Rich is a state of mind...

I feel rich today! No, I didn’t win any money last night.

Well, actually, I won $4 for about 5 hours of poker playing.

The poker director and I were laughing as I cashed out my 80 cents per hour for a night of work. We both laughingly remembered, at each of our respective first jobs, we were paid 75 cents an hour.

Mine was working in a fast food place called Henry’s, a “McDonalds” imitation that never made it. I still remember standing outside during a break, late at night, not wanting to go back inside, because I disliked the work.

I have never felt that way about poker yet, and I hope I never do.

I spent the night in the little parking lot at the Elk Valley Casino, just outside of Crescent City, California.

I awoke about 8:30 a.m. and the sun was shining and I was excited.

The reason I was excited about the sun was two fold.

One, it had rained non-stop for the last two days, and more importantly, the most beautiful part of my trip was today. I would be driving through the “Redwoods Forests”.

John Muir, the famous botanist refers to a Redwood grove as “God’s Cathedral”. Even on a bright sunny day, like today, you are in the shade, because these enormous trees go up almost 30 stories, and some are bigger around then the RV is long. Majestic and magnificent fail to describe the experience of standing in a Redwood Grove. Underneath this canopy of trees, ferns grow everywhere, and the quiet is like another world.

Some of these trees have been growing from before man changed the calendar from B.C. to A.D.

US 101 now go around some of the best groves, but I remember the old roads, through the Redwood National Forest, and Prairie Creek State Park. No one drives them anymore except bicycles and those that know they are still there. So after locating the first one, I slow to about 20 miles per hour and roll down the windows to enjoy the drive through the Redwood Forests, as much as I can.

We stopped at a trailhead, and hiked in about a mile. Later, I saw a sign that said dogs weren’t allowed on the trails. Oh, well, Pokey got to “go where few dogs have gone before.”

A little later we pulled over to observe a herd of Elk. Pokey was fascinated by them as was I. Three miles later we saw what I first thought was an auto accident. A number of cars were on the side of the road and people were out milling around. It turns out it was a herd of 30 elk crossing the road and feeding right by the side of the road. We were within 20 feet of them. You could see the wonder on some people’s faces and the enjoyment on many others.

It was in this setting that I realized again that “rich” is a state of mind.

Here we were enjoying this setting and a logging truck comes barreling down the road.

He is both driving too fast for the setting, (this is a posted area with signs indicating an Elk Crossing Area.) and it is obvious that he is bugged that people stop to enjoy the elk.

They possibly impede his progress for a few seconds by slowing and pulling over. He is cursing and yelling out the window while pulling on his air horn to try to stampede the herd. Both the people and the elk looked at him with momentary interest, and then went back to what each was doing before.

In that situation the only one making money was the trucker. Yet, he was, by far, the “poorest one” in that setting of great richness.

For fear of sounding too Zen, I offer this lesson from this experience, “it is not what we possess that is important, it is what possess us that is most important”. Being possessed by wonderment is rich, being possessed by anger, and frustration is abject poverty.

We continued down the road, continuing to enjoy this “sacred setting”. We pulled off the road near the ocean shore just north of Eureka. Pokey, and I hiked through the brush to the ocean and walked, while looking at the rough churning sea of Northern California.

Then after this exercise it was back to the RV for a nap for the both of us.

Since this was turning out to be such a special day I decided to make a “special meal”. I opened the can of Spam, Fried some eggs with it and warmed up some flour tortillas. Of course I added a generous portion of hot sauce to mine. Pokey got all the same for breakfast minus the hot sauce. It was a meal fit for a Mexican King. Since Pokey is both English (Yorkshire) and Mexican (Chiawawa*), he qualifies in both counts.
(*Since I don’t know how to spell it I just wrote it the way you would understand.)

He “gulped it down”, showing his pleasure with brisk, tail wagging. I gulped mine down, but didn’t have a tail to wag.

After cleaning up it was time to get back on the road. After Eureka there are plenty more trees waiting for us.