Deep in the Heart of Texas

So I stopped in Albuquerque and stayed with a friend for a few days. Pretty cool town. Went hiking in the snow up in the Sandia mountains, ate delicious New Mexican food, etc. Then went down to White Sands Nat'l Monument, a ridiculously crazy area of white gypsum sand dunes set among mountains. It also happens to be part of an Air Force missile testing range, so with my map I got a pamphlet full of pictures of what un-exploded missiles look like. And instructions not to touch anything I found.

Then into Texas. I drove about 600 miles in the first day, finally reaching Enchanted Rock State Park. Full of Boy Scouts, and they wanted $18 for a primitive campsite. No thanks. Drove back towards town, thinking I would sleep in my car, but saw a country bar with a sign outside of it - "Camping, Ice Cold Beer" - $5 to camp, and live music up at the bar. I made friends with four guys from San Antonio who had a fire going. They were really nice guys - offered me food, beer, etc. - and seemed to be liberal minded, at least for Texas. But then, in the middle of talking about protesting the G-20 summit, they mentioned that the big banks were "All run by Jews anyways", the most PC of them saying "Well, their culture just has all the necessary traits to be good at business." I decided to not say that I was Jewish, good choice because I later saw Nazi Low Rider tattoos on one of their arms.

Later on, when we went up to the bar, I saw a confederate flag, heard anti-Arab, anti-Black, and anti-Hispanic hate speech from an old drunk man who told me about how he used to steal cars all the time as a kid. I tried to consider how to respond: leave, and find another place to sleep; get mad, and risk getting hurt; try to respond in some way to create a dialogue. I did the third, and tried asking some questions of them - i.e. "Aren't most of the big banks run by white Christian men?" and "Shouldn't people get helped by their government?", etc. Didn't get the responses I was looking for, but what are you going to do.

These adventures aside, I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. About how differences in religion, or even differences in beliefs within a religion, are so divisive among people. This quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel sums up what I've been thinking about:

"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes and heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion - its message becomes meaningless." -God in Search of Man

I think religion, and really God itself, could and should be something that unites people rather than divides. If we see God as the embodiment of all the universe, if God is the love binding people together to one another, the invisible stuff that connects electrons to nuclei, atoms to other atoms (or Adams. Tee hee), then God is something that cannot and will not separate people from each other. Imagine if, when you were interacting with someone else, you did so knowing that you were interacting with God. Or when you were eating something, you were incorporating a part of God into yourself. When you looked up at the sky at night, the stars you saw were part of God, and that the water in the beautiful forest stream was God flowing through the world. Think I'm a hippie? Tough shit. I already know I am. I'd love to live in a world where people were treating each other/the world this way. You might too.

The issue really begins when we try to describe God in human language. Check out this diagram:


When we try to describe God, we pare down the possibilities of God's existence and put it/her/him/ in the God box. We limit what God could be. How haughty of us to think that we could say what God is. We certainly are haughty monkeys.

This isn't to say that we should avoid trying to discuss what God is. I am suggesting, however, that anthropomorphizing God allows for people to co-opt the God concept for their own purposes, as they have for thousands of years for wars, political campaigns, bumper stickers, etc. Let's think bigger. Let's think more freely. Let your God be a wild concept beyond all imagination. And maybe then my generation won't hate religion so much. Maybe then we can start a religion based on love.

Please argue with me about this. I like being called out when I'm spouting bullshit.

The route

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San Francisco... and beyond

San Francisco was great, with beautiful weather and even better friends. Much playing was done, including a backpacking trip to Point Reyes National Seashore where we cooked over a driftwood fire and slept on the beach under the stars. Awesome. Not so awesome: the Pats shitting a brick in the Superbowl. No more about that. Many thanks to the great people who let me stay with them and hung out with me all week.

I left on Monday and set out down the coast, driving through Big Sur before camping in the woods up away from the sea. The next day I camped out in Death Valley, where I spotted a little kit fox watching me cook dinner. Then on through the park to the salt flats at the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere - 282 feet below sea level and set under 11,000+ foot peaks. Literally, a dried up ocean. Saw a coyote cross the road. Down into the Mojave Desert, where I camped in a copse of juniper trees and watched the sunset, closely monitored by a herd of deer. Went for a little hike/walk in the morning and Gem managed to chase out some quail and a couple of jackrabbits. Down through Joshua Tree NP, where we took another walk and ate in the shade with crazy rock formations and the creepy looking Joshua trees all around. Then out into Arizona, where I stopped for the night at a motel to shower and recoup. I write now from Sedona, a viciously touristy town set among beautiful red cliffs. Tonight I'll camp somewhere in the forest nearby.

I've been struck by how lonely the road is, even with Gem along, and it's made me really appreciate my friends and family. I'd been staying with people for close to three months and I'm not used to being alone anymore. I've met only a few people, and all were older, lonely seeming men who had lost their wives to divorce or death. Though I'm hoping to get married someday myself, I don't want to be like that. I want to be surrounded by community, and if something were to happen to my partner I'm hoping to have love around me anyways. To all my people out there who have felt slighted by my difficulties with staying in touch, I'm really sorry and I hope you know that the love is there - even when it may not seem so.

Next steps are the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forest. Beyond that I'm not sure. I'll put up a map of my route sometime. I've tried to avoid interstates, but the ones I've been on have been frightening - border patrol and highway patrol cars almost always in sight. Helicopters overhead to catch all the outlaws. Even on some back roads, there are photo-enforced speed limits.

Maybe it's just my paranoia, but is it really worth it to spend that much time and energy on catching people going too fast? I think not. I think that these things are being put in place to control the population, which is so fraught with fear that they allow themselves to be constantly watched - soon by unmanned drones. Let's hope they don't see this post and come after me with one. Check it out - Democracynow.org. After the brutality of the police response to Occupy, and the litany of police brutality cases nationwide, who doubts that we live in a police state? We have the most incarcerated people IN THE WORLD. Land of the free, my ass. End rant.

Hope everybody out there is getting through winter comfortably. I'm sunburned and getting way too used to being a rolling stone. Here's to stability, community, and comfort. Love you all.

My route so far

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Seattle to San Francisco - The Karma train goes back and forth

I left Seattle Monday 1/23/12 with my car FULL of camping gear, clothes, books, random crap I have accumulated over the years, food, a machete (his name is Bolo, and he has no conscience), my dog Gemini, and my friend Dave. Mission: San Francisco. Despite my mind's attempts to thwart my leaving (leaving my phone charger behind twice, leaving lots of errands to the last minute) we got out of S
eattle by around noon.

Stopped in Olympia and in Portland to see friends and take in the sights. Then on to the Redwoods and the coast. There's something humbling about being under trees older than the cities we live in, being under trees so much bigger than us. We camped one night by the Smith River, among the giant trees, and it poured on us so hard that we were afraid the car might be drowned by the river. Nature has a way of telling you that you don't really mean shit in this world.

We spent the next day wandering through Redwoods (took the scenic route off of the scenic route), and met a man named Scott who had decided to move out near the Avenue of the Giants, alone, with few people to talk to and certainly no one to be close with. He hinted at something painful happening in his life, but we were left to wonder what that was. He had lived in Bend for 30 years and was now in the middle of nowhere, no car, no companionship. He talked to us about his neo-Buddhist philosophy, and of meditation, but it seemed th

at he was lacking the human contact that keeps most people sane. As someone who is constantly pulled between wanting quiet isolation and lots of human contact, I can understand why he would move that far out- it is beautiful to the point of tears there, and in the 10 minutes we were watching we saw an otter jump out onto a sandbar - but also why he would be miserable being so alone. Scott plans on moving later this year.

We camped illegally in a closed campground on the water, among a herd of smaller sized deer with the sound of ocean waves and frogs to send us dreaming. Bolo effectively chopped veggies for dinner, and Gem cleaned the plates. I could survive a zombie apocalypse without much issue! Though I would need enough time to stop and cook... Also machete range is pretty close to allow a zombie. Would Gemini turn into a zombie if she fed on zombie flesh? Woke up early and got out of dodge. Hiked on the beach, tons and tons of seabirds of different varieties flying all around. Found an old timey shovel that had rusted through - wish I had taken a picture.

Made it to Lagunitas Brewing, where we received a free tour (available to all) and a case of free beer (a gift from the CFO, who is also a Patriots fan). Tell me this dog doesn't look like Gemini:

Oh yea, and got hit by a truck, thus giving my car a little more symmetry.

Some plans for The Bay:

-Watch the Superbowl

-Get a tattoo

A little treat: Dave and Gem getting friendly--->

More to come soon as the trip continues.