Gabriel Morris in India
A mysterious cave in south India.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Going to Asia for the winter (click here to follow my travels on Facebook)
I will be traveling to Asia for the winter. In October, 2010 I fly to the Philippines for 3 weeks, and will be spending most of my time there in the stunning Palawan region. From there I will fly to the small city of Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, Malaysia for a week. Then I fly to Bali and will be there (and other islands in that area) for 3 weeks. After that I fly to Kuala Lumpur, the largest city in Malaysia for a week. And then I'll fly to New Delhi, India. At this point I'm planning to spend the whole winter in India, staying mostly in one little village on the Ganges River, practicing yoga and meditation, writing and all-around relaxing and chilling out. I will be documenting my travels with photos, videos, travel stories, etc. on Facebook. Click the subject line above to join my group devoted to my trip, and follow the adventures.
Friday, August 13, 2010
The Man Who Stood Alone in the Crowd (click here for more info)
This is one of the short fiction stories from my book "I Leapt Into the Night, and Ten Other Stories"...
"The Man Who Stood Alone In the Crowd"
There was once a man who stood by himself within a large throng of people. He was a little off to the side of the crowd, so as not to be too conspicuous—but near enough to the center that it was obvious he was in the crowd, and not at all separate from it. The crowd was nestled all around him, its gentle hum buzzing in his ears.
The crowd was all the man had ever known, and he thrived on its familiarity. Ironically, however, he was not much the talking type. He chose, as much as he could help it, not to contribute to the buzzing of the crowd he so enjoyed. He preferred simply to experience the crowd, and yet remain detached to some extent, an observer from within.
Since he could remember nothing else, he could scarcely imagine life outside of the crowd. The crowd was everything to him. It was the only world he could conceive of, and whenever he was reminded of how much he enjoyed the crowd—which was often—he would revel in its comforting embrace like a bird curling up in a warm nest, or a baby hidden deep inside the womb.
Since this man chose to stand alone within the crowd, he had plenty of time in which to ponder. Sometimes he thought about how nice it was to be in the crowd. Sometimes he thought about moving to another part of the crowd, just for a change—in which case he would generally do so, with an occasional “pardon me, ma’am” and “excuse me, sir, mind your drink!” Although he didn’t talk much, he had well-refined manners from so much listening to the people crowded around him.
Sometimes he even pondered, or at least imagined, life outside of the crowd. On one particular day, he was thinking about the time when he had actually had the urge to leave the crowd. Out of a clear blue sky, a sudden faltering within his mind made him wonder if he should flee from all these people gathered together in the crowd. He had been there in the crowd for so long, it occurred to him, for some reason, that he might be missing something interesting or important outside of the crowd.
But then, he had thought about where he might go if he left the crowd, and this disturbing possibility perplexed and confused him so much that he’d decided rather abruptly just to stay put. He didn’t much like perplexion or confusion. He didn’t see the point in it, and didn’t need any more complications in his life. The time a friend of his had asked if he would care to join him for a game of backgammon at his house had been enough to remind him of all the unpleasantness of the outside world. Leave the crowd? Of course not! What would he find out there? Probably more friends, who would ask him over for tennis, ask him to listen to their music, invite him to go swimming or go for a drive into the country. Soon enough he would be in some foreign land, where even the crowds themselves were unrecognizable.
No. It was too much. Too frightening even to consider. He must stop these nonsensical notions of leaving the crowd. It was much safer simply to remain there. He had everything he needed right there in the crowd—so why leave?
With that conclusion, he thought long and hard then about how nice it was just to be there inside the crowd. It made him so happy being amongst all those friendly people, that the man huddled up against the person next to him, who was trying to make a very important business deal, and he stepped on his foot, which surprised the businessman, causing him to spill his drink down the front of the man he was talking to, insulting him greatly so that he refused to close the deal, which put the businessman into a deep depression that left him incapable to work, so that his wife and kids finally left him for a plumber from Chicago whom she had secretly been seeing the last two years, which of course resulted in the businessman’s eventual suicide.
“Sorry,” said the man standing alone in the crowd.
Eventually, the crowd began to thin out. This did happen occasionally, although fortunately it never disappeared entirely. The crowd merely fluctuated between sparse and dense. The man who stood alone was always a little more nervous when the crowd was smaller, than after a big event when the entire town it seemed was there to join him. But he never really worried too much, because if it came down to only him left in the crowd—well, then he would be a one man-crowd. He’d heard of a one-man-band before. What was the difference? Nothing, really. As long as he was part of a crowd of some sort, then he was safe and secure. And besides, the people would always return eventually, and then he would be even more thankful for the comfort of the crowd.
It was early one May, as the sun was shining majestically overhead and the birds were fluttering from tree to tree, chirping their melodies to the people of the crowd, that the man had a sudden, unexpected desire. He had never experienced it before. He’d heard about it, of course. But he had assumed, out of ignorance perhaps or just innocence, that he was an exception to the rule. He would often hear in the middle of a nearby conversation, “Hey, Ralph, I’m a bit famished—shall we get a bite?” Or something of the sort. And then, they would be gone—only to return sometime later, revived and relaxed, as if nothing really had happened.
He thought it so curious, even a bit disrespectful for these people to simply leave the crowd like that and then return so nonchalantly, as if they knew the crowd would be there when they returned and they could just come and go as they pleased. Didn’t they feel such a devotion to the crowd as himself? What if everyone chose to leave the crowd—even him—and then there was no crowd at all? What then?
But all of a sudden, in the midst of an otherwise contented and satisfying life, he found himself experiencing this inner need, this growling within his bowels that he had only heard about before, but which he had, in fact, dreaded unconsciously for a long time. He’d known it might happen to him. But he’d hoped simply to ignore it when it did. Like the waxing and waning of the crowd itself, this feeling, too, would come and then go. But no—it wouldn’t. And he knew then that it wouldn’t and that he must satisfy it, for it was gnawing inside him and seemed only to be growing stronger.
He was filled with fear at the prospect of solving the dilemma before him. He didn’t know what to do. He knew that people always left the crowd when this happened. But he didn’t know where they went or what they did out there. He knew only that he must take action. The rest he would discover soon enough.
He lifted his right foot, which had been planted in the same position for a long while by then, and moved it forwards. His brow was sweating. His hands were shaking. “My God, I never thought it would be so hard,” he thought. He hadn’t. He had thought it would be easy, that he could have left the crowd anytime he wanted, that it was only by choice he had stayed.
He paused for a moment and fixed his tie, as he readied himself for the next step. Finally, strategically, he lifted his left foot to place it in front of the right. He repeated this action, and then repeated it again. It took every ounce of courage and concentration he could muster for him to walk, slowly, to the edge of the crowd. But he kept his head up and his feet moving, and with an “excuse me” here and a “pardon me” there, soon enough he was standing on the edge of the crowd.
He thought long and hard then about the decision at hand. It was a whole new world from here, past the edge of the crowd. It was that foreign land he had feared he might someday find himself in. But he had to face it. The crowd would always be there upon his return—at least so he hoped. But he would have to take that risk, and brave the consequences.
Just then his stomach rumbled, and he knew it was time to venture forth into that great unknown. The longer he waited, the harder it would be. If he turned around now, he knew he would never try again, and then the crowd would swallow him in his hunger, and he would never know if he could have lived to tell the tale of his adventure beyond the crowd. He lifted his right foot and raised it upwards, moved it forwards, set it down, took another difficult step, and then another—and in so doing, took a giant leap off the edge of the world he had known for too long.
"The Man Who Stood Alone In the Crowd"
There was once a man who stood by himself within a large throng of people. He was a little off to the side of the crowd, so as not to be too conspicuous—but near enough to the center that it was obvious he was in the crowd, and not at all separate from it. The crowd was nestled all around him, its gentle hum buzzing in his ears.
The crowd was all the man had ever known, and he thrived on its familiarity. Ironically, however, he was not much the talking type. He chose, as much as he could help it, not to contribute to the buzzing of the crowd he so enjoyed. He preferred simply to experience the crowd, and yet remain detached to some extent, an observer from within.
Since he could remember nothing else, he could scarcely imagine life outside of the crowd. The crowd was everything to him. It was the only world he could conceive of, and whenever he was reminded of how much he enjoyed the crowd—which was often—he would revel in its comforting embrace like a bird curling up in a warm nest, or a baby hidden deep inside the womb.
Since this man chose to stand alone within the crowd, he had plenty of time in which to ponder. Sometimes he thought about how nice it was to be in the crowd. Sometimes he thought about moving to another part of the crowd, just for a change—in which case he would generally do so, with an occasional “pardon me, ma’am” and “excuse me, sir, mind your drink!” Although he didn’t talk much, he had well-refined manners from so much listening to the people crowded around him.
Sometimes he even pondered, or at least imagined, life outside of the crowd. On one particular day, he was thinking about the time when he had actually had the urge to leave the crowd. Out of a clear blue sky, a sudden faltering within his mind made him wonder if he should flee from all these people gathered together in the crowd. He had been there in the crowd for so long, it occurred to him, for some reason, that he might be missing something interesting or important outside of the crowd.
But then, he had thought about where he might go if he left the crowd, and this disturbing possibility perplexed and confused him so much that he’d decided rather abruptly just to stay put. He didn’t much like perplexion or confusion. He didn’t see the point in it, and didn’t need any more complications in his life. The time a friend of his had asked if he would care to join him for a game of backgammon at his house had been enough to remind him of all the unpleasantness of the outside world. Leave the crowd? Of course not! What would he find out there? Probably more friends, who would ask him over for tennis, ask him to listen to their music, invite him to go swimming or go for a drive into the country. Soon enough he would be in some foreign land, where even the crowds themselves were unrecognizable.
No. It was too much. Too frightening even to consider. He must stop these nonsensical notions of leaving the crowd. It was much safer simply to remain there. He had everything he needed right there in the crowd—so why leave?
With that conclusion, he thought long and hard then about how nice it was just to be there inside the crowd. It made him so happy being amongst all those friendly people, that the man huddled up against the person next to him, who was trying to make a very important business deal, and he stepped on his foot, which surprised the businessman, causing him to spill his drink down the front of the man he was talking to, insulting him greatly so that he refused to close the deal, which put the businessman into a deep depression that left him incapable to work, so that his wife and kids finally left him for a plumber from Chicago whom she had secretly been seeing the last two years, which of course resulted in the businessman’s eventual suicide.
“Sorry,” said the man standing alone in the crowd.
Eventually, the crowd began to thin out. This did happen occasionally, although fortunately it never disappeared entirely. The crowd merely fluctuated between sparse and dense. The man who stood alone was always a little more nervous when the crowd was smaller, than after a big event when the entire town it seemed was there to join him. But he never really worried too much, because if it came down to only him left in the crowd—well, then he would be a one man-crowd. He’d heard of a one-man-band before. What was the difference? Nothing, really. As long as he was part of a crowd of some sort, then he was safe and secure. And besides, the people would always return eventually, and then he would be even more thankful for the comfort of the crowd.
It was early one May, as the sun was shining majestically overhead and the birds were fluttering from tree to tree, chirping their melodies to the people of the crowd, that the man had a sudden, unexpected desire. He had never experienced it before. He’d heard about it, of course. But he had assumed, out of ignorance perhaps or just innocence, that he was an exception to the rule. He would often hear in the middle of a nearby conversation, “Hey, Ralph, I’m a bit famished—shall we get a bite?” Or something of the sort. And then, they would be gone—only to return sometime later, revived and relaxed, as if nothing really had happened.
He thought it so curious, even a bit disrespectful for these people to simply leave the crowd like that and then return so nonchalantly, as if they knew the crowd would be there when they returned and they could just come and go as they pleased. Didn’t they feel such a devotion to the crowd as himself? What if everyone chose to leave the crowd—even him—and then there was no crowd at all? What then?
But all of a sudden, in the midst of an otherwise contented and satisfying life, he found himself experiencing this inner need, this growling within his bowels that he had only heard about before, but which he had, in fact, dreaded unconsciously for a long time. He’d known it might happen to him. But he’d hoped simply to ignore it when it did. Like the waxing and waning of the crowd itself, this feeling, too, would come and then go. But no—it wouldn’t. And he knew then that it wouldn’t and that he must satisfy it, for it was gnawing inside him and seemed only to be growing stronger.
He was filled with fear at the prospect of solving the dilemma before him. He didn’t know what to do. He knew that people always left the crowd when this happened. But he didn’t know where they went or what they did out there. He knew only that he must take action. The rest he would discover soon enough.
He lifted his right foot, which had been planted in the same position for a long while by then, and moved it forwards. His brow was sweating. His hands were shaking. “My God, I never thought it would be so hard,” he thought. He hadn’t. He had thought it would be easy, that he could have left the crowd anytime he wanted, that it was only by choice he had stayed.
He paused for a moment and fixed his tie, as he readied himself for the next step. Finally, strategically, he lifted his left foot to place it in front of the right. He repeated this action, and then repeated it again. It took every ounce of courage and concentration he could muster for him to walk, slowly, to the edge of the crowd. But he kept his head up and his feet moving, and with an “excuse me” here and a “pardon me” there, soon enough he was standing on the edge of the crowd.
He thought long and hard then about the decision at hand. It was a whole new world from here, past the edge of the crowd. It was that foreign land he had feared he might someday find himself in. But he had to face it. The crowd would always be there upon his return—at least so he hoped. But he would have to take that risk, and brave the consequences.
Just then his stomach rumbled, and he knew it was time to venture forth into that great unknown. The longer he waited, the harder it would be. If he turned around now, he knew he would never try again, and then the crowd would swallow him in his hunger, and he would never know if he could have lived to tell the tale of his adventure beyond the crowd. He lifted his right foot and raised it upwards, moved it forwards, set it down, took another difficult step, and then another—and in so doing, took a giant leap off the edge of the world he had known for too long.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Excerpts from Gabriel's 4 books of adventure (click here for more info)
Following are a number of assorted excerpts from my four books, "Following My Thumb", "Kundalini and the Art of Being", "I Leapt Into the Night" and "Don't Push the Road":
"Rather than hide from that which we fear and pretend it’s not there, jump headlong into it. Get a feel for what exists out beyond the familiar paved roads, in that unsettling foreign land where the moose, grizzly and eagle roam free. There’s another very real and deeply meaningful world out beyond the realm of human perception, which we can glimpse and perhaps even get acquainted with, if we so desire. For the unknown is truly unknown only as long as we choose to ignore it. There’s really only one way to get to know anything—and that’s to experience it. Ultimately life is an adventure, whether we like it or not. Better for the soul to accept this, it seems, and then live accordingly." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 9.)
"I lay there on my back wide-eyed for a good long while, nerves frayed from an overabundance of caffeine and another experience of strangeness, peering up at the clear night sky and the faintly twinkling stars, contemplating the odd behavior of humans, listening to the cars going around and around and around me." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 7.)
"Somehow that loneliness was heightened more during the light of day, without the comforting blanket of myriad twinkling stars to ponder overhead. It was just my lone soul, the great expanse of wide-open starkness and a thin sliver of road leading me onwards. And, based on the previous day, a car roughly every half hour that brought only a glimmer of hope as it approached from across the expanse, for what seemed an eternity of longing before it finally flew by at a mile a minute, with nary a smile nor faintest teardrop of humanity to spare a bedraggled, sullen traveler; and I was thrown back into the despair of the lonely road." (Excerpt from "Don't Push the Road".)
"As my beer buzz thickened and reality began to seep slowly into my tired, travel-worn mind, I found myself in one of those peculiar states in which you start to feel more as if you’re looking out at a panoramic movie screen before you, rather than actually living the scene around you. The woman sitting before me was a vision of beauty, as if she’d just stepped out of a fantasy film in which she reigned over a kingdom of unicorns and fairies. She had long, wavy, sandy-blond hair, a soft, vibrant face with deep, thoughtful brown eyes and was wearing tight shorts over a faded red swimsuit that concealed firm and ample breasts. She was strong, independent and intelligent, yet totally feminine and infinitely alluring. She was pretty much everything I desired in my wildest of romantic juvenile dreams. I’m sure that she would have made an excellent queen of the fairies. I just wasn’t certain in that moment that I was prepared to be her knight in shining armor, should that be her expectation. Come to think of it, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d ended up sitting there with her at all." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 5.)
"The air was cold and brisk on that starry night, and my breath spewed from my mouth like a dragon, a comforting reminder that I was still alive and breathing. The snow-covered trees and wide-open meadow were cast in that eerie black-and-white light, the awesome presence of the full moon hanging high overhead. I could see the warm lights of my father's humble cabin in the distance behind me on the edge of the meadow. The trees behind it loomed darkly, as if to pounce at any moment. The dull lantern on the front porch swung creakily in the slight chill wind. All I could see of it was the faint point of flickering light swinging back and forth, back and forth." (Excerpt from "I Leapt Into the Night".)
"In the fall of 1994, I was twenty-two and leading a relatively stable life in rainy western Oregon, when I rather impulsively quit my job, sold my old Datsun pickup, moved out of my house, and hit the road with just my backpack on my back, thumb leading the way. I had only a vague notion of where I was going and what I was getting myself into. I simply had an undeniable yearning for adventure and the unknown, which I chose to follow. I was the type who tended to act on these sorts of impulses. Little did I know the real adventure that I was embarking on this time." (Excerpt from the Introduction of "Kundalini and the Art of Being", published by Station Hill Press, 2008.)
"Over the next few days I happened to talk with a few other folks who had been involved with the community. I discovered that some of the leader’s many outrageous claims about himself and his cult were: that he considered his group to embody the highest spiritual truth on the planet (hey, that’s a new one); himself to be a reincarnation of the apostle Paul (perhaps so—but I’m not washing that one down with Kool-Aid); that he was the doorway to the fourth dimension (come on, everyone knows it was the Beatles); that the energy vortexes around Sedona were of his own making (how old was this guy—4.6 billion years?); and that crop circles were his own creations from past life-times (let me guess—and he also built the Sphinx single-handedly?). As my old college physics teacher would have put it, this guy had an ego roughly the size of the observable universe." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 10.)
"I hiked on and on through the rain. I had no idea of the time of day, with the thick, gray clouds ever-present overhead. After several more hours, it seemed that it would soon be getting dark. I had no idea how much farther I had to go. I decided that I needed to find somewhere to set up my tent before nightfall rather than be caught hiking in the dark. I set my pack down on the gravel jeep-trail—streaked with
countless tiny streams, a rather uninviting environment for making camp—to take a look around. But I could find nowhere. The jeep trail was on a steep slope covered with trees, and the trail itself, though wide, was far too wet and rocky to lie down on all night. Besides, I didn’t know what condition my tent and sleeping bag would be in at this point. I had to keep going." (Excerpt from "Kundalini and the Art of Being", Chapter 17.)
Following is the Introduction and all of Chapter 1 from "Following My Thumb: A Decade of Unabashed Wanderlust"...
Introduction.
Why travel? Good question. Like most things in life it depends on what you want to get out of it. A two-week vacation of tranquil boredom on a tropical beach can be the perfect antidote to the hectic 9-5 work schedule and all the other pressures and stresses associated with modern-day life. I’ve enjoyed more than a few weeks of tropical bliss myself in the course of my travels, and hope to again in the future.
But as for myself, it’s not a vacation from 9-5 I’ve looked forward to but, because I think modernity is for the most part an unnatural and incongruous way of living to begin with, I’ve done my best to skip the daily grind entirely. My travels could certainly be described as bumbling at times, lacking a clear direction or purpose. The whole not-having-a-regular-job thing meant that I was generally traveling on the cheap, sometimes to the extreme. My travels in Europe when I was 18, and the corresponding creative lengths I went to in finding a place to sleep for the night, led to my mantra of “benches, beaches, barns and bridges” (all being suitable places to rest one’s head, in a pinch). It seemed that whatever fix I managed to get myself into due to a lack of cash on hand, there was always a way out of it—as long as I kept my options very wide open and expectations to a minimum.
But as hopefully the following 26 stories will illustrate, with a certain degree of flexibility, open-mindedness and flagrant disregard for following the societal rules (as well as a little luck thrown in to help compensate) one can travel on a budget without compromising the experience in the slightest. In fact, it’s more than likely to be a hell of a lot more interesting (or harrowing, as the case may be).
A vacation is one thing. An adventure is something else entirely. My quest has been one of seeking out experiences that were catalysts for expanding my mind, learning and evolving—situations that suddenly showed me the world and myself from a completely different perspective, or challenged me to reach for a new way of being. The most rewarding experiences were almost inevitably the ones that I didn’t plan, didn’t expect and sometimes couldn’t have even imagined. And underneath it all, from the joyous moments to the terrifying ones, has been a silent, steady lesson of trusting the universe to provide what I needed, one way or another.
This book chronicles my first decade of being an unrepentant travel addict, from 1990-2000. Part 1 tells the stories of my first introduction to hitchhiking as a young boy and my first trip abroad when I was eighteen, as well as my escapades rambling around Alaska as a college kid—including unknowingly following on the heels of Chris McCandless, subject of Into the Wild. I hitchhiked part of the same stretch of highway through Canada and Alaska just a few months after him, and spent that summer working in Denali National Park, just a short ways away from where he was living in an abandoned bus, before dying of starvation.
Part 2 takes things to another level after I drop out of college and commence six years of semi-homeless traveling around the United States on a spiritual quest; which resulted in everything from falling in love on the road to getting mixed up with a strange cult, to attending Rainbow Gatherings and sweat lodges and living in the Hawaiian rainforest for several months.
And in Part 3 I explore a whole new dimension of cultural immersion and reality-bending as I spend five months traveling throughout the vast sea of rich culture and humanity that is India. I attend a massive spiritual gathering on the Ganges River, visit the erotic temple ruins of Khajuraho, tangle with an assortment of crooked businessmen and end up hiding from tigers in the jungle while awaiting the much-hyped potential effects of Y2K.
Although the book isn’t all about hitchhiking by any means, the theme of “following my thumb” prevails throughout (not unlike following one’s heart or gut…except that the thumb has the practical element of being able to actually get you there, i.e. hitchhiking). Put another way, it’s the journey, not the destination. Life is indeed short, and I’ve just tried to make the most of it. But hey, I’ll let the stories tell themselves and stop wasting your time with a lengthy introduction. Enjoy, and happy trails.
PART 1. Young at Heart, Loose at Foot…
Chapter 1. Hitchhiking may be hazardous to your sanity
(May 1991)
…Standing on the side of the road outside of Valdez, Alaska, waiting for a ride. We could see our breath as we stood there in zipped jackets, our hands in our pockets. Although it was deep into spring it was a typical Alaskan spring—cold, overcast, damp. The birds were not yet chirping in ecstatic delight to welcome the new season. They must have been huddled in their nests, same as all the people.
We were about ten miles out of town and the silence was deafening. Pure wilderness rolled away from the road and for hundreds of miles east and west. Cars were scarce—we had seen less than a dozen in two hours. And they weren’t compassionate faces that stared out from behind the windshields. It seemed the people around here didn’t have much time or care for hitchhikers. Our plight wasn’t their concern. It was Alaska. If they knew you, or simply knew of you, I’m sure they’d go well out of their way to save your hide. But otherwise, you might as well be a moose.
Okay, so perhaps we weren’t yet in a plight. It was May, not the dead of winter. But it could become desperate soon enough, if we didn’t get a ride the heck out of there. We might die of boredom and impatience, or even worse: Delusional Hitchhiker’s Syndrome. It’s not pretty, believe me. Frustration and annoyance turn rapidly to delirium as warm cars continue to speed by, the occupants staring out at you as if you’re an escapee from the local psychiatric ward. After a while you start to play the part, acting in strange, impulsive, socially deviant ways—yelling and singing into the air, hopping around in circles to entertain yourself, telling dumb jokes aloud to the wind and any animals that might be listening. And of course, the more advanced the condition gets, the less chance you have of actually getting a ride.
But my friend Josh and I weren’t the transient outcasts we may have appeared, despite our forlorn predicament. We were just a couple of college kids out exploring the world, on a spontaneous hitchhiking road trip after finishing up the school year at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The few paved highways of interior Alaska make a huge loop that covers about a quarter of the state. We wanted to explore as much paved ground as we could in the week we both had free.
So far we had been east from Fairbanks almost to the Canadian border, then south down to Valdez on Prince William Sound. Now we were headed back north and then west across the Chugach Range towards Anchorage, further north from there up to Denali National Park and then full circle back to Fairbanks, at the center of the state.
We’d spent the previous night at a campground on the outskirts of Valdez. That morning we got a short ride about ten miles out of town from a local going home—to smack in the middle of nowhere. We were both wishing we’d stayed near town and waited for a better ride, so we could get a hot cup of coffee about now and break up the monotony.
Finally, we saw another car in the distance coming towards us down the long, straight stretch of highway. We each pulled a hand from our pockets, thumbs extended, ready for action. As the vehicle approached we could see that it was a large Suburban wagon. Our expectations rose as it neared.
“Gabe, man, this is our ride—I can feel it,” Josh said to me.
We held our outstretched arms high. As the vehicle came closer, we could see that the two occupants were both young women—gloriously beautiful women too, or at least so our chilled brains imagined. They seemed to slow as they approached. We both had sudden visions of rescue, warmth and romance swirling in our heads.
It was perfect: They would pull over with radiant smiles on their lovely faces and offer us a ride in their roomy wagon. We’d stretch out in the back seat and have engaging conversation along the way, connecting with the two beauties like old friends, enjoying the pristine Alaskan scenery so much more now that we were moving down the road in comfort. We’d all go out for lunch at a pizza parlor in the next small town, and then continue down the road. That night, the four of us would decide to split a hotel room between us to economize. The next day we would all go backpacking together, and end up falling in love in the wilderness.
It was a classic hitchhiker’s dream. But it passed us by. They smiled slightly and waved half-heartedly as they flew past. They hadn’t slowed down a bit. It was the Hitchhiker’s Syndrome already beginning to set in, a mirage of our distorted imaginations. For a brief moment it had seemed so real, just a few feet away. But then it was all rushing away from us at a mile a minute.
I stood in the middle of the road after they’d passed, my arms raised in protest.
“How could you pass us by?” I yelled after them. “Do you have no respect for destiny?!?”
I lay down in the middle of the road on my back and started laughing uncontrollably. It was definitely setting in…
Here's the Table of Contents for "Following My Thumb" to give you a hint of what's in the rest of the book...
Introduction.
PART 1. Young at Heart and Loose at Foot…
Chapter 1. Hitchhiking may be hazardous to your sanity
Chapter 2. The beginnings of a hitchhiker
Chapter 3. When in doubt, act like you know what you’re doing
Chapter 4. Never turn down a free meal
Chapter 5. Those beautiful Swedish women
Chapter 6. Uniting body and mind
Chapter 7. Sleep under the bridge, not on it
Chapter 8. To travel is to be mystified
Chapter 9. The idiot’s guide to Denali
PART 2. Rambling Around the West…
Chapter 10. Always double-check the directions
Chapter 11. The continuing quest for a good night’s sleep
Chapter 12. Love between hitchhikers
Chapter 13. An adventure in peaceful protest
Chapter 14. Small world
Chapter 15. Sweating it out
Chapter 16. Adversity builds character—and hopefully wisdom
Chapter 17. Close call
Chapter 18. When dealing with the authorities, try to keep your clothes on
PART 3. Another World…
Chapter 19. A rupee is only worth a rupee
Chapter 20. Hold onto your chai
Chapter 21. Get good directions on the way to the rainbow
Chapter 22. A fahking adventure
Chapter 23. Always double-check the return policy
Chapter 24. Don’t fool around with the locals’ women
Chapter 25. Immersed in the crowd
Chapter 26. Watch and listen
"Rather than hide from that which we fear and pretend it’s not there, jump headlong into it. Get a feel for what exists out beyond the familiar paved roads, in that unsettling foreign land where the moose, grizzly and eagle roam free. There’s another very real and deeply meaningful world out beyond the realm of human perception, which we can glimpse and perhaps even get acquainted with, if we so desire. For the unknown is truly unknown only as long as we choose to ignore it. There’s really only one way to get to know anything—and that’s to experience it. Ultimately life is an adventure, whether we like it or not. Better for the soul to accept this, it seems, and then live accordingly." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 9.)
"I lay there on my back wide-eyed for a good long while, nerves frayed from an overabundance of caffeine and another experience of strangeness, peering up at the clear night sky and the faintly twinkling stars, contemplating the odd behavior of humans, listening to the cars going around and around and around me." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 7.)
"Somehow that loneliness was heightened more during the light of day, without the comforting blanket of myriad twinkling stars to ponder overhead. It was just my lone soul, the great expanse of wide-open starkness and a thin sliver of road leading me onwards. And, based on the previous day, a car roughly every half hour that brought only a glimmer of hope as it approached from across the expanse, for what seemed an eternity of longing before it finally flew by at a mile a minute, with nary a smile nor faintest teardrop of humanity to spare a bedraggled, sullen traveler; and I was thrown back into the despair of the lonely road." (Excerpt from "Don't Push the Road".)
"As my beer buzz thickened and reality began to seep slowly into my tired, travel-worn mind, I found myself in one of those peculiar states in which you start to feel more as if you’re looking out at a panoramic movie screen before you, rather than actually living the scene around you. The woman sitting before me was a vision of beauty, as if she’d just stepped out of a fantasy film in which she reigned over a kingdom of unicorns and fairies. She had long, wavy, sandy-blond hair, a soft, vibrant face with deep, thoughtful brown eyes and was wearing tight shorts over a faded red swimsuit that concealed firm and ample breasts. She was strong, independent and intelligent, yet totally feminine and infinitely alluring. She was pretty much everything I desired in my wildest of romantic juvenile dreams. I’m sure that she would have made an excellent queen of the fairies. I just wasn’t certain in that moment that I was prepared to be her knight in shining armor, should that be her expectation. Come to think of it, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d ended up sitting there with her at all." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 5.)
"The air was cold and brisk on that starry night, and my breath spewed from my mouth like a dragon, a comforting reminder that I was still alive and breathing. The snow-covered trees and wide-open meadow were cast in that eerie black-and-white light, the awesome presence of the full moon hanging high overhead. I could see the warm lights of my father's humble cabin in the distance behind me on the edge of the meadow. The trees behind it loomed darkly, as if to pounce at any moment. The dull lantern on the front porch swung creakily in the slight chill wind. All I could see of it was the faint point of flickering light swinging back and forth, back and forth." (Excerpt from "I Leapt Into the Night".)
"In the fall of 1994, I was twenty-two and leading a relatively stable life in rainy western Oregon, when I rather impulsively quit my job, sold my old Datsun pickup, moved out of my house, and hit the road with just my backpack on my back, thumb leading the way. I had only a vague notion of where I was going and what I was getting myself into. I simply had an undeniable yearning for adventure and the unknown, which I chose to follow. I was the type who tended to act on these sorts of impulses. Little did I know the real adventure that I was embarking on this time." (Excerpt from the Introduction of "Kundalini and the Art of Being", published by Station Hill Press, 2008.)
"Over the next few days I happened to talk with a few other folks who had been involved with the community. I discovered that some of the leader’s many outrageous claims about himself and his cult were: that he considered his group to embody the highest spiritual truth on the planet (hey, that’s a new one); himself to be a reincarnation of the apostle Paul (perhaps so—but I’m not washing that one down with Kool-Aid); that he was the doorway to the fourth dimension (come on, everyone knows it was the Beatles); that the energy vortexes around Sedona were of his own making (how old was this guy—4.6 billion years?); and that crop circles were his own creations from past life-times (let me guess—and he also built the Sphinx single-handedly?). As my old college physics teacher would have put it, this guy had an ego roughly the size of the observable universe." (Excerpt from "Following My Thumb", Chapter 10.)
"I hiked on and on through the rain. I had no idea of the time of day, with the thick, gray clouds ever-present overhead. After several more hours, it seemed that it would soon be getting dark. I had no idea how much farther I had to go. I decided that I needed to find somewhere to set up my tent before nightfall rather than be caught hiking in the dark. I set my pack down on the gravel jeep-trail—streaked with
countless tiny streams, a rather uninviting environment for making camp—to take a look around. But I could find nowhere. The jeep trail was on a steep slope covered with trees, and the trail itself, though wide, was far too wet and rocky to lie down on all night. Besides, I didn’t know what condition my tent and sleeping bag would be in at this point. I had to keep going." (Excerpt from "Kundalini and the Art of Being", Chapter 17.)
Following is the Introduction and all of Chapter 1 from "Following My Thumb: A Decade of Unabashed Wanderlust"...
Introduction.
Why travel? Good question. Like most things in life it depends on what you want to get out of it. A two-week vacation of tranquil boredom on a tropical beach can be the perfect antidote to the hectic 9-5 work schedule and all the other pressures and stresses associated with modern-day life. I’ve enjoyed more than a few weeks of tropical bliss myself in the course of my travels, and hope to again in the future.
But as for myself, it’s not a vacation from 9-5 I’ve looked forward to but, because I think modernity is for the most part an unnatural and incongruous way of living to begin with, I’ve done my best to skip the daily grind entirely. My travels could certainly be described as bumbling at times, lacking a clear direction or purpose. The whole not-having-a-regular-job thing meant that I was generally traveling on the cheap, sometimes to the extreme. My travels in Europe when I was 18, and the corresponding creative lengths I went to in finding a place to sleep for the night, led to my mantra of “benches, beaches, barns and bridges” (all being suitable places to rest one’s head, in a pinch). It seemed that whatever fix I managed to get myself into due to a lack of cash on hand, there was always a way out of it—as long as I kept my options very wide open and expectations to a minimum.
But as hopefully the following 26 stories will illustrate, with a certain degree of flexibility, open-mindedness and flagrant disregard for following the societal rules (as well as a little luck thrown in to help compensate) one can travel on a budget without compromising the experience in the slightest. In fact, it’s more than likely to be a hell of a lot more interesting (or harrowing, as the case may be).
A vacation is one thing. An adventure is something else entirely. My quest has been one of seeking out experiences that were catalysts for expanding my mind, learning and evolving—situations that suddenly showed me the world and myself from a completely different perspective, or challenged me to reach for a new way of being. The most rewarding experiences were almost inevitably the ones that I didn’t plan, didn’t expect and sometimes couldn’t have even imagined. And underneath it all, from the joyous moments to the terrifying ones, has been a silent, steady lesson of trusting the universe to provide what I needed, one way or another.
This book chronicles my first decade of being an unrepentant travel addict, from 1990-2000. Part 1 tells the stories of my first introduction to hitchhiking as a young boy and my first trip abroad when I was eighteen, as well as my escapades rambling around Alaska as a college kid—including unknowingly following on the heels of Chris McCandless, subject of Into the Wild. I hitchhiked part of the same stretch of highway through Canada and Alaska just a few months after him, and spent that summer working in Denali National Park, just a short ways away from where he was living in an abandoned bus, before dying of starvation.
Part 2 takes things to another level after I drop out of college and commence six years of semi-homeless traveling around the United States on a spiritual quest; which resulted in everything from falling in love on the road to getting mixed up with a strange cult, to attending Rainbow Gatherings and sweat lodges and living in the Hawaiian rainforest for several months.
And in Part 3 I explore a whole new dimension of cultural immersion and reality-bending as I spend five months traveling throughout the vast sea of rich culture and humanity that is India. I attend a massive spiritual gathering on the Ganges River, visit the erotic temple ruins of Khajuraho, tangle with an assortment of crooked businessmen and end up hiding from tigers in the jungle while awaiting the much-hyped potential effects of Y2K.
Although the book isn’t all about hitchhiking by any means, the theme of “following my thumb” prevails throughout (not unlike following one’s heart or gut…except that the thumb has the practical element of being able to actually get you there, i.e. hitchhiking). Put another way, it’s the journey, not the destination. Life is indeed short, and I’ve just tried to make the most of it. But hey, I’ll let the stories tell themselves and stop wasting your time with a lengthy introduction. Enjoy, and happy trails.
PART 1. Young at Heart, Loose at Foot…
Chapter 1. Hitchhiking may be hazardous to your sanity
(May 1991)
…Standing on the side of the road outside of Valdez, Alaska, waiting for a ride. We could see our breath as we stood there in zipped jackets, our hands in our pockets. Although it was deep into spring it was a typical Alaskan spring—cold, overcast, damp. The birds were not yet chirping in ecstatic delight to welcome the new season. They must have been huddled in their nests, same as all the people.
We were about ten miles out of town and the silence was deafening. Pure wilderness rolled away from the road and for hundreds of miles east and west. Cars were scarce—we had seen less than a dozen in two hours. And they weren’t compassionate faces that stared out from behind the windshields. It seemed the people around here didn’t have much time or care for hitchhikers. Our plight wasn’t their concern. It was Alaska. If they knew you, or simply knew of you, I’m sure they’d go well out of their way to save your hide. But otherwise, you might as well be a moose.
Okay, so perhaps we weren’t yet in a plight. It was May, not the dead of winter. But it could become desperate soon enough, if we didn’t get a ride the heck out of there. We might die of boredom and impatience, or even worse: Delusional Hitchhiker’s Syndrome. It’s not pretty, believe me. Frustration and annoyance turn rapidly to delirium as warm cars continue to speed by, the occupants staring out at you as if you’re an escapee from the local psychiatric ward. After a while you start to play the part, acting in strange, impulsive, socially deviant ways—yelling and singing into the air, hopping around in circles to entertain yourself, telling dumb jokes aloud to the wind and any animals that might be listening. And of course, the more advanced the condition gets, the less chance you have of actually getting a ride.
But my friend Josh and I weren’t the transient outcasts we may have appeared, despite our forlorn predicament. We were just a couple of college kids out exploring the world, on a spontaneous hitchhiking road trip after finishing up the school year at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The few paved highways of interior Alaska make a huge loop that covers about a quarter of the state. We wanted to explore as much paved ground as we could in the week we both had free.
So far we had been east from Fairbanks almost to the Canadian border, then south down to Valdez on Prince William Sound. Now we were headed back north and then west across the Chugach Range towards Anchorage, further north from there up to Denali National Park and then full circle back to Fairbanks, at the center of the state.
We’d spent the previous night at a campground on the outskirts of Valdez. That morning we got a short ride about ten miles out of town from a local going home—to smack in the middle of nowhere. We were both wishing we’d stayed near town and waited for a better ride, so we could get a hot cup of coffee about now and break up the monotony.
Finally, we saw another car in the distance coming towards us down the long, straight stretch of highway. We each pulled a hand from our pockets, thumbs extended, ready for action. As the vehicle approached we could see that it was a large Suburban wagon. Our expectations rose as it neared.
“Gabe, man, this is our ride—I can feel it,” Josh said to me.
We held our outstretched arms high. As the vehicle came closer, we could see that the two occupants were both young women—gloriously beautiful women too, or at least so our chilled brains imagined. They seemed to slow as they approached. We both had sudden visions of rescue, warmth and romance swirling in our heads.
It was perfect: They would pull over with radiant smiles on their lovely faces and offer us a ride in their roomy wagon. We’d stretch out in the back seat and have engaging conversation along the way, connecting with the two beauties like old friends, enjoying the pristine Alaskan scenery so much more now that we were moving down the road in comfort. We’d all go out for lunch at a pizza parlor in the next small town, and then continue down the road. That night, the four of us would decide to split a hotel room between us to economize. The next day we would all go backpacking together, and end up falling in love in the wilderness.
It was a classic hitchhiker’s dream. But it passed us by. They smiled slightly and waved half-heartedly as they flew past. They hadn’t slowed down a bit. It was the Hitchhiker’s Syndrome already beginning to set in, a mirage of our distorted imaginations. For a brief moment it had seemed so real, just a few feet away. But then it was all rushing away from us at a mile a minute.
I stood in the middle of the road after they’d passed, my arms raised in protest.
“How could you pass us by?” I yelled after them. “Do you have no respect for destiny?!?”
I lay down in the middle of the road on my back and started laughing uncontrollably. It was definitely setting in…
Here's the Table of Contents for "Following My Thumb" to give you a hint of what's in the rest of the book...
Introduction.
PART 1. Young at Heart and Loose at Foot…
Chapter 1. Hitchhiking may be hazardous to your sanity
Chapter 2. The beginnings of a hitchhiker
Chapter 3. When in doubt, act like you know what you’re doing
Chapter 4. Never turn down a free meal
Chapter 5. Those beautiful Swedish women
Chapter 6. Uniting body and mind
Chapter 7. Sleep under the bridge, not on it
Chapter 8. To travel is to be mystified
Chapter 9. The idiot’s guide to Denali
PART 2. Rambling Around the West…
Chapter 10. Always double-check the directions
Chapter 11. The continuing quest for a good night’s sleep
Chapter 12. Love between hitchhikers
Chapter 13. An adventure in peaceful protest
Chapter 14. Small world
Chapter 15. Sweating it out
Chapter 16. Adversity builds character—and hopefully wisdom
Chapter 17. Close call
Chapter 18. When dealing with the authorities, try to keep your clothes on
PART 3. Another World…
Chapter 19. A rupee is only worth a rupee
Chapter 20. Hold onto your chai
Chapter 21. Get good directions on the way to the rainbow
Chapter 22. A fahking adventure
Chapter 23. Always double-check the return policy
Chapter 24. Don’t fool around with the locals’ women
Chapter 25. Immersed in the crowd
Chapter 26. Watch and listen
Saturday, August 7, 2010
I Leapt Into the Night (click here for more info)
The title story from my book of creative fiction short stories, "I Leapt Into the Night, and Ten Other Stories"...
"I Leapt Into the Night"
The air was cold and brisk on that starry night, and my breath spewed from my mouth like a dragon, a comforting reminder that I was still alive and breathing. The snow-covered trees and wide-open meadow were cast in that eerie black-and-white light, the awesome presence of the full moon hanging high overhead. I could see the warm lights of my father's humble cabin in the distance behind me on the edge of the meadow. The trees behind it loomed darkly, as if to pounce at any moment. The dull lantern on the front porch swung creakily in the slight chill wind. All I could see of it was the faint point of flickering light swinging back and forth, back and forth.
I hadn't yet devised a practical way to carry my telescope, especially while tromping through the deep snow in my awkward furry winter boots, such as I was. Since the day it had been gifted to me in the sixth grade (I was now in ninth) I had tried, with moderate success, to make my passion as convenient as possible. Fortunately, my father was supportive of my unusual hobby—he trusted me alone out in the arctic cold, as I'd lived here in Alaska all of my young life. I couldn't even imagine living somewhere that the ground wasn't white for half the year, and the skies dark for much of that time.
My telescope wasn't one of these rinky-dink little things. It was a pretty big one, especially in comparison to little old me. I'd sewn straps around the legs of the tripod, so that I could swing it over my shoulder and across my back—like an archer’s quiver, sort of, but not quite as dexterous. And then I carried the lens case in my arms, just like when hauling firewood. Good thing that I had practice already, because you have to walk without seeing where the heck your next step will be—and besides, the arms get tired pretty quick sticking straight out like that.
At least I grew in the three years between sixth and ninth grade, which helped in some ways, though not in all. I must admit, budding breasts just get in the way for a young girl astronomer, at least in my case. Boys were starting to pester me for dates, but all I wanted to do was gaze up into the night sky, lost in my cosmic little world. Cheap, yes, but not much of a date. And besides, most boys just didn't understand the beauty of the night sky. It was too much trouble, too mysterious, and just plain weird for a girl.
Sometimes, I admit, I wished that I'd just taken up the harmonica or something for a hobby—I mean, you just slip it in your pocket and anytime, anywhere, you can pull it out and make your music, and you're happy. You don't have to worry about the clouds or waiting until dark, or it's too cold outside, or it's a pain in the butt to set everything up—or who knows if there's anything interesting up there tonight anyhow?
Despite all these random thoughts, I struggled on through the cold with my precious telescope that night, taking each step carefully, occasionally looking up at the deep, darkened sky that filled me with such warmth, even in the dead of winter. It was one of those nights when it was so clear, you could tell that the Man in the Moon was an adolescent, because he had the worst case of acne you'd ever seen. And yet he was still infinitely more handsome than most of the idiots at my school. I'd toss their silly cars, beer and sports out the window any day for that calm, cool, reflective persona of the Man in the Moon, and his infinite array of celestial relatives.
When I was young (well, younger) I wanted to be the first person to walk on the moon. When I found out it was too late, I decided that I would be the first person to walk on the sun. For some reason I thought that would be even more heroic. Never mind that the sun has no ground on which to walk—I'd just float there amongst the burning gasses, taking in its warming rays and looking back at the Earth with a certain pride and longing for whence I’d come. Oh, the innocence of youth! Fortunately, my dad had set me straight with some basic scientific principles—and soon enough provided me with a way to merge with the stars, and yet still stay connected to the ground.
If you happened to be looking down at my viewing spot from high above, you would see mountains all around—white-capped, snowy, beautiful awesome mountains, that make you want to leap right into them they're so shiny and wonderful in the moonlight. And within these mountains—in between them, that is—you would see a huge valley, probably five miles across, with lots of trees all over the place. In the middle of this forest was a clearing, and on one side would be our wonderful wooden cabin, that my mother and father built all by themselves (with a little help from me, of course, though I was only five at the time). Right in the middle of the meadow would be a small mound of a hill, only about ten feet across on top, which is where I always set up my telescope. And then waaaaay off in the distance, on the other side of the forest—with a skinny little dirt road running down through the valley—would be town, with its lights twinkling and smoke coming out of the smokestacks, and maybe a few dogs barking if you listened closely enough.
But anyhow, the important thing here is the little hill, because that was my mound of inspiration. You see, when I was really young, I used to go out there and lie on that hill and just watch the stars with my cat Vaughn (pronounced "Von"). This would be around late spring or early fall, when it wasn’t quite so crazy cold yet, but the nights were still plenty dark. Sometimes, if I heard there was going to be a meteor shower or a lunar eclipse, or maybe it was just an extra special night for some reason, I would bring my heavy-duty sleeping bag and a pillow and a thermos of hot chocolate. Then Vaughn and I would curl up nice and warm in my sleeping bag and just lay there watching the stars and the moon, until we got too cold to open our eyes anymore or even think. Eventually, we'd rush back inside and warm up by the wood stove.
So finally, like I said, in sixth grade my father decided that I needed a little better view of all that stuff up there, since I was spending my time out there watching it anyhow. He surprised me Christmas morning with the best present I ever got in my whole life. I was so ecstatic that I went out that very night and watched the sky do things that I hadn't even realized it was doing all along—though of course I'd imagined.
Since then I've seen the rings of Saturn; the moons of Jupiter; several comets that flew by, I forget their names; craters of the moon that would just blow your mind if you were me (which they did); the asteroid belt; double-star systems; quasars: a little meteor that exploded when it hit the atmosphere, which made me feel a little sad, in a happy sort of way; plus all sorts of other stuff that probably wouldn't sound very interesting or make much sense to a normal person.
On a night like tonight, however, I was hoping for something extra special, it being so exquisitely beautiful and cold and crystal clear and all.
When I got to the top of the plateau, I set down the lens veeeeery carefully. Then, I swung the tripod off my back with a great sigh of relief; the air blowing out of my mouth like a steam engine in the crisp cold.
I just stood there for a few minutes blowing into the air, taking in the night sky to see what it might have to offer this time. My arms hung stiffly from my sides from all the clothes I was wearing, including a scarf wrapped around my neck, that my mother had given me the Christmas before she'd died, when I was six. It had been much too big for me then. But the scarf had grown smaller as I got bigger (or something like that) so that it kept my neck nice and cozy now without choking me, even in forty below zero—which was about how cold it felt that night.
I was thinking that maybe it was a little too cold to stay out for long—which in my case could be for an hour or three. But it was just too perfect. There was electricity in the air, like a thunderstorm approaching on a clear day. The stars were so bright against the dark sky, the mountains gleaming white in the moonlight, that I couldn't waste this night inside doing homework or the dishes or anything. It was just right for becoming one with nature, as they say. This is what I most wanted, really—to feel no separation between the vastness of the cosmos and myself.
I was just finishing screwing the lens into place, when I heard my dad yell from the cabin,
"Aurora!"
That's my name, obviously.
"What, Dad?" I yelled back. Sound carried easily across the meadow in the cold night air.
"I'm letting Vaughn out—she's been meowing at me. Come back soon. The radio said it's minus thirty-three in town, so it must be almost forty-below out there tonight. I don't want you freezing to death. Would you like me to bring you some hot chocolate in a little while?"
"No, thanks!" I yelled back. "I'm okay. I won't be here for too long, I don't think, maybe just an hour or so. It's nice out here. It's pretty! You should see the mountains from here."
"No thanks, sweetie. I'm gonna stay inside where it's warm. It feels like an ice-rink out on the porch. I'm going back in. You be careful!"
"Okay, Dad!"
I could here Vaughn's faint meow, as she picked her way across the meadow through the snow.
"C'mon, Vaughn! Here, kitty! Come on!"
"Meow!"
She rubbed herself against my leg, as I finished adjusting the telescope. Then I put her in my lap, as I sat down on the chair that I always leave there. I covered her up with my jacket, since she was already beginning to shiver from the cold.
The sky was, of course, even more awesome seen through the God of Telescopic Insight. Everything was so clear, so real. It was as if a barrier that had always existed between myself and the sky was lifted, and I felt closer to the infinity of space than ever. The cold didn't seem to bother me at all. I just sat there, transfixed, my one open eye glued to the end of the telescope as I drifted off into the nether reaches of the universe. The glowing warmth of the moon and stars comforted me simply by their presence.
Soon, without realizing it, I guess, I lost all awareness of my surroundings. I even forgot about poor old Vaughn in my lap, who was probably asleep by then, but hopefully warm inside my jacket. I couldn't say. I had completely forgotten about the reality of the meadow and the trees, and the cabin nearby with my father resting quietly beside the fire. The stars were magnificent. They became everything to me in that moment. I could feel their brilliant light filtering down through the telescope, filling me with life.
The Man in the Moon seemed to be smiling at me. And once, he winked—a long, drawn out wink, that left me surprised, but delighted.
"Come on up," he seemed to be saying.
"But how can I?" I asked. "I don't know how."
"Just let yourself go," he said. "Let yourself go—give yourself to the sky, and it will happen."
I didn't know what he meant, at first. I thought, "'Give myself to the sky?' What's that supposed to mean?"
But as the warmth and comfort of the sky above filled me with assurance and strength, and helped to release me from the familiar physical world around me, I began to feel the truth of what he meant. The weight of my body slowly became less of a burden. I no longer knew or cared that I had arms or legs or breasts or a brain, or even an eye that perceived all of this through the telescope. I only cared for the beautiful sky above. As I came to realize this, I became more a part of the sky with every precious moment.
Soon I felt the tunnel walls of the telescope completely fall away. And I gave myself to the sky—just like he'd said—leaping straight into the night like a rocket leaving its launch, the force propelling me upwards, higher and higher. My spirit rose above everything, far above the meadows and the trees and the mountains and the town, and even sweet little Vaughn and my father's beautiful cabin.
Pretty soon I was looking down at the Earth like it was a speck of dust on the ground, far from my sight, but still at my feet. I could even see my body sitting there in the meadow, my eye still attached to the telescope. I admit that it made me a little sad—especially when I saw my father come rushing out of the cabin in panic and run to my lifeless body, screaming,
"Aurora! Aurora! What has happened to you?" (Though I could only imagine what he was saying.)
But I soon recovered from the sorrow of leaving behind the sweet Earth and my beloved friends and family, and became quite content hovering there above everything in the eternal night. For of course, it is always night in space, just as I had always wished. And if you look closely enough as you stroll along beneath the night sky, you may notice a little sparkle in the darkness of the night that wasn't there at one time. And if you smile, I'll smile back, I promise.
"I Leapt Into the Night"
The air was cold and brisk on that starry night, and my breath spewed from my mouth like a dragon, a comforting reminder that I was still alive and breathing. The snow-covered trees and wide-open meadow were cast in that eerie black-and-white light, the awesome presence of the full moon hanging high overhead. I could see the warm lights of my father's humble cabin in the distance behind me on the edge of the meadow. The trees behind it loomed darkly, as if to pounce at any moment. The dull lantern on the front porch swung creakily in the slight chill wind. All I could see of it was the faint point of flickering light swinging back and forth, back and forth.
I hadn't yet devised a practical way to carry my telescope, especially while tromping through the deep snow in my awkward furry winter boots, such as I was. Since the day it had been gifted to me in the sixth grade (I was now in ninth) I had tried, with moderate success, to make my passion as convenient as possible. Fortunately, my father was supportive of my unusual hobby—he trusted me alone out in the arctic cold, as I'd lived here in Alaska all of my young life. I couldn't even imagine living somewhere that the ground wasn't white for half the year, and the skies dark for much of that time.
My telescope wasn't one of these rinky-dink little things. It was a pretty big one, especially in comparison to little old me. I'd sewn straps around the legs of the tripod, so that I could swing it over my shoulder and across my back—like an archer’s quiver, sort of, but not quite as dexterous. And then I carried the lens case in my arms, just like when hauling firewood. Good thing that I had practice already, because you have to walk without seeing where the heck your next step will be—and besides, the arms get tired pretty quick sticking straight out like that.
At least I grew in the three years between sixth and ninth grade, which helped in some ways, though not in all. I must admit, budding breasts just get in the way for a young girl astronomer, at least in my case. Boys were starting to pester me for dates, but all I wanted to do was gaze up into the night sky, lost in my cosmic little world. Cheap, yes, but not much of a date. And besides, most boys just didn't understand the beauty of the night sky. It was too much trouble, too mysterious, and just plain weird for a girl.
Sometimes, I admit, I wished that I'd just taken up the harmonica or something for a hobby—I mean, you just slip it in your pocket and anytime, anywhere, you can pull it out and make your music, and you're happy. You don't have to worry about the clouds or waiting until dark, or it's too cold outside, or it's a pain in the butt to set everything up—or who knows if there's anything interesting up there tonight anyhow?
Despite all these random thoughts, I struggled on through the cold with my precious telescope that night, taking each step carefully, occasionally looking up at the deep, darkened sky that filled me with such warmth, even in the dead of winter. It was one of those nights when it was so clear, you could tell that the Man in the Moon was an adolescent, because he had the worst case of acne you'd ever seen. And yet he was still infinitely more handsome than most of the idiots at my school. I'd toss their silly cars, beer and sports out the window any day for that calm, cool, reflective persona of the Man in the Moon, and his infinite array of celestial relatives.
When I was young (well, younger) I wanted to be the first person to walk on the moon. When I found out it was too late, I decided that I would be the first person to walk on the sun. For some reason I thought that would be even more heroic. Never mind that the sun has no ground on which to walk—I'd just float there amongst the burning gasses, taking in its warming rays and looking back at the Earth with a certain pride and longing for whence I’d come. Oh, the innocence of youth! Fortunately, my dad had set me straight with some basic scientific principles—and soon enough provided me with a way to merge with the stars, and yet still stay connected to the ground.
If you happened to be looking down at my viewing spot from high above, you would see mountains all around—white-capped, snowy, beautiful awesome mountains, that make you want to leap right into them they're so shiny and wonderful in the moonlight. And within these mountains—in between them, that is—you would see a huge valley, probably five miles across, with lots of trees all over the place. In the middle of this forest was a clearing, and on one side would be our wonderful wooden cabin, that my mother and father built all by themselves (with a little help from me, of course, though I was only five at the time). Right in the middle of the meadow would be a small mound of a hill, only about ten feet across on top, which is where I always set up my telescope. And then waaaaay off in the distance, on the other side of the forest—with a skinny little dirt road running down through the valley—would be town, with its lights twinkling and smoke coming out of the smokestacks, and maybe a few dogs barking if you listened closely enough.
But anyhow, the important thing here is the little hill, because that was my mound of inspiration. You see, when I was really young, I used to go out there and lie on that hill and just watch the stars with my cat Vaughn (pronounced "Von"). This would be around late spring or early fall, when it wasn’t quite so crazy cold yet, but the nights were still plenty dark. Sometimes, if I heard there was going to be a meteor shower or a lunar eclipse, or maybe it was just an extra special night for some reason, I would bring my heavy-duty sleeping bag and a pillow and a thermos of hot chocolate. Then Vaughn and I would curl up nice and warm in my sleeping bag and just lay there watching the stars and the moon, until we got too cold to open our eyes anymore or even think. Eventually, we'd rush back inside and warm up by the wood stove.
So finally, like I said, in sixth grade my father decided that I needed a little better view of all that stuff up there, since I was spending my time out there watching it anyhow. He surprised me Christmas morning with the best present I ever got in my whole life. I was so ecstatic that I went out that very night and watched the sky do things that I hadn't even realized it was doing all along—though of course I'd imagined.
Since then I've seen the rings of Saturn; the moons of Jupiter; several comets that flew by, I forget their names; craters of the moon that would just blow your mind if you were me (which they did); the asteroid belt; double-star systems; quasars: a little meteor that exploded when it hit the atmosphere, which made me feel a little sad, in a happy sort of way; plus all sorts of other stuff that probably wouldn't sound very interesting or make much sense to a normal person.
On a night like tonight, however, I was hoping for something extra special, it being so exquisitely beautiful and cold and crystal clear and all.
When I got to the top of the plateau, I set down the lens veeeeery carefully. Then, I swung the tripod off my back with a great sigh of relief; the air blowing out of my mouth like a steam engine in the crisp cold.
I just stood there for a few minutes blowing into the air, taking in the night sky to see what it might have to offer this time. My arms hung stiffly from my sides from all the clothes I was wearing, including a scarf wrapped around my neck, that my mother had given me the Christmas before she'd died, when I was six. It had been much too big for me then. But the scarf had grown smaller as I got bigger (or something like that) so that it kept my neck nice and cozy now without choking me, even in forty below zero—which was about how cold it felt that night.
I was thinking that maybe it was a little too cold to stay out for long—which in my case could be for an hour or three. But it was just too perfect. There was electricity in the air, like a thunderstorm approaching on a clear day. The stars were so bright against the dark sky, the mountains gleaming white in the moonlight, that I couldn't waste this night inside doing homework or the dishes or anything. It was just right for becoming one with nature, as they say. This is what I most wanted, really—to feel no separation between the vastness of the cosmos and myself.
I was just finishing screwing the lens into place, when I heard my dad yell from the cabin,
"Aurora!"
That's my name, obviously.
"What, Dad?" I yelled back. Sound carried easily across the meadow in the cold night air.
"I'm letting Vaughn out—she's been meowing at me. Come back soon. The radio said it's minus thirty-three in town, so it must be almost forty-below out there tonight. I don't want you freezing to death. Would you like me to bring you some hot chocolate in a little while?"
"No, thanks!" I yelled back. "I'm okay. I won't be here for too long, I don't think, maybe just an hour or so. It's nice out here. It's pretty! You should see the mountains from here."
"No thanks, sweetie. I'm gonna stay inside where it's warm. It feels like an ice-rink out on the porch. I'm going back in. You be careful!"
"Okay, Dad!"
I could here Vaughn's faint meow, as she picked her way across the meadow through the snow.
"C'mon, Vaughn! Here, kitty! Come on!"
"Meow!"
She rubbed herself against my leg, as I finished adjusting the telescope. Then I put her in my lap, as I sat down on the chair that I always leave there. I covered her up with my jacket, since she was already beginning to shiver from the cold.
The sky was, of course, even more awesome seen through the God of Telescopic Insight. Everything was so clear, so real. It was as if a barrier that had always existed between myself and the sky was lifted, and I felt closer to the infinity of space than ever. The cold didn't seem to bother me at all. I just sat there, transfixed, my one open eye glued to the end of the telescope as I drifted off into the nether reaches of the universe. The glowing warmth of the moon and stars comforted me simply by their presence.
Soon, without realizing it, I guess, I lost all awareness of my surroundings. I even forgot about poor old Vaughn in my lap, who was probably asleep by then, but hopefully warm inside my jacket. I couldn't say. I had completely forgotten about the reality of the meadow and the trees, and the cabin nearby with my father resting quietly beside the fire. The stars were magnificent. They became everything to me in that moment. I could feel their brilliant light filtering down through the telescope, filling me with life.
The Man in the Moon seemed to be smiling at me. And once, he winked—a long, drawn out wink, that left me surprised, but delighted.
"Come on up," he seemed to be saying.
"But how can I?" I asked. "I don't know how."
"Just let yourself go," he said. "Let yourself go—give yourself to the sky, and it will happen."
I didn't know what he meant, at first. I thought, "'Give myself to the sky?' What's that supposed to mean?"
But as the warmth and comfort of the sky above filled me with assurance and strength, and helped to release me from the familiar physical world around me, I began to feel the truth of what he meant. The weight of my body slowly became less of a burden. I no longer knew or cared that I had arms or legs or breasts or a brain, or even an eye that perceived all of this through the telescope. I only cared for the beautiful sky above. As I came to realize this, I became more a part of the sky with every precious moment.
Soon I felt the tunnel walls of the telescope completely fall away. And I gave myself to the sky—just like he'd said—leaping straight into the night like a rocket leaving its launch, the force propelling me upwards, higher and higher. My spirit rose above everything, far above the meadows and the trees and the mountains and the town, and even sweet little Vaughn and my father's beautiful cabin.
Pretty soon I was looking down at the Earth like it was a speck of dust on the ground, far from my sight, but still at my feet. I could even see my body sitting there in the meadow, my eye still attached to the telescope. I admit that it made me a little sad—especially when I saw my father come rushing out of the cabin in panic and run to my lifeless body, screaming,
"Aurora! Aurora! What has happened to you?" (Though I could only imagine what he was saying.)
But I soon recovered from the sorrow of leaving behind the sweet Earth and my beloved friends and family, and became quite content hovering there above everything in the eternal night. For of course, it is always night in space, just as I had always wished. And if you look closely enough as you stroll along beneath the night sky, you may notice a little sparkle in the darkness of the night that wasn't there at one time. And if you smile, I'll smile back, I promise.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Chapter 15 of "Following My Thumb" (click here for more info)
This is Chapter 15 from my book of travel stories, "Following My Thumb":
"Sweating It Out"
As things turned out, I ended up living for five weeks in the lush rainforests of the Na Pali Coast. I didn’t hike in with my friend Natty, however. Somehow we managed to miss meeting up that day at the convenience store. Instead I hitched to the trailhead and started the hike on my own; only to meet up way with another acquaintance from the meditation ceremony along the way.
It started raining not long after I’d headed up the narrow, muddy trail. The scattered showers steadily accelerated into a constant, unrelenting downpour, which persisted for seemingly unending hours. But at least it was a warm rain. I was hiking along in shorts, rain jacket over a tank top and a pair of sport sandals, and stayed warm enough. After trudging along the muddy trail through the timeless rainstorm, I stopped to rest at a run-down structure alongside the trail, near a small stream that rushed down one of the many green valleys.
I’d completely lost track of time due to the stormy skies. All I knew was that I’d been hiking for hours and was getting weary. The ramshackle wooden structure was missing two walls and most of its floorboards—an abandoned ranger shed, I later found out. But it kept out the worst of the rain, and was much better than sitting in the mud by the trail while I took a break. I set my pack against one of the inside walls and sat down where a few of the remaining floorboards were joined together. While I was munching on some cheese and crackers, someone came hiking up the trail through the deluge, and then walked decisively over to the little shack to join me.
“Hey man, what’s up? Gabriel, right? Remember me? Caleb, from the little gathering yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah—how’s it going?” I said, recognizing him once he pulled down the hood of his rain jacket.
“I’m doing great,” he said. “Lovin’ this storm, keeps you cool while hiking. I hope it clears up tomorrow though, and dries things out. Gets old camping in the rain…So are you sleeping here tonight, too? We could make a fire together. I’ve got a big pot for cooking up some grub.”
“Well, I was hoping to make it all the way out to the Kalapani Valley today,” I said, as he threw down his pack and sat down beside me. “You’re going to sleep here? I was just taking a quick snack break.”
“This is only about the halfway point. We’ve come six miles from the trailhead. It’s another five out to the Kalapani Valley, and it doesn‘t get any easier. It’s already evening, it‘ll be dark in another hour. There’s only one another place to camp along the way, and it’s tough to find unless you know where it‘s at. So I’d say plan to sleep here, unless you feel like hiking in the dark and the rain.”
“Not really…Damn, I didn’t realize it was that late. Oh well, no big hurry of course. I’m just excited to see what it‘s like out there. Thought it would be pretty spectacular to wake up in the morning to the sight of the valley. But I guess I’ll go ahead and crash here with you then, if you don’t mind.”
“Hey, not at all—love the company.”
There was barely enough room for the both of us to lay out our sleeping bags on the few dry planks of wood that were left of the structure’s floor. We made a small fire on the ground nearby from some dry timber lying around inside the shack, and cooked up rice and soup for dinner. We stayed awake for a while, listening to the constant drumming of the rain, staring into the fire and sharing our various wanderings. Eventually we crawled into our warm sleeping bags on the hard wooden planks, as the rain continued pouring down and dripping all around us.
The following day, the rain had given way to clear blue skies. The two of us ate a quick granola breakfast, stuffed our backpacks and continued on our hike through the rainforest. The trail went up and down a series of valleys as it meandered along the Na Pali coastline. Most of these valleys were narrow, steep, crowded thick with jungle and lacking anything resembling a beach. But at the end of the eleven-mile trail, at which point the rugged cliffs became too steep even for the hiking trail to continue, there was a wide, sandy beach and a campground nestled between the ocean and the steep cliffs. Just past the camping area was a pristine waterfall, which made a perfect natural shower. It fell down a sheer rock face that dropped right onto the beach, the official end of the road for us bipeds. Only a few goats (most of them set free from domesticity by the hurricane that hit Kauai in 1992) were brave and agile enough to make it past that point.
Another trail also led inland, away from the beach and the main trail, two miles up into the wide, lush Kalapani Valley. Scattered throughout the valley grew papaya, mango, orange, guava, passion fruit, ginger and a variety of other exotic fruits and vegetables. Apparently there had also been coconut palm trees growing out there at one time. But the rangers had cut them all down to try and keep the likes of us from living in the jungle, since they were a reliable food source. Not that it had worked—as I was soon to find out.
Caleb and I stumbled wearily into the beachside campground later that afternoon, exhausted from two days of hiking one of the most difficult trails in the U.S. We soon found ourselves reenergized however, upon finding others from the meditation ceremony already gathering together for our full moon celebration. They had set up camp at the base of a cliff near the campground, where a large rock overhang provided natural shelter from the rain and wind. There was enough room there for a dozen or so folks to hang out during the day, or else stretch out for the night. And there was a large stone fire pit for cooking meals, complete with a bench made from a broken surfboard and driftwood.
We both gave a hearty “Aloha!” as we strolled up to the camp—and received a round of welcoming hellos and alohas back from the familiar people sitting around the sandy clearing. We quickly unbuckled our heavy backpacks, and with groans of relief and gratitude tossed them into the reddish dirt.
We sprawled out on our packs to relax from our hike and catch up with everyone as to their own adventures getting out to the valley, as well as take in the remarkable beauty of our surroundings. Swaying palm trees were scattered throughout the nearby camping area, and we could easily see and hear the ocean waves crashing nearby. Given our grimy state, the sounds of those waves were soon calling us seductively. Once Caleb and I were feeling rested enough to momentarily get off our asses, we mustered up the gumption to take a swim, both to wash off the dirt and sweat from our disgruntled bodies as well as shift our minds into an entirely different frame of being. We grabbed our towels from the bowels of our backpacks, and limped towards the beckoning water.
We immersed ourselves in the waves with yelps of splendid delight, and then lay placidly on our backs as the gentle waves massaged our aching bodies. The view from the ocean, looking back at the coastline, was staggering. Craggy cliffs towered hundreds of feet above the beachside camping area. We could see our group of friends through the palm trees, hanging out at the base of the cliff overhang. Up the coast a little ways from where we’d just hiked, the gently sloping Kalapani Valley itself rose steadily away from the ocean. And the stunningly rugged, burnt red and deep green cliffs of the Na Pali Coast stretched away from us in both directions, with no signs of roads, houses, antennas, beach umbrellas or other necessities of the modern world. It was as if the rest of civilization were an ocean away. And for all we cared at that point, it could have been and we wouldn’t have minded in the slightest.
I hadn’t planned on spending so long camping in the Kalapani Valley. My flight back to San Francisco left in mid-March, leaving me six more weeks on the Hawaiian Islands. I’d figured I would probably spend a week or so there on the Na Pali Coast, a few days at other spots on Kauai, and then hop over and explore some of the other islands. But out at Kalapani, one day flowed so effortlessly into the next that it was hard just to pack up and leave, without a heck of a good reason for doing so. I figured that if I were enjoying myself right where I was, I might as well just stay there.
And besides, I seemed to have lucked out with the weather. Winter was the rainy season on the Hawaiian Islands, and it generally rained a little every day, often for days or weeks without end. But during my first three weeks in the Kalapani Valley, it was clear, sunny and warm almost every day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. And yet, because it was winter and this wasn’t such an easy place to get to, there were few other people out there other than our rag-tag group of assorted wandering travelers.
In the course of the next few days more people showed up for the full moon get-together—including my friend Natty, who had been delayed by some personal business. Soon there was a group of about fifteen of us all camped out at the base of the cliff. A few more also set up their tents in the official campsites nearby. We cooked up dinner together at the fire pit each night and made music with a few drums, guitars and even a mandolin that someone had hiked in. We spent the days hanging out on the beach in the sun and swimming in the ocean, or else hiking up into the valley to search for fruit or swim in the creek that flowed down through the valley.
As we explored the surrounding area, we all kept our eyes open for a good place to hold our ceremony. Eventually someone found the perfect spot—near where the creek entered the ocean, and a little ways off the main hiking path. Amidst a ring of boulders was a flat, grassy area, which seemed almost to have been designed for such sacred ceremonies. There was plenty of room to build the sweat lodge and a fire pit, and still have room for us to gather around. The creek was close enough to bathe in after sweating and the area was clear of trees or branches overhead, so that we could see the whole of the night sky and the full moon, once it came out.
Some of us had built sweat lodges before and knew the basics of how to do it. We’d come across some green bamboo once while hiking up in the valley, which we figured would work well for building the basic structure. On the day of the full moon we harvested about twenty thin, flexible bamboo branches and took them down to the ceremony site.
It took a handful of us about half a day to construct the sweat lodge. It only needed to be strong enough to hold up a few blankets draped over it, so didn’t have to be a work of engineering perfection. The flexible branches were simply impaled into the ground and then bent over to connect with a stick from the opposite side. These were then tied together in the center, about five feet off the ground. A series of eight pairs of bamboo sticks were each bent over in a circle and tied together in such a fashion. More sticks were then bent and tied around the sides to provide further support.
When finished after just a few hours, it was a small dome about seven or eight feet across—just large enough for a small group to sit huddled inside. The framework was then covered with all of our available blankets, sleeping bags and tarps, to make it as insulated as possible and thus as hot and humid as possible. Like a makeshift sauna, the main purpose of the sweat lodge was simply to get inside, get overheated and sweat. The marked difference between a sauna and a sweat lodge however, is that more than just getting inside and sweating, there is a ceremonial and spiritual aspect to the experience.
While a group of us were busy building the structure, others were collecting armfuls of firewood as well as large lava rocks, which would serve to bring the heat inside the lodge. Later that afternoon, we started a roaring fire in a fire pit, five or six feet away from the entrance to the lodge. Thirty or so of the volcanic rocks were then placed into the raging fire and more wood was laid on top of them. We heated the rocks steadily over the next two hours, as people gathered around the flames both to be warmed and mesmerized by it, as well as watch the sun begin its descent into the ocean.
Once the rocks were good and hot, glowing as red as the setting sun, we began moving them one at a time inside the sweat lodge using a sturdy forked stick. They were placed down in a small hole that was dug into the center of the structure, to keep them away from the bare skin of those inside the lodge. After six or seven hot rocks had been brought inside the sweat lodge, all who wished to participate in the first round proceeded to strip naked, get down on their hands and knees and crawl through the small entrance hole into the darkened lodge. A few people stayed outside to watch the fire, attend to the blankets covering the structure and await the next round.
Once all were huddled inside, the blankets were pulled down to cover the entrance, leaving us in stuffy yet blessed darkness. We could feel the heat emanating from the glowing rocks as we sat blindly in the center of our little circle of friends. Once everyone was sitting cross-legged, facing the hot rocks, a handful of water was poured onto the pile of rocks—and a cloud of hot steam rose upwards to greet our faces and naked bodies. This was when things really started to heat up, and the actual sweating began.
As water was poured, handful by handful onto the rocks, the small lodge became hotter and hotter. It took a good while, perhaps twenty or more minutes, for the heated rocks to lose their heat, even when pouring cold water over them. The small space seemed to get smaller and smaller as the steam enveloped us, and some huddled towards the coolness of the ground. The point of the sweat lodge wasn’t just to warm up and sweat a little, but to be challenged beyond one’s comfort level, and even beyond what a person might think they could endure. Anyone could leave at any time if they felt they needed to. But we all wanted to go deep within ourselves and find the strength to endure and to learn from the challenging environment.
We went around the circle and made prayers, or else gave thanks for whatever we felt grateful for in our lives. A bottle of water was passed around, for those who needed to cool their throats or faces. If it got to the point where it seemed too hot to bear any longer, there was always the option of putting one’s face down in the cool grass, and perhaps finding a little air leaking through from the outside. Or else one could simply pray to Great Spirit or whatever higher power a person might recognize, for additional strength to endure the intense heat through to the very end. Sometimes humility and surrender to the moment at hand can give the necessary endurance to make it through what may seem an unbearable situation. This was one of the important aspects of the sweat lodge ceremony—to be reminded of both our potential inner strength and power, as well as how small we really are in the face of the natural elements.
We all made it through the first round, though not without plenty of moaning and praying. As the rocks eventually began to cool, the last of the water was poured onto them for a final burst of steam on our hot, dripping bodies. At last, we yelled to the people outside that we were done, and someone came to lift the blankets away from the entrance. A flood of cool air blew in on us as the blankets were lifted, and at the same time we were all dazzled by the sparkling light of the campfire. We proceeded to crawl out of the lodge one at a time, grateful for the refreshing night air and light of the fire. Stumbling a little with lightheadedness, we filed down to the nearby creek to dunk our bodies in the cool water, and rinse off the sweat and dirt.
Meanwhile, the lodge was being prepared for the second round, as more hot rocks were brought inside by those who had been attending the fire. Anyone who hadn’t participated in the first round then crawled into the lodge. Then someone yelled down to those of us at the creek that there was still some room left inside. A few went back for another round, while others warmed up beside the fire. This process was repeated throughout the evening as the full moon crested the cliffs to rise above us; and finally the last of the hot, glowing rocks was taken from the dark red coals of the fire, hours later.
"Following My Thumb: A Decade of Unabashed Wanderlust" tells of my travels throughout the 1990s to Europe, the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and India. Click the subject line at the top of this page for more info.
"Sweating It Out"
As things turned out, I ended up living for five weeks in the lush rainforests of the Na Pali Coast. I didn’t hike in with my friend Natty, however. Somehow we managed to miss meeting up that day at the convenience store. Instead I hitched to the trailhead and started the hike on my own; only to meet up way with another acquaintance from the meditation ceremony along the way.
It started raining not long after I’d headed up the narrow, muddy trail. The scattered showers steadily accelerated into a constant, unrelenting downpour, which persisted for seemingly unending hours. But at least it was a warm rain. I was hiking along in shorts, rain jacket over a tank top and a pair of sport sandals, and stayed warm enough. After trudging along the muddy trail through the timeless rainstorm, I stopped to rest at a run-down structure alongside the trail, near a small stream that rushed down one of the many green valleys.
I’d completely lost track of time due to the stormy skies. All I knew was that I’d been hiking for hours and was getting weary. The ramshackle wooden structure was missing two walls and most of its floorboards—an abandoned ranger shed, I later found out. But it kept out the worst of the rain, and was much better than sitting in the mud by the trail while I took a break. I set my pack against one of the inside walls and sat down where a few of the remaining floorboards were joined together. While I was munching on some cheese and crackers, someone came hiking up the trail through the deluge, and then walked decisively over to the little shack to join me.
“Hey man, what’s up? Gabriel, right? Remember me? Caleb, from the little gathering yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah—how’s it going?” I said, recognizing him once he pulled down the hood of his rain jacket.
“I’m doing great,” he said. “Lovin’ this storm, keeps you cool while hiking. I hope it clears up tomorrow though, and dries things out. Gets old camping in the rain…So are you sleeping here tonight, too? We could make a fire together. I’ve got a big pot for cooking up some grub.”
“Well, I was hoping to make it all the way out to the Kalapani Valley today,” I said, as he threw down his pack and sat down beside me. “You’re going to sleep here? I was just taking a quick snack break.”
“This is only about the halfway point. We’ve come six miles from the trailhead. It’s another five out to the Kalapani Valley, and it doesn‘t get any easier. It’s already evening, it‘ll be dark in another hour. There’s only one another place to camp along the way, and it’s tough to find unless you know where it‘s at. So I’d say plan to sleep here, unless you feel like hiking in the dark and the rain.”
“Not really…Damn, I didn’t realize it was that late. Oh well, no big hurry of course. I’m just excited to see what it‘s like out there. Thought it would be pretty spectacular to wake up in the morning to the sight of the valley. But I guess I’ll go ahead and crash here with you then, if you don’t mind.”
“Hey, not at all—love the company.”
There was barely enough room for the both of us to lay out our sleeping bags on the few dry planks of wood that were left of the structure’s floor. We made a small fire on the ground nearby from some dry timber lying around inside the shack, and cooked up rice and soup for dinner. We stayed awake for a while, listening to the constant drumming of the rain, staring into the fire and sharing our various wanderings. Eventually we crawled into our warm sleeping bags on the hard wooden planks, as the rain continued pouring down and dripping all around us.
The following day, the rain had given way to clear blue skies. The two of us ate a quick granola breakfast, stuffed our backpacks and continued on our hike through the rainforest. The trail went up and down a series of valleys as it meandered along the Na Pali coastline. Most of these valleys were narrow, steep, crowded thick with jungle and lacking anything resembling a beach. But at the end of the eleven-mile trail, at which point the rugged cliffs became too steep even for the hiking trail to continue, there was a wide, sandy beach and a campground nestled between the ocean and the steep cliffs. Just past the camping area was a pristine waterfall, which made a perfect natural shower. It fell down a sheer rock face that dropped right onto the beach, the official end of the road for us bipeds. Only a few goats (most of them set free from domesticity by the hurricane that hit Kauai in 1992) were brave and agile enough to make it past that point.
Another trail also led inland, away from the beach and the main trail, two miles up into the wide, lush Kalapani Valley. Scattered throughout the valley grew papaya, mango, orange, guava, passion fruit, ginger and a variety of other exotic fruits and vegetables. Apparently there had also been coconut palm trees growing out there at one time. But the rangers had cut them all down to try and keep the likes of us from living in the jungle, since they were a reliable food source. Not that it had worked—as I was soon to find out.
Caleb and I stumbled wearily into the beachside campground later that afternoon, exhausted from two days of hiking one of the most difficult trails in the U.S. We soon found ourselves reenergized however, upon finding others from the meditation ceremony already gathering together for our full moon celebration. They had set up camp at the base of a cliff near the campground, where a large rock overhang provided natural shelter from the rain and wind. There was enough room there for a dozen or so folks to hang out during the day, or else stretch out for the night. And there was a large stone fire pit for cooking meals, complete with a bench made from a broken surfboard and driftwood.
We both gave a hearty “Aloha!” as we strolled up to the camp—and received a round of welcoming hellos and alohas back from the familiar people sitting around the sandy clearing. We quickly unbuckled our heavy backpacks, and with groans of relief and gratitude tossed them into the reddish dirt.
We sprawled out on our packs to relax from our hike and catch up with everyone as to their own adventures getting out to the valley, as well as take in the remarkable beauty of our surroundings. Swaying palm trees were scattered throughout the nearby camping area, and we could easily see and hear the ocean waves crashing nearby. Given our grimy state, the sounds of those waves were soon calling us seductively. Once Caleb and I were feeling rested enough to momentarily get off our asses, we mustered up the gumption to take a swim, both to wash off the dirt and sweat from our disgruntled bodies as well as shift our minds into an entirely different frame of being. We grabbed our towels from the bowels of our backpacks, and limped towards the beckoning water.
We immersed ourselves in the waves with yelps of splendid delight, and then lay placidly on our backs as the gentle waves massaged our aching bodies. The view from the ocean, looking back at the coastline, was staggering. Craggy cliffs towered hundreds of feet above the beachside camping area. We could see our group of friends through the palm trees, hanging out at the base of the cliff overhang. Up the coast a little ways from where we’d just hiked, the gently sloping Kalapani Valley itself rose steadily away from the ocean. And the stunningly rugged, burnt red and deep green cliffs of the Na Pali Coast stretched away from us in both directions, with no signs of roads, houses, antennas, beach umbrellas or other necessities of the modern world. It was as if the rest of civilization were an ocean away. And for all we cared at that point, it could have been and we wouldn’t have minded in the slightest.
I hadn’t planned on spending so long camping in the Kalapani Valley. My flight back to San Francisco left in mid-March, leaving me six more weeks on the Hawaiian Islands. I’d figured I would probably spend a week or so there on the Na Pali Coast, a few days at other spots on Kauai, and then hop over and explore some of the other islands. But out at Kalapani, one day flowed so effortlessly into the next that it was hard just to pack up and leave, without a heck of a good reason for doing so. I figured that if I were enjoying myself right where I was, I might as well just stay there.
And besides, I seemed to have lucked out with the weather. Winter was the rainy season on the Hawaiian Islands, and it generally rained a little every day, often for days or weeks without end. But during my first three weeks in the Kalapani Valley, it was clear, sunny and warm almost every day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. And yet, because it was winter and this wasn’t such an easy place to get to, there were few other people out there other than our rag-tag group of assorted wandering travelers.
In the course of the next few days more people showed up for the full moon get-together—including my friend Natty, who had been delayed by some personal business. Soon there was a group of about fifteen of us all camped out at the base of the cliff. A few more also set up their tents in the official campsites nearby. We cooked up dinner together at the fire pit each night and made music with a few drums, guitars and even a mandolin that someone had hiked in. We spent the days hanging out on the beach in the sun and swimming in the ocean, or else hiking up into the valley to search for fruit or swim in the creek that flowed down through the valley.
As we explored the surrounding area, we all kept our eyes open for a good place to hold our ceremony. Eventually someone found the perfect spot—near where the creek entered the ocean, and a little ways off the main hiking path. Amidst a ring of boulders was a flat, grassy area, which seemed almost to have been designed for such sacred ceremonies. There was plenty of room to build the sweat lodge and a fire pit, and still have room for us to gather around. The creek was close enough to bathe in after sweating and the area was clear of trees or branches overhead, so that we could see the whole of the night sky and the full moon, once it came out.
Some of us had built sweat lodges before and knew the basics of how to do it. We’d come across some green bamboo once while hiking up in the valley, which we figured would work well for building the basic structure. On the day of the full moon we harvested about twenty thin, flexible bamboo branches and took them down to the ceremony site.
It took a handful of us about half a day to construct the sweat lodge. It only needed to be strong enough to hold up a few blankets draped over it, so didn’t have to be a work of engineering perfection. The flexible branches were simply impaled into the ground and then bent over to connect with a stick from the opposite side. These were then tied together in the center, about five feet off the ground. A series of eight pairs of bamboo sticks were each bent over in a circle and tied together in such a fashion. More sticks were then bent and tied around the sides to provide further support.
When finished after just a few hours, it was a small dome about seven or eight feet across—just large enough for a small group to sit huddled inside. The framework was then covered with all of our available blankets, sleeping bags and tarps, to make it as insulated as possible and thus as hot and humid as possible. Like a makeshift sauna, the main purpose of the sweat lodge was simply to get inside, get overheated and sweat. The marked difference between a sauna and a sweat lodge however, is that more than just getting inside and sweating, there is a ceremonial and spiritual aspect to the experience.
While a group of us were busy building the structure, others were collecting armfuls of firewood as well as large lava rocks, which would serve to bring the heat inside the lodge. Later that afternoon, we started a roaring fire in a fire pit, five or six feet away from the entrance to the lodge. Thirty or so of the volcanic rocks were then placed into the raging fire and more wood was laid on top of them. We heated the rocks steadily over the next two hours, as people gathered around the flames both to be warmed and mesmerized by it, as well as watch the sun begin its descent into the ocean.
Once the rocks were good and hot, glowing as red as the setting sun, we began moving them one at a time inside the sweat lodge using a sturdy forked stick. They were placed down in a small hole that was dug into the center of the structure, to keep them away from the bare skin of those inside the lodge. After six or seven hot rocks had been brought inside the sweat lodge, all who wished to participate in the first round proceeded to strip naked, get down on their hands and knees and crawl through the small entrance hole into the darkened lodge. A few people stayed outside to watch the fire, attend to the blankets covering the structure and await the next round.
Once all were huddled inside, the blankets were pulled down to cover the entrance, leaving us in stuffy yet blessed darkness. We could feel the heat emanating from the glowing rocks as we sat blindly in the center of our little circle of friends. Once everyone was sitting cross-legged, facing the hot rocks, a handful of water was poured onto the pile of rocks—and a cloud of hot steam rose upwards to greet our faces and naked bodies. This was when things really started to heat up, and the actual sweating began.
As water was poured, handful by handful onto the rocks, the small lodge became hotter and hotter. It took a good while, perhaps twenty or more minutes, for the heated rocks to lose their heat, even when pouring cold water over them. The small space seemed to get smaller and smaller as the steam enveloped us, and some huddled towards the coolness of the ground. The point of the sweat lodge wasn’t just to warm up and sweat a little, but to be challenged beyond one’s comfort level, and even beyond what a person might think they could endure. Anyone could leave at any time if they felt they needed to. But we all wanted to go deep within ourselves and find the strength to endure and to learn from the challenging environment.
We went around the circle and made prayers, or else gave thanks for whatever we felt grateful for in our lives. A bottle of water was passed around, for those who needed to cool their throats or faces. If it got to the point where it seemed too hot to bear any longer, there was always the option of putting one’s face down in the cool grass, and perhaps finding a little air leaking through from the outside. Or else one could simply pray to Great Spirit or whatever higher power a person might recognize, for additional strength to endure the intense heat through to the very end. Sometimes humility and surrender to the moment at hand can give the necessary endurance to make it through what may seem an unbearable situation. This was one of the important aspects of the sweat lodge ceremony—to be reminded of both our potential inner strength and power, as well as how small we really are in the face of the natural elements.
We all made it through the first round, though not without plenty of moaning and praying. As the rocks eventually began to cool, the last of the water was poured onto them for a final burst of steam on our hot, dripping bodies. At last, we yelled to the people outside that we were done, and someone came to lift the blankets away from the entrance. A flood of cool air blew in on us as the blankets were lifted, and at the same time we were all dazzled by the sparkling light of the campfire. We proceeded to crawl out of the lodge one at a time, grateful for the refreshing night air and light of the fire. Stumbling a little with lightheadedness, we filed down to the nearby creek to dunk our bodies in the cool water, and rinse off the sweat and dirt.
Meanwhile, the lodge was being prepared for the second round, as more hot rocks were brought inside by those who had been attending the fire. Anyone who hadn’t participated in the first round then crawled into the lodge. Then someone yelled down to those of us at the creek that there was still some room left inside. A few went back for another round, while others warmed up beside the fire. This process was repeated throughout the evening as the full moon crested the cliffs to rise above us; and finally the last of the hot, glowing rocks was taken from the dark red coals of the fire, hours later.
"Following My Thumb: A Decade of Unabashed Wanderlust" tells of my travels throughout the 1990s to Europe, the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and India. Click the subject line at the top of this page for more info.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Ganesh Made Me Do It (click here for more of Gabriel's writings)
This is the first two chapters of a book I started last summer, tentatively titled "Ganesh Made Me Do It", that is a mix of fiction and non-fiction. Some of it is directly from my own travels and assorted experiences, and a lot of it is pure fantasy (like pretty much all of the first chapter, except that I did hitchhike across Nevada in the middle of summer once...but I was going the other direction, and no pretty girls in RVs came along to give me a ride). However the book has been neglected and there are only a few more chapters after the two that I've included here. One of these days I do hope to continue from where I've left off because I like where this is going. Maybe I just need some more traveling experiences in order to have more ideas to draw from, we'll see...
Chapter 1. A skinny dip…
The day began with thumb unfurled to the world, ready for action, shirt off under the blazing blue sky, eyes half open behind the protective shield of my sunglasses, and a hazy, sluggish mind from intermittent sleep through the desert heat of a simmering July night. Where I’d slept wasn’t far from where I stood, on Highway 50 somewhere a long ways east of Fallon, lost in the heart of the lonely state of Nevada.
Somehow, that loneliness was heightened more during the light of day, without the comforting blanket of myriad twinkling stars to ponder overhead. It was just my lone soul, the great expanse of wide-open starkness, and a thin sliver of road leading me onwards. And, based on the previous day, a car roughly every half hour, that brought only a glimmer of hope as it approached from across the expanse, for what seemed an eternity of longing before it finally flew by at a mile a minute, with nary a smile nor faintest teardrop of humanity to spare a bedraggled, sullen traveler; and I was thrown back into the despair of the lonely road.
Okay, so maybe I was getting a little melodramatic. I’d spent maybe four hours hitchhiking there the previous evening, before bagging it and crawling into my sleeping bag under the stars. I had food, I had water. Hitching had never failed me before, and surely it wouldn’t this time, no matter how scorching the desert sun might become. The pavement I stood beside was my umbilical cord to civilization, and one way or another it would provide the sustenance and guidance I sought. Or at least, so I hoped.
A crow flew not too far overhead, and cawed. I looked up, squinting into the sun, whistled towards it and it turned and came back. Were crows normally out in the middle of the vast, empty desert? It cawed again as it peered down at me cock-eyed, a faint glimmer of pity in its eyes. No doubt I was the one who looked sorely out of place.
I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted in its direction:
“Hello, Mr. Crow, how are you today?”
It continued on its way with no need to look back.
For a long while, nothing happened.
Then, off in the distance, a speck of movement materialized out of the east. This was what I was waiting for, since I was westerly bound. It shimmered and grew until it revealed itself to be a brownish mini-van, flying along with reckless ambitions of speediness.
As it grew closer, I heard a heartbeat. It was pulsing with music, which I heard long before I picked up the sound of the engine. As it came closer, I realized it was one of my favorite songs: “Shake Your Hips” by the Rolling Stones. The windows were apparently rolled down, blasting the euphoric mix of drums, sax and bass into the desert. I began to nod my head and shake my leg in rhythm. As it neared, I raised my thumb high overhead, drumming my leg with my other hand, staring down the vehicle with an aura of coolness mixed with desperation, hoping my evident enjoyment of their music would translate into mutual camaraderie or perhaps compassion on their part.
If it did, it failed to produce the desired result. They flew by as a cacophony of mayhem piercing the subtle sounds of the desert. The van was occupied by five crazed-looking twenty-something guys all with squiggly, dark hair, who seemed on the verge of exploding from how vigorously they were singing along to the song in unison. As they passed, they all simultaneously stuck their arms out of the windows, and gave me a huge thumbs-up and a massive yell:
“Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!”
It wasn’t entirely clear if they were offering enthusiastic encouragement, or else mercilessly mocking me. I turned with my thumb still held in the air as they continued down the road in the other direction and saw, spray-painted sloppily on the back of the van, the words: “Cocky Mystery Crew world tour!!!” Whether they were a rock band, circus act or kinky sex show of some kind would, true to their name, remain a mystery.
Back to the silence of the desert, torn asunder by the momentary outburst of perverted humanity. The infectious song was driven firmly into my subconscious, leaving me shaking with the urge to dance. Unfortunately, the lyrics to that song were completely unintelligible, other than the “shake your hips” part; so that I was unable to fill the limitless void around me with even a lame attempt at a Mick Jagger impersonation. Instead, I just jumped and hopped around on the highway for a while, with the occasional yip for good measure; until the incessant, all-consuming silence took over once again and the music slowly faded from my mind.
The crow came back, and again cawed. I echoed back with a feeble caw of my own.
Another car came down the road, this time from the west, heading from whence I’d come, no use to me other than a comforting reminder that humankind was in fact still in existence. It was a shiny, silver Lexus, a clean-cut looking businessman behind the wheel, shrouded in sunglasses of his own. I stood there in solemn, shirtless intensity, only a tapping finger remaining from the previous, peculiar automotive passing. He looked at me curiously, his head cocked momentarily not unlike the crow’s, as he flew by like a dazzling silver bullet. I raised a hand and gave a little wave, and he nodded back with a subdued gesture of acknowledgment.
And again, for a while, nothing happened.
Finally, I detected another movement out of the east. Something subtle fluttered within my bowels. Perhaps this was my ticket out of there. I hoped and prayed, as the faint speck of a vehicle emerged from the horizon and drew ever closer. Or lumbered, I should say. It was an RV, painted the precise, colorless beige of the desert. My heart and thumb sank. Catching a ride in an RV was about as likely as being picked up by a passing UFO.
The awkward vehicle careened towards me at breakneck speed. It was weaving all over the highway. I grabbed my backpack and stepped off the road a little ways, in case it veered towards me. I couldn’t quite see who was inside because of the tinting of the windows. I raised my arm half-heartedly. It flew past…and then screeched to a halt about a hundred yards down the road, and began backing up. Deliverance!
I grabbed my pack and sprinted to meet it, as it came to a teetering halt.
I reached up to the passenger door and threw it wide open, met by a blast of refrigerated air. A lone woman sat in the driver’s seat staring down at me, a vision of beauty. Long dark hair, dark eyes, soft, kind face with feminine lips, a red tank top plastered to her torso and a flowery, flowing pink and purple dress enveloping both her lower half and the seat.
“Hey there, hitchhiker man, where you headed?” she said straightforwardly.
“Reno!” I said, as I lifted a leg onto the step up to the seat, and hovered in a fleeting, tangled moment of anticipation and dread as I awaited her reply–thumbs up or thumbs down.
“Great! I’m going to Tahoe, so I can get you there. Hop on up, you must be ready to get out of that glaring sun.”
“Oh man, tell me about it.”
I hauled myself up out of my potentially imminent demise, squeezed my pack between the seats, slammed the door shut and relaxed back into the blissful embrace of chilled brown leather.
She gave me a brief, delicate glance, and somehow a glint of sunlight reflected off one of her teeth, almost blinding me in a brilliant flash that induced in me an overpowering drunken giddiness. My abrupt transition from outcast desert flotsam to basking in the gaze of an air-conditioned RV goddess was more than I was prepared for. Good thing I had the sunglasses to hide behind, as I laid back and tried to act normal.
She hit the gas and we shot forward.
“So, how the hell did you end up right there? I haven’t seen a road or anything for miles.”
“Well…yesterday I got a ride a ways back, I forget the town…oh yeah, Ely I think…with this guy that was going to some business conference in San Fran. All of a sudden he realized he’d forgotten his portfolio, or something or other, and he had to turn around right there and drive all the way back to Salt Lake City.”
“Bummer! For both of you.”
“Yeah. No shit. I’m not sure which one of us was more screwed.”
She’d continued weaving back and forth all over the road as we flew along.
“Why the wacky driving?” I asked, since upon further observation it seemed deliberate.
“I don’t know. I figure with all this road to spare and hardly anybody on it, might as well make use of it.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense,” I replied…which of course it didn’t.
“I’m Allison, by the way,” she said as she took her right hand off the wheel and gently glided it towards me. “Allison Stoic.”
“Interesting name. I’m Jacob Caulfield, Jake, either way, whatever…” I replied as our hands met and embraced, and I drifted further towards a state of unrepentant delirium. She slid her hand back towards the wheel.
“So what’s in Reno?” she asked.
“I’m going to visit my brother and sister-in-law,” I said. “Other than that, not too much.”
“Where are you hitching from?”
“Well, I was at this bluegrass festival in Colorado, in Telluride. I live in Portland, Oregon, but I took a couple weeks off work for a mid-summer traveling adventure. So, I’m making my way back home. Just five more days of freedom.”
“Cool, that sounds like fun! I love bluegrass music too.”
“Oh yeah, good times, for sure. We boogied our butts off.”
She glanced over at me again and smiled.
“So what’s the deal with the RV?” I asked. “Anybody else in here, sleeping in the back or something?”
“Nope. I’m all on my own. I’m actually getting paid to deliver this thing to somebody in California, in Tahoe like I said. I found out about the gig online. I’m actually from Alaska. I’m an archeologist normally, but I also fight forest fires during the summer. It’s great money, ‘cause you get hazard pay and plus it’s pretty exciting. So they call you up and tell you, ‘We’ve got a fire in such-and-such place’ and then you have just a day or two to hop on a plane and get down there. I was in New Mexico for two weeks fighting fires there. You probably heard about them on the news, they were friggin’ huge! But it’s all contained now. So then I found this thing with the RV, had to get myself up to Durango to pick it up, and then set up a flight back home, flying out of San Fran.”
“Crazy,” was all I could think to say.
Silenced gripped us both for a time, as we watched the stream of desert solitude rushing past.
“Hey, you want to go skinny-dipping?” she suddenly burst out.
“Who, me?” I blurted.
And, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I thought.
And then, regaining some scant measure of composure: “Yeah, that sounds great. I could stand to wash off some grime, that’s for sure.”
“Alright, next time we see a river, we’re finding a good swimming hole.”
A long, long hour of sporadic conversation pierced by rampant romantic visions later, we crossed a bridge over a cool, clear, green river. A gravel road on the other side of the bridge followed the water, and she turned onto it. We drove about a mile upstream, and came to a pull-off alongside the road. It continued onwards from there towards a hunched group of hills on the horizon, which offered negligible evidence of justification for the road’s continuance. But if it had been my rig and I wasn’t destination-bound elsewhere, I would certainly have been tempted to keep the pedal on the metal and find out. I mean, after the skinny-dipping.
She pulled over, turned off the car…and then stretched her bare, tanned arms high above her head, as she let out a soft groan of exquisite release and then turned her head to sniff her own armpit.
“Yep, getting stinky. I could definitely stand to wash off. That water is gonna feel damn gooooood, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah…No doubt about that,“ I said, as I adjusted my sunglasses.
We both glanced down towards the river, flowing languidly a little ways below the road.
“You need a towel?” she asked as she turned towards me, bringing a hand down to brush her cascading, velvety hair back behind her ear.
“I’m all set, got one in my pack here, somewhere.”
I dug around until I found it, as she reached back and grabbed a bright orangeish towel from behind my seat. Then we flung open the doors to confront the suffocating intensity of mid-summer’s-day middle-of-Nevada heat. It was far more intense now than when I’d been standing in it for hours, after being softened up by the soothing air conditioning.
“Fucking crap, it’s hot!” she said.
We followed a narrow, dusty path that led down to the river, where a thin strip of sandy beach nestled against the water. We paused there in the piercing sunlight for a moment, as we took in the peaceful, barren surroundings. Besides I wasn’t quite sure of protocol in this situation. Should I start undressing first, or politely wait for her to initiate the nakedness?
Screw it. I was halfway there already anyway. I unlaced my sneakers and chucked them into the sand, eased out of my jeans, socks and underwear simultaneously, and tossed the sunglasses onto the jumbled pile. Then I stepped without further hesitation into the delicious coolness of the river. I immersed myself with a pleasant, sanguine groan and backstroked out to the middle, though I could still touch the shallow, gravelly bottom. I looked back at her with a contented smile; only because, of course, she happened to be standing where I was looking.
“It’s so damned sweet!” I said. “You coming in?”
This was the moment of truth. The ultimate hitchhiker’s dream was materializing before my very eyes. It didn’t get any better than this, if you were luckier than a leprechaun in a rainbow-emblazoned field of four-leafed clovers.
“Of course!” she said, as she reached down to unbuckle her sandals. They found a home on the beach beside my tattered blue Nike’s. She looked towards my bobbing head in the undulating waters, and then the red tank top was whisked up and away and settled onto the sand. The flowing dress and undergarments came, slowly, down to her ankles as she wiggled her hips back and forth, and then she stood tall, brushed back her hair away from her face and stepped out of the flowery pile. And with that, there was nothing left to hide her glorious, dark-haired perfect womanhood.
I gazed from the corners of my dripping eyelids upon her luscious beauty, and she didn’t seem to mind. She stepped into the water, and settled in up to her waist as she drifted slowly towards me, all four of her eyes staring at me (and no, I’m not talking about glasses).
She gave a look of longing as she approached. Clearly we were thinking the very same thing. Her lips seemed to part, as her arm emerged from the water to reach towards my cheek. I moved through the river towards her to close the gap, knowing it was meant to be. My hand reached out and touched her moistened hair, as her trembling lips pouted and pursed in vulnerable surrender. I grasped her tender waist with my other arm beneath the water, pulled her towards me as our naked bodies converged…and our lips hastened towards ultimate sensual union.
It was right about then that an incessant blaring noise came out of nowhere, a high-pitched screech filled my ears, and something heavy slammed into my head. And then, tragically, I woke up.
Chapter 2. Back in the real world…
‘Damn!’ I thought, as reality seeped into my groggy consciousness, and I opened my eyes to the morning light shining upon my cluttered, cramped studio. The yowling sound had ceased, but the blaring continued. Ah, yes, my alarm. I reached over and hit snooze. Looking around my room, I saw my cat Pumpkin (he’s orange and roundish) sitting on the carpet, licking himself. A weighty copy of Steinbeck’s East of Eden was lying on the bed right next to my face, staring at me. I’d been meaning to read it for years. Finally, in frustration over being neglected, it had apparently attacked me.
I pieced the evidence together and figured out what had most likely happened: Pumpkin had been sitting atop the bookcase next to my bed when my alarm went off, sending him scurrying frantically with a feline howl, in the process dumping the nearest book directly onto my dozing personage, resulting in the shattering of a perfectly good hitchhiker’s dream. In short, it was a veritable quandary of perfectly orchestrated events, with catastrophic consequences to my love life. Although, the dream at least would have come crashing down anyway, regardless of the placement of my cat, due to my alarm’s robotic insistence that the day’s duties were about to begin.
I reached over to the bedside table and turned on my walkie-talkie. It hummed and lit up, and emitted a confident beep. I pushed the talk button and uttered sleepily into it:
“Jake to base. I’m ready to roll…” (which, obviously, I wasn’t).
A couple seconds later I heard back, “Gotcha Jake, we got nothin’ yet. I’ll let you know when something comes in.”
With that, I was on the clock; though I wasn’t actually getting paid yet, since we were paid on a per delivery basis, plus tips. I worked as a delivery guy for a local service that contracted with assorted area restaurants to bring their dishes to homes and businesses around the greater Portland area. Think advanced pizza delivery, with a cultural medley of 150 different restaurants to choose from.
Ostensibly, when I called in I was supposed to be ready to hit the road at a moment’s notice. But it could be two minutes before they sent me something, or an hour, since the lunch rush usually got off to a slow start. Just depended on how hungry the city was. I preferred to maximize my precious shut-eye. I mean, it was the crack of 10:30. I turned over and went back to sleep.
Twenty minutes later, the walkie-talkie beeped again and a voice blared out:
“Okay, Jake man, head on down to Yummy Garden Chinese.”
“Ten-four, Bob, heading that way.”
The flurry began as I tore away my blanket, rushed to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on my face and hair, pulled on pants, socks, shoes, shirt and a warm jacket (despite my dream, it was late fall), threw my portable breakfast of raw oats and raisins in my backpack and headed out the door, less than five minutes after the onset of consciousness.
The job was a frenetic adrenaline rush that paid the bills and then some, thanks to the generous tipping of Portlanders. If I ever felt inclined to write a book about it, which is doubtful, it would be called Adventures in Creative Parking. I confess, my flagrant violations of parking and other vehicular laws occurred on a more than hourly basis.
My favorite, shining instance of delivery heroism (depending on your perspective) occurred late one evening when I was stuck behind a line of other cars in the southeast industrial part of town, waiting for a train to go by. After the train had passed, the flashing red lights continued blinking, and the traffic arms refused to raise. Five minutes later (in delivery terms, an eternity) traffic still wasn't being allowed to resume. Something was stuck.
I eked myself out of the line of cars, turned around and headed back the other way. Two blocks later I took a left turn onto another through street, heading away from the direction the train had been going, hoping I'd find another place to cross the tracks. No luck, since all the other crossings were still flashing their red lights.
In an act of strategic gambling, desperation and unbridled testosterone, I turned onto a one-way street going the wrong way, and sped down it a full two blocks. No cars were on the other side waiting to cross the train tracks. I was able to shimmy my trusty Subaru around the traffic arm, cross over the tracks and continue up the street without incident back to busy Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, to make the delivery on time. What they didn't know (my managers, the customer and the cops) wouldn't hurt them. And as I mentioned, we were paid per delivery. The quicker the better. Sometimes you had to tweak the risk/benefit ratio a little in order to get out of a jam, and make a living.
But I wouldn't be a steely-nerved, slightly maniacal delivery man for much longer. A week later, I was departing the country and putting my life on indefinite pause for an extended traveling adventure to India and other far flung exotic destinations. I can't tell you the purpose of the trip, since it was shrouded somewhat in cryptic mystery even to me. You see, I was told to go there by a god. No, not by the big 'G' God. I've never talked to him (excuse me, Him). Rather, Ganesh told me to go¬–the full-bellied, fun-loving, elephant-headed "remover of obstacles" in Hindu mythology.
You see, ever since I'd taken a class on world religions back in college, Ganesh had been appearing before me at random, generally inconvenient times. Basically, he was stalking me. Sometimes it was to preach his ways of wisdom. Others, he was clearly just bored and lonely and needed someone to hang out with. Occasionally he would appear to offer specific advice or urgent instructions, which usually involved cajoling me into doing something I had zero intention of doing.
He once convinced me to shave my eyebrows, with no explanation as to what purpose it would serve. The day after doing so, I was standing in line at my favorite Mexican restaurant, waiting to order a plate of chicken enchiladas. After picking up my order to go, I headed out of the restaurant. A punk was standing in line, with a razor-sharp, jet black Mohawk, piercings in all apparent orifices and dangling parts, purple eye shadow, dressed head to toe in tight black studded leather and knee-high combat boots, polka-dotted tattoos all over his exposed head, and another tattoo straight across his forehead that read: "Death or New Jersey"; which, upon consideration, seemed a grammatically deficient statement since it wasn't clear, to me at least, whether New Jersey was then being equated with death or else was the antithesis of death…I guess he hadn't thought that one through completely.
He gave me a quizzical look as I rushed past.
"Dude, what the hell happened to your eyebrows?" he said.
This guy was in no position to be implying that I looked strange. I pondered for a few dozen milliseconds how to respond, and decided to go with the plain truth.
"Ganesh made me do it."
"Huh?"
"It's a long story..."
With that I rushed out the door, hopped in my car and sped off.
Three blocks later, at the next intersection, I was about to fly through it on a green light when two sports cars went careening across the intersection in front of me at breakneck speed, against the red, one furiously chasing the other. I missed them by perhaps twenty feet. A policeman parked in a nearby parking lot saw what had happened, and took off after them.
If it hadn't been for the few seconds I was delayed on account of the punk and my shaven eyebrows, me and my silver Subaru would have been one indistinguishable jumble of crushed and twisted metal amidst a three-car pile-up. Of course, I would have preferred a simple word of warning whispered into my ear to slow down a little, since those eyebrows took forever to grow back. But, the gods work in convoluted ways.
Ganesh wasn't always so helpful…such as the time he appeared next to the dinner table while I was on a first date with this girl I was seriously attracted to. I did my best to ignore him. But he was rambling on about how he'd lost his rat which, oddly enough, is what he rides on to get around. He thought maybe the little bugger had scurried off to the kitchen to nibble on some crumbs, and was worried he might be mistaken by the chefs as a regular, ungodly rat and swiftly caught or poisoned or who knew what. And then how would he get his portly frame to and fro?
I couldn't help finally trying to shut him up and shoo him away; which I then had to try and explain to my date was just a nervous reaction to the Coke I was drinking, since I didn't normally have caffeine. Needless to say, I didn't get even a kiss, let alone another date out of her. Ganesh said she was just going to break my heart anyway. But as far as I was concerned, it would have been worth it with her for even one good make-out session.
Speaking of women…It was later that day, following the Pumpkin alarm incident, that I got to thinking as I continued making my deliveries around town. Who was this Allison Stoic? Of course, it was just a dream. But something about her presence within my mind was so familiar and yet elusive, as if we’d perhaps seen each other briefly on a train sometime long ago, exchanged glances and maybe a smile, and that was all.
Her sweet, tender image stayed with me, even as I wrapped up the week with last minute errands, packed up my apartment and travel gear, made a flurry of phone calls to friends and family and prepared myself for the great unknown of a voyage to a profoundly foreign land, for a journey whose ultimate purpose was yet to be revealed.
Chapter 1. A skinny dip…
The day began with thumb unfurled to the world, ready for action, shirt off under the blazing blue sky, eyes half open behind the protective shield of my sunglasses, and a hazy, sluggish mind from intermittent sleep through the desert heat of a simmering July night. Where I’d slept wasn’t far from where I stood, on Highway 50 somewhere a long ways east of Fallon, lost in the heart of the lonely state of Nevada.
Somehow, that loneliness was heightened more during the light of day, without the comforting blanket of myriad twinkling stars to ponder overhead. It was just my lone soul, the great expanse of wide-open starkness, and a thin sliver of road leading me onwards. And, based on the previous day, a car roughly every half hour, that brought only a glimmer of hope as it approached from across the expanse, for what seemed an eternity of longing before it finally flew by at a mile a minute, with nary a smile nor faintest teardrop of humanity to spare a bedraggled, sullen traveler; and I was thrown back into the despair of the lonely road.
Okay, so maybe I was getting a little melodramatic. I’d spent maybe four hours hitchhiking there the previous evening, before bagging it and crawling into my sleeping bag under the stars. I had food, I had water. Hitching had never failed me before, and surely it wouldn’t this time, no matter how scorching the desert sun might become. The pavement I stood beside was my umbilical cord to civilization, and one way or another it would provide the sustenance and guidance I sought. Or at least, so I hoped.
A crow flew not too far overhead, and cawed. I looked up, squinting into the sun, whistled towards it and it turned and came back. Were crows normally out in the middle of the vast, empty desert? It cawed again as it peered down at me cock-eyed, a faint glimmer of pity in its eyes. No doubt I was the one who looked sorely out of place.
I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted in its direction:
“Hello, Mr. Crow, how are you today?”
It continued on its way with no need to look back.
For a long while, nothing happened.
Then, off in the distance, a speck of movement materialized out of the east. This was what I was waiting for, since I was westerly bound. It shimmered and grew until it revealed itself to be a brownish mini-van, flying along with reckless ambitions of speediness.
As it grew closer, I heard a heartbeat. It was pulsing with music, which I heard long before I picked up the sound of the engine. As it came closer, I realized it was one of my favorite songs: “Shake Your Hips” by the Rolling Stones. The windows were apparently rolled down, blasting the euphoric mix of drums, sax and bass into the desert. I began to nod my head and shake my leg in rhythm. As it neared, I raised my thumb high overhead, drumming my leg with my other hand, staring down the vehicle with an aura of coolness mixed with desperation, hoping my evident enjoyment of their music would translate into mutual camaraderie or perhaps compassion on their part.
If it did, it failed to produce the desired result. They flew by as a cacophony of mayhem piercing the subtle sounds of the desert. The van was occupied by five crazed-looking twenty-something guys all with squiggly, dark hair, who seemed on the verge of exploding from how vigorously they were singing along to the song in unison. As they passed, they all simultaneously stuck their arms out of the windows, and gave me a huge thumbs-up and a massive yell:
“Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!”
It wasn’t entirely clear if they were offering enthusiastic encouragement, or else mercilessly mocking me. I turned with my thumb still held in the air as they continued down the road in the other direction and saw, spray-painted sloppily on the back of the van, the words: “Cocky Mystery Crew world tour!!!” Whether they were a rock band, circus act or kinky sex show of some kind would, true to their name, remain a mystery.
Back to the silence of the desert, torn asunder by the momentary outburst of perverted humanity. The infectious song was driven firmly into my subconscious, leaving me shaking with the urge to dance. Unfortunately, the lyrics to that song were completely unintelligible, other than the “shake your hips” part; so that I was unable to fill the limitless void around me with even a lame attempt at a Mick Jagger impersonation. Instead, I just jumped and hopped around on the highway for a while, with the occasional yip for good measure; until the incessant, all-consuming silence took over once again and the music slowly faded from my mind.
The crow came back, and again cawed. I echoed back with a feeble caw of my own.
Another car came down the road, this time from the west, heading from whence I’d come, no use to me other than a comforting reminder that humankind was in fact still in existence. It was a shiny, silver Lexus, a clean-cut looking businessman behind the wheel, shrouded in sunglasses of his own. I stood there in solemn, shirtless intensity, only a tapping finger remaining from the previous, peculiar automotive passing. He looked at me curiously, his head cocked momentarily not unlike the crow’s, as he flew by like a dazzling silver bullet. I raised a hand and gave a little wave, and he nodded back with a subdued gesture of acknowledgment.
And again, for a while, nothing happened.
Finally, I detected another movement out of the east. Something subtle fluttered within my bowels. Perhaps this was my ticket out of there. I hoped and prayed, as the faint speck of a vehicle emerged from the horizon and drew ever closer. Or lumbered, I should say. It was an RV, painted the precise, colorless beige of the desert. My heart and thumb sank. Catching a ride in an RV was about as likely as being picked up by a passing UFO.
The awkward vehicle careened towards me at breakneck speed. It was weaving all over the highway. I grabbed my backpack and stepped off the road a little ways, in case it veered towards me. I couldn’t quite see who was inside because of the tinting of the windows. I raised my arm half-heartedly. It flew past…and then screeched to a halt about a hundred yards down the road, and began backing up. Deliverance!
I grabbed my pack and sprinted to meet it, as it came to a teetering halt.
I reached up to the passenger door and threw it wide open, met by a blast of refrigerated air. A lone woman sat in the driver’s seat staring down at me, a vision of beauty. Long dark hair, dark eyes, soft, kind face with feminine lips, a red tank top plastered to her torso and a flowery, flowing pink and purple dress enveloping both her lower half and the seat.
“Hey there, hitchhiker man, where you headed?” she said straightforwardly.
“Reno!” I said, as I lifted a leg onto the step up to the seat, and hovered in a fleeting, tangled moment of anticipation and dread as I awaited her reply–thumbs up or thumbs down.
“Great! I’m going to Tahoe, so I can get you there. Hop on up, you must be ready to get out of that glaring sun.”
“Oh man, tell me about it.”
I hauled myself up out of my potentially imminent demise, squeezed my pack between the seats, slammed the door shut and relaxed back into the blissful embrace of chilled brown leather.
She gave me a brief, delicate glance, and somehow a glint of sunlight reflected off one of her teeth, almost blinding me in a brilliant flash that induced in me an overpowering drunken giddiness. My abrupt transition from outcast desert flotsam to basking in the gaze of an air-conditioned RV goddess was more than I was prepared for. Good thing I had the sunglasses to hide behind, as I laid back and tried to act normal.
She hit the gas and we shot forward.
“So, how the hell did you end up right there? I haven’t seen a road or anything for miles.”
“Well…yesterday I got a ride a ways back, I forget the town…oh yeah, Ely I think…with this guy that was going to some business conference in San Fran. All of a sudden he realized he’d forgotten his portfolio, or something or other, and he had to turn around right there and drive all the way back to Salt Lake City.”
“Bummer! For both of you.”
“Yeah. No shit. I’m not sure which one of us was more screwed.”
She’d continued weaving back and forth all over the road as we flew along.
“Why the wacky driving?” I asked, since upon further observation it seemed deliberate.
“I don’t know. I figure with all this road to spare and hardly anybody on it, might as well make use of it.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense,” I replied…which of course it didn’t.
“I’m Allison, by the way,” she said as she took her right hand off the wheel and gently glided it towards me. “Allison Stoic.”
“Interesting name. I’m Jacob Caulfield, Jake, either way, whatever…” I replied as our hands met and embraced, and I drifted further towards a state of unrepentant delirium. She slid her hand back towards the wheel.
“So what’s in Reno?” she asked.
“I’m going to visit my brother and sister-in-law,” I said. “Other than that, not too much.”
“Where are you hitching from?”
“Well, I was at this bluegrass festival in Colorado, in Telluride. I live in Portland, Oregon, but I took a couple weeks off work for a mid-summer traveling adventure. So, I’m making my way back home. Just five more days of freedom.”
“Cool, that sounds like fun! I love bluegrass music too.”
“Oh yeah, good times, for sure. We boogied our butts off.”
She glanced over at me again and smiled.
“So what’s the deal with the RV?” I asked. “Anybody else in here, sleeping in the back or something?”
“Nope. I’m all on my own. I’m actually getting paid to deliver this thing to somebody in California, in Tahoe like I said. I found out about the gig online. I’m actually from Alaska. I’m an archeologist normally, but I also fight forest fires during the summer. It’s great money, ‘cause you get hazard pay and plus it’s pretty exciting. So they call you up and tell you, ‘We’ve got a fire in such-and-such place’ and then you have just a day or two to hop on a plane and get down there. I was in New Mexico for two weeks fighting fires there. You probably heard about them on the news, they were friggin’ huge! But it’s all contained now. So then I found this thing with the RV, had to get myself up to Durango to pick it up, and then set up a flight back home, flying out of San Fran.”
“Crazy,” was all I could think to say.
Silenced gripped us both for a time, as we watched the stream of desert solitude rushing past.
“Hey, you want to go skinny-dipping?” she suddenly burst out.
“Who, me?” I blurted.
And, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I thought.
And then, regaining some scant measure of composure: “Yeah, that sounds great. I could stand to wash off some grime, that’s for sure.”
“Alright, next time we see a river, we’re finding a good swimming hole.”
A long, long hour of sporadic conversation pierced by rampant romantic visions later, we crossed a bridge over a cool, clear, green river. A gravel road on the other side of the bridge followed the water, and she turned onto it. We drove about a mile upstream, and came to a pull-off alongside the road. It continued onwards from there towards a hunched group of hills on the horizon, which offered negligible evidence of justification for the road’s continuance. But if it had been my rig and I wasn’t destination-bound elsewhere, I would certainly have been tempted to keep the pedal on the metal and find out. I mean, after the skinny-dipping.
She pulled over, turned off the car…and then stretched her bare, tanned arms high above her head, as she let out a soft groan of exquisite release and then turned her head to sniff her own armpit.
“Yep, getting stinky. I could definitely stand to wash off. That water is gonna feel damn gooooood, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah…No doubt about that,“ I said, as I adjusted my sunglasses.
We both glanced down towards the river, flowing languidly a little ways below the road.
“You need a towel?” she asked as she turned towards me, bringing a hand down to brush her cascading, velvety hair back behind her ear.
“I’m all set, got one in my pack here, somewhere.”
I dug around until I found it, as she reached back and grabbed a bright orangeish towel from behind my seat. Then we flung open the doors to confront the suffocating intensity of mid-summer’s-day middle-of-Nevada heat. It was far more intense now than when I’d been standing in it for hours, after being softened up by the soothing air conditioning.
“Fucking crap, it’s hot!” she said.
We followed a narrow, dusty path that led down to the river, where a thin strip of sandy beach nestled against the water. We paused there in the piercing sunlight for a moment, as we took in the peaceful, barren surroundings. Besides I wasn’t quite sure of protocol in this situation. Should I start undressing first, or politely wait for her to initiate the nakedness?
Screw it. I was halfway there already anyway. I unlaced my sneakers and chucked them into the sand, eased out of my jeans, socks and underwear simultaneously, and tossed the sunglasses onto the jumbled pile. Then I stepped without further hesitation into the delicious coolness of the river. I immersed myself with a pleasant, sanguine groan and backstroked out to the middle, though I could still touch the shallow, gravelly bottom. I looked back at her with a contented smile; only because, of course, she happened to be standing where I was looking.
“It’s so damned sweet!” I said. “You coming in?”
This was the moment of truth. The ultimate hitchhiker’s dream was materializing before my very eyes. It didn’t get any better than this, if you were luckier than a leprechaun in a rainbow-emblazoned field of four-leafed clovers.
“Of course!” she said, as she reached down to unbuckle her sandals. They found a home on the beach beside my tattered blue Nike’s. She looked towards my bobbing head in the undulating waters, and then the red tank top was whisked up and away and settled onto the sand. The flowing dress and undergarments came, slowly, down to her ankles as she wiggled her hips back and forth, and then she stood tall, brushed back her hair away from her face and stepped out of the flowery pile. And with that, there was nothing left to hide her glorious, dark-haired perfect womanhood.
I gazed from the corners of my dripping eyelids upon her luscious beauty, and she didn’t seem to mind. She stepped into the water, and settled in up to her waist as she drifted slowly towards me, all four of her eyes staring at me (and no, I’m not talking about glasses).
She gave a look of longing as she approached. Clearly we were thinking the very same thing. Her lips seemed to part, as her arm emerged from the water to reach towards my cheek. I moved through the river towards her to close the gap, knowing it was meant to be. My hand reached out and touched her moistened hair, as her trembling lips pouted and pursed in vulnerable surrender. I grasped her tender waist with my other arm beneath the water, pulled her towards me as our naked bodies converged…and our lips hastened towards ultimate sensual union.
It was right about then that an incessant blaring noise came out of nowhere, a high-pitched screech filled my ears, and something heavy slammed into my head. And then, tragically, I woke up.
Chapter 2. Back in the real world…
‘Damn!’ I thought, as reality seeped into my groggy consciousness, and I opened my eyes to the morning light shining upon my cluttered, cramped studio. The yowling sound had ceased, but the blaring continued. Ah, yes, my alarm. I reached over and hit snooze. Looking around my room, I saw my cat Pumpkin (he’s orange and roundish) sitting on the carpet, licking himself. A weighty copy of Steinbeck’s East of Eden was lying on the bed right next to my face, staring at me. I’d been meaning to read it for years. Finally, in frustration over being neglected, it had apparently attacked me.
I pieced the evidence together and figured out what had most likely happened: Pumpkin had been sitting atop the bookcase next to my bed when my alarm went off, sending him scurrying frantically with a feline howl, in the process dumping the nearest book directly onto my dozing personage, resulting in the shattering of a perfectly good hitchhiker’s dream. In short, it was a veritable quandary of perfectly orchestrated events, with catastrophic consequences to my love life. Although, the dream at least would have come crashing down anyway, regardless of the placement of my cat, due to my alarm’s robotic insistence that the day’s duties were about to begin.
I reached over to the bedside table and turned on my walkie-talkie. It hummed and lit up, and emitted a confident beep. I pushed the talk button and uttered sleepily into it:
“Jake to base. I’m ready to roll…” (which, obviously, I wasn’t).
A couple seconds later I heard back, “Gotcha Jake, we got nothin’ yet. I’ll let you know when something comes in.”
With that, I was on the clock; though I wasn’t actually getting paid yet, since we were paid on a per delivery basis, plus tips. I worked as a delivery guy for a local service that contracted with assorted area restaurants to bring their dishes to homes and businesses around the greater Portland area. Think advanced pizza delivery, with a cultural medley of 150 different restaurants to choose from.
Ostensibly, when I called in I was supposed to be ready to hit the road at a moment’s notice. But it could be two minutes before they sent me something, or an hour, since the lunch rush usually got off to a slow start. Just depended on how hungry the city was. I preferred to maximize my precious shut-eye. I mean, it was the crack of 10:30. I turned over and went back to sleep.
Twenty minutes later, the walkie-talkie beeped again and a voice blared out:
“Okay, Jake man, head on down to Yummy Garden Chinese.”
“Ten-four, Bob, heading that way.”
The flurry began as I tore away my blanket, rushed to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on my face and hair, pulled on pants, socks, shoes, shirt and a warm jacket (despite my dream, it was late fall), threw my portable breakfast of raw oats and raisins in my backpack and headed out the door, less than five minutes after the onset of consciousness.
The job was a frenetic adrenaline rush that paid the bills and then some, thanks to the generous tipping of Portlanders. If I ever felt inclined to write a book about it, which is doubtful, it would be called Adventures in Creative Parking. I confess, my flagrant violations of parking and other vehicular laws occurred on a more than hourly basis.
My favorite, shining instance of delivery heroism (depending on your perspective) occurred late one evening when I was stuck behind a line of other cars in the southeast industrial part of town, waiting for a train to go by. After the train had passed, the flashing red lights continued blinking, and the traffic arms refused to raise. Five minutes later (in delivery terms, an eternity) traffic still wasn't being allowed to resume. Something was stuck.
I eked myself out of the line of cars, turned around and headed back the other way. Two blocks later I took a left turn onto another through street, heading away from the direction the train had been going, hoping I'd find another place to cross the tracks. No luck, since all the other crossings were still flashing their red lights.
In an act of strategic gambling, desperation and unbridled testosterone, I turned onto a one-way street going the wrong way, and sped down it a full two blocks. No cars were on the other side waiting to cross the train tracks. I was able to shimmy my trusty Subaru around the traffic arm, cross over the tracks and continue up the street without incident back to busy Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, to make the delivery on time. What they didn't know (my managers, the customer and the cops) wouldn't hurt them. And as I mentioned, we were paid per delivery. The quicker the better. Sometimes you had to tweak the risk/benefit ratio a little in order to get out of a jam, and make a living.
But I wouldn't be a steely-nerved, slightly maniacal delivery man for much longer. A week later, I was departing the country and putting my life on indefinite pause for an extended traveling adventure to India and other far flung exotic destinations. I can't tell you the purpose of the trip, since it was shrouded somewhat in cryptic mystery even to me. You see, I was told to go there by a god. No, not by the big 'G' God. I've never talked to him (excuse me, Him). Rather, Ganesh told me to go¬–the full-bellied, fun-loving, elephant-headed "remover of obstacles" in Hindu mythology.
You see, ever since I'd taken a class on world religions back in college, Ganesh had been appearing before me at random, generally inconvenient times. Basically, he was stalking me. Sometimes it was to preach his ways of wisdom. Others, he was clearly just bored and lonely and needed someone to hang out with. Occasionally he would appear to offer specific advice or urgent instructions, which usually involved cajoling me into doing something I had zero intention of doing.
He once convinced me to shave my eyebrows, with no explanation as to what purpose it would serve. The day after doing so, I was standing in line at my favorite Mexican restaurant, waiting to order a plate of chicken enchiladas. After picking up my order to go, I headed out of the restaurant. A punk was standing in line, with a razor-sharp, jet black Mohawk, piercings in all apparent orifices and dangling parts, purple eye shadow, dressed head to toe in tight black studded leather and knee-high combat boots, polka-dotted tattoos all over his exposed head, and another tattoo straight across his forehead that read: "Death or New Jersey"; which, upon consideration, seemed a grammatically deficient statement since it wasn't clear, to me at least, whether New Jersey was then being equated with death or else was the antithesis of death…I guess he hadn't thought that one through completely.
He gave me a quizzical look as I rushed past.
"Dude, what the hell happened to your eyebrows?" he said.
This guy was in no position to be implying that I looked strange. I pondered for a few dozen milliseconds how to respond, and decided to go with the plain truth.
"Ganesh made me do it."
"Huh?"
"It's a long story..."
With that I rushed out the door, hopped in my car and sped off.
Three blocks later, at the next intersection, I was about to fly through it on a green light when two sports cars went careening across the intersection in front of me at breakneck speed, against the red, one furiously chasing the other. I missed them by perhaps twenty feet. A policeman parked in a nearby parking lot saw what had happened, and took off after them.
If it hadn't been for the few seconds I was delayed on account of the punk and my shaven eyebrows, me and my silver Subaru would have been one indistinguishable jumble of crushed and twisted metal amidst a three-car pile-up. Of course, I would have preferred a simple word of warning whispered into my ear to slow down a little, since those eyebrows took forever to grow back. But, the gods work in convoluted ways.
Ganesh wasn't always so helpful…such as the time he appeared next to the dinner table while I was on a first date with this girl I was seriously attracted to. I did my best to ignore him. But he was rambling on about how he'd lost his rat which, oddly enough, is what he rides on to get around. He thought maybe the little bugger had scurried off to the kitchen to nibble on some crumbs, and was worried he might be mistaken by the chefs as a regular, ungodly rat and swiftly caught or poisoned or who knew what. And then how would he get his portly frame to and fro?
I couldn't help finally trying to shut him up and shoo him away; which I then had to try and explain to my date was just a nervous reaction to the Coke I was drinking, since I didn't normally have caffeine. Needless to say, I didn't get even a kiss, let alone another date out of her. Ganesh said she was just going to break my heart anyway. But as far as I was concerned, it would have been worth it with her for even one good make-out session.
Speaking of women…It was later that day, following the Pumpkin alarm incident, that I got to thinking as I continued making my deliveries around town. Who was this Allison Stoic? Of course, it was just a dream. But something about her presence within my mind was so familiar and yet elusive, as if we’d perhaps seen each other briefly on a train sometime long ago, exchanged glances and maybe a smile, and that was all.
Her sweet, tender image stayed with me, even as I wrapped up the week with last minute errands, packed up my apartment and travel gear, made a flurry of phone calls to friends and family and prepared myself for the great unknown of a voyage to a profoundly foreign land, for a journey whose ultimate purpose was yet to be revealed.
Excerpt from I Leapt Into the Night (click here for more info)
This is another one of the stories from my book of fictional short stories, "I Leapt Into the Night, And Ten Other Stories"...
"The Old Man Under the Tree"
In between the two mountains was a wide valley, and in the middle of the valley was a vast field. In the middle of this field stood a single solitary tree, on which there were no leaves. Beneath this tree, sitting against it, lay a very old man, who appeared to be sleeping.
His hands were folded across his chest and he was wearing a hat, which was tilted forward on his head so that it covered his eyes. The sun shone down upon him (which, coincidentally, is precisely why the hat covered his eyes). He was indeed sleeping. His lips, barely perceptible beneath the thick gray beard that crept down his chin and neck, pursed in and out from the flow of air through his lungs; which also caused his stomach and his hands resting upon it to rise slowly and then fall again every few moments.
He wasn’t breathing rapidly, of course, since he wasn’t doing much of anything. He was merely lying there beneath the tree, enjoying the warmth of the sun, breathing so as to stay alive, while some other part of himself was somewhere far away in dream-world. But, that dream-world reality isn’t of concern since, to the observer, there was just an old man lying there beneath a tree (speaking of which, that observer shall soon become apparent).
Once, the old man reached up his hand—his left hand, since it was on top of the other one—from his stomach to his eyebrow, which he scratched twice. Then he put his hand back in the same position it had been before. He had scratched his eyebrow it because it itched. This was typical behavior for him. Once, he had been very thirsty, so he drank some water. He also had a tendency to nap when he was tired, as you may have noticed.
The grass near the tree moved ever so subtly, because there was a slight breeze. This breeze was so slight that the old man didn’t even notice it. But even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have done anything about it, because this would have been against his nature. He did very few things he was not accustomed to doing, such as acting on the weather. The wind could blow if it wanted to, he figured. And he was quite right.
There were some very small bugs alighted on the grass, however, who did in fact notice the wind and were trying their best to do something about it, since in their case the cause happened to be affecting them. Most of them simply flew from one leaf of grass to another, so as to find the best one possible for bracing against the wind. This was typical behavior for bugs, and most of them were quite typical. One slightly atypical bug, however, chose a different course of action. It decided, for unknown reasons, to fly above the grass and all of the other bugs over to the tree, to the old man beneath the tree, where it landed on his eyebrow. This is precisely the reason why the old man had scratched it.
The old man, because of his age—which was very great as far as humans were concerned (which they were)—had gray hair upon his head that was thinning, and this was why he wore a hat. His hat was small and round and black, and when he wore it, it covered up his gray hair. But with the hat tilted forward, some of his thinning gray hair—which was also slightly curly—could be seen. But he didn’t mind this, since he assumed that no one would be watching him as he napped. And he was indeed correct, that no person was watching him. But then, he was only partially correct due to the simple fact that he was, in fact, being watched. Yes, truth can certainly be quite confusing. One more good excuse for napping.
The tree under which the old man was lying was a walnut tree. Although it had on it no leaves, it did have on it a few walnuts which hung sparsely from the bare branches, dried from the sun. And though these walnuts had lost their value as nourishment, they still did remain suitable as devices for awakening peculiar characters, who sat suspiciously under lonely trees in the middle of vacant valleys.
For atop this tree, unknown to the old man since he was fast asleep, sat a very small and yellow bird who was eyeing the old man with intense curiosity. If the bird, who was a she, had translated her thoughts into human terms, they would have went something along the lines of:
“Why in the world is there an old man lying beneath a walnut tree asleep in the middle of a valley, where there seems to be no apparent reason for his being?”
Her thoughts only appeared as images within her fragile mind, but the picture created was one of genuine confusion and curiosity at the quandary before her.
Now, if this little bird had been the old man, she probably would not have chosen to do anything at all about the situation, given the old man’s character. He would have just continued down the valley on his way, minding his own business (assuming that he actually had a way, or any business to mind).
But as it happened, she wasn’t the old man at all. Instead she was a very small and yellow bird who was curious, and who wanted to know why this old man was lying beneath a lone tree in the middle of this forsaken valley.
And so, with all these factors in consideration, she decided she would attempt to find the answer to her question, having nothing else pressing to do in that moment. And being a fairly intelligent little bird, she reasoned that the first step in discovering an answer to this riddle would be to wake the old man up, so as to properly converse with him. This was part of her nature, being direct and forthright.
Quite conveniently—as mentioned just a moment ago—there was upon this tree with no leaves a number of walnuts, which seemed almost perfectly designed to serve the purpose that the little yellow bird was willing to choose for them.
With swiftness and dexterity, she flew from her perch on a branch over to one of the walnuts, grabbed it with her beak, broke it off the branch in one precise motion, and then hovered over the old man, peering at him down through the branches until she had determined that her aim was accurate. Then, she dropped the walnut. It fell assuredly through the slightly-moving air, missing branches left and right, and then hit the old man squarely on the head, right where his gray hair showed.
The old man jumped suddenly from his place of resting. For an old man, he was still quite agile. But in the process of jumping he knocked off his hat and gray hair could be seen growing all over the top of his head. He reached up and scratched the top of his head, since that was where the walnut had struck him. And then he bent over slowly to the ground, picked up his hat and put it back on top of his head, where it most certainly belonged.
The little yellow bird, having accomplished her mission of waking him up, watched the old man regain his balance and recover from the blow of the walnut. And then, once she assumed that he was listening, she leaned over ever so slightly and said to him:
“Why, old man, are you1ying beneath a tree in the middle of a field in the middle of a valley where there seems to be no darned good reason for your being here?”
The old man, however, did not hear. He was too busy straightening his hat and dusting off his clothes. The bird assumed then that he was either rude or stupid, so she asked him a second time:
“Old man, why are you lying beneath a tree in the middle of a field in the middle of a valley where there seems to be no good reason whatsoever for your being here?”
Again, the old man did not hear. He was busy rubbing his eyes and attempting to ascertain where exactly he was. He had just woken up from a long and extremely pleasant nap, and wasn’t exactly sure why he had been woken, or even why precisely he had woken up in the place that he presently was, given that it was so far away from the dream-world from which he had just come.
The bird, however, took him for being a fool who hadn’t understood a word she had said. She figured then, that the most effective way to deal with a fool was to try everything at least twice, if not more. So she flew over to a bundle of walnuts, broke off one of them with her beak, and then hovered over the old man and, with careful and deliberate aim at that part of his anatomy which stuck out rather monstrously from the rest of his face, she opened her beak and let it go.
The old man had just remembered why he was where he was, and was just getting ready to announce it out loud so as to reassure himself and anyone else who happened to be listening, when he heard a rustling overhead, in the branches of the tree under which he stood.
He looked up in order to understand the cause of the rustling—and at that moment a walnut falling from the sky struck him squarely on the nose. He was so stunned that he fell backwards, landing abruptly in the dirt, bruising his butt and forgetting what it was that he was about to announce.
The yellow bird sitting in the tree, upon seeing the dramatic effect resulting from her actions once again, couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
The old man, upon hearing a strange, high-pitched noise coming from above, looked up from his seat on the ground, to see a very small and yellow bird clinging to a branch of the tree above him, chirping away like he had never seen a bird chirp before. To him, as strange as it might seem, it appeared almost as if the bird were laughing at him. And he did not like this. He also realized, with a sudden stroke of insight, that the bird may very well have been the cause for his awakening, as well as the bulging bruise that was now forming at the very end of his nose. He became furious, and decided to tell the bird so. He lifted himself up from the ground, stood up straight and tall, fixed his hat, pulled up his pants with both hands, and then raised a feeble fist and exclaimed in a most ferocious and assertive tone:
“You blasted yellow bird, what do you think you are doing? Are you mocking me?”
The yellow bird, upon seeing the old man roar with such anger and ferocity, felt a very small amount of fear. But instead of flying off right away, she chose to stand her ground, since she found the old man to be quite a peculiar character and she wished to discover a little more about him. Also, she was rather mesmerized by the strange and explosive effects of her actions on him, and she wondered if perhaps a third walnut would do something even more extraordinary. So she flew over to another walnut, grabbed it in her beak, broke it from the branch and then, hovering over the old man, who was still shaking his fist and cursing, she dropped the walnut.
The old man, so involved in his ferocity, failed to notice the actions of the yellow bird until it was too late, and another walnut had struck him squarely in his left eye, causing him to go temporarily blind. He yowled, clutched his hands to his eye, jumped in the air and ran in sporadic, hobbling circles in an effort to escape the pain. When the pain had subsided somewhat, he ceased his yowling, stopped hobbling in circles, and slowly took his hands away from his eyes. He looked, once again, up into the tree: to see a large dark splotch on the left, and a very small and yellow bird on the right, clutching a branch and chirping away hysterically.
At this he became undeniably enraged. Shaking his finger at the bird he muttered, “You just wait, I’ll get you for this.” And then he hobbled over to the trunk of the tree. After slight confusion between it and the large dark splotch, he lifted a foot to a bump on the trunk that acted as a foothold, reached up his hands to the branches, grabbed them and, putting all of his elderly strength into this one movement, hoisted himself up into the tree—almost falling to the ground, but not quite. Within a few moments he was sitting on one of the branches, breathing heavily, clutching his left eye with one hand and his hat with the other.
The little yellow bird, as she sat on her branch laughing away at the ridiculous sight of the old man howling in pain, was quite surprised to see him so quickly bring himself from the safety of the ground below, up almost to her level in such a short time. She abruptly ceased her laughing and looked at the old man in a much different light. There he sat, huffing and puffing on a tree branch, much as she had been only a moment before, regaining her own breath from laughter. She eyed the old man with deep curiosity, for he was indeed a peculiar character. She wondered for a moment if perhaps he was a messenger from another world, who had come here to ask her to join him in Paradise. She had heard of a place called Paradise, and it sounded like a very nice place. It occurred to her that maybe she should have been just a little bit more respectful towards this old man who slept in valleys and climbed into trees.
At that moment, the old man, who had now caught his breath, turned his head towards the little yellow bird and glared into her little eyes with great anger and intensity. The little bird was so surprised that she jumped backwards from sheer fear, and landed on the branch behind her. At that she forgot completely her notion that he was a messenger from Paradise, and decided instead that he was a messenger from a place very unlike Paradise, where there were probably more people like himself, with terribly menacing eyes and protruding proboscises and that she should do her best to get as far away from him as possible. However, she was so filled with fear now that she found she couldn’t even move.
The old man looked up at the little yellow bird sitting only a few feet away from him, and he smiled. He had witnessed her hop from one branch to another. He knew that any bird that could would have certainly flown far away by now. And so, in response to this, he ever so carefully shifted his position, stuck out an arm and a leg and moved one branch closer to the yellow bird.
The yellow bird was so consumed with fear that still she couldn’t fly away. All she could do was hop. So she hopped up to another branch a little bit higher in the tree, which was at least better than staying in the same place.
The old man, not being quite as dexterous in the ways of maneuvering through tree branches, was able to move only one branch at a time as well despite his greater size and length, and so this is what he did. He reached up, grabbed the branch above him and pulled himself up, so that he was as close to the bird as he had been before.
The little yellow bird, seeing that the old man had managed to move closer, did her best to move away. But, still lacking the necessary composure to fly, all she could do was succeed with another hop. So she hopped once again to the branch above her, widening the gap between her and the old man, if only a little bit.
The old man, seeking once again to close this gap, reached to the branch above him and pulled himself up. And again, they were no farther apart than they had been in the beginning.
Then the bird hopped again, and the old man promptly climbed one branch higher.
This event repeated itself, with the gap widening and then closing, several more times. It appeared that nothing was being gained for either of them, since they were still as far apart, despite all their hopping and climbing, as they had been in the first place.
However, at one point, the old man had just climbed up to match the little bird’s hop, and so the very small and yellow bird, still frozen in fear and unable to escape properly, did her best to hop one branch farther, since that was all she could do. But upon her hopping, she realized that there were no more branches to hop to—they had come to the very top of the tree—and so, she merely fluttered back down to her original perch in dismay.
The old man, upon seeing the little bird fail to gain the usual distance, saw that his pesterer was now one step closer than before. So, instead of simply closing the gap partway, he instead lunged forward with all his might, arms outstretched to claim his prize, and silence that which had dragged him here from his blissfully pleasant dream-world.
The little yellow bird, with an abrupt awakening of her sensibilities, gained the necessary strength in her body and courage in her soul, just as she was about to be grasped by the old man. She suddenly flapped her little yellow wings, and they worked, and she flew away.
The old man, realizing that his prey had escaped him and he was now alone, flying through the air far above the ground, thought very quickly during mid flight. He grabbed the branch that the bird had been standing on—rather than the place where the bird had been standing, which now contained nothing but air. The branch that he grabbed, however, was not quite as strong as he would have liked, considering that he was considerably more solid and weighty than a mere yellow bird. Upon the rest of his body falling downwards rapidly, following the arch of his arms, the branch suddenly snapped, and the stick he was now holding was of little use to him.
He fell down through the branches of the tree in the same manner that the walnut had—that is, downwards, though not quite so swiftly as his large frame failed to sail effortlessly through the open gaps. Fortunately for him, and perhaps as a rare stroke of luck in an otherwise unfortunate several minutes since his awaking, the branches served the purpose of slowing his fall downwards so that, though he landed eventually on the ground rather abruptly, he remained mostly intact. He came to rest at the base of the tree in the same spot where he had previously been napping, though now face down, with his arms outstretched, and his legs piled up on top of him.
His hat fell down after him and planted itself around one of his feet that was sticking up in the slight breeze. The grass moved ever so subtly, and the warm sun shone down upon the valley. The little yellow bird was soon far away. A small bug that had been standing on a leaf of grass was caught up in the wind, and it flew over to the old man and alighted on his gray hair.
"The Old Man Under the Tree"
In between the two mountains was a wide valley, and in the middle of the valley was a vast field. In the middle of this field stood a single solitary tree, on which there were no leaves. Beneath this tree, sitting against it, lay a very old man, who appeared to be sleeping.
His hands were folded across his chest and he was wearing a hat, which was tilted forward on his head so that it covered his eyes. The sun shone down upon him (which, coincidentally, is precisely why the hat covered his eyes). He was indeed sleeping. His lips, barely perceptible beneath the thick gray beard that crept down his chin and neck, pursed in and out from the flow of air through his lungs; which also caused his stomach and his hands resting upon it to rise slowly and then fall again every few moments.
He wasn’t breathing rapidly, of course, since he wasn’t doing much of anything. He was merely lying there beneath the tree, enjoying the warmth of the sun, breathing so as to stay alive, while some other part of himself was somewhere far away in dream-world. But, that dream-world reality isn’t of concern since, to the observer, there was just an old man lying there beneath a tree (speaking of which, that observer shall soon become apparent).
Once, the old man reached up his hand—his left hand, since it was on top of the other one—from his stomach to his eyebrow, which he scratched twice. Then he put his hand back in the same position it had been before. He had scratched his eyebrow it because it itched. This was typical behavior for him. Once, he had been very thirsty, so he drank some water. He also had a tendency to nap when he was tired, as you may have noticed.
The grass near the tree moved ever so subtly, because there was a slight breeze. This breeze was so slight that the old man didn’t even notice it. But even if he had, he probably wouldn’t have done anything about it, because this would have been against his nature. He did very few things he was not accustomed to doing, such as acting on the weather. The wind could blow if it wanted to, he figured. And he was quite right.
There were some very small bugs alighted on the grass, however, who did in fact notice the wind and were trying their best to do something about it, since in their case the cause happened to be affecting them. Most of them simply flew from one leaf of grass to another, so as to find the best one possible for bracing against the wind. This was typical behavior for bugs, and most of them were quite typical. One slightly atypical bug, however, chose a different course of action. It decided, for unknown reasons, to fly above the grass and all of the other bugs over to the tree, to the old man beneath the tree, where it landed on his eyebrow. This is precisely the reason why the old man had scratched it.
The old man, because of his age—which was very great as far as humans were concerned (which they were)—had gray hair upon his head that was thinning, and this was why he wore a hat. His hat was small and round and black, and when he wore it, it covered up his gray hair. But with the hat tilted forward, some of his thinning gray hair—which was also slightly curly—could be seen. But he didn’t mind this, since he assumed that no one would be watching him as he napped. And he was indeed correct, that no person was watching him. But then, he was only partially correct due to the simple fact that he was, in fact, being watched. Yes, truth can certainly be quite confusing. One more good excuse for napping.
The tree under which the old man was lying was a walnut tree. Although it had on it no leaves, it did have on it a few walnuts which hung sparsely from the bare branches, dried from the sun. And though these walnuts had lost their value as nourishment, they still did remain suitable as devices for awakening peculiar characters, who sat suspiciously under lonely trees in the middle of vacant valleys.
For atop this tree, unknown to the old man since he was fast asleep, sat a very small and yellow bird who was eyeing the old man with intense curiosity. If the bird, who was a she, had translated her thoughts into human terms, they would have went something along the lines of:
“Why in the world is there an old man lying beneath a walnut tree asleep in the middle of a valley, where there seems to be no apparent reason for his being?”
Her thoughts only appeared as images within her fragile mind, but the picture created was one of genuine confusion and curiosity at the quandary before her.
Now, if this little bird had been the old man, she probably would not have chosen to do anything at all about the situation, given the old man’s character. He would have just continued down the valley on his way, minding his own business (assuming that he actually had a way, or any business to mind).
But as it happened, she wasn’t the old man at all. Instead she was a very small and yellow bird who was curious, and who wanted to know why this old man was lying beneath a lone tree in the middle of this forsaken valley.
And so, with all these factors in consideration, she decided she would attempt to find the answer to her question, having nothing else pressing to do in that moment. And being a fairly intelligent little bird, she reasoned that the first step in discovering an answer to this riddle would be to wake the old man up, so as to properly converse with him. This was part of her nature, being direct and forthright.
Quite conveniently—as mentioned just a moment ago—there was upon this tree with no leaves a number of walnuts, which seemed almost perfectly designed to serve the purpose that the little yellow bird was willing to choose for them.
With swiftness and dexterity, she flew from her perch on a branch over to one of the walnuts, grabbed it with her beak, broke it off the branch in one precise motion, and then hovered over the old man, peering at him down through the branches until she had determined that her aim was accurate. Then, she dropped the walnut. It fell assuredly through the slightly-moving air, missing branches left and right, and then hit the old man squarely on the head, right where his gray hair showed.
The old man jumped suddenly from his place of resting. For an old man, he was still quite agile. But in the process of jumping he knocked off his hat and gray hair could be seen growing all over the top of his head. He reached up and scratched the top of his head, since that was where the walnut had struck him. And then he bent over slowly to the ground, picked up his hat and put it back on top of his head, where it most certainly belonged.
The little yellow bird, having accomplished her mission of waking him up, watched the old man regain his balance and recover from the blow of the walnut. And then, once she assumed that he was listening, she leaned over ever so slightly and said to him:
“Why, old man, are you1ying beneath a tree in the middle of a field in the middle of a valley where there seems to be no darned good reason for your being here?”
The old man, however, did not hear. He was too busy straightening his hat and dusting off his clothes. The bird assumed then that he was either rude or stupid, so she asked him a second time:
“Old man, why are you lying beneath a tree in the middle of a field in the middle of a valley where there seems to be no good reason whatsoever for your being here?”
Again, the old man did not hear. He was busy rubbing his eyes and attempting to ascertain where exactly he was. He had just woken up from a long and extremely pleasant nap, and wasn’t exactly sure why he had been woken, or even why precisely he had woken up in the place that he presently was, given that it was so far away from the dream-world from which he had just come.
The bird, however, took him for being a fool who hadn’t understood a word she had said. She figured then, that the most effective way to deal with a fool was to try everything at least twice, if not more. So she flew over to a bundle of walnuts, broke off one of them with her beak, and then hovered over the old man and, with careful and deliberate aim at that part of his anatomy which stuck out rather monstrously from the rest of his face, she opened her beak and let it go.
The old man had just remembered why he was where he was, and was just getting ready to announce it out loud so as to reassure himself and anyone else who happened to be listening, when he heard a rustling overhead, in the branches of the tree under which he stood.
He looked up in order to understand the cause of the rustling—and at that moment a walnut falling from the sky struck him squarely on the nose. He was so stunned that he fell backwards, landing abruptly in the dirt, bruising his butt and forgetting what it was that he was about to announce.
The yellow bird sitting in the tree, upon seeing the dramatic effect resulting from her actions once again, couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
The old man, upon hearing a strange, high-pitched noise coming from above, looked up from his seat on the ground, to see a very small and yellow bird clinging to a branch of the tree above him, chirping away like he had never seen a bird chirp before. To him, as strange as it might seem, it appeared almost as if the bird were laughing at him. And he did not like this. He also realized, with a sudden stroke of insight, that the bird may very well have been the cause for his awakening, as well as the bulging bruise that was now forming at the very end of his nose. He became furious, and decided to tell the bird so. He lifted himself up from the ground, stood up straight and tall, fixed his hat, pulled up his pants with both hands, and then raised a feeble fist and exclaimed in a most ferocious and assertive tone:
“You blasted yellow bird, what do you think you are doing? Are you mocking me?”
The yellow bird, upon seeing the old man roar with such anger and ferocity, felt a very small amount of fear. But instead of flying off right away, she chose to stand her ground, since she found the old man to be quite a peculiar character and she wished to discover a little more about him. Also, she was rather mesmerized by the strange and explosive effects of her actions on him, and she wondered if perhaps a third walnut would do something even more extraordinary. So she flew over to another walnut, grabbed it in her beak, broke it from the branch and then, hovering over the old man, who was still shaking his fist and cursing, she dropped the walnut.
The old man, so involved in his ferocity, failed to notice the actions of the yellow bird until it was too late, and another walnut had struck him squarely in his left eye, causing him to go temporarily blind. He yowled, clutched his hands to his eye, jumped in the air and ran in sporadic, hobbling circles in an effort to escape the pain. When the pain had subsided somewhat, he ceased his yowling, stopped hobbling in circles, and slowly took his hands away from his eyes. He looked, once again, up into the tree: to see a large dark splotch on the left, and a very small and yellow bird on the right, clutching a branch and chirping away hysterically.
At this he became undeniably enraged. Shaking his finger at the bird he muttered, “You just wait, I’ll get you for this.” And then he hobbled over to the trunk of the tree. After slight confusion between it and the large dark splotch, he lifted a foot to a bump on the trunk that acted as a foothold, reached up his hands to the branches, grabbed them and, putting all of his elderly strength into this one movement, hoisted himself up into the tree—almost falling to the ground, but not quite. Within a few moments he was sitting on one of the branches, breathing heavily, clutching his left eye with one hand and his hat with the other.
The little yellow bird, as she sat on her branch laughing away at the ridiculous sight of the old man howling in pain, was quite surprised to see him so quickly bring himself from the safety of the ground below, up almost to her level in such a short time. She abruptly ceased her laughing and looked at the old man in a much different light. There he sat, huffing and puffing on a tree branch, much as she had been only a moment before, regaining her own breath from laughter. She eyed the old man with deep curiosity, for he was indeed a peculiar character. She wondered for a moment if perhaps he was a messenger from another world, who had come here to ask her to join him in Paradise. She had heard of a place called Paradise, and it sounded like a very nice place. It occurred to her that maybe she should have been just a little bit more respectful towards this old man who slept in valleys and climbed into trees.
At that moment, the old man, who had now caught his breath, turned his head towards the little yellow bird and glared into her little eyes with great anger and intensity. The little bird was so surprised that she jumped backwards from sheer fear, and landed on the branch behind her. At that she forgot completely her notion that he was a messenger from Paradise, and decided instead that he was a messenger from a place very unlike Paradise, where there were probably more people like himself, with terribly menacing eyes and protruding proboscises and that she should do her best to get as far away from him as possible. However, she was so filled with fear now that she found she couldn’t even move.
The old man looked up at the little yellow bird sitting only a few feet away from him, and he smiled. He had witnessed her hop from one branch to another. He knew that any bird that could would have certainly flown far away by now. And so, in response to this, he ever so carefully shifted his position, stuck out an arm and a leg and moved one branch closer to the yellow bird.
The yellow bird was so consumed with fear that still she couldn’t fly away. All she could do was hop. So she hopped up to another branch a little bit higher in the tree, which was at least better than staying in the same place.
The old man, not being quite as dexterous in the ways of maneuvering through tree branches, was able to move only one branch at a time as well despite his greater size and length, and so this is what he did. He reached up, grabbed the branch above him and pulled himself up, so that he was as close to the bird as he had been before.
The little yellow bird, seeing that the old man had managed to move closer, did her best to move away. But, still lacking the necessary composure to fly, all she could do was succeed with another hop. So she hopped once again to the branch above her, widening the gap between her and the old man, if only a little bit.
The old man, seeking once again to close this gap, reached to the branch above him and pulled himself up. And again, they were no farther apart than they had been in the beginning.
Then the bird hopped again, and the old man promptly climbed one branch higher.
This event repeated itself, with the gap widening and then closing, several more times. It appeared that nothing was being gained for either of them, since they were still as far apart, despite all their hopping and climbing, as they had been in the first place.
However, at one point, the old man had just climbed up to match the little bird’s hop, and so the very small and yellow bird, still frozen in fear and unable to escape properly, did her best to hop one branch farther, since that was all she could do. But upon her hopping, she realized that there were no more branches to hop to—they had come to the very top of the tree—and so, she merely fluttered back down to her original perch in dismay.
The old man, upon seeing the little bird fail to gain the usual distance, saw that his pesterer was now one step closer than before. So, instead of simply closing the gap partway, he instead lunged forward with all his might, arms outstretched to claim his prize, and silence that which had dragged him here from his blissfully pleasant dream-world.
The little yellow bird, with an abrupt awakening of her sensibilities, gained the necessary strength in her body and courage in her soul, just as she was about to be grasped by the old man. She suddenly flapped her little yellow wings, and they worked, and she flew away.
The old man, realizing that his prey had escaped him and he was now alone, flying through the air far above the ground, thought very quickly during mid flight. He grabbed the branch that the bird had been standing on—rather than the place where the bird had been standing, which now contained nothing but air. The branch that he grabbed, however, was not quite as strong as he would have liked, considering that he was considerably more solid and weighty than a mere yellow bird. Upon the rest of his body falling downwards rapidly, following the arch of his arms, the branch suddenly snapped, and the stick he was now holding was of little use to him.
He fell down through the branches of the tree in the same manner that the walnut had—that is, downwards, though not quite so swiftly as his large frame failed to sail effortlessly through the open gaps. Fortunately for him, and perhaps as a rare stroke of luck in an otherwise unfortunate several minutes since his awaking, the branches served the purpose of slowing his fall downwards so that, though he landed eventually on the ground rather abruptly, he remained mostly intact. He came to rest at the base of the tree in the same spot where he had previously been napping, though now face down, with his arms outstretched, and his legs piled up on top of him.
His hat fell down after him and planted itself around one of his feet that was sticking up in the slight breeze. The grass moved ever so subtly, and the warm sun shone down upon the valley. The little yellow bird was soon far away. A small bug that had been standing on a leaf of grass was caught up in the wind, and it flew over to the old man and alighted on his gray hair.
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