Ursula Le Guin says something similar – about how groups of individuals forge multiple perceptions into a collective reality through the medium of storytelling. How a moment of drama – being sick in your friend's car – can turn into comedy when told in retrospect, or how someone who has done you wrong can be forgiven in the context of 'their story'.
I have been wallowing in stories these last weeks. Back in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland) after four years (some claim it is five), eating, drinking, moving, sniffing out live music, chattering away with old friends. And before that a big old hitch down from Olympia, Washington through to California, 600 miles, where every ride had a story.
A story needs space to be told, and at risk of repeating earlier posts, it is worth briefly outlining what makes hitching one of the best spaces there is:
1. Both driver and hitchhiker have taken a leap of faith, putting trust above fear, and it has paid off, and that makes both feel really good about themselves, and the other person.
2. The two will never meet again, so can communicate the whole, nasty, beautiful truth of it, free of consequences. The lack of consistent eye contact also helps.
3. The absence of an expectation for anyone to say anything at all means that there is a good rhythm to the conversation, with nothing forced and time to digest.
4. Both parties are sober, overcoming the tragedy of the problem I often have that the best stories always present themselves when I am too drunk to remember anything but a vague outline...
Listening is of course also an art, and I feel my ears are definitely wider open on this trip. Fewer presumptions, less dismissive. More able (I think) to quieten the internal dialogue of judgement and hear the intent behind the words and the words behind the intent.
Some were funny, some sad, some really remarkable (though none as crazy as this). I retell some of them here for my own record, and because they give an idea of the window into lives that hitching brings.
Lucinda picked me up in Bellingham. She is a personal injury lawyer who had just ended a long relationship with her boyfriend after sleeping with a man twice her age on a trip to europe. The boyfriend hadn't been angry about it, and this annoyed her.
An industrial floorer with a huge pick up truck (the wannabe monster truck kind with a huge suspension) and one eye dropped me off at a truck stop, where a construction foreman on his way into the mountains for the first day of Elk hunting season picked me up and satisfied entirely my curiosity for the practicalities: When an Elk is killed, it needs to be fully gutted and boned there and then to save on weight for the hunters carrying out the meat. Even then, it may take three or four trips to carry out all the meat, and each round trip can be 15 miles plus. So you hunt for the first couple of days then spend the rest of the week carrying the meat out. Some people hunt from their trucks. It is true that people do occasionally get elk and other hunters mixed up. We made a stop at a shop that sold hunting equipment to buy some 'meat bags'. Very exciting all in all.
America spent $248 million dollars on Halloween this year, including $16 million on costumes for dogs.
The man who took x-rays, my age, was going with his girlfriend to climb in Bend, Oregon, sleeping in their truck. He had a wanderlust that manifested in him selling his house and spending the money on a helicopter pilot's licence. He now had the licence, but realised ($50,000 later) that helicopter flying was too dangerous for him...
A musician gave me a 5 minute ride to a 'better spot' which was infact a terrible spot, but he did tell me that at 30 he had found himself living in Kansas, and one day he realised that if he split up with his girlfriend he would have no-one and nothing, and that what he wanted above anything else was roots. So he moved to Oregon and had 6 children, and had a network and a reason to be and was happy.
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| Emergency Hitchhiking Sign |
A carpenter drove me into Eugene explaining how he used to have all these ideas, many of them (but not all) whilst in thrall to various psychedelics, and not be able to explain them, so he dedicated actual time to improving his (mostly scientific) vocabulary so he could better explain. And he did, and as he spoke I was thinking 'wow I have never thought of that' and now I have forgotten what he said.
Shelley dropped me at an amazing spot early the next morning, in time to get a ride and half a cupcake from a horse trainer, followed by a long ride (about 150 miles) in the back of a pickup truck with two Guatemalan mushroom foragers. This was a nice break from chatting, as the noise of the engine and the glass between us meant I could sit back and enjoy the Oregonian mountains unfold as we went through pass after pass.
A nurse going to an indian reservation casino to give the flu jab (the casino being the place where everyone gathers...) and then the jackpot – a huge articulated lorry going all the way to Los Angeles! The driver another chap that I could fill a whole blog about, but in brief: Grew up with his grandparents in Tennessee until the age of 13, when his mother inexplicably picked him up and took him to California. Her boyfriend was black, which didn't sit well with his racist grandparents' influence. He railed against this man and this man in turn beat him. At 15 he ran away from home and, living on the streets, still managed to complete a year and a half of school before being taken in by someone. He finished high school and started trucking. He had a wife and two children, and decided to stop trucking across the country so he could spend more time at home. They bought a home and he dug a huge pond with just himself and a shovel. He got bored and started fighting with his wife and went back on the road. He now has more children with another woman, but they have split up too. His keeps photos of his children, posed wearing shirt and tie, above the sun visor in his cab. He has a few women up and down california who know his schedule (LA to Seattle and back once a week) and pick him up from truck stops, and drop him back again the next morning. This is cool, but he wants to quit trucking. He once went to alaska to hunt bears, but didn't get anything. He made up with his mum's boyfriend and now they are good friends. If I want a ride to LA, he passes through northern california on tuesdays generally, but call him first to make sure.
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| Oregon is a cool place |
A fisherman enlightened me on the contrasting etiquettes of fly fishing in the US and UK. A beautiful aging hippie lady with sage on her dashboard was coming back from watching the salmon jump up the river, a volley of flashing silver. She spends 9 months in oregon and 3 months camping in hawaii, but now her grandson 'is old enough to know who I am' she thinks she will spend Christmases in Oregon.
I filled up my water in a diner in Kerby, Oregon, got chatting, one of the customers brought me out a portion of fries... with mayonaisse! I'll be taking my own grandchildren back there.
Finally, a retired couple shouted out from across the street 'do you like dogs?' and I spent 90 minutes with two huge dogs licking my ears as we drove the final stretch over the hills to the Californian coast. We stopped to see a type of insect-eating plant that only exists in the wild within a 50 mile radius of where we were. They operate like sticky plant-lobster nets and reminded me of the hattifatteners from the moomins.
A story needs space to be told. I reconnected with Nick on the way down from Vancouver – we were last together in Honduras doing some serious scuba diving – in Crescent City,and together we drove the 8 hours south to San Francisco, stopping to make a fire in a dry riverbed and sleep among those silent deities we call Giant Redwoods. Space enough to contextualise the 'whats' of our separate journeys since our last meeting with the 'why's' and 'therefores', and to find comfort in the fact that neither of us was any more settled or certain than before, and that the crossroads we were meeting at was indeed a, er, crossroads. The same crossroads. More of a spaghetti junction infact. Hence the meeting... Nick had divided his time between living on a small boat in a small town in Alaska, living a life as close to a hunter-gatherer as is possible in america. His boot was filled with jars of home smoked, home caught alaskan smoked salmon – the most incredible stuff I have ever tasted (my mouth waters now just to think about it – not sliced and salted like in the supermarket but great chunks you can fill your mouth with, moist and strong and dark red.) I asked him around the fire – my first for a couple of months – how often he found himself out in nature, cooking on a fire... he responded by telling the story of his and his partner's trip down to Mexico on a 750cc bike, camping out in the desert, rice and beans on the fire, the road unfurling in a heat-mirage of traction, until an oncoming driver misjudged an overtake one night and clipped nick's bike, sending him flying off his bike and, ultimately, into hospital, first in Mexico and then, after a 12 hour bus journey with a broken collar bone, a few fractures and a bizarre experience at the border – in Arizona.
Hospitals and health have been an ongoing theme of the trip. I saw Travis just after he had spent 3 hours on the phone to the government health insurance people (Obamacare). The American government, God Bless It, has it's own advisors on commission, trying to upsell more products to often low income, low disposable time individuals who are trying to get health insurance for the first time. To the point where they now have another service that advises people how to use the first service! It seems that the very thing that makes California such an amazing place – the constant forward thinking, innovative mindset that allows people with good ideas to rise quickly to the top – also creates the most ridiculous and damaging situations. For example
- Whilst it looks like cannabis will be legalised in california next year (as it has already been in four states), the biggest two groups lobbying against the move are current pot farmers, who currently make BIG BUCKS due to the black-market nature of the industry, and...the police, because they get loads of money to help fund the 'war on drugs' so they can buy their shiny SUVs, assault rifles etc... Blimey.
- There is a huge drought happening in California at the moment, and the central valley, which produces 40% of america's fruits and nuts (and plenty more besides) continues to suck up water at a rate that geologists say will make the valley stop being able to sustain large scale family in between 20-60 years... and the government is subsidising the water they are using to the tune of $450 million dollars a year! And we know how much of the food produced will end up in the bin... (30-40% of all food grown)
I could go on (the other big one being the massive budget cuts to acute mental health services in the state, which has naturally impacted on what is happening in the streets), but surfice to say that I am often left both baffled and frustrated, but not nearly as much as if I actually lived here.
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| Oakland: Succinct |
And my own story? It stinks of Karma. Walking around San Francisco one day I was thinking how much I missed cycling, when I overhear a conversation between two gentlemen, who obviously know each other, one of them offering to sell the other their bike for $40. Now this was no ordinary bike – it was a beautiful, shiny-new cruiser, beige and maroon with a cup holder and – check it out – a bottle opener attached to side! Big, chunky wheels, it was the perfect complete California Chiller bike. I walked past them, crossed the road and stopped, weighing up my options. On balance, much like when you are sitting next to someone interesting looking on the bus but don't initiate a conversation, and then get off the bus wishing you had, incase they knew the secret of all life, or were your future life-partner , I thought that I would be filled with regret and 'what ifs' unless I at least enquired further about the bike.
So I went back over and began making compliments about the bike. To my feigned surprise, I learnt that the bike was on sale for just $40! Wow. Well I best have a test ride then. She was smooth and heavy and I felt about 15% cooler just sitting on her soft, faux-leather saddle. So I bought it and whizzed off to meet travis, the bike dancing round corners and purring underneath me. I imagined the envy of all the car drivers, with me so free and stately on my bike and them in mere automobiles. I bought a lock for more than the cost of the bike and rushed to get to the twitter building (unremarkable) where I was to meet Travis. I told him the story, slightly shy as the moral arguments for buying probably-stolen-bikes are I think sufficient, though not necessarily comprehensive, as I rushed to show him and get off to the pub... but where were my keys?
Within the 5 minutes of locking my bike, walking into a building, then out again, the bike lock keys had disappeared. I took all of my possessions out of my pockets/bag one by one but no bike keys to be found. So we sighed and laughed (a bit) and went to the pub, at which point I realised that during the process of looking for my keys I had infact lost my bank card. Sighs and a bit more laughter. The next day we returned, hoping for a miracle... we found a bike savaged by moonlight mechanics, and a few days after that the bike was gone all together. Ça va, ça vient...
Thanksgiving I spent with Uncle Rich and several other chaps from different walks of life, united in their love of Rich and his culinary excellence (I contributed a rather excellent sausage, leek, pecan and cornbread stuffing), in various states of glory and glorious decay (as we all are), and after a while the stories flowed – getting out of stifling towns in the middle of the country, getting into (and out of) the army (national service lasted between 1943 and 1974), childhood thanksgivings, work, migration... but there was one person missing this year, and that was Ernie, Rich's husband, who died just a few days before I arrived, after a 6 month battle in hospital.
Ernie was a quiet man who knew a lot of things and got a lot of things done. As is often the case, we find out many things about a person in the process of their remembrance that are swallowed up in the day to day 'hi how are you gosh the dog is big these days' river of blah. As I heard more and more about Ernie, his struggles and victories, his times supporting friends dying of AIDS when that disease was a dark spectre over his community, his opening line to Rich when they met at a bar on the Russian River – 'you got a light?'... and my own memories of him, missioning around in Ireland, Las Vegas, Yosemite, walking the dog, I began to understand the quote at the top of this blog a little better. In the same way universes and atoms grow according to identical geometric principles, so the wider narrative of our lives is made up of multiple mini vignettees, strung together in fibonacciesque clusters that reach for wider meaning and inform who we are. And as we get older and we have more control over what mini-stories will play out in our lives, we generally stay close to what we know and our preconceptions, and therefore our identities, are reinforced.
And none of that means we miss Ernie any less.
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