Place Where You Live:

Bonny Doon, California

Bonny Doon My Country Home

Never heard of Bonny Doon? Don’t worry, you are not alone. We are. Well, if you call sharing a sixteen square mile mountain range with 2600 folks alone. We’re not a town, not wilderness either, but maybe a hybrid of the two. We call ourselves “Dooners”, proudly. I have called “the Doon” home for 25 years. I took Gary Snyder up on his challenge, to “Find your place on the planet, dig in.” Right now my hands are cracked from all that digging, in my garden or pulling invasive French Broom. Most days, on my slice of paradise on the westernmost mountain range on California’s central coast, I’ll see more quail than humans, more deer than cars. In winter, home is the first thing the storms slam into after picking up speed across the vast Pacific ocean. Howling horizontal rains dumping an inch an hour, 70 mph winds, and lots of downed powerlines. The local fire fighters are our heroes. Twice in the last decade they protected us from fires that swept through our overgrown and drought stressed Doug Fir and Redwood forest. Some homes were burned, but mostly the fire did what fires do, clearing brush and opening Knob Cone Pine seeds for another round. Did I tell you they also call this Battle Mountain? The reason is lost to the mists of time, but when tempers run high about speeding cars, a too-big Apple executive mansion, or a new federal agency opening land to hikers, Battle Mountain earns its name. Mostly, we get along. I even birthed my daughter in this house, so it must a peaceful enough place. We do worry what will happen when it gets hotter and the redwoods can’t drink the fog. I guess we’ll stick it out and see.