Four Corners

We followed US 89 out of the east end of Flagstaff as the lengthening afternoon shadows and dropping temperatures signaled the eminence of the high desert sunset.

"How far do you think we should make it tonight?" I asked Tim as he peered at the Gazeter of Arizona.

"Ehhh it all depends..."

"Just pick a place, and we'll head there.  All this," I motioned out the windshield towards the expanse of sage and sandstone, "is government land.  God's country.  We can camp where-ever-the-fuck-we-want."

"I know, but we're getting close to Navajo Nation.  I feel weird for camping in their land."

"Are you serious?  This shit is abandoned.  There's a gazilion dirt roads leading off into the middle of nowhere."

"I still feel strange about it.  If I were them,  I wouldn't want a bunch of gringos camping on my land," Tim said, as if addressing the possibility of Sasquatch.

"Alright, alright.  Let's head towards a monument then. I want to be within striking distance of Four Corners tomorrow.  I can't do any more of this interstate highway shit," I said, alluding to the hours spent tracking east out of LA on the 40.

Nodding in agreement, Tim flipped to the page, searching for suitable monument or national park.  " Navajo National Monument is....less than 100 miles from here.  Lets head there."

"The Dude Abides."

Rolling down the window,  the warm desert air masked the smell of sweat and dirt has amassed in the Syncro over the last nine months.  With a destination picked, my angst  settled and I stuck my hand out of the open window.  Flowing like a sine wave, I hummed the melody of a familiar Warren Zevon song.  The miles ticked by.

Juniper.

Mexican Hat.

Campfire.

My brother Tim has a photo blog called Cairn Culture.  Take a look.

Last light.

Yours truly looking over the edge. Timer.

Canyons.

Shadow.

The Clan of the Van.

Views.

Switchbacks.

Burning the last rares of daylight,  we pulled off the empty two lane highway and headed towards the Monument.  Judging by the suns position, hovering a few degrees over the horizon to the west,  we hand less than an hour before the first stars would dot the unpolluted sky.

"I wonder what's at the Navajo National Monument,"  I mused, half to my brother, half to my sleepy self.

"We'll see first thing in the morning."

Pulling off on a packed dirt road with scraps of spring grass growing in the middle, we headed half a mile towards a canyon.  Periodic slabs of sandstone broke broke the ground,  sending the Syncro on a trail that resembled a centerfold of an off road magazine.  Arriving on one such sandstone bulge,  I rolled to a stop.

"This looks about as good a place as any."

"Sure does."

Pulling the parking break, I slipped into second gear and released the clutch.  Popping my seat belt, I opened the door and jumped down to the still warm sand stone.  Stiff from the hours of driving,  I spread my arms and arched my back.

"Home is where you park it!" I laughed.

Here are some more links,

Four Corners (Facebook).

Life is Better When You Surf

"It has a really shitty learning curve," I said to Tim as he sat in the sand with his arms crossed on his knees, still dripping from an outside set.  Setting my board down in the sand,  I unzipped the chest zip and pulled the flap over my head.

"You get rocked for awhile.  It goes with the territory.  When I started surfing,  I rode one of Dan's thrusters.  I got slammed by 40 degree hurricane swell for a year or two before I finally figured out what was going on. It was so fucking cold."

"I just don't feel like I'm going anywhere when I paddle.  I can't get any speed."

"Yea, that feeling sucks.  It's all about making small adjustments, moving forward and backwards until you get balanced."

"I was trying that." Tim pushed his toes down into the granular and then flicked them up. "Let's go hike up one of those," Tim nodded towards a nearby hill."

"Comme onnn Tim.  It just takes time...practice.  It's like learning to snowboard or skate.  You just have to do it."  I flipped my 6'3 hull over and inspected the finbox.  Pulling the board up towards my mouth, I sucked at a recently repaired crack along the front of the finbox.  No water or air escaped despite my attempts to give my beloved board a hickey.

"I'm going back out."

"Wait, I'll go, just let me chill for a second. Let me catch my breath."

"Alright."  Laying back down on the sand, I propped my head on a round rock.   A few driftwood structures dotted the empty beach at Andrew Molera State Park.  We were the only surfers at the beach on an unremarkable Wednesday.  The waves were small but protected from the howling north wind by the point.  I closed my eyes and listened to waves break.

Bananas.

Sunset in Big Sur.

Blam's set up.

Hand painted.

Campsite.

Classic sticks.

Girl Scout cookies stacked 7 high and guarded by loyal pooch.

"If you want the ultimate, you've to got be willing to pay the ultimate price.."

Spring green.

Chaco tacos.

This dude is DTVL.  Down to #VanLife.

An especially loud crash made me sit up, "When you get it,  you're going to rip.  It's such a wild sensation."

"Yea, it looks fun," Tim grinned. "Everyone that's riding waves looks so pumped."

"It just takes patience.  That's one of the reasons I like it so much.  I'm not good at waiting for anything,  but with surfing,  you have to wait for the waves to be good and  the wind to be right.  Then, when you paddle out you have to take the right waves.  A good surfer is wise.  That's not the case with snowboarding or skating. Surfing makes you more wise."

For a minute we sat and watched a few waves roll through.

"You ready?"

"Alright,  I'm ready."

Here are some more links,

Life is Better When (Facebook).

#vanlife (Instagram). 

Sometimes A Great Notion

One chapter of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion bled into another  as we hummed north out of Los Angeles.  The Syncro revved up towards the redline in first gear, obscuring the narrator's voice.  Fresh off the plane from a three month stint in New Zealand,  Tim was adjusting to the pace of traffic in the San Fernando Valley from the passenger seat. Periodic grunts and his constant gaze at the seemingly endless lines of suburban landscape conveyed his feelings.

"Pretty different from New Zealand huh?"

"I haven't seen this many people in three months," Tim explained. "The cars here are totally different too. Pretty much everything that's 4wd has a snorkel on it.  They use 4wd drive down there.  Not like that."  Tim motioned to Cadillac Escalade weaving through traffic.

"They are different animal," I agreed nodding towards the vanishing Escalade.  "Want to listen to some tunes or stay with the book?"

"Leave it here.  I'm getting into it."

Kesey's novel about the brotherly corrals of a logging family in Coastal Oregon continued as we left LA's smog behind us.  A few days earlier, I had dropped off Tucker in Northern California and bee-lined it down to pick up Tim at LAX.  For three months, Tim backpacked, sailed and sea kayaked on New Zealand's South Island. Save for a few two line emails and ten minute Skype call, I hadn't heard from him since I headed south towards Baja in January.

Two years and two months separate us in age. Growing up, we spent all of our time together.  If one of us was into something,  the other soon would be too.  Our relationship was less of brothers, with a clear hierarchy and boundaries, and more an impervious friendship.

For a few days, we wondered LA catching up.  For a short while,  our conversations focused on his experiences in New Zealand,  but they soon gave way to familiar conversations and idiosyncrasies of two very close people.  After a night or two and few hours spent bumper to bumper in LA's signature traffic,  we decided to head north and explore the southern Sierras.

A year ago, sitting in my Manhattan office building, the importance of maintaining and contributing to this relationship with my brother was slowly giving way to a storm of professional aspirations, grown up responsibilities and the desire to build a new life.  Following in parallel with Leland Stampard's (a character in Sometimes a Great Notion) return to the Northwest,  I too left New York, and headed back towards my routes in the Northwest last August.  Unlike Leland's desire for revenge on his older brother,  a burning wanderlust and desire to spend more time with people important to me drove me home.

For 27 hours, Sometimes A Great Notion provided the backdrop for our travels.

Painted.

Yours to keep.

Cairn Culture.

Wet roads.

Sage.

Hammocks.

Dark and Stormy.

Toppings and Salsa.

For longest time, I called Tim my little brother.  He's 6'8. Now he's just my brother.

Green hills.

"We never fought like this did we?  I mean we argued some when we were little, but nothing this deep-seated," I said turning down the stereo, after the climax fight between the two brothers in the book.

"Yea, never like this," Tim said as he grabbed the binoculars and peered out the window towards the distant hills.

"I think the last time we got in a fight was, maybe 7 years ago when you threw that stool at me."

"Yup." Tim adjusted the focus. "I don't think we ever will."

"Me too."

Here are some more links,

Sometimes A Great Notion (Facebook),

Sometimes a Great Notion (Amazon).

First Time West

The Syncro idled roughly in the arrival area of Portland International Airport late Monday night.  Glancing in the rear view mirror, I watched the lone police officer maker her rounds, motioning to stagnent drivers to continue their laps. I was already on my third and had little interest in making it a forth.

"Brrootherrr!!!" a deep voice echoed.

Sticking my head out of the window with hopes of spotting the origins of the thunder,  I spotted a red headed man wearing a leather jacket running out of a revolving door.  If the local Oregonians weren't thrown off guard by the mohawk,  the boogie board dragging behind him put them over the edge.

"Uncle TTT!" I screamed back in an equally obnoxious but unthreatening tone.  Pulling the emergency break.  I opened the door and ran over to meet my college roommate, Tucker.

A few months after my 18th birthday, I told an admittance officer from a small college in Maine that I would love to attend their college having never stept foot in the state.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  That fall, I made the 3000 mile trip across the country excited to see a new place and meet new people.  I had never seen a lacrosse stick, heard Dispatch or watched a Red Sox game.  I thought about leaving my school for a more wordly place often but my connection with Maine and a handful of close friends kept me there.  I'm very glad that I did stick it out, because without that isolation and boredom, I probably never would have taken up photography or started this blog.

Despite having a relatively well traveld student body,  few of my peers had ever been west of a handful of posh ski resorts in Colorado.   Most people talk positively about their homes, but my experiences in New England compounded  my appreciation for the west coast and the Pacific Northwest in specific.  After six years of constant sales pitch resembling the late Billy Mays,  Tucker finally bought a ticket west and headed west for a 10 day safari.

Flying into Portland and then out of San Francisco 10 days later,  we planned to head down the coast.  Call it a best of trip.  It sounds easy enough, but the task of showing some one very close to you a place you love so well is a surprising daunting task.  I rushed to show him places that I thought were interesting.  We headed east of the Cascades,  spent a few days in portland and then meandered our way down the Oregon Coast to Northern California.

Wet campfire wood.

Tucker enjoying the signature Northwest rainwater by way of this barrel.  My guess is that it was in the mid 40s.

The green room.

Spring in Portland.

Retreat.

Campfires.

 Things I took for granted,  like Multnomah Falls or the size of the fur trees that ubiquitously dot the country side stunned Tucker.  I once heard that, "In the east, man is god,  but in the west,  nature is god."  Now I'm not a religious person,  but this mantra speaks to me as I'm sure it does to a lot of people that have experienced both Coasts.  By the time I bid farewell to Tucker,  I could tell that he was starting to agree.

Here are some more links,

First Time West (Facebook).