Westward the course of hikers takes its way

Every year in May, in the early hours of a weekend morning over the foothills west of campus, a group of Stanford students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends sets out on an exceptionally long walk from Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve out to the Pacific Ocean.

Like New York's Great Saunter, a 32-mile excursion around Manhattan recently completed by Bill Lane Center alumnus Xavier Martinez (MA ’24), the annual Stanford to the Sea hike is legendary. In fact, in a recent article for The Wall Street Journal, where he is now a reporter, Martinez mentions the Lane Center's storied trek as a formidable undertaking he thought might have left him better prepared for the 12-hour New York City stroll (spoiler alert: it didn't, and his body hasn't forgiven him).

At 22 miles, however, the full-day annual walk across the Peninsula hosted by the Bill Lane Center for the American West is still considered a hike of epic proportions. The event is a distinctive tradition within the Lane Center community, combining conversation, reflection, and immersion in the outdoors. The trails wind through wooded hillsides shaded by massive coast redwoods. At higher elevations, the trees become more mixed, alternating between redwoods, evergreen forest, and open meadow. Ferns and shrubs form a soft, green understory, and flowers spring from the ground in brilliant color with magical names. Bob Siegel, a professor of microbiology and immunology (and docent, photographer, and naturalist), attends the hike every year and documents them all: Western heart’s ease, scarlet pimpernel, Pacific bleeding heart, columbine, hedge nettle, California sweet grass, clover, bush poppy, iris, rush, rye…

Yet the hike’s setting offers more than a scenic backdrop. For historian and co-founder of the Lane Center David M. Kennedy, the Stanford landscape itself functions as a “micro-laboratory” for exploring the defining environmental questions of the American West. According to Kennedy, the idea behind the hike was to sponsor an event that would highlight the very “specific piece of real estate in the American West” that Stanford inhabits, and bring the community into this living laboratory to study larger Western issues that are at the core of the Lane Center’s mission.

The early days: Walking the Farm

“The hike had its origins in an earlier version called ‘Walking the Farm,’” Kennedy shared, “a title that riffed on the old nickname for Stanford” (once a horse farm). Inspired by a campus-focused environmental history course taught by Jon Christensen, Kennedy liked the idea of a kind of “traveling seminar,” where hikers could move around the 8,200-acre Stanford property like the farmers who historically walked the boundaries of their land to inspect fences, meet neighbors, and understand changes in the landscape. So in 2005 — the same year the Bill Lane Center was founded — Kennedy and “fellow travelers” began hiking the perimeter of Stanford lands, stopping for lunch midway at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and finishing with dinner at the Stanford Barn. “Walking the Farm” continued in this format for several years before evolving into a full-fledged expedition to the coast.

“On the return leg of one of those early ‘Walking the Farm’ excursions,” Kennedy relayed, “we paused for a bit at the horse farm on the west side of Alpine Road where the manager spoke of his family’s annual pedestrian pilgrimage to the sea. That inspired us, so we went about planning our own Stanford-to-the-Sea trek.”

Once more unto the sea, dear friends, once more...

This past Saturday, May 9, after some 7 a.m. preparatory tailgating (bagels and coffee out of the trunk of a car in the parking lot at Jasper Ridge), hikers once again began the annual westward journey through some of the region’s most scenic public lands. They arrived at the coast as evening moved in.

The route passed through Wunderlich County Park, continued along Bear Gulch Road and the Skyline Trail, and descended the Purisima Trail toward the Pacific. Near 7 p.m. — twelve hours after they’d initially set out — hikers arrived at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero. Over dinner, the group reconnected after a day spent moving together through forests, ridgelines, and open space.

Stanford to the Sea is unusual not only because of its expansive route, but also for the broad range of participants it attracts. Each year, the hike brings together walkers from across Stanford’s academic community and beyond. Professors of history and philosophy walk alongside medical doctors and PhD students. The dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences joins lecturers from the Center for human and Planetary Health, program managers from Stanford Law School, and prominent scientists studying climate, biology, and Earth systems. Students walk beside senior faculty. Researchers spend hours in conversation with alumni and staff members they may never have otherwise encountered in their day-to-day work at the university. A trail is a great equalizer, after all, making little distinction between students, staff, or Stanford luminaries. Hiking vast distances has a way of reducing everyone to the same basic concerns: water, distance, sore feet, poison oak, and a ride home.

Over the course of the day, the trail became a kind of temporary commons — one where conversations moved easily between California water policy, literature, wildfire resilience, public service, agriculture, and ecology. At three separate points on the hike, academic and policy experts gave talks on sustainability, climate, and the future of the American West.

The first talk came from Kimberly Gibson, who spoke on “Climate Adaptations & Innovations in California Agriculture.” Gibson’s research examines how to improve the sustainability, productivity, and inclusivity of agriculture in California’s Central Valley, with a focus on environmental resilience and economic opportunity in agricultural communities.

David Hayes, Interior deputy secretary in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, spoke next. A distinguished public servant, Hayes left his position as Biden's special assistant for climate policy in 2022 and currently sits on the Bill Lane Center advisory council. He is also professor of the practice at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability. In a grove along the Purisima Creek Trail, hikers stopped for lunch and to listen to Hayes’ talk titled, “Climate policy-making in the Biden White House — what worked, what didn’t, and what’s next.” Needless to say, it was a striking juxtaposition: elite policy expertise delivered not in Washington formality, but beneath the trees before a dusty, sweaty, riveted Stanford audience picnicking on the ground.

Kristen Davis spoke last, discussing “Forests of the Sea: Studying Resilience in Kelp and Coral.” Her talk highlighted research on marine ecosystems and climate adaptation along the California coast.

The day also included quieter moments of reflection, and a break from the constant “doing” that characterizes so much of Stanford life. The Center's annual hike is far more about “being,” which is easier to embrace when both body and mind must relent to the exhaustion imposed by 22 miles. Hikers paused beneath redwoods to stretch and practice yoga, listened for woodpeckers in the forest canopy, and gathered together for lunch on the trail. During one stop early in the hike, Stanford writer Melissa De Witte read David Wagoner’s poem “Lost,” inviting the group to stand quietly for a moment and listen to the stillness of the forest before continuing westward.

Stanford to the Sea reflects something central to the mission of the Bill Lane Center: bringing people together across disciplines to think seriously about the future of the American West and the environmental and public challenges shaping it. But the event also creates space for something less formal and harder to replicate — sustained time together outdoors. A chance to be in community away from classrooms and meetings, moving through landscapes that many of the walkers study, teach about, or strive to protect.

By the time hikers reach the coast, some of the conversations that began early in the morning at Jasper Ridge had stretched across an entire day of walking. Participants arrived tired and dirty, but no worse for wear, and a bit more connected by the shared experience of crossing the Peninsula together, from Stanford to the sea.