I was riding along Highway 5, wishing I could name all the fruits and vegetables whizzing by the car: Pumpkins were easy, fields and fields of orange, red, sage-colored, and white pumpkins. Apples of every variety, pears and cherries, artichokes and kale, peppers and pomegranates and pistachios: does everything come from California?
The landforms--smaller than mountains but gentle round mounds--were the color of manna. Whoever painted those indelible manna pictures in my Bible story book must have set up her easel along Highway 5. As child I used to look and look at those pictures, wondering how the Israelites managed to make cakes out of straw.
Hay is a major crop along that stretch, stacked in neat rectangular bales. The sun lit the hay like art objects. In one field, I saw about twenty human beings working the land, not with combines and tractors and plows, but with rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows.
National Public Radio fizzled out along this road, and Rush Limbaugh came on: a grating voice, angry at everybody. I clicked him off. Further down the road, I tried again to get some music or conversation, and a preacher was shouting in the same tone.
You know the brand of preaching I'm talking about: the man has all the answers (and the hutzpah to think his answers apply to everyone out there in Radioland), shouting until his voice must be raw. This one reminded me of the revivals in the little country churches in Georgia--specifically the one in which I met my Ex (and only) husband.
Further down the road a stone's throw from Clear Lake, I stopped to get a sandwich and heard a woman in the next car yelling: "Shut up!" As she continued shouting, I looked to see who it was she was yelling at, expecting some wizened old man in overalls to emerge from the back seat, or maybe a sullen teenaged boy who'd been pestering her for miles.
I went into the diner, ordered a sandwich, and when I returned, I saw that there was only one other person in that unfortunate car, and it was an infant wrapped in a pink blanket. The little girl couldn't have been more than three months old, far too little to understand her grandmother's words.
I looked all morning at the generous earth, the patches of countless shades of green stitched together so neatly that it would look like a magnificent quilt from the sky.
And yet, I thought all morning of that little girl, so tiny, who--unlike me--couldn't switch off the voice of fury in her car. I wondered all day what was to become of her, being silenced before she even had words to speak.
There are so many good voices on the radio--(I'm partial to Scott Simon on NPR, who's a great storyteller and interviewer and who has a great laugh). Most people I meet are easy-going, live-and-let-live, and kind. But the ones that are so stuck in anger always make me wonder: what happened that shuttled them into permanent anger?
I could have stayed on Highway 5. (Carlene informed me today that I had mistakenly called it Highway 15 in an earlier post). But I had a goal: to reach the hot springs Roné and Dr. Linda had told me nor to miss. I drove through the back roads and passed Harbin Springs then turned around and consulted my email from Linda for directions. No major signs, it's hidden in the backwoods near Middleton.
It was like going back to the Sixties: a very low-key natural area, no cell phones allowed, pools of varying temperatures, and little wooden houses where you could get massages and body wraps. I got a half-hour massage, hoping it would release the pain in my hips which had been plaguing me all day. It didn't do that entirely--but it did help, that and a long soak in the hottest of the pools. I had that peaceful easy feeling, driving away, wishing I'd arranged to spend the night.
Because night was coming on and the roads curvy, I decided to drive--after a walk-about in Calistoga--to Bonnie's house in Santa Rosa, then head for home in the morning. If you ever want to travel in the Santa Rosa area, Bonnie's house is the place to be. She and I stayed up talking til nearly midnight and she even read me an adorable children's story she'd written, and I showed her Joy's books on Amazon--which she thought were beautiful.
...........
When I stayed with Bonnie a week ago, she'd also told me to go to the hot springs, so I was proudly telling her about my adventure there. I wasn't going to go back to Texas and miss something that THREE of my friends had so highly recommended!
"I've been trying to get my son to go with me," she said.
I did, I think, a double take.
"I wouldn't go there with my son!" I said. "For that matter, I'm not sure I'd go with anyone I know."
She looked perplexed.
"I mean, you know, since it's clothing optional," I said.
Now she really looked confused!
"It wasn't like that when I went there two years ago," she said.
It suddenly dawned on us both that we were talking about entirely different springs. The one she'd suggested was Indian Springs in Calistoga. At Indian Springs, people wear swim suits.
I, on the other hand, had been to Harbin Springs where most people walk along the paths--old or young, fat or skinny, tattooed or plain--in the Altogether!
(I have no pictures for this story. Cameras are not allowed.)
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