Drawn to the River

Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green,

into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. Bright

pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on

the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it. With

a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white

ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones. How did he love this

water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! In his heart

he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him:

Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to

learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this

water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many

other things, many secrets, all secrets.

From Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

Yesterday I arrived at Jedidiah Smith Redwood campground. This is one that multiple people recommended, so I had been looking forward to it.  I was a bit worried that I would have trouble finding a camping spot here, since it seemed to be popular with so many different people. I had tried to reserve a spot on-line, but it said all the campsites were fully reserved for several months out.  I even called yesterday before leaving, and asked the ranger who answered the phone what availability was like.

Found a sunny spot for my solar panels

“Well, it’s hard for me to say, as several of the spots are first-come-first-serve, and I don’t know who is going to come,” he told me.

“Ok, but has it been pretty full lately? If I showed up tomorrow, do you think there’d be a chance that anything is available?” I persisted.

“I really can’t tell you that, because, again, we can’t reserve anything over the phone.” He wasn’t being too helpful.

“Yes, I’m not asking you to reserve a spot for me, I’m just asking if it has been pretty full lately,” I clarified.

“It changes day-by-day, so I don’t know what it will be like tomorrow.  You might get something if you come early though. The earlier the better.”  That was sort-of an answer to my question I guess.  I told him that I was only a little over an hour away, and that I could be there in the morning.  He agreed that would be best if I wanted to get a spot. 

So, I packed up and left Patrick’s Point at 9:00am yesterday, ensuring that I would have time to make my Starbucks stop, as well as a quick stop at Wal-Mart to pick up an extra blanket (I own an RV now, so it’s ok for me to shop at Wal-Mart).  I also stopped and filled up on gas and propane in Crescent City, shortly before arriving at the park.  As I pulled up to the gas pump, I hopped out and was surprised at the machine.  There was no credit card slot on it, and it had the large “On-Off” handle on the side of it.  I hadn’t seen a pump like that in years.  As I was trying to figure out if I should pay first, a friendly lady in a dirty blue jumpsuit appeared around the corner of my van.  “Fill ‘er up, today?” she asked.  I felt like I had been transported back in time 30 years. 

“Um, yes,” I said, surprised at the service at a gas station.

She flipped the switch to “On,” opened my gas tank, and placed the handle into the opening and began to fill up my tank.  I got the squeegee from the nearby bucket and started washing the windows just as another young man had walked up. 

“Looks like he’s doing a pretty good job on the windows already, why don’t you go help that blue car that just pulled up,” the lady told him.  

Smith River makes me feel Irish for some reason

I realized that they were going to wash my windows, too.  Where was I, the Twilight Zone?  They didn’t charge any extra for the full service, and I tipped the lady who pumped my gas.  She resisted at first, but I told her that I had never expected that at a gas station any more, and was amused and glad that stations like hers were still around.  She smiled, thanked me, and accepted the tip. 

I arrived at Jedidiah Smith Redwood Park at a little past noon, and there was a sign saying that several of the campsites were closed during this time of year. Spots 1-50 were available though.  “I should have a good chance of finding 1 in 50,” I thought to myself as I pulled into the campground.  I maneuvered my van along the narrow winding path through the redwoods, and observed the camp sites.  It was then that I decided that the unhelpful ranger on the phone must have worked in car sales at some point.   One of the key things you learn in sales is that if you can create a sense of urgency in the buyer, you have a better chance of closing the sale earlier.  The ranger on the phone was not trying to be un-helpful, he wanted to sell some camping spots.  As I drove through the 50 spots at the park, only 3 were occupied.   The problem wasn’t finding a campsite, it was trying to find one that I liked the best.  The campground at Jedidiah Smith is infused amongst several tall redwood trees that erase most of the sounds in the air, so it is a very serene park.  Their towering branches, though, also gobble up most of the sunlight before it reaches the ground.  I was looking for a spot that had a bit of sun to feed  my solar panels, and even though it was mid-day with a sky devoid of clouds, finding a sunny spot was tough work.I finally came across site #38, which was settled at the edge of a ring of trees providing an open path to the sun, and I set up my van.

I recognize these little ducks from San Francisco!

After getting my solar panels pointed skyward, my refrigerator turned back on, and a quick lunch of a spinach wrap, I set out to explore the park a bit.  People were right—Jedidiah Smith Park is a very cool park.  As I mentioned above, the campsites are wrapped in tall redwoods, and lush bushes offer natural privacy screens between sites. Fallen leaves and redwood bark and old spent branches create a soft carpet under foot throughout the park.  Smith River hugs the campground along one side with its sweeping arcs and bends.  I ventured down to the Smith River for a closer look at it.  It reminded me of one of the scenes from A River Runs Through It with Robert Redford, where he’s fly-fishing, knee-deep in a peaceful river. The water was tinted green, like a river should be, yet it was clear enough that I could see large river stones bathing on the bottom nearly half-way across.  It was quite low from the drought, and it had exposed a treasure of rocks and stones that now made up its banks.  They were in a vast array of sizes, ranging from large grains of sand to small boulders. 

The rocky banks of the river

Their shapes varied from flat to angular to egg-shaped to nearly perfectly round, but they all had smooth surfaces from years of being rubbed and polished by the river.  There was a spectrum of colors: deep blacks, iron grays, summery tans, steely blues, brilliant whites, and earthen browns.  Each rock seemed to wear its own unique costume, with some being speckled and spotted, some striped with layers of differently colored minerals, and some solid colors almost as if they were spray-painted.  The mass of the stones and the vastness of their sizes, shapes, colors, and textures came together like some landscape from a foreign planet.  A skilled rock-piler had visited the river some time before me, and had left artwork of several towers randomly growing along the banks of the river.  The stone towers cajoled me into trying my hand at creating my own.  “How many of us can you pile up?” they seemed to taunt me.  I picked through the stones, searching for relatively flat ones in ever decreasing sizes.  I managed to stack 12 of them in succession on a firmly planted boulder that had a smooth table-like top.  I stood back to admire my structure, and heard kerplunk!......kerplunk!.......kerplunk! from behind me.  I spun around quickly and saw a fish jumping nearly 2 feet out of the water to catch a quick snack of some flies that lazily hovered above the surface.  A subtle breeze blew down the channel of the river, occasionally gaining speed, then pausing, then gaining speed again. It was almost as if it were the breath of the river itself. 

Check out my stone-piling talent!

Before I was aware, nearly three hours had passed.  The sun was making its downward arc in the sky, and the warm afternoon air started to give way to its cooler evening cousin.  I headed back to my van to make some dinner and settle in for the evening.

Today I’m leaving Jedidiah Smith Park, and have no plans yet for the next stop.  The drawback of the beautiful redwood trees in the campground is that they permitted Verizon to make only a spotty voice connection to my phone, so I wasn’t able to look for my next stop in Oregon.  So today I’ve planted myself at Starbucks (iced caramel macchiato and a toasted bagel), and will find where the next interesting spot to explore might be.

If you want to look skinny, hang out with fat trees*.

*Note: I took this picture by using the voice-activation feature on my phone.  I had to find a branch hanging low enough where I could balance my phone in the tree, and then shout either "Shoot," "Smile," or "Cheese" to get it to take the picture.  My phone apparently doesn't hear so good, as I stood there shouting "Smile!!"  "Smile!!"  "SHOOT!"  several times to no avail.  Finally, for some reason, when I screamed "Shoot you f***ing thing!!!" it took a picture.   Fortunately the campground was nearly empty so no one thought I was a crazy man standing there yelling at the tree.