The Trail Ahead: What Taylor Mountain Is Teaching Me About Growing Older

The trail begins close enough to my home that I could reach it before finishing a cup of coffee.

Taylor Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve is only about half a mile away. Its grassy slopes rise above southeast Santa Rosa and are visible from neighborhoods, streets, and much of the surrounding valley.

I have lived near the mountain for almost 10 years. Yet until recently, I hiked there only occasionally, perhaps six times a year.

It was always nearby.

So I assumed there would always be another day.

This year, as I began to pull back from some obligations and pay greater attention to my well-being, Taylor Mountain became more than a familiar landmark. It became my training ground, my place to think, and, at times, my place to stop thinking altogether.

With many of the newer trails now available, I can combine routes and easily hike 10 miles.

That is nothing compared with the roughly 2,190 miles Dale Sanders is attempting to hike on the Appalachian Trail. Yet comparisons can sometimes distract us from the value of our own journey.

Grey Beard, as Dale is known, has the Appalachian Trail.

I have Taylor Mountain.

And for now, that is more than enough.

When the Mind Becomes Quiet

The climb changes depending on the season and the time of day.

The trail may be firm and dusty, or damp enough for the earth to cling to my boots. The incline gradually becomes steeper. My breathing grows heavier. My legs begin to remind me that reading about exercise and actually doing it are two entirely different activities.

Then something begins to change.

The mental clutter starts to fade.

My attention shifts to the sound of my footsteps, the wind rustling through the grass, and the changing light across the hills. Occasionally, I spot a hawk circling above the trail or a deer watching cautiously before slipping into the brush.

For much of my life, even recreation failed to quiet my mind.

In an earlier essay, “Doing Nothing,” I wrote about how difficult it once was for me to turn off my thoughts. During hikes, bike rides, and vacations, my mind kept running through responsibilities, unresolved problems, and the next obligation waiting for me.

I spent decades believing that nearly everything deserved my attention.

Eventually, I began to learn that not everything deserves my stress.

Doing nothing did not mean becoming indifferent or unproductive. It meant creating enough quiet to recognize what was important and what I could finally let go of.

Hiking Taylor Mountain has become an extension of that lesson.

Physically, I am certainly not doing nothing. My knees can provide sworn testimony on that point.

Mentally, however, I am making room.

The farther I walk, the more the noise recedes. Problems do not necessarily disappear, but they lose some of their power. I begin to see them from a greater distance.

Sometimes clarity does not come from thinking harder.

Sometimes it comes from walking long enough for the unnecessary thoughts to fall behind.

A Different View of Santa Rosa

The reward at the summit is not simply reaching the top.

From there, the landscape opens in every direction.

To the east lies Bennett Valley. Below is a sweeping view of Santa Rosa. Beyond Sebastopol, the coastal mountains rise to the west. Rohnert Park and the communities farther south stretch toward the horizon.

The city looks different from above.

Its traffic, buildings, and neighborhoods blend into a larger landscape. The places where important moments in my life occurred lie below, no longer separated by titles, jurisdictions, or political boundaries.

There are times when I pause to reflect on the many ways I have served the community spread out before me. I helped protect Santa Rosa as a police officer, later served as its first Latino mayor, and spent decades working with nonprofit boards, commissions, and community organizations.

From the summit, I reflect not only on those responsibilities but also on the unlikely journey that brought a young Mexican immigrant from a farmworker family into a lifetime of public service.

I think about my parents and the lessons they taught me through their sacrifices. They believed in hard work, responsibility, and helping others. My father embraced citizenship not merely as a legal status but as a civic duty. He taught me that opportunity carries an obligation to contribute.

Those lessons guided me through public safety, elected office, community violence prevention, and decades of civic involvement.

Those experiences shaped who I am, but the mountain reminds me that life cannot be measured solely by the positions we held, the organizations we served, or the work we completed.

Public service remains part of my purpose, but it no longer has to fill every available space.

At some point, we must ask what comes next.

There are still other trails to follow.

The Trail Ahead

I recently learned about Dale Sanders in a New York Times article chronicling his effort to reclaim the record for the oldest person to hike the full length of the Appalachian Trail in 12 months.

At 91, Sanders is attempting a journey that would challenge hikers decades younger.

He first set the age record in 2017, when he was 82. Nine years later, the trail is more difficult. His body does not perform as it once did. Despite extensive training, he acknowledges that he cannot regain the fitness level he had during his earlier journey.

He estimates that some sections now feel twice as hard.

Yet he continues.

Sanders does not inspire me because he has somehow defeated aging. He has not. He moves more carefully, adjusts his expectations, and accepts help from volunteers who drive his camper, prepare meals, and plan parts of his route.

He understands the risks. His mantra on difficult terrain is simple: It is a “don’t fall” day.

At this stage of life, that is not a bad mantra for any of us.

What makes Sanders remarkable is not that he ignores his limitations. It is that he refuses to let those limitations dictate every decision for him.

Growing older inevitably changes what our bodies can do. It does not erase our need for purpose, challenge, friendship, and discovery.

That is the lesson I carry with me on Taylor Mountain.

My 10 miles do not need to become his 2,190 miles to matter.

The purpose of a challenge is not always to prove we can do what someone else has done. Sometimes it is to discover that we can still surprise ourselves.

Learning to Look Forward

For much of my life, purpose came through work.

There was always another problem to address, a meeting to attend, a policy to develop, or a community effort to support. Public service provided direction and meaning, but it also created habits that were hard to leave behind.

Pulling back from obligations can feel uncomfortable when responsibility has defined your identity.

There is a temptation to fill every newly opened space with another commitment. An empty calendar begins to look less like freedom and more like a problem that requires immediate intervention.

“Doing Nothing” helped me understand that rest does not have to be earned through exhaustion.

Taylor Mountain is teaching me something more: Stepping back does not mean standing still.

There are different ways to move forward.

I am now looking for more challenging trails throughout Sonoma County and beyond. Taylor Mountain is preparing me physically, but it is also changing how I view this stage of my life.

Retirement and aging can cause us to look backward, measuring ourselves by what we once accomplished or by what we can no longer do.

At the summit, I certainly look back.

I reflect on my parents, my career, public service, and the unexpected path that led me from a farmworker childhood to helping lead the city spread out below me.

But I also look toward the surrounding mountains.

They remind me that there are still trails I have not walked, views I have not seen, and parts of myself I have not tested.

The sense of accomplishment I feel at the summit is not only about completing the climb.

It comes from recognizing that my life is not simply a collection of memories. There is still a future to shape.

Why This Matters Today

We live in a culture that often confuses constant activity with purpose and views slowing down as withdrawal.

We also tend to define older adults by what they can no longer do. That narrow view can become a limitation in itself, discouraging people from starting something new before their bodies have told them they must stop.

Dale Sanders offers another perspective on aging.

He accepts that the trail is harder. He recognizes that his pace has changed. He relies on others, exercises judgment, and keeps moving.

His example does not mean that everyone should hike the Appalachian Trail at 91.

Purpose is not measured in miles.

For one person, the trail may be a mountain. For another, it may be a neighborhood walk, a garden, a classroom, a volunteer assignment, or a long-delayed creative project.

What matters is continuing to find something that draws us beyond the familiar.

Taylor Mountain stood half a mile from my home for nearly a decade. The mountain did not move closer. I finally became ready to see what had been waiting there all along.

Now, when I reach the summit, I look back at the city and the life that shaped me.

Then I turn toward the trail ahead.