He has populated this blog as much as anyone with fewer than four feet, but I’ve written little of depth about him here. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps I’ve merely practiced the same circumspection toward him here that I really ought to have practiced regarding the other people in my life. And on Sunday, June 1, he’ll be the last person I see before I formally move out of the Bay Area.
He’ll also be the first person I see afterwards. My friend Matthew is the kind of person who’d volunteer to help you load the U-Haul, then drive with you to Barstow to help you unload at the other end. “Hey, you know me,” he said on the phone. “I’m always up for a U-Haul trip.” We did this in 1987, cross-country. My ex, Elissa, and I had moved to DC for a couple years so that she could go to law school, and when we moved back she flew to Berkeley with the cats, leaving me to pack and clean and dismantle the household in Arlington. Matthew used the other half of her round-trip ticket, showed up at Dulles, and we meandered west for five days in a severely underpowered U-Haul pickup.
This weekend will be a much shorter trip, and the kinds of stories that accreted themselves to our mutual experience on that trip will not likely be involved in this one. There is no world’s largest cement prairie dog along I-5, nor will we wake in a Kansas campground to watch bass the size of U-Boats hurling themselves at the sky. We will load everything as fast as we can, then roll on down the hill past the California buckeyes I’ve watched grow for six years — they’re flowering this week, brilliantly — and we will be in Barstow somewhere around dark, I hope. And then unloading and back the next day to drop him off.
I fetched up against the Bay Area’s shores 26 years ago almost by accident, insubstantial as spindrift sand. I met Matthew within a month of arriving, introduced to me by Elissa, who I’d just started seeing, as her high school sweetheart. He’d just seen Blade Runner, and held forth on the merits of the movie at some length, late at night. I was a bit befuddled at the guy. His enthusiastic geekery neatly outstripped my own. Before long he and I were annoying the crap out of Elissa with our animated and apparently impenetrable conversations, rarely using a word like “spider” when “chelicerate” would do. Matthew was studying fisheries at UC Berkeley. (The fish were far more suited to schooling than he was, and he graduated with a sigh of relief and commenced to learning in earnest.) It was Matthew who re-awakened my interest in the wild world, merely by asking me on stray hikes what I thought a particular conifer, or flowering herb, or vein of mineral might be. It took a few years before I was any likelier than he to ever have the correct answer.
Our friendship has affected me profoundly, and I chasten when I try to recall any times I’ve attempted to repay his immense kindnesses. I have offered him the profound gift of my company. He has flown across the country to help me move. I gave him a t-shirt once with a wombat on it. He came over in February 2007 to help me bury my dog. I have hired him once or twice, but he’s done the same about as often. And we’ve had dry spells. There have been a couple stretches since 1982 where we didn’t speak to each other for months at a time, perhaps years, too distracted by our lives to stay in touch.
We may be facing more times like that after this weekend. It’s one thing to keep up with a friendship when you eat lunch three times a week, like we did at Earth Island. It’s another to keep up with several hundred miles between you.
On Sunday I will roll in that truck down the hill and away from my life here, away from the hole in the diatomite where my dog’s remains dissolve gently, away from the garden I nurtured and then abandoned, away from this community of readers I have cherished these last five years, away from Becky, away from the Bay and Berkeley and the place I have lived my entire adult life but when you look at it objectively, when you take the true measure of effect and value and persistence in this all-too-short a life, my moving away from the Bay Area is moving away from Matthew. He has bracketed my life here.
California buckeyes drop their leaves in summer, then grow them again in the winter. Counterintuitive-seeming to some, the habit is a defense against drought. Set flowers when there is water in the soil and let the seeds that grow therefrom ripen slowly hard and brown in the summer heat, and those seeds will be ready to sprout with the first touch of moist October. I walked past them for years without seeing them, the soul of California’s inner coast ranges, the expression of the California seasons made treeflesh. Buckeyes and redwoods and Joshua trees, Darlingtonia bogs and Mono Lake’s tufa towers, receding Sierra glaciers and fell-fields ablaze in mule-ears and sky pilot and salt flats 282 feet below sea level and 120 degrees above zero, sliding down snow-covered slopes in winter at 8000 feet and digging for red tide phosphorescence by the ocean, my life in California has been conducted with Matthew near at hand, and I wonder how it will be to go on without him right there.
But I don’t have to worry about that until Tuesday.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
44 comments on "The last post on Creek Running North"Best to you Chris on your next adventure. I’ve truly enjoyed your writing and Zeke’s book. I hope to find more of it in the future. You will not be forgotten.
So Matthew has been the ultimate lurker.
And perhaps another co-author of Walking With Zeke.
How satisfying that last post contains answer to the recently posited and hanging question, “what is love.”
Good journeying, Chris. And thanks for sharing your thoughtful, moving writing, your wit, your excellent puns (how rare are those!), your Zeke.
Also, thanks for the tone and standard you created here. I’ve read things here that made me sad, or angry, but CRN is among those rare blogs where I didn’t need to remind myself, “Don’t read the comments!” for fear of coming away feeling worse about myself or the world.
Hail Matthew full of grace blessed art thou among super-admins with U-Hauls. (And at peril of being rude, I will just note: I had heard about the ringlets, but damn.)
So glad you have cherished help this weekend, Chris.
And congratulations on what you’ve managed to create and support here at CRN in the last five years - all the beautiful writing, a rare and lovely commenting community, lasting friendships. This is a fine garden you’ve built and nurtured.
Looking forward to seeing more of your print work, and to seeing what shifts occur sans the various low bars of the blogosphere, with home in desert and forest.
Thank you for making me feel at home here, for inviting me to co-blog, for the daily delight in your excellent work.
This is so good, Chris. All of it. Even the unspeakably hard parts.
I love you, my friend.
You will have joy in abundance.
And now: go outside!
Bye, Chris.
I was trying to come up with some sort of easy metaphor for what it’s been like to be here with you. The first thing that came to mind was a great party, but I realized that most of the “great parties” I’ve gone to have been the kind of thing where you get drunk and stupid and crude and then dread waking up the next morning because you know you’ll be sick.
Being here has been just about the opposite of that. Every time I’ve visited Creek Running North, I’ve felt smarter and more sensitive, more conscious and aware.
And the waking up the next morning ... that’ll be whatever you do next, and I look forward to it because I’m pretty sure it’ll be something fantastic.
...
Hello to Matthew! I see the pic is at Mono Lake. I lived about 20 minutes south of it for 22 years. So weird that you can go through life and have great people pass within shouting distance all the time, and you miss ever meeting them. Thanks for helping take care of our buddy.
Well I wasn’t a regular reader here, nor did I post here (as far as I recall), but my occasional explorations into this website were very pleasant experiences, and I was happier for knowing this weblog existed, which seemed an oasis of calm in a turbulent interweb. So when I saw it has come to an end (I guess all good things do) I thought I should drop by and say thanks.
Thanks.
If I could borrow from Hank: “Every time I’ve visited Creek Running North, I’ve felt smarter and more sensitive, more conscious and aware.”
Best of luck to you, and take care.
Hmm. Second try at this comment:
If I could borrow from Hank: “Every time I’ve visited Creek Running North, I’ve felt smarter and more sensitive, more conscious and aware. “
That captures it.
Best of luck to you, and take care.
Sorry, Charles. Should mention that I’ve set comments to moderation. Don’t fret if something doesn’t show up right away. (I left poor embee out to dry for about 28 hours this week. Sorry, embee.)
Thanks for this blog, your stories, and your perspective on the world. Good luck and good travels.
I got confused (well, I am easily confused) because I got a “comment accepted” notice but then it didn’t appear.
Did I mention that I’m not just easily confused but also impatient?
Say hello to the starclouds of Sagittarius for me, Chris. You should have a nice view.
And thanks for CRN.
aloha, chris. a bientot. and thanks for all the fish.
Bon voyage. Whatever you do next in the way of blogging, I do hope you’ll use the same RSS feed. But for now, good luck with that Joshua tree book!
Per Writer’s Almanac (would Garrison lie?), Pepys wrote his last diary entry on May 31, 1669.
Of course, a similar subsequent silence of 33 years would not be acceptable.
Safe travels, good wishes, and best of luck.
Let us know where to find your writing next.
Chris, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about all these happy farewells, I’d really really, really like you to stay here and do Creek Running North for the next 5 or 10 years.
But if you HAVE TO go, then I wish you well. And I hope there will eventually be something for me—as a reader—in it. :)
It’s good to have friends.
Be well, bro. Enjoy. It’s been good to know you out here in this way.
Thank you ondabeyondananda for all of your writing. I am so much richer for these years of reading, digesting, weeping with and laughing at what you were willing and able in such rich measure to share.
Blessings on your next turn at it and let us know how you are. There are a fair number of us out here who would really care to know.
This has been my favorite blog ever, and I feel truly enriched for having read it and gotten to know you.
Love,
Christopher
Good Move, Chris, and all hail St. Matthew of the U-Haul!
I’m very sad that you’re shutting CRN down - but it’s a totally selfish sadness. I will miss your words, wit, and wisdom - you have taught me what it is to truly live in one’s environment, and challenged me to do the same here in South Texas. I haven’t succeeded yet.
Not only that, but your writing re: Zeke brought back many painful memories of my little Geno - and affirmed what I already knew of my dear Blossom.
That being said, you GO! Onward! New life and new adventures! :D We all have your back. :) :)
:kiss:
** you have my heart..
You will be truly missed but I wish you well on this part of your adventure. Many thanks for your inspiration.
Chris@ #9: No worries - I am impressed you made time to deal with CRN at all, considering the immensity of all else happening in your life.
I’ll chime in: what they all said. CRN was a blessing that made my days richer; it was one of the three blogs I read daily, and will be missed. (And with Tmorph on semi-hiatus as well, it’s been a dry May!)
Although I’ll be delighted to read your books, the blog and the community built around it have a unique flavor. (mmm flavr!) I’ll miss Hank Fox and sravana and Charles and Sherwood and so many others. Bye for now at least, y’all.
*Waving*
And for you, Chris, many thanks and heartfelt best wishes for your new life.
Thanks Chris, I enjoyed the walk.
Blunders off, all sniffling and whinging.
Luck and peace, Chris. I’ll miss this place.
Hugs. I know we’ll be hearing more from you SOMEHOW.
*sigh*
i knew this was coming, but it still makes me sad…every low-entropy configuration needs to dissolve eventually i guess…i am surprised this extremely low-entropy oasis survived amidst the chaotic interwebs for so long…
good luck with all things in life chris…it has been my extreme good fortune to have gotten the chance to read your thoughts
Cheers, Chris. And thanks.
Chris
In my earlier comment I forgot to say some important words. Given the fact I’m always on my children to say them it’s not good that I forgot. Anyway, the words are: Thank you.
Wind at your back, Chris. I’ve enjoyed reading you and hope to again.
I know you will do well, Chris, because you are following your heart. CRN has meant alot to me, and I found it by accident, which is the best way to find anything, really, of value, so many times. I certainly won’t forget you or the blog!! Thanks so much for giving to all of us through your writing and sharing Zeke with us.
Thank you for sharing your writing and your life with us over the last few years. CRN has been a peaceful, meditative oasis in the deserts of the internet and a wonderful place to spend time reading and learning. I will miss it (and you!) immensely. Best of luck with your journey.
(o)
This one’s a geode.
I don’t know what’s inside, but I’m sure it’s something good.
Walk in peace, my friend.
I arrived here just as Zeke was departing. I mostly lurked, but I loved your blog and the example you set in many different ways. I will miss it.
The way you expressed the way you felt the day of the oil spill on the bay mirrored my heart so completely. thank you for that and countless other things.
Happy trails!!
In the past, I’ve read your posts here that made me cry, but this time the comments really got to me. You might be leaving the Bay Area, but your friends are obviously going to be there for you, wherever your path may lead.
Thanks, Chris. Meeting you in the desert - up by Mitchell Caverns - was a total find. Probably something that I have reflected on more often than other experiences which would have appeared to have mattered more. We had a conversation under the stars about finding one’s way, and following desires which might not be conventional, and it stuck with me. At the time, you expressed an inclination to live close to the j-trees at some point, and I suppose Eric and I expected that you would wind up there. I hope that fulfillment finds you down in Nipon.
I feel like I’m signing your yearbook, like you’ve graduated into the next phase of your life. There are words that mark these occasions, the farewells, the hopes for new and good beginnings, the sadness of endings and old lives left behind. I say them all to you with hopes that what greets you in the mornings pleases you to no end, and at day’s end, you rest well having spent the time in between doing what you love and nurtures you best.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
how well i recall the first time i went a bit overboard in comments here, replying to another commenter (anywhere actually, as i had just began bloglife), and how gracious you were in assuring me that i hadn’t really trashed your place. i came to see that you had a bit of sass in yourself too.
it’s been a pleasure to read your blog. bon chance, bon voyage, good luck and all that.
In April, I rediscovered CRN and a friend is the midst of his and mine personal turmoils. Having us both moving away. I am now far, far away from my home land and I hope not to far from my rediscovered friend.
Reading CRN was often soothing, saddening, funny and hilarious. I have been introduce to so many new subjects and learnings on this blog and I truly hope to keep learning as I wish we will still be able to access past postings…(?)
By now Tuesday came and went, Mathew is no longer around physically and things are going on. Life is happening to you Chris and to all of us. Here bedouins say that the world is spotted (al-dunyiah buqq’ah) with both bad and good spots, may you find a good spot.
Isabelle
Thanks, Chris. For the blog, for the part of you shared therein, for Zeke.
From a George Strait song:
it’s time to hit the road
Goodbye
farewell
so long
vaya con Dios
good luck
wish you well
Wishing you a life that reaches for the highest and best purpose.
helen, the stop being lazy post should be up now, here.
Oddly emotional here, and still surprised that losing the daily presence of someone I have never actually met would move me as much as it does. Though after three years of blogging, not much surprises me anymore.
I have absolutely no doubt that as you move forward you will not only do well, but that you will thrive. Best of luck Chris in everything that you have ahead of you. I will always hold a very special place where you and this site are concerned, and look forward to meeting you in person at some point, wherever and when ever that may be.
Thank you for everything.
I shall miss you. I will look here in the future to see how you are doing.