2007 | Tomales Bay, Marin County, California
I have admired this view for many years, but only out of the corner of my eye. The drive along this shoreline demands technical attention; the road is narrow and winding, bringing frequent encounters with deer, cyclists, big dairy tankers, and heavy hay rigs.
This route works along the bay, gently at this spot, and later hangs on the bluffside, higher above the water, with narrow shoulders, no guardrails, and little room for errors. The landscape here is discreetly dramatic and sharply drawn – after all, this bay is the water-filled section of the San Andreas Fault cutting into California from the floor of the Pacific. (Nearby on the levee road is the spot where the roadway was dislocated by its full twenty-foot width in the San Francisco quake of 1906.)
And just north of here, at age 92, my mother had her last driving experience, even as the family was planning for her to surrender the keys to the old Volvo. Before that could be arranged, Mom was on her way home from appointments over the hill. She noted her drowsiness and made a plan to turn in at the first known wide spot to rest before making the remaining two miles home. But fatigue caught her first, and she went off the road into a rare tiny meadow hidden below, angled into a small alder grove just above the water. A following driver saw her go off, and the first responders from the fire station across the road greeted her by name.
Mom reluctantly agreed to a ride in the ambulance and passed inspection with only bruised ribs from the deployment of the airbag. When she could comfortably laugh again, she admitted to me, “I know that I was in denial – I was pretending that I was only 88.”