Sonoma County parks in 2020 saw record rise in visits, memberships

Audrey Munson’s personal education on the restorative effect of nature began even before the coronavirus pandemic closed down much of public life and turned her workplace at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital into a COVID-19 ward.

It was her Doberman shepherd mix, Kleine, who helped motivate Munson to leave her bed and her house in the fall of 2019 when she was wrestling with deep depression. The registered nurse headed to Taylor Mountain Regional Park once, then a few times. By the start of 2020, she already had a goal to visit all of the county’s regional parks with hiking trails that she and Kleine could take on together.

And when the pandemic hit, those places were even more prized for Munson.

“Nature is so healing,” Munson said. “It’s like, you can lay in bed, stay inside all day. But it’s funny how the second you commit yourself to getting outside, it can change your perspective.”

In a year characterized by stay-home orders, closures and often confounding distinctions between essential and non-essential activities, parks — except for a short stint at the start of the pandemic — remained open as places to exercise safely, offer diversion from pandemic stresses and allow creative opportunities for social connection.

A record-breaking number of users have shown up since May in packed parking lots, busy trailheads and bustling beaches, said Melanie Parker, deputy director of Sonoma County Regional Parks. The agency is on track to surpass its annual all-time marks for visits and park memberships.

“There’s no real differentiation between weekends and weekdays anymore,” she said. “It’s a year-round, seven-day-week, all-hands-on-deck situation.”

From the start of May through November, day use at regional parks was up 22% from the same period in 2019. Annual memberships — without even accounting for the usual cluster bought in December as holiday gifts — are up by 30%, Parker said.

“(That) is huge,” she said. “Because you assume some of those people are no longer paying day-use fees once they’re members. So that’s really all waters rising.”

Visits were temporarily stymied during the spring, when Sonoma County officials closed parks from March 24 until gradual lifting of restrictions began in late April. But the rise in regional parks visits over the summer and fall months, Parker said, was well above the average annual 12% growth in recent years.

“This is clearly above and beyond the normal trend,” she said. “It’s record-breaking park use.”

Sonoma County Regional Parks comprises the largest network of local public lands, including 54 parks that feature mountains and beaches, lakes and riverfronts.

The county also has a wealth of state parks with towering redwood groves and miles of coastline. State Parks representatives did not respond to requests for comment about 2020 visits.

Social media also attests to the growing popularity of parks in the county. A Facebook group that local resident Miriam Schaefer started tells the story in its own numbers: Sonoma County Hikers, launched in March 2019, had about 555 members at the end of April 2020, Schaefer said. By June, the number had jumped to 826, and by July, the group had 1,235 members.

By the end of 2020, there were nearly 3,000 members.

“I created it because I was very passionate about hiking and wanted to share that with others, inspire other people that maybe hadn’t been out there and also learn from other people,” Schaefer said, just hours before heading out on her final hike of the year, at Sonoma Valley Regional Park. “I’m super proud that I created a positive place for people to connect over common ground, common love.”

Members post about hikes they recently completed, ask for tips and directions and sometimes arrange to meet and light out on a trail together — while adhering to safe pandemic practices.

Katie Koop is a member of both Schaefer’s Facebook group and Sonoma County Regional Parks. Her husband’s grandmother gives the family a parks membership every year, she said.

Koop, a first grade teacher, found herself pursuing hiking as an outlet that felt relatively low-risk when the pandemic first hit. Little was known at that time about the potential effects of COVID-19 on pregnancy — and Koop had just entered the third trimester.

“It was very scary, all of it,” she said. Her doctor told her to avoid crowded spots like the grocery store, gathering with people outside of her household and any other situation that could possibly put her or her baby at risk.

But walking around Spring Lake Regional Park, Koop said, she could still enjoy waving and exchanging greetings with passersby. In place of going to workouts at her gym, Orangetheory Fitness, she began to expand the network of parks she was visiting.

Now 5-month-old Everett comes along in a baby carrier as Koop hikes, sticking to trails with moderate changes in elevation. As a new mother, she said her appreciation has only deepened for the county’s rich variety of outdoor destinations.

“We feel lucky to live here,” she said.

Roxy Pectol, a 15-year-old sophomore at Petaluma High School, experienced the same growing affinity for the local outdoors, as she and her family members have undertaken a different hike or bike ride every Saturday since March 14, the first Saturday of the first local stay-home order.

“I’ve learned to love nature and the world I live in,” Pectol said. “Before, I wasn’t able to see it in that way.”

A list provided by her father, Scott, indicated that she and her sister, Charlotte, traversed 143 miles between that first outing and Dec. 19.

The outings also influenced her choice in diet. Already a vegetarian for six years, she switched to a vegan lifestyle in 2020.

“Now everything I do, I try to be eco-friendly,” she said. “I think if I hadn’t hiked every weekend this year, I would have had a completely different mindset than I do now ... I just fell in love with nature.”

Parker said the upshot for park and open space managers is a new set of people who see the intangible value of such places — and will support the work and resources needed to keep them around.

“We’re actually seeing a whole new generation of outdoor lovers and park users,” she said. “All of our futures depend on a future generation of people who value that. When we see an increase and new users coming out the door, we get excited, and we think to ourselves, this is the future of outdoor protection and park stewardship.”

For Munson, whose daily work involves donning personal protective equipment to guard against the coronavirus and treating patients afflicted with COVID-19, the chance to meet safely with friends and get a breath of fresh air without constant need of a mask has been a boon to her mental well-being as well as her physical health.

“My whole life was getting taken over by COVID... you can see all this death and negativity,” she said. Getting into nature, though, “You’re seeing how the seasons are changing. Leaves are falling, there’s new growth, whatever it might be. That’s something that’s going to be stimulating those positive feelings.”

Her visits to parks even inspired her to form a wellness group and she started a podcast called Ready to Rise, for “people in general that feel they need to elevate their lives.”

“Right now, we’re all forced to sit at home and deal with life, deal with our thoughts,” she said. “I think we need that balance and that connection ... Parks have seriously become a big way to get in touch with people and connect.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.