Winter Solstice Post

Another winter is upon us. Winter being the time for slowing and hunkering down. Reading more, preferably sitting by a fire if one can manage it. Going to bed a little earlier and maybe even sleeping a little later some days. At least I thought I read somewhere that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Winter marks the onset of dormancy for many organisms and the end of life for others. Changes in the cycle of life are so much more obvious this time of year. I’m reminded yet again that everything changes. Phases and stages pass.

For nearly twenty years I was the sole proprietor of the only two trees at Barton Springs spaced closely enough together to accommodate a hammock. They were just up the little slope behind the diving board, near the tree line along the south fence. I passed hundreds of hours suspended there in my faithful Yucatan hammock. Sometimes for entire days In July or August.

I never got any grief about hammocking there. As far as I know I was the only one doing it. No matter how crowded the pool, that particular space was usually as vacant as if I had called ahead and reserved it. The idea was I’d haul in all my backed up reading material with my swimming gear, swim laps until I felt really cold, fall into my hammock to drip dry, read, and doze off until I got hot again. Then repeat the process over and over until sundown or it seemed like enough for one day.

Or I got hungry, or had to meet someone. Or the call came from Tommie asking if I was thinking about coming home any time soon. And then I’d have to roll myself out, pack up and haul ass to catch the number 29 Barton Hills which, If I didn’t miss it, would drop me off about 200 yards from my front door.

There is a feeling I call ‘pleasantly exhausted well-being;’ a physical sensation that is beyond wonderful. If you swim long enough in 68 degree water, it actually feels as if your core body temperature has dropped. The relentless August sun feels good on your skin; the inside of a city bus positively frigid. I would stroll that last two hundred yards to the house on Elmglen feeling blessed and caressed by the universe. “No worries, Mon. Jah guides and provides.” And Tommie would be glad to see me, delighted by my pliable mood. It was a wonderful way to cope with the brutal heat of the central Texas summers. The swimming part still is of course.

One day a couple of years ago I arrived to find a yellow tape around one of my trees. The attached tag informed me that it was diseased and scheduled to be cut down as a hazard. I nevertheless continued to use it for a while thereafter and no one seemed to mind.

Some weeks later it was felled. Oddly, it was cut not at ground level but some six or seven feet up the trunk, leaving standing to continue functioning as my hammock stand. I could do business as usual for a time.
But this year the other tree got tagged as a ‘hazard.’ It was listing further to the west than usual, the ground at its base raised; the roots will pull out soon. My personal space at Barton Springs is cordoned off.

The only two hammock trees in the park enclosure are now off limits; one’s dead, the other dying. A phase of life is ending for the trees, the park and me. The dead stump will rot or be removed; the pool staff may have to hurry to fell the other before it collapses. The space will be sunnier; the grass will fill in and be lush.

I’ll still swim at the springs for as long as I’m able. When I can’t swim anymore, I’ll go anyway just to be there. But it is safe to say that after 20 years, I will never again lie in a hammock inside the park boundary of Barton Springs.

Nothing stays the same.

Back to Oregon

After being back in Austin for nearly a month, I got started back on the road later than intended, what with coordinating the completion of some work on our house and then deciding to wait a couple of more days and go with Tommie to Dallas to visit her dad and the Thomas clan. So I didn’t end up actually departing on Phase III until late Sunday afternoon July 11. I took Tommie to Love Field to catch her return flight to Austin, said what is always a very sad good-bye, and turned little Suzie northwest in the direction of Amarillo and Albuquerque. But it had already been a long day and, full of good food and the warm afterglow of a nice visit with the Thomas side of our family, I could made it only as far as Vernon, Texas and had to crash by about 10:00 p.m.

I slept well but woke up early and itching to make some distance. Visits were scheduled, after all, and I was expected in Albuquerque Monday evening and Portland, Oregon by the evening of Friday the 17th. I was looking at a long 2300 miles, but as with all things, easy does it and one step at a time. I made Amarillo by brunch, and reeled in Albuquerque by early afternoon, where I was met and graciously hosted by high school running buddy Russell Golightly. It had been 15 years since I’d seen Russ face-to-face and that was at our 20-year class reunion. Russ and his older brother Robert were my good friends and team-mates, and their house was my second home.

Russ looked great and I was so excited to get to see him again. We had happy hour and went to dinner with his grown son Justin and his beautiful recent girlfriend Flo. We went to a lovely New Mexican restaurant where indulged in my favorite New Mexican dish, open-faced red chili enchiladas, topped with a sunny side egg. We enjoyed an evening with the two best things life offers: delicious food and wonderful company. It was just outstanding to get to visit and Back home again after dinner we reminisced about our glory days running track and cross-country for Alamogordo High School. He got out our class year book and we went through every page, identifying all our former girlfriends, trying to remember people’s names, the last time we heard from so-and-so, “wasn’t that Larry Vasquez a tough competitor….I had such a crush on that girl but never had the guts to ask her out,” and so on. It was a wonderful evening reliving cherished memories with a dear friend who is an all-around top notch person. But alas it was a work night after all, and I had to get an early start to try and make Salt Lake City by Tuesday night. We breakfasted together and he saw me off. We promised not to let so much time go by before checking in with each other again.

I turned to business of getting to the southern coast of Oregon via Farmington, NM, Cortez, CO, Salt Lake City (overnight), Winnemucca, Nevada, Klamath Falls, OR (overnight), then back east and south through Medford and Grants Pass to Brookings, OR, before turning back north to head up the coastline on highway 101. Believe it or not, this was the shortest way, and all went uneventfully according to plan until just north of Brookings, where I picked up Robert.

I caught sight first of his enormous backpack, his arm and thumb sticking out as he was walking up a long hill. I had a good feeling about stopping to pick him up, and did so. He became my traveling companion for the rest of the day and night, and we camped together at Sunset Beach State Park near Coos Bay. At almost 60, Robert was had hitchhiked from Montana. He is still on a spiritual journey which he told me quite a lot about. His indomitable positive attitude struck me as pollyanic, but entertaining and infectious nonetheless. Robert thinks wherever he ends up is where he is supposed to be, and that he has a spiritual mission to be there. He trusts fate completely, knew he was going to meet up with me or someone like me who would “understand” what he’s about, and that he would benefit from our meeting.

Robert is also lonely, was divorced a couple of times and feels unsuccessful in his relationships with women. He has suffered the rejection of wives and of his grown son, and wants reconciliation and healing. In camp he pulled a large, old and worn volume from his pack entitled “A Course in Miracles.” He had ‘founded’ a commune in 1971, he said, and his life since then has apparently been one long search for a spiritual home. It seemed to me that Robert thinks if he just hits on the right belief system, maybe he’ll be okay. We made a fire and talked long into the night. I gave him an old gore-tex bivy sack I’d been carrying around for at least five years but have not used in all that time. He had a sleeping pad and bag but no tent or covering of any kind.

We breakfasted together and I carried him up to Florence where he was going to turn eastward and try to see a friend he thought might live in Eugene now. I let him off at the Florence public library, hugged and wished him well. As a parting gift, Robert gave me his own original religious tract containing his “Nine Principles for a Spiritual Life.”

It was a short run up the remainder of the spectacular Oregon Coast before I turned east myself, in to Portland where I was a much fussed-over guest of dear old friends Dave Sugerman and Janet Byrd, whom I married in 1982. Dave was subsequently the best man at my own wedding, which Jan could not attend because she was about to give birth to her son Sam, who is now college aged. This visit was long overdue; I don’t get to see Jan and Dave nearly often enough. I think it had been 15 years since my last visit to them in Portland. I stayed in their beautiful home in a beautiful old neighborhood, we walked around the city center and the fantastically abundant Farmer’s Market at Portland State University, went shopping at REI, ate too much great food and good wine, and mostly just visited and caught up. It was a full, fabulous two days and three nights with these dear people, and it came to an end far too soon.

And so, this sunny Monday morning it is back to work for Dave and Jan, and for B.A. it is back ‘into the wild.’ I’m heading out of the urban environment for a while, first to the Mount Hood Wilderness, and on Wednesday or Thursday to the Indian Head or Mount Addams Wilderness in Washington. I am due for another visit with Gary and Sally Coen in Seattle by Saturday.

Otter Bar and Klamath Falls Pictures

Post-Otter Bar and then Klamath Falls, Oregon

Well, I did manage to roll my kayak all the way back up on two occasions. That is the good news. The bad news is, I did not really master the roll during my time at Otter Bar. I didn’t reach the point of consistently, and that is the goal. So I’ll have to continue to work on it. Maybe I’ll find an instructor here in Austin, or maybe I can just get on some water and work on it by myself. I tried my best but could not consistently execute the proper technique. My instructors tell me this is the rule rather than the exception. Many people fail to master the role during a single week of instruction and practice.

Still, the Otter Bar experience was superb. It was a beautiful setting, the accommodations and food were excellent, the teachers outstanding as were the fellow students. I departed feeling worn out, with a very sore right shoulder and an ear infection (the result of spending too much time upside down in a kayak), but grandly exhilarated. Everyone asked if I am ‘coming back next year.” I hedged because honestly I don’t think so. There is Kayaking instruction available much closer to home and Otter Bar is very expensive. I think one experience here may have to suffice. While I’m very glad I checked out this particular school and learned basics of white water paddling, it may be my lot to cruise somewhat calmer waters. We’ll see.

I said good-bye to my eight new friends, drove back down the canyon, and turned….north. Being that I was in the general neighborhood, I had this idea that I’d meander a hundred miles or so northeast to a place called Klamath Falls, Oregon, where my dad was stationed in the U.S. Air Force and where I lived and adventured during my 13th year of life. It was a great year, I had many fine memories of the place, and I wanted to see what it looked like after 40 years. Not Klamath Falls proper but our old neighborhood, the ‘base housing’ compound called Falcon Heights. We lived for that year or so in a duplex so small I don’t really see how they got the three tiny bedrooms into it.

But it didn’t matter, there were these enormous back yards there. Not even yards really, just a huge, open swath of green lawn literally the size of a football field. It ran between the rows of street-facing houses, like enormous alleys. There is a Tibetan saying: the best way to ‘control’ domestic animals or children is to give them a very big field. And that’s what we had. I was always playing ball games or wrestling or occasionally fighting, in that big, open, green space. It was one of the best pieces of residential planning I have ever seen, and in truth I haven’t witnessed anything quite like it since. So I wanted to go back to ‘Falcon Heights” and see what became of it (the Air Force Base, Kingsley Field, was closed decades ago).

I arrived in Klamath Falls in the early afternoon on Saturday, and asked around at the visitor’s center. I found out that Falcon Heights is indeed still around; the nice lady referred to it as a “gated community,” and gave me directions. On the way I ended up driving by the old base which has become a local airport and a small outpost of the Oregon Air National Guard. As I followed the driving directions I remembered the familiar green of the rural landscape—still a lot of ranch and pasture land in the area. A lot of water so it’s very green. I continued along the two-lane highway and saw the arched entrance to the ‘gated community’ of Falcon Heights….the gate was stuck open, and I took the liberty of driving right in.

As if prompted from the mind’s backstage, our old address came back to me: 844-A Preddy Avenue. I turned right and followed instinct. It had been forty years.

When they developed the 'gated community' they did not scrape off the original duplex structures as I thought they surely would have. They were all still in place, just renovated. The very same little one-story duplexes! They are “condos” now, however. And yes, the street names are the same—I found Preddy Avenue, and located our old residence at 844-A. Except it wasn’t 844-A. Even if they are adjoined, you can’t name a condo “-A.” That would be too much like a duplex, and condo owners want their own, unique address it seems. So my short-term residence during my budding dolescence is now a 6 digit number. But to me, by God, it is 844-A. And there it was, a condo, and it was for sale. I could have it for $106,000, the flyer said.

The condo versions have private back yards now, and in order to provide those and fence them, the big open fields the size of ten alleys side-by-side had to go. I was saddened to see it. No more armies of kids playing football or 'free-for-all' soccer well after dark. I wondered what the frequency and distribution of morbid obesity, depression and ADHD might be among this child and adolescent population.

I drove further up the hill, staying of Preddy Avenue, and located the old quanset hut that serveds as the headquarters for Boy Scout Troop 101, where I progressed up to the rank of Life Scout. It remains but is shut and locked down. A nearby structure, the Teen Center, still stands, and serves as a community center. A wedding reception was in full progress. I played my first gig as a rock and roll drummer in that very building. I was called at the last minute to sit in for the band's ill drummer--at the monthly Teen Club dance. These were high school boys and my idols as a mere 7th grader. I still remember what I wore to play that gig. I so wanted to be cool. I think I worried more about how I looked than how well I actually played.

As I reminisce and snap pictures it occurs to me to wonder why this is all so important to me. It represents a year in my developmental life; that period when identity and belonging are so critically important. I find myself wanting, still, to belong to this place and somehow to these people of my past. I remember exactly which duplexes my old friends, and some influential adults lived, and which side--A or B. I located Lt. Kendall's place, our Protestant Youth counselor and his very good looking young wife and I'm reminded how much she loved Credence Clearwater Revival, the huge crush I had on her, and how she would dance with me to Born On The Bayou at PYC events. I want to locate them all and chat them up. Even though it's dangerous to do so. Even the ones who stay in places like Klamath Falls, or Alamogordo, New Mexico, and become right wing ideologues and build paranoid, antigovernment web sites: "the Government is not just taking our guns away, they want YOUR LAND as well!!" (an actual site built by one of my high school chums).

Over on Kinchloe street, one block over, lived Sergeant and Scoutmaster Jim Raynor and his family. Raynor was the first embodiment of the princple that leadership cannot be taught, you have what it takes it or your don't. When he was Scoutmaster, I loved scouting and wanted to be a Scout. When he shattered his ankle in an activity-related fall and couldn't lead scouting activities, I lost interest. The back-up leaders just didn't have it. Angry and disillusioned, I left Boy Scouts and made an almost conscious commitment, for the next couple of years at least, to delinquency.

I remain confused and fascinated with the passage of time. My longing, it seems, is to somehow contract time; to travel both forwards and backwards and gather everyone together in the hope that it might for a time be the same and we'd have that formative connection again. The sense of belonging that you have with a cohort of friends when you are 10 or 12 or 13 years old. Like if I could just listen to their stories and tell mine and help, maybe undo some of their hurts; prevent some of the reactive patterns that develop and change people. Ruin some of them.

It is a foolish attachment, I know. Naive, absurd, impossible. You can't go back. There is no constancy, nothing but change. I should not be so mad that they ruined our big open fields. Who would use them now, anyway, and for what? There is only this moment, by itself. And then the next moment, entirely unique and unrelated to the last one. And so it goes, moment by moment, and best to be fully present in this current moment. But even so, how I would love to go back for a moment and play a ball game on that now sub-divided big field. How I'd like to tie knots and listen to Sarge Raynor's bear stories and chase the mosquito spraying truck at twilight. Dance to Creedence with Marsha Kendall and feel the rush of those first touches from women when you learned how they feel and smell up close. And how I'd like to have a snowball fight with Greg Barksdale, and live, just for a time again in the day when I had an African-American best friend.

Falcon Heights is now a gated community alright. Within those gates live retirees and what appear to be a lot of younger people who wear a lot of patriotic apparell--eagles and flags and stuff, and who posess too many vehicles for the amount of parking space allotted each duplex. Excuse me, I meant 'condo.'

I drove out beneath the Falcon Heights archway, turning back towards my room at the Hotel Maverick in the trendy, fledgling 'City Center'. I went to the Creamery Brew Pub and ordered a boutique beer that was not a Guiness because they didn't have Guiness. I felt grateful for arriving at Falcon Heights at the right time, and for they profound way I was impacted--influenced by that place and those people. And then I felt finished with it.

Whitewater School is Hard Work

From Otter Bar Lodge Kayak School, Forks of Salmon, far Northern California.

Yesterday was another day of hard work for me, both on the training pond in the morning, and on the actual river in the p.m. As usual, I tried to pay close attention and I learned a lot. I am the only real beginner in this class, which was listed as Basic Intermediate level. Well, since there was no beginner’s class available at the time I was going to be anywhere near here, I went ahead and signed up for this one (and they let me). At first I thought I was in way over my head, but to the credit of the school and the excellent staff of instructors, they just went out of their way to accommodate me. I get a lot of much focused individual attention, mostly on a training pond (for good reason) and then I get to be closely supervised on the river and some rapids in the afternoons. In the mornings I work on the fundamental kayaking strokes and the critically important ‘roll’ maneuver. And, although my roll has not come to me yet, I get points for not being afraid to try it, and for my 'positive' attitude.

I get the sense that the instructors like me because I'm willing to attack the rapids and I'm not afraid of turning over and swimming. They say it takes some people forever to learn to roll. My attitude is to keep paying attention, try hard, and keep trying, and if I can accomplish the roll before week’s end, great. If not, I’ll just have to follow up with some later lessons and practice. At any rate, I am happy with my progress, and my teachers seem to be pleased as well.

Yesterday we ran what is called the Wild Mile on the north fork of the Salmon River, putting in only about a mile up the road from this lodge. I successfully ran 5 out of seven rapids on this mile of river (class III water), but on two of them I flipped, getting bow rescued on the first but on the other flip my ‘spray skirt’ came off, the filled with water and I had to swim. Which was fine since all of this happened in the close proximity of my teacher who was with me the whole way from tip-over to safety in an eddy. During the same run I attempted a roll that very nearly brought me back up. Almost…well, I said to myself, a least it was a combat attempt and not a practice roll in the damn pond. Yesterday therefore was a wet day but a fun one...and this river is free-flowing, not dammed, clear and cold but not snowmelt cold—not so cold that when you get dumped into it you think “oh my God I’m going to freeze to death.” While too cold to remain immersed for too long without getting hypothermia, when the sun is out a little dip into it can be quite pleasant and cooling. It is beautiful! As is this country. And REMOTE!

We’re having alternate periods of sunny clear skies followed by rain showers, and it looks like that‘s the pattern for the remainder of my time here. I generally resent being rained on when I’m in the backcountry, but when you are sitting in a kayak practicing rollovers again and again, rain makes very little difference in the quality of your day.

Otter Bar is a world-renowned whitewater school, which I now know attracts mostly return customers, all but two of us (in this class of nine) are such returnees. The teachers are all very serious and accomplished paddlers—expedition veterans with their own companies, they get free gear from the likes of Dagger, Perception and Kokotat, some have written books. I am a rank beginner, really (hours on Barton Creek in Chuck's Keeowee does not count for much on the Salmon River, I'm afraid). Just a humble goof from Texas on a lark. It could all be very intimidating, and at first it was. But these folks are welcoming, patient, positive, and encouraging. They aren’t just some of the best paddlers in the world, they are also excellent teachers, and that is something I do know enough about to recognize when I see it.

So, even thought I am consigned to the training pond most of the day and on short stretches of river with intensive instructor coverage for a couple of hours in the afternoon, I have no complaints. I am doing what I can do; maybe by end of day Friday I will have a roll down, and maybe I won't, but it has been worth every penny to just be in the mountains on such a beautiful stretch of free-flowing, river, and to breathe this intoxicating mountain air.
Today, midweek, is a mandatory rest day and I am really glad to see it. I’m using muscles I haven't regularly used and I am both sore and exhausted. I am not even thinking about paddling or the Eskimo roll today.
I am just resting and doing yoga and writing blog posts and getting a massage. Based on my considerable experience with other dilettantish if physically demaning pursuits, by tomorrow I will be feeling rested and strong enough to really concentrate afresh on the roll; the holy grail for all beginning kayakers.

Love and gratefulness to the four directions and to all my relations.

From Santa Cruz

Greetings from Santa Cruz, where I am posting this from a coffee joint that is an alternative to Starbuck’s and has free wi-fi. I have been camping at state parks since spending two nights and a full day in San Diego. Not exactly camping there, I stayed in a nice, clean bed and breakfast called Balboa Park Inn. It is right on Park Blvd, and you can walk into and all around Balboa Park, one of the nation’s finest pieces of urban community based planning and one of the most beautiful urban parks in the continent. I can think of none better that I have visited with the exception of Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. I spent my Memorial Day hoofing it all around B.P., going to some of the museums and exhibits but mostly watching people and chatting some of them up. I walked by something called the World Beat Cultural Center and of course I will dive head first into any structure so named and decorated. It is an African-American heritage educational and arts center that features a lot of drumming, dance, Reggae and aftro-pop music shows and instruction. Flyers indicated that Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, the best known and possibly best rhythm section (drums and bass) in Jamaican roots reggae music, are actually going to perform in this little place, on this little stage….such is its significance to the San Diego world beat scene. Far out! I thought. But alas, I’ll be much further north on the Salmon River on that date. Fortunately they are also on the bill for the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, and if all goes as planned, I’ll get to see them there. I literally walked myself to oblivion on this gorgeous, sunny day of perfect temperature—when the clouds blew over you needed a sweater, but when the sun came out it was a perfect, bright, breezy seventy degrees. Such flowers, everything in bloom—Birds of Paradise, Hibiscus, all manner of flowers; man it’s the perfect climate with the best weather on most days of the year, of any place I have lived or visited (I was stationed here in the USMC in 1977).

Having pleasantly exhausted myself but still not seeing near enough of the stuff you can do in S.D., I returned to my room and started writing this post when I was interrupted by one after another after another Skype call. Video calls, cool! And they’re absolutely free, for as long as you want to talk and look. It is very nice to get to see Tommie while I’m talking to her. When I was a kid we used to watch Dick Tracey on Saturday morning cartoons. I remember Dick Tracy and all his fellow cops had two-way wrist radios, with screens that showed the other guy’s face, and they used to talk into those things. I really wanted one of those bad, and I was pissed that they hadn’t been invented yet. Well, now I’ve got the equivalent of my two way, video wrist walkie talkie, just like Dick Tracy. I only had to wait 40 years. As Gomer Pyle used to say, “Lord, what’ll they think of next?” So, those of you with web cams and Skype accounts, we can communicate face to face, wherever I can get to wi-fi. My Skype name is B. A. Pierson. Isn’t that cute?

The beach is beautiful, the weather is fine and is expected to be for the next few days. For dinner this evening I made a very fine pasta primavera for one, using all dried ingredients I am carrying with me that do not spoil. I had some elbow macaroni, some dried shitake mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, a small can of sliced black olives, olive oil (of course), dried sliced garlic, dried onion flakes, and a few squirts of squeeze tube tomato paste. Cooked on two propane burners on the tailgate of my pickup truck, while I sipped a nice cheap Chianti and watched the sun begin to set over the Santa Monica mountains. With dishes wiped clean and put away, food box stored under the truck to discourage camp robbers, I reclined under the camper shell and wrote most of this message to you. Then I plugged in my headphones and listened, for as long as I remained awake, to my the Dead’s two shows at Shoreline, San Francisco, May 10 and 14. I was there for the first one (did I mention that?) In the old days, I used to take a pen and paper into the concert grounds with me so I could write down each song, recording the set lists, as it were. Now, you can pre-pay and pick up your CD immediately after the show. Or, if you’re willing to wait a few days, download it as I did. The times, children, they are still a-changin’.

The last three nights have been spent at State Beaches along the beautiful coastline, which by the time I am finished, I will have covered all of it. Tonight I’ll be at another little state beach park called McKerricher, near the little berg of Fort Bragg. Tomorrow night I am due for the introductory dinner at Otter Bar Kayak School at Forks of Salmon.

And, as Father Guido Sarducci used to always say, “It’s been more than wonderful chatting with-a you. Arivaderci, America.”

Back out there again

First night in Balmorhea again, first time I've ever seen it rain there. Gentle rain for most of the night. Very still and cool, without the usual wind. Wanted to swim, but didn't, had to get an early start. Last night in Picacho State Park, AZ, about 30 miles northwest of Tuscon. Pleasant night also with intermittent gentle rain. Man, the high desert smells good in the morning after such rains.
I love waking up and making coffee next to my sleeping bag, and laying right there propped up, drinking it while the desert (or such land as it may be) wakes up. It just may be my favorite time of the whole day. A lot of bird activity but I couldn't identify many, made me wish Tommie was around--I know she could.
Headed through Phoenix today and over to the 'river country' border between AZ and California, to push my luck and try to find some 'at large' camping places before returning to 'urban' activities in San Diego on the 25th. I have never seen that part of the Colorado river so it ought to be fun meandering.
Not sure when will encounter next wi-fi, so this may be it until reach San Diego.