The Santa Cruz Mountains are surprisingly lush this time of year, even considering all that has happened. You’d think, given the massive earthquakes that brought San Francisco and much of Santa Cruz to its knees, the flooding of much of the coastal areas, and resurgence of tribal cultures in the area, thriving redwood forests would be the last thing to find a haven here. But if you have an armed escort, you can escape, find a nice grassy knoll tucked away somewhere, surrounded by trees, fuzzy ferns, and banana slugs: a refuge from the things happening below along what is left of Highway 17.

You can’t stay out at night here, though. It turns into a bad post-apocalyptic movie, a mixture of Rhona Mitra and George Romero. Cannibals and territorial “natives,” if that’s what you can call them. But who am I to judge? Who are we all to judge the ways humans cope with disaster? These people have been through things I cannot imagine. Flash floods, raging fires, earthquakes, massive landslides, cruel winters, the list can go on.

I’m from the Northern Block, where Montana used to be. We had storms, sure, but these people, folks we used to know as hippies and Santa Cruzians, have seen some of the worst conditions imaginable. And they have largely been incapable of leaving, not with the blockades along the San Jose Front or the swampy sinkhole that is now San Francisco to the north.

This whole area made up Santa Cruz County and used to be part of California, back when States and Unions meant something. Now? I don’t know what it is. They call this place Reverb City, after the constant fluctuations of earthquakes, and Fleshtown, for various reasons. Before long, the Santa Cruz Mountains may succumb to fires and logging. But that may be some years from now.

There’s a lot to be learned here about how things have turned out—the rules, the culture, the people. We’ll see how long I can last before the locals and the conditions force me to skip town.

–Ithius Sinclair

Tags: 2012, California, cannibals, earthquakes, Fleshtown, flooding, George Romero, haven, Highway 17, Montana, Northern Block, redwood forests, Reverb City, Rhona Mitra, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, tribal cultures

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2012 at 11:01 am and is filed under Ithius Sinclair's Blogs, Reporter's Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.