Boonville To Briceland

It was the longest night of the year, the last night as well, according to the venerable old Mayan calendar, and it was an eerie one. The lightning and rolling, rumbling thunder began shortly after dark, with extended peals of doom booming from Shelter Cove to Alderpoint and everyone next day commented on it. As I broke camp in Briceland and struck out for Boonville to retrieve my rain gear and other much-needed winter clothing, they said, “The Universe realigned itself last night. That's what all the noise was about.”

The opinion of most of the people who picked me up hitch-hiking concurred, and I hoped they were right, having been unhappy with the previous arrangement. These kind folks hauled me along on their way, sharing a portion of their journey and the comfort of their cars with a stranger.

They spoke of a new day, a new world order, a new geometry: Fractal geometry.

The storm raged on, the river rose, and when I got to Garberville the on-ramp was crowded. Etiquette required I move on down the road and it wasn't long before the CHP had me under arrest and on my way to the Humboldt County jail in Eureka. They held me there in a cold concrete cell until around 2am, having charged me with nothing, then kicked me out on the streets into the teeth of a storm of steadily escalating intensity.

When I objected, they put me in front of padded wall and searched me for weapons, with an officer on each side twisting my arms back and using certain “compliance techniques” one of which may have broken my right wrist. It is still swollen after six days. I thought I was being compliant.

“You are torturing me,” I howled.

I spent the weekend on the streets of Eureka waiting for the bus to run to Garberville on Monday. During this time I met many other homeless chaps, most of whom scoffed at my swollen arm saying, “You got off easy.”

The stories I heard from these robust gauchos, these hale argonauts of the margins of civilization, was that the cops are getting tough, but only on those of us who can't afford to pay the high rents on being a “productive member of society.” I should have expected as much, considering the stories I heard in Mendocino County for the past four years. I went to see a friend in Boonville shortly after he was arrested recently and found him nursing broken ribs compliments, he said, of the famed Peter Hoyle, who only last year broke down a door in Willits and snapped the wrist of a girl who was completely innocent* — Special Agent Hoyle had got the wrong apartment, and the Task Force paid the victim off to avoid a lawsuit.

Also, there is a new publication on the streets in HumCo and Mendo: Grassroots, an amatuerish, but well-intentioned newssheet, wherein we learn of some of the local Occupy Eureka demonstrators were beaten by cops.

On Monday I boarded the new bus service to Garberville, leaving Eureka's Bayside Mall at a bleak and blustery daybreak, the gale-force winds having subsided and the temperature fallen during then night. From the mouth of the Eel in Fortuna to the Avenue of the Giants the swollen and swirling river flooded its banks. It being Christmas Eve, the bus took on only a few very soggy and chilled passengers, and when I got to the 101 on-ramp in Garberville (where bus service ends until Willits) I had the place to myself.

The first car picked me up. A pickup, actually. My contemporary Samaritan was an older gent from Alderpoint, he said. He took me to Richardson's Grove where I stood for an hour or so in the chill mist enjoying the sculptures; all the silly caricatures of lumberjacks, grizzly bears, Native Americans. The traffic was all motorhomes and shiny cars filled with prim faces from predictable middle-class places. Then, finally, here comes a battered little pickup very like the one that had dropped me there, but this one was driven by a hippy chick, and she was slowing down to take a look at me!

Wendy, she turned out to be; the very one who takes charge of the clean-up after Burning Man. She had lived in Laytonville before moving to Black Rock City, and she spoke intimately of every landmark we passed. She bought me coffee in Willits and finally deposited me in Ukiah at the Water Trough with a pair of dry socks a warm and welcome hug. I collected my gear from storage and was planning to go over the hill to Boonville but chanced instead to meet a guy going up to Bell Springs. I grabbed this ride as a kid grabs an early Christmas present, but later regretted it.

I ended up walking, after dark — it was a very short day — from Tan Oak to South Leggett. As I climbed this steep, stormy mountain and stumbled down the other side all through the long, cold, wet night many a good Christian whizzed past.

At last, one stopped. It was early on Christmas Day, and the car stopped way up ahead of me. A figure got out for a moment, then the car sped off. When I got to the place they'd stopped I found a bottle of very expensive whiskey with one good shot left in it. This cheered me beyond all description. I tramped into Garberville around 2pm, just in time to sit down to a sumptuous community feast at the John Haynes Vet's Hall. ¥¥

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* According to the Claim filed by Ukiah Attorney Barry Vogel in September of 2010, “Hoyle’s violent force threw Claimant off balance forcing the full weight of her body to fall to the floor on her left wrist at the point of two previous surgeries. This violence caused Claimant immense physical and emotional pain including potential permanent personal injury. … In immense pain and sobbing, Claimant got up from the floor and holding her injured wrist went to the living room where her mother was still sitting. Claimant’s mother took Claimant to Howard Hospital Emergency Room for treatment. … She continues to suffer pain in her wrist in doing ordinary daily activities including, but not limited to, carrying light weight items without resulting pain. She was not able to drive or type after the attack. Surgery is a definite possibility.” Vogel’s claim sought $350,000 in damages, and a call for “an oversight committee to see that other people in Mendocino County are not subject to future abuses of Constitutional protection by local law enforcement officers.” It was subsequently settled at a lower, undisclosed, amount.)