San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Face of Muir Woods bids farewell — sort of
Mia Monroe, who spent much of her life in the most famous redwood forest in the world, is stepping away from the job she loves.
Monroe retired earlier this month after 45 years as a National Park Service ranger, most of it in Muir Woods National Monument.
For years, she has been the public face of Muir Woods, the gentle force behind dozens of national park projects including overcrowding and restorations of salmon habitat. She has helped build physical bridges over creeks and administrative bridges to the other agencies that are responsible for Mount Tamalpais, the beautiful peak that is the symbol of Marin County.
Monroe fell in love with the natural world as a child and never lost her affection for the outdoors. “I always was a nature girl,” she said with a small smile.
Monroe was born in Sacramento and grew up in San Carlos. Her parents took her and her brother on camping and hiking trips and introduced them to both the forests and the desert. They had a cabin in the Mojave, and Monroe remembers watching for desert tortoises by day and enjoying the dark sky full of stars by night.
Her parents showed her and her brother the natural world. “We’d watch the wonder of it all,” she said. “They made it exciting for us.”
More importantly, Monroe’s parents were social activists, interested in civil rights and organizations like Save the Bay. “They were role models,” she said. “They taught us it was important to give back to the community, that people could be part of the solution.”
When she was still a teen and eager to do something for the environment, Monroe went to the Sierra Club in San Francisco, offering to help. They sent her to see Amy Meyer, a young mother who was working on a citizen’s campaign to establish a Golden Gate national park out of federal land at the Presidio of San Francisco and military posts on the Marin headlands.
“I rang Amy’s doorbell,” Monroe said. “And when she answered I said, ‘How can I help? ’ ”
“I had two young children,” Meyer remembered the other day. “I was overwhelmed, and Mia took the pressure off. She was indispensable.”
“Amy’s living room was command central for the park effort,” Monroe said, “It was strewn full of maps and reports and plans. The phone was constantly ringing. I was kind of like a Girl Friday. If something needed typing, I typed it. If there was an errand to run, I ran it.
Anything to help. It was a time of change, a great time and I got to see Amy in action, talking to people, planning this new park.’’
Eventually, Meyer and her colleagues and Rep. Phillip Burton of San Francisco got legislation passed to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, now grown to 128 square miles — nearly three times the size of San Francisco.
Monroe went on to run school programs to bring children to the park, particularly minority city kids. The job was abolished when tax revenues dropped in the wake of Proposition 13, but the National Park Service had heard of Monroe’s work with school children and GGNRA’s then-Superintendent William Whelan recruited Monroe to be a park ranger.
At first Monroe was stationed at Fort Point National Historic Site, but she engineered a switch to Muir Woods, a place she first visited when she was a Girl Scout and never forgot. Once her mother found a four-leaf clover in Muir Woods; good luck and an omen.
“Other park rangers move around to different posts, but she stayed here,” Meyer noted. “She has a tremendous knowledge about Golden Gate and whenever there was a problem anywhere and they needed help, she is always there. She cares.’’
I took a walk in the woods with Monroe recently. She talked a bit about her time in Muir Woods with affection and a taste of regret. “Every day I was coming to the most beautiful place in the world and working with people who wanted to be here,” she said.
She has a particular affection for redwoods and led the way to one of her favorites, a big tree along Redwood Creek not far from the park entrance. She reached out to touch the trunk of the tree as if she were reaching out to an old friend. “I feel I have come to know them,” she said of redwoods. This particular tree, she thought, might be 600 years old. “It’s humbling to be around them,” she said.
“In some ways, Muir Woods is a classic national park,” Monroe said. “Visitors come to San Francisco and check it off the list: Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods. They don’t know what to expect. It is often people’s first experience in nature.’’
One of Monroe’s greatest gifts is to be able to explain the forest, the wildlife, the plants, the fish in the creeks, even the insects. “She cares about the smallest creatures in the park,” Meyer said. “She helps people to understand the miracle of this web of life.’’
Monroe has retired her ranger uniform but will be back in Muir Woods as a volunteer. After 53 years being associated with the park in various ways, it was time. She is thinking of spending time with family and friends, more chances to go hiking. “And besides,” she said, “It’s springtime.”