Escaping the song of Udo.
It’s August. I’m on a bit of vision quest. To most people what I’m doing would be a vacation, a reunion, a recapture of lost youth. Significant other and German Short Haired Pointer in tow, I am headed for the land of my youth: Idaho.
This trip I intended to make last year, before a broken foot in a misstep of my staircase. What I saw outside my door window that I needed to gawk at rather than watch my step as went down for mac and cheese that December day, I’ve forgot. My mother has always told me to stop gawking. --My penalty for not listening, fifteen months of healing. Last summer I was still limited to walks of five or six blocks. So, I didn’t think I could make the trek from Big Trinity Lake, over the hill to Green Island Lake in the Rainbow lakes chain of the Sawtooth National Forest. This year, broken foot healed mostly, but twenty pounds heavier from excess work and no gym time I still have my doubts. But I’m not going to Idaho to hike. I’m going to soak in hot springs, to walk through sagebrush, to watch flames tickling up from logs in the fire die into embers late a night when there are no other humans to be found. Much as now, when the SO has gone to bed. It’s just me and the Pointer (Udo). He’s alert cocking his head to every sound he hears in the forest. A herd of cows is working its way up the Pit River here in Modoc County. He’s probably not going to sleep much tonight he’s so curious about area around our first nights layover. Why here? Because in the 28 years since I moved to California, I’ve always wanted to know what was in the remote NW corner of California. What in the world went on in Alturas?
Turns out, not much. It’s a small farming town on the edge of the Lassen National Forest, forty miles from Lava Beds National Monument. But it’s near parts of California you can still just get off the paved road, and drive down a few miles of dirt road and camp primitively. In fact the local BLM office hands out brochures suggesting places to do it. Not the kind of activity most people in the bay area even consider, it has a distinct lack of cappuccino, restaurants that mint garnish eggs forced into little soufflé molds with artistically swirled studio designed sauces, -- and all the spaghetti (not pasta) is cooked thoroughly, not al dente.
So here I am, tonight, the SO is in bed, and it’s just me, the cows snorting on the other side of the river and Udo. Quiet for once. (Udo, that is.) He doesn’t like the car, and sort of sings and howls as it goes down the road. I call it “The song of Udo.” It’s a bit like opera. It goes on for hours and it’s quite entertaining to imitate and make fun of, but not so great to sit through.
Udo’s operatic length solo’s over, I’m trying to think of the last time I heard this much silence. The Bay Area always has a dull roar in the background, --A bad libretto, like intermission white noise. To really appreciate it, you need to sit on a local mountain peak. 20-30 decibels of what sounds like a distant rushing river becomes apparent. But, its not, it’s just engines moving everything. Everything five million people need moved. –And a lot of crap they don’t. It's the noise that keeps me awake at night. The noise that has made me wear ear plugs to bed for the last 15 years, the noise that caused me to spend $30,000 insulating my house. (Well, that and the bus stop outside my dining room window.) But its libretto that’s not here. No, here it is just the mosquito in my ear, the steps of Udo on the pine needles, the crickets in the forest, the lick of the last flames of the fire, and the cows chewing at grass a half mile away. Yeah, I can hear cud chewing, that’s how quiet it is.
That’s this quest, the quiet of my youth. Escaping the song of Udo, the quiet I was too bored with at 13 to enjoy. The quiet I could use to sleep off a migraine headache, because the noise of Bay Area pounds in my head. And all the places I plan to go this week will be this quiet and in that silence, in the warmth of a hot spring, with the SO looking at me trying to figure out what I see in the two of us, but hopefully deciding, it doesn’t matter much, cause I see it. I plan to try and remember how those four years in silence and the noise I’ve kept quiet about for so many years.
This trip I intended to make last year, before a broken foot in a misstep of my staircase. What I saw outside my door window that I needed to gawk at rather than watch my step as went down for mac and cheese that December day, I’ve forgot. My mother has always told me to stop gawking. --My penalty for not listening, fifteen months of healing. Last summer I was still limited to walks of five or six blocks. So, I didn’t think I could make the trek from Big Trinity Lake, over the hill to Green Island Lake in the Rainbow lakes chain of the Sawtooth National Forest. This year, broken foot healed mostly, but twenty pounds heavier from excess work and no gym time I still have my doubts. But I’m not going to Idaho to hike. I’m going to soak in hot springs, to walk through sagebrush, to watch flames tickling up from logs in the fire die into embers late a night when there are no other humans to be found. Much as now, when the SO has gone to bed. It’s just me and the Pointer (Udo). He’s alert cocking his head to every sound he hears in the forest. A herd of cows is working its way up the Pit River here in Modoc County. He’s probably not going to sleep much tonight he’s so curious about area around our first nights layover. Why here? Because in the 28 years since I moved to California, I’ve always wanted to know what was in the remote NW corner of California. What in the world went on in Alturas?
Turns out, not much. It’s a small farming town on the edge of the Lassen National Forest, forty miles from Lava Beds National Monument. But it’s near parts of California you can still just get off the paved road, and drive down a few miles of dirt road and camp primitively. In fact the local BLM office hands out brochures suggesting places to do it. Not the kind of activity most people in the bay area even consider, it has a distinct lack of cappuccino, restaurants that mint garnish eggs forced into little soufflé molds with artistically swirled studio designed sauces, -- and all the spaghetti (not pasta) is cooked thoroughly, not al dente.
So here I am, tonight, the SO is in bed, and it’s just me, the cows snorting on the other side of the river and Udo. Quiet for once. (Udo, that is.) He doesn’t like the car, and sort of sings and howls as it goes down the road. I call it “The song of Udo.” It’s a bit like opera. It goes on for hours and it’s quite entertaining to imitate and make fun of, but not so great to sit through.
Udo’s operatic length solo’s over, I’m trying to think of the last time I heard this much silence. The Bay Area always has a dull roar in the background, --A bad libretto, like intermission white noise. To really appreciate it, you need to sit on a local mountain peak. 20-30 decibels of what sounds like a distant rushing river becomes apparent. But, its not, it’s just engines moving everything. Everything five million people need moved. –And a lot of crap they don’t. It's the noise that keeps me awake at night. The noise that has made me wear ear plugs to bed for the last 15 years, the noise that caused me to spend $30,000 insulating my house. (Well, that and the bus stop outside my dining room window.) But its libretto that’s not here. No, here it is just the mosquito in my ear, the steps of Udo on the pine needles, the crickets in the forest, the lick of the last flames of the fire, and the cows chewing at grass a half mile away. Yeah, I can hear cud chewing, that’s how quiet it is.
That’s this quest, the quiet of my youth. Escaping the song of Udo, the quiet I was too bored with at 13 to enjoy. The quiet I could use to sleep off a migraine headache, because the noise of Bay Area pounds in my head. And all the places I plan to go this week will be this quiet and in that silence, in the warmth of a hot spring, with the SO looking at me trying to figure out what I see in the two of us, but hopefully deciding, it doesn’t matter much, cause I see it. I plan to try and remember how those four years in silence and the noise I’ve kept quiet about for so many years.
posted by Stan at 9:44 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home