Know/No Boundaries

June 20-23, 2024

Fremont Campground, Santa Barbara County

Before the story

                  I was sitting in our campsite waiting for everyone to wake up when I noticed that the trailer we had watched park so precariously a day before, the camper of the people of the hairless cat (really! I thought it was a Chihuahua in a sweater, but no, you can’t make this up, a hairless cat camping), and so I was sitting there with my coffee in my excellent new camping mug (Thanks, Tina and Bill!) and I noticed the “NoBo” logo on the camper. For me, on the first read, NoBo meant NoHo (North Hollywood?), then I thought No Bohemians? Like No BoHo? Then I was just confused until I read the actual text on the side: No Boundaries.

                  So in my coffee awakening state, I took some time to think about this. I was about 40 years old when I learned what “boundaries” meant in personal terms, and I don’t think I really understood it until I turned 50, but I also double-internalized the phrase, knowing it meant when traveling one should be open to the gifts of the road. And then I realized that the name was a gift to me: I need no boundaries in travel, and I need to know boundaries in life.

Dogs and participants

                  The trip was the summer camping with my old friend of the Grateful Dead shirts, Bill, and his children Alicia and Ruby, and of course the dogs. This was a smaller slate of dogs: Roxanne, the matriarch and older breed (which my friend Jeannie called an East Highland Park Shephard, but is likely some mix,  Lily, the young Jack Russell who used to kick Harold’s butt as a puppy, and, of course, Harold, my pupper. Lila and Diamond, the Wonder Dog stayed home this time, and we learned that camping with three dogs is easier than camping with five dogs.

                  That’s not to say that camping with Harold is ever easy: he got mad at Roxanne for approaching his food bowl, and then pretty much decided to be a dick about Roxie for the entire time in the campsite, so, not ideal. Sigh. Harold was well-behaved with Lily the Jack Russell, however, but bad with any foreign dog who came near his campsite. He guards us and the Bus assiduously, and I am inclined to make exceptions and offer explanations, but Bill had it right when he gave Harold his “Asshole” bandana. And so, dogs.

                  But we got the camp set up with all the five part harmony and the old washboard for the dishes, and the lights that would make it clear, and lo, the port-a-potties were not so bad at the start, and then we were camping, watching the sun set over the hills, planning dinner and breakfast and next days. The fire pit, cleaned out by Bill was excellent, as was Bill’s fire, and we all had a place to sleep, even my asshole puppy, Harold.

                  That first night Harold was restless, and my sleep was bad, but I woke to the Crow alarm clock. The bird alarm clock went off reliably, and then, just like that, we were camping, having an adventure.

The place

Fremont campground is a state run site, not a state park, one of several that dot the Santa Ynez river in the Los Padres. Many of the older campsites are closed now, including our old favorite, Los Prietos, but the place remains the same as when Bill first took me there years ago. Think: oak forests, dry grass, weird cliffs, hot sun, annoying bugs, cool river, in some years more of a creek or trickle. Think: stars at night and weird aircraft going to and from Vandenburg, Lake Cachuma nearby, some morning fogs. Think: the cry of the fox, the critters at night, the wild turkeys waking you in the morning. Think: a place to escape to, a place that is no place and every camping trip you have ever been on all at once. To get there you climb the San Marcos pass out of State Street in Santa Barbara, and if you are getting there in a 66’ VW bus, that’s not a commute you want to make, but once there you are somewhere else, and, if you have camped in the region before, every year resonates and comes back.

There are few changes here: more water or less in the river, annoying flies, toilet facilities working or port-a-potties, but the space, the shade under the giant oaks, remains the same, as do the hills. We saw them with the evening sun

and the morning fog and got closer at the river.

                  And oh, what to say of the river? Last year I tried to walk Ruby and Alicia to Red Rocks to hike back to the old swimming hole, not realizing that the 4 miles we were walking we used to drive (see “The Long Walk to Forever” post), but this year we knew better and took Harold there as soon as possible, hearing his weird water bark, seeing his joy in swimming, swimming, swimming. I saw the same trees and leaves and bugs and mud from former years, and I cherished it.

                  And also, the beach, although that was awful for Harold—he is NOT an ocean dog because he tries to bite the waves, gets sick, and basically is a mess, but for me driving out to Isla Vista, where both Bill and I went to school, is a bit of a time warp. The same beat up apartments, the seemingly same people riding beach cruisers and buying beer, the same old part house on DP getting a new deck (a house notorious for people falling off said deck), and yet I am still here, older and older and older, but oh how the eucalyptus smell is still there, lemons and mint in the breeze, and the same wind on the bluffs, and my dear sweet beach.

                  This year my IV experience was especially awesome as there was a rummage sale to clean out all the student junk, and in the shadow of what was once the bank burned in the Vietnam protests, I perused the saddest cooking pans ever, but found a turquoise bandana, a pirate scarf for Harold, a macramé hanging, a book, an excellent skeleton costume for Harold, and an old lawn chair, all of 14 $, and that’s my idea of a perfect vacation.

The vacation

                  What to say? Harold was misbehaving, and the trip was punctuated by sweet relief when he was swimming, and I was with people I love, talking about things that matter, eating excellent food (thanks, Bill), and eating off clean dishes (thanks, Robert). There was some weirdness, however. Incident 1:  Coming home from Isla Vista, we were diverted, and had to take a different route up the mountain. We never found out why, but the road was super narrow, high, and terrifying, Incident 2: On day 2 (I think), we suddenly realized that the road back to the river was full of cars, and then there were helicopters, and then all the cars that couldn’t get by were turning around, but many were stuck, and the sounds of mariachi music flooded from large trucks. We never figured out what was up. Incident 3: the day we were leaving (I think), I woke up to the sounds of cattle, and horses, and cowboys. The ranch across the road was loading them up, so for a time I had the “Rawhide” song from the Blues Brothers going through my head.
And I got a wonderful present—thank you so much Tina and Bill!

                  All in all, it was a camping trip like no other and a camping trip exactly like every other one: good friends, interesting campfire discussions, good food, walking, beach, river, and yes, the little bugs (not so annoying this year). And I was thankful for my friends, and I am thankful for my friends.

Going home

                  We packed up to leave with all the pomp and circumstance (rolling tents, sorting, taking down hammocks—and Bill, I have your stuff safe and sound—but we also had a destination: a new and secret river beach. The excellent camp host, a fellow Grateful Dead fan, had bonded with Bill early on, and she let us know some intel just for the folks in the tribe, so we had a destination planned before we left: take Harold to swim. Ideally, we should have blown up the giant sea turtle float to make Squishy happy, but it was hot, so hot, and so that will wait for another year, and he got a new Hawaiian shirt and Grateful Dead shirt from Bill, so he should be happy. But back to the camp host: she was there last year and is a lovely person, and I was happy I got to give her a weird gift I made, and to receive her gift of flower seeds, and to appreciate her stickers in the ”bathrooms,” and just to recognize her and appreciate her, but the gift of the river for Harold, oh, what a gift. When we got home we found he had lacerated his paws on the rocks, but oh, to see him swimming.

                  Getting to the  river beach was an adventure of itself, but Robert somehow got the Bus down the steep and rutted incline—note to self—park at the top, and then we had one last gasp of camping and adventure and being somewhere else, the hot sun, the cool water, the shade to stand in in the shallows, and the swimming black god, his eyes not focused on anything but the water, Robert in his sun hat, Ruby finding the ball down the stream, Alicia and Lily on the bank, and Bill with Roxanne, helping her out. And we all made it out, for we gave the Bus’s toot from his horn when we conquered the hill, and we saw Bill and Ruby on the road heading home.

Ending

                  So, many years ago I developed a weird paranoia about crows, one is bad, two is good, partly based on the old rhyme: One crow for sorrow, Two crows for joy... and I returned to that in the aftermath of Jim’s death, imagining that the two crows (likely a mated pair) in my yard were Jim, my mother’s partner, and Buddy, my dog who died just after Jim. So, I have a crow thing, and reading Good Omens right before the trip might have made me more crow attentive, if that is a thing, but when we hit the detour heading home and I realized we were on the very same terrifyingly high and weird road I’d been diverted on with Bill before, but this time in a VW bus. I noticed the crows as we turned off, and they followed us down the long and long and winding hill, and then vanished when we hit the highway. Who knows what anything means?

                  Then we were on our way home, the good old’ 101 and some weird detours in Ventura, but back to our house on the hill. I found myself thinking about the morning and the trip, no/know boundaries, and I decided that what I like about these folks I call my family, or family of the camping trips, is we can have no boundaries in what we might want to do, but these people know boundaries. In other words, they make me feel safe and at home wherever we are, and I thank them for that.

FYI, the next blogs will be about the trip to my Dad’s memorial in the Bus.