The Search for the Inevitable

The Everyday Back and Forth Motion of Necessity. The Commute

2009-12-12T18:13:00.000-08:00

A Basis For Comparison (or, Why I Never Complain Too Much About Commuting)

My mother is 62 years old. Every weekday, excepting one Friday a month that she gets to take off, she commutes from the suburbs north of Baltimore to the heart of Washington, D.C. To do this, she wakes up at 4:30 am, and leaves the house sometime around 5:15. She catches the light rail from the suburbs north of the city to Penn Station in Baltimore. She then transfers to the Marc train, which travels between Baltimore and Washington. Finally, she transfers to the DC Metro, completing her commute a short walk from the Library of Congress, where she is employed (I know, pretty cool, huh? My mom is a librarian at the Library of Congress.) In all, she commutes approximately 4.5 hours round trip every day. She’s been doing this since about 1997. I think it is really cool to have a mom who is a librarian at the Library of Congress. But I wish she would retire soon. And quit with the ridiculous commute.

Washington, DC. ( Or: The Beltway)

When I was in college, I worked as an engineering co-op one summer. I worked at an engineering firm in Bethesda, MD, on the northwest side of DC, and I lived in College Park, MD, on the northeast side of DC. You could call it 10:00 and 2:00, I think, if you picture Washington DC as a clock. Which, I don't. Usually. And if I did, it would probably be a digital clock. Operating in military time. Anyway, my commute took me 15 minutes via the beltway if there was no traffic, and 45 minutes if there was. Google Maps says this is a 22 minute, 14.6 mile drive. It would take me a day to hike 15 miles. I am not sure I could run 15 miles. I would like to try one day. If I biked 15 miles, it would probably take me an hour, maybe and hour and a half? I'm not sure. This commute was my first lesson in the daily repetitive stress of traffic jams. At the time, no one had cell phones. Some people had car phones. And I am sure they talked on them, in their cars, while driving. Driving fast, or slow. But I don't think that the small number of people who had car phones seriously affected the accident rate or traffic speed during my commute. I know the speed of traffic affected my mental well being. It stressed me out. Even if I was doing this commute in a yellow and white 1980 VW Vanagon. With a good stereo and a gigantic sunroof. I can't remember if I waved to a lot of people while driving this hippy van. I hope people waved to me, but somehow I don't think they did. I mean, this was DC. I am not saying that people in DC are mean. Just, maybe, too busy to wave. I did have a CB radio in this van. Boy, the van merits it's own blog entry. Remind me to tell you the short but eventful life story of this van as I know it, and how it managed a way too early retirement in my parent's garage.

Commuting, to me, has never been an extremely painful experience. Although I don’t like sitting in traffic, stuck, in my car, I don’t always mind it either. I don't like it, but I don't mind it. There are no other times in an adult American’s life, I think, in which we are forced to just sit still. If only the rules, regulations, guidelines or maybe even customs of our society dictated that we just stop everything we are doing for 15 minutes of every day, and sit, still, wherever we are at the time, maybe the world would be a much better place. Forced non-action. Required inertia. Mandatory meditation. Even recommended rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, traffic is none of these. It is in no way a relaxing time. As soon as we start to think we are sitting still, we have to move again. Slowly. Hopefully, gaining pace. Picking up speed. Maybe this is the end of it. Maybe I can finally shift into second gear. Maybe the accident that caused all this has finally been completely cleared. Maybe…bam. Slam on the brakes again. Stop. Brake lights. Wait a second. Did I just waste the past 10 minute of my life stuck in traffic listening to an article on NPR about the controversy of skin lightening cream use among adult men in India? Really? Maybe there will be a traffic report soon. Maybe I should call someone on the phone. No. Bad. It's illegal in California. Well, so is smoking pot. Are these bad things because of their illegality? Not necessarily, but yeah, I guess you could get pulled over for doing either one. Which automatically would cause more traffic, and force you to take even more time to get where you are going.

The Glory Days of Vehicles and Carpools

During the entire 2.5 or so years that I lived in San Francisco, I commuted from the farthest south neighborhood of that fair city to different points in Marin county. You have never heard of the neighborhood I lived in in San Francisco. Unless your name is Brian, Nathan, Link, Jasin, Lorena, Natalie, Marilyn, Paolo, Kali (the dog, not the ancient goddess of chaos and destruction, though, you know, there is a comparison there that deserves mention), Lynn, or maybe someone one the above mentioned dated or were friends with. But, lucky for us, this neighborhood had a bus stop or two, and was a quick bike ride (downhill in the morning) to the Caltrain station. So, in remembering my commutes, I have to give this one points for including a bike and a train. And it doesn't end there. In the morning, I could, and often did, ride downhill to the train, get on the train with my bike, and ride north to the end of the line. I then got off of the train, got onto my bike, and road 10 minutes of flat streets to the ferry landing building, where I paid $3 to board the ferry and ride it, with my bike, to Larkspur, in Marin. During this ferry ride I could partake of a bagel, or coffee, or even both. I could sleep. I could stare out the window or off of the deck at Angel's Island, or Alcatraz, or San Quentin or the Golden Gate Bridge. Or, if I was feeling like my scenery intake level was currently too low, I would take one in after the other, perhaps thinking to myself "Ooh." or "Aaah." Or "Hey, this is a great view of Death Row! It's neat how we are in a no-wake zone, and we have to go slow as we cruise by this famous prison. I wonder if Johnny Cash still plays there ever? I wonder what modern San Quentin prisoners would think of Johnny Cash." Or, on passing Angel Island, "Wow, I wonder how immigrants felt arriving at such a pretty island, with such a nice name, only to then be processed like cattle, and quarantined for way too long of a time?" Huh. The Bay Area, with it's thought provoking scenery.

The commute from San Francisco to Marin ended with a 3 minute bike ride across an overpass over Hwy 101 to the office where I worked. So, of an hour of commuting, I rode my bike about 20 minutes on mostly flat and downhill routes, got to enjoy a train, coffee, a bagel, and scenery, and didn't pay too much more than the toll on the golden gate bridge. This commute probably takes the cake in my diary of commute memories. Besides all the benefits I listed, there was the sleeping I could do if I I wanted, or needed to. Then, on the way home, I could choose to reverse the bike to train to bike to ferry to bike to office route, or I could bike the entire 20 or so miles, including a large scenic portion through Marin on bike trails and across the Golden Gate Bridge, or I could split it up. Ride the ferry back to SF, then bike home through the city. Enjoy a beer after work on the ferry. Give a random tourist a talking tour of the scenery. Take a nap on the boat. This was always fun, especially on the catamaran ferry. This boat was fast, and when it hit the waves it tended to rise and fall a bit, especially in the bow. So I discovered one choppy day when I was napping in the bow and we hit some good waves, and I dreamed that I was falling. And rising. And falling.

Besides my time in the bike to train to bike etc commute to Marin, I also spent a significant amount of time in San Francisco commuting via my roommate's Nissan Sentra, my old 1978 Honda CB400 motorcycle, and a large brown Dodge conversion van, affectionately nicknamed "The Big Turd". There were many wonderful days of carpooling across the Golden Gate bridge. After being stuck working in 100 degree summer heat all day in Marin, my coworkers and I would take the Turd to 7-11 to get slurpees. As we cruised south on Hwy 101 towards the GG Bridge, we would sip our slurpees and reminisce about the funny things that the ex-cons and tweakers that we worked with had said that day while we worked beside them, standing in creeks wearing waders and mowing down ridiculously tall and persistent cat tails and pampas grass. At a set point before the bridge, we entered the gay tunnel (that's kind of how I think of it, based on the rainbow, you might also know it as "that tunnel with the rainbow on it", or, perhaps, as the "Waldo Tunnel", that last being what it is actually called. By the time we had gotten to the tunnel, we had rolled up the windows and put down our slurpees. The temperature in the summer in the Golden Gate strait can easily be as much as 30 degrees lower than that in most of Marin. We often hit traffic jams that backed us up into the tunnel. But that's the beauty of carpooling, especially in the turd. At least, during traffic jams, you have folks to keep you company. And somewhere to sleep. If you're not driving. Which, since it was my van, I always was.

I am still waiting for someone to create a fuel efficient conversion van. I mean, really fuel efficient. If a van is invented that gets better mileage than my Honda Civic, and I suddenly win the lottery, I will buy one. Cause I miss those days of the Turd carpool commutes. But, life moves on.

And so did I. Commuting, really, whether it's a good commute, or a long commute, is a necessary part of our lives. Unless we don't work. Or, maybe, we work from home. Or, better yet, we don't work. But for many years of my life I was lucky enough to work from home. Well, reverse that. Not as luck as those of you who rent or own a place and live there and work out a home office or something. I have worked at a variety of places over the years that provide me with a paycheck and housing at the site of the job. Meaning my commutes have often been short walks from home to work site. Whatever that work site may be. In the early 00's it was the Marin Headlands Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The commute there was a short bike ride or hike through a coastal national park. In New Hampshire, I spent a few years working seasonal education jobs for the Appalachian Mountain Club, and there I walked a short distance through sunshine, rain, sleet and many feet of snow. But always in a forested area with nice mountains around. In other places where i lived and worked in the same location, the commute really didn't exist.

Right. Climate Change. It's My Problem Too.

Being somewhat of a self-described environmentalist, I think the car commute is something, ideally, that I should avoid. I think that the closer that we live to the places that we live and work, the better our environmental conscience is. It's better for the planet if we reduce our carbon footprint. As I write this the leaders of the world are gathering in Copenhagen to talk about climate change reduction. Of course, they are, many of them, flying there in jets that use massive quantities of fossil fuels. I don't know though, maybe some of the Europeans are riding their bikes instead. Or at least traveling by BMW motorcycle. Well, okay, probably not. But maybe some of their security staff are traveling by motorcycle. If even one leader was riding his or her bike to get there, well, I would vote for that person as Ruler or the Universe. Ideally, if I ever attend a conference, I will bike there. Ideally, soon, I will be biking to work. At least a few times a week.

This past summer, though, I experienced a change of heart about some of the ideals that I had carved out for myself over the years. Well, not a change of heart, but a reorganization of my priorities. I needed to save money, so I stayed with my parents north of Baltimore. I really wanted to work on water quality issues in the Chesapeake Bay, so I commuted daily back and forth to Annapolis, the state capitol of Maryland, so I could work for the MD Department of Natural Resources. This commute, according to Google Maps, consisted of 47.6 miles, or 57 minutes, of driving. Also, according to Google Maps, it could take "up to 1 hour and 20 minutes in traffic." Which is true. But another statement that is also true is that this commute could take up to 2 hours and 30 minutes in traffic. Or, it could take 2 hours and 27 minutes. Or there could be an idiot whose car broke down in the tunnel that cause a ridiculous, and seemingly spontaneous, backup. Or, that, if it was raining, some people would drive this route very slowly and cautiously. In the left lane. Next to another person driving slowly and cautiously in the right lane. Of a two lane highway. One thing I will say for the drive I did this summer - there was an endless variety of surprises when it came to time frames and events that caused those varied time frames. And I got a lot of thinking done about human nature. And life. And whether or not I enjoyed commuting. Despite the audiobooks. And the phone conversations I sometimes caught up on. (I know. But in Maryland it's not illegal. So it's okay, right?)

When my work season ended in Maryland, I decided I needed a different commute, so I moved back to the north coast of California. Living in Mendocino for a few years has presented me with a variety of commutes. I have walked from my house to the office, or driven a work truck from my house 100 feet downhill to the office. I have driven 10 minutes, about 10 miles, north from one small town to a slightly larger town along the Pacific Coast Highway, checking the status of the Pacific Ocean and its associated scenery at a variety of bridges and beach overlooks. And most recently, I have moved from a 57 minute commute in Maryland to an approximately 45 minute commute here in Mendocino. The gate to the off-the-grid farm where I lived until recently is about 11 miles from were I work. It took me about 10 minutes to drive over rutted dirt road to reach the gate, then another minute to open the gate, drive my car through it, and close it behind me. I then drove another 3 miles, or 15-20 minutes, depending on road conditions, bears, weather, mountain lions, gnomes, mushroom pickers and strange old men with toyota pickups parked by the side of the road and looking like the ghost of Edward Abbey dressed in black vietcong pajamas (actually, this guy was probably just another mushroom picker, but he waved to me every morning during my commute) to reach pavement. 15-20 minutes, or 10 miles later, I arrived at work. Traffic consisted of the above mentioned oddities (okay, I never really saw any bears or mountain lions, or gnomes, but I could have if I had kept driving this route) and the occasional logging truck, CHP SUV, or tourist. I didn't bother with audiobooks but instead switched back and forth between the two different dial locations for the local NPR affiliate. I couldn't talk on the phone whether or not it was legal, my phone didn't work for most of this commute. I often oohed and aahed at the sunset and sunrise over the cloudy redwood covered hills of the watershed next to and below the road. Exposed for great scenery in some spots by old logging clear cuts. I marveled at how many years I had spent driving my poor Civic up and down these roads and others like them. I recalled how short the days during winter are. And despite the idyllic farm location of the cabin where I was staying, I looked forward to the shortened commute that I would soon experience when I moved a bit closer to town.

Which is where I am at now. This past summer was a great eye opener for me. It showed me that I miss riding a bike to work. I don't mind spending time in my car, but I'd rather spend it outside with my bike, or my dog. I do think it's a good idea to use less fuel. I value the time I free up when my commute is shorter. I strongly believe in designing a society where we all live near where we work. I have reignited my healthy dislike for suburban sprawl. I don't want to sound preachy here, but, well, I probably do. Do you have a long, hellish commute? Can you shorten it? Can you work from home sometimes? Can you possibly take a train or a subway to work? How about a bus? Can you bike to work? If so, you are lucky. If you can, and you don't, why not try it sometime? At the least, can I recommend an audiobook or two to take the edge off?

I'll try to remember to let you folks know, one of these days soon, how the next stage of commuting is going. I face a 7 am bike ride in December up a reasonable hill, then down a steep one facing a view of the Pacific and a vast stretch of dunes and beach. From there, a mile of PCH 1, then 3 miles of old logging haul road - paved and closed to motorized vehicle traffic, alongside that same ocean. It should be wet, cold and beautiful. Now I just have to get the bike tuned up. And buy some lights.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2009-10-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Apatow strikes again. No movie reviews intended here, but more of an honest, soul searching mistake of a journal entry gone blog posting. Did you ever love someone? Did you ever write letters to that person, and then never send them? Did you ever pour your anger, frustration, love, hate, jealousy, rage, bile, tears, butterflies, boulders or strawberry shortcake emotions out onto the page for that person to read, then tear the page up, or keep it for yourself, holding it away from that person, thinking that you had won something back, that finally, you had something that she couldn't have? Or maybe you just were to afraid to say what you had written? Or maybe, just maybe, you realized you were afraid she just wouldn't bother to read it?

But maybe you felt better once you wrote that letter.

My admission. I am still living in a state of heartbreak. I would say 4 and a half years later, but that isn't it. It isn't about forgetting someone, at this point. It really better not be. If it was, well, I know who it would be, and she and I are friends, and well, really I wouldn't want a relationship with her now. We've grown, we're different. No. I've forgotten as need be. It would be kind of easy to write a journal entry about those long buried emotions, but no. That's not it. It's not about one specific missed love. It's sadder than that. It's about feeling sorry for yourself. Living in a state of limbo. He spent a year on the couch. I could see the appeal in that, I think. Who doesn't want to eat cereal out of a gigantic bowl sometimes. The moment that really struck home was when the clock read 2:24, and he was still in bed. Okay, I'm not that bad. I like to sleep in. Sure, I can be a lazy fuck. But nah, I'm not that bad. The point is, it isn't about getting over someone.

But damn if I still couldn't relate to the movie. Not the random fucking, necessarily. Though, like the giant bowl of cereal, I can see the appeal. Not the Hawaii bit, either. Or the surfing. I tried, I didn't get back on the board. But damn if it isn't time for me to write my Dracula musical.

Corn and crosses

2009-10-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it, it's been 4 months since I drove across the country to get here, home, to Maryland. I haven't written a lick of blog since the first week or two that I have been back. I have some photos and a brief journal, and here I am thinking that I will try to capture some of the rest of the trip, at least for the sake of having a bit more of a record.

But there was a specific question I really wanted to answer with this last trip across the country. Poised to me by a friend from Kansas. I told her I really didn't enjoy driving across the midwest. The corn belt. The bible belt. I told her about the time I drove from Maine to Mendocino, back in 2003. The time that I camped in western Tenessee. I saw a sign for a state park campground as I drove down the highway. I pulled in. It was very late. Quiet. Dark. I pulled my sleeping bag out and slept on the grass next to my car. I woke up early, and decided I hadn't really spent enough time at the campsite to pay the fee, so I left. I watched the sun rise in my rear view mirror as I crossed the border into Arkansas. I saw three crosses standing by the side of I-40, and I decided that this was to be the day that I quit quitting smoking again. I bought a pack of Marlboro Reds at a gas station, planning to chain smoke, if necessary, to get across Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle that day. It was a long drive, but I made it, throat ragged and gas tank near empty, to a rest stop just inside the border of New Mexico.

What bothered me so much about driving through the midwest? Why did I feel the need to just get it over with? Based on my reaction to the crosses and my desire to smoke (maybe I was just looking for an excuse there), it wasn't just a question of the distance, of putting a big chunk of the country behind me. It was something else. Something specifically related to that particular area. A stereotype I had.

My car has bumper stickers. At the time it probably had a bumper sticker that said "Think Larger, buy Smaller - Not Everybody Needs an SUV". I drive a Honda Civic. It definitely had a sticker that said "Bread not Bombs", and certainly there was a sticker on it that said "Work Buy Consume Die".

I was almost certainly sporting a beard. A couple guys at a gas station in New Jersey (the same guys who were filling my tank and cleaning my windshield) had seen me with my beard and called me Osama Bin Laden. Funny. I thought about shaving before my trip. just to avoid drawing attention from folks who might be looking to get in an argument about the looming Iraq war, or terrorism, or freedom, or my bumper stickers, or about whether or not it was okay for John Ashcroft to use taxpayer's money to buy the Crisco he anointed himself with. But I was too lazy to shave. And for the record, I would have been smoking American Spirits, or Camels, but all they had was Marlboros.

So I did, eventually, make it across the US that time. After a night spent at that rest stop in New Mexico, I drove to Flagstaff, AZ, and stayed in a hostel. I met some really great folks there. I cannot say enough great things about the four or five times I have passed through Flagstaff. I am always just passing through, but I always seem to meet great people and have interesting conversations. I first did Karaoke in Flagstaff, in the bar in the basement of a haunted hotel. The Monte Vista, I think.

While settling in at the Flagstaff hostel, I met an extremely beautiful girl. She was not beautiful in any way that I typically find beautiful - she had no quirks. She was a billboard. She was a magazine cover. She was what the majority of people think is beauty, perfection, etc. She was not the type of girl I would typically try to talk to, yet alone hang out and have dinner and a drink with, but she and I just happened to be in the living room at the same time, feeling hungry and thirsty. We went out, just the two of us, to get liquored up and to eat. I couldn't believe it. (Yeah. I know my self esteem needs some work, but that's another blog entirely). There had to be a catch. There was a catch. Apparently, this girl was from a bit of a radical right wing Christian upbringing. She seemed innocent enough at first - ex-boyfriend a pro snowboarder, she was waiting to catch a bus to the grand canyon so she could work at a hotel there, she believed the war in Iraq was a complete and total necessary jihad to wipe the muslims off the face of the earth, she really missed her dog...wait. What? Seriously? This was March 2003. The war was on my mind. I expected to be talking to people about the ridiculousness of it while I was in Flagstaff. She didn't make fun of my beard though. We didn't make out, either. On a note unrelated to politics, I met another girl the next morning who I sat and talked with for an hour, and managed to fall in love with before saying goodbye. She was not billboard, or magazine, but more farm, or music fest. Deep brown eyes and that certain something that so many people have when you meet them, as your paths cross, heading in opposite directions.

Showers, Soul Theft and Geysers

2009-06-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

Day 3

We left the Grand Tetons, headed north towards Yellowstone. The plan was to tour around Yellowstone, seeing a geyser or two, a buffalo or two, and definitely a moose. Stop, take pictures. No hurrying. This day (I am not even sure what day it was...) was going to be at least one day of this trip where I wasn't thinking about all of the distance I had to drive. I would be a tourist. I would get out of the car many times. I would "ooh" and "aah". And when I left Yellowstone, I would trave a short few hours, possibly as far as the Bighorn Mountains, and then stop to camp at a campground.

The day started with a shower. Amazingly, in Grand Teton National Park, there was only one place to take a shower. It had many showers, sure. Also a laundry, a grocery store, a visitor center, a gas station, and other modern lifestyle necessities. I showered, and took a walk through the woods behind the facilities, to see if Abbey wanted to take a shit in this small piece of Babylon nestled in nature. As we wandered through the woods, I thought I saw the ghost of John Muir glowering towards the gas station. He was up in a tree. All the way at the top. Dressed in a long overcoat, munching on a crust of bread he had pulled from his pocket.

As we drove through the valley between the two parks, we passed construction. There was a sign that read "Your Admission Fee at Work." I thought about it, and wondered if tax dollars still applied to National Parks too. I am pretty sure they do, but I was reminded that in California, many State Parks are in danger of closing for lack of state funding. There was a brief image of the elusive bull moose taking a big crap on the Governator's head. If you need help with this image, you should know, that like many herbivores, a moose's crap comes out in pellet form. Big piles of brown pellets about the size of shooter marble.

With the window open, I smelled something. It wasn't rank, bad, stinky. But it was a bit stinky. It wasn't offensive stinky, but if you farted, and it smelled like this, you wouldn't want to claim the fart as your own. It was a really familiar smell. I thought about it for a while, and realized that it smelled just like the off-gassing of a lager yeast fermenting when I am homebrewing beer. Rotten eggs. Sulfur. Geysers.

On the way into Yellowstone from the Grand Tetons, there is a waterfall near the road, maybe called Lewis Falls? I stopped there, like so many others, to take a picture of this beautiful, yet relatively short, waterfall. Later on I would think to myself that maybe I was just falling victim to peer pressure. Maybe there was no point in taking a picture of this waterfall. It was nice, pretty, splashy, wet, as waterfalls tend to be. It was bad ass. If it was located in Maryland, people would flock to see it. But here in Yellowstone, it was, I realized later, a shot or two under par.
Still, it was the first one, so people, including me, stopped, gawked, snapped, and left. I have to admit, I had the thought, many a time while I was in Yellowstone, that maybe we tourists weren't really there to see the beauty, or to ponder it, or to meditate in the vast awesome nature of the place, but only to steal its soul with our cameras.
"Honey, pull over, I need to get a photo of that."
Click.
"Okay. Got it. On to the next scenery."

I felt that way a bit myself in Yellowstone. I was sad that I couldn't hike anywhere with Abbey. I was glad when the hike to the brink of lower Yellowstone Falls was something like 5/8 of a mile and down 600 feet. In a nice gentle rain.

Before leaving California I had done some music trading with my friends, and in the process I had acquired a lot of Phish shows. It had been a long time since I had listened to some good Phish - late 90s stuff - and in this case, the music was a great soundtrack to the drive through Yellowstone. (Which, by the way, I kept calling "Yosemite", in my head. I always get the "Y" National Parks confused.) I swear, as were driving through the first hour of Yellowstone, I was hearing Phish sing "Take the highway...to the great, divide!" And so we did:

The next scenery for me was Old Faithful. I admit, I wanted to see the famous geyser blow. I drove by a number of much more beautiful geysers, but didn't stop. I went to Old Faithful, and I was lucky enough to arrive within about half an hour of the next eruption. Right now, apparently, Old Faithful is blowing its top every 90 minutes or so.

I had read that dogs were not allowed near the geyser. The review said, "but, you and your faithful companion can watch the show from 200 ft away." I walked out to the geyser area to survey the scene, and found that the geyser field was surrounded by a boardwalk with benches. Which was surrounded by a concession building, a small visitor center and bookstore in a mobile trailer, some bathrooms, and a massive construction site. Which, in turn, was all surrounded by a massive concession area, and a massive parking lot. Which, in turn, was adjoined to many other random buildings.

I noticed some other dogs relaxing with their owners on the boardwalk, so I went to get Abbey out of the car. She was, to say the least, happy about this. We walked back to the boardwalk and positioned ourselves with a great view for the show to come. About 20 minutes ahead of the predicted "within 10 minutes" of 1:10 pm.

There was lots of steam, the whole time. There was some premature bubbling. Lots of small jets of water which were false alarms. And then a whole lot of hot water erupted from a small hole in the ground

Running, with Dog, in Bear Country

2009-06-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Day 2 (con.)

Well, despite the likely presence of a brewery and maybe a buffalo burger with a couple of beers, we skipped Jackson Hole. Drove right through it, admiring the rafts piled on trailers being pulled by vans, and on top of vans, and the school buses that were not headed to school but to the river, and I thought that I would like to do some of that whitewater river kayaking one day. I am not sure what Abbey thought. It may have been something like "I am tired of being in this car. I like the smells coming in from the window. I want to eat something."

Entering Jackson Hole through the Teton Pass, you see mountains in the distance with snow on the top, even in June. Cool. I have never been to the Grand Tetons before, and if I have seen pictures, I can't remember, so I am thinking that maybe those snow covered peaks in the distance are the grand tetons that I am hoping to see. And I am thinking, "Sure, yeah, they look kinda grand." And I read somewhere that the Grand Tetons ridgeline is one of the most recognizable mountain ridgelines in the world. The snow covered peaks in the distance don't really look that familiar to me.

Then we get into the park proper, and off to the left, I see the Grand Tetons. I am think, "Oh. Yeah. Those Grand Tetons. That recognizable mountain ridgeline."

It does look kind of familiar, really.
I had done some pre-planning and some research for this part of the trip. I was very proud of myself, and thankful to Noah and Facebook, when we pulled into Jenny Lake campground, nice and early (around 2 pm), and there were tons of open sites. A tent only campground, nestled among conifers, with options for shade, or exposure to the flat moraine valley opposite the moutains. We chose the latter.

I was definitely tired, at this point. It was really tempting to set up camp, crawl into the tent, go to sleep. When I set up my tent, sleeping bag, and pad, I like to lie down for a minute, just to test the placement of it all, make sure that I will be comfortable for the night, before making a final commitment to the spot. I did this, and I almost didn't get up again. It felt so good, so nice, so wonderful, so, well, spacious, to rest with my body fully extended. (I need to put a quick note in at this point - a friend of a friend has a blog about his current bike ride across the country (yeah, I know. Why are you reading this crap. Why am I even bothering to write about my drive?). He talks a bunch of times about holing up in shelters at rest stops to get out of the rain, spending the night stretched out in his sleeping bag. I will never again fear the highway patrol eviction. I swear. Stupid. Those picnic tables looked so tempting. Why the hell not?)

I did get up again. I could not leave Abbey tied to the picnic table - though she looked rather comfy herself, stretched out in the shade. Amazingly, in hindsight, I got my running garb on. It had been a few days since I had run. I swore back in December that I was going to start a great habit of running three of four times a week, and stick to it. Well, for a while now I have been really determined to at least keep the sticking to it part alive by running at least once a week. So, why not? I am tired, but running seems to ignore that. I was feeling like a good stretch was needed, so I did that before running. I felt like I had eaten too much food the day before, why not burn some of it up in this beautiful spot.

Another reason that I wanted to take a run was that I couldn't take a hike. Dang National Park rules, dang John Muir preservation ethic, trying to preserve everything, not mess with it, let people see it, but not let dogs chase it. Abbey was not allowed on trails in this, or most other National Parks (thank you Gifford Pinchot and the land of many uses, National Forests, though). So instead of a big hike up into a canyon, or around a lake or two, or both, I would run on a road. Luckily Jenny Lake had a scenic drive route next to it, and looking at the map I realized I could make it a nice run.

I wasn't sure how long I would be able to go. I wanted to try to get at least half an hour in. We were at altitude, compared to the CA coast, so I figured that the thinner air and the road exhaustion would probably knock me out shortly after that. I told myself to keep it slow, and I did. Abbey had no complaints. But after 20 minutes, I felt like I could do 40, and my mind was thinking at that point that it was beautiful in the park, and I want to run distance, and I am not feeling tired, and I am keeping a nice calm pace, and hell, maybe I can make an hour. I have never run for an hour before, but why not. I would run the lake drive until I got to the other end, and make a loop of it, or turn around when I got to a half hour point.

The lake was off to our left as we ran. Cars passed by every once in a while, driving slow. I thought then of how much more detail I was getting to see. I think now of that guy, and my friends, who cross the country on a bike. Hell yeah. Put it on the bucket list. As we got close to the 30 minute mark, I marveled at how good I felt, and how the thinner air didn't seem to be a factor at all. I thought I might even make it to the end of the loop.

In the Santa Cruz mountains before I left California I had been working as a naturalist again. Taking students for hikes in redwood forests and to the tidepools at Natural Bridges State Park, teaching them about the science of those places, and the general rules of ecology as they apply to all places. Eat or be eaten. Food chains. Life and Death. Predator and prey relationships. Adaptations for survival in the natural world. I was aware that there is an outdoor science school based at Grand Tetons that is pretty famous in the naturalist world s science schools go. So I was kind of happy when a van marked with the logo of this school pulled up next to me from the opposite direction as I was running.

The driver smiled at me and said, "Hi."
I said, "Hi."
She said, "I just thought you might want to know that there is a grizzly bear next to the road just a little ways down."
I looked at Abbey, and said "Thanks. Guess I'll be turning around now."
The kids in the back of the van all laughed.
She said something about being cautious, if I did decide to keep going.

I thought about it for a minute. I really wanted to see a grizzly. I hadn't seen one in over 15 years. I started running again, in the same direction I had been headed. The next car was driven by an older fellow. His wife was in the passenger seat. He motioned me over and showed me a picture on his camera. Of a grizzly bear. Told me that the bear was just down the road, and was right next to the road.

I turned around. I was bummed. But I had seen Abbey whine and whimper excitedly when she saw a squirrel. I was running, and I didn't intend to run past it, so would I want to run away from it once I saw it? What if it saw me? Would it chase me? Would Abbey try to chase it? Would it eat me or my dog first? What was really the point of seeing a griz if I didn't have my camera with me? Just kidding on that last one. I had also seen Abbey give chase to a black bear before. She was on leash, but I didn't want her getting too excited. We turned around. We ran back the other way. The time on my watch was 29 minutes into the run. How appropriate.

On the way back one more car pulled up next to me. "Hey man, just wanted you to know we saw a big red bear headed this way through the woods from the other side of the loop." I thanked them, and quickened my pace a little bit. I kept glancing into the woods to my left, but I didn't see a bear.

I asked the campground host later if they get many bears in the campsites. I had been to Yosemite, camped in Little Yosemite Valley, at the base of half dome, watched two black bear cubs climbing up onto some stupidly unprotected backpacks (they were lashed to a tree about four feet off the ground.) My friend and I had been visited by a ranger whose job it was to hike through that campground, warning people to expect bear visits. I had woken up in the middle of the night, opened the tent door, and thrown the previously prepared pile of rocks and sticks at a large black bear, while yelling at it, only to discover later that it had knocked our bear canisters about and bitten a hole in my friend's plastic fuel bottle. The host said it was pretty rare. A few weeks back one camper thought they had heard one. I was sort of disappointed. But, hell, I still had lots of Tetons and Yellowstone to drive through. Maybe I would see a griz. Maybe I would at least get to see a moose. Maybe even a bull moose.

I was proud of myself for finishing an hour's run. We made it back to the campground at 56 minutes, and so we circled the loop once to make it 61 minutes, then circled again, walking, cooling down. My first thought when I stopped running was "Wow, this is what they call the runner's high." I had felt it before, I am sure. I feel it to some degree after every run. But damn if it didn't really kick in after an hour. Of course, there was jello legs sensation, and the mild urge to puke, but these were secondary to the daze I was in. I walked around the loop, then went back to the campground and stretched, and wondered how I could possibly have chosen to run that day knowing that the campground had no shower. The sign next to the ice cold water faucet said "No brushing teeth, washing dishes, or bathing." I didn't read it.

The First and Second Day of the Trip (without much of a noticeable boundary between the two)

2009-06-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Day 1

The first line on the first page of the Driver's Guide to Driving Across this Ridiculously Large Country We Live In is probably, "Be sure to plan ahead." Which I thought I did, by getting my brakes checked. And, so far so good on that note. But, sleeping has been a bit more of an issue. Once again, the Civic is a great car for everything but.

The second line is probably something like "Allow extra time to...to do everything."
(And somewhere in there there is probably a line about not mooching great writing ideas off of John McPhee, but I am feeling spiteful right now due to the scratched nature of my third book on CD, his "The Founding Fish." It's about shad, okay?)

My intended departure time was early Tuesday morning. And despite what you all know about me and my sleeping habits, when I said early I meant early, like 7 am. I did allow enough time in the final days before for blogging, final Facebook checking, drinking with the cohorting coworkers, 9 holes of frolf with the goats and goat-like naturalists, buying a new guitar case and eating one last boring meal at the brewery, and lots of other good stuff. I managed to have a few beers and a couple of attempts at redeeming the men's team in euchre (both lost, which I would like to blame Millipede for, but really it was a team effort) as well beforehand. I did get some packing and cleaning done. On Monday evening I decided to leave the final hour of packing and cleaning for Tuesday morning, and reasonably pushed the departure time back to 8 am.

I managed to wake up Tuesday morning at 8 am, and after breakfast, goodbyes, and a final hour of packing and cleaning that stretched into about 3 hours, I was on the road by early afternoon. Aiming to get to a campground near Elko, NV.

In hindsight, I probably should have left earlier. By the time I reached the exit on I-80 where I knew the campsite to be located, I had had three Rockstars and way too much Subway, and I was amped up on my first book on tape, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. And the thing about me and books, is, well, once I am reading I don't really like to stop until I am passing out. Which I managed to widely avoid by grace of the rest area gods and their choice of placement of a quaint rest stop somewhere along the lonely state route 93 in the NE corner of NV, just south of the ID line (and well past my planned stopping point near Elko). A real nice place to wake up to see the sunrise - middle of the desert, next to a river. Or at least I imagine it would have been. I crashed for an hour, waking up every ten minutes or so to experiment with a new attempt at comfort in the front seat of the Civic. Damn it, this is just what I swore I wouldn't do this time around.

So the first night I slept in rest stops. One in NV, one in ID a few hours later. Sunrise......somewhere just short of Massacre Rocks State Park in Idaho, a place I had researched ahead of time as a possible campground if I made it that far on my first day of driving, or intelligently split the drive to Idaho into two days. I didn't stop at Massacre Rocks. I wish I had.

A list of things to do differently on Day 1, next time I drive from the Santa Cruz mountains to Maryland (or, really, so far, to Remington, Indiana. Don't ask.):

pack early, leave the night before
stay with Shawn and Emma in Oakland on a work night for early departure and hometown inspiration
stay at the campground as planned
Stop to take pictures of that crazy house on the south side of I80 in NV.
Or drive across NV 50 instead of 80, cause it sounds cool
Based on above, camp in Great Basin
drive through NE NV during the day time to fully appreciate the desert
Scratch that last one. Drive through all desert areas at sunrise of sunset only, taking photos the whole way
Travel in larger vehicle. Ideally, synchro Vanagon Westfalia or Dodge Sprinter camper

Day Two

Abbey was spending as much time staring out the window, shedding, and sleeping as I was listening to Neal Stephenson. She also was managing quite nicely to pee quickly every time I let her out of the car. At gas stations, at rest areas. A good travelling companion. Calm in the car. Not prone to howling. Only once every thousand miles or so did she try to crawl out of her cave in the back, onto the front seats and into my lap. Which I generally discouraged.

When we finally were up and on the road on "day two" of the trip, my intention was to aim for the National Forests and associated campgrounds south of Grand Tetons National Park. This meant a few hours of freeway and a lot of wandering mountain roads. We had driven through Twin Falls, ID, in the blur that was the early morning driving, between rest areas. Really, we skirted it, driving around the actual city on border roads. I was not awake enough at the time to take a break from Stephenson to put on Built to Spill, or for that matter Josh Ritter, though I am not sure he is from Twin Falls, only somewhere in Idaho. I had been to Idaho once before, actually Mountain Home, but that was more westerly than we were ever going to be on this trip. I did think a bit about how the last time I had driven up this way there was a lot more desert between CA and ID, and I realized there might be some merit to by strategy of driving at night.

We passed through Pocatello, ID, and I wondered why this place sounded so familiar until later I recalled that Jack Black (the hobo turned librarian, not the actor) had spent many a day there visiting Salt Chunk Mary and exchanging pilfered goods for cash. This was to be the first of an old west theme that is hard to avoid when driving through Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota. I managed to later pass Wild Bill dam, WY, and Deadwood, SD, and I almost bought a Stetson and the biography of Seth Bullock at Wall Drug. Last night, I camped in Garretson, SD, apparently a place where Jesse James occasionally ran from posses.

On the way into Grand Tetons, I discovered a few things. There is yet another form of the picnic robbing jay that I know as the Stellar's Jay on the west coast (blue and black, with a mohawk, annoying) and the Grey Jay on the east coast (grey, also annoying). I think, anyway. I saw one, but didn't get a photo. It was black and white, about the same size as a Stellar's Jay, and though brave it wasn't really as annoying. I could be wrong. Could this have been a shrike? I thought they were smaller. This was at Palisades Dam, on the Idaho side of the ID/WY border on the snake river. I stopped at the dam because, well, it was big, and it was on the Snake River, and I was hoping there was a fish ladder there that I could take pictures of salmon in. There wasn't, as far as I could tell. I didn't really get too near the dam though. There was barely anyone there, so I let Abbey off the leash for a bit. She immediately took a shit, and we were both happy about that. Though I missed out on taking pictures of fish and that jay-like black and white bird, I did get some of my first (don't laugh now) non-brown pelicans. White pelicans, I think they are called.

Just before leaving the dam, I realized it would be a good idea to look at the map. I did, and then realized I had made a semi-wrong turn. Or missed a turn, really. I would still make it to the park, but I was neglecting a scenic route. I turned around a headed back the way I had come. It seemed only appropriate to make sure I entered Grand Teton National Park by climbing up and over Teton Pass. Which I am proud to say the Civic managed all 8, 431 ft of (though I am sure not all at once), only slowing to about 25 mph in second gear (fully loaded, though I am glad I sold the kayak before leaving CA) on the steepest parts.

At the top of the pass, I pulled over to let the guy in the VW Passat wagon with a picnic table tied to his roof pass me, to let Abbey pee (higher than she had ever peed before!) and to take a picture of the first of much western cheese

Across the country again

2009-06-01T22:40:00.001-07:00

In 1998, I graduated from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I only knew that I didn't want to be an engineer. I was thinking, at the time, along the lines of mechanic, or environmental educator. The mechanic thing didn't work out, though I still find myself under the occasional shade tree from time to time.

I spent the summer after graduation partying hard and working a night shift job at a construction site on campus pulling wires for a construction company, making more money than I had ever made in my life. For $6.25/hr I was hanging out with my good friends, falling for a girl, working, getting paid, and hitting the bar at 12:30 am to start a night of partying. Sleeping until after noon, going to work. Repeat. It wasn't too bad of a life. I was always happy hanging out in Blacksburg, partying, doing a radio show, drinking cheap beers at the Cellar, falling for beautiful hippie girls. But one fateful day I was sitting downtown on a bench. Probably smoking, probably people watching. I happened to run into Nathan and Lorena, and they were discussing an upcoming move to San Francisco. On a whim, I asked if maybe I could come along. I figured San Francisco would be a good place to start off the next phase of my life, the "after college" phase. Nathan said yes. This was to be the first of a series of cross country trips. This first one was accomplished in a 24 ft Ryder truck and a early 90s Nissan Sentra sedan, with two dogs and four people. The two dogs consumed a lot of dramamine, the four people many a cigarette. We managed to clip the side of a shed with the truck while leaving Kent St. on the east coast. On our arrival in San Francisco, we managed to bend the drive shaft of the truck pulling into the parking lot of our new home.

In 2001 I found myself, suddenly, without a job, and therefore without a place to live, and without the money to pay rent in the San Francisco area. I had left my well paid job as an Engineering Technician to continue pursuing that environmental education dream. I was living in an amazing house in an amazing park just north of San Francisco. But I hadn't really thought too far ahead when I accepted the 6 month position, and when August rolled around, I realized I did not have prospects for work in the Bay Area, and the when the job ended the housing it provided ended too. So I sold the motorcycle, and packed up the Civic for a trip back to the east coast, where I had landed a job in the White Mountains of New Hampshire on short notice. This was to be a great break from my California life, a great place to teach, a great place to finally experience some real wintertime, a place where I found myself immersed in an amazing community of great people. Along the way I managed to sleep in a couple of rest stops, traverse the Badlands and an equivalent confusing alien terrain of emotions, listen to a BBC performance of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not recommended for road trips, get the books on tape instead) rather than James Earl Jones reading the Bible (it was a hard choice), and almost die getting myself stupidly lost amongst cows and long long roads in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

A few years later, I found myself doing the edumacation thing in Acadia, ME. An amazing place. Beautiful. Mountains meet the ocean. Epic. Also, crowded. My friend and I had both spent some time in San Francisco, and we met there in Acadia. We had a few conversations about how, well, yeah, Acadia is beautiful, ME is beautiful, but really, well, the Northern California coast is comparatively more beautiful and much less crowded. We both ended up in California again before too long. I spent the winter in MD at my parents house working in a homebrew supply store, and then at Sunday River Ski Resort in ME, paying cheap rent, living with great friends and my first baby buddy (Simon, who was 6 months at the time, and loved it when I played the Beatles on guitar for him), and learning to snowboard. In March I drove across the country. Of this trip, I recall that I crashed late in a campground in western TN, then woke up early to dodge the fee. I drove, I believe, from TN to New Mexico, not being able to cope with the midwest at the time. You might recall that this was the advent of the stupid war in Iraq. When I hit Flagstaff, AZ, I found a hostel, and met a very cute girl who was feeling equally compelled to go for a drink and some food. We went out and talked a blue streak. Turns out she was a southern baptist who believed we were finally fighting the jihad we good christians should be fighting against the heathen muslims. No, she wasn't from Flagstaff. Luckily, there were many other great people at the hostel to balance my impression.

On arrival in CA, I started work at a place that was to change my life, the Mendocino Woodlands. I became a naturalist deep in the redwoods. My edges softened, my cynicism started to fade, I learned a greater appreciation for reggae music.

It is now 6 years and 2.5 months later. I am running late on my cycle of moving across the country. But tomorrow I do it again. This time, a return to the homeland. I will be driving towards MD, the long way through NV, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Badlands, across the Mississippi, through Ohio, and home through the Cumberland Gap. I have a job waiting in MD, taking water quality samples for the state. Who knows what comes afterwards. I look forwards to thunderstorms, muggy summer nights, lightning bugs, family, old friends, new babies, Charm City, sailing?, paddling some east coast marshes, and hurting my knees on icy slopes this winter. I intend to teach myself to take nothing for granted.

Happy trails, CA. It's been, well, utopic.

Permanent Feedback with Sustain

2009-05-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I really don't like about having tinnitus and hearing loss? I mean, other than the obvious frustrations that come from not being able to participate in every conversation I am involved in, or missing the beautiful subtle nuances of each and every person's speaking style? Or, working with kids, and having to ask them to repeat themselves? Or, being on a hike in the middle of a beautiful forest, far from any civilization, or the white noise that civilization creates, searching for peace and quiet, and instead hearing a constant ringing in my ears? Or, you know, thinking the bartender is cool, but only being able to catch about half of what he is saying, even though he is speaking loudly, because he speaks in a thick Scottish brogue? (okay, maybe I am not alone at all on that last one)
The rock music. I mean, I still love rock music, don't get me wrong. That's the problem. I love loud rock music. I love to go to shows, to be totally surrounded by the "wall of sound" that a great rock band can produce. To be rocking out - for it to be so loud at a show that it feels like you are swimming through the bass and drums, surfacing to occasionally catch a breath of vocals, then diving down beneath the music again, to be submerged in rock.
I used to see a lot of bands that used volume, as well as substance, in their music, to create audible textures. This concept of textures, layers - it always reminds me of a story I heard about the album recording of Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground. John Cale, Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison had a competition during the song, to see who could play the loudest. The noise that that drug driven factory percussive instrument extension produces evolves from a volume contest. And can you imagine having seen that live? Having heard it? Having felt it?
I never got the chance to see the Velvet Underground live. I don't think I was alive for that possiblity, even. Not counting any reunion type tours. But I had my fair share of opportunities to see, rock out to, and fall for, bands that utilized a similar technique. Maybe not always a volume contest, but a more controlled version of the same idea. A planned escalation in volume, contrasted with a period of calm, quiet, contrived melody. Crescendo. Pianissimo. Am I remembering my musical terms right?
Tonight I went to get a burger and a beer at the local brewery. On a side note, the Boulder Creek Brewery is sad these days. Not much of a brewery. Apparently, there was an explosion of some sort in their brew kettle area, and now the brewer does not work there anymore, and there is a bunch of equipment just lying quiet. Sad. I think they will resume brewing one of these days. In the mean time, I was really hoping for a Santa Cruz Mtn brewery organic IPA, which, btw, is a pretty good beer. But I arrived to an empty bar - excepting the above mentioned bartender - and on ordering an IPA found that they were out. So Black Butte Porter instead. And while drinking my beer, and eating my burger, the bartender told me the theoretical reason that the bar was empty on this Cinco de Mayo Tuesday evening. Apparenty, his friend's band was playing down the street at Joe's. Joe's is the local dive bar. I've had some experience there, and so I decided that when I was done with my burger I would have another beer down the street. I would hope Joe's had a better selection of IPAs, and I would go rock out to this band that the bartender was telling me about.
I arrived at Joe's to an unfamiliar wall of sound. Couldn't hear a thing other than the music, as soon as I crossed a line about 15 feet away from the door to the bar. I saw that, unfortunately, the only IPA they had on tap was Red Hook's Longhammer IPA. I try to make it a policy of mine not to drink Red Hook beers. I think they are owned by Budweiser. Let's not even talk about who owns Budweiser. I'm not actually sure, but I know they are big and evil. I am pretty sure it's not Budweiser. Besides, apparently Budweiser donates money to CAMP. Which isn't cool.
Based on the high volume of things, in general, in Joe's, I decided maybe I would use sign language to send my beer request to the bartender. Hold my hands together, then stretch them as far apart as possible. Then swing an imaginary hammer towards an imaginary nail in the very real bar. I don't know actual sign language, but I hope to learn one day soon. Instead, I just yelled my beer request to him, and he got the message. On a side note, that beer cost $4.25, and I paid with a $5 bill, and I don't know about you, but I just don't feel right leaving a bartender three quarters instead of a dollar.
The band that was playing was set up about 5 feet away from me. They were turned up loud. Way louder than necessary. I remember more than once coming to this same bar years ago and discovering that the band was turned up way louder than necessary. But that band was definitely playing Skynyrd covers. This band, tonight, was playing originals. Their was a plugged in acoustic rythm guitar singer guy, with a pony tail, and a Boonville Beer Fest shirt. And ask me about the Boonville Beer Fest some day. I will tell you about it. What I rememebr, anyway. And there was a cool, older bass player. Also, a hard rocking amazingly talented and loud drummer. Who as also older. And cool. And a lead guitarist. Who was maybe not as cool. Maybe too good. Maybe drowning out the singer a bit. Maybe he had some money invested in his gear, and he knew he was the best guy in the group. Maybe he realized he was playing stoner rock for a stoner jam rock crowd. But probably he hadn't been stoned in years. Dressed all in black. Played a Gibson Les Paul. Etc.
I only stayed for two songs. They were actually okay. After a few beers, I didn't mind hearing them. I tapped my toe a bit, I think. I am not so judgemental about music as I used to be. But, I left after one beer. Even though I have to work tomorrow, my reason for leaving was not to get home quick, to go to bed as early as possible, to get my well-deserved beauty sleep. My reason was that they were too loud. I could not rock out to them anymore. The volume hurt my ears. Don't even try to talk to me tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will give the kids I am teaching a day-long challenge activity: They can only communicate to me without using words. If they want to tell me something, they have to figure out a way to say it without actually speaking. Writing, miming, whatever. Telepathy works. However they go about it is fine. Because I won't be able to hear what they are saying. All I will hear is "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Not really. I'm exagerrating. My ears will be more handicapped than usual tomorrow, because I rocked out tonight. But I will still be able to hear. You ask, and I respond: No, I haven't actually been to a doctor to have my hearing checked in as long as I can rememeber. Honestly, I'm a little scared. But, today I was riding the bus back from the beach with all the kids. Half asleep, but occasionally out of the corner of my eye catching a glimpse of the two girls sitting across from me. Two students, one asian girl and one very white blond girl with extremely thick glasses. I remembered that yesterday, when we were told about the students who were coming this week, our principal told us there would be one girl who was legally blind without her glasses. And it dawned on me while I was half asleep, gazing across the aisle at these two friends, that this girl I saw reading Garfield out of a comic strip book was the very same legally blind girl. I realized that lots and lots of people wear glasses. That in a way, not being able to see perfectly is comparable to not being able to hear perfectly. The realization that so many people wear glasses became a momentary stepping stool for me to work from. I realized that, maybe, if I really am experiencing hearing loss, like it seems that I am, it is not as extremely disabling and isolating a thing as I sometimes paint it to be . I mean, sure, it is the invisible disability. But really, to be fair, getting my ears tested is sort of like getting my eyes tested. I mean, different, in so many ways, but similar, in that there is technology that can help me get by.
What I really don't like about his looming disability of hearing loss - other than missing out on the silence of an old growth forest, that is - is not being able to really rock out anymore. I realize there are earplugs available. But really, can I not go randomly, without plugs, without protection, to a show anymore? Do I really need to wear big ear muffs every time I use a chainsaw? Can't I drive around with the windows rolled all the way down, and the stereo turned up to 11?
All things, including rock, in moderation. That's what I say. Learn earlier then I did to take care of all parts of your body. We are not guaranteed to operate perfectly forever. Maybe I have filled my quota of amplified music listening. Naah. But hey, do me a favor. Next time you see somebody at a rock show wearing ear plugs, don't laugh at them. And wait for set break or a quiet moment to talk to me. Because, really, I want to hear what you have to say. But your sentences will be swimming in a sea of feedback and sustain. But really, I really, really, want to hear what you have to say. Really. Even if you have to repeat yourself. Five times. Six, maybe. Don't believe me when I smile and nod. Ask me again. I want to have the conversation.
Or hey, better yet, let's all learn ASL.

Leaving California, Pt. 1

2009-04-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

So I am once again confronting a move across the country. My job with the Forest Service ended at the end of April, and I am back in the Santa Cruz mountains teaching young people to hug trees again until June, when I embark on my...count them...fourth cross country move. This time with a dog in tow. And, possibly, a fifteen foot kayak on top of the Civic. Anybody in California want to buy a well used sit-on-top kayak?
Last night I had a really hard time falling asleep. I was anxious. It's a month away, and already I am anxious. Anxious about another move. For so many reasons. Reasons that I now am going to list, along with reasons I am excited to head back East:

Reasons I am not so excited about moving to Maryland:

It's a long drive.
I still won't have benefits or a permanent job when I get there
Humidity (I'm not too afraid of the heat, just the humidity)
I am going to miss so many people in California
Though my baseball fan loyalties still lie in Baltimore, I really have no idea about the Orioles these days. At the same time, I have found myself suddenly a SF Giants fan.
John Miller (see above)
California weather
Having too much stuff and too small a car (yet, if I were to trade the Civic, say, for a Vanagon, I would miss the Civic when I am commuting)
The ridiculously long commute I will be living with at first
Dreading how much I will miss my friends and good times in California (I saw fit to repeat this one)

Reasons I am excited to move to Maryland:

I will be close to my family.
I never really gave my home state much of a chance after college
I will personally save the Chesapeake Bay (okay, I'm exaggerating, but it's a worthy cause)
Baltimore Ravens. Also, NFL games start later on the east coast.
Opportunities to visit NH for hiking and such
Close to a good number of friends I don't see nearly often enough
Many job opportunities abound. I hope.
Graduate schools that interest me are located on the east coast.
Cheaper rent. I hope.
Four seasons. Ask me again in a year if I am happy about cold icy rainy winters and hot humid summers
Thunderstorms
Getting to know Baltimore all over again
Friends, family. Friends who are growing their families. Also, not having to spend a lot of money to go to Super Prom

Wow. That helps. Putting it down on paper. So I have humidity to fear, so what. I dealt with it for the first 20 or so odd years of my life.

Okay, so that was the list. Now, here's a poetic interpretation of my excitement and anxiety:

Migration fears:

Vast expanses of freeway without a sleep stop in sight
Consumerism
Sprawl
the TV Eye
Rats. Racing.

Hopeful memories:

That feeling in the air before a thunderstorm when the leaves turn inside out in the cooling breeze and the sky gets dark.
You can't go home again (I know this). The new feel of old places.

So I am leaving CA. Again. Maybe not forever, as always. But the beginning of June will have me seeing how much stuff I can cram into a Civic. I've done it twice already, crammed my life into a Civic. Shouldn't be any harder this time. Though I am sure I will think fondly of the original 24 ft Ryder truck that brought me out here after college

Top 5 Albums Of the 90's. Sort of. Because I had to decide on a title. And decided just to keep it simple.

2009-04-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

So my brother, Greg, who knows way more about music than I do, has a blog: http://regressiveresponse.wordpress.com/. Also, he is on Facebook. I know this because I am on Facebook too. And we are friends. Recently he and some friends of mine made some lists of albums with a certain related theme, like, say, "Top 15 Albums that Changed Your Life A Lot", or something like that. I made a list or two like this as well. In Facebook for some reason these lists were call "notes". One thing that I believe everyone who tried to write one of these Top 15 Greatest Albums of All Times, Top 40 Albums That Inspired Me to Get My First Tattoo, or even Top 100 Hip-Hop Albums That Helped Me Stick It to the Man lists - sorry, notes - would agree on is that the decision making was hard. Real hard. So in some form of strange biogeometric progression pattern, the number after the word "Top" just kept getting larger.

I like to read my brother's blog. He is a really great writer. It's a response blog to our friend Cathy's blog, which is a blog of lists. Cathy is really good at making lists. Her lists - though they are lists, in the sense of a collection of items within a related topic - can be poetic. Some of them, I think, are mysteries. There may be some written yet that are even science fiction. But, as lists, they are most amazing in their concise nature. In the fact that each item on the list says what it needs to say. There is no associated commentary or anecdote. Very little in the way of parenthesis. I would say, most of the time, Cathy's individual items are bulleted, and rarely, if ever, do they extend beyond the length of one line of text.

As you might guess in that we are related, my brother's blog is rarely concise. That's not to say that he can't be concise if he needs to. We both have the ability to edit, to trim down, to eliminate the unnecessary. But I know I take some liberty in enjoying the stream of consciousness nature of a blog, and I think he does too. Recently, he wrote a response to the
"Top N" note occurence on Facebook, submitting an amazingly low value for n with the "Top 5 Albums of the 90s." It's a great read about some great albums from that long ago decade. You might want to read it. http://regressiveresponse.wordpress.com/. I really enjoyed it, and well, I'm blushing, he mentioned me. After reading the blog, I wrote a comment. I meant to keep it short. Instead, I am including it here along with his response, as a part of the beginning of this entry:

ME: "This is way more fun than on Facebook. I’m gonna see if I can’t do some sort of aggressive response to your regressive response on my blog. To start:

I am always glad you found joy in albums that I left behind - Soul Coughing, Skarmaggedon, The Weakerthans. Awesome because some were not important enough to me to bring along, some were forgotten, but to you the neglected music became treasures. As the line from the Grateful Dead goes (and I don’t expect that you would know this one, except for it’s popularity) “One man gathers what another one spills.”

My 90s were spent in HS and college. That is gonna be too tough for me to list only five, I think. I may have to try to do a HS list, and a college list. Yeah. Here’s the rough draft outline spontaneously decided on:

HS Top 5:
1. Sonic Youth - Dirty
2. REM - Out of Time
3. Nirvana - Nevermind
4. The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
5. Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese

Okay. That was too easy. There must be some sneaky albums hiding that maybe aren’t as apparent…Red Hot Chili Peppers = Blood Sugar Sex Magic. U2 - Zoo TV. Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend. The Violent Femmes - self titled.

College
1. Sebadoh - Bubble and Scrape
2. Superchunk - Foolish
3. Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain. Yeah, thanks Shannon.
4. Yo la Tengo - Painful
5. Built to Spill - There’s Nothing Wrong With Love

Alright. Greg, I can’t believe you narrowed a list down to 5. I mean, okay, maybe I should jut focus on the HS days. It’s too much, when I think about college. Overwhelming amounts of great music, rocking out, and of course, lots of things that cause most of those memories to be one messy borderless blur of good times and classes."

MY BRO: "Yeah, Brother, there are like 50 different phrases that crossed my mind for me to be able to narrow it down to 5. I think I’ve just so many top 5 lists and then gotten hung up on the This Is Too Hard that I decided I’m just gonna make some decisions. Anyway, yeah, this is really more like Top 5 post-grunge, not super-popular, maybe slipped through the cracks, albums of the 90s that I listened to…and so on. And even with those, I think it would be a more interesting list if I found two more like the first three to replace the two indie ones that everyone likes. Maybe I should be thinking of it as “Top 5 90s albums that you won’t find anything like today” or “that are especially 90s” or something like that. The Scofflaws, GLB, and Soul Coughing albums are perfect for me like that; albums that are 90s to me, but still hold up. Clearly BtS and Pavement hold up, but so much so that they are hugely influential and still playing, more or less. From their myspace page, it sounds like the Scofflaws still play gigs in Long Island, but only Sammy Brooks is still in the band; Grant-Lee Phillips has a solo career that I can’t comment on except to say that the two albums of his I have (”Ladies Love Oracle” and “Mobilize” don’t sound like GLB), and Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty has some solo albums but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t reproduce Soul Coughing. Okay, you probably got the point before I went and elaborated all that.

Anyway, yes, brother, picking from the flood of music would (is going to be?) much, much more difficult. I think your equivalent list would be from high school. Thanks for the comments!"

So after all that, here's an attempt at narrowing it down. Making some decisions, sticking with them. With the same allotment for some runner-ups, as necesary. As I mentioned in the comment above, I just couldn't handle the Top 5 of the 90s. So I made two lists. One for High School, one for College. I think that this is going to have to be the way it stays for the 90s. I was born at that time when, well, my 90s decade was culturally split in half by my educational experiences. Four years of HS starting in 1990, in the relatively affluent suburbs of Baltimore, MD, and 4 years of college as a college radio DJ at a CMJ disciple indie rock formatted radio station in between DC and Chapel Hill. Plus two afterwards, in San Francisco. Shit changed for me in the 90s.

My HS Top 5:
REM - Out of Time. One of my best friends in high school, Bill, had an older sister who I remember having a crush on. This was the crush that taught me what a crush was. And she and a friend of hers were real hip, according to my perspective. I went to my first concert with them. And my second one, I think. The first one was U2, with Primus and the Disposable Heroes of Hipoprisy, opening, at a giant stadium near D.C. Amazing. The Zoo-TV tour. There were cars on cranes, being used as spotlights. There were all these giant TVs. It was a spectacle. Bono called President Bush for our benefit. I was blown away. But U2, I had heard during the 80s. I was that cool. I knew what was going on. I had Boy, and the Joshua Tree, and Rattle and Hum. I listened to the radio. I had tapes of great songs recorded off of B104.

But going to HS meant learning to listen to WHFS 99.1. They played REM. And going to HS meant having crushes. This crush pushed it over the top. Bill's sister and her friend were so cool. I mean, they took us to this extremely cool concert. And another one. The B-52's and the Violent Femmes (but that's another blog, like maybe "Top 5 First 5 Concerts Attended"). And they liked REM, too. A lot, if I remember right. And, well, Out of Time is a great album. But damn if "Losing My Religion" didn't speak to a high school boy who sat in confirmation classes at the catholic church he was getting tired of going to every Sunday. I mean, I am pretty damn sure now that the song wasn't actually about losing one's religion, in that sense anyway, but I sang along. And shit, was that KRS-1 teaming up with Michael Stipe on radio song? I didn' know at the time how cool that was. And yeah, I had a crush on Bill's sister. But I also had a crush on Kate Pierson from the B-52's. A buddy of mine definitely wanted to have her love-child.

Looking back now, I realize, with the wisdom that age brings, that Out of Time was a pop album. That I was really into pop music then. That the catchiness got to me, like it got to so many others. That I wanted to sing along. So I did.

Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese: Of course, thinking back, now, a lot of albums are coming flooding back. This one didn't even make the first list in the comment to my brother, until I looked at the draft and said to myself, "Wait. Hang on. I am pretty sure there is an album that I liked more than Pearl Jam's 'Ten' out there". And it's true. I am going to blame a random contest that I recently heard on the radio station KHUM for my choosing Ten first. And, no, I am not ashamed at having Ten on or near the list. Just saying. Claypool over Vedder. Not a hard choice. I'm not going to put a cage match of great 90s singers together here. My mind is wandering towards the question "What about Kurt Cobain? Would you choose him over Claypool?" But that's another Blog. One called Vs. The Greatest of All Time. A cage match of rock and roll influences.

Bill is here in this one too. He and I had played violin together in 5th grade. We continued to do so through middle school. And in high school. But in high school, we realized that violin wasn't very rock and roll. We decided we wanted to start a rock band. Bill had also been playing piano since he could move his fingers. He was rather good with the musical instruments, and he started playing the bass. I took classical guitar lessons from a friend of the family and, well, my rock and roll instrument playing took a little longer to evolve. He and some friends started a band, and they rocked. I went to their shows, rocked with them, and discovered my role as that guy who is friends with the bands and takes really good pictures of them. And I have fulfilled that role, many times over, for many bands, and I have no complaints. But hell, I still can't slap a bass like Bill could even in 10th grade. If I remember correctly, by the end of high school he was deducting the cost of his bass and amp from his income taxes. Or, maybe his parents were for him.

Bill and I were friends with a bunch of other great guys. We were all in the Boy Scouts together. We were in it, most of us, I think, to have a place to get together to do strange, crazy, fun, unexplainable things. Contrary to Baden Powell's original hopes, we learned to party and disrespect authority while in the Boy Scouts of America. I have since met many a fellow Eagle Scout under varying conditions of intoxication, and have discovered that many former scouts share the same themes in their boy scout experiences. Along with scouts, life in high school was crazy. We were learning about girls, and we were eager to drive, and we were gaining independence, and we were just really beginning to learn how to rock. Along with some of those more traditional high school revelations of puberty, anti-authority ideas, and rock and roll, came this desire on our part for nonsense that only made sense to us. And I think Primus was the theme music for this part of it. Just the idea of sailing seas made of cheese kind of speaks to what we were all about.

I never thought about it when I was younger, but the lyrics of "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" sort of captured my position in the hierarchy of high school. "He never did win no checkered flags but he never did come in last." I mean, that hierarchy, regrettably, was really on my mind when I was young. I wanted to be cool. And Jerry was cool. Les Claypool was cool.

We went to a concert at UMD, the Ritchie Colliseum, Nov. 1st 1993. The Melvins opened for Primus. Looking back, I realize again that this was the second time I had seen Primus. The first being that Zoo TV concert. Unfortunately their greatness was wasted on me that first time around, and the sound in the stadium blew chunks during their show. But at the Colliseum, we endured the Melvins - who much like I learned to like tomatoes after hating them as a kid, I came to really dig - and their confusing drone and over-distorted crunch sound, to finally be able to rock out with Primus. I had not yet rocked hard until that show. That show was a turning point in my life. I rocked hard so many times after that. My back still hurts from all of the rocking hard I have done. I continue to rock hard, really, thanks to "Here Come the Bastards", "Jerry...", "The Way of American Life", and "Fish On."

Nirvana - Nevermind: I was lucky enough, in high school, to have a great art teacher. Of course there was the art teacher who was a gentle old lady who taught us to draw people with circles and ovals, and to paint inside the lines. And there was the large, loud angry lady with the shaded glasses who cut her hair really short and melted GI Joe figures into necklaces (looking back, I think she was probably a lesbian. Not to stereotype or anything). But then there was Mr. Smith. Mr Smith encouraged our dissent from any sort of traditional art, while encouraging us to focus on things that we were feeling. He pushed us into the corners to look for new ideas, new ways of interpreting the world. He brought out in most of his classes an ability to make art for art's sake, rather than for an assignment. Or maybe he was just cool. He also told his classes to check out First Thursdays, the open gallery nights down in Baltimore.

I went to my first First Thursday with some friends who were like older sisters to me. We picked up a friend of theirs at his house, and when he got in the car, he held up a tape. "This album is going to change the world of rock music forever," he said. No, actually, I don't remember the words he really used, but his statement was something comparable to that. What he said laid a heavy weight down in the car, like we were about to hear something amazing, mind-blowing, and very different. These kids I was friends with were great artists. They saw things real differently, and they expressed it in their art and in their writing and in their music. This guy with the tape, I think his name was Paul. I remember Mr. Smith telling a story about Paul once. He said he had to sneak into an abandoned building to look at Paul's advanced art class project, because it was spray painted on the side of a wall that was going to be demolished. Paul was cool.

Whoever was driving put the tape in the deck immediately. I didn't really know much about music, but by this point I had learned to rock, and this album rocked. It was, of course, Nirvana's Nevermind. There is no avoiding my putting this amazing album in this top 5. I had that experience. Like where were you when you heard JFK died? Where were you when you heard Jerry Garcia died (okay, I don't remember that one). Where were you when you first heard Nevermind? This is not something I will forget. I was with a bunch of amazing artists, on our way to look at art, in the early 90s, in Baltimore. Rocking.

Thinking about Nevermind and the way it influenced me makes me think about the way I often listen to music without actually hearing the words. I think this album was one that I didn't look too hard for meaning in. I wasn't trying, at the time, to understand what any of the songs were written about, or why they were written that way. I was just feeling it. I was on a plain, and I couldn't complain. There was "something in the way, oooooh." And I was looking at the cheerleaders in the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head Another tape deck incident. Another friend from high school immediately comes to mind. Dave. The tall one, who played guitar in the band with Bill, and who played guitar in the other band with Tricia, the girl who was probably my best older friend in that car that night I first heard Nirvana. Dave was driving a silver Volvo sedan, at the time, I think, though I remember at some point during high school he had an old small two wheel drive pickup that was painted yellow with black stripes that he once washed in its entirety with the squeegee at a local gas station.

Dave picked me up at the Cockeysville library one day. I can't remember why. I can't remember anything about this day except Dave, a Volvo, and the Beastie Boys Check Your Head album. I remember it was awesome. I knew how to rock, but this was something new. This was to lead me to later appreciate funk music like Parlaiment, Grant Green, Donald Byrd. This was the predecessor to my one day getting into DJ Shadow, Dr. Octagon, Aceyalone. Check Your Head was a natural progression, I guess. The first tape that I ever owned was License to Ill. (Actually, I think it was the soundtrack to Footloose, but for some reason I always think of License to Ill first). But I hadn't listened to the Beastie Boys in a long time. When I had gotten License to Ill I was in 6th grade. I completely missed Paul's Boutique, somehow. Don't worry, I caught up later.

"People how you doing there's a new thing dawning." Definitely. Listen to the turntables. Listen to the beats drop, so heavy. The production of this album still blows my mind. The samples, combined with the dripping soul of Money Mark's keyboard, combined with the Beasties actual playing of these instruments, punk rock mixed with soul. I guess Check Your Head defined hip-hop early for me. I heard the lyrics, I remembered the lyrics, I sang along, but the entire product, the rythm of the words, combined with the meaning, "be true to yourself and you will never fall", combined with the movement of the music. I was spoiled. Since that day outside the library I still can't really embrace a hip-hop song unless the music and the words flow together, rather than one supporting the other.

"And now, I'd like to ask you how, you like the feel of the bass in your face in the crowd."

"You should sleep late. It's much easier on your constitution." That one still rings true for me.

I don't think I could define the word "namaste" better than the words and sounds of the song on Check Your Head by that name does. Mellow. Relaxed. Peaceful. A butterfly floats on the breeze...

Sonic Youth - Dirty

In that car - - that car that I first heard Nirvana in, not the Volvo, but the other one - or maybe driving that car - was a girl named Tricia. She was so cool. She was an amazing artist. She was the singer and songwriter in a band with Dave, the driver of that silver Volvo. A band called Spastic Cracker, a band that changed my ideas about music probably as much as Sonic Youth. Details are vague in my memory on how I came to own a tape of Dirty. One thing I am almost sure of is that Tricia's influence played a role.

Sonic Youth was something so different than anything I had ever heard before. I first heard and appreciated Dirty in high school, but the sound that they created remains printed in my mind still as something more than music. It turned my entire musical world upside down Fierce cutting alternately tuned guitars ripping through the outer linings of my thoughts to grab my attention. Climbing disharmonic solos dropping into layered distortion, like you could walk across the guitar sound, stepping note to note. Then jump off, flying through the sky where far below guitars play riffs of happy dancing arpeggios until everything folds with a crushing machine-like drum roll into a building crescendo of controlled musical chaos, then explodes into empty space.

I asked my friend Tom today, my best friend from high school, and a fellow appreciator of good music and friend of Tricia who also got his mind blown by Dirty, if he remembered any significant details of where we might have first heard this music. He immediately also mentioned Tricia. He also said something that I completely agree with. Hearing Dirty was hearing music that to our knowledge had no precendent. It was a different form of rocking. And yeah, of course later we heard the Velvet Underground. I recently watched Kill Your Idols, and understand a bit more about the whole No Wave music scene that is strongly connected to Sonic Youth's roots. But at the time, Sonic Youth's guitar tunings were like a metaphor for their music - there was no understanding why they would have come into existence, where there sound would have evolved from. But they were so mind-blowing, so beautiful...a delicate balance of chaos and harmony. Their sound was a way of rocking that I never would have thought could exist. And at the time, we didn't know it, but we had only touched on the surface.

My 90s were defined my so many amazing albums. I think now that the 90s were a heyday of music for my generation. I am sure I have missed about 1,237 or so articles that people have written that have said something similar. So many amazing albums! So choosing even just 5 for high school was so difficult. I shouldn't whine about it though. I think I am going to have to leave the College Top 5 for another blog. Too much to even start to think about. The SuperDeformed hat, that the cute older rocker girl at the Stranger Than Fiction show thought said "Superchunk". Who is Superchunk? I ask. Who indeed.

I would really like to thank my brother for inspiring me to think about this. I want to of course thank all of the people I have mentioned for their influence in helping me to rock in what I think has been a really successful way for many years. Also, I want to thank Les Claypool for continuing to support the oddidty in my life. He recently acted in and composed music for a movie that was filmed in the Anderson Valley, CA (ever had Boont Amber Ale?) called Pig Hunt. I have yet to see it, but I hear he plays a preacher. Thank you Kurt Cobain, may you rest in peaceful rock and roll anonymity in the afterlife music scene. Thanks for being one in a long line of singers whose words couldn't always be understood and didn't always make sense when they could be. Thank you Sonic Youth for so often throwing my mind into the blender, pressing the puree button and blending my thoughts into something I never knew could taste so delicious. And thanks to REM for writing "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". Even though it wasn't on Out of Time.

Solstice Storms

2008-06-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

Last Friday June 20th, or maybe it was Saturday, was apparently the longest day of the year. I decided to celebrate the summer solstice in the way that I celebrate many days, by stopping into Piaci's for a beer. As I was on my way home I noticed that the sky looked kind of funny. Not funny haha. The sun was not turning into a giant yellow two dimensional smiley face. There were not cloud clowns forming on the horizon. It was more funny strange. There were large cumulonimbus clouds floating just over the ocean. There was that eerily familiar loud rumbling noise. Then, just like if it were winter, the large drops of water fell out of the sky.

In Northern California, as with a lot of the rest of California, it doesn't rain during the summer. No. Really. I am from the East Coast, where rain can happen anytime of year, where we do not leave the windows open despite the heat, where we cannot assume that taking the motorcycle to work in the morning will result in an equally pleasant and dry ride home in the afternoon. Where when we go backpacking, we always pack raingear. Okay, at least the emergency poncho. But here in Norcal, as the locals somewhat annoyingly call it (but damn if it isn't more convenient to type), the normal way of things is for the rain to go away during the summer. It usually leaves with a final storm in April then a few pitter patters in May. Sometimes it rains in June, and that's the topic of conversation around town for the next few days. Rain in June makes headlines. Rain in July or August makes the front page. And in the normal pattern of things, the rain comes back intermittently on my birthday in October, and then for real serious big dumping rains, floods, mudslides, opposite of the summer exactly on Thanksgiving. I'm reading a book right now that takes place in Bombay. I am amazed, but the characters seem to know precisely within a day when the monsoons will begin. When I say it always rains on Thanksgiving here, I am kidding. It's not that precise. But apparently in monsoon regions, it is? I dunno.

I'm getting off course here. The point, really, is not rain at all. As a matter of fact, the point is the lack of rain. The lack of rain that we have had since January. Not too many major storms came through after January. Things dried out really early, and they are still dry. That lack of rain has made for an interesting spring here. Lots of really beautiful days outside, starting really early in the spring. Nice weather in March, and then just continuing up to this point, and probably beyond. N. Cali (look at that abbreviation, how's that for efficiency?!) seems to have two seasons, by the way. Winter and summer. I didn't make that up. I borrowed it from hundreds of other people. Winter is cold and wet, but not too cold (and this year, not nearly wet enough), and summer is hot and dry (but it's a nice hot, without that sticky humidity that yall East Coasters get). Hot means really hot at times though. 100+. Of course, I think it was 120 in Phoenix, AZ the other day. Who lives in Phoenix? That's just too hot. Actually, where I am, we average 60-70 during the summer. If it's too hot, go to the coast and get socked in by fog, cooler temps and wind. If it's too cold, head inland a little ways and you will get the heat.

So right now we've got a hot dry summer. I'm on my way home last Friday during a cool evening, after a cool beer (45 degrees F was the serving temp, if you were curious), and I am looking at the funny strange sky, and I tell Abbey (who happens to be in the car with me), that we are definitely going to the beach, with the camera. If she knew what I was saying, she would've wagged her tail for sure, and gotten real excited, because she loves going to the beach. But she didn't know what I was saying. I don't think. She did wag her tail. It may have been just a standard wag.

We went home, and I looked at the clock. I really was excited to capture some epic sunset photos on the beach. The clock said 6:30 pm. I thought for a second that we better hurry, then I remembered it was the longest day of the year. So Abbey and I sat down to our respective dinners, and I think I even took a shower. Finally, as it neared 8 pm, we headed out to the beach.

When we got there, it looked sort of crazy. Not just strange anymore. Do you remember that movie Poltergeist (I think it was Poltergeist) when the sky gets really stormy and I think the heavens open up for a bit? Well, whatever, if you don't. It really looked creepy. Big thunderhead clouds, layered on top of each other. A line of fog-like clouds hovering over the horizon, with fingers of storm formations reaching up into the sky. Directly above the ocean there were multiple rain clouds moving north. A few passed by. A couple drops fell here or there.

So it looked kind of like that, above. The crazy part, really, was the wispy strings of cloud that were hanging out below the big puffy cumulos. I hate to say it but the picture doesn't really do it justice, and this is the photographer talking.
Summer storms in Mendocino are uncommon. Rare. Actually, we don't really get them. A bunch of people were at the beach watching the clouds, waiting for the epic sunset. Nobody brought their raincoats, I don't think. I, being an East Coaster still at heart, had mine in the car. I didn't really need it. It showered a couple of times for about 30 seconds. In the end, we didn't get any rain. And actually, almost tragically, the really badass clouds blew north to Fort Bragg before the sunset really hit. For some reason I didn't choose to chase them down. So I didn't get the photos that I was hoping for. But here's one of the clouds leaving

While on the beach I got to see a few serious lightening strikes. Bolts, crashing down into the ocean. Of course, followed up by rolling thunder. It was great. I get very sentimental for thunderstorms, especially during the summer. Because even in the winter time it is rare for us to get such extreme action in a weather event. We get more of the deluge, the 45 days of rainy weather, but with no thunder, no lightning.

Well, the thunder and apparently the lightening went on all night and into the next morning. Which was interesting to me. And very interesting to Abbey, who has never heard thunder before. So she barked at it, and tried to chase it out of the yard I think. She succeeded, by the way. The thunder did stay out of my yard. The reason that the thunder and lightening was interesting to me, beyond the strange nature of this occurrence, beyond my sentimental East Coast nature, was that Saturday my friends were getting married. I wasn't thinking that it was likely that the outdoor wedding was going to get rained out, but more so I was fascinated by the show that the sky was putting on for two people who were very connected to nature, natural mysticism, the earth and the magic that moves in and around her. As a matter of fact, the groom is someone I consider to be learned in the language of natural things. Mostly plants, really, but heck I wouldn't have been surprised if a he was in good with a random spirit or god that decided to throw a show for he and his bride-to-be.

As it turns out, this wasn't really a great, joyous show. Thunderstorms with lightening and no rain in California spell fire. Mendocino county made the national news today. Apparently there are 840 fires burning from the lightening strikes in different parts of Northern California. Mendocino has 131 of those. That's a lot. A few of them are near my friends homes. Some folks at the wedding had to dash off to get their dog, because they heard that a fire was heading towards their house. One friend who has now had to evacuate his place for threat of fire told me he hoped that the fire department dragged a house around his garden, and not through it. Mendocino county residents care very much about their gardens.

One of the fires is at Orr Springs, a Hot Springs resort that is really a nice place to hang out. Another one is burning a few miles down the road from the housing I was supposed to live in this summer, and in the Garcia River watershed where I was supposed to work. According to the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, about 9,000 acres are burning in the separate 131 fires, and fire crews have only been able to reach about 30-40 percent of the fires. Amazing.

We are used to hearing about wildfires in California during the summer. As a matter of fact, as the naturalist, I have to put in that fire is a more than normal part of California's ecology. That many plants (including some of the trees in that Garcia River watershed), need fire to regenerate. Some pines need the heat of a fire to open their cones, releasing the seeds. Fire, from an ecological point of view, in many forests, is a way of starting over, of having a clean slate. In an old growth redwood forest, fire serves to wipe away a lot of the tangled debris and the scrubby undergrowth, freeing up space for new trees to grow, and leaving the old trees fire-scarred but relatively unharmed. Native Americans in this area used to set fires to clear away brush, to start new growth in areas that hosted trees that provided food sources for them. So fires are certainly a normal part of the ecology here.

But as used to it as we are, and as normal a part of the ecology, it has been a long time since Mendocino has seen such a dramatic fire event. Especially here on the coast, there are some fires that surprised me as well as other residents. It is just not has hot and dry here as the nearby inland areas.

So we have a beautiful thunderstorm for summer solstice, and now the county is on fire. Well, my thoughts go out to all of my friends who are fighting fires anywhere, who are evacuated currently from their homes. Anyone in Mendocino needs a hand, please give me a call. I'll do what I can. Thanks to Ashleigh for being a fire fighter, in general.

The wedding went off well. The folks who had to dash away were able to come back. Hopefully things are working out well for them still, hopefully there homes remain safe. Next time we get lightning and no rain, I will know a little better that it is not just a beautiful natural event we are getting, but maybe a surprise fire or two, or 131.

Oh, here's one of the sunset that day. It was really nice, despite the fact that the storm clouds moved north.

Be safe.

Walking

2007-12-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

The sun isn't up yet. Not even close. Abbey is too tired to move, even when I dump the crunchies in her bowl. The woodstove went cold about midnight. My wool socks, fleece pants, t-shirt and fleece sweatshirt constitute the most pajamas I have worn in ages. Yet I am still cold. If I roll my head in either direction, if I stretch my legs, if I move my body at all, I find the bed all around me cold. Who knew when I moved in here that I would actually use the giant 70s sunshine California king comforter as a blanket. I had saved it, from house to house, since Boulder Creek, to hang on my wall or ceiling. As a decoration. Now it provides a little extra warmth. I never thought, living in Northern California, that I would need more warmth than a thick down comforter could provide. I mean, this is a Mediterranean climate, right?

Mediterranean climate. Wet. Very wet in the winter. Mold. Wet firewood. Puddles everywhere.

The new place I live in is a yurt. That's a picture of it up above.

It is surrounded by pygmy forest. The thing about pygmy forest is podzillization. Did I spell that right? Blogger doesn't think so. Did I tell you about this already? Oh well, sorry about that. "Pygmy" - the word means little, small, something to that affect. In this case it describes a forest that may have been growing for 100 years, but has not gotten very tall in the effort. Not for lack of trying, but every time the trees put their roots down, they find podzillized soils - a hard pan layer of clay like soil a few feet below the surface. A layer so hard, so dense, that the roots can't get through. So with shallow roots, a tree that is 100 years old can only grow a few feet tall. Now the yurt is located in "transitional pygmy", so, thankfully, there are some tall trees around too. But, also thankfully, there are lots of short trees, so, thankfully, there is a lot more light than I was previously dealing with in the thick of the redwoods.

I have no real indoor plumbing. Well, I have a sink, but I do my best not to pee in it. So when I have to pee, I go outside. One of the best surprises about the yurt, besides the view of the moon and stars out the dome in the middle of the night, is the view of the moon and stars in the middle of the night when I stumble outside in the crisp wet cold to pee. Orion is hanging around, as he likes to do in the winter. For us Northern Hemisphere folks anyway. It is nice to be able to see him again. I think if I had to pee outside all my life and didn't spend the last few years living in a thick redwood forest valley and the first many years in light polluted cities and suburbs I would have a better knack for naming more of this winter sky's occupants. In the meantime, it is enough, while half awake, and relieved, to marvel at the beauty of the crisp dark sky dotted with stars or a big round glowing moon.

Back to it though. The floor is cold. The bed is cold everywhere around me except where Abbey is. She doesn't know what she is missing, having to sleep on top of the covers. I hope to keep it that way. Some nights she is so tired from work that she won't leave her own bed on the floor. Nights aren't too bad. I load the stove with wood and go to sleep toasty and warm, and at a ridiculously early hour for all of you who have known me a long time. Work takes it out of me. Mornings, before sunrise, are hard. Scramble out of the cold bed into my slippers (yes - slippers and socks), find the headlamp. and build a fire in the stove. Using a firestarter and a propane torch like any good boy scout who has access to technology would. Scramble back into bed. Too soon the alarm goes off again. I smack it a couple of times, then find my senses just in time to make some lunch, feed the dog, fix a quick bagel, and grab the headlamp again in order to find my way to the car. Usually at this point I am wearing long johns under my clothes, a wool cap, gloves if I can find them. Some mornings if I am industrious I go do the trick I learned from my Mainer friend - start the car early, let it run while I build my breakfast, let it warm up. Did I mention that the sun ain't up yet? Well, it ain't. And I am tired.

Some mornings I wish I was headed to an office all day. A cubicle. Give me a nice warm cubicle. Let me swivel in an orthopedically correct swivel chair all day. Let me stare at a computer screen. Let me worry about carpal tunnel. Okay, maybe that's most mornings. That feeling can last all the way through my NPR filled 10 minute commute up the coast, past the view of Noyo Harbor and the Pacific Ocean, past the sky beginning just barely to turn pink in spots, past the coffee hut where amazingly good coffee is only a dollar, and they love to give Abbey biscuits as she sticks her head out the window from behind my driver's seat. It lasts all the way into the office, past the point when my boss tells me who I'm walking with that day, which creek we are going to. Sometimes it fades as I load my waders into the truck, or as I marvel at the still cold temperatures (okay, I know, it's really only in the 30s, but it's a wet cold) and the beautiful sunrise hanging over Fort Bragg, CA. Sometimes it lasts past the point of putting the waders on, grabbing the measuring stick, entering the initial entry into the palm pilot. Some days it take the first beautiful riffle or pool to bring me to my senses. Some days I am in pain walking the creeks half the days, sore from the days before, hating every log I crouch under. But infallibly, every day has at least one moment of revelation - check out that log, look at the way the moss is growing out of it like a thick glowing green carpet. Look at the beauty of the way that rare sunshine glints off of the water as it flows downstream.

That's the first month of work. Walking, marvelling at the beauty of my surroundings. Feeling and appreciating the soreness in my legs, a reminder that I haven't been walking up enough creeks lately, climbing over and crawling under enough fallen logs, stumbling over enough cobble, hopping across enough chest deep channels cut through bedrock, scaling enough short walls of rock next to waterfalls, wandering up enough beautiful rivers, searching for enough fish. I've been at this job since the beginning of November. We expected we would begin seeing fish around Thanksgiving. Now we've spent all of December wondering where they are. Beginning to wonder if we will ever see fish. Or redds for that matter. Where the hell are the fish and redds?

Oh. There's one. See that area that looks like something came along and swept the bottom of the creek, moving rocks and gravel around, cleaning it of algae and silt, digging a large wide hole in the bottom of the creek, spilling rocks downstream in the process. Well, a female salmon did that. Probably a coho salmon, based on the shape of the dig and the time of year. That's Jon next to the redd. Asa took the picture. The fish finds a good spot, digs out an area of gravel, and lays her eggs in the area near where the "pot" (that's the hole part) transitions into the spilled area of cleaned gravel (the "tailspill").

Our job is to walk the creeks around here, looking for redds, and, ideally, fish. We measure the redds, we poke, prod, capture, tag, measure, and generally monitor the fish. We record all we can about there location, size, species, and the characteristics of the redds we find. We compare what we find out about the population of migrating salmon in this area via redd counts to what we find out when we trap and count fish on their way upstream from the ocean and downstream when they are done being juveniles. We haven't seen many fish in the rivers yet. A few here or there. Not nearly as many as folks who have done this job before have expected. We are still waiting for more good rain storms. Not the type that sprinkle for a day. The type that pound on a tin roof so hard you can't hear yourself think. The type that make the creeks run swollen in their banks and brown with silt (hopefully not too much silt). The types of storms typical of Christmas and New Year's in Northern California. The type that flood roads, that wash away hillsides. The type that saturate the ground with inches and inches of rain in a day or two. The type that get the creeks so wet and full that they don't go shallow again. They stay full, rushing heavy all winter. They stay brown for a few days, and you can't see anything. Then they turn green. An opaque green. That's when the fish start moving. At least that's what we guess. The thing about these fish, I am starting to think, is that they like to mess with the people who are trying to monitor them.

So we are trying to monitor them, and they are maybe messing with us. And we are waiting for more rain, because we are guessing - maybe we know, even, to a point that the research has been done, the patterns have been established - we know that when the rains swell the rivers to a constant point called "bankfull" - the rivers are full to their normal winter banks - well, that's when the fish will move. But folks, it's winter. It's wet outside. It's been raining. Just not enough. It's making me smile to have job that makes me ask for rain, and to have a last name like the one I have.

We spend part of our time at the traps. We have two places on two different rivers where any fish that is on it's way upstream gets temporarily trapped. When these traps are working right, the fish cannot get by without entering the trap. And once they enter they can't leave. One place is an old salmon egg collecting station on the South Fork of the Noyo River. The facility used to be a bomb shelter. At least I think it used to be a bomb shelter. It feels like it used to be a bomb shelter.

Across the river next to the egg collecting station is a weir, or dam, or spillway. Fish can't, during most normal river flows, get over it. They are forced to turn and climb the fish ladder into the egg collecting station. Once they are inside they can't get back out, and they are trapped in the channel you can see on the right side of the photo above. The channel is blocked by a removable gate. The fish wait in the channel until we show up to net them, tag them, record some info about them, and release them upstream. This is me measuring a fish just after tagging it.

We also trap fish at the weir on Caspar Creek. This is more of a floating barrier that rises as the stream flow rises. Fish are diverted into a holding pen with a one way door. They also get to wait until we show up to tag them and release them upstream. This way, on both these rivers, theoretically, we know the gender, species and size of every fish that enters that river and it's tributaries. When a coho salmon is done spawning, it dies. With luck, we find the carcass (which we also have the pleasure of tagging) and with more luck we can check the tag on the carcass and determine when this fish entered the river.

The other big part of my job, the part which we spend most of our time doing, is walking the creeks. As I mentioned before, it's not your normal, every day walking. There's no flat surfaces, most of the way. The best you can hope for is a bit of a game trail next to the creek for 30 feet. Into the water, out of the water. Wading through ankle deep, knee deep, belly deep water. Constantly using the measuring stick for balance. Marvelling at the feeling of cold that surrounds my legs, and the fact that it's temperature alone, and not the wetness of the water, that I am feeling. Maybe a little sweat in the socks and long johns. Splashing into the creek at the beginning of the day, while frost still covers many of the valleys, an the warmth of the morning sun is just starting to try to break through. Huddled in layers of polypro and fleece, wool, and sometimes a rain jacket. Waders. I haven't had more than one day yet in a dry suit - this is me enjoying my drysuit during training.

Fun stuff. They fill with air as you enter the water. A giant floating stay puffed marshmallow man.

Walking. Stumbling. Crawling. Stooping. Climbing. It's fun work. Fish or no fish. I saw my first salmon in the river last week. It was amazing. A female was working on building a redd, and as we walked up to the redd, we didn't see her. We stepped in the water and the fish swam quickly away from us, upstream into a sheltered pool. We hung around for a while, waiting quietly on the bank, and the fish swam a little ways out of its hiding spot. We were able to see it was a female, and to get a general estimate of her length. We noticed that the bottom of her tail - the lower caudal peduncle - was very worn, whitened. Based on the size of the redd, this was understandable. She had been hard at work for a while, using her body and tail to move gravel, to dig the pot, to clean the gravel - the substrate - of small sediment, so when she lays her eggs and a male comes along and fertilizes them, the eggs will be washed in clean cold oxygenated water, and the eggs and the fish that they become will not be suffocated by fine silt. I had been waiting to see a fish, and it was wonderful to finally see one at work, spawning. Carrying on the survival of her endangered species.

It made me sad too, in that she was just one fish. We did see a male hanging out in the pool above her redd, so there was hope that her eggs would get fertilized. But these creeks, according to locals, used to be filled to the brim with salmon, such that you could walk across their backs, such that a horse would refuse to ford a river for fear of the commotion that was happening in the water.

Now we walk, we search, we hope, we count. We try to be scientists, to remain as counters, observers. I try. I try to have the ability to count without putting too much thought into the numbers. What we are counting goes into a database. Ideally this style of counting is done all over the regions where salmon spawn. Ideally, we form a big picture. We want to know, I think, in the end, what we can do to help these fish reestablish their populations. We want to know if they are reestablishing their populations. We don't have a ton of historical data on these fish. Sometimes, only stories of horses that weren't willing to ford these rivers. So it's hard to set goals, it's hard to understand what we are hoping to see happen. Maybe the world has changed so much, there's no going back. It's all fascinating to me right now, to do work that offers just a small piece of what will hopefully continue to be a very useful big picture. When it comes to restoration, and helping fish, and counting fish, I am sure there will be a lot more to say before I am finished with this job.

Thanks to Asa Spade for the photos and videos.

the only constant

2007-10-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

Age. My gray hairs have increased. I'm feeling it in my lower back. I am getting senile. I can hear a ringing in my ears. I'm old. No, wait. I'm not old. I'm only 31. Wait, I am not yet 31. I am almost 31. Almost. I mean, I am writing this now, as a probable stand alone Part 1, because I have a feeling that Wednesday night (as well as Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights) I will be unable to type. Maybe because my fingers will be broken, from bad bets, debts, love, or rocking out. Maybe just because I will be too drunk, stoned or both to work the keyboard. But hell, it's my birthday.
My 31st birthday.
To be honest, I don't much care. I am hardly aware that I am turning 31, except that here it is my favorite time of year again, and I begin to wonder, for the first time, do I enjoy autumn so much because I am a Libra, because it is my time, because I was born during this time of year? Or is it because of the change that is in the air during this season? Or maybe I am fooling myself, and I have never really had a strong preference for autumn before moving to Mendocino, where the season means harvest, and harvest means bounty in so many senses. And, well, it starts to rain again. Which gets me back to change. I guess, in truth, that's probably why I like autumn so much. Change is in the air again.
In New Hampshire, where I lived for a bit, the leaves change. Actually, I got an email today from a close friend who spent yet another summer in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire. She sent photos and a short description of a hike up to Franconia Ridge, where it had snowed for the first time this year. And it was no small dusting for a first snow. There was snow, it was almost heavy on the leaves in places. I remember having a birthday in the New Hampshire mountains, and smiling to think that it was snowing near me, that it was practically winter as I celebrated with my friends.
Here in Northern California, it does not precipitate from approximately May until October. You get the occasional freak rain in June, and well, it rains a tiny bit in September sometims. But last week was the first rain that actually made the ground wet here. And there is more to come this week. Autumn here in Mendo means lots of things. The biggest might be that farmers everywhere are harvesting their crops - big buds of outdoor marijuana are coming down to be trimmed and sold, or smoked green - grapes all over the vineyards are going into vats to be stomped, filtered, sometimes sulfated, and put away to ferment into the regions award winning wines. Farmers markets are still going strong. Every home gardeners tomatoes are bursting off the vine. And there's a big one I am excited about this year that I haven't meditated on too much before - the salmon are begining to run in the creeks. Not yet, but as soon as the ground gets a bit saturated with rain, and the river levels begin to rise again, these fish will return to the place of their birth, the fresh water rivers through the north coast, to spawn and (mostly) to die. Sure the steelhead will often live to spawn another day. But the king, the coho, the pink, they will make that single, ridiculous, strenuous, blindly determined trip up the rivers from whch they were born, over logs, small dams, past predators, through pools and riffles, fighting current the whole way, to carry on their own tradition.
I am thinking more about this journey this year than I ever have before. Because as of tomorrow I am leaving my current job as a camp caretaker, sacrificing rent free housing and a guaranteed year round paycheck, to monitor the salmon's journey. I am taking a job as a fisheries techician, wading creeks to count, measure and identify salmon redds this winter. A redd is a nest that the female salmon builds and lays her eggs in. It is made up of cleaned small cobble pebbles in the midst of a quickly flowing area of freshwater stream. She travels upstream quite a ways from the ocean of her adulthood to the spot where she will build this redd, then immediately sets to work forming the nest with her tail. It is an amazing story that I won't get into right now. Really, I probably don't have the credentials to tell you the story of a salmon's journey. Maybe no human actually does. But, hell, we should try at least. And I will, one day. In the meantime, know that these fish are born against heavy odds in freshwater creek habitats on the West coast and a bit inland. They spend the first year of their life growing up in the small pools and riffles of inland creeks, feeding on aquatic macroinvertebrates and their adult forms, growing big enough to migrate downstream where they change to adult smolts, head out into the ocean, and spend the next few years migrating around the entire Pacific. At some point they return to the exact creek from which they were born, spawn, and die.
I have gotten a job counting their carcasses. Tagging the dead fish for species identification. Finding the redds they create to lay their eggs in, measuring them, identifying the species of fish that created them, recording it all for the Department of Fish and Game (I like that fish come first in that name). I will be working 4 ten hour days a week. Wearing a dry suit for most of that time. Do you know what a dry suit is? I didn't either. I have still never worn one. It is a goretex suit, I believe, that keeps you completely warm and dry while immersed in cold water, unlike a wetsuit, which keeps you warm and wet, and is much harder to put on and take off. I will be following creeks, climbing over logs, searching for evidence of salmon who have spawned. Tagging their corpses, measuring their redds. I will be keeping an eye out for wild edible mushrooms, too. Most of all, I will be seeing the drainages of Mendocino county come to life with the water brought on by winter. I will get to see these rivers go from calmly flowing creeks to swollen masses of moving water, silt, branches and energy. This is one of those jobs where during the interview they ask if you have experience working in inclimate weather conditions. I do. Funny thing is, I think I am actually looking forward to the rainy part of it. But ask me again in the spring.
I guess the whole point is, it's autumn. It's time for change. Leaves change (even here a bit), rain begins, fungus sprout, rivers begin to swell, fish begin to migrate. I seek difference in my life. Okay, no, really, I do that all the time. Maybe I am more of a Sagittarius than a Libra. Nah, here I am writing a blog. I seek creative outlet. The reason I desire change in my life so often is that I am indecisive. Or who knows. Really maybe I am just a dreamer like my Mom and my bro have said. I acknowledge that I have this habit - I have no idea where I get it - of not being able to stick to one path for too long. In the most literal sense I am the type of hiker that hates having to return by the same route. I am always seeking a new path, though, in a both literal and figurative sense, I am always glad to arrive home again.
Happy autumn. Be the change you want to see in the world. Or in your life.

Where the hell has all the rock gone?

2007-09-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

"I think it was hearing Elliot Smith that made me want to play music."

So said a friend of mine in the bar tonight. I was having a beer with him, discussing musicians, bands and labels from our past and present. He is always telling me that he wants to rock, and I have to explain to him that these days I have been putting most of my musical energy into...my banjo. Old-time music, folk, bluegrass. Not rock. The thougt catches me for a moment, and causes me to shed a single tear into my beer. I then turn to a more immediate and importabnt matter - who was it that caused me to want to rock in the first place?

I did, shortly, realize who it was that had that all so familiar and great affect on me, the planting of that desire to rock. And I told him. I just have to say that I am listening to probably number one on the list (of course it was a joint effort) right now - and I am going to give you a quote from the song I am currently hearing

"Get into the groove for you've got to prove your love to me."

No. Not Madonna. Actually, I still don't really like Madonna.

First I said Neil Young. (The funny thing, actually, is that he didn't actually ask me to tell him who caused me to want to rock, I just felt that I had to...). Then I remembered that I didn't really get into Neil Young until after I moved to San Francisco. I wasn't into Neil Young in college. Oh, man, did I have a lot to learn back then.

But no, truth be told, it wasn't Neil that started it all.

I think it was a band called Sonic Youth.

Dirty.

One hundred percent, swimsuit issue, nic fit, chapel hill,

drunken butterfly. That might of been the start of it all. I mean, really though, credit has to be given where credit is due - SY was not at all alone. The Velvet Underground, Yo La Tengo, Superchunk, Sebadoh. Neil eventually made it in there. But to hear the wall of guitars, the alternate tunings, the sonic ambient wallpaper of Lee Ranaldo's background behind a cutting Thurston Moore out of tune solo. To fall back into the depth of the howling backdrop, to climb out on the simple innocent girl lyrics of Kim Gordon, and to relish in the comfort of Steve Shelley's constant, dependable beat.

People talk about punk rock - anger, angst, energy, enigmas, enemas, stage stunts, more anger, bottles breaking, screaming, distortion, fast beats. Or maybe that's just how I hear it. Punk, it's urban grit, it's intent to demolish and rebuild, it's no holds barred assault on the norm. To me Sonic Youth took the essence of punk and put it inside of a container. They have different sized holes on the container taht they can open, for different lengths of times. SOme of the holes have filters on them. Actually, I guess maybe their guitars are the switches.

It's not punk, it is punk, it was punk. It was a parallel to punk. This rock that calmed, soothed, built, demolished, surfed, wrecked, had immaculate orgasms of sound while causing the biggest headaches almost immediately before or after, it was a key to me, a template on which to hear everything else. It has been more than 10 years since I first heard Dirty. After which I heard Daydream Nation, Goo, Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star, Washing Machine, then I got into Daydream Nation again, then I heard Sister, Evol, Screaming Fielsd of Sonic Love, NYC Ghosts and Flowers, A Thousand Leaves, thoses really experimental EPs from a recording session in Europe...seems to me their gear had been stolen shortly before at a festival in Southern Califronia.

"We're gonna kill, the California girls..."

(the song - I named a beer after this song, Expressway to Your Skull - just started)

Lee Ranaldo - From Here to Infinity

Sonic Youth Live (at some high school in Maine?)

and at some point, I got their really early, 1987 (was it their first maybe?) self-titled album. Steve Shelley had not yet joined the band - their first drummer was a guy named Richard Edson. Who later went on to star in a Jim Jarmusch movie - I want to say Strangers in Paradise, but it might have been Down by Law.

Does anyone else out there feel their life significantly changed when they learned that during the take of Sister Ray that was released on White Light White Heat John Cale and Lou Reed were turning their amps up as far as they could go to try and rock more than the other guy? I don't know...when I read about that, when I listened to some of the songs that the Velvet Underground did...I shivered. The grit of that band gets you in your soul. It's amazing, though. I can't think of anyone, I guess I don't know of anyone, any band, historically, that did what they did. The VU took simple songs like Heroin and added intent to them. Filled them out with emotion and lyrical depth. It seems like they laid the groundwork for performance in pop, that they crafted an art of storytelling that went along with their music, that was their music. Their songs create a place, and put you there - sonically and lyrically. The Velvet Underground was a band that could lead you from the dark side of an alley, a shadowy basement, to a sunlit field of daisies, up the brownstone, into a room, late at night, somewhere in the midwest, with a radio playing rock and roll, and you're young and you're hearing it for the first time and you don't, dear God, want your parents to find out. They painted thoughts of the color of a lovers eyes, they spoke of desire, deep addiction, relief from the hit, the future, the past, the postal service and long distance desire. When I got my copy of the banana box set, in college, I had just started doing a radio show at the college radio station. I had a 4-7 am time slot. I played just about every song on it for a specialty show I did during the semi-annual fundraiser. I didn't get any calls, but I had a great time. For a long time, whenever I needed to feel anything, to think at all, I listened to the Velvet Underground.

When I was in high school, an older friend of mine asked me about a hat I had on. "Is that a Superchunk hat?" She was a year or two older than me, and much cooler. She was an art student, a friend of a friend who was a grade ahead of me and often drove my friends and I into Baltimore for the first Thursdays free open art galleries night. In this friends' car was where I first heard Nevermind. These people meant a lot to me. It's funny to think back, to wonder if any of the talented artists I knew back then became artists, or should I say remained artists, if they settled into classic American family life, or maybe became investment bankers. But, that night, this particular girl asked me about my hat. It wasn't a Superchunk hat, I told her. I had to admit, kind of ashamedly, that I didn't know who Superchunk was. I was wearing a hat that I had gotten at a Matthew Sweet concert. It had been a kick ass show, on the Superdeformed tour - that's what the hat said "Superdeformed". This was the days of the Girlfriend album, and I have to say, that album and the guitar playing on it certainly came close to causing me to really want to rock. It made a small contribution to my rock nature.

I cannot remember this girl's name. I can remember that we were at a Stranger Than Fiction show, at JHU, and that STF was playing in front of a giant projection screen showing movies, in black and white, of something. Not movies, really, more like images. This was the first of many, many times that I was to see a band doing this, and I have to say it was always cool, as far as I remember. I also recall that the lead singer for Stranger Than Fiction had a giant dreadlock - one dreadlock, that flapped up and down on his face as he sang. I think. I remember thinking they were pretty good, but kind of, it seemed, into themselves. Well, I guess they rocked, so why not? I didn't know a ton about really rocking properly then. I am pretty sure I do now, but I can't say I have yet mastered the art of being really into myself on stage. It's sort of a state of transcendence you have to reach - through lots of practice, I think - that causes you to be able to leave your own body while you are rocking to rock along with yourself. I think when you can hit this point, you can probably master your stage presence, lose yourself, become the rock. And if I remember right, that's kind of what these guys were doing.

It turned out to be a good show. One of many that led me down the alley of distortion, into the basement of darkness and periodically the garden of light. I later learned who Superchunk was. I somehow found them, maybe, I think actually, because of this girl's question about my hat. Driveway to Driveway was my favorite song for years. Slack Motherfucker. Precision Auto. Package Thief. It's funny to think about all the good bands that came off of Merge Records, and how Superchunk was always my favorite. Neutral Milk Hotel? Anyone? I never really got into them. Superchunk. I saw them at Lollapalooza one year. Mac said that the liter bottle of water he was drinking from was actually filled with vodka. I almost believed him. Straightforward rock and roll. Fast, hard, fun, bad asss, sweet. Blend a ballad into a big rock song sound. One of two bands I felt was really talking to me, kind of soundtracking my thoughts and life, for a long time.

I remember sitting on a chair, downstairs from the porch at Kent St, singing "Think: Let Tomorrow Bee", playing it on guitar, knowing the girl I really dug at the time was sitting upstairs on that very porch, probably able to hear everything I sang. Singing, it, without admitting it, really, to her. And damn if Lou Barlow's words didn't hit too close to home.

Nowadays, I listen to bluegrass, old-timey, folk, mostly. I've gone all soft. I don't fall in love with women who I am friends with anymore. Or at least I try not to. It's hard. Hell, you can't get away from heartbreak, musically speakin anyway. To tell the truth my favorite songs these days are about trains, and drinking, and, well, they all seem to be in a minor key. Most of them anyway. So I play the banjo. So I have gotten into fiddle music. I still reserve the right to rock.

Maybe I got old. Shit, I didn't I? When did that happen? But do you know what? The wheel turns, the spokes come around. I was standing on the porch at my friends house recently. Two guys I know and I had just finished playing some music together. Trying to cover a couple of Woody Guthrie songs, maybe a fiddle tune, some folky originals. You know - fiddle banjo and guitar. We got to talking, and for some reason someone mentioned the Melvins.
"Holy shit, you know the Melvins?" "Fuck yeah, man, I totally rock out to the Melvins. They fucking rule." Or something along those lines. All three of us, we had Melvins records that we worshipped for a bit. But something in me, something intuitive, made me want to go deeper. I asked if either of them had heard of Sleep.

"No fucking way." "You listen to sleep?" "Holy shit."

I mean, come on. Sleep. It's where rock evolved for me. The Melvins, Sleep, Electric Wizard, Black Sabbath...we stood on the porch for a good half an hour running through bands who had planted that dark seed in us, or helped it to grow. The deep rock. The badass rock. The 52 minute long song, Jerusalem. What more do you have to play? 52 minutes. Named after the holy city of eternal jihad. Shit.

A guitar player, a banjo player, a fiddle player. What are all three of us doing in Mendocino? Sometimes I ask this question. More often I ask, why doesn't one of us play guitar, one play bass, and one play drums? Why don't we have the time to rock, or the ability? Do we have the ability, actually, if we would just try. One of us rocks by himself, and sometimes with other people. He doesn't really have a day job. I sort of envy him. But I could be rocking right now, with him, if I wanted. I am not.

My friend who never asked me about what music caused me to rock - his band went on later tonight, and I got to hear them play a couple of songs. They followed a blues harmonica band, super tight and amazing, from Louisiana. They played fast, they played hard, they sang about angst. They had interesting changes, distortion. People didn't seem to know what to think, exactly, but they didn't leave either. It was great to see some rock in Mendocino. They were out of practice, the crowd was small, the whole effect was strange. It didn't seem to fit. As I got into my car to drive home I scrolled around on my Ipod looking for some Sonic Youth, something to rock to. I found I hadn't loaded most of the albums I wanted to hear. I was pissed at myself, and I swore to stay up way too late tonight loading some good rock music onto my hard drive. Thanks for joining me in that. I drove away from the Caspar Inn marvelling at the amount of folk I have learned to appreciate, the amount of reggae I tolerate, and the distance I now felt from the rock which was once the center of my musical life.

Rock is Dead. Long Live Rock.

To be continued....

The Turn of the Wheel, the Floating of the Magic 8 Ball

2007-06-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

Should I write in this blog tonight?

"It is certain."

What should I write about?

"Yes. Definitely."

The answers from the Magic 8 Ball are inevitable. The end of the song is inevitable. The fall of the thrown object is inevitable. The erosion of soil by water and wind is inevitable. Dusk is inevitable, so is dawn. Love seems to be inevitable, hate as well. Unfortunately, despite the best of our hopes and intentions, war seems to be inevitable. But time is inevitable. Healing is inevitable. Peace is inevitable. The balance of all things seems to be inevitable.

Maybe all that happens to me in my life is inevitable. Maybe everything that happens to us is just fate, destiny, and we have no control. Certainly, it is inevitable that we end up wondering what the hell it is all about.

Will any of this get easier?

"It is certain."

Is there an absolute to our future, already predetermined? With the talk on climate change these days, it seems that everyone has a way of modeling our future. Apparently all of the Artic Ice Shelf will be gone, melted, by either 2050 or 2020. 2020 is not that far away. What if I was thinking of buying a piece of land next to the ocean, or a bay for that matter? What if I live there? Is it going to be under water in 13 years? Or 43 years? Is this going to effect property values? Is there a way that someone can predict this for me? Can we create an entire digital model of the world to show us the inevitable future?

I have been hearing a lot lately about modeling the environment, predicting the future using digital technology. It's amazing, just using a program like Google Earth, to think of just how much information has now been digitized, and what we can foresee, it seems accurately, using this technology. We can see the oceans rising, the storms getting worse, the weather gettting warmer everywhere. The bays flooding, the mosquitoes multiplying. We can model the continued population growth. We can show what will happen, too, if we change our ways, keep striving for a better world, a healthier world, a more aware and balanced way of living on this planet.

Should I go to sleep?

"My reply is no."

Tonight is the open mic at Caspar Inn. I need to practice, to play music that I have written, to take it there to that open mic one of these Sunday nights. Tonight my guitar is off with the naturalists and my banjo is short a string. I should probably be restringing it. But I'm here, on this keyboard, looking for something.

I sometimes can't believe the emptiness of nighttime. I think I am finally beginning to realize why so many folks go to sleep before 10 pm. It's 9:50 right now. I can only imagine an hour ago, the fading twilight sky and the trees through the skylight above my head. Now I look up and see myself reflected in a mirror of black. Out the window in front of me, and to my left, is another night of the darkest night that I have ever known. I remember streetlights now as a strange, unnatural brightness. I remember being in New York City around Christmas this year, going back, late, to a friends' place to crash. I couldn't find an unlit shadow on the entire street to step into for a moment. I walked by the Fox News building and really had to take a piss. Th place was lit up so well, there was not even a dark crack in the sidewalk.

There's a twisted corkscrew of a tree in my yard, like I said. What does that tree do at night, I wonder? What ghosts, if any, haunt this forest where I live. Is ghosts even the right word? Perhaps the spirit that inhabits the nighttime of the forest is not a ghost of any sort. What does a corkscrew tree think about? How did it become so twisted, anyway? We talk about the growth of trees reacting to climactic conditions, like krumholz, gravitropism, phototropism = plants growing in a certain way in response to the environment. Bending at the will of the wind, growing directly up in response to the force of gravity, or leaning precariously out from a hillside or ledge to better feel the sun. Maybe there is a force, a spirit, a ghost in the night that moves to different degrees each night, and some of the plants respond to this. It feels like this, sometimes, to me. I can see reflections of something like this in the way trees grow here. Sometimes, it seems, influenced by some hidden force while all the other trees nearby remain untouched. Maybe there are nights that the energy here in this forest is more amplified, or bent in a different direction. Maybe there are only certain organisms that respond to this energy at all.

Ghosts in the night or not, it does get damn dark in the redwoods. As a naturalist I was responsible for walking a group of kids around without flashlights in the dark for an hour once a week. The "Night Hike". A great time to teach about owls, raccoons, predator prey relationships, coyotes. bats. Many many times during my nighthikes I would be guiding the kids on a trail by the feel of the trail under my feet alone. And more than a couple of those times I had to use a flashlight to guide my group around a bush that I had blindly led us into. There's a good Wendell Berry quote I can never get quite right:

"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."

Dark here, like anywhere, is deep, mysterious, unknown. A blanket cast over the earth to block us from the sun for half of every day to remind us to be kind to each other. A blanket filled with pinholes created by the hummingbird's beak and claw marks from the mountain lion. On some nights, a gaping hole left by the head of the turkey vulture. The dark is deep, enveloping. We found fire and crowded around it, we have to know what is there, we have to be able to see. We see, we create heat to stay warm. We barbeque.

We are humans. It is inevitable that we act like humans.

Sleep is inevitable.

Is anyone even reading this still?

"Ask again."

The Flow of the River and the Turn of the Wheel

2007-06-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

I am lucky enough to live in a second growth redwood forest, about 10 miles inland from the northwest Pacific coast. The "Village of Mendocino" (as I understand it, it is a registered "village") is a short 25 minute drive from me, albeit that's really only a 10 mile drive, and almost half of it is on a dirt road.

The village itself is located on a beautiful peninsula which forms the north side of the Big River Bay. Big River was named for the size of it's trees. Mendocino was formed on the industry that those trees created. Around 1852, a ship called the Frolic wrecked on the rocks near what is now Mendocino. At the time, there was I believe one rancher living in the area, along with a number of Pomo indigenous folk. The ship was bound for San Francisco, bearing goods from China. Silks, teas, maybe some opium. A version of the story that I've heard is that the owner of the ship sent a representative to the area from San Francisco to claim the lost goods. When this representative arrived, he met a bunch of well dressed, very stoned native folk. Who didn't give the silks back.

But, this guy was sharp, and figured not to make a wasted trip. He took a canoe trip up Big River with the rancher and realized that there was enough lumber in the gigantic Coast Redwood (sequoia sempervirens) that he saw to build San Francisco. And probably build it again, you know, if there was, at some point, an earthquake, and the entire city burned down. Well, that last part might be an exaggeration. But sometimes, history gets kind of unbelievably exaggerated.

Did you know the folks who first saw the giant Coast Redwoods of San Francisco marveled at the sight of the immense trees and believed wholeheartedly that there was no way we would ever be able use that much wood. Now, we've got about 3% of the old growth that was here in 1852 left in Northern California. But then again, no one really knew what a chainsaw was back then. Yet alone a helicopter, or a logging truck for that matter. What takes one guy and 45 minute used to take many and at least 2 days. The chopping down of one immense tree.

Well, through it all, Big River's watershed was mostly cut. For the last half of the 19th century, slowly. Then 1906, and the inevitable earthquake and fire did burn down San Francisco, and around that time, the Industrial Revolution got married to human consumption and a population boom began and, well, now I live in a second growth redwood forest. The stumps here are amazing. There is one old growth tree left that we can hike to, and certainly there are rumors of at least a few more that do not have trails to them. Some of them are supposedly along the Big River. One of these days, one of these hot days, I am hoping to take my dog and an old pair of tennis shoes and walk the river, upstream for a bit, looking for good swimming holes and hidden grandmother trees.

Big Tree is the name of the remaining old growth tree that we have. All of the monumental ones that have trails to them also have names. I was recently in Redwood National Park, in the Prairie Creek area (a campground with lots of elk nearby), and I saw another Big Tree.

Actually a bit Bigger than ours.

Also a Corkscrew tree. And trees that seemed to be marked with the names of famous foresters - one was for Gifford Pinchot - who were a part of a famous school of Forestry, the name of which is currently slipping my mind. Our Big Tree, here at the Woodlands, is apparently altered by the weather of 1200 years or so on this planet. Some time ago the top of this tree was knocked off by giants (or possibly lightning or wind.) So, although redwoods can reach 370 feet in height (they got that "tallest living organism" clout),

Big Tree now sits at a tiny 120 feet. Never mind the gigantic fire scar cave in her base, or the 16 foot diameter base. Shit. Redwoods are virile, if anything. When a part of them gets roughed up by some wind, fire, flood, they usually go with the what does not kill me makes me stronger bit. Even if they get killed, actually. Big Tree is just one of example of the resilience of redwoods. When she lost her top, she just sprouted a new one. This type of tree is affectionately known as a spike-top. Say about 6-8 feet in diameter at 120 feet in height, then, suddenly, a new sprout, maybe a 40-60 foot tall, 2 foot in diameter trunk sprouting from the top of the old tree. Apparently, a tree such as Big Tree, so massive in size, yet missing half of it's original growth, when felled, comes crashing down hard and is very likely to splinter, causing tens of thousands of board feet of very valuable lumber to explode into shards of worthless redwood. So, we have an old growth tree in our second growth forest. I never saw it, but I've been told that there used to be a sign next to Big Tree that said something to the effect of "This tree left for your enjoyment by Georgia-Pacific Lumber Company"

I recently took a bike ride down the haul road along Big River. This is an amazing trail - I can, if I am feeling motivated, ride my mountain bike 12 miles from my house, following generally the course of the river, all the way to town. It doesn't take much more than an hour, and it's all flat and even somewhat downhill. I decided to ride down a bit, to an area where a trail cuts over and across the river. There are supposed to be some good mountain biking areas across the river, an old orchard as part of it, with a loop that crosses the river and heads back towards camp upstream. I haven't yet had the guts to try it by myself - tales of the good fruit that still hangs from the trees in this abandoned orchard (now on State Park land) are accompanied by tales of the bears that enjoy eating said fruit. Probably the same bears that occasionally raid our dumpsters. Abbey, I am sure, would scare away any and all bears that decided to threaten me. But this day I decided not to cross the river to go exploring, but instead to go into town for a burger at a new restaurant that opened at my favorite (and the only) place to see live music in this area.

The trip down to the crossing is kind of fun. Even though it's flat, and friendly, and really bikeable by just about anyone, there are some spots where you can coast down short hills and feel a bit tricky gaining some speed through former mud puddles and quick speed dips in the trail. It is serious single track for a good bit, and a large part of the ride is swerving to avoid various thimbleberries, salmonberries, and the occasional stinging nettle or poison oak. After that it opens up into wide road, with an old gravel base and enough space to drive a small truck through. Down past the crossing the Haul Rd. Just gets wider and more heavily used.

I feel lucky to live at the point on Big River that I do. The river, as it passes our camp, is just big enough to form some really good swimming holes. About 4 that I know of, at this point, with at least of 2 of those being well known in the area and well travelled. I once spent some time on the phone with a columnist from the Guardian, giving him the low down on a couple of the better known holes for his yearly Northern California swimming holes article. He seemed to know more than I did, even, about some of the holes.

The same holes that we swim in provide great shelter to migrating salmon during their winter trip upstream, and to the juvenile salmon on their trip downstream to the saltwater of their adult time. A few years ago, a large, approximately 6 foot diameter redwood fell across the river just downstream of the parking area for the swimming holes here. After a heavy flow of water through the river during the next winter, the tree was pushed to one side and now hangs parallel to the flow of the river, next to a large pool that was formed partially by the presence of the tree and the disturbance it caused in the bank when it fell. From my house I can easily walk down the hill and onto this redwood. If I am feeling it I can jump 5 feet or so down into a pool that is about 7 feet deep, and swim a short distance across to a small beach on the other side.

Even better is a spot that is further off in the woods along one of the rivers in my area. Pretty easily accessible by bike or hike, but the type of swimming hole that makes you work for it just a bit. At the hole I am referring to, my first year, I got there with a few friends of mine who had been many times previous. When they crossed to the beach they all gasped. Typically there is a rock ledge at this swimming hole which you can jump off of, about 6 feet into a hole that is a bit deeper than that. My first experience of this hole had a large redwood pinned on top of this rock, in such a way that you could climb up easily onto it's trunk from the shallow part of the river, and walk up to the base of the tree that was sitting on top of the rock. From where you stood it was at least a good 12 feet down into the same pool. It was a great jump for the summer. Sitting on the beach across from the tree, it was hard to imagine the gentle river of summer flowing in such a way that would place that large tree on top of that rock ledge. But the next winter it was gone. And the next winter the same river flooded much of it's watershed during heavy rains.

Once I had the chance to take a kayak and canoe trip down the river with a number of friends. We left from camp during the last moderately high flows of the spring. It took us all day and a lot of beer, but we made it to the beach just south of Mendocino. Along the way I was surprised at how long the river seemed to wind past gravel beaches and overhanging forests, rippling through turns with short, deep holes and long spread out shallow sections that scraped the bottoms of our boats. Then, all of a sudden, the ripples had ended, and the water pooled up like a lake with a current, flowing as one massive pool towards the ocean. I eventually stuck my hand in and tasted the water - salt. Big River is 8 miles of coastal estuary, the longest undeveloped estuary on the west coast, I believe. 4 miles more of freshwater salmon run and you reach the Woodlands. Past the Woodlands is miles and miles more of undeveloped, moderately logged Jackson Demonstration Forest, a whole story for another time that I still have much to learn about myself.

Two days after my bike trip I took the opportunity to join the naturalists here in a boat trip up Big River from the mouth as far as we could go in a few hours, then back. I got to paddle a sit on top kayak - a 13' Prowler, made by Ocean Kayak. It was a good craft, but it was impossible for me to keep up with 8 people in an outrigger. They were nice enough to wait for me. While the bike trail carved a tunnel through the thick shrubby undergrowth of the freshwater river and its floodplain, the boat trip took us through a few miles of the lower estuary - a wide open canyon with walls of redwood forest on either side and long spread out grasslands and marshes spread out on either side. The folks I was with spotted a red white and blue beach ball sitting on one of the marshes which I recovered and we enjoyed for a bit. We saw a harbor seal hauled out on a partially sunken redwood log. The seal just sat there and checked us out as we paddled by. Two other seals swam in the river nearby. Amazingly enough, the birds that we passed did not seem bothered by our proximity. We got pretty close to a few turkey vultures and a number of cormorants which were perched on branches that emerged from the river, drying themselves. We also saw a number of baby ducks and their folks, and I got to see an osprey defending its nest from a raven on my way back downstream.

It was amazing to think about the transition that the river makes between the big, open, brackish estuary we were paddling through, and the tight, winding, rippling river that I had recently ridden along. I hope to connect the two via boat, bike, or both, soon. I guess it is time for me to learn to paddle (and roll) and skirted sea kayak, in order to go further faster. I also hope to spend more of my time off this summer exploring some of the Mendocino coast by kayak.

Trees. Water. More trees. What more could you wish for. Well, after a few years of living deep in it, perhaps some sunshine. Maybe deserts. But that's a story for another time. For now, I awake each morning to look out my windows at a second growth tree that has decided to grow like a corkscrew. For some reason. I stare at this tree most mornings, and on some moonlit nights, and wonder what the hell it is doing growing like that. I try to take a minute to breath in the view that I get to have. That tree, tall, twisted, linear, beautiful...to me it is a reminder that I am lucky, that I live somewhere unique, beyond the wall, a bit up the river, down the dirt road. And that I have a trees seem to sometimes have a twisted point of view too.

Words from the woods.

The Ghost of a Husky

2007-05-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've been on my bike. So long, actually, that I've forgotten my bike's name. I know I named my bike at some point. I have a few very vivid memories about mountain biking from my naturalist days in the Santa Cruz mtns. One would be Wren telling me how great her new clip in pedals were. I still think of that, every time I am trying to climb single track and I choke going towards a log I know I can ride over, and I would have to clip out, if I had ever bought those awesome new clip pedals and shoes that I still, one day, probably will buy. For the power. And yeah, I'll probably fall down more once I do.

The second vivid biking memory is when Swamp told me the name of his bike. It was Nimbus, I do believe. I decided at that moment, in order to even have a chance at defeating Swamp in the bike portion of the triathalon, that I must also name my bike. Actually, it had nothing to do with beating him in the race, but everything to do with making me seem cooler in the eyes of, well, me. And yeah, I didn't beat him in that portion. As a matter of fact I think he won the whole damn thing. But hell, he was riding a high geared touring bike, and I only got second cause I was a better swimmer and had slicks and a higher geared crank set for my mountain bike.

I decided, yesterday, to get on board old what's-his-name, do some memorial day appreciation of the forest I live in, see how the old legs were holding out. Did some climbing, did some walking, did some dismounting for little tiny logs I should have easily conquered. Rode across a couple of bridges I have balked at before, did a couple of short tiny jumps just to see how it felt. Tried to ride down a set of wide, long stairs that were almost a hill anyway, and managed to scare myself into grabbing the brakes halfway down. Which only resulted in being awkward and uncomfortable, not painful, because I was already going slow out of fear. If there is one mantra I have while biking and trying to be tricky about it, it is "Speed is your friend". It's the same mantra I always forget until after I stop and yell at myself for being a wuss. Abbey always looks at me funny when I yell at myself. Here's a picture of Abbey looking at me funny.

So I ride my bike for a while. I remember the wonders of pedals and moving fast. The breeze blows in my eyes, the dust kicks up behind me, the trees blur into a green river. As I ride along the low road past Camp One a Great Blue Heron (GBH BFD) takes off in the beaver pond and flies towards the end of the pond, headed in the same direction I am. I smile, and pedal a bit faster, realizing I am keeping up with the beautiful bird. It perches on a downed tree for a moment, and I slow to check it out. It immediately takes off again and I feel a bit bad for disturbing it's late afternoon time. Probably it was doing some fishing, enjoying the peace and quiet, and I have to come zooming in like some vicious predator, out to eat it or at least ruin it's relaxation. Same with the kingfisher I saw today. Didn't appreciate me and the work truck driving by, had to fly around in a tizzy, looking for a perch to dissappear onto. I wish there was a way to tell the birds to chill, I just want to watch them for a bit. But then, I guess my dog would eat them.

After a bit of climbing, my lungs have had it on the hill, and I decide one good push was enough, time to head home, do it again in a day or two. I turn around and head down the same single track I just climbed. About halfway down I realize I feel great again and I am having a blast. I take a turn at the bottom of the trail, away from home, and do another small climb and some flat riding along the creek on the camp road. I stop at the dog hole and encourage Abbey to take a drink and fetch a few sticks in the deep pool. She does so, and I am just about sure, at this point, that she will sleep well tonight. Not only did she get a good 6 miles of running in just now, but she spent at least half the day down at the river swimming holes hanging out with random groups of people, who I am sure were introducing her to their own dogs and throwing sticks for her. It was Memorial Day, and it seems like everyone from the coast who had the day off drove out to Big River to welcome the summer and honor veterans of wars past and present by getting drunk or just soaking up sun at the river. A true tradition in the land of the free.

We head back towards home now. It's been a long work and play day for both of us, and I am looking forward to a beer, some dinner, and a good night's sleep as well. Coming up the final hill around the camp office, Abbey takes off for a minute. When I whistle, she shows up right away, but this time with another dog in tow. I stop, and they are checking each other out, real friendly like. The other dog is a beautiful young husky, trailing about 8 feet of green rope, torn at one end. When I notice the rope I figure immediately that this dog must have gotten away from it's owner down at the river, maybe even followed me and Abbey up here. But then something very strange happens. A white SUV with an official looking sticker on the door pulls into camp. The red emergency lights on top of the cab are on, but not flashing. They pull up to me and I recognize the man in the passenger seat. I introduce myself, telling them I work at the camp, asking if there is anything I can do to help them.

"Well, there's a vehicle that rolled up on the road back there," they explain, referring to the entrance road into camp, a long 4 miles of newly gravelled (hence very slippery) two lane dirt track, "and we are looking for one of the passengers from that vehicle."

"Is everyone alright?" I ask.

"Yes, but apparently, a dog was thrown from the back of the vehicle when it rolled, and the owner went to look for the dog."

"Huh. What kind of dog was it?" I ask, with my dog and the mystery husky standing right next to me.

"He didn't say." They call on the radio back to the scene of the accident, and find out that the dog was...a husky!

"I haven't seen any guy, but I have the dog right here." I tell them. It's a very friendly dog, so we tie it's rope to the fence near the office and they go looking for the guy. I take a ride down to one of the swimming holes to do the same, but I don't have any luck finding him. When I get back, I go to my house and bring the dog a bowl of water. I notice he has a tag on. His name is Satarius and there is a local phone number. I go back home, call the number, and reach the roommate of the dog's owner, who takes down directions. He says he doesn't know where the owner is, but he suspects that yes, he was at the river today. He says he will come get the dog.

I am very relieved that the dog is okay and will get home no problem. I relax, have my beer, make my dinner, and I am sitting watching a movie when my friend Scat (see photo below)comes to the door. He lives 3 miles down the road, further in camp at the Gatehouse in Camp 2. He is one of the naturalists. Scat is not his real name. He tells me that he just got back from driving a random guy to the pavement. Hmmm...

While Scat and friends were sitting, drinking and bbqing in Camp 2, a good 3-4 miles down deeper into the camp from where the vehicle rolled, and was righted by the fire department, and was able to drive away with all passengers except the dog owner intact, a random guy walked into Camp 2. This never happens. Camp 2 is, as I mentioned, deep in camp. And even where I live is a good 4 miles from any pavement, and another 6 miles of pavement to town. Well, this guy walks into camp, and Scat says "Hi. Can I help you?" Which is what you say when someone shows up at your camp, which is often an outdoor school for 6th graders with overprotective parents, and you really don't know this person and are wondering just what the hell they are doing way out in the middle of nowhere, walking, without a car, not hiking or biking or anything.
"Hi. Can I help you?"

"No you can't help me, nobody can help me, damn it." The guy responds angrily, in so many words.

"Oh. Well, umm, are you lost? Cause you are a bit far from anything? Do you want a beer?"

Scat, in his worldly hospitable ways (this man is a commendable man when it comes to hospitality, this Scat) manages to calm the guy down, and gets his story out of him while giving him a ride out to the pavement, about 8 miles from Camp 2. Apparently, this is the guy with the lost dog (you hadn't figured that out yet, had you?). When the truck rolled (trucks tend to do crazy things on loose gravel, like going completely sideways, and rolling) the guy's dog was thrown from the back of the truck, and I guess knocked unconcious. This guy gets out after the accident and sees his dog lying on the ground, not moving. Not really sure of the details, but apparently the guy thought his dog was dead. So he got real pissed at his friends, especially the driver, and walked off to ditch his dead dog in the bushes. Yeah, I guess that's what people do here, they throw their dead dogs in the bushes at the side of the road. Without checking to see if the dogs are breathing. What the fuck? I mean, even if the dog was dead, who leaves their dog in the bushes in the middle of nowhere?

After leaving the dog in the bushes somewhere, I am guessing this guy was real pissed off and decided to walk home rather than go back to his friends. Or perhaps, when he decided to go back to his friends, they were already gone. Well, the guy ended up in Camp 2, and Scat ended up giving him a lift to the pavement. I would like to think the guy made his way home safely, and found his dog, perfectly alive and probably a bit hungry, waiting for him.

This isn't the first time, and I am sure it won't be the last. Ask me about the stranded mushroom picker sometime.

Maybe I will name my bike Satarius. Does anyone know where that name comes from? I guess I will go google it.

Everything up till now - Yesterday

2007-05-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the scene, or multiple scenes, from the movie "Goonies", during which Chunk (wasn't that the fat kid's name?) was asked by the evil criminals to tell them "everything"? Chunk rattles off all of his life story. God, what a classic joke. Still makes me laugh. At some point he confesses about being in a movie theater, and making puking sounds. And this causes everyone else to puke.

I puked this morning. Been a long time. I wasn't even that hungover. I think it was the half of a camel light that I smoked last night. God does my body hate cigarettes these days. But man if my mind doesn't love them. That's a vice, I guess. That's the way I grew up, that's the way I prioritized, for way too long. Putting mind before body, trying to live fast, die young, or at least sacrifice personal health, when necessary, for experience. What the hell?

I turned 30 last October. The revelations just won't stop. Here's one - retirement could actually be fun. So could everything from now until then, no matter what that everything turns out to be.

Here's another - being out of shape and inactive, at any age, is bad for the soul.

Here's another - naps are nice.

And another - naps are nicer when taken after doing something that makes you want to rest. Something, say, other than napping.

Way back when I was in college, I started a journal about smoking. I wrote in it whenever I was feeling a particularily high level or low level of appreciation for that number one vice, nicotine. I turned out some good thoughts. Probably a good 10 entries about how important it was for me to quit. How much I valued my health. Well, let's just say that consistency in that area was not my strong point, and still probably isn't. I stopped writing in that journal after the repetition of themes got tedious. Quit for health, smoke for introverted poetic creativity, quit for health, smoke for pain, quit for love, smoke for evol, quit for health, smoke to fill the void of time between thoughts.

So now, unintentionally, I am writing about smoking again. Well, fuck that. Let's get back to the puking.

It's like a gag reaction I get, some mornings, after smoking. A bad gag, then some phlegm, then I move on. Today was different. Today I puked.

The worst part is, I had just brushed my teeth. So I blew chunks, then I had to brush my teeth again. Hell.

Well, in the end, the puking sucked, and the cigarette was very unsatisfying and completely pointless. Broke my latest 2.5 week smoke free streak. This year was going to be the year, damn it.

The puking sucked, but if other events of last evening played a part, well I complain less. Cause I had a great night. I'd like to think it was a bit representative of summer nights here in the redwoods of the Mendocino Coast.

I love my Job.

A long day of work making campers happy - unclogging a clogged septic pipe - I can now add that skill to my resume. Also, checking the water system. Then, oooh, another clog, this time in a pipe between a sink drain and a grease trap. Speaking of puking, ever seen the inside of a grease trap? Damn, I really wish I had a picture to show you. Instead, here's a cute one of my dog.

Yeah. See, at work, I have to sometimes deal with grease traps. But I get to have my dog with me. And when the grease trap is done, I say, "Abbey, Up Up", and she, as damn awesome as a dog can be, jumps into the back of the work truck and rides with me wherever I am bound. Lucky dog.

I digress. A long day of work, clogged drains, clogged drains, water systems, and then a friend rents one of the Camps for his wedding reception and, last night, I have to decide between two different Memorial Day Weekend bbq kind of things, or a nap. I choose, as you may have guessed from the puking story above, to attend one event, then the other, then the first one again. And then work this morning. Damn, another thing I learned when I turned 30 - I can't quite handle this anymore.

These are the People in My Neighborhood

My goal, once I decided against the nap, was to get to the farm, maybe stopping along the way to visit the folks in camp who were celebrating matrimony. The trip to the farm is nice, because there are options. Farmer Cas is a really good friend and neighbor of mine. Actually, barring the folks I work and live with, he is my closest neighbor. Which means he is 3 miles away as the crow flies, or a half hour drive, all on dirt roads. But like I said, there are options. Take the wide, dusty, well travelled dirt road out of camp to the pavement, then turn right, and follow the narrow, well travelled, not too well maintained, county dirt road to the farm gate. Or, take the narrow, moderately maintained camp road 3 miles to the back of camp, deep in the dark redwoods, where it is always at least 5 degrees colder than at my house, where there are ghosts and maybe werewolves, then cross the sketchy looking bridge, turn around, and head up the not really maintained, but hardly ever driven, back road to the top. Get to the gate at the top, get out, open the gate, get back in, drive through the gate, get out, close the gate behind you, turn a hard right, drive 100 feet, get out, open the farm gate, get back in, drive through the gate, get out again, close the farm gate behind you, drive another couple miles of not really all that well maintained, kind of rutted, dirt road to the main part of the farm. Watch for pigs and guinea hens.

I chose the latter. I sometimes go the other way in order to avoid the tedium of the extra gate. Or really, maybe I go that way cause I don't want to get out of my car to deal with the gate, cause I am afraid. Of the ghosts, of werewolves, of Sasquatch. Yeah, I believe in Sasquatch. I don't believe Jack Black's interpretation of Sasquatch, or any of that bullshit from "Drawing Flies" about communing with the Bigfoot. I believe that Bigfoot is out there, and probably, he is pissed. You know, habitat loss and all. I'm pissed about it. Imagine how Bigfoot feels. So I don't want to run into Bigfoot in the middle of the night. Not literally run into, though that would suck too, cause I imagine it might be like hitting a moose, where the low bumper on my car hits bigfoot in the ankles or knees, then his massive torso goes through my windshield and I go squish.

Suitcase Sliding

Well, I made it to the farm. I did stop to say hi to the matrimonial celebrators on my way. I borrowed some of their food and a Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout, damn good thick stout from Anderson Valley Brewing Company. Yum. At the farm, I had another beer. Then I stepped onto the deck, and said hi to some good folks, including Jubal, who seemed a bit dustier than he usually is. Also, I noticed the farm four wheeler was parked near the deck, trailing a line of webbing from behind. Someone was trying to talk Dano into doing something that at first glance seemed kind of stupid. But, well, I was soon to recall how stupid sometimes also means fun.

Jubal put on a motocross helmet and a pair of work gloves and sat down on a folded pad directly on the middle of an open suitcase. He placed his ass on the ridge and his feet in two corners of the suitcase. Cas backed the ATV up so Jubal could reach the strap of webbing, and Luke jumped on the back of the ATV to be the "spotter". For posterity's sake, I guess.

The ATV started slowly moving forward, the slack in the webbing dissappeared, Jubal grabbed a PBR that someone handed him, leaned back and held on to the strap. The suitcase, with Jubal in it, slid across the grass, gradually gaining speed. The ATV and then the suitcase reached the dirt road, and they picked up speed and dissappeared into one of the back fields. About 5 seconds later, the ATV shows up, coming down a slight rise, with Jubal still astride the open suitcase, sliding along the dirt, probably at about 15 mph. By this point, he had lost his beer. It was beautiful. Four wheelers, spilled PBR, Jubal waving one hand like he's in a rodeo, hanging onto the strap with another. Cas turns and heads onto the lawn again, unwittingly driving over a hole that the farm dogs had dug. The front of the suitcase hits the doghole, and Jubal does a graceful shoulder plant onto the lawn. Ouch.

Needless to say, I had to give it a try. I did. I couldn't quite master the turns. I also tried riding half of a water drum, which proved a bit unsteady. So, suitcases make really good sleds when pulled behind an ATV. Gloves and a helmet are a must. Jubal managed to plant on the same shoulder again later. Hope the pain was worth the glory, buddy. In the end I took only one ride. The suitcases ended up as targets, later, when another friend surprised us with the 9 mm that he had brought to the party. Hell, I had never shot a pistol before. It was surprisingly easy.

No, that's not how I ended up hungover. Probably had nothing to do with puking this morning, other than helping me to work up a further thirst. But damn, I had to share. Riding a suitcase, while being towed behind an ATV, on a farm in the middle of the redwoods? Hell yeah. Never thought I would get the opportunity to do such a thing. Yeah. That's right. And afterwards we shot at stuff, drank beer, and ate bbq. Don't stereotype it.

So, slackers. Come visit Mendocino. You cannot ride suitcases in the city. Or wait, maybe you can.

The suitcase dirt track, off to the right. That yellow van used to be a chicken coop.