The Giants

Land of Giants, crazy Emerica. I had not expected to be back here, one year ago. 

Yet here I am, Back in that City, that crazy city, that I love, along the Hudson.

The rush of people, the vibrant buzzing energy down on the street. The high vibe of the high life in Manhattan, creativity is so abundant and even the homeless seem ambitious. 

Everyone wants to make it here, score in New York, and make it Big. 

Coming out of the alloy tube, time traveling across the Atlantic, screened and mangled I was thrown out once more onto the night lit streets of Brooklyn. Sirens ever howling somewhere in the distance, and suspicious fellas hanging out on the corner as I exit the subway station, which is actually overhead. The train rushes on, right through the night, and I make it to the safe haven of my dear friend Audrey's house That I know from the volcanic shores of lake Atitlan in Guatemala. We spoke and shared our adventures since our last meeting till the wee hours before a much needed sleep. Only one night I reposed there however, before heading to the sweat lodge camp in upper state New York again near the beautiful lake Ashokan.  

The dear family I had gotten to know one year back gathered under the tall eaves of green maple and hickory again, and we made camp for the weekend of Labourday. 

These are some wonderful friends, and even though our last meeting was brief, I felt immediately part and welcome to this new world Bigheart Tribe.

It got real cold real quick that weekends, but with the help of my family, we all stayed warm and cosy, and the warmth of the lodge and the clear river water we were cleansed of many an unnecessary issue, before moving on. 

Back to that big city than, to hang out more with my Australian friend, I got to know her life in the borough, where she was building up a cacao and yoga flow studio, in the middle of the bustle of the city. I got to know some more interesting spots of Brooklyn, made it to the House of Yes one late night after a cacao ceremony party. A crazy cool mix-up of many scenes of my past and maybe future, the House features things like a swinging cage where any stripper can wing her arts if the call comes. Super tall cross dressers and a glitter ball dance floor plus dancing pole, people of every color and creed, and even a pinball machine!

In the ecstatic masses I encounters a being carrying a tray full of dice-like beads. And the one I picked up read: "Gentle" on one side and "friend" on the reverse.

Was this an omen for what was to transpire in the days to come?

Having tried to get out of the city by ways of ride share for a few days now, the very next morning after the House I received I call from my dear big heart brother Rick, who offered me to ride with him on a moving truck up to Buffalo, NY, right on the shore of one of the great lakes, right near Niagara falls in fact.
One night I stayed in the house of this gentile bear of a friend. I helped pack the truck and next day early we drove right across the green and blue state of New York, north and ever west till we reached our destination; a white American house in a forlorn suburb of a middle size town, with a veranda of course. 

After offloading all our carefully wrapped wares, the day drew to an end. But we, Rick, his well spirited Mexican employee and I, none of us ever having been to the falls, couldn't resist the urge, and so made the 20 minute drive to Niagra as the dusk settled in. We reached the thundering wall of falling water with the last light of day, the cascades already lit up in changing shades of colored light, amazing us and the rest of the crowd that had gathered here, even at this unlikely hour.

Across the water rose a full sparkling city in the land that is Canada.
It did not matter that darkness fell upon us now, as we had seen the falls, for now and forever, and carried them in our hearts.

 While driving up to Buffalo, I was already planing my advance, strongly determined to reach the west coast this year, in the light of last years events. So I got on the bus next morn, a ride from Chicago down south already seemingly acquired. But as usual, the universe never quite is what it seems. And so my ride evaporated even before the sun had risen, and I was now on my way to Chicago without the promise of shelter for the oncoming night. The gods treated me kindly though, so after skimming the shores of lake Erie and Michgan the whole day, riding through the wide open plains, we rolled into the wind city, great old Chicago. The lake shore provided me with a most hospitable shelter that night though, and I found a dry patch of green grass under a shrubby bush, near a dear rabbit and the concreted shores of this vast expanse of water, that the eye is unable to cross.
Next morning, I discovered that some kind of grey aphid had painted almost all of my belongings a fierce orange upon touch, that I now still carry as a tribal marking, whatever that was I can only guess at. I wandered along the lake's coast for a bit, this water, which has all carateristics of the sea, apart from being salt.

Than I took the train. The texas Eagle. And let it carry me across this vast continent of America, with it's grandesque mountains and vast open plains. The first day was all cultured land, becoming ever more desolate and arid. An occasional red barn might split the great open sky in two parts, but otherwise fields went as far as the eye could see. Night fell, still rolling down the tracks, and when the morning emerged we were in northern Texas.
We had crossed straight through the heart of America, and the landscape was now distinctly different from the north and east. This was the South, and getting dirtier. All day we drove through that Lone star state, and as dusk settled in once more, we were still in it. That night we stopped for a few hours in fine San Antonio, where I discovered a beautiful system of low lying canals weaving through the modern city grid, where huge old ceder trees grew from the original river bed, now flanked by bars and restaurants, but still with a very charming feel, quite unlike anywhere else in America. I sat there for a while, with my feel swinging in the cool water, as the evening heat was still on, and watched the ducks peacefully drifting by in this Western faerytale of a city. On it went, and next morning we were still in Texas! So huge this once upon a time country, but now quickly approaching New Mexico.

Now the land was dry and scorched. Much more like the Texas I had imagined before witnessing that in fact it has some really lush and green parts. We came to the weird outpost of El Paso on the Mexican border. I knew we were at the border at once, because there across the Trump fence, there was hill upon hill of chaoticly organized but colorful slums, rising up like a wall. The fence, still under construction, is an 8 meter high array of iron spikes along a ditch on the Mexican side, cutting right through the heart of this border city, Gosh, doesn't this remind me of something....

The land became drier and drier, and now there were almost no fields to be seen. Only the occasional ranch or fertile valley, fed by vast irrigation schemes that made the yellow dessert bloom, and rows upon rows of Pecan trees greeted us with their shiny green leaves.
Now the sky turned pink, and huge thunder clouds filled the wide expanse. No rain would ever come of it, but the purple towers of highly charged water vapor were a majestic sight indeed.
Openness, emptiness, desert by name and actuality, this is what we now witnessed, enormous long valleys, much resembling mongolia's rolling plains now engulfed us, and it was upon the third night that I gathered my stuff and left this rolling metal island, and was warmly received by Teak and her Husband Gijs, who picked me up in Tucson, Arizona, and took me home to Phoenix.

Here I was, back again at that strange and comfortable life in the dessert city. Returned to this cool and wonderful castle on the outskirts of nature, the strange Cactei and Havelinas all around, warded by the Suguaro.
Coming back here had been one of my objectives, this time by land, and now it was time to plan the rest of my journey to the west. Only a short jump really to LA, a mere 6 hour drive. First however, I was in Phoenix for a few days, and helped my stepmother with some jobs around the house. I made a few nice hikes through this ever baffling landscape and than one day we drove up in Teak's very comfy Subaru to the Meteor crater at Flagstaff.
A huge hole in the ground, like a valley, but perfectly round. Hardly eroded through the conserving atmosphere of the dessert, in that aspect at least. Some 2 kilometer across, and several hundreds of meters deep. The scale and power of the impact it had is hard to grasp. And this was only a small piece of debris it is said, no larger than a colonial age trade ship, but infinitely more dense.
Would it impact now, all within sight would instantly be destroyed.
But now, after some 50.000 years, it seems quite peaceful there, surrounded by a vast cattle ranch as it is, and pretty dead.
What I found most impressive was the sight of it as one drives up to it from the highway. Where one may witness how the crust of the planet was torn open, liquefied for an instant by the immense heat and pressure, and a whole mountain ridge created.

All that I write more than 40 days ago, while hiding from the fires in northern California where I than found myself. Since than, I have fallen in love, made many new friends, and learned a bunch of new skills. But let us now continue with the story in correct order....

Coming back to Phoenix, I soon found a ride to LA.  One of the last nights there I took the red Ford pickup truck again and parked it somewhere in the nearby dessert, made a bed in the bed of the vehicle and slept under the open stars. The next morning, upon making a little hike, I met with a lovely cactus that produces some kind of death balls. As soon as you touch them they attach themselves to your bare skin, any skin, even your fingers, and work their needle like barbed spines deeper into your flesh with every movement. You have no defence, Shaking only makes it worse. It is vicious. Taking a rock and painfully tearing this little monster from your flesh is the only solution, and avoid them in the future at all cost.

My LA ride was a young student girl with whom I chatted straight through the dead dessert and down to the orange country. She dropped me somewhere 1.5 hours drive outside the center of the city, and we were already in it's suburbs. It's that big! After being told by various people that there was no way to get to my destination (Venice beach) that night even though it was only 6 in the evening (American public transport is grotty). Not giving up. I finally managed to get to a greyhound station that would take me through the night towards Sequoia NP.
Screw it, No Venice beach than, Let' just ride! So, as the sun rose I found myself in the sleepy town of Visalia, where I stocked up on food and made for the hills. Only two rides later I was cruizin' up the mountain in a extra low Audi A8 with a Canadian Chinese guy who took me from 500 to 2000 meters altitude. Gosh, sure was a change of temperature, even in the bright sunlight of the afternoon.
I said goodbye to him on the park parking lot, now surrounded by giant red furry baobab like Sequoia trees.
After gathering some information, alone I headed out onto a trail through the woods. Not all sequoia they were, but interspersed with many a respectable old pine and fir, that would certainly catch the eye in any regular forest. Here they were like children though, dwarfed by the immense dinosauric branches of the ancients. They just keep on growing, century after century. Never die unless they fall over or burn, and than still their blackened stumps are colossal, the size of a house or more and higher. The play of life and fire, of the green and the red. So solemn some of them, standing in small groups, perhaps once, thousands of years ago sprung from one root, or one tiny seed. These are the absolute mammoths of our planet. If we cut them, they will never come back, not in 20 generations on men. They are like living fossils.
High and cold is what they like, where life is slow and long. And cold it became.

My body remembering a chilly night, next morning I packed my tent in between showers of icy sleet, my neck still cramping from looking up at the trees all day. I was not prepared for this, I was coming to sunny California, what the heck!
I planed my escape, but as I stood hitchhiking to get out of the place, I was picked up by two young park rangers on their day of, and I was to be their entertainment. They bought some beers (10 am) and after dropping my gear drove me to another grove of giant trees where we hung out a bit and explored the hollow inside of a giant fallen one, laying like a tunnel uo the hill, I felt like in the belly of a great blue whale. We than took to cruizing the countryside and visiting a rocky knoll that supposedly had a great view, but it was closed. One of my new friends did proceed to steal a plastic garden chair from there though, which surprised me, being a ranger...
I spent the nigh in one of their cabins, but not after my very girl oriented companion had managed to convinced the 2 lovely french girls Yuna and Anna to join us to a shared dinner at his co Ranger's house. This great character was part of the bear team, that tracks bears and makes sure they stay away from humans for their own good, as you might imagine, he had some interesting stories to tell, and the warmth of his house was most welcome as there was now 5 cm of snow covering all that was outside.
Yuna and Anna shared one bed that night, and my ranger friend and I both had our own, much to his dislike.
The girls were much of my own kind, traveling Psy-tribe on their way up from Guatemala to northern California. We immediately got along very well and so next morning I left with them in their rental whip (car), going to Yosemite NP.

I had given up going to Yosemite this year round because of transportational complication, but now I was super happy to get there anyway.
It was just gorgeous there. A narrow valley with huge grey boulder like cliffs on either side. A home to a small native tribe once, the entire valley is now tastefully designed for Eco-tourism.
We made some stunning hikes that day still and the next, climbed up past several powerful waterfalls, sometimes climbing up steep rocky shelves full of tame chipmunks and rocks carved by countless aeons of wind and water
That night I slept on top of an enormous boulder that time had once deposited here and was now deeply embedded in the soft valley soil. Natives had carved small grinding holes out of its flat top for grinding acorns, one of their main foodstuffs. Yet now it lay forgotten, and I lay on top of all that. The girls slept in the car down on the hotel parking lot, and next morning we sneaked into this massive wooden wonder of a thousand trees, where the fireplace was lit and all the western comforts provided amidst art deco pleasantry. Free hot choco warmed our hands, and we were on our way down to the bay. They dropped me right in downtown San Fransisco, bewildered even though I was, at the sudden change of scenery.

It had been 17 years since I had last been at this side of the Pacific, half a lifetime for me.
Yet I found my aunt Sophia all the same, across the magnificent rusty red expanse of the golden gate bridge. Se received me warmly in her super cosy one floor home, with thick carpets and ceiling lights. She showed me the Poekynook, the business she has built up, where kids can come and create their own beany baby dolls and paraphernalia, amidst a sea of created objects dangling from wall and ceiling, in the fancy town of Mill Valley.

Once again, I did not linger too long, as her life is busy, and so was mine about to become.
She connected me with some friends of hers that lived in the country side about 2 hours north of the Bay, and next day I got another ride up there, crammed into a small car full of household stuff, a baby and it's mother, who had to hold a big wooden statue of some kind of eastern deity awkwardly across her lap to make it all fit.
We got there though, and so I ended up with this lovely family and their cute baby daughter Mila that live in a small richly wooded valley with thick oaks and Madrone trees in a red house
under the eaves.
They let me stay in their trailer for a bit, and I enjoyed the beautiful lands around there while helping them out a bit in the garden.

Soon I was connected to a community nearby, and without further due moved there, high up on the hills overlooking a beautiful valley. One of the first people I met there immediately asked me if I accepted hugs, and me and this lovely woman soon became close friends. Her name is Peace and we spend a lot of time together while doing our daily community chores. Community life engulfed me whole, and the days were filled with taking care of each other, cooking and eating wonderful meals, tidying up around and inside the house, having meetings, playing hacky sack, burning excess stuff from the garden, talking, lots of talking, and than once a week we would all be silent for a day, to give rest to our ears and and focus on what is ever inside of us all.
Than one night, as Peace and I slept in one of the living yurts, we got woken up in the middle of the night.
"There is a fire on the mountain" Spoke Sam, we must all gather in the house. The wind had been crazy all day previous, with strong sharp blasts whipping up dust wherever we went.
Once dressed and back at the house, we could all see the fire, and how quickly it spread and took the whole now darkened mountain in front of us in less than 30 minutes
New fires sprung up in several places, and joined together to make one giant sea of flame across our whole horizon.
We decided to all get some essentials together in case we needed to make a sudden evacuation.
It never happened that night, but we all slept huddled close together for what remained of this weird night.

Next day passed, and we started to hear reports of how many other counties had been affected by the nightly fires. 
We had been lucky with the wind blowing away from us, but two days later, the fires still not contained, the police made us evacuate nonetheless.
So 11 others and me, plus 9 dogs, big and small piled into Sam's Moms house a 45 minute drive away, for now spared from the flames. It were a crazy few days. Not knowing what was going on, when we could go back or what would happen. Luckily we had each other. And I started to grow more and more fond of Peace.
Eventually the fires died down, with the help of firefighters from all over the world, and all that remains are scorched hillsides. Now that the rains have come is seems strange to think about those dry times. Cause once it starts raining, it almost doesn't stop for 3 months.
So we moved our lives mostly inward, made fires in the stove and made sauerkraut or delicious sugar free treats.
Often in the morning, when Peace and me would come into the house (we slept in a big tent in the forest) someone would be doing yoga, or meditate. There would be collective planking sessions or house cleanings. It was really wonderful, and I have learned so much.
I feel thankful for having met Peace, who has enhanced my life in such an unexpected way. Our interaction has been a true catalyst for personal growth, and she made me dared to be in love against logic.
Time passed quickly this way, and so it happened that my permitted stay in the US came to an end. I said goodby to all the beautiful beings there all of them memorable, like Johnny with his amazing morning Beatologic exponentiations of vedic mythology and ancient politics, and his jazz style bamboo flute play on the balcony.
Or David with his amazing vitalizing morning cacao, maca, macha, mate, date, coconut butter bliss smoothy concoctions or other scrumptious creations.
Most of all, though, I will miss Peace, as a part of my heart stays with her. Luckily I also carry a part of her heart with me as a treasure, and I feel so enriched because of it.

Than I returned to the home of Sirius and Rose, together with my aunt, and we shared the Thanksgiving meal with them and some 15 of their friends in that cosy red house under the eaves.
Now back down it went, and after a quick browse through San Fran, with its many homeless and tents on the sidewalks, continued down by Chinatown bus straight to San Diego, right on the border of Mexico, Tijuana.
Yes, it may be hard to get into this country at times, but leaving is so easy that I managed to miss the American immigration all together. Simply because there isn't one. They don't care if you leave, only if you try to enter. Mexico welcomed me most warmly though. What a stark contrast, one side of the wall, it's completely Emerica, other side, taco vendors, dramatic Latin music, sidewalks broken up, uniform chaos everywhere. I love it!
Bienvenido, a Mexico!