--click title to drive into Woodside

Beyond the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 3
The small redwood cottage in Woodside had no heat, and no insulation. There were no electrical wire baseboards, and there was no forced air.

There were, however, a number of cracks between the vertical redwood plank boards that served both as the interior, and the exterior, walls. The cracks were just wide enough for healthy, green vines to grow through them, climbing up toward the pitched ceiling. There was evidence that someone had tried to do something about it, long ago.

Cradled into a comfortable nook, the single bed was elevated to perfect window height, and just below the bough of a one hundred year old scrub oak. It was all quite charming. A Brothers Grimm storybook cottage. That became a Brothers Grimm faery tale. It had its magic. And it was the best place that I had ever lived.

What happened inside of that storybook cottage, with flowering vines growing up its inside walls, re-directed two lives. The late-November torrential downpour played an unexpected role...