That's Califor'ya

Each summer, when I was a kid,
my parents loaded my five brothers, two sisters,
and me into a 40-foot motor home
(they weren't yet called recreational vehicles)
and took us to a different section of this amazing physical space
we call a nation: New England one summer, Florida the next rainy Christmas.
Glacier National Park, Crater Lake, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, the Alamo, Vegas.
You name the federal park and there's a picture
of seven awkward kids in various states of motor home attire
posed before its welcome sign
(all bound in a series of plastic picture albums in my mother's house).
To this day, I'm still drawn to take pictures
of myself and my partner
as we encounter the familiar brown signs
and their distinctive broad yellow letters.

This past week,
after a debaucherous weekend in San Francisco,
we headed up to Russian River
(the non-Sonoma part of Sonoma County)
to relax and take in the redwoods
(and what turned out to be more like a curvy still pond than a River with so grand a name).

It was amazing.

When I was ten or so,
my family wandered through California redwoods.
They were 'cool' . . .
All these years later, as an adult,
with a firmer grasp of things like mortality,
relativity,
collective consciousness, . . .
what were once really big, really old trees
are now staggering reminders
that the Divine exists on earth,
just waiting for a hug.

These are some of those photos.