01/01/2020
Fish Camp, California
Nie bój się!
The year is off to a melancholy start with the loss of my dear friend Matt. It's hard to grasp the depth of the hole he has left behind. Not only for me but for so many other friends. He was as good of a pal as I ever could have asked for. I spent most of the drive up here thinking about his generosity and humor. My tears flowed heavily. I even pulled over past Paso Robles to gather my wits. And I know my sadness is only just beginning.
I’m a day early for our gathering. Everybody else is showing up tomorrow afternoon. I make the most of my day. I walk around Wawona and sit by the Merced for a while studying the dome and watching the water flow. The sun sinks below the trees and the temperature drops quickly. I head back to the rustic (They still have heavy brass keys!) Narrow Gauge Inn and read in my room for a while before walking over to the restaurant where I have a piece of salmon and a glass of Barbera. Both delicious. I take a second glass back to my room and barely finish it while reading Robert Hass. He writes;
“And the days churned by,
navigable sorrow.”
I’m asleep before 11:00.
•
Wide awake by 5:00 I skip breakfast and warm up the jeep before making my way to The Valley. It’s in the twenties and my water bottle has ice in it. I’m warm in my new orange down jacket. There is no traffic and spots on the road have icy patches. My new tires perform perfectly. There is plenty of snow above 5000 feet near Chinquapin.
I’m listening to Tales of Topographic Oceans, as I drive in the forest, all four songs in a row, an hour and a half of music. First I’m in deep green and then pass a few square miles of an old burn. It has taken years for younger trees to start to rejuvenate this bare patch of the park. I also notice the damage done by a bark beetle that is killing off pines throughout the Sierras. The damage is irreversible. The habitat of these destructive bugs has slowly creeped north as the climate changes and winters are less severe. I see an entire side of a grand valley with miles of sloping hills brown and dead. A prime target for fire and it is only a matter of time before it burns.
I turn up the music. I’ve listened to these songs on mountain drives from Keene Valley to the Tetons to Greylock. True nature music.
I stop at the bridge over the Toulumne River to look at Yosemite Falls and a coyote saunters by. I’m given a long glance by this sleek dog with its gray brown coat. She (he?) looks healthy and well fed. She ambles along the river before disappearing in to the underbrush. The path, as well as the field of brown dead grass, is white with frost. The water is calm. There’s nobody around and I have this quiet spot to myself.
I park at the village store and take a two hour walk before ending up at The Ahwahnee. In the great sitting room I take a couch in front of the fire, it’s a fireplace that is big enough for me to stand in. I start to read but end up just watching the flames for a while.
In the Winter Club Room, an alcove dedicated to the Valley when the snow falls and the crowds are gone, I look at old pictures of Badger Pass ski races and ice skaters at Curry Village. There is a picture I notice of an unnamed girl on snowshoes taken in the thirties. She’s dressed in a skirt and big white sweater. She has the most wonderful smile. An almost ninety year old photo and it makes my heart beat erratically. I can’t help but think of the beauty, that like all things, will soon be long faded away. They are the same old thoughts of transience and impermanence that haunt me no matter where I am.
I go to the bar for an early lunch. Chili and a beer.
On the way back to Wawona I stop and gaze at El Cap and then move on down stream to see it reflected in the placid river. Two water ouzels are hopping around on the stones in the middle of the current. One immerses itself completely several times staying under for twenty seconds before reappearing up stream. There is a thin layer of ice on the shallower pools, so it’s cold. It’s a good and healthy sign to see these birds because they can only survive in the freshest and cleanest waters. I often see them in the Merced but this is the first time I’ve see them in the Valley.
I walk back to my jeep to find two ravens on the hood pecking at my windshield wipers. Eating insects I’ve slaughtered on the drive perhaps? I’ve been trying to get a good picture of a raven now for thirty years. They are so intelligent and wary that all my efforts have yielded nothing but blurry black smudges. It’s almost been a joke with them. I bet I’ve thrown away a hundred photos. The minute I pick up my camera they fly off usually disappearing into the trees or behind a cliff.
Well, here’s my chance. Except my phone is in the jeep. I’m positive that somehow they know this. I creep slowly closer and they eye me but continue tapping, now on the jeep’s hood, making a sharp sound as their large hard beaks hit the metal.
For some reason, they let me actually open the door and get in. I gently close it and they resume their antics. I take a few pictures with my iPhone that come out ok. Then I just sit there for fifteen minutes watching these beautiful birds peck away at the hood, leaving tiny scratches. Every now and again they look up at me and I can’t imagine what the fuck they are doing besides entertaining themselves and me. I start the engine and they stare at me but don’t fly away. I’m baffled. I slowly back out of the turnout and they finally hop down on to the pavement. I roll down my window and say, “See you around!” They squawk and fly off into the trees. I half expect to see them following me back to the house. But they don’t.
I’m the first one at the house so I relax on the deck listening to the river and reading more Hass. “What the hell?” I think and open a beer. Everyone else shows up and they tell me that the house hasn’t been cleaned yet so we have an hour to kill. We do so by walking along the river and getting caught up. Pak contemplates dinner and makes us all hungry.
Finally in the house we put out some snacks, start a fire, open some wine and Pak starts work on what will turn out to be a masterpiece of a seven course dinner. But first we go to the Wawona Hotel to listen to the great Thomas Bopp. He is, as always, beyond entertaining playing his usual mix of old jazz standards and songs from Yosemite history. He is a national treasure, literally.
I have written much about Pak’s food so I will spare the details (this time) but needless to say it was another exceptional meal and by the time we moved to the fire we were all experiencing food comas. We told stories late in to the night.
I ended up sleeping on the comfortable leather couch watching the fire slowly crackle and dim as I drifted off. It’s been a long time since I have done that and it was beautiful. I was happy, full, warm and exhausted. I slept pretty well occasionally being awakened by a popping log.
I was the first one up and soon Ellie joined me on the couch and we looked at old pictures on our phones until everyone else came out and Pak made a quick and light (Yeah right!) breakfast. It was much more substantial than my usual plain oatmeal.
We lounge around, shoot some pool, and get ready for a hike. It’s a bright warm winter morning and we saunter up to the swinging bridge. Aileen tells us about Mountain Misery, the shrub responsible for the sweet dry fragrance that the Wawona woods are famous for. All these years I thought it was manzanita and sage.
I have to drive home tonight so back at the house Pak makes an early dinner. Prime Rib, potatoes, Brussels sprouts with bacon, and stuffing. Pak gives one of his heartfelt toasts that are now a tradition, indeed one of my favorites. It’s another tremendous feast and I feel like a nap instead of getting in the jeep for a five hour trip. Reluctantly I say goodbye and head south and am home by eleven. These trips go by oh so quickly. However, we are looking forward to a week in Sea Ranch in two months.
~~~~
In a book I’m reading by Olga Tokarzcuk she writes, “…synchronicity, evidence of the world making sense. Evidence that throughout this beautiful chaos threads of meaning spread in every direction, networks of strange logic, all bearing, if one were to believe in God, the contorted imprints of his fingers.”
I think about synchronicity often. Jung called it a possible meaningful coincidence. That’s slightly more plausible. But I like to think of it as just random coincidences with no mysterious meaning or guiding hand responsible.
What would be the meaning of this? A few days ago because my mind was on aimless travel I pulled Neil Peart’s book, Traveling Music, off the shelf and scanned through the pages reading different passages in no particular order. Two days later my brother Paulie texts me with the news that Peart has died after a three year battle with brain cancer. This past summer I read his book Ghost Rider. A memoir about movement and healing. Perhaps I reached for Traveling Music because I am mourning the heartbreaking loss of my friend Mateo and need some sort of reassurance that things will get better. I’ll refrain from quoting Dylan. For now.
I feel like I don’t have enough grief right now to transfer any to Neil. And as I have written before I rarely am affected by the deaths of the famous. But Peart and I go way back. To the Hemispheres Tour, 1979. The Palace Theater in Albany, NY. Front row balcony.
And my last Rush concert just so happened to be their last concert, too. The fabulous Forum on August 1, 2015. I don’t think any of us knew it at the time except maybe Neil Peart who announced his permanent retirement a short time later. But we all held out some slight modicum of hope that even if they stopped the massive world tours perhaps they might play some residencies every so often in big cities like New York , Chicago or Toronto.
So I will spend the next few days listening to those albums that hit me so hard as a kid, 2112, Hemispheres, Farewell to Kings, and reading Peart’s words about travel and music and life. And, of course, I will be thinking of Mide, as is Paulie, who truly loved the band.
We were meant to see them together at SPAC in 2013 but he was too sick to go and Paulie went in his place. It was a bittersweet show.
I just spent an hour watching Peart’s interviews and drum solo videos on Youtube. What an amazing musician.
~~~~~~
I have been rereading the John Adams and Thomas Jefferson letters as well as some of James Madison’s writings. I have said elsewhere that these men should be required reading for anyone elected to the house of representatives or the senate. They were erudite, brilliant thinkers, philosophers, pragmatic politicians and committed patriots. They lived and breathed democracy. They were men committed to something bigger than themselves.
I have also been watching president Trump’s rallies. The gulf between the intelligent and educated first presidents of our country and Trump couldn’t be more unbridgeable. Trump speaks at the level of maybe a fifth grader. In fact, I know several fifth graders who are more coherent and well spoken, not to mention more dignified and compassionate, than our current president. As Dad might of said, “Trump couldn’t carry Madison’s jock!” Or perhaps to be more accurate considering the times, “codpiece.” Regardless, I think we all get the point here.
~~~~~~~~
Reading the last poems of Czeslaw Milosz made me want to hear what his voice sounded like. On Spotify I found one CD of him reading his poems, and that one was in Polish. I should have known. I listened to it anyway recognizing only one word, I think. Dobranoc, which means goodnight. But the poems were soothing bringing me back to listening to Polish mass when I was ten or eleven and I was a alter boy at Holy Family Church. Somehow I was chosen to serve the six AM mass which was in Polish. It was a mass attended by ten or fifteen old ladies dressed in black. They were very serious and devout. Sometimes my Aunt Vir would be there and she’d smile at me when I caught her eye. And Father Conrad would often crack me up when he opened the grand bible and there would be a photograph he used as a bookmark of him holding a recently caught fish. Without breaking a smile he’d nod to the picture to make sure I saw.
~~~~~~~~~
The news this morning of the death of the comic mage Terry Jones unsettled me some. Yet another of my youthful influences now gone. I remember staying up late on Friday nights to watch The Flying Circus and then quoting the lines on Monday morning in my junior high home room period. I drove to Williamstown to see The Holy Grail in the little art theater off campus. I don’t think a week of my life has gone by where if I haven’t quoted The Pythons or somebody around me did. They have been a constant well of joy that taught me so much about wit. Their humor is truly timeless and I feel I will be reciting from The Life of Brian on my deathbed. (Alway look on the bright side….)
As I often say, celebrity deaths rarely affect me but once again one does. The world, now when it needs it most, is a much less funny place with Jones gone.
~~~~~~~
Earlier I walked outside on this moonless night. Venus was bright and setting to the west. Orion was rising over the ocean. I looked at Betelgeuse in the hunter’s shoulder. Astronomers are watching closely lately as the star has been dimming quickly. This may or may not be the beginning of Betelgeuse going supernova. If this happens, or when it happens, it will be amazing to watch. It will be bright enough to see durning the day. But when this could happen is anybody’s guess. It could be tonight. Or it could be 10,000 years from now. Until then, for as long as I can, I’ll watch the night sky with anticipation.
I ofter wonder where I received some of the wisdom that has nurtured my unique outlook of life and perhaps altered what might have been a straight trajectory from adolescence to a normal life. This week I reread a book I’ve been thinking about since I first read it in 1979, forty years ago, as a senior in high school. It’s Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan. It’s been so long since I had read it that even though I vaguely remembered the basic premise, all the characters were new to me. Even though I’ve always called this my favorite book of Vonnegut’s I could no longer really say why. Other books of his I’ve read many times over, such as Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle and even Slapstick. Those books you could find lying around in the strangest of places, like shelters on The Long Trail in Vermont, or a rustic cabin on the McNeil River in Alaska or the apartment of the most adorable hippy girl you’ve ever met. They were popular books and traveled far. The Sirens of Titan was harder to find.
I’ve been thinking about it recently and I wasn’t sure why. So I picked it up and after a few pages I remembered why it touched my young impressionable mind. It hit me at a time when I had (still do) many more questions than I had answers. The message uttered by the space wanderer Malachi Constant was the zinger for me. He said, “I am a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
We are either lucky or unlucky and there is no god up there who “likes me.” Good luck and bad luck happen randomly to everyone with no pilot at the controls. God does not care about us, we are on our own. Quite the big idea for a seventeen year old kid seeking his own inner guidance.
I think this was the first book I ever read that left me with some serious advice. Or a serious message. Indeed, we are all victims of accidents. Even if I wasn’t really sure what that meant at the time I realize that I’ve been pondering that for all these years. It’s where, I think, my (amateur) love of science and physics started. I know it got me pondering time. I even remember checking my dictionary to really see if all the words between timid and Timbuktu referred to time. They did!
And the idea of the alien Sola, a machine build by other machines which rendered other lifeforms obsolete. When I read that it seemed, if not scary then preposterous. But now it’s within reach of our technology.
And Sola talks about a way of communicating information. He explains it as, “A kind of university—only nobody goes to it. There aren’t any buildings, isn’t any faculty. Everybody’s in it and nobody’s in it. It’s like a cloud that everybody has given a little puff of mist to, and then the cloud does all the heavy thinking for everybody. I don’t mean there’s really a cloud. I just mean it’s something like that.”
Vonnegut foresaw the Cloud in 1959? It seems so.
So, unlike almost all the reading that I had done up until then, and it was all good stuff; Hemingway, Stephan King, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Clavell, Robert Ludlum, and magazines like Boy’s Life and Field and Stream, Vonnegut really jabbed me like no other writer. I spent the rest of that summer between high school and college devouring all his books. It was quite the journey and my mind has been slightly warped ever since.
Well, the first month of 2020 is over. Mights as wells put out that Dylan quote I’ve been thinking about.
“Just when you’ve lost everything you find out you can always lose a little more.”
