The fountain of youth is horse shit

Good news: the photos from here on are Ben's. You're welcome, eyeballs. I will only bring pictures of Ben taking pictures and postcards from Billy, but I'll warn you in advance so you know what you're clicking into.

 

Yesterday we spent most of the day with Beverly and her big, hairy, crazy, smiling dog, and also her six mystical horses who heal people's spirits. I'm not making this up. Beverly, the innkeeper at our little two-day hideout in Westport, CA, rescues spiritually powerful but otherwise unwanted horses and together she and they give therapy to people who are grieving, healing, or in some way trying to get through it all (seriously, that could be anyone). You don't ride the horses and you don't even have to like or have ever met any horses. You just hang out and let them interact with you. Beverly is an interpreter of sorts, letting you know what the horses are saying with their movements and actions. They are highly perceptive, and very communicative.

Beverly let us come squish around in the muck and feed and chit chat with her magnificent creatures. Not having grown up around horses at all, I am typically frightened of them, and I believe this to be a perfectly reasonable fear, given that a horse weighs the better part of a ton, literally (oh yes, I really mean literally, and I promise to never use that word to emphasize the figurative, because I am super judgy [I looked it up, there's no 'e'] about this kind of thing, and also please excuse my typos and other grammatical faux pas...es). 

Size and power aside, here's the truly terrifying thing about horses: they can pretty much see directly into your soul, kind of like dogs, except that they don't really need your love, so they can't or won't ignore whatever it is they find in there. I've always been afraid that a horse will see something in me that should have remained hidden (like grammar judginess) and freak out or get skittish. I have only ever gotten close to a horse with a bribe, like a carrot, and only once when I was in a particularly light and carefree place. Maybe that's where I am now, because it was incredibly good. The shyest one who is afraid of men came up and kissed both me and Ben. I'm still high from it. Some of the others played with us! They have rather funny personalities. Beverly said this was the first time she had seen some of them come out the way they did. 

This may be one of those experiences that will only be diminished by me telling it without having fully processed what happened between our faces and Amora's, but the day was magical and outrageously beautiful, and so was Beverly. We couldn't tell how old she was (she is one of those timeless, classically striking women of flawless bone structure and indeterminable age who hovers somewhere between fifty-two and a hundred), and it seemed goofy to bother to ask. Despite her fine, mostly white hair and deep lines in her radiant face, her eyes twinkle a deep blue and I'm sure she is aging in reverse, becoming more pure, more trusting, more confident, more generous, sweeter with the passage of time. It is as though she gathers and collects wonder and scatters it around her everywhere she goes. However young or old she is, she does the hard physical work twice every day of feeding and caring for these horses, and it is possible that mucking around in horse poop out of pure love can keep you vibrant and gorgeous forever.

Now more than ever we are on a mission to find our little farm. First, dinner.

Burn it down, make it pretty

I'm pretty sure we are going to burn down a hotel at some point. We have a 1000 watt hot plate, which sounds like a lot of watts, but I think it isn't really enough to cook food--just enough to light up the drapes. Yesterday we stopped at this fantastic real food grocery in Eureka. It may be the only bastion of good health in a town seemingly crawling with tweakers. I know that's not fair, and a drive-through of a town is never an accurate representation of its true character. I'm sure Stepford is lovely this time of year and is aglow with holiday twinkle and the warm scent of spiced treats. 

Anyway, we have the wok, the hotplate, and after a trip to the grocery, a cooler full of wholesome deliciousness, including, but not limited to, ruby red grapefruit, spinach, wakame, oranges, bananas, pastured chicken bits, grass-fed ground beef, miso, avocados, Japanese yams (which are like cake. I LOVE CAKE), Thai curry paste (don't judge, Holly--I'm not hunting down and grinding up shallots, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, and galangal on the road), and some remaining scallion butts from the Oregon market. Not all of these things went into the wok, but chicken, spinach, scallions, and Thai seasonings did. The rest will find their way into our mouths soon enough.

When we worked in technology, I made endless, beautiful process flows that made perfect logical sense. The joke was that I invested nothing in the content. My job was to make it pretty and hopefully organize the information in such a way as to appear meaningful. Ben's job was to supply actual meaningful content, and let someone else concern herself with its visual presentation, with filtering and arranging and making the artifacts show-ready. As we shed old skins, the irony of our current arrangement is not lost on us. Make it pretty, Ben. If you can't make it mean anything, at least make it pretty.

Also, will you please post a photo of our coffee mugs?

Billy & Babe, naturally. Ben, too.

Postcards from Billy (Oregon Coast)

Passing through Brookings, our last Oregon coastal town, so naturally we have stopped for petrol because they pump it for you here--it's terribly charming. We just stopped at the local sporting good store, where the really nice guy with a lonely, tusk-like bottom tooth directed us to Bi-Rite, where we got a hot plate, a colander, a wok, a knife sharpener, and some manicure supplies (it's the road, not some kind of cosmetic purgatory). He also told us about the Superfly Distillery across from Bi-Rite, where we did not go for a "delicious lunch and a damn good vodka." We still do not yet have a knife to sharpen, but we did find some pretty old silver forks and spoons and a dinner knife at the last antique store.

Ben is putting oil in the truck at the gas station where a sweet, lanky, shaggy-headed young man is filling our tank and admiring Billy. Our sample size is admittedly small--fewer than a half dozen--though it seems this town is primarily inhabited by the kind of smiling, kind-hearted, wild-toothed characters whom I would like as not-too-terribly distant neighbors.

Entering California, the road veers away from the sea for a spell, and suddenly all is pastoral, green, and warmed by the sun. It is as if the coastal storm through which we drove last night and to which we woke this morning had never happened at all. It is like the sky and the land stating in their most matter-of-fact tones that our new life is beginning.

List-o-mania

Scrambled eggs with scallions, kippers, and leftover jalapeño cheesecake for breakfast, with an appetizer of bananas and peanut butter, of course. Every meal on this trip tastes like the first gourmet meal of my life. Also we didn't shower this morning for the first time. The trappings of the old (normal, appropriate) life are falling away (as if they ever had a firm hold)!

We found mushrooms today on the way back from our beach walk. Three varieties, I think. Ben photographed them (yes, there will be good pictures on this blog eventually). We want to learn mushrooms and how to forage food. Here are things we want to learn to do:
- hunt mushrooms
- bow hunt wild boar (sure, that may be two things or maybe more)
- field dress our boar
- throw knives
- slack line
- raise chickens

Here are the photo series I want on our blog (since I take funny, sort of bad photos with my iPhone):
- postcards from Billy
- pictures of Ben taking pictures
- food we eat

These are the things I need to do today:
- fix my stretched out buttonhole (done!)

- prototype a cabled wrist cuff
- write nice cards to friends

Here is what I like today:
- breakfast
- other people's silly dogs riding in the front seats of cars
- cooking fancy meals in motel rooms
- being on the road
- climbing piles of big driftwood or barnacled stone cliffs during low tide
- hot water in my travel mug
- taking pictures from inside Billy
- my heart bursting with all this beauty
- knitting funny hats
- rambling around with Ben and feeling like this mad world actually makes sense
- lists

Yes, Chubby Girl. Yes.

Yesterday we drove through Bandon by the Sea. This whole coast is spectacular. Cute little tourist town with almost nothing of interest except for the Friday and Saturday farmers market where we met Susan, the gem of Bandon, who moved to the Oregon coast from Minneapolis. Susan is the talent and heart behind Chubby Girl Cheesecakes, these brilliant little shareable confections made with local honeys and berries, evilly dark chocolate, wildly delicious flavor inventions, and pure love. She makes the gluten-free graham crust from scratch, and makes savory cheesecakes like onion-thyme, jalapeño, smoked salmon, and bleu cheese. We bought a jalapeño and a five spice that tasted like gingerbread and we feasted like kings.

A mountain of baby braising kale of all brilliant, jewel colors steamed with tamari and scallions, these gorgeous, giant scallions from the produce guy. We saved the purple cauliflower and sweet, jade-like broccoli for later, and sliced the broccoli stem into slices to use as chips for the jalapeño cheesecake. We ate steamed, sliced scallions in spicy miso soup, then devoured that sweet gingerbread cheesecake like we hadn't eaten all day.

We drove a ways in a mighty storm, in the dark, and stayed last night in Gold Beach at the Pacific Reef Motel, where only one other car is parked. Hotel cooking is a challenge I welcome. We eat beautifully on the road. This state is full of beautiful foods. I wonder what the desert will bring when we finally get there.

Say YA-haahts (not ya-CHATS). Trust me.

Stayed in Yachats, OR at the Ocean Cove Inn Motel in a big, funny room. Bought yams, eggs, and broccoli at the C&K Market and ate broccoli and hummus and guacamole for night snack, then yogurt.

Breakfast: leftover crab belly meat from yesterday's feast, scrambled into eggs and topped with bruschetta. Yams for snack. Already hungry for bananas and peanut butter.

Not knowing what amenities and foods will be available each day makes every meal more enjoyable. We pack our crates every morning and load Billy, and we are getting better at the routine each day. Life with Ben is easy and mostly hilarious--little obstacles are like tiny jokes. It is fun to move through the world with someone imaginative and undaunted by challenges. I am enjoying getting to know him. It is as though we started backwards and we move outward from the depths to the surface of each other. I don't explain this well. No matter, it is deliciously fun.

Let's not kid ourselves. You know Ben took this one.

Crabs, Ben's quote of the day, & Pictures of Ben taking pictures

The crab. Oh my gods. The crab. The grizzled old kings of the coast said they were closed until tomorrow, but then agreed to cook us the very first catch of the season anyway. We feasted until we nearly burst, then drove a mile or so to the next most beautiful rocky beach ever.


Ben's quote of the day: "Oregon and Northern California... these muthafuckas know how to rock a beach. Can't nary but get a mile but we have to stop again."

This is how we roll

Leaving Lincoln City. There is a storm coming up the coast. We are driving into it. We do that.

Analyze this, or fall asleep trying

Lincoln City, OR. Raining like mad. Listening to Sia and Jose Gonzales and Colin Hay waiting for his real life to begin.

Last night we climbed out onto the rocks when the light was low and the tide out. I thought of the day I sent Esther's ashes into the water in Carmel. The mist along the coast, all the cypress trees, the heartbreaking beauty of this place conjured every story I have ever known of longing and the sea and I wept like a child, as I seem to do often lately. My heart gets too full and I erupt in spontaneous laughter or tears.

Later, while we were sleeping, I dreamed dreams of Sophia and her six year old son. I was a street urchin and Ben kept me close, but one night I couldn't reach him. Sophia took my place at his gate and spent the night in his home. She was elegant and beautiful, educated and regal, a lovely mother to her boy, an old and trusted friend who needed Ben's help. I was simple, dirty, poor, not a penny or child of my own. When we woke up this morning, Ben (real, not dream) told me that he needed me as I am, as someone who can understand where he comes from, who isn't utterly naive to the grit of life (I paraphrase).

The other dream was of Hugo and a woman I had made up in my mind, Elizabeth. He had been dating her for six months and was telling me how amazing she is. She was smart, educated (but not more so than he), outwardly conservative, gainfully employed, self-sufficient, and kinky--perfect on all counts. But when I saw photos of their dates, both of them were always in costume, sometimes just a mask and different clothes, sometimes a full get-up. In one picture Hugo was fully dressed as a chicken with feathered headpiece (Ben suggested that perhaps dressing up as a pussy was too weird, even for one of my bizarre dreams). Elizabeth was dressed as a chauffeur (yawn... how utterly boring). She wore a suit and cap, and her face was so heavily made up as to obscure her features. She was, in dress and in fact, the driver. Luke told me that she insisted on these costumes and that they had never really seen each other. He liked the kinkiness of it. I thought he was mistaking their obvious aversion to honest representations of themselves to each other for kink, but what do I know about these things? I have my own quirks.

Ben is making coffee in his Bialetti on a camp stove outside our infernally cozy room at the Ester Lee, as though we are camping. There is a coffee maker here, but he is too adorably sensual to compromise on something of such little consequence. I have met my match.

Day 4 at warp speed

After 4 days of no blog posts, Ben suggested we at least keep a log of where we've been and some of the highlights of our travels, which of course for me are mostly the food. Yes, even road food. So here is the quickest jot down of what we could remember until Thursday. We both have wretched memories for events in any sequence. We write fiction, not always intentionally.

----- 

Monday, Dec 1

• Stored everything
• Secured provisions
• Left Seattle
• Drove to Astoria, OR via Olympia to Aberdeen
• Ate eggs and bacon, yogurt and berries, a terrible beef stick product, sweet potato hips and hummus, and drank a bottle champagne from Heide and Matthew
• Stayed at the Lamplighter. Quirky and glowing with an inviting warmth from the road because it's full of lamps. No joke.

------

Tuesday, Dec 2

• Drove south east to Salem, Or through Seaside
• Tried to go to Planned Parenthood
• Bought food at Trader Joe's
• Ate bananas and peanut butter, spinach and miso soup, kippers, and Asian pear
• Stayed at the Phoenix Inn. Pleasant. Boring. Didn't we leave all that behind?

Ben took this photo, that's why it's lovely. Yes, he was driving. This whole thing will only get more dangerous the farther we get from Seattle. Keep your seatbelt on.

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Wednesday, Dec 3

• Went to Planned Parenthood in Salem
• Ate eggs, bananas and peanut butter, hummus and apples, yogurt, Mexican food at La Roca: oh my god siete mares soup of tomato onion broth with squid, tilapia, prawns, crab legs, bay shrimp, octopus, clams
• Drove down Oregon coast to Lincoln City
• Stayed at the Ester Lee Motel in cottage 126 overlooking the sea. Spectacular view. Radiator heat, and how. This was beyond gorgeous for a handful of sweet and secret reasons involving the name Ester Lee and not-at-all secret reasons involving the breathtaking ocean view. I cried.

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Pictures of Ben taking pictures:

Postcards from Billy (Farewell, Seattle)

Pre-Ramble

Forgive the first post for being two weeks late (or a little more--time has lost some of its importance since Thanksgiving), and for not really being a post at all, but a farewell memo to a bunch of work colleagues. The day before Jenava went into labor was my last day of work in Nordstrom's technology tank. Jenava was my boss before Ben and I was her doula two weeks ago when she and Mike had baby Torben, the chillest sweet baby ever. That story deserves its own blog, but that's their own amazing story to tell; I am just thrilled to have been there.

This blog is about me and Ben leaving our lives in Seattle, putting everything we have into storage, and taking to the road in Billy Blue, Ben's 1966 Ford pick-up, to see what glorious things and people we can encounter in America. South is first, because brrrr. I can't stop writing goofy letters to myself, and Ben takes delicious photos, so we'll do our best to capture the juiciest bits and share something delightful. We're not sure if this is for us or for you, or if it really matters. It's just a journey, quite literally as well as in the kooky, cosmic sense. 

So, here's my self-penned corporate obituary. (The part about the camper isn't happening yet. We opted for nightly warm beds and daily hot showers. We believe we have chosen wisely. You'll see the snow in Billy's postcards. He gets a little shutter-happy.) 

From: Avigail, James-Olivia E
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 4:04 PM
To: a bunch of Nordstrom colleagues
Subject: until soon...

And so the adventure begins.

You can live vicariously this luscious life of homelessness and unemployment. It will be grand. There will be a blog and everything. Let me know if you want a link. And if you know of any cool places and stuff that we should explore, please share. We will, in turn, share back what we find. We are out to discover! We want to find folks making gorgeous things and growing gorgeous food, incredible people doing what they can to make the world sweeter, more interesting, more wondrous, and then also some other random and weird miscellany.

Drop a line occasionally just because. Email is super.

Or text me, because texts are swell, too, if you’re feeling a bit slapdash. I actually love texting—it makes me feel sixteen again, not that we had texting when I was sixteen (but I would have like totally had a Cyndi Lauper iPhone case if we had). Be warned: you may receive an MMS novel back. It can’t be helped; I’ll have a bit of free time on my hands and Apple lets you just keep typing until you run out of words. Rather dangerous in the wrong hands, I’d say. Crazy, riotous ideas get bandied back and forth and before you know it you’ve been swept off your feet by the most beautiful, wild person you can imagine and you’re rambling through the Southwest in a magnificent 1966 Ford pick-up with a funny little camper and plotting the international leg of your absurd “plan” to follow your heart. Well played, Technology.  Well played.

So cheers to technology, because that’s how this all started, including meeting you (unless we met in cosmetics when dinosaurs roamed the earth like I’m about to do). And cheers to the big sky and open road ahead. Please, please, please keep in touch.

Love,

James