Santa Barbara, December 10, 2011

Well,

first off, I wanna go home.

But secondly, that's mostly brought about by three sicknesses at once:

1 is a sore throat and stuffed nose that everybody's been suffering, perhaps on account of the awfully chilly California Coast nights. Snork. Hargle. Gurk. Phlegmblob! Snork! I take this moment to educate you about the magic of rosehip tea: It's free and abundant vitamin C.

2 is a really dreadful stomach mangle brought about by eating bolting brassicas, AKA wild mustard greens in a field in Big Sur. They looked great. They tasted... bitter. and tough. We cooked them with some salt. They immediately softened to the texture of cotton fabric and tripled in bitterness. i regret to say that i, never one to waste food, chomped down 10 or 20 leaves before giving the whole pot up as a lost cause and dumping it. 2 hours later I was in the throes of a full on lurching nausea. I thank my strong dumpster-diver stomach for keeping it down. The moral is, wild food is great. But make sure it's food.

3 is plain homesickness caused by therapeutic staring out the window and almost recognising a black outline. Let me explain.

you can look out almost anywhere on the coast of Vancouver Island where I grew up and see the outlines of mountainous islands, with beautiful names, Texada, Lasqueti, Saltspring, Galiano. It's normal. I don't even know what island I'm looking at half the time but they never move. It's part of my favourite sunsets.



driving along the California coast south of Big Sur, when I looked out the window of Leslie in an effort to not spew, I saw this:


So, yeah.

Eventually we pulled over at Hearst Castle. The van's battery died and I spent a while phoning home and observing a pack of zebras move about Hearst Ranch.

as a last, I will leave you with the observation that the practice of resisting buying persimmons, dates or oranges in BC is very grounding, and the practice of buying them locally grown in California is also very grounding.

Thanks for reading.