into the mystic

I was listening to The Beach Boys on CD when I drove into Oregon at 12 minutes past 10 Monday morning.

Pink Floyd sang, “They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.” That’s kind of cool, not sure how it fits, Dylan’s, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” feels closer to it. The “it” being this old life of mine. Waking up Saturday in San Luis Obispo, Sunday in Oakland, Monday in Arcata, and here in Florence, Oregon today. Many rivers have been crossed.

I’m perched high above another now, The Siuslaw. And if the creek don’t rise, I’ll travel just a smidge further north on the 101 (all the way from San Luis) and hang a right onto the 126, itself traveling along the Siuslaw, and shortly passing through the town of Cushman. Which strikes me as more Jimmy Cliff than either Roger Waters or Mr. Dylan.

I want to tell you something most encouraging. Much of the drives both Sunday and Monday I wound and dipped up and down through forests. Endless forests. On and on and on. Many of them Redwood, each massive tree a huge sentinel of the dark and the shade and sun-splash and undergrowth, forever oxygen, their very being profound evidence that good goes on, beauty goes on, what matters most in this often messed-up world stands taller than tall. Resolutely. So green.

There is a final line from a verse in a Zen Koan – “On South Mountain clouds gather; on North Mountain rain falls.” And now I’m in Oregon.