Going Up the Country*

As long as I've lived in San Francisco, I've been aware of the urge to get away, to go up country, and this weekend, we did.



California is such a huge land, and from here, if you drive in any direction except west (for which you need a serious watercraft), you'll soon encounter hills, fields, rivers, lakes, forests, and valleys only partially settled by humans.



That is one of the things I love about this area. Up and down this coast, in a relatively narrow ecological zone, redwood trees thrive.



You cannot get up close to one of these creatures without feeling appropriately young and small. These massive trees reduce all human beings to our monkey state -- hyperactive omnivores who come and go ever so quickly while these gracious giants tower over our world, silent, observant, perhaps sympathetic as we go about our trivial business of living and dying, as if any of it mattered...



The vineyards snake ever more obviously through the valleys of Sonoma and Mendocino. Wine is the great cash crop of this generation of landowners, who hope that the artistry of their label, and the apparent smallness of their venture, will find a market.



Given how much most Californians drink wine each week, most of these entrepreneurs see their gamble pay off. And then there is everyone else -- the export market, which provides returns that any Midwestern corn farmer could only dream of...



Up in the country, I feel free.



Maybe not exactly a free bird, but a sort of free man.



As I look upwards along the trunk of these ancient trees, I feel modest and small, inconsequential.



Nothing big can grow on the floor of a redwood forest, but clover can thrive.



My dear friends have built houses way back up in these hills, where it is possible to sit quietly, contemplating the inconsequential and the all-too consequential impacts that we, you and me, have had in our brief time on this, our common earth.

-30-

* I'm going, I'm going where the water tastes like wine
I'm going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time

--Canned Heat