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MENDOCINO STORIES EVENTS
In performance at the Mendocino Hotel January 26, 2007
Introduction to Mendocino Stories
by Linda Perry
It was the 3rd of July in 1964. We were celebrating my first car and my 21st birthday. We were students at San Jose State. We were young and blond and free. It was the Vietnam era; the war was building; Our friends were in danger of the draft.
I was proud – a Morris Minor convertible, racing green, white canvas top. On the road north we hit mist and fog near the coast. Our hands were stiff and cold as we tried to secure the top. We couldn’t place where we were. It was turning dusk when we arrived in a little town on a beautiful bay.
The beach was full of people and gear, fires. It was the Mendocino Peace Fair. We knew by now this wasn’t a day trip. We would have been happy to sleep on the beach but we had no coverings. The Mendocino Hotel was tiny and run down with a small café on the street. And it was full. A woman overhearing our dilemma, offered to call friends who rented out rooms. We were so glad, and followed the directions to their house somewhere east of the highway. We were greeted by two men on a threshold of a cabin in the dark in the woods of Mendocino. We were a little scared. In the morning after breakfast they guided us on a forest path to a river. We swam in the morning sunlight. They were naked. We were not.
The second time I came to Mendocino I knew where I was going. We were changing our lives, leaving the city, moving to the country, hoping to start a family. It was September 1972. This time when I was guided on a path through the woods to the river, I knew it was the Big River. It was our initiation. We walked the Haul Road all the way to town across the highway. Town was dark and quiet except for the lights of the Sea Gull Cellar Bar. A few people were reading, playing chess, talking quietly. A nice place to come into the warmth, have a hot drink. No one was going our way so we trudged up Little Lake Rd., lazily hitching a ride. We were not veteran hitch hikers, but now we lived in the country. A young woman driving alone stopped and took us all the way home to our little cabin.
There are four stories of coming of age in my series of Mendocino Stories. They all center around the theme coming of age, of paths in forests, of being guided on walks to the river, of being lost, being connected, darkness, commitment, finding my way, and in finally knowing the forest, finding myself. Tonight I will read number three in the series. It is called Turning Point.
Mendocino Stories
Turning Point 1988
If you don’t know what it’s like to stay rigidly on the path - so afraid of straying never to be lost, to be 16 in 1960 in Berkeley and take no drugs, not experience LSD, not go to the Fillmore or Winterland, be a virgin till the age of 22, know nothing of Psilocybin mushrooms until your 40s - then you may not understand my surprise at choosing to be leader that night.
The warm flowing liquid feeling, moving into the sole of my left foot, drew me back into that journey in the autumn woods of Mendocino. Sometimes the mildly surging sensations stayed in my foot, and sometimes they moved into my leg, and sometimes, into my pelvis.
The journey came about when the Dream Group planned one of our special events – a full night together, a slumber party. And like long ago remembered adolescents we would stay up all hours, play, talk, laugh till we peed. The mushrooms made that night even more special.
I loved my dream group. I loved our special events. I loved the idea of eating mushrooms, and just knew I would feel open hearted, loving and connected instead of troubled and judgmental. I jumped right in as usual, not knowing at the time how jumping right in was connected to my fear.
We walked into the forest that night - my cat, my dog, and five good women. We had eaten our especially tasty foods. We smoked our forbidden and pilfered Indonesian clove cigarettes. We chose capes and hats and coats and scarves off hooks near my front door. There was passion in our eating and smoking and in our hurry to be in nature together.
By the light of the moon we strolled in the cool darkness up my driveway to the opening of the forest. I walked ahead on the narrow path surrounded by huge old growth redwood stumps, standing and fallen, some bearing thick tall second growth redwoods in circles around them, some charred into prehistoric winged shapes. We strode through Jackson State Forest dappled by moonlight, through salal and huckleberry past their season, among white and yellow firs, hemlocks, tan oaks and moss - the smell of the thick mulch floor so sweet and potent.
We walked to the boundary, just above the landing. The natural strength of this edge was familiar to me, between thick forest at my back, and open space in front. We stood in this place because the landings of logged forests have full open sky. The scenes here during the last logging operation come to me as shadow images that night – felled trees lay on top of each other in huge dark stacks, awaiting their removal onto logging trucks.
I had guided my friends to my prayer spot, where I came every morning to make my intentions, to speak out loud, to spin, to sing. I wanted to share my world with them, my home, my forest, the paths I knew. From there we saw the orange ring of Mars embracing the almost full moon. People everywhere were viewing this celestial event - Mars and the moon sitting together in the deep dark sky, Mars closer to Earth that night in 1988, than he would be again until 2003.
In the orange glow we might have been standing on a moon crater - an eerie atmosphere with only dark and light distinguishable. The absence of color had a disfiguring effect on shapes. And yet the calico colors of my cat called Furry, rolling in the mulch, sprayed up like a strobe light, shooting sparks from her fur. Next we were laughing with the large writhing shapes of Margaret and Lydia on the ground with her.
We were a motley crew, dressed in the full regalia of children playing dress up. The dog noisily snuffled wild smells. Isabel and Barbara said they were tired and their feet hurt. We had barely entered the woods and they wanted to go back. I had huge plans. I wanted to complete the circle – east from my back door, south through the woods, west along the river, north back into the woods, and east into my front door. I made a speech about the soul of our dream group, about being together, about our connection to each other, about being on psychedelics in nature, about the planning we had done to carve out of our busy lives this auspicious celestial time to come together.
I described the lovely circle starting with the forest trail down to the Haul Road on Big River – about 20 minutes. The walk along the river to Dawson’s Landing at the Log Boom – about 10 minutes. “We could go swimming in the moonlight” I said, knowing I’d never do any of it alone. I sounded sure of myself when I said that just beyond the Boom, on the north side of the road we would find the water tower landmark that would guide us up the trail through the logging cut to my gardens – steep and so a little longer.
I was shocked and disappointed when they turned back. I really wanted everyone to come, but my speech had not inspired them. I felt doubly betrayed as I watched Furry turn toward home. I loved her wildness in the woods and wanted her with me. She seemed to be saying that I was no guide, that we would not be safe, that I would surely lose the way, that she would rather curl up on a stranger’s bedding.
I was so relieved and happy that three of us would make the quest- that Lydia and my dog Buddha were willing to follow me. Buddha’s knowledge of the forest was useless as a guide. She was after scents, not paths, and didn’t think twice about being lost until it was too late. Then she would lay on her belly waiting for us to come and find her. She could be out for many hours. Lydia stated firmly that she loved being lost. So, I was on my own, with my fear of straying from the path for fear of being lost.
It might help to explain that from the time he was little, it was my son and not me who led the way in the woods. We didn’t talk about it. It was where he grew up, where he played and explored. He had no fear. As he got older he knew I wanted to know the forest better. When he was 12 and going away for several months, he spray painted red arrows on tan oaks along some of his paths so I could use them with abandon while he was away.
Perhaps it will help you understand if you know that I have no innate sense of direction, cannot read a map, fear skunks, and have a strong memory of Karen Knoebber. She left a neighborhood Christmas party in Comptche to walk a short distance home, lost her way in the forest and wandered on bare feet, eating from the forest floor and sleeping like wild boars, mountain lions, bears, raccoons, schmoos and gophers, for ten days, until she came out onto the highway above Ukiah. These woods have few signs. Karen named her chronicles “Moss Does Not Grow On The North Side of Trees in a Redwood Forest”. I saw her play performed at the Helen Schoeni Theatre. Reading moss signs, she lost her way.
Our journey was full of turning points for me - my first experience with psychedelics. I was the guide. The mushrooms must have loosened my fears. I even thought we might have to stay the night in the forest. I did not turn back. At the river road I turned west for awhile and then thought no, and turned east, walking awhile finding nothing familiar enough. West and east and just as I despaired of finding the swimming hole, I found it. I listened. I quieted my heart and listened for the sounds of the rushing waters coming directly down the hillside from the spring on my land on the ridge above. I was surprised that I knew these signs. I felt powerful and very alive. And each time we were quiet, I felt my body and the warm rushing began in my feet and traveled fully up and through my head – not at all subtle.
We were not quiet nor were we noisy. We were two women and a dog, joyfully getting to know ourselves, the woods, the night and each other. We were excited and delighted in the feel of it all. Everything was alive. The dog scurried around excitedly and we smelled strong animal odors suddenly. Sounds of a truck coming fast in our direction sent us flying into the bush, and for once the dog minded my command. First silence, and then laughter. We were safe. We decided it was probably a logger who had a key to the gate at the entrance to the forest at Big River Beach. We did not want to deal with strange men. The forest was our ally. Civilization was strangely outside of our world. We had become then like the logger who knows and calls the company forest “inside” the privately owned property “outside”.
We sat by the river full of midnight moonlight, talked and listened and giggled and gazed at the red light of Mars, the white of moon, the shimmer of stars on smooth water, the dark old pilings with their rebar bent at odd angles– even these had life. We wondered about Martians, told stories of aliens, invited them to come down to us . We gave them several places to land and told them we were friendly and they would be safe. Then we thought about the world and E.T. and wondered if they would be safe, felt serious and sad.
River ruffled up against the Boom, and wet the silt of the shore. Sounds from the highway distant and distinct, mixed with silence. Ravens called. Dog explored. Trees rustled. Movement of tree energy like waves inside and outside, connecting one tree to another and to all others. We felt our own energy connected to these waves in nature. The night air became chilly while we sat still. We moved from the river bank finding the path to the road. Just as effortlessly we walked west until the metal of the water tower in the moonlight guided us off the road and into the woods toward the ridge and home.
We dragged ourselves up the ridge sweating even in the coolness of deep night. We stopped for breath, and to look around again. We used thick stemmed shrubs to pull ourselves up the steeper slopes. Finally we stood on the edge of the gorge, saw to the west the heavy mist obscuring the view of what I knew to be the mouth of Big River. To the east we saw the glow of lights through the forest that I knew to be the front windows of my home.
I had found the antidote to fear – be still, feel the body, look around, notice what else is where you are - what tree, what water, what bush. Feel the movement inside and out, connect, feel pleasure, see the life - follow it all. Adventure wraps around fear and out comes joy.
The last stretch was a wasteland left by the logging operation. Trees down, stumps left jagged against the sky, dry crumbly hard soil, deep gullies created by heavy rains driving off topsoil and mulch – gone the soft forest floor. Dying horsetails. Smells of fir branches underfoot. Huge unburned piles of slash. Familiar ground I had walked with my adventurous son.
I pointed out the fig and plum trees I had planted with hope there would be enough sun for fruit. The very defined gateway between inside and outside felt hard to cross– painful, sweet entry enhanced by the mushrooms. I felt hesitation in my bones to leaving the magical world. The wild beckoned me. I knew this bitter sweet edge – the place on my body where the cold river and warm air meet – the intersection. The turning point of that night was the gift of the woods I had lived in for 16 years, and the gift of my courage.
They were all asleep in colorful bags when we came quietly in. Smells perfumed the air - my own home, my own scent, tan oak banked, burning hot and quiet in the stove, foods on the table – fruit and cheese, olives and wine. The cat wakened, padded over stretching to greet us. Wide awake with our adventure, we sat awhile on the porch looking out into the shapes in the darkness of the woods we traveled well that night.
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