The Pacific Rainforest

Last night I biked over an inlet of Puget Sound and the fog was crossing the road adding myth and mystery to the airy warm night along the coastal town of Olympia. I could smell the ocean in the pacific breeze and hear the gulls on their late evening migration. We climbed a small hill up to the west side through a residential neighborhood on our way to a house party. The crowd there was full of youth and yet friendly and unintimidated. Hip hop and RnB played in the garage where a ton of kids danced in black light. I drank the blood of Mount Rainier in the form of beer in a can and wandered around. Surprisingly the Philly connection was ever present with either people knowing me or knowing friends of mine who had passed through here before. Conversation strayed back to solutions to the current world crises of a poisoned planet, and I smoked a joint legally thinking about something someone had told me about the winters here. The whole town becomes covered in moss. Houses, cars, fences, lawns, trees, and anything that stays remotely still turns that eternal green that I first saw in the northwest rainforest and very quickly becomes something of elvin fantasy or storybook trilogy. The whole story seems unreal but I believe.

Advertisement

Yellowstone High Hills

I feel rugged like a mountain man.
The campsite turning quickly into a western frontier shanty town
As more RVs and tents pull in and unfold
There’s community by the hot springs
Travelers from near and far in their bathing suits
Wading where the boiling river meets the cold spring
The moon with its black light glow
Illuminates the clouds of steam
Their ghostlike forms taking flight in the wind
Swimmers group together like a pack of seals
Holding tight to the stone eddies
They laugh and squeal every time the current temp changes
But needless to say, the party has a heated flow
And sometimes the bison come to join it
While the elk bulls continue their windchime-like moans in the background
Most of the time it’s just the young adventurers though
Playing in the festive waters of the volcanic hot spring
On these Yellowstone high hills.

Midwestern Gestures

So road signs for pen names, five hour drives in the fog, sunsets an hour early and an hour long, and crossing the Mississippi River further into the until now unknown.

I started this morning in an underground private sauna and healing center after sleeping all night in a mystic prayer room. I felt something had shift in my consciousness when I first awoke and it only got deeper in the healing chamber. It had very little to do with dreaming and more to do with the inner chatter suddenly ending. All that drama suddenly passed away. Good friends. Good vibrations. When leaving the basement sauna, it felt like re-entering my body but as if in a different world. My knee which has been bothering me for weeks no longer felt broken. There was loose change all over the sidewalk on our wander back to the house where we were staying. 3 dimes, a nickel, and 15 pennies. Our conversation disconnected by the coin grab meditation. At a magic shop I bought some Mayan incense and an emerald stone. My balancing stone. My old home street home. The Dream Oven came up in some of our conversations. It has a good sound as a word grouping. I drive the car and we only get further away. This is maybe the farthest I’ve driven from my home in a single sitting. But I still am seeing familiar geography. Highway, farm, forest, trees, road sign, clouds, water, mountain valley. That river though tonight was a monster. And tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll be in South Dakota. I can only imagine what I’ll start to feel when the landscape starts to change and go all screwy. Probably it will start with the heart fluttering. The smile growing. And something in my conscious mind will burst. Fortunately I got to grounding in Indiana. And that energy has kept me flowing through to the new and unknown. Life is pretty good. Enjoy the every day.