Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Night Horse

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One of the entertainers we’ve invited to Shooting the West this year is Brenn Hill, a singer/songwriter out of Hooper, Utah. My favorite song he sings is “Night Horse”, written by fellow cowboy Chuck Pyle. The song describes what can happen when cattle stampede in the dark. The cowboys mount up in a hurry and run with the herd until the cattle tire. Then, if they’re lucky, they can turn the herd back toward home.

But finding home can be a tricky proposition when you’re too far away to see the campfire and all around you it’s black as cats. So the chorus of the song tells the cowboys …

Turn it over to your night horse

Let him bring you back on home to the fire.

Now your night horse probably isn’t the flashiest horse in the remuda, but it’s the one with a sixth sense about where he is, and where he’s supposed to be. As Chuck Pyle says about one such horse …

He must use somethin’ other than his eyes

Whatever birds fly south on

I guess that’s what he counts on

Little Joe could carry me through to sunrise.

I once had a horse I could trust like that. He was black, with a white star on his forehead. Every time I hear the Night Horse song, I think of that old gelding. When I imagine riding through a dark night, miles from home, it’s not my horse’s abilities I question. It’s my own. Could I give the horse his head and lean back in the saddle? There’s always the temptation, as soon as I’m not certain of the direction things are heading, to snatch up those reins again. You know what I mean?

I’ve been working on that. It says on the quarter in my pocket, “In God We Trust.” That takes more practice than I care to admit, but I do realize the value in trusting someone other than oneself — beyond oneself. God makes a good night horse. Chuck Pyle’s song reminds me I’m not alone on the journey. When I trust, the reins lay slack.

(The illustration comes from a rubber stamp I picked up a few years ago. Thanks to “MD,” whoever you are.)

Echoes of the Arroyo Guild

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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.

Web Journals

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I started keeping journals as a teenager. The first one had a flowery pink cover but eventually I settled on these basic black sketch books. They were tough enough to pack around and even had archival pages — in case I accidentally wrote something worthy of posterity.

Most of my journals are tucked away in storage, so I’m not sure how many there are — maybe twenty? Thinking about them makes me smile. I’m looking forward to reading them again when I’m really really old and have nothing else to do.

Feeling as fondly as I do about my “real” journals, I’m a bit ambivalent about writing journal entries on the web. They seem so ephemeral. Their only substance is their content. But I guess that makes them more like a conversation we’re having together on this global party line.

So, how’s your day been?