Freedom is two feet and a right thumb.  The American dream is paved with worn-out shoes.  The asphalt begged my attention as I stumbled off the birm into sagebrush and thorny weeds for a mattress.  The moon glittered on fields of unseen moonstones as I snuggled into my bedroll.  Here I was on my way to Tucson in the dead of winter, sleeping in a pool of semiprecious gems wondering how to get my next meal, in retrospect I should have packed up as many of those stones as I could and left them in Tucson for the gem and mineral show in February but I wouldn’t know fortune quite as easy as that, after all I was going to be a graduate in the School of Hard Knocks.

 

Reverberating from the steel washtub bass across the Mississippi in a muted hum the cars passed in a steady flow of forget about the hitchhiker traffic as is usual on a highway with no exits in sight and no speed limits, four to six lanes of carbon monoxide.  Gas station coffee is a little worse than cheap sweet booze; about all it did for me was heat me up, give me a headache and keep me walking.  Toward the next great adventure, to some final and exhilarating destination, to the middle of nowhere resting under four feet of scraggly sagebrush.  Waking in the Arizona dew and shaking the dust from my face with a groggy reminder of hunger, kicking the well packed roadside and uncovering an ancient native artifact. 

What once was made from clay and stone now Fiberglas and Styrofoam. Ether melded flesh and bone left to decay on a highway sown.  Blunt and brutal is the blade which travels concrete pathways laid in haste and spite to fit the grade of waste and gore to mark the trade.  The broken yellow mile on mile like tapeworm segments in the bile.  The creed we need to ease the trial while fate lies watching, laughing all the while.  The antiseptic sting of gray to ease the woe of forced decay bid passions unheard cries away to greet the dawn of another day.

I reared up and kicked the dry scathed earth below me, AAARGH!!!!!  And my foot hung up on something buried in the soil.  An ancient artifact??? Maybe a GOLD NUGGET.  Upon closer inspection it was nothing less than a genuine Round Rubber Gasket.  Made in USA.  GREAT!!!  I wish someday it was something useful.  And so I threw it into one of many pockets as a souvenir and stuck my thumb out into the brightening sunrise as if to beckon a totally thumbs up day.  And what do you know, out from the corona came a glowing pickup truck, a fully American hotrod, decked out with rust and the whole nine yards screeching to run me over in a messy 60 mile an hour COME ON IN.  So off I was, heated with forced air at high speed down 400 miles of straight road in the baking sun, THANK GOD FOR FORD pickup trucks!  Eating breakfast at some I’m-not-sure-where-they-get-them-from-but-they-seem-to-bring-em-in-from-somewhere diner with some red faced southern Baptist preacher with a bad habit of preaching when it’s not appreciated buying me coffee and telling me all about the Love of Christ, when all I want is the Love of some fine Triple Shot Mocha Espresso in the cool mountain breeze, only 400 MORE MILES.  Then we were off again, dodging geriatric RV’s like the Dukes of Hazzard all the way to the wind beaten plains of Arizona.  To be totally beat and shit out of luck in the upstanding town of Sedona, where it was easier to be abducted than it was to spare change enough for lunch.  Picked up by a hippie bus on its way to nowhere special, stopping at Verde Valley Hot Springs for a dip.  I did not really think to ask where the springs were, I assumed that they were over there, down that wide path over there, and so I let my coy-dog lead the way, her tail waving in the moonlight over the cactus as I tenderly followed to keep the thorns out of the leather mukluks I was wearing.  I bet you the Indians around here had some killer thick soles.  Up to the tippity top of a red rock spire, climbing on foot wide trails made from the scampering hoofs of thousands of generations of havalina, balancing on the edge of the world, two hundred feet from the towering old-growth ponderosa pines below and with the wind blowing, whipping the edge of the rock, pushing my body from the mount like a kite, balancing on the edge of the trail, the end of the trail, my dog whimpering like to say “ You thought I was leading YOU?, I thought you knew where WE were going!”  and taking a step across the break in the path.  One foot over and then lift with the hands, back straight, don’t pull on the rock you’re holding onto, and then LIFT YOUR OTHER FOOT and … step over.

The frail rock crumbled like shale, pummeling me with fragments, I knew the big one was coming, I reached up and at a fine Tao resistance grabbed hold of this two ton stone as it fell onto me and redirected it into the chasm.  I looked up into the shrapnel and saw another coming, to hold and move it in it’s course like a boulder shaping the river’s flow, and let it fall to the depths to show incredible breaking force is an exciting lucky-to-be-alive experience that I sure wouldn’t want to plan.  And finally to the top, the summit, the lone rock peering into the distance like a cathedral of stone waiting for the bell ringer.  Here I was, and sat to catch my breath, to roll a smoke of herbs I had gathered from the countryside, smoke it and BOOM.. the horizon lit up like an extraterrestrial fire, a digital visual effect dancing from the treetops on distant hills, a blue flash followed by a warm breeze.  I may have been hallucinating but I know the mountain shook, and could not help but think SO THAT’S WHAT A METEOR LOOKS LIKE before I got out of there, back down the mountain, across the raging Verde River, to bathe and bask in the warm pools built by ancient elders in the sacred adobe huts.  On the walls were anthropological treasures, murals of turtles and inscriptions from nature loving 20^th century rockers blending into one culture. And they handed me a fatty, said “wonder when you were gonna get here” and Off I Was.

To the cinder swept rocky flats of northern Arizona. To the land that whistles in your ears at 60 miles an hour, wind-chill creeping into the very center of your veins.  To sleeping outside in frost and freeze of February in front of the notorious hangout hippie spot, drinking triple shot hot mocha espresso and shooting the shit with the local know-it-alls. 

And right there and then my life began.  Right there and then I was introduced to That Which I Was Looking For.  “Hey man” it greeted me; “you got a light?”  Oh man, ok. “Hey, thanks man, you know about Mother Earth’s Healing Circus???”  No, man, I just got here. “You don’t have to be HERE to know anything, the CIRCUS is everywhere, man, and hey you wanna come on check it out???”  Yeah sure, I play guitar man, I’ll check it out… is there a food bank in town so we don’t starve out there 40 miles from flagstaff in the cinders surrounded by coyotes and cows?”

Such is Captain Bringoodies.  Such is the plan of eternal bliss through mass partying and phat grooves in remote wilderness by tens of thousands of the worlds most enlightened souls.  Such is the Story of The Mother Earth’s Healing Circus. 

 

The hills waved with incoming traffic, blurring a once traveled pathway into a hardened route for vagabond busses and tour-worn vans on their way to Paradise.  No checkpoints, no stops, in through the bumpy terrain with vehement shocks rolling into the forgotten wilderness with four wheels and an engine to transform the empty field into eternal rows of pop-top VW’s, converted school busses and derelict RV’s.

The world media was there video taping our slapstick for prime time TV, I need to rehearse but the show is on!  I need a costume but HERE I AM.  Playing host to ten thousand of the world’s finest hippies and their dogs expecting nothing less than the highest quality accommodations, welcoming thousands of European Zippies decked out in silver star-covered dresses and riding mules while checking email on a laptop.  Knowing full well the Tibetan monks were on their way in modern airliners to play a killer set of crazy funky throat noises.  Knowing full well the Hopi and Dineh were signing an intertribal agreement to join as one in the face of adversity (i.e. US Government) at this event, knowing full well I had to perform. 

In the distance came the lights flashing in a neo tribal strobe over barren rock, jumping up into the sky and back to the dirt with every bump, rut and wiggle in the road as the tractor trailer tires squeezed soft cinders into hard pack.  A steady current of noise and dust, exhaust and commotion right though the center of the camp to set up next to a flock of meditating diehard gung-ho TAO pacifist monks OHMing into really expensive microphones, broadcast on watts and watts of soundboard engineered bliss.  And from the trailers came the speakers, and from the speakers came the sound repeating itself into eternity a steady boom-ba-boom-ba-ba conjuring scrubby aspens and pines to shake their roots.  Conjuring major intense masses of wildly contorted humanesque dancers sipping and gulping from the never ending pots of psychedelic mushroom tea.  Couldn’t tell you WHAT kind of mushrooms, probably All of them thrown in over the course of the evening, add more water and keep on dancing, and then take a step back and listen to how the monks’ funky throat noises blended so intimately with the boom-ba-boom-ba-ba of modern European zippie rave thumping, and then look at the dancers, and look at the fine four-paper fatties floating through the crowd changing hands from hardened Dineh warrior to Rasta Indian to dirty hippie deadhead to straight-outta-dodge city boys.  Man I’ll tell ya, after two days of dancing we all looked the same, colored light red from caked on dirt and sweat.  By sunrise all the be-bopping crowds needed was some flour, sugar, baking soda and water, cooked lightly on a fire heated steel slab into pancakes, pancakes, and then we got out of hand taking five gallon buckets of pancake mix and dumping it over the 3x4 foot grills smoothed into even cakes over two feet wide.  Flipping those suckers with two extra long handled spatulas in unison like a masterful pizza tosser, smothering them with yogurt, fruit and syrup and rolling them into two foot crepes.  Holy shit man those that stayed up late enough, or woke up early enough to get a piece of that came back for more, after all we were the OM CHAPATI kitchen, the best free place to get great grub, and no matter where in the middle of nowhere you may be if you see our flag you know you are in the right place.

And into complete exhaustion, falling asleep in shrub grass and happy dreams is better than some folks who drank from the giant tub of miscellaneous drug laden tea, later known to have pounds and pounds of uncleaned Amenita Muscaria just waiting to completely fuck your week up.  Falling asleep to dogs playing Frisbee, drums playing wildly, fires dancing and singing karaoke.

“Hey, man” Jake said “ Psst…. “  And I got up and went over to the fire where a handful of determined partiers still remained “What’s cookin here, got coffee”..  “ We’s got more than coffee over here, we’s got the whole funky shebang for ya rolled into one, man” 

“Hey Sunsing, some girl’s looking for you, she was here earlier, she said something about costumes and drums and dancing and how it all mixed together into magic.  Really cool man, and she was looking for YOU! Well, she said she’ll be back, so I’ll let you know.”

 

Fate has an interesting way of preparing and aligning things so that when something that you have always looked forward to but gives you intense butterflies when you think about it finally happens it doesn’t really seem like that much of a big deal.  Like all that stuff you had thought and planned never actually made anything happen.  And so it was when I fell in love to shake me down and get me, it was no big thing just a calm and loving feeling ripping through me as a song so familiar I did not notice anything changed.  And so it changed me, it held me down, and I fell into love.  I found her sitting next to my dog up close to the fire, holding her hands up into the flame in trance with the strumming and humming coming from a well used guitar, looking into complete wholeness with me through flame and flicker, my heart skipped with the music and I sang.  I entranced and entrained the conscious mind to rejoice, to laugh and listen to many hilarious series of finely manicured fairytales. 

All that was well and good, it was love as usual.  Man meets Woman 101, but where I started to really dig it was when I saw her cuddled up with my two dogs in the morning next to the fire, heated with ash and coals under the cloak I had made and mended over two years of travel, as cute as anything.

 

In Victoria it was given to me, a nice dark green woven thick wool army blanket, immediately cut into a cloak with a Swiss army knife 10” neck hole to become a stark reminder of the way of keeping warm.   I lived and slept in that cloak, patched over rips and holes from jumping barbed wire fences with plaid and paisley fabric.  And it looked cool.  But through all the mileage it had I never saw it better fit until I saw it on her.  Baggy and stretched but warm and cozy, and the dogs loved her, though I still think they were jealous.

 

The drums were anxious, persistent, creating form and inhabiting to fulfillment.  Her eyes like sapphires burned holes into my retinas.  It couldn’t be that easy, that sweet.  The passion rose and fell with her hair to the rhythm, to a crescendo.  The sacred rituals began in step with the birth of a new age.  The birth of the white buffalo creased the horizon in the shadows of quaking aspen leaves, breathing life into the forgotten past, a history rich with hope, a future bright with sorrow.  The most likely pace consumed our intentions, at 55 mph in the charismatic canopy of a 57 Chevy apache.  Fastened to the roof of an old Bluebird school bus with hundreds of hand set screws we roamed the countryside, a view unparalleled and privacy unheard-of, road weathered in comfort we basked each other’s warmth, a honeymoon like no other beginning the day we met. 

 

In the sea foam sprung forth Aphrodite, rising to the shore and diving to the gravel below, beckoning with her long fingers to come forward in naked obsession.  Taunting in faint whispers she urged our union from beneath the persistent waves and we answered, announcing our love into the mist, sinking into the moist sand to be held in her gentle grasp.  Her fingers reached into our very core, holding onto our libido she taught ancient rituals in the moonlight.  Granting us new life, she gave us the gift of creation and together we learned the meaning of love.

 

The crisp foam dove through the Strait of Juan de Fuca as swift and focused as the shuttle through homespun wool, eternally changing the deep fiords of west coast Vancouver Island into large pier waterfronts with fancy trim and private clubs well stocked in any fine wino.  I headed back to the bus with my family herding the lazy tourists toward new adventures. We pulled into the wharf and turned the world’s largest screwdriver in the empty keyhole in the dashboard.  Nothing noticeable happened.  I jumped out, opened the hood, manually hooked up the headlights, fiddled with the battery cables (usually the negative wire) and BOOM!! 

I dodged dirty looks from underpaid ferry workers as we rolled outta there at an incredible 10 miles per hour.  If I were truly a Canadian I would describe it as 16 kilometers per hour and that would make me feel better as I drove through thousands of miles of slush and muck in 100 kilometer per hour winds blowing snow through newly installed insulation to get home to a –35 degree house because the power went out earlier when a large (6”) tree fell on the mainlines on some rural road too far from the substation to care about fixing it until tomorrow when the locals start chewing their cud one too time too many.  But I’m not in Canada now man, I’m back in the grand ol U S of fuckin A. 

The look in the face of the guy was incredible, I was not sure if he was old enough to realize what he was getting into but there was no way I would fit in the parking spot he was pointing to “I’m gonna park over there, on the OTHER side of the road so I don’t ding that support pole over there with my rear end, ok?” and proceeded to park in the WIDE OPEN parking spot in the OTHER side of the road.  Immediately two large and burly US CUSTOMS guys came knocking on our door.  These guys meant business all the way to the tilt of their caps, and were having quite a hard time convincing us of the ultimate sub ordinance that they were capable of strenuously repeating.  “We need to search this vehicle so if you don’t mind just stepping out and waiting in that building OVER THERE ACROSS THE ROAD we will be done in just a minute.”

Built with 1/4” thick plated steel with a full insulation and interior ply the original door of our bus was not flimsy like most stock model folding doors.  No chance bumping into this one too hard and having it open up wide, secured to what remained of the cast aluminum housing for the manual door opening mechanism was a 2000 pound test climbing rope stretched taut and fastened with a great big screwdriver.  I removed the screwdriver and let it drop to the door with a ting, stood up and invited the US CUSTOMS guys into OUR WORLD.  A couple puppies dropped down the step and I rushed out to herd them from oncoming traffic “can you please not let the dogs out of the bus?” I instinctively retorted.

“We need to search this vehicle so if you don’t mind just stepping out and waiting in that building OVER THERE ACROSS THE ROAD we will be done in just a minute”  they repeated in unison like tape recorded death threats with legs.  I knew full well those guys would NEVER EVER EVER be able to even start dissecting the contents of that bus without asking for a tax increase to pay for overtime. 

The customs building was nice and yellow.  We barely had a chance to disturb most of the passengers in line for the next ferry before the US CUSTOMS guys came back to talk to us. “Welcome to America” and we walked.

 

            The crowds stopped in mid-step, hovering in disbelief, with so many other things to see they waited for a break in the action to ask me questions.  “Wow you’re good at that, how did you learn, got a business card?”  The adze rose and fell in a flurry of cedar chips, gently carving the bell shaped drum shell from a solid, two foot long log.  The six foot, twenty pound chisel beat the wood into submission, rapidly removing the center into a hollow half round bowl.  Within four hours I would be completely finished, my arms shaking in exhaustion, rivers of sweat pouring down my face in the average summer breeze.  I rotated projects to keep coherent, using a variety of tools to stretch and activate my muscles in sequence and extend my productivity.  The adze with its precise repeated blows scalloped the outer edge into shape, the chisel in its sheer weight allowed no room for error as it shook the earth and chipped two inch wide slices from the core.  Final touches were done with a variety of handmade hook knives delicately smoothing the inside and enhancing the grain into a cascading fractal.  Over two hundred people were gathered watching the creation of a half dozen drums, happy to add their names to my mailing list and intent on the delivery.  In one afternoon I generated enough work to keep me busy for six months. 

            “Put that weapon down, sir”

“Huh” I looked up in astonishment, “It’s a tool, see” and continued carving.

            “Put that weapon down NOW!!!” the unruly policeman started toward me ready to pounce.  I couldn’t believe they were that afraid of my adze.  Taxes pay for their inferiority complexes.

            “Wouldn’t you think, if this were a weapon, this crowd would stay away from me?” I retorted, and packed up the tools in disgust, motioning to the bystanders only a few feet from us.

 

            As modern Bedouin gypsies we lived in three 16x32 foot green canvas army tents placed in a vacant field in the suburban ghetto surrounding the Evergreen State College on the outskirts of Olympia.  The rain cascaded through pinholes in the canvas to soak through everything important we owned and puddle on the dirt floor.  Mice were abundant, finding food quite plentiful in our makeshift kitchen, so that one morning I rose, a barely realized cup of coffee in hand, and stood to observe the work I had for the day.  I reached toward one unfinished drum and lifted it up to feel the weight of wood remaining to be carved, and there was a cute little mouse running around the inside bowl, apparently it had climbed in though the small opening on top, fell to the bowl, and was trapped.  Startled, I put the drum down as I had found it with the mouse still inside, put down my coffee mug, and in a half asleep trance again lifted the drum shell.  In an instant I had reached down and picked the mouse up by its neck, fingers placed carefully behind its jaws so it couldn’t bite, and hurtled it through the tall grass. Call it instinctual, call it life before coffee, I wouldn’t do that with a rational mind.