Enjoy parks now, while you can

After a year of quirky weather, we have reached a welcome stretch of late-summer sunshine, and the outdoors beckons.

Yet there is a different kind of cloud looming: the impending closure of nearly one-fourth of California's 270 state parks within the next 10 months, prompted by the state's budget crisis.

Some 70 parks, including 23 on the North Coast, are on the list. Sugarloaf Ridge, Annadel, Jack London and Austin Creek are among the Sonoma County favorites listed.

So this is the time to get out and enjoy those parks, even as park advocates rally to try and prevent the closures.

Over the next few weeks, the Days Out column will spotlight some of the threatened parks, starting today with Sugarloaf Ridge State Park.

Budget cuts are already having an effect at Sugarloaf, where campground reservations aren't being taken beyond Monday.

Loved for its broad meadows, dense woods and green rolling hills, the park is home to a wide range of fauna and flora. The wildlife population includes gray foxes and even the occasional bobcat or coyote. You'll see redwoods, oaks, ferns and more along the park's 25 miles of hiking and horseback riding trails.

And from the summit of Bald Mountain (elevation 2,729 feet) you can see the Sierra Nevada and the Golden Gate Bridge.

You couldn't quite say a river runs through it, but Sugarloaf's boundaries do contain the headwaters of Sonoma Creek.

While visitors feel far removed from busy streets, the park is only seven miles east of Santa Rosa via Highway 12, at 2605 Adobe Canyon Road, Kenwood.

The park's many fans include Sonoma County poet Katherine Hastings, host of the "Word Temple" poetry readings and monthly KRCB radio series. Her poem, "At Sugarloaf, Imagine," considers the effects of losing the park: "No ferns to feel, shaped like tropic feathers. No feeling small in the beauty of it all."