GENERAL CAPTIONS

Solo Drive from San Francisco

April 3, 2009
Didn’t hit my stride until the big valley of Ukiah: too much traffic and too much worry about the bike bobbing back and forth uncertainly behind the swaying ship. Then finally J. Fogerty and his Creedence Clearwater Revival in pure energy channeled into voice and guitar. I let out some little yips and starts to celebrate that the trip has finally begun.

Up into the Jackson Demonstration State Forest where the streams flow blue and as true as liquid ice. I’m lying in the pine cones of some big Ponderosa on the edge of a redwood grove. It’s getting dark fast under the canopy, sinking cold into the ground. Quick thought for J. in New York facing the music. The stream babbles on.

Settling into Belfair, Washington

April 8, 2009

Set on starting good habits, J. flashes through her Chinese flash cards reciting the tones in an increasingly frustrated rocking way. We’re sitting on 2 dollar chairs in our 1950s apartment watching the tide sweep away. We’re out of the city and into the pines. This is the quiet and simple, the volunteer fire department pancake breakfast, monthly book club at the library, grandmotherly landlords and neighbors, tales of leaping salmon 300 steps from our screen door.

The air is clean and cold, the mountains a distant and rugged white presence, the shellfish cooked, locals are ample and friendly. We like Washington just fine so far. Out across the sound a skinny man in a black suit rides on a board under a giant kite, cutting a little white gash out toward the marshland and bird reserve. This is a nice spot that man told me.