There’s a mountain road between Fayetteville, Arkansas and Little Rock which natives call the Pig Trail.  I crossed the mountains many times by that short cut, with its winding roads, its hairpin curves, and its sudden switchbacks.  I don’t know why it’s called the Pig Trail but I always suspected it had something to do with the Arkansas razorback.

I decided to rent a car for my time in San Jose this week after  Katherine Kenyon told me about Pigeon Point Hostel and Lighthouse.  I tried to book a room for one of my extra nights in California, flanking my day of check-ups at Stanford Medical Center.  The place had no vacancies. I’d have to make a daytrip.

I studied Google-map and found two routes.  One went north, over to the coast, then back south. The other went through La Honda.  I pulled a closer view using my touch screen and began to smile:  I knew I would be taking the pig trail to Pigeon Point.

Five miles into an eighteen mile stretch on Sand Hill Road, an ambulance passed on the wrong side of the two-lane blacktop at break-neck speed, silent but with lights flashing.  A half-mile later, traffic stopped.  My rental car pointed uphill.  I turned the engine off, silencing Neko Case.  I waited, cars accumulating behind me, the occasional biker venturing beyond the impasse before turning around to cruise down hill.

After fifteen minutes, a sheriff’s car zipped by on my left.  Five minutes later, a fire truck, a cruiser, and a patrol car came down, slowly.  Then the ambulance loomed into view, coming down the mountain,  silently, with no sign of urgency.

Traffic resumed at a crawl.  We had gone  a few feet when we stopped again, as the deputies routed the two directions of traffic around the accident.  Only one wrecked car remained, assuming there had been others.  It had flipped, crushing the doors and popping the glass from the windows.  It appeared to be unoccupied.

No sound broke the air as the procession slowly skirted the scene.

Forty minutes later, deep into my second playing of the Neko Case CD, I turned onto HIghway 1 and the sight of the ocean broke through the slight haze surrounding me.  I headed south, and came to Pigeon Point, where I stood on the edge of the nation and said two prayers:  One for myself, in gratitude; and one for the poor soul who missed a sharp unexpected turn, on a softly lit winter afternoon west of San Jose.