by Oscar Burley
Having discovered a classical great out of an ocean of a thousand lames, it is astronomically impossible to stop rocking out this Beethoven #7 over and over and over again, much to the dismay of D for Dad, classical music’s greatest fan. "At least turn it down. Good grief." "Co-pilot, bank right." Via a gravel road we descend into the rusty-stone depths of the canyon, where lazy weeping willow trees drape their long green hair into the shores of the juicy river. Sage brush grows here, woody-herbaceous with tiny pastel-green leaves. Enchanted by their minty fragrance, "umm," my face I bury in an aromatic cluster and commence with smelling the life out of the poor little creatures, inhaling their spirit into the depths of my lungs. Downstream, a small pool of hot spring water encased in brown rock collects at the river’s edge. Having slithered into the cold waterway, I find great joy in swimming with the current, butterfly stroking full speed ahead, soaring like a hydroplane across the water’s surface. Alternating hot with cold, cold with steaming hot, I'm beginning to feel as minty as a sagebrush myself. With the late afternoon approaching we ascend from our watery depths and up into the Rocky Mountain high country, where I’ve managed to drag D-4 Dad over the river and through the woods and up into a large panoramic basin at the base of the highest peak in New Mexico. Surrounded with seventy degree, two thousand foot walls covered with crumbling talus rock, I am lost and wandering through a rolling land of green grass, an occasional tree, rock and lakes. Now, so characteristic of summer evenings in the The world flashes white and not but a moment later, "Ker-Blammm," another clasp of electrical discharge echoes through my bones. And indeed, rain begins to fall. It’s time to beat a slow and delayed retreat through the wonderful green forest, back to the ship, and down into the desert where the presence of night prompts us to camp on a bluff above the pitch black depths of the Grand River Gorge. The ground is hard and stars abound in the deep dark sky above.... Somewhere in this celestial hemisphere, in a little town close to the "OK, now let me get this straight," I walk the soot covered trainsman through, step by step, "you burn coal, add water, and store the steam in this big cylinder. Then what? Oh, ok, steam pressure, a valve is opened, the horizontal piston is slammed out, powering one of these big, steel, half figure-eight arms which drive the wheels, “chug.” Alternatively, when either arm completes its revolution, its piston is compressed, “ah,” and its valve is opened so as to be filled with steam and fired again, “chug.” Vice-versa, vice-versa, vice-versa. Left valve, left piston, right valve, right piston, left drive, right drive, chug-a left, chug-a right, chug-a left, chug-a right, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, choo choo! “All aboard!” Blue spruce, a hardy conifer with thick, enchanting boughs of tiny blue-green needles is of the gymnosperm division, meaning it is of cone bearing reproduction and never loses all of its leaves at any one given time. Quaking aspen, on the other hand, is of the angiosperm division, meaning it is of flower bearing reproduction. A deciduous tree, it will drop all of its leaves come fall. Quaking aspen trunks are slender with smooth, gray-white skin. Their leaves, no broader than two inches, are light green on one side and silvered on the other. With the slightest of breeze, the leaves quiver, shimmering, ablaze by the wind, glistening in the sunlight; thousands of tiny hands waving simultaneously hello and good-bye as we chug-a, chug-a, choo-choo along up the tracks cut high into the steep hillsides. Clickity-clack clickity-clack clickity-clack, standing in this open-air car with no roof, I have in one hand a 5x7 pad of drawing paper and in the other, a lime green pen. “What to do, what to do?” Hum...I wonder...even though it makes no sense to my brain, can I draw a line on paper the same angle as that one on top of the next car of this train? Hum, well, yes, actually, I can draw a line of that exact same angle. It doesn’t look like much, but add another line, the top of the next car, and the next car, and the next, a few vertical lines here and there, throw in some wheels drawn like their glued on sideways and wow! Looky here, I done drawn me a train going over a train trestle, bellows of soot black smoke belching from its locomotive! OK, look here, detail, blue spruce needles, a bunch of quick, fine scratches of the pen. Now to get the branches and boughs all three-dimensionalish. Easy, simply lay the pen strokes thicker on one side, less thick on the other, granting the effect of shadow. Now for quaking aspen, quick, bust a bunch of tiny little circles along with a few vertical slashes for trunks, and woah-lah! As for the high elevation grassy hillside, simple, I just scribble bunches of tiny, erratic lines forming various vegetation textures, and shading, shape, and depth emerge suddenly from the otherwise flat piece of paper. Look at it from a short distance and everything blends into one cohesive picture. From this open aired observation car only a railing separates us from the trees and gaping chasms below as we wind up the sides of mountains, around their bends, over passes and into a basin of green open tundra; mostly treeless due to the elevation, chainsaws, and raw elemental harshness. Once again, all so characteristic of summer days in the Three hours into the ride, now in the state of Down the way is another canyon that time is not allowing me to explore. “Choo! Choo!” blasts the steam whistle. All aboard. “OK, OK, you’re always bossin me around, I’m a’ comin, I’m a’ comin. Whoa, which way is which?” With ache-clug and a chug-a chug-a chug, the train’s locomotive now on the opposite end as it was coming up, we begin meandering back down the nineteenth century tracks. With the train crossing hundred foot high trestle, it’s now that you witness the spirit of my true nature as I am possessed to lean my back onto the railing and arch my shoulders over the edge, granting myself a self portrait photo of my face, the base of the bridge’s stilts and the crick below, all in one straight line. In an effort to draw using no definite lines, the way natural settings look, I’ve taken to not looking at the paper while haphazardly drawing whatever the camera of my picture screen eyes rolls across. One texture coming up against and blending with another texture. Using this illegible artistic method I draw quickly. Check it out: a hill, a lake, a cloud, a mountainside, many many trees all drawn in the flash of an instant! My hand, what’s happened; it’s been filled with hot steam, while my finger pistons are firing full speed ahead! Chug-a chug-a chug-a chug, blazing heavy metal guitar music has descended on me. !!!!Crazy, but that’s how it goes. Millions of people, living as foes. Maybe, it’s not too late, to learn how to love, and forget how to ha-e-a-e-ate. Mental wounds are healing, driving me insane, I’m going off the rails on a crazy train. I'm going off the rails on a crazy train! Choo-choo!!!!.. Behind the central courtyard is the sitting room, from where a bell sounds, indicating the start of the meditation session. Crawling through the low doorway, I see that tree trunks, or “Vegas,” are used to support the room’s roof, that its walls are painted white, and that the floor is of polished oak. The room is empty, but for a simple altar and meditation cushions that line its parameter. Upon these we sit, with open eyes, sometimes facing the center of the room, at other times facing outward to the room’s blank walls. Alternating times of silence with times of prayer, we recite chants in Japanese to “honor the Buddha’s, the Awakened Ones of the past, the present, and the future,” and to pledge ourselves as peaceful warriors, holding empathy for the hungry spirits of the universe. At a ring of the bell its time to stand and practice walking meditation. When walking in a single file line around the room, the idea is to be mindful of each tiny movement of every step we take, all the while holding the daydreaming mind in a state of hush-hush. So it is that I introduce to you, Mr. “Ruff ruff ruff, Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, I’m so attached, I just cannot stand to let you out of my sight for a moment. Where you been, huh? Huh? C’mon c’mon c’mon, let’s go somewhere, do somethin’. Damn it I got ants in tha pants, let’s go, let’s go.” His name is Monster and has risen the ranks to become the official the new Co-commander of our Millennium Spacecraft. At fifty light years per hour a plume of dusty exhaust streams across the desert and our turbulence is settled to an easy simmer. Soon enough we’ve arrived at the Valley of the Ancients. From the top of a hill, at the base of the 50 foot canyon wall, I look out to the hallow space. A dry wash runs up its center. Nothing moves. Everything is silent, eternally preserved, buried by stillness. And indeed, until recent years when this canyon was rediscovered, it was in fact buried, buried by wind deposited sand twenty feet deep. The air so hot and dry that heat bends light, causing waves of blurr to float across the landscape. The occasional car driving along the roadway below sounds to be a tiny supersonic jet silently breaking the sound barrier, leaving in its wake the soft echo of a muffled sonic boom. Warm wind blows on my face. Little sage brushes grow in the dust. I gaze at the remains of a dilapidated wall built with layers of cemented mud and stacks of thick flat rocks, an example of early Anasazi architectural know how. Listening to the sound of my own heartbeat, my curiosity of what lies ahead is beginning to develop. “Oscar, where are we, and just what in the hell is this place? Sniff, sniff, sniff,” says Monster as he drives us parallel to the central dry riverbed. “I’m not sure, Little Chewbacca,” I respond “but it sure feels lonely.” Along the way we slow to observe ruin after ruin of tan stone ‘great houses’, their walls, doors, and windows each crumbling to pieces under the pressure of time. Reaching the end of the road , the craft we dry dock in the asphalt harbor as I prepare to peep the greatest of the great houses. Utilizing big, sloppy handwriting and my great green pen, I have recently begun the habit of writing muspelled words and incomplete sentences of must-remember thoughts into the 5x7 inch drawing pad. Here, the first cohesive chain of words which I’ve been spontaneously inspired to write flows forth: ‘I feel that I am a tiny speck of dust, stripped naked, standing on the edge of time. A wave of emotion comes upon on me. I am reminded of the isolated and desolate hopeless feeling of sitting inside of a jail cell. Pangs of longing churn through me, pangs that miss the lushness of the mountains, the security of the As soon as the feeling comes, it passes, and in floods a rich sense of well being. “Dude, look at where you are. In the middle of a real-live ghost town located in the real-live middle of nowhere, how cool is that!” Come on, it’s time to go run around and look at stuff! “Monster, you just stay here in the shade, beneath the desert lander and I’ll be back in awhile. Here’s some of that water substance their so fond of on this planet, I'm sure you’ll need it.” A path through the thick desert brush leads to Octon Centuri, a beige-brown half-circle shaped structure, two hundred feet in diameter. Built during the eighth century, it was once as much as four stories high. Since, the elements have taken their toll, yet much of the southern perimeter remains intact. Within the central courtyard I stand peering into round 'kiva' pits. Perfect cylinders, many of them ten feet deep and more than twenty feet across. The moon? The sun? The planets? UFOs? Circles, huh. According to my archeological discoveries, I Indian Jones, via reading the posted display, have determined that Great House Canyon lies along what was once a trade route stretching from the north to south, and on into Central America. Supposedly these great houses likely did not accommodate year round inhabitants, but instead served as cultural centers of exchange, religion, and ceremony. Around the year 1200 B.C. the entire Anasazi population up and disappeared, leaving few clues, if any, as to what happened. From the courtyard a hallway-tunnel leads into the double-story, roofless structure. Small little square door, after small little square door, enables us to explore room after room, passageway after chamber, after passageway. Here the walls are constructed of fine layers of cement and tightly stacked, thin flat rocks, an example of latter day Anasazi architectural technology at its finest. The hour now being late afternoon, bright sunlight pours through the long gone roof and illuminates yellow off the ruinous remains. The remains of near petrified wooden Vegas, support beams for the non-existent upper floors, protrude from the walls. Small little doors once connecting second story rooms wish me back to the days of Native American glory, when a young brave such as myself could live and thrive within this three-dimensional labyrinth of castle chambers. Here upon the packed dirt floor my activities include standing around looking at stuff, drinking water, checkin on the dog, lying around looking at the sky, drinking more water, sitting around staring at the silence, drawing the crumbling space station’s walls, just sittin around, followed by more sitting around. So, if you need me, you know where I’ll be, just here hangin out here with my invisible friends, The Ancients. Come evening time, gold light floods into the roofless structure, glowing brilliantly off of its brown walls. Purple and orange clouds brew in the sky. Through the rectangular remains of a third story window I view a bolt of lightning flash across the sky. Here marks the onset of a thunderstorm. The air dampens, falls in temperature and wind blows through my hair. Drops of water begin to fall from the sky. It’s luscious and I love it, makes me feel wild as I run from big square roofless room to big square roofless room, spinning in circles, looking to the heavens above, engulfed in a blur of brown and blue and black. A lover of rain, from now until sundown I will be wandering about the brown ruins of this other worldly fortress, smelling the greatest benevolence a desert has to offer, a good downpour.
Truckin onwards through the solar system, our golden rover delivers us into northern
Georgia O'Keefe country; a terrasphere of pastel-brown rock, sometimes purple, sometimes orange, pink, red or blue. A good place to listen to high pitch electric rock sensations by musical orchestras such as The Doors, Jimi “Space God From Outer Space” Hendrix, and perhaps even Led Zeppelin, ‘No Quarter,’ if you’re familiar.
Sounding like some sort of seventeenth century harpsichord heavy metal music, indubitably, it’s most ass-kicking indeed. Highly suitable for the time, as we carouse along the base of the Blood of Christ Mountain Range, through the southern most fingers of the
....“OK OK OK OK. Yes yes yes yes yes," I give in, "as you wish, Dear Ole Dad, we’ll go ride the antique train through the high country, it’ll be fun.”
Wth a “Che-klug” the steel snake lurches into motion, laboring a slow, sturdy chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug-a, chug, quickly increasing its tempo to a rapid and frantic CHUG-A! CHUG- A! CHUG-A! CHUG-A! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! We’re off and running, ascending steeply into the
After lunch at the high mountain lodge, your boy, Leonardo wanders out into the tundra to sit amongst tiny clusters of grass, smell the sweet air, and look for more things to draw, such as tiny clusters of grass and the large scenery scattered before his big dough brained eyes.
High as a mountain and as happy as zippitydoodah, I hear in my head a fitting tune filled with melody and joy, sing along if you know the words. "...The
....On the outskirts of this ancient city nestled within the 7000 foot foothills is a Zen temple constructed of authentic adobe brick. I repeat; clean, natural, mud adobe. None of this aluminum and plywood fake “adobe” crap that is so spreading like a track home rash.
Returning to my cushion for another round of sitting, my mind feels settled, simplified. I feel that I may accidentally peer through the veil of physical existence. Yikes. The room is so absolutely silent, I dare not ruffle a muscle, as the only sound I hear is the ringing of electricity, the sound of my own blood rushing about the inside of my skull. That and, "Bark! Bark! Bark!" ...Oh, no. “Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!” Monster, shut up! “Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!” Seriously, Monster, shut the fudge up, you fudging A-hole. “Bark! Bark! Bark!” Well, so much for this meditation session, for I must go tend to my furry little howler monkey of a brother tied up outside.
“Well, alright there, my fine fur bitten friend, there is a little place I have in mind, if you care to join me, that is. Prepare for takeoff....
....Come the entrance of
At the visitor’s center its time to part with Senor El Hitchiker-O and bid him safe thumbings to the other side of the park, and beyond. Farewell Home Slice. “Farewell Amigo,” he bids in return.
Standing at the mouth of the broad, long, and shallow space, I say hello to the crumbling canyon. The crumbling canyon says nothing in return, just continues staring blankly at absolutely nothing.
Here lies a waterless hallway half a mile wide and five miles long, filled with stillness, silence, and the crumbling ruins of a once mighty civilization. 
QUEST CALIFORNIA is a work in progress.
Periodic entries will be added.
Feedback and comments are welcome.
Contact Oscar Burley at oscarburley@questcalifornia.com
