12. Tucson

Our "Journey to the East" took us through Tucson, Arizona.

I had lived in Tucson for a few weeks when I was a very young man but had forgotten just about everything except the dry heat and the typical deserty smells which are unforgettable for me. Most of the details of my long ago stay were erased.


We found a motel near the city center as the sun was setting and had our usual traveler's picnic dinner in our room.


Then, since it was a warm pleasant evening, we went out for a stroll. 

From a quick check of the city map in a "What to do in Tucson" magazine in our room, we decided to walk to "El Presidio Plaza"--just a few blocks away.


By one of those wonderful accidents which sometimes happen to travelers, our walk took us through a preserved old neighborhood with great houses from an earlier day. Everyone of them different. Every one of them unique.


Even the street lights were of the old-fashioned kind--the antique concrete sidewalks--the scent of lilac--everything so well remembered from my boyhood.


But these houses were lived in. There were new cars in the old driveways and new residents beyond the old bay windows watching today's  American Idol not Your Hit Parade--but the neighborhood itself was like a piece of the past. My past.


I was delighted with the museumish neighborhood and very happy that Tanya, from so very far away and from such a different cultural background, could share this experience with me.

...

11. Memorial Day

 Memorial Day Story

I was a kid in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

My family: Dad and Mom, Big Brother Joe and Little Brother Jack, lived on a half-acre we called "The Three Willow Ranch".

In those long-ago days Memorial Day was called Decoration Day and it was a custom for many people to decorate the graves of their departed family members and friends. It was not a fun celebration day like Dia de los Muertos for Mexicans, but a solemn day for us gringos.

Starting when I was about ten years old I helped Mom decorate Baby Steve's grave every year for a few years . 

Baby Steve was our fourth brother who died about five years before I was born of infant bed syndrome--one minute a healthy baby, the next a dead baby--a big shock to my young parents and never forgotten.

Mom loved roses and we had lots of them--a circular flowerbed-full of whites and reds set in the middle of the front lawn--an eight-foot high  hedge of pink climbers running for a hundred feet along the east side of the house and big yellow pink and red mixed with larkspur in a big garden by the driveway--this was before Grandpa Clayton built the carport. And there were even several huge rambling rose bushes covered with sprays of blooms back beyond the chicken pens on a trellis  by the storm cellar.

So Mom and I would bag  lots of mainly pink rose petals and cut piles of blossoms of all colors , put the cut roses in cans of water in the back seat floor of the old Chrysler and she would drive us out to the big walled municipal graveyard which had two sections--an expensive "eternal care" one with mowed, irrigated lawn  and a bigger one for us common people with hard dirt and drifted sand.


There was always a search for the right grave among the tatty metal name plates and dried-up wooden crosses for the unmarked one Mom remembered and then, using spare tin cans for tools, we would pile up some dirt into  a baby grave-sized mound and cover it with rose petals. We would set big tin cans into the dirt at "head' and "foot" and create a lavish display of all colors of roses--cut blossoms and sprays of leaves and blooms.


Before we drove away Mom would send me to look for water to put in the cans to preserve the bloom's freshness for a little longer in the heat. The water came from a spigot I would find sticking out of the dirt near some tamarack trees.


I don't remember Joe or Jack ever being there and Dad never came--I think now maybe it was because of some unhealed wound of unforgotten grief for him.

I didn't much like to do this chore and I was glad when it was over, though it was never weeping and wailing sad--just sort of a businesslike something you did every year as a duty. 

When I was grown up and  asked Mom about Steve she said that he would have been just the right age to be in the New Mexico National Guard for the disastrous Bataan Death March in the Philippines  in which so many of Albuquerque's young men died--so maybe his painless death as a baby spared him from all that suffering.

Taos Cemetery. (Tomasito photo)

...

10. Motel

Me in a Motel (Tanya photo)

Motel. A place to sleep, shower, picnic or maybe cook some rice in the electric pot, write some notes and don't watch the color TV. 

Always overpriced, sometimes clean. Park at the foot of the stairs, carry the luggage and the plastic bags of groceries up--two sometimes three trips. Maybe a laundry, free breakfast coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Motel.

Plastic card for a key that will expire at noon tomorrow--never works the first time. Motel. Queen size bed or two full size beds, cigarette burns in the carpet and  the TV table, Only one chair. Shower controls always different--water flow too weak, too strong--too hot--too cold. Thin white towels. Toilet paper folded into a classy neat point at the used edge.

Noisy family next door. Motel.  Hoodlums next door. Retired military next door. Motel. Driving on to Florida next door. Don't speak English next door.


Trucks  roaring by all night, freight trains all night long, police sirens, toilet flushing next door, strange vibrations, Gideon Bible. Motel.

Tanya. (Tomasito photo)

...

9. Desert Water

We have recently visited three human solutions to the problem of water in the desert and they all are concerned with containment pools.


Montezuma Well in the middle of the Arizona Desert--a small pond formed by nature and exploited by the "Sinagua" early human desert dwellers--Lake Elsinore, created in the early 20th Century by damming seasonal rainwater runoff streams near the Pacific coast in the southern California desert  and Lake Havasu--also created in the early 20th Century by damming the Colorado River on the desert California/Arizona border.

Here are some photos of each of these human solutions to a need. (Click photo to enlarge)

Lake Elsinore, (Tomasito photo)

Lake Havasu. (Tomasito photo)

Montezuma Well. (Tanya photo)

More humans mean more massive solutions. 

How many people are enough?

"Enough is plenty."

...

8. Montezuma Irrigation Canal

Montezuma Well. Irrigation Canal and Beaver Creek

Water is a rare and precious resource in the desert.

The plants and animals --all the living things of the desert--have evolved with this basic fact.

The Sinagua people--late comers into this environment--obviously based their occupation of the arid land on the availability of water--and that is why a small group of them discovered and used the Montezuma Well as a resource.

The circular sink of the well is adjacent to an abrupt valley and the springs that feed the well pour from a small passageway from the well into a stream in the valley.

Long ago the Sinagua people created a system of irrigation canals capturing the water coming from the cliff under Montezuma Well and carrying it down the valley to water their fields of maize, beans and squash. The later native people and eventually the European settlers used and improved these canals which are still useful today.


Just a few paces from the look-out point above the well into the valley below the well brings the visitor to this rushing "leak" in Montezuma Well and follows the ancient irrigation system a short way, passing from dry desert to lush riparian habitat.

...

7. Montezuma Well

 Montezuma Well Lookout. (Tomasito photo)

There are two other ancient sites near Montezuma Castle National Monument:  Montezuma Well and Tuzigoot. 

We drove the few miles to Montezuma well and saved the ruined village of old Tuzigoot for future exploration. .

I was very curious to see Montezuma Well since I had heard about it since I was a boy but never had the opportunity to visit. It is well worth the drive to this out-of-the-way part of the huge state of Arizona.


The well is a "limestone sink formed long ago by the collapse of an  immense underground cavern."

There is a paved access road from highway eleven, parking lot and restroom facilities for the many tourists to wish to see this small pond smack in the middle of this vast desert.


When we arrived, a couple of busloads of elementary school kids from Phoenix and their adult chaperones were climbing all over the place--gawking at the still water below from the viewing area at the rim and clogging the trail which descends to the water's edge with their lively young bodies. Maybe fifty other tourists were mingling with the exuberant children--and we were there too, of course.


I was thinking how lucky these kids were to be here--to enjoy this one-of-a-kind rare place as children when it has taken me a long lifetime to get here.

...

6. Parking Lot

I have mentioned the crowded parking lot at the Montezuma Castle National Monument.


There is a nice paved access road down into the narrow canyon where the ruins are and the parking lot is also paved and well laid out but there were so many visitors that all the spaces were filled and there was a resulting traffic jam--not exactly expected out here in the empty desert!


And the cars were from everywhere! We saw license plates from Arizona  and California, of course--and also from Texas, New Mexico, New York and Florida--even Canada.


We found a parking place though with not such a very long wait and also found a welcome  empty picnic table in the shade of some big cottonwood trees for our lunch--yogurt, bananas, oranges and some good bread. Drinking water was available free at the park.

...

5. Montezuma Castle

This famous Arizona ruin is in an elevated cave in a canyon on Beaver Creek about fifty miles from The town of Flagstaff. 

It was built in the eleventh  century of the Common Era by the Sinagua people but was abandoned before being discovered by European settlers who imagined that it had been built by the Aztecs and so called it the Montezuma Castle.


The location of this beautiful "cliff dwelling" is in what I would call the perfect place for a farm. 

There is a large natural cave in a sandstone cliff, elevated above the valley floor by several hundred feet--perfect for sheltering an adobe high-rise structure-- with a rushing stream of clear water a short walk from the cliff base.


The "Castle" is a twenty-room dwelling set picturesquely  into the cave. 

There are also  the eroded remains of a forty-five room village at the base of the cliff--so the population of the farm was never very large. There are probably more tourists in the valley at any time of the day now than there ever were inhabitants of the early village.


I think the National Park Service has done a good job of protecting the ruins--there is a small museum, gift shop and restroom facilities and a crowded parking lot.

...

4. Joshua Tree

Tanya on the Rocks. (Tomasito photo)

 Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California is another protected desert park we visited in our Journey to the East.

There are two desert environments in  this huge park--the eastern half, below 3,000 feet above sea level is called the Colorado Desert and the western half, above 3,000 feet, is called the Mojave Desert. 

The Joshua Trees (not trees, but a type of yucca) live in the Mojave part of the park--Creosote bush and cholla cactus covers much of the Colorado part.

Both environments are chock-full of life--plants, animals, birds--even the strange outcroppings of stones seem to be quite alive in their own way!

We love to drive through this big beautiful, inspiring, quiet land--and we love to park and mingle with the desert life-forms. They are so interesting!

Cholla Cactus Garden. (Tomasito photo)

...

3. Casa Grande

 Tanya at Casa Grande Ruins. (Tomasito photo)

Our Journey to the East took us by the ruins called "Casa Grande Ruins National Monument" in south-central Arizona.


These badly eroded but still impressive adobe  structures mark a town center of the "Hohokam" (All Gone--Used Up People).

This desert culture on the Gila River developed slowly for many centuries and failed and disappeared by 1450 Common Era leaving traces of irrigated fields, scattered  trade goods, pot shards and these four-story walls of some grand building.


The old village was vacant and partly in ruins when first visited by European  missionaries (Father Kino) in 1694.


This remote site became the first federally protected archeological site in the United States in 1892 and a steel protective roof was built to slow the adobe erosion in the 1930s.


A placard informs the pedestrian viewer that the village was built by unknown people of long ago. "What were their secrets? Adaptability, hard work and human ingenuity: the essentials of life."

...

2. Saguaro Facts

 Dying Saguaro. (Tomasito photo)

Saguaros can live to a very old age--200 and more years.


 At fifteen years of age the cactus may be only twelve inches in height and it does not grow "arms" until after it's 75th birthday.


The mature saguaro blossoms and produces fruit containing thousands of tiny seeds at about thirty years of age.


"Saguaros that live 150 years or more attain the grandest sizes, towering 50 feet or more and weighing 16,000 pounds or more, dwarf every other living thing in the desert" (Saguaro National Park brochure).

Dying Human Being. (Tomasito photo)

Humans can live to an age of one hundred and a few more years.

A human  female can have babies from about thirteen to about fifty years years of age after fertilization by a human male. Babies are usually single but can come as twins, triplets or, rarely, more--up to a record of eight.


Humans can attain the height of about six and a half feet or, rarely, more. Some can weigh as much as three hundred or more  pounds though the average is less than 200 pounds. (Tomasito's Facts)

...

1. Saguaro Desert

There is a kind of place I like to be in the outdoors--quiet--empty--but filled with life-- not the usual noisy, ordinary kind of life--a more mysterious, subtle kind of life: a humming, expanding, vibrating kind of life--sometimes with form and sometimes formless---the kind of life that fills and overflows the saguaro desert country of Arizona.

We went there again recently--but in a way I never leave the desert. I've got desert in my bones!

I was born in the New Mexico desert in what was the little town of Albuquerque and can always and easily recall the wild desert mood--the silence, the strange plants--the snake trails in the dirt and the lizards--the gray coyote slipping away into the distance--the glimpse of roadrunner or brilliant song of some Mexican bird hidden in the sparse trees.

But it is always wonderful to BE in the desert again: the high vibrating color, the tasty air--the humming distance--the weird plants, the the signs of animals, birds, insects--the dry heat--the magnificent sun.


Dangerous, deadly, happy, peaceful desert.

...

319. That's All Folks

Who to travel (or live) with: I think "righteous" or “holy” people are the best companions but I guess these words will mean something different to everyone, of course.


Some of the very best people don’t like to think of themselves as either righteous or holy! 

But when you have had enough earthprobing experience to develop some discrimination, I think you will agree that you can depend more on “righteous” or “holy” people through thick and thin than "unrighteous" or “unholy” people.  

I define "holy" as someone who builds you up, makes you better—just like they are. “Unholy” people are selfish---tear you down and make you a worse person—just like they are.


For me, "righteous" or “holy” is never boring, it’s classy!

Help: It is probably not possible for a traveler not to need help fairly often 
so when you need help, I suggest you go to the “religious” people in any country—that is, to the simple religious people, not necessarily the professionally religious people-- and you will usually get the simple, practical help you need—and it will usually be free. This works for me.


Don’t bother going to rich people for help. They don’t understand “need” and they will never help anyone but themselves.

~:~

And speaking of help: Tanya Wold did all the initial computer work necessary to get this old book of mine back into print and she constantly helps me when I have computer or internet problems. Tanya is my wife, inspiration and charming earthprobing companion. Thanks, Tanya!

Tom (Starship) Wold

Snug Harbor, California

...

318. Still More Stuff

Identification: is a main priority—a traveler must be able to prove who he is quickly—so keep essential documents next to your skin. Even when you bathe, have them in full view but dry, of course. I have heard that the next step is to have a microchip implanted under your skin so you can always be identified, but that is pretty extreme. We already have fingerprints for positive physical identification—maybe that’s enough.


NOTE: when traveling, “The WHO Immunization Card” is as necessary to carry as your passport. At the present time (1976) you MUST CARRY evidence of a “typhoid booster” shot (annually), a “smallpox booster” shot (updated annually), a TB test (updated annually) a, “cholera booster” every six months and hepatitis protection—a gamma globulin shot every four months. Some countries are very serious about this evidence and others are lax. Be prepared!


Wardrobe: I like a baseball cap with a bill to keep my nose from getting sunburned. I like sturdy, lace-up ankle high leather boots with “tractor tread” soles so I don’t have to worry about my feet. A change of underwear and socks are nice. A couple of bandana handkerchiefs are handy. Tee shirts and shorts in the tropics are good and I like to have one presentable collared shirt with buttons for “dress-up” occasions. Jeans seem acceptable almost everywhere and a lined jean jacket is good protection for all but very cold weather. A real wool sweater is practical if you can afford it.


In South America
I tried wearing a poncho as a combination “coat and blanket” but it never worked for me. I like a separate coat and a blanket better.


For a backpacking earthprober, “comfortable” is better than “stylish”.


I never found one trouble-free backpacker’s wardrobe that would accommodate all climates and all cultures and all conditions, but I also discovered that whatever I need seems to appear whenever I need it—this always works for me so I don’t worry much about how I’m dressed.

...

317. More Stuff

In the study: Writing kit with paper, envelopes, ballpoint pen, local stamps; drawing kit with colored pencils, sketch pad, brush and India ink; a world map and some local maps are fun;  not more than one book (Keep exchanging it!), musical instrument (like a harmonica or tin whistle), foreign language phrase book for the country you’re in and a magnifying glass, if you need it, for the small print.


In The Bedroom: Sleeping bag or blanket. (I don’t like the tapering “mummy bags” because they cramp my feet!), candle or flashlight, plastic rain sheet or ultra lightweight one-man tent.


Carry on the body: Passport, “World Health Organization (WHO) Immunization Card” ( both in a waterproof wallet hanging around the neck), address book, airline tickets, and American Express card; camera and film in a protective case with a shoulder strap—(or in the backpack for security); money wallet, ID, etc., in front clothing pockets--nothing but a handkerchief in the thief-tempting rear pockets. I like to carry some  loose paper money in my front shirt pocket--it is easier to take out to pay for necessary things and easy to protect. (I learned this trick from Brother Joe in Liberia.)

...

316. My Stuff

Here are some of the things I carried:



In the kitchen: “Optimus” gasoline stove and 1 quart metal container for gasoline (You can buy standard motor gasoline, “petrol”, almost everywhere on earth, but not specialized cooker fuels.), two-quart water container, lightweight “unbreakable” cup, bowl, spoon and fork. (My Swiss Army pocket-knife with its practical tools stayed in my pants pocket.), sharpening stone for the knife, one-quart bail handled cooking pot with lid, small tea-pot and several plastic containers for food, matches, etc.

In the bathroom/closet: soap, toilet paper, hairbrush, comb, scissors, shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste (I prefer baking soda now), dental floss (makes good, tough emergency thread), tweezers, nail clippers, sewing kit with needles, thread, buttons, safety pins.


Also in the bathroom:

Doctor Tree’s Medicine Chest:

For diarrhoea: Streptomagma, Lomotil or Paregoric (blood or mucous show means it’s amoebic: see someone for shots!). 

Malaria prevention: Chloroquinine (250 mg pill weekly) or Primaquinine (daily pill). 

Water purification: Iodine (tablets or fluid) but best is to boil the daylights out of the water (at least fifteen minutes of rapid boiling!).

Other medical needs: Vaseline (good for so many things!), mosquito repellent, adhesive tape or “Band-Aids”.

(Health tips for the traveler):

Always wear shoes (Especially in West Africa where soil parasites can bore right through the skin of your feet and get into your bloodstream!).


In many countries helpful or necessary drugs can be purchased at a pharmacy without a prescription if you know the chemical name of what you need.


If the food you eat is steaming hot, the harmful bacteria on it may be weakened enough not make you very sick!


To cure most illnesses, you don’t need a medical doctor. Just think of what you have done or are doing and change your life-style until you are better. Sometimes it takes just as long to heal yourself as it has taken to make yourself sick!


If you are hurting, don’t concentrate on the pain, concentrate on something else and you may forget the pain!


If you are in a place where sickness is rampant, leave, because health, like sickness, is contagious—stay around healthy, happy people! Avoid complainers and sickness addicts!


Practice some Hatha Yoga. You’ll never regret it! (You can learn all you need out of a book. Don’t waste your money on “power yoga” lessons or that kind of commercial nonsense!)


Whenever possible, avoid breathing polluted air, drinking polluted liquids, eating polluted food or thinking whatever you think are polluted thoughts!


Health insurance: whatever policy you are paying for probably won’t work anywhere except in the most westernised of western countries. Socialistic countries will probably give you free minimal health care even if you are not a citizen just to get rid of you. Don’t be a fool. Take care of yourself!


I never had any health insurance during my earthprobe and when people would ask me, since I had no health insurance, what happened when I got sick I would always say: “I feel terrible until I get well!”

...

315. Backpack Stuffing

My backpack, the one I called my Big Red Friend, was made of lightweight, red, heavy-duty nylon. It had four horizontally zippered compartments, which was very handy because you didn’t have to dig down to the bottom of the bag for small loose stuff, and two small zippered pockets on each side for smaller things I needed handy..These compartments were very good for keeping things separated that need to be separated, for example my eating equipment and food isolated from my old sweat socks.


I called the four larger separate backpack compartments my “kitchen”, my “bedroom”, my “bathroom/closet” and my “study”.


The backpack was attached to a lightweight aluminium/webbing frame with some handy steel pins, or it could be detached if you didn’t want to be bothered with the frame.


The frame had an adjustable belt that rested on my hips (instead of circling the waist) with a quick-release buckle and padded shoulder straps so that it was fairly comfortable to carry. When I bought it, it was the largest backpack available, but this was not good because I discovered I would carry  I whatever would fit into my luggage. Now I prefer to carry small luggage so I will carry less stuff, which means less weight to lug!


But my Big Red Friend’s frame was pretty much destroyed by the US custom officer’s drug search at Honolulu International Airport. I accepted that as one of the prices of earthprobing and let it go, but...


Unfortunately, the frame was essential to the integrity of the  backpack--it was not so efficient after the frame was messed up so I never used the backpack again in quite the same hard way—though I did use it for some easy stateside traveling.

...

314. Tommy's Travel Tips

Tommy’s Travel Tips

(For Serious Travelers)

Never buy a long-distance ticket unless you are sure you can go the whole distance. Once they have your money they can do anything they want.


Prices are often flexible. Haggling is OK and may save you a lot of money.


People carry their own weather around with them, so never believe stories of border hassles and so forth. People’s stories illustrate their own problems! But always be careful. It’s the only ass you’ve got this time around!


If you wear pants, never carry anything you value in your rear pocket! Sooner or later it will be stolen. Keep your wallet, if you carry one, in a front pocket and keep a hand on it. Fact: good professional thieves will get your money no matter where you carry it--this is experience speaking.


When you travel always carry some food and drink (not alcoholic) with you—even if it is just a little, because sooner or later you will be stranded and need it. (Stranded is bad, stranded and drunk is worse.)


Everything is temporary! Maintain your equilibrium.


Keep all signs of wealth out of sight. Flaunting watches, jewelry, cameras, expensive anything  (cloths, luggage, shoes, etc.)  will make you an even more tempting target for thieves then you already are.


Familiarize yourself with local currency as quickly as you can. Count out change in front of other customers since their reaction will show you how badly you are being cheated.


In every transaction, hold onto your money as long as possible and don’t be ashamed to yell when you are cheated.


To find the true value of the local currency, buy a loaf of bread and then think: “Tonight’s lodging will cost me so many loaves of bread.” I like the bread standard better than the gold standard.


Here are my favorite short-change artists: waiters, post office employees, ticket agents for transport of all kinds.


When you cash traveler’s checks get your cash in small denominations. Most merchants or even banks will not accept large bills.


Refuse damaged or torn paper money--it is usually worthless and if you accept it you will probably be stuck with it!


Expect the worst rate of exchange for safe traveler’s checks. Most agents will charge a huge “service fee” to cash them.


American dollars in twenty dollar denominations are accepted almost everywhere.


The world is round. Always assume you will return. Honesty is the best policy. Kindness is contagious and so on…

Don't be curious about unusual or mob human activity--walk the other way. Curiosity still kills cats.

An experienced traveler gets sensitive to his surroundings. This is not just paranoia--act on your intuitions and be happy.

The golden rule still rules.

...

313. Earthprobe Tapestry

When I began my “earthprobe” adventure I imagined that I what I was doing was gathering true information about the world for my friends and readers in Hawaii and the United States of America, but they have all been busy with their own “earthprobes”, doing and learning what they could in their own ways.


Besides, my truth, filtered by my consciousness, my experiences, my education and so forth, will never be True (with a capital T)—for you or anyone else but me.


And so my earthprobe, my life, my adventure is my lesson and my miracle. Your earthprobe is yours, but perhaps our separate ways sometimes cross and entwine like reeds in a basket or fibers in cloth. 

Maybe the deepest longing and desire of the human heart is to communicate, to help and be helped in understanding life.

So, happy earthprobing to you too dear friend and may the subtle fibers of our being merge and mingle for good.


“With a handclasp in thought”,






Tom (Thomas Frederick, Tomasito, Starship, Tommy the Drummer) Wold

...

312. Good

My old friend and colleague Wiggers invites me to spend a few days and nights on his “guest porch” until I can get myself back together.


The heavy-duty old friend who is now the English Department chairperson at the Leeward Community College branch of the University of Hawaii where I used to work takes me for a spin in her brand new bright red sports car but there is nothing for me there.

I learned to smoke with the Moslem brothers in Lebanon--now I am going through more than a pack a day. No wonder they offer a cigarette to a person about to be shot--tobacco is a wonderful depressant.


Easter Sunday. I hike up into the Nuuanu Valley to the old Royal Mausoleum Park, the most sacred place I know nearby, and spend the day under the old trees in thought. When I am ready to go, I bend down and kiss the good, warm soil of Hawaii. There are many good places to be on this horrible, beautiful earth. It is good for me to be here too.

...

311. Normal

Morning: I am lying on my stomach. I open my eyes and watch the mud and water running past my face. If I don’t move too much, my torso, at least, stays warm.


When there’s enough daylight, I struggle down the mountainside and phone another friend who invites me over to her apartment. When she goes off to work she lets me sleep on her rug where I am most comfortable—I don’t sleep in beds any more..


When she returns in the evening she fixes me a large pan of fried chicken for dinner. When she serves the food I am almost overcome with emotion. It’s all for me. I have seen too much poverty and weirdness. These normal things in these normal surroundings are almost more than I can bear. I guess I am experiencing a little of what a soldier returning from a combat zone feels.


Maybe “earthprobe” was my Viet Nam.

...

310 Welcome Home

In the morning I phone a friend, walk to her apartment and borrow her car.


In a very confused state of mind I drive through the American traffic to a magazine publisher’s office—the same office where Elizabeth and I met and got to know and like each other…but the office is locked. “The Hawaii Beacon Magazine” is extinguished--gone out of business.


I drive to the office of the "Hawaii Herald", the Japanese language newspaper I edited for a while. It’s dead too.


I drive by the University of Hawaii in Manoa Valley-- Toshi’s “Cosmic Computer” has been removed from the lawn leaving no trace.


I visit an old musician friend. He is into a new thing, which is making him lots of money—he is touring mainland America with a “Hawaiian Show”—he says it’s too bad my skin is not brown or he could hire me.


That’s my first day “home”.


I return the car and hike up into the mountains above Honolulu, pushing my way through the underbrush to a cliff where you can see the city below. I used to come up here alone when I was troubled to think, though I thought different thoughts then.


I cut loose and went my own way—did I expect any welcome home?


Wrapped in my Afghani coat, I sleep. 

About midnight it starts to rain--a real Hawaiian downpour with floods of water in pitch-black darkness. It’s impossible to climb back down the cliff to find shelter. Totally drenched and heavy with water, my sheepskin coat starts to fall apart. 

I wrap all the plastic sheeting I have around my diary to keep it dry then crouch and finally lay exhausted in the rain.  


In a confusion of emotion, I start to cry. I cry as I haven’t cried for years (grown men don’t cry) sobbing until my body aches. Then I sleep.

...

309. Absurd Fantasy

Old friends are only a telephone call away, but I know I cannot cope with a “normal” conversation now.


I hike the long way from Waikiki back to the airport—a long midnight walk—marveling at the incredible wealth, the impossible normalcy of everything I see.


The airline has “found” my backpack. The US customs police have gone through it and broken open its aluminum framework to search for the drugs I must have smuggled in from Nepal. But I didn’t.


I carry the ruined backpack to a beach I know and sleep with my head on it—guarding my few worn possessions and my diary as I have all these lonely, weary months. My backpack is the only familiar thing to me now. Hawaii, the place I used to think of as “home”, is an absurd fantasy.

...

308. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: 

Late afternoon arrival. 

My backpack--my "Big Red Friend"--is gone. It has been misplaced, they say, by the airline. I am jet lagged and exhausted. I don’t know…maybe some kind of a circle is complete—at least I am back where I started…but all these cars! The wide, paved streets! The neat, clean people speaking English…the shiny, spacious, almost empty public bus to Waikiki…the dimes and quarters and dollar bills bus fare…the glittering hotels, so expensive, so familiar and so very, very strange!


Nothing has changed, but all is changed and strange to me!


I am no drinker, but I have a drink at a hotel bar I know. Here’s Ala Wai harbor where I lived for a couple of years on my very own sailboat. Here’s Waikiki--the Rainbow Tower and Hawaiian Village Hotel. 

Oh, My God.


Where AM I? Where have I gone?


Where are the hustlers? The beggars? Are there no ragged untouchables here? Or am I the only poor, ragged untouchable now?


 Nothing has changed but me alone! 

I have changed!


I have made my long journey to the Monkey Temple and   I     will     never     be     the     same.

...

307. Over Asia

There is a difficult decision to make: should I buy two Thai silk “aloha shirts” that feel like you are wearing nothing when you wear them, or should I spend my last night in town in my hotel room? I can’t afford both.


I check out of the hotel and make it down to the airport to sleep wearing one of my new shirts.


In the airport waiting room a well-dressed older man comes up to me and asks if I can fly a fighter jet. If I can he says he has work for me. I never learned to fly one. Looks like I am back in “the real world”.


Most of the rest of the night I spend talking to a pretty Spanish woman—when she leaves for Pakistan at 2 a.m. I go to sleep under my Afghani sheepskin coat.


My flight to Honolulu leaves at 8 a.m. On the plane I sit next to a friendly American woman on her way to New York. She makes it a good trip.


Hong Kong: In and out. I never leave the plane.


Formosa: Green and lovely below.


Seoul: Cold.


Tokyo: The lady going to New York reads my I Ching: “Small gains”.

...

306. Bankok

Bangkok is a whirlwind of automobiles, buses and people.


Provocative billboards five or six stories high advertise the latest in sex and violence movies. It is so hot and humid here that sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater may be the most sensible pastime available.


The people are small and seem vivacious. Many of the young women are very attractive to me and they seem to like foreign men like me—probably because so many American military men have been through here with plenty of money to spend.


In the few days I am in the city shopping for the cheapest plane fare to Hawaii, I see several movies, visit several exquisite temples and watch one of the Asian Cup soccer finals. (South Viet Nam lost…and the USA war just ended. America lost too in South Viet Nam!)

...

305. Flying Home

The plane out of Nepal passes near Mount Everest. Snow is blowing off the world’s loftiest peak in a soft cloud.


Bangkok, Thailand: The usual airport hustlers are waiting. I am almost taken for an expensive taxi ride to an expensive airport hotel by one of the usual airport parasites-- when my earthprobeing experience takes control of my mind and actions.


Slow down. Take it easy. There is no hurry.


I wait for the other arriving airport tourists to make their frantic bid for security in an alien environment. I walk around a bit and then casually catch a regular city bus downtown. On a back street near Siam Square I find a hotel I can afford and, much too curious about this unusual city to rest, I walk out to “probe” the place.

...

304. Image

In the evening I gaze into the eyes of my reflected image in the hotel room mirror. 

It is obvious that the things I am now thinking I could think only here and now. 

The choices I have made have made every present breath and every present thought inevitable. I am-- I must be-- at “the right place at the right time” for my particular spiritual growth since this is where I am and this is all there is for me.


That’s faith I suppose— a faith that is essential at least to my present understanding.


And you reading these lines— could you possibly be anywhere else or is this meeting of our minds inevitable? I wish you very well, Dear Reader and MAY YOU ATTAIN.


Next morning I begin to arrange my return journey back to Honolulu by air.

...

303. Enough is Enough

This “earthprobe”…


My earthprobe.


Is this a small part of what “finding yourself” means?


And couldn’t I have “found myself” more conveniently on the beach at Waikiki? Or did I have to say goodbye and go—“cell in the stream, fish in the flow” as I put it back then to really "find myself" good?


Is there “something” deep in me, maybe something “spiritual” that somehow “knows” what experiences I need to “become myself”—something that somehow drives the events of my life and perhaps even provides the necessary “right experiences”?


I don't know, but this is a mystery most mysterious for me!


But honestly, this “Temple of the Monkeys” in Nepal is emblematic of the kind of place where an ignorant monkey like me would be destined to “find himself”!


I believe I have reached the end of this portion of the wandering path of my earthprobing. I do not have the strength or the will to return to India and continue traveling east by land until I come to land’s end.


China and Russia are closed to US citizens now. We Americans are at war in Viet Nam.


I am broke and bone-weary.


This is enough and enough is plenty. Enough is enough. Snuff, snuff!

...

302. Monkey Temple

Somewhat fatigued by the high altitude, I retire early but sleep like a baby dreaming of trying on new clothes for some new kind of work. Friends are helping me choose. I even get a dream haircut but regret it in my dream.


In the morning, ringing my bike bell constantly like everyone else, I thread my way through the Katmandu traffic—lots of pedestrians but few cars or bicycles. After a few minutes of peddling I am alone on a paved country lane leading up a hill to the gilded tower of the famous “Temple of the Monkeys”.


I lean my rented bike against a tree where a footpath to the temple begins and start to climb. A picturesque outcropping of stones and trees catches my eye and I leave the main path and walk over to them. The larger stones have mysterious symbols carved on them, the smaller stones and pebbles between the twisted tree roots are smeared with vermilion paste. The air is pine-scented and fresh. Shadowy monkeys appear on rock ledges high above me. I think this little natural shrine suits me better than the big golden one further up the slope so I sit and spend some quiet time here drawing and thinking and save the celebrated sanctuary on the summit for another day.

...

301. Stupa and Pie

I rent a bicycle and ride out into the countryside. There are very few motorized vehicles—maybe that’s why the air is so clean and the pace seems so “human”. Farmers are busy in the fertile- looking fields and at every turn in the country lane there is a crumbling stone temple with penetrating but sleepy-looking eyes painted on them.


I find “The Largest Stupa in the World”-- an immense white dome of solid masonry, with the same large sleepy blue eyes painted on the square tower built on top of the dome. Colorful prayer flags are fluttering in every direction from cords tied to the top of the tower. Prayer wheels-- sort of vertical bronze cylinders fixed so brushing them with the hand will spin them-- are installed in niches around the base of the dome. A saffron-robed monk gently scolds a small child who has been turning one of the prayer wheels the wrong way—unwinding someone’s prayer, no doubt!


I enjoy Nepalese food for lunch: a crispy potato pancake wrapped around some delicious curry.


In the evening I peddle my bike down to the row of pie shops near the town’s almost dry riverbed. I have heard of these pie shops from other travelers and I have been curious to see if they are as good as their reputation. I open the door of the first shop in the row, “The Upper Crust Pie Shop”, and am confronted by a by a table laden with beautiful cakes and pies. Oh, my goodness! Take your pick. One thick slice with hot milk tea for two rupees! There is peach, apple, berry, lemon meringue and banana cream pie, angle’s food, devil’s food and vanilla cake—all right from the oven!


A stoned hippy is smiling in a corner over a wedge of pineapple pie and a straight tourist in shorts is getting into some chocolate cake. I take a slice of the supreme pie, pecan!


There is no rush. When I have eaten my fill I pay the thin, businesslike boy in change and wander out into the peaceful evening. Children are playing in a fountain with carved stone faces. I am reminded of the fuente pre-Hispanico in Colombia. Though very different, this place has the same good vibes.

...