The Swiftest Traveller

Morning trek begins downhill, through still-asleep neighborhoods.  Bagel for breakfast but no coffee in sight.  Clomping West along Angeles Crest Highway - "why not just drive there?"  Like Elliott and me, when three summers ago we hopped a lone tour bus, tired and beat, down an old dirt road on the southernmost end of the rainy island.  And now, three years and a few trails later, on a sunny saturday on the southernmost corner of Turtle Island... I know that if I were to see it in a crystal ball, he'd be doing the same this very minute.  Couldn't be happier to be on the move.

Hour or two later, following up a gully in deep-settled powder (how deep?), slow going, very slow going.  The blue ridge trail is here, hidden somewhere under here and out of sight.  Salvage two dead limbs for walking sticks, one short for the uphill traverse and one long for the sloping descent, you boys aren't done for just yet!  The pastel sky, the shapeless carpet of pure white, and the evergreens in between, socks, boots, gaiters, water knife sandwich and poems ("Cold Mountain is a house / without beams or walls").  Now if you get out into the open fields well you start to sink in slush every blasted step; better to stay beneath the trees and close to trunks, where sun shines less and snow stays crisp.  Better you learn to discern a squirrel track from a rabbit, because you read about it?  Because I saw him just now, in his characteristic stop-and-go fashion, go a scampering from trunk to trunk.

Come upon a high ridge, treeless expanse, views of desert in the distance, views of ski-lifts down the opposing valley.  Squinted eye-level with the highest ridge around.  Finally to rest upon the high dry slope: no signs here, no panorama view or guest-book... but the place gives me a good feeling, a kind a hospitable quiet.  And the sun here breaks through clouds warm as august.  Leaning bare skinned on a 200 year old Ponderosa, with direct view of his brother: much more to look at, though not as tall, gnarled and twisted back again, with lots of crooks and crannies up there, as if he couldn't decide which way to the sun (must be the younger of the two...).  All around are simply needles, dry and weightless, 8-inch clusters.  And also a fallen patchwork of bark flakes, amazing curvatures of smooth golden brown.  An encircled summer oasis from the snow with golden heat beaming down.  Ingredients aside, brand names regardless - the harder you work for a sandwich, the better it tastes.

Time now to pick up the sticks, head over the valley, across the contour and down-slope to the road again.  Off toward a regular Saturday morning.  Stopping at the ranger station on the way back to town (open 9am): "Say, any good trails around this area?"

coffee black and egg white

First snow flurries in Wrightwood on a sunday morning

Where first came the Natives, the Missionaries, the Spaniards

the Tractors and the Tour Bus

Where Hollywood comes to film "wild"

Where very dark at night and stars still the primary

Could fit the whole town into the post office, and do

Could ski lift up from the mojave desert, and might

And now the waking town bright, the Costa Rica Dark

Porch Sitting, a sudden and much needed slowing down

Last night laughter resonates, chili songs and accomodates

From somewhere down the street singing "let it be"

Because Darlene I am your lost grandson is why

Because everyone says 12 inches on the way

Pass is closed.  One thing we know is snow

One thing we never forget is roads

How tall can you build them?  How high can you lean the ladder?

Never know what's changing till we leave

Never know what's coming when we're young, and just when we had it mapped and named - mystery white flurries from the blue sky came

cure for the homeless

Midmorning sun in the southwest corner of the continent

plates collide to push up from the desert -

young mountains strong and stubborn

steep rock, cliffs of scree

scrub oak and desert brush

Serrado country.

 

With skin cooled by thin breeze

I lay peaceful here,

watch a milky blue sky go yawning

from horizon to horizon

while grandfather sun, hung and glowing there

shines all the     way     down

finally to rest on bare skin shoulders.

 

In a borrowed bed of fallen needles - one

meticulously assembled carpet over time -

I lay unassuming,

gaze skyward at Grandfather pines

Citizens proper.  Contained

in that elderly wisdom where nothing surprises

and all goes without saying.

Swaying easy in the wind

while unseen and underground

ensues the complex intertwine

the gnarled thrust and search of arms

rooted to the center of the earth.

 

Hear him now jackhammering

the Nuttail Woodpecker

eighty feet high and unceasing

like he doesn’t know its Saturday.

Breaks loose a pinecone

through the air to free-fall

the soft impact and tumble downhill

finally to rest, marks the place

for new growth.

A hawk circling overhead pays no attention

rides a warm current

over ridge

and out of sight.

walks around town

The Year of the Turtle

Monday morning in the Weaverville Bakery, one of my last here for the time being.  And I got to watch 'em stand and pole the American flags all up and down both sides of Main Street (it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day).  And speaking of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we should all pay respects by listening to the song "Dr. King" by Mason Jennings.  You can easily hear it by way of google, great song by a true artist.

I am flying to Wrightwood, CA on Friday morning, as a permanent deal, to live and work and everything inbetween.  I have already compiled a list of all notable authors that have anything to do with the region and have planned a succession of adventures to surrounding areas (the tallest mountain in the contiguous US, the lowest desert, Joshua Tree Park and Yosemite, etc...).  I will be busy as soon as I arrive, searching for a place to live, meeting the people, getting acquainted with the work site and learning the flowers.

Today I am working on closing the chapter, on moving furniture out of the house and into a storage space where it will stay until Brad and Joel come and pick it up in a couple months, to begin again, if they want to.   Garrison is back in Oregon, beginning his own new story with brand new knee at a new university.  Brad and Joel are working in Montana for the moment, and will hopefully come work in California next to me for a while before returning to Asheville, and hopefully maybe even stay in California, one or both of them.  But none of us really know for sure yet, still coasting on the open-ended roadtrip we began last spring.  The house is starting to look like it did a year ago - the day we moved in - when we sat on the living room floor without a dollar to our name or a chair in the house, ate Arby's, then wondered what to do for the next 7 days before work started.  None of us actually lived out the entire calendar year under one roof, but hey, baby steps.

So far in 2011 I have been climbing a little more often, eating a little smarter, reading a lot of Gary Snyder and listening to a lot of J Tillman.  I have also been watching more movies than I would usually admit, probably since I'm living alone and don't have Joel to quote them for me anymore:  I was really excited to see the "Book of Eli" because of Religion in Pop Culture and end-of-the-world and well of course Denzel, but unfortunately the movie was completely weightless and made me swear that I would give up on Hollywood forever.  But a few days later I saw the original "True Grit" which was a damn good feel-good of a western, and can't wait to see the Coen Brothers' take on it.

Hopefully no one, besides Backpacker Magazine who claims I owe them 20 dollars, will send any more mail to 44 S. College Street in Weaverville.  I'll let everyone know of my new address as soon as I do.  Mostly, I wanted to get on here and send Love to my family in Newberg Troutdale Sellwood Livermore Little Rock and OKC, most of whom I was blessed to see over the holiday break, and the rest of who I'm excited to see for kicks in '11.

puddle-talk

To 630 in the morning and E who slips on his black Neal jacket for the thousand and one-th time.

To how easy everything is when all you have to do is wake up with Jazz.

To the white elephant who makes his home twixt Park and Yamhill, and to the rain.

To tweed ricket chairs sitting round hourglass morning tables.  And window-gazing too.

To the old Italina-capped maestro dragging on outdoor and narrow alley stairs.

To the Buddha who sleeps soundly 'mong the firescapes while the building burns slowly down.

And to Mrs Peacock under a polka-dot umbrella, grimly bearing the slave-weight of purse, shopping pouch and poncho.

To the myriad pairs of long, slender, solid-colored and suggestive synthetic rain boots.

To continuing this one among all the many memories still remembering just one.

To pretty little city.

To pretty little city and when all the time her guardian mother-cloud hangs perpetually overhead, cries her eyes on all the children.

And to a cloudy glass of water by the bedside.

colden sun days

“A repitition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in a brittle.”  Walker Percy – The Moviegoer

Pilot leans into it, points downward the dive-nose on this plastic bird

and tilts the world one over.

A true friend, this view - 

for all the places on the map

and all the people proud of their own,

it's what we've been through and been through together

as any good brother'd understand.

"And if you're partial to the night sky,

if you're vaguely a-ttracted to roof-tops."

Because the mood only comes round

once in a blue moon'r two,

you're best to cling awarely

tight, give full reign in order

see how far it travels you...

Thinking what a mysterious and lovely thing

how stories bend and bond, amalgamate

their characters.  Thinking how

"What's mine is yours

and yours of course is mine."

A pack full and leaning there

lazy on the wall

knowing all is primed and yet

unpromised, hidden round the corner

hidden somewhere neath

the hard and frozen earth,

thawing come the morning

come these colden sun days.