November 22, 2000

When plowed ground rolled like waves

"You go down through the Ocean View district of San Francisco to the first freeway exit after Daly City, where you describe, in effect, a hairpin turn to head north past a McDonald's to a dead end in a local dump. It is called the Daly City Scavenger Company. You leave your car and walk north on a high contour some hundreds of yards through deep grasses until a path to your left takes you down a steep slope a quarter of a mile to the ocean. You double back along the water, south to Mussel Rock."

Thus John McPhee starts his fine book on geology called "Assembling California."

That paragraph, which first appeared in the New Yorker magazine, both annoys and gratifies me. Annoys because McPhee, a good writer, might have somehow slipped the word Pacifica in there somewhere. He left Highway 1 at the first Pacifica offramp. He made a hairpin turn in front of Pacifica's McDonald's. He drove north on Pacifica's Palmetto Avenue.

He was only a couple of short blocks from the Tribune. He could have stopped for a movie at the Seavue, or a pizza at Manor Room Pizza Factory with only a short detour. He might have commented on the so-called Fish and Bowl, which he drove past, and which a number of Pacificans have over-glamorized in the course of trying to prevent any kind of development that might sully its pristine brushfilled existence.

McPhee brought us to Mussel Rock because that "horse", as he calls it, is where the San Andreas fault goes out to sea. You may have thought that the fault traverses San Francisco, but the truth is it's west of that city, though close enough to wreak tremendous havoc every several decades. In 1989, just by wagging its finger at us, it got our attention. 1906 was 30 times as strong. Loma Prieta was nothing much. That is true even though many bricks fell, freeways closed for long periods, people died, and a world series game was disrupted.

My father once talked to an old farmer who was a young farmer in 1906. Said farmer was out plowing his fields near Manchester (Mendocino County) that early Spring morning when suddenly the earth shook under his feet and rolled like ocean waves.

McPhee's book discusses how our state was patched together from parts that arrived from all over the world. It took tens of millions of years, and tens of thousands of earthquakes, but nature is nothing if not patient. Most of California was already here when the various species of Homo were evolving in Africa. California will continue to evolve long after we and our descendants are gone. For a truly well-written review of where our state and our city came from geologically, I suggest a visit to the Pacifica or Sanchez libraries for "Assembling California", or a call to Florey's Books. I think my $12 was well-spent, even if McPhee neglected to mention the name Pacifica.

Geology makes even a history buff like Paul Azevedo quake with respect. His usual ancient history refers to 1769, when Gaspar de Portolá arrived to discover San Francisco Bay. Paul's e mail address is Paul@thereactor.net