I love planning. On most trips I have been on, whether with family or friends, I plan our schedule to the hour including meals and breaks. This, however, was not the case with my last trip to San Francisco in 2022.
My friend Katherine and I decided to pay a visit to my brother Adam, who had just moved there a few years prior. Katherine insisted that if we didn’t make a schedule we would discover new things without limiting ourselves. While I thought this was kind of dramatic, I decided to embrace that Californian ideology and just chill.
One day that stands out to me as something I would have missed out on is our day spent in Golden Gate Park. To be honest, I severely underestimated its size and beauty, meaning it easily fell off of any agenda I had drafted.
It was a beautiful Thursday morning in August, or as we learned “Fogust”, when we decided to get breakfast sandwiches to start our day. Adam was working that morning but recommended a spot called Devil’s Teeth Baking Company. It was kind of out of the way, but he insisted it was a must-visit. We ubered there, as we did most places on this trip, finding the hills of San Francisco to be the stuff of nightmares, and placed our order. After waiting for a tedious, but worthwhile, 15 minutes, we had our sandwiches and started walking. I whipped out the maps app on my phone, eager to find the perfect spot to sit, when I realized our proximity to Golden Gate Park.
Luckily this walk was mostly downhill, where we found ourselves standing in front of a beautiful body of water coated in a thin veil of fog, which I now know is Spreckels Lake. This lake is manmade, created in 1904 for model boating, which is still a common use of it today.
We stole one of the open benches, and ate our breakfast there, discussing what our plan was next in between bites. This was a quiet contrast to the sound of the city. All that was there to be heard was the hushed conversations of old couples out on morning walks. After we got this first taste of beauty from the park, Katherine suggested that we just take a short walk through to figure out our next move.
Looking at my trusty map, I noticed something that had somehow been erased from my memory – the existence of the bison paddock. Adam had told me about it countless times, but I suppose it was one of those things so random that it just goes right over your head. We borderline sprinted there once this hit us, excited to see bison roaming through a park in such a crazy city.
This paddock is a testament to the wild west history of San Francisco, and it has historically served as a means of preservation for bison. When the first wooly friend, Ben Harrison, was brought here in 1891, his species was nearly extinct. This was due to widespread hunting of buffalo with the goal of displaying their heads as trophies.
Upon our arrival at the paddock, we were hit with a wave of disappointment as we looked out at an empty fenced-in field. Where are the bison?!? They are a staple of this park and yet they aren’t even here! We snapped a couple pictures with a sign reading “PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE BISON”, and started to move on, heads hanging low. All of a sudden, as we moved along the road cutting through the park, we heard some low rumblings and went to investigate. Lo and behold, the bison were there! They were in a shelter all together a ways away from the path. To say that Katherine and I were giddy would be a severe understatement here – we were all but jumping for joy. Despite their distance from us, we got to see THE bison at Golden Gate Park!
We continued the walk through the park, going back and forth speculating on the technical aspects of keeping and caring for the bison in such a chaotic place. We later laughed and smiled recounting our day to Adam on the couch in his small studio apartment, leaving our plan for tomorrow to unfold the next morning.
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