California to Wisconsin
Day 1
The leaving is easy, but never easy. The house is enormous and quiet in the morning, packing and loose planning and a last coffee in the modern convenient kitchen. All of it ephemeral and distant the second you leave the driveway.
The ocean is clear sky cold. I surf on the way down the coast knowing it will be my last time in the water for a bit. I change back into my board shorts when I’m finished. The sand is thick on my feet, wedged between my toes; I don’t bother cleaning it off, it will be there for days to remind me.
The drive east covers a low mountain range. At the summit I look back out over the water one last time. The shadowy Monterey hills rest low over the water in the distance; I breathe in one last deep ocean breeze and continue on.
It’s an afternoon of dusty farms and small town navigation until an early commit to the Yosemite park entrance; climbing and descending, crawling through the river valley to the gates and the loop and finally through the trees and across the meadow the first glimpse of El Cap.
I pull over, get out of the van, and just stare. The ominous cathedral presence is overwhelming. I settle my feet in the grass and lightly grip the earth with my toes. And the steady low waves of positive energy easing through the valley envelop me, thick and dense, wrapped in a vertigo state, nudging gently and randomly against my body. I close my eyes and feel it pass around me, through me; still like a stone, yet flexible to the obliging currents. I look down the row of parked cars, and sure enough see another dirtbag doing the same; steady planted feet, rocking gently, eyes closed, absorbing the vibrations. Smiling, just smiling.
I jump back in the van and shoot the loop, snap shots of half dome, crane my neck up, negotiate busses and crosswalks and traffic, and end up where I started, parked off the side of the road at the foot of the giant, staring up in continued disbelief with a crowd of others.
The sun begins to set and it’s a right turn out of the park and an empty rest area on another summit snapping sunset photos, quiet, slow, simple, alone. Cold air open door van; bundled in layers and a hat, standing exposed in the wide-open space. The morning ocean air vacated and replaced by the crisp, clean, orange sunset evening pines of elevation.
Day 2
Camping in the van at ten thousand feet; cold morning breath in the air, making coffee by the side of the road at a lookout. The sun pounces suddenly, chasing low drifting cobweb clouds from the valley, then the twisting drive down through the trees, along the steep roadside cliff edges, and to the crystal calm lake; the sandy beach easy reflection a world to itself.
The valley funnels and snakes and plunges and opens into the plains; up and over one range after another and the next, creeping at a snails pace across the precious unpopulated void.
Day 3
An early morning push into the Colorado interior; sharp towering canyon walls shift and close in, mountains in the distance settle and retreat, hanging on the horizon like photos on the wall. The van knows the way, steers itself. How many smiling passes of the country have I completed in this lifetime, never weary or calculated, always a mystery, a calm easy awe in the land. The universe gently telling me when and where and how, my movement a connection not limited to space or time; music and coffee and transient dreams of non existent arrival.
Day 4
Day 5
The infinite shades of endless Wisconsin green are somehow immediately invigorating. The barren wide escape of the western desert is paralleled yet juxtaposed by the monotonous encroaching Midwest fields; row after row after house after house, hemmed in tightly to generations of slow life in the land.