In opposition to all the great spiritual stories wherein the protagonist begins his journey in the lowly plain and ascends to the mountains (the better to commune with the gods it is generally assumed/revealed) this journey's genesis is near higher ground. Following are excerpts from journal entries (rendered as truthfully as I could make them) along the way and that are hopefully relevant to the images at hand. (NOTE: The @ symbol can represent the concept "at" or "about" or "around" in the text.)
04 Aug
@ the cabin on Eklutna lake w/ A and the boys on their last week in AK. Last night Nick came over & we drank Rye bourbon in his van & talked @ the world & women & love.
I walked 10 miles today. Talked to God.
Lived.
campfire, rushing stream, quiet, leaves, cabin A next to me as I write, the boys writing in their notebooks. I split wood & sawed logs. Shouted @ the lake. Took pictures.
Lived fucking furiously.
05 Aug
Optimum human experience today. Hiked up Bold Ridge trail where I currently sit on the mat of bushes & lichen above the treeline. There are crow and blueberries @ mountains ringing the ridgeline while below sits the turquoise lake...Gavin is glassing the neighboring mtn sides, while K sits near a reclining A. He's eating blueberries while she naps...The wind is here. The stubbly coral-esque lichen is here. Sky. God. Mtn. Water. We saw evidence of bears: scat, an aged paw print, gouge marks in a tree where a black bear had climbed.
Fucking furiously.
11 Aug
Went to Mass @ the Basilica & walked around it after. Hard not to believe God is in those places. It's like mountaintops. Then we went to the Walker Art Museum & went through an exhibit on International Pop art. BIZARRE. After, we drove to wisconsin & watched a theatre dance rehearsal where Jen had choreographed something to the tune of the movie Black Swan & it was excellent.
EXCELLENT & BIZARRE.
After we went to pub burgers & fries & beers of the region & A had vegetarian gnocchi that was amazing. Then we walked along the (across kind of) St. Croix river & we saw bats feeding along the water line & kayak fishermen @ sunset. Beautiful. Amazing. Almost indescribable.
Furious.
12 Aug
...in a huge house w/ their two daughters (M, 1 & V, 3). The girls love the boys such that V came out @ bedtime and asked "will you sleep w/ me?" I told the boys they'd not encounter that again. They were baffled. Drank beer. Went to an outdoor music thing in "Berne" (a make believe locale, presumably @ a church in the middle of a cornfield) to hear black people play live music for the whites. Don't know what that says @ anything. Drank more beer. A drove.
I am fucking untethered here.
Corn country. Soybeans. Fallow. That is all there is. Rolling farmland. Nothing. Nothing. Peace.
13 Aug
I am an alien in this world & these people are aliens in mine.
I watched a farm hand dip cow shit covered udders in iodine today before hooking them up to the electric vacuum milking machine.
The boys picked sweet corn straight from the field...
There is nothing but corn all around.
The cows wear collars w/ RFID chips...
You could get captivated by this life, sure. The compulsion to go native is there, everywhere, but w/ it the shade of knowing you'd never commit, not fully, & so fail because you don't believe in it.
14 Aug
Back to Kasson where I was in a shit mood. We went to a creek w/ a small limestone cliff and small trout in the stream. Hot. 90 degrees plus. 60% humidity. We went to a water park where I left the boys to the womens' care & walked to downtown where I purchased a pint of bourbon for some reason. Back through the town. Pure Americana. Stock footage for an ironic documentary @ the death of middle America.
Camping along the Mississippi in norhtern Illinois. Finished revising (NAME) last night over a pint of bourbon. Sober today & smelly like travel already. Stopped in IA to attend stations of the cross @ St. Donatus today & I got a picture of a hand carved pieta in a chapel up on the bluff. We maybe went 300 miles today.
K is 8. A is 34.
In Memphis ate cajun food (fried gator and fried crawfish w/ a side of collard greens) what is happening to me? So hot. Tomorrow is the delta & Baton Rouge. Lord save us. We may just make it to civ.
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