The California Chronicles

After many months apart, living lives and chronicling separate landscapes, we Chroniclers found ourselves together again in a post-performance jubilation - only the night before we had shared our Chronicle stories to a room filled of bright-eyed revelers, the first showcase of our stories in many years. Rose, Glass and I scrambled up to Tilden to anoint our reunion with a ridge top sketch. Spirits were high and the fellowship was as taught as redwood husk.

You know what, dude is a sight to see? A dancing Glass, a giggling Rose- a hiltop ecstasy. 

Confident Bob  Shares his secrets Of line work

Sometime during this glorious morning A traveler wakes with dreams untold

Autumn found us returning to our high desert springtime haunts in the Ochoco. The hills had matured with the seasons, their grassy beards now grown in, their riparian pulses slowed to a meditative trickle.  The wild horses had already moved to the valley floor for the winter, leaving us free rein over the ponderosa forests. We stoked a lordly flame, watched the moon rise, and contemplated the vastness of our domain.

The Ochoco have quicksilver in their veins, and though the mines are now abandoned cinnabar tints the ponderosa bark and a hardscrabble spirit suffuses the hills. We set our toddlers loose on the former site of Independent Mine and watched them turn a little more manly right before our eyes. Even bros are not immune to this alchemy, and an eagle-eyed chronicler might sprout a few new crow’s feet as he squints across the valley to render a vista.

Little Chinese girl Buried in her phone, instead I drew her at the window.

Candlestick Point The sunrise is rising To the East

Vollmer Peak hosted an October convocation of chroniclers, bidding us welcome with spectacular sunset. At the edges of the sea the horizon’s curve was stretched taut, the sky beyond turgid and bulging outward, straining to accommodate our vigor for vistas. The powerlines, roads, and radio towers all crumbled, and for a moment it was just us and the naked earth, stripped of infrastructure and basking in primal glory. 

Shirts were shed, and the tan bellies of summer were swept by the autumnal winds. With hands on our hips we posed in triumphant stillness, eyes fixed on the setting sun. 

The language of mountain climbing is a language of conquest, but climbing mountains is an inward conquest. By climbing high we defeat the possibility of defeat itself. We slay the mountain that would prevent us from holding on to the sunset. We conquer the twilight on a Tuesday, boasting that it is only us that can see the fire at the center of our galaxy, millions and millions and millions of miles away.

In the autumn, the clouds in the Bay Area begin to get puffy and voluminous, marsh-mellowing in the lower altitudes of the sky and teasing of rain. The eastern light beaming across the Bay in the morning strikes the western hills on the San Francisco peninsula and reflects through the blue, cloudy distance to produce a purple haze. Soon the haze gives way to pure light as the clouds burn away and another clear day begins.

In the land of everlasting sun, a cloud - not the predictable fog - is a sprite, a climatic and precipitous rebel meandering through the sky tempting tongues with its promise of water. If only it would settle for a moment over these dry lands and burst forth. Alas, it moves on shifting in shape until it is a cloud no more, disappearing into white wisps of atmosphere strewn about the horizon like a spent ribbon after a parade. 

The firs that crown the summit at Box Canyon are so mighty that they mute even the most spectacular sunset. It was from this guard station that the Willamette rangers of yore kept an eye out for more violent pinks peeking through the trees, wildfires raging down Grasshopper Ridge to threaten the peaceful old growth. Now, with shirtless season on the wane and evening coming earlier, the only flames in sight are the benign tendrils of subalpine dusk, peek-a-booing as playfully as young Theodore looking out the door of our humble cabin.

We gained this pass with great stealth--an easy feat on the thick carpet of pine needles and leafy dross that now beards the trail--so as not to startle the deer that thrive in this clearing. They crowded in as night fell, nuzzling their young, their eyes flickering in the lamplight, drawn in perhaps by the greater mammalian familial warmth we exuded. Then a twig crackled in the woodstove and they were off with a start, shadows bounding through the blackness.    

In the morning we climbed up to Lower Erma Bell Lake on the shoulders of the Three Sisters. Theo threw many a rock to test the serenity of the sky lying on the surface of those waters, which always settled quickly back into the lake basin, cozying up to the boulders.  As afternoon wore on a storm arose and we retreated to our cabin with the clouds cuddling in around us and the mist mingling with the smoke from the woodstove. 

Blue sky blow Quivering daisies in the meadow The first leaf drops

Sideways sun Stay there! Stay there! The cold wind blows

I’m somewhere in the shadow of the trees I fell off the field, I lost the sun Colossal winds shake the forest

Mountain gargoyle Stone-faced and still How do I wake thee What magic, what spell?

Gasp! Alas- Chest-heaving hellos They found me

Shaking the sketchbook Hands won’t hold the words The night is alive

A friend’s wedding brought me East this weekend, to Virginia’s Appalachia. We drove the winding road of Skyline Drive with the windows down, letting the humid breezes fill the cabin. The forest was lush and green, rain clouds slumbered along the horizon and the campfire smell danced along the ridge. I stole a sketch and a ku while the others lunched and laughed.

Blue Ridge views Lush garden canyons, birds above Waterfall breezes

They call this place Tierra del Mar, and when the mists rise up from the autumn ocean the land and sea seem like close kin indeed.

Table of bros Drawling out drawls From the old country

Street-walking cheetah Heartful of napalm Runaway son of a Nuclear A-Bomb

Black hole sun shines shadows The beer head blocks The ballet babes’ boobs I’m not saying nothing – not now

My lips feel fuzzy Surrounded by leaves I love my blood, Infused with a farties dry

Tree trunks fork Limbs, sticks, twigs, stems, leaves Dissolving

During our PDX reunion Eliot presenting a readied rockhopper awaiting my arrival, Megan preparing fresh cookies to fuel our engines, Theo providing the proper mindset to explore depths of woods unknown.  We road through neighborhood, that I’ve since forgotten, caught up on living life and remembered what our job was, to pedal, consume, and regurgitate - image and text.

Dead leaf falls, green shines Backlit woods dream scene Chirpy, squeaky, flowy stream