Peeking into the rock

I forgot to explain why I called it an Elfland for mountain bikes. It wasn't being cute about the ferny brae and all that. Elfland is a former place on the University campus, the forest that used to be where Colleges Nine and Ten are now. It was a handsome stretch of forest on the head of a lovely ravine, where students and tramps and hippies had made little shrines and labelled them and marked out paths with fallen branches (fallen redwood branches can be very stout and straight, as the tree sheds these great limbs as it gets bigger). I can no longer remember what the little signs said, but some of them invited the reader to leave a trinket in the center of a crown of redwoods, or to climb into a hollow tree (lots of older redwoods develop teepeelike interiors). And there was a wonderfully scary rope swing. All clandestinely built and beloved to the students -- of course there was trouble when they went to clear the land to build Nine and Ten. The whole nine yards -- people chaining themselves to the trees, letters, rallies, everything. It actually looked for a moment as if the University would rethink the project and save Elfland. But only for a moment.

Anyway, the mountain bike trail with all its outlaw ramps and jumps reminded me of Elfland.