September 16

Steve E., Peter U. and I strike camp in Zion National Park after two days of pre-canoe trip hiking and drive Interstates 15 and 70 through beautiful unpopulated country. We stop for breakfast in Richfield, a surprisingly prosperous agricultural town in a long, settled valley, where we joke with the waitress who brings us generous portions of  fresh, low-priced food.

A blasting rainstorm in the afternoon causes concern about how we’ll cope with such weather along the river. In the town of Green River, the next settlement located 130 miles down the road, we buy locally grown melons and visit the fair.   Pulling into Moab, we’re delayed by a high-school parade that blocks traffic.  The three of us spread out in the busy grocery store, and within a few minutes finish last minute grocery shopping for perishables. We meet up John and David, who’ve driven up from Phoenix, eat dinner at a hip Thai restaurant and head to the airport 20 miles north to meet the rest of the crew—five men flying in from Bellingham and Seattle.  Sharing a bed in the Red Stone Motel to save money, I find it hard to sleep, from excitement and also anxiety about the two hour rainstorm that pelts the town from 4 to 6 A.M. This is the kind of weather we were prepared for in the Yukon two years ago, but not here.

arrival

to start on a bus
passing thru unknown
is to be alive again
-
continuing in plane
after subway sky train
surviving stopped watch
during last hour
reappearing only at check in line up

-

end by flying back over rockies
in plane smaller than powell river’s
with flight attendant also pilot
landing fifteen miles from town
on only long enuf flat spot
‘tween peaks
met by part of other half
to crash in moab
where it never rains

Murray th K

September 17

We all gather at Tag Along, the outfitters, at 8:00 A.M.—any delays, we’d been told would be charged to us at $80/hr—but don’t depart until an hour and a half later due to their short staffing.  Two of the five canoes left for us are so dinged up we insist they substitute another two they say are reserved for a different party.  They agree and epoxy the hole in the keel discovered in one of the better boats. Dave, the crusty old river rat who drives the van and trailer that takes us to the embarkation point at Ruby Ranch, recites paragraphs from Edward Abbey, the literary voice of this part of the world. The morning’s rainclouds give way to sun beating down with an intensity as frightening as the thunderstorms, until I apply sunscreen, even under my t-shirt.

The van leaves us alone and we enjoy lunch under the shade of riverbank cottonwood trees, making quick work of dividing up the large cargo of nine-days provisions into the five boats. Lionel is appointed team leader for the day and I paddle bow in his canoe.  Entry into the swiftly flowing current of the muddy river is blissful: ten people sprung free from the connections of daily life and reattached to this old untrammeled association.

After less than an hour the flat grey desert banks transform into sculpted red sandstone cliffs revealing layers of deposition and erosion produced by the rise and fall of shallow seas over hundreds of millions of years.

There are no other people on the water or signs of human impact on those banks, except for the relentless thicket of tamarisk clogging the “Bottoms” which line the inside edges of the river’s tight turns.  This impenetrable Asian vegetation has driven out most of the native cottonwoods and willows that used to provide open shade and habitat along the shores. It was introduced by  government soil conservation officers from the Great Plains to control erosion.  They didn’t realize that erosion here was the essence of the riverbank ecology for millions of years.

The variety of angle, color, texture, light and shadow overwhelm the senses as the canyon deepens and the scale of its walls reduce the canoes to miniscule toys. But rhythmic repetition soon becomes evident at every level, from the immense meanders of the river’s trajectory to the parallel scratches in the rock polish, suggesting ranks of wing feathers brush-stroked by the wind with an action painter’s abandon.

The air is desert-clear, the sky flat opaque blue, the sun hot enough even under hats and sunscreen to make us search out shady patches along the cliffs and revel in their momentary coolness. Occasionally we cross toward the opposite bank in search of a faster flow or to avoid the riffle indicating a submerged sandbar. Passing close to the frescoed walls, we sense the  progress of the current bearing snowmelt and silt from a thousand miles upstream down another thousand miles from here to the sea.

At seven miles from the starting point we stop at June’s Bottom, a sandy beach at water level with a thin margin of shade under the tamarisks, where our large 16 by 24 tarp can be rigged by tarpmeister Steve to provide shelter in case of another downpour. We strip naked and jump into the river letting tense muscles be carried by the stream, chilling hot dessicated skin in the thick cool liquid.

Then ten bodies swarm over the canoes hauling the cumbersome loads ashore.  Some gather firewood, some pitch the tarp and their tents, some set up the kitchen, boil potatoes and corn and then barbeque steak, the last fresh meat of the trip. Happy hour is declared and a five-liter box of wine is quickly emptied.

A gray cloud passes overhead and deposits only a few drops of rain. Conversation bubbles and flows: practical coping, group problem-solving, planning the next day’s itinerary and destination, all rendered lyrical by the pure beauty of this place. The average age of the men is determined to be 64—all of us in retirement or at least heading that way, exploring the possibilities of leisure or of new careers.

Mosquitos are bothersome for an hour or so around sunset, and then stars cover the black night sky, the spaces between them filling with a misty glow that can be perceived as innumerable points of light.

start

up at five-thirty
to th question of why
do we need four pounds of aluminum sulphate
before three hours
of waiting
canoe loading
and ruby ranch entry history
with mud flats desert moonscape
midst phalfalfa fields
and lunch
before push off
with quick hit of california green for some
and irridescent blue herons
nesting  above
three canyon campsite search

-

stop at june’s bottom
with enuf time for
dessert first trudy cake
and steak corn potato grilled
before plastic cornhusk refuge burning
over distant political drill debate
and ending before finding mom
by eight thirty or nine

Murray th K

September 18

Steven is up before dawn brewing coffee in the comfortable kitchen under the tarp, the stacked totes holding the propane stove fed from a tank.  After a breakfast of ham and eggs and oranges, the second day’s commander sets a departure time of 10:30, allowing for more organization of gear and food, for easy access, for striking and packing of camp, for the hallowed ritual of Murray’s reading of his “pomes”—brief verse chronicles of the previous day’s events.

Then a surprise addition to the program.  Peter U. teaches and leads us in a fifteen minute session of Tai Chi warmup exercises, a circle of graceful movement that mirrors the circle of surrounding cliffs beside the river’s silent flow.  This will be repeated every morning of the trip just before departure, providing a brief interlude of group solemnity and meditation.

We navigate with the help of Belknap’s River Guide, a well-designed book of maps on waterproof paper that opens to double vertical pages covering sections of the river’s shifting downstream progress in great detail. But, it provides little useful information about campsites, since sandbars and beaches constantly change.

After full-group deliberation the landing location is finally decided by the map holder on short notice since there is no standing still and the canoes need to fight the current, especially on the curves, in order to reach the beach. Places to avoid include those with high banks, excessive mud, claustrophobically close and high walls, and lack of clearance from the bug-infested tamarisk groves. Our route is 97 miles long, roughly 15 per day allowing for one day’s layover.

The winding passage through the canyon seems like a journey through an endless corridor of carved arches, alcoves, columns and bas-reliefs depicting Egyptian gods, Assyrian cherubs and Mayan glyphs, all joined at the top by a continuous cornice.

(Peter Behr photo)

(Peter Behr photo)

Steven and Peter B. are reminded of the reconstructed temples they visited as children in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. All primal visual art, with its symmetry, variation and fantasy seems to have arisen, under appropriate stimulus, from imitation of natural forms like these.

The midday sun requires regular replenishment of sunscreen and frequent swimstops on sandbanks.  At 3:00 p.m. we haul out 15 miles from June’s Bottom at Spring Canyon Point, an impossibly tight turn of the river that forms part of the quadruple switchback that John Wesley Powell named “Bowknot Bend.”  It’s still hot enough that any bit of shade is treasured. I sit in the doorway of the tent, a location repeatedly mentioned in the Bible, and now I know why.  The last of the Green River melon left in the cooler is distributed to laughing swimmers who ride the current and walk back upstream to repeat the fun.

(Allan Best photo)

With the exception of one, the bodies of these men show the effects of wear and gravity.  They’ve lost their youthful grace, but in this setting, they shine with confidence.

Downwind and decently far from the kitchen, Peter U. sets up the “Groover,” a heavy steel device that all river runners are required to rent in order to store and pack out their solid human wastes, for both ecological and aesthetic reasons since campsites are small and rare.  Topped with a removable toilet seat when set up which is replaced by an odor-proof seal during transport, it’s efficient and agreeable to use.

(Allan Best photo)

Happy hour, oiled by a modest ration of rum, is followed by dinner prepared by Allan our diligent head chef.  It includes tacos, refried beans, brown rice, salsa, and fresh guacamole.

switchback

to be cast off  ready
by ten fifteen am
after top grade ham ‘n eggs
with no rickin’ it
is to be able
hopefully
to pass by geology notes
of five miles one way
nine miles another
to  end up only
quarter mile from beginning
gives design flaws
and abandoned moments
to end with memories
of taiku for peter

-

sixty eight trivia
reveals more canadian american rivalry
than is hidden
by a black box
over lsd memories

taiku for peter

float beyond tai chi
lotus blossom giving peace
silent hands reveal

Murray th K.

September 19

An early departure is demanded by today’s leader, after breakfast of coffee, cold cereal and stewed dried fruit, our pome reading, and a session of Tai Chi warmups that seems to do more for arthritis than my usual morning hot bath and dose of Ibuprofen.  (Later I wonder whether this relief was actually due to the desert climate.)

One might expect to encounter a rich and diverse array of wildlife along this sole steady source of water in the midst of the high desert, but sightings are rare: small lizards and toads, a kingfisher, a couple of ducks, the occasional crow, and a few jumping fish.  Is this absence due to the animals’ natural caution, their nocturnal habits, or some more sinister cause, such as the human impact on native vegetation created by the introduction of tamarisk? One exception is herons, which entertain us daily with their elegant take-offs and landings and with the iridiscent glisten of their feathers in the midday sun.

(Peter Behr photo)

A 20-mile paddle along a stretch with few places to overnight brings us to Mineral Bottom, a campsite close to the border of Canyonlands National Park that includes an outhouse, some shady old cottonwood trees and the end of a road that heads back to Moab used by people to access the river for a shorter trip than ours.

The canyon walls here recede on both sides of the river allowing for an evening hike up broad Mineral Canyon, where many unsuccessful efforts were made to mine for gold, copper and uranium.  We enjoy stretching legs and discovering behind the ever-present barrier of tamarisks, widely spaced desert plants and, in the washed out roads and newly carved arroyo, evidence of recent flash floods produced by the rainstorms we witnessed on the way here.

(Lionel Webb photo)

Following the suggestion of the outfitter, we each brought along five gallons of drinking water in plastic containers, but this supply is already running low, so David and Lionel start refilling the containers with water purified by the Katadyn hanging water filter. But first the silt in the river water needs to be settled by sitting overnight overnight in five gallon buckets to which has been added two teaspoons of Aluminum Sulfate, a chemical normally used to make Hydrangeas look more blue.

Happy hour depletes our second and last box of wine. After dinner of fried rice, fresh cole slaw and canned salmon, John reads aloud chapters from John Wesley Powell’s account of his 1869 expedition down this river on his way to the Grand Canyon.

He described this section of a trip that later turned terrifying and brutal as a peaceful idyll. Above the campsite a grand butte glows in the setting sun.

mineral bottom

tai chi exercise start
before quick swim bow tie beyond
gives filling between
next to nothing instructions
at mineral canyon bottom
while analysis
of state of th union
dinner prep offers
questions about
enlightenment being possible
dependent upon whether or not
outhouse graffiti is profound

-

sunset hike into hills above
offers supposed mosquito refuge
for those who go
and inner silence for left behind
at orange sunset solitude
with historical perspective
to reveal
and distant hopes
to remain

Murray th K.

September 20

Unloading and loading the canoes at the steep embankment that affords great views of the river at Mineral Bottom is awkward.  There’s general agreement to stop next at a place that looks as if it affords even more shore attractions and doesn’t require a long day’s paddle, Fort Bottom.  Ahead of us during most of the 11 mile paddle looms a great gateway formed by two high escarpments with pillars at each side flanking a low platform through which distant formations can be seen, both upstream and downstream as we approach, circling clockwise and then counterclockwise following the river’s path.  “Big Horn” Mesa is the name stated on the map, but from the water the formation looks like something other than a horn.

The sandbar at Fort Bottom is long and wide, its lower end bordered by a little inlet and a low bank mounted by a trail.  There’s an overhang topped by willows rather than the hostile tamarisk, providing shade for a siesta after lunch and a swim. I weave a garland of twigs to substitute for the adequate hat I neglected to pack.

(Allan Best photo)

A short hike late in the day leads to “Outlaw Cabin,” located in the middle of a plateau 200 feet or so above the river which curves behind it.

Built in the early 1900’s with a hand axe out of cottonwood logs, and graced with a fireplace chimney of sandstone slabs, it’s the only human habitation we’ve seen in four days.  In addition to its ability to survive here unprotected and uninhabited for more than 100 years, one is struck by the crude beauty of its proportions, materials and setting.

It’s reminiscent of the old prospector’s cabins we found in the woods along the Teslin river in the Yukon and dates from the same period.  The guidebook reports that some inhabitants of this area left for the Klondike to continue their search for gold.

Dinner tonight is pasta—glutenous and gluten-free—marinara sauce, and cheese.  At the campfire, Steven reads from Edward Abbey’s book, Down the River, his 1980 account of a trip on the Green River from Mineral Bottom through Cataract Canyon on the Colorado.

 We glide down the golden waters of Labyrinth Canyon.  The water here is smooth as oil, the current slow.  The sandstone walls rise fifteen hundred feet above us, radiant with sunlight manganese and iron oxides, stained with old tapestries of organic residues left on the rock faces by occasional waterfalls…I get up before daybreak…kindle the fire and build the morning’s first pot of black, rich cowboy coffee…the first cupful, warming my hands around the hot cup.  The last stars fade, the sky becomes brighter, passing through the green glow of dawn into the fiery splendor of sunrise…the others straggle up, one by one, and join me around the fire. We stare at the shining sky, the shining river, the high canyon walls, mostly in silence, until one among us volunteers to begin breakfast.  Yes, indeed, we are a lucky little group.  Privileged, no doubt.  At ease out here on the edge of nowhere, loafing into the day, enjoying the best of the luckiest of nations, while around the world billions of other humans are sweating, fighting striving, procreating, starving.  As always I try hard to feel guilty.  Once again I fail.

It includes a description of this very spot: “We make lunch on crackers, canned tuna, and chopped black olives in the shade of a cottonwood by the side of a long-abandoned log cabin.  A trapper, prospector, or cow thief might have lived here—or all three of them—a century ago…The roof is open to the sky.”

We agree to lay over at this campsite another night and next day hike up to the Anasazi ruin on top of a low butte, the last remnant of the canyon wall that used to define the tight curve of the river.

Upstream sunset–full size panorama (Lionel Webb photo)

     taiku

escaped wine test to
hard scrabble bottom gets you
fantastic rescue

Murray th K.

September 21

The dawn breaks as caught by Abbey’s prose and the camera—directly in the East, since this is the holy day of Autumnal Equinox.

We have a brief  breakfast of coffee and granola in order to hike before the heat of the day makes it prohibitive to be far from shade and water. Murray is encouraged not to take on the steep climb, but follows his own lights and eventually makes it to the top with a little help from friends, which includes the loan of Ian’s trekking pole to supplement his cane.  He discovers that the use of two poles is just what’s needed to facilitate the alteration of gait suggested by his Alexander technique physical therapist.

We arrive on the surface of the little butte just as the sun clears the distant edge of the canyon.

Downstream sunrise–full size panorama (Lionel Webb photo)

For the first time in days our viewpoint changes from bottom up to top down. We see the river making an almost complete circle around us and extending for many miles upstream and down.

In the growing light we see a vast array of buttes, and mesas and columns reaching to the horizon in all directions, with no sign of human habitation.

Just at the center of the elevated  platform stands a twelve foot tall cylindrical tower built of crudely piled brown sandstone tiles, accessible through a lower attached vestibule.

I lie down inside and look up at the irregular oval of the sky and at points of light shining through gaps in the tiles.

What was this thousand year old structure?  A fort seems unlikely.  Enemies who reached the top of the butte could surely take this small flimsy structure apart.  A granary?  But the other granaries tucked into cliffs along the way were clearly made to be hidden, not like this one to stand out.  Perhaps some kind of observatory of the heavenly bodies passing across that oval frame, some site of worship.

Once curiousity about the tower is satisfied, Peter U., who by now has become group shaman, leads us again in Tai Chi meditation.

He encourages us to feel the energies of heaven flowing through our moving bodies to earth and the energies of earth rising through them toward the heavens, to experience our being at the center.*

I forgo taking part in order to shoot a short video.

Murray reads his poem-chronicle of yesterday’s events.  Then we split into groups heading different ways.  John and I follow a trail that goes from the butte up toward Big Horn across the decayed ridge that used to be canyon wall.

We sense the minute-by-minute changes in the sun’s position altering the light as well as the changes in geological time by which wind and water have altered the terrain, wearing away vast volumes of the absent rock.

Assembling back at camp in time for lunch, we spend the afternoon swimming, chatting, reading, writing, and basking in the living presence of river, earth and sun. Cigars are enjoyed by some, along with the last ration of rum enjoyed by all during Happy Hour.

Dinner consists of yams, cabbage, stewed dried apples and quinoa, cocoa and marshmallows for dessert.

Someone proposes that we have a discussion of “Sex after Sixty” at the campfire, but after John’s recitation of Powell’s harrowing account of rapids on the Colorado, the plan is forgotten in favor of sleep.

(Lionel Webb photo)

     360 degrees

tai chi peak sunrise
stone cabin wind blow
three sixty degree red cliffs
above crumbling log cabin
cactus sagebrush anthills
gives rest day distance
from heat of mid day travel
evening concert
at quinoa bottom
with hot chocolate marshmallows
and history tales
where walls rise without
serious probabilities
of escaping rising rivers
and desperate extremes
of pirates drunken sailors
and saturn blend together
with personal histories
properly

Murray th K.

A poem by Allan written in 1992

INSIDE OUT

Like an eagle, he stood on the canyon rim
Eyes to the cresting sun
Planting his heels to the centre of the earth
Stretching his soul from his soles to the sky.

He’d been here before
Feeling the swift soar of flight
Diving and swooping the deadly dance of manhood
Then rifling down to seize the prey.

Then he’d drawn his energy from the world around
The wind, the sky, and the sun.
The power was the victory
The sweetness of conquest.

And here he was again, older, quieter
Back to the canyon, back to the rim
Drawn by a vision, a song from the past
Focused on the moment, waiting for the moment.

Now the canyon light is softer
A warmth grows from the inside out
Etching deep beauty on his heart
Searching for a new and gentler way.

How can this be, the hunter silenced
By a hungry splendour mushrooming within
What is this power, this deeper vision
How does the hunter make friends with the wise man?

Still like an eagle, still ready to soar
Feeling the power, straining to go
But grounded and growing
From the inside out.

September 22

Next morning finds us eager to move down the river again after Tai Chi and poetry to discover what lies around the bends.  A long straight stretch is dominated by the steadily enlarging prospect of two towers that Powell’s men named “Butte of the Cross.”

We hope to be able to camp adjacent to a formation dubbed “Turk’s Head,” in order to explore more ruins located around it, but the closest sandbar is smaller than the one shown on the map, so we continue around the corner to a beach across the river from Turk’s Head that allows no land exploration.*

But it does provide a comfortable setting for our dinner of Thai curry and rice.

The Convergence with the Colorado and the end of the voyage is approaching, and every bit of the by-now familiar routine is experienced as precious.

*A picture of Turk’s Head, scanned from the book, Robber’s Roost Outlaws by Tom McCourt, the book for sale at the motel in Moab (from Lionel)

     turkish head

willing to push on
past muddy first landing
is sign of flexible ageing
resulting in quality
conclusion

silence of tai chi grace
in time with
wind swept sunset
‘neath turkish head
stark walls
of autumn’s early beginnings
giving needed room
for left bank jasper sharing
and time for early to bed
recovery

Murray th K.

 September 23

Peter U., the day’s leader, decides we’ll take a paddling break at Jasper Canyon at mile 10, that is about 85 miles on our way, in order to check out the ruins there and hunt for Jasper.  The landing is tricky: one canoe is sent to test it, succeeds in tying up on land and then waits to receive the others and tie them on to the secure canoe. A trail is found, and like all other trails and campsites so far, shows admirably little sign of human disturbance,  due either to the conscientiousness of the thousands of campers who have enjoyed the canyon or to the National Park Service’s invisible maintenance activities.

Peter B. climbs up to the cranny that nestles a little mud and sandstone cylindrical structure with a window that is assumed to be an Anasazi grain storage unit.  It looks as much like one of the many swallows’ nests in these rocks as a human edifice.

Some people wander to the end of the box canyon finding samples of Jasper, others clamber up the sides for a view of the river but are unable to make it to the top of the cliff.

Then it’s back on the river and around one more serpentine to a wide beach under a dramatic rock column.

A brief moment of drama unfolds as an unsecured canoe slips off the bank, heads downstream and is rescued in a quick maneuver by Lionel and Dave.

Tarpmeister pitches the kitchen and parlor shelter freestanding with a tripod of driftwood poles.

As well as creating necessary shade, it captures wind and light and makes a piece of graceful sculpture that harmonizes with its setting.

The sand on this bottom is soft, deep and brilliant white, sloping from a seven-foot depth upstream gradually down to meeting the water’s edge. Chunks of the banks regularly give way and slide into the river, creating a white froth that flows into smooth spiraling patterns.  Some men accelerate the movement of this natural kinetic sculpture, riding the sandslides into the water and letting themselves be carried by the current to the kitchen on the beach and worrying those whose tents are pitched on the higher ground.  Dinner tonight is pasta, pesto, sundried tomatoes and cheese.

    jasper

quick time beyond horse canyon
before island lunch
finding mythical jasper
allows back eddy refuge
beside fully engineered
kitchen tent
with gourmet pesto
produced beside tales
of colorado john wesley powell yesteryear
and bug free
tropical evening plans
for trips to  come

Murray th K.

September 24

As on all previous days, the pairing in the canoes changes and there’s a scramble to secure the better boats and to avoid the worst one, dubbed “The Dumpster,” which is so misshapen that the steel pipe stabilizing the interior of the keel is twisted four inches off the kevlar surface.

We navigate the last few turns of the Green River before it ends its long course and disappears into the Colorado, staging for a moment a group photo with each man carrying one of the letters, M O V I N G P L A N E T, brought along by Steven to take part in the worldwide demonstrations scheduled for this day by 350.org to urge governments to act to address climate change.

The confluence itself, though a notable geographic phenomenon when viewed from above, is unimpressive on the surface of the river.  We pass by two parties of campers waiting for pickup at a sandbar there and then continue down the Colorado to our next day’s rendezvous point known as Spanish Bottom.

There’s a bit of apprehension, after we pass a warning sign about dangerous rapids ahead and small patch of turbulent water, that we may miss the pullout and be swept into Cataract Canyon, but it’s allayed when we find a long beach for our final destination.

Canoes are pulled ashore and washed.  The kitchen is set up for the last time, and several of the group follow a trail through willows and cottonwoods on the broad bench behind the tamaracks that leads around another bend in the river to the top of the Cataract.

The rapids would be impossible to negotiate with our clumsy canoes, but while we stare a couple of inflatable rafts approach slowly from upstream, packed with gear and steered by what appear to be experienced guides conducting passengers. They bob quickly through the loud cascade and meet up in the quiet water below.

We set up a final group portrait.

(Allan Best photo)

The last night’s meal is couscous and lentils and nutella, chocolate and other sweets for dessert.  Thought and conversation turn to the world beyond the Green River: dividing up the leftover supplies, travel arrangements further afield or back home, and a world-wide range of possibilities for next year’s trip.

            confluence

finished before we started
with mud on th blisters
and mispelt moving planet
before Spanish bottom
hidden hikes
to burn afternoon away
for most
while populated clothed river memories
fills th rest

-

eighteen sixty history stories
with next corner unknown
and rapids for real
is so much more
than documented reality
today

Murray th K.

September 25

Peter B. leads an early expedition of hikers up the Lower Red Lake Canyon, on the way discovering wildlife, including deer, lizards, toads and a rattlesnake. Camp is struck after lunch in preparation for the arrival of the Jet Boat at 1:00 p.m. We load it with the canoes and the gear, including the very full Groover. The driver, whose mother and dad are on the boat just for the ride, delivers the case of cold beer which we had arranged for in advance, and we sit like tourists on the three hour ride up the Colorado to Moab, where a bus waits to take us back to town.

(Allan Best photo)

     th grotto

to see morning cataract
with lizard rattlesnake antelope
moumtain top
before on time tag along pickup
and walking stick lesson
in way of colorado start
and  two beer three hour up river return
with moving picture
round each corner
as all flashes back
faster than can be remembered
so similar
but different enuf
to stay transfixed

-

canoes beyond coal
and passing uranium potash
mixed with full symphony
grand piano concert
boated in to th grotto
for all to hear
at just missed
moab music festival

Murray the K.

return home

main street city market
breakfast lunch grocery souvenir shop
before three hour
air conditioned  airport wait
stretches to four hour
apprehension

-

taking off at last
gives mountain views beyond
cloud cover interference
bringing forest regeneration
from above bumpy ride
to rocky other side
where chain restaurant airport dinner rescue
gives restful leg room west coast flight
for most
and rapid return
to safety of home

Murray th K.

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]

My sleeping bag is wet in the morning fog.  I’m up early and with the help of a chunk of paraffin found in the sand, build a fire to dry it out and get warm.

We break camp late in the morning realizing that unless we slow down, at the present rate, we’ll be at the end of the trail a day early.  The fog remains, erasing the long vistas of previous days’ walks and intensifying sights and sounds close by.

I fall behind my companions, trying a walking meditation, linking the muffled sound of the waves moving in and out with inhale and exhale and with the right-left movement of limbs.  The line of foam at the margin of each wave snakes sinuously, a white bead that thickens and then quickly dissolves as the water drains backward and percolates down through the porous grains, leaving a shimmering curtain of radiance that disappears from the smooth slope as soon as it’s seen.  At the bottom, a gaping throat opens in which pebbles dance during the instant before the next wave moves forward and swallows them.

One beach is strewn with bright purple sea urchins on which crows leisurely feast.

We reach the most popular camping spot on the trail, Tsuishat Falls, but the falls are almost dry and the beach camping area is full of litter.  We decide to press on.

Back up in the forest I try to maintain focus on the breath to the exclusion of other thoughts by counting exhales up to ten and then starting over, following suggestions from several sources. Later I cease counting and attend to the full range of each breath. On the boardwalks where little attention is required to navigate the trail, I drink in the green of salal and fern and skunk cabbage.

After an amusement-park ride in the self-propelled cable car across Klanawa River we stop to camp.

In the thickening fog, the grove of spruces by the outhouse and bear cache feels spooky.  Mist rises from the flat lagoon of the river and the ocean is still.  More people here might be welcome.  My darkening mood is dispelled by the chance to get into the sleeping bag with all my clothes on and catch up with the journal while Peter prepares dinner and Steve creates a driftwood sculpture.

The sun appears for the first time today in melancholy grandeur. The fog luminesces above the towering headland to the north backlit by a brilliant ray descending diagonally into the ocean. Then its white disk is sharply defined, but only as bright as the full moon behind a light mist. The disk moves slowly behind the trees along the ridge sillouetting their pointed tops and branches.  The oblique ray shifts hue from white to orange and  its source dissolves into a burst of radiance, then slides below the horizon.

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

Slow morning to enjoy the sunshine and instant coffee.

Next time it will be fine ground beans. Hike is partway on beach, partway on forest trail facilitated by boardwalks, ladders, suspension bridge, steel bridge and cable trolleys.  Views of water and rock and little coves below alternate with deep forest, ancient bogs and a beaver pond bypass.

Arrive at Nitinat Narrows ferry in time for another Indian Reserve restaurant lunch.  We benefit from the assertion of First Nation rights.

A four year old girl, strong Indian features but with blond-brown hair cavorts around the dock.  Her Daddy runs the little ferry and the family enterprise. He pulls a rope up to the dock and lifts out the crab ordered by Peter, tears it apart for cooking by his son and throws some scraps into the water where a large school of salmon fry clean them up.

I get salmon caught off Bonilla Point, which we walked by yesterday, Paul gets halibut.

At the next table two strapping women who passed us at intimidating speed are having lunch.  We chat.  They are carrying three bottles of booze and will finish the trail in four not our 8 days.  One with a French accent is from Montreal, has just finished school and earlier in the summer cycled down the coast to San Francisco.  Steve and she compare notes about the roads.  He did it with his son 20 years ago.

The dock where we sit is anchored at the edge of Nitinat narrows, which drains and fills a huge saltwater lake (lake not inlet because it also has freshwater that flows into the ocean).  The deep green water heads upstream at an astonishing rate, the surface curled by whirlpools.  After lunch Daddy ferries us across to the trailhead.

Late in the afternoon we find a beach access. Paul and I search for water while Peter and Steve wait, refusing to go on further.  A spring is found hidden in the brush at an unmarked spot south of Tsushiat point where we set up for the night.

Wind has shifted onshore and we see the fog approaching.  Noone else in sight in all directions.  I listen to the gravelly rumble of pebbles pushed and pulled by the waves rolling against one another .

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

Today is shoreline hike. 9km of beauty and easy travel.  Sandstone shelves, crescent beaches, otters, eagles, laughter.

Lunch at Chez Monique next to Carmanah lighthouse, on Indian Reserve Land.  Eating freshly prepared hamburger, halibut burger, salmon burger, with cooscoos and salad.

Three WOOFIE workers, two of them young twins from France working as waitress and cook in tarp covered driftwood kitchen:”wood you like ahliboot?”

Loud dogs.  Monique is gruff and loud and forthcoming with a flow of fascinating information.  She’s 70 years old, taking MS in horticulture during the Winter in the Fraser Valley.  Strong French Canadian accent.

Her husband is pureblood member of local Indian Band.   She talks to him on cell phone as he’s bringing in daily food order for the restaurant on a Zodiac. She chronicles her battles over the decades with the Provincial and Federal Governments and the Canadian Park Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the neighboring lighthouse keepers and the other Indian groups that have reserve land along the coast.  She’s maintained this business, hated by all of them, because she knows her legal rights and shows an impressive mastery of local anthropology.  In addition to lunches and big breakfasts, she caters dinners for fishermen parties and backpacker tours which include the organic vegetables and flowers she grows in front of her house by the beach.  Gas is provided by bottled propane, power by solar and a small wind turbine and stored in car batteries.  The big storm of 2007 wiped her out but she rebuilt again.

After luxurious lunch we pass lighthouse, move further through forest up the coast and come back to the beach at Cribs Creek.

Another lagoon and freshwater swim.  An eagle lands on a log and tears at a seagull it’s caught, then takes off as I approach.

Peter body surfs and Steve and I try unsuccessfully to launch a raft through the breakers.

We build a sunshade and kitchen area with driftwood and raise our own bear cache in a secluded campsite several hundred yards down the beach from the central one, which again is crowded.

Paul was given a wallet left behind at Monique’s by one of the Ontario women and he leaves it for her at her campsite.  She comes to the lagoon with word that her sister is carrying too much and got some sunstroke but is recovering.  She’s an eighth grade science teacher.  We talk pedagogy.

Sleep under stars again. Sunset and crescent moon over water.  Milky Way bright.  A satellite moving overhead brightens like an outsized shooting star. I wonder if it’s a landing spaceship.  But it dims and continues its smooth silent progress.  Probably caught the sun after it set here down below. Meditations on the sand last two nights accompanied by rhythmic sound of the gently breaking waves.

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

Eight hours hiking, lots of ladders, less vertical elevation change than first day and no terrible boulders to negotiate. Feeling stronger due to conditioning.  Most of the time in the woods.  Boardwalks in rough shape.  We’re thankful it’s not muddy and slimy as it must be most of the time here in the rainforest.  Lots of conversation, especially between Steve and me who hang back. Hemlock needles falling like snow; sunlight in patches.

Arrive at Walbran Creek campsite, grateful to be back on the  shoreline. A large lagoon and expanse of beach.  Many people here, but no crowding.  Cloudless skies.  Swim in big lagoon under an outcrop gripped by a large spruce growing vertically from under its overhang.

The sea here warmer than at Thrasher Cove.  Peter swims in it and rests.

Fog and cloud gone.  Wide ocean vistas, Cape Flattery in Washington to the South.  A constant parade of container ships entering Juan de Fuca Straight bound for Vancouver and Seattle and China.  Here’s where our camping gear enters the country on its way to REI and MEC.  Steve says they carry Treasury Bills back. Paul and Peter work with neighboring Swiss couple to string our bear caches up in a tree.

Steve cooks excellent Pad Thai, complemented by Chanterelles found on the trail.

Sleep under the stars.  Sunset and moonlight on water.

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

First two hours this morning were brutal.  Climbing over house-sized, sharp, slippery boulders and huge piles of logs with heavy packs.

Steve fell twice.  I watched him go down and get back up.  Each could have been the end of his trip, adding to this summer’s 62 evacuations.

Paul, eager and strong, always in the lead.

I enjoy approaching my limit.  Pain, sweat, fatigue, and breathing hard focus the mind on here and now.

Scenery gains beauty as we approach sea stacks on the point.  Once around it, the beach flattens, the broken granite and basalt now blanketed with a wide sandstone shelf. We enter a dark network of softly sculptured channels that reflect rainbow-colored bands of algae growing on walls supporting the ancient forest above.  Views are framed by sculpted arches and windows opening inward on a labyrinth of caves and outward on offshore islands covered with the rounded bodies of basking sea lions.

We put down packs and wander through this wonderland, then sit and munch crackers and salami.  Two young women I’d greeted at Thrasher Cover come round the point carrying packs larger than ours. We share relief at the change in topography and excitement at the splendor of the caves. They set down packs and the blond removes her sweater revealing a nicely rounded belly.

A walk on the flat beach, skirting the surge channels impassable at any but low tides and then back up to the bush trail with more steepness, ladders, wooden walkways.

The history of the trail as a rescue route for shipwrecked mariners is evidenced in telegraph wire insulators embedded in tree bark.

A few old logging sites are marked by “derelict donkey” and cable.

We stop at Camper Bay, appropriately named since its every inch of beach and forest margin is packed with tents, despite the strictly limited number of permits issued.  One of the two compost toilets is filled to capacity and despite our fatigue and the beauty of the location, we’re grossed out by the smell and the traffic.  Everyone who has come here for wilderness and solitude shares the same distaste, but it’s overcome by affability.  We schmooze with the two young women, who hail from Ontario, a couple from Saskatoon who’ve taken the hike seven times before with their six children and who sit by their campfire drinking tea out of china cups and saucers they packed in, and members of an all female guided group of civil servants from Victoria.  I swim in the clear water of the lagoon created by a rock dam of the creek along the beach, and Paul cooks supper of beans, rice and bacon bits.  Afterwards I find quiet around the point now exposed by low tide.

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

The trip concluded a long summer holiday which involved Jan and my driving from San Luis Obispo to Knoll House in Lund B.C., spending ten days there with children and grandchildren, driving to Eastern Oregon for the wedding of a relative, driving to Portland, from where Jan and the dog flew back to San Luis in time for her City Council meeting, and my driving from Portland to Port Angeles, where I left the car and ferried to Victoria to meet Peter on the way to the trailhead.

August 9 Heart of the Hills Campground, Olympic National Park WA

Inside a cloud, dark and grey under the old-growth spruces and cedars. The campground quiet and underpopulated.

A family pulls up to the neighboring campsite: 2 parents, black and white, and their five-year old boy.  His high, loud voice echoes in the forest stillness.  His parents are patient, loving, full of instruction and rule.

I used my senior passport to get in free and pay only 6$ to camp. Sinus pressure and cough just returned. Will I need more antibiotics before the hike?

I repack my backpack for the third time on the picnic table, always subtracting. I’m worried about the weight.

August 10

Awake at 6 AM, no sign of illness. But the threat remains, increasing desire to keep trying limits while I can.  I’ll see what the weight is like on a trail this morning.

Two and a half hours later I return, glad to set the pack down, but not exhausted or in pain.  No Aleve needed now for the knees. The trekking poles work wonderfully—absorbing shock and adding forward momentum, allowing  me to walk like a quadruped.

More sorting and packing: what goes in the hike pack, what in the Victoria pack, what stays in the car. In my journalette, I map what’s where in the pack. I’ll look up those locations instead of searching for things.  Mindfulness.  I’m reading “Buddha’s Brain.”  I practise on the trail: attention to breathing, movement of feet, the quiet.

Why do this? Expend the time and money, take on the preparation, discomfort, and risks?  To encounter simple necessity, to escape family and state, to find friendship and solitude, to return with pictures and words.  For adventure, a venture, face the unknown, experience engagement, not detachment.  Jan prefers different ventures: running for mayor, facing opponents, managing organizations.

August 11

Peter picks me up at 6:00 A.M. in front of Ann’s house, where I crashed after ferrying by foot from Port Angeles.  I feel royally accommodated. At Port Renfrew we eat a big breakfast at fisherman’s restaurant and drive to the trail information center located on an Indian Reserve strewn with garbage and half-wrecked houses. The mandatory orientation lecture a fast paced forty minute Powerpoint detailing dangers and challenges to a room full of people who’ve succeeded in getting one of a limited number of reservations, eager to get going.

A tiny ferry ride, then five and a half hours walk through dappled first-growth forest, steep verticals, the rough trail made somewhat easier by long ladders leading into and out of deep gullies gouging impassable headlands.

It’s the shakedown experience alternating between challenge and ordeal. I’m bathed in sweat and drink 3 litres of water.

The last section descends 200 rungs to the beach at Thrasher Cove, where we share the campsite with about 30 others.  I cook quinoa and lentil curry and chocolate pudding from Trader Joes for appreciative mouths, lightening my pack 4 lbs.

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

Alone on the wide beach in the misty rain, I load the kayak with slow deliberation, making sure hatches are tightly sealed and the sprayskirt suspenders are properly hitched to keep out water from above and below. I pour a libation from my drinking bottle onto the sand and then perform a Japanese bow to land and sea.  Finally afloat and rudder down, I swivel the kayak to face the lodge and wave my paddle overhead.  In reply there’s a high-pitched roar.

As I glide toward the southern point of Twin Islands, drops of rain go plick-plack and raise tiny domed towers in the center of widening circular ripples. The paddling has an easy rhythm controlled by the same muscles that held my posture erect while sitting. Nothing I’ve written has been as successful as my sojourn’s staged conclusion, but every minute of the trip has felt adventurous, and I depart with the hope that I’ve earned the teacher’s approval. Looking westward toward the gray expanse of sea and sky between Cortes and Hernando, I fantasize turning right ninety degrees and heading off into the great beyond.

The rain subsides during the crossing to Hernando, where I stop at a cove to pee and eat lunch.  Out from the lee of the island afterwards, the waves pick up, but not enough to discourage me from heading straight across the open water toward Major Rock rather than trying to take the longer route hugging the shores of Hernando and Savary.  I get within striking distance of the Ragged Islands so quickly that I expect to be in Lund two hours earlier than planned, but then I find that for twenty minutes I’ve made no progress at all. The sun has come out and the tide and wind must have shifted. I paddle hard to reach the protection of the narrow channel between the first two Raggeds, passing the point that Jan and I and the children and grandchildren have camped on over the years.  There’s some shelter here, but it still takes the time and effort I originally estimated to reach my destination.  I call and leave messages about safe arrival for Jan, Peter and Ruth, return the kayak, and head to the Lund Pub for a beer and a hamburger.

“Interesting,” she says, “that corresponds to my own experience. I left Cortes to marry and live for many years in Chicago, before returning here.  It reminds me of a great class I audited at Harvard as an undergraduate by a professor…what was his name…”

“ Erik Erikson,” I exclaim, “the author of Childhood and Society. He’s the one whose ideas about stages of the life cycle guided my research. I still have his wonderful response to a fan letter I wrote him in 1967.”

“I’d like to read your dissertation,” she says.

“It’s online, Google ‘Youth against Age’.”

Before breakfast I call Jan, who is driving Claire to Santa Maria today for a biopsy of the cyst on her ovary.  I thank her for handling all this alone while I’m away.

The morning workshop begins with announcements.  At 2 p.m. there will be a memorial service in the sanctuary for Christine, a friend of Ruth, Kate and Martha who was active in their Vancouver Zen Center, and for Anna, an Islander who recently succumbed to cancer. We’re invited to join and include names of our recently departed. Tonight after dinner, Ruth will host a little farewell wine and cheese party in her Hollyhock living quarters. Tomorrow after breakfast, we’ll gather at the beach to see Steven off, since he needs to start paddling back to Lund before our final session.

Kate introduces the day’s theme of Metta, the Buddhist directive of Compassion or Lovingkindness for all living creatures. To prepare, it’s traditional to ask forgiveness of others, offer forgiveness to others and offer foregiveness to oneself, with appropriate variations of three utterances:

There are many ways I have hurt, betrayed or abandoned others, knowingly or unknowingly, through greed, aversion, or ignorance.
I ask your forgiveness.
I open my heart to receive your forgiveness.

Now comes the expression of Lovingkindness itself, through an utterance like this:

May you be free from harm
May you be well in body and mind
May you be happy.

She guides us in Metta meditation, which applies the blessing to a sequence of recipients: first, the self, then a friend or benefactor, then a person to whom one has no emotional reaction, then a “difficult” person—someone by whom one feels aggrieved or irritated—then to all four as equals, and finally, through an expandable set of steps, to all sentient creatures.  The sequence is then followed in reverse order, concluding with the expression of lovingkindness to oneself. Kate’s subdued enthusiasm for this practice in ethics complements the quiet righteousness of the poems she read two nights before. After four days together, I can apply these categories to fellow participants in the retreat. It works.

Ruth says that the practice in developing empathy, opening the heart, dissolving the barriers between self and the world honed for thousands of years in Buddhist tradition is indispensable for writers, facilitating imaginative access to others from the inside. Our prompt is to select one of the people from our Metta meditation and to write from that person’s point of view.

At first I’m at a loss. I’ve never been observant enough to record the details that would allow me to imagine another person’s story.  But I did have that disarming flash a couple of days ago about the teacher’s momentary succumbing to Doubt, probably only my own projection, but neverthess concrete and vivid.  And Ruth is the person I chose in the Metta meditation as “friend or benefactor.”  I wished her relief from any fatigue she might be experiencing while giving so much of herself to our small circle of students.  Perhaps I could use that session as the framework for doing this assignment.  There’s just enough time now to get started, but I’ll come back to it later.

Next prompt is to adopt the point of view of a child, using simple sentences and vocabulary: “a time when you were sad, a lie you told, a time when you were too big or too small, a time when you got wet or dirty.”

O shoot, it’s grandpa again.  I wish my mom would pick me up at school, like Max’s and Kevin’s. Now he’s going to ask me questions about the spelling test and tell me to talk louder and take me to Trader Joe’s for a healthy snack before karate. I don’t want him to see me taking off my boxers and putting on the cup. I really hope she isn’t late  so we have to put off dinner and everybody gets cranky.  Or even worse we hold hands around the table and start without her.

It still feels forced, but I’m starting to enjoy this task, and occasionally images and words take off on their own.

Another prompt.  “You’re an old man in a supermarket shopping. Don’t mention your wife’s recent death, but evoke it indirectly.”

Howard steered his cart carefully up to the checkstand.  It was full of frozen dinners that reminded him of their meals: Turkey and mashed potatoes, steak and broccoli, spaghetti and meatballs. From the overwhelming selection, he’d limited himself to the ones marked “Von’s Club Special, save 30%”.

At lunch I meet with Kate in a personal consult about meditation.  I learn a little about her history as an anti Vietnam war exile from New Jersey, her work as a hospice chaplain in Vancouver, and her recent move to the fringes of the city where she and her husband have  established a community zendo in their home.  I tell her about my attending this workshop as a kind of revival effort to infuse more intention into my meditation routine and of my enjoyment of longer and more directed practice under her and Martha’s guidance.  She asks if there is a Zen community near me and I say yes, and I know several people who belong, but I’ve steered clear of any institutional religion since adolescence. She says nothing, and then I hear myself say that I think I’ll get in touch with them upon my return.

Before the afternoon memorial service, I work on the point-of-view exercise.  As with the dying person’s monologue yesterday, my effort to summon up detail leads to irony. Invading another person’s mind uncovers the difference between what they’re projecting and what I can imagine they’re feeling. At least that’s a way you can engage the reader, find the juiciness, even if you have to make it up.  But it gets morally risky. Empathy can be spying and stalking, like a hunter knowing one’s prey. Invention can be forgery.

In the sanctuary at 2:00, Ruth, Kate and Martha sit wearing little rectangular bibs around their necks, Kate and Martha in black robes.  Also attending are fellow workshop participants, Carol and Fran. The carefully orchestrated ritual begins with silent meditation and is followed by a fifteen-minute monotone chant we read from a single page of transliterated syllables, their sounds from the pre-Sanskrit language of Pali, their meaning lost centuries ago. Names of the recently departed are incorporated: Christine, Anna, then Carol’s mother, and my mother-in-law Ruth.  Afterwards we speak in tribute to the dead. From what is said about Anna, I recognize a person I never met, but whose name was often mentioned by Larry C., the man whose Vancouver home Jan and I lived in while looking for land in 1970. He too now lives on the Island, a friend of Ruth and Martha’s. He was sitting in the first row at the reading two nights before.

After the service I call Jan again.  She says this morning’s exploratory surgery turned more serious. The whole ovary had to be removed and sent to pathology.  Claire will spend three days in the hospital recovering.  The doctor thinks its benign, but further conclusions await the lab report in two weeks.

My last workshop session starts at 5:00.  Just time to share our reworked point-of-view sketches.  Laura reads a long rollicking account of two sisters from a remote Alberta farm getting intiated into the Banff party scene during high school summer jobs.  What an ear! Carol narrates her childhood experience of riding in the backseat of the car with her mother singing a tragic folksong. What a memory!  I read my piece.

Day three. Getting tired. Trying dutifully, but this afternoon I’m losing incandescence.  Is it these baggy pants?  This dirty hair? We’re at the place where the startup wonder wanes, and they hanker to do their own work. Three hours of workshop in the morning.  Those avid consults while I’m supposed to be eating, and now more lecture. All prepared. For only six people, sometimes five.  Babysitter’s wages. Maybe tonight will spark it up.  Right now the rat in the wall’s more interesting than synaesthesia.

There’s some laughter and a request to read it again, which I do.  Then silence.

I finish dinner early and linger in the bookstore planning to catch Ruth and apologize for the intrusiveness of my sketch, but hoping she’ll say she liked it.  She exits the lodge and approaches me as I walk toward her in the garden.  She speaks first and says that she was really hurt by what I wrote.  Not for herself, but because of what the other members of the workshop must have felt when she laughed and seemed to accept my characterization of her thoughts about them.  It was so far off that when I read it aloud she didnt get it, and by the time the connection registered, it was too late to reassure them that she’s really loved doing this workshop and deeply respects the people in it.

I’m flooded with shame.  I’d meant to be a diligent student.  And I’d meant to be a compassionate  colleague. But instead I played a cruel trick on the person I held in highest esteem.  I’m amazed at  her concern that they, not she, could be hurt.  I try to explain: getting into another’s point of view as a writer was very tough for me.  Being a teacher myself allowed me to imagine that situation. I was looking for the juice, following directions, trying to be sympathetic and also to be special.

She says yes, she understands.  It’s her problem.  I’m warmed and relieved by her hug of forgiveness, but still  confused by my own motives.

Ruth’s room in the guest house is abuzz when I arrive.  People are setting out cheese and crackers, opening bottles of wine, and fussing to get a large monitor hooked up to her laptop.  This is the occasion to roll out the weblog she’s been adding to while we were writing in Kiakum.  Accessible by password only to us participants, it’s an archive of the lecture notes, prompts, and citations that she and Kate have assembled in preparation, and it will contain work that we’ve produced while here and any links we can recommend.  She clicks links to my website, to her own blog, Ozekiland, to the huge Everydayzen.org site she moderates for her teacher Norman Fischer.  I drink my first glass of alcohol in a week.

She talks about her upcoming ordination as Zen priest by Norman and brings out a large piece of black needlework she’s about to finish as part of her preparation: Buddha’s robe, fourteen thousand tiny even stitches. Her head will be shaved. A couple of weeks later she and Kate will be led by Norman on a tour of Zen monasteries in Japan.

I empty my glass the second time. Outside the wind has come up in the treetops. I think about kayaking back tomorrow.  For the last three days, storms have been predicted. Several of the women express worry.  I assure them that if necessary I’ll get someone from Hollyhock to take me and the kayak by truck ten miles down the road to the sheltered harbor in Cortes Bay and call the Lund Water Taxi to come out and pick me up.