Sandy Vitorelo’s great grandfather buillt the home she has lived in for 67 years in 1947 in Canyon Seven in Rio Nido. She and her family love living in the trees and do what they can, like a fire burning on the TV, to bring some cheer during the dark months. Photo taken Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat)

Where the sun doesn’t shine: How to survive winter in the redwood canyons of the Russian River

To get through winter solstice in Rio Nido, residents learn to embrace the gloom

PHIL BARBER

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

December 21, 2021

Editor’s note: As we approach the darkest period of the year, we’re revisiting Phil Barber’s story from 2021.

Rio Nido

Sandy Vitorelo said she’s seen it “a million times.” A new neighbor moves into Rio Nido, seduced by pleasant summer visits to these shady canyons. The transplant arrives buzzing with enthusiasm, certain this lovely, peculiar spot on the Russian River is where they were always meant to be.

“Then they experience that first winter,” Vitorelo said, sitting by the glow of a video fire in the living room of the house her grandfather and great-grandfather milled and built in 1947.

She clarified. If it’s a mild winter, like the one they got here four or five years ago, it’s fine. But if it’s a real Rio Nido winter, where standing water makes Westside Road and parts of Hwy. 116 impassible?

“Once they experience that,” Vitorelo said, “they’re outta here. And they could’ve been here for five years.”

Living in Rio Nido, it can safely be said, is not for everyone. And the pool of suitable candidates is never smaller than right now, when the shortest day of the year comes to one of the darkest terrains in Sonoma County.

Depending on the orientation of a Rio Nido house, morning light in December can be nothing more than a glorious, minutes-long burst of rays, and afternoon sun is a friend who has ghosted you.

When the damp comes to the North Bay, and the redwood canopy of the Russian River area grabs clouds from the sky and clutches them like babies, life here becomes a pitched battle against an ecosystem that seems intent on reclaiming the upper hand. Roofs grow pelts of moss, and untreated exterior walls become slick with green-black muck. Ferns and succulents bloom so aggressively from balconies, it’s hard to tell if they are sprouting from pots or straight out of the deck boards.

A woman named Randie, who spoke to a Press Democrat reporter and photographer from her doorway on Dec. 13 (she asked that we not use her last name), keeps two rain gauges on her deck to chronicle the mighty precipitation of her microclimate. “And nobody believes me,” she said. “That’s why I have two of ’em.”

The day before, the gauges had caught 4½ inches of rain. During the atmospheric mega-river in October, Randie said, she got more than 20 inches in 36 hours.

“Rot and mold are constant issues, at least in the wintertime,” observed Jeff Widener, who lives just up the road from Randie.

He parks motorcycles outside the house owned by his son there, and said the rainy-season rust is a real problem. Ben Tacla, who has tended bar at the Rainbow Cattle Company for 13 years and has lived in his Rio Nido home for six, one-upped Widener.

“I lost a car once,” Tacla said. “Mold took over the interior when I first got here.”

Living spaces are similarly at risk.

“Bathrobes hanging in the closet? No,” said Joe Vitorelo, Sandy’s husband. “It can’t be up against the sheetrock.”

Before they moved here full-time, the Vitorelos mostly came to Rio Nido for summer vacations — as Sandy has been doing her entire life. Offseason visits, the couple discovered, could be … interesting.

“If we came up in the wintertime, this place was soaking wet,” Joe said. “Literally, the drapes, the sheets. The windows would just be soaking.”

Rio Nidans have developed an arsenal of tools to fight back. If they don’t have central heating, they turn to pellet stoves or, as a last resort, electric space heaters. Several people said dehumidifiers are indispensable.

But not everyone has those resources. There are plenty of cabins in Rio Nido that lack basic defenses like insulation.

“The truth is, none of these houses were meant to be lived in year-round,” said Brad Metzger, who owns and operates Rio Nido Roadhouse, the community’s iconic restaurant, bar, unofficial town hall and central gossip repository. “I lived in a house, if you looked at just the right angle and the sunlight was hitting it right, you could see through the wall.”

For most here, it isn’t the wetness that weighs most heavily on the spirit. It’s the vanishing sunlight. Officially, the sun will rise at 7:26 a.m. and set at 4:54 p.m. on Tuesday, a flimsy day of 9 hours, 28 minutes. But nestled at the base of steep ravines and shrouded by giant evergreens, the hours of daytime are much shorter than that.

“I’ve got SAD — seasonal affective disorder,” Randie admitted. “I do. When it’s dark, I hibernate. I don’t seem to get depressed, because I’ve got some logic and reason now that I understand what it is.”

Faced with weeks of polar half-sun, Rio Nidans come to appreciate anything that brightens their homes even a tiny bit.

“Best thing I ever did was put in this door, which lets light into my house,” Randie said, sweeping her hand across its generous panes of glass. “And I’m one who opens up all my drapes every day.”

“To put this ceiling in?” Joe Vitorelo, Sandy’s husband, said as he admired the vaulted, airy living room constructed by his bygone in-laws. “To me, when I first met her and came up, I went, ‘wow.’ That was pure genius. Even if the ceiling was a little higher but flat? Can you imagine?”

Joe sets up a free-standing awning over the back door and patio when the season gets moist. When the days start to get longer and he takes it down, he said, “That’s my happiest day of the year.”

Skylights are another game-changer. Ann Charleston, who is 73 and coming up on 20 years in Rio Nido, used to have them. “Then I got a new roof,” she said. “It’s darker now, but I’m accustomed to it.”

But while winter has been chasing the faint of heart from the canyons for years, the fact is that most veteran Rio Nidans have come to cherish it. Summers here are almost too perfect, drawing vacationers and day-trippers from all over the region, or the world. And while locals appreciate the money those visitors bring to their economy, they are not unhappy to part company for a while.

The ones who really last don’t just tolerate the darkness. They embrace it.

This is the time of year they can run into Guerneville for an errand without hitting traffic on the back roads, or walk their pets to the dog park and bump into no one but neighbors, or simply inhale the cool, clean air of a peaceful forest.

Randie said some of her favorite moments come at 3 a.m. on a December night, when she gives in to her insomnia and pops out to the deck for a cigarette.

“Because of the silence this time of year,” she said, “I can tell you who actually has a job and goes to work every day, and who is a speed freak and just drives around all night.”

By the same token, even those Rio Nidans who have gone to the dark side acknowledge the happiness and optimism they feel when winter rolls into spring and the sun visits them again, renewing its promise of turning these canyons into a quirky summer paradise.

Margo Fontes, a retired San Francisco elementary school principal who lives on Rio Nido Road with her husband, Larry Spillane, definitely sees the shine on both sides of that coin.

“We look forward to getting warm again,” Fontes said. “But maybe we wouldn’t appreciate it so much if it weren’t so dark out in the winter.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.

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