The Salinas Valley was blanketed under a thick layer of morning fog, but far above it, the trail head was drenched in slanted yellow sunlight. Dew-soaked spider webs formed small crystal bowls nestled atop fresh green grass. Run off from the recent rains trickled into a transient stream across the trail and burbled over rocks and small stones. The trail was walled by sheer brown stone cliffs, but in the places where stone had yielded to the forces of erosion creating small islands of soil were lush blooms of color - miniature yellow sun flowers, teeny purple lupines, orange poppies, bright white something or others - all tiny, fragile, tenacious. I took a deep sweet breath and tasted the flavors that were all around me and reflected on the contrast to the tableau in which I was immersed just 7 days earlier.
One week ago - at just about the same time on a Saturday morning (i.e. bloody early), I disembarked from an airplane at JFK in New York City bleary-eyed but reasonably rested and excited to catch up with friends from across both oceans, a multi-continental reunion. I stopped at a coffee counter at Baggage claim and found a sample packet of vitamins attached to my coffee cup, a thoughtful welcome gesture, to revive me from the flight and fortify me for the convoluted Subway ride into Manhattan.
The New York Subway System is a curious beast. It is an entity, a vehicle, a destination, and a culture unto itself. It has personality, moods, history. It assaults the senses, evokes emotion, and sends the mind wandering down tunnels of thought. It is both adored and abhorred, both fearful and fascinating. At street level, you can buy scads of subway related regalia to demonstrate your respect and admiration - umbrellas, sweatshirts, table cloths imprinted with prideful maps of the system, but below ground, that same respect is shown by moving efficiently through the gates and deftly navigating the crushing maze of tile passageways and narrow staircases.
The trail dipped down to a small bridge across the seasonal stream. A ranger came down from the other side, and we paused on the wooden planks for a chat. He had a reassuring authority, caretaker of this wild place. We exchanged pleasantries and expressed our mutual enchantment with the bounty of wild flowers and shades of green before he continued on his way. I lingered by the edge of the water and listened to the soft ribbets and chirps of frogs celebrating the glory of a wet spring. I climbed up from the creek bed to a rocky promonotory that jutted into a natural cathedral of rock. Sheer red walls flanked me left and right, while a lush green box canyon formed the transept, rock spires the pulpit. High above, a pair of red-tailed hawks circled while their chicks cried out from their rocky nest. A blue jay echoed their call from a bush beside me.
The serpentine staircase spiralled down to the lower platform. As I round the corner, a nervous young man quickly wheeled around and followed me down the stairs. At the bottom, I turned to face him and we had a conversation with our eyes, mine expressing vigilance and caution, his revealing that something deep inside him was broken, lost. At the edge of the platform, the passengers leaned onto the tracks to watch the resident subway rats forage among the discarded cigarette packs, batteries, and paper coffee cups. The rats carried on, unconcerned by the approaching train. I ascended up through the comparatively fresh air into a canyon of concrete buildings that emptied into the buzzing amphitheater of Times Square. Flocks of dingy grey pigeons weaved among double decker buses. A seagull plundered a rubbish bin behind the hot dog cart beside me.
The sunny morning had brought a host of visitors to the park, and I exchanged pleasant greetings with those I met along the trail. Some stopped for a chat, others, preserved their solitude with a courteous nod. Everyone was enamored with the carpet of wildflowers, stopping for a close-up photo or a long sniff.
The streets of New York are filled with people, day or night, regardless of the weather. Eye contact is avoided, loneliness is pervasive but preferable to invasive conversation. The streets are lined with make-shift gardens and vendors selling cut flowers, tiny pockets of green and color. Everything else is grey.
Cave is a rather grandiose term for a small dark tunnel beneath a giant rock fall, but semantics are irrelevant when you are engulfed in perfect darkness. Kevin and I had visited the Balconies Caves at Pinnacles many, many years ago. Not having heeded the signs about the requirement for flashlights, we attempted to piggy back through the caves on the light of the group ahead of us, but we discovered that Kevin suffers from paralyzing claustrophobia and they soon pulled away from us, leaving us blind and deafened by the sound of my husband's labored breathing. As our eyes adjusted, he saw a sliver of light in the rocks above him and scurried lizard-like for safety. Abandoned but giggling, I carefully picked my way back to the opening from which we had come, and we took the by-pass trail that lead up and around the caves instead.
On this beautiful morning, we found our selves at that same junction. I lobbied to address our unfinished business in the cave, now being permanently equipped with a flashlight on my swiss-army phone. A wave of panic flashed across his face as I watched him relive the trauma and I knew that something deep inside him had been broken that day. We started towards the bypass trail when he turned and said "We could split up and meet back at the car?" I barely had time to smile goodbye before racing towards the gated entrance of the ominous caves.
The trail zig-zagged around two large boulders into a room illuminated by shafts of light streaming through gaps in the rocks. I wondered which had been Kevin's escape hatch, but memories are painted on distorted canvas, and I couldn't overlay the location. Beyond the next turn, the gaps were sealed and the darkness became absolute. I stood still for a moment, calming my mind and surrendering to my base senses. I felt the cool draft of air rising from the stream that ran through the tunnel. I listened to the water cascading and smelled the wetness of the rock. I welcomed stillness - and in that moment of stillness came the thought "You are under a huge pile of loose rocks directly on the San Andreas Fault."
And the stillness was shattered.
I switched on my camera light and surveyed my surroundings as my breathing accelerated. In the center of my path sat an enormous round stone ball and I could not help but conjure scenes of it rolling towards me a la Indian Jones. I rounded to the right side, but loose rocks had filled the gap between the boulder and the cliff face. The left side had a tiny crawl space where the creek trickled through, but surely that was not the trail. I felt fear and panic rising in my chest and stepped back towards the entrance of the cave, wondering if I could catch up to Kevin on the bypass. But then I thought of Luke Skywalker facing his fears, and I remembered that Indian Jones managed to escape the boulder and then I started thinking about the profound influence George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have had on shaping who I am and how I fit into the world and I turned around with new resolve and only a little bit of embarrassment.
Re-examining the boulder from a distance, I was able to pick out the soggy footprints left behind from the group ahead of me. They revealed a secret staircase chipped into the rock that lead up and around the gravel pack and into the next cavern, which emptied into a shaft of light. The darkness was behind me and my trials were complete. Or so I thought. There are more perils than darkness.
Here, the cliff walls nearly touched at their base, such that the trail was a mere gap of 12 inches across - and that gap was filled with flowing water. I steadied myself with an arm against each wall and my boots were high enough to keep the water away from my feet. But the crevasse was filled with fallen boulders and I soon came to an impasse. Here, I would be forced to wade through 18 inches of water - possibly on hands and knees to pass beneath yet another round boulder. I opted instead to go up and around the boulder - scrambling up the slippery wall was not easy, but gravity became an entirely different enemy whilst sliding down the rock face on the other side. And so shall I bear my own scars from this adventure, only on my knees, not in my eyes. I do not know if I faced my destiny in the cave, but I did learn an important lesson.
I emerged through the gate that marks the entrance to the cave, and I turned briefly to wonder what the journey would be like taken from the other direction. Walking back to the car, I experienced a modest feeling of adventure and accomplishment that naturally elevated my heart and the corners of my mouth. The warmth of the morning lifted the thick perfume of the wildflowers into the air, cloying and it reminded me of the smell of urine in the subway. New York seems so close temporally, even geographically, but the metaphysical distances between these two worlds is unfathomable. And yet they are linked...amidst formations of either stone or concrete, human beings seek and receive solace in nature, whether on a grand scale of complete immersion, or wherever and however you can get it.
Even if that is only rats on the subway track.
