I looked ahead and all I could see was daybreak, blazing and mostly yellow but with reds and blues, hiding thousands of hammers and a highway, which I needed to ram myself between to get to the next moment. I could not turn away from the daybreak knowing that was where I was to belong, in the fields of labor, machines, and crude.
This morning I found myself on Stockdale Highway at 5:45 AM. It was time to go to work and Catherine (my stumpjumper) and I were half awake and plodding into the state Truck. I had left too late, not getting to take the customary shower and egg sandwich, not all ready for the toil ahead. Six AM to Six PM everyday was a far cry from my cush 30 hour work week in Sacramento, and the rigors of Sactown politics had nothing on the rigors of the west Kern heat.
I began Bakersfield without ceremony, casually discarding Davis for a lifestyle that would have mocked my former self. I know soon there will be weeks where I drive 200 miles a day, moving between oil fields all over the lower Central Valley. I will make jokes with contractors and I will watch them drill and fill the earth's crust. I will filter my ears to the cruel words I will hear. I will accept that the things I grew to love and find routine - compost, recyling, bicycling, making, and repairing would become very difficult. I will accept living alone. I will accept being afraid. I will accept locking, hiding, doubting, and driving.
So I ride my bike to work. It's almost a farce, biking four miles to work when I'm going to drive 200 miles today at work, in 100 degree weather. I drive and I drive to keep a system that destroys and pollutes from polluting more. It's hopeless and foolish. It's why I got involved with environmental work - I wanted to know failure. I wanted to take on a task that was impossible. I wanted to carry an atlas on my back and have it break me into pieces, so I would know that I was unable to do it alone. Bakersfield is the place for this.
I thought about the number of times I was lucky. The number of times I was greedy. The number of times I was where I shouldn't have been, the times I used the darkness of college towns to hide. There's no darkness in the Western Kern. There is just dirt, oil, orchard, and metal. Production. It's not hidden like it is in Long Beach. Apologized for like it is in Ventura. Glamourized like it is in Texas. Suffocating like it is in West Virgina. It is in Bakersfield, and you see everything that comes with it - Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose. It's alot of people draining all the black they can about of Bakersfield (75% of California's production) and not saying thank you.
I never wanted this life. I wanted to work with oilmen, to watch the company man suit his rig, to watch the toolpusher check his accumulators, to stand on top of a three story worldkiller. But you know what? Now I'm here, and you can criticize me while you drive, look at your iphone, watch TV, get something out of your refridgerator, and complain about you subsidized food, gas, houses, and health. Criticize me all you want, because like you, I've not found a way to live without Bakersfield's black gold.
Now I'm in Bakersfield. I've agonized over this like nothing in my life. College decisions were easy, Riverside was close to home and was free, Davis had the domes and a new life. I've always taken the path of least resistence. Bakersfield? Nothing is comfortable. The sunlight is blazing, complete blinding. And it's what I'm riding into now.
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