parktrotter

This fellow turned up outside the house I talk about, below. This is a banana slug, about five inches long, nearly the official mascot of this part of California (and the entirely official mascot of UC Santa Cruz ). This part of the world is a wet place.

But the banana slugs are not a problem. To continue my list of the kid-dangers that confront the parent in these rental houses: the electrical outlets are always uncovered. There is always a balcony upon the edge of which the child may choose to teeter. And the kitchen is always full of cooking knives, everywhere you look. I get used to my own house, where the knives are either hidden or nonexistent, and the kitchen in the rental house (which is simply normal) ends up looking like a medieval armory to me, to the extent that I expect meat cleavers under the placemats.

My final judgment of the banana slug house: I loved it. Like most of these place, it was not good for little kids, though. My final advice tomorrow.

What was he unhappy about? I do not remember. But they change faster than the weather at that age. He was happy again five minutes later.

And, unfortunately, mobile. I took this photo in another of the houses we have tried in the Pt. Reyes area, this one–like the one below–in Inverness, in the hills above Tomales Bay. I liked it well enough, but there are special challenges that come with having a toddler along. That railing in the background of the photograph surrounded the big section of floor that opened into the staircase to the first floor. The railing, of course, did not seal off the entire stairway, and the open side was like an open pit. Lewis was just starting to walk. We blocked the stairs off with a couch, and discovered that, incredibly–like Mr. Incredible–he could move the couch. The classy hardwood floor was that slick–another problem, with a toddler. So we piled two futon mattresses on top of the couch. The futon mattresses were stuffed with goose down or steel filings or maybe sand, and weighed eighty pounds each. We were all sleeping downstairs, and the stairway that led to our beds was now no longer characterized by ease of access.

These are a few of the problems the parent of small children will encounter, in these places.

Here is another place we have stayed that is among my favorites. It is inside the Inverness town limits, I think, and right on the edge of Pt. Reyes National Seashore, which begins in the background of the photo.

This one also had a sleeping loft, and the ladder up to it did not pretend to be stairs. Dustin spent both of our two nights up in the loft, and enjoyed it in the way that boys his age usually will, since it was like sleeping in a treehouse. I tried to climb up and have a look around, but could not fit through the hatchway, like the companionway on a ship, that led into the loft. In the kitchen, you could literally hit your head on the ceiling. Moving around in the house, we adopted the squeezed posture of people getting on and off crowded elevators. No matter: loved the place. What I really love is the Marin coast, of course, and will do most anything to be there.

I was delighted with that house on Tomales Bay–the one I talk about below–because as I have said, I like the ocean. In this house, we got about as much of the ocean as we could handle: we arrived in the dark, at low tide, and were surprised to awaken the next morning and discover that the tide had come in, and we could literally have fished out the kitchen window. The house was set on piles in the water. If I owned the house, that would disturb me: one day, the San Andreas Fault will slip, and the fish and the ocean both may come in through that kitchen window. But during a brief visit, the possibility always seems remote enough that I can ignore it. The photo above is the view from the side door, which was served by a kind of wharf.

These Pt.-Reyes-area houses are always old and quaint–none, none at all, are new. They have been accumulating bric-a-brac for fifty or sixty years, and they groan beneath its weight. This particular house had a sleeping loft that could only be reached by stairs like the kind they have on naval vessels, more a ladder than stairs. I found them oddly terrifying. No matter: I set up my computer at a table overlooking the bay and worked while the full moon rose, and with the reflection off the bay, I hardly needed a light to see.

Where do we stay when we come to the Northern California coast, to places like Marin and Sonoma? As I noted, we pinch our pennies where most things in life are concerned, and then splurge a little when we travel. There are actually not many hotels in this part of the world; in the Pt. Reyes area, there are a few in Inverness and a number of bed-and-breakfast places scattered elsewhere, but as I have noted, the locals are all 1960s Hep-cats and are wildly anti-development. I do not think the tourist traffic could support big hotels anyway.

So we stay in houses. The one above is my maximum favorite of all time, even though we only got to stay there once. It was, as you can see, literally on the water–in fact, literally over the water. That is Tomales Bay in the background, and the house was among a cluster of structures (nameless, as near as I could tell) on the north shore of the bay. As we did with all the places we stay, we found it on the Vacation Rentals By Owner website . You just find a place that looks good and email them. We never went back–we were afraid Lewis, then two, would fall off the back porch and into the sea–but I was delighted.

The photo above is a close-up of one of the bolts that holds the Pt. Reyes lighthouse together. It suggests, again, how destructive the salt air is in Marin. The lighthouse is kind of like a naval vessel: bored entry-level government employees have been slopping paint all over it for its entire existence (look how lumpy the surface is next to the bolt). Yet that was not enough to stop the salt from discovering the steel beneath.

My title comes from a Robert Frost poem, “The Wood-Pile,” about an abandoned stack of firewood slowly dissolving back into nature. You can practically see that happening in real-time, in Marin–and I like the reference to firewood; at these places we always stay at on the coast, the wood is so wet and dense that trying to burn it is like trying to set fire to mud. In short, everything is always wet. Cloth, walls, porcelain, all are overlain by an invisible but clammy coat of dampness. The whole environment is hostile to anything delicate. I rather like it.

Here is one more view of the wrecked fishing boat in Inverness, Marin County, California.

Looking at the boat again reminds me how remarkably destructive the elements are in this part of the world. Not rapidly destructive, although that surely can happen here. What strikes me is the capacity of the air itself to obliterate nearly anything artificial it touches.

The secret ingredient, of course, is salt. When we first starting coming to this part of the coast, I noted–I could hardly miss it–how any piece of exposed steel, like a hinge on a gate or a steel door on a public restroom, would inevitably be rusted to the point that it was crumbling like abused toast. I noted how every automobile, past a certain age, began to look like the embarrassing cars to which Lightning McQueen sells Rusteez Medicated Bumper Ointment in the Pixar movie Cars–they were on the verge of flat-out disintegration from massive rust damage, that is. I thought it was the ocean fog that was doing this, but I realize now that the process goes on 24 hours a day. It is the essence of the Northern California coast.

Writing about Inverness, below, I got ahead of myself. Headed north on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, travelers come first to Inverness Park, which is even smaller. The two towns are easy to confuse. I mention Inverness Park because our other “restaurant” is here: when we arrive in the area, we often stop at the deli next to the Busy Bee Bakery, right at the edge of town. The sandwiches are good, and “next to the Busy Bee Bakery” is all the directions you need. I have just described most of Inverness Park, I think.

I like to eat the sandwiches on the plastic patio furniture out front, next to the small parking lot, and look out across the valley. The only industry here is dairying and tourism, and the dairying is no longer a growth industry. I look across the pastures that fill this end of the valley, and I relax. That is a rare sensation for me.

Above is a closer view of the wrecked fishing boat behind the store at Inverness Proper. You can see that its fishing days are done, that its best use is now exposing its wretchedness for photographs like this one.

Above is among the first sights that greet you as you enter Inverness, California, usually our first stop on any Pt. Reyes trip. As travelers enter the Pt. Reyes Peninsula, they normally end up on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (an odd name: “boulevard” makes me think of Paris, and this is more a rural highway). Most of the destinations in the national seashore lead them north on Sir Francis Drake, up the rift valley created by the San Andreas Fault. When they reach the water of Tomales Bay, they have also reached Inverness.

When we go, we eat lunch at Priscilla’s at the southern edge of town–a small restaurant in an appealingly ancient building–and buy groceries in the store across the street. The wrecked fishing boat, photographed above, is right behind the grocery store. I don’t know how the boat came thus to grief (locals have a name for it, The Wreck or The Boat or That Thing, I don’t know), but it has been left in place in part just to give tourists something picturesque to photograph. Dustin and I climbed aboard once at low tide. I remember being struck by the fact that it had a kitchen, with, among all the other amenities, a paper towel rack. That paper towel rack disturbed me, and I only just figured out why: the life of the sea should be exciting and romantic.  The life of the sea should not include paper towels.

Here are the Morgan horses again, in a pasture next to the Bear Valley Visitor Center.  As I noted, the breeder that runs this operation raises horses for the National Park Service.  Some of the government horses I knew (socially) in Yellowstone might have come from here.  Not that I know anything about Morgan horses, or even who Morgan was.  My knowledge of Morgan extends no further than the hearty rum captain.

The Bear Valley Visitor Center next door is a surprisingly good place to begin a Pt. Reyes trip with a small child.  It is mainly a museum, with a bookstore to one side and an information counter where either a ranger or volunteer can answer whatever questions you have about the national seashore.  The museum, however, is kid friendly, in part because the National Park Service is so thoroughly tyrannized over by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  They have ramps leading everywhere, where kids like to run.  The museum includes stuffed birds and other animals.  One day Lewis will reach out and wring the heron’s neck, will grab the beautiful elegant egret and rip his head clean off.  I do not look forward to this day.