I'm still thinking about Mendocino. About how I imagined it for years; how I heard the echo of that song from the seventies about Mendocino, or said the name myself, loving the rhythm of the word, picturing some amorphous city filled with people under the sun. With the Pacific nearby. Fresh air.

Jay had said he wanted to take us to Mendocino. He said the redwoods were there, and that the town—in addition to everything else—had shades of the hippie era. I found that comforting somehow and added that to my vague sunny picture of the town.

So the day before we left St. Helena, Jay was driving us over beautiful curving roads to see Mendocino and Heather, Jay's cousin who had been living in California for over five years. Now, she works at a camp in the Woodlands of Mendocino. The camp was built as a depression project in the redwood forest, from which the oldest trees had already been logged. There are several clusters of buildings, and people come from all over to music, dance and other camps; there are camps for children too. Heather cooks for them when camps are in session, and is living in a canvas yurt.

Standing on the deck outside her door, the land drops away and the tall trees reach up from far below. There were similar drop-offs on the rutted long winding road into the camp. After Heather showed us the yurts (and the comfortable bathrooms between them), she fixed us a snack of granny smith apple slices, cheese, olives, and homemade sauerkraut, and we set out on a hilly short walk through the woods to see the camp. And the mythical redwoods.

I'll just let Jay's photos say a little about them. Right now, they seem beyond description. Tall, mossy. Heather stopped and picked up a tiny pine cone, saying, would you believe that the tallest tree has the smallest cone? Something like that. That was only one tiny reason why I was grateful to be with Heather again for awhile.

Today that walk feels like a dream. I was so happy to be with Jay and Heather. I was happy to hug that tree.