Imag(in)ing California: Shorelines

Our day began by winding through green meadows and crooked Sonoma Valley oaks, bathed in sunshine as we drove a scenic route towards the land’s edge. From the tranquil woodland town of Occidental we took the Coleman Valley Road, the sun behind us illuminating our descent, westward, down to the Pacific Ocean at Bodega Bay. The deep blue of the clear morning sky was reflected in the ocean peeping through gaps between crouching hilltops, opening out wider and wider as we reached the frothing shallows. From there we would start our journey up the West Coast of Northern California, following Highway 1 north for over 100 miles through snaking estuaries, shaded forests, and a breadcrumb trail of maritime communities.

As we set off, my brother asked us to tell him whenever we wanted to pull over to survey the view. After stopping twice in the first five minutes, however, it soon became clear that every single headland we encountered offered a whole gallery of vistas, making it impossible to see them all as our short strip of time gradually unravelled. Even if you attempted to stop at every single vantage point on this stretch of Pacific shoreline, by the time you finish, some new and spectacular feature would be sculpted by the relentless lacerating waves, freshly exposed when a curtain of mist is raised.

Drifting through the Sonoma Coast State Park, admiring the striking topography of stacks, arches, gulches, and striations from the car, our first stop was Fort Ross, an historical landmark that exhibits the place where Russian settlers once established a base for agriculture on the California coast in the early 19th century. After descending through a grove of stretching eucalyptus trees, grey and peeling, we emerged on a gravel path into the sun-bleached surrounds of the fort. It was there that we came across a throng of noisy schoolchildren all piling in through the entrance gate. Following them through, the scene that unfolded in front of us was mayhem. Small bodies charged wildly in all directions on the mowed grass, screeching and cawing as one of their pack began ferociously clanging a bell on display in the distance.

Strangely, after our immediate dismay and disbelief, they all scurried out within five minutes of arriving, having barely investigated all the points of interest. I wondered what impression this landmark would leave on their memories, and what role heritage has (or should have) in our lives more generally. Should it be a springboard for reimagination, play, even untamed exploration? Does a factual understanding of the past have any inherent value when inhabiting a space in the present?           

The square of land encompassed by the fort’s perimeter walls is sparse, with a total area roughly the size of a football pitch. Only one original dwelling remains, Rotchev House, where the manager of Fort Ross and his family lived. The handful of other buildings – a residence, a chapel, and two blockhouses in opposing corners – are all reconstructed. I tried to weigh up my thoughts on the idea of reconstruction for heritage purposes. It always feels as if some semblance of ‘authenticity’ is lost when new materials are added to historical sites. Though if it weren’t for the tireless efforts of volunteers, who have maintained such a visceral, solid display of what the fort was like based on existing evidence, whole generations would have gone without the experience of immersing themselves inside the redwood beams, understanding what kind of space this was to its previous occupants. Ultimately, how we go about such endeavours indicates what we value in our communities. What is remembered and what is forgotten, and what do we want to remember and forget? What do we abandon to ‘nature’ and what do we claim as ‘culture’?

The Russian influence in California is one that often goes unremarked outside of the state. Fort Ross marks the centre of imperial Russia’s southernmost expansion along the Pacific Coast. Although this territory is no longer under Russian ownership, their colonial presence can still be detected in the names of local landmarks, such as the Russian River, and the town of Sebastopol. Like a dried-up stream whose lifeblood has long since dispersed, traces remain in the arteries of local identities and landscapes. Intriguingly, the Russian and Alaskan settlers formed a close relationship with the Native Americans who lived around Fort Ross – the Pomo people, in this region – who, after originally living outside the fort’s walls, integrated with the community to such an extent that the foreign settlers married and had children with them. The fluidity with which these diverse populations mixed offsets straightforward narratives of colonial exploitation, the whitewashing of native heritage, or fixed local identity. The tree-sheltered visitor centre that we wandered through on our way out gave an evocative, panoramic perspective on these different cultural tributaries. Displays presented detailed insights into Native American history in this region, as well as the influence of shipwrecks and seafaring that paint a highly nuanced picture of life on the shores of Northern California in earlier centuries.

Before leaving Fort Ross, we took a moment to soak up our surroundings: the striking cerulean of striding bluejays; fleeting fragrances riding on the breeze. All along the golden coastline that day, the air bloomed with an unfamiliar scent: a sweet concoction of cinnamon and coconut. The aroma was so distinct that you’d like to bottle it; to capture a single moment in time and place like bubbles in glowing amber, there to appreciate and revisit. At every stop on our journey, we scoured the yellowing grasses and flowering shrubs in search of this elusive aroma’s source. Yet even after asking the lady at the fort’s exit, and trawling online in the days afterward, it proved impossible to put a definitive name to this manifestation. As fickle as the fog, which had mysteriously (for this time of year) failed to make an appearance, its character has been hinted at in articles yet never accurately rendered in the way we experienced.

Back on the highway, we fell once again into the trance of vehicular movement, the road undulating through the sandy inlets and craggy slopes of Salt Point. We surfaced from our daze in the peculiar settlement of Sea Ranch, which sprawls along branches of private roads that straddle a 10-mile stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. This assorted collection of wooden structures is the legacy of architect Al Boeke and his recruited designers, who imagined a community built around the principles of common ownership, with architecture that preserves and compliments the surrounding environment’s natural beauty. Each abode is adorned with grey, weathered timber from local forests, and – at least for older plots developed in line with the original design principles – are built to reflect the individual characteristics of the segment of terrain they occupy. Given the variety of coastal features and morphological events that take place here, this design brief has led to some visionary, one-of-a-kind inventions.

The previous communities we’d passed through on the way here, where the main establishments were all bunched up oppressively at the roadside, made you feel unnervingly like the new guy in town in a Western film. But at Sea Ranch the pockets of buildings were more understated, camouflaged and kept a safe distance from outsider traffic. Nonetheless, there remained an authoritarian presence; a quiet tyranny in which the isolating layout of the built landscape itself makes you feel like an intruder, where signs warn that unauthorised vehicles will be ‘immobilized’. Once you detour from the highway, you become subject to the Sea Ranch Association Board of Directors and its rules. If Sea Ranch were adapted for the screen, you could imagine it as the setting for a murder mystery story: a remote small town, doggedly resistant to change in a dramatic rural landscape, where everyone has something to hide and all is not as it seems.       

We visited one of the few publicly accessible sites as we drove through to the northern side of Sea Ranch. Nestled in a roadside meadow, accompanied by bushes, firs, and a trickling fountain, the non-denominational Sea Ranch Chapel squats as if to take a closer look at you. The most eye-catching feature is the tiled roof, asymmetrical and curving steeply to a point, where it is bisected by a skeletal ornament made of teal-coloured copper, creating the image of long fingers curling outward from a cloaked figure.

Every new angle divulged another interpretation in the obscure, indefinite shapes and arrangements. The roof appeared to me alternately as the crest of a wave, a bird, a boat, and a witch’s hat. Inside proved no less inspiring. Every surface enticed you to touch, from the smooth, hollowed wood seating to the swirling patterns of the wrought iron fretwork by the stained-glass door. The cosy space cocoons you in the sensation of being inside a shell, with a dim aura of sunlight overhead filtering through the narrow, enamel windows, and this glow reflected on the white of the low, spiralling ceiling above. As all these phenomena take place, nothing attempts to identify a name or reason for what you encounter. There are no slogans or statements, appeals to the conscience. Avoiding traditional architectural styles, the chapel embraces ambiguity. It finds reverence in not-knowing; in indeterminate moments of simply living, feeling, wondering.

Wandering purposefully on to Point Arena, a single road curving off the coastal highway leads you to Point Arena Lighthouse, a bright white beacon that serves as a glimmering landmark for road trippers on their West Coast pilgrimages. Just before you hit the gated visitor checkpoint, a narrow gravel verge opens out to the left where you can pull over and walk around. Here the cliff juts out squarely to form a platform where you can observe the coastline in all its intricacy. On both sides, as far as the mist permits you to see, beige sandstone is layered with neat grooves like claw marks, shoreline punctuated with inlets and outcrops that mirror the fluctuating pattern of the waves themselves. A primal cathedral with the shining lighthouse as its steeple, the rumble of crashing waves its choir. Stepping tentatively up to the precipice, whipped by wind and salty sea spray, the noise and energy reaches a crescendo that crowds out your senses, wrapping you in a deafening stillness. A divine balance, gripped in a communion with the colossal forces of ocean and land, beyond and beneath.

After this detour from our planned route (isn’t every trip a detour of some kind?) we returned to Highway 1. Driving between the white picket fences lining the roadsides of Elk, we paused awhile in Mendocino to gaze from cliffsides at the quaint rows of painted shopfronts, driftwood heaped on the damp sand below. Only ten miles later, we washed up at our final and northernmost stop, the old industrial town of Fort Bragg. Past gas stations, barren parking lots and an old railroad, we turned left and parked up on a soft slope that slid into an amalgam of shingle, rock pools, and swashing surf. Sauntering onto the foreshore, between pebbles we began to spot what we came here for: shimmering beads of glass. Clear, green, and brown mostly, and, very occasionally, sapphire blue and ruby red.

The history of the Glass Beach isn’t romantic. From 1906 until 1967, Fort Bragg locals dumped waste into the water at three sites. This practice continued until 1967, when the California State Water Resources Control Board closed the last active dumping ground and cleanup programmes followed. In the decades since, however, the discarded wrecks underwent a transfiguration. What was large was chomped down, what was biodegradable was swallowed, the earth reclaiming its bodily organs that were surgically removed, modified, used, and left for dead. At the same rocks where crabs crawl and limpets lie, now barely identifiable implements of plastic and metal have implanted themselves like some abstract sculpture, a geological cyborg. All edges rounded and smoothed, in time.

The Glass Beach now harbours tens of thousands of visitors each year, making it one of the prime tourist attractions for miles around. There has even been a campaign to resume the disposing of glass there to ensure the replenishment of the beaches, where collecting is discouraged but not illegal. Fort Bragg has gone full circle: a town salvaging the last knockings of an industrial heyday to fashion a spectacle that people from the Bay Area will drive for hours to see and touch (and, of course, buy). All relying on two resources it has in abundance: human waste, and the unyielding power of the ocean. With the same apocalyptic beauty of a coastline undergoing perpetual destruction, it is both miraculous and tragic at the same time.

Despite the majority of glass being clear, brown and green, pieces can be found in a wide spectrum of colours. Some browns soften into amber yellows or deepen to blacks and maroons; greens turn to emerald or lime; and whites tinge with aquamarine. Every piece unique and precious; the confluence of innumerable streams of stories and events encapsulated in a singular object.   

         

Nearly three hours from home and with our own earthly schedules to meet, our time was equally rare. Handfuls of debris we had no chance to examine, slipped through our fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass. By twilight we would be back among the seemingly eternal plantations of concrete and corrugated steel in Petaluma, feasting from ceramic plates.

Turning our backs on the beach, and the Pacific Coast, felt like leaving a treasure chest half full. Footpaths not taken, guidebook entries unvisited; everything plunged into a state of temporariness. The Midas effect, where the very things you want to hold are what you must let go. We rolled out of Fort Bragg along Route 20, bearing inland toward the cavernous depths of Jackson State Forest. With the sun sinking into the ocean behinds us, its golden, angular light igniting the redwoods beyond, we weaved a path through the dusky darkness.

Imag(in)ing California: Farmhands

One of the most influential books I’ve read during my studies in Geography is by American professor Don Mitchell, discussing the California landscape. In it, Mitchell explains how the idyllic image of California as a place of beauty and opportunity masks the struggle that has gone into producing this landscape throughout history – the toil of almost exclusively migrant agricultural workers, and the (sometimes violent) confrontations with their employers regarding wages, rights, and living conditions. Revealingly, the book’s title is The Lie of the Land.

Since I read the book in the summer after my first year of undergraduate study, I’ve had the opportunity to go to California twice, most recently in the first two weeks of May. My older brother lives and works there as a residential designer in the Sonoma Valley, giving me not only somewhere to stay and family to visit, but an insider’s vantage point into life in this slice of Northern California.           

The Sonoma Valley and neighbouring Napa Valley, known as the Wine Country, are famous worldwide for the produce of their vineyards, and the experience of wine tasting amid the scenic backdrops of wineries. According to Google and local anecdotes it’s a very desirable area to live in, with plentiful countryside, nice restaurants, and being a short drive away from the West Coast and the Bay Area with its larger cities. The median listing price for houses is between $650,000 and $700,000.  

Early into the trip, my brother drove us up a winding road to a house peering across the Sonoma Valley from the side of its western ridge. Behind an electronic security gate, the driveway leads down to the main house building, and the remainder of the property which includes a natural lake that’s about 50 metres wide, and next to it an outdoor swimming pool flanked by deck chairs and a tree-sheltered outdoor dining area. Steps from here lead to a balcony overlooking the scene, while commanding views of the misty North Bay further south. Through sliding glass doors is an expansive modern kitchen currently being refitted, which connects to a living area with adjoining bar. Downstairs there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a utilities room, another living area, and a library, all elegantly furnished.

This house is worth about $2 million.

You can experience part of the culture that attracts such wealthy homeowners to this area by taking part in local wine and olive oil tasting, which we did on a couple of occasions. The first time, in downtown Petaluma at a wine club, we were directed through the five S’s of tasting wine. The first is sight: carefully turning and tilting the glass in your fingers to observe the wine’s hue in the light. Secondly you swirl, hand lightly clasping the rim and gently spinning the liquid inside to fold in oxygen. Thirdly, you smell, inhaling deeply to draw the wine’s aroma into the nose’s olfactory receptors. The fourth step is sipping, letting the liquid roll over the tongue’s terrain and interpreting different fruit and oak flavours present in the wine. Finally, savour, swallowing and noting the strength of the aftertaste, while contemplating the experience as a whole.

We put these principles into practice on a second occasion at a place called Jacuzzi, a ‘family vineyard’ whose tasting room has one side for wine and the other for olive oil. Tasting here was free but most visitors leave with at least one bottle of something. The staff there were exceptionally friendly and knowledgeable, clearly familiar with the products they offered on a personal level. Rather than talking about ingredients, prices or other facts, they would explain what the olive oil tasted like when they drizzled it on popcorn while watching a film the other day. On this basis, it would be hard not to find something you want to buy out of all the experiences you’re offered. It is a trend in personable customer service you encounter everywhere you visit in Northern California.

As we were leaving Jacuzzi with our buys, I spotted a small group of fieldworkers tending to grape vines near the roadside. Bent over and dressed head to toe in blue like surgeons, their gloved hands operated on the plants with precision and care. In that instant, it was impossible to make out what arcane knowledge or instincts they applied as they manoeuvred the stems of the vine, for as swiftly as the farmhands came into view, the image was swept away when we turned onto the highway.

If wine tasting is a method of deciphering experience, road travel – rural California’s default way of getting from A to B – is a routine of abstracting. The car window frames the world in motion, blurring and flattening the creases and inconsistencies of nearby things into the shapes and colours of the land behind. Like looking in a crystal ball, these journeys leave you with a mixture of crystal clear vignettes and foggy silhouettes. If we extend the metaphor, the practice of tasting wine is akin to palm reading – subjective yet with a careful attention to detail, and blessed by the wisdom of pseudo-science. What both these behaviours have in common is a curious fluidity between reality and imagination.

We parked up in downtown Sonoma, an orderly square of boutiques, historic buildings, eating and drinking establishments, to shop for souvenirs. Before leaving, bags fully loaded, my brother led us into a wine tasting room to show us its unique style of interior design. Shelves of dark wine bottles cascaded down one of the room’s lofty walls, behind a well-populated bar that was surrounded by plush leather armchairs and round tables. Everywhere sharply-dressed patrons smiled across tables with glasses slouched in their hands, sipping sparingly as if they were at a church communion. I remember wondering about the chain of events that transforms what happens in the fields into this highly curated ritual; the process by which a fruit of the land becomes a social and cultural event, a vision of grandeur.

Partly out of necessity and partly out of intrigue, Mum then decided that we should stop by the American equivalent of Poundland to get a few bits, a shop called Dollar Tree. To get there we headed down unfamiliar roads to a small retail outlet somewhere in the suburbs, Dollar Tree nestled in the corner as if it were hidden furthest out of sight from the casual visitor.

The first detail that struck me about Dollar Tree was the clientele. About four in five of those queueing at the tills were Latino, compared to – from my observation – zero in downtown Sonoma or in the wine tasting venues. The store clearly anticipates this, because when entering your eyes are met with the incongruous vision of helium balloons littering the ceiling, many with the words ‘Feliz cumpleaños a tí’ printed brightly on the silvery plastic.

The decorum of the boutiques was abandoned in Dollar Tree, as items spilled out of their shelves and baskets onto the thin green carpet. Above rows of soda bottles stacked up on shelves was a sign announcing Million Dollar Brands, printed in a goofy font next to the frozen section. When queueing for the till, we saw children stretching their tiny fingertips towards the shower of ribbons, eyes wild with glee as they jumped and clutched at the balloons.

The friendly community feel that permeated every establishment we visited in the Wine Country was here too, though it came across more like camaraderie. One exhausted staff member had just finished her shift as we waited at the checkout, and joked her goodbyes to each colleague with a weary smile. Till workers and customers all seemed to know each other by name, asking how so-and-so was and telling them to take care. It felt like a Californian outpost in a distant land, where old customs remain even as conditions differ, and people make the best of what they have.

Until recently in the neighbouring Napa Valley, immigrant farmhands slept by the rivers in tents, rented garages to crowd into with other workers and their family members during the season. Napa now has three farmworker housing centres, where $13 a night gets you a bed in a shared room, three meals a day, a shared washroom. Sonoma Valley has none of these centres, though the same problems exist with farmworkers being unable to afford local housing. I never got to see where these people live.

They don’t adorn the wine bars. Instead the grape’s fluid seeps into the cracks of their palms, colonising the exhausted body until it becomes one with the landscape they tend. While the lifestyles of some Californians mirror the pristine portraits of smiling faces that you see in the foreground of Visit California adverts, others are content with finger-painting the greens and yellows of rolling hills and neat rows of vines if it means that they can live. Their livelihood relies on the consistency of this image.

There is an immense irony in how all the local boutiques we entered were so keen to sell paintings of fields and vineyards with their iconic rusting metal barns – all devoid of the people without which this much-loved landscape would be unrecognisable. It’s akin to how tourists deftly turn their cameras away from human subjects in the photographs they take, as if the existence of these individuals in the picture would somehow reduce the authenticity of the landmark they’re trying to represent. As much as landscape images can give viewers a potent dose of a sensory environment, they stink of absence – of what lies outside the border; of the events and actions that led up to that moment.

Like the picturesque uniformity of a theme park, in California we have an image of living that entices everyone; a friendly sociability that everyone aspires to, in spite of material differences. The image repeats itself again and again and again in the acts of ordinary people, because it is a beautiful illusion. Whether their hands are grasping for helium balloons or the door to the balcony, fondling for grapes in the vines or stretching down to the wine fridge, it’s California they’re reaching towards.