music: Cowboy Junkies- The Trinity Sessions
It’s always amazed me how well the roads in this country get you to where you need to go. We should thank Ike for the larger veins and arteries that push our metal and rubber cells to and fro, but roads have been sponsored by all levels of our society, from the Feds down to the private citizens. The fact that there is continuous pavement between my house in San Francisco and my old house in Boston is quite an engineering accomplishment. but the real achievements in human ingenuity are those roads built through otherwise untouched and hostile landscapes. We can and should give thanks to those large sections of unpaved land such as the stretch of the Sierras in California, the tundras of Alaska, and the sandstone chasms of the Southwest, but we have to keep in mind that the only reason most of us has had the opportunity to take in such wonders is because of industrial America’s paved vascular tissue.
Just a week ago DJ 1ey and I pushed forth into the wild tangle of concrete and managed to navigate ourselves to Boulder, CO for an amazing wedding and reunion (and an AnizeCon of sorts now that I stop and think about those present). We then put the Camry back into the Utah backcountry, properly hiking the Needles section of Canyonlands after our first attempt in the spring of 2005, and putting some time into the oft-overlooked wonders found in the Escalante Grand Staircase. The continuous pavement then wound us through deserts, valleys, salt flats, and mountain passes until we ended up right where we started. What good would all those roads be, after all, if they didn’t take you to the edge of somewhere where there are no roads?
(There is much to say about Utah and what we found there, but there’s another place and time for that. Suffice it to say that we are already plotting our return: the Paria Wilderness Area, Hole-in-the-Rock Road, and the Maze are next up.)
What is more amazing to me is that the web of roads don’t just take you where you need to go, they’ll take you pretty much anywhere you want to go. Roads, from the seriously big Eisenhower arteries to the unpaved one lane country capillaries, have and will taken me and millions (billions?) of other humans places we couldn’t imagine, and places we could very well imagine, no matter how far away. I remember thinking about the magnitude of it all while driving last July: given the sheer number of intersections and possible turns, what would the improbability be of starting at 12 Curtis in Somerville, MA and ending up in San Francisco just on random chance? Infinitesimal. But you really could go anywhere.
Most of the time I’m disdainful of all those roads, especially when I rely on their currents while traveling. I’ve read too much Abbey, and grown self-righteous riding my bike around town, I think. I’m too conscious of those dead dinosaurs in my gas tank. But I have to recognize my own hypocricy. Without the road, there wouldn’t be a journey.
The staggering number of roads out there, and therefore number of traveling possibilities, reminds me that there are far more paths to choose than I would consider under normal circumstances. Upon returning from my motorized paddle up and down a few asphalt tributaries I fell into some serious changes back home: the ending of my job as a naturalist in the Golden Gate National Rec Area, the exciting and uncertain future of the band poised to either break out or fall on its face, the prospect of a couple free months which with to make music, explore, hike, surf, read, sleep, and indulge, and the highly likely return of missa toss at summer’s end. These are things keeping my hands full and keeping me up late. Sometimes life takes a couple months to reach a significant juncture, and sometimes almost every day is filled with groundbreaking, river-diverting events. Now is one of those transitory times, somewhere in between a routine-laden spring in the field and a blissful summer. No doubt the road and I will have a few reckonings before Labor Day hits, but for now I’d do myself good to be reminded just how much the river climbs, tumbles, and bends.
And, of course, know that my travels will not go as planned.
music: Sigur Ros- Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do
My car has been in some pretty wild places. Since I brought it out to the East Coast in 2000 I’ve been dipping here and there, down interstates, city streetst, country lanes, and roads that it probably shouldn’t have gone on. THW-455 has traversed the country’s lattitude three times and longitude twice. It has been accomplice to several impromptu road trips. It has hauled my stuff around more than it would like (if it had the capacity for liking); I treat it like a truck. I lived out of the thing for two months in the summer of 2004. And all the while it had Wisconsin plates on it, even though i haven’t really lived in Wisconsin since 1997.
Today was the last day for THW-455. The car is fine, save some dents, dings, scrapes, and a small rust spot on the trunk. But I finally did the legal thing, went to the DMV, got a smog inspection, and transferred the trusty Camry’s title and registration to the state of California. It’s now got some stupid string of numbers and letters and a stupid red font that says California. Gone are the little dairy farm and sailboat of the far superior Wisconsin license plate. It’s all very strange, like a good friend who has been growing their hair and beard for eight years finally decides to shave their head bald. But it’s done. the old Wisconsin license plate is hanging on my wall, 2005 inspection sticker and all. But this is a new phase for the Camry. At eight years old and with 70,948 miles it’s hopefully just entering middle age, and even with this strange new alphanumeric designation I’m hoping that this car that has been so far with me isn’t through. After all, there is much more adventuring to be done.
music: Spanish Pop Covers at the Cafe International, San Francisco
If we are lucky enough to live to age 80, we have 960 months of life to fill. Most of them are split minimum 5:2 with school or work. There’s a good run at the start where you spend a lot of time drooling and sleeping. On the whole, though, of these 960 hypothetical months that we are given to fill we rarely spend even one doing one thing, especially one thing that we want to do. I chose to spend one of my months of life walking in the mountains, and it was a solid month of walking. From July 18 until August 16 I found myself once again with a big green backpack, but this time strolling through one of the largest roadless stretches in the continental United States. By the end, I had walked an estimated 280-300 miles, had risen 36,000’ and had descended 40,000’. And now I can say that I am a thru-hiker alumnus. I’ve completed the High Sierra Trail and John Muir Trail in succession.
I’d like to say that the whole thing was pure, unadulterated glory. Certainly there were moments of transcendence and beauty such that I have not encountered in my previous 332 months of life, but there were also moments of pain and agony. It’s tough business carrying a pack through the mountains, and doing it every single day for 29 days. My pack, I estimate, weighed anywhere from 30-55 lbs. depending on how much food we had. The first couple days left me completely spent and hurting while I built up the callouses on my hips and the muscles in my shoulders and back. Ibuprofen was part of my hardly-balanced breakfast. On day 6, in a mad dash down Mt. Whitney, I tweaked my left ankle something fierce and endured shooting pains up and down my leg for the next 6 or so days. The nights were cold; it dropped below freezing frequently when we camped above 10,500’. It rained every day for the first eight days, something that any sierra hiker would swear their life against happening. The mosquitos swarmed in plagues of biblical proportions. This was an encounter with Nature in its most raw, primitive, and uncaring state. Natural paradise has no concerns about your comfort or well-being. I learned that quickly. But there were also moments of indescribable beauty, and they were plentiful.
The journey was, in very simple terms, a long walk. So while the sightseeing afforded to us by alpine lakes and mountain passes was the reason why we decided to walk where we did, the walking itself took center stage. Have I ever done anything so physical for so long and for so many days in a row? Probably not. After my body stopped rebelling and settled into the reality of 10 or so miles up and down every single day walking became less some necessary painful experience required to get to the next campsite and more something that would induce a very quiet meditative state. Meditation is often depicted as a sitting affair, but there are also forms of meditation in which the practitioner walks. And walks. And walks. And walk I did. By the second week the struggle of walking subsided. Uphills became less arduous, downhills less jarring. Speed gave way to rhythm. I had so long to walk that there was no sense in being in a rush. In some great paradox time passed more quickly because of it. I found that my thoughts slowed and for a few short moments I reached moments of what buddhists would call something like “clear mind” or taoists would call “not-thinking.” And when I came to I found myself in some of the most amazing natural scenery that I’ve had the fortune to see.
The High Sierras themselves are dynamic. The path led us through high mountain zones that looked like what I’d imagine the moon to look like, and down into small glades bursting with plants and greenery. There were waterfalls and quiet lakes, trees literally older than Jesus, and scenic vistas around almost every turn. The JMT is called the most scenic trail in the country, and that could very well be possible, considering how long it is and how it just doesn’t stop being positive (although there’s a couple shorter trails in Utah and Hawaii that could possibly give it a run for its money in terms of raw wonder). That I find myself so close to the Sierras out here is a huge plus; Yosemite has replaced Franconia Notch as my weekend warrior destination.
And Yosemite is something to behold. While Sequoia and King’s Canyon are enormous in scope with ranges of jagged spires in all directions, Yosemite is rounded and polished, mellower, but not any smaller. The trip ended with a sunrise ascent of Half Dome and a subsequent mile descent into Yosemite Valley. Then motorized travel back to civilization proper, replete with fast food burgers, beer, ice cream, and other tasty food that doesn’t have to be rehydrated. I admittedly missed some food (and after 2 weeks even my food cravings diminished), but other than that I didn’t miss much about city living. And I was out for long enough time to get it all out of my system that it now seems foreign and slightly abrasive to me as I scurry about San Francisco and Oakland trying to find a new place to live. Maybe I shouldn’t habituate to the smell of rotting garbage, car horns, mobs of people packed into buses. But maybe it’s unavoidable. I could only make this hike happen because of civilization, having done it all with my fancy camping trinkets and gadgets and plastic clothes and inflatable lightweight mattress and dehydrated meals and water treatment system. By most people’s standards, one month of life spent walking the John Muir Trail is something unfathomable. But consider John Muir himself, spending not one month but upwards of 50 years walking through the High Sierras with nothing more than a blanket, some tea, some salted pork, the clothes on his back, and the shoes on his feet. That’s a Wisconsin Boy done good out West.
After spending one glorious month of my life hiking the trail named after him, I guess it’s time to see how I do out here.
music: AJM playing his travel guitar
I”m currently sitting in Volker’s living room. Next to me is my trusty green Osprey Silhouette, once again packed to the gills. After two weeks of seeing the entire length of this country fly by at 70 MPH (and it was a grand tour, especially once I cleared the Rocky Mountains) I’m ready to do some walking. Tomorrow AJM and I will set out for Sequoia National Park (the specifics of how aren’t quite hammered out just yet…could be a car ride from a benevolent soul or the bus through Fresno and Visalia, then a 6 mile walk up the hill into Sequoia Proper) and begin a 280-mile walk from Sequoia’s Giant Forest to Yosemite valley via the High Sierra and John Muir Trails. I’m quite looking forward to the change of speed, but also healthily nervous about the whole undertaking. 29 days on the trail isn’t something one takes lightly, but in many ways AJM and I have been preparing for this for a while. We’ve locked down our food resupplies and packed our bags (mine’s hovering between 50 and 60 lbs with 8+ days of food in it) and for all intents and purposes are ready to spend a month in the High Sierras. we have brushes with civilization on July 27 and August 4, and then will be meeting tmo on August 9 and Volker on August 13. We land in Yosemite Valley on August 16th if all goes according to plan. Should be a good little walk in the park.
And after that…?? I suppose I’ll have to figure out what I want to do with myself for the next couple of years. But first things first: Sequoia. Until next month…
music: none
In a few hours, once I’ve packed up my laptop, sleeping bag, and buttpack and thrown them into the front seat of my car, and after I haul what furniture of mine is left in the pumpkin-colored room at 12 Curtis into the basement, I’ll drive west on I-90. Away from Boston and the East Coast, into the sunset. Five years I’ve been in Boston, and nine years on the East Coast, and it’s time. It’s been time, I think. Since I got back from my road trip two years ago I’ve had my eyes on the Western horizon, waiting for the day when I could pack all my worldly possessions into my car and drive. That day is today.
I think I’ve spent so much time thinking about today that the actual event is a bit anticlimactic. At this point I’ve said my goodbyes-and-see-you-laters, I’ve tied up as many loose ends as life would allow, and I’ve distilled my material goods to that which can fit into my car. I’ve been feeling sort of dissociated from all of it this past week, in a fugue state of sorts, maybe to soften the blow of a major life transition. But even in my leaving some things comfort me; I’ll roll out of here much like I rolled in, with a little cold, a degree of exhaustion, and Peet waving me on from the porch. But this time is quite different; I’m headed into a big question mark for the first time in my life with no real plans or immediate goals. Should be interesting.
Connecticut today, the Midwest by Tuesday, Colorado by Friday, the Pacific ocean a week after that. Some stops in the Rockies and Utah to add some spice to the whole trip. Then some wandering through the Sierra Nevadas, and after that…who knows? The rear of my car is about 3-4 inches lower than it normally is, exhaust pipe clearance is less than comforting. But after 200-odd years of Americans pushing their wagons west to seek their fortunes, that isn’t going to stop much.
There is change in the air. My world in Boston is in a great deal of transition, and it’s not just me. I never did fully take to this city; a good deal of my energy was spent trying to work my way around Boston and it’s idiosyncracies. Staying any longer would have been counterproductive. Perhaps I stayed too long as it was, but nothing can be done about that now. There were some good things here…Chowdahaus, Live Live, Tuesday nights at Matt Murphy’s, grad school, 12 Curtis, the Biosphere, teaching….there will be things that I will miss, and people too. But it’s time. It’s been time. There’s much ahead to be excited about, and I am completely unencumbered and hold no obligations. I can do whatever I want. The freedom is intoxicating.
music: Grateful Dead- 4/11/1978
The Ides of March are behind us, the Equinox directly in front of us, the full moon just past, the end of Daylight Savings is nigh, and the days are lengthening. Time once again for our hero to fix his eyes on the horizon and stumble over things directly in front of him.
Teaching is a Faustian bargian of sorts: you essentially give up the majority of your weekends from September through June, but get all the time back all at once in July and August. I’ve maximized utility on the summer front for the past two years: 2004 involved driving around the American West, hiking, and playing music with AJM. 2005 took me overseas to Australia and Hawai’i. Each of the previous two years involved a lot of distance and a wide variety of activities. Plans for 2006 have been in the works for a couple months, and the plans involve something much more focused and restricted as far as distance. 211 miles, to be exact about it. This summer AJM and I will be hiking the John Muir Trail.
I’m one of those that likes to put 50 lbs (more, sometimes) on my back and walk up and down mountains for fun. This is more or less unfathomable to people who don’t do it, but whatever. I’ve done some pretty wild hikes and have pushed me and my backpack past the point of common sense on occasion, but nothing I’ve done will measure up to this. The JMT is rugged terrain, snaking thorugh some of the best scenery the High Sierras of California has to offer, but it’s remote. We will be out for a total of 26 days. We will be several days’ walk away from paved surfaces for most of it, dependent on food cache drops and prearranged resupplies every 5-7 days. We’ll be doing anywhere from 7-15 miles on any given day, plus elevation changes of up to 3,000’. And we’ll be doing all of it above 7,500’ until we descend into Yosemite Valley and wrap the thing up.
This is an intimidating undertaking. I’m rarely nervous when it comes to hiking trips, but this is one for which I have a very healthy respect. No matter, we’re going to do it. Everyone I’ve talked to that has done it says it was one of the highlights of their life. We have the experience, we have the training, we have the gear, we have the motivation, and despite the advice of many distance hikers, we have the travel guitars to write a song about it as we go. This weekend I finished the first draft of our itinerary and with it the ideations about doing the JMT this summer have become much more real. The wheels are in motion for a very different sort of adventure this summer. Next up: dates, permits, gear lists, training…gettin’ there. as always.
music: Santana- Live at the Fillmore ‘68
The last time I was in Northern California I was in the middle of a two month joyride around the American West. The time before that I was scouting grad school programs. Both times I found myself in the Bay Area, though, I kept wondering if there was a catch. In some ways, now that I’m back in Boston, I’m still wondering.
I spent last week in San Francisco paying some overdue visits and seeing what the place was all about. San Francisco has always been an outpost of people seeking their fortunes in one way or another, from the days of the Gold Rush and Manifest Destiny. It is one of those places where very few people are locals. It is a collection of self-uprooted transplants, those who are seeking something. Says the Northern California Handbook:
Californians tend to think life itself is a California invention, but “lifestyle” definitely is: people come to California to have one. Coming to California, novelist Stanley Elkin observes, ‘is a choice one makes, a blow one strikes for hope. No one ever wakes up one day and says ’ I must move to Missouri.’ No one chooses to find happiness in Oklahoma or Connecticut.’ And according to historian Kevin Starr, ‘California isn’t a place, it’s a need.’ Once arrived in California, according to the myth, the only reason to carry around the baggage of one’s previous life is if one chooses to.
San Francisco itself is a city. Undoubtedly. And as with any city it carries with it all the annoyances of urban living: traffic problems, having to lock your door, incessant noise, painful amounts of anonymity, and so on. It’s a city, there’s no getting around that. But as cities go, San Francisco seems to be one that has its priorities straight. The general consensus among the city’s residents is one that supports environmentally sustainable practices, public green space, talking to strangers, acceptance, and youthful attitudes. It’s probably no coincidence either that the Franciscian order is long associated with ecology and environment; San Francisco is in very close proximity to some of the most wonderous natural places I’ve seen. I took two day trips while I was there, one to a Redwood Grove named for another Wisconsin Boy who made his way West, and the other to the shores of the Pacific. And all this in a climate that is the stuff of dreams. All in all, San Francisco strikes me as a more humane city than the ones out East.
The first time I was in Northern California, in the spring of 2003, I almost moved there. The time was not right then; I had unfinished business in Boston. Now, approaching the spring of 2006, I am not so sure if my business in Boston is worth the cost of being here. I have lived on the East coast for nine years, which is sort of hard to fathom in and of itself. I’m not from here, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to settle here. Always in motion is the future, and there is no telling what tomorrow holds, let alone the coming months and years, but I sense a change on the horizon. I sense a whiff of the freedom that Thoreau found only when walking West. And after spending time on the other ocean last week and visiting with some dear friends who have themselves gone seeking some new life out there, I don’t shy away from the possibility for myself.
This much is sure: I will be in California this summer. The maps for the 211 mile stretch between Mt. Whitney and Yosemite Valley arrived today. AJM and I will spend a good four weeks in the High Sierras this summer as we tackle the John Muir Trail, some of the most revered areas in the fog-laden wonderland out West made famous by another wanderer from Wisconsin.
music: Studio One Rockers
Imagine a small country where there are no stoplights and no fast-food chains. You can take school buses all the way from one side of the country to the other for $3. Shoes are a rare occurrence (and shoes mostly mean flip-flops) and cell phones are even more rare. What’s more, this tiny country has an astounding array of natural beauty: tropical desert islands, atolls and a barrier reef, rainforests and jungles, mountains complete with waterfalls and rivers and swimming holes, and caves that need exploration. The people, while most likely considered poor by most Americans’ standards, live a life rich with the stuff that matters: long meals with family and friends, morning full of sunshine burning off a layer of fog, music that evokes island breezes, and the valuable understanding that very few people, in fact, are out to get you and what’s more are woth talking to.
Imagine not. Welcome to Belize.
December was miserable. December is usually terrible, but this year December was miserable for a bunch of reasons. But luckily Reuben found himself with a teacherly break in between Christmas and New Year’s, and he and I skipped town for a week in Belize, leaving his wife and our sorry excuses for lives behind. Both of us have been living, breathing, eating (barely) and sleeping (even less) for our students and were very much looking forward to a week of time in which we did stuff for ourselves- the last time we took an extended trip together was four days in Yosemite back in 2004, and before that was a road trip through Canada in 1998. So after some nice days hanging out with old friends in DC we hopped a very early morning plane for Belize City. We touched down in the tiny airport a little after noon, and scooted out to the cayes with a quickness. Thus began a week bookended by lazy days on”Caye Caulker.”:http://www.gocayecaulker.com/ In the middle of the trip we based ourselves out of San Ignacio, adventure town up in the hills. We took day trips to some amazing places: two caves in which some beautiful geology was occurring and in which Mayan rituals were performed, and a trip to Tikal, the capital of the Mayan Empire (and site of the rebel base on the fourth moon of the planet Yavin). It was a week packed full, but barely stressful. We did a lot, we saw a lot, but we didn’t feel drained from it in the least.
There are a lot of tales to tell, but I think it’s best to let the photos to do most of the talking. Suffice it to say that the trip and the time with my old friend gave me a very necessary respite from a life in Boston I’m now ready to admit is far from healthy or good. What struck me most, though, is that the perspective on people should live is so refreshingly different once you leave the US. And despite some amenities that Americans have grown soft over, in some ways the quality of life is better for those people I met in Belize. We here have things like efficient cars (and plenty of them), fast food delivery, a mighty military and well-protected borders, liability waivers, prestigous universitites, enormous leaders in industry, wireless internet, an overwhelming selection of food and drink, reliable plumbing and electricity even, but I can’t help but think that by my count, We The People are far less happy on a basic level than the folks I met in Belize. There is something to be said for simplicity and moderation and modesty. Belize and its people (a highly diverse bunch) manage to enjoy themselves, get along famously, and live fulfilled, happy lives despite not havng a lot of the stuff Americans find so valuable. I’m a week removed from my trip to Central America and am quickly losing that perspective at the hands of this Babylon System, but it’s something I’d like to hold onto as long as I can.
My life is once again governed by the obligations of Missa Toss. But like any period after significant travel, I am trying to find a balance point between the job I signed on for here and the ideals I discovered out on the road. Belize tourist traps are full of shirts and stickers that say stuff like “UnBelizeAble!” and “You Better Belize It! but the one I think summed it up was found on Caye Caulker, a gem of an island in which the main modes of transportation are bicycle, golf cart, and sailboat. As you exited the water taxi you walked over a mosaic with a simple message: Go Slow. Yes, I. Can’t think of a better way to usher in the new year than remembering that, the simplest but most potent lesson learned from a tiny beautiful country on the other side of the Carribean Sea. There is change on the wind, and 2006 will prove to be a year full of change. Here’s to an excellent start to the year, and here’s to making sure to make time for what really matters.
music: Toots and the Maytalls- Funky Kingston
One year later, some new twists, same story.
I feel very fortunate to be able to take off for two months at a time and travel to fantastic places. Big thanks to Brad for being my OZ resource and mahalo to Parker for being my island tour guide. People have been asking how the trip was; it’s not the sort of thing you can really answer. the July archives from Australia tell some of the tale. Unfortunately Hawaii is not so up on the backpacker scene, as most people stay in hotels and resorts so internet access is more limited. But as an attempt at explanation for the past couple months, pictures of Australia and Hawaii are posted on the anize photo gallery.
Doing an extended trip solo is an incredible thing. Some people understand the impulse because they have done similar or have the urge to, but most people are sort of shocked. I had moments out there, halfway around the world, where I wondered what I was doing myself, and there were lonely times, but for the most part it was excellent. Australia was absolutely no problem as there is an enormous backpacker culture there; I actually had to make a point of spending time by myself. You need to after spending a significant amount of time bouncing in and out of 8-share hostel dorms. Most people who go to Hawaii aren’t backpackers though, they are staying in resorts and hotels, so I spent most of my time alone on the islands. I realized out there in the middle of the Pacific that the solo journey, for me, is not a challenge. It’s easier for me in a lot of ways, especially when backpacking, to be on my own. The places I went this summer were places that I’ve been burning to see, and so I chose the experience of being in those places over the need to share the experience. There isn’t really any other place I can think of that beckons me in that way (although there are plenty of places I’d like to go) so for the near future I expect my travels will be with other people. Were it possible to compare this summer with last summer I might take the cross country road trip with AJM over my wanderings in Australia and Hawaii. Maybe because it was an exploration of my big backyard, but probably because it was a shared experience. We made music nightly. This summer I didn’t even have an instrument.
So I’m back in Boston.
It’s funny to be home in the late afternoon on a Monday when everyone else is at work.
I find myself in much the same position as I did at this time last year: sleeping on my couch. My subletter, who I understand will be moving in more permanently, is still occupying the pumpkin room off the kitchen and I’m still picking the same clothes out of my backpack. But I have some things back: my computer, my phone (didn’t miss either all that much), my guitars (missed a lot). I’ve already had a jam session with the band down in the Biosphere. I found, to my horror, that the leather strap stored next to the Gibson’s neck wore through the finish enough to cause a couple small indentations. Very, very not good. I’ll take the Gibson into the nearest authorized luthier in the coming weeks. But really nothing happens until I get back into my room.
the 1-2 is a flurry of activity; almost everyone is in transition. Marla is already gone, to Berkeley for grad school, and tmo is in the process of clearning out his stuff, on the precipice of his own extended solo journey. Claire has been gone. Ron is roadtripping somewhere in the midwest. JZ is moving into tmo’s room. Upstairs Chuck is gone, and Anna now occupies the third floor She had us all up a couple nights ago and seems to be down with the whole-house ethic. Matt and Gina seem to be the only ones not in transition. Peet is moving downstairs, and when he moves his stuff Gabe the subletter will be able to move his stuff into Peet’s room, whereupon I can move back into my room, set up Mission Control, and begin to get set for school and the coming fall. But an interesting thing has happened in all this shuffle, I realized: I have two new roommates on the second floor. Unexpected, this is.
There are boxes and piles and stuff moving in and out and all over the place. It’s a project trying to keep your stuff together, especially if you have to move it. We have a house meeting on Thursday night so hopefully things can be made more clear then. What I do know is that things here are changing and rather quickly, which at once is unsettling and at the same time opens up all sorts of possibilities for how things are going to go down this next year. One thing is for sure, though: the solo excursion has reached its end. Being back reminds me that I have a community, I have responsibilities and a sense of purpose, and I have a lot of work to do.
I’m currently sitting in the Railway Square YHA in Sydney, the first place I set my big backpack down in this country. Tomorrow I leave Australia, but my net movement at this point is practically 0. I’ve come full circle.
I don’t miss Sydney, or big cities for that matter. This morning I woke up in my tent in the Australian outback, at a roadhouse about 250 km outside Alice Springs. It’s big out there, and besides some select nights in the North woods of Wisconsin, the night sky was among the best I’ve ever seen. At points the only light source for 50 miles in any direction was my headlamp. I even became accustomed to the once strange configuration of stars that grace the southern hemisphere. I can recognize the Southern Cross and that’s about it. (How many can pick out more than the Big Dipper?)
The past three days has been spent in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, home to what whitey calls Ayers Rock. I did it in a rental car driven on the wrong side of the road, and I managed to find Jentz and Christian, two German students who came along for the ride. I dragged them behind me, more like. They were into seeing the rock and doing the National Park thing, but had no love for sleeping in tents, cooking food, or walking long distances in the desert. All of which are fairly prevalent in a trip out to Uluru. Luckily we picked up a fourth once we were out there: Jenny (or Janet?) from Sydney, now working as a youth worker on an aboriginal reservation 600 km west of Uluru. More precisely in the middle of nowhere than even Uluru.
It felt good to be driving, although the stereo in the car did not meet my music dorque specifications. And although they didn’t say anything, I could tell the Germans were not down with my musical selections. Christian had a two hour window to be an iPod DJ and really pushed musical boundaries with techno remixes of little-known 80’s pop groups (Boy Meets Girl, anyone?) and more mainstream stuff like Roxette and Dido. They surely couldn’t discuss the effect of a switch in Phish’s 1999 stage setup and its effect on type II jamming style like some Germans I know. But because my name was on the dotted line, I carried the keys and had my finger on the button. The whole expedition had that vibe: this was my trip, and they were along for the ride. Jenny/Janet was hitching so she had the liberty to jump off whenever she wanted.
Four and a half hours of driving through the outback gets you to the park from Alice Springs. On the way there are precisely 5 roadhouses and nothing else built by humans. The land is beautiful, though; it had more trees than I thought it would. but that’s all you see: trees. And scrub brush. And red dirt. And then, finally: a really big rock.
Uluru is really, really big. Larger than life big. But you expected that. You’ve seen so many pictures of the thing that you probably expected it to be bigger than it really is. I did, at least. But it is an impressive sight. Catching a glimpse of the thing on the horizon gives you a little start, partially because it is so big but also because you are seeing something you’ve seen pictures of for so long. Like when you see the Empire State Building or the Mona Lisa for the first time in person. You think: “oh, that’s it.” And that is it. Uluru. A big rock in the middle of the desert.
Were it only a big rock in the middle of the desert, the trip would have been arguably for very little. But the magic of the thing to me was that the entire park was run by the aborigines, the traditional land owners, and everything about the rock was steeped in their mythology. Being an outsider we didn’t get to learn about the juicy details of the thing, but we got enough about it to understand that the thing’s significance is not just that it is big and sticks awkwardly out from its surroundings. It is the physical reminder of the creation time to these people, and its many faces and facets are relics from a more magic time when gods and people coexisted. It is the source of and subject of many of the aboriginal people’s stories and mythology and is involved in many of their life events and rites of passage. It is, i think, a symbol for how they believe people can and should live their life: steadfast, patient, quiet in its beauty. Those people out there are some of Earth’s greatest survivors, and so is that big rock.
Nowhere in the entire park was there anything about geology, natural history, or anything else related to Western science. It was all aboriginal lore and custom. I think the point was lost on my travelling companions. They were just hellbent on climbing the thing. I didn’t climb because the aborigines wished that we wouldn’t. Nor did I take photos of certain parts of the rock as the aborigines wanted them to remain unphotographed. But it’s amazing that so many people did climb the thing and snap pictures. Matt said that they didn’t close the climb because someone figured out that climbing Uluru accounts for as much as 10% of the whole country’s tourism and the white government made the aborigines leave it open because of this reason.
About 45 km to the west of Uluru is Kata Tjuta, a formation of smaller (but still massive) rocks that are much less known but in their own way much more magnificient. The hiking trail takes you through the middle of the formations and because of this you really feel a part of the thing. So in its own way it’s even greater than Uluru despite less press. There are also some points of significance relating Kata Tjuta and male rites of passage so there are a lot of young guys boldly hiking around there, snapping photos of themselves, and the like. The trail itself, called “Valley of the Winds,” is beautiful. The Germans complained about the few dozen feet of elevation change.
Besides the hike up Uluru, there is a 10 km trail around its base. This was my trail. This was, I decided, the last thing I had to do before leaving Australia. I wanted to see every facet of the rock from every angle. I wanted to closely examine this geological anomaly, this source of story and law for the Aborigines, this well-recognized reason for why I came to Australia in the first place. Thanks to mom I have a picture of me as an 8 year old dressed as a swagman and holding a picture of Uluru. Now, almost 20 years later, I have a picture of me dressed in the same clothes I’ve been wearing for a month at Uluru itself.
I walked around the big rock. It took close to 3 1/2 hours. But I guess it’s ok for me to go now. I shuttled the Germans back to Alice Springs. I hopped a plane for Sydney. I’m back to where I started. I didn’t do everything I wanted to do but I accomplished all my goals here. I’m ready to leave this place.
I’m exhausted.
Hawaii tomorrow. I get a day back in the process of getting there, which is interesting. Hawaii has been the not-thought-about encore to this trip which has the potential to be equally as spectacular. I haven’t thought about it a bit, but now that it becomes my present reality I’m getting excited. Which is, AJM would tell me, my first mistake. Stop #1 upon arrival: gear store. The Germans managed to misplace my pot handle tool and the Australians took my empty fuel bottle at the airport. Bastards. The fuel bottle is a necessary; travelling backcountry without a stove and heat source is not advisable. The pot handle would be really nice to have. My weapons: I will need them. Technology allowed us to move us away from aboriginal ways of life and enjoy a sedentary lifestyle, but technology also allows us to move back to nomadism. The contents of the backpack I’ve packed and unpacked for a month now has shelter, warmth, fire, water, food, and basic tools. Everything one could need.
So just like that the month of July is over. And once again July was legendary. August will hold adventures of its own in new and strange places. Now that I’ve been to Uluru and seen the rock in the Red Center, I’m ready to move on.
I’ve floated a good number of asphalt rivers in my day. Only fitting that I should take a trip down one of the most famous stretches in Australia: The Stuart Highway. Named for the explorer John McDonnell Stuart, first white man to reach Darwin from Adelaide over land. So the stretch I undertook was the 1,484 km between Darwin and Alice Springs. Give a great substantial yell.
My travelling vessel this time around was the Wayward Bus. As touring companies go, this one is the best I’ve found. It feels less like a guided tour and more like a road trip. the bus fits about 20, you are in tents and cooking over portable stoves, and the music is turned up as you hurtled down the straight and flat. My travelling companions this time, unfortunately, were lacking. There were eight of us plus tour guide: a middle-aged couple from Germany not quite down with the exploration program, two brothers from France more concerned with their three cameras and camcorder than what was in front of them, and a couple (he from Belguim, she from Indonesia) who spend most of the time tangled in the backseat. We were cordial and got along fine, but my time was spent up front with Matt from Britian and Jas the tour guide. Matt and Jas really made the trip for me-we got along great from the first minutes of the journey. Matt was taking the Wayward Bus back south instead of the greyhound because he had the time and it is somehow cheaper, and Jas was doing her first tour down the Stuart Highway. Good enough. Forward.
The camp counselor instincts in me once again bubbled to the surface and I ended up repacking the van several times and delegating cooking duties from time to time. Fine. The rest of them needed direction, and weren’t clued into the fact that this sort of trip was not one in which you were served everything on fine china. It was funny watching people set up their tents and negotiating the camp kitchen. I, the eternal gear dorque, opted for my own tent and utensils for the trip. I carried the damn thing halfway across the world; I’m gonna use it when I can.
We stopped at some excellent places. Litchfield NP was situated on an escarpment and featured some incredible waterfalls, swimming holes, and rivers with rock hopping. It, to me, was somewhere in between Goodman Park in northern WI and the Havasupai Indian reservation. We spent the day hopping in and out of the water, and there really is no greater pleasure than swimming in cool water on a hot, sunny day. Didn’t hurt that the morning was spent at the Barry Springs thermal pools right outside Darwin. A great way to wake up.
Nitmiluk NP was next; this is a gorge carved out by the Katherine River. It’s not as massive as some of the canyons out west in Utah, but because it is on that human scale it’s that much more impressive and beautiful. The canyon is sheer in some places, gently sloping with vegetation in others, and has freshwater crocs throughout. And in true explorer fashion, Matt and I paddled the river. We got up to some rock art sites, kicked around and explored for a while, and paddled back for lunch. It was a beautiful scene-my only complaint was that there was no whitewater with which to refresh my eddy turns.
That night was spent at the Mataranka thermal pools at Elsey NP, and I might not be exaggerating in saying that the place was perfect. After dinner we wandered down to the park entrance and walked a boardwalk through reeds and palms for about 5 minutes, which lead us to the pools. the water was comfortably under hot tub water, but warm enough that you could lie perfectly still and be completely relaxed and comfortable. palm trees surrounded, Jas had the foresight to bring some candles, and above, framed by palm fronds, was the crystalline night sky of the Northern Territory.
The next day was a long day of driving. It’s like that on the asphalt river sometimes. But this wasn’t too painful of a drive: 700 km or so (about 7 hours of highway time). We ended up at the Devil’s Marbles just before sunset. The pictures will tell the tale better, but this place was mind-boggling. The only rocks around for miles were these giant boulders, and they were all eroded to the point where they were round. You walk through them and honestly believe you are about two inches tall because these are the only rocks in an enormous landscape around you. Not even pebbles. Just these enormous round boulders. We watched the sun go down at Devil’s Marbles and made some dinner. Once again my mind was blown by the natural beauty of this place.
My only complaint about the trip down the Stuary Highway is that we didn’t camp at places like Litchfield or Devil’s Marbles when we could have easily done so. The Wayward Bus route took us to these roadhouses on the side of the highway, complete with bright floodlights, electrical hookups, bars, drunk aborigines, and trucks four times bigger than American semitrailers bowling past you on the nearby highway. I can only assume that Wayward chose these spots because they thought people would want showers, alcohol, and electricity during the trip. We did have a hot pot and an electric toaster with us, and they were used for breakfast every morning, which I thought was a little strange. But there are other ways to boil water and make toast, and there is something to be said for not showering and remaining sober for a day or two. Plus you’d not have to deal with the crowds, the noise the light that shined on your tent the entire night…call me crazy, but people might thank you for foregoing the roadhouses in favor of the National Park campsites.
So I’m now in Alice Springs, staring down the final expedition of my Australian holiday: Uluru. The big red rock in the middle. In many ways the reason I’ve chosen to come halfway around the world (I did a report on Ayers rock for folk fair in third grade and it somehow hasn’t left me). This final time I’m doing it on my own terms: I’ve rented a car for the next two days and am going to make the 5 hour trip to Uluru 2004-style, but without AJM in shotgun. Cost me far too much money but I don’t care at this point. I can’t not go see this big rock. I’ve posted for travelling companions in the hostel but I have a feeling most people here are down for the guided hand-holding tour.
So: to action. I have some food to buy and some logistics to take care of. Then Matt and I are meeting Jas in town for dinner and drinks. An early bedtime, and early waking, and yet another stretch of highway towards what will be my final destination down under.
After all those hours spent bent into strange positions at the back of a Greyhound bus two and a half hours on a plane seemed like a snap. Especially because two German girls nearly hysterical with excitement about something were sitting next to me. They had just spent a month working with “the show,” which I gather is the travelling circus, and had just made enough money to get themselves through the rest of their year’s travels. And so I left the backpacker belt of the East and landed in a balmy Darwin.
There’s not much to this city. It’s got a nice waterfront but other than the YHA (and its pool) I won’t have the luxury of spending time here. I’m off on the Wayward Bus down the Stuart Highway tomorrow morning (as per Brad’s recommendation) and I just returned from two full days at Kakadu.
There are only 20 places on the globe that qualify for both natural and cultural significance according to the UNESCO World Heritage committee, and Kakadu is one of them. (Uluru is as well, and if I play my cards right I’ll be there by the week’s end.) The park is massive, and me without a car meant I only could explore a corner of it. Doc the bus driver proved to be the most valuable resource in determining where I should go. I had a ticket to Jabiru (pronounced “jab-a-roo,” whoops!) but that was a township and jumping off point. Doc got me in touch with the right people there to take me up to Ubirr, site of 23,000 year old rock art, hiking trails through sandstone formations, and a river full of crocodiles.
This one was done all on my own. No tour group, no throngs of camera-clicking tourists, and no maps. Really, no maps. The National Park Service of Australia doesn’t seem to be into them. I found an information board at the campsite and snapped a picture of the map on it, which served as my map for the trip. It worked surprisingly well.
Doc recommended the first day to check out the river and then do the monsoon forest walk, but to leave enough time for sunset at Ubirr itself. I set up my tent and started out for the walk. It wasn’t long before a migraine budded and blew me into pain unfathomable. It was the first headache I got since I started, but it came at the most inopportune time. And it came despite me doing everything I could to take care of myself. I ate enough, drank about 7 Nalgenes of water, and had enough sleep. The only factor I could attribute it to was the heat-the NT is equivalent to America’s Southestern deserts: hot and dry every single day. It was a shock to the system after all that rainy and cold weather on the East. I also think this suntan lotion I’ve been using is so sweatproof that it doesn’t allow me to sweat at all and I can’t cool myself down. Regardless, after spotting two enormous crocs in the river and doing the monsoon forest walk, I took two hours and crashed out on a picnic table bench with thumbs jabbed into either eye socket.
I eventually made my way to the border store to resupply on water and watched some of the white locals interact with the aborigines who stumbled in. It was hardly encouraging. I suppose any time you get an oppressor people interacting with indiginous people at an area of geographical significance there’s bad feelings. And disadvantaged (and drunk) indiginous people. It was probably something akin to the American push west and the demise of the Native Americans in the 1800’s. I left with the terrible thought that I’d live to see the demise of the oldest continuing culture on the planet. I also was in a lot of pain. So back to the tent for horse-sized doses of Advil, a quick nap, and possibly sunset at Ubirr.
I woke up after a 30 minute power nap feeling slightly better. I choked down some fruit and cashews and felt better still. so I set out for Ubirr. People were barrelling past me on the road in their cars, but walking the 4km only took me about 35 minutes. Just in time to catch some of the rock art (arguably older than even the cave paintings in France) and watch the sun slip over the western horizon. The pictures didn’t turn out from this, of course, but it was spectacular. Behind the art galleries is a climb up one of the rocks about 150 feet high to a lookout facing west. behind and around you is wooded savannah and scrubland with strange layered rock stacks. It looks a little like the Needles section at Canyonlands in Utah, but with gum trees and rocks that looked like a series of stacked slats. But upon reaching the overlook and facing west, the park opens up into a brilliant green floodplain with little billabongs, and behind it the sea. Kakadu is a dynamic place, encompassing four distinct biomes in one area. From the drive in and my limited exposure to the place, I only saw one until the sunset at Ubirr. The sky faded through every color of the spectrum and settled on purple. I would have stayed to watch the stars come out but the ranger was pushing everyone out of the site. I hitched a ride back to camp, made dinner, took the rainfly off my tent, and fell asleep under a brilliant NT night sky very glad that I made the effort.
This morning I woke up early with much less pain in my head and packed up only to realize I lost my sandals somewhere in the past two days. I’ve been carrying my Tevas on the back of my backpack this whole trip and have only worn them once so the bigger loss was the fairly nice carabiner that secured them to my pack. To be honest I was thinking of ditching the sandals anyway; the warm-weather footwear contest has clearly been won by crocs. I pushed on and hiked through more stone formations following the river upstream a while. I picked up with Doc and the Greyhound at the border store earlier this afternoon and we chatted about national parks over crocodile burgers, then headed back to Darwin. It was a short trip but a good one besides the migraine. Kakadu is an astounding place and I’m only beginning to understand it. I’ll have to go back. As I’ve been saying: next time with a car. I couldn’t imagine trying to do Yosemite without a car; Kakadu is somewhat the same.
So here’s a night in Darwin. This is a backpacker mecca still, full of people looking to catch their next buzz. Aboriginal alcoholics included. Tomorrow starts a four day trip through the NT to several parks on the Stuart Highway: Litchfield, Katherine, Devil’s Marbles. Alice Springs by Sunday, and then hopefully as a grand finale a trip out to the Rock before I leave for Hawaii. Hawaii? I haven’t begun to think about that leg of the trip. Such is the month of July. Such is life on the other side of the world.
Best way to beat the rain? Jump in the water and stay there for a while. Lucky for me the best scuba diving on the planet is a mere 3 hour boat ride away from Cairns. Cairns itself is an interesting place. It’s a small port city now blown up from ecotourism and college-aged backpackers. It’s more racially diverse than any other city I’ve been to yet with a sizable asian and aboriginal community. It’s located right in the notch where the Great Dividing Range meets with the ocean so it’s surrounded by hills covered in misty rainforest, something I’d imagine Equatorial Africa to look like. And it’s teeming with travel agencies, hostels, cheap eats, and those horrible bars geared directly towards backpackers.
It was raining when I got here and didn’t really stop for the entire afternoon and evening. After spending the day wandering around this tourist trap of a town I decided I needed to get out of it. And with two World Heratige sites so close the choosing was pretty easy. I dropped another sizable chunk of money on a two day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.
What is there to say? Diving the Reef was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Ever. It is everything everyone says it is, and the beautiful stock postcard pictures and videos of the reef generally downplay how it actually looks I can hear my students asking me now: “like Finding Nemo?” (which I still haven’t seen). But yes. Like Finding Nemo. The colors are brilliant and the diversity of animal life is astounding. And it’s all right there in front of you-nothing is hiding or sleeping or tucked into some inaccessible corner like on land. You are down there swimming right next to corals and anemone, right through schools of fish, right past turtles and jellyfish.
The weather was still a mess when I got out there and the boat ride was pretty messy with half of a French school group tossing their escargot into little paper bags, but once we transferred off the daytrip boat and onto the boat stationed out on the reef things improved greatly. For one we were pampered and catered to like I haven’t been in a very long time. I guess when you fork over that much money for a trip you get treated nicely. It was awkward after liffing like a hobo for the past couple weeks but very nice. I was told that since I wasn’t certified to dive in open water I’d go down with Mikey the divemaster for each of my 5 dives. It worked out perfectly. And from the moment I went under the rain and the rocking stopped, things became calm and peaceful, and I found that I could breathe underwater. It’s quite cool-I think all these adventure sports to some degree come about because people try to figure out how they can do things that human’s aren’t designed to do: breathing underwater (scuba diving), walking on water (surfing), sticking to walls (rock climbing), flying (skydiving), and so on. Of all the ones I’ve tried, I think scuba is my favorite.
All those years of teaching skills on the waterfront at camp came back to me. I was spitting in my mask before they could show me how, clearing my mask underwater, clearing my snorkel, equalizing ear pressure, the whole bit. The instructors really liked the bit about calling them fins and not flippers. (anyone? anyone?) I kept swimming with my hand out in front of me and they thought that was pretty funny. But fine. Scuba was easier than I thought it would be, and with all the issues about pressure and temperature and so on a great lesson in physics as well.
Visibility was only 5 meters (only! Have these people seen Boston Harbor??) but I couldn’t complain. I could see plenty, and all in vibrant color. Mikey let go of my arm about 5 minutes into it and I got to dip around some of the most fantastic natural scenery in the world. The trip included 5 dives so I spent about 3 hours underwater total. And as exhilirating as the diving was, being under water was equally as cool. Scuba is an activity that demands focus and centering, making sure you’ve got it all together and above all that you are calm. The slower and more evenly you breathe the better the experience is. Likewise, the slower and more methodically you move the better the experience is. It puts a strain on your body but it’s very much a relaxing thing. I came out of the water each time centered and calm. It’s something to note that I’ve forgottenn about: water calms and centers me. I used to spend three hours every summer morning in the water and was probably much happier because of it. This trip after surfing and diving I’ve come away from the water more calm, relaxed, and centered than I have been in quite some time. I missed the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation because of the extended reef trip, but that’s OK. I’ve seen trees. I will see trees. This was completely unique and special.
The boat experience itself was a good one, and I’m glad I spent so much time out on the waters of the Pacific before I leave the coast for the deserts of the NT this evening. It was extravagant-nicer than any place I’ve stayed so far. We were fed on real dishes and were cooked meals by a sour-faced ex-Navy cook. We had a hot tub in the bow where I soaked and hung out with Amy, Vivian, and Ena, the first Americans I’ve met out here, after each dive. There were comfortable couches, a sun deck, and a top level with a 360 degree view of everything around you. It was cloudy so my hopes of catching the night sky out at sea were stymied. But the best part of the boat experience, to me, was the rocking. It was gentle and lulling, and made me sleepy more than anything else. After a day of diving the Barrier Reef there really was no greater joy than being rocked to bed by the Pacific. I haven’t been rocked to sleep since I was so young that I wouldn’t remember anyway. But out there in the middle of nowhere it was the best night’s sleep I’ve had on this trip so far. That, above all else, made me appreciate the water in a way I haven’t before: the Pacific, the mother of all life, eternally lulling one of its far-distant offspring into a world of dreams not so different than the reef below.
Bad weather is following me I think. I try to stay a step or two ahead of the rain but it seems to catch up to me by the second night I stay in any given place on the coast. Today I got dropped off in Airlie Beach after a painful 13 hours on the greyhound bus from Hervey Bay. Sleeping in an airplane, which never really happens for me, is easy compared to those buses. My back is still hurting from the contortionist act needed to bend myself into those seats comfortably enough to shut my eyes for a couple minutes at a time. One halfway good thing to come of it is that I’ve discovered two very, very good reasons for anyone to come to Australia at those miserable roadhouses (known to us as truck stops): Australian bacon and Bunderberg Ginger Beer. Both are not to be missed. Consuming them at 4:30 AM in the middle of Gin Gin or Matilda or Barramundi with tattooed truckers is optional.
In my quest to end myself of the bus I’ve decided to get on another one at 2:30 this morning which should take me to Cairns, northern terminus of the bus line and jumping-off point for adventures in the Daintree National Park, the Great Barrier Reef, and Points North. But not yet. I’m in Airlie Beach, jumping off point for some of the most incredible sailing in the world-around cays and islands termed the Whitsundays. But it’s raining and I’m now under a bit of a time crunch and I’m not going sailing this time around.
let me back up for a minute:
Fraser Island. UNESCO World Heritage site and deservedly so. I signed on for a self-tour of the place. They give you and nine other people a bunch of camping gear, a 4×4 jeep, and three days to run yourselves all around the biggest sand island in the world, which also happens to have lakes more clear than Crater Lake in Oregon and Karri trees almost akin in height to the Redwoods of California. Plus a 75 mile stretch of beach on the Pacific Ocean, home to a migrating pod of humpback whales and breeding ground for tiger sharks. The biggest hurdle to all this, though, would be convincing 9 other strangers that it all was worth checking out.
Upon meeting the group I was set at ease. We ten were myself, two swedes studying in Melbourne (and skipping their first day of class to come to Fraser), two British girls taking a break from med school, an Irish couple, a motocross master from Germany, and another couple studying in Sydney-she from Germany, he from Botswana. I was the oldest by about 3 years. After our briefing about how to make sure to leave no trace and not get our 4×4s stuck, we were given maps, packing lists, and shopping lists and told to do some planning and packing. Virtual autopilot. THe difference this time was the gear: we were hauling around an enormous cast-iron grill along with an even heavier double-burner full sized stove with 2 gallon propane tank. Our tents were of the Wal-Mart backyard picnic variety. We were encouraged to purchase vast quantities of meat from a butcher. For a camping trip?
But things work different when you are tied to a vehicle. You can, storage space allowing, get away with carrying all this heavy stuff. So we bought obscene amounts of meat and used these tents which almost blew apart in the pacific winds and managed to have a great time of it. I, of course, spent a lot of time at camp re-staking tents and nudging people into action (this meat isn’t going to cook itself…) and found that as the trip wrapped up people were pretty much on autopilot. Necessity breeds productivity, I suppose. My style of camping comes from a very structured place; it has to be when 13 year olds are involved. But a group of people in their early 20’s can get away with a little chaos and still get it all done. I had to let myself allow it. Which was really hard.
As for the island itself: positive. I would have liked to spend much less time in the 4×4 and much more time walking through the less-explored corners of the place but the group was content to zip around to the more advertised spots, snap a photo or two, and pack themselves back into the 4×4 for more bumpy rides up the beach. I was the last one back to the truck every single time. As a result I missed some sweet hikes, one through the Pile Valley called “Valley of the Giants” which would have been pretty amazing, but there was more than me to consider. After travelling solo it was hard to adapt to the compromise game, especially with people I was thrown together with by chance, but it turned out well. It was above all fun to travel with people for a little bit. We chased after and shouted at dingoes to keep them away from our vast stores of meat and I learned about the ancient Swedish tradition of poking (“oh-lah,” ask a Swede about it). The group was great and I was very glad to share the time with them, but I will have to go back and hike the place properly.
The excursion out scratched my camping itch to some extent, but not enough. I decided out there that if I were to miss the Northern Territory on this trip it would be an absolute travesty, so upon returning I dropped a good chunk of cash on a flight to Darwin, a flight from Alice Springs back to Sydney, and a bus/camping trip to connect Darwin to Alice. As a bonus, there’s enough time before the bus trip to go walkabout in Kakadu for three days and just enough time before my flight out of Alice to go see the rock in the middle of the desert. After doing a report on it for folk fair in third grade, I couldn’t not go. It’ll be expensive, and a whirlwind of a week, but it is exactly what needs to happen.
So after a day here in Airlie taking care of some necessities (booking stuff, laundry, and a nap) and not going sailing like the other tourists, I push on to Cairns. Not bad for a rainy day in the tropics of Australia. Then somehow I’ll get on the reef and to a rainforest far away. Then 9 days in the Red Centre. I just wish it didn’t get dark so early here. No matter. No Sleep ‘Till Darwin.
I’m getting frustrated by a couple things out here in the throes of travel, and they have everything to do with constraints on my mobility.
The first is the way Aussies respond to my inquiries about backcountry travel. I ask about camping, overnights, where can I sleep in a tent and go for a multi-day hike, that sort of thing. I get, more often than not, an incredulous look. As in, why on earth would anyone do that? Are you mad? Maybe so, but I’d like some input into my excursions into the wild nonetheless. It seems Australians don’t enjoy strapping 45 pounds on their back and walking inordinate distances through the wilderness. Go figure. I’d like to blame the fact that Australians still have a frontier in their country. There are still possibly millions of unmapped and unexplored acres in the country such that its inhabitants are much like white Americans of the 1840’s: explore, but be careful! It’s dangerous out there! We Americans of the 21st century live in a country that is completely explored and mapped and like to play explorer for fun by going to our well-mapped National parks and following the red dotted line for a while.
I’ve also noticed that many of the “tracks” in Australia’s National Parks are paved by cement, have handrails, and are well-lit.
A second factor here could be the locals’ stereotype of tourists: the lazy, picture-snappers who hop off the tour bus just long enough to miss the air conditioning. But I swear on Abbey’s Desert Solitaire I am not one of these people. Give me dust and rocky paths and a little-known swimming hole and I’m happy. Stick me in the party-party hostels of the East Coast and I’m ready to go walkabout.
The second gripe feeds right into this: I have come to hate the bus. It’s an effective and cheap way to get around, yes, and I have a pretty sweet ticket North to Cairns, yes, but the experience of riding those steel helltubes is getting to me. The drivers are either playing the radio, filled of techno remixes of songs popular five years ago, or throwing in teenager sleepover movies. Plus the bus stops every two and a half hours for a 30 minute rest stop break. If they only knew the miles and miles AJM and I put in on the great asphalt rivers of the American West last year…
A car. It would allow so much more flexibility and freedom of movement and I would get places about twice as quickly. And I could get off this well-tread backpacker route up the coast. Were I to do this sort of thing again (and I will), it would be done in a car. With someone who will go hiking for many days at a time. And who doesn’t stop every two and a half hours.
I’ve been looking at flights into and out of Darwin, and a trip to the NT from Cairns and then back to Sydney in time for my flight out would run me upwards of AUS $685. about $540 US, I’d estimate. For a week in the outback, and in all likelihood I still wouldn’t get to see the Big Rock. I’m turning it over and praying those fares will still hold in a day or two should I decide to go. If not there’s the audible to work my way all the way up Cape York and then fly directly back to Sydney from Cairns. Still expensive, and in the final analysis I might be spending the same amount either way.
I just came from Noosa, a way upscale coastal town full of expensive restaurants and a small National Park. Did some lounging on the beach and some hiking to hidden coves full of old naked people, and tried surfing again. This time on a board much shorter and narrower than my first and in weaker surf. It was decidedly harder, but even the one or two time where I did get up the effort didn’t quite justify the payoff.
On the bright side, I’m about to take off for three days on Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world and an ecological treasure. I’ve signed on with a group of people and we spent the afternoon planning logistics. We’re going to be given a big 4×4 Jeep and camping gear and three days to tear around the island. I’d rather walk it, but when I asked about that the Aussie replied that I wouldn’t get to see everything if I did walked. I didn’t bother pointing out that I won’t get to see everything anyway…but after a couple of days bouncing from incidental and curtailed social interaction in Byron Bay and most recently Noosa, it will be good to get three solid days in with a group of people, all of whom look pretty cool. It’s the old model that’s more than comfortable to me: a group of strangers go camping. Some of my most deeply rooted instincts have already started cropping up. If there is one thing I know how to do, it’s take a bunch of greenhorns into the wilderness and make sure everyone has a good time. Rest assured none of these people can set up a tent properly or poop in a hole but that’s secondary. Even though this is a fairly standard tour, and one of the only ways to see Fraser Island, I’m excited to get out of these coastal cities for a couple days. And halfway around the world, with a buttpack full of stuff I’ll need for three days of camping (nalgene, headlamp, compass, some p-cord, raingear, warm layer) I’m a camp counselor once again. It’s inescapable. No better way to spend the summer, really.
I’ve finally pushed far enough North for the clouds to drift away and the weather to turn. I’m currently in Byron Bay, Easternmost point on the continent. There’s a big lighthouse to mark the geographical achievement. And beaches. And beaches. And lots of heady tourists. And beaches.
Unlike the previous couple of places I’ve visited this place was ultra touristy. As in I get off the bus and there’s a lineup of seven or eight people with sandwich boards, each from a different hostel. I’d already done some forward work with one and found their van. We cruised about 3 minutes outside of the main drag and were all of a sudden winding down a backcountry lane. I thought it might be a little too far out of town for convienent beach access, but then I began to see what was in store. I heard it before I saw it.
Enter the Arts Factory, backpacker hostel, restaurant and bar, art gallery, recording studio, and neo-hippie compound. The DJ was spinning old funk breaks a la tmo’s playlists (Herbie/P-Funk-The Meters all in the first 30 minutes), every surface of everything was painted with something funky, there was a pool, a deck with tables and lounge chairs, hiking trails, hostels, campgrounds, and people lounging everywhere. I glanced at the list of things the place offered during the days: nature walks, didgeridoo making, yoga, massage classes, twirling…this was nothing short of Camp Hedonism.
Sleeping options ranged from the more standard hostel room to platform tent accessed by boardwalk to a renovated double decker bus to specialty theme bunks. I slept in a giant teepee with 15 beds arranged in a circle around a potbelly stove before switching to the campground. I spent the first night playing guitar and drinking wine with a French guy named Arnold. “Ve had zome good jams,” he kept saying. And he was right. It wasn’t the burgandy; we sounded good-the people around us actually stopped to listen and we got a smattering of applause by the end.
Were the Arts Factory not enough, it is situated in what could be the headiest city in the known universe: Byron Bay. This is most definitely not a fishing town. It’s completely over the top with surf shops, crystal shops, native and modern art galleries, and just about everything a backpacker could want in terms of comfort and ease. It is the land of the lotus eaters. A couple people I talked to at the hostel lost track of how long they were there after three weeks. Right on, dood. It was a place you could get easily lost in if you weren’t careful or didn’t have the motivation to see the rest of this country. And Byron Bay apparently looks like a convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution when compared to Nimbin, a small town 1 hour’s drive from here.
Yesterday I was eating breakfast when some guy came up to me and asked if I was the one who signed up for surfing lessons. No, but…I told him I’d jump on that train right after I set my tent up. I came back 10 minutes later and he was gone, but there was a second guy packing up surfboards into his VW. He was leatherfaced and ruddy and had definitely seen his way around a few beaches. He would be back at 1pm to pick me up for four hours of surfing. And just like that, I was out on a surfboard.
I think the allure of surfing is that it’s as close as humans will get to walking on water. It’s an incredible feeling, but the downside is that the effort expended to getting out and in position to do the wave walking is extraordinary. We went to a beach with pretty easy, steady waves yesterday and it was still exhausting getting out to where I needed to be to catch a wave. Once I was up the ride would last about 10 seconds, and then the process would start over again. surfing: file under sledding.
Getting up was much easier than I thought it would be. They walked us through this four step process of standing up but when it came time to spring up I just jumped to my feet without noticing that I completely skipped their steps. It uses pretty much the same leg muscles as you use when you are hiking or riding your bike so I was primed for it. Balance on these waves wasn’t that hard either-it was sort of like riding the subway without holding on to anything. You also didn’t need to be super low-you could actually stand up a little bit. The hardest part, I found, was getting into position and picking the right wave and the consequent right moment to jump up. The first couple of times were easier as the instructor was out there holding you steady until the wave came, but by the end when I was trying to get there on my own I only caught one or two waves. The rest passed right by me before I could stand up. Not enough speed, I think. I also am not able to read the waves well enough. But I could see how, with practice, the activity could become a lifestyle for some. At your best, you’re not thinking out there. You’re not on top or in front of the wave, you’re “with the wave,” as Matt the instructor said dreamily. Right on, dood.
I came back to the hostel to clean up and after the workout and shower. I felt really, really good. More relaxed and clear than I had been in a long while, possibly years. I skipped Camp Hedonism and wandered back up to the beach to catch the sun going down over the hills to the west, did some writing, banged out a couple of postcards, and chatted with a few lingering beach bums and tourists. Made it back in time for the late night fire show though.
Today is more of the same: time on the beach and a hike up to the lighthouse. My thoughts are turning away from Byron Bay and towards some quieter environs at points North. I’m going to skip Brisbane and the Gold Coast entirely; no sense in spending time in big cities or AusVegas. It’s a tension balancing time between touristy spots like Byron Bay and more quiet natural scenes like the National Parks as each has their own benefit. NP access is a little tough without a car and I’ve been getting pangs of regret as the Greyhound has been blowing past countless brown NP road signs. I guess I’ll have to come back and do this in a car properly. Tourist towns or expanses of pristine wilderness? It’s a tough choice. Surfing the beaches of Australia seems to be a nice compromise for the time being.
I’m under the gun again-only seven more minutes on this contraption and then I’m off.
It’s colder here than I would have expected; like Cape Cod in October. And still drizzling. I haven’t seen the sun in days. Bums me out, but these things are far from my control. Because of the crummy weather I decided to take a travel day and push North, ever closer to those fabled beaches and rainforests. I’m currently in Port MacQuarie but have an afternoon bus for Byron Bay. It’s touristy, I’m told, but I’ve come to realize that there is a reason why some places are touristy. Yosemite and the Grand Canyon are touristy as all getout but for very good reason: they are jaw-dropping. So might be the case with the sleepy town of Byron Bay. They do have surfing there so my mandate will still be filled (I understand the Reef breaks the waves to the point where you can only swim in the Queensland waters, barring jellyfish) and there are some daytrips to national parks from there that might be better. I’m sad to be pushing through NSW so quickly but this will mean more time up in the tropics, and the Red Centre in turn.
I’ve noticed a smell in virtually every hostel room I’ve been in, sort of like a compost bin, and through my brilliant powers of deduction it dawned on me that the smell is coming from my wet socks.
Sydney is a big city with McDonald’s and Starbucks. I’m not on the other side of the world to walk past fast food joints. Off to the Blue Mountains.
The Blue Mountains are a mere 2 hour commuter rail ride outside of Sydney but are far enough away to be otherworldly. They are protected World Heratige sites and encompass a sizable area bordered by a dozen or so small towns. Each has positioned itself near a certain attraction there: the Jenolan Caves, the Grand Canyon (not THAT one…), the Blue Gum Forest, and arguably the most famous of them all, the Three Sisters. There you find the sleepy mountain town of Katoomba.
Katoomba was my kind of city: gear shops everywhere, pubs with live music nightly, a food co-op, a music store, and a world-renound national park 5 minutes walk south of the city. The YHA hostel there is amazing, probably one of the best hostels I’ve been to. There was a ballroom-sized common area with couches and beanbag pillows and a gas fireplace, a reading room, and an enormous kitchen that bustles with activity from around 5:30-8:00pm. It’s great to cook in the hostels. People are scurrying around asking for extra pinches of sugar or borrowing spatulas or something, and everyone makes enough food to go around. Everyone also has the foresight to bring in a bottle of wine which inevitably gets passed around during and after cooking. The kitchen stays impossibly orderly and clean as well; I’m not quite sure how it happens. Part of the joy of staying in Katoomba was bumbling around after dinner trading stories with the other travellers.
But the Blue Mountains. It was at elevation, maybe 2500 feet, but significantly colder than Sydney. It felt like November in New England up there, and most Australian families on school vacation just hung around the hostel. I made for the mountains after I got settled and had a nice hike down into the valley. Katoomba is situated up on a ridge, and as you walk into the park the ridge drops off abruptly into a gum forest below. There are several lookout points throughout, one being Echo Point with a view of the fabled Three Sisters.
Three Sisters? More like the Three Disappointments. No offense to the Aussies, of course. But geez. I’ve been spoiled on Utah, you see. The most famous rock formation in this World Heritage site consisted of three blunt spires of rock. I kept thinking: Bryce Canyon- The 20,000 Sisters.
Were it any concilation the steep descent into the rainforest was amazing. It was steep, possibly the steepest trail I’ve ever hiked, and immediately after disappearing under the rim the wind and cold subsided and things became damp and green. It was an excellent transition. The rainforest itself looked like some of the shady valleys you’d find in the White Mountains with gum trees in the place of the standard maples or oaks. It wasn’t the exotic wild that I was hoping for but still a welcome break from Sydney.
I stopped off at the visitor’s center to talk with a ranger about doing some backcountry overnights and all I found were two nice old ladies hellbent on talking me out of the idea. They tsk tsk’ed me and pushed dayhikes on me to the point that I backed out of the overnight idea. It was cold, probably 30’s at night, but I felt the need to justify that extra 15 or so pounds of camping gear that I brought. I settled on an extensive dayhike: Mt. Solitary. It is the entirely visible mesa-like mountian directly ahead of you if you’re standing at Echo Point.
I posted my intent to hike the mountain at the hostel and found Mathieu, a Frenchman who’s been travelling the world working at wine vineyards. We set out the next morning and dropped into the rainforest for our attempt on the mountain. We got to the ridge and started scrambling up huge boulders but Mathieu got cold feet and backed out. I pushed on a couple hundred feet more, but turned to see a storm moving in quickly. We slid down the ridge and took cover in the rainforest. We managed to avert the storm.
I’m happy to say that I never made it up Mt. Solitary. Nor did I spend the night out in the forest. Instead I had great night at the hostel talking sports and politics with some Brits and Scots. Mathieu and I even intercepted a guy from India on the way back up. He took a photo of the three of us with Katoomba Falls in the background, and I couldn’t help but think what he’d do with the picture and how utterly improbable it was to have those three people in the same photo in some rainforest in Australia.
The intersection of human narrative is mind-boggling when you’re travelling. You brush ever-so-slightly against another human life but only for a moment, then you are gone. You share something of some level of significance but then you pack your bag and leave before they wake up. You climb Mt. Solitary, but together briefly.
I left Katoomba this morning and have been travelling. I’ve started my push up the coast with the help of an unlimited bus ticket that will eventually take me to Cairns. In this prelminary stage of things I think I should have resigned myself to the interior; New South Wales in July is a rainy, cold place not unlike coastal New England in the autumn. I’ve been on a rickety bus with a broken transmission for the past six hours and now am in Forester, a sleepy beach town that apparently has dolphins in its small harbor. The town is completely dead at 7pm on a Sunday night; I’ve ventured out with a girl from Austria in search of food and drink and have only come up with a sandwich shop about to close. It’s rainig and windy and fairly cold, but on the plus side the Pacific is blocks away and the hostel has surfboards for us to use for free. I’m under mandate to try surfing, and I will, but it might not be here, now, in the cold and rain.
The hostel in Forester is all but deserted. I’m sharing a dorm with an Aussie visiting his dad and a Japanese guy biking from Brisbane to Melbourne (think Boston to Atlanta). A far cry from Katoomba. I spent a good deal of the bus ride reading up on the tropical wonders of Queensland and the starkness of the Red Centre, which helps me through this stopover in Foreseter. Some comfort, then: I boiled water and made tea. Short of climbing into your tent in a National Park, it’s really the best way to end a day on the road.
G’day from Sydney.
I’m still working off the annoyances of cross-pacific travel and working through some serious jetlag. But at the same time I’m enjoying the hostelling life a great deal and marvelling at just how much American culture has infiltrated places halfway around the globe.
I’m under the gun writing here. They’re charging me by the minute for this. Plus there’s errands to run and escapes to the Blue Mountains to plot.
The flight out was loooooong. Boston to LA was long enough but was made exciting by the coolest fireworks experience I’ve had to date-flying over Vegas and LA just after sundown revealed thousands upon thousands of brightly colored explosions everywhere below. The entirec city of angels was bursting and popping, and as we dropped lower and lower we were, to some extent, flying through it all. At some points it was almost apocalyptic with some of the explosions and fireworks being muted by the smog but it was very cool. Then the 14 hour leg across the pacific. Never, ever, ever take a window seat for this-you get trapped in there and it’s not worth having a wall to lean up against. It was eternal night for the trip west as we were travelling with the rotation of the earth, probably the longest night I’ve ever been through. Something like 19 hours of darkness total. I’d look out the window every now and then to a moonless sky of unfamiliar stars and think about just how far in the middle of absolutely nowhere this hunk of metal was. The deserts of the Southwest aren’t nowhere. Hell, the Red Center of Australia isn’t nowhere either. The middle of the Pacific…that’s nowhere. We landed in Sydney just as the Eastern horizon started to crack red.
Yesterday I walked around the city-did the loop through the public green space and down the main drags. Saw the Sydney Opera House, which was a big checkoff from third grade folk fair projects I suppose, although it looks just like the postcards. You are hardly floored by it precisely because it is so recognizable. You just think, “oh, there’s the opera house,” snap a picture (which will inevitably be worse than a postcard), and you’re on your way to the next thing. Sydney is a great city as cities go, reminds me a lot of San Francisco in that it is big but very laid back and uses green space very well. But dripping with all the worst of America. McDonald’s everywhere. I feel a little guilty.
Some things I picked up: change money in chinatown. I should have thought of this earlier. Also walk on the left side of the sidewalk (or footpath as I’m told they call it here). It befuddled and frustrated me until i figured out why I was running into everyone. I should like that being left handed and all but it’s still strange.
Hostel finally took off U2 and is playing Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints. Word. This is a cool hostel-it is a converted train depot and some of the rooms are actually old train cars. Backpackers of all ages abound and everyone is very positive here. Hostels are the closest things we’ve got to the old-style inn where you have a big common gathering area to meet other travellers. It’s a great vibe. Even so, I’m planning my escape from the big city. Today is about investigating how to get up to the Blue Mountains and how to best get up the coast.
music: Michael Franti and Spearhead- 1/15/2005
Osprey Silhouette backpack with Daylite attachment, modified Mountainsmith Day pack, REI Duck’s Back 100 rain cover, 2 32 oz. Nalgene bottles, glasses with hard case, fully stocked first aid kit, toothbrush and toothpaste, liquid soap, 2-in-1 shampoo, passport, traveller’s checks, credit card, debit card, driver’s license, international teacher identification card, insurance information, knee-high gaiters, Airporter bag, cheap plastic sunglasses, Leatherman super tool, swiss army knife, Leatherman micra, waterproof, sunscreen, duct tape, 100’ p-cord, 50’ p-cord, 20’ p-cord, 2 bandanas, Petzl Tikka headlamp, blue LED keychain light, 3 mini carabiners, 2 Black Diamond 24 kN carabiners, 1 locking Black Diamond carabiner, North Face Windstorm 35 degree sleeping bag w/compression sack, Sierra Designs Lightning tent with footprint and compression sack, 10L MSR dromedary bag with hydration tube, 12 oz. mug, Master Lock, compass, Burt’s Bees lip balm, plastic magnifying glass, magnesium fire starter, MSR Whisperlite Internationaile stove w/ 22 oz. fuel can, MSR Blacklite cook set, two plastic bowls, spice kit including olive oil, sesame oil, salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, and curry powder, 2 lexan spoons, chopsticks, titanium spork, butter knife, pot gripper, Polar Pure water treatment, Marmot Precip rain jacket and full-zip rain pants, Manzella knit hat, OR Magic Mitt gloves, +10 degree coolmax sleeping bag liner, camp towel, Canon Powershot A 70, mini-tripod, 3 256 MB CF cards, 16 AA batteries, USB cable, Flash drive with drivers for camera and iRiver, iRiver IHP-120 with charger, iRock mini-radio transmitter, outlet adapter, 75W car lighter power inverter, 2 garbage bags, ziploc bags of various sizes, hacky sack, 175g frisbee, 2 Mighty Kites, Crazy Creek chair, Thermarest expedition long sleeping pad, Kavu visor, REI sahara convertible pants, Ex-Officio convertible pants, synthetic hoodie, climbing shorts, 2 sleeveless cotton t-shirts, 1 button-down shortsleeve shirt, 1pr REI long underwear (top and bottom), Patagonia midweight capeliene longsleeve shirt, 3 pair hiking socks, 3 pair liner socks, 2 pair Ex-Officio underwear, Coolmax t-shirt, elastic waist hippie skirt, Patagonia ultralight windbreaker, 1 pr Teva wraptor guide sandals, 1 pr crocs, 1 pr Raichle Gore-tex hiking boots, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Lonely Planet: Australia guidebook, The Big Island Revealed guidebook, uniball roller pens, 2 sharpies, yellow highlighter, double sized moleskine blank book.
My pack still has some room in it which will probably go to food on some of the backcountry portions of the trip. The backpack is slightly heavier than I’d like but I’ll deal. Certain things didn’t make the cut, most notably the Martin Backpacker travel guitar. I feel bad about this but there was no way to pack it tightly enough for backcountry travel. The buttpack-as-top-of-hiking-pack modification seems to be working well; I’ll just have to be careful about putting too much weight in it. Things, of course, are bombproof.
Tomorrow I clean out my room for the subletter, do some laundry, and finalize my backpack situation; Monday I get on a plane for Australia while everyone is busy watching fireworksa and barbecueing. Four weeks Down Under, two weeks on the islands of Hawaii, back in Boston on August 20th. No real plans beyond that. Sounds like the makings for quite a summer. More from the other side of the world…
music: Gillian Welch- Hell Among the Yearlings
The Appalachian Mountain Club offers a killer training: teach youth workers, especially urban youth workers, to take kids camping. There might not be anything I was more cut out to do. So when school’s guidance counselor mentioned the opportunity at a meeting, I jumped at it. I spent the last 5 days hiking around the White Mountains of New Hampshire neck deep in my first outdoor leadership training since leaving Camp Minikani.
I knew parts of it would be frustrating for me. The program was geared towards people who have never slept in a tent and who have never gone more than a day or two without showering, so much of the preparation bordered on excruciating in terms of content and depth. Can I set up a tent? How about a tarp? Do I know how to tie a bowline and a taut-line? Can I work a whisperlite? Can I pack a backpack (accessibility, balance, compression)? Can I use a topo map and compass? Do I know the principles of layering? Can I recognize the symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia? Check, check, check, check, check, and then some. After so many years of camp counselorhood and my own minor obsession with camping gear the real problem was that the AMC was forcing me to leave my gear at home and use their backpacks and sleeping bags.
The hard skills were necessary, yes, because most people in the group had never had the experience of using a map and compass or setting up one of those four person Eureka tents. Fine. But the soft skills, the emphasis on leadership and group dynamics, were sometimes equally as frustrating. We had instructors, and excellent instructors they were (one had summitted Denali among other accomplishments) but at a certain point I didn’t buy in when I was assigned to be a leader of the day. Too much was already decided and taken out of my hands that leadership in this training was totemic, was a hamster-wheel hoop-jumping exercise, and I didn’t want to play. I also have to question leadership decisions to stop a group on-trail and do a mini-lecture about lightning drills in the middle of a thunderstorm. I also have to go. Beyond it being incredibly patronizing to treat a group of professional adults like kids, I didn’t feel the need to prove myself to the people who were actually in a position of uniformed authority. Adolescence rears its ugly head, even after all this time. I stepped back, opting for a more transparent (read: uninvested) leadership style as a group member, and let my co-leader take the uniformed position up front. As a result the group got lost and interpersonal dynamics suffered. I was fine with all of it, but my co-leader and the instructors were not happy about it. Fine. I enjoyed the bushwhacking. And at the end of a long school year I don’t really feel the burning need to be the adult when I don’t have to. At least we were hiking.
Hiking, though, is a relative term. We didn’t hike; we plodded. It was easily one of the slowest hikes I’ve ever done. We covered about four miles in just over 8 hours. It was mostly due to one of the participants who was not in shape the way he thought he was. He came on the trip to challenge himself, and challenge he got. By the end of the trip my pack weight had gone up 10-15 lbs and his empty pack was being carried by someone else. While it was nothing short of amazing to see him struggle and succeed in making it through the terrain, it was an enormous test of my patience. Our route was cut short. We hiked ourselves off the Kinsman Ridge on the last day for the sake of one of our group members and missed the final participant celebration. A hard way for someone to learn their limits.
Perhaps patience was one of the lessons meant for me in this training. After all, where did I really have to be? And how important was it to actually get to where we were told we were going? Apparently I bought in to the training enough to have this cause concern.
All negatives aside, it was an important thing for me to do. I had amazing bouts of nostalgia for the Explorer staff trips at the beginning of the summer. This training went so far as to have a little vesper at the end of the night. The group, a dispirate bunch who never would otherwise mix, coalesced around the very issues that would rub people raw: a painfully slow hiker, the weather, leadership who withholds enough decisions that matter to render the training itself a simulation. Adversity and challenge made our experience out there explosive in its unadulterated humanity. Between the requisite inside jokes that came out (see title) we were all fallible, we all had needs to varying degrees and couldn’t manage by ourselves, and while some of us pulled through ok, others struggled greatly. The rewards of the experience went to the strugglers. I enjoyed my time in the White Mountains and took to the group despite my difficulties being a participant, but I’ve been there before. I’ve backpacked and been a part of groups enough to know exactly what to expect from the experience. My new friends who experienced it all for the first time felt the Earth move, were shaken and awakened, and watching that happen might have been the greatest part of my trip.
This training marks the beginning of my return to what I realized I really believe in: giving others experiences with nature that change them for the better. The teaching I’m doing now is really an attempt to bring the water to the horse, but I can’t help but wonder if I could accomplish all my goals so much more effectively in the Cathedral of the Pines. This training brings me one step closer
I slighted myself out there in my impatience. I left the training with lessons of my own, the foremost of which is one that has been with me since the sixth grade: learn from all people. I shut off from much of what was offered because this was my self-proclaimed area of expertise. I would have been better to remember that even experts (of which I’m not sure I am) can get something out of the same experience if they remain open to it. Yes, camp prepared me well for the outdoors and leadership and working with youth, but to fall back on that as a gold standard is to limit my growth. I seemed to forget camp’s most important lesson. I will be humble, for I know my weakness.
music: Deltron 3030- The Instrumentals
I talk not about a space ship, but when Yoda himself can count down the days to Star Wars Ep. III on one hand then the mythology of my generation weighs heavy on the brain. More on that later. But about those special modifications…
I had a real problem when I backpacked Europe in the summer of 2000: I had to carry my buttpack by hand when I was wearing my big hiking pack. I bumped into the same problem this past summer and this spring break. Upon returning from Utah, I assembled a gear outfitting list, the top of which contained two projects: sew a tight form-fitting case for the travel guitar and modify my buttpack to become the top of my hiking pack. I must give credit where credit is due, however: Reuben is a couple years ahead of me on this one. His Mountainsmith Tour has been the top detachable part of his hiking pack for some time now, but I think that’s because the daypack that came with it was stolen or lost.
I took my buttpack to the same cobbler who sewed in a panel of pockets about two years ago and in 20 minutes the straps were perfectly in place: two 1” female clips on either side, slightly above the hipbelt compression strap facing backwards, and two 9” pieces of webbing with 1” male clips along the bottom also facing backwards. These lock into the Osprey’s clips perfectly. Stuffed full of gear it’s hard to tell whether or not the buttpack was made to go there. It is superior to the detachable daypack that comes with the Osprey on all levels: more room, more pockets, more flexibility. It fits so nicely I think it’s worth writing Mountainsmith a letter to see if they can’t engineer their stand-alone buttpacks to somehow become modular with their bigger hiking packs.
The bonus is that when not attached to the Osprey, the buttpack now has two webbing straps that run underneath and clip to the front (two more new 1” female clips, halfway up the front and next to the Nalgene holers) so I can carry jackets and layers outside the main compartment and still have the webbing open for other things. It’s actually an attachment the new model Mountainsmiths have built in. The buttpack is itself improved. Genius.
I still need to do some field testing, but things are looking good. I’ll have my buttpack, but will also be able to do extended backcountry trips without having to leave it somewhere or carry it in my hands. Once the travel guitar case (customized to fit on the Osprey as well) is finished I’ll be one unstoppable mobile modular musician. New levels of buttpack dorquedom, really, but you have to be a dorque about something. For me it’s camping gear. And Star Wars.
Yeah, she’s got it where it counts. Now my buttpack rating is just plain illegal. Which is a good thing. Travelling through the Outback isn’t like dusting crops.
music: Led Zeppelin- Boxed Set, d.1
PASSENGER: TAUS/DAVID
TRAVEL ITINERARY
United Flight 169 Coach on-time
Departing Jul. 4, 2005 Boston, MA (BOS) 6:30 pm, Arriving Jul. 4, 2005 Los Angeles, CA (LAX) 9:50 pm
Flight time: 6 hrs 20 min
United Flight 839 Coach on-time
Departing Jul. 4, 2005 Los Angeles, CA (LAX) 10:40 pm, Arriving Jul. 6, 2005 Sydney, NS, (SYD) 6:25 am
Flight time: 14 hrs 45 min
Total travel time: 21 hrs 55 min
United Flight 8588 Operated by Air Canada Coach on-time
Departing Aug. 4, 2005 Sydney, NS, (SYD)10:00 am, Arriving Aug. 3, 2005 Honolulu, HI (HNL) 11:50 pm
Flight time: 9 hrs 50 min
Total travel time: 9 hrs 50 min
ATA Airlines Flight 4518 Coach on-time
Departing Aug. 18, 2005 Honolulu, HI (HNL) 9:50 pm, Arriving Aug. 19, 2005 Chicago, IL (MDW) 12:55 pm
Flight time: 8 hrs 53 min
ATA Airlines Flight 4152 Coach on-time
Departing Aug. 19, 2005 Chicago, IL (MDW) 2:35 pm, Arriving Aug. 19, 2005 Boston, MA (BOS) 6:03 pm
Flight time: 2 hrs 28 min
Total travel time: 14 hrs 13 min
music: Geoff Scott’s Public House- 4/5/05
I thought better of attempting an explanation of the goings on of the past week and a half in Utah. Suffice it to say that I spent 10 or so days sleeping in a tent, not showering, eating simple pasty food, enduring hot days and cold nights, walking around the desert with substantial weight strapped to my back, and loving it. We tackled some major territory out there: Zion, Bryce, Glen Canyon, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, and even a couple hours at Arches. We crashed in some out-of-the-way BLM management areas that looked like pictures from the Mars Rover. We were up late and out early. We cruised through Lake Powell on a speedboat, and yes, set our feet in the virgin sand of the Cathedral in the Desert. We left more undone and unseen than we did and saw; always a reason to return.
Some conclusions about the south of Utah after spending 10 days there:
1. Canyon country is a dynamic place. You can travel for 20 minutes and move from arid desert to alpine forest and back. But its beauty lies not in going up, but going in. Squeezing into those impossibly small crevices of rock and dirt. Save the mountaintop views for the Sierras, the Cascades, and the Rockies. Canyon country is all about getting down and in. And in between the La Sal mountains and the edge of the Great Basin there are uncountable places of beauty and wonder, most being more or less uncharted and hardly explored. I’ve now been to the National Parks; should I go back I would spend most of my time exploring the unadvertised corners of the Escalante Grand Staircase.
2. My reasons for travel are changing. Before this travel was more about discovery of the self. I used the second half of a blank journal this trip; the first half was of my compulsive, erratic spring break travels in New England six years ago. The person who hopped buses all over the Northeast and slept in fields and pastures in April of 1999 was engaged in many questions of identity. The identity of the person who just returned from Utah is much more solidified. It was surprising to see the contrast in myself in the six years; I can clearly remember being that person and still in many ways believe myself to be similar to that but the contents of my head this trip indicated that I’ve grown older. I’ve settled down a bit, I’ve concerned myself more with the experiential and not the symbolic. I sought no great lessons, although some arguably came my way.
3. I’ve had it with Boston. I’ve got to find a way to get myself on the other side of the Great Divide more permanently. Being out there was itself relaxing; when the plane touched down in Boston on Sunday night I felt my muscles tighten and blood pressure go up. I’ve been out on the East Coast for almost 9 years now and I think it has run its course. I’ve promised myself at least one more year at my job here but as soon as the summer of 2006 I see myself driving into the sunset and settling in a smaller town somewhere on the other side of the Rockies.
4. Crocs are the most positive basecamp shoes I’ve ever worn. Thanks to Sarah for the tip-off on these.
As for the trip itself, words won’t do it. They never do, but this time I’m not going to bother trying. Volker’s and my pictures are here. Tmo has a handful of pictures here. I’ve spent some time gazing upon them when I should have been whipping through paperwork or working through my post-trip clean up.
The sleep debt incurred over the past two weeks is catching up to me in a painfully big way. It’s misty and damp in Boston tonight. Hopefully I’ll dream of canyons and desert.
music: Wilco- A Ghost Is Born
A surprisingly rewarding week at work is still nothing but a bunch of time in between me and my spring break in Utah. Tonight I’m furiously grading papers in this Babylon system; in two days I’ll be walking in Zion. And Bryce. and Canyonlands. And some others. Ever since I left the south of Utah last summer it’s been quietly but persistently calling me back, dangling some of the most magnificent natural treasures on the globe just out of my field of view. Too much of this urban thing since I came back; I’m itching for some time down in a desert canyon.
Joining me will be tmo, the 1ey,, and the great state of Montana. Aptly, the 1ey points out, we four resemble the eccentric quartet depicted in Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang. I’m not sure who’s who just yet, but I have feeling that by process of elimination I’m the doctor.
Anyway, it’s far too late to be up considering the day I have in store, but all the exams the kids finished today are graded. I haven’t started packing yet, but I know exactly what needs to go in the ol’ Osprey. it should only take about 20 minutes for me to gather everything. It’ll happen tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully I won’t be so twisted with excitement that I forget something important. Whatever. As long as I have a nalgene and a headlamp I’ll be fine.
Pictures and stories are certainly forthcoming. Hasta.
music: Phish- 11/14/95, Orlando, FL
A drive
beyond the city
around
but not to long to
riot in the night
through fuss and fight
through nothing
live through it all
The three day weekend was, for the most part, spent convalescing. I’m not sure what from. I spent a good amount of time pinballing around the house tweaking this and that, having minutes of focus and purpose, but most was filler. I got some big projects for school out of the way. I played a decent amount of guitar. I started work on a new song, which is now well on its way to completion. By Monday night I was restless and disappointed at how the weekend shook out. Cue tmo, asking coyly if I was interested in going to an open mic. In Gloucester. On a school night. I needed the recklessness of it all more than the content of the trip, so I dragged out the acoustic, bundled up, and headed out.
Enter the Rhumb Line, a small townie bar at the ass-end of the commuter rail far beyond the hype of the big city. The crowd was friendly and accepting, or drunk, or both. The music was predominantly classic rock covers, with some impressive improvisatory moments thrown in for good measure. The open mic was in fact an open jam session, and me there at 10:00pm on a school night, bringing the wrong brush with which to paint. I sat back and took in the scene, keeping mostly to myself, but some time around 11:30 the host of the session points a meaty finger my way. Apparently Shane, the guy who we travelled to meet up with, put my name on the list. He also loaned me his old Strat, an axe that’s been through the war and then some. The frets were almost flush against the fretboard and the action was dangerously low. It, besides all that, was a Strat, and as such has a completely different feel than the ES-335 that I’ve spoiled myself on. Throw an actual crowd of strangers into the mix, a drummer, a bassist, and the host on another guitar, shake. No, puree. I call for a simple funky improv to open: Am7 > D7, nothing too difficult, and I immediately falter on my first riffs. The Strat played sharp and pointy, the clean channel far too choppy, and I ended up fighting with the instrument for the rest of the night instead of using it as a tool. We segued into a fairly standard E-blues jam where I took a stab at a weak solo. The host asked me to sing something, and conjuring back from a far more successful gig in Bellingham, MA, I started Franklin’s Tower. By that point I had already lost my legs. I bumbled through three or four verses, the host ended it, and I turned the borrowed Strat over to Shane. I’d had enough.
This music things is hard enough as it is; doing it in vivo is even harder. But I realized as we were driving home that that is my zone of proximal development. I’m no longer challenged as much by my bedroom solo recitals. I needed to get out there, plug in, completely fall on my face, and stick it out. I needed the reality check to my pride, the humbling, the reminder that I don’t know jack. The challenge, as I saw it, was not a kinesthetic one; I didn’t feel the need to rip off mammoth solos. I’d like to blame the guitar but as a wiser person once said, the tools are only as good as the carpenter. The challenge was and is how to put myself into the proper frame of mind when I know other people are listening. There was a great deal of static and interference last night at the Rhumb Line. I was not clear and directed, and I certainly was not at ease. I made it through, and will live to play another day.
I’ve redoubled my efforts on the music front. I’ve been thinking hard about how to transition to playing in a more public sphere, about my own songwriting, and about some of the more fundamental issues of tonal theory that I’ll need in my bag of tricks. I spent about an hour on Sunday night taking a music lesson. All of this is directed towards a point- I have a jam session/audition scheduled with two guys from the craigslist music board on Thursday.
Musical horizons are expanding as I push outwards. Part of creating art is putting oneself on display publicly. I have tended to lurk in the shadows, produce from behind a curtain and reveal work without standing next to it (blog?) but that’s not so much an option any more. The musical externalizing process is too far along to slow down or reverse now, and despite any stumbling blocks that I may make for myself, there’s only one direction to move. Struggle, progress, and all that.
Slipping
Finding the stream
Living the dream
Feeling the sound
music: Martin Sexton- 9/14/01, Woodstock, NY
New Year’s, if nothing else, is an opportunity to pause and take stock of one’s life and how the events of the past calendar year have affected life. It’s a seemingly straightforward task, but is a tall order for he who is overly reflective. Iit’s sometimes nice not to be afforded the time to do all that year-in-review work. Equally as important is an excuse to seek out those who are important to one’s life. This year, meeting up with some of my oldest friends in Philadelphia accomplished both these points.
If all options were equally accessible, I’d be deep in the backcountry, well off pavement, pitching camp and cooking a simple meal over a fire with a handful of friends. Instead I found msyelf in the middle of a very large city bouncing from bar to club to bar along with thousands of other young professionals. I became lost in the sea of humanity, just one of thousands of guys with untucked collar shirts and jeans. Definitely not my thing but because of my company I managed to have a good time of it. I was lucky to be with some of my oldest friends (oldest as in we’ve known each other the longest). It’s an amazing thing to spend time with my friends from growing up. Because we are so entwined in each others’ personal development we have no troubles falling into a familiar comfort with one another. I feel no stress or obligation to be someone or do something with them; just sharing time and space is enough. I habitually and purposefully keep my attention on the path ahead of me day-to-day, but on occasions that allow me to turn an ear back I realize how important these people are to not only my growing up but to my current life. An illustration: I knew I didn’t really own clothes appropriate to the night’s activities (Carhartts and yard-sale plaid shirts probably wouldn’t cut it for a night on the town for NYE) and brought some of my work clothes as fallback, but secretly counted on scavenging from my friends. R. somehow foresaw this predicament of mine and brought an extra outfit thinking I’d need something to wear out. Neither one of us said anything about not having or bringing extra clothes, but it didn’t need to be said. It’s like that when you’ve known someone for over 20 years. Post-midnight calls from my old college roommates was the icing on the cake.
Philadelphia itself was an impressive place to me. I thought the street scene on Market Street after bar time was excellent: thousands of festive souls all enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, laughing, singing, carrying on, and talking with one another. Talking with one another! Complete strangers…never in Boston (short of the Red Sox winning the World Series). It was a great moment in time and I was glad to be a part of it. Never mind that this hubbub all took place in the Old City, just blocks away from a National Park. Philly’s neighborhoods are great as well-very distinct and colorful. We strolled through the Italian Market today and grabbed a Cheesesteak. It’s amazing how residential the city’s center is. Houses and apartments are very interspersed with historical landmarks, important government buildings (I spent the night less than a block away from the US Mint), and commerical centers. As downtowns go, Philadelphia is really a great setup.
I decided to return today despite the great change of scenery and great company. For one, the D.C. contingency of our party cleared out this afternoon. More to the point, the knowledge that I’d have to make the transition back to Mr. Taus weighed heavily on my conscience. The drive down and back, it turned out, was a worthwhile exercise in and of itself. Driving for distance has become something I’ve grown quite good at after our marathon driving this summer and as I was heading down to Philly I realized how much I missed the postmodern meditation of driving long hours on the Interstate System. The stretch I ran is perhaps the most developed in the country, with streetlight and strip mall being the rule, not the exception, but there were pockets enough on I-91 and I-84 to give me the illusion of driving through the more sparse landscapes not found on the Eastern Seaboard. Despite tackling some of the worst roads in the country I was also able to get some good thinking time in and clear my head of a lot of cobwebs. The freedom that the road affords is enough to put the routines and trappings of life in perspective, and despite falling into that distinctly American trap of sucking down over a tank of gas and shelling out over $20 in tolls I felt better about things just knowing I could do something like get up and go to Philadelphia if I wanted. And I did.
I made it back to Boston in just under 5 hours this evening. I had a good stretch of time on the road tonight to let thoughts simmer and glide in and out, time enough to reflect on the past year even after celebrating with some of my oldest friends. I hurtled through cities under darkness, shedding the previous year in the process and letting the dust settle enough to start the next, one singular life in a grey steel box gliding past countless others, content to find some sort of clarity in the jouney itself, hoping that upon returning home there will be strength, resolve, and room to begin the business of the next year.
music: Miles Davis- In a Silent Way
Just got back from an extended weekend in Tuscon, AZ to help celebrate my sister’s graduation from college. It was an excellent occasion on many levels: a positive family gathering, good time spent with sister and cousin D., some time out in the deserts of the American West, some sunshine and warmth in the middle of December, good and plentiful food, a much-needed getaway from the cold, dark days of Boston, and even a trip to a national park. I got to see parents, grandparents, and aunt in a vacation setting as opposed to a home setting where more obligations grind away at the corners of the experience. One of the coolest things was to catch a glimpse into my sister’s life out there: her apartment (complete with central air, hot tub, and pool, and all for less than my rent here), her daily haunts, her town, and her friends. I was especially struck with her friends, all great people whom I would count myself lucky to have as friends. She’s done well for herself holding such positive company. I went out with her entourage last night and had a fun time with everyone (despite things running way past this old man’s bedtime), and it gave me pause on the plane ride home that A) I finally can count my sister as a social peer and B) some of her friends are closer in age to me than her. It also made me realize how my own social life here has atrophied-the past two times I’ve gone out at night have been in Arizona and in Milwaukee over Thanksgiving break. Pitiful.
The return trip today was rough, mostly because I realized again how extraordinary the regions are west of the Continental Divide. It could be that every time I have been out West I’ve been on vacation but there is something about that open space and natural beauty that makes things…better. I was able to let myself relax a little, and noticed that I wasn’t as tense and vigilant out there than I am out East. Even as the plane touched down in Boston earlier tonight I could feel myself getting tense, facial muscles contracting into knots and wrinkles, girding myself for the unfriendliness and the press of humanity. I’m having a hard time admitting to myself that I would most likely be less anxious, possibly healthier somewhere closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic because I’ve committed myself to being here for at least one school year after this one. But after this three-day weekend, much like the end of August, I’m catching myself in a dreadfully practical half-truth about my efficacy for Boston. This is something to keep an eye on over the next couple months.
The flight back East made for a quick and sweeping study of the incredible differences between the vast environs out west and the crowded, overrun Eastern Seaboard. Flying over the Southwest at 30,000 feet revealed a whole lot of land relatively untouched by humans. The landscape, especially in the Southwest, is almost larger than the experience of these midwestern eyes; I was able to see the stretches of desert, waterless, borderless and virtually uninhabited, the Rockies hundreds of miles in the distance, the seemingly innocuous agricultural patchwork of the Midwest, and finally the malignant spread of human impact I currently call home as we moved farther East. I find myself left in a second state of wide-eyed wonder at these human-impacted landscapes; that humans not only can create something as impossible as the leviathan nexus of Chicago, Cleveland, or Boston, but also that we would. Seems that those who choose to humble themselves at the feet of the overwhelming landscapes of the West have a better sense of place in the universe than we lemmings and rats out East.
There is more to say, but I’m due up in a couple hours for school, and I’m reminded that I have responsibilities outside myself. This weekend, while a wonderful release from my life here, dulled me to my the obligations to these kids I teach, and this constant stream of effort I’ve been expending for the past four months. It’ll take all of tomorrow to force myself back into the hypervigilance and emotional fortitude that teaching demands. I’m also stewing over some other thoughts I had this weekend that probably will get the once-over here in the near future. For now, though, basic survival mode takes precedence. Eat, sleep, teach. Usually in the reverse order, unfortunately. The short desert vacation is over, I have seen the mighty Saguaro cactus, contemplated the nature of geography and population, my sister has a college degree, we had a great weekend celebrating, and I am at once tired and proud.
music: Keith Jarrett- Live at the Blue Note d.2
It’s over. I’m back home.
After a 13-hour driving day from Western Ohio to Boston, AJM and I reached Boston, my home, and the great Road Trip of 2004 has reached its conclusion. We arrived to the welcome of roommates for the next year. We ate homemade pizza and drank beer. We laughed and reveled, we stretched our legs for a bit. I marvelled at how familiar and at the same time how uncomfortable this place was; I was almost shocked at my home surroundings after two months on the road. But this is home, and after the nights’ celebrations wear thin I will start to go about the more serious business of carving out my own space in this place. It will take a bit of time due to circumstances outside my control, but in two weeks or so I should be solidly established here.
As to some sort of general reflections about the adventures of the past two months: not possible. At this point at least. It’s just too much to bite off, chew, and digest in one piece. Partly because it is so recent — AJM has not yet turned towards his own home — and partly because it is so massive. I have volumes written on the events of the past two months, just under three hours of cassette tape recordings, over 300 pictures (to be posted at some point in the near future), and even some original music that tells the tale of our travels out west and back. It’s been a productive and fruitful summer, full of experience and memory. So full, in fact, that it’s just not worth trying to summarize here and now (although I’ve been told that I have a knack for summing things up). For now, it is enough to reconnect with friends and future roommates, try to keep my mind Pacific-style relaxed even though I’m back in New England, and begin to sift my way through the pile of mail and countless emails that have amassed while I’ve been on the road. A lot of this returning business is unpleasant, annoying even, but after two months of unadulterated summertime and experiences enough for a full year of living, it’s time to start getting real.
But not quite yet. a cadre of old hangers-on will be heading up to Coventry, Vermont on Thursday to pay homage to the music that has been a major unifying force in my life over the past eight years. I have a week or so to get my proverbial act together before things really begin in earnest. And then an entirely new challenge: my first year of classroom teaching. More rivers to paddle; adventures in sight.
For now, though, some convalescence. Some sleep (I hope). Some proximal stability. And some reminiscing. Appreciation and blessings to the places I encountered and the people I met: The Rocky Mountains. Arches. The High Sierras. San Francisco. Yosemite. Big Sur. Sequoia. Havasu. Grand Canyon. Zion. Tahoe. Redwoods. Crater Lake. Eugene. Rogue. Cascades. Olympic Peninsula. Bellingham. Seattle. Badlands. Minikani. Milwaukee. DFC. Kelly. Nav and Reubs. Canton. TAC Posse. M. Bell. Margie. The Brothers Shepherd. Doody. Jami. Hoffman and the Dub Anthropologist. Dan, Lucas, and the folks at AndersenPalooza. And special appreciation and blessings to my copilot, collaborator, and companion for this trek, the one constant in this trip that made everything translate from possible to actual, “AJM.” Much love, brother. We’ve made it there and back again, and now that it’s all done I couldn’t imagine it any other way. But there are other lives to lead, as Thoreau wrote at the end of his sojourn to Walden, and the currents are shifting. I can only hope for as smooth a transition back into reality as were this summer’s trip through the wonders of the American West.
Halfway through this road trip, taking some time to catch my breath in San Francisco. Worlds of stories, but they will come out in due time. AJM and I are still at large and loving it, and we start our swing into the Pacific Northwest tomorrow. I gotta go…
music: Yonder Mountain String Band- Quincy, CA, 7/6/02
The great coast-to-coast trip is underway, but only officially. I have spent today and half of yesterday at home in Milwaukee. The past week or so has been a prologue of sorts, a stopping off with some friendly folk, a re-traversing of roads already taken. We tore out of Boston last Sunday and headed for the Phish show at SPAC. As luck would have it, AJM’s mail order landed us in the orchestra pit, third row. Third row. I’d never been that close. it was a good opportunity to see the band into whom I’ve sunk so much time and money and attention at close range. It was a good opportunity to watch them carefully, catch an intimate glimpse at their interplay. The show itself had its moments and got there at several points, but I think that I’ve pretty much had my peak experience with this band called Phish. Alpine tomorrow and Saturday will be a party: loads of fun but a large, impersonal experience. Coventry should be the same. Meanwhile, the seeds of two new original songs have been planted and will have time to germinate over the summer. AJM and I are working at it, plugging away, gettin’ there.
We made the late-night drive to Syracuse after SPAC and rolled in at about 3:30 AM. DFC and DBGrandi were still up, waiting to meet and greet. And although I have been indebted to DFC for setting me up with blogspace and email, I had yet to meet him face to face. That all got resolved early Monday morning. We all spent the longest day of the year sleeping very late, bumming around Syracuse, and relaying tales of here and there. Thus it was that AnizeCon ‘04 came to pass. We even saw Reid bike by our car, which he of course has no idea about. We’ll check in with the Anize satellite office out West in the coming weeks, but for the first AnizeCon it was great. I’m waiting for t-shirts.
We made an all-day push into the midwest and landed in Chicago Monday night. I crashed hard and drove up to the Brew on Tuesday, and here I’ve been. I liken the two stops in Syracuse and Milwaukee to the first two stops that Bilbo Baggins and his party of Dwarves make in The Hobbit: The Last Homely House, and Rivendell. Each were friendly places, places for rest and recreation, and each were located along the road that will be taken, but not yet in uncharted territory. This is my true jumping-off point, Milwaukee is my Rivendell. From here we venture down roads I have not yet travelled and into untold adventure. For now, here on my outpost on the edge of the Frontier, I can at least imagine fantastic journeys…more from the road. Probably. Perhaps not. It’s a brave thing going out your door, you know.
music: Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music, 1/28/03
Things have been busy here this week. Tomorrow AJM arrives, Friday I move out of my apartment, Saturday we pack the car, and Sunday we begin to roll west. Two months of Great American Road Trip lie in front of me, and all I can do to not leave now is keep packing my stuff up.
The summer will be my first in quite a few spent predominantly outside. It will be most welcome. I will not have a computer at the ready, which will also be most welcome. But that means that this little corner of the internet might be a little silent for the next two months. I’ll have my blank book and pen, and when I can I’ll try to post here, but we’re doing this one low-tech.
(…as if i had some sort of obligation.)
On the agenda: hiking in the desert and the mountains, two oceans, a fair amount of lakes, music festivals, roadside diners, international borders, making original music, clear nights and brilliant starfields, enormous quiet open spaces, long stretches of road, lazy mornings, busy evenings, very little obligation. Such a time will be most welcome after a full year of grad school and urban focus.
More from the road, I’m sure, but the next couple of days will be primarily about getting set to leave Boston with a clear plate. Between AJM getting here and moving and packing and locking up, there won’t be much time to sit down and type. So more from the road when I can. First stops are at SPAC, then off to Syracuse to meet the man behind the curtain. Then a swing through the midwest where we catch up with family and friends and reinstate our yearly pilgrimidge and from there we bee-line west to find even more music and adventure and the myriad wonders of the American West.
Best of summers to everyone and anyone. Pack light, sing loud, and check your gas gague often. Ramble on.
music: John Coltrane- Blue Train
I spent the past two days on an island off the coast of Maine. I didn’t really plan on going, nor did I plan for going, and up until Friday afternoon I wasn’t too sure if I was going to go or not. But I ended up throwing some gear in the back of my car and making the drive into Maine. I left in a somewhat grumpy mood, having spent a day at school tying up loose ends and beginning to think about some closure (finally!) to this school year. I left so much undone, so much waiting for me back here. I left in the rain and fog. I left in Friday rush-hour traffic. I left with the inkling that I would meet up with tmo, Peet, and others at a rendezvous point that we’d never directly agreed upon. It was all very uncharacteristic of one of my trips-so unstructured, so unplanned, so open-ended and so loose. From my point of view, at least. JZ had done some forward work and we drove right into a pre-reserved campsite around 11pm on Friday night. Done, and done. I was in Maine, and things crept towards positive from then on out.
I spent saturday with JZ and Peet popping about the island. We did some rock-hopping on the coast, hiked halfway up a mountain, and lounged about at campsite. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the lifestyle, but once I allowed myself to be satisfied with no plan and no need to accomplish anything, I had a great, relaxing time. Today was more of the same: sleeping late, waking up in my tent, driving into town for a diner breakfast and ice cream, then a slow and leisurely drive down the Maine coast on Route 1. I drove back by myself today, as everyone else opted to stay for an extra day and I have plenty to take care of. But just two days out there did the trick. I have spent so much of this year engaged in very strenuous goal-directed tasks that I think I almost forgot how enjoy wandering.
One of the reasons why I decided to head back earlier than everyone else is that I know that very, very soon, I will be doing this sort of wandering for two straight months, and I can’t wait. My summer road trip starts three weeks from today, which is close enough to start getting very, very excited about the prospect of jumping in my car and wandering about the expanses of the United States of America. This weekend was wonderful, but I felt myself shutting off prematurely. I need to keep my head about me for at least another two weeks: do some final grading, do some planning for next fall, move my stuff, and make some preparations for the road trip itself. But my freedom is within reach, and given a little taste from this past weekend, I am more than ready than to embrace a summertime lifestyle consisting of camping, playing music, and moving from new place to new place.
I also realized this weekend that it is one year since I returned from my last extended journey: my two weeks in Northwestern Colorado and Utah. I reviewed some of the things I wrote while out there and was glad that I could celebrate the one-year anniversary of that trip out in the wilderness. It was a bit cold this weekend at times, a bit windy too, and I came out of it with some nicks, scrapes, and cuts, but only appropriately so. It reminded me a good deal of my time in Colorado and what I took from that experience. I wrote that that trip was in many ways “the guided tour,” and I look forward to being my own cruise director this summer. All I’ve learned will help me on the road.
This weekend was a short one, sure, but a potent one. I am sliding quickly into the vagabond’s state of mind, and once again growing comfortable with the idea of a stretch of unstructured time where nothing has to be accomplished. Soon enough I will be spending the vast majority of my time out-of-doors. Soon enough I will not have to meet any sort of deadline. Soon enough I will set up camp in a different place every night. Such a drastic change from the strain and pressure of grad school and teaching, but a welcome change. Soon enough that weekend-camper lifestyle I enjoyed this past weekend will be a daily thing, and I can’t wait.
music: MMW- 2/16/01 Tokyo, Japan
Been some time. Howdy.
It’s not that things have been slow. Just the opposite in fact. I’ve been doin’ some hard travelin’, you see, and since the second week of this fine month I’ve been moving all around the country at full tilt with not a moment to pause and gather my thoughts. Thus, there is much to write about and no time to write about it all. I’ve been doin’ some hard thinkin’ as well.
As far as summaries go, here’s what I’ve been up to in loose order since the beginning of the month: teaching teaching teaching, throwing together some classwork for classes of my own, setting up a system to record stuff at murphy’s, editing some tracks recorded at murphy’s, popping down to NYC for the long weekend, popping out to CO to visit colleagues and family, see the mountains, and deliver lectures. Then back to Boston to re-organize things after travelling, distribute libations, sift some through some audio and photo, begin some work in earnest on songwriting, begin the job hunt, teaching, teaching, teaching, forge ahead on the Live Live front, try to have some fun, and hope to keep everything to 18 hours/day so there is time for sleep. Whew.
The past two or so weeks have been packed with substance outside of my own realm: the rebellion in Haiti, the hostile takeover of the Muppets, the beginnings of baseball season, and the like. I’ve had some good thoughts about this and that but haven’t had the time to document them. So many times I’ve said to myself: “that is the seed of a great blog entry.” So many times, however, it has dissipated into the ether. Things are moving fast-too fast to type it all out on a semi-nightly basis. The archivist in me is sad about that, the delusional narcissist in me is upset that adoring throngs haven’t had the chance to read about much, but the rest of me has been too busy to notice. I’m being stretched and pulled here and there and am spreading myself pretty thin these days. All over the place. Here and there. A mishmash. So-so. In short (and in Turkish, of all things): Ş�YLE B�YLE. Which, to the best of my knowledge, is pronounced “surly burly” except you have to imitate the Swedish chef and have a little phlegm caught in the back of your throat when you are saying it. We learned that one this morning in a TEP workshop. Pretty much sums things up.
I have bitten off far too much than I can chew, but I’m surprisingly calm about it. I think I’m learning to live comfortably with transition. More to the point: I think I’m learning that transition is a fluid thing, a matter of degree, and that I will never have the luxury of only thinking about one thing at a time. So the torch-juggling, plate-spinning, unicycle-riding, animal-balloon-making sideshow continues. All things considered, it’s going pretty well. Teaching continues to be challenging and rewarding, the radio show is stable enough to still be worth doing, I’m beginning to get more serious about writing some music, I’m trying to spend as much time as I can out of the house and with friends (largely unsuccessful), I’m digging into this archiving project at murphy’s, I’m beginning to think about both jobs for next year and plans for the summer, and all the while I’m musing about a girl in Brooklyn. The days are getting noticably longer, the weather noticably warmer, and as a result of that and the past two weeks I’m settling with not settling for a bit. Ş�YLE B�YLE.
music: master recordings from Wabeno, WI- 12/29/03 — 1/1/04
2004 has arrived and my time in the midwest is rapidly coming to a close. It’s been time enough here. There are things that need my attention (and lots of it) out East, and although I’m staring down a series of very demanding weeks, I’m anxious to be getting back to my current and chosen reality. Milwaukee was a nice respite from my obligations in Boston, but it is definitely time to dig back in. So I grit my teeth, and set myself, and prepare for the onslaught of full time teaching, final exams, and everything else my life out East demands of me.
The trip home was productive on several fronts. I spent some time with family members and friends who I haven’t seen in a long time. I made some headway on school work, although not nearly as much as I would have liked. But perhaps most importantly, I made some music.
I found myself in a cabin in Wabeno, WI with some friends from camp to ring in the new year. AJM, The Doctor, and I used a good deal of time in the back room of that cabin to record some music. The conditions were less than optimal: three guys, three acoustic guitars, and a less-than-professional microphone, but it came together better than I thought it would. When all was said and done, we committed about two and a half hours’ worth of our music to hard drive space. Included in that archive were several original works, which represented an important step for me in my own creative process.
I’ve fiddled around with snippets of musical ideas for some time, but haven’t really had the wherewithall to produce a song. I think that the collaboration with friends Up North this weekend really spurred the songwriter in me. As I sit here, a night after returning, I am still energized with possibility and creativity. I think a lot of it had to do with the reinforcement my friends provided. So much of the music I make falls on my bedroom walls, and there is nobody there to add their own voice, but this week two of my friends were there to contribue their voices and visions to the product.
I learned “Gato Negro” this weekend, a tune that AJM wrote with The Doctor last year, and I am really impressed with it. So much so that its existence somehow proves to me that this songwriting endeavour is possible, that producing quality original work is absolutely within my reach. It is something that I need in order to carry forth; it is something I am listening to right now.
The music itself is rough and isn’t mixed too well (to be fair, it is pretty good considering what we had to work with), but it represents something greater. After making music with my friends this week and having it to listen to now, the production of my own song(s) seems that much more within reach. I’ve stuggled with the producer/consumer dichotomy for the past couple of year, wishing to fall more on the producer side of things, and after the recording sessions this past week I finally feel like I’m taking a step in the right direction. The real challenge will be keeping up the momentum in Boston, where I will be far away from my New Year’s collaborators and more likely than not working in isolation. Yet another challenge to add to the long list for when I return. But this is important; making music is one of the best uses of my time and energy that I can imagine. A certain threshold has been crossed, and I aim to use this inertia to push my practice in the months to come. As AJM might say: “Forward.”
music: Grateful Dead- Dead Set
Today was a holiday, and to celebrate, I took the day to not do anything related to education, teaching, grad school, or any of that. There is such thing as too much of a good thing, and as good as this grad school endeavor is, there are other things. And I don’t let myself remember that too often.
Instead of working, I played my guitar, slept late, and today drove to Providence and back before a very satisfying nap, radio show, and Murphy’s. For some reason it’s been an extremely emotionally charged day and at the end of it i was feeling very misanthropic which is why I opted out of the Murphy’s after-party which is probably still going on. It’s nice to enjoy a quiet moment to cap off the day.
I woke up around 11:00 and felt the need to get out of Boston for a little bit. Providence was an impulsive trip, and classmate and fellow revolutionary M.McC. came along for the ride, enduring my nostalgia all the while. The highlight was that we met up with former roommate Stylz for lunch and a whopping 45 minutes of catching up. It was a really nice check-in for me, who hasn’t seen this guy I used to live with and see every day for no small time now. Stylz seems to be doing very well, making a go of acting, and moreover finding personal truth in the process. He described acting to me as a process of uncovering and revealing, as opposed to a make-believe or creation of the illusory, which is what I always considered it to be. An interesting notion to say the least; I am more comfortable with the whole enterprise when construed as such. And Stylz is getting a lot out of it. Despite the to-be-expected struggles, he seemed healthy, alive. A good, albeit brief, check-in. The Good Doctor P. was completely MIA and hasn’t returned my calls. He’s probably still on. So it goes in the world of medicine. We all have our albatross.
We did a brief walking tour of Brown and I got nostalgic for days long gone. It was raining out and there weren’t many people around, but still. The place still reeks of experiences I had; little corners of the most obscure parts of that campus hold powerful personal meaning. I called J. from in front of Middle Caswell and left a message. And wiped away a very, very small tear that was probably mistaken for a raindrop.
I was back in Boston by 5:00pm and got two hours of nap in. I crashed hard. Didn’t realize how deep my sleep debt had gotten, but now I feel a lot better. Actually, more rested than I have felt in months. Hardly a coincidence that it was on the first day that I didn’t do any thinking about school since September. I know I’m very hard on myself, but I often don’t realize exactly how hard. It felt good to take it easy for once today. And yet, I’ve got this guilt creeping in about not doing anything today. Tomorrow I’ll make up for it. We all have our albatross.
Murphy’s was excellent tonight. Even tmo was getting giddy; even A. was dancing. The past two weeks really have been exceptional. There’s good energy in that room consistently and the crowds have thinned out a little which is nice. The regulars were there tonight and most are at an after-party, but I thought it more important to do some processing and figure out why I was so emotionally extreme today. Not in a bad way, really, but it’s a fair summary of my moods over the past 24 hours. That, and I really wasn’t up for socializing as much as I was up for some late-night pensive thinking and reflection. It’s nice to take a moment from my day; this weblog is a tool that really allows me to do it effectively and I am thankful for that. But there is tomorrow to think of now: class, schoolwork, and judging from the house whiteboard my roommates are getting prickly about phone bills, bathroom use, the front door and other petty, nitpicky issues. It’s astounding how each wants something out of this living situation, but it’s always something completely selfish, and it’s never said explictly, just written on the whiteboard. So it looks like I’ll wake up to business as usual, but it was good to take a break from it all today. No, necessary. Thanksgiving will be most welcome when it hits in two weeks.
music: Keller Williams- 4/5/00
Today was set aside for a great quantity of reading and schoolwork. Instead, I took Doug up on his offer to take a bunch of us kayaking on the Charles River. I chose wisely.
It was a small gathering: myself, Doug, G-Phatty, tmo, tmo’s roommate C., and friend M. We put in at the Charles River Boathouse, all the way out at 128 and The Pike and paddled upstream for a good two miles until we hit Newton Falls (really just a dam). The trip was hardly exhaustive, although it did take us under county, state, and federal roads, and weaved us in, out, and around some rarely seen angles of the Charles River. At certain points, we were almost out of eyeshot and earshot of the city. It was enough to do the trick for the afternoon.
It drizzled all afternoon, but that didn’t really matter too much seeing as though we were in the water. Some more than others; Guy fell in twice and M. once. We paddled in and out of brush, lillypads, and small docks left to rot. We practiced bracing, hit a little blue ball back and forth, and generally had a grand time of it.
There is something about being on the river that is distinct from travelling on land: there is an ease to it (although my shoulders and back don’t think so right now), a purity to gliding over water on humanpower alone. Rivers are wonderful in that you are headed somewhere and you can not get lost. The scenery, generally speaking, is beautiful and dynamic, there’s a lot of life happening all around you, and there’s no noise or traffic. It’s a simple and glorious life on the river. Reminded me of the weeks I spent on the rivers of Northwestern Colorado and Utah last May. How glorious it was to carry all your necessaries with you on your boat, to paddle with current and through rapids, and to dock and sleep on beaches next to such a splendid liquid path that cut through the bottom of some jaw-dropping canyons. While the Charles in Massachusetts couldn’t quite match the Yampa and Green in Colorado, it served. And then some.
Above all, the quiet time spent paddling today brought with them a perspective shift. The Charles, most of the time, is a wind tunnel, an obstacle that separates Cambridge and Boston. Today, it was the path that cut through all others, the frame of refrence from which I saw all else. And it was not buildings that I saw; on this particular leg of the Charles, there were trees, shrubs, turtles, fish, even a Heron or two. Quite nice, considering it was not more than 2 miles away from the interstate.
And afterwards, we saddled up and motivated a sizable crew to Tacos El Charro. Added to the fray were Peet and new companion M., Doug’s girlfriend, the two Neumanns, and J.Z. 11 total, and quite a time it was around that long table with the Mariachi band playing at half strength. We ate, drank, and were merry.
I finally got back home around 9:30. Far later than I wanted to be home workwise. I’ve been measuring my time in terms of schoolwork productivity and completion as of late, and by those standards, today was a complete failure. But it wasn’t. Not in the least. Ten years from now, it’s not the hours I spent reading that I’ll remember. Hell, I can’t even remember all that time I spent in the SciLi during undergrad. But marked among those things I do remember were trips shared with friends of the type I had today. And surprisingly, when I sat down to work this evening, I had a much easier time of it than I had this past week. I would do good to remember to temper my work with spending time on what is important.
music: Tea Leaf Green- High Sierra 7/4/03
I spent Wednesday through Sunday of last week in Milwaukee. Had a good deal of time to spend with immediate family, extended family, and a handful of friends. Going home is usually a stressful occasion; having it coupled with the holiday seaston makes it especially so. a visit in late August, then, was not nearly as stressful as the visits impending in late November and December. Thus, there was time to stretch out, lounge about, and relax a bit.
The theme every time I go to Milwaukee is the same: I have a past. I know this, of course, but upon each visit, I seem to be reminded of certain corners of my past about which I had forgotten. The big chunks are always clear: family, extended family, high school friends, camp. But more often than not my memory is more declarative than episodic. Visiting home does quite a number on cueing up the ol’ episodic. And this trip was more different.
I had some good conversations while home. Briefly checked in with Trangy regarding his big shift from the ultra-familiar at our summer homeland to the expanses of the American West. (Others at camp are preparing to step up to their respective challenges: Drayna tells me he is digging deeper into med school, A.K. is figuring out how to best approximate the camp experience year round and moving in an easterly direction while doing so, E.H. is about to graduate and get his move on as well.) M.M. and I shared two fairly significant conversations, which really hit the nail on the head as far as all the things I was thinking about in terms of past versus present. The Rapper and I got down to some grimy issues while pacing Milwaukee’s downtown, he getting restless with kicking around Fox Point in his post-med school shift and is taking steps in a positive direction, presumably leading to Chicago. Funny how the theme was the same throughout the weekend: recognizing one’s past and figuring out how to integrate the past’s lessons into one’s present.
For a lot of folks in Milwaukee, this season is one of fairly significant change, voyage, shear, and shift. Same story on the family front. Sarah is setting up her own place and now has a quasi-serious boyfriend (this time her age). Jessie is working towards flying the coop in one year’s time, and is having quite a time figuring out where she’s going to end up. Cousin Benji is about to drive to Denver and become a buff red-haired rat in that wonderful race we college grads tend to run. Grandma Lois is gearing up for a trip out east this September(an increasingly difficult task for her), and (recently-turned 80 years old) Grandpa Max is trying hard to not slow down. Grandma Doris is staying busy keeping Grandpa Max a little less busy. It’s a wonderful interplay.
Considering all: different challenges, Same theme. Including me.
Now back in Boston, after spending a good day sleeping late, eating right, fixing up the Live Live website, working through some post-summer reading for school, and a good three hours on the bike down to Park Street and back, I have had some time to chew over the theme of last week’s journey home. And consider some solutions to its dilemma — and it is a dilemma — how to best integrate aspects of my past into the present?
Part of the problem is physical location. I tend to focus on what is directly in front of me. I tend to concern myself with things and issues with which I can interact on a sensory level. Which is fine. But many issues, situations, people are not physically proximal and therefore get less attention. I think getting a cell phone was a step in the direction of remembering that I carry my past with me. But it’s more than being mindful of such issues and people. I think that it’s important to in some way ritualize these connections to the past, to engage in action with regard to my past, to actively bring it to the forefront and into my present.
Gut-reaction: this seems like an unnatural action for me. It seems forced, contrived, unnecessary. Four years of undergraduate psychology tell me to flag such actions as important simply due to my knee-jerk reaction. Santayana’s axiom about history, then, seems to apply to individuals as well as civilizations.
And as much as I do shunt my past to…well, the past…I do enjoy the moments when it collides with the present. This seems to happen a lot in Milwaukee, which is why the trips home are both stressful and fruitful. No doubt things will just get more beautiful and complicated come December…
music: Miles Davis- Bitches Brew d.2
(actually, the bracelet was purple.)
This past weekend was Berkfest, one of the biggest events in the Northeast as far as live music is concerned. And this year, my work on Live Live earned me a free ticket to the festival, as well as media privileges. I was free to bounce back and forth from the concert grounds to backstage to VIP camping as I saw fit. I was free to hobnob with the Berkfest bigwigs, free to drink their beer for heavy discounts and eat their snacks, free to use their ultra-clean port-o-potties. It’s funny-for the most part I didn’t.
This was my third time at Berkfest. I knew the drill. I knew what to expect at pretty much every turn, I knew how to best budget my time, what to see, what not to miss, and what to do without. Because I was in VIP camping this year, I completely skipped over the increasingly sketchy situation in the “enchanted forest” (although I did venture back there to do some interviews) and was much closer to my tent site which was very convienent. I also had a better idea of which acts I wanted to see and which acts I could skip. Truth is I had already seen a lot of acts that played this year’s Berkfest, and only went to see those that I really enjoyed. As such, I took in a lot of new music this weekend. I’m going to write a review of the festival for Live Live tomorrow, so I’ll leave the music reviews up to that.
Something about Berkfest this year didn’t really strike a chord in me. Perhaps the constant onslaught of aural information overloaded my circuits. Perhaps the playing was subpar (I don’t think it was). Perhaps the setting was too over-hyped, too big, too much. This last point is it, I think. As far as live music goes, I’ve been spoiled by Murphy’s, a very small place that produces some very large music. I would pit a given night at Murphy’s against almost any set at Berkfest this weekend, and based simply on empirical auditory input, I would pick Murphy’s. Add to the equation that Murphy’s holds 50 people on average, while Berkfest was pushing 8,000. Add to the equation that people who performed on the mainstage at Berkfest are regulars at Murph’s; members of The Slip, John Brown’s Body, and Sam Kinninger’s crew all are hanging out at the bar, standing right next to you — no, talking with you — and it’s no big deal.
Maybe that’s why backstage seemed like not such a big deal. For the most part, the musicians weren’t even the ones back there. They were all out in the crowd, checking out other musicians. The bigger names didn’t stay on-site either; they bussed in, played, and bussed out just as quickly. What was left backstage was, for the most part, leeches, groupies, and hangers-on, along with a smattering of Clean Vibes volunteers and members of the media (such as myself). But again, there wasn’t much to cover backstage.
My mission for the weekend was to conduct interviews. Not interviews with musicians (although that was the logical conclusion of Gamelan’s publicity team as well as other members of the media), but interviews with regular fans. I managed to talk to a good amount of concertgoers, and a good range within that. I talked to some kids who did not leave the campgrounds and were too far gone on drugs to consider going to see music, I talked to middle-aged folks who dress in golf shirts and khakis and are camping out with the wookiees for three days in order to hear some of the more esoteric picks for the festival, I talked those who looked like they came from fraternity rush, I talked to those who sported the customary dreads-and-patchwork, I talked to drinkers of cheap beer not a day over 18. I talked to pretty much everyone I could, including representatives from some of the nonprofits, some of the festival volunteers, and craft vendors. The hard results are posted on livelive.org. For what it’s worth, though this was the highlight of the weekend for me. I gained more from talking to this wide array of people than I did listening to the music.
It occurred to me at one point that this sort of activity, the weekend-long music festival, is no longer at the top of my list of things I’d like to be doing with my weekends. I find that I increasingly seek situations of personal connection and smaller numbers as opposed to mob scenes and sensory-laden spectacles. I’d rather be talking with someone, hearing their story, than listening to music. Of course there are times when I want nothing more than to fall into the innards of one of my favorite CDs, but for the most part I’m trying to listen to things on a different level.
I think that part of my reaction to the weekend is one of disdain for the scene that I loved so much a couple of years ago. I’ve grown out of it, I guess. Or maybe because of my adventures in radio, I’ve pulled back the curtain on it and can’t really see it as something wholesome and fun anymore. Especially now that Corporate America has gotten their meathooks into the whole business…
But for whatever the reason, Berkfest didn’t carry the same clout as it has in the past for me. Strange, considering my Golden Bracelet. The most valuable lesson this weekend was about people, and how just because some people might play instruments on big stages for everyone to watch, that doesn’t make their story any more speical, important, or interesting.
_music: Phish- 11/17/97 Denver, CO_
It’s been a very intensive three weeks of reading, teaching, and not sleeping. I’m about to head up to Vermont for the night. This city is a very intense and demanding place right now, and given a night in the Green Mountain State, hopefully I’ll return with a rested mind and some of that essential extra energy needed to work my way through all the stuff here.
I’ve been slipping on my reading at work and coming up next week we are taking a module with a professor whose stuff I’ve read and whose class and assignments will have much to offer. Plus the papers are starting to be assigned and teaching continues to demand some good time from my schedule. The situation at ABFree worstens by the day. And I miss my friends.
No delay. Northward Ho!
