California Dreaming

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We left San Fransisco in early afternoon and headed over the Golden Gate Bridge and up twisty Highway One. With eucalyptus trees scenting the air like a big cough lozenge, we stopped for views at the first place where the road found the edge of the cliff.    The point had a complete view back to the city and north to Point Reyes.  We were joined by two  ladies who were still using film in their cameras, and three giggling chicas taking pictures with their I-Phones, who were from Dominican University, only about ten miles away.  Of course we all  traded cameras to take pictures of each other.

Heading north, past Stinson Beach, at the visitor center for the Point Reyes National Seashore we got a permit for a hike-in campsite.  We then went to the trailhead and packed our backpacks for the two mile, one night expedition.  This was ultralight backpacking!


We hiked through the grassy, sandy hills to the campsites close to the beach, throwing our backpacks into the metal boxes provided for raccoon protection, and headed down to the water for the sunset that was fast approaching.  What a beautiful scene, with crowds of sandpipers and dowitchers on the shore and no houses as far as the eye could see.

The few other campers all came down to watch the sun sink into an pumpkin puddle.

We went back to the campsite and set up the tent and cooked dinner by headlamp.  The air was still warm and the moon was up.  It was easy to sleep well in our flyless tent, looking through the screened roof at the stars.


The next morning we caffeinated and went back to the beach.  I ducked into the water which was cold but nothing like Oregon cold.  Robert waded and thought about getting all the way in but never quite made it.   We sunbathed in various states of undress, and I tried to capture the scene with colored pencils.   Then late in the morning we went back to pack up and head out.  Getting back to the campsite, where I had left my backpack on the table, I found that my wallet had been rifled and my money was on the ground.  A five dollar bill had two corners chewed off.  The dread raccoons had struck!  We hiked back to the car, meeting several locals coming in take advantage of the rare October sun and heat.  Then we headed for Sonoma and Harbin Hot Springs.




Reading about Point Reyes in the giveaway newspapers in the local stores, I learned that this place was saved for my public use as a result of a familiar struggle.  First, a developer declares that he wants to build hundreds of houses and a small brave band of citizens tries to stop him.  Locals are divided between those who can't understand why anyone would want this land and those who love it.  The National Seashore designation came in 1962.  We spent less than twenty-four hours there, but could have easily stayed a week.

On the Road Again

I’ve just been traveling by car through the top half of California for the last two weeks and have seen enough beautiful interesting places to talk about for weeks to come.  But given that we are in election time, I feel the need to speechify against the nabobs of negativism that seem to have gained the rhetorical upper hand.

What a great place we have!  I haven’t done the carbon footprint math yet, but I have to say the USA has great roads.  Maybe we don’t always appreciate how you can get from here to there, mostly on cruise control, but it keeps us tied together in ways the internet can never do.  And wherever I went, there were road construction projects financed by — Stimulus Money, that’s what.  Just look for the ARRA sign, indicating the funding and realize the a whole lot of people are working on the one thing we Americans really depend on, giving our vehicles a smooth ride.

Yosemite was the first place on our itinerary, and because the weather was rainy and cold for the first few days, I had more reason than usual to use all the amenities of this great National Park.  There are a lot of people employed in that park, gladly warning you of bear hazards, and patiently entertaining all manner of anxious questions about the weather, road closures, bus routes and camping reservations.  Although when we came back the fifth time to the wilderness permit office to return the bear cannister we has thought we needed but then realized we wouldn’t need, the ranger banned us from returning for at least a day.  If this is government excess, then we are all a lot better off for it. And by the way, Yosemite is beautiful and spectacular, even in the rain and more so in the brilliant sun that finally appeared.

Next we went to San Fransisco, where every block seems to have ten restaurants and tourists from all over the world were spending freely.  We happened to tour Alcatraz Island on Columbus Day and were nonplussed by how the welcoming presentation glossed over the Indian occupation of the island in 1969 and 1970 as a necessary prerequisite for the better economic opportunities now offered to Native Americans through casinos.  However, the audio tour of the island, actually paints a fair picture of the misery of the prison, or at least as much as the average person can stand to hear about.  It is one of the many chapters of our history that we have belatedly started to come to terms with.  Overhearing comments of several visitors talking about the hard time they had done elsewhere and how Alcatraz compared, I thought how education is valuable in so many different ways.

The next day we went to Golden Gate park, to visit the serene Japanese Tea Garden and the impressive de Young museum.  Although admission prices everywhere started to add up, I accepted this as part the American “you get what you pay for” mentality.   We were kinda ripped off by one cab ride but entranced by another, who gave us a short history of the city from 1968 to the present day as he experienced it, and then said we were his last fare of the day (at one in the afternoon) and he was going home for a beer.  Isn’t this the way travel is supposed to be?  Disappointment around one corner sets up amazement for the next turn of the road.

There are more places to tell about, but the real story of this trip for me is that despite the impression you get from the media, every part of this country has its own unique geography and history.  The fact that this is true proves that we are doing something very right.   I was also very glad to see that Robert’s “smart phone” didn’t work very many places, and for the most part we were at the mercy of the place we were at.  Which always turned out better than we expected.

From The Dry Side

Desert Conference 25

It used to be at Malheur Field Station,
with hospital beds, communal showers, water laced with arsenic.
We went as penance for living high on the hog somewhere else.

There were no comfortable chairs, no air conditioning,
we sought refuge outside and gathered late at night
and early morning in the Greasewood Room to tame our addictions.

Though we suffered long lines in the cafeteria, there was bird watching
at refuge headquarters,  and rendezvous at the flagpole
to plan strategy or head off together up Coyote Butte.

There were arguments about wilderness,
ranchers raging about coyotes,
and management plans that killed one animal to multiply another.

I always fell in love, with some handsome man whose
eyes glittered in sunset and words were passionate
about something living with sagebrush

I always stopped at Glass Butte for obsidian,
at Safeway for snacks, and at the first sightings
of yellow headed blackbirds or sandhill cranes.

I saw big horn sheep up Home Creek canyon,
I piled into a car for Malheur hotsprings at midnight
and woke at dawn to see sage grouse at their lek.

This year the conference was held at Big Muddy Ranch,
lately owned by Young Life, formerly by the Bhagwan.
I tried not to feel menace in the swarms of teens cheering their food.

But when we hiked out towards the John Day river,
into the tan September grass and the scrolling hills
I could not fault our location.

In the desert our handiwork is most obvious,
each road or radio tower or fenceline
is our fault and job and joy to remove.

I came from New York, informed only by a song
about home on the range where deer and antelope play.
All these years, it still sings to me.

Catholic Upbringing

Circumnavigation of Ross Island

Once there was an island, home of bald eagle, osprey and muskrat,
but man got there and started sorting the sand and gravel into piles and hauling it all away
digging deep into the belly of the island,until only a question mark is left,
just enough land for a fringe of trees,
just enough to reveal a beach at summer’s end.

We put in the kayaks by the science museum
repurposed from a steam generating plant, now prettified
with a bright red smokestack.  The water is smooth
as we paddle upstream, under bridges, past the gravel
conveyor, and pilings from the old days when logs tethered
in rafts waiting to be towed downstream to a mill.

Now there is clever graffiti and a few tents of the homeless
and Sunday cyclists on the bikepath, although a dull roar
belies the idyllic scene, droning from vehicles passing over the bridges
and down  I-5 and McLoughlin boulevard, plus the occasional
closer whine of a waterskiing boat.

Nonetheless, it is lovely to be on the water in the sun.
An osprey circles, a big fish jumps, a dozen white sails
follow each other in a circle, surrounding an instructor,
it is enough to make anyone happy and I am
And yet,  there is doubt that this  redeemed waterway
is proof of recovery or an incongruency
in the greater story of human decay.

When we come back to the dock the same sunbather
is there as when we launched.   He is thin and gray haired,
stretched out next to his bicycle, wearing only a thong.
He could be a nudist without a suitable beach, but his gaunt
skeleton reminds me of the depiction of Jesus taken down
from the cross, a warning
for the acts of contrition to come.

9/13/10

Getting Warmer

Ribbon of Highway

Trees, rivers, clouds, mountains;
elements repeat in random combination
next to slippery lines of vehicles
following each other at furious speed
up and down the Northwest corridor.

There are big and little boxes of humanity
crowded around nodes of population, but the blur
of the drive between Portland and Vancouver
is still the leafy comforter of nature.

I calculate my carbon dioxide production
to be five hundred pounds there and back,
for reasons I call necessary, but I feel guilt.
It seems like plants will save us from ourselves
right up to the moment they can’t.

9/11/10

Late For The Sky

Termination of the Biologic Imperative

The world has had its way with me,
a long descent under a parachute of experience,
billow of stories, and harness of expectation,
now collapsed, packed away, small as a tampon,
restored intrauterine,  the end to all that.

The world has had its way with me
and I have stuck to my bargain, producing offspring
inoculating against despair, launching into air,
but now I am depleted, infected with age
ready to reconceive myself as a crone.

Soon my world will be riddles and weeds,
devoted to potions from rocks and animal cries
singing long songs of historical lament
tatting doilies of complicated verse.

The world is heedless of our slow passing,
we are embodied only to embody another
cognition mere hobby beside the genetic,
happiness a mutation of stubborn irrelevance.

9/2002 and 2010.

Ironing

The use of an iron to smooth and flatten clothes is fast disappearing.  I feel like an old lady as I spend ten minutes most mornings, ironing my clothes before work.  However, I was surprised to find that a slightly older friend  uses an even more archaic implement, a mangle, to dewrinkle her larger home fabrics.  Her household revelation caused great interest on Facebook, though I doubt a rush of mangler companies started sending ads to her sidebar.

My use of the iron started early, when Mom assigned me pillowcases and napkins for my beginning attempts.  I remember her equipment included a soda bottle filled with starch water, topped with a piece of nylon  stocking secured with rubber bands.  I think this was to sprinkle on the clothes to impart some stiffness to the cotton fabrics that constituted the majority of our clothes.  Later, the invention of starch in a spray can replaced this homemade tool..

Mom must have done mountains of ironing, but early on, Dad decided to take his work shirts to the cleaners.  Whether this was because of his dissatisfaction with her results or her complaint over the labor I don’t know.  It always seemed a touch of fastidiousness on his part but led to a ready supply of smooth shirt cardboard for art projects.

Ironing has its pleasures, including the smell of hot cloth, the exciting steam expulsions and the heady risk of scorch.  It also has its artistry; the rhythm of collar, cuffs, back and sides, the careful placement of crease and pleats and the expert adjustments of temperature for different kinds of cloth.

The younger generation rarely irons, which grows less and less necessary with all the various artificial fibers and no-iron finishes.  There is also a lot of wrinkling that you can avoid with careful attention to the drying process.  But ironing may just be another type of housework which has succumbed to the reality of the working woman, with little deleterious results.  Unlike the demise of homecooking, I do not see a revival in well-ironed tea towels coming any time soon.