Highway 1, California

When Paul woke - or rather, when I woke him, bounding eagerly onto his bed - we marched downstairs to a gigantic breakfast in the cafeteria. We ate cereal and yoghurt and prunes and hashbrowns and pancakes, and rice and beans and salad, which I, hungry from jetlag, tacked on to the end of my breakfast. Then we walked downtown to rent a car, and set off north along the California coast.

Highway 1 winds narrowly and sinuously along the coastal hills, whose cliffs and precipitous slopes drop hundreds of feet to the sea. Great rocks, pounded by millenia of waves from the open Pacific, jut from the water in spires and jagged lumps. Beyond lies the imposing ocean, far vaster than the north-east's Atlantic, which encounters the shore in the quiet coves, bays and barrier island systems of New England. No gentle shaping protects the coast of California from the huge expanse of the open sea. The sea wind drives endlessly inland, like a perpetual message of strength and desolation.

I felt that desolation most keenly when Paul and I stood at the lighthouse on the tip of Point Reyes. Only a metal railing separated us from the sea. Behind us, the rocky headland hulked, battered by ocean wind. We'd arrived at dusk, and in the failing light I sensed a great, pitiless solitude - and felt my own insignificance, as though the ocean could simply have reached up a thumb and rubbed me out, snuffed me casually from the earth. What a terrible loneliness! The other visitors had gone inside the lighthouse for a tour, leaving us utterly alone. What in broad daylight might have seemed only an ordinary vista of ocean became, to me, the emptiness that sailors centuries ago must have known in the face of the great and indifferent sea.

On the walk back to our car, we looked down the cliffs to a winding beach at the base of the hills. The shapes of seagulls and pelicans passed far below, like nomads. I felt alone and awed, gazing out over the slowly dimming surf, and passing beneath an avenue of gnarled pine trees that were flung away from the sea in leaning pose, shaped by wind. I clung to Paul and prattled nervously, watching the wind sweep over the wide, silent hills.

Driving to our campsite through the ugly and broken cow country, we saw deer - does and antlered bucks - two barn owls, and a rabbit. One owl paused on a fence post, and suffered us to gaze at him for a moment in our headlights before he swept silently on again. Earlier, we'd seen harriers flitting over the brush; the next day we spotted a coyote among the cows. Throughout our trip, I felt astonished at how rich in wildlife such empty country could be.

~

Paul and I woke to rain. We'd heard it in the night, in steady thick drops on our tent roof. I'd cuddled close to him and fallen asleep again with a great sense of safety, warmth and well-being in our little tented sphere. We emerged in the morning to an absolute downpour, which drenched Paul even in his short trips between our tent and the car ten feet away.

Worrying about the fate of our day, we left our tent and drove from Olema to Point Reyes Station for a breakfast of eggs, bacon and hashbrowns in a friendly little diner. The interior, warm and flowery, sported the Hispanic touches both in decorations and menu that characterize the San Francisco area. While we ate, the clouds slipped away and left shining sunlight, so abruptly that I squeaked, "Oh look! Sunlight!" in the middle of the restaurant. People at the tables nearest us turned their heads and stared at me. I must have sounded as though I hadn't seen the sun in years.

We came back to our tent among the other tents encircling the small field (hardly a field - more a muddy lawn) where we'd camped. In the glisten of sunlight, we threw a frisbee back and forth over the badminton net, while the other campers goggled politely at the distance of our throws. Then we drew together again, admired our mud-encrusted toes and hands, hugged each other, and packed up our tent.

Back through the cow country. The cattle ranches, considered "historical," have existed since the 1850's, and great swaths of Point Reyes National Park have been devastated by their lowing herds. Although the federal government has purchased the land, the ranchers are allowed stay for as long as their farms remain within the family.

At last, though, we arrived at Tomales Reserve and McClure's beach at the northern tip of the park. We walked down a long path between hill slopes covered in tangled bushes and dry-weather plants. No trees dot the landscape that juts out into the sea. Only dry, brown coastal scrub, specked with the occasional stiff green of coyote bushes, covers the long ridge and the sloping hills. Point Reyes is very dry, an arid environment where it rains only in winter. The downpour we'd received that morning, a park ranger told us, had been the first rain in four or five months.

"That brings home how unlucky we'd have been if it had rained all day," said Paul. No wonder the folks at the restaurant had looked at me so oddly.

The rangers showed us elk herds through spotting scopes, where the animals lounged among the scrub, chewing their cud, their 40-pound antlers majestic atop their heads. Ordinarily, in fall, each male accompanies a herd of 20 or so cows. The most readily visible group, though, was a "bachelor pad," in the ranger's words, of unsuccessful bucks. They lounged disconsolately together, while further off, a small herd of cows could be seen on a ridge alongside their buck. His head, covered in the thick ruff of fur that mantles male elks' heads and necks, rose proudly from the brush beside them.

The simplest things bring such great pleasure. After leaving the rangers and walking up the road to our car, we sat with the doors wide open and our feet out, passing a floury hard salami, a wedge of brie, two tomatoes and slices of wheat bread between us. We watched the sparrows flitting among the scrub and the elk as they rose to graze and then sank heavily down again to rest some more. The hot day spread all around us. In complete ease, we chatted contentedly, and planned our upcoming itinerary as well as dreamed about future forays.

Close in our memories lay the image of McClure's beach under the cliffs, our scramble up the rocks, the foamy wash of waves around our feet. I've held off writing about it, since the deep, glittering blue of the ocean, the red cliffs carved by wind, and the stained black quartzite rocks, jutting from the water and pounded by white surf, defy description. We played for hours on the sand; I sketched the birds, Paul waded in the surf, and we swung 15-foot seaweed whips we found on the beach, that lay there as though Poseidon had discarded his chariot-whip.

All while we walked, fragments of Plath's poem, "Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea," kept returning to my mind:

We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.

...Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.

And, by the time we'd eaten our salami and cheese and bread, we only had a little time for our return journey. We managed to stop at Muir Woods on the way home to see the towering redwoods in the dusk, and also stopped to take a few photos of the cliffs by the sea with our bright orange disposable camera. But how soon, it seemed, we were back at IHouse, fatigued and hungry, with only the energy to gulp down dinner at a bright, loud, warehouse-like Indian restaurant, then to struggle home to Paul's room and sleep.

Now, as though it was all a dream - or perhaps but a moment's wakefulness - I'm in Ann Arbor again, and the week has rushed by with the force of a train. Last night, in a moment of quiet, I stood with my kitten in my bedroom when I got home, late at night. I told him that if he purred any louder, he'd vibrate himself to bits in my arms.

There are compensations to returning.

Berserkely

\Ber"serk\, Berserker \Ber"serk*er\, n. [Icel. berserkr.] 1. (Scand. Myth.) One of a class of legendary heroes, who fought frenzied by intoxicating liquors, and naked, regardless of wounds. --Longfellow.

That's what my friend Ward calls Berkeley, California, where I visited Paul this past weekend. Late Friday night, arriving from the airport on the train, we ascended the subterranean stairs and stepped out onto Shattuck Ave. We hadn't gone ten steps before a wild yell rang out into the air, emanating from some window on a side street nearby. "Welcome to Berserkely," commented Paul, and on we went.

Paul's room in International House sits squeezed onto the end of a long hall of equally tiny dorm rooms. We slept squashed together on his single bed, despite spending at least 45 minutes acquiring a cot so I could comfortably sleep alongside. Other than sleeping, we spent little time in that spare, practical cell, preferring instead to walk IHouse's wide halls and drink in its activity. I arrived to Friday night's "Skirt Party," for which Paul and I donned two of my skirts - one each - and wandered downstairs to join a vista of hairy-legged, broad-chested young men in ruffled, hot pink, flared or patterned skirts and sarongs.

On the elevator, descending, we encountered a friend of Paul's, a mild-faced and chubby Hispanic-looking fellow.

"Nice skirt," said Paul.

"Thanks," he said. "It's from Guatemala."

"Oh, I don't know where mine's from," laughed Paul, at which point I chipped in: "Yours is from Brazil."

"Ah, see?" said Paul, and "Nice," said his friend; then the elevator doors opened and he strode out, the fronds of his patterned sarong swinging cheerfully around his burly calves.

We danced on the beer-slickened dance floor, watching the couples wriggle and jive in front of the strobe lights. The intermittent white light, capturing their movements in a thousand instant snapshots, rendered them glamorous even in their preposterous outfits. We joined a great big mosh circle that swayed and swung drunkenly around the room, arm linked to waist linked to arm. I struggled not to get squashed, kicked my feet joyfully, pulled Paul in with me. Earlier, we'd stood on the steps outside of IHouse, talking to several of Paul's friends among a milling crowd of beskirted party-goers. Disdainful of the skirt theme, these friends had dressed as Ninjas. When challenged by passers-by on their attire, they brandished their plastic scimitars threateningly, and explained drunkenly and irrefutably that they were Ninjas and didn't need any kind of silly skirt.

IHouse teems with life and irreverency, much like Berkeley itself. Its walls seem to breathe an acceptance of oddity. Residents smile readily; the elevator walls are papered with posters such as one advertising the loss of a giant bubble wand shaped like a sword, and offering a reward for news of its whereabouts. "Don't let the young whippersnappers get away with it!" it admonishes. In the basement laundry room, four or five IMacs are arranged on the tables alongside the laundry machines, offering internet access while your shirts dry. There's a sense of tradition, time, and hilarity reverberating through the whole building.

~

From the women's bathroom on the 6th floor of IHouse, where Paul's room is located, a large window opens out onto a beautiful view of Berkeley, of the shining skyscrapers of Oakland to the south, and of sailboat-speckled San Francisco Bay straight ahead. Berkeley is built of wood and brick and limestone and plaster, topped by shingle roofs that descend the hill from IHouse towards the bay. Directly below the window, one of IHouse's long stucco wings stretches forward, covered by red, rounded tiles. To one side, framing the view, a church steeple rises upward alongside a tall pine.

In the morning, all is misty and grey; a cool breeze slips damply in, and one brushes one's teeth alongside the panorama of the delicate California coast. Waking early on Saturday, I put both hands on the sill and thrust my head out the window, half-tempted to lower myself from the sill to the crisply-tiled red roof below. Sucking in draught after draught of high, clean morning air, I woke, or so it felt to me, from a deep languor.

from August 20, 2004

I just came into the big, wood and tile-paneled hall that is the Daily. It looks and smells just the same - scattered with papers, the computers sitting stockily in their practical lines across the tables, and the slightly musty, paper-and-wood smell that I only now realize is a fundamental part of the Daily experience. I've avoided this building all summer, burnt out by the pace I kept last year. But coming in, I realize I'm ready for this year to start. I'm ready for the hours I'll spend in here; I'm ready for the typing and the bustle and the telephone calls. I'm ready to argue with the editors about typos and grammar mistakes; I'm ready to stay here late at night if necessary, to drum out an article or check its layout on the page. I'm scared, too - this is going to be one of the busiest semesters I've ever had, with Clutch practice and constant traveling over the weekends and my dissertation and everything else. But coming in here makes me feel like maybe I can handle it. There's a sort of timeless competence ingrained in the walls of this place.

It reminds me of Andy's Summer Playhouse, in that the building itself is so deeply integrated with the experience. It's like Andy's, too, in that it's an endeavor almost completely created by the students involved in it. It doesn't have the sense of freedom and summer and creative abandon that Andy's had, nor can it possibly produce the kind of camaraderie that theater creates - especially for me, since I'm not, like the editors, here 24-7 and pouring my soul and sweat into making the Daily happen. But even the smell is reminiscent of Andy's - a smell of dust, wood, paper, a sawdusty smell, flavored with hard work.

It's still quiet in here; summer hasn't quite ended. The business staff is present on the other side of the room, and I hear their soft conversations and the taptap of computer keys. But my side of the room is empty, and the chairs lie in various abandoned poses near the computer screens. Soon this room will be teeming with people and the sounds of the phone ringing and of people talking and of tape recorders returning the tinny voices of prior interviews. It's such a more alive and rich place than my quiet, dead office; than the sullen lab; than the cold, flourescent-lighted halls of the geology department where the best smile you can expect is usually a strained one.

I hope this year goes well. Really, looking at it as it slowly picks up momentum, rolling towards its start, it's quite petrifying. But maybe it's time for a bit more activity and stress in my life. I'm ready not to be bored; I'm ready for a challenge. I want this year to be rich and packed and productive. I want to exceed the expectations of my fears.

Anyway... there it is. The inspiration of the Daily, alongside the memories of other places in my life. Time for me to go back to work - but I'll be back here, maybe Monday or Tuesday, to start in on the several writing projects I've got for the beginning of the year.

Adventurers - from May 21, 2004

I've decided I'm insufficiently brave.

I emerged, or tried to, from University Health Services this afternoon with my prescription and the newspaper clamped under my arm. Arriving at the glass door, I thought to myself, "Why is it so dark outside? I don't remember these windows being tinted." I opened the first door, entered the glassed-in lobby, and thought, "The sky is green."

Earlier, as I'd walked down the street towards UHS, I'd glanced up at a heavy, brooding sky. Last night, too, the tornado warning sirens had sounded in Ann Arbor, eerie, intense and urgent, rising and falling in their terrifying wail. Paul and I had run down from my apartment - after I fidgeted near the door, heart clenching, while he looked for his shoes - to the laundry room in the next building's basement. When the sirens silenced, we returned, and I paced about my apartment for awhile, trying to get better reception on the radio, while lightning flickered and flashed every moment, outside. When we turned out the lights, I lay awake in bed, watching the room illuminate, illuminate, illuminate, while thunder muttered and roared at intervals all around us. At last I fell asleep.

The green sky outside the door of the medical building, then, didn't surprise me; but I felt the same sudden jolt of fear, and turned round instantly to cross the waiting room and descend the stairs to the basement. And so I caught only a glimpse of sky; saw only a moment of the sheeting rain as someone opened a large utility door to allow a frightened, drenched passerby to run inside. A remarkable scene: pale, sickly green air, rain and hail falling in white, angled sheets, nurses calling urgently out into the rain as the individual, framed by the door and silhouetted by the weather, ran in, eyes wide with alarm. Slowly, the patients from other floors in the hospital trickled downstairs: Prof. Verhoogt, his foot in a cast, who looked at me curiously but seemed not to recognize me with my newly short hair; a friend from ultimate; secretaries and pharmacists who bustled about, ensuring everyone's safety and expressing their laughing surprise at the intensity of the storm.

After a few minutes, one man went upstairs to see how things were progressing, and I followed him, chastising myself for my caution. I'd been one of the first to dive downstairs at the merest hint of trouble. But by the time I looked outside again the storm had mostly passed - I had missed the bulk of its intensity. And I found myself suddenly sorry, for that. I missed the experience; I missed its vigor, its unusualness, its lurid green sky, the wild and whipping winds. I don't want to be reckless, but I don't want to be timid, either. Life is too strong, too insistent, too present for timidity.

Now, I'm back in the geology building, and the trees outside are dancing a wild dance, still wind-whipped. When I returned I looked into B.W.'s office, who sat calmly working at his computer, hunched there like he always sits, spreadsheets open in front of him. My own office was empty and dark, my officemates gone, and I asked him where people had hidden themselves to escape the storm.

"Oh, I don't know," said he in his usual loud, jovial tone. "Most of them went out to the lobby to watch through the window" - here he imitated them - " 'Wow, the sky's about to fall!' "

That's geologists for you, at least from my own aquaintance: unafraid, full of their own particular bravado, an attitude that says, "I am a geologist, and an adventurer. I know this natural world, I study it, I have, in my way, conquered it. I'm not afraid of it and intend to show you so - to show you how cavalier and bold, how careless and experience-seeking, I can be." These are the geologists and student geologists I know from B.'s picnic each year at his farmhouse, throwing one log after another onto the yearly bonfire in the rain, carelessly pushing the logs deeper into the flame with their boots, standing closer to its heat than I dare, telling stories of drinking, stories of field camp, stories, probably embellished, of their their adventures, hiking, exploring, mountain-climbing, drinking. Casually needling one another, smoking cigarettes, coolly adding the bench-logs to the fire.

Then B. showed me a weather map of the storm on Weather Underground, and pointed out the long front of red, followed by oranges and yellows in a vast swath behind it, already leaving town, already gone, continuing on, on, on. And dismissed me, in his usual sudden, peremptory way, that is always as abrupt and as startling as his friendliness.

Ferrying - from May 11, 2004

Vancouver. We drove up the coast, flanked by mountains. Arriving at the first ferry, we waited in a long line of parked cars, and Paul and I ran down to the park to throw a frisbee back and forth and, a few minutes later, to stare down from the dock into the dark water, where fish and jellyfish swam just under the surface. We ran hand in hand from the park to a corner shop to buy me a journal, harried because we knew the ferry would arrive any moment, and picked through the available options until we found a beautiful little black one, spiral-bound, its cover shiny, just the right size. Then we heard the ferry toot its resounding note over the water, and tore back along the streets to the ferry station, where my mother had already come partway down to look for us.

The ferry rides, every one during our four days of driving, took us past spectacular scenery. On either side, snow-capped mountains reared above the green hills that sloped down to the sea. To our right, sailing north, the mountains of the continent; to the left, and further away, the mountains of Vancouver Island. We wove around the green islands rising from the sea, and trained binoculars on the birds that even a casual eye couldn't help but notice everywhere. Sometimes we'd see seals, their round heads lifting from the water to gaze our way; they'd disappear in a sinuous, shining curve in the sunlight. Rain is common in the area around Vancouver, but soon after we left Whistler (where we'd spent the first part of our trip), the clouds cleared and we spent days in the sunlight.

One ferry trip I remember particularly, and did not have time to write about in the nature journal where I kept notes all trip. We spent our last two days in and around Victoria, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, and in the evening of our final day boarded the ferry to the mainland. We'd traveled around the western side of the island that day, near Sooke, exploring tidepools and a long barrier island-like spit, and Paul and I had rented bicycles and gone on a ride through the cedar woodlands. We'd planned to catch the nine o'clock ferry, but through a mixture of luck and my parents' worrying that we'd miss the ferry altogether, we arrived in Victoria just in the nick of time for the 7:00 ferry. It turned out to be wonderful that we had. As we departed, the sun sank slowly toward the mountains behind us, and around us the low green hills rose from the water. A diaphanous haze filled the air; all turned pink and gold, and the sun crept among the clouds. High snowcapped peaks stood proudly on the island, remote and inaccessible. My father and Paul and I stood gaping at the forward edge of the boat; my mother, frightened off by the cold sea wind, flitted back and forth from inside to our side. Valinor, I thought.

As the boat maneuvered patiently through the water, the light failed, and my binoculars became increasingly insufficient to identify the tiny black birds that rested on the water. They looked so solitary down there: one tiny pelagic bird at a time, or sometimes a small raft of six or seven, sometimes littler even than the crests of the waves. It grew colder, and we swung slowly past the last of the green islands, leaving the protected passageways between them. On the open sea between Vancouver Island and the mainland, we could see sheets of rain falling far off over the water. Vancouver glittered faintly on the continent ahead. The few people that had lingered on the deck went inside, leaving me sitting on a big tacklebox, my back against the wall and knees drawn up, huddled into my jacket. I didn't want to lose even a moment of that air, that solitary, salty, independent air, the sea blowing it mercilessly into my face, the water and sky one great single grayness.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! This is my place to share my thoughts and adventures with my friends. The following three posts are old entries from my previous blog; I've been homeless on the web for awhile and am looking for a comfortable harbor.

This will be it for at least awhile.