11-12-11 0600 L&C Cabin, Petrolia. Still dark in this time of daylight saving. The little dog is curled up under a sleeping bag on the futon on the floor. Do night people feel as virtuous in their night life as us morning people feel in our predawn? This respite from the wired world feels particularly good; writing for perhaps the wrong reasons, lack of internet, but nevertheless writing.
Petrolia is a one-store-and-post office town near the The Mendocino Triple Junction (MTJ), the meeting of the Gorda, North America, and Pacific tectonic plates, perhaps the most active regions of the San Andreas system. Eighty quakes a year. John and Kathy just built a retirement house down in the valley, and john says the rocky soil they excavated all came tumbling down from the hills surrounding. The Mattole River has been cutting this valley for millennia, and Lighthouse Ridge, where the Land and Cattle Company cabin is located is the southern side of the valley.
Moonset won’t happen before sunrise today, and right now the moon is lighting up the meadow, making romantic visuals out of the fall swales of grass, ferns and disintegrating wildflower stems. The deer seem to know its hunting season, and my only glimpses have been of fast moving hindquarters. Beyond the meadow the Douglas fir are busily eclipsing the view North towards Cape Mendocino, and anyway, the ocean and rock interface is still too dark to see clearly.
The beach here on the Lost Coast, stretching south from the Mattole to Shelter Cover 25 miles away, is my favorite ocean beach. At some point or other, it really has everything I want in a beach. Well, I have to warn you, its warm tranquil spots are pretty limited and seasonal.
One of my favorite things it has is small very vigorous streams flowing across the beach and into the ocean. There are adventurous little trout in the pools, and if you struggle through the barrier of poison oak and brush, there are glades and meadows back inside the steep hills the streams have cut through over time. On the beach, the wind can get up to 30 mph even in summer, and in winter up on the ridges it regularly tumbles trailers and caves in barns.
I had a hard time if coming back from the sea lion colony one year when the wind came up out of the North. Until I realized that it was an invitation to become a penguin, my outstretched jacket enough to let me lean 45 degrees and use my feet more like flippers against the sand, soaring on the wind rather than walking. Of course, when the wind suddenly dropped I did an immediate face plant, but it all seemed funny rather than onerous, and the trip back morphed from a trial to a triumph.
The beach collects stuff better than any other I know. Stuff in the form of marine mammal bones, net floats and discarded hunks of net, crab pots and wrecked bits of boats. And driftwood, from whole tree trunks transformed into sculpted Titans to miniature masterpieces of knots in the likenesses of polar bears and pileated woodpeckers.
Of course, over the years there have been entire gigantic stinking carcasses of sperm and grey whales. And this year, in the two miles going south to Punta Gorda, four sea lions in various stages of decay. Fuji, with her sense of smell and genetic need to roll in rotting flesh, was very happy about that, but it’s probably another indicator of global climate change. There was a team of students from Humboldt State University out there yesterday, counting corpses.
The combination of wind and water keeps the beach swept neatly, and the treasure of flotsam and jetsam is beautifully displayed, particularly in the incident light of morning or evening. Mid-day is a good time to hunker down and construct mobiles, or let the miles unwind under your feet. The crepuscular hours are the best time for viewing.
The sky is lightening behind me; sunrise will be about 0710 today. We’ll make a sausage and egg breakfast, Fuji’s favorite, and maybe walk up to the crest of the hill to see if the growing firs have left any view. Feral pigs sometimes come rooting through, and Fuji can smell their presence, also the moles that somehow manage to tunnel through the incredibly rocky soil. The ferns are browning, the grass is golding, and the perpetual shadows under the second growth oak and fir are perfect for snurfing and snortling around.
Fuji loves the beach as well; leaping off cut banks of sand, and barking wildly at the ominous figuration of up thrust tree roots. We’ll get a little ahead on splitting seasoned oak and madrone for the fire. I’ll write these notes, for later emailing, and Fuji will disapprove and want to bounce into my lap and lick my face to remind me we should be heading for the beach.
Yesterday, early on with the sun behind us, Fuji spotted a gaggle of gulls in the distance, and valiantly galloped off to rout them. They rose in a beautiful wheeling wave of white wings, soaring overhead and downwind. She also routed a raven enjoying a quiet meal on dead seabird along the tideline. There was a wind, and it was cold enough for polypro as well as gortex. Seals just offshore, their curious mermaid heads with large eyes staring at us. And the waves roll in, 5 feet, 8 feet, a constant crashing drum beat of water on land, white foam lathering the beach, blowing over the smooth yellow sand.
A little wind this morning already, just stirring the taller blades of grass. And now the blue of the sky shuttered by long windrows of clouds is beginning to light up a bit, and the trees are definitely a shade of green, and the brown and yellow of the grass in the meadow is no longer my imagination. I can see the sharp triangle of Mendocino Rock, or whatever it’s called away to the North. Fuji pops out from under the sleeping bag, and it’s time to get on with things.
