“Bill’s Farm” looked no worse for the wear since the last time I stopped by three years ago. I noticed an ancient carriage almost hidden by the gaggle of bicycles kept here for the use of his hostel visitors from all over the world and the array of solar panels on the roof setting off the “No Diablo” sign by the corner of the house.

I was welcomed by a high ringing voice, and once inside surrounded by walls and tables completely covered with pictures and clippings. On the counter was a half-empty quart bottle of beer next to another one full of milk.

“Just did the goats,” giggled the man with flowing white hair, cascading beard, cabled arms and frighteningly tough legs revealed by his short-shorts.

“I love goat’s milk,” I said, “reminds me of my days on an old homestead in British Columbia.”

“Take it,” he answered, “and that dozen eggs from my chickens.”

“Bill, I came to say thanks,” I replied, “and here you keep giving me more.”

The phone rang and he spoke briefly to someone about the Santa Maria Times article on the table that reported his $500 environmental award to the graduating High School Senior who’d volunteered in the Nipomo Native Garden and was now heading for UCSB.

“These young people inspire me,” he said. They’re our only hope. I’m 86 and starting to lose it, but they carry the torch. Here’s another one of my heros,” he declared, pointing to a picture of Jordan Hasay: “While I was doing a triathlon a couple of years ago and just ready to throw in the towel, she came up behind me. ‘You can make it,’ she said, ‘just keep going.’ And she was right.

Then here’s Virginia Souza, she’s the President of the Natural History Museum in Santa Maria. It’s tiny, but she just hosted an event there for the Chamber of Commerce which brought out forty people. In Santa Maria! She was a biology student of mine way back when. I introduced her to the idea of ecology. Here’s an award for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day she gave me last year.”

“And this is my woman’s wall. Next to the fridge, pictures and articles about Barbara Boxer, Lois Capps, Hilda Zacarias, Lisa Jackson, Dixie Chicks, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Coleman, Marion Jones, Steph Brown, Kathy Goddard Jones. “I remember your Dad, Henry,” Bill chuckled. “He used to tell me how the dunes were ‘so sensual.’”

That must have been 20 years ago, when my father was just about Bill’s age now. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Sixty nine,” I answered, “just retired.”

“My sixties were my best decade,” said Bill. “Learning how to appreciate things because the end was in sight, but still capable.”

He brought over a stack of postcards and said, “here, take a few.” The top one was a photo of a sand dune gracefully curved against the sky. Running up it was a black lab next to a perfectly formed naked young woman. “I’ve worked to save those Dunes and Point Sal for 50 years–from a Nuclear Power Plant, from a Coal Fired power plant, from a housing development, from developers. And now they’re safe in perpetuity, since the SLO Land Conservancy just purchased the last developable property. Lets go out back.”

We passed his desktop computer surrounded by magazines and books, where Bill composes his “Nipomo Free Press,” an email newsletter that includes commentaries on the latest news and on long term issues as well as responses from his readers—precursor of the blog. We talked of another hero, writer and 350.org organizer Bill McKibben, who was sitting in a Washington jail after leading a protest against Obama’s approval of the XL Pipeline. We passed the chickens scratching in the sand, the empty pigpen—the pig was in the freezer—and the goat corral. He climbed nimbly over a high gate into an overgrown orchard of apple and tangello trees heavy with fruit that I sampled and picked. “I just cant keep these up any more,” he said with a twinkle. Don’t get old.”

On my way back to the car weighted down with eggs, milk and fruit, I felt lightened. Instead of dreading yet another meeting to discuss grant applications, budgets, and liability insurance, I was eager to share Eldr Bill’s harvest with the volunteers at the potluck that night.

June 16 8:30 A.M.

I was sitting on the bench built into the bridge over the arroyo listening to the water tumbling beneath and converging with Tassajara creek.  I was feeling solitude at the crossroads–monks and students and guests walking in opposite directions, stopping, bowing, moving on. I was looking at sunlight crawling downward through the leaves on the opposite bank. I was feeling the afterglow of last night, the buzz of morning meditation, the warmth of the sulfur bath, the sparkle of caffeine–all blending like flavors. That was before she woke up and joined me, before I descended the rock stairway to the edge of the water and stared at back-eddies and rills, before the sun ignited submerged rocks and the remains of yesterday’s food passed through me and I started to record what long had passed downstream.

6:30 P.M.

The sun has gone from the top of the valley’s vertical walls. A subtle breeze riffles armhairs and cools cheeks and eyelids still radiating midday heat from rounded rocks I embraced naked after a cold swim down below the narrows.

June 17  8:30 A.M.

Sitting  on the great boulder in the creek approached by the tiny arched bridge.  Feeling again the blend of zazen, chant, bath, and coffee.  The second morning of effort to achieve non-achievement. “Enjoy,” sings the creek that feeds life in this burned over and regenerated wilderness.  “Feel yourself,” gargles the water boiling from the rock.

My Rule of Tassajara

 4:30: Wake up in the dark and watch the full moon dip below the peak closing the valley upstream.

5:00 Drink coffee

5:50  Remove shoes outside zendo, parade in, receive seat assignment, hearing large bells, drum, knocker, small chimes, large chime. Practise zazen facing wall for 30 minutes, smelling incense. Follow with genuflections and chants.

7:30 Drink more coffee, walk to bath, watch sunlit alder branch reflections on surface of outdoor plunge, sit in hot plunge,  float in creek, shave.

8:30 Walk back to dining area and drink coffee.

9:00 Meet for quiet breakfast; move belongings to a different cabin; pack lunch

10:15 Hike to Suziki Roshi memorial led by Jan, then up steep promontory to waterfall overlook, in fields of flowers and charred trees.  Find beehive.  Walk through creek to waterfall base.

12:00 Find way back to new cabin, eat lunch at table above creek.

1:30 Drink coffee, nap in cabin

3:00 Go to baths—steam room, hot plunge, float in creek, nakedness nibbled by fingerlings.  Young men and old.  Everyone quiet.

4:00 Read old histories of Tassajara going back to Indians and first resort development in 1870’s

4:40 Return to cabin and read Gary Snyder.

5:00 Practise zazen on floor in cabin.

5:45  Read Snyder and Mary Oliver

7:00 Eat dinner and converse with people from San Luis Obispo at table.

8:00 Return to cabin; read by kerosene lamp; give over to nature.

This book is worth reading now because it fully takes into account three recent catastrophes: the acceleration of geophysical climate changes, the near collapse of the global economic system, and the failure of the U.N. Copenhagen Climate conference to arrive at any meaningful international agreement. McKibben’s prescriptions for dealing with our predicament are consistent with what he and many others have been advocating since 1970: recognizing limits to growth, promoting localism and decentralization, and affirming that conservation and satisfaction of basic needs must replace our excesses of consumerism and greed.

During the years he was working on this book McKibben was remarkably successful in organizing two grassroots worldwide movements largely driven by young people, Step-It-Up and 350.org. Despite their inability to produce the kind of changes needed, his recommendations for adaptation to our reduced circumstances could allow us to face them “lightly, carefully, gracefully.”

my notes and comments on Deep Economy (Word doc)

The one muddy patch on Poly Canyon road, just past the DWR pipeline, drew me toward a little watercourse heading eastward up the hill into an oak woodland I’d never explored. Led by it I came to a fence bordering La Cuesta Ranch and slipped underneath, then followed a well-trodden cowpath into a grove of immense live oaks, their central trunks fallen over centuries ago and since then growing their branches into forests of vigorous verticals.  I came out into the clear and stopped at the base of a small chapparal-covered peak shaped like Chico Marx’s hat.

The ecotone separating it from grassland is wide and empty, evidence of much furtive animal activity.  This is where the coyote chorus I’ve heard during many nights in Poly Canyon originates.  I found a seat with a good prospect, outside the dripline of the oaks, which I fear will drop ticks.  The quiet swells after I stop moving and then gradually is broken by the sounds of activity.  A bunch of big birds on thick branches of the oak across the streambed, probably quail. Now they drop to the ground  and resume feeding on bugs and worms, occasionally cackling.  Five magpies glide from the tall sycamore below into the brush above.  Jays scold and chatter.

First stage of the fast: hangover listlessness of caffeine withdrawal upon awakening, exaggerated by sinus infection.  Hardly able to speak or pack before I left this morning. Now the second stage: hunger, fatigue, dullness.

10:30 An hour has passed. Under the oak the quail have been joined by two grouse, a rabbit and many small brown birds.  It must be a luxurious plentiful buffet.  Sounds of cheeps and and warbles and a woodpecker’s tap, then a gopher’s warning chirp sends the quail into the cover of the brush.  I’m alert now after a 45 minute reverie. The fog has lifted to reveal the Citadel and Rockslide Ridge across the valley, but the sky is still overcast; there are no shadows.

I open the Bible at random to Isaiah 6.1 and read the description of God sitting on a throne above the ark in the Temple. He says:

Go and tell this people
You may listen and listen but you will not understand
You may look and look again but you will never know
The peoples wits are dulled
Their ears are deafened and their eyes blinded…
How long O lord…
Until cities fall in ruins and are deserted
Houses are left without people and the land goes to ruin and lies waste…
Even if a tenth remain there, they will be exterminated.

11:30

I’ve sat zazen 45 minutes.  As I open my eyes, a white hawk lands in the top of an oak. Quail chattering close behind me earlier, but now they’ve ceased.  Overcast breaking up.  Pieces of blue sky against the yellow gold grass on the ridge.  Colors emerging.  Monkeyflower, this years shiny oak leaves, sage greens of Artemesia and Black Sage.

More ground squirrel cheep, like a smoke alarm with low battery. No traffic sound here, bermed against the freeways and town.  Not moving for two hours.  A fly crossed my brow slowly, explored the furrow between my eyebrows, my irritation turned to enjoyment.  Mood changed to alert and content.  Colors brilliant, shadows black where the sun breaks through cloud.  I take pictures for a panorama.

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Looking at the oak, I want to draw the flowing curve of a branch’s shadow on the grass.  At twenty five I took a life drawing class.  That was it.  My father, especially in his later years, spent a lot of time sketching landscapes.  He would have loved this spot.  If he were still around I’d try drawing with him.

1:50

Climbed through the oak forest up the steep slope behind me, enjoying movement and the changing angles of motion and perspective. At the top of the ridge I could see east along Cuesta Ridge and over much of Poly Land.  The sky is blue with patches of cloud moving fast west to east.

Sitting in dry grass near the top, I read the first chapter of EAARTH, Bill McKibben’s sequel to Isaiah, which I’ll lead a discussion on for the faculty book club.  Earth needs a new name to indicate we no longer inhabit the hospitable planet we used to.  The consequences of our excess have started to snowball.  It’s still not perceptible today here, nor in B.C. this summer, but his prophetic descriptions make it real. What is perceptible is the continuing failures of political systems at all levels. And yet Jan is running for Mayor and I knock on doors for her.

3:30

Ninety minutes of zazen and a little chanting.  The fast now makes it easy and pleasureable.  The mind less busy.  Afternoon light is almost supernatural.  Colors are radiant, including the blue of cloudless sky.

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4:25

Psalm 104:
From thy high pavilion thou dost water the hills
The earth is enriched by thy provision
Thou makest grass grow for the cattle
And green things for those who toil for man
Bringing bread out of the earth
And wine to gladden men’s hearts
Oil to make their faces shine…
The trees of the land are green and leafy…
The birds build their nests in them
High hills are the haunt of the mountain goat
And boulders the refuge for the rock badger…

The breeze of late afternoon rustles sycamore leaves and then quiets, but a long twisted branch still shudders.  The shadows lengthen and the sun creeps below the tree tops.  The fragrance of cow dung returning to its source in grass and dirt.  A magpie sings his complaint.

Back to Bill McKibben.  My attention drawn from his warnings by the loud chirp of a groundsquirrel close by.  Twenty yards away a coyote lopes silently along the cowpath, the edges of his fur red in the sun.  Higher on the hillside, three more coyotes run in a line. A moment of apprehension, then I go for the camera, but they are gone.

I’ve been thinking about hygiene, since having my teeth cleaned on Wednesday and going to Dr. Malotte on Thursday.  My morning ritual lengthens, reminding me of my father’s: hot bath to reduce joint pain, three medications plus nasal irrigation with nettie pot to reduce sinus infections, water pik and electric toothbrush to reduce gum recession, shaving to reduce decrepitude, 35 minutes meditation to reduce depression and anxiety. But even with the new cushion and posture instruction, its not good for me to sit cross legged, I’ve discovered after several months.  Bending the right knee laterally produces swelling and pain.  Experiment leads me to relief with proper adjustment of the new desk chair. All of this therapy within my power, controlled with habit.

But tonight is Yom Kippur, the annual holy night. I intended to observe by sleeping out, but reneged because of my cough.  Tomorrow I will leave early for a day of outdoor silence.

I have again started searching, taking on a little of  the restlessness and frustration of a lover.  Meditation is not just hygeine, it’s an effort to be open to something more, to clear resistance, to be ready for help if it should come.  And gardening is full of longing and gratitude and fear, and eating is a little sacramental.  The preparation of next Spring’s course is leading me back to classical music.  Attending to Beethoven, Brahms.  Buying some CD’s, listening for texture and structure, a struggle to attend, like to attend to breathing and walking and the sound of waves.  Another title, Mishima’s novel, reading books, finding patterns and meanings and details.  Trying to connect with the books lining my walls, towering over me.

The newspaper and the radio and even the emails on my computer create a world of gloom hard to reconcile with the light on the mountain, the sharpness of the horizon line, the laughter of my grandkids and the returning college students.  Desperation and deception, cruelty and violence, denial or trivialization of what we are doing to each other and our planet.  So much misplaced energy, problems constantly worsened, speeding toward disaster.  And no way to detach from it.  Driving fifty miles a day to keep a little contact with my grandson, putting up yardsigns, watching movies.

What do I want?  The connection with inner and outer worlds that produces the abundance of feeling that finds expression in creativity.

I wont let my alienation from the University–latest outrage disbanding the CSA- alienate me from Poly Land.  I’ve been wondering about the red blanket of vegetation on Poly Mountain since June.  Is it dried monkeyflower or buckwheat?

As soon as I slip into my West Coast Trail boots, my mood lightens and my legs urge me to get started, like the dog when he sees Jan lace her runners. I stride through the silent foggy streets, climb over the fence, and feel the spring of my footfalls through the grass.  The sensation of freedom in the question, which way to go? Feet find a trail of cracked soil showing through trampled grass pointing straight uphill.  Breathing muscles mobilized.  The absence of the forty-pound pack makes the steepening ascent effortless, and the mixture of tarweed and horsemanure pleasures my nostrils. The trail continues beyond the fence.  Two strands of barbed wire slack enough to allow me through.  The sun is a faint disk penetrating the fog, recalling its appearance at Klanawa River.

Perhaps I’ll go to the tree house and sit there and write.  I’ve done it before. The trail winds through the chapparal right to it.  A new resident?  Entering the secluded clearing under the great  oak, I see a  spade and a rake leaning against the twenty foot ladder that reaches the lowest branch.  Ten feet above the tree house a large improvised hammock hangs atop another ladder. As I stare I hear a sleepy “hello?” Not wanting to trespass, I say “Hi, my name’s Steven. I come here every few months.  Do you know E.C. the guy who built this house?”  “Yes, met him once,” answers a voice whose origin seems to be a pile of blankets in the hammock.  I ask if it’s OK to come up, and then mount the lower ladder. At the treehouse platform I see a mop of hair at the edge of the blankets above and try to build more trust.  Yes they know M, they’re his students.  I wrote in the guest ledger here on previous visits.  I climb the next ladder into the bedroom.  Two people snuggle under the blankets, K. and T.  They work with the same environmental organization I do.  I  built a hammock like that forty years ago for kids on our farm in B.C.

After fifteen minutes chat I descend the ladders and continue up the mountain,  serpentine boulders providing foot and handholds.  The fog  now just a ribbon draping Bishop Peak. The dark red scrub I’d been wondering about from the house and while approaching SLO on the freeway is neither monkeyflower nor buckwheat, but deerweed stalks, all the leaves and flowers gone. A huge exclusive patch, easy to walk through. Three years after the fire, it’s choked out all the poison oak.

The Cal Poly Crop Science Department’s decision to kill the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program may have been cruel and ill advised, but it did provide an effective display of raw power (“Harvest of disappointment,” Aug. 25). Its execution with blitzkrieg haste at a time of year when the university is deserted was well timed to maximize the shock and bewilderment of the many students, faculty, employees, and customers who held a stake in this real community institution.

One wonders if any of the decision- makers has ever shared my experience as a 10-year CSA member—being personally connected to the elemental process of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and cooking food grown by people they knew, in soil they loved. One wonders if these agriculturalists were aware of the decades of dedication invested in this program by visionary volunteers as a tiny offset to the servitude of most of the College of Agriculture to corporate industrial-chemical interests. One wonders if these crop scientists had considered the impact of being left in the lurch mid-season on several local small farmers who had partnered with the CSA.

One also wonders if their bumbling explanations, insulting to any person of intelligence, convinced their own authors or were just a smokescreen for a show of force. The only statement that made any sense in the letter sent to the press and to CSA members was that the program has been running a deficit. Apart from the fact that innovative, educational, and community service projects should not be judged simply by the bottom line of short-term profitability, a reasonable approach to the CSA’s financing problems would be for Cal Poly to activate some of its educational resources and opportunities—for instance in agricultural marketing and distribution—to help it thrive.

I sleep in the tent and get up early to retrieve the food, light a fire and make coffee.  Fog remains, we pack slowly and head up the beach, more than ever appreciating its variety of terrain and choice of routes and the continual activity of the water.  Offshore, humpback whales and dolphins cavort.

Back in the woods, Steve and I continue our conversation.  He describes a five-day Warrior-Sage workshop he attended last year.  He says this is the time of life to get it together, get the whole picture. Alone again, I pass through an unsettling sequence of thoughts about marriage and home life which predictably resolves itself in eagerness to return.  The fog has lifted but low overcast remains .

At 1:30 we set up camp at the Darling River campsite, aware of the proximity of the trail’s end.  Peter and Paul nap.  I meditate on my Thermarest, keyed in to the wave rhythm.   Steve and I head to the river to fill our Camelbacks and see two women with bathing suits and towels heading upstream.  We follow and come upon a gorgeous waterfall unmarked on the map—a loud steady flow through a dramatic cleft in rocks surrounded by higher cliffs from which tall spruces rise, their tops lost in cloud.  The pool below is clear and deep.

The women jump in and scream and come out and wash their hair.

In the chilly weather at first I’m not inclined to swim, but I tell them they’re shaming me.  They’re proud of their ages, 55 says one, here with friends from West Vancouver who’ve never backpacked but decided in a bar to do this.  As they leave, I strip and test the water.  About the same temp as the ocean, not requiring long acclimating.  The aerated and circling water produce an intense adrenaline rush.

Back at camp I look at shots of Jan at the wedding in Oregon, still on the camera.  Steve and I figure that if we move to the next campsite and can rearrange our reservations on the bus back to the trailhead, we’d prefer to come out a day early.  Awake now, Paul agrees enthusiastically. My cellphone barely has enough juice to make the connection, but it works and they reschedule.  Peter wakes up refreshed and also agrees.  We cook dinner, pack up, hike an hour and a half further down the trail to Michigan beach where we pitch our last camp.

Wednesday August 18

Wind blew last night, sexy dreams.  Black bear roaming on the beach.  Early departure, 12K to the parking lot. I hang back alone for most of the hike.  Elegaic mood, farewell to forest and ocean.  A great trip, with a piece of driftwood, photos and journal as souvenirs.

The last section of trail winds through old growth forest devastated by recent storms.  Huge trunks crisscross it, unblocked by the Indian trail maintenance crew, but the spectacle of destruction remains. 2000 ancient trees went down here.

Centuries of growth, building upward and buttressing below, structures and systems strong enough to move tons of water hundreds of feet high every day, to hold immense weight aloft and to withstand storm and strain for centuries suddenly smashed and shattered.

But already the great upended rootballs are growing ferns and salal and new trees on their vertical exposed surfaces, replacement plants that will take root in the ground as their hosts decompose into a new forest floor.

We emerge from the last stretch of forest onto the beach at Pachena Bay.  Three people are walking their dogs. They’re from a world different from the one we’ve inhabited for the last nine days.  A man asks if we’d like a final group portrait.

He’s the mayor of Bamfield, the nearby town.  As we’re about to get on the Shuttle in the parking lot, the women from the waterfall and their friends go to their pickup truck and shout Oh no!  It’s been broken into, their phones, wallets and gear stolen, the dashboard and interior trashed. Our bus leaves as they come to grips with the situation.

[Full set of 196 pictures, slideshow and all sizes]