The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--60. Leaving the Sierras Again

Looking Back at the Sierras from Lake Kaweah, Steve Brown 2022

1.

It's funny how memories fall into place when least expected.  I had skipped writing about camping at Buckeye Flat and moved right on ahead to stopping at the Pumpkin Hollow Bridge in Three Rivers because not much was coming to me.  But the morning of April 15, 2022 is now here in full detail, and so I'm going to back-up to a few hours earlier.  I could change my mind, but I don't think I want to revise the overall narrative to put things in order.  This book is about opening up to now in wholeness.  That comes in fragments.  Always.  And not necessarily in order.  The mind works through thought-rhymes, and each moment brings a different set of connections.  Here, I have tried to be true to those, let them take me where they want me to go.  I used to think Buddhism was about disciplining the mind.  I have discovered it's more about having dialogue with it: being open, observant, not mistaking thoughts and feelings for reality, but enjoying them on their own terms.  Isn't it wonderful that a chain of memories hidden one day, opens up the next day unannounced, because of some subtle change in now--perhaps a different sound or different slant of light--calls forth what was previously hidden?  Why artificially organize the way memory actually works?  And so, we will leave the Sierras once again simply because my mind wants to.

2. 

I got up cold and made a campfire.  It was chilly, damp, and wonderful.  I remember scrounging around for small twigs amongst the dewy blades of grass to get enough kindling to start a fire.   Buckeye Flats Campground isn't that flat, and rests nestled in a small bowl amongst oaks and maples above the Middle Fork of Kaweah River.  There was a bear box, a picnic table, and our tent.  When we had arrived, someone had taken our reserved site, so we took the one next to it, and we had to walk down a grassy slope into ours.  I didn't mind, and in the morning, when I could see, I realized we had our own parking right next to camp and would not have to trek up and down the hill to pack up camp.

I got the fire going, threw on the remaining firewood from the night before, and lit the propane burner, hearing the hiss and watching the sudden appearance of that familiar blue-green flame.  Then I walked to the restroom.  When I came back, the first direct sunlight was hitting the roadway, and it felt so warm and good.  That's one of the things I love most about camping.  I hate being cold, but you really only experience the extreme pleasure of warmth immediately after you've been chilled.  Camping puts the yin and the yang of weather right next to each other.  

What if it's the same with peace?  I keep seeking inner peace.  I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that.  Less crazy is good.  It feels wonderful to be free from anxiety for greater and greater amounts of time.  But maybe our soul knows we need to lose that stable tranquility once in a while so that we can appreciate it when we return to that calm, steady rhythmic freedom.  Maybe?   I don't know.  I don't think I'd ever tire of living beside the ocean.  I seriously doubt my daily walks along the beach would ever become tedious.  Maybe instead, peace is a vast sea of tranquility that once you fully enter it, you never want to leave.  But that could also be an assumption, a yearning for what's not real.  We may need moments of turmoil to continue to recognize that underneath it all, the foundation is love and peace.

Anyway, not a worry anytime soon.  I'm plenty capable of jumping on and riding that crazy ego-train.  So, for now, I think I can appreciate moments of peace surrounded by turmoil the way I appreciate sunlight in the cold.  It feels damn good.  Enjoy it.  Be in it.  But maybe I should also be willing to walk back into the shade to get things done.  Maybe we need to return to inner-turmoil now and then to get soul work done.

I left the sunlight right at the entrance to our campsite and walked back into the frigid shade and started pulling the cooler and food boxes from the big metal bear box, which was cold to touch.  I remember shivering and trying to control my chattering teeth like a child.  And then I threw the last split log on the fire, warmed myself for five minutes, and went to the tent to wake Marci.

3.  

We had intended to drive back to the sequoia groves we'd missed, but we had descended so much, and because we'd been told we'd need a water pump soon, we decided not to chance the climb back up.  The trip had been amazing, but we'd already dealt with a flat tire and a dead alternator.  So, we decided to drive on towards home.  We also talked about how we should probably skip the returned trip through Death Valley for the same reason.  That road goes wildly up and down, and unlike here, there would also be heat.

I don't remember the lower elevations of Sequoia National Park as well as I did when I started this chapter.  The memory has slipped back down into the deep caverns of my mind, but maybe I can reach in and pull it out by its tail.  I remember warm sunlight, and I remember stopping at a visitor center, and how there was a short nature trail out back where a park ranger was surrounded by about a dozen people.  We walked in the sun near them but didn't join.  I remember the grounds had an amazing mixture of cold and warm weather plants it being located in a transition zone.

We each have transition zones in life too.  They are exciting and messy.  One of them is called Teenagerhood.  There are others, of course, which I don't necessarily think line-up for everyone.  But they always come when we are trying to change.  We lose stability.  Our emotions go up and down.  We become confused.  We think one way one moment.  Then, another way the next.  I love transition zones in nature--where the hot desert meets the cool mountains, and yucca and cholla grow next to oak and sometimes even pine.  Yet, in life I tend to dread that turmoil.  Maybe I shouldn't.  It means change.  I tend to view instability negatively.  Damn, I slipped back into the same old negative behaviors.  I let my ego get the best of me.  True.  But unlike previously, I was aware of it.  Peace Man and Shithead now live side by side consciously.  Whereas before, Ego would take over without me even knowing it, and for a while, distort reality so much so I wasn't even aware of losing peace.  Someone else was always the cause.  There was no real awareness that the weather was all inside me.  Turmoil isn't always a bad thing.  It can mean growth and openness, evolution.  It's inevitable, I think.  None of us gets out of here without change.  We should learn to enjoy the process more, to sit in the now of uncertainty, and observe it like those wonderful transition zones in nature--Ah, look at that new version of me growing right next to old; notice just how when I thought I was free from jealousy and insecurity, there it is again!  Wild and woody and full of thorns!   Hello, old friend.  Notice, you're being slowly crowded out though.  I know that because I'm talking to you now instead of you dominating the conversation without me even being aware I have something to say back.  Well, I do.  I say, "Peace."

More chaos, more thoughts.  More thoughts, more openings.  More openings, more choices.   More choices, more freedom.  More freedom, more paths.  More paths, more wisdom.  

That does not mean walking through all openings though.  Not all paths lead to paradise.  It really does matter which road you take in the long run.  Many lead to addiction, spiritual bondage and death.  But the more openings you spot, the longer you can sit there and quietly look down each of those roads and decide which is better to take.  Without moments of chaos, we never sit down and look around to see where we truly are, let alone where we want to go.  I now ask two questions:  Is this freeing me of me of my ego? and Is this aligning me more with Christ than I was a minute ago?  If the answer to both of those is yes, or even probably yes, then, I should welcome and enjoy the chaos, notice the slipups with relish, and be excited by the journey into the unknown.  You can't progress walking in circles around what is already known.  (Well, actually, you probably can.  But that's for another book.  We are built to open, to flower, to move towards the unknown.  I can see that happening even while walking round and round, attempting to get nowhere.  So, if change comes so naturally to us, why do we fear it so?)  

April 15, 2022 I was open.  Skipping the groves, the prime reason people go to Sequoia in the first place, didn't seem crazy at all--just a wise decision based on the now that would open up more time to see something else.  I was in a car, Marci was beside me, the weather was fine, and all I had to do was drive.  That usually is the very definition of Heaven for me.  I have since bought a Tesla so that I can do that a little more guilt-free.  I'm trying to slowly align myself with the world around me and who I want to be.  I can't give up the road-wandering, but maybe I can do it pumping out less greenhouse gasses.  That is soft revolution, and it may be the only type that can save us.  We need to want to do the right things, or our addictions will always drive us.  The ego always believes escape is safer and easier than change.  It will always revert back to what is known regardless of how ineffective it was.  Hard revolutions are temper tantrums on a societal level--anger for anger.  Soft revolutions are I think I'd prefer not to participate in that anymore, so I won't.  That's when the change comes.  The alcoholic doesn't stop being an alcoholic when he first becomes pissed about one or two consequences from drinking, but rather when he first realizes he simply wants more out of life than the escape into alcohol can offer.   Only then does he choose daily to not drink.  

We will not become a society free from coal and oil until we decide we want something more than coal and oil can offer.  Once that mental switch happens, the societal change will happen almost overnight.  Right now, our egos keep telling us that the change can't be made, that it is impossible, and so it is.  We will not become a society free from hate and war until we decide we want something more than hate and war can offer.  Once that mental switch happens, the societal change will happen almost overnight.  Right now, our egos keep telling us that the change can't be made, that it is impossible, and so it is.  But when we truly want it, it will be. 

 What we truly want is who we truly become.  Sometimes anger is needed to jump-start the process.  A drunk may have to get disgusted with himself first.  But the real change is always soft and sure.  I want to do this, and so I can, and so I will.   

I want to live green, and so I can, and so I will.   I want to live in love, and so I can, and so I will. I want to live in peace, and so I can, and so I will.

It takes a lot of work to realize it's that simple, but there is a part of me that is damn sure that's really all there is to it.  Just assert you what you want more than what you don't want and move towards it soft and steady, and it will be so.

4.

We stopped at Lake Kaweah for a look back at the Sierras.  The air was clean, the lake was blue, the sunlight was warm, the snow-capped mountains were majestic.  It looked like the perfect July day in the Sierras.  The only problem was it was only April.  We humans hate dealing with reality.  All we want to do is escape.  But climate change is real, and it won't go away until we change our ways.  At some point we will have to make choices, some hard, or there won't be any choices left at all.  You can't legislate away climate change; you can't get rid of it with an executive order.  You can ignore science all you want.  Natural laws don't care whether you adjust your actions.  They just move forward naturally, predictably, at one with the Universe, at one with God.  And we have our free will to alter what we do or be swallowed up in the inferno that will come naturally based on our actions and what we already know to be true but ignore.  It looks like it will be our shared destiny, but it doesn't have to be, if we decide now that we want something more than oil and coal can offer.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--59. I Feel Solid When I See

Sunrise, Galveston Island State Park, Steve Brown 2025

One morning I watched the orange sun lift above the folded and polished waters of the Gulf of Mexico in a tangerine sky with blobs of tropical clouds hanging around.  The surf was constant, but not loud.  The air was moist and slightly chilly, but not cold.  Marci and I had driven up to the restrooms to shower at Galveston Island State Park on this last morning of our very rushed trip with Lloyd across Texas.  And then we had slowly strolled down to the beach.  I walked in the warm waters knowing I probably wouldn't return for a long time.  Our previous time in Galveston was in 2001.

Tonight, I had at least half a plan of what I would write here.  It had to do with the "Thou Mayest" section of East of Eden, Chapter 24.  But for some reason, I was drawn to that other coast so far away from Monterey, so far away from the Salinas Valley, and so far from the overall narrative journey of this book, not to mention whatever it was that I wanted to tap into in East of Eden to make a point I had on the tip of my tongue last weekend, but which right now, seems to have sunk to the bottom of the ocean.  I'm sure I can find it again, and probably will, when I reopen the novel sometime soon.

But right now, all I want is to stand on a beach in Galveston and listen to the waves.  Another day it will be Pismo Beach, or La Paz, Mexico.  And some days it's not a beach at all.

But it is always somewhere.   Including here.

I sometimes get lost, looking for meaning.  I want things to add up.  I want there to be something.  I want there to be love and kindness.  Not sometimes.  But always.  I want there to be peace.  I doubt the toad ever feels peace when the tarantula is devouring it, nor the fly battling pointlessly to get free of the spider's web.  Physically, nature frequently offers no peace.  Nature is mostly brutality with short, glorious moments of birth and love, like a doe licking the afterbirth off her wobbly newborn fawn.  If you see nature without jaws of death though, you are not really seeing nature at all.

Yet, spiritually, I only feel solid on a beach, a retreating wave sucking the sand out from underneath me.  Or about any other place where nature is big and I'm small.

Other than close family, I never feel comfortable around people unless there are enough of them to where I can be totally anonymous.  I guess there's something wrong with me, but it doesn't feel that way.

Silence astounds me.  Standing alone in the desert, I seem to expand in all directions, become everything.  How can I feel lonely?  How can that feel bad?

I watch people.  I can even enjoy watching people.  Occasionally, I can forget myself, lose myself in laughter or a string of ideas in the company of others.  I think it is a good thing to learn to let down my guard and do that more openly, more freely, and I am getting better at that.  But I know who I am.  I know who I'm meant to be.  I was born to stand on a beach and marvel at sunrises and sunsets.  

Perhaps I told God in the preexistence, "I just want to go down and observe crap.  Let everyone else strive to get something done.  They enjoy that.  Just let me look and put into words what I've seen."

I have lived a good life.  I wouldn't give any of it back.  But I could have lived much better life if I'd been more comfortable with who I am.  I still can be.  There's time.  I can play my part in a world I believe is make-believe as a sort of game and still be incredibly genuine underneath it all.  

It seems possible in the moment, but ten minutes from now, my ego could easily be trying to devour me. Once you identify your ego for what it is, you become more aware of the wolf and smile at him as you cautiously walk by through your inner landscape.  I'm just beginning to do that.

Writing about the sea reminds me who I am meant to be.  

God, help me remember it tomorrow.  Let me give others that space too, let them be who they want to be.  Don't let me get caught in webs of fear of my own making.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--58. Leaving the Sierra Nevada

Kaweah River, Steve Brown 2022

I love the rivers of California.  They are boulder-strewn and feathered with plumes of white water.  They drop quickly and are not quiet.  They must be astonishing during the high waters of spring.  I only know them from the summer when pools of deep green water are connected by winding ribbons of white.  Boulders islands sit high and sunbaked, ready for young kids to scamper up out of the brutally cold water to sun themselves before easing themselves back into that icy current.  My memories are filled with blue dragon flies and floating boats in the little coves along the shoreline, careful not to venture out too far, for even in the dead of summer, currents are swift.

It was April when we drove through Three Rivers, but with the extreme drought, it might as well have been August, and so, when I stopped to look at the Kaweah River, it was astonishingly like the rivers I knew from my youth--the American, Carson, Truckee, and Feather.

I didn't know what to think of the giant Sequoia.  They were clearly grand, but they were not the Coastal Redwoods I knew so well.  I couldn't take my eyes off them, but they also didn't feel part of me.  They were otherworldly, disconnected from the various Californias I knew from my childhood.  But the Kaweah River on this day, April 15, 2022, said to me, You know me, even though I'd actually never seen it before.  It felt good, and I hated to get back in the car and drive on.  

The day before, against my will, I longed for the trip to be over.  There comes a point in every road trip where you move from anxiously awaiting the next sight to just wishing you were home.  That point had come many miles and a couple days back at Eastman Lake, but this river now was pushing my love of travel back to the forefront.  All of the sudden I didn't want the trip to end.  I didn't want to face the unknowns of my kidney disease.  Home would mean facing reality, whatever that would be.  I just wanted to travel down this road with Marci forever.

I got back in the car, filled with a mild dread.  Soon we would be leaving the Sierra Nevada for who knows how long?  Why would anyone in their right mind ever do that?  Donnor Lake, Taho, Sand Pond, June Lake, Sierra Buttes, Mt. Rose, Yosemite.  Why, why would anyone ever leave that pine and granite paradise?

I didn't know the southern Sierra as well.  Still, there was clearly enough in common to tug at my heart and make me want to plant myself there forever.  

Yet, a journey has a timeline, and so you go.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--57. Thou Mayest

Thou Mayest, Steve Brown 2026

The worth of the individual isn't valued as much by mankind.  We see this in nation building; we see this in corporation building, and almost any other organization.  If we look closely, we can even see this in ourselves.  Families may wail unconsolably at the loss of their loved one sacrificed for the agendas of others.  Individuals may wail unconsolably for their very personal loss.  But nation-states, corporations, and most organizations only wail if that grief supports their agendas, which is always framed as growth or the greater good.  So, anything viewed as an attack from the outside produces much collective sorrow because it increases the feeling of unity and shared values.  Anyone viewed as a threat or a nuisance from the inside is eliminated.  Therefore, what is clearly valued is the reinforcement of the group's ego, not the individual.

The death of Charlie Kirk matters deeply to his friends and family regardless of whether their values align with his or not.  Adult children often wail deeply over the death of parents they certainly do not see eye to eye with.  We can have friends we feel are totally lost and love them anyway.  But beyond that, a human's worth is only what he or she contributes to the cause.  Charlie Kirk is a martyr because he was attacked from the outside.  However, had his ideology evolved over time and begun to run counter to the ideas of the conservative movement, he would have quickly become hated like Liz Cheney and discarded.  That doesn't say anything about conservatism because the same happens on the left.  However, it says volumes about humanity.  Sadly, some families are so dysfunctional that they do the same thing.

It is an important truth to recognize that outside our friends and family, as individuals, we humans are basically worthless.  This knowledge is useful for two reasons.  First, it provides a lot of freedom.  If I acknowledge that I really don't matter much to society, then I have a lot of space to grow into who I want to become without having to worry too much about what others think.  Why would I care too much about the opinions of people I know value me only when I support their egos?  I can still love and care about them, but why would I let their opinion stifle who I want to become when I know that I am only valuable as long as I reaffirm their world view?   Yet, we do that all the time, over the stupidest stuff.  We worry about what we wear because of what total strangers may think.  Absurd.  Once you realize that to the world you are insignificant, you can become whoever you want to be.  

Second, although knowing you're worthless outside your immediate family does provide an enormous amount of freedom, the divine soul within each of us, instinctively knows This should not be so.  God has put deep within us the knowledge we are intrinsically valuable beyond measure.  We are his stuff.  God matter.  This is where our sense of injustice comes from.   As destructive as the ego can be, this is the good part, the source.  We instinctively know we are divine and rant and rave and pout when we are not treated that way.  That comes from insecurity, from both knowing and not-knowing simultaneously.  We feel our divine nature enough to know when we've been treated unjustly, but most of us do not know our divine nature enough to know that that it is impossible for our divinity to be taken away if we fully recognize our worth.  You cannot strip or beat divinity out of someone who firmly feels it.  

When we know that ultimately, we are worthless to humanity and yet divine to God, we become humble and free enough to do good mischievously, under the radar.  We begin to value people simply because they are, and not because they support us.  We look for those most distanced from who they really are, and we want to reach out to them, not because they support our ego, not because we feel we can save them, but because we no longer see humanity in terms of alliances and enemies and no longer see people as something that can be sacrificed.  We become free from society and instead intensely immersed in everything living.  A person is no longer valued because he or she supports our worldview.  A person all of the sudden is valued because when you look inside their eyes you see life--that glorious reflection of heaven.  We stop thinking how can I help this person and start thinking how can I know this person.  

It's a huge shift; one I'm in the middle of making.  It's sloppy, very messy.  The ego does not die peacefully because it is rooted in a true notion: we are divine and we all deserve to be treated like kings.  But ego is a distorted version of that truth because it is built on one enormous, big fat lie:  that there isn't enough divinity to go around.  God-matter is infinite and includes everything, including snails.  You don't have to compete to be part of divinity. You are it.

Whatever shitheads we are right now, recognizing divinity is unlimited and free to all, from kings and popes and prophets to pugs and snails absolutely guarantees we will eventually be shitheads no more.  You cannot begin to recognize the nature of God and not want to emulate it.  I now patiently wait to leave my shithead-self behind.  It's coming.  I can feel it approach slowly, day by day by day, and now, just slightly more removed from my ego then yesterday, I can sometimes actually relax and lean back and watch the show.

Once you recognize you are both worthless to society and of infinite worth to God, the ego dissolves, and you are totally free.  No longer needing escape, and no longer needing approval, thou mayest do as you please.  But at the point of freedom--the only point you can truly be free--you will always choose to do good.  It will be impossible to do otherwise.  Demolishing the ego is not only the only path to real freedom; it also the only path to full alignment with God.

But knowing that is not becoming that.  Experience, not knowledge, fuels change.  We have to will ourselves closer and closer to that state of being through our thoughts, actions, and revisions.  What can I learn from this now to approach my next now more open, more fully, with less fear and more love?  How can I better see God matter in absolutely everyone and everything?

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--56. Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks

 

Parking Lot, General Grant Grove, Kings Canyon National Park, Steve Brown 2022

The giant trees.  That can mean two different species in California in two very different climates--the coastal redwoods, which is what I knew well as a child, and the giant sequoia, which until 2022, I'd never really seen before.  I wish I remembered the latter better.  Perhaps, as I write, I will.

What I recall most about that day, which isn't much, is how shocked I was at the up and down of the highway through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.  I'm used to high passes.  Going over Donnor Pass was a frequent occurrence during my childhood as well as Tioga Pass to the south, and I have been over many passes in the Rockies.  But there was something wonderfully wild about driving the Generals Highway.  It's narrow, curvy, goes up and down, up and down, and is surrounded by a tangle of thick, snow-beaten conifers, and yet the drop-offs are so steep that even with the thick growth, these spectacular views still open up.  It is one of the most untamed-feeling highways I've driven.  And yet, for some reason, right now, I don't remember it that well.  Perhaps we were just too tired to absorb what we were seeing.  What doesn't really seep into the ground water doesn't bubble up well later.  

I do remember being in the actual big trees was at first a bit disappointing to me.  Like the coastal redwoods, I thought they'd be surrounded by a thick carpet of ferns and moss, everything bright green and dripping with moisture.  At least in April, they were not.  The forest floor was a typical Sierra forest floor littered with small twigs, needles, and very random, isolated grasses.  I felt like I could have been around Truckee except the trees were much, much bigger.  Marci didn't have the same experience though and was clearly impressed, and so vicariously, through her excitement, I slowly entered the moment and began to feel wonderfully small amongst giants.

We only stopped at one grove, the Grant Grove, located in Kings Canyon National Park. As I slowly let go of my expectations, the steely gray day and almost complete silence seeped into me.  Birds were few.  Visitors were few.  There was plenty of space to just enjoy the sound of the trail beneath our feet.  

Perhaps my favorite part of the hike was when the trail went lengthwise The Fallen Monarch, a downed Sequoia.  I was amazed that there was a ten-foot-high ceiling above us and no doubt plenty of wood beyond that.  It was like being in a cave, the wood sides polished like stone by people passing by and rubbing them time and time again.  I half expected stalactites to hang down from above us so much was the log like a cave. 

We had intended to stop at more groves, but the pass between the groves in Kings Canyon and the ones in Sequoia was high, wild, and curvy, and the already dark day deepened, broken by short moments of glorious gold as the sun neared the horizon while the clouds were slowly breaking up.   We decided we would continue onto camp so that we wouldn't have to set up our tent in the dark.  "We'll just drive back up in the morning," I said, fully meaning to.

After we dropped into the other groves, and drove on without stopping, we dropped and dropped some more, the road turning this way and then that way.  And still we dropped.

That was good, for it was getting cold.  

At dusk, we reached the turn-off for Buckeye Flat Campground.

Recollection for me is like this: recent memories flow mostly unbroken like film footage.  Sure, they may break and have to be taped back together and rethreaded through the projector as I write, a glitch here and there, but they flow, mostly unified.  But with time, the film breaks into smaller and smaller bits, and it gets harder and harder to stitch them back together.  But the fragments are still intense.  Sometimes it seems more honest and natural to just leave them that way--short, intense bits of a day that once was, now not connected to whatever came before or after because in my mind that connection is mostly gone anyway.

Buckey Flat Campground now feels isolated from the upper elevations of King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks--almost as if it were a separate memory.  

This film ends with the headlights picking up the camp sign in the dusk, tall trees towering all around, Mountain slopes behind, and a narrow gravel road off to the left.   

The last flick of film flashes before the screen, slides off crooked, so one can see the individual frames and the holes to the side.  This happens in less than a second.  And then all is white.