searching for the ghost of gram parsons.

this post is about my most recent adventure to joshua tree national park this past week.

having left my house at 10:30 am to pick up my buddy randy, we only made it into the park and to our campsite by perhaps 6 pm, by a rough and generous estimate. what happened in between is not really pertinent to the immediate story at hand. however, i will garner this tale with some highlights, since this is my blog and i do have that liberty.

highlight one: peco bill's oklahoma bbq (somewhere in burbank) - my first experience with okie bbq. wow.
highlight two: rei. always fun to waste money on cool camping gear.
highlight three: the exhausting search for firewood that nearly broke the collected calm of the moseying nature of the day.

and so, we're there. the drive to jumbo rocks, the site of our first night of camping, was about 22 miles and you see a good overview of the north side of the park. giant, what amounts to, piles of rocks form mountains. it's very hard to describe the architecture of all the land, as the park has different formations and dimensions, yet it's all pretty amazing to figure that the valley and high desert was all carved out by an ancient body of water. so piles of rocks give way to singular rock formations, little nubs that are the dream of rock climbers (of which we saw quite a few). all around are gorgeous joshua trees. majestic. and the different positions, so numerous, but at the same time of certain types. shadows cast by clouds and by mountains. it's an insanely joyous scenery.

got to jumbo rocks, pitch a tent, start a fire, cook dinner, drink some bourbon to stay warm in the 40 or so degree night, put out the fire and go to bed.

the sound of coyotes at night should be terrifying, but really, its like a really mournful plainchant, a plaintive bluesy moan. gorgeous and comforting.

woke up. explored the desert just over the rocks that secluded us from the vast wilderness beyond. packed up.

rode into town to find cellular service to link up with friends annie and sarah from my barnard days. in the meantime, explored some of the local shops and culture. attempted to grub several times and ended up buying sandwiches to bring back to the park. made our way to a new campsite, the smallest of the developed ones on the grounds, white tank. found the best spot - site 4. pushed back into the rocks and secluded from all other possible fellow campers. kinda spooky, definitely beautiful. pitched a tent to claim it as our own and set off for a leisurely hike.

a ranger had told us about an old mine/miner's cabin up a relatively unmarked ridge. what i mean by this was that they were attempting, or more like thinking about attempting, to turn this path into an official trail. all we had to guide us were stacked rocks plotting a course up the mountain. on the way up, i saw a snake. the journey up was quite fun - just a solid uphill hike with beautiful views. i noted on the way up that everything is the desert is spiky or rough. it does not want you to kill it, much less touch it. even the flowers seem to have cactuses underneath.

so we're wandering around looking for this rumored mine, about to give up when, ah ha! a pile of granite and an aborted mine.

we get really excited and wander down a hill and low and behold, the eagle cliff mine. its on a strange little plateau in the midst of hilly, rocky terrain. it's almost an alien world there. you have to understand that at this point, randy and i were absolutely boiling over with excitement. the whole boyish adventure mechanism had taken over after years of disuse. it was like one of those little plastic play castles, except this was real. the mine was deep and scary and not closed off. luckily we both have good sense and no urge to die so young and stayed on the perimeter throwing stones inside to gauge how deep it went. then i wander off and discover an old barrel metal hoop around a cactus. i get excited and we discover a path that leads to the back of this miner's cabin built into the rocks. it's a pretty staggering place, really humbling, exceptionally stimulating. we explored around there for quite some time. the home still had cans and other rusted metal objects strewn about and apparently lost hikers will spend the night there, which seems sorta spooky. turns out that eagle cliff is one of the earliest claims in the park, dating back to 1895, so its very possible the cabin dates to some time around then. truly amazing. i was speechless in the history of this place. more rock climbing ensued before we had to head back down to meet up with the girls who were supposed to arrive any minute.

on the way down, we did end up getting lost. having lost the minimal markers, we staggered through back country, watching out for spanish bayonets and other hurtful plants. truth be told, we did end up getting cut up a bit. but it could always be worse and was totally worth it. on the trek down we saw both a bighorn sheep and a tarantula -- totally far out.

got back down finally thanks to our orientation skills and a compass that i made randy bring.
back to the camp site where the girls had arrived and were settling in. met mike, our next door camping buddy, from san diego, star watcher, latent conspiracy theorist and genuinely nice guy. its amazing how when people are really forthright and friendly, one is very taken aback and feels as if there is something wrong, to be worried about. perhaps there was, but his manner was fresh and appreciated. conversation free of machines is a rarity and mike was a master at it.

at the campsite, we cooked, drank, played guitar around the campfire and made merry eventually making our way towards pleasant slumbers.

the next morning, we woke up, packed up and headed towards cap rock, the site where gram parsons's body was burned. if you're unfamiliar with the story, the gist is that gram and his road manager had a spoken bond where whoever died first, the other would take their body to joshua tree to burn and rest. so when gram overdosed just outside joshua tree at the joshua tree inn, his parents in florida wanted the body returned there for burial. at the airport, the road manager got onto the tarmac and stole the body and took it out to joshua tree and burned it in a spot just under cap rock. this is where we were. people graffiti messages on the spot, but we opted to just perform a ritual ceremony whose particulars i cannot divulge. i will say it involved singing sin city and listening to lots of international submarine band, byrds, flying burrito bros. and solo material. i also cannot say whether we saw his spirit, but it was a moving experience.

then into town to the local country kitchen for amazing chocolate chip pancakes. as learned from the adventure in the northwest, a country kitchen is always a good call.

from there, home.

in recap. what an amazing place, spiritual and raw. a total respite. and the internal diversity of the park is staggering. once you get attuned to such things, which i am slowly becoming conscious of, america becomes an even more wondrous and its beauty more deep.

Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away...

I will do a big update of all this Los Angeles last of all, covering the holes and in-betweens of these Odysseys - never fear.
But for now, let me tell you about what I think was the most magical adventure yet undertaken - north to Santa Cruz and back down through Big Sur.

I set out relatively early one morning, driving up the 1 and the 101 as much as humanly possible. Long story short, drive with no to minimal stoppage up to Salinas, where I figure I'd take lunch and the John Steinbeck Center (read museum) in. Ended up at the local brewpub for lunch, had a yummy sandwich and porter, and made my way down the street to the Steinbeck Center. There I met the gentleman who used to be the Dole produce buyer for Giant in the Washington Metropolitan area. Small world -- go figure this man chose the fruits and veggies I've consumed. I learned quite a bit about Steinbeck that I hadn't previously known and was all excited to pick up a copy of "Travels with Charley," his tale of his own American odyssey road trip, but alack - nowhere to be found in the gift shop. There was also an local agricultural museum, which was pretty neat. Dig this, apparently 3/4 of America's iceberg lettuce is grown in the valley. Crazy.

On from there through Castroville (Artichoke Capital of the World) to Santa Cruz. Here I beg the reprieve of the reader for a short detour into one of the most extraordinary and awful sights of the trip yet. In the planted fields lining the road are hundreds of migrant workers of all ages. They come in school buses that have trailers with port-a-potties attached. Backpacks and other belongings held upon racks. It was eerie and disheartening to see -- this is one of the aspects of America that hasn't changed over the years, the scene could have been from Steinbeck's time.

Up to Santa Cruz and make my way to the library - home of the Frank Kofsky archive. Kofsky was a documentarian of the Avant-Garde Jazz scene of the 1960s and the reason for my quest was some material in the archive pertaining to Marion Brown, the musician whom I wrote my thesis about and a project that I'm continuing in this post-graduate life. Anyways, the archive is in Special Collections and despite having written the library to double-check I'd have access to the material, lo and behold - two things - one, I might not have clearance and two, it was still summer and so the Special Collections were only available for about three hours rather than the all day session I'd anticipated. (I'd also gotten a request for some research from WKCR that I was supposed to complete as well!)

Anyways, disheartened, I made my way down the Boardwalk where my terrible mood only subsided when I saw and heard the dozens of sea lions that make their home beneath. So special. So beautiful. Such odd sleek creatures, but with amazing vocal cords. The cry of the sea lion is a song of the sirens. I spent quite a while just looking and watching them sit, play, sleep - and you could get so close! It was really something else.

I ended up at a motel just off the downtown strip. The whole area a little seedy, but the hotel or seaside motel, to be more appropriate, was very nice, recently redone with hard wood and stone floors and a big flat screen TV. It was a little odd - this being my first time spending an evening alone in the hotel room, but I made the best of it. I took a book, always a solitary person's best friend, and made my way down the strip looking for interesting store and a spot to grub. A couple decent thrift stores and a compellingly hip record store later, I ended up at a sushi joint where I must say I had some of the finest sushi I've ever had. Pickled radish, and fresh artichoke sushi were some of the highlights and washing it down with a Sapporo, I must say I felt fighting fit by the end. Made my way back, watched some King of the Hill and fell asleep...

...waking up early enough for the continental breakfast. I decided to make my way to the library early to try and negotiate with the folks there. Driving into the campus, I took the time to appreciate the cattle grazing on the immense land that used to be a ranch, the remains of which still haunt parts of the campus. Passing an immense family of deer, I parked and made my way to the front doors only to have them locked! Summer hours - too early. I wait for it to open and immediately make my way to Special Collections and hark! what nice people, so accommodating - they hooked me up with an extra hour.

The Marion Brown interview was intriguing, but perhaps the best item I heard was an audio letter from Bill Dixon to Kofsky that cemented my opinion that Dixon might have been a prophet. He had the clearness of message that a prophet has, a powerful tone and a message of humanity. We really lost an extraordinary artist with his passing earlier this year.

Upon completion of my task, I lit out southbound with the intention of making it down to Big Sur to camp. My first stop however came at Pt. Lobos State Reserve, just south of Carmel by the Sea. Words cannot describe the spiritually cleansing experience that was Pt. Lobos. I got there with only about two hours left of daylight and so the illumination of the seaside was amazing. I feel like whatever burdens I had were left on those beaches. I've never really felt quite as much at peace as I did during the hour and a half I was there. I made friends with seals, deer and rabbits. It was stupidly beautiful.

However, all good things must pass, and realizing that it was nearly dark and I was still quite a distance from my destination, I left and continued on. Driving in Big Sur, you're on the coast, but its dark and so you can only hear shapes and the crashing of the oceans. Weirdly, sometimes there is pasture filled with cows on the edge of that precipice. In a sense, the experience was much like Kerouac's in the novel Big Sur, where you're overwhelmed by the sounds and darkness, it's ominous and looming. With that in mind, it was dark when I got to Big Sur and decided to stop in at the relatively uppity Big Sur Inn Restaurant. There had delicious deep fried artichokes and a locally raised burger. Whoa. By this time it's like 930-10 at night, so I find a private campground on the Big Sur River and pitch my tent.

I really had no idea where I was, what the surroundings were like, so waking up in the morning was a complete surprise.

this place called earth

many apologies that is has been months without an update, a word or any motion of wind round these parts.
i will attempt to rectify that situation now as swiftly as time-space may permit.
thanks for patience. (you will inherit the earth remember!)