Gentle reader, it has been a journey. And I would kvetch about the details, but that would take all day, perhaps all week, maybe into the early 2030s, so why bother? Suffice it to say that I have spent five hours over the last few days talking to Messrs. Apple about why my brand new laptop can’t quite find its way onto the Internet. You don’t want to know the answer. Too much for blogging. However, on this very day after endless discussion, I am back in action.
Well, mostly. We have to exclude my bladder, which is currently infected, if I am to believe Kaiser. And why not believe Kaiser? This is the guy who started WW1 right? Or was it the Weimar? Whatever. My physician has provided a remedy, though not an explanation. How does one’s bladder get infected? I really would like to know.
Our mutual theory has to do with nine days spent driving around Northern California. Which, let me be clear, I would not have missed for the world. And what a world it was. And much of it is well known to anyone but me. All you have to do is open up a National Geographic from any era to see the redwoods. Which, by the way, hang out in drippy, wet environments, vis-à-vis coast, fog and rain. We had three days of the latter, by the way, actual droplets descending through the air gravitationally in the time-honored tradition. Rain not being very much in evidence in drought-stricken California. But Humboldt and Del Norte counties are in California and simultaneously not in California. They have a strong allegiance to the Pacific Northwest. By the way, if you want to speak like a local, don’t refer to it as Del Norte, rhyming with forté. It rhymes with snort. Just if you wanted to know.
As for Humboldt County, it’s good to see the marijuana industry suddenly respectable and out of the closet. The redwood tanks lining the road to Shelter Cove are used by growers. The land itself is not so well used by growers, some say. Which is definitely a problem. I mean, after all, marijuana may make you feel like you are floating lightly on the land. But living lightly on the land in the agricultural sense is another matter. Never mind, for driving to Shelter Cove will take all your concentration. While being there will take absolutely none.
This is one of the few spots reachable by vehicle on the so-called Lost Coast. Lost Cause might be a better word for the actual town. Because 40 years ago real estate developers tried to make Shelter Cove into something like Sea Ranch on the Sonoma Coast. They failed. But remnants of that effort remain, principally a small airport that was supposed to fly vacationers, sport fisherman and tourists in for a stay. The runway occupies the one available bit of flat land, and what town there is has been built around it. Never mind. In the two days we spent there only one small Cessna came to ground. The town has about 3 ½ restaurants. It has as many motels, with every room facing the ocean. The buildable land faces the ocean. And the ocean is all there is, which is wonderful.
One thing there isn’t is traffic. Shelter Cove is at the end of the road. Might as well park your car and forget it. You might decide to drive up the coast a mile and a half to the Black Sand Beach, the result of lava being ground up over the millennia. And once you’re there, you might as well stay few hours. In this part of the roadless California coast, the mountains descend directly into the sea. Usually without any intervening beach. The Kings Range takes a tectonic dive directly into the Pacific. It is breathtaking. It is inspiring. From San Francisco, it is about six hours north.