Tired of the Same Old Sunday Brunch on Mother’s Day?

Celebrate Mother’s Day by packing up everyone’s favorite edibles and heading up to Big Basin Redwood State Park—California’s oldest state park. Docent Doreen Devorah will portray some of the incredible women who lived in, worked in and fought for the creation of the park.

Originally from Carmel and Big Sur, Devorah graduated from UC Santa Cruz in the 1960s and thought the world was waiting for her. However, with her art history degree in hand, she was advised by potential employers that if she wanted a job, she'd better learn how to type. She had predated the women’s rights movement.

She was divorced, her son was in college, and she did not want to type. She wanted to live in an artist’s commune. A friend mentioned that her brother lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where U.S. expatriates had created a lively art’s colony.

For the next several years Devorah lived her dream and was a member of art and theater groups. She traveled back to the states and lived in San Francisco, but she missed the Bohemian life and decided to travel to South America by herself with only her thumb as transportation.

Eventually, her journeys guided her back home to Monterey County.

“Down through the years, I had hiked Big Basin a few times before with my family, but several years ago on a trip with them, I realized in the 15 years I had lived in foreign countries, I had forgotten about the redwoods! I was newly retired and was wondering what to do with myself.” 

And then she spotted something.

“As fate would have it, as we were driving out, I noticed a little announcement about training for docents coming up," she said. "I didn’t even know parks had docents."

A park docent for nine years, Devorah says she now knows the trees by name.

“Some of these trees are over 2,000 years old, and redwoods are the tallest living things on earth,” she said. “The Mother Tree on the Redwood Loop means ‘mother of the forest.’ [It is] the biggest tree in the forest, bigger than the Father Tree!”

Devorah has really come to respect the forest in her time as a docent and works to help others do the same.

“When I lead tours, I sometimes ask visitors to try to be quiet and wipe their minds clean and just commune with the trees,” she said. “When you are around the forest for any length of time, you have the real sense that the forest is alive, you have a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself. Some come just to hike; they aren’t aware of the trees. I used to be that way before I came up here.”

Dressed in period costumes, Doreen will present her living history reenactments for the Mother’s Day walk through the Old Growth Loop. You will meet pioneer homemaker Alice Maddock; distinguished writer Josephine McCrackin; fundraisers Louise Jones and Florence Hill, who along with her husband, Andrew P. Hill, fought for the creation of the park; and Harriet “Petey” Weaver, the first female ranger.

The show starts at the flag pole in front of the Big Basin State Park headquarters at 12:45 p.m. Sunday and will be a half-mile, one-hour walk.

“We will be celebrating the women who saved this park and worked to make it great,” Devorah said.