Visiting Day

Woke up early this morning and drove up to the small town of Crockett, the town my good friend Mary spent a good part of her childhood in. She was up here for a short weekend visit with her family, so we took advantage of what little window of opportunity we had to hang out. I'd visited Crockett with her way back in the college days, so it was nice to go back. It's a wonderful small town in the big city sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area. I could see myself living out my old age here. I like it because it's small and quaint, with quiet streets and old brick buildings and sleepy art galleries and little parks, surrounded by the Bay and the Delta and nestled in the crook of the sleeping arms of the East Bay Regional park system. Urban life imposes itself conspicuously with such things as the impressive Carquinez Bridge and the massive C&H Sugar factory, which is more picturesque than urban:

Since I only ever get a few hours here and there with Mary, we decided to go for a nice hike through the regional park. Unfortunately it was closed. I'm not sure how you close the great wide open spaces of a regional park, except with those cow fences that swing open and shut and are built like ladders anyway. So we just ignored the "No Trespassing" signs and hopped over a couple fences here and there and made our way down the great swaths of road that serve as fire breaks. We walked through rolling fields of thistle and foxtail, past stands of poison oak and little man-made ponds filled with thick green and brackish water. We saw the ostrich-like flash of a wild turkey as it fled, saw deer stand absolutely still on a distant hillside, tracking our way past with its ears. At one point Mary jumped straight up in the air when she realized she had just stepped on a snake, but they both scared each other off, and I had a nice laugh. The hills rose and fell around us, great green swaths of light and color. The live oaks with their new green and jagged leaves gave us a place to rest under. In the distance was Suisun Bay with its rusting battleships laying in their hazy graves, waiting to be scrapped or consumed by oxidation.

At one point we eyed a hill, large and hulking, the back of a whale that we clamoured up, disturbing crickets and small beetles and butterflies, and we were rewarded by a great view. It sat over a road frequented by Saturday morning motorcyclists, and was covered by prickly grasses that are just beginning to turn golden in anticipation of the long, hot summer months to come: In the distance were radio towers, placed at the intersection of where old military installations fought old wars--real and imagined--and where radio signals from the City begin to lose their reach and are boosted to the further places. Who knows what tales were ever broadcasted or broadcast still:

We rested on that hill for a while, enjoying the sunshine and the mutual good company and we traded stories and talked about life and sat also in that silence that only old friends have, beneath the crackle of the radio waves and above the drone of motorcycles and amidst the calls of crickets and the hard-shelled insects that tick and wind themselves up as if they were expanding and cracking open.

Our time was up too soon and we headed back, more slowly than we had come.

After I dropped Mary off, I was driving back home, only to get a phone call from another friend from my college days. She lives just across the Bay, but such a short distance creates bigger divides to cross. The stars must have been aligned today because we made plans to go see an art show her friend was in. It was good to see her, and after seeing the show we went and sat down with glasses of Merlot and loud music and caught up with our lives and had a nice little talk. It's good to check in on old friends. We made vague plans to make my Mother's tamale recipe, since we both love to eat and we both loved my Mom's tamales--which are notoriously delicious, by the way.

It was a good day. I'm such a home-body but every once in a while it's nice to get out and be in the world and with the people who have joined you along the way. Tomorrow I pursue my future again. We have another installment of Ghosts and Girls coming up at the end of the month. Never too early to start plugging.