Los Altos Lost

Here I sit on a Sunday morning whilst the girls are at church, having just watered the garden and eaten a few ripe tomatoes off the vine.  In two weeks, I'll be sitting on a bus bound for the Badlands, leading a tour of the Northern Rockies but looking toward the west.  

Been thinking about Los Altos a lot lately and the old bay area days.  I've said it before but I am so grateful that my parents decided to move down that way in the mid-50s.  Had I grown up in San Francisco, I'd be an entirely different person now, though who knows if better or worse. Would growing up in an urban environment have made me more competitive?  In the predator/prey relationship of young boys, would I have been the prey?  Or would I have been a hustler?

Just got lucky, I guess.  I look back an amazing 50 years now, and I remember the summer of 1963 hanging out with friends, walking the railroad tracks just outside of town.....the old Vasona line…feeling like a mid-century modern Tom Sawyer. There was the intimacy of the small town, the proximity of open space, the golden humming hillsides. 
 
I had my first girlfriend too....a sophomore named Marilyn who lived in a big, sprawling house up in the Los Altos Hills.  Her family owned five cars, swimming pool.  She was way out of my league and I think she knew that.  We were a hot item for a few months, but she broke up with me that summer.  I was devastated, of course, as only a lonely teenager can be.  But I had my friends, and a warm summer of apricot wind, and that intangible feeling of the world opening up to me.   

 It was a sad day when the railroad tracks were torn out to make way for the Foothill Expressway, when the last fruit orchard was removed to make way for subdivisions, when Hal’s Record Den moved from Main Street to the new super-mall on the El Camino Real.  It didn’t all happen overnight but the changes came soon enough.

But 1963 was a year unto itself.  As my late friend Jim said about it
“the last great expression, for us, of innocence and childhood."   Most of that changed too in the fall when JFK was assassinated, and our world went south.

Little Los Altos, tucked away from the world for so many years, was my isolated Eden, my salvation from a bigger reality and now, half a century later, a still warm village of memory.

Last Tango in Durango

My assignment was to drive to Durango and meet up with a representative from the Western Energy Project to photograph potential oil and gas leases near national park boundaries…in this case, nearby Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico.  Just to keep things interesting, I took the long westerly route.  That first day's drive through Moab and down along the edges of the canyon country added an extra hundred miles or so but I had all day and I wanted to see the desert in bloom, and reconnect to some rock art, and just once again be amazed at the diversity of this country.  Just outside of Cisco, Utah the globe mallow and sego lilies were in a blooming frenzy, covering the normally barren landscape with color.

South of Moab, I took a detour toward Newspaper Rock, not far from my old Canyonlands haunts in the Needles country.  As I dropped down the Dugway, the canyon of Indian Creek came alive in bursts of lime green from new spring foliage.  Cottonwoods.  Box elder.  Gambel oak.  After a brief stop at Newspaper Rock, I drove a little further along highway 211 looking for other rock art sites not marked for the general public.  In spite of the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend, there was very little traffic.

From the edges of Canyonlands I turned around and drove up Harts Draw, over the Abajo Mountains through aspen and fir forest before dropping down again into the pinto bean farm country of western Colorado and the hustle and bustle of Durango. Magnificent dynamics in the highs and lows of the landscape.

I met Ti on Friday morning....a lanky young man in his late 20s, I would guess.  Easy going.  I didn't feel any condescension or discomfort.  With his maps, we drove down several county roads looking at potential drill sites and their impacts on the Mesa Verde view shed.  And I took my photos of same.  We spent a large part of that first afternoon in Mesa Verde before heading south to Farmington, New Mexico which is the total antithesis of a Colorado mountain town like Durango.   Farmington is rife with industry.  Pickup trucks.  Cheap hotels.  Fast Food.  And drill pads and well sites everywhere.

 Hot.  Dusty.  Ugly.  Probably the worst way to enter New Mexico, "the land of enchantment".  Be that as it may, on Saturday we drove down to Chaco Canyon and once we were actually in the park itself, it was hard not to get caught up in the depth and level of sophistication of the people who once lived there.  I wandered alone through abandoned doorways at Pueblo Bonito before taking on the moderately strenuous hike to Pueblo Alto, an un-restored ruin site with unobstructed views north toward possible drilling rigs. 

The rest of the day was spent on more back county roads looking at drilling leases.  Not a pretty site.  But maybe some of the photos I took will be persuasive enough to help the Western Energy Project people with their cause.  I was able to get a nice early start on Sunday morning for the drive back to Durango.  Incredible clouds in the sky as the sun rose just south of the Colorado border.  I linked up with Tom, an old park service friend of mine, for breakfast in Durango.  I've known Tom since 1971.  He is my oldest NPS friend and, like me, long since retired and now living in Pagosa Springs.  We don't see each other all that much so it was nice to have the time with him.  And then, of course, there was the spectacular finale for me....the drive up and over the Million Dollar Highway through Silverton, Ouray, over Red Mountain Pass, Molas Summit, and finally descending into the familiar angular country of theWestern Slope.  And the dark hulk of Grand Mesa which always embraces me like a vagabond son.

Sunday Morning Goin' Down

It rained last night so the air today is clean and fresh and the earth smells damp like bay area mornings.  I miss those smells.  Especially that warm earthy aroma of dry grass and oak leaves on summer days in the Los Altos hills.  It is a kind of romantic smell, though I was seldom in a romance at the time.  Or a job.  Or even in school. Were those warm days wasted?  Not really.  Sometimes I would just sit on a dry hillside looking out over the bay and valley below, at all the humanity knocking themselves out down there while cicadas and quail made lively noises in the sticky underbrush around me.  I’d be soaking up the sun like a lizard, my mind and body in sweet, non-committal reverie. 

I still have those moments on occasion when I get myself out into some quiet local canyons.  Only now there is more to reflect upon as more years have gone by.  Past romances good and bad, childhood traumas, political inequities, the roads not taken, the doors that opened and the doors that closed.  There is no better place to wax philosophical than a warm piece of sandstone in a hidden side canyon somewhere.  A piece of solid earth under my ass and an open sky above. 

Non-committal reverie.  Is that what it is?  In the late 60s I dabbled in protest.  But I could never get behind the strident left.  I didn't trust the left wing organizers any more than I trusted the right wing extremists.  I had my own opinions and I felt strongly about them but I didn't like being pushed or prodded.  I can remember a sit-in or two at SF State.  I remember being chased by cops on campus.  But I was never right there in the fray.  I didn't want to be a pawn in someone else's game, I guess. 

What was all the fuss about?  We made some strides in women's rights, gay rights, racial equality but only incrementally.  Psychedelia ended up being used to peddle shoes and soap suds and flowery fashions.  But at the very least, hopefully, people like me ended up with a sound foundation for a right livelihood, for developing a moral compass to get thru the weird times.  Seems we are still fighting the same battles but might never win the war.

There was a "Freedom Rally" in Grand Junction yesterday.  I saw the signs first and knew immediately what that meant.  Whenever you see the word "Freedom" or "America" or "Patriot" tagged on to an event, it usually means someone is going to wrap themselves in the flag and rail about their freedom to do what they damn well please with total disregard for anyone else.  It's kind of an obnoxious western ethic left over from the 19th century when we were pushing Native Americans off their land and harassing immigrants.  And sure enough, it was covered on the local news last night....about 200 people with nothing better to do gathered at a local park to decry taxes, social programs, health care, gun control, and the dread Obama...the Anti-Christ. 

While the Freedom Rally droned on, young teens from my daughter’s church were going around the community helping senior citizens get their spring chores done....moving trash, washing windows, doing good works locally in something called Sharefest. A chance to lend a hand to people who really need help.  They accomplished their mission quietly while the Freedom Rallyers shouted to be heard.

It is no secret that these “freedom” seekers cannot extend that privilege to cover a woman’s choices over her own body, or a child’s right to a good education, or to those elderly folks on a fixed income that my daughter’s friends were helping out yesterday. For them, it is more important to vilify than to mollify, to tear down rather than build up.  And I wonder sometimes if they ever stop to feel the sunshine, or to look beyond their own front porches to consider the core of this community.

There are fewer and fewer non-committal reveries for me these days.  And fewer and fewer quiet Sundays in my mind. My late friend Jim McGregor put it pretty succinctly over forty years ago when he wrote “If we are to survive, I think this is essential; we must trust ourselves, regard ourselves as the central core from which all understanding, all searching must move out. We cannot know ourselves and we cannot lose ourselves.  We can only hope to know what we are dealing with...” 

And I wonder if I will ever really know.

It's All In the Journey

The older I get the harder it is for me to make my annual solo treks west.  Hard both physically and emotionally.  This last one found me driving 600-mles from Valley of Fire to Carson City through beat-up Beatty, Nevada over plains of desiccated sage; sleeping in the Subaru in an empty campground while a hard rain fell all night long; passing through a once-familiar but now unrecognizable neighborhood; getting lost in Sacramento; being stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate in Las Vegas; worrying about snow on the summits, and visiting a parent oxidized by age.

But it is the highlights along the way that make it all worthwhile.  The exhilarating drive over the San Rafael Swell; a walk with my daughter along the Truckee River in Reno; eating at a Greek café; sharing a hot tub with sis while looking out over the Sacramento delta country; a lunch of fish ‘n chips on the coast north of Half Moon Bay; hiking into the morning misted Pinnacles surrounded by dew-flecked flora and volcanic monoliths; exploring a hillside in the Sierras where granite boulders fat with moss flanked gnarled oaks; watching The Big Lebowski again with my new son-in-law; good conversation with old friends; and that wonderful moment on the return leg when red rock cliffs rose up against winter-white mountains telling me that I was as good as home.

I can still do the journey.  I can still endure the long distances, though my hips and legs complain mightily.  While they ache in the background, my eyes take in the foreground – the vast expanses of west.  The wrinkled horizons of the Colorado Plateau or the razor straight horizons of the central valley and the delta. The tawdry towns.  The energizing interstates.  The rusty car, white trash heaps in the middle of Nevada.  The dilapidated house boats along the sloughs.  A pair of geese on the wing over the Sevier River. And in all these things the reflections of my life.  From a childhood where I watched the Valley of Hearts Delight morph into the Silicon Valley.  To a career as a park service nomad in seashore, mountains, and deserts high and low.

I will still do the journey for as long as I can. For as long as I am driven by that restlessness and sense of adventure.  As long as I can keep these old bones working and my mind fresh.  I always come home with something new, if only an intangible feeling of having once again survived the great open spaces of hope and anticipation.  

I can’t help it. I am an old man with young dreams.

The Compost Heap of Hope

At the back of our lot in Grand Junction there is a home-made compost bin that rests against the garage and faces south into the sun. Made of old wood and chicken wire, it rises from the dead weeds and detritus in that forgotten part of the yard where pruned tree limbs, bent tomato cages, broken bricks, and pieces of pvc pipe meet their final resting place. It is as far from the front of the house as anything can be on our property, and its prosaic purpose in our lives is often forgotten….particularly in the winter months when one has to slog through the snow just to empty the household compost pail.  That would be the little clay urn that we keep by the sink that is mostly full of used coffee grounds and veggie trimmings.

Today was the first day in about six weeks of temperatures over 40 degrees, and it was time to empty the urn.  The last several times I did this chore required me to don snow boots, wool cap, and heavy parka just to get across the yard.  But today was decidedly different.  For one thing, I could actually see the lawn in places where patches of flat faded grass were straining for heat and light.  Other parts of the yard, suddenly freed from their icy blanket, were melting into mud bogs.  In one of our raised beds four crinkled chard plants re-emerged, battered but alive.

The compost bin was in full sun, still covered with November’s leafy mulch, and dotted here and there with onion skins, broccoli stalks, and an occasional tomato peel.  With a scattering motion, I emptied the urn’s soupy contents into the bin, taking satisfaction in the small bit of steam that rose from the surface.  Now it was time to take pitchfork in hand and churn the whole mess into a viable mixture.  As the tines broke through the crust they met resistance from stubborn pockets of ice.  I found myself turning over large chunks of material rather than the loose dirt that I had expected.  But as soon as the dark, dank underbelly was exposed, the ice crystals melted before my eyes.  The compost began to breathe again.

And I began to breathe again. Without the mucus in my nose freezing.  Without five layers of clothing on my body.  At that moment about a dozen geese flew overhead in V-formation, honking loudly and heading west.  And I swear I could almost see the grass unbending, the earth opening up in a broad brown smile, and the hibernating soul of myself finally thawing out on the backside of winter.