I am in Fairfax, but the hills seem unusually wild and monumental. I meet a fireman who tells me about his job. He says, “Once a fire gets out of hand, it will run right to the naked rock of the ridges. There is really nothing we can do to stop it at that point. The fire sweeps through quickly, and doesn’t really change the shape of the land. It doesn’t kill the big trees, and everything else grows back. Fire has never altered the aspect of the ridges.”
I am thinking about the shape of the land and my many dream journeys into it. I recall the feeling of returning in dreams to a familiar starting point, often in Big Sur, irresistibly drawn to the pilgrimage into nature’s sanctuary. I see that the journey always proceeds from an entry point, like a well-loved creek canyon, and climbs toward increasingly steep heights. At the top, above the cover of vegetation, are sheer faces of dark rock, resembling gods overlooking the world. It is as if we are flying, or suspended mid-air, viewing the sweep of land from the forest below to the rock gods facing us. I say to the fireman, “This is the steepest place on Earth.”
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