Let’s go exploring at Lick Observatory

Many years ago, USA Today asked its readers to define themselves in one word. Of course, this is an impossible task, but I finally decided that if I could use only one descriptor, it would have to be “explorer.”
As I waited for spring with my fellow explorer, Bucky the dog, I had a bad case of cabin fever. Sticking our noses to the window pane, we would watch another front of frog-stranglers settle into the Santa Cruz Mountains, memories of sun-splashed country walks and roads dancing in our heads.
For Bucky and me, the cure to cabin fever is the roar of the old Rav4 on the open road, exploring places we have never been. So, on a rare sunny day, we drove out of the dripping rainforest and into the sunshine of San Jose to Mount Hamilton and the Lick Observatory.
Positioned at the highest point within an 85-mile radius, the observatory looks like the ivory temple of a Greek oracle. Just as the oracles were thought to be portals through which the gods spoke to man, the Lick telescopes are portals through which the heavens speak.
Our quest took us up Mount Hamilton Road into the foothills of the Diablo range, where we shed the encroaching “civilization” of Silicon Valley and entered a world of wildness and solitude. An occasional leafless oak lifted its dark spires against a carpet of neon green meadows as a solitary vulture surfed a thermal updraft.
At the roadside, I stopped to see the inhabitants of a ground squirrel town, but their furtive looks and high-tail scampering told me I just meant trouble to them. Over the mountain, Tule elk graze, and somewhere are other unseen denizens, like rainbow trout, red-legged frogs, mountain lions and kit foxes.
Of course, this natural sanctuary does not come easy. The Nature Conservancy has been working for years, buying up land and restricting development, to create a “ring of conservation” on Mount Hamilton.
According to the Conservancy, it is “also working with partners to preserve the upper Pajaro River floodplain. Located between Gilroy and Hollister, this 20,000-acre spread of agricultural lands, perennial streams and seasonal wetlands is the most defensible, undeveloped wildlife corridor remaining between the inland Diablo Mountains and the coastal Santa Cruz mountain range. Preserving it will allow animals to travel safely between the two ranges, giving large mammals the territory they need to maintain a genetically diverse population.”
Although Mount Hamilton Road is only 19 miles, it is a maze of constant switchbacks that had me playing peek-a-boo with the observatory all the way up. But it was built in 1876 for the horses that carried the equipment to build Lick, not for cars.
Outside the observatory, I was so captivated by the almost extraterrestrial view that I forgot about the telescope inside. Finally, Bucky and I went in and followed a voice down a lonely, echoing hallway.
I was surprised to see a few tourists listening to the last few minutes of a talk about Lick. Although the telescope was modern and gleaming, the dome was covered in centuries-old wood planks that gave the room a dark and ghostly feel.
Closing time came and I headed outside, where an approaching front had turned the colorful view into a mercury-tinted abstract painting from the marshlands of Alviso to the bridges of San Francisco. As we drove back down, the looming old staff buildings rose straight and high out of the rocks, reminding me ominously of Stephen King’s “The Shining.”
But Bucky and I were happy explorers, cured of “cabin fever” and heading home.
Lick Observatory will present “Music of the Spheres,” a summer concert series, starting in June. After the music, research astronomers will give a talk, and people will be able to look through the telescope.
• Carol Carson is an environmentalist and writes a nature column for the Press-Banner. She has a master’s degree in education and has been a docent for Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park and taught courses on Big Basin State Park for UCSC Extension.