Camino Cielo

It's been blowing all week, and with gusts on the water forecast to hit 50 knots yesterday afternoon, I decided that I'd go for a drive.

West Camino Cielo, the Highway in the Sky, is a rugged track that follows the crest of the mountains behind Santa Barbara and points west. I drove out to Refugio, stopping at a few places along the way just to make sure that there really wasn't any surf on the go (there wasn't), and then turned up Refugio Canyon Road toward the higher country.

The road winds through orchards and ranchos at first, a few stream crossings here and there that will be dry soon, a few houses snuggled behind oak and palms, just out of sight. Then the way begins to narrow and climb for real, up through the scrub and wildflowers, until topping out at about 3000 feet, where Camino Cielo joins in.

I haven't driven this road for at least 25 years, maybe longer. It goes from Refugio Canyon Road all the way to San Marcos Pass, about 20 miles east, a mixture of paved and unpaved surfaces that can be downright impassable at times for most vehicles. I'm pushing the edge of what my little car is capable of, or I will be, if I can get through. One mile at a time.

I stop often. There's nobody else up here and the views leave me gobsmacked. I can see 50 miles to the north, past Lake Cachuma and the Santa Ynez Valley, on up toward Los Olivos and Sisquoc. On the southern side of the divide, Santa Barbara shimmers in the golden light, and the beaches of my childhood occupy the near distance: Refugio, El Capitan, Driftwood, Sands, Haskell's, Coal Oil Point. The channel is speckled with whitecaps as far as I can see, validating my decision to desert the salt water for the day.

I am almost to the towers and antennae of TV Hill when the pavement ends for good. I cut my speed - not that I am traveling very fast anyway - and follow the smoothest route I can pick out as I continue. I am just starting to believe I'm going to make it, that the car is more than up to the task, when I get to a gate that bars further progress. "Road Closed." I had been wondering if that was going to happen and although I had hoped I would be able to complete the route, I am not too put out.

How could I be? I am passing through heaven, after all. I take a photo or two, then turn around and begin the drive out.

Thoughts on death and surfing, part 5

The funeral was yesterday. Clear blue sky and 80 degrees, with a breeze coming in from the west as we all assembled at the graveside. Words were said and songs were sung. Tears were shed. People who hadn't seen each other for many years got to reconnect - happy, shining moments on an otherwise somber afternoon.

This morning, the sun came up again, the same as it always does. I shuttled Mary and Micah down to LAX, through the crazy, weaving traffic of Reseda and North Hollywood, then turned back around to drive back.

I don't know when I'll be getting back in the water again... I was thinking maybe this afternoon, and I guess I still could do it, but there's less chance of it happening now than there was a few minutes ago, back before I ordered my second pint of Anchor Steam. The waves are blown out anyway, right? And, of course, there are any number of things I could do when I get back to the house - chores to be done and dinner to cook. I'm just not feeling it, when it comes right down to it.

The sun will rise again tomorrow too. There is a distinct possibility that a dawn patrol session might be appropriate.

Alice Marie Campbell

Alice Marie Campbell passed away this morning after an extended battle with Alzheimer's. She was my mother.

Alice was born on June 7th, 1920, in Milan, MN, the thirteenth of fourteen children born to Danish immigrants Eli and Anna Willadsen. Before her second birthday, the family had relocated to Sheboygan Falls, WI, where Alice grew up on the family farm. From there she went on to attend Moody Bible Institute in Chicago before moving on to be a missionary in Africa, in Zambia at first and later to the Belgian Congo.

She spent a decade in the African bush, where she met and married my father, James, who was working as a chemist in the copper mines. When they left Africa, they traveled for a year in the Middle East and Europe before settling in Santa Barbara in 1960, which is where I was born in 1962 (although, now that I think about it, "settling" is probably not the right word.) From Santa Barbara, the Campbell's went to Salt Lake City for a couple years, then on to St. John's, Newfoundland, for another four birthdays before returning to Southern California.

In 1980, Alice and Jim moved back to St. John's, where they stayed until 1989. The idea at the time was that they would stay there for good, but the winters were too long and hard for her as she got older. Santa Barbara, with its mild climate and good memories, beckoned once again and they moved back 22 years ago and have been there ever since.

Alice is survived by her husband Jim, son Ken, grandchildren Jessica, Sawyer and Micah, and sister Ruth, along with the hundreds - perhaps thousands - of friends whose lives she has touched throughout the years. Her last ten days were spent at Sarah House in Santa Barbara, an enormously caring and beautiful facility run by the Hospice and the Visiting Nurses Association.

Lotusland

"We landed in the country of the Lotus-Eaters, who live on a flowering food... My men went on and presently met the Lotus-Eaters, nor did these Lotus-Eaters have any thought of destroying our companions, but they only gave them lotus to taste of. But any of them who ate the honey-sweet fruit of lotus was unwilling to take any message back, or to go away, but they wanted to stay there with the lotus-eating people, feeding on lotus, and forget the way home.

I myself took these men back weeping, by force, to where the ships were, and put them aboard under the rowing benches and tied them fast, then gave the order to the rest of my eager companions to embark on the ships in haste, for fear someone else might taste of the lotus and forget the way home..."

The Odyssey

I surfed yesterday morning. Just a couple hours in a glassy point break at Ledbetter Beach, 2 -3 footers that lasted forever, warm water and nobody else in the line-up. I am going back right now.

A Word from Wendell Berry

A Meeting

In my dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,

I know, gone long and far,

and yet he is the same

for the dead are changeless.

They grow no older.

It is I who have changed,

grown strange to what I was.

Yet I, the changed one,

ask: "How you been?"

He grins and looks at me.

"I been eating peaches

off some mighty fine trees."

Campus Point, 2011

I finally got on the water yesterday afternoon. I put in at Goleta Beach and paddled out, past the UCSB skyline, to Campus Point. There was a wind blowing at me on the half-mile run, and once I got to the point, there really wasn't much going on. A few rides, shallow water, little point break, blown-out from the southwest. Ah well, it was good to get wet (and not a bad down-winder back to the beach).

I remember walking along this very same stretch of beach with my father, years ago. I would have been about 10, maybe 11... it would have been a Sunday afternoon. Warm sand and a long walk on kid-sized legs. The curve of the shoreline seems so much shorter now.

I remember too, a few years after that, coming here with my own surfboard under my arm, a 7'2" Wilderness single fin. I can see me now, riding up on my bike, through the campus and down to the beach. I'd lock my bike up on the chain-link fence at the marine lab and paddle out into the line-up. Sometimes the waves were big and scary; a lot of times they were more like they were yesterday.

Sometimes a beach is a time machine.

Thoughts on death and surfing, part 4

I won't say it was completely unexpected, only that it happened quickly this time. The landscape was a blur out my side windows. Cities and towns fell behind me in regular succession: Portland, Eugene, Redding, Sacramento, Paso Robles... I'm back in Santa Barbara again, where the sun is brightly shining, where the mockingbird sings. I haven't been to the beach yet.

The News from Arcata

Kokatat has a good blog. There are a lot of stories here that make me want to go too. (Especially that first one.)

An anniversary

The time does fly, yes? It was twenty years ago this week that I started working for Tahoma Outdoor Pursuits as a canoe guide. It was up at Farrell's Marsh, in Steilacoom, WA, a week of doing twenty-minute canoe trips for groups of 6th graders on the cloudy, brown water of the bayou. I remember they were especially delighted with the frog's eggs they found as we paddled.

Tahoma Outdoor Pursuits was put together in the late 1980's as a partnership between two Tacoma couples, each of whom had been long-time outdoor enthusiasts. Rob Hignell, an English kayaker and skiier, was a gifted instructor and the driving force during those early times. He hired me, first to do the canoes at the marsh that week in April, and later to be a kayaking guide, instructor and retail manager. He sold the company in the fall of 1993 to Marmot of Bellevue and it was co-located with Backpackers Supply up until it officially became Azimuth Expeditions back in 2004.

Two decades. Is. A long. Time.

Butts in boats

I am not sure about symposiums. Or expo's, festivals, or whatever the kids are calling them these days. I like them, I really do, but I don't know whether they are still as relevant to the paddle sports world as they once were.

It used to be that if you wanted to hear about so-and-so's paddle to the arctic or to the south island of New Zealand, you had to go to a presentation by the adventurer in question, and symposiums always featured a full slate of such talks and slide shows. Likewise, if you had a desire to try a few classes, say a forward stroke clinic and a rolling demonstration, a symposium (expo, festival, whatever), was the best place to get that too.

But now, with every expedition boasting a thick and informative web site and YouTube how-to videos just a click away, there are less compelling reasons for going to a symposium at all. And it shows. Attendance dropped steadily at both the Port Townsend and Tacoma symposiums before the plug was pulled on each of them a few years back. People are getting used to sitting at home, it seems, and having the information come to them.

There really is no substitute, however, for getting together with other paddlers, professional industry-types and novices, hard-core paddling freaks and curious onlookers. It not only reminds me of all there is out there that I have left to experience, it puts me in direct contact with people who know things I want to know and who are doing things that I want to do for myself. Done right, a symposium can be informative and motivating, and I can't help but like the experience.

With all that said, there are three on-water events in the near future up here in our corner of the country. The Port Angeles Symposium has been an April staple for the past decade on the beach by the Red Lion, in downtown PA. The NW Adventure Sports Expo is in its second year in Port Gamble, and the new kid on the block is the NW Paddling Festival, scheduled for West Seattle at the end of June. (Info on all can be found on the sidebar, page right.)

I'm going to all of them. It's what I do. A slide show here, a SUP demonstration there, maybe even sell a book or two. I hope they are well attended and the sun shines brightly. If you see me, say hello.

San Juan orca; an update

There's new guidance out for whale watchers, whether on commercial barf boats or in kayaks. Here's a real good synopsis of the regulation changes and their effects on people and whales alike, but the main update for paddlers is that we have to stay 200 yards away from the orcas now, compared to the 100 yards that has been the rule for a long time now. Since I've been paddling up in Haro Strait and the San Juans. A few thoughts:

200 yards is still close, at least from a kayaker's perspective. Paddling with the orca is a powerful experience, either way.

On the down side, now I have to figure out how to mentally gauge 200 yards. In the past, I've just tried to keep a "football-field" away from marine mammals; "two football fields" is not as intuitive a distance. I'm sure, with time, I'll adapt.

The reality remains that we never really know what the orca will do as they are underway. Commercial operators will be kept further back but the whales will continue to approach paddlers that just sit still. That's really all it takes, a little patience. More often than not, I have found that the whales seem to be watching me as much as I am watching them.

Nostalgia

Sometimes when I'm making dinner, I'll look for old songs on YouTube. It's good to hear the old ones, the one-hit wonders especially. Good to remember the way things used to be.

There are paddling spots that bring out a similar sense of sweet nostalgia. The Nisqually Delta, where Jon the all-pro whitewater kayaker flipped over on his first sea kayak outing; Strawberry Island in the San Juans, closed to camping now but I remember some epic nights around the fire, playing songs and telling lies as the porpoises jumped in the rips right off shore; My first trip to Cape Flattery, watching the whales and listening to the pounding waves from the warmth of my sleeping bag. There are others. When I go to these spots now, I find that I am just as often paddling through the past.

One of the songs I listened to while I was working in the kitchen yesterday displayed some comments from other listeners. One of the comments was such a great piece of writing, so amazingly evocative and haunting, that I feel like saving it for later contemplation. I don't know the person who wrote it and it was likely just a throw-away comment, but the way that he wrote make me feel like I was there with him way back then. I may have been.

"Sitting still in the silence of the night, and this song would come on, everyone was still with us, mom, dad, and all my best friends. Joe buddy getting ready for that big party with our best girls. We would dance deep into the night with this song. Remember the smell of their hair? I wish that night never ended. This song makes my heart beat even when it wants to stop."

I'm going to paddle the Foss this morning before the sun comes up. I haven't done that for a while.

Cold

It's supposed to get up to 58 degrees today. That will seem tropical compared to the way it's been so far this spring. I suppose I should be grateful.

All right. I'll be grateful.

Doing the maps

I've been trip planning. A little San Juan stuff, Deception Pass and Marrowstone Island, plus other places closer to home, like the Tacoma Narrows. I have six multi-day courses on tap for this spring and summer and it's that time when I have to sit down with the charts and the current information and plan the routes. (Actually, I enjoy the process a great deal; I should have said, "I get to sit down with the charts.")

On some of the courses, I have menu-planning responsibilities as well. People remember the food, whether it's good or not, so I do what I can to make the meals memorable in a good way. I'll get to working on that next week, after I'm done going over the maps.

With some of the other courses, I'm still putting together the teaching plan. Private courses - as all of these are - means individualized curriculum. In a private class, everyone has specific skills that they'd like to work on, and each group is very different. As I'm considering which things will be covered, I'm also looking at the route, planning the best places for going over each of the items on the lesson plan.

It's an involved process at times, and the connections between the where, the what and the why of any course can be difficult to put together. It is also possible to overthink the process, which has its own special set of consequences. Trip planning is a balance between what you know and what you don't. I have to try to control for the things I can, all the while realizing that I don't really control much of anything.

Like I said, I do enjoy it.

Gunfire and mysteries

The prairie is a natural interpretation of an egg crate. Little mounds four, five, eight feet high, make up the surface of the inter-forest grassland, like a living mogul course. No one knows how they were formed: Prairie dogs? Seismic activity? Native earth sculpting? Glaciers?

Mima Mounds is an anomaly. The fact that we still don't have a plausible explanation for why the place exists - or the fact that we have so many - is reason enough to see it as an interesting and special spot. It has an official designation as a natural area preserve, but there are facts on the ground that tend to downplay this fact. There is, for example, a paved trail that winds throughout the grassy dunes, a most obvious intrusion. The hardness of the asphalt against the velvet of the soil and the ground cover doesn't look right, like a scar. Or an embarrassing tattoo.

But the most incongruous element to Mima Mounds, especially on a weekend afternoon, is the continuous sound of gunfire. There's a gun club on the other side of the prairie, and the bursts of fire make a stroll through the mounds seem more like a busy afternoon in Tripoli. Single shots from a plethora of calibers form a strange, ongoing syncopation, while rapid rounds erupt like out-of-tune razors. Going by the sounds of the explosions, Thurston County would seem to be exceptionally well armed.

Jobs, money and kayaks

When I first started kayaking, almost all the boats were made in the US or Canada. There were a few British boats on the scene as well, made in Great Britain, and a few others from Mexico, but the lion's share of the manufacturing took place in North America.

Now, of course, things have changed substantially. My paddleboards were made in Thailand. None of my kayaks is Chinese, but that's only because I don't have any newer boats. If I were to replace them with something of their type that is a little more current, the replacements would likely come from the People's Republic. It's true for just about anything anymore; everything seems to originate in China.

It's economics and I don't claim to understand it. I'm not one of those who automatically pooh-pooh trade and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with buying something from another country, even a kayak. But I remember when production started moving overseas and the reps all talked about the savings and how much less it cost to produce kayaks in China than it did here. (When you don't have to pay a fair wage or abide by any environmental or labor guidelines, when dumping your trash in the river is just how business is done, you should see some savings, eh?)

The thing is, if all that is true, if it does cost less to produce a kayak in Asia than here, why aren't kayaks less expensive? If the companies really are saving money, why aren't those savings obvious to the consumer? Why do kayaks cost more now than they did then - even when you allow for inflation - and where is all the money going? The prices should have gone down, yes? I've never been good at math, but I can run the numbers through in my head and come up with a few realities, and they don't match what I see for sale these days.

A Chinese kayak shouldn't cost $3,000, ever, but it does. If there's a good reason why, I'd like to know what it is.

Military spending

The Spruce Railroad Trail, just west of Port Angeles, is a four-mile section that connects the North Shore and the Lyre River trailheads and runs along the scenic shores of Lake Crescent. It's not backcountry. But it is beautiful.

The original right-of-way was constructed during World War I by the Spruce Production Division of the Army, but it wasn't completed until the war ended; not a single spruce ever made it to the Eastern Front. The railway operated on a limited basis until the early 1950's and then it was gone too, just like the Spruce Production Division. What remains is a low-elevation, mostly level hiking or mountain biking trail, usable year-round and easily accessible.

I bet it's pretty muddy right now.