Seeds and Wakes
Could it be even one strand of hair fallen off a comb tine? Perhaps the lingering echo of my footsteps along a certain beach or trail? Does the earth feel me return as I get near? Some dormant seed, left behind, waits patiently for the right conditions—a cell message, or random email—available timing, maybe prospect.
Could it be the wake still coming to rest from travels past? I was here once. And over here. And over there. We all know we cannot go back to the moment of creation—when the seed buried itself underfoot, longing with anticipation for water and sun and a Vermont license plate heralding my return.
No experience can ever replace the first moment—the perfect ripeness of time and location, whatever offers itself up.
But, even still, along this third year long road trip, whispers of seeds and wakes awaken their sleepy heads and I remember. Seeds have grown into new friendships, and new friendships turned into ongoing connections. Some didn’t make it—messages not returned, locations changed, just not enough in common to persist geography. Lots have.
Nostalgia always gets the best of me, and comes from the best from withIN me. Two years changes a lot, in me, and in place, and in others. Reflections of me remain seeded in locations like Ojai, Ventura, San Luis Obispo—sandy beaches, orange and Meyer lemon trees, tango, poetry open mics, food establishments.
“Let’s meet at Rainbow Bridge in Ojai,” Z. texts me. “See you soon.” He’s found me safe and legal places to park my truck at night for a week, and offered me paying work. Money is always close to the proverbial bone, so, of course, I say yes. This is why I’ve stuffed some work clothes and a few tools in my truck—if a door opens, I’ll walk through it, tape measure and experience in hand.
Gratitude on the road overrides my attitude back home—thoughts of schlepping heavy sheets of plywood around my woodshop attach themselves to mafia-like cinder blocks that cement themselves into my gut. But I’ll be assisting, guiding infrastructure to Z.’s Art Deco design details. I’ll gently suggest based on my decades of failures and successes. Five partial days, and money that will catch me up on expenses lingering on, longing for payment.
Rain, wind, chill still hug these coastal towns. Four years ago, I walked these towns in skirts and tee shirts. Two years ago, three months in Ojai due to the car accident afforded me a range of weather options. My friend B., now in Santa Fe, lived in Santa Barbara four years ago, when we enjoyed warm walks on the beach under the pink skies of the setting sun.
“It’s a Mediterranean ecosystem,” he recently reminded me. “Depending on everything, really, there can be heat, cold, rain, sun, fires….people whine after a handful of years of perfect weather and then it’s rainy and cold.”
In the evenings, I return to the tango scene in Ventura, picking up where I left off two years ago.
“How has the healing been going?” I am asked. “Mostly back to normal,” I respond. And it is true. Every now and then, something is sore or gets tweaked along the back of my neck. Another reason to be cranky about heavy plywood and cabinets.
San Luis Obispo invites another version of myself—these seeds, these memories, have deep roots, a friendship spreading all the way back to Massachusetts. My time here previously was anonymous—by chance, knowing no one. Sometimes I meet a person who shares that they don’t have any long lasting friendships. I have many, and SLO brings me respite from the road, respite from male energy, and the remembering of times shared over thirty years. My dear friend, originally a California girl, spent a lot of years in the Northeast, fighting with the snow and cold. Then Ojai until the wildfires during the fall of 2017 drove her north to SLO.
But even so, I’ve been here before, on the first trip, a weekend rental car adventure to Montana de Oro State Park west of SLO. C. and I drive there, walk the bluffs, but the waves crashing into the coastal rocks don’t seem to remember me. Memories flood into my thoughts—the warm sand of the dunes, the zig zag trails up the hills, the grand history of the eucalyptus trees lining the road. I look for condors, but see none. Times change. Environments change. I change.
Fruit trees, pruned for the winter season, wait out the rains and cold for another round of fertility and harvest. Partway down See Canyon Road off the road to Avila Beach, C. rents a small apartment set back behind a fruit orchard. The canyon hills, carpeted with poison oak, keep us contained and tidy, no bushwhack hiking up a hill from here. But several short coastal hikes spread out from around the small Avila Beach village, sea lions “sunning” below the bluffs on sea rocks, even without the sun. Sea otters rolly-polly, otter bellies splashing salt, whiskers wiggling, along the pier, their black eyes smiling up at any onlookers. Otter performance art. Do they think we’ll toss down sardines or something?
I love these individual coffee cafes when I can find them. I love the anonymity. I love writing in these places, looking up at whatever view is available, think, wrap myself in synonyms. Blog, poetry, book manuscript—my traveling companions. Whipped cream lingers on my upper lip and I dab at it with my napkin. I press send on my device. A set of poems flies through the web waves for submission to an online themed anthology. Since I’m not performing music since I started traveling, these submissions feel like final performances, along with my offerings at poetry open mics. Rejections don’t matter online, they are so impersonal, so subjective. The poems just want to take flight, soar from the digital pen, right out the coffee shop windows.
The Rock
I’ve run out of cord cinching on the hood of my rain jacket. It’s not actually raining, in the sense of actual rain, but mist blowing off the ocean. Wind pummels the beachwalkers, each of us pulling hoods over heads, and zipping up jacket zippers. Intense. Out along the far edges of Morro Rock, that monolith jutting up along Morro Bay, the waves slam, thunder, burst up the crags. Concussed, the wave crests swoon down to the tidal pull, return out to sea to regroup. Too cold to walk barefoot in the soft sand, I wait for the sun to join the horizon, camera in hand. Sand dollars promote the beach’s abundance—whole ones, broken ones, barnacled ones, clean ones and dirty ones—five petals decorating the white, bleached skeletal remains of the sea urchin relative. Natural cycles of life and death—the sea spitting out its seeds onto the beach. I pick some up, place them into my rain jacket pocket.
Fragile in their bony state, my pockets cradle them against the jarring winds blowing wave foam across wet sand. Leftover clouds blot out the setting sun, and only a hint of pink tinges the occasional cloud edge low in the sky.
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Pismo Beach
"You don't want your toes in the water?" she asks.
"Too cold." I'm happy to stroll the packed sand, watch shorebirds, and play with my camera.