Pigs (Nine Different Ones)

I have lamented to people before that driving through Oregon will take a toll you did not foresee. It's a pretty drive and everything, but for some reason it seems to take for-fucking-ever. I think it may be that the landscape is all very similar, like watching the same background cycle over and over again when Fred and Barney run somewhere - if they run for five plus hours.

But break West, head towards California's lost coast and man oh man, there's beauty that will shake you. I constantly forget how much wilderness there is left in California. I often forget just how dark it can get there.

The rain that dogged us through Oregon finally stopped, we shook loose of the Memorial Day, SUV and towed speedboat traffic, and the rest of the hours to Dos Rios were spent with mostly laughter and smiles of wonder. We did take a few unnecessary detours down roads so narrow and windy they seem designed by someone determined in their derangement, roads you almost have to search out to travel. One road brought us to a three building "town" that had promised food from the highway - liars. One took us on a completely unnecessary tour of a slightly bigger town, chasing a phantom Carl's Jr. that was apparently a Brigadoon of fast food joints, only materializing every hundred years and only if the moon was right and the adventurers were true of heart.

Oh yeah, and one lane, windy and desolate Dos Rios Road, which began in Laytonville and would have shaved 45 minutes off the drive? The road where the pavement ended three miles in? The road that was actually closed, without prior warning, due to a wash out eight miles in? Well, we saw a peacock, and that was pretty rad.

Anyway, we got to Dos Rios around eight, just as the sunlight is at its most magical, where all that glowing wilderness and stark contrasted shadows just seem to throw an arm around your weary shoulders and say, "c'mon in, have a beer". And if the landscape doesn't actually say it, thank the fates for Greta and Chris who actually will.

A brief note on Dos Rios, California: Get on that glorious Golden Gate Bridge, headin' North out of San Francisco, and ride 2 and a half hours on the 101. You will reach a town called Willits. Willits is a small place, and had I not lived with someone who had run away from Orange County to live in Willits, I may never have heard of it. Now, travel past Willits another few minutes and look out for Highway 162 (a.k.a. Covelo Road), one of the afore mentioned desolate and windy roads. Hang on for a wild 15 miles that will take you 20-30 minutes, depending on how daring you are, and how well your vehicle corners, and you will arrive in Dos Rios. I'm not sure what the last census reported, but I believe Dos Rios has a population of no more than 20. It is literally in the middle of nowhere.

I need you to understand the sort of remoteness we're dealing with here, because it makes what happened on our second morning make a little more sense.

I woke up with a pressing urge to urinate as will happen when you drink copious amounts of beer the night before. Chris and Greta were having a heated discussion in the bathroom regarding a neighbor's water consumption so I figured I'd go throw a whiz off the cliff and towards the river that lies close to the house. I stood up, glanced out the window and had to do a sort of mental systems check just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

On the short stretch of yard that leads to said cliff, were 9 or ten wild pigs milling about; big ones too. I noted that they weren't boars, there were no gnarly tusks or anything, but information files in my head told me that wild pigs can be dangerous.

"Um, there's a bunch of pigs in the yard," I told Biff. She immediately gave me that 'you're fucking crazy', "nu-uh".

I quietly knocked on the door to the bathroom, the door opened to Chris and Greta's expectant faces. "Uh guys, there's a bunch of pigs in your yard," I told them. Greta had a look on her face as though I had just told her that Miles Davis was churning butter inside the Delorean prop from Back To The Future and could be seen through the space-time rift that had just opened in the living room. Chris only simply and quietly said, "that doesn't happen".

They followed me out to the window. The hushed and ponderous quiet was swiftly broken by Greta's banshee like wails when she stepped outside to scare the pigs away. They bolted en masse, like a flock of birds.

Apparently, they are a wild pack of pigs (pod of pigs? school of pigs?) that roam around in the hills above Dos Rios and generally make a mess of the land they root around on. They had never come down that far though and Greta was scaring them off before they tore up the small patch of yard beneath the oak trees that supported the hammock.

I couldn't help but think, watching those pigs flee in mortal terror, of all that ham that would be so good with breakfast.