Nathaniel Shrake's Blog

The rain, at first a delicate honey trickle illuminated by the suns descending gaze, grew in its boldness and soon became a steady and all-encompassing deluge that fell from an indifferent sky. We continued our search, riding our motorcycles from campsite to campsite, but were met with a familiar rejection at each. No vacancy. No vacancy. No vacancy. Only rain, and the encroaching darkness leading both Zach and I to begin fearing that we may be without even humble accommodations for the night. We pulled off into a sprawling gas station complex that hugged the entrance to the park, and milled about in a shared frustration as we considered our options going forward.
It's funny how our concepts for the future never quite unfold in the ways we expect them to. I’m coming to find that nearly all of my life’s adventures have followed a similar script. And yet, as I examine each, one by one, I am reminded (and comforted) in the fact that they have each turned out to be grander and more rewarding for unfolding in the ways that they ultimately did. It’s almost as if providence, serendipity, or whatever you want to call God, has a hand in the unravelling of our own personal stories and adventures.
It makes me wonder, what does that say about our anxieties if our conscious designs and plans are almost guaranteed to unfold in ways that are different than our mammalian imaginations prophesize.
But enough about anxiety. This is a story about motorcycles, and mine in particular. Her name was Mojave, and she was a beautiful machine. It was one of those creations that lead one to consider the possibility that Man may have been crafted by Gods hand for the single sole purpose of assembling its parts.
I remember the day I bought it. I was stationed at Camp Pendleton at the time, and my friend Zach had recently purchased himself a slick Sportster. After hearing him talk at length about the romance of his rides, I was sold, and had to get one for myself. As was the style of my youth, I got in over my head quicker than I could say traumatic brain injury and I homed in on a bike on Craigslist that was way too powerful for a first-time rider.
“They’ll sure hear ya coming, and that’s a safety feature in itself,” I remember Zach saying confidently.
It was as 1600cc Harley Softail and it hummed like a cheetah. I remember sitting on it for the first time and feeling the heavy vibration of the engine envelope my legs and reverberate my spine. Then you’d roll back the throttle and everything became vibration and the sound of crisp American rumble enveloping everything and all.
I took out a loan that I had no business taking out and purchased the bike even though I still didn’t know how to ride it. Zach rode it home for me while I followed behind in my Jetta, which left a considerably less imposing impression upon my senses.
Thankfully, though, I wasn’t the first young man in the Marine Corps to get such an idea, and the Corps made it mandatory that any Marine that purchase a motorcycle undergo a week-long motorcycle training course on base. It was an invaluable experience and I very well might have ended up on the side of a road someday if it wasn’t for that class. With its conclusion, I at last added the coveted ‘M’ on the endorsement block of my drivers license.
On the weekends Zach and I took to zipping around the area like we were running from something terrible chasing us. We rode like a pair of toddlers possessed through the streets of Escondido, Temecula, Oceanside, Fallbrook, Carlsbad, San Marcos, etc, and in private company we called ourselves the Devils of Escondido. All we were missing were the leather jackets. Personally, I blame classic rock, as the Bluetooth speakers in my helmet and the music that I played while riding were likely bad influences upon my decision making. But goddamn, if ‘Money’ by Pink Floyd isn’t a jam while riding a hog.
Now cruising around the gentle streets of Southern California was fun and all, but it wasn’t the reason I had bought the motorcycle. I had dreams of long hauls through the mountains and riding along ridgelines that overlooked vistas that would take anyone’s breath away.
But I had only ridden through the community side streets as of yet as I hadn’t yet the need to ride on the freeways, and if I was being honest with myself, I was afraid to do so. Anyone that has ever had the displeasure of navigating the category five rapids that is the I-5 or I-15 of SoCal knows exactly what I’m talking about. If not, envision a five-lane freeway constantly in rush hour with half of the cars piloted by blind muskrats while the other half are competing amongst themselves to beat the land speed record. It’s madness with a view.
And that alone kept me and Mojave tied to the immediate area for some time, that is, until one late Friday afternoon when a wild hair grew inward instead of out, weaseled its way into my skull, and whispered sweet nothings to my frontal lobe. “You should ride up to Santa Barbara tonight”.
“That’s a great idea, wild hair!” I said in reply. I had a cousin up in that direction that was reliably good company, and so I strapped on two jackets (thinking that that would protect me), and hit the road. At first, the freeway wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it to be, but the higher speeds certainly were fear inducing. But that fear was a good thing. It likely kept me alive to tell this story to you now.
But by the time I hit Dana Point, all five lanes bottled up into a standstill I might have waited in line, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to be riding in the dark for any longer than was necessary. Plus, lane splitting was legal, and I had likely placed an unreasonable amount of emphasis on what some of the car’s occupants might have thought of a motorcyclist not taking advantage of the open bike corridor between each lane. And so, on my first freeway adventure, I leaned left and split the lanes to begin sliding past a thousand cars per minute as the sun began to set on the western horizon.
All went well for the first handful of miles, until suddenly, I leaned a little too far to the right and BAM! The right edge of the throttle smacked a rear-view mirror. I hesitated for a split second, then ripped down on the throttle and accelerated away. I’m sure that the mirror had simple collapsed in on itself as they’re designed to do in such circumstances, but regardless, it is scared the life out of me in the moment. An inch further to the right and the mirror would have snagged the handle and pulled me to the asphalt in a fury. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.
The hours went by and I eventually made it to Santa Barbara unscathed. The visit was worthwhile, as were all of my visits to see cousin Chris. The following day I made a relatively uneventful trip back to Camp Pendleton, this time without splitting any lanes, and for better or worse, my fear of the freeway riding diminished quickly after that.
I began to feel a growing itch to tackle the ultimate beasts of my romantic designs. So, Zach and I began planning a trip to Yosemite for the upcoming Forth of July weekend. Now, if we had done a halfway respectable job of actually planning the trip, we would have likely reserved a campground. Or a hotel. Or something of the sort. But our “planning” likely involved only which routes would be the most scenic and what hand signals we would come to use while communicating on the highways.
Come the day of the trip, the first four or so hours of the ride northwest toward Muir’s granite playground were a slog to say the least. It was a hot day, and I came to understand why so many motorcycles have windshields. Mojave, of course, didn’t offer such protection (I thought it diminished the aesthetic of the bike) and the wind pressing against my chest oriented me to the harsh realities of aerodynamics. For four straight hours my hands grew numb as I gripped heavily onto the handlebars while the bike flirted with 80 mph.
We took the 15, 215, and eventually the 395 that ran parallel alongside The Sequoia National Forest, The Golden Trout Wilderness, Mount Witney, and the John Muir Wilderness respectively. ‘The Wall’ was the soundtrack to much of that portion of the ride, with cascading mountain ranges rising into unseen glories on our left while long unspeaking deserts drug on forever to our right. The vast difference between our separate peripheries was both utterly uncanny and vertigo inducing while the wind continued to push on my chest and the engine continued to purr.
You see, the underlying beauty of riding a motorcycle on the open highway boils down to the vast exposure that one comes to sense all around you. In contrast to driving a car, where you are within a cage and embrace a degree of separation between yourself and the world through which you travel, the motorcycle rider comes to feel as if he is gliding uninhabited through the unbridled and wide-open spaces of the world.
You come to know those spaces better, in a way.
And to me, lucky, lucky me, those wide-open spaces just so happened to be the American West, specifically the Eastern curvature of the Sierra Nevada mountains. While doing so, I came to feel as if I were speaking with God every time I looked to my left, and to my right, and when I felt the painful numbness in my fingers. It penetrated everything that I came to touch and know in those fleeting moments of sudden clarity, and when I came to marinate and examine those thoughts as if to dissect them, they would disappear like a fading dream, and I would look up to see Zach pulling off onto a rest stop at the next exit.
Now like I said, we didn’t exactly plan meticulously for our visit to Yosemite. We figured that we would let serendipity guide us, and we would find a place to camp wherever it’s whims saw fit. And so, as we began to approach the park, we began stopping at each campsite within 50 miles of the park’s entrance hoping to stumble upon a vacant campsite for us to settle into.
But each and every site that we visited was at max capacity. I remember one site manager laughing us out of his office in a thick Jersey accent. “On Fourth of July weekend? Are you insane?! Hey Tony, get a load of this guy,” he yelled across the room as we walked back to our bikes with our tales between our legs.
And so it went for hours. And then the rain came, just as the sun started its flirtation with the western horizon. Things were looking dim, and Zack and I pulled into the same gas station complex where this story began.
We got ourselves some gas station burritos and sat around, not quite sure of what to do next. The rain continued on, it was getting dark, we were 400 miles from our homes, and we hadn’t even a car to sleep in. In a last-ditch effort, Zach approached the cashier to ask if she had any leads on campsites nearby that might be willing to offer us some respite from our predicament. She said that although she didn’t know of any official campsites with vacancy, she had heard of an off-the-grid campsite down the road that some locals had mentioned in passing. All she could say was that it was down the road a couple of miles, and to look for a single lane dirt-road turn-off into the brush.
And so, we got back onto our bikes and followed the bread trail that she had laid out for us. And sure enough, two miles down the road in the direction of the park, a narrow dirt road led off into the darkness of the forest. Now, if this were a horror story (maybe it will be some day), this is where things would turn precarious. But not in the true story of this telling. This time, we followed the road, and found that it led to an utterly gorgeous and uninhabited campsite beside a creek that gurgled just beyond.
We dismounted our steeds and examined our surroundings in disbelief. It was truly providence incarnate, or whatever you want to call it. The rain stopped too, and we began to unravel our effects and pitch our tents for the night to come.
But then, just as we were preparing to settle in for the night, the sounds of an unknown motorcycle approaching threatened to upend our utopian circumstances. Indeed, a lone motorcycle rolled into the campsite. Its engine ceased as it parked a short distance away, and the rider dismounted slowly. Zach and I stood anxiously by, and I even considered reaching for my knife in its sheath nearby. But I decided not to, and instead waited to see what the rider would do. He took off his helmet, and called to us in a friendly albeit heavy Russian accent, “Hello friends! I’ve been searching for a place to camp. Might I share this camp with you?!”
And so, a night of jovial cultural exchange ensued as Zach and I contributed the Jameson and Jack from our Harleys while Oleg pulled Vodka from his BMW. And as we stared into the thousand billion stars that came to replace the clouds that had at last departed, I came to feel lucky that we had let serendipity plan our trip and our humble accommodations for the night. We couldn’t have done it any better ourselves.
Mojave and I went on a handful of other similar adventures together. We camped in Borrego Springs, circumnavigated the Salton Sea, visited Lake Bartlett, and cruised along the beachside in Oceanside more than a few times. The following year, as I was preparing to leave the military, I decided to sell the bike to make room in my debt ceiling for music making equipment. It was a sad day when I signed it over to another young rider, but I was glad to do so with my head still attached and the memories that it had given me.
I doubt I’ll ever get a bike again. I’ve come across too many riders face down in the street to see past the dangers anymore, and my wife Mary has a firm grip on the veto card. But nonetheless, every once in a while when I roll down the window in my (new) Jetta on a particularly beautiful day, I think back to the crisp rumble and fear that dovetailed like rain and sunset on the Eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The end began two days before Halloween 1969 in the city of angels.
The word LOGIN was submitted upon the keyboard, but when researchers at the University of California hit send on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), only the letters “LO’ emerged out the other end. The system had crashed before the entirety of the word could traverse the conduit of the internet’s prototypical ancestor.
If only we had known it for the omen that it was.
But who could have blamed us? After knowing Vishnu’s words in the desert only decades before, any portents thereafter lay toothless beside them.
And yet, like lines from a talentless script, it was the more quiet of the two that eventually did us in. Not the fire of scripture, but the unceasing cacophony of the zeitgeist and its thousand messiahs. Not nuclear winter, but, to quote an oracle borne of the beast itself, “a little bit of everything all of the time.”
And so the tumor grew.
In 1983, the ARPANET transitioned to the internet’s modern protocol known as TCP/IP. In ’89, the world-wide web is born at CERN. And in 1997, SixDegrees.com—the world’s first social media platform—went live to begin seducing us in the perceived permanence of our thoughts.
Sixdegrees became Myspace which became Facebook which became Instagram which became Twitter which became TikTok, and soon, we required not even each other to satisfy our burgeoning lust for audience. Soon, lo and behold, the artificial fountain received our thoughts like pennies while the fountain itself spewed thoughts that we ingested like candies.
We no longer knew silence.
Now, the theologians dance on the box while lovers look up from the gaze of their neon gods only to meet faces cast blue in entrancement. Children grow mad in the minutes that it takes for the batteries of their best friends to charge. Purpose has become a subscription. Meaning birthed by algorithm. Even the favorite gluttonies of our fathers, nationalism and war, have lost their taste.
The exponential growth of our understanding negates all wonder while nihilism competes only with absurdism for prominence in our minds.
In our indifference, abstinence will soon be in vogue. The abstinence of art. The abstinence of endeavor. Abstinence of anything that might risk a moment’s contemplation of our stubborn mortality.
As such, the highest pursuit will be that of technological integration, the absorption of our thoughts into quantum wells of LO so deep that our attentions will never wander nor want. Procreation will become superfluous and cruel. After all, why would we wish to conjure further eyes to witness that which we so vigorously evade? Why activate more thirsty neurons to drain resources from the productions being projected upon the backs of our eyelids?
Before long, we’ll entomb ourselves in metallic sarcophagi to enjoy eons of flittering joys without end, joys programmed to accommodate and distract us from the alternating stages of madness that will become our immortality.
But immortality is a mirage. A boat out to sea. Entropy, as we will eventually remember, is the only immutable rule of the universe. Of existence.
One by one even the stars will die. And eventually, after a span of time incomprehensible, those of us still traversing the silent dark with mirages for eyes will find, some solemn day, no galaxies left to warm us. Only carcasses of dead stars and black holes in accompaniment of eternal night. A right screen to cast our projections. No more distractions; no further ushers to interrupt the cinema grand.
Mad and alone. Decaying and decomposing in the slowest of rivers.
At what point do we pray for the destroyer of worlds?

It was in early March when he went for a solo excursion into the hills surrounding The Somerville Grand. It was shortly after his father had died, and the trip was intended to be a means of processing the resulting void that the death had resulted in him.
On his person he carried provisions for three days, a bedroll, a map, a compass, and Thoreau’s Walden as he went off in whichever direction that best suited him in that moment. After all, he had no itinerary nor intentions beyond getting away and maybe even lost.
And over the course of two days, he succeeded in doing just that.
He ascended a trio of peaks, each with a view more magnificent than the last. He made camp atop two of them, taking advantage of the fair weather that had so far accompanied his travels. It was a miraculous adventure filled with insights into both himself and the world through which he ventured. He made peace with his father and maybe even death itself.
But on the third day, when he made to head in the direction that he had assumed to be the straight arrow back to the Grand, he trekked all afternoon finding no familiar sights. Come dusk, he had begun to suspect that he hadn’t an earthly idea of where he was.
He began to fear that he might have stupidly become one of the nearly sixteen hundred people to get lost in national parks and forests every year.
As such, the following day was filled with dread. He ate the last of his food for breakfast and every subsequent moment offered less and less assurance. Even with his map, wet and dirty as it was, he could only guess which contour lines he was ascending with each forward step.
Terror soon gripped him and in the approaching darkness he began to run through the trees, sprinting in a desperate attempt at escaping the swallowing maw of the forest that held him when suddenly… his feet skid to a stop as a crack of thunder erupted overhead. Before him, nestled between a trio of high boulders, was a hole in the forest’s floor... A cave. He looked to his map, hoping to find it referenced somewhere so as to give his location context, but as he did, he heard it. Singing. Singing as if he’d never heard singing before. Singing of interlacing harmonies that dovetailed with a pitch reminiscent of Mont Saint-Michel itself.
Without thought, without prudence, he neglected his practical pursuits, placed the map into his pocket, and descended the craggy entrance.
At reaching the level floor within, he was met by a long corridor with a rounded roof, like that of a subway tunnel dragging off into the darkness, the singing continuing ever blissfully upon the walls.
It was then that he saw it.
Far off in the dark distance shone a sparkling dot of light. Like that of Jupiter in the early morning. Again, thoughtlessly, he carried towards it, blindly pulled by those heavenly chords growing louder and louder with each step.
When he finally drew near enough to see things clearly, he tried—as best he could—to comprehend what he saw. Hovering in the air, no taller than his face, was a ball of a light so bright that he couldn’t bear to look at it. But that wasn’t all. Directly below it, resting on the jagged face of a boulder… was a book. A tremendous tome. He bent down to pick it up, but just as he did, noticed a shift in his shadow upon the rocky ground. He looked up to discover that the orb ascending upward toward the jagged roof of the cave. And when it met and traversed that ceiling, he was doused in darkness… and silence.
Suddenly, a tremendous, awful fear pressed upon his skin from the depths of the cave. as if something truly awful was peering at him from a silent darkness, now undeterred by heavenly light. As quickly as he could, he carried the book in his arms to steadily retrace his steps out of the cave, guided only by the rapidly fading light of dusk pouring in from its entrance.
When he finally emerged back into the rain, he ambled forward through the trees to make camp under a nearby outcropping of granite. There, he made a meager fire and looked upon the book for the first time. Its cover read Tome of Instruction.
He opened it, and on the very page that he flipped to were specific directions on where to go and what to do. And not just vague instructions, but specific directions from the exact seat from which he read the words.
‘Sleep until morning then face the aspen. Turn 45 degrees to the left and march forward.’
He looked up in the light of the fire to see a lone aspen in the surround foliage. Naturally he was dumbfounded, but in the first light of morning, followed the directions verbatim and marched through the trees. Just as the book had instructed. Just as it said. And after only a few hours of following its directions, he marched into the lobby of the Grand with the book grasped tightly to his chest.
He tucked it away, fearful of its implications.
He tried to forget it. To let it be.
But eventually, as is our affliction as human beings, curiosity got the best of him. He neglected his instinct toward caution and on a sleepless and stormy night, pulled out the tome to again peel back its pages. He couldn’t help but wonder: what directions would it have for him in the safety of his home? What instructions would be given to a man in leisure?
He creaked open its spine to a random page, considering the words that met him in a lightning’s flash.

A faceless crowd descends the staircase grand to fill the chapel across the landing. I am encouraged by their momentum and enter the room. Like cattle into the catch.
A thick haze of frankincense escapes the passage. The cloud is pungent and summons recollections of mass but isn’t so thick as to agitate the lungs or occlude my sight. More than anything it does well to soften the oceanic hue emitted by the sconces upon the walls. Beyond their interruption, the borders of the room appear to be an empty black devoid of accents or artwork.
The room is filled with pews that appear almost normal, although there exists a peculiar cushion atop the backrest of each. As if the pews were designed to allow the occupant to lean their head all the way back. To stare at the ceiling.
The novelty of the pews appear inconsequential to that which next captures my eye. At the far side of the room stands an elevated platform where a figure draped in a long, black cloth sits upon a chair, unmoving.
“Who is that?” I ask aloud, no sound coming from my lips.
I don’t recall sitting but here I am, in furthest back pew. Those seated ahead of me have begun leaning their heads back onto the cushioned headrests to indeed stare up into the jet-black paint of the ceiling.
A priest in dark robes begins to walk through the rows placing coins atop their eyes.
He comes to me. It’s my turn.
“Lean back. Close your eyes. And do not open them until you are instructed to do so.”
I do as he says and soon feel the weight of metal pressing lightly upon my eyelids. His footsteps depart, followed shortly after by the creaking of the pew across the aisle.
What feels like several minutes pass without change. Occasionally, someone clears their throat or adjusts themselves, but silence largely reigns in the room. That is, until a voice ugly and old begins to speak from the far end of the room, likely from atop the rise.
“Breathe in slow… Hold it in and feel the rain… Let it go, and ponder the dirt… Breathe in slow… Hold it in and stand in the river… Let it go, and ponder death… Breath in slow… Hold it in and feel the rain…”
The voice continues, repeating the lines again and again. At first, out of stubbornness, I refuse to engage with the prompts, but as the instructions drag on and on and on and on, I find it easier to do as he says than to refuse him.
I begin pulling in deep breaths when he says to. Exhaling when instructed. Visualizing rain, dirt, a river, and then death.
I’m surprised at the clarity of my imagination.
I’m looking up between rising trees; into a volley of raindrops falling upon and all about me. I vaguely hear splashes as the droplets add to puddles that surround me.
I imagine my relaxed hand dragging its fingers through a soft mound of dirt. I feel the moistness of it as it compresses against my skin, against my muscles dragging pull.
I stand waist deep in a forest’s river. The water is cool and steady as sediment crashes against my bare ankles. A breeze goosebumps my bare chest.
I feel nothing at all. Blissful, empty, nothing. And before I can contemplate the void, I’m back once more beneath the trees and the rain.
“Breathe in slow… Hold it in and feel the rain…”
With each cycle, I know each setting more intimately. More personally. I have known them always and have only forgotten them a short time ago. My skin rebounds like a laughing trampoline with each raindrop’s impact. The dirt becomes my hand. The river’s rushing song echoes against the rocks and the void grows more and more pure. I smell the petrichor. I taste the dirt. I swim in the river and I am, and have always been, death.
Suddenly, the prompts cease but I continue on without them in independence. The journey continues onward in siphon. Rain. Dirt. River. Death. Rain. Dirt. River. Death. RAIN. DIRT. RIVER. DEATH. RAIN. DIRT…
“Open your eyes!” commands the voice as dry as bone, “And witness the glory of the word!”
I am relucent to move. I’d rather stay exactly as I am. But soon, the sound of laughter emanating from all around me encourages me enough to pluck the smooth metal from my eyes and raise my head from its cushioned rest. I’m astonished by what I see.
The hue of the room is no longer aqua but a shifting cascade of color. Contour lines dance upon every surface while the walls themselves breathe in and out. Those in the pews stand and embrace each other in jubilance. Many openly sob. Others dance jigs of happiness in the aisle that parts the pews.
The figure upon the platform is still draped in black cloth but it now stands erect, floating in midair.
I stand, suddenly compelled to approach it. To be nearer its sheet and pull it clean. I am no longer afraid but overwhelmed by the separation that exists between myself and its glory. I find my legs uneasy and I’m forced to lean against the surrounding pews to support my journey. My pilgrimage.
“Ahwyanaseeeeyaaaa!!!” screams a man suddenly writhing against a nearby pew. His face is contorted. His body shakes.
I care not and step forward, toward the figure draped in black, floating off the ground.
Another, a woman, abruptly bolts for the midnight walls and begins to claw at their height, reaching for something unseen above her.
I’m nearly there. From here I can see the billows of air pressing away from the face that covers its face with each breath exhaled. And when it breaths in, the outlines of a strong nose and chin press against the black sheet.
A man sprints across the aisle to attack another, plunging his thumbs into the second’s eyes.
I ascend the rise to a chorus of chaos behind me.
I reach up, grasp the edge of the sheet and pull.

Kill your darlings. Let go of what doesn't serve the story, whether you--the writer--enjoy it or not. It's an important lesson in writing/editing, and one I encounter often, considering my writing style, which is that of an unapologetic pantser running wild without hope nor a care. That's to say, I run into plenty of darlings to cut down as I go. Often times its entire chapters. So instead of erasing these passages that don't otherwise fit this working novel without a proper funeral, I've decided to let them lie here in the subsequent posts of this blog.

Maybe they'll find peace here.