I had been my own boss for quite some time. I'd even seen Wizard Island in a beautiful lake. But then I found a place to stay for a while, and that provided a place to work with something new and interesting, and before I knew it all I had to do was report to a guy named Anthony and pretend that he was my boss. Don't get me wrong. He was my boss. He paid me, told me what to do and provided leadership from above. But he and I both knew I didn't have to be there, that overall my time was better spent elsewhere, and that this was really just an intriguing new work experience for both of us.
I was working there because my old basketball teammate Ian had generously offered his yard for me to camp in, and a dog for me to throw a ball to, and then a winery for me to gain glory as a hard working story teller.
Anyway, Ian nicknamed him "The Wizard" the year before.
The Wizard made my job enjoyable by doing three things. First, he had endless enthusiasm, all the time. This was despite a workload and level of professional and family responsibility I couldn't comprehend. Second, he had an eclectic background of world experience that enabled him to have intelligent conversations wherever he was and no matter how much he had to keep track of or what meager lowly task he was doing because someone had to do it. Third, and best of all, he gave me permission to play music on the sound system with my iPod while we worked, no matter what it was. Well, there were quality checks from time to time, but mostly we had a good time.
I always started my day around 6 am, unzipping the flaps of my tent and pushing the drops of dew away. I would either greet glorious California sunshine or clouds of fog. The course to work was very windy, and eventually Ian told me that there was a simpler way to go, but I really loved all the curves and twists and turns because eventually I knew them like the back of my hand and didn't even have to think. After twenty minutes or so I'd roll into the vineyard by 7:30 and begin work.
My first duty was to knock over these enormous barrels of water. They were the sanitizing barrels for all the equipment we used that needed to be clean for the grapes and/or juice, and it needed to be filled with clean water each morning. But the water from the night before was always there too, so I had to give them a good heavy push and scream, "YAAAA!" as water went rushing all over the cellar floor but into the nearby drains. Then I'd pick it up and place the hose in it to refill with either hot or cold water, depending on the bucket, and then knock over the next one with a hearty scream. That and the jazz/rock/classical music really woke me up in the morning. Then I'd have to mix in several cleaning chemicals for various sanitation tasks. Basically, you have to dip the equipment into several types of acids and bases to achieve the desired cleanly result.
After all of that I'd take the temperatures on the wine vats where the grapes were fermenting so the boss would know how they were doing and whether or not they needed covers or dry ice. Then I'd begin with my main task, punch downs. I had to use a hydraulic machine to stir up the grapes and punch them with a metal press pad. Before I pressed anything I had to sanitize the press pad and then attach it with this little slippery pin, which meant leaning over into the tank and not falling in and dying (you wouldn't last long with the CO2 levels down there, and it was all deep enough so that you couldn't stand). When I was done I had to remove the pin and the pad and move the whole machine on the belt and repeat the process. I also had to take the covers off and reattach them, which involved a ladder and lots of leaning on one catwalk. On the other catwalk I had to hop over the rails and balance myself on two inch metal bars while I pulled the elastic cord around the black garbage bag plastic material we used instead of covers for some reason. Also, if it had rained the night before, I would have had to scoop all the water off the covers with a bucket first so that it didn't mix with the fermenting wine. When I was done, I had to scoop dry ice into buckets and pour it into bags attached to the insides of the vats, and then put the covers on so nothing unwelcome would grow in there.
It took about 5-10 minutes to punch one vat, because you had to go all the way down and all the way back up on every level of the surface and really stir it up good so there was no crust at all left on the top. There were anywhere between 12 and 25 vats to press during a shift, and there were three shifts each day. I always did the morning shift, and usually the afternoon one too, although sometimes we switched it up. I was originally hired to help sort grapes for two weeks, but when the boss saw I could do punch downs well enough, he realized that his other interns would be free to do other work and he could give me a small raise and the official title of "harvest intern." At my peak I recorded "hat tricks" twice in three days. This means I punched all the grapes during all of the shifts, 50 and 55 total on the days, respectively. The second one was during the harvest party, because they celebrated before we were actually done. It didn't matter that it was a Saturday because we always worked Saturdays, so I got to show off punching and hopping and pulling and lifting in front of all these laid back California wine club people who had come for the party. The next day we had to be at work despite the hangover, and then put all of these really complex temporary mini-roofs made of wooden boards and many elastic cords to protect them from the first serious rains of the season, which were due that night. Then every morning we had to move all the covers off the morning before punch downs, which really slowed things down. Sometimes it was really fun putting those covers on in a windy rainstorm.
A few times I had to shovel several tons of grapes out of vats on my own, while a helper with a CO2 monitor had to be around outside the tank to make sure I didn't die of C02 poisoning from the fermenting grapes. Several hours of shoveling grapes will make you feel like a man, I guarantee you that.
Besides that, there were usually crates of grapes coming in freshly picked from the fields. Someone would carry them with a forklift and place them in a tray on the sorting table. One of us would step on a pedal that would tilt the crate so they could rake the grapes onto the table. The rest of the people on the table would sort through the grapes and pull out leaves, loose stems, and any grapes that appeared to have rot or be too rosy. Once I raked grapes for seven straight hours without a break.
At the end of the day we always had to clean off all of the machines, which meant putting on wet suits and getting high pressure hoses to take off all the inevitable grape stains. One of them you had to run while you sprayed it, and be very careful not to get your hands taken off.
Then we had to spray the entire floor and make sure there wasn't one grape on the floor at the end.
Then I'd go home and eat broccoli, carrots, red/green bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and tofu. We often got free lunches during work, so I got plenty of meat and carbohydrates there. I also ate about two Builder's Bars by lunch time. Doing those punch downs was like lifting weight half a day every day after day after day. Then I would go to sleep in my tent, or sometimes on the ground under the moon and stars. Once I worked seventeen days in a row. Three days off in 6 weeks. 75-86 hours a week. I could barely move my middle and ring fingers after a while. I was really starting to worry about carpal tunnel and my writing career. It took a few weeks after harvest for it to wear off, actually.
I couldn't have survived it if Anthony hadn't been there to talk to me about his experience in journalism and graphic design before he reinvented himself as a winemaker when he was 30. He was also dealing with a 2 year old named Jack at home, and a wife who was seven months pregnant. I was working 85 hours a week, but he was logging over 100 and had way more responsibility. But I still got to correct his grammar from time to time, which was fun.
I usually began the mornings with jazz, classical or classic rock music because the other interns didn't arrive until 9:30 (they worked later), and they tended to like more modern music. Luckily, Anthony loved jazz. I played Hiromi Uehara for him numerous times, and he was immediately smitten by her intense energy. Who isn't? He asked me if I liked Herbie Hancock, and I told him I did my presentation report on one of his world music albums back in college. He said that Herbie Hancock is the most underrated musician of our time, and I think he was excited to be talking about jazz to someone. I often walked in on him listening to Herbie in his trailer while he was working. Or Eminem. Or Pearl Jam.
Sometimes I'd be playing The Kinks or The Who and he'd ask me what year I was born, and shake his head and say if only I'd been born at a different time. He always got angry when I played Bob Dylan, especially Maggie's Farm, which I thought was funny.
It all started with him daring us to create iPod playlists. It was the first Saturday we all had to work and process fruit for over fourteen hours, and we were all working together and talking on the sorting table. He made the Australian guy make a mix that was only 10% metal and half ambient or electronic, but it ended up being mostly metal. The Wisconsin guy liked Devo and Talking Heads and lots of 80s and punk music. I used most of my lunch break to make a playlist when I was challenged, and I immediately failed because the volume hook-up wasn't left correctly, and I wasn't aware. But he gave me a few tries to figure it out, and then my glorious career as Harvest DJ kicked off with the San Francisco Orchestra's version of Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold" and then Ennio Morricone's theme overture for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". From there the musical joy continued. Led Zeppelin one minute, Beethoven's 6th the next, Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." the next:
I think that's when Evan, from Wisconsin, told me my taste was "eclectic." I think my playlist lasted about ten hours before the cellar master, who was more fond of reggae, turned off "Milestones" by Miles Davis half an hour before I got to leave. It was September 29th, the completion of one of the most productive and enjoyable work weeks of my life. I had made it to northern California, I had a job, I was only ten minutes from Bohemian Highway, thirty minutes from the Pacific Ocean and sunshine just about every day. No bears had eaten me, no cops had bullied me, no trucks had crashed into me. I was earning money to start a new life in San Francisco, but before that city life began again, I was living on the outside. No wondering what was going on back in New York or in Japan or even in the mountains of Montana or canyons of Utah or lakes of Minnesota. I just had a task every day and a place to sleep at night. Often I had a chair to sit, stars to gaze upon and a dedicated dog to run up to me with a tennis ball and eagerly await my throw. All I had to do to be God to that dog was keep throwing the ball, and then pet her behind the ears. I'd never liked dogs as a kid, because they were always barking at me or biting me. But things had changed. Dogs had changed how they acted toward me. I had changed.
I fell asleep under a Harvest Moon that night, before one day off and then another eight days of work in a row. Then another day off, and then seventeen days of work. Then a party, then rains, then winding down and looking forward to living inside after half a year outdoors.
Crazy, right? Well, I believe in any method to get my blood pumping, my body moving and my imagination glowing. So did Anthony, in his own way. Anything to get our blood pumping, heads bobbing and hands moving grapes. That's why he made me put Eminem's "Lose Yourself" on a loop one Sunday afternoon. I think someone unplugged it during the fourth replay in a row. The Giants game was on anyway. They were sweeping the World Series, which was cool.
The Wizard was always telling me I had to quote him on all the great things he said, but then he'd counter it by saying I couldn't use anything he said, so I think I forgot most of it out of habit. The best thing he said he made me promise not to print. But I do remember we were discussing enlightenment once, and I repeated the old line about loving your enemies, and he said he was so enlightened he didn't have any enemies, and gave me that, "Aha! Top that!" look he always gave. He was always telling me he'd turn me into a wine man soon enough, and I'd always reply that I'm just "the guy in the tent."
It was strange to resume working life in America in such a way. Had I been in an office job, I would have been connected to the world constantly, always checking e-mail, Facebook or Youtube. But having come from a summer mostly in the wild, it was easy to transition to life where I focused on a job and only worried about the outside world every few days. I don't think I watched any kind of online media besides Daily Show my first two months in California. It really didn't seem like the outside world existed. Just sleeping, eating, working, listening to music and joking around with the boss and co-workers and host.
Then it all ended and I was in a new city where I didn't know anybody, or if I did, they flaked on me. So I carried the harvest mentality into writing my first few weeks, and then it turned to photography and reading, and then back to writing and getting a job, and then writing and reading and working and meeting people and cultural events and moving and traveling in the area... and now I'm back to the true harvest: the story from the journey.
I was working there because my old basketball teammate Ian had generously offered his yard for me to camp in, and a dog for me to throw a ball to, and then a winery for me to gain glory as a hard working story teller.
Anyway, Ian nicknamed him "The Wizard" the year before.
The Wizard made my job enjoyable by doing three things. First, he had endless enthusiasm, all the time. This was despite a workload and level of professional and family responsibility I couldn't comprehend. Second, he had an eclectic background of world experience that enabled him to have intelligent conversations wherever he was and no matter how much he had to keep track of or what meager lowly task he was doing because someone had to do it. Third, and best of all, he gave me permission to play music on the sound system with my iPod while we worked, no matter what it was. Well, there were quality checks from time to time, but mostly we had a good time.
I always started my day around 6 am, unzipping the flaps of my tent and pushing the drops of dew away. I would either greet glorious California sunshine or clouds of fog. The course to work was very windy, and eventually Ian told me that there was a simpler way to go, but I really loved all the curves and twists and turns because eventually I knew them like the back of my hand and didn't even have to think. After twenty minutes or so I'd roll into the vineyard by 7:30 and begin work.
My first duty was to knock over these enormous barrels of water. They were the sanitizing barrels for all the equipment we used that needed to be clean for the grapes and/or juice, and it needed to be filled with clean water each morning. But the water from the night before was always there too, so I had to give them a good heavy push and scream, "YAAAA!" as water went rushing all over the cellar floor but into the nearby drains. Then I'd pick it up and place the hose in it to refill with either hot or cold water, depending on the bucket, and then knock over the next one with a hearty scream. That and the jazz/rock/classical music really woke me up in the morning. Then I'd have to mix in several cleaning chemicals for various sanitation tasks. Basically, you have to dip the equipment into several types of acids and bases to achieve the desired cleanly result.
After all of that I'd take the temperatures on the wine vats where the grapes were fermenting so the boss would know how they were doing and whether or not they needed covers or dry ice. Then I'd begin with my main task, punch downs. I had to use a hydraulic machine to stir up the grapes and punch them with a metal press pad. Before I pressed anything I had to sanitize the press pad and then attach it with this little slippery pin, which meant leaning over into the tank and not falling in and dying (you wouldn't last long with the CO2 levels down there, and it was all deep enough so that you couldn't stand). When I was done I had to remove the pin and the pad and move the whole machine on the belt and repeat the process. I also had to take the covers off and reattach them, which involved a ladder and lots of leaning on one catwalk. On the other catwalk I had to hop over the rails and balance myself on two inch metal bars while I pulled the elastic cord around the black garbage bag plastic material we used instead of covers for some reason. Also, if it had rained the night before, I would have had to scoop all the water off the covers with a bucket first so that it didn't mix with the fermenting wine. When I was done, I had to scoop dry ice into buckets and pour it into bags attached to the insides of the vats, and then put the covers on so nothing unwelcome would grow in there.
It took about 5-10 minutes to punch one vat, because you had to go all the way down and all the way back up on every level of the surface and really stir it up good so there was no crust at all left on the top. There were anywhere between 12 and 25 vats to press during a shift, and there were three shifts each day. I always did the morning shift, and usually the afternoon one too, although sometimes we switched it up. I was originally hired to help sort grapes for two weeks, but when the boss saw I could do punch downs well enough, he realized that his other interns would be free to do other work and he could give me a small raise and the official title of "harvest intern." At my peak I recorded "hat tricks" twice in three days. This means I punched all the grapes during all of the shifts, 50 and 55 total on the days, respectively. The second one was during the harvest party, because they celebrated before we were actually done. It didn't matter that it was a Saturday because we always worked Saturdays, so I got to show off punching and hopping and pulling and lifting in front of all these laid back California wine club people who had come for the party. The next day we had to be at work despite the hangover, and then put all of these really complex temporary mini-roofs made of wooden boards and many elastic cords to protect them from the first serious rains of the season, which were due that night. Then every morning we had to move all the covers off the morning before punch downs, which really slowed things down. Sometimes it was really fun putting those covers on in a windy rainstorm.
A few times I had to shovel several tons of grapes out of vats on my own, while a helper with a CO2 monitor had to be around outside the tank to make sure I didn't die of C02 poisoning from the fermenting grapes. Several hours of shoveling grapes will make you feel like a man, I guarantee you that.
Besides that, there were usually crates of grapes coming in freshly picked from the fields. Someone would carry them with a forklift and place them in a tray on the sorting table. One of us would step on a pedal that would tilt the crate so they could rake the grapes onto the table. The rest of the people on the table would sort through the grapes and pull out leaves, loose stems, and any grapes that appeared to have rot or be too rosy. Once I raked grapes for seven straight hours without a break.
At the end of the day we always had to clean off all of the machines, which meant putting on wet suits and getting high pressure hoses to take off all the inevitable grape stains. One of them you had to run while you sprayed it, and be very careful not to get your hands taken off.
Then we had to spray the entire floor and make sure there wasn't one grape on the floor at the end.
Then I'd go home and eat broccoli, carrots, red/green bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and tofu. We often got free lunches during work, so I got plenty of meat and carbohydrates there. I also ate about two Builder's Bars by lunch time. Doing those punch downs was like lifting weight half a day every day after day after day. Then I would go to sleep in my tent, or sometimes on the ground under the moon and stars. Once I worked seventeen days in a row. Three days off in 6 weeks. 75-86 hours a week. I could barely move my middle and ring fingers after a while. I was really starting to worry about carpal tunnel and my writing career. It took a few weeks after harvest for it to wear off, actually.
I couldn't have survived it if Anthony hadn't been there to talk to me about his experience in journalism and graphic design before he reinvented himself as a winemaker when he was 30. He was also dealing with a 2 year old named Jack at home, and a wife who was seven months pregnant. I was working 85 hours a week, but he was logging over 100 and had way more responsibility. But I still got to correct his grammar from time to time, which was fun.
I usually began the mornings with jazz, classical or classic rock music because the other interns didn't arrive until 9:30 (they worked later), and they tended to like more modern music. Luckily, Anthony loved jazz. I played Hiromi Uehara for him numerous times, and he was immediately smitten by her intense energy. Who isn't? He asked me if I liked Herbie Hancock, and I told him I did my presentation report on one of his world music albums back in college. He said that Herbie Hancock is the most underrated musician of our time, and I think he was excited to be talking about jazz to someone. I often walked in on him listening to Herbie in his trailer while he was working. Or Eminem. Or Pearl Jam.
Sometimes I'd be playing The Kinks or The Who and he'd ask me what year I was born, and shake his head and say if only I'd been born at a different time. He always got angry when I played Bob Dylan, especially Maggie's Farm, which I thought was funny.
It all started with him daring us to create iPod playlists. It was the first Saturday we all had to work and process fruit for over fourteen hours, and we were all working together and talking on the sorting table. He made the Australian guy make a mix that was only 10% metal and half ambient or electronic, but it ended up being mostly metal. The Wisconsin guy liked Devo and Talking Heads and lots of 80s and punk music. I used most of my lunch break to make a playlist when I was challenged, and I immediately failed because the volume hook-up wasn't left correctly, and I wasn't aware. But he gave me a few tries to figure it out, and then my glorious career as Harvest DJ kicked off with the San Francisco Orchestra's version of Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold" and then Ennio Morricone's theme overture for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". From there the musical joy continued. Led Zeppelin one minute, Beethoven's 6th the next, Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M." the next:
"So I ask what's it worth?
Ready to give up so I seek the old Earth
who explains working hard can help you maintain
to overcome the heart aches and pain
Cash rules everything around me
CREAM*
Get the money."
I fell asleep under a Harvest Moon that night, before one day off and then another eight days of work in a row. Then another day off, and then seventeen days of work. Then a party, then rains, then winding down and looking forward to living inside after half a year outdoors.
Crazy, right? Well, I believe in any method to get my blood pumping, my body moving and my imagination glowing. So did Anthony, in his own way. Anything to get our blood pumping, heads bobbing and hands moving grapes. That's why he made me put Eminem's "Lose Yourself" on a loop one Sunday afternoon. I think someone unplugged it during the fourth replay in a row. The Giants game was on anyway. They were sweeping the World Series, which was cool.
The Wizard was always telling me I had to quote him on all the great things he said, but then he'd counter it by saying I couldn't use anything he said, so I think I forgot most of it out of habit. The best thing he said he made me promise not to print. But I do remember we were discussing enlightenment once, and I repeated the old line about loving your enemies, and he said he was so enlightened he didn't have any enemies, and gave me that, "Aha! Top that!" look he always gave. He was always telling me he'd turn me into a wine man soon enough, and I'd always reply that I'm just "the guy in the tent."
It was strange to resume working life in America in such a way. Had I been in an office job, I would have been connected to the world constantly, always checking e-mail, Facebook or Youtube. But having come from a summer mostly in the wild, it was easy to transition to life where I focused on a job and only worried about the outside world every few days. I don't think I watched any kind of online media besides Daily Show my first two months in California. It really didn't seem like the outside world existed. Just sleeping, eating, working, listening to music and joking around with the boss and co-workers and host.
Then it all ended and I was in a new city where I didn't know anybody, or if I did, they flaked on me. So I carried the harvest mentality into writing my first few weeks, and then it turned to photography and reading, and then back to writing and getting a job, and then writing and reading and working and meeting people and cultural events and moving and traveling in the area... and now I'm back to the true harvest: the story from the journey.
*There is a cookie store a five minute walk from my new sublet called CREAM: Cookies Rule Everything Around Me. There is always an enormous line around the corner. I don't like waiting in lines, so I haven't been yet. Soon enough.
