Happy Cows

I had the privilege of getting away for the weekend to do a little hiking in the mountains east of town with some gal-pals of mine.  A friend has a quaint little house perched on the side of a mountain and we made our way up there on Saturday, did some hiking to catch the sunset, then did some more hiking on Sunday before coming back to town.  It was a refreshing change of pace... literally... since every other time that I am in that area I am usually passing through, rather quickly on two wheels and thinking about how I need to make time to do some exploration on foot.  I won't spend a lot of time delving into how out of shape I am, or the fact that for the first 2 days of this week, my legs and butt were so sore that I could hardly throw a leg over a motorcycle without cringing. You would think I would be in better shape... but no.

We trudged up a steep, grassy hill-side, walking among a few free-range cows that grazed lazily under the shade trees.  They (the marketing folks with the California Dairy Industry) say happy cows come from California and I have to say that they must be right.  I mean, I know that if it were me, I'd much rather graze freely on a lush mountainside than spend my days locked up in my own feces with 500 other cows. Yes, for that visual, you are welcome.  Remember folks,  "Beef: it's what's for dinner." 

God, at least there's beer.  Thank Gods for beer. Craft beer even.  Not any of that mainstream chemical-plant shit.  Only the real deal for me!

But I digress...

So there we were, hiking along and I was draggin' ass but trying to do so gracefully and inconspicuously. My gal pals were a few steps ahead chatting about something that I was only partially invested in.  My thoughts were in other places: how peaceful it was, what the history of this area is, how one poorly chosen step would result in a tumble down the side of a mountain as the cows would watch me topple ass-over-head to my doom.

Before I knew it we were at the top looking out over a vast valley.  Beneath us, the green rolling fields of farm land. It was really quite a refreshing sight.  I really enjoy the way the world opens up the more you explore it from different perspectives and even though this was essentially my back yard, it was still a fresh perspective.  It also helped that there was a nice breeze. 

A lot of people have asked me why I choose to stay in a town where the ratings indexes all point toward it being one of the worst places to live in California; poverty, teen pregnancy, low education, high unemployment and all of that jazz.  But what most people don't understand, or what the media doesn't tell them is that those problems are everywhere.  America has some of the poorest academic performance of any developed nation.  All over America the economy is struggling and people are desperate. I also feel like we live in a world where everyone is always looking for the next best thing without really taking the time to get to know or appreciate what is right in front of them.  It's a side effect of the residual illusion of the so-called American Dream and the epidemic of consumerism.  We are led to believe that the more we buy, the more we own, the more power we have in money, the happier we will be. We are left feeling empty; mindlessly reaching for things that we don't even know if we really care about because we never really thought about it.  We are also the most medicated.

Every day Americans walk into a doctors office and complain of sleeplessness, depression, anxiety, restlessness, hopelessness... They have questions... inquiries but no way of reconciling them on their own because they've never been taught to think, so they seek the next best thing: medicate it, take it all away, medicate it, "let me escape to the next best thing as I think it should be." People everywhere live their entire lives never knowing what lies just beyond their doorstep.  Instead, spending countless hours in front of the television absorbing illusions of far off lands and manufactured imagery. We are, in so many ironic ways, artificially inseminated with ideas, values and other influences that dictate the course of our lives before we even have a chance to think about it, let alone consent to it. Do I love where I live?  In some ways. In most others I know that I may not belong here and that there is also a huge world out there that I want to experience as much of as possible before I die; a world full of answers to enduring inquiries that I have of my own existence. I long to pursue them and I am alone in my journey... as we all are.  The answers will come to us and us alone, and they can only come from us and us alone in our own realizations as we inquire, experience, and learn.  

Home is where heart is.

I realize that way of life takes courage and volition, and sometimes I wonder if we aren't anything more than cattle grazing in a pasture.  Free-range as we believe, but to some extent protected by the cattleguards and easily herded into containment by the sorrows and suffering of our life experiences and the promise of shallow appeasement for those who don't inquire... those who don't want for something greater.