Rebecca Forth discovered her home away from home about 10 years ago. She was on a run with friends who brought her to Annadel State Park in Santa Rosa. Now she comes back every week.
She loves the smell of the bay trees and dried grass, the taste of dust on her tongue and the crunching of pine needles under her pink tennis shoes.
“It’s really a sensory experience,” she says.
After losing herself in the network of trails for several years, Forth now has an intimate understanding of the area.
She checks her worries at the trailhead, shutting out the noise and distractions of city life as Santa Rosa disappears behind a thick wall of trees. Picking each step carefully, she dodges up the rocky pathways, and the repetitive rise and fall of each footstep become almost meditative. Forth thinks of nothing else.