A Ride to the Ridgeline

Thank you for joining me on California Ridgelines. I am embarking on my next novel. I’m certain it will take place(s) somewhere in California; and I’m fairly certain it will involve aspects of history. That’s about all I know at this point. Endless possibilities entice and overwhelm. So, I’m getting started with tidbits – observations, nuggets of discovered knowledge, new insights about what I thought I knew. Please come along to expand points of intersection and new directions.

For starters, this morning I rode my bike to the highway known as Skyline in my neighborhood. Skyline (SR 35) comprises a bona fide north-south ridgeline (and was a possible title for my Substack). It runs along the crest of the Sierra Morena, a portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains that runs from Half Moon Bay Road (SR 92) to the Lexington Reservoir, southeast of San Jose.

To the west of Skyline, the marine influence asserts itself, sometimes as suddenly dense fog that the redwoods turn to rain. Today, however, the sea breeze smacked of clear, autumnal horizons. To the east, one leaves behind the shimmering plate of San Francisco Bay and the undulations of the East Bay hills under a fair sunrise. One’s own pounding heart and pants testify to the steep escarpment down into Woodside, where the sleeping dragon of the San Andreas Fault neatly parallels Skyline. The steepness of Kings Mountain Road silently bears witness to the minor-god power of that dragon, who pushed up these mountains eons ago.

I rode up the appetizingly named Kings Mountain Road (somebody named King made a road up the mountain? The Spanish explorers declared the pathway for their sovereign back in Spain? It welcomes any king (or queen?) who is hardy enough to climb the 1700-ft ascent?) To be researched.

On the way to the summit, the nature of California ridgelines is manifest. One passes through multiple microclimates and topographies to reach the climax – crossing after crossing that tell their tales in the quality of your breath. You move across dry, stockpiled warmth in sunny patches of road and relentless, stream-fed cold through shadowy hairpin turns. Oak woodlands, chaparral, second-growth redwoods – each smells, tastes, and feels different in your lungs. Ghosts of giant sequoias linger.

The road once was used as a type of skid road. Logs were jammed into the muddy passage, greased with whatever tallow the grease monkeys had to hand, and felled redwoods were barked and hauled (skidded) by twelve-ox teams down to the mills in Woodside, and from there floated with the tide on barges (or as logs tied together) from Redwood City to the resource-hungry city of San Francisco.

The stories! The dangers for the resource extractors, the devastation of the natives, the exfoliation of unchecked capitalism altering forever the landscapes. The fortunes made, the hearts broken, the friendships and betrayals, and on and on.

My novel BAY LANDS (She Writes Press, Spring, 2027) brought me to the crossroads on the ridgeline. I can’t wait for the next ride.