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| Grasslands Near H.V. Eastman Lake, California, Steve Brown 2022 |
After we picked up the Camry from the garage, we headed towards Yosemite. It would be quite the push as we lost a day of travel waiting. Yet, we lost nothing. We only gained. The visit to the National Steinbeck Center was probably the most important part of the trip for me. Although the vacation was already somewhat about Steinbeck, as the choice of our honeymoon twenty-five years earlier had been about me wanting to visit Cannery Row, I doubt this book would have come into being if we had not broken down in Salinas. I try now, each moment, to realize how deeply derailed plans are part of our journey, both individually and collectively. I'm certainly not there, but I don't think anyone has fully arrived in this life until one is glad to see things fall apart. Those moments when we don't get what we want are the same moments we are forced to pause, focus, and realign ourselves with our true being. It is a wise man who notices the magic of disappointment in the moment and doesn't have to wait until hindsight forces him to admit that the day gone wrong did him well.
Although, at the age of fifty-nine, I haven't fully arrived in my life, at least I am now fully aware of what arrival will look like when it occurs. It will be the day I decide to see each moment as detailed as the head of a single bent blade of dry grass in a field of hot, seedy fecundity-- the day I am finally determined not to let the worries of my mind, no matter what, draw me out of that precise focus. Knowing that's what my full arrival will look like lets me return to the practice of being without forcing it.
The California trip of 2022 gave me my first real glimpse in a very long time into is knowing--that simple knowledge of We are, and that is enough that isn't experienced in the brain but in your entire being. Having to face the uncertainty of my kidney disease and having this trip before me, which I thought could be my last, forced me to value a moment enough to fully sit in it as I once did as a child without expectations. And now, I don't care about what anyone else wants out of life. Whatever gives their life meaning, let them experience it. But I know what matters to me: now. Each moment that I am here: this moment that my pug Buddha is curled up in her bed snoring, that the fish tank is gurgling, that there's a good chance a toad is hopping down the path outside my back door towards some greenery as the morning slowly lightens. And if that wasn't my reality now, there would be some other reality just as important, and whatever that reality was, I now am absolutely certain, it would be the one the universe picked out just for me to sit in, to realize, Oh this is what this feels like now. When I have that down, I am living. When I don't, I'm just floating around existing, waiting for the moment when I'm ready to get down the actual purpose of life again--to exist and be fully aware of it. The mind used improperly removes you from all that is. The mind used properly is at home anywhere and in any circumstance. I haven't experienced that. It doesn't take much to derail my mind, and yet there is a part of me that knows that it is absolutely so. Peace and presence are not some unattainable illusions. They are our birthright. We keep ourselves from finding them. But they are there, always, waiting for us to arrive.
We never arrived at Yosemite, and we were okay with that. We'd been there together on our honeymoon, and it was wonderful. There are still fragments of that day of us strolling down through the valley with golden leaves all around, thin slivers of silver water spilling over polished granite canyon walls, auburn grasses in the meadows shaggy and tufted around the bends and wiggles in the river. We still had these things, at least in shards, fragments of what once was our day together. And a storm was coming, and we hadn't been to Sequoia or Kings Canyon, and the weather wasn't expected to hit as hard further south, so we decided to build new memories instead of seeking to relive old ones. We talked this out as we drove as the sun slowly lowered, and the shadows from the scattered bulky oaks slowly lengthened, and the hills slowly rose from the flats of the Monopoly board valley. I don't remember how it happened, but at some-point we decided to camp at H.V. Eastman Lake. If I remember right, we were afraid campgrounds closer to Yosemite were likely to be full, and now that Yosemite wasn't a destination, it didn't matter where we camped.
I remember how remote the low, boulder-blobbed hills thick with dry grasses and scattered oaks looked, the sky of thin drawn-out clouds slowly turning marmalade as the sun sank towards the horizon. The campground was almost empty. We found a great site next to a large boulder with views down to the lake far below. The site had a covered picnic table, which we moved, so that we could set up our tent under the canopy. We weren't sure when the storm would arrive, and packing up a wet tent isn't fun, so we took advantage of the chance to have a solid roof overhead.
After we set up camp, we went exploring. It was then, a little way down the trail, we noticed the massive inside of the earthen dam. The lake was only far below us because, although still large, it was almost entirely empty. What we were seeing was a puddle compared to what once was this mammoth reservoir. It must have been drying up for a very long time because the grasses were so high and dry one did not immediately detect a shoreline. It was not until we saw the inside of the dam that we noticed there was a line at which the oaks stopped, and looking at that one could determine the normal shoreline. It was subtle though, very subtle. I have a sharp eye when it comes to looking at landscapes and am not easily fooled. The drought had been so long and extended the vegetation was able to establish itself as if the water had never been there. My heart ached for California when I saw how much water wasn't there, that should be. If that was the story at Eastman Lake, it was the story for most, if not all, lakes in the state. It's so sad that the state that is doing the most to mitigate climate change is also the one that gets hit hardest by it. I would love to visit Florida. My heart goes out to the South too when disaster strikes. We are one nation, and we need to act as one. But there is a difference. California is trying to respond responsibly to climate change; Florida is not. It seems unfair that the state working the hardest to reduce emissions is among the hardest hit by its effects.
But life isn't fair; it is. Nature isn't reactive; it's predictable. It operates according to natural laws, laws scientists understand surprisingly well, yet societies foolishly ignore. California doesn't get back its karma, nor does Florida. Because we are one world, both places, like all places, receive global karma. Predictable, measurable, clearly understood consequences that hit different places differently because of very understood local conditions. That's what's so frustrating. We know what will happen to California and Florida, or Kansas or Utah, if we don't change our ways, and yet we don't change our ways. We are burning and flooding and tornado-tearing apart our homeland (not to mention what we're doing politically), and we're doing nothing to ease the pressure. We see the cliff, understand the distance between us and it, and run like hell towards it anyway.
No amount of denying the laws and dynamics of climate will save us; only changes in behavior will. You can pretend the gun you're pointing at your own head is a flower all you want and say that trigger is nothing but a leaf, but if you keep putting pressure on it, it will react predictably according to the physics behind it, and the story you are telling yourself while you keep increasing the actual pressure won't do diddly to alter the outcome. You must ease the pressure and put down the gun. We all need to ease the pressure so that societies together can put down the gun.
I know I didn't fully understand that reality the night we camped H.V. Eastman Lake. Traveling is in my bones; perhaps, because of my dad, it is who I am. When I am on a quiet highway, there is only the road ahead of me, and everything is so ultra-real--the variety of reds in the tumbleweed growing through the crumples of asphalt at the road's edge, the shades soft grays and greens of the sage, the shocking yellow of the late-blooming rabbit brush, all the various beiges, reds, lavenders and blues in distant ridges . When I'm on a lonely highway, looking out that window, I finally vanish and I am. So an automobile is a very difficult thing for me to give up. The distance between my home and work and the rural nature of where I reside further complicate things. Yet, if I understood the nature of the gun and the amount of pressure we're putting on that trigger deep down in our bones where I need to feel it, I would do anything, absolutely anything, to lighten the load. I think I might get that now, right now as I write this--perhaps for the very first time.
Yet, at the same time I've known for some time. I finally dreamed myself a Tesla because I've been wanting one deeply for a very long time, but not because I care about cars. I care less what I drive. A car for me is just a way to transport an eyeball. It is the vision, not the car I need. But I do need that space, that open road, that place to just be. I felt guilty as hell though needing that knowing climate change indeed is. So, I guess I manifested a Tesla for myself to ease the pressure I'm putting on that trigger.
I don't know how each of us needs change to reduce the load we're putting on our environment, but I do know the laws of physics and the chemical reactions in our atmosphere are real and predictable and that we have very educated people who have been telling us for decades what will happen, and all those consequences are indeed unfolding in real time and are very observable. So, I know I need to understand that gun better, to picture me putting my weight on the trigger, because, through my choices, my actions, I am doing that, whether I think about it or not. I do not like a man named Elon Musk; but I care about living in a world where I and my children and future grandchildren can exist a whole lot more than I dislike that man. Buying a Tesla is not the only way to ease up on the trigger, but it is one way. What is yours? The gun is loaded. That isn't propaganda. It is as real as the grains on the head of dry grass blowing in the winds coming down the foothills of the Sierra in California.
We are on a road headed towards a cliff with our foot on the accelerator. We do have the choice to let up on the gas even if we're not sure we've left enough breaking distance. Why in the hell do we seem to want to gun it?
I think I finally feel this deep enough to change. I sure hope so. Now is all we've ever got; this moment is the only thing that actually is. In an instant, it will become part of the past that can never be fully recovered and definitely never altered. The past is the past. Done. Dead. Forever out of reach. How we collectively act now changes everything collectively forever. And yet I am the only thing I can control. My choices now, in this instant, in any instant, is all that I have at my disposal to influence the outcome of eternity. It isn't much, but it is reality. And I am here now. So are you. It's all we've got alone; it's all we've got together. One now after another, that add up to be everything. We are all collectively determining the nature of our future now, not only for us but for all upcoming generations, whether we like that responsibility or not. That joy or burden is ours to carry because we are here now carrying it regardless of our wishes. God, chance, the cosmos--together, they say it must be so, and so it is. Now. And so it is that I think good thoughts because I want good outcomes--for me, for everybody, forever.
