It must be the hugeness of the trees that the waves and beaches of Humboldt County feel they have to meet in size and scope. It's a breathtaking place to be - look out one window of the car and you're staring at the powerful vastness of the Pacific, then turn your head the other direction and it's the redwood forests, rolling green hillsides, endless lagoons that roll past your living video screen. Turn your head a little further and there are the kids in the backseat: Sawyer just about to hurl and Jordan halfway through her eleventh chapter book of the trip.
After breakfast we headed a little ways North into the Redwood National Forest and Humboldt State Forests for a peek around. We came first to a perfect mile long loop at the Ladybird Johnson Memorial Grove. Turns out Nixon actually did some good in his time as president, responding to the new environmental awareness of his constituents and delegating protected areas of wilderness. This lovely grove dedicated to Ladybird Johnson's environmental work was a perfect path for our two sprites with plenty of huge trees to walk into, hiding places, wildflowers, and twists and turns. It was also a morning of sibling rivalry and dueling, but with plenty of distractions to keep the parents sane.
It is a stunning sight, those trees, and confounding to think how they were possibly logged before there were cars - or helicopters or cranes or logging trucks. Human resourcefulness is an amazing thing, and somewhat staggering as well: how quickly we could remove a forest that took centuries to grow. Jordan and now Sawyer are still deeply engrossed in games of "pretend" and here they were little bears we were adopting. Occasionally JOrdan will want to play "family" (which is kind of hilarious - like what are we doing when we're NOT playing family?), the great part of which is that we get to pick not only our own names but also our own ages. TOm's and my profound enthusiasm for this element of the game has caused Jordan to instill a new rule: that we chose a number as the parents that is greater than twenty. Which still gives Tom a bit too great of a twinkle in his eye when he hears me say "My name is Julianna and I am 23." He's got a great knack for coming up with names that crack me up. Magellan and Ferdinand and Butch and the like.
Renamed, we left our little grove of fantasy and headed to Redwood Creek at the park entrance that boasted a trail and a lovely picnic spot. While the three of them had lunch I ran the trail that led to the "Creek" - this time of year a gorgeous steel colored river we hear is a perfect two day Class II family trip. The trail continued across the river, but the seasonal bridge had not yet been erected and so I ran up the rocky beach and dreamed of another family trip within a family trip: just me and Butch and Posey and Diamond, a pair of twenty-something parents on an idyllic float trip in spring down a gorgeous river.
Tom ran the trail after I returned and after accidentally swatting each other in the head with the plastic baseball bats still loaded in the truck bed, we decided to head toward the beaches once again, having promised the kids another look at the Camel Rock caves. We took a detour down another park road and wound through dense wet forest and past signs informing us when we were entering and exiting tsunami safety zones. We wound up at more serene and endless beaches - gorgeous waves patiently waiting to crash to shore, surferless. Going back (and hitting every puddle we could find along the way), we stopped and marveled at the elk - deer aren't quite big enough for Humboldt, it's gotta be elk. The weather on our trip was completely idyllic - the kind of year-round weather I'd choose to live in, if it existed - sunny and warm, but not hot, just enough to keep the plants green instead of brown - throw in a weekly rainstorm and I'd be thrilled.
It's a long rock and cut earth staircase down to Camel Rock beach, giving you a feeling of entering another world. We spread our blanket (kind of a token move since no one ever sits in this family) twenty feet from the incoming waves and as Tom stared at the surfers, the kids quickly stripped off their clothes and hit the tide pools. We brought sand toys, but I am always amazed at how quickly a game or another reality is created by the kids - they work so hard, so faithfully on whatever it is they are creating or building and take no notice of us or anyone else around. Their abandonment of our world and escape into their own reality is so complete, and clearly so freeing.
I walked up the beach to check a cache of rocks rolled in on a high surf and discovered the rotting carcass of a whale along the way. As we were edging toward five o'clock the kids wanted to check it out and were non-plussed by the discovery. Jordan is definitely creating a clear internal scorecard of things that are gross vs. things that are not. We got back to our blanket just in time for a local woman dashing past to let us know an incoming wave was a doozy and we'd best relocate before it hit - sure enough, we lifted our belongings just in time to be ankle deep in the rising surf.
Up top, Tom decided to bike back up to our campground. The kids and I drove and went straight into one of those delicious campground showers where the quarters may as well be gold pieces for the perfect warmth and cleanliness the shower provides. I think we spent $.75 for a blissful ten minutes of decadent warmth and cleanliness and were amazed when we emerged to find Tom already back and making dinner.
Since it was late, we decided to put off the dutch oven cake for one more night. Tom put the kiddos to bed without their latest installment of the story and I headed to the beach for a walk with Austin. It was a gorgeous night, such a beautiful place and I was wary of the quick rising surf from earlier in the day, so the single rogue wave that came up and stole the clothes and shoes of the teenagers also at the beach didn't get me - the lack of light did. I couldn't find my shoes when I was ready to walk back to the campground and I had two routes available: the trail by the lagoon which involved a bit of climbing through and over tangled tree roots and branches, or on the road. I chose the road and a third of the way there was wrapping my feet in my t-shirts. The teenagers ahead of me were pretty verbal with their exclamations of pain due to thorns on the side of the road and rough pavement on the road itself. Pretty weak feet for a girl who was known for going shoeless in highschool. We were debating whether to stay at the campground for one more night or to start to head back and spend a night somewhere between where we were and Lotus - such a bewilderingly free feeling to have time and ability and no internal compass - I wanted to go everywhere and not just for a night, but we were also in a pretty heavenly place and so why leave? These are the good dilemmas, the standing in a train station with an open ticket and a board full of available destinations. My version of a candy store.
The next morning the kids started wiggling early and just when I'd convinced them to try to sleep a bit longer, my phone rang at 6:30 and I knew immediately: Allison's baby was on it's way! Before I'd even finished the conversation, Tom was out the door and packing up camp. Allison's water had broken at 2:30 am and although contractions hadn't really started, we knew her doc would want the baby out within 24 hours. So now, we had a new train station dilemma: which airport? By 7:30, the kiddos (still in their jammies) were in their car seats and we were headed down the highway once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment