by Neil Peart
I bet you do. Though you’ve always been more tolerant than I have.
Is that the word? I still tolerate a lot, probably more than ever, but that doesn’t mean I accept, admire, or appreciate what I see. I just try to put up with it.
Oct. 27, ’99 Death Valley
[sticker with photo of Death Valley landscape] — Manley Peak, from Zabriskie Point, of course, and at the top left is Telescope Peak (snowy that day, apparently, but not today).
It began with a 65-mile ride over ever-worsening road; from the good paved state highway, to narrower, lumpier pavement, to a graded gravel road, then for the last few miles, to ungraded, aggressively vertical gravel. Just like that Hunter Mountain Road, with sand, gravel, rocks, ruts, and perilous curves (“curvas peligrosas”) above steep dropoffs. (Signed “High-Clearance 4-Wheel Drive Only” — ha!)
And that was just to get to the trailhead, at 8,000 feet. Then seven miles on foot up to the summit, through ascending ranges of sage, then juniper, then pinyon pine, mountain mahogany (another tree, like the giant sequoias and ponderosa pines, that needs fire to germinate), limber pine above 9,000 feet, and finally, the ancient bristlecone pines, above 10,000 feet.
The summit itself was pretty much bare, jagged rock (though it felt pretty comfortable to lay on by the time I got there), with only a few grasses. But the view, of course, was stupendous. The whole valley so far down, the white floor around Badwater (the part they call the “chemical desert”), and the oasis of Furnace Creek just a tiny green smudge. And far below to the west, Panamint Valley, with its brown furrowed mountains, heaping of sand dunes at one end, the highway across it invisible except to my imagination, and somewhere way over there, Father Crowley Overlook.
Now, though, I’m tired and sore. Coming down was once again nearly as tough as going up — except it was easier to breathe, at least. At one point, I was enumerating my pains as I walked: neck, shoulders, back, lower back, hips, thighs, hamstrings, knees, calves, ankles, and, especially, feet. (Waaah!) But I made it without needing a helicopter rescue.
And at least there was no way to drive up there, so I only shared the experience with two other guys, who likewise sat quietly, ate their lunches, and looked around (I got one of them to take my photo, for proof), and I passed one other hiker on my way down. Checking the trail-log at the bottom I noticed that, on average, three people signed in every day, though some admitted they hadn’t made it to the top.
Now, my brain is as tired as my body (all that thinking while I did all that walking) so I look forward to shutting it down for awhile in L.A. (ha!), and also heaping abuse upon my too-healthy body. That’s enough “training,” sayin’?
And there, I shall also certainly be speaking to you, so I’ll save something for us to talk about. I was thinking today that one reason I’ve been doing so much letter-writing lately is that I’ve been staying in a better class of places, where the restaurants tend to have dimmer lighting. No good for reading, but okay for scribbling my heart out to you!
And now, after I tell you that I had corn and crabmeat chowder, Southwestern grill, with a petit filet, chicken, and shrimps with appropriate sauces and salsas, a glass of Benziger Cabernet, Indian River peaches with ice cream, coffee, cognac, and lots of water . . . I’ll leave you alone.
Look forward to talking to you, muchacho, and hearing “wassup” with you.
From Death Valley, where the Ghost Rider does his laundry (where else better?), I bid you Buenos Noches.
G.R.
And did I but know it . . .
As I stood at the summit of Telescope Peak, Death Valley was before me, but Death Valley was behind me too. Yet again, big changes were on the horizon.
changes never end hope is like an endless river the time is now, again
CEILING UNLIMITED, 2001
Chapter 18
EPILOGUE: EVER AFTER
Love is born with solar flares
From two magnetic poles
It moves toward a higher plane
Where two halves make two wholes
THE SPEED OF LOVE, 1993
In less than a day I was in Los Angeles; in less than a week Andrew introduced me to Carrie, my real angel of redemption; in less than a month we were deeply in love, and in less than a year we were married in a fairy-tale wedding near Santa Barbara.
Carrie:
Beautiful, smart, cultivated, artistic, affectionate;
Deep green eyes, long dark hair, radiant smile;
Tall, slender, shapely, nicely put together;
Half English, half Swedish, all American, all mine.
The answer to a prayer I hadn’t dared to voice, or even dream. Carrie. A friend, a soulmate, a lover, a wife, a new journey to embark upon, the greatest adventure.
Though even after we met I resisted this unlikely salvation for awhile, feeling myself by then to be still little more than a burned-out husk. That metaphor can also be stretched to embrace “once burned,” and all that, and I guess this little baby soul had been burned more than once. But the East African people have a different saying about that, “Wood that has burned once is easier to set aflame.” Or maybe it was more like the seeds of the ponderosa pine or sequoia, which must be touched by fire before they can produce new life.
After our first, awkward meeting at a Hollywood restaurant with Andrew and his date, Carrie and I were brought together again later that week by Andrew (a determined little matchmaker) for a hike in Topanga State Park with him and his dog, Bob, an amiable Jack Russell terrier. Carrie and I walked together the whole way (Andrew discreetly ahead with Bob: our chaperones) and talked about the world and our lives in it. But stubbornly, I still refused to consider this “dating,” or that I was supposed to do anything, and the next day I continued blithely on my travels.
A week or two later, I somehow found myself circling back toward Los Angeles, and Carrie and I had our first date alone together at a restaurant in Laguna Beach, then drinks over at the Ritz Carlton. Again, we talked comfortably, growing friendly but not “flirty,” until one moment when I chanced to see her from across the restaurant — that single, unforgettable glimpse of her unguarded face would stop time, and change everything. One telling moment melted my cool resolve and beckoned me back to the land of the loving.
But again, with a typical lack of self-awareness, I rode away (Carrie by now calling me her “conquistador,” forever donning my black leather armor and riding off on my steed in search of adventures), and again I found myself wanting to circle back. This time I was less able to resist this woman’s undeniable “rightness,” and after a two-day visit to Santa Monica, where Carrie lived, it was all over for the Ghost Rider.
Still, the “conquistador” rode away again. Steven and I had arranged to meet in Tucson in mid-December to go Baja-bashing in his father-in-law’s Hummer (a whole other story), but I couldn’t stop thinking about Carrie. A few days into that trip I phoned her and asked her to meet me in Cabo San Lucas for a weekend. Then, once Steven and I had successfully “killed off ” Christmas, I flew back to the house on the lake, and Carrie joined me there to ring in the new millennium with ardent love and hope aflame.
In January 2000, I moved to Santa Monica to be with Carrie, for she had a budding photographic career there, while I had only — her. I often had that “caught in a whirlwind” feeling once again, my emotions soaring toward a newfound joy one day, then diving into the old familiar misery the next, but the tendency was all upward, and I committed myself to building a new life with Carrie. I had found my little baby soul’s true salvation, and once again I wanted to live forever. I joined the local YMCA, started yoga classes, stopped smoking, and even cut way down on my drinking. Anything can happen, and sometimes that’s good.
On September 9, 2000, our families and closest friends gathered in the garden of a villa in Montecito, a day of sunshine, flowers, music, champagne, and dancing; a day of happiness, laughter, and triumph. For those who had helped me survive that long, lonely, road,
like my parents, Geddy and Alex, Ray, Liam, Sheila, and Brad and Rita, there was so much joy.
As I stood under the arch of white flowers before the ceremony, the orchestra playing before Carrie’s grand entrance, I looked out over the group of well-dressed, smiling guests, then behind to the trees and the blue expanse of the Pacific. For a moment, I thought about all that had brought me there, and my face began to crumble. But it was only a moment, a little turning point of realization, and then of peace, and I smiled with pride and happiness as I stepped down to the grass to take Carrie’s hand.
And now, as I bring this tale to a close, it is January 2002. For a year I have been back working with Geddy and Alex in a small recording studio in Toronto, composing, arranging, and recording a new Rush album called Vapor Trails. The title grew out of a metaphor which first appeared in a letter to Hugh Syme, in the summer of 1999, as an off-handed reference to the ghosts of memory.
The song “Vapor Trail” was also one of the first lyrics I wrote for the project, for the first few songs I worked on necessarily had some philosophical and emotional “baggage” to sort through. Songs like “Sweet Miracle” and “Earthshine” reflected the joy of my new life, and then I moved on to less personal, more conceptual themes.
Carrie still had her life and work in Santa Monica, and we had made our home there, but we didn’t want to be separated too much, so throughout the year she and I commuted between our townhouse in Santa Monica and a rented apartment in Toronto — her introduction to the dislocations of a musician’s life (and a musician’s wife).
With wonderful serendipity, Brutus was released on parole in January 2001, and started working at a photo studio in Toronto just as I arrived there. Once again we were best friends who could actually see each other, and the “letters to Brutus” written from lonely restaurant tables and distant motel rooms were replaced by evenings spent together, talking of where we had been, where we were, and where we hoped we might be going. Even dreaming of travelling together again one day.
Jackie’s brother, Steven, remained a close friend (though distant, living in darkest Ohio); Keith continued to keep the house on the lake perfect for us (despite the rarity of our visits amid all that work and travel), and the only one who still seemed to have trouble letting me “move on” was Deb. We kept trying to heal the breach between us, but when I told her I was engaged to Carrie she seemed to feel abandoned, betrayed, and cut off from the memories we had shared, and reacted with an emotional letter that drove us farther apart. Even then, both of us tried to keep communicating as best we could, and Carrie even agreed to meet with Deb in hopes of helping her to accept the way things were now, but maybe it was one gap between past and future that could never be bridged. Still, we kept trying.
And I continued trying to build my own bridges, trying to put my experiences into words, as both continuing “therapy” and attempts at resolution. After a few weeks in the studio, I had a handful of lyrics finished, and wanted to let Alex and Geddy put some of them to music before I continued, so I started looking through my journal notes and letters from my travels. Before I knew it, I was working on the impossible task of translating all that material, and all I had survived, into this book. It was another long process, sometimes painful and always difficult, but it seemed to help me lay my ghosts to rest. The healing continues.
With that in mind, I look back to another turning point, a late afternoon soon after I moved to Santa Monica. I stood alone on the Santa Monica Pier looking out to sea, thinking of all that had happened, and how miraculously my life had turned completely around again. I thought about all those restless, often miserable miles (55,000 of them) I’d covered between the dock on Lac St. Brutus and that pier overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And the distance my little baby soul had travelled on that Healing Road too, from sitting on that dock with a cigarette and a Scotch and seeking meaning in a pair of duck-shaped rocks across the lake.
It occurred to me that all of my “characters” had found their separate redemption there too, and that I was gradually reuniting into one focused entity. The Hollywood party boy, Ellwood, was happy to have moved to California, like he always wanted to, and to be romancing a beautiful woman every single day (and night) of his life. John Ellwood Taylor, the wandering bluesman, was content to hang up his blues and sing a happier song for awhile, while little Gaia, our 14-year-old “inner girl,” was all aglow with misty emotion and romantic poetry. Only one of us had no place in this sunny new world: the Ghost Rider.
As I stood on the Santa Monica Pier, the unofficial end of Route 66, the “Ghost Road,” I saw that it was a fitting place to entertain the sudden realization that the Ghost Rider’s road ended there too. A hermit no more, a gypsy no more, a splintered personality no more; I was growing into one man again (though no longer a man alone), with joy and meaning in my life, passing the days and nights in a place where I belonged — beside the woman who loved me so well. Carrie.
I had found my place of rest and redemption, and the Ghost Rider’s work was done. He could keep on riding now, right off the end of that pier, into the sunset.
And if the music stops
There’s only the sound of the rain
All the hope and glory
All the sacrifice in vain
If love remains
Though everything is lost
We will pay the price,
But we will not count the cost
BRAVADO, 1991
ACKNOWLEDGEMEMTS
Some of life’s journeys must be undertaken alone, but no open highway can soothe a battered soul like the open hearts of caring people. I wish to take this opportunity to formally thank the family members and friends who cared for me when I could not: my parents, Glen and Betty, sisters Judy and Nancy, brother Danny and his wife Janette, Deb and Mark, Steven and Shelly, Keith, Brutus and Georgia, Brad and Rita, David and Karen, Paul and Judy, Ray and Susan, Sheila, Pegi, Geddy and Nancy, Alex and Charlene, and Liam and Sharyn.
On the road, I was given hospitality and welcome diversion by some of the above, as well as by Dan and Laurie, Gump, Trevor, Nathalie, the Williams Family, Freddie, Rob and Paul, Andrew (Our Benefactor), the Hollywood ex-pats, the Rich family, the Nuttall family, and those who more directly helped to shape these pages: Lesley Choyce, Mark Riebling, and my brother Danny, who gave me astute and valuable advice. Paul McCarthy’s editorial genius was unstintingly sympathetic, encouraging, insightful, and incisive, and drove me to keep trying to make my story deeper and richer.
My motorcycle and I would like to extend our special appreciation to BMW of Salt Lake, Iron Horse in Tucson, Shail’s and John Valk in Vancouver, and McBride Cycle in Toronto.
Sometimes I can almost sustain the high-minded sentiment that it was worth the pain of losing Jackie and Selena for the joy of having known them. I don’t know if I will ever be able to embrace that notion, but the important thing is that I embrace today — the joy of knowing Carrie, and the inspiration of being loved by her. Without her, Vapor Trails would not have been made, and this book would not have been written.
“Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.”