The Secret of the River

But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions. ...

He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"

A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "Is that what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" ...

And once again when the river swelled during the rainy season and roared loudly, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, my friend, that the river has very many voices? Has it not the voice of a king, of a warrior, of a bull, of a night bird, of a pregnant woman, and a sighing man, and a thousand other voices?"

"It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice."

from Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

How a Grinch enjoys the holidays

Holiday happy hour kicks off in 15 minutes! (Of course, by the time this post is complete, I'll likely be somewhere between rounds 1 and 2.)

The insanity that is our American Christmas is over and now the holidays may begin. Mine officially kicked off last night when the first pumpkin pie slid into the oven.

"I hate Christmas!"

My kids will tell you that's been my mantra ever since Thanksgiving dinner was recycled for the final time. It's not Christmas per se that frustrates me as much as the shopping, the imperative to spend money we don't have on doodads we don't need, the traffic, the crap that fills up even my favorite stores this time of year. (Who needs a table sized book of cute puppies or the Seinfeld version of Trivial Pursuit and where do they hide this junk during the rest of the year?)

Jesus is the reason for the season? Yeah, right. Anyone been to the USofA recently? Have you seen any sign of the risen lord anywhere near the hurried and frustrated shoppers, grumpy overworked clerks, and speeding SUV's at the Bayshore Mall?

And it's the endless stream of piano recitals, basketball tourneys, ballet programs, school pageants, office parties, and volunteer board dinners all crammed into the last two weeks of the year. Can't we hold even one of these events in the doldrums of mid-February and allow just one night in December to breathe?

I hate the 6-week build-up to Christmas, the commercialization of Christmas, the greed and rush and selfishness of Christmas. I'm not a believer, so I don't find solace in the birth of a messiah.

This time of year, I find my peace and celebration in the kitchen, preparing a once a year weekend of feasting for the family and occasionally some others. I even enjoy the multiple trips to the Co-Op (for real food) and Safeway (for the not so real food I can't find in the local outlets). I don't even mind the mountains of dirty dishes my creations create.

The kitchen staff (me) clocked in yesterday afternoon and remains on duty throughout today and tomorrow. Short breaks are provided to reluctantly attend Christmas Eve mass and excitedly participate in the Christmas morning gift orgy. First out of the kitchen were the world's best cranberry sauce, 2 pumpkin pies and the cornbread required for the Christmas day stuffing. Today we focus on our not-so-traditional Christmas Eve Smorgasbord...the wife's Swedish heritage celebrated this year Mediterranean style with a little Pasta e Fagioli, fine cheeses and salame, and an experimental spinach and shallot polenta torte, all served alongside a 2006 Oswego Hills Marechal Foch from the Willamette Valley. We'll polish off the aforementioned pumpkin pies around the Christmas tree in our new Christmas pj's. Me and Mrs Claus will enjoy Irish coffees while we wrap the Christmas loot.

Following our traditional crack of dawn present-opening (kids never sleep in on Christmas Eve, do they?) we'll enjoy a simple French Toast breakfast, a rasher of bacon, and mimosas for those of us of sufficient age.

While the others try to break their newest electronic gadget or park themselves in front of season 4 of The Office, I'll don the chef's jacket and cap, and get back to work on the smoked Willie Bird, warmed and filled with a cornbread stuffing. Oregano potato cakes, rosemary yams, green beans with lemon and pine nuts, and green chile gravy will join the bird atop the good China. An '05 Stags Leap Cabernet is set to accompany the meal. When we're too stuffed to see straight, we'll pile on the double mocha pecan pie.

Today's a good day for a holiday. My girls are out of the house leaving me to my Frankensteinian machinations in the kitchen. Christmas tunes play in the background on the computer. The house smells of garlic and sage and kahlua and cranberries.

And my 15 minutes are over! Now where's that bottle opener?

Happy eats. Happy holidays. And we'll see y'all when the leftovers are finished.

A few minutes with a solitary seagull

A lone seagull floats easily over the calm water, rising and falling on the unseasonably small waves between storms. His bright white head, free of dirty gray streaks, highlights his maturity among his kind. He’s alone, yet unbothered by his solitude. Peacefully, he coasts slowly northward atop a royal blue sea on a cold winter afternoon.

A quarter mile away, a churning flock of his brethren flip and flap above the creek. It is chaos: blurred wings, screeching heard the length of the beach, birds on the water, birds in the air, birds in constant, frenetic motion. They’re busy, every one of them. But busy with what, I can’t tell.

The sun is gold on the horizon. The breeze streaming down from the eastern hills is cold. Tomorrow’s storm appears in the distance, a dark wall of gray rising north of the setting sun. The seagull is unconcerned.

He pauses briefly when I stop to pull out my notebook. Does he wait for me? Probably not, but I imagine a kindred spirit, another soul seeking quiet and calm amid the season’s frenzy. For him, this solitary swim is a moment between storms and raging surf, away from the daily squabble for food and shelter necessary to survive the harsh winter. For me, the solitude of the beach pulls me away from the activity and noise and chaos and crowds and stress that have come to mark our American Christmas.

“Alone among others.” It’s a phrase I stumbled across in a book a couple years ago, and one that could be the pithy caption under my grainy black and white photo in life’s yearbook. In career, home and community, I am surrounded by others. Yet, increasingly, mostly by choice, and especially in this season, I enjoy my own company more than the camaraderie of the crowd. The world swirls around me, and the faster it swirls, the more I seek solitude.

In the couple of minutes I’ve paused to scribble these notes and chill my fingertips, the seagull has vanished. There’s no sign of him on the water or in the sky. The seagull flock flutters in the distance, their wings flashing white in the reflection of the setting sun. Perhaps he’s joined them. Maybe two proved too much a crowd for him.

As much as I want to imagine the gull as a spirit or heavenly metaphor intended for my personal reflection, I realize it’s mere coincidence. The cosmos don’t work that way. Still, it’s heartening to know that the search for quiet and solitude is not mine alone. It’s part of the way things work. For each of us, there comes a time to be together and a time to be alone.

Redwood philately

Our backyard redwoods will be featured on the US Post Office's 2009 Priority Mail stamps available in January. (Yellowstone's Old Faithful graces the more expensive 2009 Express Mail stamps.) The illustration shows a pair of Eddie Bauer attired hikers (Does the woman look like Jennifer Aniston to you, too?) beneath the towering redwood canopy. The illustration is the digital creation of an Illinois artist under the direction of a southern California art director. These long-distance artists (no locals were available apparently) capture nicely the multi-layered canopy, fire scars, ferns, even an old dead top tree...all indicative of old growth forests. I'd love to find out which of our forests from Santa Cruz to Humboldt and Del Norte served as the model for the illustration.

Though I'm no where close to being a philatelic historian, the redwoods were last featured by the USPS in the 2006 Wonders of America series of 39-cent first class stamps. The only other redwood-themed stamp I've discovered in 12 minutes of exhaustive googling research is a 1964 issue honoring John Muir with redwoods as the backdrop. Though they could be the giant sequoias with which Muir has more of a stronger association, the shape of the trees and their proximity to one another makes 'em look a whole lot more like our neighborhood coast redwoods.

Here's a link to yesterday's USPS press release on the Redwood stamp including directions on where and where to get 'em when they're available: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2008/pr08_132.htm

A moment of calm before the storm

Is this the calm before the storm? I've been following the increasing number of dire warnings all morning: Coast Guard marine alerts, Weather Service hazardous weather outlooks, high surf advisories, special weather statements. Yet from the windows on the beach, it's still surprisingly calm shortly after lunch.

On the beach, there's a cold breeze, but not terribly so. The ocean is churning, but not as dramatically as I've seen. Even the sound of the curling waves is hushed. Gulls raft quietly just beyond the surf rather than flock noisily at the creek mouth. They are invisible but for the binoculars.

The sky is a monochrome gray from one horizon to the other. Everything appears grainy as if cut from the pages of a pre-color National Geographic Magazine. In moments, the sky is not so much colored as it is textured. Low puffy clouds are parted by distant winds temporarily revealing tightly ribbed clouds higher up.

It is a heavy, repressive gray. The dying leaves of the coastal shrubbery are distant memories of their golden autumn brilliance. The only colors to speak of are the red stripes on the flag over the building, the orange bill of a passing cormorant, and the yellow kayaks trailered on the side of Orick Hill. The mighty redwoods are only dark shadows on the hillside.

As I return to car, the first mists of the anticipated storm dot the windshield. Writing this from the bureaucratic comfort of the office less than 30 minutes later, the rain pours down in sheets across the highway.

Four minutes

It’s 4:40 in the afternoon, two hours since a near-minus tide turned on itself and started its return towards the crest of the beach. Even now the beach is wider than I’ve seen it in weeks. Redwood Creek’s 67 mile run extends several yards farther out in the ocean than normal. Dark rocks usually encircled by ocean waves at the outpouring creek are reachable by dry sand this afternoon.

Don’t look at the sun! Tiny circles of gray temporarily burned into my eyes force me to use my peripheral vision for tonight’s sunset. A cold wind streams down the broad boulevard of sand from the north. One hundred gulls gather at the mouth of the creek. Two large and out of place pelicans do a poor job of hiding amidst the flock of gulls.

At 4:44 the edge of the sun kisses the thin line at the end of the world. A narrow band of distant fog shades a dark line across the sun’s bottom edge. The sky mellows, pale blues slip into soft grays while a fiery orange glows on the horizon.

By 4:46 the sun is nearly halfway gone. Baby blanket colors, pinks and blues, tint the thin clouds. At 4:47, it’s just a rounded orange speed bump, then a thumb tack, then a dot.

By 4:48, the sun is gone. No flash of green. No angel choirs. No great splash or sizzling steam. Just gone. The ocean seems calmer and quieter though I know that’s my imagination. The beach darkens to a cold gray. My northbound footprints at the water’s edge are dark shadows in the sand where they haven’t already been erased by incoming waves.

Four minutes from beginning to end. Four minutes for a burning ball of gas 870,000 miles across and 95 million miles away to slide across the line between earth and sky three miles from where I stand.

In the east, in the fading pink sky, the pointed green tips of the world’s tallest trees serrate the pink-tinged eastern horizon where tomorrow, it starts all over again.

December Sunset

I closed the gate to the Redwood Highway a little after four and had the beach to myself for an hour. A cool, late afternoon breeze blew down from the north. Hundreds of gulls gathered at the mouth of the creek while dozens more rafted through the narrow outlet to the sea or flittered over the booming surf. The ocean was rough and ragged, a churning white foam stretching well beyond the last rock which stood silently above the fray a half mile off shore.

I've watched sunsets countless times in my two score and six years, but I continue to be fascinated by how effortlessly the sky melds from one color to the next and how fast the sun slides into the black line of the horizon.