Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1)

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  Is it that way because that is the right way? Or is it that way because that's the way we've always done it? Because that's the way it was marketed to us? Because Fisher-Price says? Or Gerber? Or Oprah?

  It's why I feel great about taking my kids from the Land of Plenty, into India. We'll just figure it out, build our own forests. Do things a different way.

  September 27, 2007

  A Somewhat ill-advised journey down Highway 1.

  You are alone, headed south for a writing retreat in your van. Your first stop is in Willits, about an hour from home.

  You look around you, as you walk down the street in Willits. You begin to think that you have seriously underestimated this town, this Willits place. You walk into a little organic burrito shop and eat a yummy breakfast burrito, which they allow you to order even though it is lunchtime! And then there is a little sign, thanking you for eating at a locally-owned restaurant. Go Willits, you think to yourself. You say goodbye to the nice girls who made you a burrito and some good coffee, and wander into a used bookstore to peruse its shelves, looking for an elusive book that you probably will never find. It's not there, although the store unfolds into room after room in an admirably magical way.

  You turn the corner and find a little cafe called the Red Caboose. There is no reason for the way this cafe grabs you. Perhaps it is the unheard-of freedom that you are experiencing right now, the giddy head rush of no seat belts to fasten besides your own that grips you, or maybe it is the way that the front yard of the establishment is all grown over in a lush garden, with a wooden red model of a caboose heralding its front path. It somehow reminds you of Asia. And you are gripped with a desire for an adventure. A desire to explore.

  You will drive down Highway 1. It can't take that much longer, can it? You consider consulting a local person or a map, but that is really not your way, you're not really into that. So you head down Highway 20 towards the coast and the legendary Highway 1.

  There are almost no words to describe how happy you feel. The sun is turning the trees to gold and you are spinning along the kind of road that you like best; the curvy kind, the kind that takes you and turns you every different direction that exists on a compass, the kind that makes you grow a little taller as you resist the centrifugal force of hairpin turns. Not only that, but this is the kind of adventure that you like best; the kind that has travel and sunshine and trees and little towns with interesting people in them.

  There is an old red Chevrolet truck in front of your van, so old that it has that narrow tailgate with the word CHEVROLET painted very seriously, in somber letters, across the back of it. It is the kind of truck you have always loved, and driving it is an robust elderly man with a Newsies cap on. There is another truck in front of him and the three of you take the curves together, keeping up, keeping on. You are heading to the ocean. You are friends, you and the man in the red Chevrolet.

  The trees start to get scrubbier and more coast-like. Funny how it's only a few miles out, but because of the wild Northern Californian hills, it takes forever. You sense that the man in the red Chevrolet is starting to get tired of driving. He probably needs to get home to his wife. You observe some things, like the construction worker who is holding a stop sign with duct tape covering the word "stop" and black marker over the duct tape that spells the word "GO". Which is confusing. Because everyone knows what a red octagon means, even your five-year-old son.

  You see a Confederate flag flying stubbornly in front of someone's yard. What could they be thinking? You don't have much patience for this, these Confederate flags so out of place in the Northwest that they can make an ignorant statement about the way they wish things could be. The way they wish everyone was the same.

  And then you see a glimpse of the ocean, and the red truck is still persevering ahead of you. You are glad for the old man, that he gets to see the ocean today. In the distance it is shimmery and elusive. You are entering Fort Bragg, a town that you are barely on speaking terms with. You have tried to get to know Fort Bragg better, but it always seems to have a lot of hotels and you have not been able to connect. A man is holding up a sign that says, "ELK" and you are blank for a minute, blinking, "Elk? What could he mean?" And by the time you remember that Elk is a place you are past him, but you remember that it is probably not good to pick up hitchhiker dudes when you are by yourself, anyways.

  You and the red truck keep driving on past the outskirts of Fort Bragg and then he turns off on road 409. You wave goodbye and feel a little sad. You were pals. It has been about an hour, since you started meandering to the coast, a whole hour of traveling with the ancient red Chevrolet. But you are cheered by the sight of the ocean below, so deeply blue and impossibly lovely and delicious that you might just have to drink the whole thing.

  The little town of Mendocino. You and Mendocino have history. Here you fell a little more irrevocably in love with your husband, before he was your husband, before you were dating. You skirted around each other shyly in a music store, Lark of the Morning, and you tried not to stare at him too much, at his beautiful hands as he picked up a dulcimer guitar, a flute, an old hand drum. After you were married you came here together for a brief vacation, when your oldest was not yet one and shoveling sand into his mouth almost as fast as you could scoop it out. It's hard to believe that was over four years ago, those lovely days on the beach, the longing for a home as you gazed at perfect lattice work on houses with roses spilling out of their front yards.

  You always long for home, no matter where you are. Beautiful things touch you with a sharp spike of yearning, and you have grown used to this as a state of being, rather than something you need to fix, or something you need to buy. The glimmer of sun on the sea, the perfect corners of beautiful expensive inns, these things make you hurt, in a sweet way, a way that promises a forever home someday.

  You see a bush in a field and then suddenly think, "That's not a bush, that's an alpaca!" There are many surprising things like this, over and around these cliffs. You notice that the Navarro river is huge, compared to your little Eel, even at this time of year.

  And then you are in Elk, the place, and you can see why that hitchhiking man wanted to arrive here. It is precious, tiny, with Inns that are perfect in their architecture, leaning prettily out over the ocean with their glass and corners and clean lines. They have names like the Sandpiper. Cute names.

  You start to take notice of the Adopt A Highway signs. This bit of highway has been adopted by the Mendocino Medical Marijuana Group. The next one by the Irish Beach Planning Committee, which is mystifying until you realize that it appears to be the name of the town.

  You come upon Manchester, which is nothing like Elk. This must be where the area stashes its poor people. There are no cute inns, only trailers that are moldering and leaning, junked cars and falling down huts. This is life on the coast when there is never enough money. Money flows on around these people and they may never get to jump in. A sign on a store advertises "Antennas and Chainsaws". There are satellite dishes on all the trailers. The highway here has been adopted by Dave's Plumbing.

  And you drive on, and on, and here is Point Arena. You pass by another Catholic graveyard and another Catholic church. Are there more Catholic people on the coast? you wonder. No, wait, there are the United Methodists, representing also. Here the highway is adopted by Everything Under the Sun. This is a little hippie town, cute and brightly painted, not really a touristy place, but kind of, in its own way. You almost stop. Later you wish you had.

  You pass a road called Gypsy Flat Road, and an Inn called the Whale Watch Inn. You wouldn't mind staying there, watching whales. It would be nice. Now you are coming into deep forest, and it is more like home. There are redwoods here, tall as mountains. A ferrari breezes past you, no doubt headed for the Whale Watch Inn. Look! There on the left is a Turkish house, with turrets and woodwork that must have taken years to craft!

  You are coming into Gualala. In Gualala they have huge metal dinosaurs and condos!
For so long now on this highway, you have only seen trailers and homes that seem to have been put together lovingly by hand, that condos jump out at you like eels. You are spinning through Gualala quickly, and you do see a supermarket that was probably made back in the days of the Old West. You like the name of this town.

  Sea Ranch has golf. And you see a sign for a beach called Shell Beach. You want some shells, so you stop, but Sea Ranch will not let you in. The County of Sonoma will, but they will charge you $5. You rustle up some old dollar bills and some change and determinedly set out for the beach. Unfortunately, someone lied. There are no shells at this beach. There is water, however, and sand, and marvelous miles of seaweed, covered in flies and smelling like brine. The sun is on your face.

  The highway here is adopted by the Gleaners. You are beginning to regret your decision to take Highway 1. It sure is taking a long time. But you keep going, there is nothing else to do. The land becoming more scrubby again and it is covered with boulders. But some of those boulders are sheep! There are sheep all around you, and then you keep driving and cows are on the road. The truck behind you wants to pass you. He keeps honking, but you think he's crazy because there is a line of cars in front of you stretching as far as you can see, and all of you are stuck on this winding coastal road. You will probably be here forever. Still, you pull to the side to let him over, and then bemusedly watch him honk at the car in front of him. His life must be very frustrating, he's living a six-lane lifestyle on a two-lane road.

  You are slumped over, now, with your elbow on the door of the van and your face on your hand. Will it never end?

  Jenner. Wow, another town. But suddenly you perk up. You've been here before, you are near the highway that will take you back inland. You have reached the Russian River. You are exhausted. It has taken you four winding hours to drive what would have taken one. Still, you are so, so happy. There is an older woman on a bicycle, riding down a forested road beside the river and you can still see the sun. Suddenly you can think of nothing you would rather have done with the first day of your retreat. You made friends with the man in the red truck. You almost got shells on the beach. You lived in little towns in your mind, pretending the Turkish house was the house of a Turkish princess, and you even saw an alpaca. What a perfect day in September, a day of solitude, a day saying goodbye to the California that you love.

  September 28, 2007

  So what is it, inside me, that chooses the wrong things for comfort?

  It's not that ice cream is bad. It's not. It's not even that I'm unhealthy, because I'm not. I eat well. I drink mostly water. My vices are usually too much pasta, brown sugar in my coffee, coffee. I don't smoke anymore, unless I'm with an old smoking friend in Canada and just have to light up for old times sake.

  But sometimes eating ice cream feels like the smoking in the alley behind my house that I used to do, late at night, when everyone was sleeping and I felt that teenaged hollow feeling, the hurting that I just couldn't understand. I loved that house. We had just moved from the suburbs, where we were homeowners, to a rental in urban Edmonton. For my parents it might have been a sad move, but for fifteen-year-old me, it was heaven. Thanks to an understanding landlord, I painted my room a green called "Ireland's Pride." You can imagine the shade. I also ragged it off, giving my walls the texture of a ferny rainforest.

  It was the beginning of my love affair with old houses and gardens and lit windows. At night I'd sit on my couch in front of my long, tall window, and gaze at the enormous house that I could see on the next block. I'd watch their windows with the lights pouring from within, thinking about towers and nooks and little rooms, and I'd dream of the people who lived in that large red house. They loved books and cats. They ate yogurt for breakfast. They were professors. And then that ache would get to be too much and out I'd go to sit in the alley with a cigarette.

  Last night I found out that my grandmother is very sick. I knew she was struggling with her health, but none of us had received any real diagnosis, yet, and the truth suckerpunched me in the gut. I sat on the couch. I called her. I cried. I called my husband. I prayed for a while, my hands on my stomach. I wrote a little. I turned on the television, then turned it off. I picked up my knitting, put it back down and then went for the food.

  What is that? Once again, it's not that food is bad, it's just that it's not all that comforting. You're all shovel and chomp and then you end up burping. Baking is comforting, measuring out ingredients. Cleaning, reading the beautiful words of God. But nothing calls like the siren song of junk food. I believe this is called bingeing.

  I did only end up eating about a third of a pint, hardly a binge. But there was some Pirate's Booty involved, and some peanut butter cups, also. Not many, but still. All designed to distract.

  My grandmother is one of the strongest women that I have ever met, strong in that incredibly refined way, like the Queen of England. Except that she's Scottish, Scottish-Canadian, the kind of woman who enjoyed her childbirths, the kind of woman who gets tears in her eyes every time she thinks of my baby brother, who died, and yet who was the only member of my family I could bring myself to ask for the full details about him and several of the other family tragedies, because she processes grief by remembering, by talking about it. She is a woman of detail, the kind who remembers every single birthday of every person she's ever met, who sewed all of her own clothes and her children's clothes, the kind who retired at seventy-eight.

  I can't think of her sick.

  This troubling tendency toward distraction in myself is something that I'm working on. I bet we all are, to some extent. I've been coming up with a group of practices, harvested from different Christian traditions, different homesteading and artistic traditions, which I am using to reconstruct my life. I know what I believe, I feel rock solid in my faith. But what do I practice? How do I live this life, how do I reap the most out of it?

  Probably not by eating ice cream and channel surfing. I don't want to be too hard on myself, and if you could see my little heart right now you'd see that it is tender towards nine-year-old me gazing glassy-eyed at the t.v. that she had previously ignored on this writing retreat.

  These practices that I'm working on are almost like bookmarks, like things I can return to again and again. I hope to come to a place where I reach for the things that will truly comfort, even in times of great need. Even when someone I love so deeply is sick, when the idea of too much change threatens to rock me a little too hard and tip me over.

  I will pray for my grandmother and keep calling her, keep telling her I love her and hear her trying to reassure me as she says, "I know you do, dear."

  October

  October 4, 2007

  Oh Leafy,

  You were sick yesterday, and snuggled ferociously in that hot-headed way that you have when you are feverish.

  Before I realized you weren't feeling well, I told you that your pacifier, or Ny-ny, as you have named it, was for bedtime, and I put it away. While I was folding clothes and not paying attention, you took matters into your own hands, dragging a chair into your bedroom, climbing onto it so you could reach the dresser, and grabbing all of the pacifiers out of the container that I keep them in. When I next looked up, you were sitting at the kids' table with a pacifier in your mouth and two in your little hands, just in case.

  You barely let me out of your sight, yesterday, sick baby that you were, you chose to hang onto my legs, or simply follow me around, and so we sat together a lot, you facing me on my lap, laying your head on my chest. If my attention was directed at anything other than you, you simply put your fingers on my face and turned my head back towards you. If I could replicate the feeling of your hot little hands on my cheeks, gentle but determined, or the sight of your very serious brown eyes above that little pacified mouth, oh Leafy, I would. I would just carry those memories around in my pockets to pull out when I was feeling sad.

  We sat and tried to catch specks of dust, and it made you laugh, again and again, as lou
sy as you felt. The glittering air kept evading us, and you yelled, "Sparkles! Sparkles!" over and over. Your games last forever.

  It's amazing to me, this talking that you do. The other day we were sitting around over dinner and you turned to me and said, "I love you, Mom-mee." And I thought, "It speaks in full sentences?"

  You are some kind of guy. And I am one happy Mama, even when we are glued together all day, on a sick day, on a day that you need me a little more than most. Especially then.

  October 11, 2007

  I always feel sad when I come here.

  I am in the City, in San Francisco, the only city that I have ever known intimately. I know many secrets of this city, especially secrets about the dark underbelly, the shouting that goes on at night, the faces that are slammed into fences and gates. I also know good secrets, like where to get the best coffee and pizza, and which streets to travel on when you are in a hurry. I know no other city in this way.

  But it never did let me in.

  Now, I am staying overnight in the big sprawling flat where I lived before I moved to the Land. I don't know what it is about a place that can get into me this way, I only know that I grip things, and my knuckles are tired.

  I remember walking up the back steps, the old wooden steps that are ridiculously steep and that smell like pee, with Kenya, when she was barely four hours old. I was a little unsteady, but glad to be coming home from the birth center to go to bed. It was about 10:00 at night. I sat on the couch and someone fixed me some cereal, probably my mom. They all sat around me, all my friends and roommates, on the couch, around me and on the floor beneath me, and some perched above me, on the arms of the couch. They stroked me and touched me and of course, held tiny Kenya, who just hours before had revealed that she was a daughter, not another son.