"AVENUE OF THE SUN" (OAK HINGE)

Painting:  Across The Valley, 11 x 14, oil

Joseph P Grant park, (owned and run by Santa Clara County) in the foothills below Mt. Hamilton's Lick Observatory (World's first mountain top observatory, 1888), was a wonderful place to view this year's Summer Solstice.  Camping for the week of the Solstice, I went specifically to experience the phenomena and meet with the man who discovered the Avenue of the Sun, or Oak Hinge, as some have called it.  Ron Bricmont, who has been coming to the park since it opened in 1978, discovered the Avenue in 1998, and has continued to expand his knowledge and writing about it ever since.

While there are at least 6 oak species in the park, (Coast, Interior, and Canyon Live Oaks, and Blue, Black and Valley Oaks) it is the Valley Oaks (mostly on the valley floor and lower hills) which he discovered had been laid out as an avenue aligned with the Summer Solstice.  Through his explorations and research, he learned that the earlier people, the Northern Valley Yokuts, (for at least 5000 years) and for 100 years before white settlement, the Ohlone people, created and maintained the alignment of Valley Oaks with the rising sun of the Summer Solstice.  These ancient trees are from 400-500 years old.  When a tree died, the Indians burned it out then replanted a new tree to maintain the alignment.  While he doesn't know how old the alignment is, he knows the grove is older than the oldest tree.

Tempera Sketch:  Solstice Oak

Ron pointed out that the alignment is actually the heart of a larger grove which includes a Winter Solstice alignment.  (The oldest Valley Oak in the larger grove is 750 years old)  Originally there was a ritual path tying the arrangement of the trees together, which then became a ranch road, (Grant Ranch), and finally a paved park road.  I met Ron on the road 2 days before the actual Solstice where he discussed his discovery and what he has learned subsequently about the Avenue.  There are 6 trees in the alignment. One tree on top of a hill on the Eastern side of the valley floor, which he called the 6th tree, is where the Solstice sun rises.  The other 5 are on the valley floor.  On the Solstice, this is the tree I focused my camera on for the first glimpse of the rising sun.

Bricmont is working on plans for creating interpretive panels about the Avenue of the Sun for the park and a scholarly paper on the subject for future publication.  I want to express my appreciation to Ron for passing on his knowledge of this amazing place.  Living for a week at Grant Park, painting oaks on location, meeting Ron, and experiencing the summer Solstice on the "Avenue" of ancient Valley Oaks has been the highlight of my California Oak Trail so far.