Oregon Summer

A vast ocean of green seems to touch every horizon here.
This ocean would be paradise, but for the islands...

          These islands are products of progress, fruits of civilization. The first are but tiny atolls, isolated and sparse. They are aluminum homes, often decrepit and filthy, huddled about small creeks deep in the green. Barefoot children play in the creek's muddy waters. Their parents stare with hostile eyes from their porches at passersby. These folk live in the shadows of barren mountains whose tops have been sliced clean away. Great are the rewards granted to the murderers of these mountains. These atolls are not pleasant places to visit, and none wish to live upon them.

*

          I didn't wake Angela when I left. She's probably still sleeping off last night. I get a little red when I think of Todd being alone with her. He's probably trying to crawl into bed with her right now. He'll be trying to lay her until I get back. Then next time he sees me he'll be all anxiety and guilty tokens of friendship. Stupid ones too, like offering me cigarettes and opening beers for me and cleaning the fish I catch.

          They shouldn't have come, yet here they are- afraid of being left behind. Angela has slept until sunset almost every day since we made camp outside of Eugene. They both wolf down pain pills like they have terminal cancer. I took the last of their grass when I left the camp. I'll leave what I can't smoke on Nebo's peak. Hell, I might leave everything up there, throw my clothes in a pile- burn 'em- change my name, slice my shadow off the soles of my feet with my pocket knife...

*

          It was past dawn when I spotted the farm. I paralleled a barbwire fence, trying to ignore the smell. On the other side, cows slept standing (in their own shit, I might add), but for a single skeletal calf that lay on its side, flies buzzing around its eyes.

          A gray haired man stood where the fence terminated, a gravel driveway beneath his leather boots. The gravel, though, was muddy and the leather was cracked. A dozen yards from the road the drive disappeared between broad barn doors. The gray haired man hefted bails of hay from the floor of the barn up into the bed of an old Ford F100. He stopped working when he saw me.

          "Morning," I said.

          He nodded.

          "So, this is Kesey Farm, huh?"

          "Yes sir," he replied, "this is Kesey Farm."

          "I don't suppose there's any chance I could talk to Mr. Kesey, is there? I’ve always been such a big fan of his books and… I don’t know… I just really wanted to meet him. You know, see what he’s like."

          "Well, you're more than a little late, son. Ken Kesey died five years ago."

          “Oh, I’m sorry. I… I didn’t know," I said, feeling like a fool. "Sorry to bother you.”

          I retreated back down the gravel road, directionless. The camp was several hours away by foot, and going back there now would be depressing. I cut off into the woods instead.

*

The first of these islands are but tiny atolls, isolated and sparse. But the islands grow larger.

          Yes, they grow larger, their mass fed by blacktop tributaries that coil about the countryside like unleashed cans of worms left too long in the sun. These islands become places of the poor and their betters. On these islands, monoliths obscure the sun and the green. Economic dogmas force the value of life to plummet. The poor sometimes kill each other. Their betters are entertained by this and demand more, gentrifying their slaves into tighter and tighter quarters and providing them with fewer and fewer scraps.

*

          It is noon and the sun warms the back of my neck as I begin my ascent up the side of Mt. Nebo. I've never felt so free. I have always lived in cities and suburbs- always so close- smothered. It's different here.

          I am forced to shed illusions as I struggle up the mountain. They are too heavy to carry any longer. I look down. Even from this height a fall would be lethal. So I leave them behind, just as I'd left Todd and Angela and Kesey Farm.

          I begin to see the real:

          I am both powerless and poor. I will always be both powerless and poor. I'll toil for my betters and die wretched and alone, never finding the freedom that I was taught to seek by the words of a gypsy/jester/hippie author. How could I? My generation has grown beyond his. We are the children of synthetic molecules and decayed myths- the byproducts of cleaning supplies and sitcoms, constructed haphazardly from narcotics and TV commercials by schizophrenic institutions whose tools are violence and fear.

          My fingertips rake over wind sheared stone, searching for handholds. Clinging to the face of the mountain, I struggle on. It's much colder than I'd planned for. Dusk is nearly upon me, and I am soon enveloped in Nebo's dark side. Muscles ache with strain as I crawl upward, inching toward the peak. I begin to think I will die. Then I begin to think that if I die, the whole world will die. My lungs burn as I whisper truths to myself in the last strains of daylight. With unexpected suddenness, I crest the summit.

At last, I am free.

*

A vast ocean of green seems to touch every horizon.

          Fields of pine roll over the swelling earth, peaking even the highest mountaintops with rows of jagged jade teeth. Bluebird nests huddle between thin branches, eggs safe from the red fox that treads across the needles covering the forest floor. Great rivers cut through the valleys, forming mighty cataracts as their waters crash over fields of uneven stone. Willow trees rest lazily on their banks and offer shade to the passing white-tailed doe, which sips at the small ponds beyond the frothy wake with eager lips before dashing away into the valley. She runs beneath towering oaks and between stately cedars, disappearing into the browns, reds, and greens of an Oregon Summer.

The End

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