one home for another

Ryan and Christen took the morning off to take me out for breakfast and drop me off at the BART. I shouldn't have been surprised at their selflessness - the characteristic that has surprised me over and over again these three weeks that I've squatted in their kitchen, pulling out the foldout couch mattress at night, hopping up on the bed and squaring up my shoulders with theirs to watch Jon Stewart and the Office on the laptop.

Christen shifted her day off to today, and after we hugged goodbye drove then the hour with Ryan to work, where they would spend the night and she'd have the commute in the morning for a change. I love this couple who have learned, as much as anyone I know, to think outside the boxes. Move into the VW van for the two interim summer months. It snowed the first night, but later htere were plenty of sky blue lakes to reward long hikes. They hosted evne in that small space, and still seem to think of the Sierras as "theirs." Ryan, eXpecially, loves the land. Like John Muir and Wendell Berry, with a sense of stepping into the slow movement of centuries.

At Holly and Andrew's we all fit onto the wide couch with mugs and cookies and turned off the lights to watch Being Caribou with proper awe. As a twelve-year-old, I thought nature documentaries were so lame, but last night it was as exciting as any feature film, maybe more. The story of a sweet young couple and their six month trek in  Alaska wilderness after the migrating caribou. The calving lands near the coast - threatened by US oil-hunger - still looked quiet and remote in their footage. There was warped time and dreams that held in reality, and when canoeing out they bumped into the Gwich'en hunter who'd sent them off, and I felt flare in me the desire to believe. In DC no Congressperson seemed to care, but at least a small George W. had been there to see it all.