At twilight, the boardwalks and jetties reaching out into Tomales Bay become black silhouettes against the pastel palette of water. Like long, ragged black insects they stand stilt-legged above the mud and the glinting salt water that forms a fractured mirror for the sky.

A scruffy fringe of pickleweed and saltgrass cling to the muddy tideflats. Dark islands of spartina rise farther out, spots on the mirror’s shine. On the far side of the water cars swing, lazy, along the curves of highway one. Headlights appear and disappear around the turns, shooting bright little moonbeams of reflection across the sunset bay. Later, the real moon will rise, a few days past full and shining in this inland pocket of the sea: larger, more majestic, more sedate than any headlight. Later, there will be fewer cars and they will seem more like what they are: fireflies, little sparks of humanity. Flashes of strangers’ stories, heading north. Rolling south.

The dark spine of Inverness Ridge, shaggy with Bishop pine, looms above the bay, facing the rising moon. There is something fierce about this ridge, something ancient, something solitary. It could be an old warrior, it could be a silent army. These days it looks like it won’t be conquered; it won’t be won. Instead it continues on its inscrutable mission: facing down a continent, marching alone up the far side of the San Andreas Fault. Somewhat trammeled, somewhat trampled, but comparatively untamed.

The hills on the inland side of the water are softer, more civilized, more inhabited. They lie in soft grazed folds, sheltering houses and willow groves and towns. They roll east, flattening into the urban grid surrounding San Francisco Bay. There the hills sparkle and glow with garlands of highways, strands of red and white, and the infinite pinpoint jewels of streetlights and porchlights and barlights and signs. But out west, out in the dark, Inverness Ridge is dressed only in night. Homes and businesses and occasional passing car are dwarfed; lost in its hoary blackness. The ridge bristles, it stands like a wave; and past its crest it falls away to the flat hand of the Point Reyes Peninsula and the salt tang of the open sea.