EUREKA SOLSTICE

12/21/2002

The "super typhoon" raked Guam with 180 mile an hour winds, howled across the Pacific and hurled 25 foot waves against the Santa Cruz coast. Angry as a wet lion, it clawed over the vineyards and redwoods, flooded the lowlands of the Great Valley, then crashed into the Sierras in a whiteout blizzard. It dumped its last moisture on a desolate desert mountain range far from its swirling tropical birthplace.

Outside my office, SUV drivers were cutting off slaggards on the freeway, while agitated shoppers were elbowing people on the mall in quest of the new Trivial Pursuits. The economy was going to pot (without inhaling) while the country was girding for war, maybe 2 wars. Grim old men were giddily buying guns with tax dollars and telling the old and poor that butter wasn't good for them. Radio ads wove twinky Christmas music into huckster pitches for junk. The trains of health care--suffering and self-righteousness, entitlement and greed, arrogance and marvel--were barreling toward each other in a perverse game of managed chicken. Fluorescent bulbs aren't enough to illuminate many spirits in these dark days.

Before dawn at the remote Eureka Valley, 45 miles of dirt road north of the Ubehebe Crater, crystalline air reveals the mantle of fresh raspberry snow on the Panamints. The scouring wind has airbrushed into oblivion all traces of Man's steps on the towering dunes, although the coyotes and kangaroo rats have been roaming in the dark. Silver skeletons shiver while the sand sings softly on the solstice. Angular light massages the muscular ripples of the earth, making them writhe in private delight. Distant canyons beckon through the longest shadows of the shortest day. Flaming arrows dart into the stratosphere when the moon crests the rugged edge of the Last Chance Range. I'll gently ease the cork from the Primitivo and sacrifice a dribble to Dionysos, another to my friends, another to my girls, another to my teachers. I think it's time to take off some clothes and join the Druids dancing.