Early memory, Point Reyes

The hillsides were more open. The brush hadn't yet advanced into the meadows. Deer crossed the fields intermittently. In the forested valleys, on foggy days, they came down to the creek to drink. On the other days, they waited for the safety of dusk.

When it rains too much, water comes spouting out from the gopher holes that drain the water from the higher hillsides. A good place to find quartz crystals, swept up from the bowels of the earth. Once I found rendered fat in one of the holes. Tiny globules waxing my wrinkled fingers.

My pants of gray and blue woven cotton, made from a remnant my grandmother bought at the Lagunitas church bazaar, were laden with rain, and they hung low on my hips. The chocolate mud bordering the cuffs calligraphed the earth.

And my tennis shoes make squelching sounds as I walk down the path, now a runnel from the runoff. I leave my clothes on the newspaper sheets spread in front of the door to catch the winter's mud. I shed my clothes like the hide of a beast —too much of a hurry, I dry off and sit by the fire.

But it is a landscape of wet and cold that doesn't willingly leave you. My grandmother talks of catching bronchitis and the tiny tubules that everyone in our family seems to have.

In the night I begin to cough, and it goes on and on. We hitch a ride out to the doctor. His office is in Point Reyes Station. It's a long winding road right through Camp Taylor where the redwoods crown the sky, and it is always dusk. 

Over Olema hill, near the crest, there's one small curve, where you get the first glimpse of Tomales Bay. On the flats, we pass drowned artichoke fields, and the old caboose, an abandoned railroad car that still proclaims it is the Point Reyes Library, though the only books it holds are written by the wind whistling through broken windows.

The caboose shares a pasture with a donkey and a goose. The goose is swimming in the volunteer lake at the lower end of the pasture. The donkey's ears are splayed at 30° angles as he huddles next to the caboose wall for shelter. He doesn't understand why his friend seeks out water on a day like today.

The doctor's office smells of alcohol and Pine-Sol. Thick coating on my tongue, dark breath. and roaring ears. I am burning. He says 104°. And the doctor gives me orange-flavored syrup. For years after, I will hate the taste taste of oranges.

I remember Tomales was foggy that day. Trees dripped steadily as condensed fog fell to the ground. I looked up a raindrop on the edge of a leaf, the quavering edge reminded me of a wintergreen potato chip.

Last summer, at Heart's Desire Beach, I kept looking for the secret heart. I thought maybe the inlet was heart-shaped, but no, it was an inlet like any other. Not understanding the metaphor, I wondered what shape did it desire to take on?

A stingray gracefully slid across the shallows of the small lagoon and then settled under the mud, using its wings to sift the mud over its body. Only its pale blue eyes were visible, like two tiny pearls fallen from the sky.

When the sun comes out, the water is like dark forests. It's more like a lake than a bay. But periodic shark reports keep it honest. My eyes are like sharkskin, the color of water on a foggy day.

6/1985
added, rev. 2/18