Deep into the Woods

I walked the empty floors of what had been my home for eight years on Beale Air Force Base in Non Commission Officers’ housing.  The echo was unnerving, this home once filled with laughter was now void of any emotion as the inspector had finished his duty, signed the form and handed it to me.  I was free.  My truck was all packed, the cats were in the carry-all and Jordan, my big black Labrador was sitting there looking at me with her tail wagging. 

My divorce would be final in two more weeks and my ex-wife was already in an apartment near the Yuba Community College where she worked.  Any sign of our existence here had been wiped clean by Lysol and now it was time to leave.  I put the carry-all with Bandit and Whiskers in the front on the bench seat and then grabbed Jordan’s leash and put her next to the cats.  Pulling out of the driveway one last time, made me pause, take a final look, and drive down the road to the main road that led to the main part of the base.  Sitting on the rim of the Central Valley in California, Beale had been my home base for eight years from February 1985 until this moment in October 1992 and now I was headed for the next stage of my life which was scaring the life out of me at the moment as I drive the ten miles from base housing to the front gate.  While most Air Force Bases were more compact, Beale seemed to go on forever as it would take nearly fifteen minutes to get to the front gate on this open road.

In January 1991, the Air Force retired the SR-71, capable of Mach Five, but that was a military secret leaving Beale as the only base with the U-2 aircraft nicknamed the Goony Bird and was the slowest aircraft in the entire inventory.  The only mission for the U-2 would be reconnaissance or taking really good pictures at near outer space altitudes which is why the pilot was dressed in a spacesuit.  One of the Goony Birds was taking off as I drove by.  I had spent nearly a year at Howard, Air Base in Panama in 1990-1991 supporting the operation of Detachment 4.  When I got home, my wife asked me for a divorce and since she already had a boyfriend, it was a pretty logical conclusion to our five year marriage.  

As I drove past the security guard shack at the front gate, I took one long look in the rearview mirror as tears flooded my eyes.  I had to stop by my ex-wife’s place to drop off a few odds and ends that belonged to her.  She hugged me and kissed me before I got back into my truck and headed for Interstate 80 toward the Bay Area.  I looked at her waving as I pulled away and once again the tears flooded my eyes.

The drive was routine as I drove through Sacramento and then Davis on my way to Vacaville and then onto Vallejo before getting on the 101 up through Sonoma and Santa Rose.  I would make a left at River Road near Healdsburg and drive until I was in the thick of the Redwoods past Forestville driving along the Russian River, deep into the woods as one would say.  Rio Nido Canyon Two was where our new home would be and there was a Bavarian Hotel that marked the small isolated community jammed into three canyons and redwoods.  Corbel Winery was next to the hotel and their vineyards went all the way to the banks of the river.

Canyon Two Road was built at a forty five degree grade which made it difficult for me to get my Dodge Ram into my tiny driveway, so my friend told me I could park my truck in his driveway on Canyon One which was as much more navigable road.  

My cabin was quite tiny and I would tell everyone, I could take the front door knob in one hand and the back door knob in the other and open both the front and back door.  That was an exaggeration, but not by much.  The deck ran around the front of the cabin and was more spacious than the inside, but this is where I planned on holding court.  

As I unpacked the truck, I let Jordan explore the yard which was nothing more than a rock canyon wall, but there was a winding path to the top.  In the load from my truck, I had more stuff than space as I was slowly beginning to realize that the life of a hermit was going to take some effort.  After three hours, I was hot and tired and needed to cool off.  I would take Jordan to the river and have a look around.  It was a half mile hike that included an underground tunnel for pedestrian traffic since River Road was always so busy with the bustling metropolis of Guerneville just around the bend. Once we came out of the tunnel, we were standing on the north shore of the Russian River just in time to see a canoe with a single person paddling go on by with no way of knowing it would be the last canoe we’d see that season.  

Jordan waded into the water and I took off my socks and shoes, but the water was already below sixty degrees and too cold for me to tolerate for very long.  On the south shore there was swamp grass nearly as tall as I was, but the coming winter had made the green fade to a light brown in places.  The Russian River flows through a canyon and on the canyon walls sequoia trees lined the walls, obliterating the blazing orange sunset that was taking place.  It had been a long day, but it felt good to be here.  When we got back, I would prepare my humble dinner.  

I had both Bandit and Whiskers to take care of as well as I knew they would be hungry after the long day of traveling we had gone through. My friend waved at me as we went by, but it was clear he was not going to leave the sanctuary of his front porch since he did not care for dogs and of course Jordan loved him.  I gave him a thumbs up so he’d know all went well.

I am not a primitive man, so I made sure I had basic cable so I could watch television, mostly the nightly news and the voice of the broadcaster was comforting since I was now alone without any human companionship for the first time in my adult life and it put a funny taste in my mouth.  I ate dinner and went out to the deck and if it weren’t for the streetlights, there would be absolutely no light, but Rio Nido used to be a very popular camping place back during the 1960’s that had fallen into disrepair in places, but the streetlights were still functional and kept the canyons lit.  Sitting on the deck, I could hear the sounds of the night impeding on me and Jordan who was lying by my chair, content and happy to be with me.

When I finally went to bed, I slept the sleep of the dead, waking up at nearly ten in the morning, something I had not done on a Tuesday morning since I went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in June 1979.  I got in my truck, but the dampness made it hard to start.  I must confess, I am not a mechanically inclined person, so I did what I always did when I had vehicle problems, I began to cuss.  But in keeping the hood open, some of the moisture dried or leaked out and within the hour I was on my way to Santa Rosa Costco where I had money to stock up.  Upon returning, I found out that the available space I had would not be enough to accommodate my supplies.  With the wood in the yard, I did what every woodsman does, I built a storage unit on my deck and put the durable goods inside with a locking door.  I had truly become a woodsman and I was beaming with pride as I had spent my first full day in my new place.  I had survived twenty four hours in my new life and defied the odds I was given by my friends.  

Sequoias grow to become the tallest living thing on the planet and the branches can be as high as two hundred feet from the ground.  I found out this can be a problem as one of the trees in my yard let loose with a branch that darn near skewered me as I sat on the deck.  Then I found a real live banana slug on my doorframe.  Of all of God’s creatures a banana slug has to rank up in the top ten as one of the most disgusting living things as they live to eat plants and ride in their own waste known as a slime trail.  But what topped the day off was looking in my tiny kitchen sink and seeing a scorpion that took up the entire bottom of my sink.  I put a glass over the repulsive arachnid as he curled into attack mode, striking the side of the glass several times.  I had no idea how to get rid of him, but for some reason I turned the hot water on and because my tank was small the water got really hot.  Removing the glass, the hot water ended the existence of my uninvited pest.  I would later be told that they congregate in pipes where the water has not been used in a while, because like the banana slug, scorpions like their environment damp and slimy which is exactly what living in the redwoods provides.  I had survived yet another day after being faced with a banana slug measuring about six inches long and a scorpion two inches larger.  

The next day after waiting for a while for my truck’s carburetor to dry out properly, I took Jordan to Armstrong Woods which is a state refuge with a two mile hiking trail and sequoias shading nearly every foot of the trail until you arrive at the top of the canyon.  To get there you drive to Guerneville and take a right until the road ends.

Guerneville was where the hippies retreated to after the Summer of Love as many roadside places sold tied dyed and the smell of some very fine weed hung in the air at all times.  But Guerneville was also the place that many people infected with AIDS would come to spend the last few weeks of their lives before succumbing to whatever ailment that could penetrate their failing immune systems.  While I lived there Randy Shilts passed away after writing And the Band Played On a book that had told the story of how he had contracted AIDS as a reporter for the San Francisco Herald.  He was one of many in a time when AIDS had reached an epidemic level.  I had listened to the religious right that claimed this was God’s way of punishing people for their homosexuality, but I knew that was not how things worked.

My friend took me to the Ziggurat in town where it seemed like it was Halloween every night with all of the female impersonators and very attentive males seated at the bar.  My friend suggested that since I was a newbie in town, to stick close to him.  The music was loud and the dancing could top any of those shows that are on television right now.  It taught me not to fear those whose ideas of sexuality did not match my own.  I had a blast and managed to get out without any awkward social interactions.

The Russian River empties into the Pacific Ocean at a place called Jenner-by-the-Sea near Goat’s Rock.  But where the river trickles into the icy Pacific is a cove where seals like to hang out.  Seals swimming in the open ocean are exposed to predators like sharks, so this cozy cove is like a resort.  Rangers patrol the shore making sure no one disturbs the female seals as they give birth to their young.  Seals are not one of the most quiet creatures around, especially the males who use their voices to establish dominance.  

I took Jordan, but a ranger immediately told me, even though Jordan was on a leash, we were not to go to the cove.  So I took her down near the rock well away from the cove and let her splash in the waves, but she did not like the salt water and so she was not really enthused until a male seal popped its head out of the water and they had a game of tag as Jordan thought the seal was a strange ocean dog or something like that.  Anyway when we got back to the car, she was exhausted, but very content. 

Driving home, River Road hugs the Russian River with redwoods everywhere you look so at about six at night, the place becomes very dark in the deep shadows of the trees and the road is like a snake in places.  So I had to be careful on our way home. I was in no hurry and the traffic flowed smoothly.  

My main goal in leaving the service after nearly fourteen years was to get my college degree.  I was to retire in 1999 and instead I wanted to have my bachelors in teaching by that time, but with an old Ram truck who did not like the dampness of the woods, I went and purchased an economy car, but there was one thing about my new car that was a problem.  The car was a standard and I had never driven a standard.  I had also gotten a job at a juvenile rehabilitation residential place in Rincon Valley which was exactly twenty four miles from my home.  If I continued to drive to work in my Dodge Ram, the money it would cost me in gasoline would just about having me breaking even, so this new car was a deal as long as I could learn how to drive it.

My friend told me he’d help me learn, but then in one of our driving lessons near Armstrong Woods, I could not seem to switch gears as a logging truck was bearing down on us.  His life flashed in front of his eyes and just before the collision, I managed to get the heck out of the way.  There would be other trials to come.  Once he took me up in the coastal hills near Cazaderro where I got stuck on a steep hill and wound up going backwards into a ditch.  We were in luck as a passing Volvo filled with German hikers stopped, got out and lifted my car out of the ditch and back on the roads.  In my version of the story the four helpers were saying “Hip, hip, hip” as they rescued us.  On the first morning I drove twenty four miles to work, I left two hours early when there was no traffic on the streets and prayed not to come to a red light in Santa Rosa.  I almost made it.  In the time I spent living deep in the woods, I would become proficient at driving that car, the same car I would use to drive up the AlCan Highway from California to Alaska through Canada.   

Life is after all a journey sometimes on uncertain roads and when I look back on what I call my River Days when I left both my marriage and the United States Air Force, I felt as if I stepped off an airplane in the sky without checking to see if I had remembered to put on my parachute.  I would meet another friend after we decided that we were not boyfriend or girlfriend material and she would take me touring through Sonoma County where she had grown up and intended to spend the rest of her life.  She taught me to be brave and leave my cabin from time to time even though I was working around fifty hours a week and going to classes at Santa Rosa Junior College.  

Also in my first summer, I found I could wade from one side of the river to the other, but then I got an inner tube and a backpack to put my books in for class.  I would walk Jordan down to the river, get in my inner tube, put my backpack on my chest and grab Jordan by her collar as she swam across the river.  Once on the other side, I would sit in the sandy beach area near the swamp grass and study while all sorts of water crafts from the rental place a few miles up river would paddle on by.  It was always a perfect day.