Category Archives: Places

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.

The Pelican’s Guests

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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.

Blessing the Peacemakers

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On a sweltering morning in June, I wandered across the withered grass of the historic Riverview Cemetery on the outskirts of Denver. I was looking for the grave of Captain Silas Soule, a remarkable man who refused to order his men to fire on the unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864. This may seem like a small detail in the tragic history of European American and Native American relations, but Captain Soule’s brave deed keeps haunting me.

Once I found his grave, it was clear I wasn’t alone in wanting to honor one of the many people who tried to turn the tide of genocide away from the Indian families camped along Sand Creek. Among the dozens of military grave markers lining the northeast corner of the cemetery, Soule’s was the only one decorated with plastic flags and Memorial Day juju. The sprinkling of stones left along the top intrigued me. I’ve heard that people bring these offerings from Sand Creek, but since I’ve yet to visit the site of the infamous Massacre, I don’t know if that’s true. I hope it is. The talkative magpies that liven up the cemetery left an iridescent black feather on the ground. I tucked it under one of the little stones and said a prayer as a coal train rumbled beyond the chain link fence.

When popular American culture replays the history of the so-called “Indian Wars,” we rarely hear about the peacemakers like Black Kettle, Lean Bear, William Bent, or Silas Soule. Let’s seek them out. I can’t help thinking their efforts still hold a blessing for us.

Wildfire Filter

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Sunsets seen through wildfire smoke can look pretty weird. I made this photo a few weeks ago looking over the southwestern flank of Winnemucca Mountain. It makes me think of Georgia O’Keefe’s early work, with a slightly apocalyptic bent. Although a picture can be worth a thousand words, there are times when a picture without any words is, in a sense, dishonest.

This image without an explanation is just a glowing pink pearl. But as I pressed the shutter, I thought about how the smoke in this picture is all that’s left of the grasses, herbs, and forbs that made up the grazing lands of several of my ranching friends. This particular fire is huge and the chances of finding replacement pasture for their livestock, small.

Our tragedy probably won’t make the national news. It’s not dramatic enough. But if you happen to be here, it’s plenty dramatic. The map of this wildfire shows that a sizable chunk of our sizable county has been converted to heat, acrid air, and sunsets that look like they came out of someone’s imagination and Photoshop.

So the beauty of this sunset is bittersweet — a snapshot of this Western summer, when our skies were rarely blue.