I never fought the land

Late afternoon I am crawling up a twisty dirt road through the redwoods.  Crawling because there are signs everywhere to drive slow.  I have to drive around a pile of fresh split firewood in the middle of the road, cross over a cattleguard before I reach the top of the ridge outside of Navarro, California...Anderson Valley area.
See a house and drive to the back of it and walk up to a low deck and start my "Hello!'s"  In the city of course you'd be knocking on the door but I'm figuring up here a Hello! is better.  Eventually a man comes out.  Says he was taking a nap, I say I'm here to shoot the vineyard, he says he's been expecting me.

At the two minute mark of the conversation we're talking about bars.  "I've always said if you want to know America, go into the bars" he says. Now folks, you know how I feel about the value of bars but I let him continue.  To me there seems to be two types...one who actually listens to another and the type who waits until there is a pause in the conversation so he/she can jump in and start talking about themselves.
So I listen to what he has to say.  I don't break in.
At the five minute mark he's talking about coming out to California in 1960 via the army to go to the advanced language school in Monterey.  He told me he had read everything Steinbeck ever wrote before coming here and once seeing Monterey that he felt he had found what he didn't know he was looking for.
Not only went to every bar ever mentioned by Steinbeck but became a regular.  Him and a buddy moved to a beat down shack on cannery row to be closer to Steinbeck's ethos.
Bars.... bars....bars...
I kept listening.


At the fifteen minute mark he's onto how in 1972 he didn't know shit about grapes and went to Wente to buy some plantings for his property.  Just a hippy who wanted to grow some grapes so he could make some wine.
Those plantings have been ripped out but there some chardonnay down there next to the pump house from 74.
I like this man.  Finally tell him my views of bars.
We talk more about bars.

He says stop by after you're shooting the sunset and let's drink some beer.

"Original Beirut Taxi. 92"

 He says.

 There are books everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  We pop a couple of beers and sit at his kitchen table.  His wife has passed away.  Across the table are photos of people.  I'm thinking they're offspring and the offspring's offspring.
We get onto Montana, he finds out I went to school there. Do I know such and such who taught there. We talk about my favorite Montana author...A.B. Guthrie.  He tells me his and starts pulling books off his shelves magically and putting them on the table.  An atlas comes out and we put our fingers on special places we're talking about.  We land on the sheep/cattle wars of the west.
"You know the vineyard here is just a small part of the property.  I own all the way to there."  He's poking his finger out the darkened windows.  "I ran sheep for 35 years up here."
"I never fought the land.  Always undergrazed, always brought the fattest ewes to market."
"I always under logged my land."
And he then brings up his other career as a text book editor and it goes on and on and on.
You know how you meet someone and sometimes your vibrations are the same and you're getting this person?

The house that looks down the valley.

Not that it's pertinent but the next morning I'm at his place to shoot the early light.  Someone across the valley and on the other side must be having target practice with a very large caliber rifle.  Every shot echoed up and down and in and out of every little finger and canyon.  I counted 11 seconds from the time of a shot to when I couldn't hear it anymore.  11 seconds.  It was trippy.

A crop of a snag on this property.  A most magnificent redwood snag.  I could not take a photo of this that did it any justice.  Far enough away to see it all made it feel insignificant.  Closer you couldn't fit into the crop without a wide angle and it again became insignificant.  100-125" of hollow burned redwood.  A thousand holes from birds pecking at it, maybe 15 feet in diameter.

I'm cropping this because Y'all did not pay me and therefore I'm protecting those that did pay me.