By Ashley MacDonald

Under the continuing health guidance of the County of Marin, the Homestead Valley Music Festival will not take place as scheduled this August. This is not the end of summer that any of us hoped to face, but our main focus remains the well-being of our community, artists, staff, partners and everyone involved in the festival.

A year without the Music Festival is hard for us to comprehend, but we have every intention of returning in a great way in 2021. As of now, the Homestead Valley Music Festival will take place Saturday, August 28, 2021.  We look forward to sharing our new lineups and more information. We can't wait to be together again with our friends and neighbors in the meadow when it is safe.

Above Cowboy Rock on a mid-summer day the gone-wild pincushions were like jeweled tiaras in the whitened oat grass. Down below the Himalaya blackberries hung ripe and gleaming.

The view from the rock was a landscape in flux. The wind raced over the ridge, whipping around everything flexible in its path. Tamalpais Park and Stolte Grove were breezy; the well-trod Eagle Trail through the Land Trust's Weedon Redwoods was calm. But as I rounded a rise I heard noises.

The bay trees were clacking and rattling. Buckeyes rocked and creaked where convoluted branches touched. Live oaks bowed and clunked each other. The wind thrashed through all the leaves. Madrone leaves sailed along, the just vacated branch trembling. Leaning on a tree, I felt the wind's pulse. All around was the sound of wind rushing, the sight of plants flexing and swinging.

In the tempest I walked silently. My dog, too, passed without sound. Two voiced creatures, moving without a peep, while all around the speechless trees gave voice to that time and place.

September 1987

These timeless articles are reprinted from "On Foot in Homestead A Hiker's Journal of a Coastal Valley," by Matthew Davis, 1988. Matthew Davis (1935-2015), a former HVLT Board member, wrote articles which appeared in the Homestead Headlines beginning in 1984. In 1988 Matthew compiled his columns into a book "On Foot in Homestead - A Hiker's Journal of a Coastal Valley," published by the HVLT.

The Tamalpais Land & Water Co. (TL&WC) was chartered as a 100-year corporation in 1889. To go out of business in 1988 it quitclaimed its properties to the Homestead Valley Land Trust (HVLT). HVLT hoped that accepting the quitclaim deed might result in acquisition of more access to the open space it had bought in 1974. Surprise. HVLT had acquired streets and lanes in Homestead, Almonte and Mill Valley . In 1998, the county accepted HVLT's quitclaim deed for streets in Homestead and Almonte. In 2009, the city of Mill Valley accepted HVLT's quitclaim deed for 40 Steps Lanes and Paths. But the city has yet to accept a quitclaim deed for 60 streets in Mill Valley although HVLT has made numerous requests to do so. The city is responsible for use of these streets, but HVLT owns them. Bizarre. A few examples: Throckmorton, Lovell, Molino, Summit, Corte Madera. HVLT also owns paper streets in Mill Valley open space land such as Cypress Trail. 20 years ago the then current city manager opined that this ridiculous situation would be corrected, but he warned, "these things take time."