When Hillie welcomed Marty and his family to “The Lagunitas Triangle,” it had several meanings. One referred to the strange, nurturing eeriness of the setting, suggesting a vortex of mysterious forest powers. It was the kind of place where people could appear and disappear without drawing notice, like mushrooms. Another interpretation was the geographical triangle of the high ridges rising steeply above the confluence of Papermill Creek and the Lagunitas Creek just below the Inkwells. The San Andreas Fault was less than two miles away as the crow flies, and the ridges formed by its massive tectonic forces were pinched and twisted in agony. The canyon was so narrow that its steep, forested slopes were shaped in an inverted triangle a thousand feet tall. Most of all, the affectionate nickname referred to the interpersonal dimensions of the three families living in that locality: the Whites, the McAuliffes, and the queer variety of characters that hung around Paula’s place. Marty and his family felt initiated into an obscure Middle Earth cult, or the sacred Scottish Rites of Forest Freemasonry.
In the weekend after the party, Marty met “Ent,” who was reputedly some variety of Wizard or a Druid. He was sitting in the center of a redwood grove, reading The Two Towers, when Little Billy introduced them. He was a very tall and nervous fellow, giving the impression of a Douglas fir towering into the sky. Straw-colored hair grew from the top of his head in a way that flowed into his beard until it covered most of his face. He was the very picture of a young Gandalf, but without the pointy hat. His eyes were deep and intense behind thick, rectangular lenses. He was hyperkinetic, but unlike Tillie, he didn’t need Pepsi or other stimulants. His energy came naturally because he seemed to draw it from the forest. When he saw Marty, his knee bounced up and down in greeting the way a dog wags its tail. He unfolded in a standing motion, with the strange grace of a gray heron getting up from its nest, and shook his hand vigorously. “Hi, I’m Ent,” he intimated with a wink, “My real name is too difficult to pronounce.” It was obvious he had been reading way too much Tolkien, but that was a sin easily forgiven; especially in Lagunitas, where the woodlands were phantasmagorical and rich with intrinsic lore. He had a genuine smile and an ironic sense of humor behind that beard somewhere, with hints of flashing teeth and a twinkle in his eye. He wore a characteristic green Pendleton shirt, and his trousers were too short for his slender legs, which accentuated his treelike appearance. Marty estimated he was about 25 or 30 years old, but had no way to count his rings.
Ent knew everything about trees (of course), and taught Marty a great deal about Laurus nobilis, Sequoia sempervirens, and other denizens of the wood. He had traveled all over North America, to all the great forests, and considered this part of the world his favorite. His tone of voice made it certain that this was high praise, indeed. And Ent could talk! Oh boy, could he talk. If there was a rotating team of scribes following him 24 hours a day, they could have compiled enough information to put all the encyclopedia companies out of business. His erudite loquaciousness about forests always got Little Billy pumped up. The junior McAuliffe was prone to sporadic bursts of enthusiasm like a puppy, and they had to go on a hike right that instant!
The three of them spontaneously took off down the railroad bed and strolled past the China House, but didn’t see anybody naked, or clothed for that matter. Garden tools were laying around as if people had recently been working, but they were all at lunch, or had beamed up to the mother ship. They soon found them all at the Inkwells, with a bunch of their friends. Or, at least their behavior towards one another was exceptionally friendly in a… er, physical way. The three hikers stood there stupidly, adorned superfluously in their forest clothes, as if they were the only ones who hadn’t gotten the orgy memo. It was a beautiful summer day, and there were over twenty people naked and enthusiastically making out… in the water, on the rocks, and in the bushes. Some of them were doing things beyond just hugging and kissing, and Marty’s adolescent camera was collecting lots of interesting images to be developed later. Ent shifted his long legs uncomfortably, as if he had somehow arrived on another planet, but Little Billy wanted to join the fun. Marty was somewhere in between those two extremes, just hoping to get out of there. They had to walk across the water pipe going over the creek in order to reach the trail. That gave the youngster a good excuse to keep his eyes on something other than the fascinating behavior of the locals. Alas, he couldn’t do what was best for him (being a teenage boy and all), and nearly fell off the pipe a couple of times.
With a sense of relief they made it to the other side and crossed Shafter’s Bridge, then turned left to follow a dirt road that was just as flat as the railroad bed. This followed Lagunitas Creek, which was the main tributary flowing out of Kent Lake, a man-made reservoir behind an earthen dam just a quarter mile from the highway. Little Billy led a brief side trip to the pool beneath the spillway at the base of Peter’s Dam, where there were a couple more sunbathers. At least those folks were wearing swimsuits! It was a busy weekend, and they met a few other hikers coming down the fire road as they turned to ascend the ridge. Steeply it zigged and zagged, in switchbacks wide enough for a truck to drive through, but there were no tire tracks. Little Billy and Marty were huffing and puffing, with the short little legs of Hobbits, but Ent devoured the ground with incredibly long strides.
After about a half an hour they emerged in a clearing at the top of the Bolinas Ridge, which ran parallel to the San Andreas Fault. The trees gave way to wide swaths of green grass, studded here and there with pockets of bay trees in the wet spots and crevices. Marty suddenly realized that this was one of the major geologic faults on the planet, and they lived right next to it… beneath a large dam! Fantastic. He was standing on the huge train platform of the North American Plate, watching the arrival of the massive Pacific Plate locomotive across a gigantic crack in the earth’s crust. It was bound to leave the station sometime. Actually, Los Angeles was scheduled to arrive here in about a billion years. What if it decided to get a head start while Marty was standing there? Ent informed him there were actually four dams poised to obliterate them, beginning with Lagunitas and Bon Tempe lakes up on the shoulders of Mt. Tamalpais. Further downstream was the concrete Alpine Dam, and if that ever gave way behind Kent Lake, it would certainly wipe out the entire canyon in a domino effect! Awesome! They had not just one, but four dams to worry about, so there was even more chance of dying in a flood! It was a sobering thought for an impressionable lad who had seen the movie Earthquake a year before. Distractedly he wondered: if there was an earthquake, could he make it high enough up the ridge before disaster struck? Or maybe hide in a submarine? Those thoughts were not conducive to enjoying the beautiful panorama, so he stopped and just enjoyed the view, with a Moody Blues song playing in his mind.
“The trees are drawing me near,
I’ve got to find out why.
Those gentle voices are here,
Explaining all with a sigh.”
To the northwest stretched the narrow Tomales Bay. It was a little too far to see all of it, but Marty loved to study maps and charts, so he knew it was about 15 miles long, and sat right on top of the fault where it dove under the Pacific Ocean. The creek that flowed past his bedroom window emptied into the ocean at its head. The bay was only about a mile from one side to the other, framed by a set of parallel ridges that stretched from its top all the way south to the town of Bolinas. It looked more like the broad mouth of a river than a bay. The east side was called Bolinas Ridge; named after Gregorio Baulinas and his family, who were the first non-natives to settle out there. The land was officially granted to him by the colonial Spanish government (much to the annoyance of the indigenous people who had lived there for centuries). The modest ridge they had surmounted eventually climbed to almost 2,000 feet above Stinson Beach to the south, where it became a unique protuberance known as Mt. Tamalpais.
The ridge trail where they stood was public land in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The round, grassy hills sloped greenly down to the Olema Valley like scoops of melting mint ice cream. Somewhere inside that huge scar in the earth below, Highway 1 skirted the edge of the fault line. The ridge directly across from them was nearly as tall. It was part of the Point Reyes National Seashore, and densely forested with Douglas fir. To the south, a few ambitious trees were gathering in a rebellious plot to take back the Bolinas Ridge. The bay laurels choked the steep ravines where rivulets flowed down to Olema Creek, and firs dominated the high spots. Here and there was an intrepid young redwood, not quite bold enough to grow in clusters yet. Give them another 1,000 years, and this ridge would be covered with dense forest again. At the present time, it displayed to one’s eye a very pleasing variety of terrain.
They ambled a bit to the south to see Old Grandfather Fir, to whom Ent planned to introduce his new young friend as a worthy initiate. He claimed the great tree could be felt before it was seen. After a short walk, Marty sensed a thickening of the branches on the downhill side of the trail, and realized what he meant. Partly screened by an admiring throng of laurels, an arboreal masterpiece stretched its spidery arms in a 30-foot radius. It was a curiously ambitious Douglas fir that had somehow stopped growing vertical in its main trunk – perhaps from a lightning strike centuries ago – and now its primary branches had grown thick as normal firs. Some of them grew horizontal to the ground for several yards before discovering the allure of the sky. The base of the main trunk was gnarled and plated with thick callouses of bark in the manner of a very old man’s feet. The hoary arms stretched out wide, with a knot of needles for its head, and Spanish moss for a beard. Marty could see why Ent loved this tree so much. The tall Druid was infused with calm from its serenity, and finally stopped fidgeting. He folded himself in the green grass like a flannel origami crane, and grinned through his beard as if to say, “See? I told you so!”
The ancient fir was the oldest non-redwood tree Marty had ever seen. Ent estimated its age at 700 years, which was pretty old for a fir. It awakened in him a realization that all trees have a definite life energy, and that very great trees have veritable souls. Sitting quietly in its presence gave him a feeling he was being protected. Little Billy was perched on one of the burly horizontal branches, rolling a joint. Even the air under the tree was docile and respectful, although there were ample signs that this great being had weathered its share of coastal storms. The ocean was less than 4 miles away from this point, and the moisture from the marine layer fed the many strands of Spanish Moss that hung in its sheltered boughs. Marty checked but couldn’t find any poison oak, which was ubiquitous in the semi-shady areas of this habitat. He imagined that the blanketing benevolence of that spot was too intimidating for a malicious little weed like Toxicodendron diversilobum. He had already experienced a couple of cases of the nasty rash that comes from contact with the noxious oil of its leaves and stems, and was determined to avoid it whenever possible.
In time, they strolled back to the trail, bidding Old Grandfather Fir farewell, and heading home. Looking over his shoulder, Marty was thrilled that he could follow that trail all the way to Mt. Tamalpais to the south, or cross Highway 1 below and enter the voluminous Point Reyes National Seashore. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area stretched another 30 miles to the north, following the contours of the fault line. The best part of all was that he was co-owner of nearly everything he could see! There was so much open space, in a landscape that was so uniquely beautiful and accessible, that it boggled his young mind to consider ever exploring all there was to see. He had been all over the United States by car, and visited many of its iconic national parks, but this area was equal to any of them in terms of its splendor, diversity, and convenience. The most appealing aspect of it was that there were no crowds! They had seen only one other hiker since they left the creek. Everywhere they walked today was accessible on a bicycle. On the way home, Marty wondered when he might return, and then he laughed out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Little Billy asked.
“I can come here anytime I want,” Marty gushed, with an awestruck look on his face. “I live here!”
“Welcome to the Lagunitas Triangle,” Ent rumbled with formal sincerity. He may as well have given him the secret handshake.
As an under-loved child of recently divorced parents, Marty felt very grateful and privileged to be living in a virtual wonderland, instead of some tacky suburban cookie-cutter house in San Rafael. He could have wound up anywhere after an acrimonious breakup of the family, but instead was delivered to the doorstep of a natural, healing paradise. Sometimes, God makes known the door you’re supposed to walk through by slamming the other doors in your face.