Animals: Great
Egret
Quotes:
“No, that’s not a fountain, that’s a floral
arrangement” - Impatient
grandfather to a toddler in the hotel lobby.
“Fun as hell on earth.”
SIARPC: Captain
Beefart
I’m going to combine the next two travel days because
there’s just not that much to tell. The idea was that we would give ourselves
an extra day to meander down the coast, seeing as how much we enjoyed the
experience last time. However, much in the way a goldfish will grow as large as
its enclosure will allow, we have the ability to expand non-action like a
balloon until it has filled up all the available time. In this view though the
time still exists, it’s just hyper-compressed. This then might explain how all
the emotions of those trapped in the bubble become intensified so that what was
meant to be leisurely becomes fractious and, shall we say stressed. Still, the
obvious elephant in this view is that we’re not really talking about non-action
here,* we’re talking about dicking around. I don't know, I'm thinking maybe it’s more of a 1st Law of
Motion thing.Anyway, this has all become needlessly convoluted and besides, trying to come up with scientific analogies is
exhausting. The end result was we managed to see the same or slightly less than
we had on the last tour when we only had one day. Also, this was the first time
this tour where we wanted to kill each other.
Well, I’d wager Chuck and I didn’t want to kill anyone. We
just sit in the back of the van like old men on a bench and let the young folk
get all worked up about the state of the world. I made a conscious decision
before this tour to not try and change the course of any rivers. I used to
expend an enormous amount of energy trying to make sure we went to places I
wanted. Ugh, fuck it. Everyone in the band likes pretty much the same kind of
destinations. I figure we’ll end up someplace cool and I wont get all up in the
2nd Noble Truth’s grill.
So after a stop at Guitar Center to attempt to replace one
of Joe’s drum cases, and an afternoon of harried driving we got to a beautiful stretch of rocky Pacific shoreline just in time for sunset. I grew up
well inland and yet seeing, hearing, and in particular smelling the sea
satisfies such a deep, dormant longing that I wonder how it got there. I like
to think it’s proof that we came from the sea and somewhere in our DNA we’re
just missing home.
Oh and it is so beautiful. The sand is dark and super fine.
There are few if any shells but lots of driftwood. The rocks, at least where
the tide was when we were there, were a short ways offshore and just huge and
hulking with entire flocks of sea birds coming in to roost on them. The wind
had created small dunes and I tried to run along the crest of one giggling like
an idiot. At your back there tends to be tall hills or cliffs, and in this case
vast stretches were covered with lovely yellow flowers. I came across a washed
up seal, there long enough to receive rites from now absent children, who left
behind an altar of the yellow flowers and a driftwood tomb, but still so fresh
as to frustrate the Turkey Vulture that couldn’t do much more than stare at it
and will it to rot.
We all gathered back at the van, and then sat on the ledge
leading down to the beach and watched the sun set. It was while I was sitting
there that I began to feel a little of the weight start to slip from my shoulders.
It’s funny but you don’t even feel it accumulating. I don’t know if everyone
does this or not, but one of the curses of adulthood is it’s easy to think the
entire world is somehow dependent on your efforts. It’s an ego-centric view and
maybe one of the benefits of a trip like this is it gives everyone a chance to
breathe. I can go off and do something on my own and my kids are not abandoned,
we just miss each other. My fiance’ has a life of her own. She’s good. My
ex-wife’s aunt said something about this while we were having coffee, “You have
to do your own thing because they (the kids) leave, and you’ll be left there.
Believe me, we experienced it.”
Anyway, enough about that. We managed to survive a foggy 101
in pitch black to make it to Eureka.
Day Two:
Euraka was OK. There’s a place that makes the best English
toffee I’ve ever had but that was about it for first impressions. Our goal for
the day was to see the Redwoods and make it to San Francisco. We randomly
picked a place to stop somewhere in the Avenue of the Giants and split off to
wander. I swear if there is a place expressly designed to provide succor to the
distressed, it is this place. I know I said it before, but the Redwood forest
is a holy place. I did what I do, wander, fail to take pictures that provide any sense
of scale, and sneak off and have seat in the soft mulch** with my back against a
tree and just let the woods reassemble themselves around me. After enough
wandering to think maybe the band was wondering where the hell I was I returned
to the van to see Joe and John being formed into a search party to find Lisa,
who in full Deerslayer mode had gotten lost. I decided not to worry since the
area we were in was bordered by a road and was no more than a few acres wide. We
were entertained in the meantime by a Stellar’s Jay who was sneaking in our van to steal our bounty of crumbs.
Lisa was fine and we left somewhat like a teenaged couple who've done nothing but hold hands as they depart for summer break.
Before we got back on the 101 we stopped at an awesome town
for gas and lunch. "Garberville, the town where ambition went to die", according
to Chuck. It’s chock-full of the crunchiest granolas you’ve ever seen; for whom
the grid is merely a ghost story whispered under the sheets with flashlights
held under your chin. Everyone had a dog, and there were two guys who looked
like Floyd and Goober sitting all day outside the Hemp store. If you go to Garberville
eat at Calico’s. It was a remarkably yummy deli with local beers and comely
employees.
I spent the rest of the day listening to the new Withered
Hands record and writing. Seriously, too much time in the van together with too
much crankiness. Time for a break.
Tomorrow is San Francisco.
* I spent about an hour researching non-action and wei wu
wei. Very cool, but definitely not applicable here.
** See what I did there
No comments:
Post a Comment