When I lived in Humboldt County, the world felt almost too pristine. It was too open and too unhurried. I couldn’t fully surrender to its quiet rhythms.
Life there moved at a pace that asked something different of me, something I didn’t yet know how to give. Living now in the Bay Area feels like an entirely different existence—denser, louder, propelled by urgency.
Humboldt carried the spirit of an older world. It seemed to exist just outside the reach of time itself. The Bay Area, for all its energy and ambition, could never quite hold this spirit.
My life carried me from Northern California to what I think of as its middle stretch. Yet, I found myself missing what I had once struggled to inhabit.
I remember one afternoon in particular. I sat in my backyard and absorbed the warmth of a rare, sunlit day. It was a quiet gift after months of blistering cold and relentless rain. Reclined in a chair, I let the sunlight settle into my bones, the stillness wrapping itself around me like something earned.
Then, from a distance, I heard it: the low, steady hum of an engine. It grew gradually louder, pressing against the calm I had begun to feel. I looked up just in time. A low-flying airplane glided over the small town of Rio Dell. Its presence was brief but intrusive.
Moments later, it disappeared, and with it, the disturbance. A quiet relief followed.
But the sound returned.
Again, it passed overhead.
And then again.
By the third time, I felt a flicker of irritation rise. It was almost enough to make me want to wave it away. I wanted to call out, Hey, I’m trying to rest here.
But just as quickly, the thought softened. My four-year-old son was absorbed in his own small world. He chased a ball across the yard. His laughter was unbothered by the interruptions above. His presence pulled me back, gently, into the moment I had nearly lost.
I might have forgotten that afternoon entirely if, months later, something hadn’t brought it rushing back with unexpected clarity. While browsing in the library, I picked up a picture book and began turning its pages absentmindedly.
Then I stopped.
One image held me still: an aerial photograph of my home and my small town, captured from above. It was breathtaking—at once familiar and newly revealed. The book was filled with images of Humboldt County. However, that single photograph carried the echo of that afternoon. It preserved the quiet beauty I had once lived within but had not fully known how to see.
Ruby's Musings 