Description: In which Marty and Heather, presented unexpectedly with a three day weekend, experiment with vacationing by hanging out in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties.
(Marty's Report):
So Heather says to me, "Work is making me take two days off. I don't want to but if I don't I'll lose the days. Something about holiday time. And leprechauns." Well, I'm not sure am reproducing that with full accuracy, but the two days off was right. So we poked around our schedule for when we could do a long weekend, and lo, there was a gap starting June 10th. Our lives are pretty heavily scheduled, so this is rare, but we jumped on it and after notifying my clients (after her boss cleared the time off) and brainstorming ideas, we came up with hanging out on the Russian River in Sonoma County and doin' some canoein'. (Brainstorming is a little inaccurate. We hadn't come to any conclusions and most places seemed too far away, but while sitting with a client I heard "...kayaking..." and it all fell into place. "Heather, we're going canoeing on the Russian River." She protested a little, but I got her in an arm lock and that was that.)
Another bit to this process is the fact that Heather, in the Heather and Marty partnership, is generally, and often de-factorially, the researcher. I must cop to the fact that I have relied on that in the past, on Heather's somewhat neurotic tendency to research as a way to suppress anxiety, which has worked for me given that I don't like to suppress my anxiety that way. But Heather bolted on this one and forced me to do the research. It's not hard, just tedious. So I came up with a few options--the Russian River area is actually designated a resort zone, and the prices and availability reflect it--and we settled on The Jenner Inn, out at the mouth of the Russian River, which had a lot of rooms available and cheaper than elsewhere. And I found a place called Burke's Canoes at Forestville that would rent us a canoe and point us in the right direction.
So come Thursday, I got home from my overnight at the halfway house, we packed up quickly and piled our stuff in the car for the drive up into the north country. (A note on packing: the first time I traveled out of the U.S., I had a sleeping bag and big hiking pack. Those got dumped quickly in Bangkok, and I carried on with a single tiny castaway military pack whose think straps cut into my shoulders. But I was butch! Now, in my Advancing Decrepitude, I can't be bothered to worry about overall poundage, so I just throw in an approximate over-estimate of clothes, grab the Humongous Shaving Bag, and go, without much thinking. I think a lot in general, but there are some areas--packing, work benches, clothes closet--where I loathe to think at all. So that's where the stuffed gym bag, computer bag, and ice chest comes from.)
First stop was Whole Foods, San Rafael. If you want to see the white, upper-middle class demographic of Marin County, that's the parking lot to see it in. We bought a bag of goodies and treats, upscale road-trip food, and drove further up 101 to Santa Rosa, and hooked a left onto River Road, which follows for most of its length the Russian River. It passes through the Western section of Sonoma wine country, but rangier than the better known areas further East and therefore more comfortable to me. It was a beautiful, beautiful California afternoon, and the company was pretty good. My stunningly gorgeous, intelligent, deep, rich, challenging wife, well, we nattered and chattered all the way out, out through the tiny vacation towns, and the gay mecca of Guernville (where I once had coffee with Emily and Paul at the hairy gay bear cafe), and on to the coast and Jenner.
You have to zoom in rather far on Google maps before Jenner shows up. Out in Western Sonoma, you keep seeing town signs with populations in the three digits, and low at that. I think Jenner has a population of several hundred, a collection of houses that dribbles off the hill in the same way that trees cluster in the ravines. It has settled in a crook in the road, overlooking both the estuary and, with the hill at you back, the ocean off to your right. When we arrived, it was warm, not too much breeze, and all the crisp colors of late Spring.
The Inn itself is a long, low central building next to the gas station (this is downtown Jenner), with the cottages being off to the left, starting at road level and tracing back up the hill, as well as a few along the estuary. We booked the cheapest, and the man who I think was the owner, offered us another room at the same price, which we took. The Elijah Room, which didn't smell as funky as the original one, and which had a narrow enclosed sitting area, then the big room, and a decent sized bathroom. Not 5 Stars like in Egypt--thank God! If I never see another 5 star hotel, I'll die a happy man.
We settled into the room and then took off to find the seals at Goat Beach, a place that James and I used to go to (or went to once, I'm not sure) when we were romantics (in the English Major sense) off traipsing about nature as if that's where Spirit resides, like unicorns (mark this point, because I'll come back to the long conversation Heather and I had later). The beach is just up Hwy 1 a bit, rather, a bit south from Jenner, and you enter the park from up on the bluffs, looking down on a typically stunning view of the broken California coastline. A long beach stretches both directions from the parking lot, and not many humans drug their feet through the sand. We passed a family heading out, but then, aside from the guy flying a kite in manic circles, we were pretty much it.
Which made sense, because the wind had whipped up and blew tiny sand particles at us in a little aperitif version of a sand blaster. They stung! And I was worried about them scratching my new glasses. Which is to say, I was the wimp of the duo, but Heather's usually hidden Byronesque self came out, and she wanted to strut through the elements, fired by the flames of Nature. I hid behind her and let her take the brunt of the wind, since she seemed to be enjoying the experience more than I.
I asked her to tell me what happened in the book she'd been reading in Egypt, called The Host, by the author of the Twilight novels. She is particularly good at story telling, sometimes her own but often the retelling of what she's read. So she described in detail this account of a parasitic species that takes over other planes "for their own good." They come to a planet and insert themselves into the neural systems of their "hosts," and then supplant the host's consciousness with their own, after which they simply mimic the lives they've just extinguished. All the while claiming that it's a gift to and step up for the hosts. The drama of the story revolves around a host who won't vacate the premises of her own mind, and her relationship with the "Soul" (the name the parasites give themselves). I found it all deeply disgusting, the tale of a whole race of liers and dupes, not dissimilar to those I find repulsive in my daily life, who are parasites in shining, usually self-righteous cloaks. On the upside, no sleeper waves grabbed us off the shore and sucked us off into water oblivion. So that's good.
On the way back, we stopped at the Indian restaurant on the spit above the mouth of the Russian, and had an authentic Indian meal like we might have in Jaipur or Bombay. One of those strange but significant experiences in modern America. I don't really remember the content of our conversation, but we weren't fighting, and enjoying each other, so that marks it as different than many of our out of town excursions. Success one in the Vacation Project. (Although I must cop to the fact that we had a Typical Argument at the hotel before heading to the beach, in which Typical Fracture Lines were revealed Again. But I don't really sweat that anymore, but more focus on the details: how long a fight, how much blood loosed, how many metaphorical fists thrown, or how much attempt to listen and dialogue, attempts to deescalate, etc. There's going to be dog fights in our world, especially given two characters like us, so in such a situation you get attuned to whether the dogs' teeth are filed sharp or not, whether there's more barking than biting, and especially whether it ends without any fatalities. Important distinctions, and I'd say we negotiated this one with little residual.)
Back at the Inn, we settled in for the night and did some reading before heading off to the dream time. Heather was reading another vampire porn novel, and I was continuing to read Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirit, and later a book on the twenty years preceding the American Revolution. The Wilber book, his magnum opus, is really a stunning story and argument that acts, I'm finding, similarly to those combs they used to clean the grit and twigs out of masses of cotton. I'll say more on this later.
The next morning was breakfast at the Inn, in their beautiful old wooded sitting room, Victorian I suppose, comfy to my fairly Luddite tastes. There were a few couples scattered about, and the innkeeper took care of us, remembering not to bring me eggs, leaving me with fruit and toast (I supplemented with the cashews back in the room). Then we loaded up and drove inland along the river to Burke's Canoes, in Forestville. Well, we missed it the first pass, but after a bit of, "Umm, no, I think it's just up here," and, "Well, maybe just around that bend," to, "Huh, where'd the river go?" we turned around and found the place, a big parking area carved out of the redwoods and pines.
We pulled up to the stop sign, and there was no one around except two old locals sitting on a tree trunk. One hauled himself up and walked over to us. "No canoes going out today." "Oh?" "Yes, Bob Jr., the owner, died last night." Both Heather and I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry!" He nodded and told us about another rental company, up near Healdsburg, and we gave our condolences again and went on our way. I'd probably talked to the man two days before.
Rivers Edge Rentals was another twenty minutes up the back roads, a professional looking place employing those young outdoorsy men who could as well be working for a surf shop, hiking agency, or fishing boat. They scooted us through the process and before long we were in a van being driven by one of these sunburnt men, down a dirt track five miles up river where they beach their canoes and kayaks. Our company was two other couples, and a woman with a Boston Bull Terrier named Precious. I tried to engage her in Boston Bull talk, telling her how mom and dad had Fred, Charlie, and Harvey, but she didn't seem all that interested. Bitch. She didn't get in the water but just rode out with us.
Nice Water Boy got us suited up and gave a little instruction, and then we loaded our sturdy canoe--actually a unbreakable aluminum tourist model that was a bit tippy--with the cooler and a water proof bag, waited for the others to get around the bend, then pushed off.
So, that was where the Major Discussion (to my mind) of the Vacation Project began, though in my head primarily. What we talked about was the beautiful and bourgeois envy inducing houses along the river, some of my memories about river days during Sacramento summers as a kid, why Heather being captain at the back of the boat and thus doing all the work was good...those sort of topics. Along with a barked command, "Two hard right!" "Pull left." And given the fury of a Class 1 river, occasionally, "Pull right. Um." "What are you doing?!" "I mean, left. No, wait..." But we passed the Couples Canoe Death Challenge, and were married still at the end of the trip.
But what was in my head was an ongoing, nagging sense of dissatisfaction, which has plagued and dimmed vacations for the last few years. I could remember times in my teens and 20's, jaunting about with James to the coast, hiking in Pt. Reyes and whatnot, and feeling a sense of expansiveness and connection which didn't come through in suburban Sacramento (not a huge surprise there). There was a sense of immersion in the environment which has escaped me probably (it seems to me now) since going to India in 1995. That was a great trip, but the awe and sense of exciting difference that had characterized earlier trips was not there. Rather, what I felt was a deeper sense of familiarity and non-novelty--not boredom or ennui, but a sense that I knew the place in some of its particulars, and many of its universals.
So out here on the Russian River, in a beautiful, clean natural environment, I keep expecting some kind of nature mystic thing to happen, to feel a loss of self, and...it doesn't happen. Hmm.
So after canoeing, we went into Healdsburg, and wandered around the fru-fru town square, doing some window shopping and having lunch at The Grocery, and gelato down the street. Pretty quickly, though, the preciousness of the place got to me and I requested from Heather a rapid exit. We left, without the massage we'd intended to get (the prices, oh my God), and drove back to the Inn, where we crashed out from heat and exertion, and pretty much slept through the next morning.
Heather had the idea, rather than kayaking out on the estuary, of driving up the coast, through Booneville, and take in the Real Goods store in Hopland before coming back down 101 to home. So we got our continental breakfast (for me, Heather had some eggs, being unapologetic about her carnivorousness), and then packed up, said our thanks to the Innkeeper, and headed up the coast.
It was a classic California day, like from the postcards. The coast was sparkling in the warm blue day, all the pines standing out against the sky like they were etchings. I had some coffee at breakfast, but I've noticed that when traveling or doing physical things, it doesn't affect me the same way as otherwise. So I was chatty, and by the time we had gotten to Ft. Ross, I was onto my questions about why I seemed impervious to Nature.
Walking around Ft. Ross, the reconstructed old Russian trading post from the mid 1800's (Sutter bought it and carted the wood up to Sacramento for his fort--want a read of a sleazy, Deadwood-like character, read about Sutter), Heather and I talked about what was starting to emerge in my head. It was a little funny to be walking around this old relic talking about spiritual insights, but thereyago.
What was hitting me was the application of Wilber's articulation of what you could call "holonic fallacies" (he has another name, but I'm blanking on what that is), being the confusion of larger and smaller, or more or less inclusive, levels of being. So here, as I've developed in the last 20 years from my nature tromps with James, a more profound level of insight and identity has come online. I'm not the same boy I used to be. And yet, I've been trying at some level to have the same experiences, and been a bit baffled as to why that isn't happening.
Now, Wilber describes the modern problem with the systems oriented ecological movements and disciplines, of describing human beings as arising from Nature, that we are members of a web of being. But there's a problem there, that's described by the concepts of span and depth, being the number of things (holons: things which are both parts of one context and wholes to another context); and the number of levels that are inside a holon, depth. So hydrogen has an enormous span, but little depth, because it does not include in it the biosphere or the noosphere (the level of mind). The natural world, the biosphere, includes the physiosphere (the realm of molecules, thermodynamics, etc.), as it is built out of carbon compounds, energy exchanges, etc. But it does not include the noosphere: the realm of the mind has as its base the biosphere (and noosphere), but does not reduce to it. Ok?
So my problem has apparently been that as the level of mind/noosphere has deepened and developed in me, the contact with nature has gotten more muted (that's the shadow aspect of differentiation, being dis-association), but it's also that I've gotten "bigger," as it were. In other words, as I've deepened in my noospheric self (and further into my transpersonal/spiritual self), I've been trying to stuff my self into Nature, trying to see Spirit/Mind as arising from Nature, whereas it's actually the exact opposite: Nature arises from Spirit/Mind, not vice versa.
That may sound a little abstract (ahem), but the feeling, walking around the old walls and grassy fields at Ft. Ross, was one of relief. Vipassana, the name for the Buddhist meditation I practice, is translated as "seeing things as they are," and the teacher Saniel Bonder has referred to this as "the great relief." Why? Because when you see reality in its natural order, nested properly, then you don't insist things, or your self, be anything than what it is. You don't keep coming to the child and insisting it do higher math. Or in my case, you stop coming to nature and insisting it be something it's not: Spirit. (Heather and I got into the fine points of this, but when we agreed that everything was saturated with Spirit, and relatively ordered as holons, then we found common ground.)
At the relational level, it was a wonderful discussion, because we've often clashed over such points, but here we were able to both stick with the conversation and find an understanding of each other. And this continued on a wonderful 5 hour drive up through Pt. Arena (where I bought some beautiful hand crafted tiles), through Booneville (a seedy little place that still publishes the only real radical American paper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser), and on down Hwy 101, where Heather napped and I listened to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
(Heather's Report):
Um, pending.
