from NYE '06

Oohhh baby. Mountains.

It's the dawn of a new year, so it's time to get the hell out of town. I took my little streetwise car on a long overdue 1200 mile air-out east in order to find my brother and sister and nephew in their small alley-filled prairie town in Montana in time for Christmas. Haven't been on an American road trip since 2000, and I looked forward to the early morning wakeup in a hotel room, wandering the city I would choose for the evening, and a long long road with CDs.

I pulled out of SF and was in Sacramento by sunrise, shooting past Schwartzenegger's villa and just up to the edge of the national forest where I slid between two parked semi trucks and slept before climbing up through unknown weather to the state line with Nevada. Air horns woke me and the blue sky above was good news, and the roads were good to me and I climbed up and over into Reno without problems. The only real problem after that was the road across Nevada, a flat two lane jobbie that offered no climbs, shorn trees, few views, endless casinos and countless places to buy sugar-filled energy drinks that make my pee fluorescent. Also very bad, the Christian rock and country music radio stations, and even worse those stations that played bad country Christian rock for Christmas. i could barely hear the classical music CDs I brought over the rumble of the cold asphalt, so I was left to hearing songs like "Me and God" while sipping sugar bombs and focusing on the perpetual perpendicular angle of the road meeting the horizon, for ten hours.

My intended destination of Jackpot, Nevada, was more a blip of dreck than a bounty of boon, and I accidentally drove out of the town as I looked for a hotel, which led me to Twin Falls and its Motel 6, a smelly room in the freezing cold of Idaho. It's not what I had planned on but with only my quick one night stand with this town I realize I cannot say much about Twin Falls. But the best thing happened the next morning when I left and drove on a bridge over a 1/4 mile deep gorge carved by the Snake River on my way out of town. It was the day of the winter solstice so the sun darted up and down and soon I was on a dark road in Montana with a few hundred more miles to go and more Christian and country on the radio. Luckily I had consumed about 6 cans of sugar-robusto and my face tingled enough to keep me awake.

Winter in Montana now. New Year's Eve 2006. Heavy snowfall brought us a white post-Christmas, complete with skidding tires and slipping people, animal tracks leading to and from my car, now buried a week by a foot of powder. We are planning a quite night tonight, though we wanted to land in Denver for three nights of bluegrass with new and old friends which the snow decided we could not do, so here we are. Tonight will be different from last year when I sat with a recovering Dotty in a pair of recliners sipping schnapps and watching the ball slide down the pole (the ball just doesn't 'drop' anymore... safety issue?) I trust that Dot is staying away from emergency rooms, but I liked our quiet celebration last year. I can't say 2006 was a good year for me, it had sporadic joys, sad passings, and some deep frustrations. But these last few months I have learned more about myself and how close I am to making 2007 a year for the ages, at least in terms of what I can control and create. So I can resolve to be resolute in my resolutions, which are simple: to learn, to listen, to work hard and well. That will set me up in every part of my life as I enter my 33rd year on the planet. New Year's Eve is the one night we all feel the same anticipation, that moment when (if we are coherent) we feel the clock in our veins ticking toward something unknown and full of hope, and we know that everyone around us is feeling something the same. We're all part of it. I hope we all can feel that anticipation more than just one night of 365, maybe once a week, once a day, just more often.

So hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Listen to good music, fall in love a couple times, sing, walk, wrestle, relax, and love and know yourself. Happy New Year.