Dinosaur Weather

The early morning had started out foggy, what I call dinosaur weather. As I headed into the Oakland foothills on Nomad, my Honda trail 90 motor bike, all around me was damp gray fog as far as I could see. Leaving the valley, Nomad took me up Mountain Boulevard until we reached Snake Road. The fog grew thicker the farther up the winding narrow road we drove.

On reaching Skyline Boulevard, I pulled over to the side of the road and switched off Nomad’s engine to more fully enjoy the quiet morning. Expensive homes, with their still sleeping occupants, rose like multi-colored ghosts out of the thick fog. In the distance, I heard the muffled barking of a dog, soon joined in a canine chorus by two or three more. A whining of a car repeatedly trying to start, most likely from one road over, joined this cacophony of sounds. I heard it backfire once, and then take off down the hill, with a diminishing Doppler effect of its engine’s noise. Someone, I thought smugly, kicking the starter on my well-maintained motor bike, needs to tune up their car.

Leaving the homes in the distance, I headed further into the deserted wooded area along the ridge of Grizzly Peak Road. Civilization seemed far away the deeper into the forest I drove. The fog now made visibility almost impossible more than a few yards at a time ahead of me, and I slowed Nomad down almost to a crawl. Suddenly and without warning, out of the mist from the opposite direction came a set of low-beam headlights, and a large black SUV raced towards me. A man, looking to be in his 30s with a baseball cap covering short blond hair, hunched forward over the steering wheel. He never even glanced my way as he drove by, white knuckled and only concentrating on getting out of the fog.

When my startled heartbeat slowed down, I found the area around me seemed quieter after hearing the loud noise of the SUV. Once more, I pulled Nomad over to the side of the road. This time, I got off and walked a short distance into the thick forest to explore it. As I went further between the fog-dampened trunks of the trees, the pungent aroma of fallen bruised leaves rose up when I walked over and crushed them into the soft moist soil. My canvas tenny runners soon became soaked through, causing my toes instinctively to curl away from the damp cold material covering them.

Within minutes, I no longer could see Nomad parked silently by the side of the road, waiting patiently for my return. All around me, the forest was slowly coming to life even though the fog had not diminished. Birds sang to each other high up in the trees, turning the woods into an aviary amphitheater for their musical composition. Nearby, just behind one of the trees, I heard a small animal scratching in the dead leaves for its breakfast of live grubs or maybe fallen acorns.

Just as I turned around to return the way I’d come, the sound of loud pounding footsteps coming towards me drowned out every other sound, except the roar in my ears of my own frightened breathing. I could hear whatever it was crashing relentlessly through the underbrush, coming closer and closer. Ducking behind the shelter of a large weathered oak tree, I waited for what could only be one of my imagined dinosaurs to find me. Birds, previously happily singing their little hearts out, shot up out of the trees to escape from the fast approaching rampaging menace. Looking up through the thick covering of leaves, I could gauge the progress of this unknown berserker by the sight of the birds flying to safety. Was it a human-hungry T-Rex went through my terrified mind, or perhaps just a peaceful herbivore Stegosaurus?

In either case, I definitely did not want to meet it. Slowly, step by silent step, I moved backwards away from the safety of the tree and then finally turned towards the road. Without warning and because I was not watching where I was going, my left foot, numb from the cold, caught in the root of another tree. This caused me to fall flat on my face to the ground where I ended up with a mouth full of fog-dampened leaves. As I spat them out, I could also taste the bitterness of twigs from the tree mixed in and hoped there were no bugs in this soggy mulch. The beast now seemed only a short distance away from me, and I quickly got to my feet. Looking around, I saw no place I could hide and discovered I had lost my way. The trees had thinned out considerably, and all around me was just a thick mat of emerald green grass. At another time, the sight of this pleasant sylvan glen would have had me stopping to enjoy it, but today a terrified feeling of self-preservation overwhelmed my senses.

As if Heaven sent, I heard the sound of a car passing by not far from where I stood. This pointed me in the right direction, toward Nomad and safety. Now, if only I could reach it before the creature reached me. Not caring about any noise I made, I ran towards the road, twisting my ankle in my haste but ignoring the pain shooting up my right leg. The fog was slowly lifting as the morning sun burned down on it, and ahead I saw the welcome shape of my little Nomad.

Behind me, the sound of the creature crashing ever closer seemed to put wings on my feet, and I finally burst out of the woods onto the dirt of the road’s shoulder. Leaning forward, with both hands on my bent knees, I gasped repeatedly to get air into my tortured lungs, all the while looking back into the forest. The feeling of terror was almost palpable throughout my shaking body, and I wanted to spit out the taste of bile from my mouth.

As I limped towards Nomad, out from the forest only a few feet from me shot the beast. No hungry T-Rex or even a spiked-tailed Stegosaurus came towards me. My knees buckled out from under me in relief of what I saw, and I once again landed on the ground. This time, though, my rear end took the full force of the earth instead of my face. This strange being that was currently nuzzling my head and exploring my face with its long red wet tongue was not scary at all, just big and brown and furry.

However, I was glad to mount my motor bike and ride away, leaving the forest with its rapidly diminishing fog to the dinosaurs and other creatures that inhabited it.