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There are writing implements, pencils and pens, scattered throughout the Camry – front and back seats, glove compartment, in the pocket of the console. In and around the room I rent as well – the only drawer in the fifteen-dollar desk, boxes of Bic and gel pens in the second drawer down of the flimsy trailer built-ins, on the bed (usually pencils), somewhere on the book shelves. Jean jacket pockets.

I grew up with, “You are what you eat.” and I could chatter long why I find that true in my life – bell peppers and peanut butter, yogurt and hot dogs. I also believe that I am what I write, and especially now these last seven or eight years, after half of the published books, the sentences and paragraphs and all the floating-alone words which fall out here – in this ‘Mountain Bench’ blog space and ‘Couch Surfing’ before. 

And especially in my Morning Pages. There’s a growing magic (loose loopiness no-mind) there, a thing I could never create or duplicate with intention. Three blank pages as host, all the crazy, far-out, look-in-the-mirror, down-the-rabbit-hole, scrambled, rock-and-rolled images painted in ink as guests. Falling out. Every single morning.

I’m thinking I’d like to mostly post some of those ‘Pages’ sentences here from the mountain bench through this week, and will note so daily when that’s how it goes.

When I was quite young back in my hometown I had a friend named Donnie, and we would often walk into the woods directly from the edge of his backyard. Those were the Everett Woods, and back before progress and housing developments, the only sign of people going deep into the woods was the fire road that traveled from South Main Street to Bodfish Avenue – like it sounds, a route for apparatus should there ever be a fire.

I tried reaching out to Donnie any number of times these past 10 years, until I was informed by his brother’s wife that Donnie had lost his memory. That means I’m the one who has to keep lit the memory of walking with Donnie in the Everett Woods – and the zillion times we went fishing – for both of us. It’s both a deep sadness, and an honorable invitation.

I find myself walking in woods often these days, and as my ‘practice’ continues and grows, I find myself more at home there. In the woods and as the woods. It sure would be great to have Donnie walking the Bob Jones Trail with me these days. Donnie pulled my ass out of the flames any number of times the middle years of this life I still get to live, and mostly remember.

There’s Donnie, with my youngest, Spenser (now 32).

My friend Gina Fiedel from Santa Barbara texted me this photo she snapped while traveling through Bosque Farms, New Mexico.

It so perfectly captures the “show, don’t tell” of what I’m forever trying to present as my daily weather here at fromamountainbench. Here in San Luis Obispo.

Less words. More that. Solitary boat.

It has poured rain much of the night, with 10,000 flashes of lightning. We’re warned here in California the first time it rains after months and months of drought, all the oils which have dripped from car engines wash to the road’s surface, and things become slippery.

I have an every other Wednesday date with a younger woman named Sarah to meet for coffee and talk. I’m not sure what she gets out of it, or if she has a goal. For me it’s always a chance to riff on joy. This morning I may pay more attention to the drive over than our time in the coffee shop. And yet, when am I never not all there?

Rain-soaked oily kid.

I guess I would say if I am “working” on anything about myself these days that could fall under the entirely ethereal concept of “improvement” it is to be more spontaneous. To be spontaneous to the point where spontaneity nudges consciousness completely out of the room. Preparation as chatter.

Here is a definition of “spontaneity” from The Cambridge Dictionary – ‘Spontaneity is the quality of being natural rather than planned in advance, or a way of behaving in which you do what feels natural and good whenever you want to.‘ That sounds like Spontaneity 101. I’m thinking more in terms of Spontaneity on two hits of mescaline. A wild level of no think just do.

Sometimes what you see here as a mountain bench post just came flying in out of a nowhere and I scribbled it someplace or used the remaining memory cells and transcribed it here. This post for instance, in the Camry after a sweaty walk, at a stop sign.

The Hollies sang “Stop, Stop, Stop All the Dancing.” Chris Montez sang “Keep on Dancing.” Wilson Pickett invited us to a “Land of 1000 Dances.”

This is my dancing mind.

Last week it was all vultures. This week it’ll be all me – now as the blogger. I’ll share a secret. If you really show up here at fromamountainbench, look at each word, and especially look between each word, between each line and paragraph, it’ll be some thing of a time warp, a fracture in space, where you are looking directly at me right here right now. Science non-fiction.

The best ancient advice for my Zen/Ch’an life available here today: “Maintain your practice in secret” – is entirely impossible. Every single word, each of these travelogues/stories, is this very me nothing-held-back here now, my own vendor’s stall in this always-open planet’s farmer’s market.

REM sang, “That’s me in the corner.” I’m humming, “Here’s me on the market table, orange bell pepper.”

I cannot be a secret, visible on California’s Central Coast, aged 76 years, renting a room in a trailer, wearing YMCA apparel, yearning for the trails I see through the windshield, most of my money on books, hiking shoes, and peanut butter. Always with coffee. Always out there.

…I read Chinese poetry, I create vows of genuine friendship with these vultues on my path, with sidewalk kitties, with blue jays on the Bob Jones Trail, and most supremely, with every elegant cow I know. All these mountains.

Fortunately I have no explanation for any of this. An Oregon September 24, 2010 blind date through Match.com led me directly to this very strange California chair on which I sit and type here now, and I can see and roll back 60 years of connections from that Portland cafe. I guess I feel a little nostalgic today.

Early yesterday, Thursday, sipping coffee where I do, I came upon this line in a poem belonging to T’ao Ch’ien, who lived long, long ago – “My empty home harbors idleness to spare.” I have no one I call friend here in San Luis Obispo, despite much weekly people time. In this trailer I most often find myself alone. It’s not a bad thing. There’s idleness to spare.

So I say yes when Koans come calling, and find myself in these September 2025 todays friends with wing-ed and tail-ed creatures. Utterly belonging to the trails I hike. Entirely home on the morning cushion.

“A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.”

on Sunday morning when I set out on the Main Street of the Johnson Ranch trails I carried this as a goal – have an intimate conversation with one soaring, path-sharing vulture.

The ancient Zen master Hakuin said “The sound of one hand is not a sound you hear with your ear.” Two pair of vultures paid visits the first twisting mile of the walk, and the first pair spoke with their wings directly to my eyes one word: floating.

Close by the end of the trail a single bird flew immediately over my head, and when it banked away brought my eyes to the half moon still present in the mid-day blue, blue sky. A moment later this Zen koan arrived:

‘A solitary boat without oars making its way in the moonlight.’

Therefore,…

often I am high enough that I’m above the vulture’s glide on the wind. I don’t think I ever see that without feeling thrilled. Yes, that’s flying, and what little kid doesn’t spread their arms as wings, flying through summer vacation? There’s always that.

Yet for me, now, this path, there’s the clear feeling the vulture and the thermal wind doing the carrying are not two things. This – “You can take the kid out of Wareham, but you can’t take Wareham out of the kid.”

Joni – “Round and round and round in the circle game.”

All of which is why…

the vulture’s call was like a hawk’s, just more throaty, less ethereal. A possible Chinese poem: “circling Vulture, expresses throaty.”

And that was only one of the hundred sounds on this hike, different from the blue quiet there my first go round. New low-to-the-ground flowers must have blossomed, lavendars and yellows, since Wednesday, the buzzy hum of countless bees lifting up from near my shoes. One mysterious rustle through the golden grass and scrub after another. A young guy advising I climb over the padlocked fence to do the higher ridge-line trail, his small, black dog offering little whines for my attention. The chatter of other hikers.

The vultures’ cree, cree, cree, me far below, though…