In the morning it was chilly and the picnic table and benches were wet with that brief rain. I huddled, relishing my hot tea and heard the throaty "Rhah, rhah," of a raven flying low over the campground. By campground I mean, of course, miniature city of metal and fiberglass boxes on wheels. I sat hunched over Nella Last's War. As I told my Sewing Sisters in an email picked out on the iPhone, I read her that morning thinking three things:
1) I love her and wish the book would never end
2) She's a great antidote to the over-consumption that surrounds me (us all)
3) I haven't yet got my new dwelling in order. Dishes are still soapy from the previous renters, the ice chest reeks. My things have no logical, assigned places yet. Nella's clean habits and household economies and her determination to scrimp and save and care inspire me to pay attention to details and make this vardo a working home.
Lisa, the woman who checked me in last night, had given me a map of the RV park and described a nice walk I might take that started right here. I followed the map out to the dead end road out front, passed some baseball diamonds and a horseshoe pit and arrived at an open area that clearly was leading to the ocean shore. It turns out this is a special raptor preserve. Norah would love this. I did see hawks circling overhead, so they're using it.
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| The succulent I so admired for the first 12 days of my trip -- days of ignorance, as it turned out. It carpets the dunes in lovely fall colors and creates a strong root system. |
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| Isn't it lovely? |
The dunes are criss-crossed with trails getting lots of human use. Runners and walkers came into view frequently. The ice plant captivated me over and over and I spent many photo frames on it in various locales other than this. Some of the spears are like lobster claws reaching for the sky. Viewed from afar, the range of reds, golds, greens is quite striking, reflecting the season's colors spread all over the dunes. I should say these are the season's colors as we in the east and midwest are accustomed to think of them. The flowers are similar to portulaca:
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Retrospective: It wasn't until my last day, up at Pt. Reyes in Marin County, that I learned the dark truth. Ice plant is invading. Planted first along road cuts, it was useful at holding the soil. Now, however, it has outpaced and smothered more delicate dune species and is a serious threat. There are ice-plant eradication efforts along the coast in CA just as there are campaigns against the invasive Japanese honeysuckle in OH.
So now the ice plant's beauty in my eyes has soured a bit. I can see and love those Monet-like compositions of color which are especially glowing in late-afternoon slanting sun, spread large over shapely dunes, but I can no long separate the appearance from the deed.
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It was nearly noon by the time I left the RV park and got on the road again. I made my way south mainly because Lisa had said that if I tried to go north, traffic would be jammed with the Sunday rush of visitors returning to San Francisco after the revelries. That was enough of a heading for me. South I went down Highway 1, the famed scenic highway full of hairpin turns, breathtaking sights and many opportunities to drive over cliffs and into the sea. There is one lane in each direction, with occasional very short passing lanes and many pull-offs for admiring the views. I made good use of these, of course. Sometimes the road dipped closer to sea level and there were state beaches and pulloffs that allowed a closer look.
In Santa Cruz I stopped at a Safeway for more supplies and to boil water for a thermos of herbal tea to see me through the afternoon. I think this is where the Safeway Moment fits: I had just stowed new supplies away and had the back hatch open with the propane stove set up on the counter, the single pot filled with water waiting to boil. This pot had no lid so a huge teflon frying pan was centered on top to serve as one. Past experience tells me that this activity sometimes alarms shopkeepers nearby, so I stayed alert for signs of trouble. I was returning to the back hatch from some rummaging up front when my eye was caught by movement as a car slowed and stopped. A young Latino man got out and asked me something I didn't catch. He was not in uniform (good) but was quick and assured and at first I thought, "store manager." He, on the other hand, was slightly taken aback when he saw me, and quickly said, "Oh! I thought you were selling tamales!"
Apparently the sight of an open hatch with cooking going on resembled an impromptu food stand and he was curious, or hungry. I said I was just brewing up some tea. "Oh, I see!" he smiled, and got back into his car. "But that's an idea!" I called after him, and he paused and asked where I was from. He seemed surprised I was not local. I couldn't catch the name of the place he said he was from, but wherever it is, he identifies as "not from around here, either." I wondered if he was homesick for the food of some distant land.
It was a nice exchange, anyway: my favorite way to travel, making small (or significant) connections human-to-human. We share this planet, struggle under common constraints, dance the same dance with death and taxes.
By this time I knew people at work and at home wanted to see pictures of my gypsy vardo, so I took shots and chose which went to whom. If I did it right, only Linnet got the underwear-drying-in-the-back-window image (a reference to our Alaska trip).
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| The black shape is a small folding table that I sometimes set up right near the bumper as extra work space. That grubby white shape under the counter is a small cooler. Folding chairs are stowed behind it but I never investigated them. |
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| Another item I ignored was the side awning mounted on the edge of the roof, visible here at top right. Sebastian had trouble even unzipping its cover to demonstrate how it worked and that was enough to deter me. |
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| Both side doors give access to the platform that forms the bed. The wooden slats transform into a table and bench arrangement, but I never had need to try it. Every morning I'd drop one section of the platform and flip back one/third of the mattress to allow the driver's seat to slide back into driving position. At night the reverse: jam the front seats as far forward as they'll go, and prop up the last section of wood to support the mattress. It was a very comfortable bed. |
I passed Moss Landing and possibly even stopped there (there is a Moss Landing State Beach), but I would not know until later that at 7:00 this morning some high-voltage power lines came down in the PG&E electric yard near Moss Landing. This caused a major power outage all over the Monterey Peninsula, affecting Monterey, Pacific Grove, Carmel, Seaside and others. 55,700 residents were affected.
I knew nothing of all this until I reached Monterey/Pacific Grove and even then, all I noticed was that the stop-lights -- the many, many stoplights -- were not working. I assumed it was a local signal problem and the loss of power did not register with me. It would have, if I'd tried to buy anything: there were no credit card machines or even cash registers working. What I do remember is trying to keep pace exactly with the car in the next lane whenever I came to one of these dead intersections. With 2 lanes running in each direction I found it hard to interpret the 4-way-everybody-stop behaviors. So I just went when the guy next to me went. Several days later the clues came together when I saw the headline of a newspaper. Officials were saying this was an opportunity to test local readiness for big disasters in future. Stock up, be prepared, and expect the possibility, folks.
I stopped in at a Visitors Center in Monterey to see if I could get a lead on the dunes we visited as a family when we were young. There's a photo of us three kids sitting on the crest of a dune eating sandwiches and getting our hair blown around. I have always understood that it was taken somewhere around here. The man I asked said the dunes were likely back up the coast toward Sand City. Indeed I had passed signs for several dunes areas just before arriving in town. He also told me there were rocky beaches and tide pools south toward Point Lobos, white sand beaches along Carmel Beach, and that the monarch butterflies were starting to arrive to spend the winter among the eucalyptus trees. There is a butterfly sanctuary in Pacific Grove, which is officially the next town west, though it feels like a continuation of Monterey. Also known as Butterfly Town, its citizens tax themselves to provide the funds to maintain the sanctuary and staff it with volunteer docents.
When I asked about camping, he circled Veterans Memorial Park on a map that showed it to be right in the center of town. It offered tent camping first come, first served and sounded promising.
This was all good and useful news. It turned out the Visitors Center closed for the day moments after I left, so I felt lucky to have the information and the maps he'd given me. I used all three items constantly in the next few days: 2 Monterey area maps and one full CA state map. I was to remember fondly his quiet, somewhat sad face in the days to come. He treated with kindness my hunt for those long ago dunes.
I moved the van to a public pay lot and tried several times to pay at the kiosk, but my money was returned. Another man was getting the same treatment. Was this another effect of the power outage? By the end of the day much had been restored, according to newspaper accounts I read later, but a machine out of order is such a commonplace that again, I took the power itself for granted and suspected the device.
I was in the neighborhood of Cannery Row but had no urge to go see it. I'll keep Mack and the boys safe inside my memory. The sandy beach immediately adjacent to the parking lot was full of current-day hippies perched about with their belongings. One young woman walked around talking to herself, cause unclear to me: whether she was high or mentally busy with her own internal life I did not know. She could have wondered the same about me --- I do catch myself talking out loud at times when thoughts are suddenly vivid and need expression. I wondered, though, what this Veterans Memorial Park would be like, smack in the middle of town as the map showed it. Would this be a replay of Amsterdam parks back in the 70's?
As it turned out, the Veterans Memorial Park is so far up a very big hill in the middle of the city, that no horde of drifters was to be seen. And what if it had been? An opportunity to live my claims to a wider life (or eat my words).
There were plenty of sites. I chose one near the entrance and the ranger's house, filled out the self-pay envelope and deposited it in the Iron Ranger. I think I must have been feeling wary about this city campsite -- thus my site location -- but I soon relaxed. It was a lovely place. I had a picnic table under a tree with a water spigot and a bathhouse nearby. Ideal. All roads were hills. Walk uphill to the loo, back down again to the campsite. I felt very lucky to find this place at the tail end of the day. I cooked up more vegetables and read more of Nella Last's War by the glow of my new water jug lantern. This was a small LED flashlight hung by its tail loop from the neck of a full plastic gallon of water. The water diffuses the light in an interesting fashion and the slope of the jug holds the bright spot of the lens just about exactly on the page. It was a useful discovery I used throughout the trip.
I hate to see Nella go --- I've loved this book so much. Maybe there are works available from other Mass Observation diarists.
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