Mendocino
California Highway 1, we're cruising, GoGo and I, smooth and competent, north of Mendocino. Level landscapes, golden autumn meadows crouching beside the Pacific. Blue rolling ocean meets wind-dancing grasses, the dry thistles stretching up ugly but fitting right in, it's October and there's way less traffic than I expected. Level ground because long concrete and steel bridges span the dark chasms that rivers cut deep into the meadows. Deep down below in there, it's dark with fecund mystery. The mists slide in off the salt water, dank and alive, strong, acrid, evocative like a Sherlock Holmes novel or the Genesis Planet. Down in there, Russian Gulch is a crescent of another place, a slice of the lower Cascades transplanted here, into this gentle gouge in the earth. This world doesn't belong here, but it's alive and it smells like it means to stay. Blackberries, ferns, redwoods, salt water, I can smell all of it and more, way more, because smells stir the cauldron of memory like nothing else. I'm transported by smells of the Massachusetts sand spit where I grew up, with the tall grass meadows of milkweed and Queen Anne's Lace overlooking the now continent-distant Atlantic, and then later where I went to escape, Puget Sound and the blackberry thickets and nettles (yes, nettles smell, and it's terrifying)and the oppressive green green dampness. Waves break and rush up into the rocks. Mist jumps and escapes, the cold Pacific becomes air until it's all around and you can only breathe this ocean-sky mix. People are water but this is too damn much, like a crowded wedding reception with relatives you haven't seen in decades and wish weren't standing quite so close to you now. The air has thrust beyond humid, you and it are chilly and wet, so now hey, suck it up and push up that trail in the early morning, sun beaming through the hemlocks on the ridge. The trail was hidden, I would never have found it but for the generous and evocative woman in campsite 12. She was stowing her tent at 6:00pm, and in all my years on the road I never saw somebody pack up in the falling evening twilight before, so I asked her in confusion, "You're putting your tent away? But it's getting dark," and she answered, yes, I know, we almost stayed here again tonight (...I heard that she longed to stay another night in the elemental gulch...) but my son has to be at school in the morning. We hiked to the Falls this morning, and I answered, Yeah I've heard about those Falls, I'd like to hike there tomorrow morning but I don't have a map and I have no idea where the trailhead is. She was very plain and had long brown hair boldly streaked with gray and she was very beautiful, middle aged and she carried herself like she had the power to make something out of nothing for a very long time now, graceful and confident, which is very lovely, but she looked a little tired as if living this frikking life is kind of a lot of work. I saw she was doing a good job for herself and for her kid, and I had no worries for them although I could see it wasn't easy. So maybe it was my goofy ponytail or my sincere confusion or that ever-cute VW camper bus with the pop-top, but she told me where to find the trailhead, and next morning I walked up there. Weird deja vu with the nettles and ferns and skunk cabbage, but I walked on up into the redwood chasm like I'd never been away, working for years in some stale milk-toast office. I felt very at home and very very welcome, although the redwood forest duff demanded to know why I was wasting my life with those moronic e-mails and voicemails and 1K stage lighting instruments, but I blew off those tough questions because I just felt so happy to be here. This was my first day on the road after too many long months, and I walked to the Falls and I thought, this is how I need to live because I'm not made for standing still.
