The Santa Cruz Mountains become a place of retreat for the narrator after traveling to forget Isobel has the opposite effect: attending to humanity as a whole intensifies his feeling for her specifically. His drives into the mountains mark a turn from seeking distraction among human faces to spending time in the natural world.

Setting and Visits

After returning to Stanford University, the narrator tries to lose himself in nature. The evening becomes the high point of his day, and he often drives out of town toward the Santa Cruz Mountains. One destination is Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where he parks and walks among giant trees, noticing jays, woodpeckers, chipmunks, raccoons, and, occasionally, a black-tailed deer.

The Park’s Particular Landscape

When he arrives early enough, the narrator takes a steep path near Berry Creek Falls. His attention shifts from looking at the landscape to listening: the rush of water is sometimes joined by the low croak of tree frogs. The place is presented through these specific acts of observation, with the falls, path, animals, and trees giving shape to a restorative routine rather than serving only as an unnamed wilderness.

Place in the Narrator’s Change

The mountains offer a different tactic, not a cure. The narrator had tried to fill his mind with human faces, but that widened perspective only made his attachment to Isobel more particular; the natural world instead draws him into sustained attention to individual forms of life. His visits belong to the account of his changing capacity to be moved by the world around him: the mountains are where he practices looking and listening, without the text claiming that nature erases his longing.