Oct 2013
...I woke up in a hotel in Yulupa. It was cool and rainy, but the TVs said it was September.
Later that day I went outside and frolicked among some unusual plants, so reveling in the ways of folk here not pushing me to "keep moving" with the winds like in the other places I had been. A health food store was nearby, and amid the busy townspeople gathering food for the winter ahead, a couple of fellow travelers saw me and we shared our stories under some tall trees. I learned that "Yulupa," known also as Santa Rosa, got its name from the golden sun sparkling on the waters.
Then I was on a bus headed north, and the news reporters kept saying something about a "government shutdown." The people around here ignored these claims and went about life as if this change had no effect.
Passing verdant vineyards and golden-hilled live oak savanna, I felt a rush of euphoria and understood this was the path my faerie guide had laid out for me. At each stop, I wanted to get out and feel the air but I knew I would be left wherever I got off. Night came and the canopy of giant trees engulfed us on the curvy, hilly highway. It felt as if we all were together in waking dreamstate on the bus, "somewhere in between" realms, as in a long dark tunnel.This was the space-time that the orcs and wraiths and mercenaries could show their faces to those innocent or unaware, and take advantage of them.
I called out to my faerie guide, asking that for the next body of water I were to touch, if she would appear to me in sparkling form and take me away for "at least a moment." My destination would have flowing water and giant old trees, and I badly needed the recharge.
By the sunset of the following day, I had stood on the fallen trunk of the "Council Madrone," the largest Coast Madrone tree in the world; washed my face in the hillside spring waters, and stood on driftwood at the Mattole Lagoon, a magical place where the small river breaks the coastal mountains to the ocean. 
My gracious host, a mama-bear woods elf coming into her own, fed me and gave me shelter in exchange for community and land help. With her outdoor furnace on the hilltop, we cooked and kept warm using hot-burning madrone tree branches.
About the place-name "Yulupa":
http://santarosa.towns.pressdemocrat.com/2012/07/news/place-names-how-yulupa-got-its-name/
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| coastline by the Mattole Lagoon. |
http://www.digthatcrazyfarout.com/madrone/
