yeah this has to be the spot, although the golf course threw me off for a minute until i realized it was built in 07. they are thirty year old memories, but with a little logical deduction i conclude that it has to be it. first i remember it wasn’t too far from the apartment, and that it was down the street from where my girlfriend lived. other than that i have two very lucid memories of getting there; at the end of that street where the court is, there was a chain linked fence we had to jump to start up the hill toward the rocks. now it looks open and accessible, although i’m not even sure if it’s private property or not. i don’t think it is because the area is accessible from santa teresa park, and google maps is showing very well worn trails around the area today. thirty years ago none of that was there.
anyway this spot had almost mythological significance for us. for one thing it was up at the top of the only visible hills from the south san jose valley. that little vein of hills (basically santa teresa park) was all we had… all we could get to on foot, anyway, and none of us had licenses or cars. but that vein of hills was visible from any point in town… so it was THE mountain, as far as those hills could be called mountains.
now from the google view it looks like a cluster of rock formations. you can probably scale the relative size of the area in your head to get an idea of what it would be like to stand there. but the uniqueness of the formation was that it was perfectly suitable for a dwelling area. the rocks were so perfectly placed that they were almost like pieces of furniture of structures built for a purpose in mind; here to sleep, there is where the fire goes, here is where we sit and look down on the valley, etc.
the one particular incident i wish to relate to you at this juncture involves a story about three friends deciding to run away from home and… well, ‘live’ there at the rocks. no like literally; move in as if it were an apartment.
school was out and none of us had jobs (i was fifteen, too young to have a job), so running away wouldn’t be an incredibly bad violation. i mean the punishment wouldn’t be as bad because it isn’t like you’re skipping school or work. this enabled us to come to the unanimous decision that it would be feasible to run away… that the consequences wouldn’t be severe enough to deter us from pursuing our established ends; that we would colonize the rock formation annnnnd what… just… hang out there all day? wait we were fifteen man. you don’t think that far ahead when you’re fifteen. it didn’t matter that in one week, we’d be walking home dirty, smelling like a camp fire, sore from sleeping on rocks, hungry and covered with poison ivy. don’t spoil the adventure with a reality check.
and this brings me to the defining moment of the adventure… the one image i remember most clearly… in fact i am seeing it right now in my head as if it just happened. i think it was on day two or three that i woke up as the sun was rising and as i stepped down from my sleeping spot, i saw a sight to behold. something magical - and perhaps the cause of this recent nostaligic obsession i have with the place (i went through an identical obsession in 2014) - the feature that has given the place and my experience of it it’s mythological quality was what i saw in that field just south of the rocks about thirty yards or so. it was probably almost six o’clock (i’d guess) because the sun was just appearing east of him.
down in the field was adam, shirtless in jeans with a stick (like a staff) chasing after a small herd of deer. but there’s more. adam had his t-shirt tied around his head like a turban or something… and adam was fat. not just chubby. well just chubby in some places but basically fat, quantitatively. and he had a serious t-shirt tan… when the tan stops at the sleeves an collar. and where he wasn’t tan, he was incredibly pale.
so get the scene in your head if you can. you have to use the map image and impose yourself there in the rocks looking south at adam the pale fat kid with his t-shirt tied around his head running around chasing deer with a stick (techincally a ‘hunter’s staff’) thirty yards to the south.
here’s the thing though. that’s not even the funniest part. the deer were like fucking with him… they weren’t running away, see… they were zig-zagging around as he approached but they didn’t leave the area. it was as if they knew, collectively, that it was only adam with his hunter’s staff and they need not be afraid. or we could even play with him a little bit. get him running around and see if we can make him trip.
the housing development there to the immediate south didn’t exist either. all that was open field.
yeah, i’m sure of it. this is the place. the red dot marks the place i beheld the sight that early 1990 spring morning.
