IN THE WOMB WITH ORSON WELLES

In the final scene of the film Lady from Shanghai, Orson Welles leaves the mortally wounded Rita Hayworth lying amid broken mirrors on the funhouse floor.  He walks outside into the dawn of San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach.  The camera follows him as he crosses the parking lot, panning past the Dodger Car ride, the midway entrance, and the Deluxe Café.  Orson continues walking toward the Great Highway and the Pacific Ocean as the closing credits cover the screen.

The year was 1947.  Welles had been struggling with Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn to get this film made.  Cohn was furious that Rita Hayworth had cut her hair short at Welle’s behest for the movie.  And the screenplay was so convoluted, no one could really figure it out.  Filming had started the previous October.  Now it was January and the project was wrapping up.

My mom and dad had been struggling too.  On the same day the climactic Funhouse scene was shot, my dad was working for his in-laws as a short order cook at the very same Deluxe Café.  He spent the day flipping burgers, dipping candied apples, and making milkshakes in what was then the typical Greek diner (as typified in the famous SNL skit with John Belushi, Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd).  He was about to become a father for the first time.  Meanwhile, my mom spent most of that day amid the crowd of onlookers across the street who were waiting for a glimpse of the great Orson Welles.  She often tells the story of how she and her friends waited for hours to get that one quick look at the man who was bringing Hollywood to Playland.

And I was there too, in a manner of speaking…curled up in my mother’s womb in my fifth month of existence.  And while I cannot say for sure that this event inspired me in any way as a future film student and rabid cinema-phile, it must have awakened some primal celluloid, sprocket hole, dream factory, fantasy escape mechanism that I carry with me to this day.  The love of film noir.  The comforting embrace of a darkened movie theater.  The joy of looking at all of those lost landscape locations like Playland at the Beach.

My last visit to Playland was on a foggy night in 1969 when I wandered down there from my flat on 38th avenue.  I was a stoned student with no money and a film can full of weed in my pocket.  And by this time a seedy element had taken over the area and the great amusements along the midway were already slated for demolition.  The Funhouse was abandoned.  The Deluxe Café was already gone.  And I got accosted on the beach that evening by two black kids who took the last of my weed.

But because of Orson Welles, I can always go back to that final scene in Lady From Shanghai.  I can watch him crossing the parking lot, think about my dad working hard at the Deluxe Café, and imagine my mom standing just out of camera range waiting for that moment of glamour and magic that would momentarily rekindle her dreams and invariably touch the unborn child within.

Serendipity at Work

By the late summer of 1970, I had reached the absolute nadir of my existence.  I was sharing a rundown house in Santa Cruz with an emotionally damaged woman.  I was living on mescaline and $26 a week in unemployment money.  And my friend Ed Robinson, who worked at the local natural food store, was bringing me damaged fruit and outdated bread to subsist on.  My collegiate dreams of becoming a film maker had long since been dashed.  I had no prospects for the future.  And my main source of transportation, a beat up old bicycle, was stolen one day when I was downtown.

One night in a drug-induced funk, I wrote a desperate letter to Pinnacles National Monument.  It was the one place I loved more than any other.  It was my getaway…my power spot.  And I thought perhaps some one there would take me on for a few weeks to clean the rest rooms and empty the trash cans. So I spilled my guts out on paper, waxing rhapsodically over how much I adored the high peaks and cliffs, and the smell of the chaparral.  When I came to my senses the next day, I was a little embarrassed by what I had written, but by then I had mailed off the letter.

As summer turned to fall, I admitted defeat and moved back in with my folks.  Over the next several months I embarked on a series of hitchhiking trips and aimless road journeys. But shortly after New Years Day, 1971, I got a phone call from the naturalist at Pinnacles National Monument.  My emotive letter had caught his eye and, well, he might have an opening for a seasonal park ranger.  Could I come down for an interview?

I cut off my long hair. My mother drove me the 90 miles to park headquarters.  I somehow convinced the naturalist that I was competent.  And within three weeks, I had a job in the place I loved the most.  The rest, as they say, is history.  But this was not the first nor certainly the last example of the power of serendipity in my life.

Four years later while on vacation in southeastern Utah, I somewhat facetiously asked the campground ranger at Canyonlands National Park if they might ever have an opening there for a seasonal job.  He replied that a position had just come open and I could pick up an application on my way out.  Four weeks later, I was moving all my worldly possessions into a spacious mobile home in the Needles District of Canyonlands.

In 1987 I was left alone in Phoenix, Arizona when my wife and I separated and she and my daughter Alison moved to Northern California.  For the next several months, all I could think about was how I could move there myself without leaving the Park Service.  When I called the chief interpreter at Whiskeytown Lake one day looking for some slides of the place, he told me how much he’d love to have my job.  Within weeks we had arranged a job swap and I was on my way to Redding, California - just a few hours away from my daughter and the place where I would ultimately find my enduring love and current spouse.

Time and again, when I’ve felt powerless or helpless, fate has stepped in and given me a nudge.  In the late 90s when it looked like my Park Service career would be scuttled by a venal and vindictive boss, I got a last minute job offer from the Bureau of Land Management which set me on a path as a land manager of some of the finest resources on the Colorado Plateau.

I remember going to job fairs at elementary and high schools and having kids approach me to ask me how I ended up on my career path.  And I would have to be honest and say that I was just damn lucky.  That the universe had other ideas for all my best laid plans.  But also, that it helped immensely to have a broad based education, and the support of family and friends who never gave up their faith in my passions and abilities even when I myself would waver.

Super 8 Memories

While cleaning out the garage the other day I came across a cache of my old 8mm home movies, many cans worth piled in a footlocker.  I grabbed several of them from the Canyonlands era, dug out my Bell & Howell Super 8 projector, and set up a mini-theatre down in the basement. Even though I had digitized most of these films several years back, there was something exciting about threading up the ol’ projector again, feeling the celluloid gliding through my fingers, and then flicking that little toggle switch that brought everything back to life.  The turning of the reels and the rhythmic clickety clack of the film flowing through the gate.  And that flickering image on a piece of white matte board I had hastily set up on the floor.

The first reel I chose was from early 1978 and documented my last several months as a ranger in the Needles District of Canyonlands.  There was the work-related footage, of course…the jeep patrols, ranger training, driving the big water truck, hanging out at the old trailer we called a visitor contact station.  But most of the scenes were of a more personal nature, documenting my day to day existence in such a wild and lonely place, my humble mobile home at the base of Squaw Butte, and the ups and downs of my romantic life.  It was a bitter sweet journey into the past.

There were scenes of Susan and I in our final days together backpacking beyond Lost Canyon.  There was Linda, the folksinger from New York, playing her guitar on the front porch of my trailer.  My friend Phil hiking over the Wooden Shoe Butte back when he was still ambulatory and healthy. And fresh-faced Mary Ann who hung out with me in those last few months, helped me pack up the house, and then moved with me to Northern California.  All there on the little screen, scratches and dust and all. We were all so young and vital and full of the self confidence one needs when living in such a harsh and powerful landscape.

Last week I attended a 50th birthday party for Canyonlands National Park in Moab…rubbed shoulders again with folks I had not seen in some cases for nearly 40 years.  And I think just about all of us at that extraordinary gathering felt like we were part of an amazing fraternity of folks who had shared something so intense, so life altering that we too at times felt as powerful as the place.  Times of extremely satisfying adventure punctuated by moments of stark terror.  The stories came pouring out about the midnight searches and rescues, the boats destroyed in Cataract Canyon, the jeeps stuck in quicksand, the high drama of hunting season….and the unmitigated joy of living with no phones, radios, television, mail delivery or convenient shopping.  Only the camaraderie of like minded individuals connected by a labyrinth of sandstone canyons, hard but meaningful work, and a deep and abiding love of the land we shared together.

My Time On Tomales Point

 When I moved out to Tomales Point in 1983 with infant daughter Alison and my then-wife Jeanne, the old Pierce Ranch was still being restored by the National Park Service.  The main house and the eighteen out buildings would materialize out of the ever present fog like ghostly apparitions, their exteriors grayer than the surrounding sky.  With the exception of the ranch house, only traces of the exterior whitewash remained on the remaining wooden structures which included two large barns, a creamery, bunkhouses, chicken coops, and a one room school house.  Other objects of interest included one rusted gas pump , a broken thresher, and several weathered porcelain bath tubs that had served as cattle troughs.  Our nearest neighbors were the Kehoes who operated a dairy ranch three miles away.

A line of gnarled cypress trees stood guard along the western edge of the ranch, many of their branches broken and hanging from recent storms.  On the eastern edge, a forest of eucalyptus funneled down slope to the shores of Tomales Bay.  Just behind the ranch is where eucalyptus and cypress mingled in an unkempt tangle of limbs, shredded bark and downed trees.  A cistern on a nearby hilltop provided the only source of fresh water. The paved road ended near the ranch providing access to McClures Beach.  For the most part, this was a wild and lonely outpost on the edge of the continent.

The main house had been largely restored and occupied for several years by a series of seasonal park rangers, mostly single males.  But the Park Service was looking for a more permanent and reliable resident to occupy the site to guard against vandalism or other nefarious activities that might be occurring seven or eight miles from the nearest ranger station.  So I volunteered even though it would mean a daily commute of eighteen miles to the Bear Valley headquarters where I worked.  I was trading my little apartment over the Olema Store for a 12-room, Victorian era farmhouse with a long and rugged history.

The ranch had weathered the 1906 earthquake with only minor damage, sited as it was on the hard granites of the Pacific Plate.  But for all its ruggedness, there was a sense of isolation and vulnerability, hunkering down against the winds in the swales and hummocks of Tomales Point, its foundations teetering on the narrow ridgeline.  The main house had been built in the 1860s with various alterations along the way.  Now its floors sagged and the damp air seeped in through the walls.  It was a large house for three small people to inhabit.  And without the daily hum and drum of cow milking and butter making, the ranch complex often took on the air of a ghost town.

Still, it was a remarkable home for nearly four years.  I could walk down to White’s Cove on the Tomales Bay side and watch pelicans diving into the shallows.  Collect fresh mussels at McClures Beach to barbeque or steam.  Hear the Great Horned Owls in the cypress forest, or the occasional bark of a sea lion in the early morning.  And in the fall the tule elk began the rut, the big bulls screeching in the fog, swinging their antlers through the scrub and pawing the earth.  In those magical moments, I could see deep into a primal past where the headlands held the ocean at bay and the bay fed its bounty into the ocean.  And life was inextricably linked with the ebb and flow of the tides.

Cool Reflections on a Hot Day

I spent my birthday this year as I have a number of other years…in a desert canyon surrounded by wildflowers, wind and stone.  I felt both humbled and assured by my ability to still be able to hike off trail, follow the animal signs, avoid other humans.  And No Thoroughfare Canyon, just on the edge of town, did not let me down.  Upon leaving the parking lot, I headed into a landscape covered in primrose blossoms whose normally subtle scent now hung heavy over the trail.  Soon after that, I left the maintained path behind for a more adventurous walk in the creek bed.  A coach whip snake slid quickly by and took shelter in a salt bush.  Whiptail lizards, now awakened and revived from their winter dormancy, scurried back and forth just ahead of me.  The air hummed and glowed in its late spring brilliance.

The dry creek bed soon turned moist, then muddy, then flowing with a trickle of cool, clear water.  The red Jurassic sandstone gave way to dark pre-Cambrian schists and granite.  The canyon narrowed, funneling me toward a large green pool of water fed by an ethereal cascade some ten feet above its surface.  One large cottonwood tree stood as a sentinel beside the pool, its leaves gently lilting in the breeze.  I stopped here and sat in a shady alcove where I could just look at the water, listen to the droplets breaking the surface, and watch the comings and goings of tiny critters.  I took off shoes and socks and waded partway into the pool, surprised at how cold it was.  A few minutes later I returned to my sitting spot to think about past birthdays and canyons.

Thirty seven years ago on birthday number 30 I did essentially the same thing.  Only then it was a very remote canyon far from any official trail, and I was living in a ranger residence not so far away in the heart of Canyonlands National Park.   At my secret spot, a small waterfall lightly poured over a limestone ledge on to a shelf of shiny stone where it scattered into several pools and puddles.  I too was on that ledge, stark naked in the sun, dividing my time between rescuing tadpoles stranded in the puddles, reading Robert Graves, and watching the humming diversity of life both in the deeper pools and in the hot dry air above.  I was a part of the eco-system that day, full of confidence, reverence and contentment. 
 
Thirty seven years have changed a few things.  I can no longer hike for miles into remote backcountry.  I will take off my shoes and socks but not the rest of my clothes.  I have lost some of the strength and stamina that I had back then.  But I have not lost the passion, or the reverence.  Give me a stretch of free flowing water in the middle of the desert and I will always feel a kind of magic in the miracle of it all.  The anomaly of cool springs bursting out of bare rock, unbridled under the sun.  The life that scoots, buzzes and thrives in that ephemeral riparian corridor.  And the pure music of drip drop and trickle through unbroken sand.

In Remembrance of Someone I Never Knew

I never really knew Bill Madlam in high school.  All I remember about him is that he always seemed to have a broad grin on his face as he moved through the otherwise faceless hordes in the halls.  I knew his name because I was on the yearbook staff and had been editor of the LANCE, our school newspaper, and therefore made it a habit to put names with faces.  So I knew a lot of people at Los Altos High School who had no idea who the hell I was.

Nevertheless, it saddened me to hear of Bill’s recent passing as I am always affected when I hear about the loss of one more individual from an extraordinary graduating class.  In retrospect, perhaps the times were more extraordinary than the class but there we were in 1965, all 400 of us, poised on the brink of huge social and political upheaval, the Vietnam War, the psychedelic age, the rise of civil rights, free speech, free love, and freedom in general to be who we wanted to be and go where we wanted to go.

We were down there on the sunny peninsula basking in our parents’ affluence, the warm embrace of a quaint and cozy suburban town, and the seemingly endless possibilities that lay before us.  Our generation was already making enough of an imprint to be named TIME Magazine’s Man of the Year the following year as they honored those of us “25 and Under.”  Yet there was an odd dynamic between those of us who could see that wild times lay ahead and those of us whose expectations were formed by television shows like Donna Reed and Leave it to Beaver.

I regret that I was so wrapped up in myself back then and so concerned about social survival that I did not reach out a little more to embrace the diversity of our classmates.  To get to know someone like Bill Madlam who always seemed so friendly and upbeat in the mass of adolescent humanity that swirled around us each day.  It has been my pleasure since that time to have made contact with some of these folks as adults and reconnect with our commonalities.  And in some cases, celebrate the differences.

Most of us made it and we made it well.  But with the passing of Bill Madlam, the LAHS Class of 65 is diminished just that much more.  The optimism, the energy, the determination of a group of disparate people is affected by one less member.  As aging baby boomers, we will all press on.  We will still make our own way through an increasingly complex society with the grace that has carried us through these past 50 years.  But I will miss Bill Madlam, and Tom Lowery, and Sally Reynolds, and Jim McGregor and all those others who will not be able to complete the journey with us.  And in my own stumbling bumbling way, I will continue to carry the torch.

Elizabeth Reed and Me

Elizabeth Reed must have been one hell of a woman.  Not only did the Allman Brothers compose a 13-minute song in memory of her but she got me through a root canal process as well.  People make jokes about rather having a root canal than, say, watching FOX News for any length of time, or listening to a Barry Manilow record….but I wonder about that.  And I sort of put it to the test today.

The dentist office was only two blocks away so I walked to my scheduled appointment this morning under cloudy, late winter skies.  Into that brisk, enigmatic wind that blows down from the north this time of the year and forces you to pack a jacket with you even though the sun may be shining.  That was all a moot point anyway once I got inside the warm, glass-enclosed medical building.

Unlike the last time I had a root canal four years ago, I remembered this time to bring along my Ipod.   And my dental assistant Cassandra led me into a well-lighted room where I had a distant view of the snow-flecked Uncompahgre Plateau and the burgeoning mass of gray clouds coming into the Valley.  But I didn’t have that view for long as the chair was tilted back and the dribble bib applied.  As the hardware was being installed into my propped open jaws, I turned on the Ipod and held fast to it.

And as the noise of the drill escalated, so did the volume on the Ipod.  We started with Hard Work by John Handy, a breezy jazz number that lasted long enough to make me feel relatively comfortable under the circumstances. After John Handy came Huey Lewis with The Heart of Rock and Roll, a nice foot thumper.  I wasn’t going to think about any pain, only the music.  So I was delighted when the Allman Brothers announced from the stage of the Fillmore East that they were going to play In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.  I was immediately transported away from the sterile office.  No amount of pounding or probing was going to distract me from Duane Allman’s guitar riffs or Dicky Betts’ sinuous solos.

I thought about those old days at the old Fillmore off of Geary Street in San Francisco.  The anticipatory drives up from the Peninsula along the Bayshore Freeway.  Away from our safe suburban streets and into the concrete maze of downtown. Homing in on the music just a few blocks away.  Parking anywhere we could find a place in the heart of the black neighborhoods, and blithely heading for the dance hall entrance.  Bill Graham was usually hanging out in the lobby.  There were free apples.  Posters for next weeks concert.  And lots of smoke.

Then wandering into the hall itself and finding an appropriate spot on the floor in that mid-zone between the stage and the dancers.  The colored lights and film loops up on the wall. And that sweet, sweet smoke.  Four or five hours of hard driving music before being expelled into the street once again, trying to find the car for the long drive home.

This was a weekly ritual for a couple of years.  It only cost $3 to get into the Fillmore or Avalon back then.  I saw Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix on their first tours, when they were third on the bill.  Caught old timers like Chuck Berry and Howling Wolf.  Saw a new band, The Doors, up from L.A.  And reveled in our own local talent like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and Santana.

Santana is playing right now.  The Allman Brothers have left the stage and now Santana is doing Soul Sacrifice as the dentist makes his last few assaults to my jaw.  My oh-so-sore jaw.  But wouldn’t it have been so much worse without Elizabeth Reed and the memories of those youthful, naïve nights near the bay.  All these years later, Elizabeth lives on and I am grateful to her and the Allman Brothers and Santana and those artists who have infused my life with such magic and memory.