In

I suppose that at some point in my weeklong stint in Inverness, California, I may just lower my van's wheelchair lift, ascend into the driver's cocoon and hit the road. It's not much of a road, one might say, or too much. Drake's View Drive...everything around here is named after the Elizabethan pirate, a.k.a., explorer...there being some faint evidence that his ships pulled into the inlet just south of the Point Reyes peninsula...and one quickly gets Draked out in these parts. But never mind, for whatever it's name, and whether or not there is any view of anything Drakean, driving to the top of Drake's View Drive gives one pause. Actually, pausing is a very bad idea on this private and precipitous road. The significance of 'private' is that no publicly sanctioned road engineer would permit such a thing as the sheer inclines and hairpin turns that lead from Tomales Bay to the top of Inverness Ridge. In other words, having gotten my van here, I plan to stay here. Others can drive me up and down the hill in quest of meals and adventures. My plan is to stick around. Of course, I may not have all that much choice. My sister arrives tomorrow, boldly alighting from the West Marin Stage at the base of this very hill. And I may have no choice but to launch the van and roll down slope. I have thought this through, imagine myself at the terrifying wheel of my multi-ton Ford and decided not to worry, that this is why God invented low gear.

And low speed. The dial-up Internet connection available in my rented holiday home transfers, say, a photo of the Farallon Islands taken by my cousin this morning in about 40 minutes. Of course, slowing down is the Inverness thing. It is why I come here, and that's why I am pleased that I came here this year...even under the sad circumstances.

One visiting friend asked me about the natural level of forestation. Did the Bishop Pines once extend down the slopes and spread across the windswept moors that inspire the name of Inverness? I guessed at an answer, but admitted I wasn't certain. I would like to know. The human history of these parts is remarkably thin. Wander into the Inverness Museum, barely larger than someone's living room, and you'll see photos of a sparsely populated, barely settled coast and valley region that can boast no cities, barely a couple of towns and not even a port. When the occasional schooner dropped off cargo, people transferred to land aboard a launch or pitched over the surging seas in a bosun's chair. I do not doubt that they were hardy, but there were few of them and they seem to have left little behind.

So what's really left is what I see from the deck of this house. The top of Inverness Ridge intrigues me greatly for its powers of recovery. A big fire swept up the slopes a couple decades ago, taking out scores of homes and leaving an enormous black and denuded emptiness along the top of the mountain. The first year I returned, the charred trees and blackened ground seemed sadly permanent. But this is California. I should know better. The rare Bishop Pines don't even open their cones and release seeds unless they are burned. California is designed for burning. Within a couple of years the ground was green with seedlings of all kinds. The shrubbery grew up. Pines shot from the blackened, mineral-rich earth, and today you have to strain to pick out the brown hulks of dead tree trunks in the hilltop forest that has returned to Inverness. Seeing this, being here for the process, has calmed me down in some strange way. Things die. Things grow. It's all going to happen with or without me.

There are mysteries. The watch Marlou gave me a couple of years ago stops running at the merest sight of water. Sure enough, dipping my arm under the faucet in this unfamiliar kitchen sink, there was an unfortunate interaction between the Inverness water supply and my old Seiko. 6:36 PM acquired a permanence. The watch was frozen. I kept thinking it didn't matter, but it did. There are people coming and going here. Still something of a schedule. But I knew there was a reasonable chance that, with the watch on my arm, forearm heat and the passage of time would dry the thing out and, coupled with routine arm knocking, get the watch going again. And, yes, it is running now. So, am I grasping at profundities to ask if time is going again? Somehow, it seems to be. My summer's travels have seemed all about escape. But despite it all, I seem to be escaping into the present.

It's hard to get the lay of the Inverness land. The land isn't truly wild, although wild processes are underway in much of it. Volunteers keep ripping out the Mediterranean ice plant that is threatening...and perhaps this word overstates the situation...a lagoon to the north. I can't tell if the long, matted grasses that surround this house are replanted natives or something utterly ersatz. And I don't know the story of the forests. Whatever the truth, I am staying put. I'm staying in. I am honoring the 'in' in Inverness.