Former Bolinas resident Ras Zulu waited for two hours
on Olema-Bolinas Road before he caught sight of Prince Charles. The
prince and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were on their way
to their limousine after lunching at an organic farm; but when Zulu
and the 300 others gathered to see the couple gave a cheer – "hip,
hip, hooray" – they crossed the street to greet the crowd
and shake hands.
When his hand was touched by the prince, Zulu –
a native of Jamaica, an independent country still part of the British
commonwealth of nations – burst into tears.
"It was the emotion of being a commonwealth person
and touching the hand of the prince," Zulu said afterwards. His
hair styled in dreadlocks and held up by an orange-and-black head scarf,
Zulu beamed as he recalled the encounter. "He looked like one of
us."
Zulu’s reaction was characteristic of West Marin’s
response to last weekend’s visit from the prince and duchess. The
couple came to the region to honor its pioneering role in the organic
farming movement; what they left behind was a widespread mood of elation
whose equal would be hard to recall. And expressions of that mood verged
on the ecstatic.
"It was like he was made out of silk and not human
skin," said Bolinas resident Suzanne Bartlomé, who shook the
prince's hand. One of her companions, Rose Camarillo, wore bright orange
boardshorts and a wool cap; a surfer, Camarillo had handed Camilla a
shell from Bolinas beach, which the duchess accepted. "What a kind soul,"
Camarillo said, a far-off look in her eyes.
Sixties hippies at heart?
Up and down the coast, from Bolinas to Inverness,
locals were struck by what they called the royal couple’s down-to-earth,
approachable nature and sincerity.
"I think if, he had a choice, he would have been
a sixties hippy," said Point Reyes Station resident Suzanne Taylor,
who met the couple during their Saturday tour of the Point Reyes Farmers
Market. "If he hadn’t been a monarch," she added.
At the Old Western Saloon in Point Reyes Station,
where Charles and Camilla quaffed a couple of pints after their market
tour, bar owner Judy Borello remembered the prince as a "sweetheart."
In a consummate gesture of informality, Charles actually
offered Borello a sip of his beer, which she accepted.
Market vendors also had good impressions of the couple.
"He seemed genuinely interested in my products,"
said Julie Evans, owner of Point Reyes Preserves and member of a fourth-generation
ranching family on Point Reyes. "I want to say impressed –
that’s the impression I got, is they were impressed by what they
saw. And that’s a great feeling." Camilla, she said, was "really
excited" about her pickled artichoke hearts, while Charles was
drawn to the garlic preserves.
During their tour of the market, the couple spent
about three minutes at each booth. At one point, they accidentally bypassed
the stand set up by Planned Feralhood, a local adoption agency for wild
cats. Laura Brainard, an Inverness resident who volunteers at the agency,
caught up with the royals a few stands later to let them know her booth
had been skipped. Camilla promptly led Charles – and their large
security retinue – back to the booth, where the duchess petted
Sapphire and Sally, two abandoned kittens rescued on Wednesday from
Bolinas.
"They were so nice," Brainard said.
Prince talks GMOs with farmers
Charles and Camilla were originally scheduled to spend
45 minutes at the market; they left after an hour and a half. "That’s
a huge indicator of how much fun they had," said Marin Organic
executive director Helge Hellberg, who was the couple’s guide.
In Bolinas, the royals visited the organic farms of
Peter Martinelli, Dennis and Sandy Dierks, and Warren Weber. Afterward,
they ate a lunch at Weber’s farmhouse catered by Margaret Grade,
owner of Manka’s Inverness Lodge, where the couple stayed Saturday
night.
During lunch, Weber said, Prince Charles talked with
local farmers and ranchers about issues in the modern organic farming
movement such as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the competition
faced by small-scale, family farms from larger organic farming operations.
Prince Charles compared the threat of genetically
modified crops – which can cross-pollinate with nearby organic
farms, leading to a loss of those farms’ certification – to
the threat of second-hand smoke from cigarettes, Hellberg said.
At the Dierks farm, the prince talked with Dennis
Dierks about his use of microbes with decaying organic matter (such
as seaweed or fish) to produce a natural fertilizer. The prince, Dierks
noted, asked specific, substantive questions about the process.
Couple at ease in West Marin
During the tour of Bolinas farms, Hellberg said, Camilla
"kept petting my hand, saying this was one of the absolute highlights
of the visit."
The couple appeared more at ease amidst the ranches
and rolling hills of West Marin than during the previous legs of their
visit, in Washington, D.C. and New York.
"You could just look at him and tell he was really
relaxed," Bolinas organic farmer Don Murch said of Prince Charles,
whom he met in the farmers’ market.
Prior to the visit, newspapers here and in Britain
had predicted a cool reception for Camilla in what was assumed to be
a nation still in thrall to Charles’ late ex-wife, Diana.
Camilla has been castigated by some for contributing
to the divorce of the prince and princess. A woman bearing aloft a sign
reading "Diana lost her life wicked mistress wife" appeared
Saturday in both Point Reyes Station and Bolinas, where she was booed
by fellow royal watchers.
Activists turn out
Others hit the streets trying to push political causes
into the national spotlight that was shined, however briefly, on Point
Reyes Station’s main street. Banners protesting the proposed construction
of a cellphone tower north of town hung on the brick wall of the Grandi
Building, and activists clustered south of the farmers market with signs
protesting pesticide use.
Richard Kirschman of Dogtown was busy handing out
flyers denouncing the National Park Service’s plan to exterminate
axis and fallow deer in the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Kirschman said that axis and fallow for centuries
have been the official deer of the British royal family. As such, they
were guarded in forests throughout England.
"Throughout most of British history, if you went
after one of those deer, off with your head," Kirschman said. "That’s
what Robin Hood became famous for."
Inverness resident Norman Solomon, a political activist
and author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning
Us to Death (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005), was in the market
early on Saturday morning distributing flyers protesting the Iraq war.
"War is not organic," the flyers read.
"Of course we should all celebrate and support
organic food," Solomon said. "We should also celebrate and
support an end to this war as soon as possible."
Solomon refused to leave the market when it was cleared
by security agents from the US State Department prior to the royal couple’s
visit. Instead, he went limp in the arms of Marin County sheriff’s
deputies, who dragged him off the scene. When Solomon was first asked
to leave, he said, he had "just bought some beautiful chard."
"I think I was handcuffed while still standing
in front of the vegetables," he said. Solomon spent the next two
hours in the back of a patrol car.
Apple pie incident
Margaret Hamilton of Inverness reported a less serious
run-in with security. Hamilton had just bought a pie from Tomales Bakery
when she was approached by men in dark glasses, dark suits, and white
earpieces.
"Just what are you doing with that pie?"
They asked her.
Hamilton pointed out that the antique apple pie with
currants she carried was not a good pastry for throwing in the face
of royalty, had she wanted to do so. After that, the security agents
lost interest.
"If it had been a cream pie, I would have been
in trouble," she said.
The couple’s weekend concluded at Saint Columba’s
Episcopal Church in Inverness, where they attended services on a wet,
overcast Sunday inviting comparison with the damp mornings of England.
During pastor Tom Brindley’s All Saints sermon,
Prince Charles and Camilla sat in the front row, heads bowed.
On his way out of the church, the prince stopped to
talk to several of the congregation’s children, asking them, among
other things, what they’d done for Halloween.
"You weren’t out scaring the locals, were
you?" The prince said with a wry smile.
‘The divine succession of kings’
Parishioner Claire Smith, a Briton who now lives in
Inverness with her husband, Paul, said she felt a special awe in the
presence of representatives of the line of Windsor.
"It's something about the divine succession of kings,"
she said. "There's a sacredness to the order."
After the couple had departed (they were due to attend
a performance of Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco Sunday
night) Marin Organic’s Helge Hellberg speculated on just what had
stirred such a joyous welcome for celebrities in a region known for
its fierce independence and insularity. He concluded that it was the
prince’s devotion to environmental causes – most especially
organic farming – that had opened doors in West Marin.
The prince has his own organic farm at Highgrove in
Gloucestershire, and owns a line of organic food products, Duchy Originals.
"That really falls on fertile ground in West
Marin," Hellberg said. "It’s a county that takes sustainability
seriously. It opens the heart to him. Once the heart is open, if you
are met by a person who is really sincere and looks you right in the
eye – that’s really special."