Californee

I am in Orange County, California visiting my mother and brother. As far as my past and current experience goes, the OC is an utter wasteland of a place... little more than a ginormous condo community and minimall. However, I've stumbled across some letters I wrote last year while traveling to less/more savory parts of California, and have decided to publish some of them here.

Let's start with raccoons.

~~~~~

We were tired and full and just wanted to find a place to sleep. Justin, Biscuit and I had hitchhiked into San Luis Obispo earlier that afternoon and had been ballyhooed in great detail of a possible sleeping place with “a totally spectacular view” called Terrace Hills.

Our informant was a middle-aged cyclist who happened upon us at the local coffee shop. He seemed to pity us after realizing we had no site in mind to rest our weary backs, it completely not occurring to him that I’d be fine with spending our time exploring the town and stumbling upon a place to spend the night. With almost unwarranted zeal, he hunted down a phone book in the coffee shop for fifteen minutes, afterwards exuberantly trying to navigate me through the unfamiliar lines and street names on the city map therein. Terrance Hills itself did not appear on the said map, “but its right about here” he eagerly reassured me by pointing to the apparent location. Finally, both of us satisfied that I could apprehend the area, he handed me three dollars and departed, his good deed done for the day.

We started out okay, passing foretold signs and landmarks, carelessly venturing in the right direction. Then somewhere, though I tried to follow his instructions best I could, I obviously screwed up. The railroad tracks that had been described were nowhere along our track, as were the street names I’d memorized. I didn’t say anything to Justin, less and less caring how on track we were.

A few minutes before closing time, we came across a health food store and decided to check its dumpster for abandoned goodies. And what a feast there was! Justin gleefully pulled out a box containing four perfectly ripe avocados, two red apples, a grapefruit, some bagged vegetables, an organic tomato, bouquet of fresh basil, and half a fresh watermelon. We carried our find a bit further, halfway hoping to run into some indication that we were headed in the right direction, and then finally plopped down in an empty lot to gorge ourselves. With some sub rolls I’d purchased earlier with an old Albertsons’ gift card, we dined on avo-tomato-basil sandwiches and watermelon.

Across the dimly-lit road, nestled between hills of yellow grass and weeds, was the entrance to California Polytechnic University. Recalling the map from a few hours before, I was finally certain that we were way off track. A student with a fashion mullet and purple skinny jeans walked by, nice, but unable to give us information regarding our original goal.

“Fuck this,” I grunted between mouthfuls of watermelon, “let’s just sleep up there.” I pointed to low slopes of dry, matted, cadaverous-looking grasses and other forage. It didn’t look like much of a hike, but was high and secluded enough that we’d likely go undisturbed till morning. Justin agreed, so we stuffed the apples and grapefruit in an extra plastic bag and raced across the street to locate a point of entry. Biscuit was getting tired, but was still alert and adventurous, eager to sniff the unfamiliar plant life at the base of the hills and seek out something to chase.

Turns out the hills weren’t as easily penetrable and they appeared. A menacing fringe of thorny bushes and implausibly monstrous grey-green weeds seemed to be the foundation of the desired hill. Still, we advanced further and further down the road, determinedly looking for a weak spot to invade.

Then Justin found the dead snake. The creature appeared to have slithered halfway out of its hole, its jaw slack and eyes open as if it had simply gone “oh, fuck!” and keeled over right then and there. It looked so ridiculous that Justin and I wondered if it were a plastic toy, placed there to alarm passerbys. Justin poked at it a bit, until my patience wore and I began to nag him to cut it out. Now we were nearly at the end of the not-so-opportune hills (though we hadn’t checked the ones on the other side of the street) and decided to wander through the university to check the much grander hills we could see towering behind the parking lot and student dormitories.

Polytech University, as it turned out, is quite an interesting campus. Tempting orchards, model irrigation systems, livestock, and other programs kept us interested throughout our hike through the campus. As we neared the campus’ Einstein’s Bagels and partying students, I saw an inspiring amout of bicycles crammed together in a ton of little parking structures.

We spotted some restful looking hills directly behind the dorms and determined that we should try to sleep there. Finally, we looked down on a silent ravine, nestled between the partying students and the road leading through a canyon like a secret hiding spot. Ignoring the “No Trespassing” signs, the three of us hiked down the grassy slope and followed a dry stream bed to an inviting tree. All was quiet except for the occasional passing car along the canyon road and the few students who were still awake way above us. We were secluded enough that we were sure not to be found out, but close enough to the road and the dorms not to feel too isolated.

Justin and I threw down our heavy sacks and relieved Biscuit of his Roughwear doggy backpack, stretching out our aching bodies and sighing relief that we’d finally found a place to rest. We threw out our sleeping bags and Biscuit collapsed onto Justin’s as if he’d never known such relaxation. I pulled out my letter writing kit and began to scribble an address. The sky above us was a peculiar, milky-orange color, a byproduct of the foggy nature of the sky and the city lights beyond.

A few minutes passed, and the forest we were calling a campsite for the night began to look a bit creepy. Then, we heard the scuffling.

It wasn’t terribly loud, but it wasn’t quiet either. At first it sounded like a drunken frat boy stumbling lost through the thick leaves, but then it would be utterly silent. Justin and I watched with wide eyes and stiff, quiet bodies. Scuffle, scuffle, and then quiet. Scuffle, step, step, step, quiet. Justin and I looked at each other.

Scuffling, stepping through the leaves. I don’t believe that I had never been so completely terrified. Literally, I felt that my veins were frozen. Fear slowly pulsed through me like a drug you can’t get out of your blood, almost to the point that you’d slit your wrists just to purge it. Justin sat observing the area where the unidentified noises originated from, calm but alert. Biscuit just snored, which should have assured us that nothing threatening was lurking about.

Whispering with considerable unease, we debated what could be creating the racket. A person? An animal? Not likely a person, we determined, it sounded more like a small group of smallish animals foraging. But what animal? A mountain lion would not have been so carelessly noisy, and Biscuit surely would have alerted us by now to something interested in eating us. Not mice or rats, too small. They must be raccoons. We even heard some tell-tale squeaking to validate our theory.

But we weren’t sure, as our eyes had not actually seen the furry beasts.

It is almost mind-blowing how something as humdrum as a hungry family of raccoons can be so embarrassingly fearsome to modern, nature-sheltered humans late at night. Raccoons, I knew, are benign creatures who generally avoided confrontation unless they or their young were directly intimidated. Even Biscuit, who growls or barks at anything that even seems to have the most miniscule capability to infringe on our territory or safety, snored peacefully through most of the incident. But still, I rolled up my sleeping bag and squeezed into Justin’s, irrationally puerile and still shaking scared. Knowing full well that it was just raccoons that would ignore us, I lay wide-eyed like an atheist who isn’t 100% sure about the nonexistence of a god.

Then, at about three in the morning, Biscuit, who had been slumbering this whole time, finally must have decided that the squeaky critters were too close. He sat alert, eyeing a dark spot not more than fifteen feet in front of us. Justin and I also sat up, seeing nothing. An invisible raccoon hissed, Biscuit growled, and Justin and I decided at last to just leave the place.

Five minutes later, adrenaline channeling stamina through our exhausted, sleepless bodies, we hiked back through the tall, yellow grass, passed the dorms, before finally coming back to the hills at the front of the school that we’d originally schemed to sleep upon. Looking across the road from them, we realized there sat an even more secluded little hill, with no brambles or dead snakes to impede us.

A brief hike and a quick turn later, completely hidden in lovely trees and almost insultingly perfect, was a sleeping spot. Even soft mulch was littered about, coyly whispering “Here I was all along, now come and rest.” And so we did.