Fallen Trees

This is the road that my dad lives on, and the house (one of the houses) that I've considered Home since I was five. The drive is absolutely beautiful, through thick trees and though its on a public road, my dad always called this his extended driveway. Though its hard to tell in the video, to the left is a major drop-off into a deep ravine.

There are major storms every winter up in Mendocino. There is usually hail, though not the golf-ball sized hail that TX gets. Tiny pellets that don't break all your skylights and make your unprotected cars look like a machine gun fired at them. Stuff you can actually ride your bike through. Its not the most pleasant, but you won't end up with a black eye and several bruises. Every 10 years there's the possibly of a little bit of snow (that quickly melts upon touching ground). When it storms there is mostly rain, and lots of wind and power outages. Every winter it was common to lose power for at least a couple days, and the further back you lived in the forests up to a week or more. My dad's house lost power for I think 12 days one year. That was the record for him.

Losing power was always something to look forward to in winter. As a kid it meant you got to stay home from school. Growing up I LOVED it. We would play board games and cards around the fireplace, and cook all our food on top of the wood stove. We would get together with our parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and friends to do puzzles and drink hot chocolate and cider. We would use flashlights and light candles, and spend more time together talking to one another. We would have majong, and scrabble tournaments. We would draw, and read and write and play mad libs. It was like camping, only with the luxury of being in the comfort of our homes. My fancy friends had generators, which lost some of the back-to-nature charms, but it still felt like it was exciting, rustic, and magical. It was the annual winter reminder to realize our dependency on PG&E and to be thankful for the luxuries it provided us with. Not to take anything for granted.

The power went out in San Francisco for less than an hour when we lived there on a couple occasions and I wish that all those people could have found the same joy in back-to-basics living. Everyone there was freaked out. Confused traffic stopped for miles, frustrated at the non functional lights. People ran out of their apartments into the streets angry that they couldn't watch TV to see what happened on the news. I guess it wasn't as big of a deal in Mendocino, because there is only ONE traffic light, and you get most of your news from your neighbors at the Post Office or while you shop at Harvest Market. Austin lost power a while back, and it shook me up to the point where I again had to remind myself to remember how much fun it can be to detach yourself from technologies. I also know that I'm happier when I'm not living in big cities.

Anyway, the power would go out in Mendocino because more times than not, one of those big beautiful trees would fall and knock down a power line. Depending on the storm, and accessibility, the amount of time the power stayed out depended on our local PG&E crewman's ability to battle the elements, repair the damages, and clear the fallen debris. My grandfather Jack, better known by everyone as "Captain," worked for PG&E. If you've ever met him, you'd know why his name is Captain. He's a man's man, with a heart of gold, a comforting sense of fearlessness, and as strong as a horse. He still is today, in his 80's. He's going to live to be at least 100 and still be chopping and stacking wood piles for all his kids.

One winter, in my senior year of high school, I was on my way to work at the Mendo Bakery. I was driving down our usual extended driveway and was going extra slow because it had been storming all night and still was pouring down rain. It was a Saturday and my dad had already gone into work his early morning bar shift at Patterson's Pub. The road is not only beautiful, but very narrow and very windy like all roads up in Northern California by the coast. I noticed that the road was covered in leaves and fallen pine needles and small branches turning the black asphalt green and brown with no view of the yellow or white lines. It was the usual sight during and after a major rain storm. Since my dad had gone to work, I figured I would be able to make it into town too.

I took my '88 white nissan maxima with a bunch of stupid teeny-bopper stickers on the bumper and several rust spots around one curve only to be met HEAD ON with a fallen tree. The branches were pointing at me and in every-which direction, if I were driving as fast as all the other locals drove down that road I would have driven straight into my doom. Which is why I don't care if people make fun of me for driving like a granny, that stormy morning it saved my life. The tree was slopped off of the hill on one side of the road, and pointing down into the ravine on the other. The entire road was blocked. There was no way through.

Even though I loved surfing back then, and I have always loved swimming I am terrified of seaweed. Anything at the bottom of the river like logs or large slimy, mossy rocks freak me out too. Its like the seaweed is alive and alien and no matter how hard I kick or try to avoid it, it would continue to wrap its tentacles around my ankles and paddling wrists. Teasing to bind me and pull me under. My brother Alex would lead Kayak tours and make all his rich tourists grab a piece and take a raw bite straight out of the ocean. Believably or not, after seeing my brother do it every time, they would do it too. The fallen logs at the bottom of the river were scary to me because they were at a dead end. They had fallen, and they couldn't get out, so they would be eternally doomed to be covered by moss and slime and rot on the bottom of the riverbed. Like corpses, or worse, like being buried alive in a watery grave.

Plants are alive and being alive they have energy. The tree was laying across the road on its side but was still as high as a two story building. Coming that close to meeting a great, big, fallen tree, shaking slimy sea-weed like branches towards my dwarfed car stopped my heart. Its hard to say what shook me more- facing my own possible death or feeling the distress of such an intimidating yet broken monster. I caught my breath, and in shock I sat in my car watching it. The beast before me moved with the wind, yet at the same time was left pitifully immobile. Bullied by the storm. It made me feel like I was underwater. Like a real-life tidal wave dream coming true, only the ocean engulfing me was dense, and made of bark, and wet leaves and thick slithering branches. I was being drowned with fear, and all the rain continued to pour down and rust my car further. I had to get out of there.

I wished that no other cars would be coming around the blind corner as I had just done, because I knew instead of driving 20 MPH like miss granny panties, they would probably be going 45 MPH or faster. I was able to safely make my 5-point turn to twist my car on that narrow road back in the direction of my dad's house. I watched Death in my rear-view mirror as I drove away.

Tonight in all the wind, one of our trees in our backyard did this:
Which doesn't look like much, but its actually a REALLY big tree and it scared the hell out of me. I'm glad it didn't fall on our house, or on our power line.