This past week, I drove 5 hours up the California coast to Big Sur with my dog, Eero, to watch the lunar eclipse.
At Kirk Creek Campground, I immediately met four new friends: Jamia, Jordan, Hunter and Paolo. They borrowed my wine key and invited me to sit by their campfire. Jamia and Jordan are professional women’s soccer players. They’ve played all over the world and only once on the same team, in the Philippines. When I said, I don’t know much about professional soccer, except my neighbor runs a women’s club of underdogs — United City — they’re not pro, but they play pro teams, and win. Jordan said, I played for them last week! I know Steve!
The next morning I met Christina. She travels alone in a pristine burgundy Westfalia van, and sits on the board of Keep Big Sur Wild. We talked about how important it is to protect wild places, to keep the icy cold BlackRock big-box strip mall fingers off little towns like Big Sur. The places that, in never changing, hold the condors, the gray whales and the redwoods in one hand, and a mirror to see how much you’ve changed since your last visit in the other.
Down the road at Sand Dollar Beach, I met Average Joey and his black Chow mix, Charlie, playing in the surf. Joey was wearing a ratty t-shirt with ACAB spelled out in Marge Simpson’s hair. He held up his hand to mine, and pointed out our matching tattoos: middle finger, second knuckle, three dots. It’s the same tattoo I share with two of my best friends and at least one Australian singer. The thing we have in common? We often go alone.
Joey travels in a van with his dog across America playing music, and I said, Hey — I know that life! He said, Tickets haven’t been selling; my shows are getting canceled. I might busk in Santa Cruz to make some gas money. I said, No one has any money — don’t blame yourself. He said, Yeah, this might be Charlie’s last run. He’s tired of being in the van. I said, I had a Charlie. I stopped touring when he was eight. This is what really matters anyhow, I said, as our dogs chased a ball together in the brisk sunshine. Enjoy every minute.
Further down the coast in Morro Bay, I met Judy. She’s in her sixties, long gray hair to the middle of her back, gold tooth flashing mischievously when she smiles wide. She told me she gave up her home and traded it for a camper. Now she lives everywhere. Last winter, she sang in an Americana three-part harmony group outside of Palm Springs. They’d find a bar who’d have them, and play. People followed them, she said. They never recorded anything or put music out online. But people came back, week after week, because they wanted to hear music — the language we all speak — live, in a room full of people.
As I drove, I listened to the news. It was bad.
Strangers in other countries I would never meet because they live further than just up the coast are in danger, dying. My country’s government is responsible.
I would bet every tax dollar burning up in American million dollar missiles, that the President, the Secretary of War, and every one of their cronies in Congress has never traveled alone or talked to strangers. Because if they did, this wouldn’t be happening.
They would’ve met Jamia, Jordan, Hunter, Paolo, Christina, Average Joey, Charlie, and Judy; they would consider the condors, the gray whales and the redwoods, both here and abroad; they’d learn all their names in Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Armenian and Hebrew. When you know people’s names, you want to protect them. You understand they are all wild places who shouldn’t be touched by BlackRock big-box strip mall fingers. You feel how they change the soft part inside you every time you meet, because they hold up a mirror and show you you.
I wish you could see how many stars were visible during the eclipse: the crisp cluster around Orion, the smudge of the Milky Way emblazoned through the hazy marine layer, whole universes brightening into focus as the earth hung in the balance and blocked out the sun.
So that’s it, the whole of my advice in this dark time:
Travel alone. Talk to strangers.
Because it won’t take many miles to find that, number one: you never are; and number two: there aren’t any.
