Flying Hobo Girl

For more photos of Nepal, go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/flyinghobogirl/Nepal2008#

It’s hard not to lapse into cliché after returning from one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. I’m inclined to say “It was amazing!” or “Words can’t describe it!” Fortunately, I wasn’t the designated wordsmith on this October trek to foot of Mt. Everest.

During the two weeks I spent in the Solu Khumbu region of Nepal, my only job was to wander, sip chia, and snack on potato momos in view of Ama Dablam, Nuptse, and other famed peaks. My travel companion Jeff, however, was hard at work. On-assignment for a glitzy outdoor magazine, his charge was to follow adventure legend Leo LeBon as he returned to Everest to celebrate the 40^thanniversary of his company Mountain Travel. LeBon was instrumental in opening the Everest region to trekking back in the 1960s. Jeff was to tell the story of Leo’s return and write about the changes that have taken place in the trekking industry over the past decades.

Aside from the thrill of venturing to the world’s highest mountain, I was curious to watch Jeff at work, to see the much romanticized profession of travel writing in-action. What was it like to be sent on exotic journeys and then try and shape a story? Was it as great as it all seemed?

The adventure began well enough. At a cocktail-infused get-together in the lobby of the Malla Hotel in Kathmandu, we got acquainted with our trekking group: a combination of clients along with Le Bon’s family, friends, and his upbeat assistant Anthony. Jeff was pleased to get on well with Brian Sokol, the simultaneously dashing and goofy New York Times photographer who was assigned to snap pictures for the story.

Twenty-four hours later the group was on a plane headed to the mountain village of Lukla. Our landing marked the beginning of a nonstop binge on natural spectacles: lushy “lowland” swaths of farms rife with twining pea-vines, verdant spinach, and agrarian nostalgia; the Dhud Kosi river churning below like a endless ribbon of class 5 rapids; then eventually the icy peaks of Thamserku and even Everest glimmering in the high distance, releasing a magic bound to dreams. In the book I brought–Hermit in the Himalaya– Paul Brunton says it all: “The gods that made these mountains must have been beauty-drunk.”

The group chatted easily along the trail, staggering together over swinging bridges, yielding to lines of yaks, and sharing good natured grumbles about the unrelenting swichbacks. At night Jeff and Brian forged their working relationship, holding post dinner powwows to troll for story angles. Brian needed to get shots that would satisfy the magazine’s luxury niche reader. He was to show how the rustic pursuit of mountain trekking can be done in high style. Jeff would capture the morphing emotions and reminisces of LeBon as he reexplored the old pathways of his youth and reacquainted with old Sherpa friends.

It sounded straightforward,but it wasn’t long before cracks began to shoot through the storyline. As we passed village after village, Brian struggled to work within the magazine’s suffocating parameters: he was not to photograph any rustic cookware or “crusty-faced kids.” He was to portray LeBon as rugged but fashionable; the magazine even sent along clothes for Leo to wear in the photographs. Being the self-made individual that he is, Leo promptly threw them away.

It wasn’t long before it began to dawn on Brian that he might not produce the photos the magazine needed. Afterall, “luxury” in the Himalayas is a relative term and no amount of skill could make our dark lodges or tuna fish lunches photogenic. He got increasingly desperate, bottom-feeding on staged scenarios of LeBon and his wife drinking wine, taking shots of well-made apple pies, and doing whatever he could to cut out the din and grunge that is endemic to nearly every Himalayan tea house.

Finally, at one of his post-dinner meetings with Jeff, he threw his hands up. “Luxury shots? There are none.”

Jeff was also at a loss. The magazine expected a story about Leo, but within the context of a high class trek. Could he “write around” the filthy toilets, the cold showers?

It came to a head at lunch on day four.

Sipping a spoonful of watery broth, Leo shook his head in surprise:

“Who ever said this was an ultra-luxury trek? This is a third world country.”

Jeff strained to recollect the queries and emails that proceeded the trip. “Was this just something I invented?” he asked. “Was it all based on my misinterpretation?”

Leo, Jeff, and Brian spent the next twenty minutes trying fruitlessly to unravel the series of misunderstandings and assumptions that led to the assignment. Then the group set about trying to solve the problem. Could they put Leo on a horse with a fancy blanket? Maybe a few shots of him recieving blessings from a high lama?

“You said you threw away the clothes that the magazine sent?,” Brian asked.

“They didn’t even ask him his size” defended his wife.

“How many words does the story have to be?” Brandon asked, turning to Jeff. He was a friend of LeBon’s son Alex.

“Three-thousand. About seven single spaced pages.”

“Whoa. That’s gonna be a lot of bullshit.”

But if the story seemed compromised then, these problems seemed minor in light of LeBon’s declining health. On the 5^thnight LeBon sat quietly through dinner and later complained of breathlessness. Even many young and fit trekkers struggle with altitude on the Everest trek. LeBon–strong and determined though he was–was 74 years old. When in the morning his condition remained grim, he was forced to leave the village of Dingboche on horseback, and descend to the nearby clinic in Pheriche. He was flanked by his wife and son and trailed by Jeff, who would lend moral support and record Leo’s reflections as he left his beloved Himalaya for probably his last time. The rest of group trekked onward without their leader, counting now on LeBon’s assistant Anthony.

While Jeff descended, I continued to the next village Dukla to await his return. The rest of the group would stay the night at a slightly higher village.

At Dukla, our remaining leader Anthony stopped with me for lunch and feeling fatigued checked into a room, disappearing for the entire afternoon. I found him later in spandex and tennis shoes, staring at the hallway wall.

“Headed out for a jog?” I quipped.

He looked up at me blankly, his eyes unfocused, body slightly swaying.

“I’m coughing up something that looks like red popcorn,” he wheezed.

My heart skipped a beat. I tore through my guidebook, looking up what this meant: advanced stage pulmonary edema. Though the sun was disappearing behind the ridge and a chill was setting in, immediate descent was critical. Jeff had just arrived an hour before. Still emotionally spent from seeing Leo off, he now had to gather Anthony’s things together and arrange two Sherpas to walk him down to the hospital. Twenty minutes later, we stood on the deck of the teahouse and watched Anthony and the Sherpas disappear into the dimming light and said silent prayers.

Both Anthony and Leo would be okay, but that day the story–and the group– crumbled apart like an icefall. Jeff and Brian conferred. Both had a lot at stake: they were counting on their income from this high paying magazine, and had passed up other assignments. Both were growing increasingly despondent: if the story wasn’t published, they would recieve–despite all their work and time–only a fraction of their contracted fee.

But this was no time for depression. With both leaders gone now, the unraveling group needed guidence. Brian and Jeff had the most experience in the Himalayas and so had to abandon their roles as observers and recorders and jump into action as the new trek leaders. Brian rushed ahead to the next village to check on the rest of the group. I sat with Jeff as he caught his breath. Together we looked at the fluted ridges, seracs, colouirs and glaciers.

“Serious mountains,” I observed. “

Jeff sighed. “The most serious.”

The rest of the group straggled on in its scattered state,more or less making it to Kala Patthar, the vantage point at the foot of Everest and ending point of our trek. A day behind the rest of our group, we encountered them one by one on the trail on their return. Cem, a good-natured Turk, ambled toward us breathless. He had never in his life been camping or hiking and how he ended up on the world’s hardest trek would remain a mystery. Though he had made it, the altitude was taking its toll.

“That was worst place on earth,” he said with half a laugh. “You can’t eat, breath, or shit.”He would leave the mountains by helicopter the next day, suffering an ulcer but also just generally worn out in body and mind.

As for Jeff and I, we climbed to the top of Kala Patthar together on a bright sunny afternoon with fast beating hearts. The view of Everest was clear as we could ever hope. Jeff busily strung prayer flags for his father and I clung fast to a rock, in awe but also dizzied by the off-kilter angles and overwelhming scale of things.

We had reached our goal and I was gazing at The Highest Mountain in the World. But I felt strangely subdued. After days of slogging, we had reached the top, the pinnacle, and instead of feeling victorious, I felt annoyed by the other tourists thursting their cameras at me and asking me to snap their photo. Funny how the moments of transcendence don’t come how they should. It was half way down the slope of Kala Patthar that my Everest moment came: Squatting for a rest in front of Nuptse, Lhotse, and Everst, I placed my hands in reverent prayer as my favorite bird, the clever raven, soared in front of me.

Such moments of awe cannot be predicted; they fickly chose themselves. So often I was moved by small, more relatable things: the day we encountered the painter of the Tengboche monestary, standing before his half-finished renderings of dakinis. Or just the regular pleasure of tea steaming my face on clear mornings. Or the afternoon Jeff and I meditated on the cracks and moans of the Khumbu glacier. The surprises thrilled me, too: when we came across an abandoned shack above Jorsalle, treaded lightly over its rotting floor boards, and discovered a wealth of old Tibetan art.

Such moments are rich but they don’t necessarily make for a good magazine stories so, though Jeff would return with plenty to tell, nothing fit the heroic storyline that the magazine could market. I tried to help him shape what happened into something salable: Leo was a worthy character to write about, he reunited with Sherpa friends, spent quality time with his family, and had to confront his own limits. Wasn’t that enough of a story?

But Jeff, wise to the commercial realities of freelancing writing, was busy resigning himself to the fact that his October work may well be nixed; that he may just not have a whole story here: just a collection of shimmering–but broken–pieces.

Still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that in a week I’ll be in Nepal. Soon I’ll be in the Khumbu region of the Himalayas, on a group trip to Everest Base Camp with adventure legend Leo LeBon, the man who helped open the region to trekking 40 years ago. I look forward to the fine camaraderie and also to the simplicity of trail life: the stark mountain aesthetics of rock faces and delicate arêtes, the simple meals of dahl, the earth-scent of sandlewood incense.

In the meantime, I’m in the flurry of preparation, contending with the gale-force stress of my to-do list. Though I grasp about for one big project that will get me on-the-road, the truth is it’s accomplishing an assemblage of little things that will get me out of here: procuring extra passport photos, balling up my wool trekking socks, making sure I pack along toothpaste and sturdy shoe-laces.

In that vein, yesterday I went shopping for a suitcase at Costco. Now that I travel with a 50 lb. paragliding wing on my back, it’s time to concede that I need something with wheels to carry all the other essentials. As I walked down the imposing aisles of 40-pack soap, buckets of vitamins, and dog-food-by-the-ton, I chastised myself for not being a better garage-saler. Had I thought of it earlier, I could have spent my Saturday mornings ferreting out a perfectly good used suitcase with wheels and not supporting this bad American habit of buying everything new.

I vow to take this as a lesson and start garage-saling now: looking for the three-speed fan that I might need next August, the glasses I’ll need at my next margarita party. But where will I store all of it?

After wandering around Costco like a lost child, I came across a good aquamarine Kirkland suitcase. I lifted it off the shelf and rolled it down the aisle, wondering how it is that the Kirkland Corporation manages to make everything from suitcases to fish taco sauce. I arrived to the register filled with despair. A massive line of couples were cued up and holding vigil over carts stacked high with plastic-wrapped bulk crap. Was I being melodramatic, or did we all look depressed? Like a bunch of upright cadavers in an Adbusters nightmare.

I went out to the parking lot, loaded my new suitcase, and fired up my car to continue on with my typical American day of driving around and shopping, checking my cell phone and email along the way. At home now, I sort through my heaps of cute dresses, my shelves of books, and assortment of gadgets, culling only what will fit in my suitcase.

When I get to Nepal, all this stuff will feel far far away.

I won’t miss it.

As a travel writer, Jeff Greenwald has traveled across five continents. He has experienced the world in up-close detail, trekking in remote regions of the Himalayas, hanging out with Tasmanian Devils on the Australian coastline, and shopping for honey at the Medina in Fez. There came a point in his career when he realized that he had seen more of the planet than Marco Polo and Magellan combined. Still, he says no landscape is more beautiful than the American Southwest.

I have not seen that much of the world, but after spending the past week roadtripping around the Four Corners area, I’ll take his word for it.

Allison and I are on a sort of farewell journey before she leaves next month for an extended stay in Munich. Though we are repelled by the interminable track housing and strip malls that blight the west, the natural architecture stuns: when we woke up in Castle Valley outside of Moab, the sunstruck redrock seemed perfect as the Taj Mahal. At Arches National Park, I was convinced that “Landscape Arch” was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. When we practiced asanas in Canyonlands, the Needles Overlook seemed as sacred as the any ashram. Up a Wasatch canyon, the towering granite and running river brought us to life. Now in Telluride, the surrounding peaks silence us like the Sistene Chapel.

Lest I get too romantic, against the backdrop of this unbelievable west, all the clumsy features of a real road trip remain. On the first day, we detoured far into the Alvord desert, coveting fantasies of hotspringing under the stars, only to find a lukewarm tub and hurricane winds. On day two, we plundered into the mud at a Nevada Hotspring, the van hopelessly waylaid. Fortunately, we were pulled out by a couple of miners on their way to work. They refused our money so later we left them a bouquet of roadside flowers and a couple homegrown tomatoes.

In between our rashes of giddy chatter there have been interspersed stretches of silence. At one point I was sure that Allison was purposefully disagreeing with everything I said.

“I think this is the darkest place in the US,” I said of Natural Bridges in Utah.

“Well,” she huffed, “I have a hard time believing that.”

When I wanted to turn right, she insisted on left. When I pointed north, she pointed south. I wanted to take this trail, she wanted that one.

One nigh after finishing a bottle of rose under the stars at Arches, I soliloquized about how awful it would be to get a DUI. That you could end up in jail.

“That’s not true!” she crowed.

I left my story unfinished and went to bed.

Now in Telluride, we get along, but the mixed bag that is travel continues. The other day, I shied from a walk with a near stranger, only to find out later that it was Youssou Ndour, the Grammy Award winning Senagalese singer. We watched him perform last night and I am still kicking myself for not taking that walk. How I would have loved to have him teach me a simple song! All the same, Allison and I have had great food, good hikes, seen friends.

No landscape, no matter how beautiful, can make everything perfect. It’s a cliche, but true: it doesn’t really matter where you are, you take yourself with you. So it is: against the backdrop of the Cretaceous epoch, between the upwellings of basin and range, at the place where the Paleozoic era gives way to the salt flats, our speck-like concerns persist and we fume, fret, get stuck, regret, argue, wonder, laugh, philosophize, and debate. We shuttle through emotions as diverse as the landscape.

. . . Which makes me think of the film I saw last night. In a park, underneath the glow of the big dipper, we watched an outdoor screening of Pirate for the Sea–the story of activist Paul Watson and his ship The Farley Mowat (www.seashepherd.org). While the raw depictions of seal clubbing and illegal whaling had me in one moment despairing, Watson’s direct action approach to combating these problems fired me up. By tangling-up the rudders of whaling ships, slicing their hulls, and otherwise getting in the way, Watson has preserved the lives of hundreds of whales and seals. Though radical, this is a kind of activism that I support. In the end, the movie left me wanting to find my way onto the Farley Mowat, to climb aboard to join the drama unfolding across the beautiful landscapes of this earth.

Post-flight Contentment: feather-friends in the Woodrat LZ

Mid-summer finds me in a paraglider pilot’s paradise: living within a short glide path to the Woodrat Mountain landing zone. My place is nothing spectacular–a small trailer with bland decor but equipped with the essentials: a four slice toaster and high speed internet. A few decorations might make it feel more like “home” but I move so much these days I’ve nearly given up on such efforts; my painted sugar bowl and beloved brass horse figurines will remain indefinitely consigned to a storage unit until some distant and more settled future. For now, my need for decor is sated by sunsets and trees, which are easily viewable from the trailer’s wide deck and never in need of dusting or storage.

Life here has a satisfying rhythm. Early mornings bring writing sessions on the deck, where I can glance up occasionally and watch gray squirrels twitch or watch deer tip-toe through dried madrone leaves. My flight radio is always switched to “on” so I can hear when the pilots have arrived and get up-to-the-minute flight reports from top-launch. It’s a short commute to join up with them and spend the late morning in search of gentle thermals. Afternoons here are hot and languorous, spent sidled up to the Applegate River reading West with the Night, which is female pilot Beryl Markham’s flight log-turned-eloquent travel narrative set in Africa. My own writing also fills the hours and out here, removed from the tempting social scene of Ashland, I am more productive than I have ever been.

Around 6:00 the evening shift of pilots arrive to fly glass-off. The camaradarie is enough to scratch my social itch, and often friends come by the trailer afterwards for beer or mojitos, sometimes staying over to catch a morning flight. I write late into the warm nights, sitting out on the deck with large bugs crashing into my computer screen. I sleep in the outdoor bed, tuning out the mysterious rustlings around me.

The place has its quirks: the electricity is haywire and the oven smokes, making my last pizza smell like a Les Schwab tire. In the bathroom the shower head sprays wildly in every direction. But, overall, this place combines the best of everything: flying, socializing, quiet time to write, nearby vineyards, organic farms, cool rivers. A great place to land.

Without question, John Muir was a catch. Had I been alive in the late 1800s, when he was traipsing through Yosemite, I am positive that — if we met on a trail in view of Half Dome — I would have swooned.

I am, in a sense, swooning even now over Muir’s muscular legacy: how he founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and in 1905 led President Theodore Roosevelt on the backpacking trip that ultimately preserved Yosemite as the National Park we love today.

Struck as I am by the alpenglow of these great achievements, I’m equally charmed by the small details of his life: his literary leanings and the famed image of him wandering the Sierras with a crust of bread in his pocket. His priorities were clearly in order. A giddy romantic, he wasted no time on banalities such as dinner. Who has time to for food when there are so many mountains to climb, sunsets to watch, and streams to cross? Muir’s vision was too big for mincing garlic and peeling potatoes.

Obviously, I’m not the only one smitten by this Prince of the Mountains. It seems we cannot pay him enough homage. So many places are named in honor of Muir — hospitals, museums, hiking trails. In 2006, astronomer R.E. Jones even named a planet “Johnmuir.” So great is the temptation to honor him that the U.S, Geological Survey has had to discourage further attribution of his name to the landscape. If every place carries his namesake, how will we distinguish one place from another?

And, yet, as I wandered the John Muir Wilderness last week, scrambling over the famous blue granite, swimming in tule-lined lakes, and gawking at the wildflowers, I had the sensation that no person’s name—not even John Muirs’—was large enough to contain the magnificence around me. Nature, I find, is too timeless, too universal, and too irreducible for even the greatest pronoun.

And so, as my hiking companion and I followed the trails that led through the wilderness, we sought to rename it. “How about‘The Peoples’ Glorious Revolutionary Wilderness?’ he quipped.

It had a Soviet-era ring, but I liked it. I could imagine the sign arching across every trailhead:

THE PEOPLES’ GLORIOUS REVOLUTIONARY WILDERNESS

I wonder if a title so grandiose and all-encompassing might broaden our concept of the place, might even change our relationship to it. I wonder if perhaps we would start treating wilderness less like a borrowed tent, and more like what it really is: a place of our own.

Nine months have now passed since my grandmother moved into Milder Manor Nursing Home. One morning last September she was getting dressed, took a fall, and in that instant was transformed from a commanding, bridge-playing, globe-trotting golden girl into a disoriented elder in a wheel chair. With years of lively restaurant dinners and trans-Atlantic flights behind her, she must now learn to live for small things: the blooming rose at her bedside, the soft green fleece blanket she wears wrapped around her shoulders.

During my visit last month, I was determined to widen the breadth of her newly constricted routine. Between her rounds of medication and physical therapy sessions, I’d visit. Together, we nodded along to Frank Sinatra CDs, ate ice cream bars, and read the newspaper aloud. We cruised the nursing room hallways and studied the art on the walls. One night I stayed for dinner and engaged her dozing table mates, doing my best to celebrate the watery soup, hard cookies, and knuckles of translucent cauliflower set in front of me.

Except for a few doctor appointments, my grandmother–who still wears jewelry from Bangkok–has rarely left the nursing home. She is now so frail that the ordinary world has become a hazardous place, full of precipitous curbs, careening action, and unpredictable weather. Despite these dangers, one day during my visit–after we’d run out of things to do–I insisted on a walk. Living each day safely indoors was never her style, and with all the medications she is on–antidepressants, blood thinners–nothing could be better for her than fresh air.

I rolled my trusting grandmother out of the nursing home that afternoon. From the drab confines of the lobby with its caged cockatiels and synthetic greenery, we punched the “open” button. The door swung open, and we broke into a world of blazing sun and wild blue sky.

We wheeled around in front of the building, gushed over a patch of red-orange lilies and then, little by little, found ourselves on a slow cruise down the sidewalk. She seemed delighted.

For a second, I balked. “Do you think this is okay?” We hadn’t formally checked-out. I imagined the nurses discovering her empty bed, finding her usual hallway hangouts vacant, and initiating a panicked search.

“Who cares?” My normally law-abiding grandmother waved me onward. “No one pays attention. It’s good to be free.”

Now accomplices in this foray, we picked up speed, heading away from the nursing home grounds with an aire of defiance. As we cruised, I began to imagine myself a heroine who had returned to repay the many kindnesses my grandmother had shown me since birth. For all the hugs she gave me, for all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for the summers at horse camp, and for the Christmas presents, I would now even the balance by saving her from life in a nursing home.

Together we would embark another grand journey, rolling down the sidewalk forever, block after block, and never get tired. We’d cross streets, push through parking lots, and stop in libraries, art galleries, and museums. We’d dash inside grocery stores for ice cream bars and then continue on. Fields and miles would move underneath us, sunrises and sunsets would circle by. At night we would marvel at stars and planets, go to drive-in movies, and stay in hotels where in the morning we’d order up bacon, eggs, and coffee in bed. We would not live in the past, we would live in the now. We would meet new people. Find new places.

“I’m hot,” my grandmother complained, snapping me back to reality: it was 3:00 in the afternoon in Lincoln, Nebraska, and from where we stood on South 20th street, we’d only traveled a block.

It seemed too soon to take her back. A trail broke off the main sidewalk and wound through a small park. “Let’s go a little further,” I urged.

The park didn’t amount to much: a scattering of deciduous trees and a gesture toward landscaping that amounted to a few hydrangeas, a mowed and watered lawn, blue birds. I felt judgmental, thinking of how much better the trees are at home in Oregon, and how this humble neighborhood parcel was inadequate for my strong hikers’ legs: legs that wanted to stretch and stride up and down long grades. Worse: it was inadequate for my grandmother—a woman who in her life had seen the Pyramids, Africa, and the Taj Mahal.

But in truth, to my grandmother, the 100-yard path cutting across the park looked interminable. “Look at that long, hot stretch,” she droned. Her thin puff of dyed brown hair glinted red in the sun. I pushed the chair faster and coached: “Almost there. We can make it. Yes we can.” The path rejoined the sidewalk and we continued on down the shadier neighborhood street. My grandma grew concerned. “We’re getting a long ways away,” she fretted.

It was time to concede. My travel partner was getting homesick. We turned around, and re-crossed the hot arc of trail through the park. As the sun beat on us, I was forced to acknowledge that my fantasy where I was tireless and my grandmother still a free spirit might make a good screenplay, but that truly being the heroine would be far less glamorous. It’d entail moving back from the West Coast and living on her limited terms. It would require giving up my beloved mountains, my friends, my traveling, and settling for a while into this Midwestern eternity of humid corn fields. But could I really move here? This was a question I would have to tackle later. For now, since I could not save her, I would just do what I could: make life more interesting for a few days.

We rolled back down the block, her chair vibrating over the concrete. We passed the red-orange lilies and arrived at the nursing home door.

Before we went in, a breeze kicked up. “Feel that,” she observed, holding up an open palm. My grandmother has never before been a nature lover, tending only a few tulips in her lifetime and shooing “pests” that homesteaded on her patio. Suddenly, in her old age, she was an admirer of trees and of passing clouds.

“A perfect day,” she declared.

We’d only gone to the park at end of the block and back. For me, it was a rather dull outing. For her, it was plenty. Like anyone’s idea of a good journey, it seemed to strike the perfect balance between effort and payoff, and to contain just the right interval between departure and return.

My grandma was happy. “Let’s put this one on the good memory page,” she said aloud. I can only surmise she was imagining her reams of photo albums stuffed with snapshots of Africa, France, and Cuba. From where she now sat, it was clear that the perimeters of this wide world were drawing close, that the horizon no longer receded. I squeezed her delicate shoulders, grateful to have shared this late foray with her, and then rolled her back inside.

in memory of my grandmother, Dorothy Ammon, who embarked on the ultimate journey on August 10, 2008.

(pics of the parade line up: http://picasaweb.google.com/flyinghobogirl/4thOfJulyBlog

I’ve always thrived on overwhelming last-minute ventures and so entering a float in Ashland’s 4th of July parade on a whim was like a big happy shot of adrenaline for me and my collection of free form friends who were up to the task late afternoon on July 3rd. Our flakiness even got us some publicity. The local newspaper broadcasted our lack of preparedness across the front page. http://www.dailytidings.com/2008/0702/stories/0702_parade.php

The float was to represent the Eagle Mill Farm Education Project (www.eaglemillfarm.org) so we needed to create a farmy ambiance. It would be a lot of work, but we had a jump start since the core of our float was already built. We would use the Moonshine Luv Shack, the art car I lived on at Burning Man last year. Rustic and whimsical, it proved to be the perfect canvass to showcase our vision (or lack of).

We parked the shack at the farm, opened a few beers, and started wandering the acreage in search of good junk. Decorations were everywhere: fencing wire, rusty tiller tines, shovels, flowers, dried peppers, old gourds. We pooled our odds and ends in a heap and got to work. Garth tinkered with the motor while I artfully positioned farm tools on the shack’s porch. Amanda hung signs, arranged flowers, and had ideas. Everyone cheered as Allison skillfully stapled pea vines along perimeter of the shack while holding a beer in one hand. By early evening, us slackers had a masterpiece on our hands.

The parade started at 10 a.m. the next morning and, by then, our friend Benny had set up a PA system for our float band, a trio comprised of myself and Chris Fowler on our guitars, Gary Schrodt on mandolin and blues harp. The plan was to sing John Prine’s Homegrown Tomatoes, definitely in tune and hopefully in harmony.

With the upper deck of the float filled with children, the lower decks with dogs and friends, we lurched forward and started the procession. A huge cheer erupted from the jammed sidewalks. It’s true that we are just a small nowhere town, but people in the Rogue Valley take the Ashland parade very seriously, placing blankets out to mark their spot several days before the 4th. The day is anticipated and debated: will the family-vibe be ruined with nudity? Will the entries be too political? Not political enough?

We crept down the street with a troupe of dancers ahead of us and the Animal Shelter entry behind us with their barking dogs straining from leashes and triggering a commotion among our float dogs. Chris, Gary, and I kicked off Homegrown Tomatoes. We hadn’t practiced, but our good musical chemistry pulled us along and Gary’s well-placed harmonica solos were a crowd pleaser. Friends Selene and Richard trailed behind the shack with a wheel barrow full of ice and carrots, which they tossed into the candy-filled crowd.

By the end of the 8 blocks, we had sung 30 rounds of Homegrown Tomatoes. Though I’ve played that song a hundred different times in my life, singing it back-to-back like that imprinted it onto my consciousness in a whole new way, causing it to take on all sorts of overblown meanings that I am sure John Prine never intended. I realized the lyrics were surprisingly political and apropo (‘cuz I know what this country needs, it’s homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see…”)

When we reached the end of the line, Garth cut the engine. My fingers were spent, my voice was hoarse, and I was dizzy. The children, arms weary from waving, climbed down the latter from the upper deck and I bid them farewell from my sprawling place, the shack couch.

After a few moments rest, Garth drove our tired bodies the back way through town to return us to our morning meeting spot. Gary plucked a lazy tune on his mando and the shack squeaked and rumbled underneath us. Above where Allison sat humming into the sky, the pea vines swayed from the upper deck, limp like the rest of us from too much sun. After all the commotion, the moment felt inordinately calm, like in that space of time after a great party ends an the clean up begins. And though it was only 11:00 am, it felt like the very end of the day.

But it wasn’t. Allison and I would end the 4th of July far away from the crowds: camped out atop Woodrat Mountain, with two folding chairs set in perfect view of the sliver moon, which would slide its way down through clouds and sink beautifully behind a ridge. Then to be traditional, we would observe a few firework displays before falling asleep with great happiness. Afterall, we had our own version of independence to anticipate which, at that moment, assumed the form of two paragliding wings, one green and one red, neatly folded and waiting under the night sky for us to wake.

I don’t normally bother to get upset about the weather. What’s the use? But after a week straight of rain and a sky the hue of funky dishwater, I am getting agitated. The farm is a mudhole so I can’t work–the tiller would get mired and the seedlings would rot. And I also can’t fly. And neither could the other pilots who were grounded in the rain the annual Starthistle Fly-in held at Woodrat over Memorial Day weekend. It’s feels so long since I’ve flown that the fact that I ever flew at all seems like an abstraction. A previous life.

So without the organizing forces of flying and working, my days feel hodgepodge like bad sculptures and my concerns are getting frilly. Like I’m wondering what to wear later this week when I oblige my friends to a girls-night-out to see the Sex and the City movie. At the same time I am lamenting about how our society insists I be shoe and clothing obsessed. Worse, I am lamenting about how I sort of am. All this makes me want to put my helmet on and block it all out. To run off the mountain, fly away, and see things in their proper proportions. An old pilot maxim declares that there is safety in altitude. This pilot was referring to terrain clearance, but what a metaphor …

So staring out into the rain, I’m feeling like there is no point. And the contrast makes me realize the tremendous role flying has in my life as of late, making my days feel utterly compelling–each flight a contemplation of the earth, of freedom and each landing a little survival that ignites the rest of the day.

It is fitting that I should pass the time watching Werner Herzog’s flim “The White Diamond” about a Brit who constructs ridiculous looking blimp–the “Jungle Airship”– and transports it to Peru to test it out under the incidental auspice of seaching for medicinal herbs in the cloud forest canopy. But really it’s all about obsession: with flying, with grandiosity.

The movie starts with a brief summary of aviation history nobly narrated by Herzog himself. As he depicts the success and failures of flight–from the first hot-air balloon ride to the Hindenburg–he proclaims flying “the great purpose.” As I pilot, I felt my spine straighten with pride when he said that: The Great Purpose! But the story quickly shrinks back to the Brit with his totally nonhistorical puffer-fish aircraft which, right before its first flight, gets rained on and turns into a wet rice wrapper. Days of waiting ensue and Herzog’s camera gets distracted by all manner of rainforest insect and then spaces out for a spell on a local guy breakdancing on a rock outcropping. Any paraglider pilot can relate to this–the fine art of waiting on weather, the restless antic-inspiring boredom. It is why the sport has earned the seconday name of “para-waiting.”

Anyway, after all this preparation and patience the Brit launches the Jungle Airship and has a sinky flight only to find he placed a motor in backwards.

And so Herzog subtly lets the air out of this overinflated endeavor. What is the purpose of flying, afterall?

There is none.

But the irony, which Herzog captures, is that when you are up in the air nothing could feel so compelling, so important, so crucial. Its profound and pointless simultaneously. Above all, it is joyful. And in the end, as a wise friend friend of mine recently pointed out: “Joy is a purpose unto itself. Maybe the only purpose, along with love.”

So much has been written about rivers and though I am surrounded by several–the Klamath, the Rogue, the Smith, the Illinois– I am not a part of river-culture. I am not a kayaker nor a flyfisher, and prefer to take my swims in still bodies of water where I can float on my back eyes-closed and not find myself a mile downstream.

All the same, I love rivers for their great beauty and because they are so candidly metaphoric: Life is a river, Go with the Flow, Water under the Bridge. Writers like Norman Maclean and David James Duncan floated whole books on this metaphor and rivers have meandered through many of the poems of my favorite poets, like What the River Says by the former Oregon poet-laureate William Stafford. And then there are the rivers in the poems by my friend Joe Chermesino, a lesser known but not lesser talented poet.

Last week I accepted a last minute invite for a four-day float trip down the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue River. The trip was to celebrate the birthday of a wonderful guy named Dan but, in the end, I felt like it was my birthday; by the time I hopped on the trip all the packing and organizing had already been done, and throughout the trip Dan and his girlfriend Lynn insisted on setting up and cooking almost every meal for the rest of us. Each morning I woke to a riverside buffet of coffee, fresh fruit, bagels and omelets. For dinner, fish tacos, tortellini, hearty stews. Wine was poured, martinis were mixed in Nalgene bottles, enormous slices of German chocolate cake were distributed after dinner. We were all feeling grateful in mind and body that Dan was born.

We spent the first night camped on a small sandbar. After staking out our tent settlement, a bald eagle flew low over our heads. Then another one. And then another. Though no longer officially threatened or endangered, to see one bald eagle is still a rare thing, much less three. It was a special moment and we knew it. We cranked our heads skyward in rapt silence as one eagle tried to chase off another, diving and swooping and showing its enormous wing span and cloud-white head. Our senses were wide awake: The sound of the river sharpened, the sky deepened. What luck! A good omen!

Then the eagles reeled toward each other, locked talons, and tumbled near to the ground. We let out a loud collective gasp, as if wowed by the last firework display on Independence Day.

The spooked eagles left. We sadly watched their disappearing tail feathers as they aimed downstream.

But that wouldn’t be our last wildlife sighting. A curious young bear investigated our rafts. A river otter ambled along the shoreline. Fish surfaced. Deer hid in the riparian foliage. Fire newts spooned and mated in bogs. Herons held still. There were plenty of frogs to kiss. And then there were the ubiquitous, but always compelling ravens.

I spent much of my time on lounging at the helm a raft rowed by Jeremey, a competent river guide from Jackson Hole, WY. Jeremey is on his way to Alaska for a season guiding on the Tatshenshini river. Our conversation revolved around the value of unstructured time, of nature, and of travel. The rest of the time I spent fending for myself in an inflatable kayak. I was surprised how scary it was to paddle some of the rapids. After a few runs, this bold pilot climbed ashore quaking like a shitsu.

A great trip in all. A happy group of people varying nicely in age and interest but with the key things in common: a belief that time spent on rivers is never wasted time and that there is always space on the raft for more wine and cheese. And martinis. And chocolate cake.

During those 4 days life, indeed, flowed like a river. Photos from the trip

Today I was blindsided in the Grange Feed and Farm Supply store. I sauntered through the door thinking about sprinkler heads but was hit by a smell: a warm grainy farmy earthy atmosphere made up of soil, cornmeal, of rawhide. It struck me that it was the first time I’d been there since my dog passed last August. For the 13 years of his life, it was our tradition to walk to the Grange for a bag of dog food and bones. That smell set me back 8 months.

It felt ridiculous to fall apart in the store– among the ranch-hardened men, the rows full of gopher traps and hoses–so I stepped back outside. Karen, the Grange clerk, sat at a sunny table surrounded by racks of geranimums and cosmos. Though over the years we’ve only spoke of gardening tools and fertilizer mixes, I couldn’t resist the urge to disclose: She had always been a good friend to him, tossing him biscuits from behind the counter and kindly turning a blind eye when he snatched treats from the bottom shelf. “I am overwhelmed in there. The smell.” I sat down and explained.

Having dogs of her own, she understood exactly. And she knew about smells. She told me that her father had stasis planted outside his front door. Now that he is deceased, she is undone by the faintest scent of the flower.

Back in the car, I called a friend who had loved my dog almost as much as me, who accompanied us on many walks to the Grange. He listened, empathized, cried and then the conversation ended badly and I was left even sadder. Another loss. We broke up exactly one year ago today. One year. And still.

What else can I do about these losses that sometimes seem frozen in place? I’ve cried plenty–even made an alter in the Temple of Forgiveness at Burning Man. When it burned on the last night of the gathering, I felt a huge release as the spectacle of embers floated up into the desert night sky. I moved ahead and filled in the gaps with many great people, places, and things. I’ve spun suffering into stories.

And learned to fly.

Back now at Woodrat Mountain, I’m getting my first real sense of “coring” a thermal–turning in 360s and rising into the wild blue and a whole new world has opened up again. So much terrain to explore. And math, which has always been irritating, has become suddenly fascinating, as I attempt to calculate altitude, windspeed, and glide path.

An emotional day in all. Life is fraught with sharp-edges, things to crash into. And the ground is hard. But as pilot Stan Koszelak says: “Anything worth doing…”–and I think this can apply to love as well as flying–”…requires a helmet.”