12.20.2014

this is the rain that came as grace

I'll dig in,

into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price 

of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.

-Denise Levertov


"You're as stubborn as I am!" yelled a woman in an electric blue rain jacket, coming down the trail. We laughed and replied, "We are!" We thought we would be the only ones in Sutro Forest this morning, and for the most part, we were, except for this one woman, whose spirit (and resolve) was not unlike ours. We had parked the car and walked up just a few steps when we encountered the first demarcation of caution tape, wound haphazardly around two trees. "CAUTION. DO NOT ENTER" read the tape, blocking off the path, weakly urging you to turn around. Crys and I looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going without any debate, holding up the caution tape for one another as we slid underneath and into the forest. The caution was lost on us, mainly because we assumed that what might be a slippery inconvenience for most would be a private haven for us. And we're stubborn. I was adamant about hiking this morning, rain or shine, so we crossed at least three more of these barriers. At one point Crys peeled a slimy wet sheet of paper off my shoulder that said "Area closed. Do not enter." I must have swiped it as I ducked beneath the tape. We laughed and kept going.

The ground was muddy of course, reddish like terracotta. The logs were smooth and slick, cylinders perfectly shaped like musket barrels, rounded and dark and shiny. Not too far from the trailhead, a fallen tree lay, swathed in vine branches that hugged the trunk like a hundred serpentine limbs. The eucalyptus, we assumed, had been knocked over by the wind from the storm last week, whose intensity of the wind and water shook up the earth and the trees, compensating, like a long-lost lover, for its absence this year. Extreme begets extreme. The fallen trunk had split open, and now soggy with rainwater, the innards of the bark glowed a pale orange. From faraway, we could smell it. Crys bent down for a deeper whiff. "It smells like a candle," she said. Funny isn't it, how we try to bring wilderness into our homes instead of going out to it. The replica becomes the first point of contact, our access to the original: we first experience, if it can be called that at all, nature in a convenient, bottled and condensed form, as a reminiscence, a fragment, a purified remnant. Less wild, more domestic.



Sutro Forest, is of course, merely a remnant, a hundred-year-old, 80-acre forest first planted by Adolf Sutro, the remainder of the 1100 acres of eucalyptus trees that used to cover the western side of the city. Sutro Forest is strange and magical because of its location, an island of wilderness surrounded by an ocean of urbanity: asphalt, Victorian houses, cars parked parallel, and perpendicular streets around its perimeter, no buffer, really, between the wilderness and the city. But wander beyond the houses and up into the hills, and you will find yourself wandering not lonely as a cloud, but wandering through a cloud, in the majestic canopy of fog that hangs over the entire hill, the midair suspension of water droplets that enshrouds San Francisco even in the summer months, the dense thicket of vapor compacted into the spaces between trees, exhaling its breath through every turn of the city.

That Sutro Forest rests in the city's fog belt, wrapped up in a low-level cloud, creates a lush ecosystem that fosters abundant understory growth: mosses, lichens, ivy everywhere, Himalayan blackberry bushes, funguses growing like flecks of dandruff on the bare wet logs. Cloud forests, of which Sutro is one of the very few in the world, are also called "elfin forests," which, in a very impressionistic way, makes sense: the brush is so electrifyingly green, so layered with its histories of secrets, its dark crevices, its burrows, its passageways; there must be mystical creatures hiding out here somewhere.

A cloud forest is a self-sustaining ecosystem, a micro-climate whose life depends on its own watershed: the tree leaves first absorb moisture from the fog, then drip fog condensation down onto the ground, watering the plants and life below it. As you walk through Sutro forest, you are traversing multiple spheres, stratified into layers. The growth at your feet, new grasses and ivies, has just sprung up from the rain, among lithe branches and prehistoric ferns, dark and waxy. This field of green recalls a cushy, verdant Irish knoll; it is the color of life, the color of a blessed land, the color of sufficiency. Beyond the path on which you tread, you can hardly see any ground, for green overflows. It is as if the forest has finally awakened, and it awakens you with its abundant life. Your eyes move upward along the rigid trunks of the eucalyptus trees, and now you are in the clouds, which keep you here, rooted in this place. There is too much to see, and yet, the fog precludes your seeing beyond the forest. The fog is its own presence, not a disappearance of the things beyond it. This is a good thing because the forest contains itself, and it contains you in it. It holds all your attention today.


Today it is raining, streams from the sky creating small streams on the ground. Everyone is hidden away inside their homes, but we have chosen the forest as our hiding place. We have chosen to dwell here this morning. In the city, the rain is made out to be an inconvenience, a hindrance, a barrier between you and the next place you need to go or the errand you need to run. But for a farmer or a gardener, rain is life, as it has been forever, a cleansing of the earth as well as a revival.

The other night, Crys, expressing her gratitude for the rain, said, "Our food comes from the earth, and the earth needs rain to live. So rain is life. We can't exist without it." This is the truth spoken by a woman who spends her mornings kneeling in the dirt, sifting out rocks and fallen fruit so that the soil is rich and pure, ready for new seeds. It would help us all to listen to those who move with the earth, who tend to its wildness. It would, perhaps, be salve to our wounds, to be more attentive to the life that springs from ground and reaches up into the fog, for in it, we see light and grace. We would know so surely that rain is, in fact, a way of grace, a gift that precedes our existence, and a gift upon which our existence depends. And if we understood that it was grace being poured down upon us, we would dance expectantly, pleading for rain, and dance again when it came. For when it rains, the ground, the flora, the eucalyptus trees, the mushrooms, and the grasses are as they should be, joyful, exuberant, teeming with life. Growing upward, shooting sprouts, revealing new leaves. We, walking through Sutro Forest on this rainy day, rejoiced with the rain, celebrated the way it resuscitates, resurrects, revives. Among us there was no silence, though we did not speak or clamor; life, even what was invisible, even what we could not see or grasp or understand, was singing a hymn, saying over and over again, amazing grace, how sweet the sound.


The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.  
-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead 



12.16.2014

this is the back of the world

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

In high school, after we got our drivers' licenses and could finally, with the obsessive exercise of newfound freedom that defines adolescence, roam the Bay Area beyond our parents' houses, we used to go this secret spot we called "the back of the world," a lookout in San Carlos that opened up into a spectacular view of the entire Bay Area. The entrance to the lookout was unassuming: merely a passageway between two houses in a very average-looking suburban neighborhood, albeit, a little higher up in the hills than most. But you had to know where to look to find the back of the world. After someone took you once (and it was, like any local spot, shared through word of mouth and random late-night visits), you made sure to remember how to get there and what the houses on either side of it looked like, and then, when you wanted to impress someone, or stay out past curfew, you'd go, re-discovering it, again and again. For its beauty and its mystery, it never got old.

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

The back of the world. We found another little corner of it in Geoff Evans' Bolinas backyard this past Saturday, where I celebrated my birthday with a gathering of friends, a crab boil, a bonfire, and a whole lot of food spread across (Geoff's hand-built) 32-foot-long table (the wood was found swept up on the shores below). I wanted my friends to experience the Bolinas that I have gotten to know over the past few months, the protective and somewhat mysterious little coastal town with its shark-infested waters and artsy denizens. You only get a first impression once, that overwhelming deluge of sensation in which you're taking in so many new sights and smells and sounds, not separately, most of the time, but as a superabundant stream, and you're seeing the glacial tip of a place, not yet understanding its full spirit, or essence. Even the tip of a glacier, when you see it for the first time, is so magnificent and extraordinary and incomprehensible (Where did it come from? How did it get there?) that there is enough to take in for now. Plumbing the depths will come later.

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

The back of the world. This implies a place hidden beyond. You must find it; it is not in the path of tourists and dabblers. It is not public; it does not make itself known. The front is easy to see; the back is somewhere else. The back is intimate and familiar once you arrive, tucked away from the noise and buzz of swarm out there. It was serendipity, then, a privilege really, to gather in a backyard, a private and personal corner of the world whose view of the Bolinas Lagoon, where it siphons into the Pacific Ocean. has been passed through generations; to hide away together for an afternoon; to be among friends, instead of a crowd of strangers; to be in someone's home, but still feel uncontained, free; to eat the food our hands had made, off a table and among ceramics and vases created by Geoff; to see out into the wild, where the infinite tides move in and out, and the strands of light, the first sun after days of rain and storm are purer and stronger, full of spirit like freshly cut rope, more incandescent than before. Re-emergence demands glory, after all.

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil


Thanks friends for celebrating with me. Audrey, Evan, Jaron, Paige, Janette, Viv, Phil, Jared, Nnena, Channing, Andrew, Andrew, Justin, Emily, Jess, JJ, Josh, Jackie, Jacob, Matt, Carlos, Steven, Zack, Roxi, Ryan, Shannon, Sam, MM.

Thanks Ben, for orchestrating the crab boil. You are the man all men strive to be.

Thanks Geoff, for your generosity and kindness, for your artistry, which was woven through every crevice of your house and backyard. You inspire and bless all of us.

Thanks JD, Rob, Crystal, Jia Min, Jonathan, for your extra culinary and emotional support. You are the best friends a lady could ask for.

12/13 Bobo Birthday Boil


12.09.2014

"I have fallen in love with a painting. Though that phrase doesn't seem to suffice, not really—rather's it that I have been drawn into the orbit of a painting, have allowed myself to be pulled into its sphere by casual attraction deepening to something more compelling. I have felt the energy and life of the painting's will; I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into its brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world."

-Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

12.05.2014

"There is no such thing as the life we deserve, just like there is no such thing as a prophylactic against regret. There is the life we live. There is the series of crises we do our best to muddle through. No sacrifice now will make the future effortless or the pain we will inevitably cause easier for others to forgive ... But we all do our best, and we hurt some people and get hurt by others and what's terrible as it is wonderful is that we endure, we endure and find ways of looking back and, if we are able to manage the trick of perspective, if we are able to hold on to our memories ... we find a way for it to have made sense."

-Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction
"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it. And that was such a quiet day, rain on the roof, rain against the windows, and everyone grateful, since it seems we never do have quite enough rain. At times like that I might not care particularly whether people are listening to whatever I have to say, because I know what their thoughts are. Then if some stranger comes in, that very same peace can seem like somnolence and like dull habit, because that is how you're afraid it seems to her."

-Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

12.01.2014

this is a place: west marin & west county

I wrote this piece for Edition Local as a story about a very special region in Northern California, home to the first group of makers and craftspeople we are featuring. It was an extremely difficult piece to write; it is difficult to do justice to a place so complex, rich, and beautiful, but I am happy with the first few strands of a narrative that I was able to put forth. As with any place, this story continues on, and I hope to revisit this place and its story often.

Read the original piece here


Photo by Daniel Dent for Edition Local

We begin here, at the edge of the Western frontier, where water meets the land below mountains and forests, where tectonic plates slide along a fracture in the earth. To the northwest of San Francisco, along the coast, West Marin and West Sonoma County sit on a triangular peninsula that reaches into the Pacific Ocean. From the coastal communities of Muir Beach and Jenner, to the tree-filled enclaves of Inverness and the peaks of Mount Tamalpais, to the small towns of Mill Valley, Sebastopol, and Petaluma, this mostly rural region is a convergence of some of the grandest Californian landscapes, home to artists, poets, philosophers, tradespeople, farmers, fishermen, musicians, laborers, and more.

The story of this place originates with the Coast Miwok Indians, who over the course of thirty centuries, lived as hunters and gatherers in both permanent villages and temporary settlements scattered throughout Marin and the southern Sonoma counties. They consisted of three major groups: the Kookooeko of Marin County, the Olamentko of Bodega Bay, and the Lekahtewutko near Petaluma. The Coast Miwok were the first people (hoi-ah’-ko), and it is from them that we receive a legacy of histories and mythologies, a vital understanding about what came before and what still remains. Among the things they left behind: broken shells, bones, spirits, names of places: Olampoli, Tamál, Oléma.

As the populations have changed, as people have settled here and thrived, there is still a deep sense of living with the land in harmony, as the Coast Miwok Indians did, instead of on it, indifferent to its complexities, in conflict with its wildness. To exist at the intersection of several intricate and interwoven ecosystems is to live, literally, on the edge: on the edges between redwood forests and salt marshes, between coastal shrubs and Pacific winds, between montane chaparrals and open woodlands. These blurred edges are everywhere: in the wilderness, in ideologies, in the tensions between art and commerce, between outsiders and natives, between governments and people.

Over the years, this region has become known for its preservation of land, environment, ranching, and farming, as well as for its rich architectural and craft history. The Sea Ranch houses, the Farallon Institute, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Point Reyes National Seashore Association, the J.B. Blunk house, Straus Creamery, farmers markets, oyster companies, wineries, and more. Its diverse microclimates, species, and people have drawn pioneers desiring the freedom to live on the fringes as well as those seeking refuge from the city. Like the Coast Miwok, displaced nomads have come to roam, moving with seasons and opportunities. Liberal and libertarian ideologies have abounded here; enclaves, monasteries, and communes have thrived. The surf is thrilling; the untrodden still available.

Nevertheless, despite the richness of the land and its history, jobs are scarce in the region. Ecological preservation, in the face of tourism and fierce encroachments, has required resilience, perseverance, and protest. In turn, the evolution of these counties, shaped by both internal and external forces, has been a story of both protection and accommodation.

Despite gentrification, the land here still possesses a sense of unearthed mystery and welcomes recluses, itinerants, and pilgrims. Because each ecosystem is dense with its own natural populations—each is a world unto itself, and a multiplicity of these hidden worlds exists—, it is still possible to wander and to get lost. One might lose herself, perhaps, and find a mirror in nature instead: in the volatile waters of Dillon beach, in the fog that breathes heavily on the hills around the Nicasio Reservoir, in the still and empty shores of Marshall, in the precariousness of the craggy coastlines that end at Bodega Bay. And it is here, in the local community’s preservation of the land as a refuge and a hiding place, that trails and beaches have become secret codes and handshakes, whispered among those who dwell here.

The individuals whose lives we bring to the first edition of Edition Local are varied: some are artists and craftspeople; others are musicians, teachers, carpenters, weavers, community organizers, bird experts, and historians. Some are transplants; others were born and raised here. But in common, they share this region of Northern California, West Marin and West Sonoma counties, and inevitably, they each have a profound and unique relationship with the land. They live with wilderness, which is the wilderness cultivated inside their homes and the wilderness beyond. As Gary Snyder once wrote, “wildness is not just the ‘preservation of the world,’ it is the world.” Through the things they make and the ideas they profess, a distinct sense of these places begins to emerge.