In the white wash of Gaviota Bay

e- Day seven, Hobson Bay, California -

​Sipping hot coffee, I cannot help but admire the golden glimmering waves reflecting in the window of our campervan, just beyond the jagged grey boulders protecting us from the rising Pacific.  Seated on silver steel beneath the cries of a California Gull, a nesting Night Heron and, as always, our trusty Raven, I replay the phantom work assignments and plots of racial injustice that kept me hot in my sleep; Worn weary from a week on the road and a lifetime of beauty.  

Finished The Road just yesterday with Sal Paradise in the white wash of Gaviota Bay.  There beneath the rusted red rails and beyond the tar ridden sand, beside cascades of yellow iridescent metamorphic rock, with the gliding wings of vultures four feet wide, the cool green waves rolled over my thighs and I said goodbye to Dean Moriarty and hello to Neil Cassidy, Will Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Henry Miller, all by the way of my spirit animal Patti Smith.  

We found Solvang's broken wind harp and 20 minutes of silence along Jesus' death march, beholding the rolling vineyards of their mission, and forgave our wandering ways beside a slow dancing cactus and the angry roots of a wild cyprus.  

We made stop motion films with our GPS and took winding 101 through Santa Barbara's fertile breast, where we made lives of running moms and power brokers, before we grabbed a pound of sirloin and met our faithful road.  

Digging for soft gold along Juan Bautista De Anza's path, where he once led 30 families 1,210 miles from Tubae Precidio to San Francisco 1,240 years ago.  There and then, his soldiers went astray and incited the Yuma and Mojave spirits; Men and families who rose up and burnt Anza's missions and pueblos, killing 103 soldiers and 80 more, mostly women and children, and closed Anza's pass for 44 years.  But Anza's sails persevered and built their home among the eleven blue green rolling hills, along the opposing estuary of our Manifest Destiny.  

We are flower children hugging bone trees, worshiping copper beetles along our dream walk.  Drinking water from droughted land and sweeping sand from our beachside van.  A wandering poet and watercolor princess, pouring whisky and fire in Hobson's purple night; Playing two note songs in the mountain's starlit silhouette.  

​We have finally arrived, to leave again, at last...

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via GIPHY

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via GIPHY