When I left West Marin in November of 2010, it was with trepidation that I moved out into the world of the unemployed. However, I have never looked back on that decision to leave because I firmly believe that some of us were not made to stay put for so long. I had lived in Inverness for more than 20 years and the beauty and safety of that place were so seductive as to become a snare, a beautiful trap. It was time for me to leave, although I didn't realize that until after the fact. Would I move back? No.
However, I am back there on Monday and Tuesday mornings, working for Tom at the inn. He needs a break and I need diversion and money. It's a job I know well, I am a known entity to him and we like each other enough to pass through the boss-employee membrane with no side effects.
Driving there in the morning, early, is delicious right now. It is so green it defies the word "green." It defies the word "verdant" and any other word you can use to describe rolling hills oozing fresh vegetation. There are baby cows (hmm, I think they are called calves) jumping around in fields, black crows like shiny Maltese Falcons in contrast with the green grass, wildflowers of yellow, orange, blue, red. Postcard vistas. A flat, straight band of fog like a child's lost hair ribbon laying over a dip in the hills. The drive is the pay-off for getting up early and leaving before coffee.
Then, when work is over, I drive back to Petaluma and over to Sonoma and to my other job for the afternoon shift and I see some of the same but a lot of different as well. Lines and lines of vines. Beautifully plowed hills, rows like cables cut into the ground. And has there been a year when the poppies have been this beautiful and prolific? Poppies under the vines, poppies on hillsides, along the roadside, freckling the green fields. It can only make you smile, the guilelessness of nature.
But back in Point Reyes Station: I was in the Palace Market, buying groceries for the inn, and I encountered two men who I sort of knew from living there. Just random acquaintances, not friends, and they both remarked "Hey, I haven't seen you in years!" as if I had been hiding in my house, just waiting to pop out when the time was right! Not questions about where I live or if I moved or any such thing, but just that THEY hadn't seen ME. It struck me so, so West Marinish and in a way that I can't even explain.
So, not really a prodigal returning to Point Reyes, more a sorry pilgrim on the work road but enjoying the view at the same time.
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