Friends and family, it has been a long time since I last posted. In fact, I don't think I've posted anything since I've been in California. Let me tell you, it has been a journey. I have been thrown completely out of my comfort zone just about every day. Some of it has been really good. I've gotten to spend time with people that I almost never get to see. I've gotten to experience their worlds and enjoy the comfort of their company. I have gotten to see the universal message of love and how they interact with it in their lives. I have also met and interacted with literally HUNDREDS of strangers, many of them living hollow lives, unhappy, fearful, anxious, angry, and neglected. San Diego, hands down, has the highest homeless population of any city I've ever seen. As a vagrant and a vagabond myself, when I look upon these poor souls, their pain mirrors my pain. I have learned a lot from being a 'prince among vagrants.' Having a healthy amount of savings to rely on, I have never had to worry about resources. Transportation, lodging, food, clean water...all a credit card swipe away. Most of the 'poor souls' I've encountered are literally living their lives at the whim of life. I've honestly experienced an irrational self loathing at my own situation: total freedom without fear of wanting for resources. But I can't dwell on this for too long. Everyone is having the experience they're having for a reason (including me), and I respect the path of the true vagrant as the path he has decided to travel. I have no desire to fight the system, and it would be hypocritical for me to criticize the vagrant for his lack of motivation to improve his situation. It's simply a reminder that the longer I travel and let my savings wane, the closer I come to truly knowing what it means to be in the hands of the universe.
A few of the souls I've met on the road have been incredible people, folks that I miraculously met when I needed an ally. People that I met only briefly, but that I know I will keep be in touch with for the rest of my life. People who are trying to see the bigger picture that I'm trying to see it.
I didn't plan to go deep into philosophy or higher meaning in this post, so I'd like to circle back around to what I had planned to share. As many of you know, I'll be heading to Seabreeze Farms tomorrow to begin my month long WWOOFing experience. If you don't know what WWOOF is, check out www.wwoof.org. I may have limited access to phone, email, Facebook, etc. while on the farm, so, since this blog post is already three weeks late, I wanted to share it with you now in case I can't do it later.
I had an old contract with myself to spend some time by myself from awhile back. I had no plans for my birthday really. I was on the west coast, no farming opportunities beating down the doors, no real obligations of any kind. My first thought was Tijuana. After all, what sounds more bad ass than spending your birthday in Tijuana?! Okay, how about alone? Didn't sound like a lot of fun. Okay, so I'm going to be alone on my birthday. What would you do? Camping. :) I was staying with a good friend, Sandy, in San Diego at the time, and as a former employee of REI, she had a TON of camping gear to offer me should I decide to spend a week roughing it with Mother Nature. It took me almost two whole days of looking at camping sites and state parks and bus lines and this-that-and-the-other before I concluded to camp on Catalina Island.
Catalina Island (thank you Wikipedia): Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California in the Gulf of Santa Catalina. The island is 22 miles (35 km) long and 8 miles (13 km) across at its greatest width. The island is located about 22 miles (35 km) south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is 2,097 feet (639 m) Mt. Orizaba. Part of the Channel Islands of California archipelago, Santa Catalina lies within Los Angeles County.
It was quite the adventure. I left San Diego at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, March 3rd, bussed, trained, taxied, and finally ferried my way to Avalon, the only thing big enough to be considered a city on Catalina Island. From Avalon I took a bus to the Airport in the Sky, a tiny airport in the central mountains of Catalina Island. From the airport, it was a long, strenuous six mile hike with all my gear to the camp site at Little Harbor. But once I was there, I was in an introvert's paradise. I was the only person to camp at the Little Harbor camp grounds for the four nights I was there. There was literally no one around for miles.
I had some pretty critical experiences at Little Harbor, mostly internally. I had never before achieved the kind of meditative clarity I did over those few days, and the things I learned about myself while I was out there are still coming into focus, some of them very slowly. Ironically, I read and wrote very little while at Little Harbor, but I did write a few things which I'll share with you here.
TOP TEN REASONS CAMPING ALONE IS AWESOME:
1) No one can tell you that you're building the fire wrong. (I am man, man creates fire. No one cares about tipi structure, or whatever.)
2) No one is around to hear you singing (or see you dancing to) JT songs.
3) No one is around to tell you it's too early to start drinking the rum. (How the hell am I supposed to know what time it is anyway?)
4) No one is around to be offended by your stench when you haven't showered for days. (Which actually a plus because it deters the wildlife from coming near your campsite.)
5) No one is around to tell you that the head lamp is not sexy. (Because we're bringing sexy back, dammit.)
6) The Port-O-John is always vacant. (And if it's rancid, guess who's fault it is?)
7) Every ranger that passes through thinks you're a badass for braving the wilderness on your own.
8) No one is around to laugh AT you do something stupid (like step in buffalo shit).
9) Say whatever ever you want, SCREAM whatever you at God, nature, life, etc. The people that DON'T care are miles and miles away....
10) You GET to face yourself, one-on-one, without intermediaries.
TOP TEN REASONS CAMPING ALONE SUCKS:
1) No one to help carry the burden of food, clothing and equipment for the six mile hike to the campsite.
2) No one to reassure you when you wake up from horrible nightmares induced by the foxes trying to get into your tent in the middle of the night.
3) When something happens that defies physics, there's no one around to whom you can say, "Did you just see that shit?!"
4) No one is impressed by your outdoor culinary skills... And you eat alone.
5) There's no one to snuggle with when it gets cold.
6) There is no one with whom to share the brilliant sunsets, sunrises, stars, and moons.
7) No matter how hard you try, words and pictures will never do the experience justice.
8) No one is around to laugh WITH you when you do something stupid (like step in buffalo shit).
9) Locals and other tourists who wander onto the campgrounds may think you're intriguing and mysterious, but mostly distrustful and possibly insane.
10) You MUST face yourself, one-on-one, without allies.
I found these revelations to be very eye opening (and hilarious). And so I went on to write this, as I made my way back to San Diego:
A COUPLE OF THINGS I LEARNED WHILE CAMPING ON CATALINA ISLAND:
1) Light your fire BEFORE you take a cold shower.
2) When hiking or kayaking, that structure you're aiming for is nowhere as close as you think it is... Don't get your hopes up thinking, "I'm almost there!" You're probably not.
3) In a pinch, sunscreen is a decent substitute for deodorant.
4) Get used to not knowing what time it is. Do everything in your own time. The only times that matter are sun-up, sun-down and the tide change.
5) No matter how hard the hike, how steep the climb, how rough the waves... you can succeed. Quiet the mind, give love and support to your body, and focus on the goal.
Evidently I didn't learn much more than that on the surface level, but I can't deny the philosophical implications of my experience. They may not seem like big changes here in language as I have described them, but I put forth that internally, something changed.
