The building looms large before me, several stories high, its bulk measured not in feet, but in football fields or baseball stadiums or 747s. Two giant parking structures tower on either side, with cars flowing in at a steady rate. Vehicles not suited to the towers—the trucks and buses and vans and RVs—park on a vast expanse of asphalt that stretches along the front the buildings. 

That’s where I sit, staring at the main entrance. And at the giant sign above the entrance, with its glowing white letters and enormous stars-and-stripes banner.

The Mall of America.

It reminds me of a Fourth of July picnic. Home of the red, white, and blue.

I enter the mall through Sears and follow the flow of foot traffic into the inner sanctum. There I’m greeting by three jam-packed levels of retail space—2.5 million square feet in all. Over four miles of store front. Over 500 stores. Over 11,000 year-round employees.

I move quickly through the maze of lights and signs and carts and kiosks and trees and bag-toting shoppers.

I weave my way to the heart of the enterprise—the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park—and watch scores of visitors get shaken and rolled and twisted and dropped by everything from the Avatar Airbender to the Brain Surge to the Splat-O-Sphere to the Spongebob Squarepants Rock Bottom Plunge.

The mall averages 40 million visitors a year. My guess is that most of them are here today.

A week ago, I was crawling through a red-rock cave in Colorado to view 13th-century Native-American pictographs. The cave is on friends’ property outside of Fort Collins. To get to the paintings, we had to walk through a minefield of grasshoppers that had taken over the grounds around their home and decimated their plants and garden. As we passed, the grasshoppers leapt into the air like popping corn, in numbers large enough to keep Moses as happy as a laughing Buddha.

The grasshoppers disappeared as soon as we climbed over a fence and into the more natural vegetation, a field of scrub brush and sage and juniper pine, where rattlers are a much bigger concern than lettuce-munching insects. But we reached the cave without incident and slipped in beneath a ledge covered in bat guano to view a place where families had gathered many centuries earlier, leaving behind only these simple drawings to mark their eastward passage.

The hunters in the pictographs carried shields, large shields, indicating that they predated the arrival of domesticated horses on American soil. That is, before European settlers took away their land. The hunters also traveled as a group, young and old alike. They knew what it meant to have no child left behind.

After Fort Collins, I headed up to Devils Tower in Wyoming and hiked around its base, all the while staring up at the giant basalt columns. Pieces of colored prayer cloth hung in the trees along the path, left by Native Americans as part of their spiritual practices.

It’s not surprising that they’d chose Devils Tower for their ceremonies, given that they view the area as sacred grounds. That’s why they ask people not to scale the steep rock face. For the same reason Christians would frown on nonbelievers scurrying up their church steeples, local tribes have requested that climbers stay off these hallowed walls.

Even so, I saw several climbers pulling themselves up the graceful spires.

I also saw a lot people with cameras, pointing and clicking endlessly as they tried to capture the moment—or perhaps gather the evidence they needed to prove that they’d stood before Steven Spielberg’s mountain. I also noticed a particular fondness that several men had for posing their significant others on rocks in front of the tower and then capturing them in pictures.

Overall, however, I saw few people who stood before the soaring tower and simply watched and listened, without comment, without taking photos, without climbing on the sacred walls.

From Devils Tower, I traveled to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. On a clear, bright morning, as I stood atop one of the wide mesas, I listened to the wind whip through the deep canyons and against the steep cliffs. I watched how the white dusty rock glowed in the morning light. I felt the deep serenity that must have filled these valleys for centuries as wind and rain eroded their delicate walls.

Then a car full of tourists arrived. They sat with their engine running as they gawked at the canyon through their closed windows.

For 11,000 years, Native Americans camped throughout these secluded valleys as they hunted for food. In fact, not far from here, local tribes performed one of the last ghost dances they would ever conduct in the area in the hope that white settlers would vanish and their hunting grounds would be restored.

We all know how that went down.

A couple nights later, a friend and I canoed the Mississippi River up near Lake Bemidji in north-central Minnesota. The sun had just set and a pale orange glow reflected off the still waters. We glided through lily pads and wild rice as we skirted the giant stalks of cattails. Along the shores sat massive homes—mostly empty—overlooking the river. The majority of houses had docks that jutted out into the river. Tied to those docks were colossal powerboats that could slice through these waters like a hot knife tearing into a slab of butter.

The Mississippi is 2,350 miles long. For thousands of years, hundreds of native tribes depended on the river and its tributaries for trade, travel, and of course, food. The river supports 241 species of fish and 326 species of birds, which use the river as their migratory flyway.

The upper Mississippi is also fitted with 29 locks and damns in order to allow commercial vessels to more easily navigate its waters.

When traveling between Colorado and Minnesota, I could not help but notice the countless number of US flags—plastered on cars, hanging off front porches, waving at town borders, marking the entryways of various businesses. In many cases, the flags seemed to grow in size proportionate to the size of the car or the nature of the business. Restaurant chains especially found big fat flags useful for marking their territories.

I also noticed an inordinate number of anti-abortion signs. The human fetus, it seems, is sacred enough to pour hard earn dollars into giant billboard ads despite a faltering economy. I did not, however, see any signs against unjust wars, diminishing wildlife habitat, treatment of Native Americans, out-of-control handgun use, or capital punishment.

I leave Nickelodeon Universe and continue my stroll through the Mall of America. Actually, I’m not continuing anything. I’m trying to get the hell out of there. I’m trying to get away from children screaming for bigger and better, from families guzzling Big Gulps as they race from store to store, from acres of corporate signage that continue to promise life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—despite all evidence to the contrary.

I climb into my van and drive east toward the Wisconsin border.

It takes a moment before I remember that Kay used to live on this street, up on the next block, after she moved down from the mountains, after she had her third and final baby.

That was over thirty years ago.

The last time I heard from Kay was this past April, when she sent me an electronic birthday greeting. After that, we exchanged a couple emails, but that was about it. And then, in May, I got word she was in the hospital, admitted on Mother’s Day for severe abdominal pain. Several days later, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Within two weeks, she was dead.

Kay had just turned seventy. She had celebrated her sixty-ninth birthday by jumping out of an airplane. Parachuting, she said, was as wondrous as being able to fly.

Until the time she entered the hospital, she traveled internationally, led workshops across the US and abroad, and counseled those around her in a variety of personal and spiritual matters. She might have been seventy, but she looked closer to fifty and had the energy of someone in her thirties.

After her death, memorial services were held in Kauai, Los Angeles, and Colorado—all places she had once lived, all places she had profoundly affected the lives of those around her.

I was unable to attend any of those services. I did, however, hold one of my own. Last week, in Grand Lake, I hiked up the North Inlet trail into Rocky Mountain National Park. Kay and I—along with several other friends—used to hike that trail at night. We’d set out around midnight, when the moon was full or nearly full. That was the summer of ’75.

At least two of the people who walked with us have also passed on. Wanda died in 1983 from toxic shock syndrome. Irwin committed suicide by jumping off a train in Germany, shortly after the summer we had strolled under the full moon.

While hiking up the North Inlet trail, as we had 35 years earlier, I reflected on the time I had shared with Kay and the others. I thought about the walks we took, the cross-country trails we skied, the resort where we worked, the retreats we attended, the restaurant we started, the frustration and enthusiasm we shared. All in the Colorado Rockies, surrounded by the lush spread of grassy meadows, the towering rock faces of snow-covered peaks, the icy deep blue of sapphire skies.

Another place, another lifetime.

As I ride my bike up Ogden Street, I try to remember the house in which Kay lived. But there are too many two-story brick homes, all shades of tan and brown, all subdivided into apartments, all a little worn at the edges. Too many years have passed for me to distinguish one house from the other. Too many years of numbers to pick out a solitary address. The truth is, I remember little about her time down here, except that we visited often and never ran out of things to say.

Over the years, I’ve lost family and friends to causes too many to list. I’ve lost them to heart failure, kidney failure, and liver failure. To cancer, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS. To war, accident, and suicide.

The National Cancer Institute estimates that over 21,000 new cases of ovarian cancer will be diagnosed in the US this year and the disease will take nearly 14,000 lives. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cancer kills over a half million people each year. But it’s heart disease that’s the leading killer in the US, coming in at number 1 on the CDC’s mortality list. Then there are strokes, which take the third slot, and respiratory disease, which comes in fourth. After that come accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and an assortment of other illnesses, putting the annual number of deaths somewhere around 2.4 million.

Our time here is tenuous and fleeting at best. And no Armani suit or Lexus sedan or high-definition television or 5,000-square-foot trophy home is going to change that. Nor is our desire for it not to be so.

I continue my bike ride up Ogden Street, heading toward nowhere in particular, a park perhaps or maybe a coffee shop, somewhere where ghosts no longer linger. Yet my ride is not just here and I’m not alone. I ride with Kay and Wanda and Irwin and the others who’ve gone before me. I ride through the mountains and along the canyons and across the desert and into the sky. I ride anywhere the richness of friendship and experience and memory take me. Anywhere that reminds me of the exquisite moments with people and places that have made this journey worth taking.

My friends live off the grid, four miles up a grueling dirt road that’s passable only part of the year and only when the weather remains dry. I was lucky. The rains had held off and I made it up yesterday without incident, despite the steep inclines, severe dips, sharp drop-offs, muddy pot holes, and constant spray of rocks. My only hope is that it doesn’t rain before I get off the mountain.

But as I sit here, soaking in the solar-heated tub, I’m more focused on the surroundings than the road. The morning air is cool, crisp, and the sun is about to edge over the mountains. I stare out at the rolling slopes, covered mostly in sage and grass, till they approach 9,000 feet, then pockets of aspen appear as well as stands of lodgepole pine. But most of the pines are dead from a beetle infestation that has decimated much of the forests.

Even so, there’s grace and beauty in this terrain, and as I take in the view, breathe in the fragrances of chamomile and sage, I listen to the way the birds chirp and squawk and flutter from tree to tree. I listen too to the drone of insects, the howl of distant coyotes, the rustle of aspen leaves as a soft breeze winds through the branches.

This, I think, is how we were designed to greet the day.

But then I hear it. A combustible engine, a small aircraft from the sounds if it, nowhere in sight, but near enough to matter. In most places, I would probably not have noticed, but here, the engine is a stark intrusion that shakes me from my reverie, reminding me of the rarity of such solitude and quiet.

I shouldn’t be surprised. We live in an era in which such silence has become a luxury, a scarcity, unknown to most of us most of the time. For those of us who reside in an urban area, we can give up any hope of experiencing such quiet. Even shut up in our homes, we can rarely eliminate all outside sounds—the sirens, leaf blowers, car horns, garbage trucks. And inside we have our refrigerators and washers and dryers and microwaves and clock radios. Then there are the stereos and televisions and computers and cell phones and high-tech video games.

And it’s not just in urban settings we face the noisy dissonance. Even in rural areas, we’re often confronted by automobiles and motorboats and jet skis and car alarms and motorcycles and ATVs and stereos and plenty more televisions.

Sure, nature is full of its own sounds. And they’re not always pleasant. Those who’ve lived through hurricanes often cite the noise of the unrelenting winds as one of the most frightful aspects of their experiences. But for the most part, what we hear in nature often soothes, not grates, and in that quiet cadence we can find solitude and tranquility. We can find the will to look deeper at our lives and the way we place ourselves in the world.

When driving to Colorado, I crossed the Nevada desert at night, deciding it best to give my van—and me—a break from the heat. At a rest stop just west of Winnemucca, I pulled into an unpaved section separate from the main facilities. I parked on the edge of the desert, with my sliding door open to the starry tranquility. Though I could still hear the hum of the interstate, relatively quiet at this late hour, I could hear too the sounds of the desert—the rustle of animals and insects as they settled into the night.

I fell into a restful sleep, my face pointed out toward the desert, and felt the quiet enfold and enchant me. But then I was woken by the sound of an engine, a mid-size sedan parked not far from me. The driver sat with the car running, the lights blazing into the night, pointed directly at me. I had no choice. I got up, started my car, and continued to drive. It was that or ram his high-performing Volvo.

I ended up sleeping in a casino parking lot.

We are a culture, it seems, that does anything it can to avoid silence, as though it is the quiet itself we fear the most. Rarely can we be without our radios or our TVs or our music so loud that reflection and contemplation and serenity become an impossibility.

Just the other night, I camped along Chicago Creek outside Idaho Springs. Several campers were already spread out along the banks on the other side of the water. Because this was not an official campground, people grabbed whatever spots suited them.

At about eleven, as I was about to turn out my light, a man appeared outside my van, holding his flashlight in such a way I thought he was an apparition. I let out a loud “What the fuck!” which I think scared him as much as he had scared me.

With a stoner’s nasally slur, he quickly apologized and explained that he and his buddies wanted to play their car stereo for a while and was checking in whether it would be all right. I figured with as far away as they had parked and the swift stream only a few feet from my van, filling the valley with the sound of rushing water, I would never hear the stereo. I was wrong. At about two in the morning, I finally gave up, closed up my camper, and sought out another spot, which ended up being a rest area on Interstate 70.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, noise pollution adversely affects the lives of millions of people in the US. Any sound that interferes with normal activities can result in health problems such as high blood pressure, sleep disruption, stress-related illnesses, and, of course, hearing loss.

Research by the World Health Organization suggests that out of a hundred deaths attributed to heart disease, three might be the result of noise.

Yet noise levels, if anything, are increasing. There are more cars on the roads and more planes in the air. Amplified rock music now averages between 110 to 130 decibels, about the same as a military jet, shotgun, or air raid siren. More people than ever are experiencing hearing loss as a result of headphone use. In fact, most of us are exposed to dangerous noise levels on a daily basis.

It’s no accident that US interrogators play rock music at excruciating volumes in order to disorientate and break Iraqi prisoners.

Even for those of us not Iraqi prisoners, getting away from that noise is more difficult all the time. The outdoors have, for many, become nothing more than a playground, a source of recreation and entertainment that brings with it as much sound as a New York intersection. That’s not to say outdoor recreation is a bad thing, but I wonder about our growing inability to appreciate the natural sounds that wilderness brings, our incapacity to approach nature with the respect and reverence it deserves, rather than treating it as a playfield meant only to provide us with yet one more noisy distraction.

The sound of the plane fades into the distance, as the sun peaks over the mountain. A hummingbird buzzes past me and a chipmunk scurries through the brush. Then I hear a quick screech and I see, soaring over the valley, a red-tail hawk, swooping down into the fields, out of my line of sight.

I lean back into the tub and wait for the sun to shine fully onto the deck. Every movement I make I try to do so as quietly as possible, for fear of disrupting the serenity that surrounds me. The plane is gone for now, but I know it’s just a matter of time before another flies by or a train blows its whistle or a jet passes high above the clouds or an ATM roars through the nearby forests. I only hope that what I gain here, I can retain long after I get off the mountain.

From up here, I can see how the river’s silver-blue waters meander through the valley, glistening in the day’s last light as it winds through the lush foliage. And ahead of me, off in the distance, the peaks blaze with the alpenglow’s orange radiance, set against the deep blue of a darkening sky.

This is the Colorado I remember, the Colorado I return to. Everything that surrounds me exudes the astounding beauty of the place I once called home. Even the forests seem charged, glimmering with a vibrant golden-orange glow that seems to emanate from the trees themselves.

Wait, that’s not what’s going on. Those are dead trees, thousands of acres worth. The aftermath of a mountain pine beetle infestation that has attacked the Rockies with a vengeance, taking out most of the lodge pole pine and leaving in its wake wide bands of forest that first turn rusty orange and then a deadly gray.

What I’m seeing is the rusty phase.

Pine beetle infestations are not unusual in the Rockies. They’re part of the natural cycle of forest regeneration. What is unusual is the extent of the infestation. Not only are we seeing unprecedented numbers of infected trees, but the beetles are reaching into higher elevations and higher latitudes, and are now jumping to new species.

And therein lies the problem. The millions of dead trees that surround me are only the tip of the pine beetle iceberg.

To date, the beetle has affected nearly 3 million acres of Colorado forests. The staggering amounts of dead wood could impact water supplies, change wildlife habitat, increase fire risk, curtail recreational actives, affect the timber industry, and pose a safety hazard to anyone in proximity of the dead trees.

In addition, scientists are now reporting the presence of beetles in the whitebark pine, once considered to live at elevations too high to be susceptible to beetle epidemics. And foresters in British Columbia are seeing outbreaks that are heading further north than ever before and taking in their wake an unprecedented number of trees.

It gets worse. The insects have jumped the Continental Divide in Canada and are now spreading northeast into the edges of the boreal forest, making it possible for the beetles to make their way west toward Alaska and east toward the Atlantic.

So what’s causing all the bugs to go so buggy? Several reasons have been cited—drought, warmer temperatures, and poor forest mismanagement. When you get too many of the same type of trees reaching the same age at the same time and then the planet starts heating up and the rain and snow stop falling, you have a recipe for disaster—and that’s exactly what’s happened here.

Forest management practices such as clear-cutting, mono-species planting, and fire suppression do not make for healthy forests. But they make for forests that the beetles like to call home. So too does a changing climate, when those changes increase temperatures and decrease the level of precipitation.

Although the causes of climate change are still being debated—at least in the US, the rest of the world seems to have caught on—what doesn’t change is the fact that so many trees are dead and dying. Even if the devastation were not so extensive, some level of destruction would still exist. Hordes of lodgepole pine have been wiped out in the past, and they will be wiped out in the future. That’s how nature works.

So this shimmering rusty wall that now surrounds me, washed in the golden glow of a late evening sun, might be here regardless of management practices and a changing climate. The forests cannot escape their cycles of death and regeneration any more than we can, no matter how hard we try.

Besides, if I were interested in correlating all the points necessary to draw such a conclusion, I would suggest that it has been our attempts to avoid facing death—and the industrial aftermath that is the consequence of such avoidance—that has led to the extreme environmental challenges we face today, the extensive pine beetle outbreaks being only one of them. But that’s a discussion best left to the experts. As I said, we’d still have acres of dead trees, just not so many.

So the Colorado I return to is not the Colorado I left 20 years ago. But then, I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago. Who is?

Yet when I drive over Rabbit Ears Pass and drop into Grand County—ground zero of the beetle epidemic—there’s still a part of me that has the sense I’m coming home, that the core of my past experiences remains untouched, despite the dying forests and the environmental changes they herald.

In fact, as I travel along the highway, wanting to reach my destination before dark, the changes I’m most aware of are not the endangered forests, but the way the shadows lengthen as I head east, reminding me of nightfall’s inevitable descent.

But then, even if I were to stand still, those shadows would still be growing longer.

At the Van Ness station, a group of older teens boards the train. I notice them only because one announces, “I sit here. I sit here,” as she plops down on a seat that faces the aisle.

The rest of the teens soon follow her example and fill the nearby seats.

They are a group of kids with Down syndrome, apparent by the broad heads and round faces and short necks that they each share to varying degrees.

A man then enters the train and sits in the middle of them. At first I think this odd, given all the other empty seats. But then I realize he’s with the group, that he is, in fact, their guide or coordinator or counselor.

He’s a tall man with a short dark beard and athletic build. He looks the type more at home playing pro baseball than herding a group of teens—any group of teens. Yet there’s a sense of self-assurance about him, a sense of calm that emanates from his clear eyes and unruffled continence.

When the train starts moving, the boy who sits nearest him clenches his fists as his face stiffens with fear. Yet his movements are almost imperceptible, and if I had not been looking in that direction, I would never have noticed the shift.

The counselor—or whoever he is—also notices. Without saying a word, he places his hand on the boy’s forearm. There’s a sense of strength and tenderness in the way he calms the boy with his touch, a sense of reassurance and patience and compassion.

The boy calms down quickly and the rest of the ride is without incident. When we reach the Embarcadero station, the counselor herds the teens together and leads them out to the platform, his face as calm and assured as when he arrived. I leave the train through a different door and do not see them again.

I walk up to the next level and exit through the turnstile, then climb the last flight of stairs to Market Street. There I’m assaulted by a wall of people who speed along the sidewalks without regard to who they push, step on, bump into, or cut off. Most are part of San Francisco’s business community, the nine-to-fivers racing from appointment to appointment. They talk on cell phones, read text messages, listen to headphones, walk with blinders.

I’m suddenly aware of the way I’m dressed. My shorts are tattered at the edges. My sweatshirt is ready for a facelift. I’ve walked too many miles in my Columbia lightweight hikers. And now I find myself surrounded by Armani suits and Prada handbags and Gucci shoes and Cartier watches with enough gold and silver to supply half the bullion at the US mint up Market Street.

It doesn’t help that I just lost a button on my shorts and hold them together with a safety pin.

When I cross the road, I’m nearly run down by the driver in a Lexus who has little patience for people on foot, despite the Walk sign that opens the crosswalks to pedestrians like me. Two minutes later, the same thing happens with the driver of a Cadillac SUV.

I decide to grab an early lunch at a small diner that advertises Mediterranean food. I walk inside and stand before the counter, studying a wall menu that announces everything from gyros to falafel to hamburgers. The woman behind the counter eyes me impatiently, until I finally order, then she never looks at me, never says anything except how much I owe.

When I tell her I want a glass of water to drink, she grunts an acknowledgement. But when my order arrives, there is no water. So I ask again. With an air of annoyance, she tells me that I’m supposed to grab a cup from the stack and get my water from the soda machine. Then she flashes a look that’s meant to remind me of how stupid I am for not having read her mind.

These sorts of things—the pushy pedestrians, the annoyed drivers, the rude counter clerks—are repeated everywhere I go in the city. The impatience and indifference and intolerance are, in fact, a way of life.

Yet San Francisco is only a small slice of the pie. Recently, Tennessee’s Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey called Islam a cult. Arizona’s new immigration law lets police detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. A Memphis councilwoman received death threats because she supports the rights of gay workers. BP CEO Tony Hayward is expected to receive a severance package worth over $18 million. The latest statistics out of Afghanistan indicate that July was the deadliest month for US troops in our nine-year war. No statistics were provided about civilian casualties.

I walk up to the Powell station to catch the J train. As I start down the stairs, a man knocks into me without saying a word. When I show my transfer to the attendant at the ticket window, she does not look at me, does not acknowledge I’m there. She pushes the button to release the turnstile and returns to whatever she was doing. I head down to the next level and enter a crowded train. I find a teenage girl sitting with her feet up on the seat next to her, the music from her earphones so loud I can hear it even in the din of the station. She never makes room for anyone else to sit down.

As I stand in the center of the car, holding on to a handrail, I think about the counselor on the L train with his gaggle of down-syndrome teens. I think about his commitment and his patience and his compassion. I wonder how he or anyone can maintain such dedication and a sense of purpose in a land that can seem so devoid of any of these.

From people like him, I have much to learn.

Since my arrival, I’ve seen jackrabbits and great egrets and black-tailed deer and wild turkeys and hummingbirds and raccoons and red-winged blackbirds.

I’ve also seen cows, tons of them, scattered across the grasslands that sweep over the hilly landscape. That’s because cattle and dairy ranches have been part of this area for generations, long before the feds designated the place as protected. The ranching, it seems, has been grandfathered into the park.

What I haven’t seen are white fallow deer. Although they used to roam freely, the National Park Service (NPS), in the last few years, has slaughtered most of the animals—90% by some estimates.

But the NPS didn’t do its own dirty work. They brought in hired guns. Wildlife exterminators. Species mercenaries. Bambi hitmen.

The company, White Buffalo, Inc., out of Connecticut, specializes in remote euthanasia of unwelcomed species. Their sharpshooters came into the park and shot the deer while they were feeding—supposedly in the head or neck to guarantee a speedy and humane demise.

The NPS then donated the meat and hides to non-profit or charity organizations, at least that’s what they say. Local hunters and hikers often found the dead animals scattered throughout the forests, their carcasses rotting, their eyes plucked out by scavenger vultures.

Even so, the NPS is bent on eliminating the white fallow deer. They believe the animals represent a threat to the local ecosystem because they’re a non-native species.

And they are. The deer don’t belong here, not in an evolutionary sense. A wealthy rancher imported them into the area in 1948 so he and his cronies would have something fun to hunt. But the establishment of Point Reyes National Seashore made the hunting illegal, so the deer—a hearty lot, it turns out—went forth and multiplied.

But the NPS believes that the white fallow deer are extremely disruptive to the natural ecosystem. Unfortunately, the NPS has yet to present definitive evidence, particularly carrying capacity studies, that prove that the deer adversely impact the environment to the point they need to be exterminated. Even so, the NPS insists that the deer must go if the park is to be restored to its original pristine roots.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that the park already blossoms with other non-native species, such as Himalayan blackberry, scotch broom, eucalyptus trees, and jimson weed.

Then there’s the coyotes. These critters arrived only 500 years ago, pushed north by the encroaching human populations as they traveled up the coast by way of Mexico and the Southwest. That makes these howling canines a bona fide non-native species.

And what about all those cows? I can’t quite see how dense cattle populations and modern ranching techniques and miles of fenced corridors can have any less of an impact than a few white deer.

Of course, none of that compares to the impact of human activity. If the NPS is serious about restoring the park to its original state, or even close to that state, the park better get rid of most of the cars and most of the people.

But then, taking a step backwards is never easy. Even the NPS must realize this. Too many bad decisions have already been made, and the best we can hope for is to preserve what we’ve got. Virginity is never retroactive.

All the NPS can do is to decide what is acceptable non-native invasion. But that’s like determining what’s acceptable collateral damage, a phrase bandied about freely when we invaded Iraq.

Even so, the NPS must decide. They must contend with the fact that the white fallow deer were brought into the region without considering the impact on the land, both then and in the future—sort of the same logic used when deciding to invade a country without provocation and without protecting the country’s infrastructure or its people and without thought to the long-range consequences of such an invasion.

But the government, it seems, and by extension those of us the government represents, are in the business of trying to clean up messes that are the consequence of poor decisions. Unfortunately, strategies to clean up our messes are often implemented in ways that call for a callous indifference to the sanctity of life and to freedom from pain and suffering.

We have a history of intervention that mismanages, misappropriates, and misrepresents the truth. Not just with Point Reyes or Iraq, but with Katrina and Afghanistan and Vietnam and our national forests and the latest environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Poor decisions keep being made, and we find ourselves making more poor decisions to try to fix them.

Only about a hundred white fallow deer remain at Point Reyes, and the NPS wants to get rid of those too. But there are still plenty of cows and plenty of cars and plenty of fences and roads to keep the cars and cows going.

And there appears to be plenty of owls. I heard two of them hooting to each other last night, along with the howls of distant coyotes. Sounds well worth preserving—in Point Reyes and anywhere else we can save them.

I only hope none of those birds are spotted owls.

I step over to the cash machine to retrieve more quarters for the second load. I reach into my pocket for my wallet. My pocket is empty.

I race back to the front-load washer and look through the window at the sudsy water filling the tub. I see my shorts on the top of the pile. I envision my wallet sloshing around in those suds.

I try to open the door but it’s fused shut, so I rush over to the attendant. I ask whether there’s a way to stop the washer once it’s started.

She stares back at me with a look of both indifference and disdain, the kind of look that the bored and frustrated and powerless give those who are momentarily at a disadvantage, the kind of look that provides them with a temporary sense of vindication and superiority, that leaves them feeling something akin to satisfaction.

“No,” she says. “You have to wait.” She looks away before she finishes speaking.

I return to the washer and check how many minutes remain. Sixteen. I look at my shorts longingly. I watch them go round and round. I watch them take my wallet on a Six Flags whitewater river ride.

I step outside to wait out the rinse and spin cycles.

The laundromat sits next door to Guerneville’s only coffee shop. Together they form what constitutes the town center.

Here you’ll find the full spectrum of the town’s finest, residents and visitors alike, patronizing one, both, or neither of the businesses. They lounge in the chairs, hang out at the picnic tables, huddle around on the sidewalks.

Here you’ll find the eighteen-year-old mother with her three children, the aging hippy with her tie-dyed shirt and Birkenstock sandals, the volunteer firefighter from the station across the road, the queer couple celebrating their twentieth anniversary, the wasted teen who’s been smoking weed since ten, the suburban family with their 2.3 golden-haired children, the Silicon Valley bikers who just arrived on their new Harleys, the homeless man who carries his house in a plastic bag, the state-supported, heavily medicated, chronically ill SSI lifetime wards.

I sit down, more toward the coffee shop side of things. Next to me, a guy in his late twenties bums a cigarette from another man. The second one is older and taller and stringier, with circles under his eyes so dark I think he’s been punched in the face.

“I just got out of jail,” the younger one says. “I have no cash.”

The older guy hands him a cigarette. “No problem, man. I won’t ask why you were there. None of my business.”

“Wasn’t so bad.”

“Hope you didn’t murder anyone.”

The younger one shakes his head. “Nothing like that.  Parole violation. Only thirty days.”

“Get yourself straightened out, that’s what you need to do. Figure out your passions and follow them.”

The young man smokes. “I know what I want. I’m gonna be a farmer. I’m gonna raise chickens.”

“Chickens.”

“I can’t wait to eat my first one.”

“A chicken eater,” the black-eyed man says.

“I can’t wait.”

“When you plan to start all this?”

“Already have. My husband and I bought eight acres near Sebastopol.”

Decades ago, Guerneville was a popular family vacation spot—campsites, cabins, canoeing—all in the heart of California’s redwood country, next to a slow-moving bend on the Russian River. The influx of drop-outs in the late sixties and early seventies, along with their carloads of drugs, changed the area forever. The bikers showed up around then too—and not the Silicon Valley kind. Then the queers arrived, with plenty more out-of-control substances. There were also the wine connoisseurs, bouncing from winery to winery, swelling in rank every day.

Throughout all this, the families kept coming.

So what you have now is a bit of everything. That and the aftermath of an area that in the last twenty years has been hit hard by floods and failing economies.

I go back into the laundromat and check the washer. Nine minutes to go. I return outside and take a seat nearest the door. I listen to a man grumble about the state of the economy. He talks to a woman whose got that rich New Ager look, a cross between an astrologist and an heiress, with wavy blonde hair that cascades down to her waist.

The man’s probably in his fifties, with a short, thick body and hair that’s long and matted, dark brown and streaked with gray. At least half of his teeth are missing.

He tells the woman he can’t work because the Mexicans are taking all the jobs. “Try to earn a living,” he says. “Try to get anything done, and they get in the way.”

I take note of his teeth because of a previous visit to Guerneville. Several years ago I spent a few months down here, hanging out, writing, getting to know the region. On more than one occasion, people who lived in the area said, “You must not be from around here. You have all your teeth.”

Such is the nature of meth.

I step into the coffee shop to use the restroom. A sign hangs on the bulletin board in the hallway. It announces a meeting for Guerneville business owners to discuss the growing problem of homelessness in this area. The goal is to bring people together to discuss solutions that everyone can live with.

But the town is facing problems in which homelessness is only one of the symptoms. Many of the businesses have closed, buildings are falling apart, tourists are staying away in record numbers. But drug and alcohol use remains high. So does unemployment.

On the last three evenings, I strolled through town in search of a place to eat. Many of the restaurants were closed, the streets nearly deserted, not unlike a western ghost town in a Gary Cooper movie. Granted it’s the middle of the week, but this is still July, the height of the tourist season. I’ve been here in tourist season before. I know weeknights are slower. But weeknights in July should not be like the dead of winter.

The Safeway is busy, though, at least it was this morning. I stood behind two women in the checkout line. The first dug through her purse as the cashier rang up her groceries. After a furious search, she announced that she couldn’t afford all the food. So she handed back several items—candy bars, salsa, pasta sauce, Cocoa Puffs, a bunch of rhubarb. Once she got the amount down to what she could afford, she paid for the groceries, all the time apologizing for causing any trouble.

The next person in line, the woman in front of me, pushed a cart that carried a baby. All she bought was a tube of Blistex. She paid in cash, took her change, and rolled away. That’s when I noticed the case of blue sports drink in the bottom of the cart, hidden from the cashier by the baby seat.

A lot of the people who hang out in the makeshift town center have nowhere else to go and no money to get there. Jobs are in short supply. Businesses are struggling to survive. Relatively few tourists are coming and those who do come are not spending.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts California’s current unemployment rate at 12.4%, compared to a U.S. average of 9.7%. The state has lost nearly 245,000 jobs this past year.

Yesterday, I read in the San Francisco Chronicle that gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has spent nearly $100 million on her campaign and might be donating another $30 million to the state’s Republican party. As Meg Whitman has discovered, power does not come cheap.

Republicans, not surprisingly, are salivating. Democrats, I’m guessing, are running with their tails between their legs.

I wonder whether any of that money will find its way to Guerneville. I wonder if the people who need the money the most will ever see it.

I return to the laundromat and wait out the last two minutes of the wash cycle. When the warning beep sounds, I open the door, pull out my soaked shorts, pull my soaked wallet out of my shorts, and pull my soaked money out of my wallet.

It might be the only clean cash left in California.

She stands at five-feet-four, minus a couple inches for her perpetual stoop. When she walks, she never lifts her feet off the floor. It’s more a sleep-walker’s shuffle—a mix between indifference and the result of a stout, squat body that no longer wants to move.

The café where Grace works—and perhaps owns and has done so for her century-long career—is a nostalgic gateway to Hollywood’s golden era. In addition to the years of grease and grime, the walls are covered with movie star posters that range from Mae West to James Dean.

My favorite is a large silver screen version of The Last Supper, with Marilyn Monroe in the center, Humphrey Bogart to her left, and Clark Gable to her right. Also at the table are Elvis, Cary Grant, Marlon Brandy, and several other Hollywood dignitaries from days gone by.

Though it’s only a few minutes past noon, I’m the only customer. I open the menu and try to read through the grease and food stains. That’s when Grace shows up, her pen and pad poised to take my order. She stares at the space across the table as she waits for me to decide. Old rock-and-roll music pours from the crackling speakers—currently an Elvis song, though nothing I recognize.

Grace dyes her hair a bright red-orange. Judging by the thick gray roots, it’s been a while since her last treatment. She has a bulbous nose that hooks down toward meaty jowls and sagging lips, giving her face a squashed look, as though years of gravity have caused it to cave in on itself.

She has a look about her of a person not fully in this world, an old woman biding her time, only partially aware that she’s still alive. It’s the look of someone who has watched too much television, someone whose eyes have been permanently glazed over by sitcoms, reality shows, and mouthwash commercials.

If she were of a different generation, I would suspect too many hours in front of a computer.

I close the menu and order eggs and hash browns and coffee. She writes down my order. I feel as though I participate in an ancient ritual.

Grace shuffles over to the counter and calls my order to the two Hispanic cooks. She speaks in a stilted, halting voice, as though she’s never fully learned how to use her vocal chords, as though she came from a place of cloistered silence and was dropped here on Mission Street.

When a few other customers trickle in, she smiles, greets some by name, takes their orders. None of them talk on cell phones or send text messages or work at computers or listen to iPods. I can’t remember the last time I was someplace where I could say that.

In between customers, Grace sits at the counter and stares at the stainless steel walls and the shelf full of hamburger buns and loaves of white bread. Occasionally, she squeezes behind the counter to take a customer’s money—cash only, rung up on a manual register unable to match today’s prices.

Grace lives in a world locked in ’50s memorabilia, free from the Internet and hand-held electronic devices—a holdout against progress and the gentrifying forces that squeeze in around her. Grace lives in a world of diminishing returns, a world that leaves her little space in which to retreat.

In some ways, Grace might be considered one of San Francisco’s more fortunate. She has plenty of food, a place to spend her days, and in all likelihood, a home of some sorts—though for all I know, it could be a back room in the restaurant.

Many in San Francisco are not so lucky. Any visitor to the city can quickly discern the severity of the problems associated with homelessness, substance abuse, and mental illness.

Last night, as I waited for a bus on the corner of Eighteenth and Castro, I watched one man get into a debate with a garbage can, two men curl up on a blanket next to the curb, another two men yell drunken insults at a third man across the street, and still another man so bent and twisted and inhibited in speech that he could not formulate the words or gestures necessary to beg for money.

Anywhere you go in the city—outside the wealthier neighborhoods—you’ll find a wide range of drunks, tweakers, junkies, panhandlers, mentally ill, and homeless people so disabled they can barely move. Any night you find the disheartened, the discarded, the walking wounded. This is the San Francisco not mentioned in the brochures.

According to the San Francisco Homeless Services Coalition, about 35,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area at any given time. Of these, 62% live on the streets during the night. In fact, San Francisco proper has the highest rate of homelessness of any U.S. city.

Yet San Francisco is by no means alone. About 800,000 people in the U.S. do not have a place to live—and as many as 20% of them have fulltime jobs.

There’s more. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20-25% of the U.S. homeless population suffers from some form of severe mental illness, yet only 6% of the general population suffer the same fate. In fact, mental illness is considered one of the top causes of homelessness for single adults.

Yet the U.S. spends only $2 billion a year on federal programs aimed at helping the homeless. Compare that to the $700 billion spent on defense. (That’s according to the Washington Post. Some estimates put our defense spending a lot higher.)

As I sit in the Mission Street café—trying to eat a slice of toast so saturated in margarine I can barely get through half—I gaze toward the display near the front window, a wide shelf covered in fake cellophane grass, the kind you find in Easter baskets. On top of the grass are hundreds of plastic animals and plastic flowers and plastic houses.

While studying a rather sick looking frog, I notice a woman out on the sidewalk, slouched against the building, so tweaked out she can barely stand. She appears to be in her mid-sixties. She wears a blonde wig. She wears lipstick the color of bing cherries. She wears false eyelashes so long her eyes seem entangled in spider webs.

She smiles at several men who walk by, perhaps attempting to turn one last trick. But they don’t acknowledge her. I don’t think they even see her. Many talk on cell phones. Many are plugged into earphones. Many are texting as they walk.

Many look as equally lost.

We are a culture of damaged and displaced and dismissed souls. But as long as we have our iPhones and Facebook pages and HD televisions, as long as we let ourselves be endlessly entertained and distracted and misled, we don’t have to look at those we leave behind. We don’t have to be accountable, feel responsible, take action.

I push my plate aside and sip what remains of the coffee. Grace comes by and drops off my bill. She says that I should jot down my name and phone number on the back of the check. She says I could win a $25 gift certificate. Then she smiles and returns to the counter.

When I pay my bill, Grace punches the sale into her ancient register. It rings and the drawer pops open and she counts out my change like a little girl playing bank teller.

I did not write my name and number on the back of the check. And Grace never says a word. She smiles and returns to her seat at the counter.

My traveling companion looks at me with as much monkish patience as he can muster and gently reminds me that we’re at a monastery. Properly humbled, I follow him to the guest quarters.

Our rooms sit across from the chapel and up from the duck pond, with its quiet muddy waters stretching into a lush Northwest forest, the air filled with the sweet scents from a thousand shades of green. In this area, we’re expected to refrain from any activity that could disrupt the tranquil setting. No loud voices, no cell phone use, no playing radios or musical instruments, and certainly no profane outbursts.

This suits me fine, as long as I remember to curb my more enthusiastic responses. After months of nonstop schedules and sensory overload, I welcome the meditative sanctuary offered in this serene setting, a silence disrupted only by birds singing, leaves rustling, and the occasional murmur of voices. And my austere guestroom, with its single bed and small plain desk, only adds to the sense of soulful retreat. There’s even a robin’s nest outside my window, for Christ’s sake.

What I don’t welcome is the large crucifix hanging over the bed. I can handle the other symbols of Catholic veneration—the picture of the last supper, the Medieval-styled statue of Joseph holding his son Jesus (I think that’s what it is), and the wooden plus sign, shaped like an iron cross, painted with five colorful images of Jesus. I look at these with the same cultural inquisitiveness and appreciation I’ve experienced in Buddhist or Muslim countries. I welcome the cultural adventure and aesthetic variation.

But the crucifix over the bed gets to me. There’s something about a tortured, emaciated body hanging above my head that makes my dreams anything but sweet.

It’s not that I haven’t been around this stuff. I was raised a Catholic, but a very loose one. On the occasions I was forced to go to church or catechism, it felt like punishment. And historically, the Church has been big on punishment—though Catholics hardly hold a monopoly on that.

But attacking the Church’s history is too easy—the witch hunts, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and its questionable role in the Holocaust. Even the contemporary Church, with its institutionalized discrimination against women and gays, seems too simple a target. Just this past May, the Pope called gay marriage an insidious and dangerous threat. That’s right, he insists that we protect those straight Vegas weddings from the sinister spread of love and commitment.

Yet the Church’s bloody history and cycles of discrimination give way quickly to the sense of sanctuary I feel at the abbey. And soon I give no more thought to the crucifix—or the Christian-centric pamphlets or Bible on the desk—than I would a full-page Wal-Mart ad. I even attend the day-hour and vesper prayers. Sure, I notice the monks’ off-key chanting and the slight whistle one makes whenever he sounds an s and the bat that hangs from the rafters, but I notice even more the sense of sincerity and devotion that emanate from these guys as they participate in their daily rituals.

At that moment, I’m not seeing the Church. I’m seeing a small group of individuals, ranging in age from thirty to eighty, committed to a way of life that promotes respect, tranquility, and a belief in a higher calling. And even a sophisticated Seattleite like me can’t fault them for that. In fact, I envy them some, living in a community that so faithfully shares a common set of beliefs and values. My stomach still rumbles and I squirm against the hard pews and I keep straightening my spine, but much of that is a carry-over from my youth, and the spine thing, that’s just a response to the stooped backs of the aged monks whose years of veneration and humility have taken their toll.

But as I listen to them, I understand that it’s the generations of devotion that have created such a peaceful environment, a place where stewardship and sanctuary seem one in the same, a place open to anyone seeking rest and serenity—although the openness part is not something I fully test. True, I’d feel easier if they used biodegradable cleaning products or instituted a more effective system for composting and recycling—especially here in hip northwest Oregon.

But the lack of such steps doesn’t make their dedication seem any less genuine. If anything, it’s a good reminder that not everyone’s priorities are the same. Besides, if they were more environmentally proactive, I might not have discovered the can of Odor Assassin in the shared bath. And I might not know that Odor Assassin promises to eliminate even the smell of skunk.

I wonder if the monks leave the deodorizer there as a joke. I suspect they’re not without a keen sense of humor.

When walking on one of their trails, I follow a sign that reads, “To shrine,” only to discover an undulating, overgrown ball field with a rusty backstop complete with a giant plastic Miller’s beer bottle, a Jack Daniels tailgating sign, and a set of baseball cards mounted in Plexiglas. And next to all this sits a small, wooden cross, perhaps to remind shrine-seekers why they’re there.

It doesn’t seem possible that the people who could create such a space—not just the ball field, but the entire retreat—are cut from the same cloth as an institution that has been responsible for so much suffering, that the men who work every day to build community, to resist the plague of consumerism and greed, to welcome strangers into their sanctum, are tied to a system that continues to denigrate and ostracize. Yet when I look at these monks as individuals—a small group of individuals participating in an intentional community—I can see beyond the institution and witness their faithful and profound journeys.

On my way back from the baseball shrine, I walk along the pond near the guest quarters. The pond is teaming with bullfrogs, turtles, and long, slow-moving fish, merely silhouettes in the muddy water. As I stroll along the pond’s edge, I come across a sign: “Caution: Walking on Water Prohibited. Monks Only.”

Yes, the monks do have a sense of humor. Perhaps we all need more of that. Humor somehow cuts through the institutional thinking and stagnated beliefs, the divisive politics and religious prejudices. Without humor, and the openness it affords, I suspect none of us would be able to negotiate these murky waters.