I am not sure what to make of little you hitchhiking to school at dawn. It seems you were perfectly safe, in one of the continent's most beautiful places, which you had mostly to yourself. I wouldn't have wanted your childhood, but that's because I didn't have the wildness of it. A happier childhood than mine in a big white house that sat behind the only fence in town like a castle behind its moat.
Sleepimg outdoors is beautiful — I actually miss it still. Funnily enough, I remember that one the reasons I slept outside was to get away from the flying bugs (like winged daddy-long-legs) that would be visible at night indoors! They were harmless, but they terrified me. Now I'm have screens, but even when one occasionally gets in here, it no longer bothers me, and it's easy to rescue them and put them outside. Thanks for commenting, and many thanks for the recommendation! Was honored to see it.
I'm happy (and jealous) that you got to live in Bolinas. Visited as a kid a few times and it's where I always planned to move when I grew up. But by then! $$
It's complicated, perhaps. But yes, Bolinas was stunningly beautiful. No $$ in my day — absolutely the opposite. It was shocking to learn of the changes that came later. I used to have a recurring nightmare that I'd gone back (for the first time) and there were hi-rise resort hotels downtown.
This glimpse into your safe, easy and beautiful childhood is so uplifting. The fact that your parents built you a deck, and encouraged watching the sunrise together as a family is much to their credit. We sometimes forget how family times in nature can be so bonding and memorable.
I grew up in South Africa (am still mostly here) and also remember sleeping outside under the stars a few times, with my dad and sisters just for adventure of it. Mom chose to stay inside in her comfortable bed. We couldn't understand why. Funny.
Oh, that sounds like a wonderful set of memories. Strange to think in how many parts of the world now it's almost impossible to see stars fully, due to light pollution.
Beautiful, just beautiful - a lovely Solstice gift, so well told and evoked. I know that landscape, too, in memory, and you describe the natural rhythms of fog and sun and the big Milky Way so well.
Thank you so much! Yes, it was all complicated, but the landscape and natural world were overwhelming beautiful. I'm so glad that, knowing them, you felt that this captured some of what they were like there.
This sounds so completely idyllic. I have never slept outdoors in the way you describe, but think that is something I should now remedy! An uplifting piece to read.
Thank you! I've rarely done it since those years, but the sleeping outdoors part was a treasured memory, and I've wondered what it would be like to do it as an adult. I'm so glad if this shared something pleasing.
Sounds to me as though your parents and you got about as close to hippie nirvana as reality would permit. I brought my little girls to my Ukiah foothills plot a couple of times, just for the experience of the star-dome at night, after our fire died down; and of coastal mule deer quietly browsing practically within reach, at dawn. But these were interludes, not entire passages, in our lives. I envy your experience of so many days and hours in that environment. And I admire your parents for their love and willingness to create a life--or a chapter of it, at least--for all of you there.
Ah, that sounds beautiful, those times in Ukiah. You would have had exactly the same skies. Have you also found that it's hard to encounter that again? That era was a complicated era, but the density of the stars is something that I still miss, all these decades later. Your daughters surely experienced the beauty of it as fully as I did back then.
This is lovely! I read it with my heart in my throat. My relationship with Bolinas was different, as you know, but I remember the sunsets and the views… and the fogs! You really captured the freedom of being raised in a beautiful unpressured place and the good side of being quite cut off from the rest of the world.
Thank you! I'm so glad that it brought back some of the more positive sides, including the experience of connecting with the immense beauty of the place. And hope that it brings some added lightness in some way to your memories from there.
In truth, this piece was meant to evoke both the good sides and the bad sides, as spelled out more in the other Bolinas piece posted here. But if it succeeded mainly in conveying just the positive, that is a value in itself, as your lovely note here shows.
I think Bolinas became such a dark place to me, because of its association, that I was really grateful to read its more innocent depiction. There is of course a shadow to everything, and the hippy upbringing was often very far from the ideal that it set out to be.
”I think Bolinas became such a dark place to me, because of its association, that I was really grateful to read its more innocent depiction.” This makes me so happy. I'm so, so glad that it gave some of that back.
Glad midsommar! (I hear my Swedish grandparents.) What a beautiful recollection this is. And I well understand how some of these morning rituals were so impactful as to become timeless. Perhaps happening just a few times or over years. I love the reminder that I can always take a night under the stars here and reconnect with the Milky Way.
My son, age 21, recently spent a night sleeping outdoors under a big moon in our grassy yard to be with our dog Raisin for her last night of life. It was so touching and beautiful.
Thank you! What a tender moment, you son and the dog and the night sky. Deeply moving. It must be a sad time now too, having lost her — I'm sorry. Can you really see the Milky Way in any detail where you are? I see only the fantest outlines these days, even in a country village. And glad that you picked up on the timelessness of some kinds of memories from childhood. It's fascinating.
Some nights are better than others, but there’s that density that is so very different from what I could see in the city growing up and is the arm of the Milky Way
Thank you so much! In truth, I meant the piece to show a bit of the complicated aspects as well, but the beautiful aspects are indeed beautiful, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed them.
I am not sure what to make of little you hitchhiking to school at dawn. It seems you were perfectly safe, in one of the continent's most beautiful places, which you had mostly to yourself. I wouldn't have wanted your childhood, but that's because I didn't have the wildness of it. A happier childhood than mine in a big white house that sat behind the only fence in town like a castle behind its moat.
It sounds as though they might have both been lonely, in different ways. The image of the only fence in town is really striking.
Cribbing from myself again.
😊
Just to add, thank you for picking up on that passage in the piece, especially.
Sounds like a lovely childhood. I've always wanted to sleep under the stars, but then I think about the bugs and change my mind.
Sleepimg outdoors is beautiful — I actually miss it still. Funnily enough, I remember that one the reasons I slept outside was to get away from the flying bugs (like winged daddy-long-legs) that would be visible at night indoors! They were harmless, but they terrified me. Now I'm have screens, but even when one occasionally gets in here, it no longer bothers me, and it's easy to rescue them and put them outside. Thanks for commenting, and many thanks for the recommendation! Was honored to see it.
I'm happy (and jealous) that you got to live in Bolinas. Visited as a kid a few times and it's where I always planned to move when I grew up. But by then! $$
It's complicated, perhaps. But yes, Bolinas was stunningly beautiful. No $$ in my day — absolutely the opposite. It was shocking to learn of the changes that came later. I used to have a recurring nightmare that I'd gone back (for the first time) and there were hi-rise resort hotels downtown.
This glimpse into your safe, easy and beautiful childhood is so uplifting. The fact that your parents built you a deck, and encouraged watching the sunrise together as a family is much to their credit. We sometimes forget how family times in nature can be so bonding and memorable.
I grew up in South Africa (am still mostly here) and also remember sleeping outside under the stars a few times, with my dad and sisters just for adventure of it. Mom chose to stay inside in her comfortable bed. We couldn't understand why. Funny.
Oh, that sounds like a wonderful set of memories. Strange to think in how many parts of the world now it's almost impossible to see stars fully, due to light pollution.
Beautiful, just beautiful - a lovely Solstice gift, so well told and evoked. I know that landscape, too, in memory, and you describe the natural rhythms of fog and sun and the big Milky Way so well.
Thank you so much! Yes, it was all complicated, but the landscape and natural world were overwhelming beautiful. I'm so glad that, knowing them, you felt that this captured some of what they were like there.
This sounds so completely idyllic. I have never slept outdoors in the way you describe, but think that is something I should now remedy! An uplifting piece to read.
Thank you! I've rarely done it since those years, but the sleeping outdoors part was a treasured memory, and I've wondered what it would be like to do it as an adult. I'm so glad if this shared something pleasing.
Sounds to me as though your parents and you got about as close to hippie nirvana as reality would permit. I brought my little girls to my Ukiah foothills plot a couple of times, just for the experience of the star-dome at night, after our fire died down; and of coastal mule deer quietly browsing practically within reach, at dawn. But these were interludes, not entire passages, in our lives. I envy your experience of so many days and hours in that environment. And I admire your parents for their love and willingness to create a life--or a chapter of it, at least--for all of you there.
Ah, that sounds beautiful, those times in Ukiah. You would have had exactly the same skies. Have you also found that it's hard to encounter that again? That era was a complicated era, but the density of the stars is something that I still miss, all these decades later. Your daughters surely experienced the beauty of it as fully as I did back then.
This is lovely! I read it with my heart in my throat. My relationship with Bolinas was different, as you know, but I remember the sunsets and the views… and the fogs! You really captured the freedom of being raised in a beautiful unpressured place and the good side of being quite cut off from the rest of the world.
Thank you! I'm so glad that it brought back some of the more positive sides, including the experience of connecting with the immense beauty of the place. And hope that it brings some added lightness in some way to your memories from there.
In truth, this piece was meant to evoke both the good sides and the bad sides, as spelled out more in the other Bolinas piece posted here. But if it succeeded mainly in conveying just the positive, that is a value in itself, as your lovely note here shows.
I think Bolinas became such a dark place to me, because of its association, that I was really grateful to read its more innocent depiction. There is of course a shadow to everything, and the hippy upbringing was often very far from the ideal that it set out to be.
”I think Bolinas became such a dark place to me, because of its association, that I was really grateful to read its more innocent depiction.” This makes me so happy. I'm so, so glad that it gave some of that back.
Glad midsommar! (I hear my Swedish grandparents.) What a beautiful recollection this is. And I well understand how some of these morning rituals were so impactful as to become timeless. Perhaps happening just a few times or over years. I love the reminder that I can always take a night under the stars here and reconnect with the Milky Way.
My son, age 21, recently spent a night sleeping outdoors under a big moon in our grassy yard to be with our dog Raisin for her last night of life. It was so touching and beautiful.
Thank you! What a tender moment, you son and the dog and the night sky. Deeply moving. It must be a sad time now too, having lost her — I'm sorry. Can you really see the Milky Way in any detail where you are? I see only the fantest outlines these days, even in a country village. And glad that you picked up on the timelessness of some kinds of memories from childhood. It's fascinating.
Some nights are better than others, but there’s that density that is so very different from what I could see in the city growing up and is the arm of the Milky Way
Oh, I envy you! There are places near here with no artificial light, I've been told, but I haven't visited them at night as yet.
What a lovely post. And how safe your childhood seems to have been from this small snapshot of it.
Thank you so much! In truth, I meant the piece to show a bit of the complicated aspects as well, but the beautiful aspects are indeed beautiful, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed them.