The adventure was enlightening, but like Pedro Fages, the Spaniard who sought a route north of San Francisco, only to be deterred by a river, I did not find what I was looking for. In my case it was a creek. Marsh Creek. And Im headed for the intersection of Coyote and Mollok trails in the Morgan Territory region. I may not have found it, but what I did find was provocative enough, as much in the way it came about, as for what I discovered. After my morning ritual, which consisted of staring at my naval, coffee, and more staring at my coffee, I opened an email, clicked a link and am listening to Michael Meade talk about Carl Jung and dreams, and I note that it has been ages since I studied my dreams, and almost at the same time I have an inclination which is as close to an inspiration as anything yet, today, and I pull out a map, and here I go. After packing my gear and some food I note that the day is passing but if my calculations are correct, I have time. But what I don’t anticipate is the work on Morgan Territory and the half hour wait, watching a rooster walk across the road and waiting for the signalman to flop his sign from stop to slow. I also don’t anticipate the decent on the trail, and although the landscape, covered in oaks, is as mystical as any of my travels out here, I am determined to stay on it until I come to my destination. The decline, I mull over, means an accent later in the day, and this obvious point is followed by another – if I am to proceed, I have no choice – when I am interrupted, by the sound of falling water. I can see a cairn of hard rock granite in the creek bed through a field of poison oak, and if I were a Volvon, I would consider this as a primo grinding spot. Remember, I am looking for artifacts, cupules, where they beat the acorn into a paste to make their bread, and I am standing here wondering how many acorns they have ground, every day, for as long as they were eating mush in the morning, which is as long as the culture survived, and suddenly the fruit of the oak are plentiful as there are stars in the sky, and this is astonishing, and impels me.

Now I have never willingly walked into a copse of poison oak – Needless to say it’s a slow go, stepping over vines with dingle berries just above my head and Im thinking, ‘I shouldn’t have left my machete in the car,’ but the water rushing below gets louder, and now the boulders tower over me, and I know that I am close. Marsh Creek is flowing swift and gathering into pools one below the other, large enough to bath in, and I take off my hat and dunk my head and use the silt to wash the underside of my arm, where I know I have rubbed against it. It’s cool and invigorating and I offer my thanks and look at the rocks above me scouring the surface for indentations, circles of black in the moss, much like gopher holes on a hillside, but not one do I see. I climb a few faces more, then I see a rock, slightly higher than the rest, a sort of pinnacle, and I decide to climb it – its only fifteen feet or so – and I say to myself, ‘if I don’t find any, I turn back,’ which means back up the hill to the trail through the poison oak. There are no cupules, not one. But there is something else. On top of where I’m standing, impossible to see from any position below, is this image, glazed onto the surface. It’s some type of mortar, perhaps lime – no moss has grown, a circle and the glyph of a cross? Does this refer to the Spaniards, or is it some more ancient meaning? I rub my hand over it, then pour a little water on it. It’s oddly ‘indelible’ and not likely to have been put there by anyone other than a Volvon, Over the last century, as many are aware, cement has been made on the slopes of Diablo, the mountain they call Tushtak, which means ‘the coming of the day’. When I walk back down the pools, I dunk my head again, and even though I did not find what I was looking for, I entered a dream.