Avenue of the Giants

  The moment Albert awoke, possibly while he still slept, he knew from the scent in the air, that he was embedded in farmland. Slowly rising, rubbing a hard, deep sleep from his eyes, Albert remembered flashes of his night’s dream. It was a funky dream, one in which he co-starred in a Hollywood blockbuster movie with actor Will Smith as Barack Obama. From the bits and pieces that he could recall, Albert played the roll of Obama’s assistant, a sort of Robin, as in ‘Batman and Robin’, and together with Obama, their super-powers, and their spandex, saved the world from the off-smelling, “evil ones” – whomever they might be.

   Albert always liked Joe Strummer’s lyrics, “...cold water on the face, brings you back to the human race...,” and with doing so, was off and running. From Ferndale, Albert headed east down Grizzly Bluff Road, a narrow country lane, lush with fauna and wild flowers, to the small town of Rio Dell. From here he crossed over the twisting Eel river for the first of many times that day, and passing through the town of Scotia, entered the ‘Avenue of the Giants’. Albert thought that there must be many beautiful locations in the world to cycle, but this had to rank right up there. The sun was high and the temperature warm, but the air under the canopy of ageing redwood trees was cool. Albert cycled the dark, wooded avenue, narrow and winding, rising and dipping, for over ten miles – sometimes alone, sometimes together with the life-affirming, optimistic, little Blue Bird.

   Near the hamlet of Weott, Albert pulled off of the avenue to a wayside, and trekked down to the edge of the glistening Eel river. This section of the river was wide, with a broad expanse of stony beach on either side. It was whilst taking in this glorious view of nature that Albert had a ‘deja vu’ experience. This, he realized, was the location in his dream that he’d had that heavy stormy night back in Forks, about the white, and the red wolf. Here, Albert was sure, was where in the dream he found himself running with the two wolves along the banks of a remote mountain river, only to lose sight of them as they sped off into the distance, eventually taking flight. Albert, sitting himself down on the edge of the river, blocked out the ridiculous, petty problems of the world from his thoughts, and concentrated on the pure beauty of the setting at hand. In a moment of meditation, becoming one with the environment, Albert envisioned the two wolves as they playfully ran together, wild and free, joyful and loving, in what could only be termed as ‘A Wolf’s Nirvana’.

   With a warmth in his heart, and little Blue Bird by his side, Albert and Blue Bird (like Batman and Robin) returned to the ‘Avenue of the Giants’ and passing ‘The Immortal Tree’, The Foundation Tree’, and the ‘Dyerville Giant’, rode on passed the towns of Myers Flat and Miranda, eventually ending up in the post-hippy town of Garberville.

   It was summer-hot in Garberville, Albert had cycled seventy miles this day, and night was falling. Finding an empty meadow, Albert, too exhausted to pitch his tent, pondered over the past two-weeks on the road, and the more than one-thousand miles he’d cycled, lay his head down on (what he imagined to be) a bed of California Stars, and drifted off.