Becoming a Humboldter -- a slightly self-deprecating but nonetheless joyful transformation in one act

It is almost dusk. I've shoved a jar of organic pasta sauce into my hemp backpack beside a copy of Gary Snyder's TURTLE ISLAND and am crossing the 14th Street bridge from Northtown to home, which is situated snugly in between the redwood forest and the bottoms. From the top of the hill, I can see out beyond the pastures where the tiny black and white shapes of cows graze to the hazy blue-ridged hills, and the placid blue waters of the bay that separates the cafes of here from the smokestacks of there . After a long afternoon of studying poetry in Muddy's Hot Cup to the sounds of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, I'm ready to unwind from the passionate but all-consuming think-a-thon of experimental education. I pet the scraggly old cat we call Scuba when she comes trotting towards me out of the bushes, meowing her silly underwater-sounding meow, before she gallivants up the steps to the porch of the house on the corner with its peeling pale blue paint. Pink-tinged clouds scud across the horizon, and my mind is filled with dreams of goats, chickens, and yurt villages. This T-shirt I picked up from the free stuff box on my friends' lawn isn't keeping me quite warm enough from the spring wind, but home is just down the next gravel alley. I push open the wooden back gate, across which somebody's dress mysteriously lays, and in the garden, the snowdrops are nodding their sleepy heads amid the uncut grass, and the last rays of the sun are turning the apple blossoms golden. I put my stuff down in the kitchen, trying to decide what I should do first -- call my brother to invite him to a bluegrass & Appalachian folk show on Friday night, call my sister to see if I should get camping tickets for the Kate Wolf Memorial Festival in June, or sign up for the North Coast wildlife identification course in May. And on top of that, what should I eat tonight? Lentil soup, beans & rice, or hypoallergenic penne? Somewhere between scooping kibble into the bowls of Faith's cats, Gingko Biloba and Pants, and grabbing my iBook from where I've left it beside the table where Sara is sprouting squash, carrots, cucumbers, basil, and dill, I realize something: I've gone native. And not only that -- I like it.

Love from the granola basket,
Jules