the forest is made of darkness

extreme hitching is my new favorite sport, barring only ski BASE wingsuit jumping, the ultimate of ultimate extreme experiences.

the city was driving me absolutely insane. a combination of factors… i think the white noise might be part of it. even when it is quiet there is a loud rush of the freeway in the background, and the hum of every electronics item including refrigerators buzzing away in your subconscious, not to mention the glut of electromagnetic waves filling the urban air. i got off work at noon and by 1pm was standing on the freeway on-ramp 3 blocks from my house, thumb high and hopes higher. my face read: get me the fuck out of here, i need to be in the forest! it took me until the next evening to get to my destination, about a 14 hr drive. on the way home, i hitched a 14-hr drive in 18 hrs. not with one long ride either, no one took me more than a couple hours.

take that…. “law”!

at one point i got dropped off at a highway interchange, and saw a group of several travel kids already sitting on the side of the road. as i walked over to say hello 2 more hitch hikers rounded the bend. there were 9 people and 2 dogs trying to hitch out of this one spot. luckily, i was the only one going south so i walked a mile down a got the fuck out of there. hung with them for a hot minute first though, pretty cool kids. i’ve never seen that many hitch hikers in one place. truly epic.

HAHA WHAT ARE YOU DOING????

this one was from sweden

THERE BE REDNECKS

some very notable rides, i’ll just write about a couple.

my first ride of the trip was a beekeeper with both arms done up in beautiful sleeves of plants, grapes and flowers, swarming with bees. he had his bee-suit still half on, and a 5-gallon bucket of bee pollen sitting between the seats, which he was eating out of with his bare hands. i said “sure i’ll break veg for that,” and had a handful myself. it was sweet and pasty. he was sweet and tan.

usually i get dropped off, have just enough time to photograph some roadkill, and another car pulls up

a real life cowboy picked me up too. Cole. 60ish years old, covered in burn scars, approximately 8 and a half fingers, cowboy hat. the works! the seat of his pick-up truck was littered with technical manuals on horse-shoeing and equine physical therapy, which he shoved out of the way to make room for me. this guy is amazing. he went to UC Davis and got a degree in blacksmithing, which is actually the science of horseshoeing (i didn’t know you could do such a thing, but davis is where you would i guess). he loves horses and especially wild mustangs. he researched the leading causes of horses being put down and found that it was lameness, so he has become an expert physical therapist and can correct most lameness even if it takes a year of therapy. i am going to refer Farm Sanctuary to him, since they occasionally get lame donkeys e.g. Bonnie. cole went on an on about how he loves the wild, lives it, lives with the cougars bears and elk, and especially how important and beautiful the wild mustangs are, how he is a one-man war against the BLM, how he only eats meat he hunts himself.

Bonnie was rescued after spending the first decade of her life in a 10×12 cement enclosure which was never cleaned, and her hooves were never trimmed. she was found literally up to above her knees in her own shit. her hooves were about a foot long, so she was unable to stand on them, which is why her ankles are bent. she was crippled for so long that some of the bones are flipped around permanently and can’t be corrected. this is the kind of case Cole takes on.

with diane, a whisperer. i don’t wanna say donkey whisperer or anything, because everyone loves diane. i think maybe she would be the goat whisperer if anything.

it’s always a good sign when you look into a car and see a shirtless dude covered with tattoos! “i always pick up hitch hikers, especially gutter punks, cuz i used to be one!” he took us to his house and fed us vegan dinner, almost entirely 100-mile diet including a main course of fresh chantrelles. i’d never had them before and they were fucking amazing texture and flavor. he and his skate / ski / board punk friends are building skate park hidden off the road near the ski resort town they all live in. well it’s inside the town, but the town is nothing but a couple buildings. anyways the skate park is part inside an abandoned building they’ve requisitioned, and part outside in the building’s overgrown parking lot in the woods. he said we could crash there for the night, and we fuckin did! i’ve never slept in a skate ramp before.

reason #666 west coast >>> east coast

it was dark in there…

skateramp/bed/toasteroven

pillow?

one of the most beautiful things in the world is waking up somewhere you’ve never been before, after arriving dead tired in the middle of the night and stumbling through the dark to where you slept… then you wake up, the sun is shining, and something beautiful is always before you:

I CAINT READ I NEVAR LARNED

“ahhhhhh, if only i had my board” chadanaken thinks

their tag… forget what it stands for… snow apocalypse…? snow something.

just going to throw this out there, but the skipunk guy had 2 pitbulls who were fat and happy and cute, and a cat who had just had kittens, and therefore by inference a fucking litter of fucking newborn kittens! fucking awww!!

the next morning we told our ride that we were from alabama and we just turned 18, and we were trying to get as far from alabama as we could and were soooo excited because we were almost to the coast! he took us an hour out of his way and told us to “stay away from the Central District, there’s a lot of crime there.” for those of you who don’t know seattle, the CD is an awesome neighborhood where lots of black people and punks live.

when i was a couple hours from home, trying to get back in time for work the next morning, night fell dark and frightful on the side of the freeway. now all the cars were wizzing by with glaring headlights and no one could see me even with the flashing bike light i held up with my invisible thumb. i got a ride though, which took me all the way to tacoma to catch the last bus home for the night, the bus rolling in right with the cops to arrest the man flashing a gun around… i was so glad to get on that bus! the woman who drove me there said she never ever picks up hitch hikers, and wouldn’t have stopped but for a dream she had the night before, in which she picked up a young lady hitch hiking and drove her all the way to seattle! she manifested me! i still feel eerie thinking about it days later.

in the forest and spent 2 days in a feral puppy pile with some wonderful people, who brightened my whole life and i’m still basking in the glow. what’s a friend if not someone who shows you the stars, the absolute quiet and perfect darkness of night in the forest, and wizardz paste all in one day? and eats kale and soy ice cream with you in the park as you watch the fog roll in while listening to black metal, and welds wood-burning stoves by hand, and… and… <3

the forest is darkness