My first chore of the day was to empty the gray water tank under the sink in the van. I hadn't used all 5 gallons of the provided fresh water, so this container was only part full. I hauled it to the toilet in the campsite and dumped it there. During the night as I lay awake I had hit on an idea for getting rid of the kitty litter. In preparation for this trip in a van with no toilet, I'd read about various camp solutions and this seemed the easiest to rig from materials easily available. I never needed it because I spent my time close to all the necessaries. So I had a big bucket of highly scented kitty litter and did not want to burden the campground maintenance crew by unloading it there. Unless I suddenly met a cat-owner, I decided I would give it to an automotive garage or gas station for use in soaking up oil and gas spills.
Now for a time I was free to forget this was my last day and just enjoy it. I headed toward Point Reyes National Seashore, traveling down the mountain on the Panoramic Highway to a junction with Hwy 1 where I turned north. The highway hugs the coast and passes a tidewater mudflats called Bolinas Lagoon, where I stopped several times to watch pelicans and other shorebirds. In my luggage was a map a contradancer had drawn out for me, and I was now within range of an odd tidal phenomenon he described. A salt water hot springs is here, only accessible when the monthly tides are just right. Had I been here on October 21 at the right time of night I could have joined the locals who know of it, and hiked down for a communal bath.
Instead, I found the Bear Valley Visitor Center. It was not yet open so I stood looking over a big map posted on the outside wall. Along came another big tall ranger (do they ever come in size Small?) and he cheerfully greeted me and asked how he could help. What a gift! He clearly loved this place and was generous with his enthusiasm, ready to share what he knew about it. I saw now how sad it was to have only one day to spend in this park with its 150 miles of trails. Having to choose among the riches, I said I'd like to see bird life, so he suggested the Estero path off the Limantour Beach.
I took a wrong turn somewhere on this walk, never did find the Estero, but I saw how bishop pines grow their female cones:
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| Another visitor enjoying the sun. |
I returned to the van to head for the Point Reyes Lighthouse, which is approached by Sir Frances Drake Boulevard and goes up and over big hills dotted with cattle ranches, all with letter names: Ranch A, Ranch C, Ranch M. I thought at first this was a naming scheme imposed by the Park Service but these are the names given by a pair of eastern entrepreneurs who gradually took over the ranchos that had been operated by Mexican land grant holders after Mexico's independence from Spain. The area was prime cattle grazing land and the easterners built a highly successful dairying operation here, shipping premium butter downstate to the growing San Francisco market of the late 1800's. This hilly ranch land is referred to as the pastoral zone, and it stretches for miles.
The lighthouse itself was closed today, but the views and the experience of unrelenting wind can be had any day there.
I watched for whales out in the water, struggling to hold the glasses still and keep myself upright in that unceasing wind. Wind won out.
All my video clips are hideous to listen to with the wind buffeting the tiny mike so badly. But I left the lighthouse and backtracked along Drake Boulevard to find a road that would take me to the North Beach. Once I got there I could not resist some last moving pictures of the ocean.
As I was taking this farewell walk a text message popped in from Bob, asking for my arrival time in Columbus tomorrow night. I sent him the beach movie and flight info, along with my hopes that all flights would be canceled so I could be stranded here.
I looked up a new route to take me back to St. Raphael and the 101 for a straight shot down to the GGB. I memorized the route so as to be ready for losing the cell signal along the way.
In San Rafael I stopped in a Mi Pueblo for the food to carry me through the next 24 hours and on a whim picked up a Mexican guava. It smelled wonderful. I should have left it at that, for the taste was a few steps dimmer and duller.
Before continuing, I stopped for a fill-up of gas and asked for hot water in my thermos so I could have herbal tea tonight. I dropped off the kitty litter on the pedestal of the gas pump, hoping it would not be too big a nuisance.
The hot water was tepid, the tea barely flavored. So we were even.
Down around the tip of the peninsula St. Raphael is on, I found myself looking for a boondocking site once more. I saw signs for San Quentin and thought that would be a memorable locale, but conditions weren't quite right. On one of my forays in that neighborhood I ran down a road that came to an unexpected dead halt at the gates of the prison. I turned around right quick.
I finally found my roosting spot on yet another stretch of Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Larkspur. I was nuzzled up behind a line of box trucks with the logo "Always On the Move." When I first spotted them from across the boulevard it looked like I might fit in the space between a couple of them, which would shade me from passing headlights. But in the end I decided not to chance attracting attention if the parking took too much wrangling. We were on a sort of parking island, directly adjacent to the road but separated from the businesses and foot traffic. It was a good spot and once I masked my eyes against the lights I slept well until my alarm went off at 3:30 a.m.
Hi Raven,
ReplyDeleteAt twenty two someone had told me to journal my trip up Highways 1 and 101 along the west coast. Of course, I did not. Camping, hiking, visiting many of the parks and places you describe, interacting with the people I met, I did my trip on a Honda S90 (which had a top speed of 70 mph on the straight and level, and which achieved 120 mpg) from the LA area to Portland, Oregon.
For the past week with the stimulation of your writing I have been reliving the life incidents, landscapes/ocean-scapes, California air, and sense of personal adventure I had felt on that trip and other trips I took in that era of my life throughout Oregon and Washington. Thank you for doing the journaling I did not do.
I have very much enjoyed dancing with you, Raven, especially in waltzes. For the pleasure of writing them, and for remembering them in rereadings, I often journal, describing favorite or distinctive moments and partners in dance. Searching for others writings on dance, I find not much. Have you written of dance?
S. Leon Jesionowski -- December 2015
Leon,
DeleteI'm delighted this journal struck a chord with you. I have traveled too many times in other places without taking the time to get the adventures down on paper. It's lost treasure! But if your memories are stimulated by reading this, you may still capture some of your own travels and pin them to a page after all.
You mentioned writing about dance, and that's another living topic that feels important to capture. I know of at least one occasion I was moved to write, and it was after a waltz experience at a weekend dance in Tennessee. What is it about waltzing? Some special undercurrent of connection is there, flowing between partners and making a completed whole out of two separate bodies. You know what I'm talking about. [If I lay hands on that piece I wrote, I'll be in touch].
Hello Raven,
DeleteYou want to hear about my trip up the coast of California and Oregon?? Really?
Okay.
I will try to describe it -- or parts -- now being four tenths of a century later. After a year at CalArts I was leaving. In the institute at the entrance to the cafeteria I set up a garage sale, ridding myself of almost everything I had brought to California: a scuptured laminate recurved archery bow to one of my teachers; a deerskin and a wrist rocket slingshot to an outdoors young woman. Everything gone.
My heaviest treasures, wooden boxes of long playing records, I put in storage with another teacher. My tattered jeans and flannel shirts, my leather flight jacket, a well-used goosedown sleeping bag, a ripstop nylon hammock I made from a parachute, my cast iron "chicken pan," and my Barclay acoustic guitar in a battered Silvertone case were all I remember strapping on the homemade racks hanging from the rear fender of my Honda S90 motorcycle.
Social Security dependent money I had been waiting for all year finally came, so I had some money in my pocket. Having moved out of my house with the turn of the month, a young woman student had pity on me and let me shower with her. Nervous about the trip, just wanting to get clean, I could not get excited.
The motion and push of the forward kickstart of my motorbike was satisfying. The padded rubber accelelerator handle turned with the twist of my wrist. I did not especially like the awkwardness and weight of the baggage, but I had to live with it. The first leg of the trip, the first major stop was to be in Santa Barbara where Van Morrison was playing an outdoor concert.
The June weather was luscious as I made my way to the coast on what seemed to be side roads. The scrub oak and semi-arid vegetation saturated my senses -- for hours and hours. Hills, winding road, steeper hills, a valley overlook, occasional agricultural workers -- it was good embarking on the first leg of the journey -- of the rest of my life.
Leon,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great way to begin! I love the paring down to minimal STUFF. It's a classic way to start a new life, starting over *sans* everything. Where is CalArts located? I am trying to picture your first leg up to Santa Barbara.
-Raven
Saugus, California was where I had lived for the school year, three film students as roommates. CalArts is in Valencia, CA. Both locations are in the Santa Clarita Valley, north over the mountains from the San Fernando Valley. Everyday I would past the Bunny-Luv carrot fields.
ReplyDeleteOn the trip to the coast, heading generally northwest toward Santa Barbara, at one point I piloted my motorcycle over railroad tracks. A rural crossing. Dry farmland valley. A boxcar on the siding. Suddenly! As I crossed my heart shot up to my throat, the muscles of my arms went to gelatin convulsions, violently everything in my vision shook, the bike shimmey threatened to throw me to scrape the sand graveled pavement with WWII leather jacket and scuffed full face helmet.
My positive action was to forcefully relax the wrist throttle and hang on through the sharply wander-snapping convulsions. As the bike slowed the wide wiggle tapered, edging toward something slightly less than harrowing. Then I could brake.
Stopping, dismounting, rocking the bike onto its stand I could not stop my body from shaking. A few steps to a utility pole and I slumped to the embrace of solid earth and man-planted upright.
Is that what a photon feels traveling on its wavelength? Straight, but not straight. Riding the buzz of the waves, zipping along, all matters shed aside? Whew!
Grounding the experience, touching the sand, looking up at blue sky and green hills and tan dirt and rocks, it took me a quite a few sun-arc degrees to calm enough to get back on.
An agricultural worker smiled from a distance at me processing the experience. I had come through safely; he had quiet understanding of life's moments like this. I smiled back as he moved along, shaking my head with the wonder and a zig-zinging heart.
When I was ready -- shaking less -- I investigated. All the weight of the baggage had been hung onto the rear fender, which now was clear that it had only been attached to the bike frame with one small square-nut stove bolt. Over the tracks the nut had vibrated loose, and the bolt out, allowing the mad, wild shimmey patterned on the bumpity-bump of railroad tracks. Even now, writing this many years later it feels like it just happened.
With wire I reattached the fender, cinching it tight. At the next post office I mailed my deep cast iron chicken frying pan and lid to my sister's apartment in Portland -- my destination. Then I renewed my journey.