Ezekiel's Valley

It was the late summer of 1997, I had just taken the bar exam and I had packed nearly everything I owned into my little white 1992 Honda Civic.  I pulled out of my sister's driveway in Newton, MA and headed west.  I had no plan, no itinerary, no company.  It was just me and the road and I was running.  

I had separated from my first wife in the last few weeks of law school, a public and painful process that left me bruised, angry and feeling more than a little isolated.  She had been a large part of the reason I went to law school and our dissolution raised profound questions for me about whether the trajectory of my new career and the job that waited for me in Los Angeles were the right ones. So when I hit the road that August, my tentative destination was California but it wasn't set in stone.  Everything was up for grabs, everything was negotiable in the heart-to-heart conversation I was about to have with myself on the two-lane roads of America.

I wandered for awhile, but eventually wound up in Jackson Hole.  I thought I might do some backcountry hiking so I had purchased some basic gear at LL Bean in Freeport before I headed west.  This seemed like as good a place as any to give it a shot, so I stopped into the ranger station in Teton National Park and asked if they could recommend a hike that could take me well into the mountains for a 3 or 4 night stay.  The ranger drew some lines on the map in yellow highlighter and I picked one, drove to the trailhead and started hiking.

I hiked all day on a trail through a canyon that eventually broke into the high country just below the treeline.  I set up my camp on a beautiful outcrop of rock that overlooked a 1,000 foot drop to a small river with a gorgeous view of the opposite side of the canyon.  I stayed for three days and spent most of the time trying to figure out what I was going to do next.  I looked across that canyon with the proverbial angel on my shoulder and considered it all.  As the wind blew down that mountain, I decided to go forward, go to California and create a life out of what seemed to be a valley of dry bones.

I've reimagined those three days on the mountain in the Tetons many times.  I've looked for that spot on Google Earth and as time has erased the certainty of exactly where the spot was, its significance has only grown.  I've always known I would visit that spot again someday, and on this trip, with the future once again cloudy, the time seemed right.  So on Sunday afternoon, Quimby and I and the kids set off up the mountain in search of a spot now more imagined than real.

I made an educated guess that the place was Granite Canyon mostly because it looked right on the map.  I remembered the lake at the top after the trees fell away and the map showed a little blue dot called Marion Lake.  I recalled it being a strenuous hike but I attributed much of that to the gear I was carrying that day 18 years ago.  But sure enough, after the first two miles, the trail curved to the left into the canyon and started a serious climb.  As we walked, enough views looked familiar that I knew we were on the right trail but the kids were beginning to tire and it was already a five mile round trip for them, so Quimby agreed to play with them in the river while I forged ahead in search of my dream.  

Freed from the pace of the kids, I ran up that mountain.  As the shadows lengthened, the river fell away below me and the path narrowed, while my eyes scanned the contour of the opposite canyon wall until it seemed to match a picture I had taken on that trip.  Finally, just by chance, two hours later, I saw what looked like the remains of a trail veering out to the edge and on a gamble that perhaps the trail had reworked itself in the intervening years, I scrambled through the brush.  

I could have so easily walked right past it but I didn't.  Here I was, my 43-year-old self in search of my 25-year-old self based on an artist's sketch by an unreliable witness.  It was the spot, but it wasn't how I had remembered it.  The underbrush had overtaken the little clearing where my tent had stood and the trees were bigger.  Erosion had exposed countless rocks that were buried in the soil.  As I stood there taking in the view, it suddenly seemed like a foolish idea, the significance I had attached to this place.  And yet, sweating and dehydrated with no water, eight and a half miles in and four thousand feet of elevation up, and facing at least a two and a half hour hike out if I did it at the limit of my physical abilities, I suddenly realized that both my younger self and the mountain were speaking to me again. The answers, they said, weren't here anymore.

Somewhere down in that valley, my wife and kids were waiting for me and the thought that the last time I sat on this spot I couldn't have conceived of them brought a smile to my face.  Still smiling, I said a quiet goodbye to my ghost and the mountain and turned back towards the valley.  I still had eight and a half hard miles ahead of me but I was also half way there.

View fullsize

Life Preserver

Our last day in Salt Lake was meant to be one of the highlights of the trip.  The idea was that we would spend the entire day together at the waterpark.  I don't usually get those big blocks of time to play with the kids doing something exclusively for them, so the anticipation ran high.  From 10am through late afternoon we went through a maze, jumped on trampolines, panned for gems, played in the pool, screamed down waterslides and ate all manner of electric blue and red concoctions.  Days like this live somewhere in the ether of sunshine and memory, in a slipstream of summer where time doesn't seem to exist until you notice that the shadows are long and growing, and the heat of the sun has given way to a radiant warmth from the concrete that struggles vainly to overcome the evening chill that has begun to creep out of the now-damp grass and trees.  When we finally noticed the time, I tried to get us cleaned up and off to dinner but the day had been so good, so right, that I succumbed to the entreaties to do one last thing, that "just one more thing, Dad."  "You promised we'd go miniature golfing."     

You know we did.  And you probably also know that almost as soon as it started the iceberg appeared directly on the starboard bow.  I had the throttle all the way up and it was too late to pull back or steer.  Samantha was golfing terribly and getting frustrated.  Parker moved her ball.... she retaliated... and then the unthinkable was happening on our amazing day.  It was now almost dark, we were taking on water, and I had two over-stimulated and over-hungry hot messes on my hands.  Mom wouldn't have made this rookie mistake.  No, no, she would have stayed alert on the bridge, cut the throttle to slow ahead, and steered through the ice field.  Maybe we wouldn't have broken the record, but at least we would have made it through.  I got them fed and into their sleeping bags but the spell that had surrounded our trip so far had been broken.  In my haste to end carnage, I yelled at them both and Samantha took it hard, rolling out for the first time the father of all parent gut punches:  "If I'm such a pain, why did you even have me?"  The ship was going down and we needed a life preserver.

Almost on cue, that's exactly what we got.  After a relatively uneventful drive the next day through northern Utah, Idaho and into Wyoming, we rolled into Jackson Hole, WY on Friday in the late afternoon, just in time to wash the road grime off the Chief and do the same for our salty bodies.  With the kids' hair still wet, we hopped back in the Chief for a short ride out to the Jackson Hole Airport and watched as United 1644 touched down and taxied to the gate with Mom aboard.  And for the next hour, I listened with a growing smile as my children breathlessly described the adventures of the previous week like correspondents from a magical land.

With Mom back on the bridge, the weekend in Jackson has been smooth sailing.  We shopped a little, ate like kings, rode a stagecoach, saw a gunfight on the square and topped it off with a surprisingly good old-timey musical production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Jackson Hole Playhouse.  And today, with the kids safely in her care, I slipped free for a few hours to hike to the top of Granite Canyon, a grueling climb from the valley floor on the south end of Grand Teton National Park to what seems like the top of the world when you get there--a little outcrop of rock facing a 1,000 foot chasm just large enough for a one-person tent.  If it killed me, I wasn't leaving here without sitting on that rock again.

Samantha and Parker admire the sunset over the Tetons as they wait for Quimby's flight to arrive in Jackson Hole, Wy.

Homeless

We've been living in the old Pontiac for five days and as such it's developing a patina of aromas to match the paint.  Camping and living out of the car is tough--I knew it would be--so I strategically positioned some upscale hotel amenities in our itinerary to make sure we have a chance to recharge our batteries, both literally and figuratively. 

Yesterday we cleared out of our teepee in Bryce Canyon and headed north through the Utah desert for another hot drive to a campground in Salt Lake City.  We pulled in to a place called Cherry Hill, an RV park and small water/amusement park that I visited on a similar epic roadtrip with my family 35 years ago (I'll be doing a post on that in due course).  We completed the registration and requested a quiet spot near the back, which was readily assigned, then climbed back into the car.  As we rumbled slowly through the grounds towards the rear, a young kid, maybe 15 years old, was walking with two little boys along the narrow roadway.  As we went by, he called out with an excitement for this antique that's unusual for kids his age, "Wow, hey man, nice car!"  The shiny chrome is a conversation starter almost everywhere, albeit usually with a demographic at least as old or older than me, so I wasn't surprised when he caught up with us a few minutes later and came over for a closer look.

He was a good-looking kid and he introduced himself as Tyler from Louisiana.  I didn't need the second part as the accent was as bayou as crawfish jambalaya.  The two little ones were scruffy, shirtless and tan, and looked like they could stand a bath.  He asked a lot of questions about the car that belied a knowledge of things automotive unusual for a kid who barely had hair on his face.  He wanted to know the size of the engine, type of transmission and the answers to some other, wonkier questions.  He said they had the campsite about a hundred yards away and alluded to it with a casual, non-directional wave of his hand.   Parker and the two little ones were about the same age, so they were already playing a game of swords or light sabers or something just out of ear shot.

Tyler said they had driven out here from Louisiana.  His Mom lost her job and the economy was bad there.  They heard that jobs were plentiful in Utah so they hit the road in their 1988 Cadillac.  He talked about how long the drive had been, some places they stayed along the way and how he changed the fuel pump on the aging Cadillac in a parking lot with a pair of vice grips.  Older cars, he said, were better because you can keep them running yourself.  This unusual interest in cars, I realized, was born not of desire, but of necessity.

I explained our epic road trip, and how we'd be here for a few days and then hit the road again.  I asked how long they were planning to stay and he looked over toward the tent and the picnic table and clothesline connecting two trees above a little smokey joe grill, and shrugged noncomittally, "I don't know.  Maybe another two weeks.  Depends on how long it takes us to get ourselves set up.  My mom got a job two days ago, so that's good."

The conversation meandered from there and a few minutes later we parted with the obligatory "good luck" and "probably see you tomorrow".  I hadn't noticed that the '88 Cadillac he had spoken of so fondly wasn't parked in front of their campsite, and it wasn't until a few minutes later as I was replaying the conversation in my head that I fully grasped that this family was homeless.  Not under-the-overpass homeless, but not more than a stroke or two of bad luck from it either.  They were staying here because the weekly rate was far cheaper than any motel, at least any motel you'd want to spend a night in.  Mom was going to her new job during the day while Tyler watched the little ones.  This campground was to be their home until they got on their feet.

Later in the evening I was talking to another guy who stopped by to inspect the tin and he more or less asked me the question I've been wrestling with as I watch the scenery rolling by: what is this trip all about?  It's about a lot of things, but a big part of it is gaining some perspective.  That box was checked this morning as Tyler's mom pulled away in her worn, black, loaded down 1988 Cadillac.

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon has been on my bucket list for years.  On my post-bar trip, the last time I went Kerouac, I made it as far south as Arches before heading back north.  On that 5,000 mile trip, Bryce was just a bridge too far.  This time, it was right on the flight path so it was a no-brainer that we would check it out.  

The original plan was to drive out here on Monday and spend all day Tuesday and part of Wednesday exploring the park.  When we got back from Hawaii though, I looked at the weather and Las Vegas had a high in the low triple digit teens.  After the roast-trip we endured in the Central Valley two weeks ago, I knew the only way through was to drive at night.  After all, that's how the dust-bowl migrants crossed the desert.  They were people accustomed to adversity and this was a risk they didn't take.

So on Sunday night at 7pm, with the temperature in Las Vegas still well over 100, we were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace, our only faith in this tired 55 year old machine.  In that heat, you can feel the moisture leaving your body, the salt accumulating on your skin despite a pronounced absence of sweat.  I passed the gatorades to the kids in the back seat and there were no pee breaks all night.  At 3:15am, 530 miles later, I pulled into Cedar City, UT.

Bryce Canyon falls into the "giant hole in the ground" category of national park (a sub-category of the two types of national park: "pretty land with no economic use" and "freak of nature").   That said, it's pretty stunning, and more comprehensible and accessible than the Grand Canyon despite the similarity.  On day 1, we hiked the rim trail, grabbed some dinner and then set up our tent.  

That's when the show really started.  Bryce sits on the Colorado Plateau, between 8,000 and 9,000 feet in elevation.  It's bizarre because there are no mountains, so the height is deceiving.  There is also no appreciable civilization for hundreds of miles, so it's one of the truly dark spots in the west.  And dark it was.  As the sun went down, the stars pressed down from the inky sky, the Milky Way dividing the heavens like a great crack, revealing an ancient, inner light.  So beautiful.  At Bryce Canyon, it turns out that the most spectacular view is not down, it's up.

View fullsize

Man vs. Machine III "Cage Match"

The bags are in the trunk, the camping gear is loaded, the cooler is packed and it's time for the main event, the road trip I've been waiting what seems like years embark upon.  I've imagined the pavement rolling by under my wheels, the open road unfurling before me like a promise waiting to be fulfilled, a destiny of possibility muddled with the smell of asphalt and late summer.  The road is a metaphor for life--there's hope, possibility... everything that you imagined was waiting for you when you were young.  Everything your high school teacher said was out there waiting for you in the "real world" if you worked hard, studied hard and followed the conventional wisdom.  I did all those things and yet deep underground, for all these years, the optimist in me was conspiring to a different future.  The days will be about preventing my children from killing each other in the back seat, but the next three weeks of evenings, after the kids are fast asleep in the tent, will be mine to write, work on my photography, look up at the stars and contemplate the possibilities.  On Sunday evening around 6pm, I'll release the parking brake, turn on some Springsteen soft and low, and point the hood bird into the desert for the first 500 miles of dark open road.  I can't wait.

Hula Daddy

It's been a beautiful week in Hawaii with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law and their two boys.  The kids have gotten along famously and we've been able to have some adult conversations and adult beverages to go along with a spectacular setting. Despite the fact that Hurricane Hilda churned offshore for most of the week, casting a shadow with the specter of a direct hit to the Big Island, after a little hula dance yesterday she headed south, and apart from a little choppy surf, didn't bother us at all. As a result, the weather has been nothing short of amazing.

We've taken advantage of it.  We've been to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, we've been snorkeling several times and we've done a traditional luau (which I'm slightly embarrassed to admit is my first one, despite having lost track of how many times we've been to Hawaii).  The excursion that grabbed my attention most though was a short visit to the Hula Daddy coffee plantation.

I have an old friend from O'Melveny that I've stayed connected with on Facebook.  Heather is a model for charting one's own course.  Her husband is a coffee shop consultant (yes, that's an occupation that really exists) and as some of you may know, some of the best coffee in the world comes from right here in Kona.  It made sense for him to be nearer to the action and so she struck a deal with her firm to work remotely from Hawaii.  She's been our internet guide this week, recommending local restaurants and activities, all of which have reflected her excellent taste.  "If you're interested in touring a coffee farm," she said, "Hula Daddy does a nice job and isn't too far from you.  The owners are good friends of ours."  Done and done.

Hula Daddy is a pretty small operation, with 11 acres of coffee trees at the main farm and another recently acquired 20 acre plot further up the hill. It's a small batch operation, producing only a few thousand pounds per year, but what they don't have in volume is made up for in quality as their coffees have cleaned up in competition, scoring among the top coffees in the world.  It's a success story to be sure, and while I admire people who are unafraid to enter a crowded space because they are sure they can do it better, that's only part of the story here.

Lee Paterson, the owner, was an attorney at Winston and Strawn until retirement forced him out at age 65. He wasn't ready to be done and he was inspired by a couple of O'Melveny lawyers who quit the practice of law to create a winery in Santa Barbara.  "I know those guys," I chimed in at this point in the story, amazed that it really is a small world. Lee didn't really have a passion for coffee per se, but his wife wanted to live in Hawaii so he decided to try growing coffee as the analog to the Santa Barbara winery idea.

As we chatted, I explained my career sabbatical status and how I'm looking for ideas that will energize me again.  Lee was unphased.  "It takes a certain kind of person to buy our coffees, so I see a lot of professionals, a lot of lawyers," he explained, "and a lot of them will say 'how did you do it?' Well, the only thing stopping you is you." 

As we drove across the mountain to a little lunch spot my friend Heather recommended, I replayed the conversation in my head as I looked out across the lush green hills to the sapphire water in the distance.  For the first time since July I allowed my mind to peer over the abyss that I've been consciously avoiding (and will continue to avoid until I finish the road trip in September).  There's a lot I still don't know but I do know this:  I don't want it to ever be said that the only thing that stopped me was me.

www.huladaddy.com