Bruno had set chokers in the woods until a few years ago, but then got clobbered in the hip by a swinger, so the company found him a slot at the mill. Though not too mobile from the waist down, his upper body was sturdy and flexible; still could bench press two hundred. He’d grown up near the woods, his daddy helping to rid the Cascades of their second and third growth, the family moving down to redwood country in the late seventies where a few benevolent company towns still had trees to support them. They’d settled in this coastal town, Bruno starring in football and track, a shade too young for Vietnam. He’d earned good high school grades and tried State College, but the money in the woods drew him back after a semester.
Sure, Bruno was brown-nosing, pretending to appreciate Pete’s humor, but he sensed there was more than geniality coming down here. Pete was trying to warm him up for some kind of deal; might mean money to supplement the unemployment and not having to kissass jerks like Pete for drinks. It was sort of disgusting to hang out for much of the day at the Torino or the Philosophers or the Widowmaker, but there you could hear what was happening, who was doing what to whom, and maybe you could pick up more than spare change on that information. And now Pete was asking if he had wheels and if he’d be interested in some good paying work for the next few days.
Early Wednesday morning, Bruno’s battered salt-rusted pickup topped the Cottaneva grade where he got his last look at the town’s sawmill plume fifteen miles downcoast, lit by the midsummer sun. I’ll feel a lot better heading back and seeing that plume day after tomorrow, Bruno thought as he steered the pickup through an S curve.
At the bottom of the grade, he turned east on a rocked road and followed it for a couple of miles, then through an open yellow gate to a comfortable-looking lodge where Pete was waiting out front. Unlike yesterday at the Torino, Pete was all business, praised Bruno for being on time, then passed two parcels, five $20 bills and a slip of paper with an address through the pickup’s passenger side window.
“Don’t ask,” Pete said. “Just stick to back roads, keep a low profile and get these to Baytown by noon tomorrow. You’ll get more money on delivery,” then smiling added, “and have a good ride.”
As Bruno turned the truck and headed back down the road, he noticed the corrugated building next to the lodge, backed by fresh terraces on the recently clearcut, south-facing hillside. He drove north on the two-lane for a few miles, then turned left on a single-lane graveled road, climbing over the ridge and dropping into Salal Valley. Bruno remembered family picnics there and fishing for summer steelhead where the creek meandered through alders. From Salal north the road wound again to the ridge top where third growth struggled up after clearcuts. The road was steep, gullied by the past winter’s rains, and he needed four wheel drive to keep moving through the ruts. Thick dust forced Bruno to roll up the windows and turn on the fan. It took nearly two hours to make the twenty-odd miles to a decent road again at Four Corners. He stopped in the shade, released the hubs, and after taking a pee, got his styro cool chest out from the bed and wolfed sandwiches he’d bought earlier that morning in town.
Rather than head east to the highway, Bruno stayed north on graveled roads, and it was mid afternoon when he reached pavement near Nectar. As he rolled past Sal’s Cafe, he thought he could sure use a bowl of her tomato soup, so swung a U and stopped in front of the diner. He sat at the counter and Sal, a ruddy, sweet-faced lady greeted him through the kitchen hole. “Hey. What’s riffraff like you doing up here in the middle of the week?”
“Oh, just looking over the country. Greenchain jobs’re scarce now that the mill’s folding. How about some of that tomato soup?”
Sal laughed, “I’ll have to open a can.” But he could tell it was the real stuff when she ladled the crimson elixir from a big pot into his bowl. While Bruno was slurping, only Sal noticed the Redwood County sheriff’s car slowly easing past, its driver checking his watch and talking on the radio.
As Bruno headed northwest down the valley toward the Cape, the sun was directly at him, about to set behind the coastal fog bank. “Hang out around here part of the night,” he muttered to himself. “Then get over the hill early so’s to deliver in Baytown during proper business hours. No need to speculate what’s in those packages.”
It was nearly dark when the road curved north and followed the beach. Bruno swung his pickup into the state park lot near the cape lighthouse. He stretched, walked around, then got back into the truck to escape the wind blowing off the fog bank. He napped fitfully in the cab as gusts shook the truck, and was awakened predawn when the wind died.
Try to get through Victoria before sunup, thought Bruno, cranking the engine. The road wound to the ridgetop through open pastureland, then dropped down the north side through partly forested slopes, flattening just as it reached the town. He eased down Main Street past closed antique shops, boutiques and cafes, and was beginning to pick up a little leaving-town speed when the red light illuminated the cab from behind.
Yesterday hadn’t been one of Deputy Charlie’s better ones, an embarrassment really, and now he’d been staked out half the night waiting for a beatup pickup that fit the description of the one he’d just pulled over on the shoulder outside of Victoria. Yesterday, working 101 southbound, Charlie spotted a classic VW beetle, early seventies, but judging by bumper stickers and decals the driver was right out of the sixties. He radioed in the plate number, then noticing a large black plastic trash bag showing in the backseat, he decided to pull the guy over to check tail lights, turn signals, or something.
“O.K., but don’t take too long,” responded Dispatch. “Remember you’ve got a court appearance at two o’clock, so try to keep that shoulder mud off your shoes.”
“Roger, I’m flashin’ him now and I’ll leave my lapel mike on so you can record.” After pulling the beetle over Deputy Charlie asked the driver, a short man, late forties with a pony tail and graying beard, to please exit and stand clear of the vehicle, “and do you mind if I take a minute to check inside?”
The driver said O.K., with an odd look that made Charlie even more suspicious of that black bag. Tilting the driver’s seat forward, he stuck his head and shoulders in the back, noting an aroma not really that of marijuana, but nevertheless still familiar. Without peering further, he put his right forearm into the bag, rotated his hand, felt damp, sort of slimy cloths. Then the ammonia odor hit him and Dispatch heard him say, “Shit,” as he extracted his hand and saw, then smelled his greenish-brown - covered fingers.
She heard the driver chuckling in the background, saying, “Yeah, we don’t have diaper service out here, so I take ‘em to town twice a week for exchange. I gave up growing years ago, but you guys never quit. I guess you’d call it profiling.”
The Dispatcher was chuckling too, and hoped Deputy Charlie could find a rain puddle to wash hands before he got to court.
Now, outside of Victoria, Bruno cursed quietly as Deputy Charlie kept him waiting, then politely asked him to get out, and with minimal searching retrieved the packages from behind the seat. As dawn broke, the truck looked lonely beside the road. Manacled, Bruno was in the back seat of Charlie’s cruiser, en route to the Redwood courthouse.
Charlie was thinking, compared to yesterday things’re looking up.
mayor, the sheriff, the Arkansas-Pacific Lumber Company regional manager and other captains of government and industry met in a private dining room at the Baytown Inn. The Empire Club prided itself as a venue where deals were cut, spheres of influence demarcated, stamps of approval allocated, “In the best interests of the people of the Redwood Empire.” Thursday’s guest was Lance Erskine, a highranking official of Carolina Tobacco; lean, fit, in his forties, (“slicker’n snot on a doorknob,” said his admiring corporados back in Raleigh - Durham) who explained company policy, “- that would provide long-term benefits to all residents of the Redwood Empire.” Nodding at the beaming Arkansas-Pacific Lumber Company manager, Lance stated he was delighted to announce his company’s new joint ownership of all A-P lands in Redwood County. “From what we know of what’s comin’ down in Washington, it’s inevitable that cannabis’ll soon be legalized, and it is in your and our interests that a forward-looking tobacco company be positioned to move quickly to market that product as soon as legalization occurs. Our allies in the coastal timber industry realized this years ago, and they’ve had the brightest agricultural specialists scoutin’ the best sites and growing conditions for the finest cannabis the world has seen.”
Erskine paused, then with a slight smile continued,” It would of course not be legal to actually plant and grow marijuana in test plots, but in cooperation with your law-enforcement people, we had the good fortune to acquire high-quality product, confiscated from savvy growers who, we discovered had optimum sites and state-of-the-art methods. And we are so certain of success in this endeavor, we call it - - ” He was interrupted by a tap at the door, followed by the entry of a sheriff’s captain who ceremoniously doffed his Smoky Bear hat and handed him two carefully wrapped packages. Thanking him, Lance continued, “- - Redwood Gold. And now, my friends I invite you to sample a prototype of this product of your wonderful region, to be produced by a partnership of stewards of the land and enlightened tobacco.”
Lance passed around carefully rolled cigarettes which most of the attendees fingered with some hesitation. But when the college president lit hers up and inhaled, the rest relaxed and followed suit. Most were in their fifties, and recalled their balmy student days puffing pot not nearly as good as this in dorms, coffeehouses and parked VWs. They tilted back in their chairs,engulfed by the familiar aroma and the euphoria of the certainty of corporate insight.
Just two blocks north in the County jail holding cell, Bruno was wondering where the hell he could raise $2500 for bail. Toward afternoon, a deputy opened the cell door and said, “You’re lucky, somebody’s waiting downstairs.”
And there was Pete, saying, “you’re out, now here’s the deal . . .”
Bruno interrupted, “you son of a bitch, you set me up. . .”
Pete’s smile disappeared. ”Sure, that’s part of the deal. Now hear me out. There’s bigtime interest in this, no fuss, no questions. We had to go through the motions. You won’t have to appear, there’s no record. Hell, you’re part of the team that’ll save the economy up here. Here’s your keys. The main thing now is to keep quiet, meet me tomorrow at the Torino.”
Bruno exited the jail and there was his truck, freshly cleaned, a full tank of gas, ready to take him south. As he drove back through Victoria, he saw the Sheriff’s cruiser parked along Main Street, with Deputy Charlie tossing him a salute.
Estuaries are the transitions between rivers and the sea, where steelhead and salmon acclimate to fresh water on their journeys upstream in the Fall, and where young smolts feed and get their first taste of salt water before they venture seaward. When I kayak Mendocino County’s Big River Estuary I traverse ecologic zones ranging from beaches, through salt marshes, to riparian woodlands and conifer forest.
The estuary is a drowned river valley that extended at least five miles farther west when sea level was three hundred feet lower, fifteen thousand years ago during the last glacial epoch. If you were standing on the Mendocino bluffs then, you’d barely see the beach five miles away, down the river flowing in a valley incised in the sandstone bedrock. As continental ice sheets melted and sea level gradually rose, winter river flows deposited silts farther and farther upstream, partially filling the valley and forming
riverside flats that were in turn inundated by the rising salt water of the
growing estuary. Freshwater silt flats became salt marshes, forming the
basis for the interplay of life between the river and the sea.
Just across from the beach where I put my kayak in, there are small salt grass islands laced by channels, navigable except at low tide. Here it is easy to see that the estuary is the key to the life of the lower river, and the border marshes are the key to the life of the estuary. The marshes rely on daily flooding and emptying; the free flow of salty water around the marsh grasses nurtures the microlife that forms the base of the estuary’s food chain. Near high tide, every small channel brims with salt water, and salt grass and pickleweed bend before the upriver current. Six hours later at low
tide the vegetated channels are exposed to air, oxygenating, the veritable lungs of the estuary.
After investigating the marshes, I start upriver. Despite the evidence of old logging and the presence of other boaters, I have the feeling of solitude after rounding the first bend and losing sight and sound of the highway. The alders and willows of the flats and redwood and fir of the slopes instill an impression of wilderness. Several osprey pairs nest in the tree tops along this stretch, rearing their nestlings in spring, training their fledglings in summer, then heading south in October. Past an old log boom the estuary narrows and a blue heron precedes me upstream squawking my presence. In the late spring, flotillas of young mergansers are escorted by their moms
under the alders overhanging the north bank, sharing the shadows with river otter. In the fall when the Coho school up to await the first rains to provide fresh water, a harbor seal may be out for a dinner cruise. He surfaces, stares me in the eye for a few seconds, then backslides under water and I see, can almost feel, his dark form streamlining beneath the kayak.
A hundred years ago, this was an industrial waterway, clogged with first-growth logs dumped into the river, then boomed up behind temporary dams to await winter high water to flush logs down to the mill in Mendocino. Today the slopes are mostly reforested, and have recently become protected in the Big River State Park.
Bedrock underlying the estuary and its marshes is exposed on bends where the current has attacked the steep banks. It is a fine-grained sandstone, termed “graywacke,” whose parent material was deposited in an ocean trench, then became hardened and fractured as the trench collided with the western edge of North America forty to sixty million years ago. In places the graywacke is laced with white veinlets of quartz where the fractures conducted warm, silica-rich fluids.
Bluff tops on the sides of the estuary’s valley are capped with softer sandstone and pebbly conglomerate of marine terraces, uplifted hundreds of feet from where they were shoreline dunes. Successive terraces with theirunique “pygmy” soils make up a giant staircase, where the oldest terrace, about a half million years old, is now five hundred feet above sea level and several miles inland.
The boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates is the San Andreas Fault which now lies a few miles offshore; when sea level was three hundred feet lower, you could have walked out to the fault. The San Andreas moves in fits and starts; the most recent episode was the great earthquake of 1906 when the Pacific plate shifted instantly fifteen to twenty feet northwestward with respect to North America. The shaking and subsequent fires in the towns of Mendocino and Fort Bragg were similar to
the trauma experienced in San Francisco.
Having been in a rowing shell on a narrow arm of San Francisco Bay when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit, I can extrapolate a little to what might occur on the Big River in the next large earthquake. I remember feeling the solid slap on the boat’s hull of the shock transmitted through the water, then my amazement as millions of bubbles reached the surface when the shaking released gasses from the bottom sediments. Water in the arm of the bay I was on sloshed from bank to bank, causing small waves to slap the hull from right and left. The wet soil on the banks slumped into the water, adding to the wave action. I can imagine similar occurrences on the Big River, with the added unease of seeing trees shaking and some tumbling into the estuary. If I were near the mouth, I’d feel compelled to beach the boat and get to high ground before a tsunami bore rolled up the estuary. But why this paranoia? The probability of my being in a small boat during another large earthquake is infinitesimal, I hope.
During winter high water, the estuary is the color of latte, and the current makes my paddling upstream very difficult. I see then how sediments from the interior Coast Ranges continue to be deposited in the estuary, adding material to the existing natural levees, slowly converting salt marshes to fresh water marshes. Our present global warming might offset this process as sea level rises rapidly and salt water intrudes farther up the Big River.
During times of moderate winter flow, I’m able to kayak about four miles upstream in a couple of hours to where a landslide from the south bank partially blocked the channel in 1998, evidence of the effects of that year’s El Nino winter on slopes logged in the 1980s; a reminder that nature and human activities still combine to alter the estuary. Then with energy sagging I turn and ease down river, paddling just enough to keep my kayak aligned with the current. In summer, timing for the tide I reach five miles upriver on the flood, then use the ebb to return, cooled by paddling into the afternoon wind past the marshes with their saltgrass bending upstream.
Skip Wollenberg
