If there is a place that better blends agricultural heritage with a literate, urbane sensibility than Point Reyes Station and environs, then I haven’t found it.

First stop? Philip K. Dick’s former house, a kind of pilgrimage for me, as Dick’s one of my favorite writers. The science-fiction legend famously lived in town for a few years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Typing away in his kitchen, he wrote numerous short stories and his novel, The Man in the High Castle, winner of the Hugo Award in 1963 and subject of a recent Amazon series. I stood in front of the house awhile. The “Face of God” that Phil claimed to see in his Pt. Reyes backyard was nowhere to be found—I checked—but the long-awaited pilgrimage to his iconic house was complete. I headed over to Ink.Paper.Plate for a chat with Sirima Sataman.

The Artist At Work

Sataman’s had a lot going on over the past couple of years. She’s had a show at the Bolinas Museum. And the Saltwater Oyster Depot in Inverness displays her prints, which brings more visitors to the multi-functional workspace, teaching space, retail outlet and community gathering space that is Ink.Paper.Plate.

Sataman’s story has many twists and turns. She studied printing, weaving, and sculpture in college, but a more “serious” career got its hooks in her after graduation and she spent years working an office job. “The universe kicked me out of my old career,” she says. Her son was fully grown by then and she was debt-free, so Sataman decided to roll the proverbial dice and become a full-time artist. She found the storefront that would become Ink.Paper.Plate and took up residence in Bolinas.

The largest pieces on the walls are all Sataman’s, but the workshop also displays prints by other artists and students. One wall features more than a dozen small posters for West Marin bands like The Haggards—all produced by local musicians who learned the craft from her.

If you’re not familiar, the old-time printmaking process is pretty cool. First, Sataman sketches an image on a thin piece of wood before carefully carving out the areas that won’t transfer ink to paper. Then she slathers the wood with black ink before subjecting wood and paper to extreme pressure to produce the image. Print runs can end suddenly when the wood plates shatter during the transfer. The paper, too, must be especially thick to survive the process.

Sataman had two plates on display at different stages. The first was a sketch of the Point Reyes Lighthouse with some carving already completed. Like the real lighthouse undergoing restoration and closed to the public, it’s a work in progress. The second was a well-used plate—the picture was of a local church— covered in dry ink. Although the plate looked worn, it still had some life in it for more prints. (Her art adorns the cover of the Pacific Sun this week.)

I left Sataman’s studio for some refreshment at the Old Western Saloon where the only customers on a Sunday afternoon are locals and motorcyclists Irishing up their coffee. The place smells of cigarette smoke, and the liquor bottles sport a thin layer of dust. Perfect. Enjoying a beer as you admire the photographs of Prince Charles’ 2005 visit hanging above the bar. Preserved in a glass case are his and Duchess Camilla’s pint glasses.

Rainy Day Ramblin’

The rain was coming down hard the next day and my car made the “smart” decision to take me from Petaluma to Pt. Reyes on the Petaluma-Marshall road. After 15 miles of impenetrable fog, wet asphalt, and one logging truck, I arrived at Highway 1 and the Marshall Store. I ordered a cup of clam chowder and six raw oysters. The oysters were cold, the chowder was boiling. I doused the soup with black pepper as I took in the iconic view of Tomales Bay. I considered my scalded gums and white knuckles, and got back on the road for the short hop to Pt. Reyes. The town has a number of “It’s the only town in West Marin with a . . . “ features. It’s the only town in West Marin with a pharmacy—West Marin Pharmacy. It’s also the only town in West Marin with auto-service stations (Cheda’s and Greenridge Gas and Auto) and it’s the only town in West Marin with a radio station, the great KWMR. It’s not the only place in West Marin where you can buy a gallon of gas, unless you want to drop nearly $6 for a gallon at Bo-Gas down the road (it’s for a good cause—affordable housing—but still).

Like most of West Marin County on a Monday, it’s pretty quiet in Pt. Reyes as the work week gets going. Locals know this is the day to go grocery shopping, after the tourist-intense weekend has ended. I went to the Palace Market for a Marin Kombucha, oak-aged and flavored with apple and juniper. It tasted just like slightly sweet tea and I loved the brown-glass bottle, something straight out of an 1890’s snake oil salesman’s kit. Are you lacking vigor, young man? Then step right up!

After the oysters, the chowder, and the kombucha bacteria, I was still hungry. I ducked into the Station House Café and splurged on an order of fries and a cocktail. Around me were plenty of families with young children taking lunch. I marveled as the wait-staff managed the cacophony and chaos with friendly attentiveness. The Station House recently celebrated its 45th year in business and here’s to many more. It’s an institution.

The rain subsided in the afternoon and I walked down Main Street to Point Reyes Books, found the perfect book for a rainy day and headed for the recently rebranded and upgraded Olema House, whose location at the corner of Highway 1 and the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard makes the hotel the living gateway into Pt. Reyes National Seashore, with all its trails and hiking opportunities. There’s lots going on out here in coming weeks as spring gets rolling. The 10th annual Point Reyes Birding & Nature Festival takes flight on April 27, on the lawn adjacent to Cowgirl Creamery. Festivalgoers can meet a local owl and a local hawk. The bird event also features all sorts of family-friendly activities—coloring, face painting, and a youth bird walk. The Point Reyes Station Library is loaning bird backpacks to attendees that include binoculars, a bird diagram-book, and a local bird chart. Lucky kids. Then in June, the Pt. Reyes Farmer’s Market will be up and running in and around Toby’s Feed Barn on Saturdays through the summer. It’s said to be the first organic farmers’ market in the greater Bay Area—and was visited by Prince Charles and Lady Camilla back in 2005.

The Junket

I arrived at Olema House for a press junket and was warmly welcomed by host Jan Vanderley at the front desk. He handed me a hot towel, which was welcome relief after all that cold wind and rain. He gave me a tour of the impeccable hotel, which features two dozen rooms, all with a unique theme, and all designed to denote a sense of luxury amid the rugged Point Reyes wilderness. I was in Room 16. The theme there was oyster shells and redwood accents to go along with a page of Kerouac’s On the Road hanging in the bathroom. I unslung my pack and settled in.

The air smelled heavily of cedar, here, a product of both the wood rails and daily fire in the lounge’s stone fireplace. As spring becomes summer, weddings and receptions come through here at a steady clip—2019’s pretty much all booked up—and even during the rainy season the hotel hosts a few corporate events every month.

The rain gave way as I looked out the window and then checked out Room 16’s third-floor balcony. I lit a fire (Olema House provides two Duraflame logs for visitors) and wrote for a few hours before dinner.

Due West is ext door to the hotel and I spent a while there sipping a martini and snacking on roasted almonds while listening to diners’ conversations. I ordered a tomato bisque paired with a light Chardonnay. The bisque was delicious and delicately sweetened with an undercurrent of carrot. I cursed myself for eating all those fries earlier in the day. I could have had a chocolate torte for dessert. Instead I settled into one of the softest beds I’ve ever slept on and broke open Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home.

In coming months, Olema House and Due West will expand their culinary offerings with a new spring menu, and a newly renovated deli on the premises—Due West Market—that offer guests picnic baskets full of cheese, bread, wine, and other North Bay delicacies.

No Rush to Go Home

I awoke long before the alarm went off and stayed in bed through the morning and listened to the birds and occasional car driving by on Highway 1. Even out here, civilization makes itself known.

The complimentary breakfast in the lobby featured smoked salmon, sliced tomatoes, and cucumber. It reminded me of European hotel breakfasts, the effect enhanced by sitting near a young German couple. Outside, the fog was lifting. Near the rushing Bear Creek, a little girl played with her dog—the hotel Olema House can also provide bedding, food, and other amenities for guests’ four-legged friends, within reason. Leave the pet emu at home.

I lingered right until checkout time and then set out for the Great Beach, which spans 11 miles along Point Reyes’ western edge. Some sand between my toes would be the perfect way to end the trip . . .

But the road was flooded. I didn’t walk on sand, but the ride home was a delight. Black Mountain, the local massif and spirit guide, glowed emerald green, and guided me back to Petaluma. I might have even seen the face of God.

Tom Gogola went along for part of the ride.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni says. The 4th District representative made the rounds in West Marin over the weekend and talked about news of a new $3 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that’s being made available to homeowners who live in flood-prone zones in the county’s unincorporated parts.

It’s a drop, sure, but it’s a welcome one to county officials trying to assist flood-prone homeowners through the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan.

And yikes—it’s still raining and flooding this week as the county is now in the process of reviewing dozens of applications seeking a piece of the grant, most of them from the coastal towns of Marshall (15 applications) and Stinson Beach (17 applications). The rub is that not all of the applicants are in a FEMA flood zone area or in a future sea-level-rise area identified by the county in a pair of vulnerability assessments it produced in 2017. They won’t qualify, even if they’re at risk, too.

One vulnerability study determined that future sea level rises in Marin County could, under one scenario, spike by ten inches. Add in a 100-year storm surge and it’s estimated that 8,000 acres of land would flood and 200,000 residents would be displaced or otherwise be impacted. Three ferry landings, five marinas and numerous boat launches would be under threat, commuting employees could be stranded and some 4,500 homes would be flooded.

The current FEMA grant to raise houses to a safe level would be spread across an estimated maximum of 16 homes. A bucket’s drop indeed—but the county says there’s more on the way.

This latest grant opportunity comes as Marin County weather-related events this winter—mudslides in Sausalito, levee breaches in Novato, houses poised to hit the beach in West Marin—are underscoring a regional push to deal with climate-change impacts on storm seasons and anticipated sea level rises. Nobody’s denying climate change in these parts and if they are, they’re drowning under a sea of observable realities.

The buzzword du jour from all quarters these days is resiliency—but can the county keep pace with its visions of resiliency, given the looming sea-level-rise peril?

The deadline for the West Marin FEMA grant was March 22 and the Marin County planning office tells the Pacific Sun this week that they’ve received 39 applications for the $3 million grant to raise houses along the Marin coast. The maximum grant to any household is capped at $243,337, and the homeowner is required to be able to contribute 25 percent of the cost of elevating their structure. The county currently offers no funding boost of its own to assist homeowners of lesser means who are at risk of flooding, but says it’s open to the idea.

The funds are part of a FEMA program designed to build resiliency in parts of the region at risk of flood and fire.

The grant, says Marin County Planning Manager Jack Liebster, came about as a result of the state Disaster Declaration that attended the 2017 Sonoma and Napa county wildfires. The opportunity sprang from the ashes of fire disaster, but localities have the flexibility to deploy the funds to meet local resiliency shortfalls as they see fit. And while it’s true that Marin County’s been described as a “sleeper county” to the extent that it’s overdue for a big wildfire—concerns about flooding and sea level rise are a graver and more real-time threat that’s already affecting the county.

The latest grant is pegged to unincorporated West Marin and is for homeowners in the special flood hazard zone. It’s aimed at helping them get their houses raised above the so-called 100-year-storm line. While it does seem that 100-year storms are occurring every winter, the metric actually refers to the 1 percent statistical probability that a killer storm will hit in any given year. Meteorologists may need to upgrade the metric as storms quicken and intensify.

Marin County homeowners in high-flood-risk areas are subject to a county code that requires homes to be built at least a foot about the 100-year-storm high-water mark. To counteract future predicted sea level rises, the county also encourages anyone near the shoreline to build or raise their home two feet above the 100-year mark mandated by county code. Homeowners in those areas are required to carry pricey flood insurance.

Marin County has gotten two FEMA resiliency grants recently; the other is pegged at flood-prone properties in the eastern part of the county.

As Liebster explains, federal funding is provided under the authority of the Stafford Act through FEMA and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CAL OES). The state agency is responsible for identifying program priorities and reviewing sub-applications. They forward recommendations for funding to FEMA. The federal agency has the final say over eligibility.

Meanwhile, in Novato

As the song goes—it kept on raining, and the levee broke. On Valentine’s Day, a sloppy and windy pineapple express roared through the region and breached one of two levees that hold back the engorged Novato Creek. The breach closed State Route 37 between Highway 101 and Atherton Avenue—aka, the Narrows—for several days, snarled traffic and frayed nerves of commuters up and down the North Bay.

The levee breach was visually startling, but not surprising. Route 37 was similarly flooded in the drought-busting winter of 2017. This year, stormwater broke through the creek embankment and levee on the section of land owned by SMART, according to city documents.

Novato has been subject to big floods on a fairly regular basis, going back decades. Still, voters there turned back a 2016 local ballot measure that would have funded flood-remediation efforts through a new tax.

A year later, the city sent a letter to numerous residents who live on the downtown floodplain, informing them that while they weren’t officially in the special flood-hazard zone, they were at great risk of flooding. Novato has more than 5,000 acres designated as Special Flood Hazard Areas (SHFA), and the city notes on its website that a half dozen storms between 1980 and 1998 caused flooding and damaged buildings. “However,” the city notes, “your home need not be located in the SFHA to sustain flood damage.” City officials there urge residents to keep those drainage courses and storm drains free of debris.

The levee breach appears to be an entirely predictable event. In 2016, Novato applied for a FEMA grant to study the levee system with an eye toward improving it. The grant request was denied. In April 2018, Marin County issued a request for proposals to study the Novato levee system. The objective of the project is to “evaluate the geotechnical condition of the existing levees, and determine the feasibility and costs of modifications to address both levee stability and potential improvements that could achieve improved flood protection for FEMA accreditation.”

According to state records online, the 900,000 contract will be split between state and county money: The county committed $400,000 to the study in 2017; the state, under the 2006 Local Levee Assistance Program pledged an additional $500,000 in June 2018. (Elsewhere in Marin County, Larkspur’s levees are currently being studied via a $350,000 contract.)

The proposed study was to be completed by 2020; the implementation date for the proposed Novato levee study was set for this winter.

Just in time for the levee to over-top and wash out State Route 37.

Is This the End?

There’s a dirt road in Bolinas that boasts a killer view of the Duxbury Reef and San Francisco. It’s a quiet block most of the time, barring the occasional obnoxious Airbnb party and the chattering quail that are all over the place up on the Big Mesa. This weekend there’s a Tsunami preparedness drill out here but if the FEMA maps are any indication, Bolinas is pretty well protected from Tsunami impacts through its Big Mesa and Little Mesa (downtown’s a different story). But if a Tsunami hits out here, Stinson Beach is doomed. Forget it. No more Parkside Bread, no more Red Rocks nude beach.

At the end of the Bolinas road, besides the great view, there’s a concrete retaining wall that was installed some years ago to prevent the road from further eroding into the ocean. The talk around town says it cost the resident who built it some $5 million.

It does not appear to be money well spent, as the rains this winter have completely undermined the surrounding area; the wall has itself slipped some twenty feet down the cliff. A nearby home isn’t going to make it through another winter. It’s been condemned by the county.

I live near the cliff and before it collapsed, the retaining wall was my go-to spot for a cup of coffee and the morning meditation. I’ve always had this sweet meditative spot contemplating the sea as it crashes into rocks. Last summer, I headed out there one afternoon and a woman was perched on the retaining wall, reading Hermann Hesse and drinking her coffee. Maybe it was matte. Lately, locals have been coming to check out the erosion, and I go out there every morning to check the status of the house as the cliff inches closer and closer to the back deck. I miss the coffee spot but there are bigger problems in the world.

There’s a line from the Hesse bildungsroman, Beneath the Wheel, that I’ve occasionally meditated on too, and that seems wholly appropriate for Marin County as it chases the money and charts a sea-rise course in the era of resiliency and wild levee breaches.

His small fragile ship had barely escaped a disaster; now it enters a region of new storms and uncharted depths through which even the best led cannot find a guide. He must find his own way and be his own saviour.

Resiliency!