birds mountains cities tea

its suddenly the last day of my trip out west and im flooded with a zillion stories and memories everytime i try to instarecap. it was an entire month of moments. lots and lots of moments. a month of them. (but, you know, its saturday night, soooooo yeah)

today i hiked with john on mt rainier which was beautiful and cold and sunny and windy and great. and it reminded me of hiking last week on mt seymour in vancouver where you can see all around you from all three peaks and the last one is spiritual and it was also sunny. that was the day a small plane like one from the 60s flew past us and it was yellow and we were so close we could wave at the pilot and he waved back. that was also the day we met colette and christian and spoke french and spanish as they shuttled us down to the busstop before our night out with the couchsurfing hosts and the hungarian busmates we met on a greyhound from seattle.

that was probably just about a week after we sat on a hill, me and tolu, and watched a million or so birds (vaux's swifts aka "the swifts") funnel into an old chimney of an elementary school one at a time over an hour and a half. they filled the sky and some of them got pecked off by hawks and falcons. which reminds me of a million birds that stood on the pacific shore we found at the end of a long day hiking through the redwoods that are so big they could swallow you and really truly understand silence. and we walked through fern canyon with walls so high and covered with ferns you feel as though you are prehistoric. that was the day before we met deb and emma and they made us tea.

2 days ago we drank tea with an old taiwanese woman for 3 hours and learned about tea more than i ever thought was possible. we met a young white guy who was a monk in a past life and dropped everything in this life to drink tea all day and share its peace and wisdom. in a thai restaurant yesterday where you sit so close to the stove that the fire heats your face and makes you sweat, we saw a woman hold up a picture of herself on her phone wearing only lingerie and marveled at technology and (dis)illusions of privacy.

i'm suddenly reminded of the light coming into ted and chris and dereks house in arcata and how that song by bon iver (stacks?) was playing and the sun was hitting the garden just right and it hit the wood floor just right and we felt just right there. which reminds me of pottery and wood tables, and homemade tomato sauce and dairy-free vanilla frozen yogurt and chickens and walking and parks and farmers markets.

like the one oliver and kristyna took us to in arcata our first day where there was so much produce and music and dancing and color that we lost each other and reappeared with delicious things to cook and made an outlandish meal that night. and bread. that we made with them and i just made it again last night and now i want only to make bread and never to buy it because it is so much better that way.

tomorrow im flying to st louis to continue the journey.