The Santa Venetia Marsh Preserve and the John F. McInnis County Park lie on opposite sides of South Fork Gallinas Creek. Here dog-walkers, power walkers, and joggers wend their way along the water's edge into the wetlands under the flight path of noisy Canadian Geese and an occasional small airplane making its way to the tiny Marin Ranch Airport. My husband and I like to frequent this place in the early evenings and we often stay out until dusk when Mt. Tamalpais glows on the horizon and bats dart busily above.
A transition zone between land and the San Pablo Bay, this is a place where housing developments, soccer fields and a golf course cede to the hunting grounds of hawks and falcons, herons and egrets. The creek water rises and falls with both the tide and the season and year-round birds adjust to migrants while rodents tend the soil in the thick grasses. It is a rather humble place, unpretentious in its beauty, a place thus gentle in its revelations.
