Wanderlustingalways in search of something…

I woke up this morning, and the world was blanketed with snow.

Living out here in Colorado like this, snow is anything but a nuisance — it’s just magic, plain and simple. The world looks so beautiful, and it’s hard to keep from smiling no matter what you’re doing. The fact that I don’t usually ever have to go anywhere makes all the difference in the world.

I wandered outside and just looked at the world for a while. Even a familiar scene is entrancing when there’s snow everywhere. I found two sets of tracks in the snow just outside the front door, emerging from one side of the house, circling the car, and then disappearing back up the hill on the other side of the house. I still don’t know what they are. (One set is clearly from a hoofed creature, although it doesn’t look quite right for elk and the path it took squeezes in areas far too narrow for an elk; the other looks decidedly canine or feline. Coyote is my best bet, as mountain lion tracks, at least according to Google, don’t look like that either.)

I introduced myself to the erg (rowing machine) for a few minutes in the basement…it felt surprisingly good, but also definitely something I’ll have to get used to before I can do it for a truly long time. My brother (as many of you know) was an Olympic-caliber rower, and I’d love to see how well I can do at it myself. That brief workout inspired me to go running outside…where I promptly fell right on my ass. Note to self: snow covers up ice. But a further workout indoors left me in the mood to go outside once more — this time walking carefully and slowly, not trying to actually run.

Wandering outside in the snow early in the morning, covered up in warm clothes, coffee close at hand, is one of the most wonderful feelings I’ve had in a long time. Combine that with hot chocolate back inside, listening to Nick Drake and Peter Mayer, hot steel-cut oatmeal with maple syrup and brown sugar, and I was in heaven. Even better, bacon and eggs call soon…

Before that, though, I wanted to go outside again…and I took my camera with me this time. It’s amazing how wonderful it can be just to meander through your own front yard out here. This time of morning there are almost no cars around, only the occasional person letting their dog out, and you can just look around in wonder. The road was matted with the tracks of vehicles past, but, fortunately, it didn’t snow enough that they plowed, making it all the more beautiful. Snow surfed off the peaks as the winds kicked up, making great plumes in the air.

Back inside, it was warm and I was ridiculously happy.

From the steps outside the front door.

Tracks in the snow. Human…and what else?

The road outside.

This is the view you get if you walk out the front door and about thirty feet off to one side.

There are times a 12mm lens is worth its weight in gold. (To those who aren’t photo geeks, this means “ridiculously wide angle”.)

Taken from the front yard.

This is where I’m living. (But, no, I’m not living in the garage. ;-)

This is what I see out the front window every day.

And this is what I see out the back window every day. Could you ask for anything better?

Yes, believe it or not, I do still exist. I may be off in Colorado, and I may have detoured for quite a while with a number of different things, but I’m not planning on abandoning this blog.

Not in the least.

Next up, I’m planning to finish the series I started on my trip out here, and then talk a little more about what it’s like to be out here — both from the sort of day-to-day, physical perspective, living in Colorado, being among the mountains, and from the much more emotional and intellectual point of view, taking this kind of break in my life, figuring out what I want to do, the connections I’ve made with people, and so forth. To me, that’s the really important stuff in life by far, and I’d like to make this a place where I can talk about just that kind of thing.

In the mean time, I’ll leave you with two pictures. I was out for a run yesterday, and ran right by these guys; I didn’t even notice them until I was almost all the way past. They were all of 60-70 feet off the road, and there are well over a hundred of them — it really makes you realize why they’re colored the way they are; they look just like rocks from any distance at all in the wintertime. They meander through the front yard here, too, and I’ve run literally through big herds of them at times. (They’ll give you about ten feet of clearance, but you really can get astonishingly close to them.)

Hope you enjoy — more posts coming soon, and I’ll post some Bighorn pictures soon, to boot…

For those demanding more…yes, this is for you. I suppose I knew that last philosophical/emotional post wouldn’t satisfy everybody for long…“Pictures! We want pictures!” you say. And who am I to deny anybody that? So here it is: a series of posts on my drive from California to Colorado, and everything in between.

Leaving home is always difficult, and these days are no different. I’ll have to post more later about what that experience was like for me, and what it’s like being out here (although it’s been better than I even expected in many senses…although I am definitely coming back soon, too)…but, for now, it’s all about the trip and what that was like for me.

Wednesday morning (a week ago — October 24^th), I left the hotel I stayed at for my last night in the Bay Area, and headed up the coast — across the Richmond–San Rafael bridge, up to Petaluma or so, and then west, to the very coast and Highway 1. I hadn’t done this drive in years, and it was better than even I remembered…

If you’ve never driven north up the California coast on Highway 1, I highly recommend it. And it’s absolutely nothing like driving south, down through Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, and points south; starting about fifty miles north of San Francisco, it changes into the most rugged, pristine, beautiful coastline you’ve ever seen, and it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Point Reyes is the first glimpse you get into this, and it just gets better from there. Big Sur and Southern California are all beautiful sunshine, cliffs plunging into the ocean, and slow metamorphosis into sandy beaches; northern California is ruggedness to the extreme, boulders crashing into the ocean, huge waves pounding the shore, redwood forests close at hand, and wind that’s beautifully cold.

The first night, I drove all the way up Highway 1 until it cuts inland and joins up with US 101; I finally stopped for the night in the tiny little town of Garberville, CA. Garberville is the town you dreamed about when you were six, and reading a fairy tale about a magic town, nestled deep in the forest, that you can only find when you’re not looking for it.

Garberville is nestled deep, deep in the redwoods; it feels like you’re covered under a canopy of trees, perpetually in shade and with the fog always rolling through, any hour of day or night. It has one stoplight, a pair of freeway entrances/exits, three restaurants, and at least fifteen times as many hotel rooms as residents. The hotels are, aside from a Holiday Inn Express way at one end of town, all little places owned by local residents and look like they were built in 1953. I ended up in the only one that had Internet access — in addition to its peeling green paint, parking lot in need of slight repair, and heater that I could only hope wouldn’t catch fire and burn down the place. Looking back on it, I wish I’d taken a picture; it was such a perfect microcosm of the entire town…far from modern, but charming and the perfect place to spend the first night on the road.

For this first day, perhaps I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking for me. And so, without further ado…

And then you drive off into the mountains…

In so many ways, I can hardly believe that I’m leaving California. I’ve been there for more than ten years, and it only seems a day — yet things have changed so much for me while I’ve been there, from the day I arrived with a car of my belongings as a new graduate student up through today.Along the way, I’ve realized, I fell in love with California; there’s something about it that is so very, very right for me. Which fascinates me, because I don’t feel like I “instantly fit in” with exactly any one group of people out there (which is probably a good thing); I’m not a neo-hippie, nor a Silicon Valley tech-head looking to make his millions, nor a Marina up-and-coming neo-yuppie. I’m my own thing. But it’s in the Bay Area that, somehow, that manages to fit in more than any place I’ve ever been; my thirst for interesting and different people is perhaps the biggest single piece of that, and it’s there that I’ve found more of those than any other.My life has changed so much in even the past four months, too. I think back to what my plans were four months ago, three months ago, two months ago, and one month ago, and they’re all very, very different from each other — astonishingly so, in fact. How did I end up here? The same way you end up anywhere in life — one twist after another, one choice following another choice. And yet I’m convinced, more than ever, that this is precisely, exactly the right thing for me, right here, right now; there is nothing else in the world more right for me right now. I’ve made the right choices. Even as I stare off into the future, facing only the unknown, I know that more than anything else. It is the right thing for me, right here, right now.Sometimes I think staring off into a vast, unknown future — giving yourself literally no idea where you’re going to do, what you’re going to do — is the best thing of all, the most important thing you can possibly do. It forces you to figure out where your heart truly lies, and follow it. It forces you to figure out what’s good for you and what isn’t. It forces you to reach out, to chase down the things you truly need, to discern the difference between the few things that are truly essential in life and all the rest. It’s in this emptiness, this unknown, this purity of spirit, that you can find what you truly care about and what you truly need.It’s here that I want to give an enormous “thank you” to all my friends over the past couple of months and especially the past two weeks; friends old and new alike have come out of the woodwork to make me happier and make my life better, whether just by spending a little (or a lot of) time together or by more direct, practical means (I’m looking at you, Mary and Andy!). I feel blessed in ways I didn’t quite understand before, and happy to have these memories in my heart, whether they’re of people I’ll see again and again and again or of people that, perhaps, will remain just that — memories in my heart. Either way, you’ve all been absolutely wonderful, and I feel privileged to have known every single one of you.There’s more to say, so, so much more to say, but, for now, I’ll post this from this hotel room in Price, UT and keep writing. I have pictures of this trip that are coming up, too, and so much more to say. Watch this space. It won’t be empty for long now.

All the posts from my trip:

• Day 1: From Berkeley, CA to Lompoc, CA, including Pescadero, Duarte’s, kitesurfing in Santa Cruz, Big Sur… in words and pictures. Also: anticipation, iPhone angst, miscellaneous thoughts, on detours, and yum.
• Day 2: From Lompoc, CA to Joshua Tree National Park, CA, including Carpinteria State Beach, LA traffic, Indio and “other Desert Cities”, and camping in Joshua Tree… in words and pictures. Also: rain and the beach.
• Day 3: From Joshua Tree National Park, CA to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, CA, including Keys View, Twentynine Palms, desert aqueducts, RV parks, and Lithuanian entomologists from Kansas… in words and pictures. Also: what I woke up to, remembering why I do this, and where the streets have no name.
• Day 4: From Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, CA to Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ, including border towns, a coyote puppy (!), Kitts Peak, Nogales, AZ, and, finally, a shower… in words and pictures.
• Day 5: From Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ to Deming, NM, including Tombstone, AZ, huge pit mines, more border towns, fording rivers on the road, and thunderstorms over the desert… in words and pictures.
• Day 6: From Deming, NM to White Sands National Monument, NM, including more border patrol, thunderstorms, a Swiss classical singer letting loose absolutely gorgeous Native American chants in the middle of the dunes in the dark, an wonderful Argentinian guru and artist with a slightly-offensive name, a New York hipster girl rambling through New Mexico, a guy quite a lot like me, a transsexual artist in inflatable sculpture, and stargazing and talking with them out under the stars all night long… in words and pictures. Also: what I woke up to.
• Day 7: From White Sands National Monument, NM to Taos, NM, including waking up to an absolutely amazing sunrise over the dunes and New Mexico mountains… in words and pictures. Also: Part 2 of that day.
• Day 8: From Taos, NM to Estes Park, CO, including bad hotel breakfasts, rustic Taos, the high road to Santa Fe, roadside graveyards, arriving at my parents’ place, and having driven farther than any straight trip in the continental US by now… in words and pictures.
• Day 9: Relaxing in Estes Park, CO… in words.
• Day 10: From Estes Park, CO to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, WY/UT, including cinnamon rolls in Glen Haven, rugged Wyoming, almost hitting cattle on the highway, The Laramie Project, Ph.D.s in clinical psychology (from USC, nonetheless) in small-town (tiny-town) Wyoming, driving through tremendous electrical storms… in words and pictures.
• Day 11: From Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, WY/UT to the Colorado River Canyon near Arches National Park and Moab, UT, including sunrise, teenagers “roughing it” with three giant RVs, five ATVs, and two boats, really, really tasty cantaloupe, and the hottest place I’ve ever camped in my life… in words and pictures.
• Day 12: From the Colorado River Canyon near Arches National Park and Moab, UT to Muley Point, near Mexican Hat, UT, including the world’s biggest cinnamon roll, creative methods of sleeping, Dead Horse Point State Park, the Moki Dugway, and camping on Muley Point, possibly the most beautiful places on this whole trip… in words and pictures.
• Day 13: From Muley Point, near Mexican Hat, UT to St. George, UT, including more Muley Point, the tragic poverty of the Navajo Nation, the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the amazing lodge they have there, a bit of homesickness, all followed by the most spectacular sunset I’ve seen yet… in words and pictures. Also: Muley Point, the Navajo Nation, and my reaction to it.
• Day 14: From St. George, UT to Great Basin National Park, NV, including a much-needed shower and shave, a back entrance into Zion, the Middle of Nowhere, UT, “WHOA!”, seagulls in the desert, and the best campsite yet… in words and pictures.
• Day 15: From Great Basin National Park, NV to Sparks, NV, including the metropolis of Baker, NV, the loneliest road in America, the Most Beautiful Phone Booth on Earth, Sand Mountain and wishing I could be a redneck for a bit, and the cultural capital that is Sparks… in words and pictures.
• Day 16: From Sparks, NV to Berkeley, CA (home!), including Lake Tahoe, the return of exorbitant real-estate prices, the heat of Sacramento, and coming back home, very, very happy… in words and pictures.

And a few extras: on driving and the open road, about the Border Patrol, and a few statistics and a map of the whole trip.

Days: 16

Miles: 6,472.1

Time spent driving: 147:55

Average miles/day: 404.5

Average time spent driving each day: 9:15

Average speed: 40 MPH

MPG: 23.6

One thing I noticed with a smile after a few days on the road: when you’re out there driving in a convertible, with the top down, bikers — including the huge, burly guys on Harleys — tend to give you a little wave, thumbs-up, or peace sign as you pass them by. It got me thinking, too: what is this? And I realized it also gave me a little bit of an answer to why I liked being out there so much, even as I was driving 400+ miles each day…

I think being out there in a convertible, with the top down, stopping every 30-40 minutes (or even more often) to look at whatever you happen upon by the side of the road, is qualitatively different from most car trips. Most car trips I’ve been on have been all about getting there: whether you’re driving a few blocks to the grocery store or halfway across the country to visit relatives, it’s about getting to where you’re going…and even when it’s partly about seeing things along the way, they’re scenery, they’re things you see out beyond the glass-domed top of your car, they’re things that sometimes come across as more of a TV screen than reality.

And while I’m not pretending for a moment that being in a convertible is the same thing as being out there on a bike (whether motorized or not), with the entire world around you every inch, it’s definitely a step closer than being in a traditional car. I saw so many people out there on my trip in luxury cars, SUVs, enormous RVs (some with enormous view windows, even) that looked like they were…watching a real-time video feed of what it’s like to drive across country, instead of being out there in it. They completely passed by the little things I found at the side of the road — the “most beautiful phone in America”, the shoe tree, the graffiti made out of colored stones on the side of the railroad, the aqueduct carrying billions of gallons of water through the desert… They didn’t need to wear sunscreen, or put on a hat, or worry about getting stung by a bee, or feel the overwhelming heat around them; they just closed the door, set the climate-control system to 72, put on music, and let five hundred miles pass them by.

Nor am I criticizing them — everybody’s got their own way of doing it, and some people may want to get there this way, to see things more like a movie, or to just get there and get it over with. More power to them. But when I wonder about why driving four hundred miles a day could be such an experience, so much fun, and let me experience and see so much, I really do think that being out in the world, feeling it all around you, and stopping to see all those random little things by the side of the road — they make all the difference in the world. Be there. Experience it. Let it surround you. This is how you make yourself part of it, and make it part of you…

On the final day of my trip…

• Sparks, NV is, um, not the world’s most amazing town. Someone called the Reno area (Sparks is basically a sister city of Reno) “like Las Vegas’s seedy younger brother”. I’d say that’s about right, and that’s saying something. It’s good for hotels, places to eat…and gas.
• Coming up over the hills into Lake Tahoe is really pretty spectacular. I’d been up to Tahoe before, mostly in the winter, but never seen it quite like this — it has a great deal to recommend it. The mountains are amazing, the cool air feels wonderful after being out in the desert for so long, and the ruggedness…it has such a great feeling to it.
• Ah, back to California, and exorbitant real-estate prices. You should see some of the homes down by the lakeside around Tahoe. I don’t remember which Godfather film it is, but the one where they all go to their retreat/compound near Tahoe…well, the word “compound” really is the only term to describe many of the places I saw out there. Large (tasteful) fences, automatic gates, monograms on the pillars…amazing. I’m not saying I’d mind spending a weekend there, mind you — just that the amount of money people spend on these places is staggering.
• Tahoe is so, so…blue. And surprisingly warm, at least in the summer; there’s even a beach there, complete with sunbathers and white sand. I had no idea.
• Down through the hills, out of the Tahoe area, to the vast plains of the Central Valley…let’s just say that Sacramento is as exciting as it’s ever been. I was eager to get home —
• Onwards, onwards, onwards —
• And the bay rolled up, the hills splashed down to the ocean, Hilltop, Ashby Avenue, the 24 on-ramp, across the Bay Bridge, Treasure Island once more, taking a picture at the end (and my car has never, ever, ever been this dirty before) — flooring it onto the Bay Bridge again —
• left, right, left — my hands know the way by heart —
• in the back gate, up the stairs —
• key in the lock —
• and home, home again, everything’s there still —
• dropping bags, sunglasses off, flopping down —
• and I’m home. Home.

Day 16: (Sunday, August 19, 2007) Sparks, NV to Berkeley, CA.
Miles: 6217.4 + 254.7 = 6472.1 total. Current distance from home: eight inches.
Photos: 3,002 (37.9 GB) + 99 (1.11 GB) = 3,101 (39.0 GB) total.
And I’m done…a few more thoughts to follow in the coming days.