Smoky Sunlight © 2013 Bo Mackison

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” ~ Henry Miller

A week on the road. My traveling companion and I are seeing many new things in new ways, driving on roads in a part of the country I’ve never visited. We took a back way from Lassen Volcanic National Park in northeastern California to the redwood forests on the Pacific Coast.

We negotiated six lane expressways, national forest roads, smoke drenched roads from a forest fire near Salmon Creek, road construction delays, a state highway that turned into a paved, but unmarked road that crossed a narrow gorge on a high, one lane bridge that led into a deep woods on a gravel switch-back road hat narrowed to dusty, washboard road.

Finally we emerged from the dark forest into a sun dappled prairie. A prairie? Yes! On the eastern fringes of Redwood National Park, we drove through a prairie, then an oak woodland, and finally we could go no further — the Pacific coast and huge cresting waves were the last of today’s continual rewards on this wondrous day of traveling.

Tomorrow we enter the cathedral redwoods. Hush.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is traveling this week, seeing anew.