Even though it was actually shorter than the going our return seemed a longer more difficult journey. Perhaps it was all those unfamiliar places on the departure map and certainly that Diminishment at the Beginning didn’t help…

The food was better than the usual airline food, as might be expected…

On the other hand the otherwise charming stewardesses were strangely recalcitrant about letting a person look out the window most of the way, and though I was, generally, too uncomfortable to care there were some striking frozen landscapes to be witnessed…or missed.

…but soon enough it was just hours of hazy deserts, we landed, slogged through the extreme weirdness of the Homeland’s Welcoming Scrutinies [how ‘BOUT those automated eyeball scanning devices, hey?], ate salty food and had a glass each of appealing but probably ill-advised wine while waiting hours in LAX for our connection…

I finally sort of passed out in the van coming up from Oakland to Benicia, where first thing first morning it was out foraging for food at the Safeway.  The humans all seemed so misshapen, outsized, awkward in their ability [or lack of it] to walk even from the parking lot to the shops and back…we take up so much space, we and our huge individual vehicles; so inept, so profligate…”the people just get uglier and I’ve lost all sense of time” Bob Dylan once said, though probably not right after returning from Turkey.  Returning from somewhere, though; phew.  I realized I’d been among a far more vital, attractive population for a couple of weeks without even noticing and it was a shock.

A few blurry days were spent, trying not to not screw up the work too much, the mind still floating somewhere among the Byzantines; architectural dreams by night while going daily down to the water with the dogs, even the bike occasionally …

Four days after landing I loaded the truck for the trip over the hill;  up to Sierraville, gas at Hallelujah Junction, cut over from Doyle to [even if google can’t find it] the Sand Pass Road  for a late lunch – at Sand Pass – and home to Wall Spring, still dreaming those residual architectural dreamings…

 

…but from another world…

 

 

 

mas, cierto….

 

M