In the beginning a cathedral of trees. An ingress, a threshold to a world aloft. North through the enshrouding mist; striding ashore amid boggy seas teeming of unbounded ferns, fecund skunk cabbage, and fairy tale amanitas. Emerging from dusky Gaelic clouds, a locus bearing treasures: ancient promises, silver-handed kings, biophilic fables, and lesser esoterica. Behind a redwood curtain a country unknown, a greater notion concealed—a beginning.
To map and to name is to claim dominion. Etched borders and boundaries can be simple annoyances, arbitrary facades, or conspicuous markers of domination. But a learned man once said: “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”
For me, the Cascadia bioregion’s southern extent envelopes far Northern California. Growing up in the lower San Joaquin Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area was deemed Northern California and all that lay above a nameless enigma. But perceptions are relative. With age, lands once distant grow nearer; in time, mysteries once opaque come clearer.
Thus, in 2005 I came into that true north country by way of U.S. Route 101. Trek 200 miles from the Bay Area and traverse the Humboldt County line. The highway meanders costive through old-growth redwoods impeding sunlight and crowding the paved artery—a verdant, primordial tunnel heralding arrival. Sail through the murk and the vapors, breach the artificial frontier, leave the piloted vessel in ashes, smoldering—no return permitted. Exit the cathedral and enter Cascadia.
Those born to the sea ponder the waves as routine just as those born to the desert wonder only mechanically of the sand. Likewise, those born to temperate rainforests perhaps yawn at poetic visions of drizzly fishing villages, moss-carpeted trails, and moody argent skies. But for those less fortunate, born to placeless suburbia, to tedious dirt lots, to monotonous weather, to alternating soy and corn fields, to concrete jungles and ticky-tacky domiciles, to insipid plastic ephemera, to brown-yellow hillsides, to the there that was never quite there; Cascadia is a revelation.
The mythical Tuatha Dé Danann people ventured the world’s northern islands before coming to Ireland holding exclusive wisdom, prophecy, and supernatural powers. Their ships sailed on clouds, sliced through the darkened brume, and finally docked at the emerald isle. Upon arrival they set their boats aflame, ceased their oceanic voyaging, and strode onto the shore peering only forward.
For manifest reasons and also for reasons difficult to articulate, entering Cascadia was a beginning. Breaking free of the bush, I had located the trail. Maybe you cannot go home again, but perhaps you can come home for the first time and discover that despite your origins you had been misplaced, wandering perennially in a foreign land.