"Thanks," I said, neither conceding nor denying her powers.
Shivering, we dried and dressed, and clambered down the mountain: We joined the people at the campfire between the pool and the resort ruins. We chatted with the twenty-odd residents of the ruins, smoked a little dope. Yana borrowed a pair of jeans from one of the residents. I met an AWOL soldier who was traveling through in a VW bus. With him were his wife and a tiny baby and a hitchhiker they had picked up earlier in the day. When they left to find a place to camp that night, Yana and I went with them.
Across the ravine was another loose cluster of permanent camps-one old farmhouse, a converted chicken coop, shacks, and sod houses, Beyond them was a string of transient campers where we set up camp with another group we met. We made a fire and ate beans, fried rice, bread and tomato soup, and we drank coffee. I walked back across to the springs to bum a smoke. Someone gave me a package of Bugler and papers which I took back to the group.
Yana and I found an abandoned VW bus to sleep in. It was windproof and warm and had some extra bedding in it. As she unrolled her bedroll she said. "Look, I forgot that I didn't have my baby with me anymore. "Rolled up inside her sleeping bag was an empty baby bottle and an assortment of second-hand and home-made baby clothes in faded, dull-colored plaids and paisleys.
"See, I'm still going through changes." she said. "It's been a long time since I was without my baby. I'm going to have to get used to it."
Yana was quite disappointed to find unbeautiful people living in her old commune. The group around the hot springs especially; there were a few winos and a moron Indian. She frequently ran "niggers" down. Earlier, I had tactfully tried to get her explanation of why she spoke so badly of some people.
"I'm an open hole" she said.
"How do you mean?"
"Like, when an idea comes into my head from-" she waved her hand over her head-"I don't think about it or reject it. I just let it flow on through. But it's not me." She paused.
"I mean, not really me."
The next morning, she asked me what I was going to do. I said I'd probably hang around the commune awhile. She said she thought she would go somewhere else and look for her husband. She exchanged her sleeping bag for a smaller one that was in the bus and left before breakfast. As we were splitting up, we wished each other luck.