It is finally autumn in my corner of California. It might even be winter. Up until later October, and into early November, I had many chances to be reminded that the California coast, even this far north, was a Mediterranean climate. Still walking around sweating in late October, and then more or less within a week in November, the clocks shift back, and I am huddled up at home, wanting just to eat chocolate and sleep.
About two months ago, I posted about my walks across Humboldt County, or at least the easily accessible parts of it. Humboldt County has a wide assortment of transit options, but the "main" bus line runs between Trinidad (population 360) in the north, to Scotia (population 850) in the south. This line stretches 50 miles, and combines aspects of being an urban intracity busline and being a longer distance intercity busline. I didn't make it all the way from Trinidad to Scotia, but instead to Fortuna, a 40 mile distance. (Although the route I took was probably substantially longer). What I would do is ride the bus to a stop, walk a few miles, get back on the bus, and ride home. I would do this for 5 or 6 mile walks at a time, sometimes slightly longer. I walked along the main trunk rode, and also took other subsidiary walks to different places. I did this as the late summer faded into something approaching autumn. It was a fun way to imagine my life as having momentum: go out, enjoy the beautiful forests and beaches of northern California, and come home, sated with my experience. Trying to explain what this is like in subjective, or even objective terms, is difficult. I guess the easiest way is to say that along the 50 mile stretch that makes up the "central" part of Humboldt County, about 50,000 people live, in places ranging from midsized towns like Eureka to outposts that consist of nothing but a post office and minimarket at a crossroads. It is not extremely rural (that would be the Avenue of the Giants, to the south]), but it is in most places at the lower end of suburban. There are charming examples of idealized small town America, Victorian homes around a general store, and also the flat asphalt of car dealerships, dumped haphazardly on the edged of wetlands. The terrain is incredibly varied, from long, flat sand beaches, to steep, forested mountains, and to rolling pastures. Someone driving by on Highway 101 would probably miss all of this, seeing only the loglo of shopping malls and big box stores. Someone who came only to see the beaches and redwood forests would be missing just as much. There is no easy way to describe what this patchwork is like, mile by mile. It is strangely representative of the United States as a whole, but in an unexpected way.
I will say that certain things that were not clear to me at the beginning of these walks were clear to me by the end, when I finished the last leg, 8 miles along the highway between Arcata and Eureka. All it took was a dozen afternoon walks, a dozen chances to eat candy bars from The Dollar Tree and feel an aspartame buzz while the road moved under my feet, and I realized something about the landscape I was moving through, and I realized something about the country I was living in.