On Holiday from Real Life

Update: Found out there's a hotspot in the campground so I brought the laptop just to be able to communicate with my daughter, who's due to arrive here this evening. Hi, blog friends, from lovely Big Sur, California!

It’s time to shut down the busy brain for a while. We’re off to Big Sur and the beautiful California coastal redwoods this week for an annual AA campout, where the only challenge is the hike to the restrooms at night. I always come back grateful to have a bathroom with toilet, tub, and hot water in my own room. At the campground, this is my own room:

We leave behind the challenges of maintaining hearth and home. This month has been especially taxing. A new computer required, thanks to the rogue sprinkler that watered my desk through the open window. Unexpected and costly automotive work on our 11-year-old pickup was another blow. I’m thankful we had a savings account. My head, as usual, wants to add a cranky “But” to that last statement, but I won’t let it.

Got almost no sleep last night, thanks to my head and its itty-bitty-shitty committee. So I’m punishing it by making it stand in the corner today. This is what it looks like:

Notice the condition of its nose. It has suffered from nosing around in places that are none of its business. In AA, we are reminded over and over again that our business is between our noses and the back of our heads. Everything from our nose outward is none of our business. When I try to exert control over the world Out There, I’m mucking about in someone else’s business without skill. My head likes to think it is skilled at that work, but I’ve noticed a total lack of success in that department and I suspect my head suffers from denial and delusion.

So, it’s off to the woods with us, without cell phone coverage, wi-fi, or any other distractions. We sleep in a tent and cook on a propane stove, and there are no schedules to keep, no bills to pay. Well, I can’t forecast the bills part. Lord willing, and the creek don’t rise….

And I got a big miracle sendoff: My dead watered computer rose from the dead!!!! The mail came as we were packing, and in it, my resurrected friend!!!! The tech guys, whilst doing the autopsy, found the corpse still breathing, patched it up and sent it home. Miracles happen!!!! I'm a happy camper! (And I had just got the new "puppy" trained.... Well, I guess our young housemate has got herself a computer, courtesy her grandfather and me. It was a happy moment all around.)

Off to Organize the Forest

The trees and the road to Big Sur along the California coast.

At last, we’re leaving everything behind for four days of R&R in a redwood forest overlooking the Pacific.

I see a hospice bereavement counselor once a week now, and she browbeats me: Stop managing everything! You’re always organizing! Organizing your thoughts, organizing information, organizing your feelings! Take a rest!

So I’ve organized all the camping gear and food, organized care for the animals, organized my suitcase, and we’re off to camp in a tent at Big Sur, one of my favorite places on earth. I’m taking Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins, a couple of poetry journals, and a writing assignment, so I’ve organized my literary materials too.

I have to go organize the ice chests now. I’ll leave you with a few glimpses of Big Sur. Have yourselves a wonderful weekend!

Big Sur Magic Photo Tour

There's a place midway along the coast of California where rugged mountains meet the Pacific ocean, creating one of the most beautiful areas of the United States. For miles and miles, the slender road named Highway One clings to steep mountainsides, winding its way through canyons, cliffs, and high narrow bridges, and the speed limit rarely tops 35 miles per hour. Until the road was built, in the 1930s with convict labor, the only way to traverse the mountains was via horse trails and precarious wagon roads.

Because of the high rainfall, rockslides often close portions of the road for months at a time. When we followed it last weekend on our way to Big Sur, four slide areas were under reconstruction.

And so begins our photo tour of Pfeiffer Big Sur state park, where one of the world's three remaining redwood forests begins. Here, in the coastal redwoods, are the world's tallest trees. This area suffered an enormous wildfire in the early autumn of 2009, bringing down many trees, denuding mountainsides, and causing massive landslides that winter.

A fern ravine filled with rocks exposed and tumbled by rainfall.

Fields of clover fill the shady areas.

My daughter Milo and I took a hike up a canyon near our campsite.

Our humble abode in the state park.

Along the rocky Pacific coast, beaches are scarce.

Pfeiffer Beach is subject to fierce riptides. On the path to the beach is a memoriam for a young Kansas girl who was swept out to sea and drowned some years ago while wading at the ocean's edge. Her mother and grandmother also drowned trying to save her.

My husband skips stones on the surf. Temperatures were in the high 50s, and it's a windy beach.

Milo and Kaleb sit on a boulder at the foot of the steep bluffs edging the beach.



This is new growth rising from a fallen redwood. Even when felled, redwoods live on.

I share a last name with this Calochortus Alba, also known as a white globe lily or fairy lantern.

Looking up into the canopy of an old redwood. They are an ancient species, with the older ones in the park dating back to the signing of Magna Carta.

The Big Sur River, which many would call a creek, was flowing fast with rain runoff. Steelhead trout that were born in this river are able to find it again after a season spent in the ocean, and this is their time for swimming upriver to lay eggs.

Blue jays in the state park are used to people.

Fungi will eventually help break down this redwood log.

New growth at the foot of a redwood seared by wildfire.

A variety of grasses line the trails.

The late afternoon sun shines through a grove of young redwood.

Hope you enjoyed this taste of a beautiful place in our neck of the woods.

Thanks for traveling with me.

Glorious Big Sur and a Sick 55

The California coastline approaching Big Sur

I'm heading up the beautiful, rugged California coastline to camp at Big Sur with my family today. We'll camp among the redwoods and hike the Big Sur river (which is really the size of a large creek) and the park trails this weekend.

I grew up in a camping family and have slept in campgrounds from Washington state to New Hampshire. We keep three lug boxes ready with camping gear at all times, so I consider that we're earthquake prepared too.

You won't hear from me until Monday evening. I won't have Internet or cell phone service. I won't have a blow dryer. I'll have a tablet of paper, a camp stove, and a tent... my three requirements for camping.

Maybe I'll get lucky and catch some crawdads for jambalaya one night.

In the meantime, here's a Flash 55 to remind you that love wears many faces. For more intriguing attempts to tell a tale in exactly 55 words, visit the host with most, the G-Man.

It Must Be Love


You glare at me as if
you could burn me to ash
with the power of your rage.

Your veins want to pop
at your temples and blood
suffuses your face.

Your hands tremble
with the force of it.

Only love could excite so much passion.
I want to hold you.

A Few Days in Paradise

The California coastline was blocked by fog most of the way north, but this one shining cove revealed itself for my camera. We've stopped the car about halfway up to Big Sur for this shot, all those mountain ranges on the right still to cover.

I'm half crazed with the tiredness that follows such a trip but wanted to check in and say we made there and back. We had women's meetings, men's meetings, bonfire meetings, art meetings, decoupage meetings, and sculpting with found objects meeting over the picnic table. On the right is flying Root Man, and he is held up by granite and Flying Root Woman and the breath of its maker, 6-month Julia, on the right.

Julia is one of those newcomers who Gets It. She has been the joy of the past six months and is on her ninth step. She doesn't even mind when surrounded by old timers and middle timers and people who would could be her mother's age (moi).

We had the usual hodgepodge of AA people from our county. People shared their choice dinners, and Joe took up one of his blue-ribbon carrot carrot cakes and his ever-popular scones.

I didn't hike much because my hips are bothering me, but I did take a nice slide in the river unexpectedly, and found the water very nice, thank you.

This is our Earth Mother on the left and her black Mustang. She makes outstanding fajitas and maintains a loving curiosity about everything. She nearly has three years of sobriety and is another one "getting It." The shot on the right is our farewell espresso at Gorda with Julia and Joe ready to hit the road home. And home is where the heart is, right? Just be thankful for what you got, and where you go, be blessed by God.

No redwood trees photophraphed, no banana slugs, nothing of wide nature in her glorious best, but here's one of nature's own sculptures:

Things I am grateful for today:

Safe travel on a curvaceous road. Short AA speakers who get right to the point of how they stay sober today. The sound a river sings at night. Laughter. Beautiful daughters and aunts who babysite our critters while we're gone. My sobriety today. Espresso. Granite and feldspar. The heat here will be falling 20 degrees tomorrow.

And blogging. I missed my blogger while I was gone