FRAN HAWTHORNE
Behind The Scenes
After a career as a journalist, I am compelled to fact-check everything checkable in my novels, even the tiniest details. It's in my DNA. If, in one scene, a character "dug her index finger into the custard in the center of her Boston cream doughnut," then I will force myself to buy a Boston cream doughnut and dig my finger into it. (See Chapter 31.)
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Thus, early one July morning, I headed out to Humboldt County, California, to explore the national forest there. I barely made it back.​​​
​​​​Waking at 4 a.m., I flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco to grab the last of what were then just two daily flights north from San Francisco to the tiny Arcata-Eureka Airport. We were delayed more than an hour by fog–hardly worth a shrug from the reservations desk staff.
​But all was fine. My rental car was waiting when I landed, I checked into my quaint hotel in downtown Arcata, and I got up the next morning with enough spare time to take a run through the local streets. Then I headed south down Highway 101. Since GPS for phones was new and I was (and still am) tech-incompetent, I'd mapped out my route via paper: Maybe an hour to the official forest entrance; a careful drive along the narrow, winding mountain road; lots of chances to pull over to take photos and scribble descriptions of trees and views; a short hike on a trail to a campground for more local color and smells; then the return down the mountain and on to the airport, to catch the last flight to San Francisco and from there, my red-eye home to New York. I even built in an extra hour's cushion, just to be sure.
After about an hour and a half on 101, however, I began to wonder why I wasn't seeing the turnoff for Route 299 to the forest. I gave myself thirty more minutes before I stopped at what looked like a park ranger's station, to ask directions.
Actually, the ranger told me, the forest entrance was north of where I'd started in Arcata, not south, the way I'd gone.
I whipped around and zoomed north at 85 mph.
There seemed to be two obvious choices:
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If I drove safely, I could probably manage a brief glimpse of the forest and still make my two flights. But in that case–if I wasn't going to get the rich forest details I needed–why had I bothered even coming here?
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Alternatively, I could spend the full time I'd planned in the forest, which would require rescheduling my two flights plus finding a hotel for the extra night in Arcata. That could undoubtedly be done, with some hassle, cost, and more rescheduling of the rest of my week.
Nah. I chose Door #3:
I floored the gas pedal up the highway and then up the winding mountain drive, eyeballing the trees and scenic view and dictating those impressions into my phone while also clutching the steering wheel with the non-phone-holding hand and occasionally watching the road. I squeezed in a quick stop at a turnaround to kick some gravel and smell a few leaves–forget the hike and the photos–before zooming back downhill to the airport.
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I arrived too late.
But the flight to San Francisco was delayed by fog.
Readers, I was able to salvage both the San Francisco flight and my flight back to New York that night, with all my notes about the forest.
Please read Chapter 17.