I stood on a brush-covered ridge; the sound of my father pounding nails echoing in my head. I try to ignore it. Ceanothus and manzanita scratched and scraped my young forearms with a subtle fury I did not yet understand. My fathers bitterness at my lack of a work ethic pounded in my head as I looked over the valley below me.
A bite of cheese and bread from some other land in my mouth as I survey my surroundings, the dry air on my brow, the untouched grassed valley to my left, the sea to my right, my uninformed genitalia flaccid, far from the world of men and women.
The clutter of quail spooking and the grunt of a hog were blown into my ears as I looked down upon the silvery hues of manzanita and the waxy plumage of ceanothus. What will I find today?
I was so far from light bulbs out here that they seemed like a prop in a bad science fiction movie.
I will carve flutes from the old elderberry on the west side of Army Jacks nasty old cabin. I will take up my old .22 and find that fat cottontail. Maybe I will take the time to walk down the alluvial fans into the ravine to masturbate under the shade of the great cedar trees that border the small stream that gave us water.
It was that simple. I was a young boy in a truly old place. The Marble Cone fire had ripped through, slaying and resurrecting a few decades ago, but this place was old. The bunchgrasses whispered stories that rivaled any bible, the chaparral told stories so true that I could not understand them. I was a young boy in the real world.
I was subject to the rain guided up the slopes angrily by the fiercest of winds, rain that it would fly up your nose on the ridge top. I was subject to snow and cold that would kill any man that did not truly have his wits about him.
I remember leaving. I sat in the back seat of a ford pickup truck and I cried. I realized that I had not seen a light bulb in months, that I needed no clothes unless it was colder than shit. I realized that I had learned far more that school could have taught me, and I learned that people do not belong bunched up together like sardines.
Your cities make me ill. I am an older boy now, some would say a man. I live in a place that nature has abandoned by the order of man. In the name of the economy and in the name of what some would say is fun. Your clubs, your bars, your apartment buildings and your golf courses all reek of an unspeakable evil that I cannot honestly assess.
My greatest folly was not jumping out of that truck. My greatest folly was coming back to the squalor appreciated, for some reason, by the majority of civilization. I should have stayed there, on the ridge. I do not want to hear any more of your environmental issues, Bay Area. I want you to go build in hell. In addition, stay there.
A bite of cheese and bread from some other land in my mouth as I survey my surroundings, the dry air on my brow, the untouched grassed valley to my left, the sea to my right, my uninformed genitalia flaccid, far from the world of men and women.
The clutter of quail spooking and the grunt of a hog were blown into my ears as I looked down upon the silvery hues of manzanita and the waxy plumage of ceanothus. What will I find today?
I was so far from light bulbs out here that they seemed like a prop in a bad science fiction movie.
I will carve flutes from the old elderberry on the west side of Army Jacks nasty old cabin. I will take up my old .22 and find that fat cottontail. Maybe I will take the time to walk down the alluvial fans into the ravine to masturbate under the shade of the great cedar trees that border the small stream that gave us water.
It was that simple. I was a young boy in a truly old place. The Marble Cone fire had ripped through, slaying and resurrecting a few decades ago, but this place was old. The bunchgrasses whispered stories that rivaled any bible, the chaparral told stories so true that I could not understand them. I was a young boy in the real world.
I was subject to the rain guided up the slopes angrily by the fiercest of winds, rain that it would fly up your nose on the ridge top. I was subject to snow and cold that would kill any man that did not truly have his wits about him.
I remember leaving. I sat in the back seat of a ford pickup truck and I cried. I realized that I had not seen a light bulb in months, that I needed no clothes unless it was colder than shit. I realized that I had learned far more that school could have taught me, and I learned that people do not belong bunched up together like sardines.
Your cities make me ill. I am an older boy now, some would say a man. I live in a place that nature has abandoned by the order of man. In the name of the economy and in the name of what some would say is fun. Your clubs, your bars, your apartment buildings and your golf courses all reek of an unspeakable evil that I cannot honestly assess.
My greatest folly was not jumping out of that truck. My greatest folly was coming back to the squalor appreciated, for some reason, by the majority of civilization. I should have stayed there, on the ridge. I do not want to hear any more of your environmental issues, Bay Area. I want you to go build in hell. In addition, stay there.