A Trailer by the River

My brother drove the U-Haul van I hired and helped my wife and me pack up our furniture and belongings. We were leaving San Francisco for the wine country, where I’d found a secluded place for us in Alexander Valley.

We headed north from the city and turned off the freeway outside Santa Rosa, following Chalk Hill Road to a private drive that ran along Maacama Creek through oaks and madronas up a slight rise past a duck pond and an old farmhouse to a double-wide trailer overlooking vineyards and an oxbow of the Russian River. This would be our new home, an outpost offering the space and time I believed I needed to write a book worth publishing. The rent was only two hundred a month, cheap enough for us to live off our savings, at least for a little while. We’d given up our jobs and any sense of security.