From Bend to San Francisco

Again, I am in Bend, Oregon. With a smile, I remember walking with Rose, eating soup with Stephen, making baby Aiden giggle as I pretend to gobble his hand, hearing Abby's contagious laugh, seeing the fuzzy deer and rabbits from Dawn's window and getting warm hugs from my favorite people in Bend.

My favorite image in Bend was not one that I captured. At night, I walk the patchy path of crunchy snow and ice from one street to another. I look up and see the criss-crossing, thin branches of a young, bare tree with a few shriveled leaves clinging and glowing in the moonlight.

I eat by myself at a narrow counter by the window. Three of the staff members stop by to check on me and I can feel their kind and somewhat pitying expressions for the woman all alone. It makes me uncomfortable. I do not feel lonely as I write in my battered and worn, green journal. I appreciate their concern, but would feel better if they had a different conclusion of my solitude. But I get it and maybe they feel more about me than I do.

I appreciate my time walking with Abby. The calm morning turns blustery and you can see the wind from the flying, sandy dirt and debris. I wipe the film of sand from my lips caught there by my lip balm. We walk along the loveliest of all rivers, the Deschutes.

I exit the wind into the airport and breeze through security. We are buckled into our seats, ready for takeoff, unknowing that the plane will not move again, at least not on this day. In line to be re-ticketed, I call my sister to check the weather for the towns I would pass through if I happened to drive back to San Francisco. At 9 p.m. snow will fall in Dorris and the same for Weed, California but Redding looks clear. I want to be home. I could get past the snow before 9 p.m. but it is not my fate to drive this time.

Instead, I board a plane for Portland, in the tenth and final row of the small plane. I trade the aisle for the window seat with the young man next to me. Better than a movie, I watch the land of central Oregon stretch out below me and I salivate as I look north and east to the remote stretches of desert and I strongly desire to explore it. That is the kind of alone-ness that energizes me, in it I feel who I am.

We fly into the clouds and above them and the ground is gone again until we near Portland. Then the clouds break up and the rolling green hills and forests appear. I can see the farthest reaching western touches of snow, the trees are dusted in white and then finally, only green. I am grateful to see the Columbia River Gorge as we fly parallel to the huge river. We land smoothly.

I spend five hours at the Portland airport, sitting in the large open area at a table next to the tall windows. Businessmen are scattered about on their laptops. One man is engaged in a video call and by his looks and hand gestures he must be talking to his kids. A large crowd of people gather just beyond security with balloons and signs and they start clapping and cheering for someone who has finally arrived. What a nice welcome, I wonder if I would ever like that.

I sit next to two off-duty flight attendants by my gate for two hours waiting to board our delayed flight. I can tell they have lots of practice waiting. I finish the book I bought at the San Francisco airport before I left, never expecting to read a whole book on my short trip to Bend. I am not sure the book was good for me. Many times I wanted to stop reading, throw it out, even burn it. It wasn't all bad. It glared at me the addiction of doing, doing, doing things, lacking passion, and bloated with shallow activity. But it wasn't all bad.

I talk to another of my sisters on the phone. It is her birthday and I wish I could be with her. I miss her nearly every moment I am not with her, I don't feel that way about too many people, maybe only her. Why is that?

The air feels very rough and I tighten my seatbelt as much as I can. We are over the runway, but we have not touched down yet. I like flying but I don't always like landing. We bounce and swerve small amounts and then brake hard but we are safely on the ground. We wait for 15 minutes just short of the gate in San Francisco. I have finally run out of patience. I am at the back of the plane and it takes a long time to empty. Paul picks me up, curbside.

At nearly 1 a.m., I walk in the door of my house exactly 12 hours after I walked into the Redmond/Bend airport. Knowing that fact turns me into a complainer. But really, I want it as an excuse to take the morning off, to gather myself and clear my mind. I need that time. If I take the time without an excuse, I fear I am weak and lazy. I roll my eyes and shake my head at myself, "Give me a break!" I tell myself, literally. Okay fine, I just might try.

My Unexpectedly Short Trip Through Nicasio Valley

My steering wheel was shaking. That's what you can expect from a 14 year old car with no power steering, right? Its been doing this for a while but last Tuesday it started to concern me and I got a tire blow out later that day. It seems like it has gotten worse. I continue down highway 101 north anyway and exit at Lucas Valley Road. My car roughly rounds the tight curves, winding its way up into the hills. Each shake of the steering wheel creates a loud thud, which is worse when I pull the wheel to the left. I take it slow.

The road makes its way out of the large waves of grass covered hills into a magnificent stretch of tall redwoods. It is dark and quiet and mysterious, where we might discover the secrets that our soul may not reveal, even to ourselves. Here, these things can find their way out.

The road exits the redwoods to sprawling, rolling hills and a layer of fog. I turn down Nicasio Valley Road and stop in the tiny village of Nicasio. Fields meet village, coming right up to the edge of town.

There are less than ten buildings here, in the middle of nowhere, and one of them happens to be a church I like. I ask myself why I have always been enamored by this church. It is quaint and charming and dropped into the middle of poetic landscape.

The rest of the town is also intriguing, a hint of an older time, perhaps, and a contrast to the way of life just ten miles away. There are men exiting from a restaurant and getting into their trucks and I wonder what they do here, what is their day like?

There is an oak tree and a field that intrigues me, so I creep along the edge of the fence and try to make some images. This is why I came out here, to discover what might be waiting.

Back on the road, it takes me around Nicasio Reservoir and eventually to the town of Point Reyes Station, where I stop for a quick snack at the bakery. I linger and wonder if I could live here. It is beautiful and rural and quiet and not too far from the city. We are looking for a quieter place where we feel at home.

Continuing towards the coast with increasing fog and decreasing chance at any vista at all, I finally stop at a gravel lot, worried about my car, and call my Dad. Yup, I still call my Dad about car trouble as he is an excellent source of information. His diagnosis: its either a ball joint or a wheel bearing and I should probably turn around.

I am disappointed and worried as I slowly make my way back. I am, however, lured to stop a couple more times in Nicasio Valley to capture a few more images for the day. It often happens that I see something when I am driving and I let it pass. I regret this, as I am not sure where I am in such a hurry to get to, and isn't this what I out here today to do?

I make it safely back to the city, relieved. The next day the mechanic informs me that the wheel bearing needs to be replaced and the tire is beginning to separate. Different and unrelated issues, since the tire was probably damaged after hitting a bad pot hole and explains the blow out of the other other tire on the same side. Thanks Dad for your wisdom.

All in all, it wasn't the day I had hoped for, but it was a day and it had its upsides and here it is.

Summer Road Trip - Driving to Cedar City

Breakfast view from the Lodge restaurant

On my last morning in Bullfrog, Becki and I go back to the Lodge restaurant for breakfast. After I am full of pancakes and coffee and gazing out at Lake Powell, I amuse myself with the thought that Becki is from Bear, Delaware and now lives in Bullfrog, Utah.  Also amusing, is that she has a dog named Pancake, named after a breakfast food and this reminds me of the time my sister wanted to name her dog Lollipop when she was eight and of the cat my grandmother had temporarily, who she named after a food as well, Mochi. I could go for some mochi right now, my favorite food, I am sure they don't have any within at least 300 miles of Bullfrog. But I like the name Pancake for Becki's dog. Pancake, the dog from Bullfrog owned by Becki from Bear. Where do these names come from anyway? I am from Landenberg, but what does this name mean? I am sure it means something, some word or words. I find it interesting that almost all words can be defined by other words, and those words can be defined by other words. So, does that mean that there is a word that in not definable by another word? Is this the first word of language? What, I wonder, was the first word? What was the first word that humans decided that they could agree upon the meaning where they needed no other words to define it. A meaning that is simply that, because it is that word. Maybe it was "I" or maybe it was "God". Is there any person on this world that does not understand the meaning of "I" or the meaning of "God"? Even if you do not believe in God, I think you have a very clear sense of what other people mean when they say "God", and also, you must know the meaning of "God" to know that you do not believe in God. Sure, we have words now, that we can use to describe "God" but maybe, if you could trace those words back to the words that describe them and so on, you would have, at the very beginning, just "God".

Lake Powell at Bullfrog

I find it interesting that "I" and "God" were the two words I thought of as the first words that were the basis for all other words. Maybe, when you strip away all the words used to describe "I" and "God", you will find that these two words actually mean the same thing.  This is not to say that I think I am God, or that God is me, but that God is in all of us individual "I"'s, and we are all in God. The fact that we have words and at some point there was a first word that we agreed we knew the meaning without another word to describe it, would seem to suggest that we can know something without words. Which also would say that we can think without words and perhaps feel without words. And even if it seems almost unfathomable now to know something or think or feel without words, we all started our time in this world exactly in this way, as babies. And maybe, as babies, we knew these meanings without knowing the words and now these words are really just pointers to the meaning, but they are not the meaning themselves. I wish I could "know" more often, without words. Ah, but perhaps I do! This is why I like photography and music. A picture and a sound can be meanings without words and maybe we crave them because they let our mind relax and take us back to that time as babies, when life was so simple and pure and full of meanings that we could know without labeling them. Oh words, how you complicate and simplify everything, at the same time.
Maybe the first word was actually "experience" and I should really get back to using words to describe my "experience" of driving to Cedar City. On this day, in Utah, I left Becki who went in late to work and I set out driving north out of Bullfrog.
START: 1762 miles.
So, I race back across the orange Utah desert lined with bright pastel green sagebrush and through the open range. The enormous rock formations take the shape of mountains. The mountains begin to be colored with green only to turn again into a white-gray-yellow color. I am on my way to Capitol Reef National Park. The road goes up and down and around sweeping curves and mountains. Today I feel a very familiar nervousness, that is some flavor of fear. What I am nervous or fearful about, I don't know, but I often feel it when I am off to somewhere new. It makes my chest burn and my stomach anxious to the point where I almost feel like I am going to throw up. But I know this feeling so well, that I know I can just charge through it without understanding it.

Capitol Reef is kind of a "drive-through" park. You could be on your way to somewhere else and find yourself just driving through, which is how it happened the last time I was here. This time, I will stop and do at least a short hike. After dry, dry landscape, I enter Capitol Reef, where the valley seems lush in comparison. The narrow valley is green with a river flowing through it and high multi-colored walls rising on the sides. I stop at a gravel parking lot and start my hike.

The road through Capitol Reef

Half-ling Tree

The hike takes me up red rock and turns into white rock. It is dry and hot and the sun feels especially drying today. I drink often from my camelback. There are dry bushes and dwarfed trees that are kind of depressing. I think I have been in the desert too long. There are desert clumps of wildflowers, but, even as a lover of wildflowers, these too seem sad. The vegetation here seems half dead but not struggling, like they have given up trying to flourish, they have decided they will just take what they can get. I wonder why they grow to such an unsustainable size and put up with their "half" life, so to speak. Why not be smaller and nicer looking? Some of the trees look completely dead, like they are just dried up sticks that have remained. I don't know what about this bothers me today. Why should vegetation bother me? I think, in all the beautiful places I've been, the harsh climate plants you see are usually miraculous. Sometimes it is a tree or a flower that somehow seems to thrive in a particularly extreme climate and this makes it miraculous and you get a sense of wonderment, how nature continues to surprise you. Not here so much. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and teenager and we would go to the beach for just the day and then drive home two and a half hours full of sand and salt water. For some reason the feeling of sand sticking to you in a hot, sweaty car interior where you can't really move around would really irritate me. This reminds me of this place. Irritating.

The Main Road through "white" rock valley

I don't want to turn back, I want to finish my hike and I don't even know why. There is supposed to be a beautiful lookout, so I guess this is motivating me. I am sweating a lot and wishing I had a hat. Even the sun is annoying me today. But I do reach the lookout. I go out to the edge where I enjoy views of the valley and the distant hills, mountains and roads. Its actually quite nice and I indulge in some homemade dried fruit and buffalo jerky. You can see the main road making its way through the green valley made of red and white rock. The green-ness seems unnatural here, but I guess the river that runs through here helps to hydrate the place to life.

View from the overlook

The green valley amongst dry land

I sit there for a while, dangling my feet over the edge until I get a strong urge to leave and get off this mountain and go away from here. Why am I so irritated? My hike down passes quickly and before I know it I am back at my car feeling unrefreshed and thirsty. Hiking usually makes me feel refreshed and excited, even when I am tired.

I get back in my car and get back out onto the main road. A few miles later there is a turn off for a scenic drive through national park land which I decide to take. Much of the road is paved, but soon turns into gravel. There is expansive desert sweeping down and up to one side and high butte walls on the other. The landscape here seems to bother me less. I even enjoy the wildflowers, yellow and red. Maybe I like it because I am amongst the green-ness, instead of looking down upon it. I think I really like green, it means life. I pass many gravel parking lots for hikes whose names seem familiar to me from my travel magazines. Someday I will have to come back to try these all-day hikes, perhaps they will be more inspiring than the one I chose.

At the end of the dirt road I don't stick around too long and turn around. The view going in the opposite direction are also amazing and different. This is what I like about traveling both directions on a scenic road, you get to seem something from a different perspective. Becki had told me about the orchards in Capitol Reef where you can pick your own fruit and pay per pound by stuffing your money in one of the little boxes posted around the orchard fences. I attempt to do the same but it seems that every orchard fence is locked and this discourages me easily. I could go for some fresh fruit right about now, but it is getting later in the afternoon and I know that the best part of the drive is ahead of me, so I continue on.

I make one last stop on my way out of Capitol Reef, to look at a tree. At this stop is a motorcycle group. The tree is half alive, half dead but its shape is beautiful and curving, reaching up vertically, much different than the beautiful, curving landscape reaching out horizontally.

Through red rock, crumbling, dry earth I continue. Then, the landscape starts to burst with bright green. The trees get taller and more abundant. I travel through small towns and see pastures where cows mingle amongst large, smooth rocks. The mountains lose all red color as then begin to be covered with more and more trees. Before I know it I am traveling through forests. The road continues up into the mountains blanketed with forests. The trees change into pines of some sort. I can still feel the dryness but there is something refreshing about it too, like stepping into a nice shady spot after being out in the bright sun. An occasional break in the trees reveals the desert landscape I have recently left, showing off the bright red and white colors.
The air becomes rapidly cooler and here the trees change again into white barked birch trees (I think). These forests are very dense with the long, white trunks reach high up toward the sky. While the green pines brought refreshment, these birch trees make me feel calm, like everything is alright in the world. It is amazing that on the top of these mountains you find birch trees, and reminds me that maybe everything has its own place. I think I've said this before. At the summit, the birch trees break up into clumps and allow for rolling mountain pastures. There are some purple and red wildflowers blooming along the side of the road. I can see the road I will travel ahead of me, swinging down the mountains and through forests and into more mountains and disappearing out of sight. The air is cool here, you might even call it cold. It is a nice change.

Farmland

After descending for a long time, I discover what is on the other side of these green, tree covered mountains, it is farmland and white mountains. These white mountains turn into canyons and the road continues up alongside them. At one point there is canyon dropping on the left side of the road and on the right side of the road. The narrow road winds precariously between the two canyons and then continues through canyon lands and uphill to a breathtaking overlook.

Overlook

Canyon views

The road up to the overlook

As I continue on, it is becoming very clear how late in the day it is. The shadows are long and the light, slanted. I pass through green fields, some dotted with yellow wildflowers, with tall, green walls or mountains in the distance. I pass through small towns where young kids are practicing football. The area is remote and open. I pass near the edge of Bryce Canyon National Park and see some outlying red spires, which I know exist in the heart of the park. The setting sun cast some amazingly, deep red colors on the already red rock. After that, I drive through wide open mountains pastures and forests of Dixie National Forest. Then it is dark and after a long time of barely seeing another car on the road I come to Cedar City. I pass my motel and continue on in search of some food. When I finally check in the lady there is "courteous" and not at all helpful. I am glad to be in a room with four walls around me. I am getting weary, I am ready to be home. Part of me wants to skip the rest of my trip and just go home.