2017

Back from the memphis journey, or whatever that was, fresh off the sandlines m-fortworth to west colton junker i take com trans to go visit my mother a few weeks in escondido. and during this time find a couple of job opportunities on this website some chick in denver had told me about.. 'workaway'. one in the bay area and one further north in the puget sound. 

around the same time i was getting ready to head back out there was a post by a couple of fellow crusties about passing through to the bay from yuma in a vehicle.. i jump on this opportunity to taxi back up to colton. just had to meet them at salton sea, just 30 miles to the east. to avoid the heat i take off in the early evening to ruck the desert highway through the night, catching a few z's in the early morning upon reaching the station there.

younger people and a bit rambunctious for me, but we do some hanging around on the way up and it isnt all unpleasant, after a fair amount of drinking. 

they drop me next to the yard later in the night and i grab a northbound over the interstate from L.A loop next day no problem. a peaceful spot to wait, and you can essentially catch out to the east and west here also.. only its one of the most exhausting, at the same time — you have to book it through the sand some 100-200 yards up to the mains at the east throat and jump up into a box at a run with the last measure of air youve got left, as soon as you see it swing up and over and decide its got enough empty lumber to be sure its not a barstow/las vegas train. which has also happened and sucks.

anyways, i grab the right manifest and im in roseville 16 hours later. there, already acquainted with the new oakland cc point, im on the international stacks east for four or five hours through the early evening and sleep in some cranny next to the tracks there. next day a bus and a couple more over the golden gate to salsalito where i meet with this lone older gentleman living out of his little sloop anchored by the docks at the edge of richardson bay. and theres a little community of them, some 20-30 more, by the grace of whatever legal loophole, doing the same thing rent free there.

no pay and not much in the way of food. (he brought me to the bum feeds, where he had many friends.. himself also homeless. which i was in no way averse to and if nothing else this made him easier to relate to. but, in this man's listing on workaway he had expressed the desire to teach people how to sail. so i found this a worthy detour, on the way up the i5 corridor to the next thing in any case. 

but.. after a few days i quickly fell under the impression this man was a bit screwy and that i wanted nothing to do with him any longer. so stayed a few more for whatever novelty could possibly be left in the thing.. and then i walked away, without a word further.

im fairly certain, 90%, it was on this trip that i nabbed my first deep well container — ever — north out of roseville. immediately i was of the notion that this was the rare sunday special to seattle out of oaklands desert yard, it being sunday and the entire thing being made up of these blue APL cans which id never seen before either. and i think this was before i ever learned of the lcbr to pdx being rerouted north through sacramento instead, or id not been looking out for an IM at that hour of the night in the first place. luckily.

anyhow, its all 48 foot containers inside 53 foot wellcars, leaving a good chunk of space on either side of it in the bottom, where many of the cars there is only a crossbeam between you and the ground.. but in others a solid 2 1/2' x 7' of floor to lay out (or sit upright) in. completely unseen. cool beans yeah? 

i get off in portland anyways, to refill, then take an empty gondola on the good old trash train, off champ siding, for the last leg to seattle.

this next thing is a landscaping position up in the san juan islands. so getting off in georgetown, i take the first bus down to the airport where theres this special (and unnecessarily spendy) $40 shuttle straight to the ferry terminal in anacortes. 

technically theres a way to freight all the way to anacortes, but itd be an unnecessary feat of traincore figuring all that out when the com trans there is like 6 dollars in total.

id never been to the islands before so didnt know what to expect. place turns out to be a total partier resort and has plenty of avenues for further employment opportunities around, for those looking to lay down roots. 

at the center or belly if you prefer of orcas, is eastsound. the islands only actual town. there you have the one library, the one gas station, one grocer, and the four or five bars all in the same few square blocks.. a long bay jettisoning out into the sound.. and here just a hundred feet off the shore like a naval sits a smaller island.. or whatever the dictionary would more properly term an island this small. no bigger than a house really. 

doe bay resort and retreat then, starts its interns off on a biweekly stipend of 200 loaded onto a cashcard useable only there. but after a month or so they put me on an actual payroll as an employee. 

theres only a handful of us at first, beginning in march, but many more show up later in the spring and the place gets to be quite lively. there are cabins and designated camping spots reserved for employees on the premises, all up the hill way back into the woods where theres a smattering of benches.. restrooms.. outdoor showers.. and one yet unfinished outdoor kitchen underway. 

a bonfire most every night with a quarter of the staff around it, winding down after work before trickling off to bed.

and at the base of it all though, the amenities there are hot tubs, sauna.. a licensed masseuse..  veggie garden.. cafe overlooking the bay, with a little soundstage in it for live music on thursdays.. finally, a real change of pace for me. everyone here so laid back it took me some time getting used to.

they put me as landscape lead and then after some weeks on dishwashing at the cafe on weekends. that, then spa maintenance once a week and im all booked. 7days a week. 

pretty soon im showing up to work so hungover im still drunk from the previous night, every few days. giving off definite candle at both ends vibes for sure. it was funny at first but then some people started showing some signs of concern after awhile. there goes old rob again back to his camp, with his two growler sized beers. how does he do it.. myself, i didnt know some days.

all the positive signals from the womenfolk but i never make any moves, mostly out of sheer laziness. but also on many occasions when id have liked to, because i was aware of my being too far passed a harmless buzz to really pull it off with any surety. in these environs with its multifaceted complexities of.. social credit, in a word. 

i was rapidly budding into the resorts own resident alcoholic, and for that i had a very fine balancing act to maneuver through if i was going to make out alright on an island this tight-knit, and i knew it.

meanwhile were all going out to the lower to play pool and carouse around on weekends. long drunken walks with coworkers… and somewhere in the midst of all this i was beginning to feel somewhat strange. at times a little more than somewhat, but in an even profound and spiritual sort of way.. about things in general.. and it could well be that a sort of prolonged burn-out which was accruing slowly over a period of work related, mostly physical, stress was partly to blame.. but it felt almost like i was losing my mind some days — except in a vaguely pleasant way. it seemed that all the faces and places and occasions of the recent past and over that previous winter most particularly (as it had been fairly difficult and rife with ever present dangers throughout), were replaying through my mind still fresh as yesterday. this sort of.. kalaedescopic..  effervescence of memories that i could sit down with a beer between i and the window of the cabin and never grow bored or lonely — and it distracted from other things, like my peers. lost in thought, and tired. always tired.

there was one though. one girl. i was in good position for it too as it happened, since i was a staple on the maintenance side and, well, known-of. it was by now common knowledge i wasnt out for the ladies much at all. so all i really had to do, to say it, was look at her. and she goes cursing out to the smoke table like somebody just slapped her in the face. 

got her good: by surprise. but that was only one step in a dozen and i overshot things; the dream faded. life intruded before i could build it all up properly. i had to get away from the workplace and find something else. so left abruptly to alaska for a second go at salmon season. and i leave just the same way as usual, walking the whole 20 miles back to the ferry terminal without comment. one morning i just didnt have the heart to show up anymore, as positive an experience as it was while it lasted. and i really do sometimes think back and wish that i had stayed a little while longer.

Bristol bay, AK just a week later and its 16 hours a day, 7 days a week racking frozen fish. grueling work, but not so bad knowing what to expect after the first time three years earlier at the same plant. but its got a bad batch of angry laborers this time around and the season gets pretty wild. i knew by then to keep my head down so i survive it all fine, myself. but over the final week there people are getting damn near murdered.

a couple days before we all get our paychecks and flown back down to the lower fourtyeight theres a full on riot. 

i wake in the middle of the night to go take a leak and dont hear all the screaming and shouting until im just out the door pulling the earbuds out of my ears. i look to my right and in the hallway is a mass of 15-20 bodies all over oneanother and just as many more standing just beyond, some trying to deter one or another and here and there someone jumping into the mix. somebody had ripped a toilet out of a stall and thrown it through somebodys bedroom door. and i saw someone grab the fire extinguisher and try to smash the face of someone else on the ground with it, before that got ripped away by yet another party who proceeds to spray the entire parade down with it in effort to break it up. semisuccessfully. but it keeps going.. and im just standing there with the other white guys, the dude next to me with his mouth hanging open.. in raw, genuine awe.. transfixed in childlike wonder. we exchange glances for a brief second, and we are in silent agreement on something nobody ever really quite works out in words but rather senses all the same. there surely must be significant differences, from one ethnicity to the other. and you dont really feel it so much as witness the thing.

before long sparky, the lead foreman, comes bursting from the second-stairwell door into the hall with a baseball bat, yelling.. and it was just like one of those comic fight sequences in the jackie chan movies.. this little philipino man makes ten-fifteen feet and stops dead in his tracks before two behemoth black dudes standing in his way grinning.. and doubles back out the way he came, more screaming than yelling.. the two directly after him, right by me and this gorgeous philipina across from me whom id never dared talk to there and we only turn to eachother wordlessly like, did you just see that fucking shit, laughing out loud. what the fuck.

with that the whole mess kind of migrates outside and eventually the police make it out and some arrests are made.

my first summer up there id spent a whole month between herring and salmon in anchorage, waiting to get flown back for the other, may to june. mostly drunk for the duration. mustve hit just about every bar in town. west and then working my way to the east side after a time. first just recovering from herring though, initially. sore all over, down to the finger bones sore. my whole body hurt. but i eventually got around to the train yard there. id been wanting to scope that line up to fairbanks out. so starting from the bridge over the river from downtown, north onto the bikepath running between that and the tracks i work my way up. and its here that im first acquainted with alaskas mosquitoes. and as my stroll progresses out to the east throat of the yard and then backtracking over to the west and over to the north side to access the wooded area along the bluff opposite, i discover just how bad it really is. there are so many mosquitoes, setting up on this or that side for any length of time is inconceivable to me. not for an hour, not for a minute. and then, surveying what all i have to work with under these conditions i discover that i am even iller-equipped for this than i had assumed i was — my bug-net is in fact only coffin sized.. 3x3x7; cubic, and without stakes for the four corners of the thing. not at all practical. in short: anchorage proved to be straight ass for camping. and the yard itself altogether its own beast, the security is unexpectedly harsh. at some point someone spies me — from close to a mile away spies me — crossing over the mains well outside the yard itself, to go have a merry shit in the woods. thats to say, i didnt make a ride to fairbanks.. you see, i was nearly arrested by the rail police instead, just barely talking my way out of it. carefully emphasizing that i was homeless and only sitting in the bushes next to the railroad tracks with all my hiking gear because all the other spots to sleep have been claimed, sir. a shame too, my ride left just some minutes after corporal dicksuck did and it was really crawlin at a friendly pace. 

so i give up on fairbanks and kinda just resign myself to the hostel for the rest of the month. the hostel and all the bars. i found a nice pool hall too, a real big one with like twenty tables and five of that other thing. billiards or whatever. would daydrink away there, playing myself mostly. sometimes my roomie would come along though. also a drinker, and also waiting on hr to bring him out for salmon processing, only further south down the panhandle. back at the hostel motherfucker was facetiming his wife and kid every day in the bunk below mine crying like a whiny bitch. its alright though, some people just never been long away from home. otherwise a pretty solid guy. but for that was nice to get him out and about at times, so at least i didnt have to hear it. 

so besides all the wandering around town either drunk or hungover out of my mind im kind of just doing a lot of small talk with randoms. surprisingly never getting into any confrontations for as strung out as i was waiting for salmon to pick up. but there was this once i almost got my ass beat by this samoan dude. some club up towards downtown. was standing around with my drink just enjoying the music, watching people dancing. but was staring too long at all the ass in between i guess because these three samoans appear before me and guy gets real in my face to say that the chick im looking at is his fiance and hes not playing at all, just staring into my soul. i surprise myself with how tactfully i reach out my hand at the last moment in way of deference and congratulate him on his betrothel. he accepts that and fucks off thank god. but i did no more floor gazing after that, needless to say.

overall anchorage was not unlike most any other city, although relatively small for a fullfledged metropolitan, whole swathes of wooded/undeveloped sections here and there which isnt typical fare for its size, gave it its own feel a little i guess.. but im mostly just reminded of bellingham when i think of anchorage, or viceversa possibly.. both in terms of layout and atmosphere. the sea to the wet end and mountains on the east. although surprisingly, for anchorage, where the sun is never entirely set until 2am, there was not much of a nightlife. or so it seemed that way wheresoever id gone drinking in the evenings; everywhere closed right around ten or eleven or sometimes even earlier. step out of the bar and it aint even fucking dark yet. and i found this somewhat depressing. really the only thing i have against anchorage i think.. that and the mosquitoes, obviously. 

anyway, salmon that year the going was pretty cool and people at the plant were easy going. we got along swimmingly. but this summer was about opposite that. and in between days, when there were no loads coming in id be walking the 5-10 miles down the beach and to the first market in naknek for beer. following grizzly tracks in the sand all the way back. alone, considering myself an awful lucky cunt never catching up with the bear, each trip i made. (3 maybe, im not totally nuts) there were ofc others making the same hike, but together in groups. they were smarter, you see.

all up and down fishing boats near and far, some laying down nets and others smaller and closer anchoring trot lines to shore. little cabins and storage sheds here and there.. a few houses. their families out and about on bikes or atvs or in trucks.. imagine owning beach property right on bristol bay. raking in fish every summer with your wife and kid. selling that by the truckload in town or to nearby plants like pederson point by the pound. blowing the odd moose or grizzly away with your hunting rifle..

none of them looked terribly rich, in fact most of them looked to be scraping by relatively humbly — and this i found peculiar. a sort of striking contrast there.. these people made it look easy, like you could just show up one day with a trailer full of lumber and stake out a plot right there on the water, live the dream out there in the alaskan wilderness. fishing boat and all. that was i think what made bristol bay so oddly picturesque to me.. made the imagination wander..

drawing up images straight out of hemmingways old man or islands in the stream.. these hovels perched humbly against the great northern sea, with the salt of the earth trickling in and out of them. campfires.. laughing, cooking. living.

re 2024

..i visit my mother for a couple months first. had not seen her in a couple years i think. then hitch on to whitefish where it starts snowing like mad after a few days — a few inches is fine but after that hoofing it gets to be a bit much.. and 8" is just unacceptable. so continuing on i stop through sandpoint, where id side out in previous years between the lake and golf course, but never stepped off. nice little place, a lot like whitefish i suppose.. but the mosquitoes are just miserable in the summer there, and the coal mostly never sides. ebds are more common, and UP up to the border i think also. 

next, an international stack sides out one afternoon and i throw onto that, 100$ richer. getting out again in hauser to switch to a night train for the spokey bull.. but looking at maps out there it dawns on me that couer d'alene is just 10 miles down the road, and its even got a labor ready.. id been thinking about couer d'alene ever since we had a dude from there come out to intern back up in the cascades a minute once. gave me a nice image of a relatively relaxed, homelessness free.. traditional-minded environment — and it happened to be just about that exactly, to my great surprise. little bit like bend but roomier, more expanded. 

labor ready has zero work unfortunately but somebody gives me a hundred bucks, and then somebody else does when i try to hitch to ellensburg on the 90, thinking i might wind up in spokane drinking half of it if i went back to the yard.. they tell me its for a bus ticket and so when they drop me off at the bank the banks closed because its sunday. so i wait for monday, and then monday turns out to be mlk day so am forced to wait for tuesday and by the time tuesdays rolled around ive spent a third of it already and its now a waffle between a bus ticket and just walking my rich white ass back to the yard afterall with an extra 60$ in my pocket — provided i make it passed the bull. i opt for the ladder, like i knew all along that i would.

so its a cheap bus over to post falls again and a 6 mile trek up the country road to hauser yd. i bed down there until next day when an imds pulls in along the main around sundown. the perfect hour. just barely late enough in the evening to work. no piggybacks though so i situate myself as up under the grate as humanly possible, to be on the safe side and hope the rail cop is t as vigilant after hours..

no cop i could see, squinting up through the dark as we crept up through spokane yd to the overpasses and signals.. but it did seem that the oncoming train, stopped alongside for signal indication on track two may have been doing a rollby check while they waited bc we slowed to a stop just seconds after my car passed them. i get off immediately and start walking ahead, between each train to find another rideable. mine doubles back 20 or so and im certain that it was to bring my car back.. but theres no headlights nor flashlight that i can see when i go to peek back, once im on a different car. 

still.. i get off again after some minutes, paranoia getting the best of me. thinking the bull could feasibly come rolling along the high banks alongside with a spotlight and id have nowhere to run fast — the far side of the mains being too steep and bare to scale with my things on me. 

but.. when my train airs back up and departs as im walking away, now too far to change my mind again, its clear then that idve been fine if id stayed on. no lights came scanning.

following morning i wend my way out to the outlet mall to the east, my ace in the hole every time i have to get off in spokane. id caught a canadian unit grain that comes down from eastport, set out overnight out here the last time id been forced off. (one does not get off in spokane of their own free will). unsure whether itd be the same again — you never know with the rails these days. thankfully though, it was the same. woke to a horn approaching through the early morning and i hustle down to the tracks, knowing that if the departure time on this one would be anything like the last it was bound to be leaving off again soon. regardless, nature calls and i find a bush first to squat down by.. and then, staring blankly down the line i spot a dpu. pulling up my pants i start jogging on again.. the grainers on this thing arent quite the same and all the rideables have big circular holes cut in either side of the porch making for an uncomfortable ride, and ive hardly a choice but to include the engine unit in my list of options.

i make it back to the mid-train finally, without problem, and its locked of course. and theres a limber yard right up alongside the tracks on the starboard, the side i need to get to the window.. BUT, broad daylight be damned, it happens to be a SUNDAY and I thank my lucky stars and climb in. a convenient thing too because i was getting real low on water and theres no water anywhere around but the first gas station two miles off, in hinkle.

so its through the canyons and down the columbia, as always, every other year at least.. westward into the grapefruit sun, capsizing onto those flaxen high plains hilltops. ocean beaches just one train beyond it.

in pdx i wait patiently for champ siding before getting out. because fuck wilkes. sleeping a good 10 hours by the tracks there before stepping off to the bus to kirby around noon. getting there, i grab a few beers from the pantry and sit down on the drag outside a coffee shop, pulling out the guitar.

some dude that looks just like john strolls by and, dropping a fiver in my case asks if im accepting donations, with a big grin on his face. i jump up immediately to give him a big hug and slap him on the back asking how hes been.. it was a very strange exchange. guy assumes he knows me from somewhere and says hes no longer working for the 'nonprofit'.. i go 'huhh??'. guy introduces himself as RJ, says keep buskin and then he was off again. 

im in eugene the next morning and head directly to the stop to florence, downtown. where i chill a week or so, and doing just what im sure you can guess by now. one other ex-rider who happens to be posted up in the same spot alex's veteran friend had been the previous year is hanging out at the freddies, where we drink an evening away exchanging stories.

after i get laundry finished with i take the bus north to yachats and then newport. in yachats i go into a bar for the first time in a while, feeling blessed with the 100 some nice lady had given me earlier that day in florence. 

in this bar i learn that my friend john carcia had passed away the previous year, not long after id received an email from him saying he had built a tiny house there with some other people that had done the same. someone had found him and his dog laying dead in there and suggested carbon monoxide. 

in newport i wake up behind a church and theres this old dude that works as a maintenance guy or something there that lives in the shed next to me. says he had been a whole lot of traveling around like myself till one day he stopped by this same church and theyd offered him work. still there today, he still goes out to play guitar on the street a few times a week. invited me back later to maybe jam a little but i wasnt recovered enough yet to feel much like doing anything. and later when i was i found myself headed down to the old irish bar at the beach. the mood had come finally.

its funny though, all this way back for the beach, i finally make it there and i dont even so much as glance that way, just a block further yonder. i couldve at least taken my boots off and set my feet in the sand to say 'aye.. man was here'.. 'ayyyye, i did journey from montana-ways.. i came, i saw, and it was good..' 

nope. just set down in a corner, waterfront behind me, cracked a beer and started playing. somebody even gave me some fives this time.

2024

on my way back from bend to eugene for a doctors appointment i meet john carcia through this website for travelers. travelers on the anarchist / punk spectrum of things. he had recently signed up and had been looking to get into the freight scene. i open the page after a few weeks absence and find a message inviting me over to eugene and i tell him im there tomorra anyways whatsup. lucky timing, as it turned out — huge ice storm hits the same week. guy houses me up at the place hes staying with a handful of youngsters.. im pleasantly surprised to find a band of of them essentially squatting an old two story in the middle of the suburbs.

I spend two-three months here and john and i and one josh sometimes jamming in the garage. we almost feel like a potential band, the three of us, for just a little while there. and john and i start making excursions into town together every week or so with our instruments, to see if we could make any money (himself being every bit as broke as i was). 

when the ice storm hits we have 3-4 days straight of freezing rain and theres a few inches of solid ice left over everything. theres trees everywhere toppling over from the sheer weight of it all, and i even see a man ice skating through the street, just cruising along. 

meanwhile im making trips from foodbank to foodbank and carrying loads of beer cans out across the river from cal anderson to fred meyer or walmart for 10 - 20 dollarsworth of deposit. drinking profusely and boosting most of it from every grocer in town — except for walmart and winco.. those didnt look so easy. 

i go for a few job interviews without any luck, except for the one i land and then drunkenly piss the employer off via text before i ever even start.. but labor ready got me a few days work, at the last minute, unloading drywall. probably the most physically demanding job ive had in years.. basically just lifting all day every day, which isnt all bad if you look at it differently.. like maybe this means you dont need a gym membership. all in perspective.

john and i had been talking freight a lot but not nearly enough to leave me with the impression he was going to get off the fence about whatever direction, in his mind, he was ultimately going to be taking with the approaching spring. so was surprised when he said finally that he was ready to leave the house and make the leap to freight. mainly, i figured the house — his living situation in general — was beginning to wear on him and he just needed a break. little fresh air.

so let the wind lead the way. after taxes come in i put together a little money to throw at matt in ways of rent / compensation.. buy a new jacket and new pack.. and with beer money enough remaining to get me at least a week on. so.. we head out to the train yard after my last day with the drywall place, at times of our own convenience respectively, meeting up at maxwell to wait on a southbound.

for whatever reason the z that comes that night has zero rides. or at least any of the normal fare.. the only wells available are these fucked up little beveled ones where half the floor dips down. uncomfortable as hell. mother fucker.. and that was poor old johns first and only ride.

Kfalls doesnt have a whole lot going on downtown.. gotta hit it on a saturday early.. so we never really pull out the instruments there. just sort of wander over to fred meyers and circle back again, to the outlet at the sbd spot, next day. 

not surprisingly johns back on the fence about it that morning, saying maybe rain (his def cattle dog) isnt freight riding material afterall.. and that hed head on over to the coast instead. he really seemed to be fond of yachats for whatever reason. i only recognized the name of the town bc i had gone to job corps there way back in 2013. anyway, he peaces out to the amtrak station — i later learn that he had gone hitching it instead, and a damn time of it too. (not a fun stretch of interstate).

so he leaves, then i leave to the store to grab a fresh case of beer.. and just as soon as im walking back my imds pulls in and i start running. five minutes later im hauling ass out of town with my first cold beer and im watching the bastard sun climb up out of the morning mist. im certain that if that train had been just 20 minutes earlier john wouldve been on that train with me and he wouldve found a better way.

jumped off in old roseville for 24hrs to fly a sign up at the bel air. made a 100 and split on the next eastbound. i stay with this train clear to wyoming, but we did work in salt lake for some hours.. another block is added and we leave off again. making almost 48 hours altogether up to the overland and eastward by green river. most of the gms seem to stop over here in rock springs, the town over, way the hell on the other side of an impassable marsh land; so was glad to be stepping off in green river proper this time, at the old riverbridge. took the most satisfying shit ever in my life i did take. dead quiet and the headlights of the interstate against the canyon on the far side.

never much to be done here unless youve dirty laundery ig.. but to soak up the peace and quiet, relax and re-discover all the power outlets around bc you always forget just where they're hiding here. two other riders are at the mavericks there and we chill for awhile, share stories. one mutual acquaintance. and the stars come freckling out over the fading light. 

left a few hours later and was in cheyenne early next morning. 

in cheyenne i find a little bit of yardwork after flying at either walmarts, and spend a few weeks just sort of wandering around town there, drinking. a wild windstorm appears, clocking just a touch under 100 mph.. some category l hurricane shit. i about blow right over the side of the overpass. three blocks was a real endeavor that day, and they had canceled most of the city busses.. so for a day or so im sat in a corner against the wall.. just like usual except this time its for cover from flying shrapnel and debris..

when i decide to head out ive decided to hitch it to casper first, bc the north/south traffic goes right by the military base there and wasnt entirely clear on where to spot it nor willing to spend another week doing so i head toward the onramp up near the shopping centers. i meet a couple of scruffy rubber tramps headed the same way that were flying at the walmart there. dont remember their names but we made bank at the centers in casper once we made it in. about 300 in a couple hours.. split it up and they skidaddled north again. on the way up from cheyenne it looked almost like kansas, just a little hill here and there and a whole lot of grass/brush — then, out of nowhere, mountains.

tried my hand at the same spot alone a few days later.. made a little more beer pitch and scored a days work in some young couples front yard. didnt run into any other travelers for my time in casper. just wandered around, restocking on beer here and there and back again, practicing guitar. im sure there must be a good spot to busk somewhere around casper but i never found one. 

i had originally assumed the daily z-seall went up this line but after looking over the cc and the maps realized that they moustly route around through billings and down via wendover in the east. cheyenne — casper — greybull — laurel is evidently all junk gms, and relatively sparse. so had to guess which string in the little yard here was leaving first, out of each respective yard. and once in laurel the mains of the lowline come through and theres less guessing there.

wind river canyon had been on the bucket list for a long time. for the duration actually, since picking up an issue of aaron dactyls 'railroad semantics', where he recounts his and one 'T-BOX's trip through there.. jumping off at a siding along the river where, waiting some days for another to side out, they find some old ass hobo tags carved into the rock wall nearby. 

a gorgeous ride, and my manifest departed casper at the perfect time, so that i was rolling through it right around late morning. even the weather was immaculate and i caught plenty of pictures of the canyon for posterity.

greybull just an hour north of that, and its as small and low key as any. i find a shoestring tag from like 94 or something. cant find the photo of it id had now. 

i wait a few days. almost lose my shit somewhere in the dark of the yard im so drunk, at one point. had fallen asleep on a lumber rack in the middle of an IDing mission like a dumbass and completely forgot, on waking, which track id grounded my gear next to. 

between greybull and laurel my gm stops 10 miles out of lovell for something like 2 days. cant go anywhere ofc bc you dont know just when youll air back up and go, it could be any minute. but luckily, when i ran out of water, i found some up in the headend. then an empty box some 30 back from there before a big rain came. theres someone coughing in the box just ahead of mine, opened on the far side.. and next morning decided there was two up there cause for a brief time heard something like lovemaking.

laurels chill. but forget the travel center on the east side though. terrible beer selection and no foodies. just stay southside by the grocers, save yourself the time; there aint shit out there up the road. another couple weeks.. i do laundery, some folks give me money, i drink a bunch.. just drinking.. and ever so often i get a hair up my ass and look at my guitar. something haunts me and i play it out, sometimes successfully othertimes not so well. its a funny sort of.. process, this matter with the guitar.. am i drinking to play or is it the other way around.

i grab some loaded coal out of laurel and get off in helena to rinse and repeat there. some auto detailer gives me a few hours work in his shop, and theres a few bucks on the side made flying walmart. again, no fellow travelers anywhere i can see.. just more wandering around town, although i dont go too far here, the whole place is at a tilt and everytime i have to walk back uphill for more beer i swear its the last. 

on the way back to the yard there i dumpster a couple of whole ass large pizzas from dominos. score. and when i get there, another coal train waiting on the main for me, theres a shower of greens and pinks dancing around in the sky to the north and i watch this over a pizza and long after we air up and leave into the night. tall shafts of grey pulsating electrically directly overhead all through the mountains and stars. aurora borealis.

missoula

id fairly set my mind some years prior, after buying the silvertone there, that id go back to missoula to stay and so when i arrived it felt like a real accomplishment. i may not have the glock id planned to have for it anymore but ive got everything i need to make it anyhow. 

but all i do is play. play in the street, play in the dark and under the bridge and in the alleyways play.

labor ready gives me a few things but thats my only cash flow. i meet one other traveler there the entire summer and i dont know where or how i mustve missed the rest because missoula is definitely a point of interest along the hi/low line every summer.

teague and i were sent out to the same detailing job by labor ready. this big boat and rv place up reserve ave. id seen him and his dogs walking that way, out the window of the bus there. thinking oh look theres one… shortly before the shift starts sure enough. guy shows up and we acquaint ourselves. sort of a rare thing to see a fellow traveler working through labor ready, we agree… and to be assigned the same shift! 

guys camping out on an island on the river with old unused tracks that run out to it. same day his dog shits, for what was i guess the umpteenth time, all over the place and they tell him to leave halfway through the day. but we chill at some point the following week — guys hitching the main drag south, bc they wont let his dogs aboard the bus.. i had just gotten off my temp shift at walmart and was sitting in the grass out by the street..  just looked up and there he was again, with his thumb out.

wasnt much longer before i left. the aim had been to find work and stay there, in missoula.. but as time passed, all i did was play.. in the street, in the dark, under the bridge and in the alleyways play, missoula. and when the summer had gone i was gone with it.. with cheery notions about the warm friendly beaches, missoula.

latter half of ‘23

after ashland then

Im always circling back to bend I guess. just one of those places rife with qualities.. got to have a good smoky mezcal now and then. got to. like the smell of the ponderosas and sage, that distinct free spirited college atmosphere and the varying landscape cut along the cool deschutes.. that, all together, help to break up the monotony of the rest. others less distinct. a nice contrast, most years, for a little while. I guess.

So after a long heat wave on the i5 i swing out onto BNSF trackage for the first time in six years, for a little change of scenery after ashland. spending the last weeks of summer, clear through fall, there. 

met this local dude my age that gave me a few weeks work, flying a sign at the offramp by freddies. picked me up on the spot and i went straight to it, shoveling for something like 20/h. he and his wife and kids were moving house and fixing to put a patio in back of it before renting it out. all kinds of shoveling.. was basically like their negro by the time we were through. a big fat score, for me.

mostly just drank all that money away though. enough to fuel me through a great deal of evening busking / guitar practice anyhow. But not without a spanking new pair of insulated bibs and renewed cell service on the side. yee. before briefly jumping over to eugene to take care of some chlamydia i picked up earlier that summer, a court date in k falls, and then back again by october for more busking.

the night i hopped back towards eugene this native gentleman with a beautiful green yamaha and a fifth of vodka gives me a fresh pickup for my acoustic, and offers to show me the breezeway across the street. sitting down he offers up the bottle. a very unique playstyle, freeform / improve rhythm but fluid as though all one song melted together like — no pauses. Says he had popped some acid earlier and i notice then that hes sweating profusely, long black locks running down past his face meditatively over the guitar. chromatic hammerons and percussive slides.. i could hardly keep pace and quickly resigned my own guitar just to watch quietly. 

next morning i wake in the middle of the modoc forest barreling through norcal, realizing id long overslept my stop in k falls. extremely hungover and not a beer stowed. maps putting me just a couple hours north of keddie. 

we stop on a single main, still some 10-20 miles up from it, for a long time. i crack open a tea which is always a mistake — withdrawals + caffeine.. always severe anxiety. sometimes to the point of mild paranoid episodes. anyway i get nervous because the next stop south after keddie would be stockton.. and what with all the randomized crew change points in certain places i couldnt be sure whether it was that or something else. so i decide to risk the hitch and hoof it up to the head end to have a look. see if theres a crew, signal, anything. the crews there, but no bnsf vans/trucks and no signal posts anywhere either direction. so i walked earnestly up to the conductors window which was open and said afternoon. theyd been phoned by dispatch, over the radio, i guess. about some maintenance of way up ahead.. i said thank god and biddem gooday, booking it back to my grainer. just minutes after i make it back on we air up and are rolling south again. 

which is when the very worst of my caffeine/hangover induced anxiety starts coming on pretty hard. i start having second thoughts about the conductors response. like, what if he was just pulling my leg? what if they were the new crew for that consist, and we really were about to blow through keddie? and, in that moment, i felt like if i wound up in keddie with no more money for beer and a bad hangover i was in for a rough time. it was the first time ive ever had to talk myself out of jumping off on the fly.. gripping onto the crossbeams of the V like my sanity depended on it.. i really felt quite out of my mind. looking back its of course fairly comical.

anyway the train did crew change in keddie, and i did get to sleep off the rest of my withdrawals that day. keddie feels as though no one has been there for hundreds of years, even though there are signs of traffic all over and the buzzing of timbermen in the hillsides all morning long. still feels as though you are in the middle of nowhere.. and yet there are busses through and around the area, and the one i took down to quincy (bc keddies not but a bridge and some old camping / resort on the river) was free i think. make a few bucks there by the albertsons for a couple days, enough for tobacco and some more beer, then head back. across from the park on the river theres a gravel road leading up to the tracks.. and i take it.

at some point i get thrown out of a bar there. the astro lounge, this little hidy tidy college kid club with the lights and electronic music. id been busking across the street the day after xmas when somebody dropped me a hundred dollar bill. so went directly in for a couple of double shots.

for the second id yelled too loud for my order when asked to speak up, over the noise, and quickly found myself being dragged away from the bar — and an untouched and very expensive bourbon. i catch a black eye from one of the bouncers and give them a bloody nose in return, for which the cops get called and i narrowly avoid going to jail smooth talking them. in oregon fighting is actually illegal. which explains a lot, actually..

anyways, i later realize id left my jacket there — or somewhere.. i had kind of blacked out.. coming to sitting on my pack with a beer in an alleyway staring into space with only a longsleeve on. setting a precedent for the following few days shenanigans.

figuring the jacket gone for good i decided walmart.. and ive got to lift it bc all ive got left is 60, and although the insulated bibs help its still cold as fuck.

I run across this couple of riders flying at freddies. Nice girl Clyde and i forget her mans name but also rad.. little pit puppy between them. Good to see eome real mccoys around Bend.. these two were rough and weathered.. all the signs and symptoms of having been on the rails for the long haul — years.

we put some rounds back when theyre done flying, myself ive still got a wad left after the hundred i broke the other night.. soon dudebro goes in to the restroom and doesnt come out. so his lady gets worried and runs in for a look when the ambulance shows up.

the man had gone and smoked some fent in there and wound up collapsing at the entrance on the way out.. so i help his lady carry their things over to a chill spot for the night to wait for him to get out of the hospital.

released the next day dude doesnt have his jacket now either bc theyd cut the thing clean away at the ER. so we both go hit the homeless / vet services clothing closet for some extra layers. Later, the same night after hitting walmart also for a nice dickies crew jacket i find a sick 'the shining' shirt in a pile on the ground in the wooded area we sack out at. which was exactly the last piece of gear missing — a hood.

downtown again to drink some more and celebrate new years next evening we head to the family kitchen for a nice dinner.. i pass out early though, never making it there, and wake up to the lady having brought me a whole ass 'to go' bag. awesomeness, madam.

i pass out again briefly then wake up to find them gone. assuming they went back trackside i head that way myself. 

but when i see a train sitting there i get on anyways - without a word sideways.. just felt like getting, while i was still feeling alive.

the rock

the years carve away into you

these glacial ravines and beginningless valleys

twice wept in the verdant sleep of a memory

dozing away 

somnolent in the dusky hollows

of trees and cool waters

the magnitude of a moment, long past

there left a rumor, like the coriander in may

a lark in the mossbrae shallows singing

theologizing, the approaching day

a strange panegyric

to the mercurial passing of time

this terrifying monocline, cutting

away into you

into your forests your streams

valley and hillside

until there is no other but the one moment

that hid herself away into your heart

like a sliver, like a seed

grown upon it like a stray dahlia flower

the supreme deathray of ultraviolet slaughter

the seed that is your chloroform laughter

your redemption

the redemption of 

the realization of your own bondage to it

to that moment 

that petroglyph that says 'aye'

let it cut away into you

so that the years that pile up like pages

from your book or what book 

but mine or any other

will be like nothing. like rain.

beating away into your rock

drop

by drop.

confession of a failed suicide, 1885

 After my late pride, the lurid incident 

They called — ho-ho! My attempt to fly
I hereby take the stand and soddenly oath
On the good book with my good foot 
And three toes confess 
On behalf of the defendant a lie.

let me cut to the chase and cut it quick!
While I can still raise a finger and 
With my good eye your honor identify
the sole witness to their attempted homicide..

the carnies were in town
And late one sat no Sunday eve
I’d taken one for a bite to eat
Recompense for the ride you see
We sauntered over to a place
I think by carnival or carousel street

it was there I recognized 
in the parlor mirror a man I manage, 
alone at the bar with his drink
And took cas.. the girl round 
By the back, for a better seat

But men are oft malicious
And mirrors many misleading things
And he, doubtless another suitor, 
Waiting — to be sure — blowing rings
for her, our defendant there, in that 
Err.. smoke filled scene.

because strolling home together
From dinner the following week
Hand in hand or at least
That’s what it seemed 
over the bridge with talk so sweet..
I’d paused to pack my pipe
Whereupon did she, my lawful wife
Did push me over the railing
— grotts and scotts, flung me bodily
Like a bouquet into the nightly breeze

not a word or warning, heavens
I could hear the pigeons singing!
I didn’t jump I tell you, neverimagined the thing!
Yet for my injuries I’m the oneshamed!

And it wasn’t terror but remorse
Which screamed as I
Plummeted narrowly into death’s
.. onto the blessed decks of ferry boat Mary Alise.

halloween 7

So anyways, I wind up in Austin. It’s new years day. The rain isn’t freezing but it stings. It’s new years day and I couldn’t care less. I am walking the upwards end of uptown where I’ve been sleeping over work days for close to a month, between the railroad and the highway. 

I am flat broke, waiting out the holiday for a deposit into my account for the next meal, conjure up a new game plan and moor myself in it, and then hedge all bets against it over a cold beer.

 
So I’m in Austin, it’s new years and I am climbing tiredly up the southern portion of one far west blvd. Central tx heat is not always so forgiving, even in the dead of winter, sometimes it's absolutely sweltering - to me - but what do you know Im pretty damn cold just then and I am thinking about how I’d come to be here in Austin and why.. when I get a phone call from a guy I’d known in high school.

I don’t recognize the number. I push the little green key and give the warmest greeting anyone can manage when they are chilling like a cold headless turkey in a basin of water. The ensuing conversation is dull and mildly irritating and just what to expect from anybody you haven't talked to in some time. But there is a point in every conversation that we make a judgement call and say or don’t say what nature of beast is really riding our ass and so I do. I start into it and I kind of sort of open my heart a little bit, if for nothing else but to clear up my head a stretch for the coming day.

The cold is enough that my thinking is thick and I am jittery — but early enough in the morning too that I can’t tell whether it’s more cold or sleep that I am convulsed with. Not sure that seven elevens gonna be open.. is all that ricochets in my skull. And the dumb words roll off my numbed mouth rubbery and bouncing hollowly out like billiard balls onto the pavement before me and I can’t seem to connect in any real way with this fellow anymore.. I aim to suit myself and I get into it about this girl I am crazy about and how long it’s been. He tells me, in his own innocuous way and straight out that I’d better get to it as soon as possible or she’ll likely be getting married before long. And although these words are unexpected and quickly brushed off, it burrows into my brain like a captive bolt pistol into the brains of a helpless steer. Oh my god he's right.

So I am in Austin, it is new years without a care in the world, etc and etc. . but here was this random phone call that was so instrumental in my decision to leave. The following week I am on a wbd for one far west farther than any far west blvd ever was or ever could be. Highway 101 far west, Sonoma county California.

//B Temple TX

After getting all my shit together and consolidating and regearing with what money I have I take the first amtrak north to Temple TX where theres a yard is situated on a wye that sweeps directly west to sweetwater and north to ft worth. I wait there a week, learning the town and have a tough time of it as all of the trains seem to be exclusively north and south. Was hit with dysentery for almost a week. I remember doubling over in agony every 50 feet across town one day as I made my way to the grocery store to restock. I feel like a bitch post-rut unable to oblige 30 meters without a drop of blood. There I buy a bottle of grandma’s honey mint green tea and there is something in it that calms my stomach almost immediately.
Chowing down on a sandwich and a bag of chips behind the store there is this old guy comes and sits on the parking bumper next to mine and opens up a 40. Old 40 here says he rode bulls in his day until something happened to his hip and now he’s got this limp in his step and does construction work to pay child support and get himself by. I don’t remember his name or the details, but I don’t remember his face either and this is always saddening… that my memory can’t even forage up enough to put together a clear image of these characters any better than whatever hazy approximation. But never mind that because it was and always will be the things that went unsaid that were what made the company welcome and what made the person memorable, and these things lodge themselves deep down so that I carry them with me even after I no longer recall the words nor character or aspect. So it comes to pass that I’ve finished my lunch and ready to carry on, and Mr 40 oz bullring bootscootin badass motherfucker here tries to tell me where I can find such and such foodbank, and I try and tell him that I am passing through and not interested in such and such and I kindly appreciate it anyways and we bid farewell and yes, why, isn’t it a nice day to have a beer in the sun? Cowboy booted and clean shirted and leaned against an afternoon warmed cement wall cursing Abelard through Zion and content as a beached foal.

I finally make a ride out on a local 3 hours out to brownwood and from there think to hitch but change my mind, after surveying the state of things along the highway there, and head back for the yard where I bag another local in the wee hours just as it is kicking forward for Slaton. Brownwood isn’t even listed in the little book and so I am somewhat impressed with myself in making it out on another train in less than 24 hours.

Next stop, Slaton, and it's downright frigid. And gusty. Snowing in brief interludes as I make my way to the other side of town for a burger. For no particular reason every scrap of visible clothing on my hide happens to be black and my carhartt hooded and my wool scarf tied round my face from the wind and I suspect I must look like something wandered out of a charcoaled dystopia or some fevered dream of the 1001 arabian nights. It is so cold and gusty and destitute, but Im warm and relatively satisfied.
Making my way back again into the yard where there isn’t a sign of life to be heard or seen from for over 5 hours, I weave my way between lines and set up on a flatcar until twilight closes in and I finally hear a flickering voice on the scanner.. tally ho!.. and a line nearby jolts northward. Clambering over a few strings, near the end of it I find an old 3 hole to squeeze into. I fall onto the porch gasping for air.

 
So far I have had my scanner on constantly and it has done me some good, but is often just as much a source of confusion and wasted effort. Too much guesswork after so many hours begins to drive you mad and sometimes it’s best to shut the damn thing off and just use your eyes. 
This empty grain train stops and starts like a wild ass horse, and before long I'll have least a couple of bumps on my head before I walk away from it again. We stop in Lubbock for forever. It's dark and before I can crash for the night I am jumping up and down on the ballast to keep from going crazy from the cold, pretending I’m at that DJ shadow show at the box office one more time and wishing I at least had as much vodka as I had had that night now long past. No smart phone just then.. just.. singing. Anything to keep the blood moving.

//C New Mexico

This old blue 3 hole carries me across NW TX and out over the east of New Mexico to Belen. When I wake around six or seven my one asscheek and one foot feels like so many pounds of dead meat and I sit upright for a little food and water. Looking out to see the sun spreading over the nearby mountains like gods gleaming ass cheeks over gomorra and onto a frozen snow and sage brushed desert floor and I am inspired to pull out the android phone my mother had sent me loaded w family photos. Activating the camera, a message comes on screen saying that it is too cold for the camera to function and I almost throw it out off the train instantly. The first time in weeks I have need of a camera and it says it is cold.. If I’d kept the thing for a fucking thermostat I’d just as well sold it off and bought a goddamn thermostat. 

Technology.

So I roll in and explore both Belen and Albuquerque for a bit and the next day I hit up a farm up north beyond espaniola, against the Colorado border.
Albuquerque is crawling with homebums. It feels like Seattle all over again, only in the desert. Tepid, and only mildly homicidal. Seattle because Seattle after a matter of weeks begins to give off this arid, acrid desert-like stale piss of the washed-up seamonster kind of gray and grayer proportionlessness, like a salt-blurred mirage that is veridically broken by a dozen anomalous scuttling lizards and bizarre buzzards, palsied basilisks and bats, flagging jackrabbits. . . The guy on the phone sounds irritable and impatient and keeps talking over me but he sounds well and sensible enough that I take the job and head out straightaway. Free busses all the way up.

I spend the following 4 weeks in this peculiar but beautiful DIY establishment high on a hill overlooking a valley in between one spine of low mountains and another and a canyon there in the midst of it, at the bottom of that a stream, which opens up an arms length out and directly below my balcony. I see Elk and wolves and owls in intervals passing through, three-hundred four-hundred feet below. I read 6 books out of a library of them they had there on their shelves and I sew up all the holes in my pants, but I never write. The mood never came to me.

For all of it’s beauty there are nights I have these horrific and grotesquely detailed dreams and at times there are dull steps and thuds and cracks from the roof of my hut and I never fully managed to shut the proximity of the legendary town of Dulce from my mind… I am accustomed to sleeping in strange places everywhere sure, but here in this particular part of the country I feel again at times a little bit superstitious. Still winter and at this altitude still plenty of snow. A foot or so.

One morning 2 weeks in I look out over to the west, all that wilderness and quiet.. and on momentary impulse alone I pack my things and steal out toward the road to walk the ten miles back into tierra amarilla and catch a bus back to the rails. Homesick for the bloodlines of freight traffic for the unknown.

My hosts wife happens to be heading out at just the same time to go teach class, and catches me up not 200 yards off. We were on such good terms as it was that she undoubtedly thought there'd been a blowout and I had taken some of their things w me. So I get a visit from her husband a couple minutes after she rolls off again.

This was a very interesting thing. Here we are in the middle of nowhere, closest neighbor about half a mile down the hill, and arvo, he and his wife and their other farmhand to me all terribly good people by this point.. steps out of his car w every intention of making me give back whatever it was I must've taken. You know, without saying anything to them. You know.. like, ready to tackle me. 

Very embarrassed I slowly try to explain best I could how romantic disappearing into thin air felt to me for a moment and that I'd long had a bad habit of doing exactly that since I don't know when and that I didn't suppose that was why I had no support network or contacts in my phone or any relations to speak of. But.. that I still insisted on leaving.

Still very upset, he says to give back the rolling tobacco he'd bought for me. I reach into my pack for it and then stop.. overwhelmed w guilt already, returning a gift to this man who I most sincerely respect in that moment was too much. I put it back and asked if he'd have me for another two weeks and he might find some way to forgive me for walking out on my friends without saying goodbye.

//D Pheonix

On leaving I make it to Albuquerque within 8 hours and the same night find an IM in belen which carries me directly into phoenix..
Because I miss my initial bus I have to hitch down as far as Sante Fe, and the guy that picks me up, a native coming from Dulce, is headed to the airport there to pick up a friend from florida. What luck.
This man is unusually reserved and almost timid but I soon learn that it is something else, a humility that is fairly rare on the road which I mistook. Conversation is nearly inexhaustible as he begins to divulge on who he is and the more that he does the more questions I have and all the while he has all these questions for me because as he admits it is few and far between that he takes on travelers on the highway in this area. He is the chief and spokesperson for his nation on the Apache reservation there in Dulce, and he has a lot to tell. His friend at the airport happens to be a representative of the publisher for his autobiography, and the three of us grab a bite to eat and browse around town for a couple hours before I have to leave off for the rail runner south.

I don’t know what it is today that defiles men and whips them into these innocent puppies trying to be like saints. I don’t even know if it is right or if it is wrong. But there is something in it notwithstanding, or so I decide after this encounter, that is self-indulgent, for which all the humility and politeness in the world cannot offer apology. 

So I roll into Pheonix.. and, well I don’t even care to write about Phoenix except that my time there totaled approx. 36 hours and I walked practically nonstop through it’s bowels it’s extremities, it’s broad streets and it’s front streets and it’s state avenues with about 15 pitch of foodstamps in my wallet…

*O lord above you know *
*how much I love the smell *
*of diesel and *
*hellfire in the morning *

//E California

Making it back out of phx to Winslow via bnsf I grab an IM to LA and wake up 12 hours later to that signature rock littered tropical oasis unique to socal.. the sunrise at larboard is a great radiant exodus of heat trailing me over the sands and valleys all the way from that south land I’d left a month previous.
Chewing hungrily on some of the bear root I’d been given by the farmer in Tierra Amarilla I lay back anxiously wondering when the time to gtfo the train will present itself.
After getting smacked by the bnsf police I make my way 4 miles to the station and call my dad. I spend a month there with him and his sister and her family while I set up for the next move and file my taxes and wait for a new pair of boots to come in the mail. In the meantime I read, sleep, and do my best at honoring the family I haven’t talked to much at all in so long.

So here is the landfall of the arc of my flight west out of this first grand foray east, this clockwise circle that was the summit of all the wonderings and ceaseless drifting and working and inward calculation of more than two years. Stepping into it I wanted to make sure I covered all the bases before finally marching into that hallowed terminus toward which I had marched, subconsciously, inexhaustibly, effortlessly, every day since that one windy november afternoon. I want to make sure it is a trial. . .
Instead of hitching directly up the 101 I make a detour out to Nevada first for the couple of weeks prior to heading in for this farming gig I found north of the bay. So I amtrak it first to west colton and I expect the worst, but here there isn’t a soul to shatter the silence and all spots are vacant, all railroaders look the other way, and even the stray dogs seem to be blind. The entire week it is as though I were a ghost. The plan is Las Vegas way, but I wind up with a manifest to RV instead and from there a bucket on another GM through Donner Pass and onward. The terrain I am met with is vast and empty, and the towns.. littered along the way, can they even be called towns at all? More like aborted affairs and vestiges from days long gone. The emptiness is somehow alien and I suspect that it is because it is new terrain, and also that for whatever reason I was expecting more trees than this. I reach Elko and hit the brothels for a little hanky panky for a few days before catching back west via alkali flats and feather river.
Feather river is a wonderful ride, but it did not quite top the hellish expanse of the black rock desert nor that later interval of extraordinary geographical variety marking the transition up the grade from the salt-choked lake beds into the mountains and in for Portola. What amazed me most though is that I didn’t even plan for a train taking that line, it just happened to be the one I’d seen stopped when I opened my eyes that morning out in Nevada.

Portola is incredibly small and I don’t make two blocks out from the yard when I am halted by the sheriff and the fucking ant-eater questions me as though I am already cuffed and, not so foreign anymore to copper bullshit, I break his balls in every way convenient. He warns me away from the yard, and for this at least I am grateful that we met as soon as we did.
So, I am in portola and that same night I make my way down to a spot remote and away from the yard and away from any road, on top of the river and covered in ponderosa, and I realize what a good thing it is that I decided to stop off in little Portola after all. Lying upon the needles that night with the song of the river not 20 feet to my left and to smell the clean pine scented mountain air, so close to the sky which I can clearly make out between the trees… In the twilight of the following morning I have a grainer west and laugh like a stark raving lunatic as I am carried out of the yard and past all possibility of detection. Victory.
Back in rv I attempt to find an IM west but end up in stockton and blow most of my remaining finances riding commuter trains and busses over to san jose and then north in time for work. An anti climax, this final leg, but all the journey before drowns that out in it’s brilliance, even still.

//F Petaluma

When I arrive.. it is like I’d jumped out of a helicopter into enemy terrain and my eyes and ears are opened to every voice and every face or car that passes. I cris-cross all quarters, looking into shop windows and markets and gas stations and restaurants. The rolling hills are green and the oak everywhere, the town is vibrant and beautiful. There are young people everywhere and many of them sauntering alongside the river that cuts through it all. In those three days I try every bar and every promenade and strip mall and grocery I can find and I find nothing.

I spend 3 months and in that time I finally cave and try a few phone numbers, and I learn from these mutual acquaintances that she is to be married before summer is over.

. . .

After the farming is through with, I take a landscaping job in Santa Rosa first, from where I can see clear over the valley and over the coastal range to the ocean on many days. The nights I sleep in a magic tree net 30-50 feet up in the air like a fucking gorilla, from where I can watch all the city below through the canopy of the oak and contemplate always which beacon in that valley of light the person in question could be residing beneath.
Soon I am on my way again and hitching up the 101 for a fishing gig in Newport OR. The day that I start off is a bright white summer sunday, and that low-lying morning coastal fog has yielded finally to the apex of the afternoon sun. I am watching the weekend traffic there in petaluma, getting ready to tell myself outright to quit this fools errand and throw out my thumb for good or for bad, when my eyes light on this passing dark grey sedan. And there she is in the passenger seat looking as well and done up as helen of troy and for a brief second our eyes meet and I know as sure shit who it is just as I knew who it was that day 2 years before climbing up the stairs of the hollywood station in portland, and I see all over again that it was all idiocy.

The vast scope of our most ambitious undertakings alone is not enough to cleve to success.. nor justify the cause, however encumbering the weight carried or the purpose.

I went on up the coast for the second time that year, oakland to sacromento to portland to auburn, and from there cutting over the cascades into ellensburg and finally yakima where I find employment at a freight repair shop 10 minutes south. But when spring hits I am again like a freed bird, and again flying east.

draped in velvet

like smut pencilled libels on the walls of caged stalls

invoking desert arroyos cauterized in too bright insight and

ancillary stair cases, exit doors hinged on the brink of madness

daily branded new under skylight copulas in mazes of labyrinthine 

city stages, everywhere histories, footpaths, languages, cellar doors

submerged just below the dust, roots reaching everywhere but up

to steeples and bathhouses, foodcourts marauded w ghosts of

animate dancers, animal handlers cartwheeling over and over the green

coves of time etched in space, dreamscapes laced in sands embrace

sand dollars of stained glass ripped from dining halls enthralled in ash

grave diggers distaff of footsoldier sweet grass, vaguely glowers

w gowns of red wire and bones conferring their silent epitaph

barely buried in brooks and under bridges like white nails

platitudes wrapped in yesterdays fortitude, loomed w worms

pray careful songs forgotten over tables and windows, reflected

over scrupulous entryways chiseled w procession alms and old plays

dead pensioner reclining in your suited antechamber won't you

pardon the air once brought steel mares w chernobyls fare 

staring into the arrow consolations convicted, furrowed implications

in crows feet ruminations ponderously impaired

sightless ferrous inculcations, two spurious flights instilled w night

brooding ortega and andora, narrate your cold logus in luminous aciform

traverse the living word w modes that surpass new leaden dearth

draped in velvet, and pull the folds of night around it

as the careering globes which watch w heavy lids the light

when you have a sense of humor

you cut the cards slowly

just enough and in such a way

so that the the dealer wants to ask for them back

but can't

talk nonsense psychobabble to dullards

beg for money from the beggar

overtalk your boss and make the decisions for him

recollect thoughtfully your last name signing at the dental office

play dumb when it's your turn for the mic

tell the guy w the jag that you keyed it

and wait for him to come back w the proof

ask his wife to buy you a drink

let your girlfriend call all the shots

shoot at pool so that it's always a ball in hand

tip 40 bucks and never say a word edgewise

say nothing until their ears bleed

when they ask if you're a cop say no with two ns

tell the vocalist of your favorite band he's got no style

write f u c k on your dirty windshield

buy everyone at the bar a round of drinks even though

you only went in to take a leak

you have to make them think

slip love yous and thank you notes

under garages

and keep your dick in your pants when 

they return the favor

you fall in love with lap dancers and stay all night

you walk into a party and hit on the monolith

and then regret it

you have to wait for the third pitch and punt it into the dirt

apologize about everything

there's no other way to laugh

missed connections

I was on the coast somewhere. there was a city by the sea, I had been driving north up the 1 looking for a good beach, out for some fresh air. I didn't find anything acceptable and eventually turned back, but met someone somewhere on the way back down and we decided to go for lunch there. the pier was full of people and towered up over the water on an enormous cliff, w steps and guard rails leading narrowly down. a massive footbridge led from the top of it out over the water to a nearby key, obscured from view by shoreline cliff faces which wound to the north, jutting away. the girl took me to a squat in town and a few of her friends were there and we talked about local attractions and food. in time the others leave and we are alone, we are talking quietly on a couch, when you walk in and lean against the opposite wall, looking at me. I recognize you immediately and she doesn't. you are wearing a light brown jacket, dark hair curling down just the way it always did. I leave the couch and walk over, surprised.  you didn't say anything but had a look instead, reading my mind. I wanted to ask you what you were doing there and how did you find me in my own dream.