French explorer

The publisher's wandering around The Lost Coast of California.

The lost coast is way north, up where the road feels lonely and may only be consoled by thousands of potholes.

There's a little town along the road named Petrolia, and another one named Honeydew.

At the end of the road, near the Mattole River, there's a redwood grove. 

The publisher parks his car, gets out and walks among the redwoods. The coolest, cleanest air in the world fills his lungs. When he looks up at the trees he thinks that some of them may have grown too tall, so tall that they might be punching new holes in the ozone layer, but he's aware of his own anthropomorphic bias.

He thinks, if there's one thing worth worship it's a redwood tree.

Every time he travels north he feels inspired; it's then he travels south to implement.

The publisher dwells on something Maurice Blanchot wrote, something the publisher read years ago: "literature begins when literature becomes a question."