Last weekend I went into the mountains for a hike in the Devil’s Punchbowl, a tilted sandstone formation in the Angeles National Forest.
These sedimentary rocks were were squeezed into their present, steeply tilted form by ongoing uplift action along the Punchbowl and Pinyon Faults and by pressures along the San Andreas Fault. That’s right, I live very close to the San Andreas Fault.
According to my parents, the San Andreas Fault is the line which separates the part of the United States that will stay where it is and the part that will, at some point in the near future, break off and float out into the Pacific Ocean. For my father, this was more about separating AMERICA from the strangeness that he called California. Full of hippies and LIBERALS (egad), ridiculously high taxes and people who don’t eat meat, in his mind this state was destined to fall into an abyss. And soon.
Politics aside, this kind of accurate scientific education was common in my childhood and used, I suspect, both to discourage moving across the country (see how well that worked) and to entertain the adults who were probably sick of my endless questions about the way things worked.
Me: What makes fog happen?
My Mother: Fog happens when the sun sets into the ocean.
Me: Really?
My Mother: Of course. The hot sun sets into the ocean and makes steam. Which becomes fog.
Seriously, I remember being totally fascinated by the idea that there were cracks in the earth and that somewhere below them there was lava. But living in the northeast where there is very little extreme nature, fault lines and volcanos were completely foreign to me and, you know, probably FAKE.
Until I started hiking in California. I mean, what kind of shit is this?
The Devil’s Postpile near Mamouth, CA
The fact that these formations all have names with Devil in them suggests that the people who named them found them scary and unsettling. ONLY THE DEVIL could have made such a place. I get that; it is hard to get my head around the forces that could make solid rock look like it was squeezed through a giant Playdough factory. But in spite of my mother’s attempts to ruin me for science, I became an adult who loves it and is awed and amazed by the wonder of the earth. I seek out these strange places in my new state and I embrace these glorious formations and the faults that lurk beneath them as part of my phenomenal new landscape.
The big surprise for me is that my new California life includes massive changes in another kind of landscape as well – the landscape of my heart. I was, until very recently, utterly convinced that I could not, would not, LIVE WITH A MAN, ever again. (Nor would I live in a Box. Or live with a Fox). Allowing myself to contemplate loving him with my whole heart was simply RIGHT OUT. Preferring instead to protect my wounded self from the difficulty of romantic relationships – with all of their COMPROMISE and SACRIFICE – I found myself happily and eagerly enjoying a life with loads of friends and few responsibilities of the romantic kind.
But here I am, on another kind of fault line. On one side is the LAND I KNOW, which is solid, connected to everything familiar, and very, VERY safe. On the other side is a man and his boy, and the joy and confusion of becoming a partner and a parent. Can I straddle both sides of the fault safely? Or will I float out into the Pacific when the big earthquake comes?
I suppose only time will tell. The mysteries of the heart are about as clear to me as those of plate techtonics. But somehow my confidence in the beauty and strength of the earth is expanding to include a confidence in the beauty and strength inside of me. And so off I go exploring, happy and a little bit nervous, about this new adventure as well. Wish me luck.
Boys: as miraculous and foreign to me as geology.
Country Mouse, City Mouse 