Waking in the giant's garden, 9/21/09

There is a scene in The Iron Giant when Giant is with Dean in the scrap yard, twisting away at pieces of metal, making some of own creations out of Dean's work. Those works are huge, oversized creases and crinklings of metal, delightful, imaginative, abstract in the way that pipe cleaner art would be if done up in a grand scale, say, twenty or more feet tall. That's what I experienced the other morning. I woke up, sans the Giant, in a much cleaner, wide open version of Dean's scrap metal yard, with grand oversized pieces of steel and iron work all around me. Totally and completely wonderful.

I was lucky to be able to do the trip, considering. Money was there, Sr Gadbois was there and the weather clear and sunny. It didn't seem like a doable trip at first. The car hadn't proven itself after it's crash and burn maiden cruise in June. The moneys were the last of a check that shouldn't have been touched except in an emergency and the weather, well, the day I woke up it was rainy, then misty, then tentatively clear. But I have learned the hard way that when friends come to town you have to act, you must go, and money and weather and time be damned. I know that those were some of the excuses that were used a long time ago, excuses that kept that friendship in a sort of limbo state. I knew that if I had any intention of breaking free from the past that I had to go over the mountain to see my old friend. I woke up on Sunday a bit hung over, having suffered from an early morning bout of indigestion, but I got a pot of coffee into me, showered and threw myself in the car. It was gassed, the tank full and my wallet loaded with jingle. All systems go.

You know, I had it in my head to do that trip the very same way when we took that trip to the WALE conference, but I knew that this trip up and over the Cascades needed to be different. I was not going to plug in all the old particulars as it might have made that drive a bit too much like a ride down the old nostalgia trail. I am a sucker for that kind of thing, but I want that old magic to live on in serindipitous moments, not stark and slavish reproduction. So I got on the highway and drove north, knowing that when I got to Sedro Wooley that I would be on my way.

What I wanted for this trip to be was a bit of an information gathering experience. The novel is underway and while I can't necessarily use place names I needed to see some of the places we visited again, just for atmosphere, for the sake of detail. So I found some of our old landmarks, like Lorenzo's Mexican Restaurant in Sedro. I don't think it was Lorenzo's then, but I could be wrong, but the restaurant was there, poised on the edge of the field on one side of the highway and industrial building and such on the other. I also gathered information from the Seattle City Light Museum in Newhalem, the place where we stretched our legs and took the bridge over the copper green river to discover the joys of lichens, mosses and liverworts. That path is officially called the Trail of the Cedars. Still a nice walk, still as beautiful as ever.

Got to the top of the pass and stopped to see where it was that we tasted the first snows of winter that year, but I was too high up and the road beckoned. I took the road down and into Winthrop, stopped at Mack Lloyd Park to eat a few graham crackers wishing I had a pot of coffee to knock them down. We never carved our initials into that park bench they have there under that shelter by the red barn, but it was nice to sit for a moment on something that was firm and not moving. Afterwards I walked around a bit in town, stopped at the Winthrop Gallery and got the name of the artist that did up that card you bought there and found out that the print "Red Barn and Winter Apples" was available to buy if I ever wanted one. Someday, maybe, to be included in the novel. Who knows, maybe the cover shot?

So I headed down to Twisp, cruised by the downtown and waited for that old pal of mine. He and his brother and nephew met me at the local pub where we availed ourselves of beer and pub food. The evening topped out at his friend Bernie's place, where I looked at art and thought about pieces to buy and then, when all was talked out, to crash in the back of my wagon in the middle of the field that, in the morning I would come to find out was Giant's garden.

I suppose that all of that, the narrative on the way in and all the sights seen and revisited on the way out would have been just another car trip to see Sr Gadbois if hadn't been for you. But as I told him the other day in a letter that it was all his fault, that Twisp leg of our trip. If it hadn't been for him we would have never had an excuse to do that drive, to stop at the Rest Awhile Fruit Stand in Pateros or buy cinnamon rolls and such at Cinnamon Twisp or stroll the Confluence Gallery thinking my old pal would come by. If it hadn't been for him we would have never enjoyed the passages you read out of Amos Fortune Free Man or would have never seen that outrageous green water above Diablo Dam. We would have never eaten Mexican across from each other that day or stopped and worried down time with an ice cream bar in Everett or played that last slow hand of rummy bouncing off of Vashon Island. We would have missed practically everything that our legend had to offer that day if it hadn't been for Sr Gadbois. We would have done a daytime reversal drive back to Port Orchard with a passenger or two I am sure.

There are many things in this world to be sure about, or not know a damn thing about, but one thing I do know for sure and would stake my life on it is that I know that both you and I lived that day, lived easy and hard all at the same time, in a way that says to me that day, no matter where you or I go in this world, will be worn like a brand, like a small and intimate tattoo on our souls. Professora, I can't speak for you but that was one of the best days of my life.

I woke up the other morning in the middle of the Giant's garden. I wandered around Bernie's field, touching on his works, amazed at the vistas, wishing I could wish all my worries and problems away just so I could plonk myself down with a computer in his workshop and write our story. Instead I got the approval of that man to bring myself back anytime I wanted to help him bust up wood and write. So on the way home I took notes, stopped at Campbells and got information about my old room, and stopped at that vista point where we got wild and mussed up your hair and I gathered rocks and sage to smudge later. I got out and stood on the corner by McGlinns and looked at the phantasms that would always be running across the street in the light mist, their hearts on fire and their shadows chased by street lights. I didn't walk Leavenworth or do Highway 2 as I already knew that I didn't want to replicate the whole package, but I did stop in Sumner and sat under our tree and ate a sandwich. That was good enough for me.

I woke up in a Giant's garden, and let my imagination and my heart and soul go wild. It was beautiful to be there once again, in Twisp, with my old pal, knowing he had as much of a role in our tale as anyone. It was wonderful to head out, too, to go backwards on our trail, knowing, even if nobody else did, how much love was still out there gracing the roads and rivers and rocks of the region.

Your WHMB