Tag Archives: Travel Journal

Journal entries from my travels, whether they be by bicycle, train, plane, or automobile.

76 – Some Santa Cruz Island

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Returned from my first hike traipsing back across the island through the crisp, dry grass and reedy plants, sans knit hat, sweating and all, like a blithering idiot to the new water reservoir I bought only the day before yesterday, clawed up, off the picnic table, in the dirt and with a small hole in a corner, most of the contents leaked out (too curious foxes!), after dark of course, as I had enjoyed a magnificent sunset on the opposite side of the island.

It all leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth, after experiencing something of the first order of perfection. These were images of an Italian or Grecian coastline, such as one might find in a magazine or an Instagram (and no cliff-side homes, nor a human for hundreds of meters all around), I was observing, but in actuality, with the crashing of the waves below and the barking of sea lions beyond, the wind on my face and the sky glowing like a picture postcard. Unfortunately, the resultant discovery of my favorite (read: only) knit hat (an expensive one at that) to be gone from my person, and the ensuing tumble across the island after sunset in hopes of finding it—an impossible attempt, mind you, since I wandered rather through the back country instead of following the main trail, and thus had no distinct path to follow—has me feeling somewhat morose. And the not-quite-comfortably-long-enough stick I resorted to using to prop up the entrance to my tent because I don’t have trekking poles or a front support pole and there was nothing for me to tie the guyline to like I normally would. Well, that’s the life of the ever not quite properly prepared! Tomorrow I may search again before departing, but more importantly must go for a run!

Went for a marvelous run this morning before needing to break camp. Followed the trail I took last night and found my cap which I had thought lost. Just goes to show ya. Course it has a couple large holes in it now, and much of the edge is chewed up. Souvenirs, I suppose! Anyway, the run topped off at one of several peaks in the area. Could see over quite a vast area—the island goes on and on, ridges and valleys like a set of ribs, caves and bays, tiny islands (rocks, really) smothered with birds and bird shit, the vague horizon a smudged line. Speaking of horizons, amazing how far one can see on a clear day; Cali mainland in the distance. Santa Ynez mountains mysterious and cloud hidden and blue. Cormorants fishing in the jewel-like water. Girl sunbathing on a distant bench. Two more sitting in the shade of a seaside cliff subsumed with the rocks and boulders into its shadow. And a man walking along the stony beach with his camera.

About to take a snooze on a picnic bench before the boat picks us up. Slept poorly last night. Kayakers returning from an excursion exploring the arched caves and passages the ocean has carved over the eternity of its existence. Something to do if ever I get back here.

71 – California Dreaming

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California, so far, is like a dream. Specifically San Francisco, Berkeley, Point Reyes, Marin County, the mysterious pacific coast shrouded in fog: in short, much of the Bay Area.

Point Reyes is a beacon of Earth’s agelessness and perfection. Of what is possible. Ancient trees tower above one like monuments, like ancient colossi. Douglas Firs with their ridges of bark as thick as one’s fist, like ropes to be climbed up. The hiking trail twisting its way up and down and through, soft and damp, spongy, loamy, guided on both sides by the lushest, greenest vegetation I’ve ever seen, all fragrancing the air with verdant, earthy aromas of  life and amazement, of how this world once was all over ….

I wish to put what I’ve seen into words, but how can I!? The magnitude of the task binds the gears of my mind and wrenches the cogs off track. How does one translate the colossal magnificence of such an ancient, prehistoric world (or anything, for that matter) into idea, into these scrawny characters that even when strung together into something greater than their individual selves are little more than a whisper in a  storm, that are not truly experience, but merely place holders for experience. How can one translate a piece of bark into a string of characters and somehow communicate all that is that piece of bark and what it means to be present to it?

Words are like fake fruits and pastries in a display case, but even more pathetic, because at least those things, as false and unreal as they are, maintain a resemblance to that which they imitate, but words, words are nothing. Just amalgamations of parts of an alphabet. Just attempts to translate a feeling, an emotion into a communicable symbol that still can’t ever communicate properly that which they must. They’re idea, and idea is only something in the world of idea. In the world of experience, which is Life, they’re just “POOF!” They’re even less substantial than the fog that rests just off the Marin coast, the fog that appears so thick, so heavy and luxurious that one would delight in wrapping oneself in it like a blanket, or weaving it into a sweater, or filling a pillow. Yet the world of idea is a fun world nonetheless, because it is an imaginary world. It is unreal and completely made up. And that, of course, is its virtue. And the challenge of describing something! All one has to do is read a few quotes from Giacometti on painting and sculpture to get the gist of what that’s like.

The trees were tall. Colossal like the dreams of history’s greatest thinkers, but greater and older still. Untouchable. Incomparable. Point Reyes, you stir something in me that I can only call awe, but what is that, and what does it mean? I’d like to smash it with a hammer…. The temperature cooled as I moved closer to the shore, like the Pacific itself was washing over me, and when I did finally gain view of that vast, empty nothingness that had no horizon but vanished into the fog like life into death, I could only stop running, and stare, thunderstruck. “THIS is what is meant by eternity, ” I thought. “This is immortality.”

It’s like digging a hole. Digging after something  buried there that can’t ever be excavated. But this isn’t a physical hole, it is a hole in my mind being dug. It is a metaphysical hole—the idea of digging the idea of a hole.

70 -Love and Hate, and Thinking

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I think I hate road trips. Of the vehicular kind. Not so much the self-powered-on-a-bicycle kind. There is, obviously, a greater sense of adventure, and a more seamless connection to one’s environment—the relationship is felt more acutely; the suffering, if there is any, is different (of course, one doesn’t suffer much sitting in a car other than perhaps from monotony and ennui, so maybe in this case they are similar), and the joys are greater, the pleasures more pleasurable. Less is lost, more is gained and seen. To stop for something, say, to take a picture, is a simpler task. You are not polluting…

Sure, in a car one covers more ground but feels like a slug. Just sitting. Sitting, sitting, sitting. At least today I hiked part way up a mountain. I think my photographs of the salt flats should turn out nicely.
The fifty or sixty year old waitress at the Black Rock Grill, where I’m having dinner, across the street from The Cadillac Inn (a homey, inexpensive, little place that I would recommend, run by a single mother) in Lovelock, NV, is having a conversation with a cook. “We’re shaking our cans out here!” she exclaims (she and the other server mercifully are not). But she is so mirthful. So friendly and amicable. Would that all the people of this world be like her on a daily basis.
The sunset. The Nevada landscape. Can one be separated from the other? They will forever be inseparable to me. I’ve recorded myself rhapsodizing over them… it, while driving.

Nevada is vast. It is like a piece of classical music, Beethoven’s 9th perhaps, become geography. All vertiginous highs and vast, yawning lows (that Great Basin!), and those highs erupting from the dry ground of the valley, apropos of nothing, like stalactites up, up, up! from the floor of a cave, nonetheless, projecting harmoniously, and all the while the shimmering interstate insinuating itself in thread-like fashion through the warp and weft of the land, winding on continuously over tall masses and plummeting back down again whatever the topography be.

A narrow scrawl on a limitless sheet of paper.

69 – Take My Home With Me

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Watching a spider wander through the grass beneath the small wooden table here in the yard, and thinking to myself wouldn’t it be grand if I could produce a thread inside of me and string up a cozy hammock anywhere I’d like. To carry my own house inside me wherever I roamed. It would keep me dry in a deluge of rain, cool during the heat of summers, and warm through the winter.

67 – The Virtue of a Light Bulb or, On Being Rich

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The naked light bulb in the lamp on the table beside my bed fascinates me. A bare light bulb, whether hung by a cord from a ceiling, or screwed into a lamp, is a symbol of poverty. Not just a financial poverty, but, as well, a poverty of the spirit, an indifference to the state of one’s self. The reason there is no lampshade covering this particular light bulb is because I removed it, basically, because it was completely useless. Really just a thick, purple, glass bowl with an opening in the top, it didn’t simply soften and disperse the light radiating from the bulb, but contained it altogether. That, it needn’t be said, is not useful.

I look at this light bulb, and I look around the room that I am in with its dirty white walls, kind of brown and tan in places, the surface rough and unfinished, areas of incision where squares of drywall were removed and inexpertly replaced; exposed electric sockets naked in wall recesses; the ceiling which slopes down to a waist-height wall in which a door is set, sea-green, about three feet in height, and held shut by a single piece of duct tape; another wall: red, following the contour of the ceiling, also with a door, dirty and with a large brown smear of spackle that looks like a wad of human shit where someone lazily repaired a hole; the mismatched dressers and tables; the clay-colored tile floor; the dirty window and its frame that’s coming apart at the joints, paint chipping off. I look around at all this with fascination. It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t make me feel poor, or contribute to feelings of inadequacy (none of which I have, anyway). Perhaps that’s because I know I’m only here temporarily. Or perhaps its because I have a sense of self-worth, or self-knowledge, or understanding of the world and my place in it that is great enough that a lack of certain material things doesn’t affect me so much. I know better.

And so I look at this light bulb, this naked balloon of argon filled glass, and I appreciate it for the light that it emits, that I might write down these thoughts, and I wonder at its polished, white, pearlescent surface, and its simple, beautiful shape, and I don’t know that I am poor because I feel as though I am rich, and so this light bulb holds no sway over me, but sheds light so that I may rejoice because I am alive to experience it.

65 -Frisco Morning the Lawn Pondering

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Frisco, CO. Eight a.m.
Lounging on the bench-swing in the lawn. Surrounded by dandelions. The dog, Sugar, being dog-like, sniffing around, investigating the morning scents, then choosing a cozy spot in a warm patch of sunlight on a lush patch of grass to lie down; the prominence of the fast-running river only a stone’s throw from here very nearly the only audible sound, white noise maintaining a backdrop for the bursts of birdsong flushing through the aspens and pines, and the sun filtering through just beginning to stab my eyes with its pointed glare. The slight sound of slightest traffic thin and fringy, and thankfully, easy to ignore.

I just finished drinking an exquisite cup of an Ethiopian Kochere—citric, floral with a bright, lively, happy acidity that dazzles the tongue much like the early morning sun might one’s eyes, or the song of the birds one’s ears. There is no better start to a day than this little ritual of mine.

I’m noticing now how in the shaded parts of the lawn the dandelions are closed up tight, like they might be cold, and so each of them has snugged up his and her sepals tight around their blossoms like I might zip the collar of a warm jacket up tight. I would also be remiss not to mention how much like aristocrats from the sixteenth century they look like, albeit headless ones, with their broad collars peaking out the tops of their shirt and jacket. A particular painting by El Greco which hangs in the Prado in Madrid titled The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest comes to mind.

In places where broad swaths of sunlight paint the ground these dandelions’ heads are thrown back, petals fully extended like mouths wide open stretched to their limits, swallowing whole all that pours forth from the sky. How strange that I’ve never noticed this phenomena before! How intelligent the world is! Is there anything that looks happier, more full of joy, than a flower opened up completely? It is like a human soul who has become so accepting to everyone and everything, all experience, good or ill, that it matters not what might become of it, that it might be destroyed means nothing, but that it continue in its course, which is always the correct course, and finds satisfaction in that.

A White-crowned Sparrow is flitting about the yard, sounding out its presence from perch to perch like a submarine’s radar keeping time with whatever metronome guides it.

62

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Monday 06/06

With a knee injury (or, any injury for that matter) one has essentially two choices to make: abandon the trip and go home, or adjust things accordingly. I am adjusting accordingly. Thankfully, cars here in New Mexico are fairly cheap, and I have enough money in my account to cover the cost of one and its assorted peripherals. So, yes, adventure by Subaru Legacy Outback. It doesn’t sound terribly adventurous, and it’s certainly not nearly as physically demanding as cycling, but who’s to say what an adventure is or isn’t anyway? Besides, I may end up run/walking the west coast from Seattle to Berkeley, but that, at the moment, is neither here nor there.

The car, despite cutting into my “budget” (which can be solved by selling it later), makes me more mobile, and gives me greater flexibility and range of travel. I’ll be able to camp out of it and go on hikes, visit monuments, parks and forests I would not have otherwise. I’m actually quite excited, though that could just be wanting to get on the road after having been stuck in Taos and Santa Fe for the last two weeks. Just so long as it doesn’t break down!

Additionally, I’m going to spend some time around Breckenridge, Co (Frisco, specifically) where a friend lives, so who knows what I’ll see on my way to and from there. And then there’s the whole west coast, and house-sitting in Berkeley, and I’m really getting ahead of myself.

61

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I want to write something about the house I’ve been staying in, or at—my first few nights were spent in my tent—but I don’t know where to begin….

It is a largish property, at least in comparison to the house which is a squat, adobe, two room affair, usually dim inside, with wooden rafters supporting a ceiling slanting up at five or ten degrees from the south wall where there is a series of small rectangular windows, to the north wall where there are none but within which a set of double doors is installed.

Much of the property is bounded by cottonwoods and other native deciduous trees. Most of the lawn is sandy, dry and hard-packed, covered in a patchwork of different, unmown grasses, like an old tattered sweater with many holes in it. There is an apple orchard on one corner of the property which has been neglected so much so that the apple trees planted there are hardly leafing and will need a fair bit of care if they are ever to produce fruit in their lifetime. On the more wild, southern portion of the property which borders her neighbor’s yard where a few horses wander, the grasses and weeds grow more thickly, taller, and greater in number. Amongst all of this are large, sandy cones of course granules, like grains of salt that have agglomerated together with the help of a bit of water, about twelve inches high and in the shape of perhaps a cubist breast or a bra worn by Madonna in the 80’s, and fire ants scurrying in and out and all around them.

Near the clothesline where I camped for a couple nights is a mound of firewood that had been clearly dumped and forgotten. On the porch by the entrance to the house is a neat row stacked waist high. A rain catchment basin is situated at a lower corner of the house, gutters directed into it. From the stack of firewood where I’m standing writing all this I can see scattered about all over the yard are piles of dried cut twigs and plant detritus, an empty plastic bucket, gallon water jugs (also empty), dog bowls and flowerpots, an old Radio Flyer full of sticks and torn up weeds, two plastic trash bags filled (with weeds, presumably) and knotted off… Mainly it gives the appearance that a rather confused and disorganized person was in the middle of yard work before being summoned off somewhere with no time to organize or clean up.

The air is cool and almost always filled with the song of crickets, doves, magpies, the occasional chatter and drumming of a woodpecker, and the buzz of a fly or two. I’ve just spotted a Western Tanager (a first!) and some sort of flycatcher. A truck rumbles down the dirt drive, and a neighbor’s cat, two in fact, are on the prowl along the treeline bordering the lawn, one seated on a downed log peering at me with that disinterested, disregarding look that cats are so expert at, while I stand here writing this. The air is clear. It is always clear. Rain was forecast for today, but never materialized.

60

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Things have gotten simultaneously simpler and trickier since hurting my knee. I’m going back to Taos this evening for the weekend. Staying with Jeanne. Haven’t yet determined whether I’ll rent a car in Taos or Santa Fe—I can take a bus from one to the other if necessary. The only reason, at this point, for renting in Santa Fe is that I may need to order some things and have them shipped there. I can really only be in Taos until Tuesday, AND I want to get on the road. Hopefully this car rental thing goes smoothly.

The reason I’m ordering things is because I’m selling things. Shrinking and lightening up my kit. Hopefully it all goes, especially the trailer which I’ve been tired of for seemingly ages. The lighter my kit may be the sooner I can be back on my bike again.

58

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Lying on the couch yawning madly. Matt is coding in the other room, his bedroom, which is hardly another room because the doorway has no door and I can see him sitting there in his chair working away in front of his monitor. Meanwhile, I’m here, lying on this couch yawning madly. The front door several feet away is open, and I am listening to the crickets chirping madly. It is cool out. I wonder if there is a degree of cold at which crickets stop chirping but don’t die and just grow silent. Like the energy required for that activity is too much to be continued below a certain temperature, or the act of maintaining homeostasis becomes more difficult as the temperature decreases, and so only the most necessary, vital activities are continued. It seems too cool tonight to me to be hearing crickets chirping so.

Santa Fe seems to me a bit of a tourist trap of a city, and an expensive one at that, though that is nothing out of the ordinary. I wonder how the crickets find it to live here. I suppose I could find work , but I haven’t found any decent coffee yet*. Too bad I don’t have the money to open a business.

Tomorrow I plan on spending much of the afternoon at Ten Thousand Waves: a spa where one might get all sorts of skin treatments,  face masks, massages and the like. I’m just going for their outdoor, communal bath. Matt has a free voucher he’s offered to me, so I won’t have to spend a dime (thanks again!). The establishment I’m told is inspired by Japanese mountain hot spring resorts, so I’m quite excited as I have had for a long time a fascination of all things Japanese. There is also a restaurant attached, in the style of a more upscale izakaya, which obtains most of its meat and produce from local purveyors. I will probably eat there too.

I have lots of coordinating, thinking, and planning to do as well during the rest of my stay here since I have a bum knee and won’t be cycling for a good long while.

*I found some excellent coffee a week later at Collected Works books—Iconik Coffee Roasters. It’s on par with the best stuff I’ve had on this trip, which has been little and far between, unsurprisingly.