After the Fourth of July festivities, Jimbo and Otter started building a large shed. They planned to raise it 18 inches off the ground on concrete piers, in case the creek flooded. It was going to allow the White family to get all the junk and boxes out of their “living room” so they might actually live there. Marty helped them some with the digging for piers, but would rather have been exploring the surrounding land, and they could tell he wasn’t very interested in being an apprentice.
“I’m going up on Mt. Barnabe today,” Marty asserted one morning (appending a minor article to Julie’s declaration of independence). This was after Marge had gone to work and the men were getting their tools together for a day of manual labor. Jimbo looked at the boy thoughtfully, with a toolbox in one hand and a circular saw in the other, then just turned away and nodded gruffly as if he expected this to happen.
“If you bag a deer, you got to skin it and haul it back yourself,” Otter advised facetiously, and Marty put a sheepish expression on his face. He could never shoot Bambi! Killing an animal for food might make sense at times, but hunting for sport completely escaped him. He hoped he might see some deer through his binoculars – not through a rifle scope! He was planning to get an early start; all the more quickly to get away from the grumpy hunter-carpenters.
As he pedaled past the China House Camille and Frederick were in the garden, sitting in the chairs of an elegant wrought iron patio set next to an arbor where burgundy red roses were blooming. The table was set elaborately for tea, with delicate china and a silver teapot. Fresh wildflowers sprouted from a crystal vase, and both of them were perched on their chairs, sitting straight-backed and perfectly nude as usual, pantomiming an English tea party without the traditional costumes. This would make one hell of a record album cover, Marty reflected in a flash, and snapped the image with his mind’s camera. They waved cheerfully, but there was no way he was going to stop and talk to naked people again, and instead rode by quickly so they wouldn’t get up.
The road led away from where he was. He followed it.
The first leg of Marty’s expedition was familiar, pedaling along on the flat railroad bed where he’d ridden before. Today the light was somewhat brighter, with a sharper contrast to reveal more detail. When he came to the turnoff and the fire road that climbed steeply up the ridge like a staircase, he wheeled his bike up a ways and stashed it deep in the bushes so he could continue on foot. The altitude gain was abrupt: even steeper than the similar trail across the highway that led up to the Bolinas Ridge. Soon the big trees were thinning out, and he was huffing and puffing from exertion. He was used to running up and down hills like a mountain goat, but that was a doozy! It was harder than climbing up 20 flights of stairs when the elevator wasn’t working. He put the palms of his hands on his knees in the illusion that it somehow helped push him up the hill.
Now the edges of the ridge could be seen, and the scrub brush took over. Marty was climbing the southwest corner of Mt. Barnabe, and the sun was hot. He was amazed by how well the redwoods protected the canyon from fierce summer heat. He climbed on, and the bushes gave way to grasses, by then burned tan brown by the sun. He gained a view from a knob of the hillside, and undulating flanks of tawny grass stretched away for a quarter mile. He felt like a flea on a lion’s back. The light had a special clarity to it, which helped him to see all the billions of blades of grass as individual expressions of a collective life form. Through this living, woven tapestry of biology, the man-made road slashed its ugly scar. He actually felt bad that it was there, although it was certainly making his hike easier.
Marty could easily see where the fire road led up and over the ridge that still obscured the lookout tower. That landmark was visible from several places when driving on local roads, and he couldn’t wait to see things from its point of view. He turned around and the opposite side of the canyon loomed closer than expected. The trees grew thick and lush. It appeared near enough that if he were a red tail hawk, he could just open his wings and glide over on a warm updraft, and land on that dead tree branch right on the ridge line. He was already above the tops of the biggest redwoods next to the creek, as they thrust upward in an exuberance of sun gluttony. Each massive array of branches was spreading its needles outward as wide as it possibly could, to capture all the precious photons and deny the lesser trees below. The effect was dramatically intimate, as if each tree had its own unique personality. Their green crowns stood out as the heads of people in a crowd, waiting for a train. Some had bushy hair, while others were slim and straight. One even resembled a man wearing a hat! They were so personable Marty had to remind himself that they were massive beings, around whose trunks five people could not join their arms.
He continued up and crested the ridge, which was just another spur of the mountain, and the lookout tower came in view. He could see a fence and a gate where the road wound its way up to the top. He was now above most of the surrounding ridges, and the vistas were opening up. A great expanse of unbroken, convoluted land stretched away towards the northwest, and he could see a part of Tomales Bay. The Bolinas Ridge soared up to his level across the canyon, looking like a great green tidal wave about to crash at his feet. To the south lay the twisted ridges of Lagunitas and Forest Knolls, and beyond that the San Geronimo Valley. Marty walked east to see if he could get to the lookout tower. The gate was open, and there were no vehicles or signs of habitation, so he climbed the stairs of the spindly structure and reached the deck that surrounded the hexagonal room at the top. The room itself was locked and bare. He did several laps around the deck in super slow-motion, guzzling the views with his eyes the way Otter chugged a beer. Needless to say, that was the best vantage point in the entire region (which was probably why they put a fire lookout up there – duh).
From the deck Marty could see another trail diving down into a small ravine to the north. On that side of the mountain all water flowed to Papermill Creek, where he’d find the old railroad bed. Tired of bulldozed roads and trails, he took off cross-country to find someplace wild. The summit sloped down sharply into that wooded cleft, and he stayed above the slopes of tangled undergrowth. Thick stands of bay laurel, scotch broom, and poison oak made access to the tiny rivulet impossible. He labored up and down small, carpeted wrinkles of earth that all flowed into the crevice the way foam bubbles drain from a bathtub. The grass was still green in the shady spots, and there were lots of mosquitoes. He loved the rough, abrasive wildness of the unexpected route, which made him feel he was part of the landscape instead of invading it on a dirt road.
Down, down, and up, and down. Ever downward, impelled by gravity, Marty carefully navigated the woods back to the old railroad bed. He came out on top of a small cliff and worked his way down until he stood again on the road next to the creek. His bike! He forgot that he’d left it on the access road, and didn’t know which direction that was at first. He walked a bit towards home, then recognized a fallen log that made him turn around and go back to find the bushes where he stashed his bike. Tired but happy, he pedaled all the way back to the gate exiting the state park. That was the corridor where the railroad bed was carved straight through a wayward knob of the hill, which could be referred to as one of Old Man Barnabe’s toes. It looked like a tunnel with no roof. Passing the China House, Marty readied himself for another meeting with the naked Space People, but thankfully there were no unclothed gods or goddesses about. He made it home safe and sound, after the longest solo hike he’d ever taken.
Jimbo and Otter were laid back, drinking beer on the finished platform of the shed with a complete framework of two-by-fours surrounding them. They looked like animals in a cage at the zoo, and because they were in good spirits Marty told them so. “Yeah, this here is Jimbo break-your-limbo, and I’m Otterus whomping-stickus, and we’re gonna kick your rusty bucket!” They laughed like crazy, due to the fact that they were stoned out of their gourds, and they were happy to see Marty because he could go fetch them another beer.
“The sign says don’t feed the animals,” he giggled.
“Don’t push your luck, boy,” Otter admonished, “We’ve got about a million shingles for you to nail to this sumbitch when we’re done.”
Marty brought nice cold beers for them, and some chips, too.