California Western

I went on a trip up the delta today with Bill in his new old boat. Parked on a trailer out in Bay Point, the end of the line, literally, of the Bay Area. Out there the glamour and the wet beauty of the silicon valley dry up and you're left with parched, windswept earth and a very big river.

Something about this space reminds me of the desert. I'll write a post soon about my love for Death Valley. But suffice it to say that I feel like it's a spiritual home. There's something so elemental when the rocks are exposed and the requirements so stark. If you don't have enough water, you die. Someone did last week.

And yet it's exquisitely beautiful. And it's this exquisite place where the human being is able to go and be set against the power of nature, and see that it is larger than he. The delta is like this. Even as we sped along in our blue boat, I felt the sense of power around me. The river itself is enormous. It's waves in the wind from the bay where intimidating. I was sure we were going to nose dive and be plunged into the green fear.

I wanted to talk about it not only because of this sense of fear (and awe) that wild places give me. Also because I felt this strong desire to make a modern western out in this space. A western in the sense that the landscape makes up it's own character. Man (human) is small in its scope. He is industrious, has goals, has a family to protect, and he is always smaller than the landscape. Nature. I love this theme. I love it because it gives us awe of man's potential to survive and awe of nature's raw power and grandeur. A California Western in that it is here, in the outskirts - it is the west. Out here at the end of the line (the Bart line) I felt the west again in California. Not the fertile west, nor the glamorous fancy west, nor the hippie west, nor the dream of the west, but the expanse of the west. The great and powerful west with its great mountains (Diablo) and great spaces and plains and stretches. Stretches so long you could die in the hot sun if you're not careful.

I loved this space. I loved the windmills and the cattle and the boat we were on and the fraternity and the fear. I loved the heat of the grass - the absolute readiness it had to burn. One scuff of the foot and a hundred acres would be black. I loved that. I loved the power.

Thanks to Bill for that excellent trip. Really a wonder.