Blue Mesa - 1986

           We were in the middle of the Dying Ground when I noticed her for the first time.  A low sun cast long shadows over blue earth as she knelt on a bare hillside, picking through pieces of petrified wood and the bones of beasts long forgotten.  Beyond her diminutive form, above the dusky round hills to the east, a nearly full moon eased its way upward over the Painted Desert.

            We were creatures out of time.

            The remainder of the group had gathered together in a low swale about a quarter of a mile away, listening to a park ranger explain Triassic floodplains and ancient volcanoes.  An eerie softness was borne on the cool April wind that swirled around the buttes.  Knowledge of all the hidden history underfoot cast a cloak of quiet reverence over the group.

            In one hand I held a fossilized piece of animal armor.   My mind and body had wandered far into the primordial depths. In a shallow gully I had scared up a Great Horned Owl.  And at the top of one small, pleated hill, at its very apex, I came upon her.  Her small fingers were lightly sifting the soil, deep eyes looking beyond the surface into the past.  Perhaps it was her grey bunting jacket that made her seem a part of that landscape.  Or the long black hair billowing around her shoulders.  Or something in her Asian countenance that hearkened back to primal Bering Strait migrations and Native American orientations.

            In that world of palpable silence, the pastel blues and greys seemed etched into clay, and her subtle movements were magnified against the austere sweep of the badlands.  We did not speak, though I desperately wanted to say something to her.  Instead, I passed within a few yards of her, pretending to scan the ground for more prehistoric puzzle pieces.  Our eyes met very briefly.  As I recall, she smiled.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

For nearly four years I lived in one of the loneliest outposts in the western United States…the Needles Country of Canyonlands in southeastern Utah.  Only a few of us lived there year-round, caretakers of some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.  This was in the mid-70s and cyberspace had not yet been tapped in rural San Juan County, or anywhere else for that matter.  So we lived without telephones, televisions, daily mail or even radio, unless you count the Blanding station that transmitted in Navajo for most of the day.  As a young man at the time, I took these deprivations in stride. But for a boy raised in the San Francisco Bay area, the one thing I really missed was current music.

Oh, I had my collection of vinyl records all neatly sorted between bricks and boards on the floor of my government mobile home.  And a box full of mix tapes for the car cassette player.  But that was stuff I’d brought with me.  I could order records through the mail and eventually pick them up in Moab.  Or I could drive the 200 miles to Grand Junction, Colorado where I could patronize a real record store.  But to keep really current on the music scene, I relied on friends far away to send me tape recordings…usually from records but occasionally just chunks of local radio broadcasts. This infusion of contemporary music was always most welcome…an audio tether to my urban roots.

This became most apparent when my friend Phil sent me a jazz mix tape sometime in late 1977.  By then I was living by myself (my longtime lady friend had fled the prior winter), and I was feeling the loneliness and the weight of the surrounding wilderness.  Fortunately, my Moab mailbox was often checked by fellow rangers while on supply runs and such was the case on this particular occasion.  The padded envelope was brought to my door and I eagerly opened it, finding a nice selection of Herbie Mann, Grover Washington Jr and John Handy.  Urban jazz invading the heart of slickrock country.

I played the tape a couple of times at home but its impact wasn’t truly felt until my “weekend” came around and I elected to hit the road.  It was late afternoon in late November and the shadows along Indian Creek were long and cold.  I drove up the dugway into open sagebrush country and reached highway 191 to Moab as the last light of dusk was fading away.  Northward past the Lisbon Valley turnoff. Past Wilson Arch, Past the little outpost of La Sal Junction.   At Kane Springs, I popped in the jazz tape and heard those first quite bass lines to Grover Washington’s  rendition of A Secret Place…a fine bit of funk as I crested the hill to Spanish Valley and saw the first lights of civilization.

At that moment it didn’t matter that I was driving into a town of less than 5,000 residents, with not one decent restaurant, music or book store, and no real bars (just a state liquor store).  When Grover’s sax started playing, I felt like I was heading into an oasis of energy….the hustle and bustle, the neon, the human connection.  I was seeing downtown Moab but I was feeling the Bay Area and remembering those nights in the clubs and dance halls of the City.  And bittersweet though it was, I knew that I would get a motel room for the night and spend hours on the telephone, and watch whatever was on the telly, and buy my groceries the following day, and head back into the canyon country I loved so much with a renewed sense of who I was, and where I was from, and where I was going.  Something in that sweet music had set me up, and satiated a need in me so that I could better appreciate the truly remarkable setting where my life was playing out.

To this day, when I play A Secret Place, I remember that long drive through darkness and that first glimpse of the lights, like stars fallen from the sky and ready for the taking.  The sweet music of youth.

New Day's Year

Thirty three years ago today I was presented with the most precious Christmas gift I’ve ever received…a healthy, dark-eyed little package called Alison Noel, who is now herself a mother of a Christmas baby.  At the time her mom and I were living in a one-room apartment above the old Olema Store near Pt Reyes National Seashore, about 30 miles from the hospital in Santa Rosa.  Jeanne went into labor right around rush hour and I drove like a madman around the curves and hills of Pt Reyes-Petaluma Road to get us to the delivery room on time.  That part turned out quite well.  But about two weeks later we became concerned when Ali got into a multi-day crying jag.  On New Year’s Day we drove back over the hills to see the doctor and I penned the following little essay:

This is a quintessential Northern California New Year’s Day, shimmering under a cold sun through thin layers of haze, and wrapped in a palpable calm.  We are driving the open road along the edges of swollen Nicasio Reservoir whose still, sepia waters like a rambling Rorschach ink blot, mirror every detail of its banks.  From the evergreen forest of Point Reyes we have come, sliding through billowy treeless hills already decked in spring green amid serpentine crags whose gray walls stir my mind’s memory pool. Of younger times along coastal cliffs.  Of day tripping over slickrock.

Beside me in the car is Alison Noel, tiny daughter of just two weeks whose hat-covered head bobs gingerly against her padded infant seat.   Lulled by the engine’s hum and winding roadway, she is finally sleeping after a long evening of crying and colic.  If she were awake, she would have little awareness of the pastoral scenes beyond the windshield.  And she is too young to have memories or longings for other places, except perhaps that warm dark world of the womb she has so recently emerged from.

In the back seat is Jeanne who reaches forward with motherly concern to shield the baby’s eyes from occasional bursts of sunlight.  She is exhausted from the previous night’s ministrations to Alison.  But even in fatigue, she bears the calm radiance of new motherhood.  We comment on the newborn calf by the roadway and the frozen stance of a great blue heron.  A white-tailed kite hovers at the road junction where we turn away from bucolic vistas and begin the curvy course through redwoods and ranch-style homes in Lucas Valley.

At the doctor’s office in Terra Linda, we are reassured by the prognosis that Alison’s troubles are nothing more than normal infant behavior…a little stomach adjusting to a big world.  And anyway, it appears as if the ride has calmed her down somewhat.  I cannot speak for Jeanne, but I feel that perhaps the strands of memory weaving through my mind have infiltrated all of us, pulling us into that timeless web of familial unity.  Today marks our first minor crisis as a family and my first strong awareness of us as a trio.

As we drive homeward through the long soft shadows of West Marin, I am at once protector, provider, parent and child, weaving through the primordial mist, confronting myself at every turn, and dividing by three into the light.  Down the last hill we drive toward the muted sun, toward the dark spine of Inverness Ridge….toward home.

Happy Birthday, Alison…and good health and long life to your Christmas angel

A Simple Day

Lindsay is on the living room sofa practicing her Japanese.  Amy just finished baking two pies for tomorrow’s quiet festivities.  One pie is made from the remaining apples on our backyard tree that hang like yuletide balls on bent over branches.  The other pie is made from the pumpkin that has been on our front porch since before Halloween.  It escaped being hollowed out and eviscerated for Jack-o-lantern status, only to be chopped up and boiled for pie filling. 

Outside the sky is full of indecision.  Ragged clouds can’t decide whether to be stratus or cumulus right now, so they duke it out between bouts of blue. Long shadows lie along the Bookcliffs’ deep ridges.  Snow is forecast for the high country but here on the Western Slope we are getting only wind and a mild threat of rain.  The last autumn leaves cling tenaciously to sycamore and box elder.  But the top of Grand Mesa is etched in white.

Tomorrow we will have roast duck instead of turkey.  This has become a Grand Junction tradition for a family that doesn’t usually travel during the holidays, and has an affinity for dark meat.  If the weather is reasonable, we may sneak in a short walk at the edge of town on the cusp of canyon country.  In the afternoon I will replace the fall decorations with Christmas houses, and in the evening I will fire up the exterior holiday lites for the first time this year.  Then, perhaps, we will find an appropriate movie to watch….something light and not too sentimental.  Maybe an episode of Doctor Who.

Over the past decade we have made this our family tradition.  It is a far cry from the exuberant Greek Thanksgivings of my youth but I have grown to like it nonetheless.  Three people going about their business in Colorado at a pace to match the coming winter, and saying goodbye to that kindest of all seasons.  And hunkering down against a world that seems so wrought with fear and paranoia.  We salute ourselves, and our loved ones in other places…and we keep looking forward.

Dancing With Sally Reynolds

The band is playing loudly in Bart Nelson’s backyard.  Caught up in the bizarre giddiness of my 50^th high school reunion, I find myself getting up to dance, swirling wildly and erratically with fellow classmates from 1965 and earlier. I am transported back to one of the very first times I attempted to dance socially with anyone.

From an old brown file folder long stashed away I recently exhumed a crudely mimeographed “survey” sheet from my eighth grade days at Covington Junior High School.  I can no longer remember the purpose or reason behind the simple missive that queried me about my “favorite subject” and “favorite teacher”, but the odd question that caught my eye simply said “Favorite Dance Partner” followed by a short purple line on which I had written in pencil “Sally Reynolds”.

Covington was one of many shoebox-architecture schools that dotted the San Francisco peninsula in the mid-50s.  It was stylish back then to build these low slung, flat-topped, pastel painted institutions to accommodate a burgeoning baby boomer populace.  Covington was located in the semi-bucolic and affluent community of Los Altos on a quiet, pepper tree lined street with no sidewalks.  And it had the added cachet of having a swimming pool and a huge playground and cafeteria.

 Several times a year the cafeteria became a dance floor where we awkwardly shuffled in our stocking feet to songs like “You Were Mine” by the Fireflies and Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head On My Shoulder”.  I remember that last song in particular because I danced to it with Sally Reynolds.  Sally lived just a few blocks away from me and we rode the same bus to school every day.  I wouldn’t say we were friends because at the time I was so socially retarded I couldn’t possibly talk comfortably with a girl my own age, especially one as cute as Sally.  Oh yes, she had dark eyes, dishwater blonde hair cut pageboy style, and a perpetual California tan.  And almost always, a dazzling smile.

These attributes alone were enough to endear her to nearly everyone, and to include her in that intimidating echelon of seemingly unattainable cheerleader/pom pom girl types that kept boys like me at bay. But Sally was always friendly and had an easy charm about her that made her accessible even to a bumbling thirteen year old like myself.  It didn’t matter much at the time anyway because the boys hung out with the boys and the girls hung out with the girls, and the genders mixed only on rare occasions…like the infrequent dances in the Covington cafeteria.

These dance events were almost always held in the late afternoon.  There were no thematic decorations or frills.  Just a phonograph and PA system.  With boys on one side of the room and girls on the other.  I believe these affairs were probably held as an attempt to socialize all of us and make us feel more comfortable with members of the opposite sex. But for me, they were uncomfortable at best and usually did nothing more than magnify my inadequacies and anxieties.

I am speaking mostly for myself here as there were always the boys who had no trouble at all asking a girl to dance, and unashamedly sliding out on the shiny floor.  But I wasn’t one of them.  For me, the walk from one side of the cafeteria to the other was a painful one, and there were very few girls I could muster up the courage to ask for a dance.  But Sally was one of them.  She willingly endured my inept attempts at the fox trot.  She was soft and sweet and never said a word.  So perhaps that is why she made the list as my “favorite dance partner”.

Once we got into high school the lines were more clearly drawn and I only saw Sally in the hallway or sharing an occasional class.  Which was all well and good because I never had that intense and painful longing for her that I would feel with other women.  She was the neighbor girl with the dark tan and the winning smile.  And beauty that would never go to her head.

At the ten-year reunion for the Los Altos High School Class of ’65 Sally was sadly absent.  Apparently, just a few years before, she had died in a car that was hit by a railroad train. And after my initial shock, I wouldn’t have given it much more thought but for the fact that I remembered those quiet little moments we shared on the dance floor at Covington Junior High.  Such a small and ephemeral thing that seems to take on more meaning as I grow older. 

It is over fifty years later and I am still awkwardly moving to the music that punctuates this summer night.   But I can still remember dancing with Sally Reynolds in that sunny, innocent time during JFKs Camelot, before the wars in southeast Asia erupted, before the dot.coms overwhelmed the valley and turned it from Santa Clara into Silicon.  Paul Anka is singing from a 45rpm record and I have my hand around Sally’s waist  The late spring sun is streaming into the cafeteria and I am experiencing for the very first time those little pangs of romance that will soon take me places I have never been before.