Nevada was extremely cold. in the back of my mind i had already agreed that sleeping outside at the highway rest areas i come across would be the most logical approach when traveling cheaply. while due to warmer weather and the plan going smoothly on the trip west. yet refused to assimilate the notion that the weather may change over the coarse of a month.

it was probably 22 degrees with a dusting of snow that night. i thought that three blankets a sleeping bag and a bivy cover would be ideal. but the high desert gets far too much wind.
i slept off and on for maybe three hours and resumed the tiresome monotony of staring into the east.
Subway food is no longer appealing. i thought it would be the only thing suitable when searching for fresh vegetables on the road. but I've reached my threshold.
luckily in some casino smothered Nevada highway driven town the Subway also had a little Hispanic boy that found joy when making fart and/or duck sounds with his mouth while watching me eat.
i made fart and/or duck sounds back.
he was surprised and as well intrigued to continue.
i told myself no more Subway. yet i ate my last meal with the best entertainment that money could buy.
back to carrots and raw cashews and cold soup straight from the can.
my generic leathermen has no well defined design.
it takes ten minutes to open a can halfway. and by then i get too hungry so i just sort of drink the soup like it was a smoothie.

Utah has water on the salt flats this time of year. it reflects the clouds and bluish-gray horizon. the mountains become perfect replicas of themselves yet hold this uncanny pull of gravity.
it makes the desert somehow seem exotic. i must keep my self from stopping to jump in. maybe to wake up or to realize how deep it gets. i think no more then two inches. vast lakes of two inch water.
i sleep at a gas station for a couple hours because the sun came out and made my car warm enough.
my car doesn't have heat so every time i get more gas i make hot tea with my canteen and when its nighttime or early morning i hold onto it with both hands while driving with my knee.
i don't recommend driving this way. it only makes it far too similar to television but is much more difficult to turn the station.
well actually my car does have heat but it also comes with the noxious smell of car fumes.
i must get that fixed before deciding to travel faraway again.
cleaning fogged up windows with my handkerchief is far from ideal.

when driving for such an extended period of time i've realized that at a certain point in the day either time would slow down or my thoughts would speed up. why must they put millage signs given the distance to multiple cities every 10 miles?
i put duck tape over my clock to resist the habit.
it peels off so i add more. in Wyoming i give up.
it is still very cold and i say to myself "i must pick sage brush for a friend".
i say it incessantly until i decide to stop.
it is very cold and most of the brush has already flowered or is too small to wrap. the wind travels across the open desert just to tangle up my hair and spin me around until i find the door to my car and assume the exact sitting position that i have held for the past 10 hours.
five days later the brush still sets in my door and is probably too dry to tie up. it was the thought that counts.

Wyoming is better then Nebraska because of the variation in the landscape. but a man yelled at me for dumping my yerba mate in the toilet at a gas station. (a stimulating alternative caffeine-like tea from south america)
it was funny though because he actually refereed to it by its name.
i probably drank six ounces in three days.
half the time it makes me alert and patient. the other half it doesn't seem to work and seems to create the opposite.
i make it to Nebraska after 2 hours of 60+ miles per hour wind. cookie seems to be a cheaply made can of tuna fish. i rock side to side with dreary eyed apprehension.
i drive till 4 in the morning and due to the cold i have this hairbrain scheme to sleep in some secluded corner of some warm hallway of some average run of the mill hotel. really i was going to get some more hot tea at a gas station when i pulled off the highway. but the exit i took only had closed gas stations and open hotels. i decide to try one of the back doors at this travelodge thinking that not in a million years. but the door pops open and a warm gust of air washes the cold from my face.
i scamper upstairs thinking that I'm in some 1920's hero and villain caper with the fast quirky music. my goal to find the hidden nesting ground for a weary weather beaten traveler on his way home.
yet there were absolutely no nooks or cranny's that i so imaginatively thought to be sleepable.
so with slight agitation and a soon swelling of anxiety i lay my sleeping bag at the end of the hall on the second floor near the stairwell.
now i might add that this probably wasn't the brightest idea that i had chosen to pursue but those few minutes tucked away under my warm covers in this warm hotel hallway felt like they could last forever (well maybe a few hours longer then they actually had).
then my conscience got the best of me and the paranoia and the anxious feeling evolved into the imagined circumstance of being woken up by some law enforcement. this brought enough will for me to come to my senses and leave that moment of undeniable rest.
thought i do put up one final last debate that almost keeps me put but the lacking of a pen and paper makes it difficult to conger such a sign to lay next to my sleepy self exclaiming my strenuous and scenario driven argument with my loved one that has evidently sent me to such a predicament outside of "our" supposed legally purchased hotel sanctuary.

i decide to walk out the way i came and enter through the lobby to plead my tiresome case with the night attendant. she said twenty dollars cant get me a room but sixty five can. her next advice is to call the cops and they could find my a place.
at first i thought this may be a trap. but my intellect prodded a bit further and realized that some religiously involved haven may take me in.
yet when directions are set and i wave goodbye to both the officer and the night watchmen i realize that I'm about to knock on some door to some strange house in some little town in nowhere Nebraska. oh yeah and at 5 in the morning. but at last i arrive after twenty minutes of side roads and another twenty minutes of poorly given directions and i seem to find the church and the house with the two florescent soda machines lighting up the driveway. i knock once and i then knock four more times with each a little more confidence and momentum. and soon enough come to a conclusion that this plan has one minor flaw that has grown into new a wholly more logical direction for the evening. i say out loud that this is stupid and jump back in my car toward the familiar sanctuary of wonderful interstate 80.

my plan is to fill up my canteen once again with very hot liquid and drive to the next rest area, put the canteen in my sleeping bag and sleep in my car not far from the position that I've been driving for the past two days.
of course the rest area was closed so i find a gas station and park out back.
an hour into such anticipated slumber some lady taps on my driver side windshield with which i reasoned to be a whole lot of guff. now i don't use the term guff that often except for my friend Miles, because when he walks i just think to myself "man he's got guff". but this woman tells me through my window and the faint muffle of three blankets and a sleeping bag after, just to remind you, merely 1 sweet hour of undisturbed rest " hey wake up, you cant sleep here or I'm calling the cops"
so i do any logical action that one can do in my situation and drive across the street, which must have seemed like an awkward sort of drunkenly gait, to yet another hotel parking lot. half dazed and half resuming the mission that i started long ago. which is sort of a blur. finding a place to call home for the night or still actually trying to make it to the place i once knew as home.
luckily i was tired enough to not contemplate this for too long.
i wake up sweating at 10 in the morning because the sun has filled my car like a greenhouse.

the rest of the trip is tiresome and boring.
the rest of Nebraska is surely flat.
Iowa is sort of the same.
we all know Chicago.
but it nice to get into your home state especially when your destination is only about an hour from the boarder.

there's nothing more reevaluating when you have so much time and distance between your place of travel and a place you consider to be your home.
it almost feels sort of courageous to take on such an overwhelming amount of stress just to leave a place that you ultimately end up drawing yourself back to.
my eyes needed some exercise from their limited but intensified range of motion.
i just rolled them back and forth lot in my head.

right now Northern California is a place with much rain. The farm I'm working on have geese that chase me around. they seem really mad at everyone. but i finally found some chickens that let me pet them!!!!
each night its like a five minute walk to my tent in the deep dark forest and then it opens up into a spacious meadow where spiders keep getting everywhere. like in my tent. and i assume my sleeping bag too.
for some reason I've been a little apprehensive each time i make the walk. i don't think I've seen dark like this before in Michigan and a friend on the farm mentioned that she's once come across glowing eyes at night in that area and thinks it may be a mountain lion.
so maybe i catch myself thinking about glowing eyes and mountain lions a little to much. oh and extraterrestrials, yep i always think of extraterrestrials when camping.
yet last night i had my head lamp on and was watching the brush and sure enough found two pairs of eyes staring right back at me about thirty feet from my tent. they were yellowish orange.
i tried to say hello but i don't think it understood me so i decided it might be best to grab my sleeping bag and head for the house.
once i unzipped my tent the foreign sound of zippers must have made it relocate to another hiding spot where i couldn't see.
today my host said it was probably a fox. but when you see a pair of eyes floating in the forest from the reflection of your head lamp anything can seem a little discomforting especially when you associate their eyes with intention and contemplation.

after two more days I've decided that i miss working at the library in Kalamazoo while realizing how appreciated i am given my change of lifestyle.
it can feel a little unsettling though given that whenever i made it somewhere new that after a few days i would want to keep moving. while living out of a car may seem a luxury at one point it can be a bit over bearing when wanting to feel relaxed and at home. and a little costly when not really making any money.
i decided to drive across the country again.
it always seems closer then it really is.

Toketee Springs / Umpqua National Park

my automobile takes me across the night. into the mountains. and over rivers back and forth. i try not to listen to the radio because music already seems to be around me. but once the sun begins to fall over the mountains it remains a source of direction and certainty.
i listen to J.S. Bach.

the location of this place was a little vague to me and sometimes i feel like there's no other mode of experience when stuck in my car for eight hours. so hiking through the Oregon cascade mountains at eleven at night seems a little foreboding.
but soon i arrive. its dark. people tell me go this way and that.
the river gurgles past with unfathomable volume.
on the way in i encounter two lost hikers.
this makes me all a little more apprehensive but they reissure me that the springs do exsist.
So after about 20 minutes on the trail with my trusty flashlight i arrive to an oasis lit by candle light and steam. I manage to remain on my feet while the starlit sky sweeps me up and around and sends a greeting from the happily soaking bathers.
they become my friends.
they become my camping companions and the ones whom teach me songs and play the drum and flute.
we sing in the springs. we sing around the fire. we sing to the stars.

its funny how just at the moment you feel so very far away from anything at all
that the world opens up into such a marvelous welcome.
i end up staying two enjoyable evenings with this group of six.
they drive a short bus painted purple with variable additions of colorful paint along the way. they are nomadic. soul searchers.
they wear their faces like how the river carves the rocks it passes through.
they smile to the rain.
they are at home.
they have wheat grass growing of the back of their bus.

morning is usually a time that passes and eventually the sun makes me stir and yawn and all that warm shaking dreams from your hair and everything.
but this particular location was low to the river and the ground was always perpetually wet and thus was very cold in the mornings.
there is nothing worse then waking up just before dusk and the cold is creeping all around so quickly with every single breath when you realize that sleep is futile. Unless there is a source of immensely warm water nearby. like a two minute walk. like i could have probably thrown a rock all the way there. accept for the trees.

this morning the orange came through the clouds passing rays of the sun just at the perfect time to let my body turn into something absolute.
something unquestionable yet something indefinite.
i heard twice now that these springs are rich in lithium.
it makes it very hard to leave them. a man tells me.
now i believe what he meant. i almost fall back asleep but thought that it would be better to pack my things and keep moving.

crater lake is a sham. it was cold and snowy and when i arrive I'm like "hey i bet if i climb over this ridge I'll see some greatly fantastical view, huh"
but no. i mean yes and no. it was vast and overwhelming. yes.
but the sand was heavily blown around from the wind and it made its way under my eyelids.
i jump back in my car and drive to a spot where i can see from the road.
the car rocks back and forth from the wind. i was very close to a very large and non-completely visible drop that seemed just to go straight to the lake. the whole mountain was out of power when i go to one of those mountain/park style over priced cafes made from logs to get some hot tea. but they thought i was ok and gave me hot tap water and free peppermint leaves.
so with a hot cup in one hand i keep onward, now back to the west. now to California.
now to the salty ocean.
now to Arcata. funny people with big eyes.

So my sleep patterns are a little bit turned around. i tend to go to bed soon after the sun falls from sight. I'm not really used to ten o'clock bed times. But i wake up at eight so it sort of makes sense. I guess its just one of the changes when not having electricity to help pass the time.
I've been thinking lots about the season and how we change. Maybe I miss Michigan. But part of being somewhere else is that you get an outsiders look at the weather and people and culture and climate ecetera.
I find it fascinating to see new faces and try to understand why they are so different and realize how we are both very similar.
Today Jon (my host farmer) and i had a really good talk about photography and the art made before its invention and the art made after. I think it all stemmed from talking about the farms and farmers markets in the area and how people tend to interact with their food differently when they meet the people that grow it and even give a hand from time to time.
When people come out here for their shares they seem so different and foreign. Like they bring the city with them. All the quickness. All the shuffling and time related tasks But i try to imagine myself as being just like them and this sort of makes it that much more rewarding knowing that I've changed my pace for a little while.
i think i felt the need to travel to avoid the habit in my daily routine.
i wanted to change things about myself but it was too difficult when the routine i was in kept having so many principles that i would let shape my sense of place.
while this can be very helpful when making paintings, i considered that maybe i needed to step away from the meaning of home to understand that it is always changing whether physically or mentally.
Painting and photography have always been an acknowledgement on the passing of time and place but now I'm sort of trying to catch a glimpse. Maybe building temporary homes and leaving them behind as just another place to come back to in someway or another.

busy hummingbird / busy bee

Today the colors washed all around me, the farm sifted the rain far bellow and everything became very busy. It has reminded me of the last time i was on lake Michigan and so many monarchs. it was during my last hour of work and my tummy was full of beans and millet.
The chickens and roosters keep following me around, i keep telling myself that i should try and pet them but half of me thinks that they will just run away and the other half thinks they will gang up on me.
Often i have found myself thinking of places warm because the rain and cold nights make my throat all scratchy in the morning, but today i took my shirt from off my back, rolled up my pant sleeves and for the first time in two weeks really felt at home again. The rainy fall has come so quickly that Portland became a place much to fast to keep up with. So now i live in a cabin with candles and a wood-burning stove. Now i sort through hazelnuts and pick ripe vegetables. Now i am not afraid of spiders.
My hosts have grown less apprehensive of my fairly new presence and feed me so very well. I think that we will be good friends very soon. they did my laundry for me.
At night i listen to Louis Armstrong on my tiny battery powered record player and draw leaves falling just the same that pears would.
Before the sun hid behind the tree line and confirm the day to be passed a humming bird mumbled around my head like a stop motion film. I thought i was somebody else for a short moment. It was beautiful.

like how they build sail boats inside bottle

a seagull by the name of benny and the jets
his friends call him
heard off the shores of the great peninsula
mountains and timber float

great fish today in his mouth already benny was hungry

all the naked people by the water
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a guitar player with crazy hair
a short chubby hawaiian playing bongo fever

with his hands he will grow into magical picnic table where at night grizzled beard man will sleep
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invasion of the lighthouse gnomes (from dream sequence)
with voices like montana ranch gate for horses slap flies with tail and metallic wind

the way in movies just before the sun makes big
plaid stencil of family in peril
to cover chest, limbs
archaic face

inside empty ice box lies large furry creature
stuffed with cotton and red boxing glove attached to each hand
this is my stuffed animal friend
the one i bring with me to feel at home
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the center ring of a large pine tree
cut low to the earth surrounding nearby
with sand, stone and empty plastic

a sculpture of a man holding a fish with no mouth (the man)
salt along his cheeks
slowly enveloped the wind