Friday, August 25, 2006

Of Retail and Redwoods

Did I tell you that I bought a hat in San Francisco?

On Monday, we hire a car ( it is better to drive a car around SF than to take the Beast a-roaming here) and head out to Petaluma Retail Park for some shopping therapy. Amy is desperate to get herself into American shops to buy as many clothes as she can fit into her suitcase. She is already talking about buying another suitcase if they won't all fit! I am not in the mood today: back home I have to psyche myself up for days before attempting clothes shopping (body image problems), but I bought a couple of tops from Gap and one from Vans, so I called it a day and headed for the bookshop while they did the rest! Now, this was my idea of heaven, an hour, uninterrupted, surrounded by books. My suitcase is already weighted down with several tomes I couldn't resist in Santa Barbara and San Diego, so I know I have to limit myself, but the time spent wandering around also gives me some precious breathing space.

The last days in the RV have been testing the mettle of all three of us. Two weeks in what is essentially one vaguely partitioned room on wheels is really quite long enough and we are all at the stage where the sound of the others' breathing seems like a personally tailored provocation. There's been a lot of bickering and squabbling in the time when we're in the RV, but we've been making the most of our days out, when we're all at our best! The morning at the retail park is ideal because we can all get a chance to go off and do our own thing. I buy one book, called The Broke Diaries, which chronicles the adventures of a student in the US trying to make it on a limited budget. Her writing is amazing, and exceptionally good karma, as the writer, Angie Nissel started off just writing her low-income nightmares on a blog and this became so popular, it eventually earned her a book deal! You can check her out at www.angelanissel.com and you should.

When I meet up with Dad and Amy again, I am in a much better mood, and much amused to learn that Amy had spent about 20 minutes in the same bookstore and I was so immersed in my browsing I hadn't even noticed! She had bought the latest Sarra Manning (Lisa, she bought the three volumes of Diary of A Crush in Santa Barbara, devoured the first two in two days and then bought another one of her's called Pretty Things a day later - she loves her! I'm trying to encourage Ames to send a note via Sarra's website but at the moment she's shy and doesn't believe me when I tell her that writers love nothing better than to hear from readers how much they appreciate their work!). We grab some coffee at an Italian Eatery and Amy and I share a delicious freshly-baked pizza before we head off to Muir Woods, a few miles north of San Francisco. I am getting far too addicted to latte - they're full fat and everything, seriously, I'm wild.

Muir Woods is an ancient redwood forest that we were all keen to visit as we didn't have time to visit our preferred option, Yosemite (it's on the 'next time' list). Redwood forests used to cover much of the surrounding Marin County area but the rapid expansion of residential and urban areas have threatened these ancient habitats for many years and many areas are now protected by the national parks. Muir Woods is one such conservation site, and paths through the woods are carefully marked out so that humans can no longer even step on the same soil as the redwoods for fear of the damage that we can do to their habitat. Thousands and thousands of people come to these woods every day and if they were all allowed to walk around as they wished, the damage to the redwoods could be extensive and permanent. The redwoods have no central 'taproot' (I'm not sure what a taproot is, but it sounds impressive, doesn't it?) but embed themselves in the soil by a series of shallowly grounded roots that intertwine with those of neighbouring trees. This is how these beautiful and amazingly fragrant trees manage to grow to such amazing heights - I find this inspirational, that without the support of the neighbouring trees, they'd probably all be bonsai (ok, I'm exaggerating), says a lot about the power of community.

Dad walked ahead (we found out later that Amy and I simply chatter too much for him to bear, especially in such a beautiful space - I hadn't even noticed, but I suppose we were quite spirited!) and Amy and I took the pathway slowly. We had a guide from the park's office that told us all about the forest and we saw loads of chipmunks in the woods while we were there, so we can't have been that loud! The chipmunks are tiny and move really fast, in rapid, jerky little movements, like a bird. They are hilarious to watch and Amy came up with the best description of the way they move when she said that it was like watching them under a strobe light, they move so quickly that you seem to lose moments. Their tiny bodies are in one place one second and then reappear in another space without seeming to move.

The woods are a fascinating insight into the way that nature's chaos seems to reside alongside its beauty. The redwood trees are often hit by lightning because they are so tall and this leads to fire, but the trees have evolved to need these fires as they provide the vital nutrients necessary to their survival and now the park rangers light intermittent controlled fires for this reason. There are many trees that show the evidence of these fires inside them, there are openings in the outside of the tree, often large enough for people to fit inside, as you can see. These openings are charred with fire damage on the inside, but the trees just keep growing - there's a lesson there, too, we need to get burned in order to keep growing, geddit? Gosh amighty, I'm feeling poetic tonight!

The smell of the trees is beautiful, though there is often something eerie about the woods for me, or maybe something that just has the quality of other-ness to it. I really felt this when Amy and Dad went ahead to the gift shop and I took a few minutes to stop in the silence of the trees. The woods are a fairly sparse environment for most forms of life and many of the creatures that do live here are nocturnal, like the owls and bats. I could understand in these moments alone in the woods why Stephen King and many other American writers have written of the woods with a haunting reverence; they are a great setting for ghost stories or stories that explore our distance from nature with a backdrop of the supernatural. The book I have just finished reading, that I bought in San Diego and mentioned in a previous post (about the sea and mythical creatures and spirits that rise from it, which I made the mistake of reading by the Pacific) is called 'The Town That Forgot How To Breathe' and it's by Kenneth J Harvey, but don't rush out to buy it because I'll lend you my copy as soon as Bean has finished with it (Lisa, your Burt might like this one). This book explores exactly these kind of undercurrents of our distance from nature as the woods made me think about, but it is set in Newfoundland, and rather than the woods being the site of the action, a sleepy fishing town, Bareneed, is the focus.

Congrats to Lisa 'where's the plug socket' Clark for roughing it in a teepee, I'm seriously impressed, but I double triple dare you to do it in Muir 'Blair Witch Project' Woods for a night!

It is interesting to me that although the native americans in this area, the Miwoks, lived in the coastal areas of Marin county, it is thought that they did not live within the woods themselves, and it is only hypothesised that they would have passed through them (see the website http://www.visitmuirwoods.com/history.htm if you're interested). Maybe there are some parts of the planet that humans just do not belong, maybe parts where nature simply does not want them to be. I got a strange sense sometimes in the woods, not of hostility to my presence, but something more chilling, like indifference, as though if the woods have a spirit, it is not averse to letting you pass peacefully through, but it would also not be averse to consuming your soul entire and absorbing you into the bark of individual trees, where your spirit would live sentiently for all eternity. Wait, have I gone too far again? Sometimes I say too much.

As we left the woods, Amy and I noticed a sign on the rangers' hut that said 'Mountain Lion alert' and beneath it another that said 'Coyote alert' (I kid you not). These signs contained several pieces of advice, namely: If you see a mountain lion or coyote, pick up your small children, do not make eye contact with the animal, make loud noises and throw things at the animals, and my personal favourite, if attacked, fight back aggressively. I am not kidding about this, I swear. Fight back aggressively? Against a mountain lion or a coyote? Sure, I can see it now:

"Put 'em up, buster, you messin' with the wrong writer here, I'm tougher than I look bitch! Bring it on!"

The beast growls, bares its teeth and leaps forward, aiming for my jugular. There follow sounds of scuffling from within a big cartoon-like ball of dust, from which, after a time, the mountain lion or coyote stumbles out whining and looking slightly dazed before limping feebly and shame-facedly away to the hooting derision of its mountain homies. Sure thing.

Further along, as we got closer to the car park, I see an intriguing sign that says the woods are a 'First Amendment Area' and I could not get my head around what this might mean. As I was the only one among us remotely interested in it, I made a mental note and moved on, but later I look it up and it turns out that these were introduced under Bill Clinton's adminisitration but have been most commonly used under the imperial reign of Junior Bush. These blew my mind. Basically, these areas are used as a means to (as Hicks would say at this point, "Now, strap yourself in,") keep protestors away from media coverage and the subject of their protest. Erm, I don't mean to be obtuse, but isn't the point of protests kind of that the subject of your protest knows you disagree and that you raise awareness and ideally support for your opinions and ideas? And, moreover, the First Amendment guarantees free speech under the US Constitution, doesn't it, so wouldn't that sort of imply that the whole of the USA is a First Amendment Area???????????

I mean, for goodness' sake, to coin the words of countless overheard Americans since we arrived, Are you frickin' serious? (Is it just me or does the word frickin' sound much ruder than actually swearing to you?). Find out more about these First Amendment Areas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone, which, funnily enough has a picture of the sign that you can see at Muir Woods. Then maybe just spend some time being seriously scared at how far up America's arse the UK government is right now. Then go out and stage your own protest in your garden. Grab a couple of friends and make some nice placards. Take some photos and email them to me and I'll post them here. Well, go on then!!

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How rubbish am I!! My email has been down so i couldn't find your blog, been searching but sarah does the states (TEE HEE) was not along the lines i was looking at, chatted to Sarah E Chev somewhere in the states, but she didn't have your sense of humour so I got off my arse and fixed my email to get the details!! Thank you for my birthday wishes, god I missed you on the day, and yes "frinkin" does sound way worse. Oh my god how stunning is amy now, been a long time since I saw her now. haven't read all of your blog, but will continue reading later. Not even sure when you get back. Did you enjoy universal, a much better park than disney anyway, not so "american dream crap". Will post again soon. Love you babycakes.

H

10:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Sarah,

I'm posting now because it may be Tuesday before I get to read the rest of your blog. Saw your pictures of Muir Woods and was reminded of Kay Nielsen's illustration of the wild wood in East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Link attached to view the picture I'm on about - 5th or 6th one down. You'll know it when you see it. http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/01/media-kay-nielsen-east-of-sun-and-west.html
Hope you're enjoying New York. I'm certainly enjoying your blog!

Bridget X

10:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am wearing my placcard now and marching up and I am just about to march up and down the guildhall square! "Strike, strike, stike,"!!!! Oh no, that was the last protest, maybe i will go for "Chev, Chev, Chev"!!!!

Love and magic

Shone.xx

12:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ps... how strange is it that i finally post today and get your postcard too! thankyou lovely! angel card says 'transformation'. Loving the writing honey, it reads very well, I feel that i can close my eyes and see what you see.

I'm missing you x

H x

2:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey lovely one. Looking good in your hat there! You've got some great pictures and I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest when you get back.

I loved the woods - well, I know I wasn't actually there but I could imagine it and feel it. Magical! Now I'm waiting for you to take me on my next journey. Where will it be?

Catch up posting soon 'cos it's not long before you're back - Yay for that!! What a long 18 days this has been without you.

Love & hugs xxxxxxxxxxxxx

6:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I went one better than Shone, protested naked with pants on my head (not yours!). Close call though, had to move indoors before the men in white coats payed a visit. They seem to have been here a lot while you've been gone!!

I LOVE the photo of you in your fabulous hat-you look brill. You are brill!

The woods look so magical. They must have seen and heard so much. Well impressed by the benefit of such a powerful element, fire, to enhance rather than destroy-what a great partnership!

Really loving your blog but missing you more-I need my sunshine back.

Big hugs and bucket loads of love x x x K

7:42 PM  

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