By Bruce Springsteen.

Best rock song ever? Arguably.

This morning the wildfire’s smoke has blown down from the mountains and into our valley here in Nevada City. The sun rose red and wearily I made the coffee and the protein shake and headed out the door.
Stay tuned here this week for a couple of things:
One Sung Over, my very first album, will be available to those of you who register (create a user name, password easy, 5 seconds).
The first video off of ‘Midnight Door’ – “Closure”

Last night I put together a stack of 20 or so packages to send off to various places my music. From Sub-Pop to Filter Magazine. I’m confident that if only people give the album a listen, it will catch people’s ears.

A long weekend, spent some hours watching Shakespeare play (“The Taming Of The Shrew”), some hours working on video for closure, many hours on packages, and other hours on catching up on much needed rest.

Harvesting tomatoes from my garden, making salsa. Life is good when you do that.

Currently reading :
The Shadow of the Wind
By Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Release date: 25 January, 2005

Moonrise 1 2,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

so last night I went up to the side of a mountain to check out the eclipsed moon rising full. It was a subtle effect, by then the eclipse had mostly passed.

I sat on my tailgate and checked my compass because I couldn’t even tell which way was east, exactly.

It was nice though to run into a fine fellow who was an amateur astronomer, he had a lot of fascinating stuff to say about telescopes, gravity, quantum physics.

Could be on my way to something, could not, you never know.

Change has been prevalent, and yet, as it is with most people, its not fast enough, big enough, rich enough, glamorous.

But I have a new job. Any kind of job at this point is somewhat amazing… and you know, it feels alright. I like to not feel like crying everytime I have to cough up rent. Rent is horrible. Especially in this town. But now I just throw my money away happily. Maybe that isn’t an improvement. But either way, jobs allow that to happen. Yay!

South Yuba River State Park – October – 1,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

Up late last night, endlessly reading Kafka On The Shore, last book read was ‘no country for old men’ by cormac mccarthy and before that ‘the first horseman’ by john case. well, a strange mix of literature, a strange obsession with reading lately. an escape within an escape i suppose.

On the road out to Bridgeport State Park, only to find the road is closed. No troubles, drove down and past the signs and found a nice spot cropped out looking over the river.

On a sunny day the sound of the distant river moves from one ear to the other without pattern yet hypnotizing.

I spent the afternoon lying on my tailgate, listening, watching, thinking, absorbing the sun, reading, and taking pictures.

I’m such a loner lately, but that’s ok I think for now. Its how I’ve always been. nothing new there. Sometimes I think I just need to appreciate that so that I can appreciate my friends and friends yet to be. Or just so I can appreciate my own identity, and find solace in that. I think there is nothing wrong with a little solace in that. I wish I had more time to put into it, and that more people found that to be valuable in some way.

Tonight just letting time flow around me. Very quiet. Back and forth between books and wine and this computer.

October time.

Dracaena – 4,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

The Yankees and Tigers are on the TV, I don’t know why I’m letting myself sit here watching it, but I am and I never do so that’s that. Last night’s beer bottles on the table. Lunch? Bread and cheese.

Kate left on the road today to go visit family in Sebastopol and then to head up to Portland to visit that fair city. Her sister and nephew are along for the ride.

And so I’m on my own in Nevada City for the week. I’ve got an album to finish, things to work on, but I will miss Kate. I’m a lucky guy with her in my life and I feel that when she goes.

Tea Shop – 5,
originally uploaded by haikuluke.

Those who know me lately know that I’m: anxious AND i drink a lot of coffee. You could reverse those and claim cause and effect. Either way. BUT all these things in my life are changing slightly at the moment.

For instance: I am drinking tea a lot, and I feel like it is different entirely.

I have a job to go to today and that is also different entirely

it is really cold

i feel that yes i have too much yet to get done, but the pressure is lightened.

TEA is good for you. I like white teas and oolong, probably because they are expensive and it makes me think they are fancy.

I took a lens off my old (real) camera and taped it backwards to my digital camera. I don’t know why I did this, I just wanted to see what might happen. Well, it kind of turned the whole thing in to a magnifying glass of sorts and hence, the macro pictures are amazing. that’s all you can do with a second lens taped to your camera, but nonetheless, its neat.

So this is it, checking in after all these months.

How is it life? It changes every day. Right now I’m sorting through old files and hard drives, trying, vainly, to get it in order. I want to bring order to things, to make them brighter.

I’ve been sort of in Nevada City for a while now, having my way and not. Suddenly I’m feeling stuck. As if too much has gone on without going on.

We went to Samoa, and felt the humid air, watched my brother get married, celebrated, fretted, felt what it was to be in tropical paradise with a lot of questions hanging around your life. Questions I can’t even relate here.

But they seem resolved.

Kate is in the kitchen making pumpkin pie, zucchini bread, and broccoli casserole. Couldn’t get any better really. The air is pushed around by the fan, Summer outside, as usual. Music in the making, the album sits on the hard drive. Couldn’t get any better really.

And yet, I’m feeling the missing of a vital part of my life. The part that feels that I know what I’m doing, that I’m in any kind of control whatsoever. This time here in this town has been up and down, but never really rapidly toward anything… each new alleyway seems to end up a dead end, back here, wondering what to do, and what I’m doing, with my self.

I’m so desperate for decent work, for a bit of cash, for direction in my wanderings. I long to have a bit more crystallized beauty in my mind and waking life, and I’m tired of having nightmares, regularly.

I’m tired of feeling old, older, and not feeling that it is leading anywhere. I long for the spiritual, and the practical. I long to be released from a long dry spell.

So here is to it. nothing new to report really, just letting it get down and out. letting it be where it will.

May. Day. Its that between Spring and Summer thing, where truly there is reason to celebrate, if you are into the sun at all.

Things have indeed changed here, finally, too long on the waiting list quickly evaporating.

I’ve found work, which, though I’m not anywhere near working my dream job, is a big huge sack of lead off my shoulders. I’m even doing some work that I really like and want to do a lot more of, working for a photographer and framing prints. The other work is another persona, where I show up, make money and leave.

And the apartment is alive, full flowers are bursting up from the warm soil all around the house. I’ve taken to planting as many houseplants as I can, attempting to start new ones, and generally fill this place with life.

Kate is painting and she is painting amazing things, her series on hands is so beautiful and profound I stop everytime I see them, and they are in our house everyday.

What else… o, you know, taking pictures, making music. Inspired, but in a slow way. I think that, oddly enough, now that I am working I will have further impetus to push the results of my work in music to further levels, and not discount it as much in my life… working crummy jobs gives me reason to want to put out great music.

My cello is to be fixed soon.

I’ve been discovering the rivers around here, and finding out that Nevada County (California) is a fantastic place, with amazingly beautiful Mountain and River scenery and feel.

And that’s that, I’m exhausted, but wanted to check in.

It has been a while to check in. I feel like I’m building up commentary for when the real excitement begins, but then, this could be it so… I’ve yet to find steady work, though things floating hallucinatorily on the horizon. That would be nice, idle hands are making me update my blog.

I don’t feel like documenting too much of the trip until I’ve got some income coming in. And so I am putting it off a little bit. I am right now, however, reviewing the minidisc recordings I made during the trip. Some of which are really neat. Some of which seem to have been recorded over accidentally.

Life is filling itself out, slowly, its like waiting for the shower to get hot in a freezing bathroom. And its taking a long time.

And yet though not a born optimist, I look forward feverishly.

The goal is to finish the albums I’ve got started, play a bunch of great shows, move in and out of different cycles at will. Enjoy. That is the goal.

Kate set four alarm clocks this morning for six o’clock, a necessary precaution to make it to work by seven. I got out of bed and as I walked past the mirror I unfortunately saw myself, looking as if I’d been asleep for ten years.

But then I got excited because it snowed last night, and I decided that I’d go out and take pictures before the whole loud world woke up. I drank like seven cups of coffee and headed out.

The world is loud, man, I don’t mean to complain about mundane things, but right now somebody is operating a leaf blower (in the snow), and its this constant loud annoying on and off of an engine specifically built to annoy the hell out of people. It might as well spray itching powder while its at it. Its far too early for leaf blowing.

Which is why I can’t do a landscaping job… OK, working at UC Santa Cruz there was this general hippy ethic that you didn’t really douse things in chemical solutions in order to make them grow. Around here its considered the work of God to plant bio-engineered pansies in rows next to astro-turf and then to coat in a few millimeters of anti-life solution. Many hyphens in that last sentence. In fact, I’m not kidding, I’ve read a ‘series’ in the local paper (two stories, should have been zero) about the big growing business around Nevada City: brush clearing. So rich scum buy promising real estate so that they can have a longer commute to jobs that they hate, and they look at their land, and they think to themselves, what if this were just… lawn. So they literally, quite sadly literally hire people to plow down every living thing, brush, trees, animals, flatten it, just flatten it, so that they can have a nicer view of the highway from their mcmansion. This is a true story, I wish I were making it up.

And then food serving. First of all, it is highly desirable to have a (very expensive) college degree (in music, so it almost doesn’t count, unless you live in Berlin) and work a food serving job. Everything you could wish for really. But that’s fine, I can’t knock it for now (desperate) because you can make a lot of money and literally be asleep in terms of actual responsibility, which sounds like shucking the idea of responsibility, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you can go home and start right away to do whatever it is that you care about doing (in my case music) because its as if you just rolled out of bed mentally.

And there are so many positions for ‘admin asst’ out there, which basically is shorthand for ‘do the work I don’t feel like doing’. Including the ever stimulating data entry, for companies you can’t comprehend staying out of the red financially. Maybe someday you will be elevated to the person who buys everyone frappe’s a few times a day from the Starbucks down the block. Yay.

That’s my ever so optimistic outlook on jobs at the moment. I need to get it out of my head because it makes me insane how flat the world can seem some time, constantly striving for the lowest point.

But I do need work, badly. I need work to keep my hands from becoming idle. I need work because it makes me feel good. I like doing good work, and getting things done. That’s part of the reason I enjoy making music, I feel like there is an ultimate end that I have trained myself to get to (almost there) where I can produce quality music because I know how. Not as product, don’t get me wrong, music ultimately will never be product, but as something filled with intention. Good intention.

When I work I can focus on something intensely. I would not notice an earthquake if it happened to take out my neighborhood, I do not notice fluctuations in temperature, the need for food or hydration, I do not lose focus for anything. Its satisfying.

I took some pictures this morning, and now I’m creating the next project. I’m spending my days thinking about how I’m to pay rent somehow. I can’t wait to not have to think that thought.

Life has been settling in somewhat.

Playing the piano, looking for work.

I put up some pictures of our apartment I’ve been promising:

flickr photos from me

Sitting here in Cafe Mekka there are so many influences swimming around noisily between my senses, music in my headphones, the grinding coffee machine, new people everywhere, new faces, a new world really, called Nevada City.

We landed from the trip and instead of feeling the launch off energy of faithful hope and new beginnings I kind of collapsed into a troubled half state of worry and disappointment. Disappointed that the trip was over. Disappointed that back in California I was no more close to a new life than when I had left: new life being a career, a direction, no complaining, just doing. Disappointed though in a more vague sense, tired, able to be happily numbly in and out of my parent’s house, mostly in, and afraid to make the big changes.

So it was a period of transition. Kate was in Auburn, diligently going back and forth to Nevada City looking for places for us to call home, while I drove all through the familiar but alien towns of “my” Northern California, Geyserville, Sonoma, Petaluma, San Francisco, looking in all of these places for a place that felt like home in at least some minor way.

Christmas gave me purpose. To spend it with my family for me has always been a sacred obligation, not to be broken, and being with my brothers was crucial for me, I have missed them so much in the last five years, and here they are new people, adults not kids, being not only that but the most amazing people I know.

And then I worked on cleaning out my parents overflowing and overwhelmingly cluttered garage. I mean, just a two car garage filled up stacked up mice running around and boxes full of important and not so imporatant all mixed into one. It took me a good near two weeks of working everyday to sort through it all in any kind of meaningful way. And the whole time I am uncovering trunks full of ancient memories, lost and forgotten locks of hair, family pictures that everytime I saw one made me pause and retreat into a place inside of my mind and self that is still a child. And it stretched me out in all ways, desperately lonely in my parent’s garage of all places, doing something utterly contemptible work wise and yet amazingly fulfilling AND I felt a very worthy duty for the family, necessary to protect the priceless artifacts that had not been eaten up by the passing of time.

And then that ended.

And Kate followed through on this apartment, a chance look one day, a couple of days before Christmas. It was a place we could afford. It was something. We’d been nothing homeless for nine months, couldn’t hurt to have a couch or a bed to call our own. I went and saw it and I really didn’t feel it… I was disappoionted, I nearly broke down the night before we had to tell a yes or no, but decided with Kate that we needed to get SOMETHING going, whatever it would be, and so reluctantly we said yes. And then the landlord calls Kate and reports that things have changed. We can move into HIS old apartment, an amazing spot on top of Deer Creek with a big old living room and high ceilings, big windows, two decks, and a piano on top of it.

Its a turn of fate and luck that I had I hate to admit been waiting for.

And so we packed the U-Haul with everything that had been sitting literally gathering cobwebs, pulled it out, painted all the walls white and established working areas in a few days, perhaps the fastest move in in my history.

So now I’m here. We’re here. The creek whistles its sound around our bedroom through the night. The space has this amazing feeling of freedom to me.

I’m jobless, need work, badly, not just money, but work. I’m desperate for good work.

The music is to come along.

And that, is where I am, today.

O wow. I have so much to report. So much that to sit here now and write it would take hours. Which I have this afternoon, finally, but do not have this morning.

In short, I’ve moved, and the apartment is great. That’s it in a nutshell. Which is also why my posts are so limited. More, of course, to come.

Buddy the dog and Noah the cat are slumbering indignantly while the crickets mumble loudly outside. Its not even close to cold, at the peak of darkness from winter here in Hopland, NorCal.

Just got back from dinner with the Welches, a holiday kind of dinner, number 7 of seventeen it seems, the kind of dinner you come home from both satisfied and regretful at once, full, tired, drunkish, where did the rest of life go?

Its good though to be doing these kinds of things, out to dinner with my family, meeting their family, two families colliding like a couple of galaxies, not even or symmetrical, but perfectly formed in themselves.

Its good because in high school, or whenever I last lived here, o, yes, high school, well, there was that stopover after the Europe trip, post graduation, but I don’t remember stuff like this per say, anyways, lets say high school I would have inevitably hid in my room and played guitar and listened to Creedence Clearwater or both, and drawn pictures of circles for six hours and told myself that was the way it had to be. You know, the true life of an artist. But now, accepting that maybe, maybe after all this I actually am an artist, I no longer have to prove anything. And so I went out to dinner.

Although I did have to prove something to myself post Christmas day, my hair was long, I was unshaven, wearing pajamas around the house had become commonplace for me, easy, easy to be slowly circling the endless questions that have become my identity upon return from this latest trip. I had to prove to myself that I had not slipped into something inescapable. I had to prove that though I didn’t have a job or school to go to, that I wasn’t starving or in jail, that I had some sort of deep purpose, some sort of day to day inner smile. That’s what it comes down to, something you laugh about with yourself, on your way to or from work you think how silly it is, this day to day thing we do. That’s what contentment is for me really. I remember 530 am on the way to work at the pear factory in Ukiah, Summer becoming a tragic memory, and thinking how silly it was, that I was in that car, the sun rising again, drastically sleep deprived and unsatisfied.

Anyways, I was around my family, Pete comes up with T from the city, to be married in June, and they are looking spotless and stylish, not over the top, not yupped out, not anything I wouldn’t wish upon myself, just kind of content and getting married and having jobs and apartments and happy to be young and doing it. I felt a million miles away from that entire existence and it bummed me out. I couldn’t understand the use of hair product, why? hadn’t used it in eight months, campfire was my stylist. Nate and Sam, beautiful and vibrant in college, the energy of the dorms of Santa Cruz wafting from their voices and stories, and their lives one great open highway into promise and potentiality. Mom and Dad, thirty some odd years later laughihng with and at each other, out to party with friends, old friends, more times in two weeks than I have in the past year.

And I don’t thrive on self pity, nor do I believe in it in any way. So I don’t go there, but walking soggy footed out to the back of the house, to see the view of the highway from above the rooftop of my parents house, the christmas lights glowing in the cold air, I think to myself steadily about the choices I ought to make right now.

I got my haircut yesterday in the department store salon, started cleaning out piles of boxes in my parents’ garage, and cleaned my room. Took a shower, shaved, and looked for jobs online. Ran into Joe Leonardo, close distant friend and person who asks all the wrong and right questions at the wrong right moment.

Ready to give up, in the best of ways, to say Oh well, I guess I just have to live my life from here.

Christmas, it came and it went. The days leading up to the Day, I was driving on the highway back and forth to mall land, Santa Rosa, solitary witht he rain constantly slamming the windshield, my own company with a camera to hold the days down one by one, presents to buy, things to distract myself with. At night I would settle down to turning on the christmas lights, putting together the model train set, decorated in completion with fake snow and clay gazebos.

I felt giddy thank god. The night before Christmas was and is a perfect crystallization of a whole year, a whole lifetime of affection and interaction in my family. I took the moment, the one moment I have always needed, to stand in front of the tree with its heavy syrup of colored lights, covering the hastily wrapped presents laid out in piles beneath the tree, the scene as primal to me as anything could be, a pure expression of my childish desires, something I can remember with clarity and reverence. I took that moment, and many others, sleepless on Christmas Eve, 27 years old. I thought about Santa Claus above the rainy clouds, how, in spite of everything, all evidence and clear thinking, so many kids were believing headily in his reality, its hard to not accept that in some way he is there.

Christmas morning we sat there, opening presents, making fun of each other, laughing, myself with my coffee, a little dumbfounded by the generousness of life and my family, my family really truly giving, and able to give, in ways that are more genuine than pop culture could conceive as fiction.

December is rolling by.

I’ve been caught in a space time continuum where in nothing moves too quickly, and at this point, with any certainty at all.

Coming off this epic trip I’m weighing the ever present questions of what makes my life my own, quality of life, ambition, progress, happiness, et cetera.

I find after a little time for reflection that my seven and a half months on the road with Kate has left me a bit out of touch with these questions. And I think that is good. I’m starting with a blank slate, looking at what comes next, and basically deciding what feels right.

I am lucky to have that luxury, if I do.

However, I don’t know what feels right. I can’t sleep at night, I don’t know where I want to live, I don’t know how to approach my life, my music ‘career’, my goals seem, out of reach.

On the other hand, if I can allow myself to relax, I’m at this peaceful place where I get to be detached. I feel too detached though, from my own life, and the direction it will go.

There are options, but I can’t even talk about them yet. They are too far removed to seem real right now.

OK, well, all is well though, beyond that. I’m just exhausted, and uncertain, and it mixes in with the holidays and its very interesting.

Here is to the next page.

Somewhere In The Sierra Nevadas its 343pm

Just got back from gathering a mountain of dried sage branches for the fire tonight. I expect it will be pretty cold, we must be somewhere around 8000 feet. The campsite is a perfect little hidden away spot next to a creek, with a rock firepit and the truck leaning one tire on a rock to make it level.

We’ve had a few spots like this, like in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where we parked in an old hunters campsite next to a creek and enjoyed absolute solitude. In fact, save for the hijinks of a tiny town called… shoot, something forgettable, maybe 500 people, two markets, both way overpriced, we’ve enjoyed absolute solitude for a while now.

The past three nights we’ve been back in California, camping in Death Valley National Park. All three nights we did back country camping, driving up treacherous roads, more bumpy and messed up than anything I’d ever driven, to camp out in these vast flats of desert, with no one around, maybe a coyote off somewhere, a few kangaroo mice, ravens. Death Valley strikes as odd at first, not much going on, just desert, but quickly as you turn the corner on the valley itself, it is this vastness of solitude and permanent warmth in the day time that is quiet, strange, and surreal. The colors of the sand and rocks are layered and warm, collapsing down from 11,000 foot peaks (Telescope Mountain) to the lowest point in the U.S., near Badwater, which is 282 feet below sea level. You can see millions of years of history, even if, like me, you have no idea of geology at all.

We spent the days rolling in the warm air through desert roads, in shorts and t shirts for the first time since Sandwich, on the east coast. The light is so intense it colors everything in slightly deeper hues than usual. And most of all the quiet, the sense of space, of mystery, of time sits hushed in the nights, especially at our desolate and beautiful campsites, just me, Kate, and the Truck among millions of sage and mesquite plants, rolling endlessly toward the layered mountains. Everything looks close, but in reality, what looks like it should take five minutes to walk could take three hours. There seems to be nothing small in Death Valley save for the towns, the outposts for radiator water and in our case, Miller High Life.

This morning I woke to the sunrise, the warmth of the sun already pushing into the camper shell across the great cool of the night before. We made coffee on the tailgate and sat like spectators to the vast empty ancient beach before us.

I think yesterday I was in one of the most strange and beautiful places I’ve ever been. Its a dried up ancient lakebed called The Racetrack, so known because the rocks that mysteriously are on its surface leave long twisting trails, indicating that they’ve moved, seemingly of their own intuition. The lake is just dried mud, miles of it, all cracked into tiny hexagonal shapes, natures favorite, endlessly stretching beneath and in front of you. As an experiment I closed my eyes and walked for ten minutes, not needing to open my eyes at all… the lake is one of the flattest surfaces in nature, and there are no obstructions in any direction once out on it.

Before Death Valley we had the strange “luck” of revisiting Las Vegas. We decided that from Canyonlands National Park, in Southeast Utah, that it would be more fun and just as fast to cut down to Vegas and up the way we are now (Hwy 395 heading to Tahoe).

We got ourselves a cheap (but surprisingly nice) hotel room at “Circus Circus”, one of the older, more tacky, and yet, more, how do you say, nostalgic of the Vegas Strip casinos. We rested up in the room, reading, writing, and headed out once again for the Strip. This time, it was bearable. I learned that to judge the Las Vegas scene in any way is too easy, and completely redundant. You can’t knock the tackiness and utter desolation of a place that prides itself in exactly those things. And so we just wandered, from casino to casino, taking in the kitsch, spending 7 dollars on slot machines, losing it all, and returning, exhausted to our hotel room.

Losing 7 dollars in Vegas is not as bad as it could be.

We spent two nights camping in Zion National Park. Zion is packed full of awe inspiring mountains, red and orange, strange peaks rising from the river that runs through the middle of it. Its best seen in the middle of the night, next to a river, with the moon bright and lively out, as we found out. We had time to kind of take in the basics, a walk up the canyons, along rimrock trails, past emerald ponds and tiny waterfalls, and warm breeze nights at the crowded campsite.

***

So after Death Valley we were clearly in our final stretch. We were in California towns with California people, California license plates, California attitude, ie., easy going.

In short, the trip is coming to an end, and it is nearly impossible to be sad about it. We find ourselves now in South Lake Tahoe, at a $25 motel, the last scheduled stop on the trip. Today was kind of a toss up, we didn’t get much sleep at all last night, the biting Sierra Nevada air crossed well below freezing, and even in our normally invincible sleeping bags it was chilly, often sleepless. In the morning we made a fire out of dried sage branches, made the coffee, and headed up to Tahoe.

Its hard to visualize, let alone vocalize, the final stage of the trip. Its something I kind of continually want to talk about, evaluate, figure out. And yet, my mind can’t really grasp not camping out every night. Can’t grasp what is to come next.

I want to offer a grand summary of the trip: Seven months of two American kids out on the road, dazed, impressed, broke and beautiful, finding what we could where we could, doing our best to live it up. And we have, we’ve lived it up for all its worth. We embody the lifestyle now, dirty jeans and thermals, a dirty truck packed full of memories and essentials. No clue where it goes to next. How to do it again. No answers, but nearly a year of doing exactly what we wanted to do. To see America. To live a life void of regret. To feel the air and the sky and the sun on our skin. To feel the weight of the road pass below us like nothing. To vacate our souls into campfire after campfire. Sure of one thing, certain of the trip. Alive and proud. Unbelievably free. That’s what we do here. That’s what we’ve done.

In a sleepy quiet cafe in Moab, Utah, stuck in the rocks.

We’ve been staying at the absolutely mindblowing Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park, both within throwing range of Moab.

The vastness of the desert, its quietness, warmth, and amazing features are somewhat addictive.

We’ve decided to try and make it back for Thanksgiving, being so close as we are to California. Its strange, we have an endpoint in a way, sad, going to be hard, but hey, it could be a whole new adventure, and wouldn’t that be ideal?

Plus it will be great to see my fam.

We decided strangely today that the best idea would be to pass through Las Vegas again (deja vu, and a scary one to have) and pass up the 395 through California to check out Tahoe, as the last stop.

Oooh, my chest feels sad just writing it.

Anyways, we drive to Zion National Park tomorrow.

Kate is painting right now, I’ve got to get over here so I can play some guitar.

That’s it. That’s the plan.

Signing off.

11)6(05 its 925am

We got snowed and blowed and iced out of Yellowstone. It was in the middle of a drive out into Lamar Valley to see the wildlife purported to be thriving there, bears, wolves and the like, when, while watching a small family of bison laying around bored like, off in the distance a big distance mind you, Yellowstone is full of those, this massive cloud looks like a down pillow that has a massive tear and is spreading its feathers all over the valley. And it would have been great if they were feathers, I’m sure we would have made piles of them and through them around, but it was snow. Snow that is cold and icy.

But I have to rewind a little bit about that day because there was more to it than just that moment of things changing, although, it is those moments we do remember best. It kind of began with even the hint of the idea of Yellowstone. I mean, we had gone WAY way out of our way to get to Montana/Wyoming, and really just for this. So Yellowstone was engraved in our minds from the early days of the trip, something we have to see, and can’t miss, and you know, its good advice. And then it began with leaving Bozeman, and driving through the valley that enters into Yellowstone, following a perfect river past perfect ranches with perfect horses staring off into eternity in their yards. It began there because apparently my Great-Grandmother, Marion Sullivan, had lived there. And all the while we are driving through this magnificent valley, with peaks on either side and the promise of four seasons hiding in each single one, Van Morrison on the radio and enough instant mashed potatoes to not have a trouble on our minds.

The moment we pulled into our campground we were met by something I’d never had the tingle to experience, a whole heard of huge elk kind of carousing through the sites, yawing and yeeing and making the strangest whale like sounds you’d never expect to come out of them. The big old female elk make this entirely unexpected and therefore funny high pitched squeak somehow come out of their massive frames, as if a kitten were strapped into a microphone booth somewhere within them.

In the morning we were awoke by the herd passing two feet from where we slept in the back of the truck, as if a friendly neighbor going off to work with a cup of coffee in the hands.

Part of what makes Yellowstone neat is its geothermal activity, its unsettled molten core bubbling to the peaks of mountains in the middle of nowhere these murky and primordial stews of boiling water and algae, dripping down their own manufactured shapes of strange bowls and ornamental cups. Off in vast distance geyser valleys steam like a fleet of riverboats were making its way through the mountains. Underneath you on wooden boardwalks, crystal blue and blood red water hisses and bubbles, pits of mud churn on themselves and geysers erupt out of nowhere in frantic excitement, short lived, but excited nonetheless.

The thing that I love maybe the most about “nature”, as in, those places you go that are not paved maybe, is the sense of vastness that is completely opposite the dimensions of say a TV screen, or an apartment. A few years back I hiked around Mt. Hood (well, I won’t kid you, part way around Mt. Hood) with my great friends Mark and Jason. There are parts and pieces of Mountains that you know go with mountains because they wouldn’t fit on anything else. Boulders the size of the White House teeter on the edge of rocks the size of, well, rocks that are really big. Standing there, on and below these enormous gaps in space was the first time I really needed to seek out that place of grandeur.

Standing on river canyon edges that plummeted 2000 feet down into churning waters that rode past rugged mountains and geysers off into the horizon inseparable from the feeling of vastness. Purity, beauty, this could be the definition, something, be it inside you or not of you, most likely not worded out: vast.

We rushed to our campground which was a bit disappointing because it was as if they had put this particular campground (the last open campground we could get to) in the most boring spot in Yellowstone. Which is not that bad when you think about it. Plus it was Freezing with capital F and getting dark and there was ice and snow on the ground. We set up camp, our tarp flapping over our screen house, out in the frozen air, and drove out to look at more animals and just be in the valleys of Yosemite in the evening. The horizon grew more and more dark and we passed herds of bison and elk into the thick of a fat snow cloud, grey and dark and pouring snow like scattered papers in the wind. The light grew dark blue and murky, and the elk continued to feed as the windshield wipers scraped away the fresh ice beginning to land on it like a nuisance. We drove slowly in the absolute silence of snow stopping to stare at the open

102805 its 928am

Its a soggy morning in Bozeman, the American flag with copper eagle soaring above it sits motionless in the wind against the flagpole. The sun is starting to pry open the clouds, and the mountains that surround the town are beginning to show their new coats of snow.

We’ve been crossing through the crucial landmarks of the American west, and specifically getting a feeling for the ultimate in truths that this country and its identity deny, which is that not very long ago, Native American culture was brutally wiped out, and the wisdom and profundity of so many people, whose home was this soil, was trampled and tossed aside like a tabloid magazine.

I felt something very strongly along these lines in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. We had driven up into them on a beautiful way, camped the night out above a pretty lake, awoke to frozen boots and frozen truck and frozen coffee cups and frozen us, and then we set off again, way high up into the mountains, whose peak is somewhere around 14,000 (feet that is) though the pass we went through was around 8000′. The craggly rocks leveled out and smoothed slowly, the white firs and thin aspens more thinned out over the yellow meadows whose ceiling was the sky, drapes over with soft linen clouds like handkerchiefs blowing away from earth. We approached Medicine Wheel, a spot I must admit I previously knew nothing about. Prompted by a sign that said that Medicine Wheel was indeed off to the right up a treacherous dirt road with boulder strewn cliffs on either side and snow packed up the walls of course I took it. The truck protested and bumped and rattled and cautiously pulled itself up the couple of miles to a vastly deserted place (save for the SUV full of loud tourists from Montana who apparently never leave the house save for to pick up some fast food). What Medicine Wheel really is, I don’t know. From what I understand it has been a place of worship for many different tribes of Native Americans for over 7,000 years. That people would walk the endless miles of the west, up into these brutal mountains, and come to the most exposed spot in them to pray. And that all people should and could come there. The trails that ran to and through Medicine Wheel are apparently some of the oldest in North America.

The site itself was quiet and subtle, lines of stones lined up like the spokes of a large (35 feet or so diameter) though not giant, wheel. At the four points of direction there were larger pits built from rocks, presumably for fire. The area was wisely roped off, and a sign asked people to walk to their left around it. Along the ropes were thousands and thousands of prayer flags, bundles of sage, necklaces and other offerings tied to it. Inside the circle/wheel were the same, along with jawbones of animals, feathers, dreamcatchers, all, presumably, sacred to someone.

The place was wildly exposed and I felt the chill of desolation as I looked off to the west, where the mounds of dirt were pressed some 10,000 feet below. I felt the power of someone there, in prayer, while the lightning storms and blizzards rushed across the face of this place as if creation were taking place from that mountain top every day and night.

And coming back down the thin road I realized in a profound way the sadness that is inherent in the destruction of Native American culture. Its so simple, and yet, its as if people don’t take the treasures of knowledge and wisdom that cultures practicing rites and reason for more than 7,000 years in this land, the most beautiful place in the world, the American West.

Two nights before we spent the night below the towering and endlessly imposing/impressive Devil’s Tower, in Northeast Wyoming. It is known to most tribes from the area as Bear Lodge, or Home of the Bear, or something along those lines. You may know it from Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind”, its the mountain that everyone goes crazy to make out of paper mache and mud and where the alien spaceship lands and makes music with the CIA or whatever. Anyways, you might not have seen that movie. But this formation is truly, and I’m not just trying to impress you here too, but its one of the most grand and awe inspiring things I’ve ever seen in my life. Its literally just thousands of rock columns, from afar looking like small and compact but up close being massive hexagons of about 20′ in diameter, pure rock, all pressed together and skyward. It looks as though the biggest tree in the world ever by far, as in a Redwood Tree that reached out of the upper atmosphere was cut, and all that was left was the stump. This too was a revered sacred space, where all kinds of people came to hunt, live, and be reverent. Its nearly impossible not to feel reverence for this thing. Its so much bigger than words or even pictures can convey.

And today we head into Yellowstone.

And so, nothing to complain about, off to get some coffee, off to see some wolves.

10)22(05 its 1121pm

I-90 relentlessly pulls West, mile after mile of flatlands, billboard after billboard, big sky overhead, the clouds pushed by North wind down with taste of ice finally in the air.

We spent five days days in Minnesota, kind of by accident, but a good accident, the accident that Minnesota is gorgeous, the weather was gorgeous, and the sights were amazing.

We found that the camping of Minnesota was some of the best so far. Our first state park found us rolling along dirt roads underneath the sparkling golden fall trees. The colors all around the Mississippi River Bluffs State Park were blasting into the sky and the warm weather pushed a gentle breeze around it all. The park sits on a perch above the Mississippi river where it twists between Wisconsin and Minnesota and the views down to the river are fantastic as you walk gentle paths through the gentle aspen and ash forest. We stayed there two nights and had enough time to settle into putting our scrapbook in order, making mobiles out of aspen bark and apples, and taking long walks among the falling leaves. Our neighbors were kind and interesting, and interested, and it was a great couple of nights.

We crossed the whole state in a day and made our way to the Southwest corner of Minnesota. And then…

South Dakota, oh, South Dakota, what do I make of you, so desperate for attention and granted, deserving it, and yet longing with its kitsch and hardiness to be taken seriously. Taken seriously thank you and pass on through and have a cup of 5 cent coffee but don’t drink it or you may be seriously regretting it. The speed limit is 75, the towns are not closer than 30 miles apart, and the ‘towns’ themselves, well, a Flinstones backdrop of motels and diners and tourist traps. You find yourself reading billboards for entertainment, even though they say the same thing again and again, attractions 400 miles away begin to advertise from the Minnesota border and pound at you, every 5 miles or so: Wall Drug, Reptile Museum, Mt. Rushmore, 1880’s Town over and over again until you get there and you find yourself thinking “wow, I’ve got to go see that”. And then you do, and you know, its a heck of a lot more entertaining than the freeway rolling by at 73 miles per hour. 73 because it turns out the truck and its little four cylinders and a back packed full of firewood and blankets and all the other stuff we need just can’t quite zip along in the face of steady South Dakota wind. Amazing that the pedal can be to the metal and big rigs hauling 15 new cars zoom by you. And you go up a hill for a while. And down. Yippee.

It is really actually beautiful though, the vastness of the place, the endless places that you’ll never set foot on and no one else will either for a long time, and if they do they’ll probably wonder what they’re doing out there, in the middle of nowhere, which is pretty much everywhere in the plains outside the farms wrapped in bony trees. The clouds give you lessons on perspective and light, and you get plenty of time in for non thought.

And so it is that we’re finally close to the border of South Dakota, even though its only our second night here mind you, and ready to head West further still.

Last night we crashed in the ultra budget but clean and weird Sioux Motel, where across the street we had a few Rolling Rocks in the Rusty Spur Saloon while the locals filtered in in cowboy hats and filled the place up chatting over greasy cheeseburgers.

Today we drove into the wonderfully desolate and eerie Badlands National Forest, now completely vacant in the late October post tourist season. We stopped into the Circle Ten cafe where we were easily the only customers of the day and enjoyed home cooked biscuits and freshly grated hash browns. We drove and drove twisting through the landscape that feels like the dusty corner of the earth with hills and spires of dirt and clay like pre giant gothic cathedrals washed under a couple of ice ages. The wind blew constant 25 miles per hour and the air tasted icy, piles of buffalo dung littered the straggly sagebrush gardens and it felt like if anyone had been to the place we hiked out to today it was a cowboy taking sleeping on his hat after a long cattle drive.

10)8(05 its 1142pm

Its late in Ottawa, and the degrees celsius is dropping. We’re holed up in a cheap motel for the night, resting and preparing for the next leg of the trip.

This last week and a few since leaving Sandwich have been amazing.

We headed up to Dover, New Hampshire for a couple of days, where I enlisted my dad to help me track down some details on our family’s ancestry there. It turns out there is a direct line from my bloodline to the Knox family, some of the first settlers in America. Thomas Knox landed in 1633, and the Knox family stayed right around the area for 5 generations. I’ve never done genealogy before, and believe me this was amateur stuff, but it was like I was in an action movie with no crucial tragedy awaiting me sifting through the piles of information, trying to find the keys to some secret. I found enough information to be able to visit the graveyard where the first settlers were buried, the first church site, some of the buildings in town that Knox relatives owned, and the patch of land that used to be the Knox’, Knox Marsh Rd.

Dover was charming and very pretty. The weather held up nicely, and all too soon we were heading out on the road, due west for the first time in a long time, on our way to Kate’s aunt and uncle Cacki and Pete’s place.

Pete and Cacki built the home that they live in on gorgeous land that they bought back in the 60’s. There life there is ideal in many ways, close to the pretty town of Woodsbury, which is quiet but full of community minded folks. Their garden was in full swing and we ate delicious meals every night from home grown vegetables. We watched PBS in the evening and I started to read “All The Pretty Horses”, which is a new good thing in my life.

I can’t begin to talk about how beautiful our time there was. The leaves were starting to change radiant colors and slowly falling from the trees. The air was crisp and clean, the weather beautiful and it felt like we were living life as it was meant to be lived.

I’m most proud and thankful for the work that we were able to do there. Peter had just recently built this amazing house on the property and sold it, and there was a bit of painting left to do. The design and feel of the house is fantastic, I was jealous of the new owners. It has this really neat feeling of being thoroughly modern, with vast high slanting ceilings and full views across to the gorgeous hills, with skylights lining the uppermost walls, very open and spacious. It also blends somehow perfectly into the landscape, with its wood tones and its layout feeling just right for the space it was in, like it was meant to be out there in the woods, in other words, it will be a timeless house, as impressive 30 years from now as it is now, brand new. Kate and I spent our days on the interior, painting and painting the primer and final coat, listening to music, talking a little, and having plenty of time to think. It felt so rewarding to be able to work that way and actually get something done. Meanwhile Peter and Cacki worked all day every day in this natural pace of life that was inspiring. They do what they need to do to be happy and survive and they put everything into it and they are content. It was very inspiring.

It was hard to leave, the country was so beautiful and our hosts so welcoming. The last night we were there we all feasted and drank Vermont brewed beer from Alex and with Cacki’s brother, in from Seattle. It was the kind of scene you want to have a lot in your life.

But the truck was calling and the road was waiting and believe me we are aware of the potential of the weather to turn the trip short on us. We cleaned it out and backed out of the driveway and headed north to Burlington.

We only got a glance at Burlington before the sun beginning to wane led us north of town about a half hour. We found a nice little spot on the shores of Lake Champlain, and sat with a big fire and a few beers that night while the waves calmly repeated themselves over and over.

So we headed out the next day bound for the glorious unknown that was Canada. We approached the border crossing unprepared for what was to come.

We rolled up to the window and the Canadian customs guard asked us

“where are you headed?”

“oh, we don’t know, up to Montreal and then around for a little while”

“where do you live?”

“oh, we don’t really have a home right now, we’re just out and about”

“what’s in the back of the truck?”

“just all our stuff, camping gear, guitars, everything we own”

“where do you work”

“we don’t have a job, we’re just on the road”

“I’m afraid you can’t cross this border.”

It came as a shock. Here we were just being honest and the pride of Canada thought, and reasonably in retrospect, that we intended to move to Montreal and take advantage of all that Canadia has to offer.

It was a major frustration as well, the idea of heading south back through New York, past Baldwinsville where we had already been was not only depressing but impractical. Going around the Great Lakes from the South was a big detour, and would take us days off course.

We were shagrinned. We camped for the night outside of Plattsburgh, NY, had some pizza in a dingy joint and played scrabble into the night. We were still on the shores of Lake Champlain, on the other side but nowhere near where we thought we’d be.

The next day we resigned ourselves to our long journey south, but decided to try one more time at the border. This time we told them we had a regular job and loved America and had to be back at work on Monday. They passed us right through without another word.

I felt light. It was great. The signs were in french, the speed limit in Kilometers per Hour, and Montreal was on the horizon.

We rolled into the city in the afternoon, and found that most of the reasonably priced motels and hostels were booked due to Canadian Thanksgiving. So we did what every reasonable person would do and parked the truck and had a few beers in the lively nightlife that is Montreal. The streets of Montreal open up late, even with the freezing rain that we had, the bars were empty until 11:30 and then they just packed full. Montrealians stay out on the weekends until 3 or 4 am like their french speaking counterparts. We didn’t last that long. We walked back the pretty old tree lined streets to the truck and slid in the back, warm and comfy in our sleeping bags.

In the morning we woke up to the sounds of Canadians shuffling by the truck, and stumbled out into the day. We chose breakfast from a picture menu in a cheap cafe and headed into Old Montreal, a quaint and neat touristy area of town. The architecture is old and the streets are cobbled and the Notre Dame was closed for the day. We had a good time.

And then we drove to Ottawa. The landscape up here is flat and agricultural, the farms huge, and the sky vast.

We haven’t seen much of the town, just dinner in an Indian restaurant while Kate fends off a cold.

The months have rolled by on the trip and it feels better than ever. We will be back in the states in a few days, heading headlong to Colorado and Yellowstone, just to see what happens there.

From Ottawa, signing off.