The trail down to Rodeo Beach was occupied mid-morning by a loose procession of people — a man with a dog that kept stopping to reconsider, two women in matching yellow rain jackets moving at a serious pace, a kid collecting rocks near the waterline who had separated from anyone who might claim him. The beach is black and gray sand, the color of old pencil lead, fed by the serpentine and chert eroding out of the cliffs. It doesn't look like the beaches that end up on postcards, which may be why it draws the people it draws.

The GGNRA has been running a revegetation effort on several of the coastal bluffs, pulling ice plant and replacing it with native coastal scrub — buckwheat, lizardtail, coyote brush. The work is slow and the ice plant has decades of tenure, but in a few stretches the transition is visible, the bluff going from the flat green carpet to something more textured and wind-shaped.

A ranger at the Marin Headlands Visitor Center, tidying a rack of trail maps, mentioned that spring weekends have been busier than usual, attributed it to nothing in particular. "People come, people come back," she said, which seemed like enough of an explanation.

Someone walking the Coastal Trail tomorrow will notice the same thing they noticed last week: the water on both sides of the peninsula, the towers of the bridge emerging and disappearing in whatever the fog decides to do, and the headlands themselves, still there, still steep, still declining the invitation to become something else.