California Immersion

I'm back in Evanston after a long two months spent mostly outdoors in California. First: six weeks at Cazadero, a music camp where you either sleep under the stars or, if you're higher on the food chain like me, in a tent cabin with a canvas roof and a deck built into surrounding redwoods. You eat outside, teach outside, rehearse outside, and practice (mostly) outside.

Six weeks of outdoors clearly wasn't enough. So Leander and I embarked on our long-planned, long-anticipated backpacking trip along the California coast. We left on August 10th, taking a very sketchy little bus from Sebastopol to Stewart's Point, a small cluster of old buildings near Sea Ranch near the Mendocino-Sonoma border. The bus dropped us off, and we began walking south. The destination: San Francisco, about 126 miles away. It was supposed to take 13 days, in which we would be camping every night but one, cooking all our meals outdoors on a little stove, and keeping the ocean on the right. We ended up doing the whole trip in 11.5 days - and it was awesome. Especially the part about leaving the flute at home.

We walked south through Salt Point State Park, Fort Ross, and across a gnarly section of the San Andreas Fault. We camped above some beautiful coves, picked up supplies in Jenner, near the mouth of the Russian River, and bought smoked salmon from a nice guy on the side of the road. We took a boat across Tomales Bay to Point Reyes National Seashore, where a few days later we were able to stay at a hostel and take a much-needed shower. We climbed Mount Vision and Mount Tamalpais, which were both shrouded in fog. We walked many beaches, saw harbor seals, otters, starfish, crabs, and other sea life we weren't sure about. Owls kept us awake at night with their screeches. Our map led us astray many times, a couple of which were kind of dangerous. And we met some really nice people.

We walked into San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge, something I've done many times. It probably should have been our most exciting moment, but really, walking on the GGB is pretty unpleasant with all the noise, tourists, and wind. We walked into the city, to our friend's apartment, took showers, and ordered a pizza. And we still had another week to hang out with people and eat food in San Francisco before coming back to Illinois. Beautiful!