The headlands leading out to the bluffs of the Pacific Ocean have been visual magic to me ever since I saw Rex Brandt paint them and the Rocky Creek Bridge on the Big Sur of Central California. Every year since 1974 my family and I walk the trails of the Mendocino headlands on our summer vacations. It was time I painted them. The distance from the bluffs to the town over the headlands is defined by the miniature scale of the old buildings and tank houses on the horizon.