Hangin' with Sandy /// Classes Begin

i’d set the alarm for 6:25 (Tuesday, 17 May), enough time to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth before heading up from my room in the aptly named Lower Dorms, to the Temple, where an hour long Anusara yoga session begins every morning at quarter to seven. It’s a nice workout, and it feels good to be back in the yoga groove. i’m not sure exactly what Anasura implies, but it doesn’t seem that different from the Hatha yoga i was doing in Amsterdam.

It was 9:30 by the time i’d breakfasted and gathered the things i was taking with me on my first visit to see Sandy since a tearful farewell from her new home on Michael’s farm eleven days earlier. it was a gray day and a bit cool but not raining, for which i was thankful. i did have a red compact umbrella with me as i left Heartwood but was wearing nothing waterproof as i began walking down the 4.8-mile twisting, up-and-down dirt road leading to the main (paved) road to Garberville, another 10 or 12 miles distant. It’s a lightly traveled road, and i was counting on what i considered to be my presentable appearance plus a hoped-for neighborliness on the part of the few drivers who might come along to pick me up when they saw my outstretched thumb.

Much of my awareness as i huffed up and strolled down hills was on my breathing, and a simple enjoying of the immense beauty of the land- and skyscape around me: rolling green hills with an occasional house, pond and pickup nestled hither and yon; acres of evergreen blanketing slopes in every direction. Great cumulus clouds blew slowly and silently overhead, while closer to the mountaintops cloudlets drifted and hung like tufts of sheep’s wool stuck on barbed wire.

i saw a deer not far from the side of the road, who watched me until i waved to say hello, at which point it bounded into the bushes. Two dogs next to a house in a valley below me barked from a great distance when they saw me on the road. i stopped to chat with a horse who stood under a shelter in a field with one hind-hoof slightly raised; he cocked his ears this way and that at the sounds of my voice. A couple of quail startled me with the furious flurry of their flapping wings as they flew abruptly out of some roadside bushes just in front of me.

i watched with curiosity to see how a herd of cows would react to my solitary presence along the road, and to the bright red shirt i was wearing. Silly cows! They seemed unnecessarily startled, and then ran ahead of me rather than in the opposite direction so that in a short time we were again closely viewing one another. Some of them bellowed; i bellowed back. There was a mournful moo; i mooed mournfully back.

i found a penny on the road. Later i found a quarter! And later later, i found a dime! i smiled at the small but providential ways in which the abundance of the universe is shared. i focused awareness on how wonderful it was to find money, instead of feeling disappointment that it wasn’t more.

i stopped to watch a trio of bluebirds harass a hawk, who sat on a telephone wire trying his best to adopt a couldn’t-be-bothered attitude. But he was obviously too close to the bluebirds’ nest, because they would not give up their rattling noises, and their jumping closer and closer, and finally flying close over his head. The hawk spread its wings and without barely flapping them, allowed the wind to pick him up and swoop him through the branches of a huge tree not far away, where he re-perched. But only for a minute. The bluebirds were not letting up until he vacated the neighborhood, which eventually he was required to.

All this time, three vehicles (all pickups) passed me buy, and an hour-and-a-half later i found myself at the paved road. It was another couple of miles to the New Harris general store, where i planned on stopping to buy something to take to Michael, maybe a chocolate bar or two, despite tight finances.

Just then i recognized coming toward me the black Beetle belonging to the newly appointed director of Heartwood, with whom i’d shared the sauna the night before. He recognized me just as he passed me, jammed on his brakes and backed up quickly to ask with a bit of concern why i was walking away from Heartwood with such a big pack on my back. (In addition to a backpack, i was carrying an Ikea sack with the sleeping bag i’d borrowed from my roommate Nilo Tranquilo, as well as Sandy’s doggie bed: 4 pieces of foam and a liner.) i smiled and explained that it was the second of three days in a row that i had off from work, that i was going to visit my much-beloved pooch, and would be back the following evening. He wished me well and continued on his way.

Even though i was only a couple hundred meters short of the store where I wanted to buy chocolate, i did stick out my thumb for an approaching vehicle, two guys in a four-door pickup, not realizing that they too were going to the store. They pulled up to park just across from the store. They stopped to look at the asking price on the For Sale sign stuck in the window of a pickup out front. “Forty-eight hundred,” the younger one said to the other. He wore a white cap on top of his head similar in height to the one sported by the Cat in the Hat, partially concealing a huge mass of blonde dreds.

i spent a couple of minutes examining the chocolate section before deciding on three with rainforest ingredients, and one that promised to send proceeds to help save mountain gorillas. Does anyone ever check the claims made by the so-called, self-proclaimed environmentally friendly companies, i wondered again, and walked over to the checkout counter. A man in front of me had a beautiful handmade glass bong in his hand, and was asking what the purpose was of a particular hole in the device. As he placed his lips on it to test the draw, the older guy joked, “You blow on it, you buy it!” Just then his younger companion tipped over a small display of little brown bottles of ginseng juice that had been placed precariously close to the edge, one of which had broken; he offered some cash to the cashier, who i wasn’t sure had noticed the damage.

My three chocolate bars came to just over nine bucks with tax; i handed over a twenty, got my change and was headed out the store just in front of the two from the pickup. By the time i’d got my backpack and Ikea sack back on my back [say THAT three times fast! backpack and Ikea sack back on my back] and stuck my thumb out again, the dudes from the pickup had got in and started up, and pulled right over to pick me up!

The older one jumped out to re-arrange some things in the back, i threw my stuff in and we took off.

After i’d thanked them and told them where i was going, they went back to talking about who’d been in the store; they made some comments about a young girl who was going to load her pickup with chicken feed. After a while we got to talking about the usual things you discuss with strangers you’ve picked up: where they’re from, where they’re going. i told them about Heartwood and how excited i was to be working there while earning a certificate in Swedish massage, and the younger one, Pat, said that he’d gone to school and was still friends with the son of the founder, Bruce Berger. i asked if he was at Heartwood too, and Pat said no, but that he was still “in the neighborhood.”

Now all this time, Pat and John were smoking and passing a joint, and knowing the type of people most pot-smokers are, i knew it would be a matter of time before they offered me a toke, and so I started asking myself the question What would I do when they offered it to me? For such a bloke it was no joke. A habit that’d been difficult to control in Amsterdam was left behind, and the last time i’d had a smoke was my last day there, the morning of Nov. 22. i’d had a few opportunities since then, and had easily and with little hesitation declined them all.

Well, i’ll tell you, there were a things that went through my mind. 1) i’d been walking and hitching with a cumbersome (though not really heavy) load on my back pretty much non-stop for almost two-and-a-half hours, and while immensely enjoying what i perceived to be an adventure, was also immensely relieved and thankful to finally have gotten a ride. 2) While turning down their offer to smoke might not have been considered rude, they might have considered my sharing what they offered to be friendly, and 3) i didn’t have to work the next day. So when the joint appeared between the seats, i took it and simply said thanks. It was of course locally grown; and one puff was more than sufficient.

It did put a much more relaxed and personal spin on things: i told them about how excited i was to be going to see my dog; about the ad i’d placed in the Redwood Times, and the local grower who’d taken a risk in answering and inviting a stranger onto his property. At one point, i’d made an imitation of some animal; i can’t at the moment quite recollect what it was; maybe it was of the cows that I’d passed earlier. But it led Pat to relate a tale of having stayed on beachfront in Maui where whales could be heard at night: moaning and whistling and slapping their huge tales till it sounded like a drum session, at which point he produced the most remarkable imitation of a whale i think i’ve ever heard.

In any event, i soon noticed the sign marking the spot on the road at which i’d descend. Pat pulled over and reached his hand back to say goodbye, as did John. i said, Fellas, you KNOW how many hours of waiting and walking you saved me from, and i’m grateful to you. They said it was no thing at all and just as i got out, my water bottle dropped to the ground. it was a good indication of how stoned they’d gotten me, which reminded me to say, with a little laugh, Hey and thanks for the blow, that was good stuff, first time i smoked any since Nov. 22! And they replied with something along the lines of how good it was for them to have been there with me too. Special occasions call for special decisions, I replied, feeling great gratitude at finally having gotten a ride almost all the way to my destination and still thoroughly enjoying the adventure and the excitement of getting closer to seeing Sandy. They laughed and waved, i closed the door and picked up my stuff as they drove off.

It was 12:00, and i had another hour’s walk this time all down another dirt road on which i was pretty sure i would not get picked up. And before getting started, i had a second laugh when i realized how much I was struggling at getting that Ikea bag restrapped to my back! Slipping an arm through each of two cloth handles had seemed like a pretty straightforward maneuver the last time i'd tried it.

i had been plenty warm enough when walking mostly uphill from Heartwood and in relatively calm and dry conditions. But now at a higher elevation and with a light mist beginning to fall and the wind picking up, i had to stop twice: first to untie my jacket from around my waist, which required the removal first of my water bottle, then the Ikea sack, and finally the backpack. i’d only walked a few more minutes when i had to stop a second time to take out my umbrella, and again remove all that stuff!

i had another laugh when i suddenly spotted a second herd of cows in the distance, already studying me as intently as the first had. Now my red shirt was covered by my blue coat, but i was holding aloft a bright red umbrella that in the green, brown and gray environment could probably be seen for miles! These cows also all began to run at a certain point, and again in front of me. And i was amused to see that they stopped en masse near a gate. Did they think i was bringing food? Or that perhaps i might set them free? Apparently neither, for as i got still closer, they again took off, this time in the other direction. Silly cows.

i realized at this point that when i put down my things to get out the umbrella, i’d left behind the flowers i’d been picking for Michael. i turned around to see how far it was i’d come since then, and seeing the slope of the hill behind me, i turned immediately on my heel with the thought that surely other flowers as fine as those would also be found and picked. Silly me.

It was 1:00 as I approached Michael’s property and saw Sandy gnawing on a bone in the yard. Poor thing: she has grown quite deaf, and she didn’t really notice me coming till I was nearly on top of her! But she was soon a twisting ball of tail-wagging, best as she still could and felt the urge to, but was soon back to her bone as I said hello to Mike and to two workers of his I hadn’t met. I’d spoken to Katie before on the phone and so was glad to be able to put a pretty face with her name. Her boyfriend Jeff was also there, a pleasant, tall, brown-haired guy with a quick smile.

We chatted some, but Katie and Jeff were about to leave to run errands in Garberville before heading back to Michael’s house, in a small town in the middle of the so-called Avenue of the [redwood] Giants, and so they were discussing with Mike things that needed doing while i unpacked Sandy’s bed and attempted to re-assemble it. i didn’t realize till the next day that one of the things that made it more complicated than it needed to be was my forgetting to insert the large oval bottom piece which is useful in holding the liner in place over the two other foam pieces which form the bed’s wall. It really is unnecessary to mention any other factors that may have complicated this simple task.

Fortunately there was more important work to be done: opening and spreading in a greenhouse still being constructed the contents of about 12 50-pound bags of various kinds of soil enrichments: shredded coconut fiber, kelp, seashell, fertilizer, dolomite and 5 bags of guano, about 25 lbs. each, which (i asked) came from a cave somewhere in Arizona. i made pretty, swirling patterns in the rich dark soil as i ran around trying to evenly distribute the contents of each bag, and then spent a good hour or so raking and mixing it in, before going inside and making dinner for Mike and myself.

There’s no electricity or running water at the house yet, so it’s got a really rustic feel to it, like you’ve gone camping. We had pasta and sauce, with garlic, peppers, tomato and onion thrown in. He’s pretty well-stocked. Then it was Mike onto his mattress with a couple of dogs snuggling up next to him, and me into the sleeping bag Nilo had let me borrow, with Sandy curled up not far away, and a wood-fire crackling in the stove to keep the cool California night away.

The next day was some more muscle work: turning over the soil, a spadeful at a time, in order to mix in all of the stuff i’d thrown on it the day before. Did that for a couple of hours before coming in to make us an omelet for breakfast – Mike has been pretty run down with a bad cold for a couple of days, and so was doing his best to take it easy, kind of difficult for a guy who’s used to getting so many different things done in different places – and then, man i was just zonked, and both Mike and i went back to sleep for a late-morning snooze. We were awakened by the sound of Jeff and Katie’s pickup truck pulling up, and an hour or so later, after i gave Sandy a big hug and kisses good-bye, Mike and i took off for the ride back to Heartwood, his first visit there (i was surprised to learn) in five years of living in Humboldt County. i invited him in for dinner, but he was on his way to replace an engine in some kind of a pump somewhere. He put eighty bucks into my hand before i got out for the work i did around his place. What a guy.

i believe i’ve got a bike of my own, a nice multi-speed mountain bike, and i’ll be going back there on occasional Wednesdays or Fridays, the two days during the week when i have neither class nor work.

Today was the first day of classes: Massage from 1:45 to 3:45; Therapeutic and Professional Standards (an ethics class) from 4 to 6; dinner 6 to 7; and then Massage again, from 7:15 till 9:15. Normally the evening session will consist of supervised practice, but for the first few weeks we will be learning all about the chakras, one a week for the next seven weeks, with an overview for tonight’s class. The text we’re using [Principles and Practices of Massage Therapy] cost $59! But we also have a beautiful text for anatomy called Trail Guide to the Body, which i got second-hand at a $15-savings. The ethics class was quite lame, but i'm thrilled with our Massage instructor, a woman named Bess from Minnesota, about whom more later.

During the dinner-break tonight, i took my plate – mixed veggies, rice, marinated tofu and carrot-and-ginger soup – down to the hot-tub behind the lodge and ate there as i soaked in the warm swirling waters and enjoyed the sunny view over the mountains. A couple of small deer nibbled in the tall grass, and a red-headed hummingbird rested near the top of a small bush a few feet away.

Right, it’s 10 pm and i’ve got to walk back up this big hill to the lodge where the one computer for general use is located and post this to the blog before clambering back down and collapsing into bed. It was a full moon last night so i didn’t need my flashlight to find the path, but i think i’ll be taking it with me tonight, just in case. i’m getting up about 7 tomorrow in order to catch breakfast and a ride toward town with a Heartwood staffer who’s said to be leaving for Garberville about 8. The start of classes means a new schedule, and that this time i won’t be able to spend the night at Mike’s, unfortunately. So i’ll be leaving by bike for Heartwood about 5 or so: plenty of time, i figure, to get back before sunset, and plenty of exercise, too.