BOULDER CREEK: Salvation & Community Validation
Safety Lost & Found at the Tree House
This post discusses incest abuse. If you’re a survivor or supporter seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.
It was just a little rain. It came falling from the sky. Dripped on the windowsills. Decorated the tree branches. Danced on the roof. Surrendered to the stream turned river running below after one too many storms like this.
We watched the water. Outside the window from the house in the redwood grove. Drenching tall trees that shot up, some over 300 feet, into the usually blue opening interrupted by gray today.
The earth here was dry. Due to the drought in California. The land here was vulnerable. Due to the CZU fires that burned these trees just a few years before. The risk of mudslides high. The water quenched the thirst of the land. Making it full. Heavy. Risking it falling, falling, falling. Like the rain onto the house. Into the house. Robin’s house. My temporary home.
Robin is my best friend. We met on a plane on the way to another friend’s wedding. An instant connection, we’ve been attached ever since. We chose not to evacuate. The amount of water had been calculated. We knew what to watch for. How to listen. If the river turned too brown, we would run. If the boulders smacked each other loudly on the way down, we would leave. It wasn’t risky enough so we stayed.
But sometimes weather is a mystery. And in the space between what we knew and what we didn’t, the wind blew. Suspected gusts of 30 MPH showed up fast and furious at 80 MPH speeds. The invisible force shook the house. Transforming the once light drops of rain into pellets that slapped against the windows. Branches and leaves suddenly lifted to the skies in flight.
I held Robin’s baby in my arms. Just six months of life so far. Harrison. We call him H. As his mother cooked breakfast, we witnessed the flurries of wind and water and leaves and trees. We watched the river rush speedily, but still transparently. So still felt we had no reason to worry.
Then it happened. All at once. A rush of wind blew too hard at the same time that the water flowed too fast at the same time that the tree roots became free of the soil grounding it underneath. Suddenly a redwood tree fell. Down. Across from the house. Smashing the neighbors’ bedroom next door. Snapping the power lines onto the floor. Sparks flew. The lights flashed in the house, then went out. We lost power. Darkness.
We screamed. Startled the baby. Robin and I looked at each other gravely.
“We should leave.”
Another blast of wind swept from the opposite direction. My body tensed. Held the baby tighter to my chest. I ran in the same direction the wind traveled so if a tree fell on the house, I might outrun the length of it. Robin ran toward me to comfort us. We smashed into each other and smooshed H.
The baby screamed. “I need to gather our things,” Robin explained.
While I held the baby, she collected all she needed to care for her family outside of her home: clothes, toys, bottles, diapers, food. H slept on my chest.
“Excellent timing, buddy.”
I expressed gratitude as I took deep breaths to keep my nervous system from activating a stronger sense of stress. Then suddenly, like H, my nervous system settled. Not to sleep, but relaxed into a deep state of calm. Like an old memory
My father used to stand at the foot of my bed in the morning before breakfast. Then yell, “TIMBER,” as his 6’3” body fell like a tree on top of me. This was play to start the day. Different then the other times he fell inside of me. In the middle of the night, when no one was watching. No one there to bear witness to this repeated trauma. Incest.
Back then I wanted to evacuate too. To leave the emergency. But in this scenario, the woman with me, my mother, demanded that we stay. So I suffered this violence serially by him and other men in my family. My body learned to settle into this storm. To remain calm always. To survive.
After years of this, crisis came to feel so familiar. So my body knew just what to do today when the trees toppled down around the house. This time I could run. So I did. So we did. Together. We knew what we were running from, but had no idea where we were running to.
We could go to the place I was staying temporarily. Another friend’s rental unit at the bottom of the hill surrounded by fewer tall trees. But the power was out in the entire town and we had the baby. We could go to Robin’s in-laws across town. They had a generator. But the roads were blocked by more fallen trees.
“Let’s go to The Treehouse Cafe,” I suggested.
They had a generator and food and coffee and an open dining room to keep the baby warm and engaged. We parked. Grabbed as much stuff as we could carry and the baby, then rushed through the rain to arrive inside. We tried to dry ourselves before the water made itself at home in our clothes, but failed. So shook with cold.
Others had made their way to the cafe too. A community of evacuees trapped by trees blocking the roads to their ways home. We got in line. Ordered some chili and coffees and thanked the staff for staying open.
“We’re all stuck here, so might as well enjoy it,” they said.
A collective of community members sat in the cafe. Waited for the storm to settle. A tree shooting though the restaurant as it was supposed to. The cafe was built around this one, inspiring the name, “Tree House.” Like a long, lost dream.
When I was young, I had always wanted a treehouse. A place where I could go far up and away from the everyday, apart from family, to be alone. To daydream endlessly not about the world that was, but the one that could be. A new beginning. Safety. Something only reserved to the memory of the future. At 24, when I finally had enough financial independence, I ran away.
Now, nearly 12 years later, here I was sitting in The Tree House Cafe with other evacuees. A place we all ran toward to secure safety. The vision in my childhood dreams suddenly becoming a reality all these years later. Some people began to share stories.
“My father died from a redwood tree.” One man said shakily. “I was only 15.” He paused. “I watched it happen.”
The pain of the past resurfacing to heal as it does in a safe place. To be witnessed. To be heard. To be claimed as real.
“That sounds really traumatizing,” another replied, as he validated this man’s painful past resurfacing in the present.
“But as soon as the baby arrived, I felt better. My anxiety washed away from me.”
I smiled. A reminder of new life. H became the joy of the community as the baby laughed and cackled and played in one place. While the rest of us stayed, texted loved ones, canceled plans, tried to ensure everyone was safe. A practiced virtue within this community.
During the CZU fire many members of the town lost their homes, their belongings, their stability. Insurance often didn’t cover the fire and complications with permitting restricted many from rebuilding. The homes that still stood — including my friend’s — did so due to the courage of the local volunteer fire team. An unincorporated town of Santa Cruz County, when the city’s fire department refused to respond, the town stepped up to save itself. The Boulder Boys they’re called now. The ones who stayed to fight the fires, to save lives, risking their own.
Now here we were. Robin, baby, and I sitting in a treehouse with the resilience of this community. H feeding, us eating, all of us chatting. Sharing more stories to stay connected in the stress of it all. To keep each other calm. Some members returned to their powerless homes if they could to grab blankets and coats to offer to others who arrived like us — wet, drenched, dripping. The cafe promised to stay open all night if necessary. We remained as late as we could to be with the power and each other.
Before I left my family a decade before, I had tried to gather them and share what happened. The trees falling into my body. Destroying any sense of safety. Risking ruining intimacy. Creating self-hatred and shame so deep it became me. My health failing. I needed my trauma to be witnessed. To be heard. To be validated. But they refused to listen. Forced to choose safety over family, I left. I had no idea what’d I’d do or where’d I’d run to.
I bore the burden of my healing and economy alone until I rebuilt a family, then fell into their arms and their homes like this redwood tree. Burnt out, without roots, the grounded foundation of family washed away from me. With the waters of grief flowing far too quickly like a river through my body. I was supported by the generosity of friends who became family and survived, as I recovered from this tragedy and learned to manage chronic disabilities like Complex-PSTD. The consequences of too much violence at too young an age.
Incest is a death. I still carry it with me. But at least I’m not alone now. There are so many other incest survivors who don’t have access to the support I have. No homes. No community. No witnesses and listeners to claim their experiences as real. So many remain isolated and vulnerable and afraid and alone with nowhere to go. So often when the circumstances aren’t right, these children stay in their abusive families for a lifetime or end up on the streets only to be trafficked by others adding more violent memories to their compounding histories.
So as I sat there and witnessed and listened to the stories of this community, I reflected on how this Tree House has been transformed from a cafe to a healing space due to the generosity of the owners, the vulnerability of the evacuees, and this steady tree sitting firmly in the ground holding the space in place. Right where it should be.
In that moment, I was filled with even more than I had ever dreamed of having. A treehouse to run to for safety. A community gathered for strength. Stories shared to honor memory. Trauma witnessed. Voices heard. Until the wind calmed, and the water stopped, and the land dried, and there were no more risks of mudslides. Or more trees falling.
The next day the sun came to shine on the community as The Boulder Boys joined by others threw chainsaws in the backs of their trucks and started cleaning up. Cutting the trees that blocked our streets. PG&E restored power. Eventually, the lights turned back on. The internet was restored. Everyone returned to their homes. I can never go home.
Where do we go when our families fail us? What does safety mean in a world where we can’t always anticipate the violence of people or the ways of the wind? Especially with the rise of fascism and the levels of the water due to political oppression, social complacency, and the climate crisis.
Safety means exactly this. Having a safe place to be raised, and a safe space to play, and a safe place to land when suddenly the environment changes. A hot coffee, a warm meal, connection to community. The presence of a baby. Sustainability. The future of memory. People to hold your history as real and your hand as you process all that you should never have been through. Together, we do whatever we can to ensure violence never happens again. And then develop systems to better manage the storm the next time around. This is how we ground.
A new dream arrives as I cry experiencing this model of collective safety for the first time within the confines of this cafe. I imagine a community like this one for children and incest survivors like me. To be raised safely. And if not, to land in a community of generosity to help us save each other and relearn what family could’ve been, what the future has the potential to be. All with this baby wrapped in my arms reminding me of the work we will do to preserve the world for the next generation. The inspiration of The Tree House Cafe right here in Boulder Creek falling onto me, into me, like the heavy weight of healing.