An interest in spirituality and meditation has been present in me for a very long time. I was never really interested in religion. That always seemed too stuffy. For me, spirituality includes science in its definition. The leap from an interest in spirituality to an interest in India is an obvious one. Most people in our western culture think of India as being a sort of motherland for spirituality. The numerous yoga studios in the west is the best example of this.  
        About three years ago I heard about a festival in India called the Kumbha Mela. This festival happens once every three years, each year at one of four different cities along the Ganga River. The Maha (great) Kumbh Mela happens every twelve years near the city of Allahabad. Here the three great holy rivers of India come to a meeting place. The Yamuna, Ganga and Saraswati. Indian legend goes that one of the Devas (demigods) was flying through the air on the way back to heaven with a pot of the nectar of immortality, Amrita. He was attacked mid flight by demons and ended up spilling a few drops amrita. A few of these drops fell in the water at the confluence of these three rivers, called the Sangam. Some believe that by bathing in the water at the Sangam they will attain freedom from the necessity of reincarnation.
        Others view this meeting point as a representation of the spiritual eye and the three rivers as a representation of the three spiritual pathways in the spine. These pathways are called the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. Ida and Pingala on either side of the Sushumna represent the Ganga and Yamuna. These two pathways are less subtle and easier to concentrate on. The meditator focuses on these currents in order to find the more subtle Sushumna, represented by Saraswati. The Saraswati river makes it’s appearance at the Sangam by bubbling up from the ground. Legend has it  that Saraswati was cursed to flow underground because she was making too much noise. When one jumps in the Sangam he could say that he is swimming in the Spiritual Eye of the World.
        I did not know any of this before going to the Kumbh Mela. All I knew was the summary of Indian Spirituality could be found there. I don’t know this as a fact. This is what I was told and what seemed to be the case. Walking down the comparatively neat rows of tents, comparatively for India (most of India is strewn about with trash, cows, dogs, farmers selling vegetables and children) I saw hundreds, out of the hundreds of thousands of different spiritual organizations, methods and individuals. If not all of India, at least most of it was represented at the Kumbh Mela.
        My journey in India started with three different ashrams connected with an organization I am a member of called Yogoda Satsanga Society (Self Realization Fellowship in the USA) These ashrams gave me a shelter from the storm of Indian street life. I was on a mission to explore Indian Spirituality and at first I did not see anything spiritual outside of these ashrams. Inside the ashram walls all was clean and orderly. Hoards of older women with straw brooms walked about sweeping the few leaves that fell on the cobblestone pathways that wove through groves of fruit trees and flower beds. Every morning and evening a mediation was conducted by a resident swami, clothed in the traditional orange blankets (yellow if they had not yet taken the final vows of the swami order) Three times a day everyone visiting the ashram would file into the kitchen and sit, men on the left women on the right, waiting to be served curry, rice, dal, sabji, yogurt, chapatis and chai. Once you finished one type of food there was immediately someone there to refill your plate. This was my safety and my spiritual environment.
        When I went outside the fortress walls, it really was like a fortress there were guards at all the gates, the sound descended on my sensitive ears. No traffic laws are obeyed on the streets. The bigger the car or motorcycle and the more guts the diver had meant they had the right of way, always. It really is a miracle how few accidents there are. In one month the only serious collision I saw was a young man being hit by a bicycle. I heard someone say that India is just one big family. This must be how things work out so well. How the trash and cow manure piled on the side of the road finds a final destination away from the city chaos, how the farmer with five cows living next to the seamster living next to the candy salesman all within six meters of each other can get along. I could not be in the city for longer than a few hours without getting a headache or feeling completely stressed out.

I could not help comparing the Indian culture with my own. How sanitary and quite  my world is compared to India. I normally try and meditate morning and night. At the Kumbh Mela a peaceful mediation was impossible. There were loudspeakers from plays, chanting and speeches happening literally all day and all night. Over the several miles that the camp stretched along the rivers the sound gradually built upon itself until there really was nowhere quite to hide. I tried earplugs under a blanket wrapped around my head under a sleeping bag and still the noise was almost unbearable. I spent six nights at the Kumbh Mela. Around the fifth night I realized that the best way to deal with the chaos and noise was simply to deal with it. This is what I feel the Indians do naturally all the time.  The Indian mentality seems to be “God will take care it” And God must take care of them, guiding those huge trucks carrying several tons of gravel only a meter away from kids playing on the street going twenty miles an hour. That truck had an image of baby Krishna drinking milk from a cow painted on its side.

        Pop culture exists in India. Plenty of people only think about money, try to wear the most impressive designer clothing they can afford and listen to suggestive music. But, for all these people an orange clad swami carrying a trident indicating his faith in Lord Shiva is just as common. Maybe the reason so many people have such a natural deep faith in India is because of the intense poverty. Not seeing material wealth every day a person can become easily disillusioned by the world and be inspired to seek something more internal. As a final test to see which country was more prosperous in the inner wealth of happiness I looked and counted the smiles I saw. The verdict was that it’s the same as the west. Some people are kind and happy some are mean and grumpy. I can imagine a changed and better world if each culture took the strong point from the other - India taking the material efficiency of the west to fill their time and space up with beauty. The US taking the natural spiritual faith of India and using that make connections and a feeling of a national world family.

Summer with MCC. August 12, 2012

O summer! Even when I work summers have a holiday feel. Spontaneous things happen and they are remembered with a nostalgic fondness.

After arriving in Hallowell, a day early, I found another Americorp employee walking on the street. I noticed he had a certain rugged look about him so I chanced asking him if he was a part of the same program I was in. He was, only in a slightly different field. He invited me to stay with him. We watched Braveheart. 

When my program started, the next day, I was thrown into the schedule and remained in it until the end of the summer. There really was no time alone and no time I didn’t have something to do or someone to talk to. Everyone in MCC (Maine conservation Corps) had an orientation week at a camp beside a lake, a nice taste of what the rest of the summer would be like. I'm not sure how much of use we learned during the scheduled activities. However, we learned a lot about each other and had a blast doing it. Every night sports were played, fire-circles made, conversations had and friendships developed. I found myself leading many of these activities. I felt a natural drive to motivate people towards activity. In the process I found that getting groups of people to do something is a tricky business. It needs to be approached with a sort of sideways-directness. Clear intention mixed with with enthusiasm and a casual non-important attitude while assuming that others will follow you seems to work best. By the end of the week I felt close to almost all of the people in the group and was dreading the moment when we would be divided up into our teams-we would be spending the entire summer with. I genuinely have to say that I was very lucky with my team-members. We had no choice in the matter of who would be on whose team and besides a few factors like work preference we were divided op completely randomly.
    
My team and I spent two and a half months living together in two different cabins with minimal contact with the outside world. A situation both isolating and sweet. It makes my heart melt. There was Jennifer, our team leader for the first part of the season. She cares about people almost too much. You don’t realize how much she cares until you have lived with her for awhile. She is strangely weird which ends up being normal. She sees the offbeat creative side of others. Usually at some point during dinner she would burst into uncontrolled laughter we called Jennifer Giggle Fits. Everything is open with her, making her easy to talk to. She put up with my complaints about what I thought were overly strict company policies. We usually talked it out and made amends with a hug.

The assistant team leader, although I was never able to view him as that because he was so laid back and friendly, was Jared. Jared studied philosophy in school and continues to study it in life. We talked about what philosophy actually means although I can’t exactly remember what definition we decided on. I feel like it should mean something like “the pursuit of Truth” which is helpful in describing him. Deep discussions about everything is a passion of his. Everyone agreed that he was an excellent conversationalist. In contemplating his next bite of food or where to place a rock, he took his time. He strove for quality and control in all his actions.

Whitney was on summer break from school. Going on walks looking for birds, specifically owls, was a favorite activity of hers. I don’t know how she did it but I think she finished a Sudoku  puzzle every day. I learned to play cribbage this summer and played her several times, with no success at winning, she was nearly undefeated. Any new game played she mastered quickly and became very difficult to beat. She knew so much about birds, especially chickens, that we called her Mother Chicken Nerd. Sometimes on the weekend she would make breakfast for everyone and then clean it up before anyone could get to the sink.

When I felt my enthusiasm lacking there was Courtney. Calm and strong, no one ever really mentioned it but among her best traits was virtue. Different from doing “the right thing” she would do the upright thing. After a long week of work she would get up an hour earlier than our already early start time and go on a run. Following the rules of our employers and society she filled in the gaps with her own fun and loving creativity. She stopped to ask me how I was doing when no one else thought to notice then ran up a tree to set up the grip-hoist. Another time, while moving a heavy rock on her own, she dropped it on her hand. Her fingers being crushed she called me to help her without a trace of anxiety in her voice.

At first I thought that Sheldon was really “cool” but that's just because he was coming from ATL. Really, he was super sweet. He was training to become a firefighter in the fall so we would sometimes go on runs together. Almost every friday he would turn the speakers up on his truck and we would dance to techno. He knew a lot about everything. I’m not sure why no one has written an article on his ability to read and retain information. A 500 page book could be devoured by him in a day, well part of a day really. He did not spend hours and hours reading, only a few. He finished Thoreau’s book In the Maine Woods in a single day. I never finished the first chapter, it was just too thick. He entertained us with hilarious and horrifying stories from the years he had spent in the army.

Augusta became our team leader towards the end of the summer. She fit in well with our group adding a caring and quite presence. She hated unnecessary discipline or being too nitpicky. She was just respectful and kind. It was easy for me to have conversations with her. She had worked for MCC for a while and knew a lot about setting rocks and living in the woods.

The end of the summer slipped away too fast with a recognition ceremony with all the groups... then we split up. Its hard for me to remember events and things we did but the people are etched in my heart. I became closest with my immediate group but instant and deep connections were made with those in other groups. In my mind, Maine is a place of magic and fairy tales, sunshine, passion and adventure.



This is a quote taken from the MCC newsletter describing our team.

“I was impressed by how much work they were able to accomplish.  The team completed three staircases and half of a staircase for the fall crew to complete.  They also cut half a mile of new trail, sidehilled, quarried many stones, and set up high line systems to complete the stairs more efficiently.  After work they baked homemade bread and cookies made in the cabin, had great dance sessions, and swam a lot.  It was a pleasure joining their team.”

Community in Maine. May 14, 2012

I made it to my farm! When I started out I had intended on biking the entire way from New York City to Milbridge, Maine, a five-hundred mile journey. What happened was this; I biked the first day and camped out in a park that night. It was cold, and I was ill prepared for the trip. What I really wanted was to just get out of New York. I ended up boxing up my bike and taking a bus to Bangor, ME, about one-hundred miles from my destination.

The road, starting about twenty miles north of New York on Hwy 1 is quite amazing. The country immediately above the mega-metropolis changes fast. The first people I talked to an hour into my ride on the first day said they had hadn't been to the big city in four years. There are lots and lots of old buildings, old from my perspective being form the west coast. Right along the road I saw the ruins of a house and renovated fort dating back three-hundred years. Its seems as if the entire New England coast is filled with old buildings and history. As I got further north the coast began losing what form it had and looked like the results of a bucket of spilled paint.

The second day of biking presented me with a couple of problems. Equipment and money. I had neither in sufficient amounts. Thats OK! I took a bus most of the rest of the way. From there it was fifty miles by bike to Mount Dessert Island and Acadia National Park wherein lies Bar Harbor. This is also where college of the Atlantic is. In the winter the entire island has a meager portion of locals with a light topping of college students, but come summer it turns into a feast of people and cars. For some reason I can't seem to stay away from the place.

I stayed for four days with friends made on a previous visit. The community is very hospitable with open hearts and creativity and talent shining from every corner. I had to wait a few days before traveling to the farm, Living Roots is the name, because the farmer had not yet arrived. The distance was another fifty miles. Living Roots is mostly a one man show. Half a mile down a dirt road then through the trees into a half square acre clearing with a small cabin with no running water or electricity. It was simplicity to the max. Travis, the farmer very energetic and active, a part time stockbroker, knows seemingly everyone in the community who is into homesteading. Over the course of my stay I met countless entrepreneurs of the ancient art of surviving on account of Travis. Living Roots farm has a  song that idealizes its motto and name. The song is "Strictly Roots" by Althea and Donna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcz_YjR3LKQ Great song!

Our neighbors and fellow farmers were Sasha, Sam and Bea. Bea is their two year old daughter, a budding soccer player and in charge of feeding the dog, unofficially. Most of the food placed in front of her ends up on the ground and in the dog's mouth. Sam says they stopped feeding the dog as soon as Bea joined the family table. Sam brews his own beer. One of the first things I heard upon walking in the door, with his natural generousness, was "want a beer?" This is fallowed by Sasha asking me if I wanted something to eat then by Bea grabbing my hand. If you watch the You Tube video I posted you will know the exact way in which Bea dances to reggae, only with more energy. I ended up spending a lot of time there. They grow veggies and have sheep and chickens.

Another of Sams hobbies is boat building. One of his ambitions, and there are a lot of them, is to build a viking style skiff and, with his family loaded upon the vessel, conquer foreign lands like his Viking ancestors. His first conquest would be Bar Harbor. Sam had the plans for the boat but not the time to build it. I jumped on the opportunity. I was lucky enough to learn the first basic steps of boat building.
We cut out the frame supports and took them over to another neighbors, Bob and Megs, the experts on everything wooden, for further direction.

Walking into Bob and Megs, one sees roughly fifty of the one-hundred plus violins that Bob has created hanging about the walls. Around the house and in the shop are beautifully carved horses and other animals that are Megs creations. I feel as if Bob and Meg live on a slightly different plane of creative ability than most humans. They have a garden, chickens and a composting toilet.

Every one I met in this community has a theme of self-sustaining-homestead-ability. A part of the list of Travis' friends and Washington county, down-east Maineers include a small-farmer political activist, a logger, small farmer and carpenter who built his own three story sustainable mansion, Cliff-the log-home-builder, members of of a homeschooling Waldorf community, a yoga teacher, members of a south of the border immigration program, many carpenters, Jerry the junk collector, Royal the locals-only store owner and many more. Most of these people know each other. There is a wonderful feeling of family, small-town-ness, gossipy-ness, love and support.

May 6th I hitchhiked to Hallowell, Maine for the the beginning of my Americorps job.

NY, NY, the Whirlpool. April, 2012

"Just go under, no one cares". My friend had just ducked under the gate in a subway station and was telling me to so the same. I was completely out of money so I couldn't buy a train ticket, but I needed to get somewhere! Its incredibly easy to ride the train for free and I'm sure its a common occurrence. It carries a hefty fine if you are caught however. I only did it once. It seems like most people here are just barely getting by financially and fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat. NY is the best description of a melting pot city I know of, there are people from all over the world here. The only demographics are students and young adults, between the ages of 18 and 40. Young hopefuls, people with big dreams, trying to "make it big". Some are some aren't. It's the experience that counts for the temporary non-New Yorkers. When we finally leave we will have satisfied a very specific and common desire.

As I write this I am in the middle of preparing for an accent into the crazy, quite, quiantness of the Maine wilderness. My objective for the past two months, the duration of my stay here, has been to raise money for a summer-European-bike-tour. I have not yet succeeded in finding a way to do this in New York; the cost of rent is the biggest obstacle. In addition I feel the need to breath fresh air and soak in the sun for long periods of time, not just for the 3 minutes it peeps out between buildings. To throw in a positive observation umong so many nagative ones I will say that the population here is quite energetic, geared towards success. The Big Apple is a whirlpool that sucks in it's inhabitants and creates it's own little world connected by subway lines.

To chronicalize my time here I will start with my buddies couch. The first four days I spent lost in the metro system; Its not so bad once one gets used to it. My first job was at a cafe in Times Square. I walked in and asked to see the manager, a loud man who liked shaking hands. He and I immediately became friends. I was told to sign some papers, was asked if I could cook eggs, and was then hired. Wow! That was the caziest and most intense job I ever worked. The cafe was divided by one long counter with three feet for the workers and seven for the customers. Those three feet were packed, open to close, with the cafe's twenty plus busy employees.  I made omelets in the morning and salads in the afternoon, lots of salads. At about a minute per salad with no break in-between. Im estimateing I made over two-hundred salads per day. After a month working at "The Bread Market Cafe" (I know its a boring name; you know its a dead end job when you work inside and the uniform includes a basball cap) it became clear that I was not saving any money, I was loosing it. I bounced, hopped, skipped from through interviews and trial work days until I landed as a street canvaser pesuading people to sponser a child through Children International.

People are busy in NY, getting them to stop isn't easy, but its fun. It seemed like the best thing to do was just be original, every time. There was no catch all stopping method. People can sense an act and they distrust it. At the end of the day I felt emotionaly exhausted. It got easier the second and third days but I knew there was nothing in it for me. The wild was calling me, telling me to escape from the whirlpool. I made arangments to leave, bought a bike and rode out of the city, north, to Maine........

Driving, Driving and....Crash! January, 2012

I was wrong after all. The south-mid-west is quite lovely actually. When people are surrounded by empty space their hearts seem to expand with it.

I made it across the country in four days, not including the two days I spent in Prescott, AZ. Spoilers! Prescott is the best school I've visited. Its small and flexible, flexible meaning it allows its students to grow, each in their individual way. Outdoor education and designing one’s own curriculum is strongly encouraged. Along with every course, a lot of writing is required, which makes sense to me. Writing about an experience is an effective way of “personalizing” information and retaining it longer. From Prescott to Kingston, Ontario, where I visited my cousins the Cote’s, I drove as fast as I possibly could. Not as fast as one man did however. Twenty-one or so years ago a lone trucker traveled from New York to Los Angeles in two days to pick up his wife, who was about to give birth to a son, and take her to Colorado, via train, where they lived. Present day, on a cold on-ramp in Arizona, my trucker-hero’s son (Jeremy, or Scraps Trashcankid, as he is now called) was picked up by a red Geo Metro, after waiting for three days! I can’t begin to think up sufficient excuses for the thousand or so members of our friendly-world-community who passed him by. Scraps and I had a regular good time, driving for 36 hours straight through the desert. I slept for ten minutes on a couch in Starbucks but other than that we only stopped to re-fuel. I dropped him off in Memphis where he tried his luck catching a ride to Nora, for Mardi Gras. He was going to resume is role of previous years as booze fairy. Walking the streets with an open liqueur container, legal in Louisiana, and coercing party people into drinking.

Things got faster paced the further north I got. People are serious about their business and a relaxing, amiable conversation between friends is less likely to occur. Not so much the case, however, in Canada. I crossed over to see the torrential beauty of Niagara Falls then on to Kingston to visit the cousins. More ice-skating in a winter wonderland, and a wonderful shower and bed! I had been sleeping in my car, parking in rest stops and washing my face and hands in place of a daily shower. Its really not that bad, it just gets a bit uncomfortable after awhile. I’m glad there isn’t any more space between to Atlantic and Pacific!

After much anticipation I visited College of the Atlantic. Its absolutely lovely there, well to be honest, all of Maine is. I drove all along the coast and it was just quaint friendly little town after town. COA is a cool school, a lot like Prescott but with a less defined curriculum. A very exiting discovery I made is a boat building school just north of Portland. Its a small thing and they have internship programs to teach you how to build boats. Smaller ones mainly, but it looked like tons of fun. I went on further south to visit Boston and see the sights but I never made it because the back tire went out on my car. I lost control and crashed headlong into the side rail.

The poor thing, it just crumpled. I don’t understand how I hit the side rail at 65 mph without flipping, and I don’t remember if I spun or not. It was like a 90 degree swerve to hit the rail head on, then another 90 degrees to straighten out, to find myself on the shoulder facing forward. For a few terrifying seconds I felt like I was dreaming or watching a movie, with the almost cliche screeching of wheels, me frantically pulling on the steering wheel, the air bags, and rubbery smoke spewing from the dash board. I was not injured at all just majorly freaked out for a bit and bummed to see my investment destroyed so suddenly. I had brand new rear tires put on the car, from Firestone, before leaving. The US is 3,000 miles across, so they went out about 50 times too fast. Also they were completely shredded, there was metal sticking out of the rubber, so they were obviously the wrong tires or put on incorrectly. Ah bummer. 

 

It worked out alright though because I went straight to NYC and stayed with a buddy from Hidden Valley. Driving does not work here unless you love honking all day and trying to kill peds, also there is no where to park. I think people just switch out their cars so they are continually on the road. And subway here is great! Any where that’s anywhere (said with a downward drop of the hand with fingers extended) is accessible via the subway.

The plan for NY is to leave New York. Well I’m enjoying it of course but the objective is to raise money for a bike trip in Europe. I estimate three months, until the end of April. In the first week here I found a job and a place to live. I love the room and room-mates, all students from Korea or Thailand. The job is a joke. Minimum wage and stress-full, cafe job. I was really surprised by how easy it was to land it though. I suppose there all lots of jobs out there like that, with lots of turnover, catering to the “uneducated” working class. I KNOW that we are working harder than the squishy fleshed desk gnomes we are making sandwiches for. My co-workers all have huge hearts. It doesn’t show, however, unless there is a bit of free time. When its busy, and it usually is really busy, anything goes in the deli bar. I was shocked at first, coming from chill and compassionate Eugene into the NYC war zone. Its a bit sad , but you know the true New Yorkers because, ther’e always talking about “watchin your back” and trusting no one. Apparently trust in strangers is not a possibility when one lives in a sea of humanity, at least not in this age. The art of connecting and establishing trust with all our brothers and sisters is very subtle and it seems to be lost on most people.

Exploring the Brave Old World. December, 2011

Hello community!

I am on the road again, as I have been many times before. Only before, it was undocumented, which is a shame really, because no one, including myself, can remember anything that happened.

Any ways, the main reason of this particular trip is to do a bit of recon on schools to attend for next fall. And of course to explore. There is so much in this world I have never seen, so much history and drama, I just gotta see it! I bought

a little 95 Geo Metro, that will carry me accross the US. I am very proud it. It barely fits me, my stuff and two other people, and it has a tiny 3-cylinder engine, which means that going up a hill or getting up to speed on a 65mph high way requires race-man like skills, shifting at the right times, flooring the gas and weaving in and out of traffic. Absolutely thrilling. The car also gets an average of 38mpg (better on a hwy) which makes the commercials for fancy and expensive cars like the Prius seem ridiculous, when you think that this car is over 15 years old. It makes me think that its not a lack of technology at all, that makes our cars burn through gas like newspaper, but the cheap price of oil in the states. Those of you who have spent time in Europe, can testify to the greater efficiency of the cars there. What the

heck--?

The schools which I have in mind are (and please feel free to suggest others if you think i'll like them) in order of when I will visit them: Santa Monica College in California, Prescott in Arizona, Clark University in Massachusetts and College of the Atlantic in Maine. I already visited Santa Monica College and Maharishi University of Management, in Fairfield Iowa. The reason I did not include Maharishi in the previous list of schools is because I already decided to not go there. There are some things about this school which are nice. There is a feeling of peace and general friendliness there, but as far as worldy education is concered, well, kooky is the best way to describe it. For a weekend it was doable, but I am sure that living there for a couple of months a creative and and inquisitive mind would begin to feel stifled. Santa Monica College was OK. It fulfills everything a community college should. Two years there, and then your out. That is exactly what I will do if I decide to go there. I would get a transfer certificate as efficiently as possible then go to a better UC school. The main attraction to this school is the evironment its set in, Santa Monica. Immediately above Santa Monica there is wildnerness complete enough for you to forget the appalling sea of car fumes and cement to the south east that is most of LA. Not to be misunderstood, Santa Monica has a bit of traffic to contend with, and painful parking tickets $50 a pop, as I found out, but its just lovely if you have a bike. There must be over 200 yoga studios, and you can easily shop well at farmers markets and health food stores, and eat absolutely divine food at the restaurants. My friend works at a place called Euphoria Loves Rawvolution. I quite honeslty have never eaten food as exquisite as I had there. Everything is raw and vegan and simple to the max, and satisfying and energizing perfectly. I felt as if I were digesting pure energy. There are also many bike shops and pedestrian or community area

s, and all of this is separated from the ocean by the widest beach ive ever seen. Being in Santa Monica, one gets the feeling of being on the leading edge of society, as if the forward progression of the world is marching west and its captain is that furthermost left-hand side of the map.

Starting from the time I left my family's ranch in Oregon, on which I had been working to save enough money for my car and traveling expenses, which I have already burned up. I dont know where it goes!? O well, I can work along the way. I stayed in the Bay Area for a week visiting old friends. I had the opportunity of running on the trails at Tilden Park. I never realized how beautiful

the hills surrounding the Bay actually were! Then to Santa Cruz for Christmas. As always, there was activity and fun every second. Cousins literally piled on top of one another, successive events and social gatherings. So much fun! My family then went to Lake Tahoe, to not go skiing, because there was no snow (that's what you usually do there). Instead we got to ice skate on a frozen lake! Man! There is little more poetic than ice skating, especially when you can do it on a wide expanse that is usually just water and fish and the like. Gliding, or flying, through space with an infinite amount of variable movements

to be made. Such freedom! Then down to Santa Cruz for a night, and along the Camino Real to Santa Monica. El Camino Real, the Highway of Kings, is the route pilgrims or travelers would take, going north or south in California. Every 40 miles or so there is a Mission one could stay at. As far as I know, they are all still standing and available for visitation. The one I visited, and pictured here, has an incredible vibration of peace, and strength in its antiquity. Definitely a suggested travel destination, maybe a day driving along the route and stopping at as many missions as possible.

And now Hidden Valley Ashram, way out in the wilderness of SoCal amidst flaky rock boulders and pokey shrubs and dry dirt where silence and still air is everywhere. Not much longer before I brave the desolateness of the south-mid-west in my tiny car. Likely to prove wrong the validity of my inherited disdain for that area, I am sure.