The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [97]
Japhy began to shriek and hoot and whistle and sing, full of pure gladness. Nobody around to hear him. “This is the way you’ll be on top of Mount Desolation, this summer, Ray.”
“I’ll sing at the top of my voice for the first time in my life.”
“If anybody hears ya it’ll just be the conies, or maybe a critic bear. Ray that Skagit country where you’re going is the greatest place in America, that snaky river running back through gorges and into its own unpeopled watershed, wet snowy mountains fading into dry pine mountains and deep valleys like Big Beaver and Little Beaver with some of the best virgin stands of red cedar left in the world. I keep thinking of my abandoned Crater Mountain Lookout house sitting up there with nobody but the conies in the howling winds, getting old, the conies down in their furry nests deep under boulders, and warm, eating seeds or whatever they eat. The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. All these people thinking they’re hardheaded materialistic practical types, they don’t know shit about matter, their heads are full of dreamy ideas and notions.” He raised his hand. “Listen to that quail calling.”
“I wonder what everybody’s doing back at Sean’s.”
“Well they’re all up now and starting on that sour old red wine again and sitting around talking nothing. They should have all come with us and learnt something.” He picked up his pack and started off. In a half-hour we were in a beautiful meadow following a dusty little trail over shallow creeks and finally we were at Potrero Meadows camp. It was a National Forest camp with a stone fireplace and picnic tables and everything but no one would be there till the weekend. A few miles away, the lookout shack on top of Tamalpais looked right down on us. We undid our packs and spent a quiet late afternoon dozing in the sun or Japhy ran around looking at butterflies and birds and making notes in his notebook and I hiked alone down the other side, north, where a desolate rocky country much like the Sierras stretched out toward the sea.
At dusk Japhy lit a good big fire and started supper. We were very tired and happy. He made a soup that night that I shall never forget and was really the best soup I’d eaten since I was a lionized young author in New York eating lunch at the Chambord or in Henri Cru’s kitchen. This was nothing but a couple of envelopes of dried pea soup thrown into a pot of water with fried bacon, fat and all, and stirred till boiling. It was rich, real pea taste, with that smoky bacon and bacon fat, just the thing to drink in the cold gathering darkness by a sparkling fire. Also while pooking about he’d found puffballs, natural mushrooms, not the umbrella type, just round grapefruit-size puffs of white firm meat, and these he sliced and fried in bacon fat and we had them on the side with fried rice. It was a great supper. We washed the dishes in the gurgling creek. The roaring bonfire kept the mosquitoes away. A new moon peeked down through the pine boughs. We rolled out our sleeping bags in the meadow grass and went to bed early, bone weary.
“Well Ray,” said Japhy, “pretty soon I’ll be far out to sea and you’ll be hitchhiking up the coast to Seattle and on through the Skagit country. I wonder what’ll happen to all of us.”
We went to sleep on this dreamy theme. During the night I had a vivid dream, one of the most distinct dreams I ever had, I clearly saw a crowded dirty smoky Chinese market with beggars and vendors and pack horses