The First Raven, Battered Batteries, and Gradients
{The Longest} Day 2.2
The robotic voice of Google Maps directed them away from San Francisco Airport toward the city by way of a wide, undistinguished highway. After a dozen quick miles, it led them to an inefficient scenic route that took them through neighborhoods of narrow, high houses standing like books on a shelf. Sprawling trees lined the undulating streets, and the Golden Gate Bridge peeked in and out of the fog in the distance as the car ascended and descended the hills.
“You would think they would have a faster route through San Francisco, since they have offices here,” B said as he slowed for yet another four-way stop.
“Who?”
“Google. They have offices in San Francisco.”
“Oh.” AJ was secretly glad of the picturesque route, rapt in the “life as usual in the outskirts of the city” scene they were passing through. The nouns that whirred by out her window–schools, houses, restaurants, professional buildings–were the same as she might see in her hometown, but the adjectives set them apart and held her attention.
“I wish I knew what those huge trees were,” AJ muttered, pressing close to the window to see to the very tops of the expansive, grayish beige trunks.
Then onto the more sensible, faster highway again.
Then onto the more sensible, faster highway again.
“That was weird,” she muttered. “But interesting.”
“Where do you want to eat?” B asked. The question was on all their minds, and had been bubbling up from their empty stomachs since getting off the plane. It was an odd thing to ask, wandering down a strange highway, in an unfamiliar land, as if she knew where the restaurants were. B pointed to the phone. There was an app for that.
“There’s not much around,” she mumbled as she stared into the little screen. “Grocery stores … fast food …” Glancing up from the screen, she spotted a burger joint, “there’s one,” she said, pointing to a little plaza along the highway.
The In and Out Burgers were the best burgers they had tasted in a long time, since it had been a long time since they had eaten. Luck put a Safeway grocery store close, where they loaded the car up with bottled water and quick breakfast food.
In the few navigation challenges up to that point, technology had demonstrated itself to be so useful, possibly deserving the title of "Can't Live Without", so when the phone reception started to wax and wane (more waning), AJ and B's sense of power over the strange environment dwindled; the GPS had let them down.
In the back seat, One and Two were restless, their “Where are we going?” queries answered with vague images of big trees or beaches, or both. In the front seat, a vile creeping, motion sickness started to diminish AJ’s ability to think strait or even navigate a paper map, which lead to B. passing the visitor center of Muir Woods National Monument, the first maybe destination.
“Was that the place we’re trying to get to?” B asked, as the family turned around to read the sign as it moved farther away.
“I guess, I don’t know … maybe,” AJ said, reluctant to look at the map. “There’s Muir everything around here, I can’t tell if that’s the one …”
As her hatred for the twisting route grew, the sickness moved from her head down to her stomach which started to mimic the writhing, indecisive roads.
She breathed deeply to stem the growing malaise.
“You need me to stop?” B asked, sensitive to the signs.
“Not yet.” Two slope-hugging hairpin turns. “Now, please,” she said. She got out, breathing in the cool, fresh air, the sick retreating a little from her limbs and arms, head and stomach. “It smells sweet,” she said as she looked past the guard rail, down the steep incline below.
The mountain side was dotted with a yellow-flowered, silver leafed plant, one she recognized as a relative of wormwood, probably from the genus Artemisia. After a few minutes of fresh-air therapy, she resumed her place in the front seat, gladly succumbing to a dose of motion sickness medicine.
The car and green-faced passenger managed to find its way to Rodeo Beach and Lagoon, part of the Marin Headlands in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where the cool, moist wind whipped hair, clothing and skin as the family tried to walk on the course brown sand.
“Our hotel is five minutes away. We could check in and drop off luggage,” B. said as they dove for shelter in the little grey Ford. “We’ll come back here when the sun goes down.”
“Yes, please,” said AJ, a little less green, but still unstable.
In the hotel parking lot, while B went in to get room keys, AJ and the boys looked the place over. Planters of neatly trimmed horsetail (Equisetum) lined the sidewalk. Two custodians cleaned the glass plates that fenced in the patio.
“It’s really nice inside,” B. said as he parked the car. “They have a s’mores pit.”
“And they have really clean glass,” AJ added.
After a short rest, the family drove back up the winding road and stopped at an impressive, but relatively inconsequential scenic overlook where AJ was graced with her first raven sighting.
Ravens were a relatively new side-interest, and she wasn’t certain if she’d ever seen a real one. It was so easy to call a crow a raven. This lone bird’s beak was thick and black, it’s neck feathers fluffed out, ruffled and disheveled, as it tilted its head in curiosity at the human tourists. It wasn’t like the flighty, slight and sleek, caw-caw crows that haunted her neighborhood in bunches. The difference was subtle, but it was there.
It was windy and cold at the spot, the sky was grey and wafts of mist were moving fast over the mountain tops down into the valley below: perfect raven weather.
A battery, other than being an electrical storage device, is a place where military artillery is kept, and they are located all around the hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay. These places were placed to ballistically intercept invading forces, but now they provided tourists with great opportunities to shoot panoramic photos of the bay.
They stopped at Battery Spencer was first. It is an abandoned and still-abused military look-out that used to have big guns pointing out to the ocean. AJ wandered the abandoned, and over-built buildings trying to imagine what it looked like when uniformed military sat vigilant on the wind-whipped site.
After becoming sufficiently chilled and windblown, the family descended to a lower, warmer altitude, where they stopped for salad and pizza at a little Italian restaurant called The Aurora. The food was good, but the the most impressive thing they experienced was the eerie quietude of a Tesla car driving by.
On the east side of the bridge, they stopped at the Batteries Cavallo and Yates and admired the bay view, noting the strange Lost-like (the TV show) feel of the metal reinforced doors to the mountain-side buildings. Nearby, cyclists coasted down from a mountainous bike trail to take pictures of the bridge and bay.
When the sun hinted at sinking, they drove back to Rodeo Beach so B and Tripod could get some giant-rocks-in-the-water-at-sundown pictures. As the family followed the amateur photographer out to the perfect spot, the wind blew chill through their bones; the ocean waves growled, obliterating the subtleties of any other sound. B waded out into shallow waters, biding his time before the sun sunk into its most beautiful pose.
As B clicked away, AJ and the boys explored the beach, nosing into cozy alcoves in the wall of rock, poking seagull carcasses with sticks, collecting pieces of crabs’ shells, chucking colored stones and kicking seaweed.
There was a woman picking up trash on the beach in return for the cans she took from the recycling bin. Some bottles got her .05$ a piece. She looked like she needed it.
When the last bit of light dissolved into the deepening dark, the ocean-deaf, wet, chilled-through and tired family went back to the hotel. They had been up for 22 hours before turning down the hotel beds.
The day had been interesting, the sights beautiful and strange, but what AJ liked the most was the hot shower at the end of the day. The warm water slowly thawed her body and mind, moving her from cold and dirty to warm and clean. The transition was comforting and somehow reassuring.
She often surmised that gradients, or the distance and slope between different personal states or perceptions, made a person’s world go around. The day's gradients came to mind as she wiggled her thawing toes on the heated tile floor of the bathroom while she dressed for bed.
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