This metal sculpture stands on a bluff overlooking Highway 20 a little west of Burns, Oregon. The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro corrals are just out of sight behind the hill. I always watch for this spot every time we visit family for the holidays. Last week, I snapped this picture through the truck window. (No way I was rolling down that window — it was about 14 degrees out there!)
I like how the mustang looks to be bustin’ out of captivity. I hope you do the same in the New Year.
In December, the Great Basin makes do with a meager palette. I often drive the better part of a day across the frigid “sagebrush ocean” to be with family in Central Oregon for the holidays. Hundreds of miles go by with only a wintry blue sky, the dark brown of volcanic rocks and dormant trees, faint suggestions of green on sage and juniper, wistful tan on the occasional wind-blasted building, and white skiffs of drifted snow. But every so often there’s a settlement — and the color red.
A few years ago, I came across this cheery wreath in Crane, Oregon.
Our family had an unconventional Thanksgiving this year. We hauled our travel trailer to southern Utah in search of longer days and warmer weather. The day before Thanksgiving we went to Zion National Park. We ate a picnic lunch along the Virgin River, then climbed to Angel’s Landing. The sun set before we got back to the valley floor and dusk found us resting at The Grotto.
In the twilight, a flock of turkeys scurried around us. They dashed between the picnic tables, around the parking lot, along the paths, between parked cars. They were everywhere — and in a hurry.
I tried to photograph them but all my pictures came out blurry. Low light, fast birds. At first I was disappointed, but then I thought about Alfred Stieglitz’s idea behind his series of cloud photographs, Equivalents. Stieglitz’s goal in these images was “to record something so completely, that all who see [the picture of it] will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed.” In his case, he introduced the world to the idea of abstract photography. Heady stuff. In my case, I introduced the world to what it’s like being around edgy turkeys at this particular moment. My equivalents, such as they are.
After a half hour of dashing around, the agitated birds began to launch themselves in long low trajectories across the road into the towering cottonwood trees along the river. Bulky forms flapped wildly in the air in front of startled motorhome drivers. Traffic backed up as Japanese tourists tried to capture the turkeys’ awkward ascensions on their camcorders.
One after another, the birds made their way into the lowest branches of the trees and clambered, hopped, climbed, and flapped toward the tops. As darkness settled, the flock roosted above the valley floor — safe in Zion.
Why did I leave Paradise? Well, after Adam and I split the sheets, I couldn’t afford the rent by myself.
Actually, it had nothing to do with Adam. I left Paradise for greener pastures. (Or so I thought at the time.) But a few weeks ago, I returned to my old college town of Santa Barbara after nearly a twenty year absence. I’d forgotten how pleasant life was in Paradise. Strolling the city streets on a warm autumn evening, listening to guitar music wafting from an outdoor café; wandering an uncrowded beach as seals watch from the surf; feasting on fruits and vegetables picked fresh from the garden — it’s not half bad.
But let’s get real — even Paradise has its problems. I remember a few. Things grow well here, maybe too well. Take the humungous avocado tree that loomed over one friend’s tiny bungalow, for instance. We’d pick all the fruit we could reach, but eventually the overripe avos at the top would plummet to the ground. It was dangerous just getting to the front door. We made a helmet for the cat from an empty cottage cheese container but she stubbornly refused to wear it. (She must have had plenty of lives left.) Green slimy goo coated the brick walk until the winter rains finally came. Still, considering how much I love fresh guacamole, I wish I had this nasty avocado problem now.
And what about beach tar? It gets on your shoes, your feet, your swimsuit, your towel, in your hair. (Yuck!) But watching a line of Brown pelicans elegantly surfing the updraft from a breaking wave, while the Channel Islands drift on the horizon, can almost make beach tar inconsequential.
For a few blissful days, I overlooked any trouble in Paradise. I appreciated Santa Barbara more than I had as a college student. Before I left town, I walked along the streets of my old neighborhood, gulping in the scent of jasmine and savoring every colorful bloom, hoarding this sensory candy against the bleak Great Basin winter yet to come. Remembering Paradise still exists might get me through to April.
Fellow craftsmen in life’s work, we are seeking the high, the true, the noble, the beautiful. Stop not in your seeking; rest not in your climbing.
Arroyo Craftsman, October, 1909
The wild Arroyo Seco separates Pasadena from Los Angeles. Coyotes, raccoons, and possums travel its oak-lined, boulder-strewn channel from the San Gabriel Mountains into the heart of the city. The lower stretches of the creek bed were paved to create the nation’s first freeway, but its upper reaches retain the right to flash flood at will. The Arroyo has a strong spirit. I suspect it’s immune to the concrete insults we’ve hurled at it over the past hundred years.
The beauty and spirit of the Arroyo Seco drew artists and writers to its banks in the early 1900’s. My grandfather and great-grandfather fell under its influence. They both worked for Tiffany Studios in New York as stained glass artists before following their vocation to the West Coast as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Along the Arroyo, they found a blossoming artist colony that encouraged them to take their art form to its highest level. They painted with glass and light.
On one of my trips back to Pasadena to explore our family’s past, I found a copy of a journal, Arroyo Craftsman, originally published in 1909. The little quarterly gave me a glimpse into the cultural and spiritual atmosphere surrounding the Arroyo Seco. The artists and craftspeople, both men and women, had formed a creative team they christened “The Arroyo Guild.” They believed in gender equality, democratic self-government, rigorous standards of quality, and the value and creative synergy of working together. It was, and still is, a beautiful vision.
The Arroyo Guild, as an organization, was short-lived but its energy flowed into dozens of receptive channels. Like the roots of an ancient California oak, the guild’s ideas kept spreading and fueling new life. For instance, every October, Pasadena Heritage sponsors Craftsman Weekend to celebrate the indigenous architecture that, in some instances, literally grew out of the Arroyo. Home and neighborhood tours give us a chance to see the context of the work created by the Arroyo Guild members and their contemporaries. But to experience the current flowering of the tradition, you have to visit the exhibit hall at the Pasadena Convention Center.
Welcome to a world without plastic, where everything is made by hand. Your senses slow down to analog speed and your first impulse is to reach out and touch things. There’s an underlying language in this creative work that addresses something deep in our human nature. As it says in that 1909 edition of the Arroyo Craftsman, “… the more true, perfect, beautiful the work you set before your patrons, the more are you helping them to glimpse the world of spirit …” That’s what draws me in, the chance to explore this timeless world together. I can forget the freeways and the cell phone towers. When I immerse myself in this gathering of woodworkers, glass artists, letter-press printers, painters, blacksmiths, fabric designers, and potters, I feel my elders walking with me, savoring the survival of the Arroyo spirit.
At the end of September, my family rendezvoused on Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon. We paddled the canoe trail from Rocky Point to Malone Spring. In this picture, my husband and niece are waiting for us to bring the rest of the gear. What you can’t see are the clouds of little fish swimming beneath the dock and the constant chatter and splashes of the Kingfishers diving from trees along the shore. Although the morning has this calm, dreamlike quality, we are about to embark into an explosion of fish and birds.
Once on the water, we enter the wildlife refuge and become guests in their home. It’s humbling to feel so out-numbered and out-maneuvered by critters. Around every meander, flocks of birds take off or watch us steadily as we slip by. Ibis, egrets, herons, ducks, geese, pelicans, and eagles feast on marsh plants and fish. Fish leap skyward after insects. Columns of insects spiral above us, glowing in the sunlight against the deep shadows of the forest. Dragonflies mate, fight, and crash into the water. Everywhere we look, the sky animals plunder the aquatic world and the water animals snatch their meals from the air.
We float tenuously amid their give and take, a temporary obstacle to work around — or make use of. Fish fry hide in the shadows of our boats while dragonflies ride along until their wings dry and they rise to fight again.
I look up as a pelican cruises ten feet above our heads, its wingspan as long as the kayak. I wish I could hitch a ride on the pelican’s back and gain an aerial view of the marsh’s twisting channels, but I’m a creature whose access to this world comes from inventiveness, not natural adaptation. I’m tethered to my little boat and can only imagine the perspectives of the creatures above and below. But on a quiet autumn day, paddling for miles, there’s space and time enough to dream our way into a wilder life.
