Day 15- Wed.: LA to Cambria, CA (San Simeon) and filling in the gaps

I woke this morning in LA to the persistent barking of a dog, but will be going to sleep shortly to the sound of the Pacific Ocean, less than a hundred yards away from tonight’s lodgings in Cambria, about 250 miles north of LA on the Pacific Coast Highway. I am also just two miles south of San Simeon, site of the Hearst Castle, my destination in the morning.

Today (Wed) was the first day since leaving Philadelphia two weeks ago that the top went down on the car. It was too wet in the Southeast, and both too hot and too dusty through the Southwest. (Besides, having listened to that dermatologist on NPR speak about skin damage from too much sun AND having a parent who died from melanoma, I'm leery of prolonged exposure despite liberal application of sun-block.) The California weather and the road were a commercial for convertibles: mid-60s temperature with a light wind, blue skies, and a road that varied from coast-hugging with dramatic ocean views to undulating through rolling hills and irrigated fields. All that was missing was Grace Kelly in the passenger seat....though I'd have settled for her driving and me being Cary Grant. She could've shelled the garlic-roasted Pistachios for me: it's tough to do with one hand and drive. (What? You thought I wanted her there for her looks??)

I am looking forward to the next four nights because they will ALL be in one place, ie. no packing and unpacking every day! Several months ago, when I knew that I'd be going to my friend Janet's wedding in Monterey this Saturday, I was high-bidder on a 4-night stay at The Carriage House B+B in Carmel-by-the-Sea through a website that specializes in offering packages at interesting resorts around the world. (I highly recommend it: see link in the link-list.) I can't wait to "nest", if only for a few days: it's a basic instinct even when the fulfillment is temporary.

I alluded, in a posting of the last couple of days, about meeting a young man, Henry Gray, a Navajo, while hiking in Canyon de Chelly National Monument last Saturday. I was leaving the viewing area of the White House ruins when I notice what I thought were an older teenager and a younger boy who had arrived after me and were also starting back. The older "boy" turned out to be Henry, a twenty-six year old father of four, three boys and a girl, including the seven year-old with him (whose name I didn't write down and also had difficulty pronouncing). I had mistaken Henry's age because of his appearance: about 5'9" and strongly built, he was wearing a bandanna head-cover, over-sized black T-shirt and shorts, and black sneakers. I took him to be, at most, twenty years old or so.

In the semi-strenuous forty minutes of steadily ascending the switch-back trail back to the mesa top several hundred feet above the place where we met, our conversation went from the general and ordinary to the personal and meaningful. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the heaviness of the physical steps (especially mine as the path seemed never-ending) and the increasing lightness/ease with which we spoke, particularly him, about ourselves. (While we talked, his son's silent scampering short-cuts up the rock faces was typical of youth's envious energy: I felt my age each time I saw the routes he was taking.)

In the early going, we covered China's future in the world, the presence and impact of Native American gangs in the area of Chinle, and the connection between Asians and Native Americans at the genetic level, since the Americas were populated by Asians coming over the Bering Straits land-bridge during the last? next-to-last? Ice Age. As we climbed, we also moved on to our respective backgrounds and families. I learned that Henry was twenty-four, a shift manager at the local Church's Chicken fast-food store, had four children (the youngest being a two-month old daughter), a ninth-grade formal education, aspirations as a rapper/musician, and a wife who worked at a retail gift-store. He had lost thirty pounds in the last year -- and wanted to lose more "...so I'll look good on stage..", to which I pointed out that some rap artists are quite large and we both named Notorious Big as one. (Going down and up the White Horse ruins trail a couple of times a week was part of his exercise routine.) He also intimated at troubled younger years of "...doin' wild stupid stuff and runnin 'round on my woman" and to the young boy, who would turning eight next month and was his oldest, having had a drinking (!) problem that caused a situation at school. I told him about how I came to be in the USA, this trip and its reasons, and my daughter.

I am a good interviewer. I'm good because the other person can see/feel that my interest in them is genuine, even if, in a professional situation, I may have to judge them on the answers. In this case, my questioning of Henry was based both on liking him personally and on the opportunity, through his experience, of learning more about how typical (or atypical) it was from other Native Americans of his age group and the factors that made for those similarities or differences. (Writing it down, here, makes it seem more clinical than it was.) What he volunteered next and how it has already affected me (and might even more), will have to continue tomorrow. (It's 1:30 a.m. and I have to be up early if I am to "do" Hearst Castle as intended.) Photos of Henry and his son are in one of the postings of June 7, when I got a high-speed connection to upload a bunch of them.