Life of Pilgrim

Seventy years ago a five year old boy Pilgrim stumbled from his attic bedroom to greet a new day. He was a sick little boy diagnosed with “double pneumonia”: a steamer beside his bed. He’d spent the night in a desperate struggle to draw each breath. His grandfather almost died in the flu epidemic of 1917. A nurse saved him: calling for oxygen as she noted a blue pallor that marks the last stages of a dying man. After passing “that hump”: his grandfather lived on, then courted that nurse and married her! When he hit the road with his girlfriend in 1971 his nation didn’t understand what “a counter culture” was! His generation wanted to modify themselves to change the planet’s condition. It couldn’t be done: but many ideas still color our lives. Many Edens he found were with members of the opposite sex! All listened awhile, and then allowed him to “touch them” so they could better know “who he was”! He studied literature and fine art.

Generations of writers and artists laid Eden's “on his lap”! After he hit the road he found them everywhere: in Manhattan Beach and Venice California, a flat and two communal houses in Berkeley, and one in Seattle, a tiny house deep inside the Redwoods of Mendocino County. Shortest: 2 AM one night at “Esalen” hot springs. Longest: two studios at a downtown artist community. He found “camping Eden's” on the west coast of mainland Mexico. He found them at hot springs, and the Feather River while camping at Maidu Indian ceremonies. His Japanese geisha left and he hit the road to find new ones at a cabin, sauna, or inside the apple picker bars at Okanogan Washington. Then a couple Jewish girls showed him Eden's deep inside New York City, Bronxville, Long Island, and Manhattan. Then a girl and her two sylph-like children on a banyan Island near Key West. The most biblical ones: deep inside Hawaii’s big island. These were jungle Eden's shared with teenagers camping, reproducing, growing cannabis and dodging the law.