September 12, 2019 — Nori Dolan came to Willits in 1974, already knowing how to drive a five-ton truck and ready to move back to the land.
She lived in a crowded two-room cabin on a rugged dirt road, then made her home in Redwood Valley, Covelo, and Redwood Valley again. When we talked last December, she was settling into a new home on Ridgewood Ranch, after surviving the fires of 2017.
She’s a dancer, a storyteller, and a gardener, who performed an interpretive dance about her escape on the night of October 8 for a packed house full of longtime friends and neighbors.
And everywhere she lives, she plants perennials or fruit trees for the next people who come along.