Summer 2000
I decided to rent the SUV because I'd just bought a GPS and I wanted to play with it. I got a later start than I'd planned, and drove too fast to make up for it, and I got into Ashland sometime after 9. I had planned my accommodations, typically, at the last minute, so I was spending the first few days of my stay at a lodge about 10 miles from town, off the interstate and up in the pass. I'd brought 60 CDs, my guitar, and my bicycle.
The rooms were in the basement and were therefore dark, so I slept in the next day. When I went up for breakfast, there were only a few other diners in the large room. I ate salmon Eggs Benedict and read literary criticism while I covertly eavesdropped on the people around me. Their conversations were coolly mundane recitations of reasons for being in town; weddings, theater visits, and plans for the weekend.
After breakfast I changed into my bicycling clothes and started working my way up the side of the mountain. It wasn't too tall, but it was tall enough that I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I made it to the quiet, empty ski slopes at the top, on only my second day of trying. There were a couple cars parked in the parking lot, but nobody else was visible for as far as I could see. On the way down the mountain, the wind was so cold that I had to ride my brakes to keep my hands and arms from freezing.
When I'd go into town, I'd park the SUV next to Lithia Park and then walk down through the park into the town center, passing through the playground with the corkscrew slide I remembered so vividly from when I'd visited Ashland with my parents as a child, going past the pond with the ducks and two irascible swans. Since it was summer, there would be knots of kids scattered across the lawn by Ashland's plaza, odd groups of hippies and punks and goths that suggested that Ashland was hip enough to have a subculture, but not big enough for the various cliques to separate into tribes.
My schedule was never on a small-town clock. I'd be getting breakfast at 10 in the morning and so wouldn't get lunch until 2 or 3, meaning that whenever I went to the small vegetarian / health-food restaurant, I'd have the place pretty much to myself. I'd read books, eat hummus, and flirt on a very low register with the devastatingly gorgeous waitresses, who all looked like they should be college students working summer jobs, but all turned out to be outdoors junkies of one kind or another, most of whom were dropouts from anything approaching a conventional life. I always tipped heavily.
After lunch, heavy in the bright summer heat, I'd go stake out my own place on the lawn, either to read or to write, and spent the afternoon thinking about Ptolemaic physics or Antonin Artaud or nothing much in particular, listening to music and studying the kids as they threw frisbees, kicked hackey sacks and flirted. Every so often one or two of them would nervously walk by me, swerving at the last minute to ask if I knew where they could get some weed or acid. I'd just smile and apologize. "I don't know."
Almost every day I'd hike back up into the park, going back beyond the band shell and the tennis courts, to where the groomed part of the park ended and the trail narrowed. I'd walk up past the enormous water tank into the hills, where the trees were wild and all you could see was the hills surrounding Ashland, dotted with the large, new houses of Ashland's wealthy, most of whom were from northern California. It's still, high desert country, but the sun's light is more exuberant than pitiless, and I could get away with hiking for an hour or two without carrying a water bottle.
I'd generally follow my way down by a different path than I came, often catching one of the dirt roads that surrounded the town and coming down through the dense, old residential neighborhood surrounding the business district. The neighborhoods were always sleepy, and only very occasionally would I encounter someone watering their lawn or walking a dog. They were friendly but distant, in the way that people who live in tourist towns often are. More often than not, I'd end up back at the park, walking by the gigantic complex of theaters that house Ashland's Shakespeare festival that makes Ashland a tourist draw. In the late afternoons, crowds of theatergoers would be in the plaza between the enormous outdoor Elizabethan theater and the more modern indoor theater, milling around trying to get last-minute tickets or just waiting for the pre-show entertainment to start. I'd pass through them to the stairwell leading down into the park and the restaurants where I'd find dinner.
After dinner I'd wander around downtown. At dusk, the streets would still be full of people, as the temperature hovered on the cool side of warm and the air held the last light of the day. It's a coffee shop kind of town, and after an hour or so of walking I'd end up at a coffee shop, reading more theory and watching the crowd, which in the evenings was college students taking summer classes or just hanging out in Ashland for the summer. I'd stick around for an hour or two, then go back to the hotel, play my guitar for a while, and sleep.
It was midway through the week before I perched the GPS on the dash and drove out of town, out past the state park on the reservoir and up into the mountains southeast of town. I pulled off onto a likely-looking Forest Service road, and within two miles the road was so rutted and bouncy the CD player was a hopeless basket case. I turned it off and saw what I could find on the radio, which turned out to be a Christian talk show where a married couple, who were atheists and disciples of Ayn Rand in college, detailed how they had converted to a life lived by the Gospels. Meanwhile, the road got higher and lonelier, winding back and forth between the huge wooden electricity poles.
I had to pull off when I found the fiber-optic substation. The road by this point was a single-lane dirt track with grass growing between two sets of ruts, and I was easily twenty miles from the highway. But there it was: a gigantic shipping container behind hurricane fencing and concertina wire. It was impossible to conceive of how it was gotten there. It had a science-fictional air of alienness, like it had been air-dropped from the future, although its mundane purpose was just to repeat digital signals through fiber-optic connections up and down the coast.
I drove forward because there was no way to turn around. The road continued to degenerate, eventually losing all sign of gravel, and then turning into a creekbed with water trickling through a rut down the middle of the track. On the GPS, I was only ten miles from the highway, but it might as well have been a thousand. The former atheists chirpily droned on about how if they had seen the light, other lost souls could as well. The sun's started to shade towards late afternoon. I started to wonder a little bit.
Eventually the road came out into a recently forested clearing, and on the other side became a well-maintained logging road. When I reached the highway, I turned left back towards town and put Sunny Day Real Estate on the stereo.
The rooms were in the basement and were therefore dark, so I slept in the next day. When I went up for breakfast, there were only a few other diners in the large room. I ate salmon Eggs Benedict and read literary criticism while I covertly eavesdropped on the people around me. Their conversations were coolly mundane recitations of reasons for being in town; weddings, theater visits, and plans for the weekend.
After breakfast I changed into my bicycling clothes and started working my way up the side of the mountain. It wasn't too tall, but it was tall enough that I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I made it to the quiet, empty ski slopes at the top, on only my second day of trying. There were a couple cars parked in the parking lot, but nobody else was visible for as far as I could see. On the way down the mountain, the wind was so cold that I had to ride my brakes to keep my hands and arms from freezing.
When I'd go into town, I'd park the SUV next to Lithia Park and then walk down through the park into the town center, passing through the playground with the corkscrew slide I remembered so vividly from when I'd visited Ashland with my parents as a child, going past the pond with the ducks and two irascible swans. Since it was summer, there would be knots of kids scattered across the lawn by Ashland's plaza, odd groups of hippies and punks and goths that suggested that Ashland was hip enough to have a subculture, but not big enough for the various cliques to separate into tribes.
My schedule was never on a small-town clock. I'd be getting breakfast at 10 in the morning and so wouldn't get lunch until 2 or 3, meaning that whenever I went to the small vegetarian / health-food restaurant, I'd have the place pretty much to myself. I'd read books, eat hummus, and flirt on a very low register with the devastatingly gorgeous waitresses, who all looked like they should be college students working summer jobs, but all turned out to be outdoors junkies of one kind or another, most of whom were dropouts from anything approaching a conventional life. I always tipped heavily.
After lunch, heavy in the bright summer heat, I'd go stake out my own place on the lawn, either to read or to write, and spent the afternoon thinking about Ptolemaic physics or Antonin Artaud or nothing much in particular, listening to music and studying the kids as they threw frisbees, kicked hackey sacks and flirted. Every so often one or two of them would nervously walk by me, swerving at the last minute to ask if I knew where they could get some weed or acid. I'd just smile and apologize. "I don't know."
Almost every day I'd hike back up into the park, going back beyond the band shell and the tennis courts, to where the groomed part of the park ended and the trail narrowed. I'd walk up past the enormous water tank into the hills, where the trees were wild and all you could see was the hills surrounding Ashland, dotted with the large, new houses of Ashland's wealthy, most of whom were from northern California. It's still, high desert country, but the sun's light is more exuberant than pitiless, and I could get away with hiking for an hour or two without carrying a water bottle.
I'd generally follow my way down by a different path than I came, often catching one of the dirt roads that surrounded the town and coming down through the dense, old residential neighborhood surrounding the business district. The neighborhoods were always sleepy, and only very occasionally would I encounter someone watering their lawn or walking a dog. They were friendly but distant, in the way that people who live in tourist towns often are. More often than not, I'd end up back at the park, walking by the gigantic complex of theaters that house Ashland's Shakespeare festival that makes Ashland a tourist draw. In the late afternoons, crowds of theatergoers would be in the plaza between the enormous outdoor Elizabethan theater and the more modern indoor theater, milling around trying to get last-minute tickets or just waiting for the pre-show entertainment to start. I'd pass through them to the stairwell leading down into the park and the restaurants where I'd find dinner.
After dinner I'd wander around downtown. At dusk, the streets would still be full of people, as the temperature hovered on the cool side of warm and the air held the last light of the day. It's a coffee shop kind of town, and after an hour or so of walking I'd end up at a coffee shop, reading more theory and watching the crowd, which in the evenings was college students taking summer classes or just hanging out in Ashland for the summer. I'd stick around for an hour or two, then go back to the hotel, play my guitar for a while, and sleep.
It was midway through the week before I perched the GPS on the dash and drove out of town, out past the state park on the reservoir and up into the mountains southeast of town. I pulled off onto a likely-looking Forest Service road, and within two miles the road was so rutted and bouncy the CD player was a hopeless basket case. I turned it off and saw what I could find on the radio, which turned out to be a Christian talk show where a married couple, who were atheists and disciples of Ayn Rand in college, detailed how they had converted to a life lived by the Gospels. Meanwhile, the road got higher and lonelier, winding back and forth between the huge wooden electricity poles.
I had to pull off when I found the fiber-optic substation. The road by this point was a single-lane dirt track with grass growing between two sets of ruts, and I was easily twenty miles from the highway. But there it was: a gigantic shipping container behind hurricane fencing and concertina wire. It was impossible to conceive of how it was gotten there. It had a science-fictional air of alienness, like it had been air-dropped from the future, although its mundane purpose was just to repeat digital signals through fiber-optic connections up and down the coast.
I drove forward because there was no way to turn around. The road continued to degenerate, eventually losing all sign of gravel, and then turning into a creekbed with water trickling through a rut down the middle of the track. On the GPS, I was only ten miles from the highway, but it might as well have been a thousand. The former atheists chirpily droned on about how if they had seen the light, other lost souls could as well. The sun's started to shade towards late afternoon. I started to wonder a little bit.
Eventually the road came out into a recently forested clearing, and on the other side became a well-maintained logging road. When I reached the highway, I turned left back towards town and put Sunny Day Real Estate on the stereo.
And it’s strange
how we’re wasting our lives
Novacaine
when the pain helps us rise here we stay
Though it’s only a clever game
running from our lives
and we linger on
But if we try to lift up our eyes
replacing the lies
we own this moment
Everything and everyone
and in the end we all are one
truth will not be denied.
posted by Forrest L Norvell at 水曜日, 9月 01, 2004
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