Peter Adriel: read

now booking summer/fall tour dates for the mountain west, midwest, northeast, and southeast...

The Imnaha River is all the way in the Northeast corner of Oregon, it is a milky snowmelt blue. High in the Wallowa Mountains I camp alone and swim in its frigid waters, then bask and dry in the late afternoon sun. At night I stand on a rocky outcrop above the chattering stream and watch a new yellow moon sink slowly towards the peaks. Constellations glitter above this wild valley and the feeling I get makes me think: "This is why I came all this way, all for this."

I wake with the traveling bug and drive up into wild Idaho, up the Clearwater and up the Lochsa. I bathe in the Lochsa River, drink cold water from a hand-pumped well, and sleep under big old cedars at the water's edge. In the morning I fill all my water bottles. Energized by the light and the air and the water, I drive 1600 miles home in two long days, stopping briefly to sleep and refuel. I'm not tired. Erik's ancient country music mixtapes, with their LP hiss and scratches, bring me back laughing to the place where it all began.

The streets of Portland are filled with people who are glad to be here, people on bicycles, people busy in their gardens. Ted and Terri welcome me to their home, where I will rest, write and pass the time under the shade of giant elms. It's been a few years but with friends like these it doesn't matter. No explanations are necessary, we sit and talk, go to the market and buy new potatoes and cherries, make dinner on the grill.

On Saturday night we head up to Burnside for music. The crew assembles, tables are pushed together and dinner is served. The lights go down, it's a good show, I can see my friends all down the long table, the room echoes and the sound is good. Afterwards we go out back to the patio where we sit around a table with a little gas-powered campfire in the middle of it- what a concept! We stay late, talking and arguing and laughing around the fire.

Mark and Missy's urban farm is well underway here in Oregon, the sugar snap peas are sweet and the strawberries are sweeter. Mark and I drive into Eugene and pick up a little keg of Ninkasi IPA that turns out to be the best beer I've ever tasted. The day is hot but the big maples cast a deep shade over the side yard. We build a stage out of an old pallet and some stumps. Old friends arrive and the table fills with delicious home-cooked food. We eat, crazy girls arrive in outlandish hats. The sky darkens, the music begins, big clouds roll over and commence a lightning show. Who could ask for anything more? let's dance! and let's do it all again before too long... thanks Mark and Missy!

in this city, good things happen.

The band reunites and makes a bigger noise than ever. Dave on drums, Mike bass, Andrew guitar.

Shandon and I meet. She has two cats that perform judo. She cooks and grows plants, she reads and draws, she writes good letters. we walk, we understand each other. we wander through the deYoung Museum, looking at glittering glass sculptures and ancient masks.

The solstice moon, closest and brightest of the year, rises on a night clear and cool.

I play a show at 12 Galaxies, opening for Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band and Ha Ha Tonka. The noise floor, that's my homemade foot percussion, sounds sweet through the house sound system. Chrystal (voice) and Chad (brushes & phonebook) join me. Rev. Peyton burns the place down, after midnight.

Mike and I make a time-lapse movie of a cityscape. He draws and paints and scribbles, I click away with a camera.

Rosh helps me replace the worn-out radiator fan on the Honda. His dog Seeley is a legend of a dog, still a puppy... black and white, smart and fast. We talk about Wisconsin.

The view from Christine's house looks out over treetops, across the steeple of the old mission, and down to the shores of the Pacific. There is a fog there, and a haze over Santa Barbara, but the Channel Islands are still visible, their tops floating in air.

We go to the mountains first, a hike up through shade and hot sun to a rocky perch overlooking the town... then down to the market. There are fresh figs from nearby orchards, bunched greens, people wandering, street musicians.

After a good meal on the deck, watching the long views, it gets dark, and cool air blows in from the ocean.

Christine's friends arrive, I set up the guitars and the noise floor in front of a window that looks out into darkness. the music is good and the listeners listen well.

There is a tree here that drops flowers all over the deck, they rain down. In the morning I pick one up and tear it in two, releasing a tiny bug that bites my hand.

These hills are really brown, dry from years of drought. But in the small valley the oaks are green and tough, and the sycamores grow with their roots down in the subterranean stream. There are cornfields and tall eucalyptus trees, dusty lanes, corrals with horses... orange trees, pepper trees, monkeypod trees, and an avocado orchard high on a hill. Peacocks wandering and strutting, half-wild. Oleander, blooming white and pink.

Gabe and Pam are like old friends, and we sit on the small front porch in the evening coolness. I play some songs. We walk along in the night, talking. The moon is waxing and the air is clear and bright. In the daytime Gabe and I walk slowly under the hot sun, drive the jeep up to the big garden, move irrigation hoses, lay down mulch around young tomatoes. We go up to the House of the Book and he steps less than a foot away from a rattlesnake, stretched in a sliver of shade on a walkway. He jumps back, the snake sounds its alarm and escapes to a drainpipe.

I eat warm oranges from the tree outside my cabin, and siesta through the mid-day heat. In the evening we go and look at giant agave plants. The huge spiky leaves and towering candelabra flowers are illuminated by the warm glow of a streetlight. Stars and planets wink in the night sky above them.

The Mojave Desert bakes in the sun, it's 109 and there is no shade. Interstate 40 slides and crawls across the vast heat, refrigerated trucks haul lettuce, long diesel trains push toward the horizons. Interstates are often worlds apart from the country they traverse. I exit and take a small paved road that angles up and away from I-40. The road goes Y and I angle upward, the road gets smaller and more crumbled at the edges, the road climbs uphill gently now and then more steeply, towards the stony bulk of the mountains. Steeper and steeper until I can go no further. I am on the Eastern face of the mountains and already in shade. What a relief. Life is all around. barrel cactus, yucca, wrens, lizards. There are caves up here. On the rocky slope below one of them, I kneel to examine a small shrub-- it is completely covered with light blue flowers. A cool breeze issues from the mouth of the cave, flowing across the shrub and releasing the strange wild scent of its blossoms...

Later in the dusk, on a stone stairway, under a fig tree, I step down next to a rattlesnake, it buzzes, I jump back. it's friday the 13th. I stir-fry some greens and cook dinner on the mountainside.

I camp in the canyonlands and meet Wild Boy.

Ben Schreck lives in a valley, behind curving railroad tracks, below rocky hills. I rest there, and look at the growing moon and the mile-high city far below. We play a nice set at Folsom Street Coffee in Boulder, a stage in the corner, good sound. Ben tells one long joke, continuing it between songs. Afterwards we party at Miles' house, meet real good people, talk and listen and hear. Miles gives me the pick of destiny, thanks Miles.

I go with Ben and Alora to the South Side Walnut for breakfast, eat an omelette filled with avocado and artichoke hearts. Fuel up, drive past Nederland to Left Hand Reservoir, where Ben throws a five-foot stick the size of my leg into the water, and dog Bailey fetches it over and over and over...

...sleeping on the back porch, breathing that good mountain air...

...drinking quality beer from a can...

David and Sarah take me down to the wide Missouri, it is big and fast, a half mile wide and rolling brown. Winding gravel roads through green fields and jungles take us to a place called Coopers Landing: a dock and boats and general store. From a little Thai trailer-kitchen parked there, I eat a plate of rice noodles with collard greens that the lady grew herself, and then sit on the porch of the general store with the river right there and sing songs to it and my friends. I like that, singing river songs.

...in the bottomland fields is the biggest oak tree- nine feet through the trunk, branches big as giants' arms, ancient. The road curves by its feet, just like in the dream I had years ago...

...wading in a fossil-rocky creek, smoking cigars like Huck, and Nature Girl's voice floating down the stream like the original Water Music...

...climbing down caves to the Devil's Icebox, cool relief from the heat of the day, singing down there, and meeting a bat...

...meeting Lily at the Holy Road House, she went to Iran to send love there for us, thanks Lily...