Penulitmate

Penultimate
4/29/11
Tomorrow we leave. This morning spring has returned and the air is filled with light and is fresh and cool. I drink an espresso with hot frothy milk and feel the aliveness of the morning. Bob is making homemade biscuits and preparing for the trip. My final research paper is written and printed, ready to turn in. The semester is over. I listen to KCRW 24 Eclectic and reflect on all the times in the past I have made this same trip; the trochal pattern of the years, driving from Texas to California, across the endless desert, the Basin and Range, either straight to San Diego and down to Baja, or up to Santa Cruz and the Sierra. Since age 23 I have been repeating this same drive, over and over, countless times. Sleeping in m car, watching sunrises and sunsets over the desert, feeling the cold chill at dawn, the thrill welling up inside me when I hit the coast of Cali, or the tears of joy when I reach the east side of the Sierra, and especially when I get back to Big Sur and Santa Cruz. I have three homes of my heart; the places where all my history happened--Santa Cruz/Big Sur, Yosemite and the Sierra, and Joshua Tree. My heart quickens and I feel the joy of coming home again, once more, to the places and people I love the most.

They used to be climbing trips and backpacking trips and now they are surfing trips. I first passed through Santa Cruz when I was 18, hitch hiking from San Francisco with a girl I met who took me to a legendary place called Esalen in Big Sur. We spent three days naked, making love in the redwoods and swimming in icy cold rivers. When I was 23 Santa Cruz was another magical, legendary place I heard all about while climbing in Yosemite. I hitch-hiked there from Yosemite to try and enroll in UC Santa Cruz. I can remember the excitement I felt walking up the little trail beside the stream and trees on Bay street up to the campus for the first time. I was wearing my Asolo Yukon hiking boots and carried my tent, stove and sleeping bag in my Gregory pack on my back. I was self-contained and ready to sleep anywhere night found me. The counselor took a look at me and told me college probably wasn't a good idea for me and maybe I should go back wherever I came from and think about it. I hitch hiked back to Yosemite but was already under the spell of Santa Cruz.

A year later I officially made Santa Cruz my home for the first time, enrolled in Cabrillo College, lived in my car, started a band with a friend and fell madly in love with Santa Cruz. I commuted back and forth to Yosemite to climb; the world was such a fresh, young, amazing place then. I had never seen such an amazing place as the west coast of North America of planet Earth when I was 23 years old. I had seen nothing like it growing up in Texas. I had only dreamed that the rest of the world existed, this ocean, these mountains, this desert, these people, the throbbing pulse of the 24 hour non-stop music, dancing, and party in San Francisco. A feeling that something very big was happening and that I was right in the middle of it, with my finger on that pulse.

After a year in Santa Cruz something, my wanderlust maybe, pulled me away to Latin America for almost three years. And then I was back again just in time to feel the Loma Prieta earthquake knock it down and me along with it. And back in the Valley climbing. Then once more, I was off to college and then Central America for a couple years. Back again. Then off to Europe and Turkey for a year or so. Back again and off to New England, India, Thailand, Nepal, a life of yoga and ashrams for several years. And then again, finally back, back to my dear, dear beloved Sierra, to Santa Cruz and Joshua Tree, for years of climbing and backpacking, still living in my mothership. For 10 years I lived in the mothership, between Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Santa Cruz and Baja, climbing, backpacking and surfing, and finally coming full circle to discover Esalen again and finding my way to Burning Man, a home, a community, a culture I never knew and always yearned for.

And then, as always, that wanderlust, that inexplicable drive, took me away again, to India and to graduate school. And now, by tomorrow night, I will be on the endless Interstate 10 drive once more, on the way to Santa Cruz, to Cardiff, to Baja, to waves and friends, at last.

Only this time, for the first time, I am not just me; now I am with my beloved Bob. On the road again.