Encampment of Enchantment

Last week I pointed the front bumper of my truck south from Steamboat Springs and by sunset, as the full moon rose, I was parked safely outside of Taos, New Mexico. Two days later, Cass and I moved into a little adobe house in San Cristobal. New Mexico is known as the “Land of Enchantment,” and there is a sign at the end of our road that reads, “Enchanted Circle.” There is magic here, and somehow, it seems we landed in the midst of it.

It goes against my better judgment to take the first place I look at, but as the landlord showed us the little cabin and told us about the property, virtually all of the things on our mental checklists got checked off. He told us we could grow our own food, keep bees and even livestock. These aren’t on the immediate horizon, but with really cheap rent, if we did grow our own food we could live for almost nothing. I must admit, the fact that D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley used to live on this property didn’t hurt either.

It is well known that this region attracts artist. I’m starting to think that Taos makes artists. The land here feels like a well stocked pantry of creativity. Often I feel that I have to bring my own ingredients for creativity, but here there are so many around I just reach out my hands and toss whatever I can grab into the creative cauldron. It smells good as it simmers. I don’t know what it will taste like. It may be just be a soup stock for a future creation.

The shadows are lengthening and the coffee shop will soon close. Perhaps I’ll stop at the little hot spring bubbling out of the rocks along the Rio Grande seven miles from our house. Maybe I’ll just go home and try to decipher the Raven’s language as they shout at each other from the trees around the house. Either way, I intend to make sure that New Mexico is living up to its motto.

Cultivating Visions from the Warming Hut

Ah, the first week of a new year… I consider this the lowest pressure week of the year. Whatever last year had to offer has already been received, and due to those new last two digits at the end of the date, there is nothing but a clean slate to work with. It feels much like it did in school when the teacher would give the assignment for a research paper or project. Though bound to be a lot of work, the assignment would set the wheels of creativity in motion unencumbered by a nearing deadline. This is much different than the feeling one gets on deadline week when those wheels are often forced to spin faster without the luxury and lubrication of time. This same feeling is experienced when the post office tells you that you only have one more day to post packages if you want them to arrive by Christmas.

I’m experiencing this low pressure week from Steamboat Springs Colorado. From my comfortable seat in the new wing of the Bud Werner Memorial Library, the snow is gently falling, covering up all traces of last week and last year. When I was young I thought that the if you mixed all of the colors together it would be black. After all, that’s what it looked like when I colored in a space with all the crayons in the box. Later, in photography class they told us that the color white had all of the colors in the spectrum. I have seen proof of this when the sun hit’s the snow and the individual snowflakes reflect all the colors in the rainbow. When I first moved to Steamboat 12 years ago one of my major complaints was the lack of color here during the winter. The sky was blue, the trees brown and green and sometimes when the sun would raise or set, there were some reds and oranges but in the winter the primary color was white. Today the sky is just a few shades darker than the snow and the other colors look more gray than anything. Fortunately, I can use what I learned in photography to see the snow for what it is. All of the colors in the spectrum: Pure potential.

This is a very trying time for many of us. This time of the year the weather is colder and the days are shorter. This leaves us with less energy and usually limits our daily journeys to paths that took valuable energy to clear for ourselves. At least it is this way in snowy communities. This year it feels even more oppressive due to a failing economy and increasing war around the globe. Cabin fever with messages of doom and gloom pumped over the airwaves are only making things worse for the individual and collective psyche. Seeing this makes this time of limbo feel extra important.

I’m sitting here in limbo waiting for my taxes to get finished and my damaged passport to get renewed. In the meantime I have been using the internet and magazines to see visions of beauty and hope. Darkness and light are always present and they are both contagious. I was taught in the past that it was really important to watch the news to see what was going on in the world. I rarely did. The longer I went without news the more I realized why I never wanted to watch it. Dwelling on the one percent of what was actually happening took away from experiencing the 99 percent that felt applicable to me. It made me feel powerless. Conversely, the program I was in at school aimed to empower me to empower others. Ironically this was the impetus for us to start a newspaper in Steamboat Springs. The Local empowered people to tell their own story about their perception of the world. Each of us has the potential to have a 16 hour newscast that is our own life (the other eight would be spent sleeping). That is, unless we devote our lives to the way someone else chooses to view the world.

That being said, I have been following the news and the life I am living at this moment would not be a newscast worthy of watching. I am, however, greatly enjoying this time of freedom and using it to embark on imaginary journeys, some of which will be real journeys in the near future. My practice right now is to briefly acknowledge the problems and injustices happening, but then immediately turn to a plan to create something positive. Nothing gets in the way of progress like negativity. I find it much more powerful to use what I call the law of enticement. If you don’t like the way things are, create something more enticing. Just like water always flows to a lower point, people usually flow effortlessly towards things that feel good or things that they want.

The snow is still falling. Each layer erases images from the mind’s canvas presenting a space for new creation. What entices you? I’d love to hear.

Back to Reality

Beginning to write this blog entry feels like trying to extract a thimble sized sample of water by dipping a syringe into the Colorado River as it flows through the Grand Canyon.

I just looked back at my last entry and saw that I used a snow globe metaphor. Now I question that wisdom. Before reaching Montreal I had experienced a week of rain in California. A few days after reaching the ashram in Val Moran, Canada, the rain turned to snow. It snowed and it snowed. I lost track after 24 days of snow. The snow would stop for half a day in order to let Jack Frost poke his sharp nose out and smell his handywork. On an exhale he breathed his icy breath throughout the mountains bringing temperatures down to -15 Fahrenheit. Fittingly, my chores at the ashram consisted of shoveling snow and cutting firewood. Calls to my Dad in Las Vegas and Cass in California made me anticipate the sunny warmth upon my return. No dice.

When I flew into Las Vegas the Valley was covered in snow. On my way to Dad’s house I saw the palm tree I wrote about in my last entry; It had three inches of snow sitting on its mop top. I enjoyed my day in Las Vegas. We didn’t make it to the strip but even the lights in outskirts resembled a psychedelic dream. It was culture shock but the carrot at the end of my stick was my girlfriend waiting for me in the peaceful hills of Northern California.

When the wheels touched in San Francisco I made two phone calls. My Dad told me that I was lucky that I got out when I did because the snow was falling and Cass told me that she would attempt to pick me up, but due to snowy roads, she may not be able to make it down the mountain. I jumped on two different busses heading north. The first bus got me to Charles M. Schultz airport in Santa Rosa (yes, there was a huge Snoopy statue out front) and the second bus got me to Willits. Unfortunately, there were no busses heading north from there and it turned out that Cass could not make it down the mountain to pick me up. As the second bus dropped me off I took advantage of the last few minutes of daylight and stuck my thumb out hoping to get a ride. The ride didn’t come that night, but I did get a call from a local woman who had ties to Heartwood, the community where Cass lives. She asked me where I was, and a few minutes later I was sliding open the door of a green mini-van and saying hello to a smiling face. “I know you,” were the first words to come out of Krista’s mouth when I opened the door. It turned out that she lived in Steamboat Springs for a few months back in 2002 and we had a mutual friend. When we got to her house she told me that she would be staying at her boyfriend’s house and I was welcome to stay at her house in a comfortable bed. She also invited me to come to her yoga class which started in an hour. When I told her about my past month of yoga teacher’s training, we decided that it would be fun if I taught her class. An hour later I was teaching my first yoga class in the outside world. It’s amazing how fast things work.

The next morning I tried calling Krista a few times but there was no answer, so I dragged my computer bag and roller board out to the street and walked to the busiest road I could see. Luckily it was indeed HWY 101. It didn’t take long to get my first ride. Within two hours I was in Garberville at the bottom of the snowy hill that prevented Cass from picking me up. On a good day it takes between 45 minutes and an hour to drive it to Heartwood. Who knew how long it may take on this day.

Fortunately, It didn’t take too long. Three different cars picked me up. The roads were indeed hairy, but the trucks were equipped to handle the conditions. I arrived at Heartwood just in time for the lunch bell.

This was two days ago. There is still snow on the ground and it‘s currently raining, but we hope that the snow will melt in time to get us to Taos New Mexico shortly after Christmas. I never thought I would get stuck in the snow less than 20 miles from the California cost.

Montreal

Canada has never felt so foreign to me. I guess I thought the same about New York when I entered its airport in the wee hours this morning. I suppose the East Coast sun had risen, but that was a secret jealously kept by the rain and lovesick clouds who were trying to have their way with the ground. All of this drama kept us on the ground for an extra hour. Our tiny plain was number 30 in line for takeoff. Until today, I have never had a pilot turn off the engine and announce that it was ok to turn your cell phones and ipods back on for at least 20 more minutes. When we landed and deplaned in Montréal, the customs agents were as reluctant to let me in as New York was to let me out. Maybe it was because I had a one way ticket to a yoga ashram, or maybe it was because my appearance was affected by the past eight hours that felt like trying to sleep on a wooden benched rollercoaster. Thinking back at the situation, it could also possible that they were toying with me. The three separate women who sent me into the depth of beaurocratic maze were all about my age, they all sent me forward with a slightly coy smirk and the third one said that it was really slow right now but I should come back later. I bet every day during their lunchtime smoke break they get together and talk about the “victim of the day” Long story short, I’m now in Café Vienne a block from the bus station waiting for a bus to take me to Val Morin.
It’s really fun to be in a foreign country again. Outside the rain is falling and two guys in electric wheel chairs with cigarettes dangling from their lips are on opposite sides of the street racing each other while pedestrians dive out of the way. Across the street is a Libanaise (that’s how it is spelled) restaurant with a neon sign that has a neon knife wielding chef cutting neon lamb slices for neon kababs. When I have worn my welcome out here I’ll probably go across the street and look for some exotic food and tea.

I have heard French people make fun of Canadian French because it offends their ears. I just offend myself when I have to order things in English because all I took in College for a foreign language was American Sign Language. Regardless, people have been very kind to me here.
It has been a strange transition this past few months. I went from full time job to long distance motorcycle riding to a retreat in the woods of Northern California and Oregon to Las Vegas complete with casinos and bars and now I am about to have a month of a strict yogic lifestyle. The whole point was to shake up the snowglobe I call my psyche. When this is all over it will be interesting to see what it looks like when the snowflakes land. I’m just kind of hoping that there will be a palm tree there.

Reconnection

At 5pm on Saturday evening, I unplugged my vacuum, scooped up a handful of cleaning supplies and walked them down my stairs adding them to a random pile of stuff awaiting a new tenant. My pickup truck was already packed. After slipping a note and key through the manager’s mail slot, I chased the setting sun to the Utah border. As I laid my sleeping bag on the red dirt a few shooting stars welcomed me home to my place under the Milky Way, my Steamboat life was but a memory.

The past week has been one of my most trying ones to date. I basically sequestered myself away in my apartment and went through 7-plus years of accumulation and reduced it so it would fit comfortably into my pickup truck. That last week in Steamboat felt strange. I got to say goodbye to a small handful of friends, but for the most part, I just hid out. I didn’t even go out for Halloween. This was partly because I had so much to do, but mainly because I had no desire. The effects of spending the last eight years as a newspaper publisher are starting to become apparent. Paulie, my business partner said it best, “It’s great because people don’t kiss my ass anymore.” I have found that my interactions, though fewer, have been more real.

In the past two days I have driven about 12,000 miles to Heartwood Institute outside of Garberville California. My girlfriend Cassidy is working here for a few months and I figure it will be a perfect chance to leave my old life behind and prepare for the new. The plan is to head to Las Vegas from here and put my stuff in my Dad’s garage and then fly to Montreal Canada for a month of Yoga teacher training in an ashram. I’m not sure if I will teach yoga when I finish, but I at least want to hit “reset” and figure out what’s next.

Judging by the smell, what’s next is dinner. Happy Election Day Eve! Spooky…

Home, well, sorta...

I never made it to San Diego. I was swallowed up by the LA vortex. Sometimes it’s good to dip a toe into an experience. I dove in head first. Some of my highlights were having swim races in a friend’s new pool while smoke from dozens of out of control fires blew overhead, screening a film with a producer friend in Hollywood, going to a yoga class with a few yoga teacher friends of mine, chasing a friend around the windy roads between the coast and the 101 as he tried to lose me on his motorcycle, spending two days surfing with a lifeguard friend in El Segundo and finally, spending the day with Cass watching the wildlife in Venice Beach. Two days before I was going to head back to Las Vegas and Steamboat we were staying with some friends in Santa Barbara. The husband asked me if I knew anyone who would be passing through who may want to drive his pickup back to Steamboat. I told him that if my motorcycle would fit in the back, I would be happy to drive it back. It did. The next day I reluctantly loaded Shadowfax in the bed of the pickup, said goodbye and began the journey to Steamboat via Las Vegas where Shadowfax will be spending time in my Dad’s garage. The end of our journey together took me by surprise, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help someone and avoid having to book a flight back to Steamboat. We logged just over 4,000 miles since 9/11

The drive yesterday was gorgeous. I went between five and 10 mph under the speed limit the whole way. It was great to catch up with friends on the cell phone, something I can’t do on the motorcycle.

When I peeked the front of the truck out of Glennwood canyon, I was pummeled by sideways blowing snow, quite the opposite of the seventy-something weather on the Grand Junction side of things. The snow slowed down and stopped, but when I reached State Bridge, the truck started getting squirrely. The roads looked wet, but when I got out to check on things, it was slicker than an ice skating rink. Thank goodness the truck had four-wheel-drive.

I stopped for an hour in Oak Creek to see my friend and business partner Paulie. It was good to catch up and see how much our lives have changed in the last month and a half. Strangely, I dreaded going home. Sleeping in an apartment that I will need to vacate in the next nine days feels like pressurized limbo. Steamboat fall feels really good. It’s the time that naturally pulls one into nesting mode. This is not my path right now. In the next nine days I plan to give away most of my clothes and furniture and will bring the rest back to my Dad’s house where it will live until my restless spirit is ready to float back to Earth.

In nine days I will have paddled to the mouth of the harbor. The ocean awaits!

Lane Splitting

In The Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, there is a story called Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut. I haven’t read it since just before Clinton got into the White House, but apparently the story left a deep impression. In the story, Mrs. Todd always looked for the shortest route to where she was going. She would constantly watch the clock and the odometer. Each time she would beat her previous record, until one time she managed to escape the time space continuum all together. When my Mom had Alzheimer’s I took frequent trips to Las Vegas to be with her and my Dad. Each trip I would go faster and faster. I remember holding 135 mph for what seemed like an eternity until the world started looking normal at that speed. When I would slow to 85, it felt like I was crawling. This lasted until I got the trip down to just over 10 hours. Eventually, I sold that car for a Subaru wagon which went dramatically slower. With that car, I took a different route every time and made the trip as slow as possible. I found petroglyphs, hot springs and magical canyons. Both ways gave me a great deal of satisfaction, though the latter burned less gas, was safer and reduced the chance of a speeding ticket significantly. On this journey I have also experienced both extremes. Though Shadowfax’s comfort zone doesn’t allow speeds much faster than 90 mph, I can still burn a lot of pavement in a day. I’m currently on my third back tire and my speedometer decided to quit as I was leaving San Francisco at 10,016 miles.

Driving in a car, I can daydream and take time to look around at the scenery both close and far. On the motorcycle, I have to be completely in the game. Subsequently, I have made a game out of the act of riding itself. Last week I found myself on Highway 1 feeling the urge to pass cars, even ones who were doing the speed limit. I put myself in check and asked why I didn’t just relax and enjoy the view. I realized that the view wasn’t changing much and the road was much too twisty. I changed my focus and the ride became much more enjoyable. P A S S became my mantra. I passed one car, I passed two cars, I passed on straight stretches, I passed on curvy sections. I didn’t pass to get there quicker, I just passed cars because they were there. Eventually, I dipped into the fog and couldn’t ride more than a minute without rubbing the steam off my glasses. My visor was already useless from salt and water inside and out. Just the act of riding was difficult enough.

One last phenomena of note is called lane splitting. In California, if you are on a motorcycle, you can ride between lanes of traffic. “Those guys are idiots,” I remember my Dad saying when we would visit California when I was little. It took me a good week of California riding before I became one of those idiots, but when I broke down and tried it, I experienced a rush I had never felt. It feels like skiing or snowboarding in the trees, only the trees are moving. As with any thing this intense, I will practice moderation.

My last week-plus with Cass has caused me to slow down significantly and once again I am taking time to look at the things around me. We have backpacked in the redwoods, fallen asleep to the sound of the waves and enjoyed a bluegrass festival in San Francisco. I’m enjoying both worlds, though sometimes the transitions are surprisingly noticeable to me and those around me.

Now I’m in Ventura with Cass staying at a friend’s house for a few days. Then I’m not sure where. Maybe I’ll head down to San Diego and complete my stretch from the Canadian border to the Mexico border