One day in late April, I decided to go for a walk in the park. Not just any park, of course. The open space that grabbed my attention is the 4,350-acre Palo Corona Regional Park, created in 2004 south of Carmel, with an entrance right on Highway One.

However, my visit couldn’t be spontaneous: I had to apply, online, for a permit at least 24 hours in advance--a requirement necessitated by limited parking along the shoulder. So I hit the Enter key and hoped that the day I had selected would be a beautiful sunshiny one, and that the summer fog would hold off just a little while longer. I really wanted to enjoy the view from Inspiration Point.

As it turned out, the afternoon was bright, but windy. I almost bailed. But then I spied my Windstopper jacket crumpled on the floor of the back seat, and decided to brave the breeze. Once I unlocked the tall wooden gate (the combination comes with the permit) and passed through to the other side, I felt I had stepped into another world: not only did the wind vanish completely, but the colors--of tall grass and flowers (orange poppies, purple lupine) and even the weathered wood of derelict cattle pens--became more vivid. And there was birdsong everywhere. Of redwing blackbirds in particular. Individual males dotted the landscape; perched atop bending thistle stalks, they fluffed up their brilliant orange-red epaulets and twirrrrrrred their invitation of love to all the females within hearing. Every so often they would take to the air in hot pursuit, yelling me me me me! If I were a redwing gal, I would have caved in an instant. These guys were spectacular.

As is Palo Corona itself, or what little of it is presently open to visitors: approximately two miles along an old ranch road, with an elevation gain of 600 feet. The trail started out flat as I passed some farmworker cottages and strawberry fields on the left (not part of the park), then a barn (now offices and storage) and the cattle pens. A half dozen virile bulls--safely behind barbed wire--regarded me from a lush field of grass. I tried to take a picture of one standing next to the fence, but when his eyes got wide and he started snorting, I realized maybe barbed wire wasn’t such good protection from a half-ton vessel of testosterone. I backed off. He resumed his munching of grass. Peace, man.

Soon the road curved up a steep incline, affording gorgeous views of the Carmel coast--including a bit of Point Lobos--before it flattened out again in a gentle upland valley.

Inspiration Point, accessible by a short spur trail, is the high point, and the views are indeed exquisite. Pines add their shade to that of oaks here. Another half-mile brought me to Animas Pond, home of the threatened red-legged frog. To think of it as a pond, though, I had to use my imagination a little: only a couple of feet deep, it is well populated by all manner of wetland reeds and ferns.

And that’s the end of the road, as a locked gate informed me in no uncertain terms.

Palo Corona is a beautiful place, but that isn’t its only value. It’s the newest member of the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District (MPRPD), and constitutes half of the 9,898-acre Palo Corona Ranch purchase made in 2002 for $37 million by the Nature Conservancy, Big Sur Land Trust, Monterey County, the Regional Park District, Wildlife Conservation Board, and Coastal Conservancy. It was one of the premier initiatives funded by Proposition 40, passed that year. Two years later, when the lands were transferred to the Regional Park District and California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), they became the crucial missing piece completing a valuable--some would say invaluable--jigsaw puzzle. With the addition of that land, 14 protected properties--belonging to State Parks, DFG, the Land Trust, the U.S. Forest Service, and Monterey County--were united to form one huge wildlife corridor extending 70 miles from Carmel to the Hearst Ranch in San Luis Obispo County. As Bill Leahy, executive director of the Land Trust commented, “If you started out at the Carmel River and started walking south, you could go 70 miles and cross over only one paved road, Nacimiento-Ferguson.”

Palo Corona Regional Park alone, which stretches seven miles north to south and rises to over 3,400 feet in elevation, is home to the endangered red-legged frog and Smith’s blue butterfly, and the threatened tiger salamander and steelhead trout. Deer, mountain lions, bobcats, golden eagles, and California condors range over the park, and unusual birds such as mountain quail and horned larks have been seen as well. Rare black bear, peregrine falcon, and spotted owl have been documented on adjoining lands.

The park also includes the headwaters of 13 watersheds. And it has a couple thousand acres of native bunchgrasses, with associated wildflowers--which might not sound like much, but consider that the next largest bunchgrass acreage in the state is only about 400, followed by 86. This bounty of bunchgrass stems from the rough topography in the backcountry, which makes grazing difficult.

That said, grazing is still allowed--even encouraged--in Palo Corona Park. Researchers now think that carefully managed cattle grazing may actually help the native buckwheat that the Smith’s blue butterfly needs to survive. Studies are ongoing.

Other issues being studied here are fire management, trail construction, and road grading to reduce sedimentation. Parking, too. When and if the parking situation is improved, the permit process will disappear--and spontaneity can reign.

When I reached the locked gate at the end of the currently open stretch of road, I wanted to go on. Two miles of so many seemed . . . paltry! I wanted to escape the exotic grasses and gentle slopes of the “front ranch” and find out what the more rugged backcountry had to offer. I wanted to see a condor or a horned lark or a mountain lion (preferably at some remove).

Plans are for the park to be opened up more--certainly to hikers, and probably to mountain bikers and equestrians also, given the distances to be covered. The next park south is Garrapata State Park, and people already do enter from there, illegally. The DFG’s Joshua Creek Ecological Reserve, rugged and difficult to access, is downcoast as well. The recent purchase has enlarged that holding, and plans are to make it more accessible to the public.

For now, though, it’s worth logging on to www.mprpd.org and getting a permit for the two-mile stroll that provides a glimpse of the future--and the past. Of our ranching heritage, but also of our continuing stewardship of this precious land--and simply of the beauty of the central coast, untouched by development.