rewarding and full of delight as it can be.
This would constitute a purpose as meaningful as most and more noble
than some.
Pleased by Orson’s wagging tail at least as much as he seemed Ited my I
had two places I wanted to go before the sun chased me into hidin The
first was Fort Wyvern.
From the park at Palm Street and Grace Drive in the southeast quadrant
of Moonlight Bay, the trip to Fort Wyvern takes less than lowing for a
paten minutes by bicycle, even all ce that will not tire your canine
brother. I know a shortcut through a storm culvert that ten-footruns
under Highway 1. Beyond the culvert is an open, wide, concrete drainage
channel that continues deep into the grounds of the military base after
being bisected by the chain-linker of the fence-crowned with razor
wire-that defines the perimet facility.
ghout the grounds of Everywhere along the fence-and throu.
Fort Wyvern-large signs in red and black warn that trespassers will be
prosecuted under federal statutes and that the minimum sentence upon
conviction involves a fine of no less than ten thousand dollars and a
prison sentence of no less than one year. I have always ignored these
threats, largely because I know that because of my condition, no judge
will sentence me to prison for this minor offense. And I can afford
the ten thousand bucks if it comes to that.
One night, eighteen months ago, shortly after Wyvern officially closed
forever, I used a bolt cutter to breach the chain-link where it
descended into the drainage channel. The opportunity to explore this
vast new realm was too enticing to resist.
considering that I was If my excitement seems strange to You t a
twenty-six-year-old not an adventuresome boy at the time bu man-then
You are probably someone who can catch a plane to London if You wish,
sail off to Puerto Vallarta on a whim, or take the Orient Express from
Paris to Istanbul. You probably have a to be pleased by my latest riff
on the sculpture, I consu wristwatch. Less than two hours remained
until dawn.
driver’s license and a car. You probably have not spent your entire
life within the confines of a town of twelve thousand people,
ceaselessly traveling it by night until You know its every byway as
intimately as You know your own bedroom, and You are probably,
therefore, not just a little crazy for new places, new experiences. So
cut me some slack.
Fort Wyvern, named for General Harrison Blair Wyvern, a highly
decorated hero of the First World War, was commissioned in 1939, as a
training and support facility. It covers 134,456 acres, which makes it
neither the largest nor by far not the smallest military base in the
state of California.
During the Second World War, Fort Wyvern established a school for tank
warfare, offering training in the operation and maintenance of every
tread-driven vehicle in use in the battlefields of Europe and in the
Asian theater. Other schools under the Wyvern umbrella provided
first-rate education in demolitions and bomb disposal, sabotage, field
artillery, field medical service, military policing, and cryptography,
as well as basic training to tens of thousands of infantrymen. Within
its boundari tillery les were an arrange, a huge network of bunkers
serving as an ammunition dump, an airfield, and more buildings than
exist within the city limits of Moonlight Bay.
At the height of the Cold War, active -duty personnel assigned to Fort
Wyvern numbered-officially-36,400. There were also 12,904 dependents
and over four thousand civilian personnel associated with the base.
The military payroll was well over seven hundred million dollars
annually, and the contract expenditures exceeded one hundred and fifty
million per annum.
When Wyvern was shut down at the recommendation of the Defense Base
Closure and Realignment Commission, the sound of money being sucked out
of the county economy was so loud that local merchants were unable to
sleep because of the noise and their babies cried in the night for fear
of having no college tuition when eventually they would need it. KBAY,
which lost nearly a third of its potential county-wide audience and
fully half of its late-night listeners, was forced to trim staff, which