Winter Travels 2022:

My path begins;

Six years ago I underwent multiple traumas that lasted for 24-36 months, and which the results I will live with physically the best I can. Mentally, between the ‘new’ research into Truama and Nueroplasticity things might be on the upswing. I begin here as my entire life changed, my thinking, feelings, existing... all due to those years.

Then two years ago in 2020, the Pandemic hit us all hard, well all of us who are working class, all of us who have always felt the costs of consumption. Those of us (actually most of us, economic class notwithstanding) who trade 2/3rds of our waking hours just to survive in America.

I refer to this trade of waking hours, as the “Unacknowledged American Deal”. You give us 2/3rds of your waking hours to make money so you can have a roof and food, and ‘we’ give you unlimited distractions; sports, malls, celebrity culture, political opinioning, anything you desire.

We are all born into this deal/social contract, but who among us has given much thought to the nature of the deal, its fairness, or its across the board applicability?

Yet this construct has done more to shape the soul of the American psyche, then wars or insurrection, natural disasters or even access to healthcare (legislated or just financially incentivized).

So, here we all are trodding along, and BAM...global pandemic. American society gets shut down. We isolate in our domiciles (those of us who have them) and wait. We Zoom, we Netflix, we just consume. But, do we contemplate?

The 20th century brought such change; Societal, Governmental, Technological, even steps toward addressing longstanding ongoing injustices. Yet, one could argue that things actually got worse not better in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We became upwardly mobile, but isolated, we grew distant from each other, but more comfortable, we work multiple jobs not to save for the future but to simply survive, or we have excellent high paying jobs yet only focus on the next lavish “escape” vacation. We have instant communications, but do we connect? We know more about so many things, but is our understanding any greater, our sympathy, our empathy?

Do we have strong values that define who we are today as Americans, as we did in the past?

This book is dedicated to searching for the state of todays American Soul, its 21st century soul, who are we?

The essence of America and Americans is not found in the Mall, or on our screens, its found in the small towns. It’s found where the TV’s are the lowest and the stars are the brightest. It’s found inside each of us, individually and collectively.

We are going somewhere as a country, as a people, as a Nation. I set out to discover some sense of what that direction is (both for the country and myself).

What follows are my observations along these lines during my ‘keep it warm’ Winter travels.

Part travelogue, part retelling of my own American story, part searching internally and externally for an understanding of what American life is today. No answers, only questions.

I hope you enjoy the ride.

Chapter 1:

Escape From Orange County

Sure, we could begin with some crazed drug filled Hunter Thompsonesque observations of the escape from Orange County, but it wasnt that crazed.

It was as if it was all new. Not in the excited looking forward to new adventures kind of way, more in that first day at the new High School way. The nervousness coupled with the realization of no choice, leading one down the hallways of a new adventure, be it for better or worse, only time will tell.

Like that wide-eyed student, I drove familiar to unfamiliar freeways, alongside all the other ‘busy’ people running to and fro until I was able to leave the major ribbons of asphalt and the unquestioned consumption behind.

Day 1, Week 1: January 2022:

It begins: but first a little background.

I’m rolling SE of all the glitz of Palm Springs and the soaring sky scraping Native American casinos. Leaving this island of unlimited water flows I find myself marveling at the costs of these distractionsboth in terms of finances and wasted water (life in the desert). These landscape altering projects offering only hopes of luxury lifestyles and only nurturing out of place golf courses.

But I digress, once out of these affluent areas, life is dry. This area of land I am driving through is technically part of the Sonoran Desert. This whole area of South Eastern California is, but goes by several names, most commonly the Colorado Desert.

Leaving the capitol of consumption (the Los Angeles basin and surrounding areas) and driving through dry, arid lands of inescapable beauty, one is awestruck by the familiarity of the view. A forever unchanging landscape ringed by beautiful mountain ranges (the Chocolate mountains, the Chuckwallas and others.)

The unending hours spent with the TV babysitter of my youth had populated my mind with far off places; the Sahara Desert, Ghost towns, battlefields, and far off times; the old west, wagon trains, battles with Indians vs settlers, Indians vs cavalry. All exciting far away places, although unknown to me at the time, each actually not so far away, and each teaching an unseen lesson. In this land that I now travel, lives the memories of my youth sparked by these familiar landscapes (as I was to later find out so many movies were shot in the deserts outside Los Angeles). Each of these movies often times purposefully or not, teaching lessons or building notions of what makes an American.

But I am here today. This land is ethereally familiar but all truly unknown to me. Before I hope to discover, or more precisely stumble upon the ‘New American Ethos’ I first must take a moment or two to consider my own beliefs, ethos, understandings. The desert seems to be a good spot to pause, breathe and prepare for some reflecting.

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For the last 19 years I have lived on a sailboat. First a small 27’ then a more comfortable Catalina 30, and for the last 7 years on a 42ft sailboat, each amazingly more adaptable to ‘comfortable’ living, as far as that goes for sailboats.

After moving West half my lifetime ago and living in Santa Cruz and then San Francisco I found sailing, something I hadn’t done since my youth in summer camp in upstate New York. One day while sitting in a SF skyscraper cubicle, looking at boats on the bay, something just clicked inside, so I decided to pursue it. This led to buying the first boat, which led to me learning about the lifestyle of traveling the world by small boat slowly and inexpensively, often referred to as Bluewater cruising, or just ‘goin cruising’.

Overall, I discovered I didn't need much but also didn't lack for any creature comforts. Eventually having hi speed internet, cable tv, even central heat and air, just not space as most Americans define it, when it comes to housing.

Also during this time (2005-2010) I delivered boats on the ocean and hired out to perform mechanical repairs for other boaters, all in preparation for joining the long term cruiser community. Nights I spent studying maps, reading articles, learning of other community members, their journeys, struggles, experiences. I spent countless evenings searching map routes, reviewing old wind logs kept by the the British Admiralty detailing when and where and how to cross oceans, dreaming of places and exploring new skills I would need.

Well, as often happens, one thing led to another and in 2010 I started a marine waste management business, and all my plans for leaving America and doing life a different way, subtly shifted.

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One cold rainy March morning a few years back, somewhere around 2018 I would guess, as I was dreading going out in the grey, wet, get under your skin and freeze your bones type of cold Bay Area breezy morning, and doing my daily run I was dragging. Dreading leaving the warmth of my floating cocoon (S/v Nonchalance) but having clients depending on my not shirking my duties, finding that forced motivation, I set out for another days run. Only to find that within minutes of being out on the water, no others in sight, a weird calm peacefulness came upon me. No longer thinking or even noticing the cold and grey this peacefulness allowing me to reflect upon the circumstance I find myself within, my life (at 5mph) and the contrast with those around me.

Above me, on the Bay Bridge, those commuting souls headed to start their day after a long hard drive, after an ‘early alarm’ after yesterdays team won and the ensuing celebrations still felt this morning on the crowded freeway drive. Somehow (thankfully) I realized I was still seeing America differently.

One reason I originally set my goals on going cruising was I felt America had changed deeply in my lifetime. It wasn’t because I changed with age, its because the ethos/pathos I was experiencing in the Bay Area changed.

Wether it was the big tech jobs, or the invention and mass adoption of social media, the 24hr news cycle, virtue signaling or whatever. The growing cynicism, the divide, the ‘its mine’ get yours if your ‘not lazy’ this, combined with the overall notion (or realization) our generation will be the first modern generation who wont statically due better than our parents

...well, simply put; things felt very different.

Everything was, indeed different, but strangely it didn't seem obviously so, and certainly few others seemed to notice.

All these thoughts flooded calmly through my mind as I slowly moved along at idle speed, on my way to empty holding tanks (human waste) to be taken away or ‘flushed’ for those who choose to live differently/alternatively to the dominant paradigm; the irony not lost on me.

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Today sitting in Little Box Canyon, a small slotted canyon, the walls casting shadows, providing relief from the desert heat, I reflect back on that day. The simpleness of those pre pandemic times, when I was in control (or believed it to be so) and simply wrestled with the effects of trauma and used big thoughts as my distraction contrasting with where I sit and what I see today.

In March of 2016 my personal trauma journey began and continues today, as it will tomorrow. In July of 2021 I sold the marine business created a decade plus before. Partly as i could no longer do the repair work (as I could no longer tolerate being in small confined spaces) and partly as I died inside. I was just going through the motions, the bare minimum motions, to earn a dollar to be able to pay for rent and food. The effects of several years of ongoing traumatic activities had changed me, everything about me, and even my thinking (well mostly).

Each day was a battle to make it to the next second of that day.

If anyone has ever experienced a cut off airway, choking, struggling to even breathe, the body contorting, gasping desperately to simply catch a breath; that was the experience of every waking second of my life.

That summer (the summer of 2021) I found a moment of relief during backpacking weekend excursions. Back to the basics; just sleeping, eating, moving (and not getting eaten by bears). Simple stuff; that and the silent healing power of nature and non societal distractions. So i set a plan in motion to take a few months, in search of more of this natural healing, and hike the PCT (the Pacific Crest Trail). I started planning again, and started playing music again, and writing songs, and poetry again; clearly healing was possible.

Alas the burning of California and Oregon in 2021 allowed only a taste of the grounding and potential possible healing, it could provide.

And so, with Winter quickly approaching, and an absolute hater of cold (learned from long winters of SF Bay and cold ocean weather) I set out to find warmth and nature, isolating and grounding in a different way. A journey through America; no plan other than not being cold....

Of course, Life, as is often the case had a different agenda.

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