Along the Redwood Road: A Trip Inwards

You leave on Christmas Day, like you always do, when the roads are empty and you can make better time. The car is packed with food and hiking boots and weather gear because the woods are wet at this time of year, blanketed with the rainfall that sustains them like a blessing.

You try to make this drive every year but it’s not always possible; there are other commitments, places where you find yourself other than San Francisco. So you go when you can, and you feel then how the intervening years have changed you, left you older and slower and more contemplative, more appreciative.

Your will to get there, to arrive at the woodland temple, is a powerful thing, a driving force to slowly motor along the so-called Avenue of the Giants, through groves of towering redwoods where the world is ethereal and quiet. In the heart of the woods the road is rain-wet and shining, casting a glow on the surrounding forest scape where the full force of the sun’s light fails to reach, diffused by the treetops.

And when you finally stop and venture out onto the trail, the soft layers of last season’s fallen foliage carpet the ground so completely that the woods possess the acoustics of a recording studio. No unnecessary sounds or white noise, just blissful silence.

Sometimes, on the trail, you pause for deep breaths of fresh, rejuvenating country air, and then you stop and you listen. You welcome the quiet and marvel at its completeness.

There is so sound, no sound at all, other than perhaps the gentle murmur of the rain. You take it all in for as long as you can, before you push on around the next bend.

You pine for this feeling all year long. At no other time are you this much at peace.

You have made this drive many times before, guided from somewhere deep inside. Once past the orange majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge, the congestion of Marin County and the winding Russian River, the road narrows to two lanes and the best part of the journey begins.

You have your internal mile markers. Reaching Mendocino County feels like an emotional release. The road begins to playfully meander through the forest at spots like Benbow, Weott and Myers Flat, Scotia and Rio Del.

You feel as though you’re getting close when you reach Loleta, King Salmon and the College of the Redwoods, as you pass the crayon-colored Victorian homes in downtown Eureka, and the young men in dreadlocks and backpacks, soggy from the unceasing weather, as you finally push on towards Crescent City and the Oregon border.

The drive is the same yet always different. You see things you remember and things you see for the first time. You are a homing pigeon ready to alight at your destination.

This year you have rented a cabin in the woods, where you awake each morning to the green undergrowth that presses against the outside window like an audience.

The girl is along this year. At first, you weren’t sure how you felt about that. The last time she came, four years ago, she was 12 and complained about the long drive and the lack of a smartphone signal. 

She’s older now, almost through high school, but is still obsessed with her clothes and her makeup and how long the boys she texts wait before opening her Snapchat mail. 

You don’t have children of your own, so how you cope with your niece and her world is a brief test-run to a fatherhood that never was. You haven’t done so well in the past, aggravated by her self-obsession, an altar where you too once worshipped and in your own way still do.

One morning, you say something, call her the same hackneyed nickname, and you can discern a slight wince, a blow landed, a wound deepened.

And you are struck at once by your own immaturity.

So you resolve to do better, to step out of old habits like a retiree might finally rise from his easy chair. You tell her that for the rest of the day, you are going to compliment, not tease. You are going to listen. You are going to be a better uncle.

At first, she treats you warily, like a cautious deer waiting for the crack of the hunter’s gun. You look at her anew, as you try to do with the forest each year. You compliment her on the very things you had once dismissed. Her sense of humor and her style. You say things in an effort to ease her insecurity.

You tell her that she is beautiful. And it is true.

Finally, from you back seat of the car, you can feel her relax. It’s like you have seen each other for the very first time.

One day, you decide on a different hike, one that takes you out of the forest and along the shore. You drive north into southern Oregon, to a stretch of untouched vistas along the Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor.

You have been here before, so you hit your favorite spots, playing tour guide. The weather has been rough in recent days and the waves are at high tide, flooding the beach as they pound against the ancient coastal stacks and rocky coast with a swirling fury.

As they roll toward shore, the gray winter seas turn white and churn and roil. Here your senses are treated to a different performance — one different yet no less magical than in the forest. You listen to the low roar of the waves and mutely watch the restless sea. The moments approach something religious before you finally force yourself to turn away. 

Because there are still miles yet to go.

*

Your sojourn ends before you know it. The girl sends a text saying how much she enjoyed herself. You respond right away, not like those other boys.

You realize that this might be the last time that the girl comes on this trip, and the thought brings a melancholy at first. 

But life goes on like the winding highway northward. 

There will always be the redwoods, and the coast, and those precious moments of appreciating both nature’s comforting quiet and her roar.