On the horizon I could see it: dark mass of the sea below, dark sky above, and between them the black bulk of Catalina, bejeweled with white points of light both fixed and moving, and red lights to mark the highest peaks, and a few yellow and green lights here and there. It was like a bright constellation, the finest constellation, always on the verge of setting. For years I had considered it the prettiest sight I had ever seen. There was a cluster of light on the water at the south end that was invisible from the cliff—the foreigners’ port—it could be seen from the height of Tom’s house on a night like this, but I had no desire to go up there and see it. The dim patch of Nicolin’s sail moved out of the narrow path of moonlight on the water, and disappeared. He was one of the shadows among the few moony glitters on the black sea, but strain my eyes as I might I couldn’t tell which one he was. For all I could tell the ocean had swallowed him. But I knew it hadn’t. The little boat was still out there somewhere, sailing west to Avalon.
I stayed on the cliff looking out to sea for a long time. Then I couldn’t stand it, and took off into the forest. Leaves clacked and pine needles quivered as I trudged under the trees. The valley never seemed so big and empty as it did then. In a clearing I looked back; the lights of Catalina blinked and danced, but I turned and walked on. I didn’t give a damn if I never saw Catalina again.
21
The forest at night is a funny place. The trees get bigger, and they seem to come alive, as though during the day they were asleep or gone from their bodies, and only at night do they animate themselves and live, perhaps even pulling up their roots and walking the valley floors. If you’re out there you can sometimes almost catch them at it, just beyond the corner of your eye. Of course on a moonless night it only takes a little wind to imagine such things. Branches dip to tousle the hair, and the falling-water sounds of the leaves are like soft voices calling in the distance. Two holes make eyes, a trail blaze is a smiling mouth, branches are arms, leaves hands. Easy. Still I think it may be true that they are a type of nocturnal animal. They are alive, after all. We tend to forget that. In the spring they sprout joyously, in the summer they bask in the sun, in the winter they suffer bare and cold. Just like us. Except they sleep during the day and come awake at night. So if you want to have much to do with them, night is the time to be out among them.
The different trees wake up in different ways, and they treat you differently. Eucalyptus trees are friendly and talkative. Their branches tend to grow across each other, and in a wind they creak constantly. And their hanging leaves twirl and clack together, making the falling-water sound, a rising and falling voice. The eucalyptus has a great voice. But you wouldn’t want to touch one, or give it a hug, unless you could see it and avoid the gum. The bark is smooth and cool, fragrant like the rest of the tree with that sharp dusty smell, but it doesn’t grow as fast as the wood inside it, I guess, and there are a lot of breaks in it as a result, cracks that split it completely. These cracks leak gum like a dog slobbers, and in the dark you can’t keep from getting your hands and arms in it, and coming away all sticky.
Pine trees are more forbidding speakers. In a breeze their quiet whoooos are fey, and the wild ohhhhhhhs they utter when the wind is up can raise the hair on the back of your neck. But pines feel good to the touch, and you can look at their black silhouettes against the sky forever. Torrey pines have the longest needles, and their little branches are all curly. And the rough, brittle bark feels wonderful against the skin, it’s like a giant cat’s tongue. Redwood bark is even better, all split and hairy; you can put your fingers in cracks around the sides and hold on for dear life. It’s like hugging a bear, or holding on to your ma and crying into her hair. Good friends, pine trees, though you have to ignore their stern voice and touch them to find that out.
Of course there are real living things in the forest at night, mobile things I mean, animals like us. A whole bunch of them, in fact: coyotes and weasels and skunks and raccoons and deer, and cats and rabbits and possums and bears and who knows what all. But damned if you’d know it by just walking around. Even a lone human sitting in the forest for hours might not catch sight of a single creature—much less a human who is crashing around hugging trees and such. Someone like that isn’t going to see a single animal, or even hear one except for frogs. Frogs don’t scare easily, they’ve got the river to hop in and they don’t care. You have to come close to stepping on them before they’ll shut up, much less move. All the others, though, they hear you coming or smell you way off, and they get out of the way and you never know they’ve been there, except if you chance to hear a rustle off in the distance. Of course a big cat might decide to eat you, but you hope they’d be wary enough to stay out of the valley. Generally they avoid crowds, and in the fall they’re not very hungry. So… if you walk about you don’t see a creature anywhere, which is funny because you know they’re around you, getting a drink, chomping on sprouts or dead prey, hunting for or hiding from each other.
But I forgot about the birds. Occasionally you’ll see the quick black shape of an owl, flying without a sound. It’s uncanny how complete their silence is. Or higher, geese or herons migrating, their heads poked ahead on those long necks, flying in V’s that flow in and out of shape.
That night I saw a flock of geese, flying south. Two pairs of wide V’s, passing over the valley in the hour before dawn, when the sky was blueing and I could see them quite clearly. Slow, steady wing strokes, and quite a conversation going on up there in that honk and squawk language…
Of course they aren’t part of the forest proper, but you can see them while in the forest. And I did see them that night. I slept earlier against a redwood, and then for a while curled between two gnarly roots. Mostly, though, I walked around. I had spent a lot of time in the forest, day and night, without paying the least attention to it. But this night I studied tree after tree, hung out with them and really got to know them well, touched them, climbed a couple.
Where the creek from Swing Canyon meets the river is a little meadow that always has a lot of animal tracks in it. I wandered that way when I woke up and saw the geese overhead, in hope of seeing some furry brothers taking a drink. Sure enough, after I lay in the ferns behind a fungus-riddled log for a while, watching a spider weave her morning web, a family of deer came down and drank. Buck, doe, fawn. The buck looked around and sniffed; he knew I was there, but he didn’t care about it, which showed good judgment. When they were done drinking they pushed off, across the meadow and out of sight.
I clambered up stiffly, went down to the creek and drank myself. My pants were still damp and my legs were cold, and I was stiff, and dirty, and cut up, and hungry, and dog tired, but mainly I felt all right. I walked down the west riverbank empty as an empty bowl. I wasn’t going to start crying again, no matter whether I thought of Mando and Steve or not. I could think of them and not feel much of anything. It was done, and I was empty.
But then I rounded the bend above the bridge, and caught sight of a figure downriver on the same bank, at the foot of the cornfields. This was still early morning, when the whole world was nothing but shades of gray—a thousand shades of gray, but not a hint of color. Dew soaked every gray leaf and sprig and fern on the ground, a sign that the Santa Ana was ending.
The figure downstream was a woman. (If a person is visible we know their sex, no matter how distant they are—I’m not sure how we tell sometimes, but it’s so.) And the dark gray shade of this woman’s hair would be brown in the sun, brown with a bit of red in it. Already in this world of grays I could see that touch of red. Kathryn it was, standing at the foot of her fields. From the knee down her pants were darker—wet, then, which meant she had been out walking for a while. Maybe she had been out all night too, I thought, yet another animal in the night forest that I had not seen. Her back was to me. I would have gone to her, but something held me. There are times when a back a hundred yards away is as expressive as ever our faces are. She started and began walking downstream, toward the bridge. At the end of the field she suddenly swung to her right and gave a fearsome kick to the last cornstalk. She wears big boots and the stalk shuddered and stayed tilted over. That didn’t satisfy her. She got set and kicked it again and again, till it was flattened. The scene blurred before me and I stumbled away through the woods, all our catastrophes made real to me again.