When I leave to go anywhere, whether I’m going to school or traveling overseas, I always feel sad to leave home. Where I live, in Marshall, there are slow-rolling hills spotted with grazing cows. It’s warm and breezy, and the ocean is at my front door. There is a feeling I get sometimes when I am somewhere else, and a smell from home reminds me of everything back in Marshall… it’s like a memory smell.

If you slip out of the wonderful bliss of the West Marin, you bump into the constant annoying bickering between the second-home owners and the state park service, otherwise known as the government. Normally the problems that accrue have to do with land; it’s always about the land, which I’m all for but sometimes they just take these little things too far. I’m always in the know about all the local news, but I try not to get too involved because it’s too much to handle over something so simple. Right now the main problem is about an oyster farm called Drake’s Bay Oyster Co.

Drake’s Bay Oyster Co. leases land from the park on Drake’s Bay located on Point Reyes to grow oysters. At the beginning of this year, their lease ended and the Park wanted to shut them down because of suspicion of seal and other sea-life harassment with their Oyster Co. boats. It is a very big topic right now, and it has been taken to the Supreme Court and been written about in The New York Times. All the locals are really sad because Drake’s Bay Oyster Co. has been around for a very long time and is a very well-kept business that would never try to hurt wildlife.