beside the fast lane

Intimacy as a tangible thing – as a vibrant experience – is wild in my life right now. These days. I suppose it may be greater awareness, slowly encroaching through years of devoted meditation – zazen. Or maybe there’s just more intimacy at 76.

This example:

I have become intimate with the 101. When I lived in Portland, OR, then on to Encinitas and San Diego, CA, I spent time on the 5. It was a route from one place to another. Long while driving, and with sometime serious traffic jams. It was pretty much just the Mexico to Canada highway to take when heading north or south.

It’s different with the 101. Driving it feels more experience than task. I learned it from Ann, hoping off the 405 north of LA on the way to central and north places. She pointed out the ‘El Camino Real’ markers every mile. It has offered an amazing array of scenery, then and today. There’s a friendliness.

But mostly what has brought the 101 into its own revered place in my heart is the way it joins me on every hill and mountain hike I take. I see it from this blog’s mountain bench. I see it on the ups and arounds at the Johnson Ranch. It’s there when I’m sweating up Bishop Peak, and I can see amazingly far both north and south on my newest Lemon Grove Trail, a confidant. The 101 as boundary below, visual and aural, the land and landscape on which I trudge and stroll keeping all my secrets.

Even on the beloved Bob Jones Trail, a growing volume of 101 music urging me on to the turnaround place. I like how it feels.

This morning I could offer dozens of examples of a wild intimacy wrapping its arms around the whole of my late summer ’25 life on the Central Coast. This highway is one of them.