Baines - Cross the Line

Someone's boring me. I think it's me.

Dylan Thomas

I was stuck. Burned out. My activities both at work and home had become routine, predictable. My thought patterns looped and looped over the same tired ideas. I had been overworking, overcaring, overserving until one morning I woke up hollowed out, numbempty of all feeling, desire, imagination. I found myself spending more and more time eating ice cream in front of the television or drinking beer on the back deck. I was tired of myself. My speaking and teaching was flat. Life had lost its mystery. God had become a chore.

What do you need? my wife asked me one night.

Not to be asked questions, I told her.

For ten years I was driven. Driven to prove my worth to God and myself. Driven to attract my fathers attention. Driven to heal my childhood wounds. Driven by an ambition that often burns within young adults.

I wanted to accomplish something, to succeed. I worked hard to design and manage a new approach to spiritual formation with youth and families at our church. I developed a national research project grounded in contemplative prayer. I began coteaching spiritual formation classes at San Francisco Theological Seminary. And by working eighty to ninety hours a week, eventually I found the success I was seeking. I won grants, was featured in the Wall Street Journal , watched my face on ABC News, listened to my voice on national radio programs and read my words in various magazines. I was offered book contracts and speaking invitations, secured a job at the seminary, received respect and admiration from my peers as a minister and spiritual teacher. And yet inside myself I was uncaring, uninterested and lethargic. What was particularly ironic was that most of my activities involved teaching others sabbath practices of rest, silence, solitude and retreat. I was teaching and writing about what I yearned for most.

During this time my poet friend Kirk called me. We grew up together and had maintained our friendship despite living on opposite coasts. I talked to your wife. She says you seem distant. Whats going on?

I dont know. I guess Im just tired.

You sound depressed. Listen, take some time off work. Im coming out. Two weeks later Kirk was on a plane headed west.

The night he arrived we took out maps and read guidebooks about the California coast. As we talked, it wasnt long before he noticed I was uninterested. I actually dont care what we do.

Kirk looked at me a moment and then shrugged his shoulders, All right, no plan. Tomorrow we drive. The next morning we loaded the car. Lets head north, back toward the Siskiyous, Kirk said, referring to the mountains where we grew up. I had no opinion.

I drove as Kirk took out a CD. Listen to this, he instructed. He put in the Basement Tapes , Bob Dylan and the Band working with classic American folk tunes. He rolled down the windows and turned up the music. Listen to this stuffmurderers, lovers, hobos, moonshinerstheyre singing about the other America. The one we dont talk about.

I listened as we drove past the dry farm fields of the Central Valley. The day was heating up. We need beer and tacos. Kirk directed me to a stand he knew just outside of the University of California Davis, his alma mater. There were coyotes painted on the windows, and a long line of students, homeless men and suburban moms. Go get some of that salsa, he told me. The orange stuff. I did as I was told, found a table and sat down. Kirk returned with grilled shrimp, carnitas and a plate of corn tortillas. Im going to get beer. You want one?

Im driving.

So what? Well wait it out. This is medicine.

Kirk returned and stuffed sliced limes down the golden bottlenecks. Try the habaneras. Theyre hot as hell. You know that peppers release endorphins in your brain? Its the same thing as runners high. Here, get some more of this on your shrimp, but dont touch it or youll burn your fingers. He smiled and drank half his beer in one lift. I ate and drank mechanically, my mind empty, my mouth burning. We went out and dozed beside a patio table, our faces toward the sun. After some time, we headed north into the mountains.

Kirk lowered the window to breathe the air ripe with pine sap, forest loam and lake water. Listen to this music! The vocals muffled, the microphone far from Dylans mouth, the drums heavy and slow. You hear that tempo? Kirk yelled to the trees, the passing cars. It goes right to the hips. Thats hip tempo, brother. Hip tempo!

We saw signs to the Trinity Wilderness. Turn here. Kirk pointed. We left the interstate and followed the highway along the Salmon River. The mountains were steep and soon the sun was buried by the trees, leaving the sky propane blue. We wound along the river until a yellow light bulb appeared, screwed to a wooden sign that read Carls Fishing Cabins. We woke the manager and paid for one night.

Any place we can get some food? I asked.

Nope, the manager said, half-turned toward bed. I can sell you a bag of pretzels.

We paid two bucks for the pretzels, and Kirk found an orange in his backpack and quartered it. We set kitchen chairs in a clearing behind the cabins and looked up at the black, moonless sky.

Im going to read something to you. Wait here. Kirk went indoors and came out with a nightstand. He then rummaged inside the kitchen and returned with a handful of candles, which he placed in some coffee cups and juice glasses. He lit the tilting candles, pulled a chair into their glow and opened a book. This is Whitman. Now listen. Just feel the grief in these words.

We had no food for dinner, no plan for the next day, no television, no cell phone connectionno distraction whatsoever. So I sat outside and watched the stars spin and listened to Whitman mourn in When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd:

Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,

Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,

Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.

Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,

Loud human song, with the voice of uttermost woe.

O liquid and free and tender!

O wild and loose to my soulO wondrous singer!

I listened to Whitmans song, felt his grief rhythms, breathed in the forest air and quietly fell asleep.

The next morning we discovered the manager rented inflatable kayaks. We put on shorts and sunscreen, found two smashed peanut butter granola bars in the trunk for breakfast, filled water bottles, rented boats, life jackets and paddles, and had the manager shuttle us upriver.

The day was bright and the river refreshingly cool. For the morning hours we stayed quiet, each of us navigating the rapids beneath the August sun. But toward the early afternoon the river skirt spread wide and heavy, and eventually we found our kayaks gently spinning in an eddy shaded by willow trees. Our skin turning red, our bodies tired from paddling, our stomachs empty, we each lay back in our kayaks and fell asleep. It was half an hour, maybe longer, before we awoke and paddled the final half mile to the fishing cabins. We pulled our kayaks up the riverbank, returned them to the manager and headed out on the highway mad with hunger.

As we drove I remembered a restaurant where my sister had once worked. It was run by an Italian woman, Maddalena, from the island of Sardinia. The story was that Maddalena had been a celebrated five-star chef in San Franciscobut after marrying a wealthy stockbroker and weekend fisherman, shed moved to the beautiful, tiny mountain town of Dunsmuir, located along the headwaters of the Sacramento River. Maddalena had refurbished the local train depot and turned it into a restaurant. From September through May she served dinner two nights a week, Friday and Saturday.