I’ve been in Napa for a day to see an old friend.  Sometimes you need to see someone and you find a way to make that happen, no matter what sort of crazy journey you are on.  I’m glad I did.  Napa is a peaceful place, and I had a wonderful evening and day with my friend and his family.  Today, I left to the north, through Calistoga to Porter Creek, which I followed until it hit the Russian River, which I followed until it hit the Pacific Ocean.  From Stewart’s Point to just south of Fort Bragg, I travelled the “1” again.  I thought it might get old, this road of 10,000 post cards, but it doesn’t.  With near continual elevation changes and flora from deep forest to open pasture, there is a new frame around each bend for each new view.

It is, however, a place of almost frightening raw power.  To ride the “1” is to witness the battle of natural forces — the relentlessly pounding Pacific versus the proudly defiant rock walls of the continent, and the third player in the game; the water from the east.  While the shoreline has it backed bowed against the ocean, that same back is turned to the eastern mountains, where rain and snow — prodigious this year — land and begin a headlong rush downhill to the sea.  Everyone knows it is hard to hold back anything if you don’t have good footing, and this year, footing for the coastline is sketchy.  The erosive eastern tide of snowmelt and rainwater is washing out chunks of the coastline, and the “1” with it.  We, or at last I, am conditioned to respect the power of the crashing surf — it shakes the ground when you stand on the rocks to to take a picture of it — but the rain and snow seem more docile.  Not so here on the western edge.

Forced off the “1” I cross over the mountains via Route 20 and turn north again on the 101, which will join the “1” at Legget and continue from there to Olympic National Park in Washington.  Everyone out here calls roads by the word “the” and then the number, I don’t know why.  Anyway, the 101 takes me to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, via a scenic offshoot called Avenue of the Giants. 

The thing about Humboldt Redwoods is that it is the largest old growth redwood forest in the world. In the world.  And while these coast redwoods are not the oldest trees on the earth, or even in the US, they are the tallest.  Age is more an honor than a contest, however, and these trees have the honor of being around since before Christ, at least a few of them do.  I take two different hikes today through two different sections of the Rockefeller Forest in the wilderness section of the park.  On the ground, amongst these giants it is deeply peaceful. Coins in your pocket seem an intrusion as you walk along.  Their power is one of permanence.  As soon as you are about to be awed by the tallest redwood in the world (which I was, it is 361 feet tall and over 53 feet around) you realize that size is not nearly as important as staying power.  And this joker has staying power.  While the coastline was breaking off in chunks, many of these trees were enduring lightening strikes, floods and sawyers’ blades, only to refute them all and stand tall.  Stately, quiet, power.

I will move on up the coast tomorrow to Redwoods National Park, where I will see more, but not taller redwoods.  I hope to camp on the beach there. Like the rugged violent coastline, I don’t expect the presence of more redwoods to get old. I feel better when I’m around them.  I feel more certain about our future.

California Highway 1 is pretty much the epitome of what it means to travel on the edge. Planted and paved in a narrow space between the surging Pacific Ocean and the cliffs of the stubborn continent, it is literally and figuratively, the edge.  And you can drive on it.

Having spent restful night tucked in a cove behind Montana de Oro itself, amidst fir and Eucalyptus that hissed in the ocean wind, I awoke to ride the “1” north. The plan was to make it San Francisco and then turn inland for two days in Napa to re-charge, wash some clothes and see an old friend. Plans on the edge, as I know by now, rarely survive in tact. It turns out that Highway 1 is very nearly washed away between basically Hearst Castle around San Simeon and just south of Monterey. I drive to the spot of the closure where, by happy accident, I get to see a colony of Elephant Seals before turning back to find a route inland around the damage.  Among their many charms, Elephant Seals spend most of March and early April lying on the beach blowing snot out of their noses and shedding all their hair. The molted hair and skin leaves a piquant odor in the air and provides an all you can eat buffet for the noisy seagulls.  There are several hundred seals flopped up on the beach itching and snorting.  The males grow to 5,000 pounds and are 16 feet long. The females are a svelt 1,800 pounds and 12 feet long.  Not even including the juveniles you can begin to get a sense for the amount of hair and skin we are talking about. Educational, yes, and an interesting thing to check off the bucket list, but at this time of year at least, unpleasant.

So as it turns out, the rugged western edge is a fragile thing. A continent unmotivated to cede its ground and a sea determined to take it away. Add in a year of record rains, a good portion of which having hit the ground wants very badly to run to the sea and the edge is getting it from both sides.  The combination has proved too much this year and the mudslides and road collapses have forced an alteration to my plans.  I weave my way back over the coastal range and find suitable route north as far as necessary to rejoin Highway 1.  The same rains that have washed out the highway on the edge have fueled a spectacular outbreak of fertility on the eastern side of the coastal range.  The broad green valley, already known for its vegetable production is chock-a-block with new growth and every grower and farmhand is wearing a smile.  I think about the early settlers here as I drive along.  Some saw the coastal range and thought, just one more time we will see what’s on the other side.  Others saw the fertile valley on the eastern side and, after weeks in the desert, said this is where we will settle. And there they did, ultimately producing the bulk of an entire nation’s fruit and vegetables.  The other group crossed one more range only to damn near fall into the sea.  But there they settled also, hanging towns in the narrow gaps in the cliffs and exercising all manner of engineering to cantilever and prop up what soon became centers of fishing and financial and technological industries.  With the ocean as a backdrop and no plows to push, the western edge became the more popular and the required development pushed further still the boundaries of what one can and can’t do to a terrain to establish a home.  Periodically, we are reminded when we pushed too far — and the land simply takes it back. Whether through a shifting of the ground itself, or the sloughing off of hillsides under the weight of heavy rains.

Such is the beauty of this rugged edge that, regardless of the risks and penalties, we simply call in the big machines and start again.  California will re-open the lost sections of the Highway 1, edging them a bit closer into the cliffs, supporting them a bit more strongly with engineeried devices.  And one day, the land will take those back too.  Man decided the northern and most of the southern edge of our country, but nature created the western one.  And it’s not inclined to have its choices altered. And so the struggle continues out here on the edge.

At some point in the history of North America, the Mojave Indians forged a series of trails from their homes in the Mojave region to the Pacific Ocean.  This allowed trade with other tribes, and gave them a chance to get out of the arid desert region of southeastern California, traverse the mountains and explore the new terrain of the coast.  It enabled them to find the edge. And it allowed them to return home, richer and more informed, and perhaps more appreciative of the very special place that is the Mojave.  The Spanish Missionary Francisco Garces followed their tracks sometime later and made the same journey, and, in 1826, Jedidiah Smith became the first white man to follow this path and reach the Pacific overland from mid-America.  Today, along the exact same route, tested at times by the terrain, I left the Mojave and headed west to, as Jedidiah did, reach they Pacific from mid-America.

While I would be much aided by modern conveniences and roadways, for the first four hours, I followed his route — the route of the Mojave.  A simple two-track path out of the New York Mountains, across the lava fields and groves of Joshua trees, at a pace of around 10 miles an hour.  Where I travelled, they had travelled, where I went, they had lead. I saw one other traveler the entire route before arriving at a paved road and making my way to Baker California and from there onward to the coast.  I spend a fair amount of time appreciating the land over which I travel, but I don’t, I think, spend enough time realize how it is and why it is I am able to travel it.  Other people, for other reasons, with greater burdens than mine, found it, settled it, mapped it, routed through it and made it a way forward.  Today, amazed by all that I saw, I took a minute to think about them and to offer some measure of gratitude for my path to the edge.

At Baker California I was reminded of a quote my son recently sent me.  I can’t vouch for the attribution, but I believe it.  The quote is, or is close to, “Men argue, nature acts,” and it is attributed to Voltaire.  In Baker, nature acted.  50 mph constant straight line winds blew out of the west and scattered sand, dust and soda from the dry lake at Mojave in an apocalyptic scene of chaos.  Men and women scattered as well, from one lane to another in fist-shaking rage at all around us.  I tried, vainly in some cases, to focus on progress and to remember previous travelers and their hardships. And I kept my focus where their’s no doubt was — on progress to the sea.

With only a little slacking of the wind, I crossed the nation’s fruit basket between Bakersfield and Mojave, mesmerized and appreciative of the rows of almond and fruit trees.  I thought about the massive irrigation that kept them growing with water from the Colorado, and I thought about the signs posted saying “no water = no jobs.” And I thought about Voltaire.  This year, after many years without, nature is acting in abundance when it comes to water.  Not since 1983 have we seen this depth of snow pack that fuels the Colorado and other rivers that provide the water that grow our fruit. While we are arguing over who owns what water and what causes it to be more or less in abundance, nature is raining and snowing like we haven’t seen in years.  I don’t know why.

What I do know is that from Mojave along the Smooth road to Paso Robles, the result is as obvious as it is glorious.  The land is green.  In row after row of hills as large and smooth as great pachyderms’ backs, the grass is tall and green and lush.  In years of similar cycles the Mojave Indians making this trek must have thought they’d arrived in some paradise, as different from their homes as night is from day.  They knew very little of other places, but by comparison, my experience is vast, and I have not seen ground and terrain as beautiful in any place. I wonder if it will be this way next year, in any years hence, and I decide that it has been before and it will be again. To think otherwise is to project a dominion over this land that I simply do not believe we possess.

Closer to Paso Robles the great beasts of hills give way to slower rolling ground transected by the the geometry of vineyards.  The rhythm of the vine rows and stakes carries a tune as you pass along before the city intrudes. There is some sense of a terminus, but no evidence of one as I drop through the valley of the National Forest just south of Los Osos, draped with gum and Eucalyptus, hidden and dark and peaceful.  And then it happens.  The great ocean fills the scene as far and as wide as any author has ever described.  The edge.

Here at Montana de Oro I am at the western edge.  An edge that is so only grudgingly.  A land that fought and fights to continue.  Jagged and raw it cedes only to the power of thousands of miles of hydraulic force born in Asia and stenghthed with every swell until it breaks this landmass off at the Pacific cost.  This is an edge wrought not by men, but by nature.  This is as far as we could push, as far as we could dream.  To here we could travel, from here we could trade, but we could not make more land, we could not will more opportunity.  From this western edge, we would stand, turn eastward and realize that we now knew the extent of our country.  But we would have to make it one. And so we have.

Tomorrow, I follow this edge north. To learn more of who and what made the travel possible, and to learn more of what it means to know limits — and how to make the most of them.

In the early 1820s, travelers headed west would often find themselves on the Santa Fe Trail as a means to get there.  From Missouri, across Kansas, Colorado and into New Mexico.  The trail crossed the great grassland prairies before rising into the mountains of northern New Mexico.  Today, I started my journey the same way — Missouri, into Kansas along much of the same route.  The old travelers were on the edge of something remarkable and life changing.  I think I am too.

Around 10 o’clock last night after a very nice first day, the sky lit up and put on a lightening show non-stop for six hours.  I lulled to sleep to the sound of the rain and the distant thunder and roused periodically to the bright flashes, and I don’t remember ever worrying about anything. It was, if there is such a thing, as peaceful a thunderstorm as you could imagine. This morning, rain still falling, I got the camp buttoned up and headed west into Kansas wondering why I didn’t worry.  And then wondering why I was wondering about not worrying. I was headed for the Cimarron National Grassland, a place I’d never been and I decided that I must have just replaced worry with wonder.

The Cimarron National Grassland is one of 20 National Grasslands administered by the Forest Service and is over 108,000 acres of land in total.  The Santa Fe Trail runs for 23 miles of its length through the middle of Cimarron as does the Cimarron River, more on which later.  Rather than finding rolling fields of tall prairie grasses, I found rolling hills of, well, I don’t really what.  There is cactus, sage, certainly some grasses, and the low areas are dotted with cottonwood trees. And there is horizon to horizon a constancy of rhythm to it that it takes your breath away.  The idea that one lone point of rock was so important as a navigation point is testament to the sameness of it all.  Called, appropriately, Point of Rocks, it was a point from which one could see other travelers in the distance, or by which one could navigate along the trail.  Everything else, everything, is the same.  Through this all runs the Cimarron River, though “through” is not the right word.  Under is the right word.  If you look on a map you will see the Cimarron River.  If you come here to it, you will not.  It runs under the grasslands.  As a result, you can only identify it by the cottonwood trees along the shallow depression where one presumes it sometimes rises to make an appearance.

Amidst all this vastness, I find a campsite along the Bank of the not a river and within hours am surrounded by yipping coyotes, various raptors and Merriam turkey.  This is before the stars show up.  When that happens the whole notion of vast takes on a new meaning.  With no light pollution, crisp dry air, and nothing taller than your waist (Point of Rocks not withstanding), the night sky is a pallet of which only the Creator was worthy.  Mercury, Mars, star clusters, all the old favorite constellations explode in clarity and depth only possible when you get this far away from everything.  And somehow they mean more here.  They have a permanence and stewardship to and of this space, watchmen of travelers through this vastness, stenographers of a history that we only print in pages.

I’m not on the edge yet, but for many travelers in the past, this day’s journey was an edge.  They were leaping off.  Pressing on.  Going forward into what they knew not.  And these stars, and this grassland saw them on their way.  As they are each doing with me.  Much to my delight.