BIGFOOT TRAPPED BY NORCAL FANATIC!
I’d long ago developed the habit, while out Bigfooting, of carrying in my jeans pocket a dog-eared copy of Birds of Northern California , one I’d bought at the Booklegger in Eureka’s Old Town. Previously having had no interest in bird species other than chicken (and, once a year, turkey,) I’d since incubated ornithology into a full-blown hobby. Park rangers, you have to understand, took umbrage at the suggestion that a community of gigantic man-apes inhabited their workplace. “Bigfooting” just wasn’t the raison d’etre you offered to the authorities. Hence, the birdwatching alibi.
“Seen anything yet?” she asks.
“Nope.”
A few more seconds of painful silence, the fog drizzling audibly, and I return her unblinking gaze. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for , I mantra inwardly, anxious to open my “Christmas presents,” stored on the camera’s two-gigabyte flash memory card.
The forest ranger stares silently at me for a few more seconds, smiling uncomfortably, then wishes me good luck birdwatching.
She speeds off.
Earlier that morning, on the way into the park, as I have every morning I visit, I count the vehicles parked at Lady Bird Johnson Grove. A mere two-miles-or-so into the Park, the Grove sits near a paved, lined parking lot, and is by my estimation the Park’s most frequently visited locale. It boasts a clean restroom, after all. And the pleasantly brief, level trail that encircles the Grove provides a Cliff’s Notes version of the Park, all sword ferns and behemoth Trees of Mystery-esque redwoods.
Today, parked on the Grove lot is the same number of vehicles that I’ve noticed on my previous three trips: None.
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