Bob’s house is at 7000′. The first day up in the mountains with him, I felt like I had cotton in my mouth. But the next couple of days I felt surprisingly good. It was probably the elation of being out in the powdery snow, with the blue skies, the cold clear air, so different from California. After falling a few times I got the knack of snowshoeing.

On the 3rd day we went up with Bob’s friends Larry and Billy. It was a beautiful Rocky Mountain morning. Bob leads the way, he’s like a coyote following animal trails. He keeps his pace down so we can keep up. Larry and I discover common interests is Native Americans, Baja, and wild animal skeletons and I’m so excited I forget to be tired.

We’re up in the hills for almost two hours and on the way back discover these mountain lion tracks. This was a big cat. You can almost see him, bounding through the snow, fwump, fwump, fwump.

Bliss at the Beach

I was walking back from the beach last night when my neighbor Andrew pulled alongside in his car.’ Hey Lloyd I love that book (Builders of the Pacific Coast). I gave mine away so can I buy another copy?” “I’ll give you one,” I said, so he came by the house and I handed him a copy. “I just caught a halibut,” he said, and so last night we had halibut about an hour old, cooked in butter and garlic and you know, there’s is nothing like FRESH fish. It’s really different. Fresh in the markets is going to be a day or two old at best.

I’ve been spending more and more time at the beach, usually at the end of the day. You can never tell whet it will be like at the shore. Sometimes it will be windy or cold or the combination of tides and light will not be anything special. But sometimes you’ll hit it when all the elements are working. Last Friday night was one of those seashore moments. It was exquisite. I’d had the flu and was just starting to feel the spark of life again. I waded in the shallow water to reconnect with life on the planet. It was a pleasant night, and the water was relatively warm. There were maybe 40 people scattered out along the beach. It occurred to me we were all feeling the same thing, experiencing this harmonious blending of the elements. It raised the spirits and soothed the soul.

A couple of recent beach graffiti:

Korean Translation of Home Work

Our book Home Work has just been translated into Korean. They completely redesigned the book, and it’s a delight. Some of the photos we had used small, they used large. They cut out about 75% of the text. It’s a playful job of page design. Of course, our contract says they will not alter or change anything from the original, but who cares? I wrote and told them we loved it and we’re trying to buy 15 copies to give out to the builders.

Stanford Tailgate Party

Last week I went to a tailgate party before a Stanford football game. It was thrown by John Brodie, the great Stanford (and 49er) quarterback and his friends. Brodie had a stroke a few years ago, but is making a steady comeback. There were maybe 50 guys there, most of them jocks. I’m surprised any of them remember me, because the last 2 years of college I spent more time surfing in Santa Cruz than I did hanging around the campus. Plus I’m also the only guy I can think of from Stanford who has long hair (not to mention the earring). I definitely inhabit a different universe from these guys, having left the security of the business world in 1965 for the lifestyle and interests of the next-younger generation. But even though we’ve taken different paths, I still feel affection for many of these guys. It’s fascinating to see how life (and time) has treated us all. It’s like time travel.

Misc. notes:

Baja and Mexico: Next year I’m going to take some time off. I thought I was going to do a book on Baja, but things have changed (degraded) so much down there that this project is on hold. My current plan is to explore the coast of mainland Mexico, rather than spend more time in Baja

New Camera: I just got a dynamite little camera, a 14+ megapixel Canon Powershot G-10. Lens is 28-140 mm (about 35-200 mm in old lense terms). If I’m traveling on an airplane and don’t want to lug around my huge and heavy Canon EOS 20D, this is a great alternative. It shoots RAW. This has just been out for a few weeks. Check it out on DPReview

GPS for the Truck I finally got a GPS, a Garmin Nuvi 660. Wow! Easy to use, it’s phenomenal. I didn’t realize that these things show your car tracking along and the street you’re on as well as the cross street you’re approaching. You watch your car moving along the screen. Think of the satellites continually tracking hundreds of millions of cars with pinpoint accuracy. A voice guides you. If you deviate from the route, it announces: “Recalculating,” and gives you an amended route. Kevin Kelly just did a writeup of the cheaper Nuvi 350 on CoolTools

“I pulled into Nazareth…” I got into Prescott (Arizona) around six last night. It was March 30, the day my cousin Michael Kahn was born 72 years ago, and I was coming from a celebration of Mike’s life and art at his creekside sculptural compound of buildings near Cottonwood, Arizona. Mike left this world on December 22, 2007 (the winter solstice), a victim of Pick’s Disease, a degenerative brain disease similar to Alzheimer’s. His wife Leda organized an outdoor gathering, and about 125 friends of Mike’s and Leda’s showed up to talk about and remember the life of this gentle man who touched many people’s lives with his art and presence.

Mike several years ago

There were 10 pages of Mike’s buildings in my book Home Work: Hand-made Shelter. The NY Times did a large article on Mike’s buildings (called “Eliphante,”) on January 31st, titled A Handmade Home

I’ve been socked in for months now, finishing my book on builders of the Pacific Coast, so it’s been great to get out on the road again. 80 degrees in Phoenix, all riiight! after a cold Northern Calif. winter, felt good, like Baja, and then rolling northward in a rented Nissan Sentra, through saguaro-studded desert, then into the higher elevations north on I-17, with an elegance in the landscape, different shades of red earth, hillsides of blooming yellow flowers, and then a cut by the side of the road that was a delicate light purple. I did a double-take.

As I got close to Mike’s, a Credence song came on KCLD, the “Good old rock & roll” station in Flagstaff. Things were feeling good. I turned up the volume. The party the next day was great. Good vibes, good people, good food. In between talking to a bunch of Mike’s friends and family, I shot pictures, and the images describe his work better than words. Here are just a few of many.

Inside “Eliphante”

Door to “Pipe Dreams,” the building containing Mike’s latest paintings

When I get out on the road, I’m overwhelmed with people and places and things I run across. I can only get a fraction of them on to my blog. I figure I need two clones to do everything I want to do. More and more I’ve come to employ randomness in my travels. Finding places to stay by instinct, whatever is available at the end of the day wherever I am, and asking locals where to eat or hear music. On this trip I allowed an extra couple of days to mosey around, so I left Eliphante around 4 in the bright desert sun and headed for Prescott. I ended up checking into a 106-year old 79-room hotel in downtown Prescott, with a morning sun-facing 3rd story room looking down on a park, with wi-fi, HBO, and free full breakfast in its bistro. It wasn’t until an hour after I arrived that I realized I’d checked in to the Hotel St. Michael. On Mike’s birthday. Cosmic. I should add that Mike and I were close when growing up. I was a year older, and both he and I (and our dads, who were brothers) all looked alike. One guy at the gathering said he looked at me across the yard and burst into tears, I looked so much like Mike.

It’s a sunny morning in Prescott, which turns out to be a great town. Good food abounds, lots of music, there are “fixer-upper” dumps for under $200K, air is clear, sun bright, it’s a relief to get out of money-choked California.

I love this country. I love the land and I love the people. I say this from having been in 45 states, from 6 round-trip cross country coast-to-coast car trips, from hanging out with cowboys in Nevada, surfers in California, publishers in NYC, and farmers in Kansas. I love the canyons of the southwest and the woods of New England and the shores of Cape Cod and the beaches and arroyos of the west coast from Canada to Baja. My mother’s family has been here since the 1700s and fought in the American revolution. So I feel I can criticize what my own country has become. A pervasive sickness has crept into America and is manifested in all its ugly and greedy and homicidal horrors by the Bush Administration. My heart is sick with what this corrupt bunch of corporate thugs is doing in the name of America, and it’s become so serious and pervasive that I feel compelled to mention this bummer aspect of today’s reality. The American flag, as it’s being flown by individuals these days, represents support for the destruction of Iraq. This administration should be brought before the international war crimes tribunal, especially Rumsfeld and Cheney, the Himmler and Goering of the 21st century. God, how can we get rid of these criminals and shift this country’s perspective and behavior? Before they invade Iran.

I got back yestrday from 5 days travel by boat up the west coast of Vancouver Island. We set out from Tofino, a town at the end of the road. We went 40 miles north, stopping at maybe 10 different places to visit people and/or to let me shoot photos (550 of them). We saw bears, got battered by the ocean, hung out with a bunch of wonderful, self-sufficient coastal people, caught fish, got drunk (well, one of us did), had whales spouting all around us one day, went swimming…it’s going to take me a while to process it all, but in the interim, while I’m regrouping here in Courtenay (truck lube, washing grubby clothes, checking email) here are some thoughts while I’m waiting to pick up my truck:

When I came into Tofino yesterday, I picked up a copy of Happy, a surf/skate/snowboard magazine (large format on newsprint) and it was stunning. Just talking layout, it’s a breakthrough, just like Thrasher Magazine was 20 years ago, and Andy Warhol’s original Interview magazine of 30 years ago. The photos are stunning and inspiring, and the art, ads, and layout take advantage of the large format. The newsprint is perfect (it’s a free mag). It really did make me happy. Look for it in surf or skate shops. Their website, https://www.happymag.com/, wasn’t working today, it just refers me to a snowboard contest.

Michael Kershnar

In this issue (May, 2006), there’s wonderful paintings of wild animals by skateboarder Michael Kershnar. His website, https://www.mikekershnar.com/, isn’t working as of today, but I recommend seeking out his work. Here are a couple of shots of his work from the mag. They really look good at full scale. Aren’t these wonderful? He’s tuned into wild animals on a cellular level, like the Australian Aborigines.

Surfers’ Tribe of the Pacific Coast

In the last 15 years I’ve found myself travelling the Pacific Coast, south (from home base near San Francisco)to the tip of Baja Californiato, and north halfway up Vancuver Island in British Columbia). I’ve noticed that a lot of people, many of them surfers, fisherman, farmers, etc., travel north/south along the Pacific Ocean. Many people get away from the rains up north and spend winter in Baja. I’ve noticed connections between Tofino/Hornby Island/The Lost Coast/Pt. Arena/San Juanico (Scorpion Bay)/Todos Santos/San José del Cabo — these are just some of the connected dots. It’s an undeclared coastal tribe, having in common a love of the blue and powerful Pacific Ocean.

I’ll try to get some stuff up here from my trip when time allows. The trip north by speedboat with Bruno and Godfrey has to be one of the best trips I’ve ever taken, and I’ve taken a lot of trips. Whew!