In 1976 I sold my auto body and paint shop and moved to 23 acres of remote land in Northern California, and built a house. The land straddled a creek that had cut deeply into the earth over thousands of years, and created flat areas as it wandered back and forth on it’s journey down. On one of these flat areas I built my house.
The house is gone now, the land above it was never very stable and there was a lot of rain in wintertime, and the earth steadily moved downward over the years until it pushed the house down into the creek below. It served me well in the many years I lived there, though, and that little valley gave me some amazing memories.
The creek would go wild and deep in winter with all the rain water rushing down the valley into it, but in summer it was clear and calm and even had little fish swimming in a deep pool that I used to swim in as well, on hot days.
Once, and only once, in the evening as the sun had set just below the horizon and the day was darkening, I saw a tiny flash of light. Looking closely, it was a tiny beetle whose back end was glowing brightly. Now, this is California and we don’t have fireflies here. Those are an Eastern United States insect. But we do have glowworms, which are a sort of firefly. In all my life before and since, I have never seen another one.
But there were jewel bugs. These critters infest trees and kill them, but they’re beautiful to look at, with their very bright, iridescent bodies and wings. They look like something a princess might wear.
And then there were the fuckbugs. That’s what we all called them and the first time you saw them, you knew why. They’re always paired, butt to butt, coupled in an orgy of mating, hundreds and hundreds of them all over the place because when they appear, they appear in droves.
Once, walking up my drive, I stopped because there was a large animal sitting in the middle of it, staring into space. It was a lynx, a big one, there perched on it’s haunches and apparently lost in reverie as it was obviously completely unaware of my approach, and I was within 20 feet of it. After a good wait, I whistled to it, and it turned it’s head, looked at me, and then just walked off seemingly totally unconcerned.
I wasn’t at all alone on that land, there was a large variety of creatures sharing it with me, deer, squirrels, porcupines, bobcats, skunks and at least one lynx. Mountain lions and bears, though I never had any encounters with them.
Native Americans owned that land before I did, but their tribes were wiped out long ago when the White Man came and took over. They left a lot of things behind, though, as I accumulated a large collection of their stone tools, arrow and spear heads.
Now we have Google Satellite images and you can look down from on high and see how that whole area has become more populated. A heavy steel gate was put up at the top of the valley while I was still living there, to keep out the non-owners and now the entire character of the place has changed. Most of the animals have moved away to more remote places, safer from humans. It was pristine when I was there, though, and a grand adventure at being a modern pioneer.