Welcome to Oregon

It felt like entering the promised land when we drove past this sign on Friday, March 14, 2014. 

Oregon looks like I imagine Ireland looks.  Lush.  Green.  The further north we moved, the lower my anxiety became.  I'd been anxious all the way through California, scared.  Of what, you might ask?  I have no idea. It was just a constant sense of the possibility of things going terribly wrong.  Part of my lifelong wrestling match with depression/anxiety. 

We visited a couple of bookstores in Medford and Roseburg and pulled into Eugene just around sunset.  We had no idea where we were going to camp, but a little internet research via the smartphone found the Eugene Mobile Village on Franklin Blvd.  In the dark, of course, we had no idea of the actual surroundings, but we found the place.

The office was closed, but we picked out a spot near the office and put our payment in the slot.  A few days later, we moved to a longer-term location. 

 

Our first spot at Eugene Mobile Village.

One of the first things I discovered on our new spot was a green stone that looked like jade.  I didn't see this particular kind of stone anywhere else, just in our lot.  Over the course of a couple of weeks, these green stones would just appear out of nowhere.  One day the yard was perfectly clear, the usual gravel, dirt and moss and hours later, there would be this big chunk of this green stone.

Our long-term location.

The green stones kept surfacing here beneath the trees.  Notice the orbs.

 Within the first couple of weeks, we had signed up for Piccadilly Flea Market and attended one Saturday Market. We attended a couple of pagan gatherings at the Unitarian Church and a shamanic healing journey at a private home.  I was lucky enough to get a scholarship / barter agreement with a local shamanic teacher for entrance into a year-long shamanic apprenticeship. 

The first weekend of my apprenticeship training  I returned home and we had new neighbors.  A long old tan RV was parked behind us and the couple that owned quickly became our fast friends.  Christie and Abijah and Abijah's son, Seth are delightful, open, honest, genuine young hippies.  Both had birthdays a couple of days apart in April and the three of us celebrated our birthdays (mine is April 19).

I later learned that the stone that kept mysteriously appearing was serpentine--very similar to jade, but associated with spiritual healing.  The signs just keep coming. 

Struggles in Shasta

Mount Shasta brought its own challenges.  We had planned to stay for three days or so, drink in the mountain air, connect with the spirit of the mountain and rest before we pushed forward into Oregon.
But the Universe had other plans and as usual, I was not given a memo.

We went to town to visit the bookstores, and stop at the auto parts store to get some brake fluid.  But too late!  Our brakes failed to stop us at the auto parts store, and if it hadn't been for the metal post, we might have landed IN the auto parts store.  Fortunately, other than bending the pole a little, no serious damage was done.  But there we were in a mountainous town with absolutely no brakes at all. 

We called AAA (again!) and while Rick waited for the tow truck, I visited my bookstores.  Luckily, Mount Shasta is a small enough town that all stores were within a couple of blocks of one another. When I got back, the tow truck had just arrived.

The repair shop was less than a mile from the KOA campground, but we were grounded, for sure.

A desperate call to rich relations obtained the needed funding for repairs, but we had to cut our stay short.  The campground hosts were very nice about refunding our camping fees and as soon as the truck was fixed, we gassed up and headed north.

But I didn't waste the rest of the day--I went for a walk around the campground, took some nice pictures and set and meditated in the "shadow" of the mountain. 

Here we are at Mt. Shasta KOA Campground.

I loved the tall, tall trees.

And of course, that magnificent mountain.

Gotta love my zoom lens!

One day, perhaps, I will have a chance to go back to Mount Shasta and drive up closer to the mountain and walk its trails.  I would love to feel the land itself right on the mountain, to feel its Lemurian connections, its magical place in the Dreamtime. 

A Poem

Drought Resistance

California is bound to become

A water battleground

A fluid prism prison where the wealthy

And the corporate “persons” starve

The non-corporate people into being

Non-corporeal victims of the greed

Wars over water.

Where golf triumphs over gardens.
--Catt Foy, 2014

 
 

Mount Shasta

Mount Shasta, California has loomed in my mind as a long-yearned-for sacred place since the 1980s.  One of my first bookstores was the Golden Bough in Mt. Shasta.  Missie Gillespie was the manager or owner, I can't remember which, but she has stayed in my mind all these years.  I never met her, only talked to her on the phone.  In fact, she was one of the last orders I filled for Psycards before my divorce in 1991 and in the end I sent her the last decks I had when I had to move to a small apartment, and US Games had taken over the Psycards business.  A sad time in my life during which I lost everything that had defined my life. 

After 25 years of yearning, I was on my way to Mount Shasta and I began to feel her presence even before I could see her. I felt her strong Mother Energy, her otherworldy connections and I felt as though I was on a pilgrimage to the Sacred Mountain.

It began with tiny glimpses of white on the horizon--is that a cloud or a mountain?  No, it's a mountain, definitely a mountain.  Is that Mount Shasta?  It has to be, I determined as I consulted my maps.

At last we were in the presence of the Mother Mountain.  I could feel other energy connections to this place--as if it were a hub from which other energy lines radiated to other mystical places.  It felt very strongly like it linked back in time, too, back in time and to the West, to the ancient Lemurians, perhaps, to the star people, to some lost place of human history.

We stayed a the KOA campground there, at the base of the mountain for a day or so, until finances dictated that we move again if we wanted to get to our destination of Oregon.

Camping at KOA.

View of the mountain from KOA.

Another view from KOA.

I spent quite a bit of time walking in the woods and meditating in the aura of Mount Shasta over the next couple of days.  But I also had the feeling that there was the spectre of decline haunting the town itself.  It felt like a town that might one day soon be nearly empty or abandoned.  Later, I heard reports from the townspeople about the drought and its impact on the local economy--no snow means no skiing, no skiing means no tourism in the winter, their biggest season.  Local businesses are barely staying afloat.

The Mountain doesn't care about such things--she has much bigger things to contemplate.  She felt as though she was humming with some sort of internal activity that made us little grasping humans seem irrelevant, unless we were there to worship in some way.

After having our brakes fail and nearly running through a plate glass window--fortunately a steel sign post stopped us!--we were forced to borrow money for repairs and get on the road as quickly as possible to find a home spot.  So worried and feeling urgent, we pushed forward toward Eugene.

San Francisco and Beyond

Pacifica beach at dawn.

We spent two very stressful days visiting the bookstores in the San Fransciso area.  Traffic was tortuous and the streets were very challenging. 

I had heard stories about SF's hills--getting stuck at a  stop sign at the top of a hill in a standard transmission and trying not to roll backward into the car behind you!  Well, you guessed, that is exactly what happened to us.  A stop sign just below the top of the hill on a street with something between a 20% and 30% grade!  Revving the engine so high you think it will explode, praying for the clutch to catch before you catch the front bumper of the guy behind you, praying when it does that it doesn't stall (it does!), then re-starting the car and trying all over again, knowing somewhere in one of the houses with a view of the intersection is someone laughing his ass off at the out-of-towners from Iowa! Quite nerve-wracking.

But it is something to say that I have now been to the Bay area.  Would NOT want to live there with its congestion and high cost of everything.  I'm sure it is a lovely place to visit when you have the resources, and rich with history.  Of course, the cultural depth and the beauty of the land are also attractions. 

Other than one sale (30 days net) we didn't do very well in the SF area, so on it was to Sacramento and the I-5 north to Oregon.

Colorful Haight-Ashbury district.

San Francisco Skyline

San Francisco gridlock.

The old SF Bay Bridge.  Remember the collapsed part from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake?

The new Bay Bridge--old bridge is to the right. 

Two bridges.

A foggy view of the Golden Gate.  We did not visit because of traffic and budgetary restraints.

I'm a little sorry I didn't get to visit Golden Gate Park.  An old friend and I, in 1975, had made a pact to meet one another there on New Year's Eve of 2000.  Needless to say, neither one of us made it, but just being there made me think of her.

Another glimpse.

After leaving Pacifica, we went to Oakland and bookstores in that area, then on toward Sacramento.
There we found camping at CalExpo fairgrounds, and the following day we were able to drop by two more stores in Sacramento. 

Camping at Cal Expo.

Sacramento seemed like a nice enough town, especially the old town part.  I love historic districts--lots of spirits to sense and history to feel. 

The original Wells Fargo in Sacramento.

Wells Fargo, now a museum.  Surprisingly, there isn't even a Wells Fargo ATM on the property.

After the bookstore visits, we rested a couple of days in Sacramento and planned our next steps.  I was nervous, worried because everything was so expensive and we had many days in California where we had no idea where the next gallon of gas was going to come from.

Spring in Sacramento

Somehow we made it through and when we left Sacramento, I was happy to be heading north, away from the crazy energy of California's big cities.  Out across a big open grassy plain, we headed north on I-5. 

We had only gone a few miles when we suddenly had people honking their horns at us and waving.  We pulled over to see what was the matter.  Apparently we had a blowout on the Ford Ranger in tow and had been spraying sparks all over the interstate as we dragged it along on the metal rim!

Thank heavens for AAA--again!  Well worth the investment for the tows we have had to use along this trip. 

Waiting for the tow truck.

So a portion of our gas money went to fixing the tire.  Fortunately we had the cash, and the repair shop was very reasonable and helpful.  Better late than never, we headed back on the road three or so hours later.

Our next destination: Mount Shasta.

After Watsonville

Watsonville was near enough to Santa Cruz to allow us easy access to the bookstores there.  After visiting our potential customers, we went to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. 

The Mystery Spot is one of several "gravitational anomalies" along the Pacific Coast (two more in California, and one highly reputable one in Gold Hill, Oregon).  Many people have seen these places featured on TV shows about the unsolved or the paranormal.

So you can see a visit to the Mystery Spot was in order.

We did witness some anomalies, although the construction of the house created a great deal of optical illusion to enhance the actual effect.  The tour guide used levels to show us places that were level, but appeared to be decidedly un-level.  Some of these spots were tilted one direction (according to the level), but things would roll uphill! 

The entrance road to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot.

At the beginning of our tour, we were introduced to the edge of the circle in which the mysteries occur.  The cement markers we stand on mark that boundary.  One is inside the circle, one is out.  A carpenter's level demonstrates that the area is indeed level.

The tour guide asked for volunteers who were the same height and asked us to stand on the two spots.  Then we switched places.

The perception while participating was that the other person actually got taller.  However after examining the pictures below, I realized that once I was inside the circle, I was leaning decidedly backwards, creating the illusion that she had gotten taller.

We start off the same height.

Now she's taller--or is she?

From this demonstration, we climbed the very steep hill to the mystery house.  The story was that originally a small shack had been built there, but quickly collapsed into odd angles.  Over the years, the Mystery Spot has rebuilt the original, allegedly in the original configuration.  Personally, I think they have exaggerated the structure to enhance the optical illusion.  By the way, there is no sense of the paranormal here, although one does tend to lean when inside the circle.  My guess is it is some kind of anomaly having to do with whatever stone/mineral/metal lies beneath the location that creates a minor magnet effect of some kind.  I suspect there are many of these places, but I did not get the sense that it was spiritual or paranormal in any way.

The steep hill to the house.

You can see that the house is deliberately constructed to be twisted and tilted, enhancing the optical illusion and the gravitational anomaly.  We did experience a kind of light-headedness inside the house--very disorienting.

A level testified to the perfect position of this board, but...

The billiard ball, when placed on one side of the board, rolled back "uphill" to the other.

The interior of the house is definitely disorienting--deliberately, I believe.  However, I noticed that in the second room of the house, hardly any of my photos came out.  They were all blurry, or overexposed and I am a good photographer,  I rarely have trouble getting good pictures.

The only clear shot I got in this room.  I tried very hard to stay upright for the photo.  You can see how everyone leans to keep their balance.

Walking inside the house was a struggle, as well as on the outside of the house, on the hillside.  Everyone was stumbling, walking as though we were at sea.

Since the circle is very small, the tour is necessarily short.  But it was definitely interesting! 

Another "who is taller" spot was behind the cabin.  These two photos show the illusion that one person has gained in height, while the other has shortened.

The tour guide took our picture, but as you can see, he deliberately tilted the camera to enhance the illusion.  The crooked fence, the fact that we are leaning against the gravitational pull, and the steep hillside all add to the exeperience.

Good-bye to the Mystery Spot.

From Santa Cruz, it was time to head up the coast toward San Francisco.  Although it was expensive we did find a very nice spot at the San Franscisco RV Resort in Pacifica, just outside of SF. Beautiful spot, and I finally got my camping on (well, near) the beach.

Parked at Pacifica.

It was a lovely place, full of salt air and a magnificent view of the sunset. 

Visible erosion.  The little ledge sticking out is the asphalt that used to be a parking area. I was told the cliff used to extend at least another 100 feet further out, but the sea is persistent.

Our next stop was going to be San Franscisco, and Oakland.  Next blog post.