muir Beach, Stinson Beach and in the Mount Tam Community.  It took four years of continual activism, but with the help of Charles Mc'Glashen we were successful in turning back the assault on our communities by the National Park Service.

I thought this was a "done deal."  Boy, was I wrong!  They are back and the fight begins all over again.  As many of you are aware, the GGNRA management is proposing to construct a 180 car parking lot up on the Dias Ridge.  We must once again mobilize, get informed, get active, step up to the plate of civic action and stop this from happening.

To assist in this regard, I have written a commentary for this new moment called, "What Gives?"  It follows in my next posting.  I hope you take the time to read it.  It makes a case that is contrary to the one presented to us last month by the Park Service.  It gives a detailed description of the likely consequences of allowing this to happen.  It provides some hard analysis that I challenge anyone from the Park Service to debate openly with me.  I think that after reading it, you will concur with me that this proposed 180 car parking lot on this pristine ridgeline is as unnecessary as it is destructive.

After reading it, I hope you will join us in defeating this intrusion on our community and the natural environment that surrounds it.