I'm looking in my journal here, and it says that a year ago I was in North Dakota, wandering around the hills of my first national park of the move journey. I woke up in a ditch, relaxed for a few hours realizing that I should just enjoy the fact that it was officially summer now and I should appreciate the peace of nature in exchange for how hard I'd been working to earn this experience. After a few hours it got really hot and I packed up and hiked back to my car. I ate food in civilization, this incredibly small town in southwestern North Dakota where the most recent rock face president used to hang out when he needed a break from Manhattan and New York State. Then I waited until evening and drove up to Buck Hill, the highest viewpoint in the park, and tried to make sure my car didn't blow away with the wind. After sunset I drove around the corner to my permitted entry point. All that was in between me and a rest for the night was this huge insanely steep and bumpy hill with barely any discernible paths.
Luckily I had a walking stick from China that made it easier to
descend with heavy weight on my back, and I got to an open field with a
few trees to hide me from the road, as per the camping code. I set up
my tent near a huge evergreen tree with wide boughs, and within ten
minutes I learned that there were a lot of bats flying overhead. My
Uncle Al was a bat expert, and still is I suppose, but he made them seem
less scary because he actually went into caves and studied them. He
hiked all over the place, including Utah. He was another big
inspiration for all of these travels. I thought of him and how much he
would have liked seeing his favorite flying mammals who move gracefully
through the night guided by a keen sense of sound. I was used to them
flying within inches of my nose on the pond, so I knew they would leave
me alone. They had better places to go.
If you haven't read the novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, you should at least be aware of some of its best quotes, because they come from one of the greatest red-bearded writers of all time, Tom Robbins. Cowgirls is about a woman who is the best hitchhiker of all time because she has abnormally large thumbs, and has to learn that her unusual gift is what makes her so beautiful, and then becomes this model in New York before going out to North Dakota to find a pathway to a larger experience of the wild love that life has to offer:
"I'll say this much and no more: there's got to poetry. And magic. Your thumbs taught you that much, didn't they? Poetry and magic. At every level. If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall... then statesmen are going to have to concern themselves with poetry and magic. Bankers are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. Time magazine is going to have to write about magic and poetry. Factory workers and housewives are going to have to get their lives entangled in magic and poetry. As for policemen and cowgirls..."
"Do you think such a thing can ever happen?"
"If you understood poetry and magic, you'd know that it doesn't matter." (p. 333)
When asked what the purpose of life was, he wrote:
Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. (Wild Ducks Flying Backward, 255)
So I brought my laptop and wrote for a little while (North Dakota was the only place I ever brought my laptop with me, but I thought it was a new variation and worth the weight), and looked at images from the journey so far, and then closed it after a short while and went out under the stars and wandered in this cool little area beneath the hill with strange streaks all over it, and then I hiked back with the stars shining in the sky, and I did one of my favorite things I could possibly do. I lay down on my back, relaxed with the atmosphere and felt the wind whispering through the trees and the tall grass in the field, and gazed at the dark forests and cliffs up above me and around me, and said hi to the bats flying by, and when I thought I'd had enough of the pure peace, I tuned into a different piece of pure pleasure.
The wild apple on my iPod told me it was time to make my unique feeling awareness of the universal love the best show it could be, with magical musicians Hiromi Uehara, Joni Mitchell and Kaki King.
A sensational set of three hours, one each from these mesmerizing muses, softly and swiftly swimming in your soul through your ears, a glorious grace of eternal art flying delightedly from the universal mind straight to your heart, which is smiling wide along with everything else inside.
I awoke the next morning and relaxed in the field on very little food before hiking back up the intense hill to find my next adventure.
Once again, I hiked into windy hills after dark, but not as steep. Even so, it was hard to set up a tent in that wind.
Let the good times roll...
If you haven't read the novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, you should at least be aware of some of its best quotes, because they come from one of the greatest red-bearded writers of all time, Tom Robbins. Cowgirls is about a woman who is the best hitchhiker of all time because she has abnormally large thumbs, and has to learn that her unusual gift is what makes her so beautiful, and then becomes this model in New York before going out to North Dakota to find a pathway to a larger experience of the wild love that life has to offer:
"I'll say this much and no more: there's got to poetry. And magic. Your thumbs taught you that much, didn't they? Poetry and magic. At every level. If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall... then statesmen are going to have to concern themselves with poetry and magic. Bankers are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. Time magazine is going to have to write about magic and poetry. Factory workers and housewives are going to have to get their lives entangled in magic and poetry. As for policemen and cowgirls..."
"Do you think such a thing can ever happen?"
"If you understood poetry and magic, you'd know that it doesn't matter." (p. 333)
When asked what the purpose of life was, he wrote:
Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. (Wild Ducks Flying Backward, 255)
So I brought my laptop and wrote for a little while (North Dakota was the only place I ever brought my laptop with me, but I thought it was a new variation and worth the weight), and looked at images from the journey so far, and then closed it after a short while and went out under the stars and wandered in this cool little area beneath the hill with strange streaks all over it, and then I hiked back with the stars shining in the sky, and I did one of my favorite things I could possibly do. I lay down on my back, relaxed with the atmosphere and felt the wind whispering through the trees and the tall grass in the field, and gazed at the dark forests and cliffs up above me and around me, and said hi to the bats flying by, and when I thought I'd had enough of the pure peace, I tuned into a different piece of pure pleasure.
The wild apple on my iPod told me it was time to make my unique feeling awareness of the universal love the best show it could be, with magical musicians Hiromi Uehara, Joni Mitchell and Kaki King.
A sensational set of three hours, one each from these mesmerizing muses, softly and swiftly swimming in your soul through your ears, a glorious grace of eternal art flying delightedly from the universal mind straight to your heart, which is smiling wide along with everything else inside.
I awoke the next morning and relaxed in the field on very little food before hiking back up the intense hill to find my next adventure.
Once again, I hiked into windy hills after dark, but not as steep. Even so, it was hard to set up a tent in that wind.
Let the good times roll...
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