McUSA
MENDOCINO REUNION
Another Mendocino visit. Twenty five years Ive been coming back. Back home
to see old friends, the wild coast, feast on fresh salmon, scent of eucalyptus.
Our annual Labor Day get together. First week of September. Six week Alberta
incarceration, now sanity. Six weeks in redneck country: Arabs are animals.
Lets nuke Iraq. Big Oil rules. Freedom for free enterprise. The Alberta screed.
Cynthia drives to Fort Bragg every day, sells building supplies. Sandys working
part time at McCallum House, booking rooms and meals. Buzz is up in Heaven,
but left some ashes beside the pond, over there, under the red Japanese maple.
Down the road in Albion, the white Pacific keeps climbing the black cliffs, locals
are still buying their cheap wine, fishing boats set out each day.
Sandys bamboo is everywhere around the yard, now two persons high, waving
between the madrone and the redwoods. Larry used to be a broadcast journalist.
Now hes a part time woodworker with his own blog. Margot moved up from Marin,
rebuilt the cabin, goes to visit one of her daughters in Uganda. Ive got the guest
house and the infinite night sky when I step out to pee.
Fog banks roll up the ridges most afternoons, arrive around sunset, usually burn
off before noon. Were all a bit slower, quite a bit heavier, hopefully somewhat wiser.
The first time, driving up Highway 1 with my young daughter, Suzanne, I came
upon Mendocino village, white church spire perched on a rugged ocean bluff,
of course, couldnt leave.
Sandys son, Nick, quit building satellites in LA, moved to Portland with his lovely
wife, Jen. David, our movie producer, just bought forty acres above Elk. Trees with
an ocean view to escape the smog and confusion. People come and go, but somehow
everybody ends up back here, leaving their egos behind, slowing into the flow,
seduced by this humbling reality.
For four months theres no rain as Pacific currents carry clouds north and south.
Heavy fog and morning dew keep everything lush until autumn. If you stay still you
can hear the family ghosts whispering through the mists: Buzz, Barbara, Nan,
Grandma Rose, Frank; all the good souls who visited these mysterious trees, gazed
on these miraculous waters. All the fine folks now scattered beyond time but are
still here, watching, clearminded, waiting to return.
Mendocino, Sun. 09/04/05
