Nature at the Table: The Many Lives of a Picnic Area

Nestled in the woods beside Alameda Creek, the picnic area at Sunol Regional Wilderness is among the least developed of the East Bay Regional Park District's formal picnic spots. Photo by Sarah Anne Bettelheim.

by Chris Clarke

It's a beautiful spring morning in Sunol Regional Wilderness. Owl's clover and Ithuriel's spear bloom on the drying hillsides, and soaproot rosettes send up leaf after long, sinuous leaf. Acorn woodpeckers sing in comedic trills as they probe their granary trees for nuts, silhouetted against a bright blue sky. Alameda Creek is singing as well: A little low after a dry winter, its flow splashes musically over rounded serpentine cobbles washed down from their source at Little Yosemite.

There's other song in the air too. A few hundred yards away, muffled slightly by the oaks and sycamores, a tenor voice belts out a plaintive ballad in Spanish, a flare of brass rounding out each verse. A car door slams shut; the song is quieted momentarily, and then rises in volume again when the driver opens the rear doors to unload the cooler and boxes of food. Before long the scents of moist creekside earth, sun-warmed coyote mint, and bay laurel on the hillside above are joined by the tang of burning charcoal and seared meat. Picnic season has started; one by one the quiet spaces along Alameda Creek fill with people out to enjoy the sunny weekend in the company of family and friends.

Of the 55 parks administered by the East Bay Regional Park District, 30 offer areas specifically developed for picnicking. At last count, there were nearly 4,000 picnic tables in the district. More than a hundred picnic areas can be reserved in advance for large groups, with even more available for impromptu use. These areas range from the woodsy and informal, like the sites along Alameda Creek at the entrance to Sunol, to elaborately developed areas with permanent shelters, such as those at Quarry Lakes in Fremont, some of which accommodate 200 people.

At Tilden, park staff had to relocate aggressive raccoons that started swiping meat off hot grills. Illustration by Jack Laws.

For countless park visitors, picnic areas are the ideal safe place in the woods—separated from the noise of the city but just a short walk from park staff and facilities. Park supervisors estimate that some 1.6 million people picnic in the regional parks every year. In a 2005 survey in which the district asked people why they visit its parks, 23 percent said they came to have picnics—the second most popular reason, after "relaxing/escaping the pressures of everyday life" at 26 percent. The popularity of picnicking isn't limited to the regional parks: When California state park planners commissioned a statewide survey in 2002, they found that over 75 percent of park visitors use picnic areas.

Park managers don't really need surveys to tell them that picnicking is popular. They just have to go to work in the morning. Anne Rockwell, park supervisor at Crown Beach Regional Shoreline in Alameda, says that on prime picnic weekends the line forms before the sun comes up. "On the Fourth of July," she adds, "they're here when the gates open at eight, and they've been here since 5 a.m. staking out a particular picnic area." Several other parks are also picnicking favorites, especially the waterfront and lake parks.

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Charity prize drawing at Lake Chabot Regional Park, during the family picnic of the Birzeit Society, a non-profit organization that provides services for the town of Birzeit in the West Bank. Photo © 2007 Wisam Daoud.

East Bay picnickers are a diverse lot, reflecting the communities they live in. District Assistant General Manager John Escobar says he thinks culture is the key to describing picnic area users. "People several generations removed from their immigrant origins tend toward a much more individualistic view of the parks and they go hiking," says Escobar, "and the picnicking and lake parks tend to be used by groups that still have a strong family structure."

Rockwell, of Alameda's Crown Beach, says, "We have a large Tongan family that at one point used to take over one whole section of the park. There were so many people in the family, so many generations. We see people grow up over the years, coming here every Fourth of July, every Labor Day. We've had people who've brought their own fire pits, set up a little kitchen in the picnic areas, teams of women making tortillas."

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With parks from Antioch to Fremont and Richmond to Livermore, the landscapes of the park district are as diverse as the people who use them. Still, they share a dry, east-wind season in late summer and autumn, when all but the smallest, most developed parks are vulnerable to wildfire. Inviting picnickers to show up in the parks with bags of charcoal and matches might seem risky; when fire danger is high, the district prohibits grilling and sometimes closes parklands to all recreational uses. The measures apparently work, since district staff don't recall any wildland fire being started by picnickers.

But picnic areas also affect surrounding wildlife and plants in subtler ways. …

You will find the rest of this article and additional features in the July-September 2007 issue of Bay Nature, available through our online store or by calling
(888)4-BAYNAT or (888)422-9628. You may also purchase the current issue at bookstores and other retailers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nature and science writer Chris Clarke lives in the Pinole Creek watershed.

Tilden Park Picnic and Nature Walk

Sunday, September 2, noon–3:30 p.m.
Join us at Tilden Park for a family-friendly picnic and naturalist-led walk. Attendance is limited; RSVP required. Visit the events page for details.

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