Ecological Musings: Butano State Park, Pescadero, CA -- May 16th, 2025

Background:

I’m currently taking a California Ecology class. One of the class assignments is to keep a field journal of each of our weekly trips. Today’s journal is about one of the BEST HIKES I’VE EVER BEEN TO: Butano State Park.

Baseline Data

Name: Butano State Park

Address: 1500 Cloverdale Rd, Pescadero, CA 94060

Coordinates: 37.2021° N, -122.3395° W——

Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Time: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM

🌤️ Weather Overview

  • Temperature:

    • High: 62°F (16.7°C)

    • Low: 52°F (11.1°C)

  • Cloud Cover: Partly Cloudy

  • Wind:

    • Direction: South-Southeast (SSE)

    • Speed: 7 mph

  • Humidity: Around 75%

  • Precipitation: None

I’m not gonna lie, I always wondered how certain people I knew back in college were so into hiking and backpacking and outdoorsy stuff. It was as though they made it their personality. They often donned flowy hippy or “granola” type clothes and never left the house without their Patagonia jackets. On the weekends, they could be found going on backpacking trips with our Into the Wild club or doing yoga in some forest. And I never really understood the appeal of a regular ole hike…

UNTIL I came on this hike. Then I understood the appeal. Then I understood everything. That is because Butano is the ULTIMATE hike.

To me, hiking always felt a little boring. All you do is walk around and hope to God that you don’t get super bored, super overheated, and super tired midway through. Sometimes you get lucky and see beautiful animals in the wild, but oftentimes it’s just you and the trees.

Butano is different though. Butano is magical!. I realized how magical Butano was the minute we began hiking.

We first started down the trail by walking through this little mini trail that had canopies of leaves and was sprinkled with patches of unripe berries. Our professor, Gillian, explained to us that the berries would probably be ripe sometime in the summer. What I truly loved about this hike was that every other thing we came across seemed to be edible. In this little enclave of the hike, we walked past some Miner’s Lettuce. Though it technically is edible, I didn’t end up giving it a try.

Once we exited the little canopied enclave, we walked towards the main path of our hike. We passed by a number of redwoods, some healthy and others charred by the recent fire in the area. Some of the fauna we encountered on the hike included banana slugs, ensatina salamanders, slender salamanders, and poisonous newts. We even heard a distant owl hooting on our way down from the hike.

By far, the best part of the hike was the edible fauna we kept stumbling upon as we walked through the wilderness. Everything from wild sorrel to raspberries to elderberries. I literally ate my way through the hike. I started off by gingerly taste testing the wild sorrel. It was absolutely fantastic and tasted just like sourgrass. Eventually I convinced my classmates to join me and soon we were all munching on patches of sorrel as we walked. We then encountered wild raspberries and wild strawberries. The raspberries were tart and juicy and the strawberries had such a unique flavor profile. They were sweet, yet slightly floral, as well. As we continued down the hike, Gillian encountered some fresh, edible pine leaves that she picked for us to try. I didn’t quite care for the taste of those since they were a bit too bitter for me. I did enjoy almost everything else I tried on the hike, however. I was slightly saddened by the fact that the elderberries were not yet in season and so I didn’t get the chance to try those out. I’m excited, however, to come back for those later this summer.

Another really cool part of this hike was that there is a particular section of the hike where you can go fossil hunting. We didn’t have time to give it a go, but Gillian was telling us that people have even gone so far as to find Megaladon teeth nestled in the rocky portion of the hike.

We ate forest-grown food. We discovered that we could have hunted for fossils if we’d had more time. That would have been more than enough for one hike, except for the fact that Butano also has free art supplies, as well. Natural charcoal is one of the byproducts of the recent fire in the region. I went ahead used some of the charred bits of trees on the ground to create a charcoal drawing of the hike. Hypothetically, one could use some of the natural fauna as “paints” as well. The hike truly has everything to offer and is an explorer’s dream.

To me, Butano didn’t feel like a hike. It felt like an adventure. Its trails felt like the kind of trails that I could keep coming back on, again and again, and never really get bored of. Butano made me understand the appeal of hiking for the folks that were obsessed with nature back in college. If hiking was as multifaceted as Butano hikes are, then I’d literally be hiking multiple times a week.

Here’s to hoping I can find more natural places that are as magical as Butano. 10/10 — would recommend to any new or avid hiker.

huda .