The moontree lassos itself : 1

The following posts are transcribed, with some edits, from a journal kept on a backpacking trip in the Ventana Wilderness near Big Sur, California in mid-May, 2008, just a month before the entire area got the shit brûléed out of it by one of the largest wildfires of the summer. This was the trip that finally got me interested in backpacking and general, beard-sporting, retro outdoorsmanship/running again, by circuitous way of a long talk with my father about canyons, women, Transcendentalism, and religion. You know, manly shit. Like most things I do. Beyond the usual backpacking gear, I brought with me on this trip a warmish 6 of Budweiser, purloined from my cowboy roommate’s stash, but which didn’t last beyond the first night, where I carcamped near the town of Big Sur before hiking in early the next morning. Also carried in my backpack where two books brought along for the first pleasure reading in months: Haruki Murakami’s novel Sputnik Sweatheart, and Tim O’Brien’s often-anthologized collection of Vietnam short stories, The Things They Carried.) What follows is mostly in telegraphic fragments and short sentences, as that’s how I tend to record things when I’m by myself, hoping to later cobble them together into something larger and more seamless. Images are not my own, as my I'm-too-cheap-to-give-yahoo-money flickr account has been totally maxed out this month. Whatevs.


5.15.08
Things seen on the road (five hour drive from Reno to the town of Big Sur) this afternoon:
-“Lightfigher Blvd.”
-Large building’s skeleton in Sacramento—a high-rise—one floor covered in a green, ribbed tarp—pale & bulbous against the high blue haze of a California sky. Summer is infecting everything—a different quality of light.
-Death Cab’s “Title & Registration,” it turns out, is prescient. Determines me to make some sense of Sarah while I’m out here—can feel some of the loamy marsh of my brain’s sorry current state beginning to bilge.

Other things seen since the road:
-Out on the beach at the State Park at Big Sur, feeding a wary beach raven some Bold Party Chex Mix, which hopefully are not lacerating the poor bird’s unprepared GI tract. Cute slender girl in a pink t-shirt, barefoot, holding her tennis shoes by their tied-together laces approaches: “you’re ruining wilderness”
“It’s not exactly wilderness.” (I point to California 1, way behind the beach, the sound of traffic, etc.)
“What?” (removes iPod earbuds)
“Forget it.”
-To my left, a middle-aged asian woman in a HUGE sunhat and a long skirt with floral patterns, getting pummeled by the stiff breeze coming in off the surf. She was picking her way across the shore a few minutes go, seemingly searching intently for something. Now she’s doing calisthenics. (Californisthetics?)
-A few degrees below the sea horizon, two ominous sets of black fins.

New development: am apparently camping next to the Swedish Bikini Team. Just came back from the beach to find three nubile, impossibly tan, suspiciously clean San Diego blondes setting up their camp approximately three feet from my own. Am sweating from pores I didn’t even know existed. Overheard:
“Victoria, where would you like your sports bras?”
Was unaware that this backpacking trip was in actuality a descent into my imagination’s sordid equivalent of Chris Isaak’s video for “Wicked Game.” Christ, they’re giggling. They won't stop giggling.

“at night, scruffy bears hang around your cabin.” –Murakami, 5

the sea’s sound a slow crumpling of tinfoil
(or is that the noise of distant traffic?)
(Swedish Bikini Team continues to giggle while erecting tent. Jesus.)

“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.” –Kerouac, quoted in Murakami, 5.

Just before sundown, while drinking the last of the Budweiser, am accosted by woodland creature. Squirrel? Ground squirrel? Pygmy sea marmot? Can’t tell in this poor light, although the moon’s supposed to rise in an hour or so.

Rooms improved by cut
flowers in black vases.

If you want to write, the best thing you can do, I think, is to not write and ride through some time and experience first. And then go hungry for a while. Stop eating, feel your gut begin to rot and fall apart.


When will I have spent enough time outdoors to tell individual ravens apart, I wonder?

Note: that pipe tobacco when consumed with rolling papers does not lead to a good experience has been duly noted. Blech.

Written on the campsite’s picnic table: “death is the Mother of beauty,” scrawled next to a pentagram. Keats meets Slayer, I guess. Also written on the table: “Ron’s back always hurts” and then a particularly morose, almost frantic-looking frowney face. Took out Bic and added: “Cameron empathizes with Ron.” My back always already hurts.

Scene in a novel featuring a disaffected father gradually losing touch with reality as his brain literally shrinks inside his skull:
“Look, Paula drew you a picture in church today!”
“Is that supposed to be me?”
“Of course! Look, it’s us camping.”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I don’t see it.”
“What?”
(Paula starts to cry. Mother looks confused. Father stares blankly at drapes.)
“How is that supposed to be me? That looks nothing like me.”

“If it’s something a single book can explain, it’s not worth having explained.” –Murakami, 52