Well, Portland is Babylon too, but San Francisco is Really Babylon. I have such a love-hate thing with cities. They are beautiful, horrifying. Shining, filthy. Dazzling, depraved. Human, inhumane. Creative, stifling. Most of us live in them because most of us *have* to live in them, given our total population. Cities are liberal bastions, arenas of open mindedness and free creative license. They are also, along with the vast suburbia which is their inextricable other half, teeming hamster cages of mindless peregrination, workaday tedium, addiction, coldhearted blindness to suffering, and cultural decay. My impulses in the face of all this veer back and forth from a desire to simply hit the trail forever as a permanent hiker, or dive headlong into the delerious social maelstrom with a pack of new songs and a glittering new thrift-store freak suit.
Anyway, so I'm in San Francisco for a few days after a 3 day old-fashioned automotive road trip via Crater Lake, Oregon Caves, Happy Camp, the lower Klamath River, Eureka, the Lost Coast, Mattole River and Beach, and the giant Redwoods. I always wanted to poke around through the Siskyious and the mid/lower Klamath Canyon, so that was cool. Very beautiful country. The Siskyiou/Klamath Mountains have a greater diversity of tree species than any other area in the American West. At Oregon Caves I hiked to see the largest Doug Fir in Oregon, but the same trail went through woods of Tanoak, Madrone, White Fir, Manzanita, Ponderosa, and Port Orford Cedar. The range also has Sugar Pine, Incense Cedar, Jeffrey Pine, Whitebark Pine, and some very rare firs that grow nowhere else.
Tuesday night I had a vivid dream of driving along a highway and there were 3 dogs wandering in the middle of the road, one or two of them sniffing at a roadkill. I was alarmed as I went past, worried that they might get hit. The next morning, within the space of an hour or so, there were 3 separate dogs wandering in the middle of the highway. The first one was just before the town of Happy Camp, CA, trotting across in front of me, intent on someting in the bushes on the other side. The second one was wandering down the middle of the road in front of me as I drove through the hamlet of Orleans. The 3rd one was checking out a dead squirrel right in front of me a couple miles north of Hoopa. Each time I was rather alarmed and had to brake and/or swerve.
Just after the last dog (and there were no others that day) there was a guy hitchhiking. He looked like a local (was carrying nothing) and felt trustworthy so I picked him up. Hoopa is an Indian Reservation but he was white. Though sober, the appearance and manner of an amiable 40-something drunk. T-shirt with howling wolves and trees/moon (you know the image.) Said he was originally from Texas, had lived in Hoopa for twenty years. My guess is he long ago lost his driver's license. Hitching into town to buy booze. When I dropped him off he greeted with friendly familiarity an older Hoopa Indian guy coming out of the package store.
Crater Lake was pretty, though honestly i think i have been a bit pre-jaded to it by having seen it too many times on calendars, license plates and quarters. I like that it is a mountain the size of Adams that blew itself to smithereens. It is still Mount Mazama though, with a rim 7 to 8,000 ft elevation. I'll need to go back though, the east rim road was closed because of ice and the Wizard Island boat was ended for the season anyway.
One last trip of the season, this time to San Francisco via Crater Lake, which i've never been to. I'm in Eugene at Kathy and Sue's, will head south tomorrow morning.
Regardless of my broken computer I realize i've gotten pretty lazy about this blog. I used to write informative travelogue peices and stuff. I'd like to do that again, but my focus shifts from this to that. I've been wrapped up in my own head lately, writing songs and the like, also pondering what the hell I'm gonna do next for a living. Which gathers importance by the week. So why am i running off to San Fran? Well, now or god knows when, since in fact i probably will soon be back at a job with a schedule. Haven't seen Duke Lee or Jessie Murphey in a coupla years. So many random things make up my days. Housepainting most of last week "under the table" for some bucks, practicing my songs for some as-yet unscheduled gig, reading (Milan Kundera, Henri Nouwen, Tom Robbins, Jamake Highwater,) helped out at Back to SCRAP, rode today in the memorial bike ride for Gareth Parker, a very friendly older fellow who became extremely active in Portland bike circles as an advocate of safety and visibility. I first met him in May-June 2004 when i organized the Pedal Picnic and helmet giveaway at Peninsula Park. He was always upbeat and it was neat to see him riding energetically with the "kids" on (for example) a Midnight Mystery Ride. Well, he was hit and killed by a drunk hit-and-run driver on Labor Day along the road in Oregon City. Is that the shittiest thing ever or what? Waaay too many bicyclists have died in Portland this year. At least 4 of them have been hit-and-run, all of whom I *think* were later caught, though i may be wrong about the one up by Delta Park in June or whenever that was.
I'll leave you with the lyrics of another of the songs i wrote last week. Has nothing to do with any of this.
Gate lying open there before me
Eye of morning shatters house of glass.
Broad hills roll down from this old fortress
Harvest done and freedom now at hand.
That perfect tenement I leave now,
cheap liquor's taste no longer keeps me strong.
Through the weeds down to the streamside,
ride on broken pallete I see roses there across.
My totem in my pocket, flask at the ready,
these my weapons will suffice
as now i jump onto the granite,
all around me still the ice of early morning.
Now just to wait a few short hours
until the golden time arrives,
and though it lasts just while I hold my breath
its light will fill me as I walk into the night.
My god but it can take me awhile to get back into being in town after a long trip. All last week i pretty much laid low, slept a lot, ate junky food, did that sweet melancholia thing. Ask a Pisces Moon what it's about. Wondering what the hell I'm doing. Seeing things from maybe too big a perspective for even my own good. But I did write four new songs. Two of them are more like poems that i put to music. Here's the short one. I don't know if it is good.
Dark wall of fire, I see you
Angel with flaming sword, I see you
Sweet earth with open arms, I see you.
Children singing by the graveside
From what we bury will grow the end
And as we dance the shining wake-song
Now comes the water again
Saturday night i finally felt a shift back into back-home mind after hanging out at the Saint John's Bridge Bash with Carye Bye and Bruce Orr and then taking part in a candlelight pedestrian walk across the bridge and back. That bridge is high!
My computer wavers between total brokenness and intermittent functionality. Better get a job. There is a decent prospect I am applying for this week. Later in the week i plan to head to San Francisco for one last trip of the season.
Well, i just got back to Portland. I'm still waaay out of town mentally. To quote my webhost Andrew's blog entry (at http://www.drewish.com) about his recent return from his trip to Australia:
"it was a bit depressing to get back actually. it's always hard to come home after traveling. chris larson used to say that the best time to move is after you take a trip. that's when your ready for something new."
Chris is our good friend who, like me, was prone to move onward in search of that elusive something. I met him when I lived in Reno for 2 years, though he is now rather permanently ensconsed here in Portland with his wonderful partner/wife Sierra. He and Paul Nama blazed the trail here to Portland from Reno and that is why I came here rather than move back to Seattle or onward to, say, Nome.
But as for this moment, I'm not mentally back yet, and indeed may head out again imminently for several places including San Francisco. I have to figure things out. There's a reason I chose to call this thing travelingdan.com. I am happiest in motion and experiencing the new. I think that is a legitimate way to be. It flies in the face of the pressure to be an ordinary settled person. And it conflicts with such things as home ownership and steady employment.
I met a very nice Minnesotan couple, Don and August, on the top of 13,162 ft Cloud Peak in Wyoming (after an exhausting but exhilirating climb.) They met as Outward Bound instructors in the early 1990's. Don is now a mental health professional who conducts multi-week wilderness therapy sessions every summer. By the time we parted the next day he asked me if I would be interested in co-leading these groups next summer, in Minnesota's Boundary Waters and the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. Each group has 2 adult leaders, one a mental health practicioner and the other an outdoor-skills specialist. It would be a fabulous opportunity to engage in something I've long thought about. It would also take me away from Portland for months. Along with other work and travel ideas I am contemplating, it ends up looking alot like not living in Portland. But I love Portland and my friends here.
And yet... I have to do what I am called to do. Even if it is like leaping into thin air.
Something Rumi said:
How is it birds get their freedom?
They fall, and in their falling
they are given wings.
I'm in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. The canoe trip was great. The boundary waters is a different wilderness than anything out west. Lake after lake. 10 days worth. Pretty much every lake was a gem. Piney forest, polished granite shores, loons calling, huge Pike lurking in the inky waters. Thanks to Celine Fitzmaurice for organizing it and to her, Jim, Eli, Kristen, and Zeth for being such awesome companions.
I'll be back in Portland sometime around the 10th, though possibly later.