You Are Here: Above San Francisco

I’m a morning Twin Peaks individual. In the best way that I’m a winter Tahoe individual and an East Coast summer time individual and a San Tung dinner individual. An individual who prefers a selected place at a selected time.

There are, I’m certain, lunchtime Twin Peaks individuals. And night Twin Peaks individuals. There are definitely late-night Twin Peaks individuals. (Proof is within the McDonald’s wrappers and damaged Modelo bottles and no matter different newly tossed litter wasn’t there yesterday.)

The individuals who present up on Twin Peaks roughly between 7 and 9 a.m., although, are my individuals. I’ll not know their names or, actually, something about them—however I think about us an unstated neighborhood of kinds. Every of us crawling round these two hilltops in our personal method. We see this place in an identical mild. At 922 toes, Twin Peaks is the second-highest pure level in San Francisco (just some toes shy of Mount Davidson, the very best). A pair of adjoining rocky, rust-colored hilltops lined in coastal scrub spanning 64 acres and flaunting panoramic views from the Golden Gate Bridge to the north throughout the glowing bay to Mount Diablo within the east.

I typically see my precise good friend Lisa Brown “walkin’,” as she calls it. However principally, it’s a sequence of acquainted strangers: Right here’s the auburn-headed lady together with her matching mini auburn-bodied canine. The white-mustached man and his floppy-hatted woman-friend, who put on reflector vests within the solar, choosing up trash as in the event that they’re metropolis workers. The 2 maybe-married dudes who amble quietly alongside one another, one slightly bowlegged, like he used to play lots of soccer, who supply hearty waves as I go. The man with the lengthy, grey ponytail who shuffles alongside, all the time alone. He by no means smiles however all the time offers me a thumbs-up, or a fist pump, typically a kind of double-gripped victory clasps. As if I’ve executed one thing extra outstanding than merely run by.

In March of 2020, each entrances to Twin Peaks have been closed to automotive visitors by the Metropolis of San Francisco, as a part of its effort to develop pedestrian and bicycle routes for individuals in any other case sheltering in place towards COVID-19. For the primary time, in all my years of working within the metropolis, I laced up and ran towards the sky.

Earlier than, I’d all the time run down, from my home on a close-by hill of its personal, in Cole Valley, to Golden Gate Park and alongside Ocean Seaside. Then, early within the pandemic, my route took me by means of neighborhood streets lined with shuttered storefronts and extra tents than ever earlier than and confirmed me angst, anger, and, it appeared, all that was mistaken with San Francisco and our new world. Whereas pandemic-era Twin Peaks was a reminder of all that was nonetheless proper.

After almost three years, my fellow once-masked morning individuals have grow to be as a lot part of Twin Peaks’ panorama because the rising solar and snaking fog and swaths of graffiti.

Who am I to them, I ponder. The center-aged maybe-mom who—actually?—runs each day? That quick lady sporting a rotating mixture of leggings and ridiculous woolly hats? Joyful she didn’t must do faculty drop-off? Who has simply misplaced cell service whereas speaking to her good friend? And now’s again to listening by means of tangled headphones to Michael Barbaro and NPR’s Up First and possibly KQED’s Discussion board if she received a late begin? And typically to the deafening wind, or nothing in any respect.

What they don’t know is that I was a proudly anti–Twin Peaks individual. “Favourite views” is an precise factor individuals in San Francisco speak about—although much less ceaselessly than, say, finest burritos or the entire snoozy “San Francisco versus New York/Los Angeles/wherever extra reasonably priced” query. And when the topic would come up, I’d say, typically to nobody particularly, “I hate Twin Peaks.” I’d tout as a substitute the prevalence of different, much less widespread vista factors, these unmarred by steel fences and glass-strewn parking heaps and scavenging crows and blurry telescopes charging 50 cents a peek. Twin Peaks had too many vacationers. Too many bus excursions. Too many winding curves for working with out worrying about being hit by a careening automotive.

However then the roadways into and out of Twin Peaks closed to vehicles, and I’ve been working up there ever since. Throughout the first month of homeschool, I ran with my second-grader son—a deal he struck in return for a Nintendo Change. Often, I run with a good friend. By no means with my new canine (regardless of everybody telling me, “It’s enjoyable to run along with your canine!”). However normally, fortunately, I run on my own. Up and down and across the electric-green knolls and crumbly cliffs and again once more, by no means bored, turning the possibly three-mile out-and-back into six, typically extra. Staying to the correct of the double yellow traces whereas pelotons of spandexed cyclists pace down on the left. Sprinting alongside the graceful, flat curves on the high, admiring our Emerald Metropolis of Oz. Clambering over the steel boundaries, shifting between cement and path. Muddling by means of the muddy sections after a uncommon rain. Brushing previous dewy prickers of dormant blackberry bushes. Climbing the steep, uneven, picket stairways to heaven.

Generally, the fog recognized to locals as Karl is so thick, it’s a whiteout equal to a winter drive over Tahoe’s Donner Go. Different occasions, the view is so glassy and sharp, downtown so distinct and glossy, I really feel like I simply received LASIK surgical procedure. On September 9, 2020, a.ok.a. Orange Sky Day, when wildfires infamously turned our Bay Space skies a deep, disturbing hue, I used to be on their lonesome up there, flanked by fiery-colored rocks, slicing by means of an eerie, yolky soup, and it felt like…Mars.

Although impassioned residents petitioned to maintain Twin Peaks’ roads closed, the town reopened the south gate in March 2021, allowing vehicles to drive so far as the vista level. (The north gate and roadway stay closed.) There’s extra rubbish now, and vehicles have resumed careening, if fewer than earlier than. It’s nonetheless wonderful.

I’ve seen rainbows and absolutely arched fogbows. Spiderwebs so intricate they’d make E.B. White cry. Surrounded by cops, a unadorned man on the high, who thought he may fly. I’ve seen coyotes skulking and truant teenagers tucked within the bushes toking.

I’ve pounded over asphalt coated in declarations of Valentine’s Day like to somebody named Daniel, and I teared up passing a freshly painted, blue-and-yellow promise to “Stand with Ukraine.” I’ve cruised by the assertion that “Luis Fucks” and the widely agreed-upon undeniable fact that “Greed Sucks.” For weeks, a once-white T-shirt lay twisted within the filth. I stored leaping over it questioning whether or not anybody would decide it up, whether or not I ought to decide it up. (I ought to’ve. I didn’t. Ultimately, although, somebody did. Perhaps the mustached man within the reflector vest?)

The cultural historical past of those twin grassy hills dates again not less than to the Ohlone, who say they have been as soon as a single peak: a married couple who disagreed so typically that the nice spirit separated them. In Twin Peaks’ lengthy, storied historical past, I’m, in fact, however a blip. Barely certified to pen an ode. I’m not Cool Grey Metropolis of Love writer Gary Kamiya, who deems a hole on a slope of the south peak the quietest spot to sit down in all of San Francisco. Or fifth-generation native Lynn Oakley, who lives on a hill in the home her grandfather constructed, the primary on Twin Peaks, 100 years in the past, earlier than roads and electrical energy. I’m not even a Bay Space native who partied up there all through highschool or somebody who employed knowledgeable photographer to seize their engagement or one of many helmetless skate boarders who’ve been cruising this determine eight endlessly, twisting and turning and one way or the other by no means crashing.

All I find out about Twin Peaks, actually, is the way it makes me really feel whereas lapping round it: fortunate to dwell right here, fortunate—as working all the time makes me really feel—to be alive.

The opposite day, although, I discovered one thing new. “Hey, look,” the gray-ponytailed man mentioned, stopping me mid-stride. I appeared. Noticed nothing out of the odd. What? I mentioned, muting Michael Barbaro and speaking, it seems, to Tom. “It’s rising again after final summer time’s hearth.” What’s rising? What hearth? I suppose I’d been again East. “The coyote brush,” he defined, pointing to pops of vibrant inexperienced breaking by means of snarls of blackened roots. “I’m up right here each day, in any case,” he mentioned. “I discover issues.” I smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, and ran on.•

You Are Right here is a month-to-month column that examines concepts about place and locations within the West, written by members of the Writers Grotto.