The hook
The largest collection of Andy Goldsworthy's land art in North America, hidden in a forest you have to walk to find.
01Why it's worth it
Four works by the British artist who builds only with what a place gives him, spread along a three-mile loop through the Presidio's woods. Spire is ninety-five feet of thirty-seven dead cypress trunks lashed upright, slowly being swallowed by the young trees planted around its base. Wood Line is a twelve-hundred-foot ribbon of eucalyptus branches curving through a grove along the park's oldest footpath, quietly rotting back into the ground on purpose. Two more hide indoors: a tree trunk coated in clay and human hair in an old powder magazine, and a buried sphere set into a wall of the Officers' Club. None of it announces itself, which is the whole idea. You walk an ordinary forest trail and keep stumbling into art built to disappear.
02How to experience it
Do the loop that links Spire and Wood Line through the trees. If you only see one, make it Wood Line. The two indoor pieces need their buildings to be open, so check hours before counting on them.