Road Trip

Part 2 of A Long Winded Photo Essay

This is the second part of a long winded photo essay. Click here to check out Part 1 where we visited The Sphere in Las Vegas, Death Valley National Park, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, and Yosemite National Park.

Dunbar, the Oxford anthropologist, spent an improbable amount of time measuring how humans arrange themselves when they talk. He found something every bartender, fishing guide, and old ranch hand already knew. Women tend to square up and talk face-to-face. In order for men to open up, we need to drift off-angle, shoulders somewhere around 90 to 120 degrees apart. We stare at the river, the fire, the road, the fly line— anything except each other. Face-to-face among men brings a subconcious charge to the conversation. It’s challenge. Side-by-side is cooperation.

Nobody taught us this as boys. It arrives factory-installed, older than memory and probably older than language. Olde world European pubs and western saloons stumbled into it by accident. Long bars, stools pointed the same direction, elbows lined up like fence posts. Men who’d never survive a feelings circle would tell a complete stranger about a dead brother, a lost marriage, or a bad year in the factory while both stared into a glass and pretended they were discussing the weather. Gierach would have recognized the scene instantly. Two fishermen standing knee-deep in a river, speaking mostly to the current, and somehow saying more than they ever could across a kitchen table.

Australia eventually built a mental health movement around the same principle. Programs like the men’s shed movement discovered that older men who would rather chew gravel than sit in a therapy circle would open up while repairing a lawn mower, turning a piece of wood on a lathe, or sorting bolts into coffee cans. The trick was never getting them to talk. The trick was giving them something to look at besides each other. Not because they’re hiding anything, but because the oldest parts of the brain still believe a direct stare is a challenge, while a shared horizon is an invitation.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately because the same rule seems to apply to marriages. My wife and I can sit across from each other at the kitchen table and discuss schedules, bills, and whether we're out of peanut butter, but put us in a truck headed west with a thousand miles of asphalt winding through the windshield and something different happens. The road takes over the job of eye contact. The conversation doesn't have to carry the full weight of itself. We talk while watching mountains rise on the horizon, while following rivers through canyons, while chasing the last light across some empty stretch of desert.

For me, the words come easier that way. Maybe it's because we're side by side, looking toward the same distant point. Whatever the reason, some of the best conversations of my marriage have happened with my hands on the wheel, her feet on the dashboard, and both of us looking not at each other, but at the same patch of country rolling toward us.

Where was I? Oh yeah, we left Yosemite on the Friday morning going into Memorial weekend. Turns out our timing was perfect. Headlines in the local California news for the next 4 days centered around the “chaos” at Yosemite. I didn’t feel bad for those people who got turned away from the valley after waiting 3-hours just to get through the entrance gate. That’s what you get for showing up to a place like Yosemite at noon on a holiday weekend. I could never make it as a Park Ranger. They’d fire me for telling people, “Go home, you’re stupid.”

We arrived at Pinnacles National Park during the height of mid-day temperatures. Pinnacles is famous for volcanic rock formations, talus caves, and wildlife— including the California Condor, which we were lucky to see while hiking the Balconies Cliffs and Cave Loop.

The cave section was tight in places and actually really fun to scramble through. We’ve been in a bunch of caves over the years and it isn’t often you go to do them self-guided. It was also a nice way to get out of the sun for a little bit.

HEavily cropped pic of a Califormia Condor soaring over the desert

Our next stop was the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). We worked our way over to the Golden Gate Bridge and started working our way up the coast. We had an Air BNB booked an hour north of San Fransisco. It was a former artist’s bungalow tucked in the back of an incredible flower garden and not much bigger than a storage shed. This was probably our only planning snafu of the trip, as we got there around dinner and realized all of the local restaurants would be closed before we could get to them. We audibled and had dehydrated backpacking meals. Janet went with Backpacker’s Pantry Three Cheese Mac ‘N Cheese, I went with Chicken Fettucini Alfredo, Peach Cobbler for dessert.

We woke up early the next morning, hit a local beach to explore some tide pools, got some coffee, and drove into Point Reyes National Seashore. We had a few spots to visit here, with the highlights being to see the Tulee Elk and Elephant Seals.

Tulee Elk

After that, we worked our way up the PCH, stopping at a dozen beaches and overlooks along the way until we got to our next Air BNB in Fort Brag