misplaced mama

King Tubby’s Dread Satta Version echos and drips, melts and reverbs through the air as we drive up past Klamath, CA, through the majestic Redwood Forest.  We travel through a tunnel of age old trees, protruding with knobs and twists and eyes that seem to follow us as we look through our foggy windows.  They are covered in moss dripping with greens, fuzzy branches, soft enough to cuddle even the weariest traveler, while the laser beams of sunlight pierce beyond the any mortal visions. The road winds and ascends to a mountain pass and with a glance to the right it almost seems like my eyes are playing a trick on me.  But I am not mistaken.  Some of the largest waves I have ever seen crash only feet from our cruising truck.  I have met my match.  Ocean meets mountains.  There truly is nothing in between these land mass formations and the foam gray of the sea.

How could anyone ever think that this land is all in jest, it is here to use and manipulate, consume and tap its resources because this is just temporary, just a place before a heaven, before some kind of manifestation of a bullshit Armageddon?  The earth is not a bank; She is not an instant teller where we can subtract from her account.  We are in Her debt, there is no doubt and we owe big.  Our relationship with this land should be symbiotic but my heart cries to me that we are not.  We are takers.  I long to see us all take care of, making that shift in consciousness is my hunger, my craving.  We have gotten to a point in this particular culture, this western United Statian culture of excess, where we have so much we are bored and lazy and even if we don’t necessarily rape the land ourselves (personally), what are we doing to take care of ? I don’t pull my pants down and shit a perverbial crap on the Earth, but what do I do to take care of, deeply and actively?  I climb down my Ladder of Green and realize not a whole hell of a lot. Alice Walker once said something about how the Earth does not pick and choose those who love her and those who don’t. She doesn’t care.  No.  She’ll cleanse us of all in the long run.   I think that if and when we start to take care of each other, as humans on a deep heart level, then without even thinking about it, we will take care of our ripe and lush home.  Or vice versa.  Maybe even at the same time, all at once.  I do have hope.  My eyes have been seeing things a bit fuzzy these days.  That can only mean a good change is right around the bend.

***

I chose to get married in the forest.  There is something so protective and surreal about it, enclosed and captivated, I almost feel other-worldly, utterly untouchable when I step down into springy earth.  And now to have the ocean crash against the edge of the rocky land while I get lost in the forest realm, almost like it captures me and won’t let me go. Sometimes I think I can get stolen forever in this dark and cave-like womb of green and brown.  Dragonflies the size of birds wiz by me.  Time becomes non-linear.

The girls wear little leather pouches around their necks, bought at some tourist spot or 2 bucks.  Inside each of the hold a special stone the found on the banks of the Klamath River, the place were we slept last night.  The finger their bags, happily and a bit anxiously.  I don’t think they are yet sure what is up ahead for them on the road.  As Sula said to me the other day, “What IS Washington?”

Next stop: Oregon, just a bit up the road.  Three nights there; 2 camping the coast and 1 in Portland. California, as usual, has been good to us.  Watching the coast evolve from The Beach to The Shore to The Cliffs, what a diverse and amazing state.  If you have never driven up the Left Coast, do it. Do it.  Do it.  I love to travel and will cross the oceans and explore land around the globe, but there is nothing quite like following the merging of where the ocean meets the land and mountains.  I mean, I look to the left now and I realize that the next piece of land is probably like China.  I am on the edge of the earth and the next stop is China.  It makes me tingle all over.