Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Deep Penetration
SO YOUNG, SO
open and alive, so free of regret and inured to loss. Ah, well, it was down to John
Levy, LA photog, and me, back out on the rolling foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains, born to
the saddle and bound for horizons. From side roads and on-ramps like tributaries to the great-
er flow, the boomer brotherhood rounding Europe on two wheels joined our cavalcade for a
few miles or many. Most headed to Pamplona, some just up from Marrakech, a hotspot that
summer where three bucks could buy a matchbox of kief—a blond, loose, fiber derived from
cannabis but not marijuana and not hash.
It's really the best
was the word on the road, but then
anything new or different gets to be really the best for a while. Rolling into Pamplona ten or
fifteen motorcycles pulled over as if organized to share a few bowls and compare coordinates
on who'd been where and seen what, while comparing kief from East Marrakech to kief from
farther south.
This was the height of it, when all men were brothers and women too. We knew each other
immediately by the bell-bottoms, beads, headbands, vests, tie-die, peace symbols, stoner halos
and hair. The hair was straight, curly, kinky or ratty and all long. We didn't wear helmets. Hats
weren't popular for another ten years or so, and long hair gets windswept into wings. We poin-
ted and laughed: what a goof. We passed pipes with universal understanding and no explan-
ation required, because we were in it together, loving the common adventure. Word was out,
that it was happening at the campground four miles farther from the far side of town.
John and I stopped at a roadside café for breakfast.
Huevos con tomates
sounded disgusting
but tasted delectable, as the waitress assured it would. A black-haired, dark-eyed beauty of
eighteen, she didn't hide her favor for the stick-thin Americano in tight pants on a thundering
moto with wanderlust in his eyes. She was Marisol and agreed in broken Spanish and English
to meet by the creek at five. What creek? The one by the campground.
A cinco horas
. “Fife. Hat
fife ho'clock.”
So the world unfolded, its lovely petals and scents, colors and textures revealing wanton
youth with no plan, no duty, no schedule, no rule, no reverence except to the gods of fun and
high times—
nada
but a future of lusty potential, freedom in movement, beauty and
motor-
cycles
. Just look around and see what you like, then try as you might to use it up. You could go
all night and have a lifetime left at sunrise. So what should you do? Pace yourself?
This imagery may suggest heavy action, but it more accurately recalls a period of rough
transition for a boy who had yet to learn what is expected of a man.
