Chapter 19: The Moon and The Mortal
Some ways north of San Francisco, over a winding mountain pass, sits one of the oldest lakes in all of North America. For thousands and thousands of years, it has been the home of the Pomo people, or at least one of the many bands of indigenous peoples that European explorers and settlers would come to call Pomo Indians.
Of the legends that have been told about this lake, about the range of volcanos that separate the big lake from the smaller lakes, about the chieftains and maidens whose bodies and tears formed the landscape, there is one I take home with me and return to. I can even hold it in my hand.
The legend is about the moon. The moon, like the beautiful moon in many myths, fell in love with a mortal man. He was a powerful Pomo Indian chieftain who loved the moon in return. But the moon could not stay with the chieftain, no matter how much she loved him. The light of the moon could not belong to one man alone. She lit the night sky for all people, and she guided them through the seasons.
The moon wept to leave her lover. She cried millions of tears that sprinkled the earth, tiny brilliant drops of clear crystal that remained long after she had returned to the heavens. You can still find the moon’s tears, scattered in the earth. They sparkle like diamonds, and if you hold one on the lake’s edge, you might feel the moon’s grief so powerfully that you forget your own.
To drive home from the lake, I have to take the highway that twists and kinks like a new gray hair. It rises up and over the mountainside. Rumor has it there was once a bar on one of the highway’s pullouts many decades ago. The bar is long gone, and likely its patrons too, although one wonders how many survived driving a Model A or even a Model T down the winding hairpin turns after a nightcap or two.
I spent my childhood amongst mountains that were far bigger and were much farther away from the ocean. We certainly had lakes in Colorado. I knew people who spent time fishing at the lake, who went swimming, took boats out to water ski. I went to a lake only once, where I learned the hard way that a poor swimmer and first-time water skier should not wear a bikini. I supposed for many years that I was not a lake person. Mostly I spent my time hiking or biking, longing for one city or another and occasionally for the desert.
Falling in love is often a surprise, but having my heart stolen by this lake and the land that surrounds it was truly unexpected. The stillness in the morning, interrupted only by the endless ripples undulating all the way to smack the shore like some tiny ocean. The silver-blue surface that reflects the birds and the clouds. The golds and greens of the hills, and the dark blue-green volcano that, another legend has it, was formed from the body of a dying chieftain.
There’s a pullout on the northern side of the highway just a little ways before the summit. It looks across the mountains and volcanos and offers a slice of the lake in the distance. When I stand there, next to my car, I think about how I want to turn around and drive back down, go back to the lakeshore and stare across at the volcanos whose earth is rich with the tears of the moon.
