wanderings in the land of plenty

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What to expect, of a visit to the Land Of Plenty, the Land Of The Free, the Land of Super-sized fast food and forcefully imposed democracy?

I guess I expected everything, and I haven't been surprised.
Landing in San Francisco from Hong Kong was my first glimpse of America the Brave. Interrogated at immigration as to who my friend in Seattle is, how long I've known him, what I plan to do in the US, why did I spend so long in China, where will I be going next... accompanied by their recording of my two index fingerprints and a slightly disconcerting retina-scan. A few booths down I heard a distinctly impatient immigration officer repeatedly questioning a Chinese man who clearly didn't speak enough English to answer him sufficiently. I expected it to be a bit rough, with a septum piercing and scraggly hair and a bit of a penniless-traveller look, but I didn't really expect it to be so unfriendly...

My first impression was quickly overturned. Americans are very friendly, at least to me, at least so far. Maybe I was just so reassured to be in a place where very tall slightly androgynous pierced fezza-types kind of fit in a bit... but DAMN it was cold. Bradley met me at the Tecoma airport with wide-open-arms and a big smile, and hustled me out and pretty soon we were winding down the corkscrew ramps and out onto the freeway, heading for Capitol Hill.

Jetlagged and frazzled, my first incoherent attempt at seeing Seattle was accompanied by budget-shock. Holeeee what? You mean I have to pay that much for a coffee, and then add tax and then work out the tip too? honey, you ain't in China no more...

A few chilled out days with Bradley showing me the sights and tastes of a pretty funky city. Fremont markets, Pike Place where they throw the fish to each other in the seafood store (apparently the number 1 tourist attraction in Seattle by the amount of cameras out), the Space Needle and the warped architecture of the Experience Music Project. We took in some bizarre Polish animations from the 1920's involving beetles with marriage problems, the teddy bear's visit to hell and some very odd ice-skating stuffed toys from the 1950's - as part of the annual Polish Film Festival.

After a couple of days with Brad recuperating from the previously mentioned jetlag and sampling the local delights of Capitol Hill, I was whisked away by my good friend Claire (from Newcastle) and the long-awaited Catherine (of Dana fame) to a Seeds reunion on Whidbey Island. This was the reason I timed my visit when I did: a gathering of friends from a 30 day Joanna Macy workshop I attended in Denmark (WA) in 2005 (http://www.joannamacy.net). We were all pretty excited and Linda Seeley, Dana, Catherine, Claire and Joanna had a lot to catch up on after 3 years of global distance... I was also lucky to meet several new Seeds from the workshop last year in Oregon, and a bunch of great crew from Olympia. We were on Whidbey for a speaking tour by Joanna Macy and Bill Plotkin which was held at the Whidbey Institute. Joanna sprung me with performing at the end of the event, and the surprise collaboration with a cellist named Ashraf who had performed with the Cairo orchestra for 16 years made me extremely nervous so that I actually missed most of the talk... however somehow Ashraf and I managed to pull it off pretty well all things considered, and Ashraf even invited me to record with him - sadly I haven't had the time to do that, yet... head to www.ashrafhakim.com to check out his work.

After the excitement and beauty of Whidbey with its rain and forest and beautiful meditation mandala and non-stop reunion, we headed back to Dana and Catherine's beautiful home on Vashon Island. Joanna was speaking again at the Zen Institute on Vashon, and we had a couple of days to enjoy the long-overdue spring sunshine amongst Dana's lavender bushes. Once again Joanna called on me to play - but this time solo during the "four abodes" meditation.

Pretty soon everyone was heading in separate directions. I headed back to Seattle for a few days road trip with Bradley - we headed straight out to the Olympic Peninsula and spent a couple of days exploring the Hoh River Rainforest (the ancient forest of my childhood fairytales... I think it was used for filming some parts of the Lord of the Rings) and Ruby Beach and up to the Makah Nation and out to Cape Flattery. It's a stunning area, but there are whole hillsides disappearing under the timber industry's ministrations - clear cutting is just as brutal when applied to pine forests as to eucalypts...

We stayed in a little town called Forks, where I visited a "real American diner" complete with bear-skin rug and stuffed elk-head on the wall. Many notices all through the town welcoming home troops from Iraq and supporting those still serving... NPR (my new favourite radio station - National Public Radio) has some hilarious shows including "This American Life" and "The Prairie Home Companion" ... check it out here: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/ this is GOLD listening if you have a computer to download and some time to listen. NPR has been hosting a special on China which is pretty interesting for me, and timely considering the massive earthquake in Sichuan province... more about that later.

After returning from the Peninsula road trip I met up with Claire at the end of a Bill Plotkin workshop, where we were hoping to catch a lift down to Olympia with our new friends. After a brief stop for some southern fried chicken (or tofu, anyone?) we bailed it down to the capital of Washington state for a Beltane free dance night run by a new friend. Olympia is the home of such grunge superstars as Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and it has a darn funky little comic store. Aside from that, it's a beautiful place, and I spent most of the next day hanging out in the little veggie garden with the kale and dandelions having some time to myself and sharing it with the squirrels and a very territorial Stellar's Jay.

The next day Claire and I hopped on to Amtrak for our trip down to Portland. The train was extremely comfortable and went through some gorgeous countryside, and we were almost disappointed that we arrived half an hour early in to Portland. After a bodgy coffee and sickly sweet ho-cho we were on the public bus getting treated to some more American hospitality by the bus driver who ruthlessly pulled the piss out of us before giving us free tickets for the rest of the day... After a quick catch up with the ever-spunky Rhea and her beautiful Scarlet and Grady family, Claire and I set out to explore Portland. Talk about cool! Okay - so Portland is a world leader in green planning and society. It's also the home of Bitch magazine - one of my favourites (http://bitchmagazine.org/) as well as a bunch of awesome independent bookstores, punk bicycle gangs, guerilla gardeners and so many other things that make my brain get kind of mushy with excitement. Claire and I got happily absorbed in the radical zine bookstore for a few hours before heading back to home-made pizza with the crew.

Rhea is one of my favourites, okay? and her little girl Scarlett has got to be seen to be believed. precociously eloquent, she totally stole my heart away as soon as she made me a pretend cup of tea. Grady's doing some pretty inspiring stuff with botanical education and guerilla gardening seed packs. Rhea, Scarlett Claire and I went for a great wander down by the river, amongst the mud with the squirrels and baby ducks but it was all to soon that Claire and I hopped into Melany's car for the trip out to Cascade Head...

Melany and Duncan have a million-dollar view up near Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast. 30 acres of forest/meadow with almost 360 degree view over forest, estuary, river mouth and ocean. Melany is another Seed-friend from 2005, and they were also involved in the planning and coordination of the Seeds workshop in 2007. We celebrated the record-low-tide by going for a stroll over at Westwind (the former YWCA camp now run by a non-profit which Melany and Duncan are pouring theselves into: http://www.westwind.org) to spy on starfish clinging to the barnacly rocks which are usually at least 2m underwater. It was beautiful... the crew at westwind are doing a pretty amazing job, and it is a truly stunning part of the earth - sitka spruce (tall fat pines) forest and alder trees and a little bit of meadow, a chunk of craggy high cliffs and eroding hillsides - each year the ocean eats an inch or so into the hillsides. It's populated by elk and deer and squirrels and all kinds of birds - hang out by the cliffs of Cascade Head and are regularly seen soaring over the hill and sea.

Claire and I went up to explore Cascade Head - the craggy promontory this area is named for. About 260 acres of the headland is preserved as a "Nature Conservancy" protected area - there is an extremely rare endemic butterfly that is just crawling out of its cocoon (attached to the tiny violet plants) at this time of year. We sat and admired the circling eagles, including at least 3 adult Bald Eagles as well as a bunch of turkey vultures (that travel in groups) and possibly some red-tailed hawks. We saw deer in the meadow. Squirrels, woodpeckers and heaps of finches in the forest. T

hen, things went a little awry. We had climbed all the way to the top of the mountain (a small one, anyway) and decided that a cup of hot miso would be that much quicker if we just went straight down the side. Melany had told us that it would be fine to leave the trail as the TNC volunteers who patrol the park are only there on weekends, and there are plenty of elk and snowshow hare trails to follow through the forest. Well, we ended up spending 2 hours sliding down the hillside and crawling through prickly thickets to get home - which was actually a lot more fun than it sounds. Very relieved we were to find the automated pumping station providing water to the local eco-retreat and be able to follow its road out of the forest. yay! Our sense of direction was actually fantastic, it just took a lot longer to get that cup of miso than expected. Never leave the trail, girls, never leave the trail...

I was also very interested by all the young pine saplings and branches that were torn from the trees and laid out on the ground. I suspected bears, but didn't mention it to claire ... we found out later that the Rowley creek watershed (that we had clambered down through) does have a population of small black bears who were probably not interested in porridge but might get a little bit pissed at the interruption of their coming out of hibernation...

Our next day's adventure was a small kayaking trip up the river to explore the marshlands of WestWind. We were pretty buggered from the excitement of the day before, and to our tired arms it seemed that both the wind and the tide were against us, so we kept it brief, heading to a little forest area jutting out into the estuary. Later, DUncan told us that his brother and friends had found a buried skeleton there, remnant of the Indian history of the area - and that a village had used to be sited on that same area but was probably washed away in a huge tsunami event a couple of hundred years ago. After that, the village was sited up on the hillside closer to Melany and Duncan's house. Sadly, the area is now so expensive that only very well-off people can really afford to live there, and the indigenous history of the place is only maintained by the hard work of people like Melany, and places like Westwind.

to see more photos head here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36069&l=5117d&id=572849814

next installment coming soon...

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Photos

Hall of the Mosses, Hoh River Rainforest
Olympic Peninsula, Washington

Ruby Beach
Olympic Peninsula

The View at Cape Flattery
Makah Indian reservation, Cape Flattery, Olympic Peninsula

Cascade Head
view over Westwind

meditation labyrinth at Whidbey Institute
CLaire, Dana, Linda, Catherine