Point Reyes Light - January 23, 2003

Margot Doss' life of adventure

By Larken Bradley

Longtime Bolinas resident and conservation leader Margot Patterson Doss, a popular journalist whose passion for the outdoors led readers and television viewers on explorations of nearly every trail, path, and lane in the Bay Area for more than 30 years, died of natural causes Wednesday, Jan. 15 at Marin General Hospital. She was 82.

Prolific life

Sporting a trademark Stewart clan tartan cape, matching Tam-o’-shanter, and saucer-shaped eyeglasses, for seven years Mrs. Doss led walks on television’s Evening Magazine program. A veteran journalist, her San Francisco Chronicle column, The Bay Area at Your Feet, enjoyed a huge following for 30 years.

She was the author of 14 books including A Walker’s Yearbook: 52 Seasonal Walks in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Paths of Gold: In and Around the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The guides also included photographs by her husband, John Whinham Doss.

After retiring from the Chronicle in 1991, she wrote Garden Gallivanting, an annual spring series for The Light. She also contributed to Coast and Oceans magazine, and the Bolinas Hearsay News.

A champion of open-space preservation, Mrs. Doss helped establish the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. While she kept blatant politics out of her walking columns, she sometimes drew readers’ attention to scenic or historical spots at risk for development.

In the 1960s when developers had their claws set on turning Fort Cronkhite into a suburban tract, readers began flocking to the Marin Headlands, and the fight for preservation was won.

A member of the Citizens’ Advisory Commission to the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreational Area from 1979-1994, Mrs. Doss functioned as a voice for ranchers’ interests for 15 years. In 1978 she served on the California Coastal Commission.

Oldest of four

Born on Aug. 22, 1920, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Ina Margaret Patterson (who would change her name to Margot as an adult) was the oldest of four daughters whose mother was an artist and father an undercover narcotics agent with the FBI.

In an interview published last month in the Nicasio News, the third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade reporters noted that Mrs. Doss’ father "was killed on the job with poison."

As Mr. Patterson changed job assignments the family relocated with him throughout the United States, and once ventured overseas for a brief stay in Cairo, Egypt.

Mrs. Doss’ journalism career got underway during high school in Illinois, where she learned to set type and write editorials at The Treemont News. After receiving a full scholarship to Knox College, in her freshman year she transferred to Wesleyan College in Bloomington where she went to work for The Bloomington Pantograph under publisher Adlai Stevenson, later US ambassador to the UN and an unsuccessful candidate for President.

She went on to The Milwaukee Sentinel, and later became Midwest editor of Seventeen magazine.

Husband and a move

On June 6, 1947, in New York City, she married John Doss, whom she’d met in the respectable venue of her college chapel. The newlyweds moved to Baltimore, where Mrs. Doss wrote for The Sun, and Mr. Doss earned a degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She went on to write for The Kansas City Star before moving to San Francisco in 1955, when Dr. Doss became a resident at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto.

In San Francisco the Dosses raised their four sons on Greenwich Street in the City’s Cow Hollow neighborhood. During the Beat Era they palled around with poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsburg. Their parties attracted politicians including then Assembly speaker Willie Brown, who "once did a tap dance on my dining-room table," Mrs. Doss laughed in a 1994 interview with The Light.

Also a prolific travel writer, Mrs. Doss documented for numerous publications her travels to Samoa, Asia, and South America, where her husband worked with the World Health Organization.

In 2001, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley acquired Mrs. Doss’ life’s work for inclusion in its archives.

Vibrant woman

A vibrant woman who attracted many people to her, Mrs. Doss was an astute observer who possessed a photographic memory, her daughter-in-law, Elaine Doss, remarked on Tuesday.

Supportive of the aspirations of friends and family members, "she would take you to the next step of creativity," said Doss.

Longtime friend and Bolinas neighbor, artist Arthur Okamura recalled meeting the Doss family in 1967, during the Summer of Love. Describing Mrs. Doss as a kind of "communication center," she was the one people went to for the meaning of a word or expression, he observed.

Edgar Wayburn, MD, current honorary president of the Sierra Club and fellow commissioner of the GGNRA and the PRNS, remembered his colleague as "outgoing" and "very firm in her positions."

On Wednesday Seashore superintendent Don Neubacher echoed Dr. Wayburn’s observations. "When Margot wanted to get something done, you were better off getting out of her way."

Added Neubacher, "she was easy going, but also determined."

Indeed, while few observed her "Scottish ire side," noted her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Doss didn’t hesitate to express her opinions. Elaine Doss recalled a story her mother-in-law told of being on a hike with fellow conservationist Mrs. Elizabeth Terwilliger, also known as "Mrs. T."

A part of nature

When the two women "came upon naked hippies," sunbathing in the open space, Mrs. Doss defended their free-spirited expression by telling her friend, "it’s part of nature," Doss laughed.

Reflecting on more than five decades with his wife, this week John Doss wrote, "My life’s companion for 55 years . . . we reached the speed limit. Margot Patterson was a great spirit. She had a lightness of being in all her activities and I consider myself to be the luckiest of persons to have known her."

Added Doss, "Margot filled our lives with magic and surrounded us with beauty."

Mrs. Doss was predeceased by her three younger sisters, Jean, Barbara and Roberta.

She is survived by her husband, John Whinham Doss, MD, of Bolinas; sons and daughters-in-law, Richard Patterson Doss and Anika Jacobsen of San Francisco; Alexander MacKenzie Doss and Elaine Durando Doss of Nicasio; John Watson Doss and his partner Debra Kay Foster of Marshall; and Gordon Williams Doss and Joan Davis of San Rafael; grandchildren, Bonnie Bright of Seattle; and Alexander Durando Doss of Nicasio.

After rotating her cremated ashes between the seven sections of her garden seven times over the course of 49 days, on Ash Wednesday, March 5, family members and friends will cast Mrs. Doss’ ashes on the outgoing tide at the entrance to the Bolinas Lagoon. The Doss family would like to invite friends to a celebration of Margot Doss’ life at the family home at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25. They request that those who attend bring food, drinks, and memories to share with one another.

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