On October 14, about 20 people gathered at the Berkeley Rose Garden to experience one of our most popular paths in a new way: listening to “graffiti poet” Leslie Reed read some of the 60+ original poems she’s inscribed on the “Running Fence” of Tamalpais Path. Reed has been writing on the redwood fence since 2019, transcribing verse that she channels from a higher source.

For Reed, being in the “silence of nature” is almost always the source of inspiration. “I’ll start to hear a couple of lines, and they're usually similar to my own thoughts,” she shares, “But then I feel an urgency to put the pen on the fence, and I’ll just start writing.” When her arm shoots up higher on the wall, she knows it’s going to be a longer poem.

Reed first experienced this creative process in 2017 when she was living in Broadstairs, a town in Kent overlooking the English Channel. The poems would come over the channel with the wind, she says, sometimes in French.

“A rhyme usually comes for the third line,” she says. “And then it propels itself forward, and I’m just writing as quickly as I can because, as I'm writing, I'm usually hearing the next two lines.”

The fact that she’s penning unplanned words with permanent marker in a public place can be intimidating, she adds. “But the sensation of having that poem arrive is just total bliss and flow and a lack of self-consciousness,” she says. “It’s truly a delight.”

You can follow Reed on Instagram at @leslie_reed_art.