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.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--55. Now, Space, and Walking Things Back

Walkabout the Rock, Steve Brown 2025

Writing this book has been an active discovery, not only as a project, but as a saner way to live my life.  It has been less about sharing what I know and more about recording how my approach to life is changing, and at least for me, in a manner that is easily identifiable as better.  Whether or not others have noticed the change or not, I do not know.  I do have my days when I seem to forget everything I've learned and behave as if I'd never began this journey.  However, overall, I spend less and less time reacting to world as I once did and more and more time being curious and open to now.  None of the ideas are my own.  However, one moment of realization was clearly my own.  Learning doesn't occur simply by receiving new information.  It occurs when you absorb it, and it becomes one with who you are.  That usually involves some experience that can be tested-out in your own mind.  Learning is active, verifiable, tangible, and changes the learner forever in ways big or small.  Writing this book has changed me.  I am not who I was previously.  This is how it generally progressed up until now:  

First, in January of 2022 I found out I had kidney disease, which for several months, Marci and I didn't know how serious it might be.  Furthermore, because of genetics, there was a small chance it could be Amyloidosis, which is very serious indeed.  The greater than usual possibility of my impending death made me acutely aware of time, especially time spent with Marci.  As our 25th anniversary was coming up, we decided to redo our honeymoon trip, which had been to Monterey because of my love of Steinbeck's work in general and specifically the book Cannery Row. 

Second, our car broke down in Salinas, which I now believe was no accident.  This provided me the opportunity to literally walk back through Steinbeck's work on our visit to The National Steinbeck Center.   And as luck (or providence) would have it, all the research books on Steinbeck's life and writing were half-off, allowing me ample resources to read while writing this book. 

Third, in the early stages of writing, I honestly felt Steinbeck was guiding the process, including the theme, which came to me the second day of working on the book: We are all connected, and what we choose to do now will impact our individual and shared realities through the eternities.

Fourth, while writing on September 14, 2023, I had the realization that although I'd been unhappy for a good chunk of my life, I'd never been unhappy while in the now--that whenever I was fully present, I was happy regardless of circumstances.  In that moment, I realized all my unhappiness was in my head and that if I'd spent all my life in the now, I would have been happy my entire life.  I even had the sense that except in rare traumatic events such as war, rape, abuse, etc., that it actually is impossible to be unhappy if one is intensely in the moment because being fully present brings an openness, understanding and empathy towards life and everyone around you that allows one to transcend things like a loss of a loved one, going through a divorce, or losing a child.  I had a sense that there is a type of joy that included deep sorrow and that type of joy was accessible through being fully present in the now, whatever that might entail.  All this I felt I knew in one moment while looking out my sliding glass door at a single sunflower glazed with late afternoon light.  However, I only felt I knew it.  That is close but not the same as knowing it.  I would need to experiment on it to know it more solidly.

So, I began to practice now-living.   It was and is still a struggle.  I don't always do it well.  My ego takes over, and I slip back into old ways of worry and living in my head and comparing myself to others and imagining crazy scenarios that don't even exist.  But overall, I do keep getting better and better at living in the moment, and sometimes I do it absolutely splendidly.  And when I do, I notice something very significant:  

Living in the now opens up space.  Space to observe, space to be still.  But most significantly, space to walk things back.  One day, I was talking to Marci, and we were heading towards an argument, and in that present moment I noticed how beautiful she is and how much I love her, and I had this thought I had never had before:  I can walk this back right now, in this very moment, and end this argument instantly.  I don't need to be right.  And I did do that, and it worked.  I don't even know if she knows it occurred, but I do.  All I had to do is give up my need to be right in exchange for something greater, that moment we were sharing together.  I didn't even have to admit I was wrong, which I didn't think I was.  I just didn't need to prove I was right.  The ego is all surface.  It cares nothing about integrity, morality, truth, especially not reality.  All it cares is about is perception--what others think. 

There is something about entering the now that totally obliterates the need to put on a show.  Mindfulness eradicates selfishness.  When we observe something acutely, we become one with it on some level.  I knew that well in sixth grade when I observed closely the cute freckles on Kelly's nose.  There was such a connection that it felt like love.  It always does.  I now feel that same connection to the bees in my garden and the small but great oaks in my front yard.  Living in the now connects us to life and opens up space--space to just enjoy but also space to revise our lives instantly, without any regrets.   For where there is no ego, there are no regrets.  Empathy for the feelings of others, yes.  But regret, no.  When you're fully in the present, you know all that matters is the choice you're making right now.  The past is gone, and the future will take care of itself, but based on this moment.  All life and all accountability is reduced to now.  It doesn't matter if you've needed to apologize to your son for ten years.  You can't do anything about that.  All you have to do is decide what you're going to do now.  And then do it.  And you don't even have to worry about how he'll receive it.  You can't do anything about that either.  But that apology will feel oh so good no matter the outcome because it has been weighing on you for ten years and because regardless of how it is received you will know it was needed.  Now obliterates guilt because when you're truly in the present you take care of whatever you can right now and don't worry about anything outside what you can do here, now, this moment.

Recently, I had a couple weeks where I let my ego take over again.  This led to worry, defensiveness, and ultimately some very bad behavior by me at a meeting at work where I could have severely damaged the relationship with my boss.  The old me would have just sat in that moment of regret and piled on the doom for a couple of weeks.  What have I done?   

But because I’ve spent enough time consciously in the now to know that ample space exists to walk back the ego at any time, once I came to my senses, I did just that. I set up a time with my boss to formally apologize. 

Apologize.  I can do that; you can do that; we can all do that. And each time one of us chooses to do that, the world becomes a little less broken, a little less fragmented, and a little more one—which it already is whether we like it that way or not.   That illusion of isolation, of separateness, of superiority and inferiority causes so much stress, pain and heartache, personally and globally because we act out the illusion as if it were real.  And so, the consequences are real even if based on a misinterpretation of reality.

Now makes us all equals in this moment, all just trying to get along the best we can based on the information we've gathered and experiences we've had.  Nothing I've written here is original, but it wasn't original for my sources either.   What made it original for them is the same thing that made it original for me.  They had one moment, or more likely a series of moments, where they had this realization:  I finally understand.   Currently, I practice living in the now very imperfectly.  But I have the sneaky suspicion that is true for my sources also.  Great ideas only get lived grandly one moment at a time.  I've read enough about John Steinbeck to know he could be a real jerk at times.  I assume the same about Wayne Dyer, and Gandhi, perhaps even the Buddha.  Christ may have been exempt from imperfection in this life, but I think even he must have been a novice once upon a time for evolution and growth seem to be universal laws. But flawed teachers don't change the universal truth: We are all connected, and what we choose to do now will impact our individual and shared realities through the eternities.

My hope is that just like when the first Steinbeck book fell into my hands, the many times I heard Doctor Daniel Sanderson speak at work, or after I rediscovered Wayne Dyer after almost 30 years, and I'd get these small ah-ha moments, I hope something said here will touch you as an original experience although I'm well aware there is nothing original here at all.  

The Tao, God, Love--they are eternal but only when witnessed from right here, right now.  And the moment we let our ego back in, they vanish until we once again enter that space where we are free to walk around, observe, just be.  Even if that mindfulness only lasts ten seconds, it can totally derail an entire drawn-out argument.

Look for those spaces.  Try it out.  See if it's not so for yourself.  There is so much space in a second if you just look for it.

That just may be how we find eternity when we're finally ready.  Right Now.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--54. The Void Between H.V. Eastman Lake and Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks

Palm and Orchard Near McFarland, Steve Brown 2022

Somehow, the next morning, it felt like the trip was over even though we still had Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks on our itinerary, as well as a second swing through Death Valley National Park.  It may have been our decision to skip Yosemite due to weather that gave the trip its premature feel of finality.  Perhaps it was just because we were tired.  But, for me, I think, it was that my soul knew the real reason for the journey was for me to visit The National Steinbeck Center even though I hadn't put that on the itinerary.  It took a well-timed death of an alternator and the perfect geographical location for the garage to make that happen, but sometimes the soul needs what it needs, and the universe complies.  In the moment, it feels like the universe is blocking all of our plans, but in hindsight, we realize we really would have missed out had things gone our way.

That morning, looking at the sky, I felt that way.  We agreed that we both felt tired, satisfied, and ready to head home. 

However, I was still excited to see more of the Central Valley.  I wanted to see more of California's agricultural empire.  I didn't yet know what I was going to get out of revisiting Steinbeck, but as I knew how central the farm field is to most of his work, I figured it was important to get that feeling down even if the cropland I was observing was outside the Salinas Valley.  There is no story of California without its fields.  You can say the same for America, as well as most of the world.  Even deep within the concrete jungles of civilization, humanity is still deeply tied to soil, not only physically by still needing that nutrition, but also spiritually.  We have all farmed for so long we are all farmers whether or not we've even grown a tomato.  Drive by an orchard and just see if you can keep your heart strings from being tugged.  The trees don't even have to be in bloom or be glazed with low light and casting long shadows between the long rows.  Even midday there is a pull towards the apple, the orange, the pistachio orchard.    And the same is true of a field of cows.

We may be revolted by an enormous industrial dairy with cows dotted among the mountain tops of dung and thousands more roaming around the squishy valley below, a thin green haze obscuring everything under the bending, twisting and tortured green light, but that's because our ancestors never knew of such agriculture.  We are not tied to such monstrosities.   I assume laboratories that grow meat will also have no such pull.  But the orchard, the field, the average-sized barn and farmhouse--they will always whisper Remember me?  They speak of our parents or at least our grandparents and every generation going back thousands of years.  And our genes know that even if we don't. A farm says to a person:  This is you, this is your story, and this is how you carried on.  It can be no other way because for thousands and thousands of years there was no other way.  We are all farmers deep in our souls.  There is no way to truly find yourself without at some point finding your way back to the farm.  Up until the 1970s pretty much every suburban yard also had a large garden in the back.  Canning was still a common thing.  There is a reason even people in high rises have the urge to grow things in pots on their balcony.  We are just born to have our hands in the soil.

Steinbeck knew that.  And I knew he knew it.  So, this journey needed to be as much about the field as the sea.

And yet, it really wasn't.  I was done.  I'd lost my focus for the day, if not for the rest of the trip.  And a void then is a void now.  I really don't know how we got to the tall trees of Kings Canyon and Seqouia. I just know we did.  

What little I captured of that irrigated empire I caught further south, on the other side of the high, high hills and passes and mammoth trees, and then back down in hotter, much dryer places, like McFarland, USA.

I had planned to go back, to feel that dirt, to know that space.  Yet, every journey is left incomplete.  Even one's life.  Perhaps the best attitude is to absorb all that you can in the moment and don't judge yourself too harshly for all the amazing life you let slide right on by.  We are, by design, creatures pulled oh so easily from purpose.  If an unfocused life can't be appreciated, there can be no real appreciation of life.  I am distracted because I am.  That distraction, that milky white blur where there should be pulsating pigment and stone solid experience, are in the end, part of the journey.  If you ain't ever been lost, you also ain't never been found.  You ain't even is.   You ain't anything.  Incomplete is complete.  The journey just ends when it ends, that time being known only by someone greater than us.  And my belief is, then the journey just starts right back up.  The trick is to be in the moment more often than not, and quick to self-forgive for the moments when you're not.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--53. Eighty Percent of Each of Our Nows Are Essentially the Same; We Can Learn to Live All with Novelty and Wonder

Sunset, Galveston Island State Park, Steve Brown 2025

10/29/25 

Exactly one week ago I woke up in a tent in Galveston Island State Park, Texas.  It was still dark, and I had to go pee.  Marci was awake for the same reason.  It had been a hostile night for sleep.  First, there was unbelievable heat and humidity.  Late October, and it was still in the low 80s when we set up our tent after 9:00 that night.  Then came fantastic electrical storms and great winds that swept across the tent and vibrated the poles fiercely.  The tent held; the rain never came.  Things did cool down, and I eventually crawled into my sleeping bag, but sleep was short and sporadic.  I so wanted to close my eyes and drift off now that things were calmer, but my bladder wouldn't let me.  Marci was also stirring, so I asked her if she wanted to drive up to the restroom.  She did.

Here at the beach, our days would begin basically the same because of our same basic need.  The change in our sleeping conditions from our typical Tuesday night's rest didn't change at all what we would be doing Wednesday morning.  True, the restroom was a lot further from bed than what was typical, but what drove us out of bed against our will was exactly the same.  Nothing had changed.   The journey to the toilet would be more filled with adventure and wonder than normal, but only because it was new.  If I had been blinded all my life and woke up one morning to a full bladder and full sight, the short journey across my bedroom would be even more spectacular than stepping outside my tent to a misty, dark morning and the sound of waves hitting the beach across the dunes behind me and the flames of a refinery across the bay lighting up the fog in a big, pulsating ball of orange-glow.  

Novelty awakened my senses and created the wonder of the beachside bathroom journey.  What if I could learn to bring that same sense of novelty and wonder to each bathroom journey?

The bathrooms in Galveston are alive with the sounds of bugs because bugs there are everywhere.  The restrooms are big and clean with showers and concrete bench seating areas and shiny hooks for clothes and shiny hand dryers.  There was even liquid handwashing soap, a rarity in campground restrooms.  Yet, there were bugs bumbling and buzzing in the sinks and crawling up the walls and swimming in the toilets, and because it was new, although it was an irritation, it was also a wonder.  Flies out west indicate a restroom or outhouse is unclean.  They are vile because they go hand and hand with the vile smell.  But here, the restroom was clearly clean, and the bugs took on a different meaning--at least to me:  Here is an ecosystem so rich and diverse you can't even bleach the life out of it.  I'm sure that's not true--man is capable of sterilizing life out of anything--but that's how it seemed.  Fecundity everywhere.

Outside, waiting for Marci, I listened to the waves lap the shore somewhere beyond the mist that seemed to gather around the light poles.  The air was damp and I could breathe.  I was glad my bladder had woken me up to take in this moment.  Yet, if I was more disciplined, I could answer every morning call to use the restroom similarly.  Although the bathroom is four feet from my bed, I could slip on some shoes afterwards, step outside, and walk up to the end of the driveway and back.  In fact, I think I will.  That will be part of my morning routine, to bring a sense of wonder to each day.  I will set my shoes beside my bed with fresh socks for my short morning walk to bring the wonder and adventure that going pee has when camping into my everyday life.  This is a promise to me, to start each day with a way to bring me naturally into the present, which in January will be very real indeed.  Shockingly so.  I can't wait!

I loved our short visit to Galveston.  It is a place I once knew fairly well and loved immensely.  The heat and humidity and ocean and bay are alive with life and fecundity.  Yet, that is true anywhere, even Death Valley.  Although there is much less life in Death Valley, there is so much more silence and space, that the life and the fecundity that there is, takes on so much more significance, and one is still drawn to the rattles of life stirring all around.  Life is always alive all around us.  It's our senses that become dead, and they are always deadened by the same old thing: a wandering mind driven by an ego always soldiering up to protect our self-image even though at least 80 percent of nows are essentially the same and realistically pose no threat to us at all.  The looming deadline this week is essentially the same as the one last week, which even though we survived it just fine, somehow, we don't get that in our head: it all works out; all is well, all is well.  

But it doesn't have to be that way.  We can choose to be essentially on vacation always while going through the motions of meeting those pesky deadlines if we focus on the wonder around us.  Light still streams through the window and bounces around the room while you do dishes.  There is that certain slant of light igniting suburbia on the way to take the family to the soccer game.  And there is always the silence deep below the stirrings of your own thoughts anywhere, even downtown, waiting for a bus on a busy street corner, with car horns and heavy exhaust, which you can find if you're willing to wade out into the warm, lapping water and feel the hush of the ever-present now fold all around you.  Every moment can be filled with novelty and wonder if we choose it to be so.

Sink Light Show, Steve Brown 2025

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--52. One Night at H.V. Eastman Lake and One Moment Now

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.