These days, I’m perched high up in the pinewood on the Point Reyes Peninsula between a tectonic bay and the vast Pacific, writing writing writing. I recently saw an image of the side of the earth that isn’t usually photographed because it’s almost entirely comprised of the Pacific Ocean, and thought no wonder my psyche feels like it could float away out here some days. I’m at the tip of unbroken water. Blue that goes on forever.
The Peninsula juts right out into the ocean, shaped, I’ve always thought, like the rather rakish profile of a coyote. And it’s actually part of the Pacific tectonic plate, not the North American, riding along the edge of the continent, as it has been doing for eons, in a slow journey from the warm lagoons of what is now Baja California, toward its eventual subduction somewhere along the edge of Alaska. Where it currently sits, this movement between the two plates is called the San Andreas Faultline, the source of San Francisco’s major earthquakes. During the devastating 7.8 magnitude 1906 earthquake, the Peninsula jumped 16 feet north along the fault-line. Living here, I am reminded of earth’s own movement. Point Reyes is tidal at its heart, moving slowly, slowly, but inexorably, north.