return to the redwoods – part 2   14 comments

Posted at 4:01 pm in birds,california,memory,trees

It’s a fact. Traveling alone can be quite stressful. When driving in unfamiliar territory, you struggle to read maps and navigate through traffic. In the past, Don did much of the driving while I read maps and charted our course. Luckily, I’m a good navigator. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be sitting here in Arizona writing about my travels of the past few months.

There are other stresses as well. What if I get lost? What if the van breaks down? What if I get sick — who will take care of Sabrina? What if I lose my car keys, wallet, money, or passport? Luckily, none of those things happened, although I did, in fact, lose one of my car keys (we’ll get to that story sometime soon). When there are two of you on the road together, none of these things seems quite so problematic. You’re both carrying keys, wallets, and money. You never feel truly “lost” — instead, you’re just taking the scenic route and can laugh about the “very long detour” at a later date. If you get sick, there’s someone to look after everything until you’re feeling better. Also, there are two of you to discuss and decide on a route, or one to take over as the “relief driver” when the other begins to feel fatigued. Together, you can figure out how late you should travel before getting a campsite or looking for a motel. Alone, such considerations become more critical. All of the above niggling fears were never far from my mind as I made my way from Oregon to Arizona. Add the constant stress to that which I’d experienced over the past year, and sometimes it was hard to avoid feeling too overwhelmed to push on, but at this point in the journey, I didn’t have a choice. To cope with these feelings, I pretended that each morning was the beginning of a fresh, new adventure, while days that ended badly due to difficulties or mistakes were regarded as “interesting experiments” that didn’t turn out quite as planned. Most times, that form of mental trickery seemed to work — more or less.

On my second day in California, I found myself struggling to make some decisions. I’d been hoping for decent weather so that I could spend a few hours along two rivers which Don and I had visited in 2006. However, a large and very unfriendly weather system moved in during the night after my arrival at the Smith River. Sabrina and I awoke to the sound of a steady rain beating down on the van roof. I soon made an executive decision to move on and look elsewhere for the coming evening’s campsite. Regrettably, that entailed abandoning my plan to linger along those rivers that meant so much to me. However, I decided to at least drive to the coast to revisit a few of our favourite spots around Crescent City. It was stormy and cold at the look-off for the Battery Point lighthouse (see above – click on all photos for larger view). Sabrina and I found ourselves alone gazing down at the swelling seas breaking on the rocks far below.

I drove over to the breakwater pier, hoping to see Brown Pelicans — I’d harbored a wish to see flocks of them as Don and I had so enjoyed watching them fly overhead at so many points along the California coast in 2006. At first, it seemed that there were none around. Sabrina and I stood searching the sky while getting well and truly soaked by the frigid rain. At last, I called it quits and walked back to the van. As I stood by the van’s sliding door, drying Sabrina with a towel, I caught sight of a long line of Pelicans struggling southwards into the wind. They were having a difficult time making headway, but on they went. I shot a couple of photos, shut the van doors, and drove southward, in the wake of the wind-battered Pelicans.

As I’ve written elsewhere, many points of this journey intersect with those of my past travels in the west – some with Don, and others with a close friend. My “trip map” resides in my thoughts — a palimpsest of routes interwoven through time and space. One of the intersections is the redwoods of Prairie Creek – and more specifically, the Corkscrew Tree. In my personal mythology, it figures like some form of energy vortex, binding several pathways into one. With a light rain falling, Sabrina and I made our way to the tree where I put my hands onto its thick, twisting bark, roughly where I remembered Don having placed his hands just two years before. Perhaps, subconsciously, I hoped to connect to that time, and in some ways that was true. It felt as though very little time had passed — much like when you run into an old friend and ten years feels more like ten minutes. However, in the end, it was just Sabrina and I standing in the rain, with her looking soggy, bewildered and even a little sad.

We returned to the van. I took a photo of Sabrina walking ahead of me. Oddly, the camera seemed to capture just how that scene looked through my eyes as my tears mixed with the now rapidly falling rain.

I now had to make a decision about which route to take and where to stay for the night. I had briefly considered turning inland at Arcata to take Hwy 299 through the Trinity Alps Wilderness region, but the sight of an upside down pick-up truck that had spun out during a few minutes of freezing sleet about an hour back along the road made me reconsider. That turned out to be a wiser choice than I had imagined as the 299 route takes longer than I had calculated (more on this in “part 3”). Instead, I chose to continue southwards, wondering if the weather would improve by the time I got to Patrick’s Point (it didn’t). The only plan I could come up with was to either look for a motel around Eureka, or find a campsite at an inland park. I quickly discounted the motel idea as I was feeling the need to be in the redwoods — as alone in the forest as is possible at a campground. I decided on trying to make it down to Burlington Grove in the Humboldt Redwoods, so drove on through the rain, hoping that I might leave it behind as I moved inland. Taking a rest from driving, I stopped at the rock shop along the highway near Rio Dell, and ended up buying a slice of green rock that the owner of the shop said was Mariposite, from Mariposa, California. That got us talking about places and travels. When he heard I was from Canada, he said he’d never been “up there” and that I’d come an awfully long way from home. He was quite right, in more ways that one.

It was still raining when I got to Burlington Grove, but lightly enough that I was able to cook us a hot meal over the little propane stove. I chose a campsite in the shelter of a burned out redwood stump – the same one in which I camped in 2007 while traveling with a friend. Thankfully, the campgrounds were almost empty as it was inclement and so late in the season. It felt peaceful and safe. With raindrops pattering onto the van roof, Sabrina and I soon fell asleep and restored a little of the precious energy we’d been expending all too quickly for the past few weeks.

Written by bev on January 6th, 2009

14 Responses to 'return to the redwoods – part 2'

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  1. This is a lovely, emotional travelogue, Bev. I’m looking forward to Part 3 and to reading more about what you’re doing in Arizona. I’m curious, too, about your place in Canada…will you return to it, have you sold it? I know you’ll say what you have to say in good time. Take your time and know that your readers will appreciate whatever you have so say, whenever you say it.

    John

    6 Jan 09 at 9:45 pm

  2. John – Thanks. Hopefully part 3 will be a little sooner in coming than part 2. I’m not so inspired to write as I once was, but I believe it’s still good to put down my thoughts. My plans for the coming year seem nebulous and, day by day, range from feeling like spending the summer camping and canoeing in remote areas, to doing a walk across Canada, to building a small energy-efficient straw bale house in Nova Scotia. One thing that seems fairly certain is that I will probably sell the farm and close that chapter of our lives.

    bev

    6 Jan 09 at 10:09 pm

  3. Very moving journal Bev. Thank you for sharing the things that move you. (Rock your soul even.) With your words and pictures you describe the cliche beginning for many novels “It was a dark and stormy night” The ending? Who knows? I do know that after the night, the dawn comes.

    Ken

    7 Jan 09 at 1:48 am

  4. Bev – your words and selections of photos are almost too moving. The Battery Point lighthouse especially struck me, and before I saw that you had identified it I noted your label, and found the website you had already linked to. That took me to the 1964 Alaska earthquake, another reminder of wrenching change.

    Travelling alone – it’s not an easy thing.

    Wayne

    7 Jan 09 at 7:12 am

  5. Bev– This journey is both outward and inward. In the van and in the heart of the moment. The crashing waves at the lighthouse and your hand in the corkscrew tree. Where he breathed the air, exhaled in wonder, and felt the life of something maybe a 1000 years old; you do the same, and find a piece of him still. It is breathtaking and heartbreaking.

    robin andrea

    7 Jan 09 at 1:03 pm

  6. I feel privileged to be allowed to read your recollections.

    I’m used to traveling alone, so some of the things that worried you never bothered me much. I suppose some of the difference has to do with men versus women. When I first started to motorcycle by myself I worried about camping at the roadside. Then I decided that most people would be more afraid of me than I should be of them.

    Mark

    7 Jan 09 at 2:33 pm

  7. Ken – Yes, I don’t know how this story will end either. After darkness will come…something.

    Wayne – The earthquake and tsunami are still discussed in the area. You do remain aware of that history as there are “tsunami route” signs posted all along vulnerable areas of the coast. I’ve found traveling alone to be an odd mix of stress and freedom – stress from some of the hassles, but freedom as a form of escapism from recent events.

    robin – Thank you. How well your words describe this journey.

    Mark – Thanks. I feel privileged to have people such as yourself following these travels. I’ve given some thought about what it is that sometimes makes me apprehensive about traveling alone. Definitely, there seems to be a something different about being a woman traveling on my own. I ran into virtually no other women camping alone along the way. That said, I had no problems, but did stick to camping in those places that had park hosts present. Actually, the thing that has caused the greatest stress for me is not having my “support team” back home. Previously, when I traveled alone or with a friend, I knew I could always pick up the phone and call home and have Don there to consult with, or to deal with a problem such as banking or something along those lines. I’ve had a small amount of trouble with banking on this trip — because I’m traveling in a “foreign land”. Fortunately, I haven’t had a medical problems while traveling in the U.S. (knock on wood), but do sometimes wonder how easy that would be to deal with on the road by myself. Perhaps my greatest worry of all is what might happen to Sabrina if I had an accident or became seriously ill while traveling. I expect single parents might experience a bit of that concern when traveling with a small child. Interesting dynamics to some of these problems.

    bev

    7 Jan 09 at 3:43 pm

  8. Bev, I hadn’t thought of the safety net of someone back home. In my case, it would have been my parents. I could always count on them to help out if I ran into problems – I never did, but that thought was always there, even if only unconsciously. I also understand your concerns about Sabrina. It’s odd, but when I traveled with my dog (not on the motorcycle) it never occurred to me that something could actually happen to me. Of course I’m an idiot.

    Mark

    7 Jan 09 at 4:19 pm

  9. Mark – I have a bit of a similar net remaining back home, but for the most part, I’m pretty much on my own. It does seem to make a difference in how I fee when on the road — less supported than in the past. That’s okay though. I’m gradually adapting.
    Ha — about the travels with your dog. I wouldn’t say you were an idiot, but probably just a typical young fellow who thinks he’s invincible! (-:

    bev

    7 Jan 09 at 9:02 pm

  10. Stormy weather on the coast of Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. An unexpected flight of Brown pelicans. Prairie Creek and the Corkscrew Tree. Burlington Grove. Dearness and tearfulness. Thank you for posting these photos from your journey with Sabrina and for posting some of what you have been able to write.

    A memory from years of traveling alone in that inner and outer landscape:

    A conversation in the Humboldt redwoods with a park ranger. We spoke about a giant redwood tree that had recently fallen. As it lay there on one side, it was the size of a train. The park ranger said that the sound of its falling could be heard miles away — in a place where that particular sound made people think there had been an earthquake. The park ranger told me that the redwoods talked to each other. That they were a true community. That when one knew it was going to fall, it would make sure that in its falling it did not land on another redwood. That redwood trees loved and grieved.

    am

    8 Jan 09 at 1:28 pm

  11. Saying thank you is not enough, but I am at a complete loss for words with which to respond to a post so moving that it left me sitting here and crying along with you. Thank you, Bev, and from the bottom of my heart.

    Cate

    10 Jan 09 at 5:53 pm

  12. I’ve been so moved by the stories of your travels. Your photography, as always, is magificent. I especially liked the very first one. I love the ocean when its at its moodiest.

    DougT

    11 Jan 09 at 7:42 pm

  13. Thanks for the update and good photos, Bev. I keep
    wondering what you’re up to, marveling at your strength
    & self-reliance . Taking time to post probably not the highest
    priority for you these days, but it makes a special day on
    this end.

    Marci

    12 Jan 09 at 11:01 am

  14. am – Thanks. As I write about the redwoods, I keep thinking about how special that region is to quite a number of people who read this blog. Thanks for posting the story about the ranger. When I was at Muir Woods quite a few years ago, I was told that when one of the redwoods fell there, it could be heard for many miles and that the sound of it cracking and falling went on for hours. They seem so sentient to me — which doesn’t seem at all impossible considering how long they have been on this earth.

    Cate – Thanks. Writing these posts has been a very personal thing for me — and sometimes very difficult to record my thoughts. I’m never sure how they will resonate with others.

    Doug – I love the moody weather of the oceans as well – both Atlantic and Pacific. I particularly like the silvery light that sometimes occurs along the Pacific coast — I’m remembering a particular day at Gold Bluff beach a couple of years ago. It was amazing.

    Marci – Thanks. I don’t usually feel too strong or self-reliant, but I’ve been told that more than once on this trip. At this point, I can’t really figure out any other way to exist, so it’s just how I have to be. I’m glad you’re enjoying the posts and photos.

    bev

    18 Jan 09 at 5:59 pm

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