This Place in Forest Knolls May Look OK on the Outside
But it's broken, empty inside. (Sound familiar?)
When my little boy sneaks in to be next to me in the middle of the night, I can be in the deepest, foggiest state of sleep and still know he’s there.
I don’t know what it is, intuition, a “feeling,” or maybe it's his little snores and toots and the sudden absence of covers, but it’s there, something little being that wasn’t there before is beside me, and I sigh a contented sigh and turn over.
Last night he came in, but I wasn’t even yet asleep. Instead I was staring into the void, up at the ceiling, and out the window. I live by the ocean, where the fog that settles in most of the time overrides the dark.
The rats and raccoons and whatever other critters of the night who battle it out for scraps after everyone else has called it good were swinging through the branches on their own midnight jubilee, landing on the rooftop like Indiana Jones and skittering across it.
Being awake to hear this chorus isn't a bad thing; life goes on living and all that. But last night, I was in limbo: too tired to get up and do anything productive, too lonely to want to think about anymore, too awake to not run all the poisonous scenarios through my head.
I blame this week (again.) It’s super-charged (again) with tragedies out of my control and the feeling of impending doom which isn’t a feeling at all. It’s a more stark reality of how we’re all tumbling down the hill, out of control, and the bottom—which should’ve been reached a decade ago—is actually nonexistent—just careening down a deep, dark, endless abyss.
We tend to make light of it now—the people killing themselves with horse paste, the undoing of ability for women to control what happens to their bodies in a shroud of darkness and contempt, an undemocratic takeover of the governorship of the most populous state, and all the while, while forces of evil bask in the garden of malfeasance and contempt, the other side, the one currently in power, strips 9 million people of unemployment benefits during a won't-stop/won't quit pandemic while it continues to pad the pockets of the gross and macabre who are hellbent on destroying this planet—once and for all—for temporary financial gain. And yet, they, like me, act helpless and dreary too.
Through the gauze of half-sleep I turn to my son. His arms outstretched over his head like he’s on a roller coaster. When he was a baby and sleeping, you’d put his arms back down by his side, and he’d throw them right back up in the air over and over like a little doll. And then he’d smack his lips twice and roll over, enough of that little game.
I watch his little eyes flicker from dreams, I see him pull his blanket up around his chin, I tuck him in a little tighter, like a burrito, and I scoot over, my sliver of the bed now reduced in half. I don’t mind.
I look outside and decide that this is the only safe place. Time is suspended in a loop, at least for a moment. And all is quiet. I shouldn't ruin it with any more thoughts.
350 Montezuma Ave Forest Knolls, CA 94933
This is one I clicked on just because of the price tag $279k REDUCED in Forest Knolls, CA—which is essentially Lagunitas, which is essentially Woodacre, which is essentially San Anselmo, which is essentially the not-yet-deforested part of San Rafael.
For the record, you can make it from this place deep in the forest to the Larkspur Ferry terminal in under 25 minutes; give yourself an hour, and you’ll have time to peruse the farmers’ market there or get a pint of Mt. Tam at Marin Brewing Co. (my alma mater/former employer.)
There’s plenty of trails out the front/back/whatever door. Pt. Reyes Station is eleven twisty miles away (about an hour bike ride.) And the trials of Samuel P. Taylor Park can lead you out to Wildcat Beach or even down to the lost city of Bolinas.
Yes, there’s a lot to love about this one. The ultra-NIMBYs of West Marin have won and this time capsule so close to civilization is the spoils.
There are no accessible or arterial roads jutting off of the 101 to dump commuters here. The extra twenty minutes from downtown San Rafael into this version of Eden is just too much for most to bear, so it sits there, upended and ignored and ready to melt or burn to the ground. But it is, all the same, a tiny sliver of your own paradise found.
The only catch is you walk into the actual structure, and there’s no floor. One step through the threshold and you fall two stories, or maybe it’s built on one of those bottomless pits that star in my half-awake state. You fall, and you fall, and you fall. (Do not, in other words, open that door on the floor. It's the DOOR TO HELL!)
The ceiling, what’s left of it, is burnt at the edges like a fake old-time treasure map, a kitchen fire, perhaps, or too many woodstove-related accidents.
The building’s foundation appears to be held up by marshmallows and toothpicks, a fine idea for such a gingerbread-type affair in the middle of the forest. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss the old lady waiting in the corner, ready to shove you into the oven.
So what to do with this jigsaw masterpiece set in actual Endor, this place where dozens of dreams haven’t necessarily gone to die, but they’re slumbering well. Strap on your tool belt and take it on as a weekend project?
Tear it down and start over—return it to the land? Or just tie a swing to the highest rafter and make it your tetanus-hazard, end-time Marin sex cult paradise? See, there are possibilities in every dire outcome.
Or maybe just lay down a few rugs and roll on over, look at the night stars punching their way through the roof. This place is nearly a century old and was at one point haunted for sure, but even the ghosts have lost interest and moved on to a higher-rent district and a home with a six-burner range, a center island, and a stainless fridge.
Whoever said we needed to fix it up? Is making sure our kitchens are dialed our way of extorting control over all the things we cannot? I tend to think so. Maybe this is just the place where it’s cheap and accessible enough to just—let it go.
Let it remain empty, gutted. Just like you. Just like the rest of us.