115 journals

journaling, reading as strategies for survival and change

Sailing in Shangri-la

Posted on July 31, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

Regular readers of this blog will know that circumstances have led me to spend my summer in a remote mountain village without media. Oh, media is here, via satellite dish but not that I can access easily. Deprived of my usual sources of information (except old National Geographics -1985!!), my conversation has fallen back on old timey tales. This morning four of sat outside the Bear Claw bakery toasting in the 8 a.m. sun, eating the best croissants outside France and telling such tales.

There had been a terrible lightning strike at Venice Beach the previous Sunday. One of us had been near the beach that day, but not actually at it and had witnessed the brief violent storm.

Julia piped up and said that when you are near ground zero, the flash is a sheet of light. She recounted being in the family room of our house under the hill in Scarborough when lightning hit the flag pole above.

I didn’t remember.

I have amnesia about lightning mostly. When I was a toddler and sleeping upstairs, a ball of lightning came in one window, streaked over my crib and out the other. I leaped out of my crib and hit the stairs running. Just as the horrible thunder crashed, I slipped in my pajama feet and soared into space. I fell –into the waiting arms of my Uncle John – infinitely slow John Cunnington who had heard me, sprung up from the table, flung open the stairway door and caught me.

That was it for me – memory wise. The file marked lightning was full.

But Julia had other memories from her sailing childhood.

When she was 14, her father, Blake and I bought a Northern 29, a sailboat designed to sail in the narrow North Sea, where the waves come close together. It has a lead keel, which renders it very stable, indeed capable of righting itself should it turn over. It was a good choice for Lake Ontario which is also narrow and prone to similar waves. It has a steel mast that is set in the lead keel. This means that lightening strikes should go down into the lead and disperse over the water. The fourth member of the crew was her 13 year-old brother, Daniel.

Julia thinks that it was Blake’s wartime experience that made him want to sail. He was evacuated with many other children on the ship, Antonia, to Canada. At least one such ship, The City of Benares had been torpedoed with the loss of 77 children.There were two other ships carrying children in Convoy Z in which Antonia sailed, a total of 1000 kids. There were 6 destroyers protecting the convoy and the Battle ship Revenge, which as it turns out was carrying Britain’s gold reserve £10 million to safety in Canada. Blake was 5 at the time. He was 10 when he made the relatively safe return after V.E. Day.

For whatever the reason, we found ourselves press-ganged into the crew of the red sailboat, Sirocco.

Mostly we were self-taught sailors, although Blake took a night course to qualify as skipper, learning such things as right of way rules, how to understand lights and buoys and so on. He had also read avidly. But the first time we flew the spinnaker, none of this helped. The spinnaker is that balloon-like, colorful sail that flies out ahead of the boat when it is sailing downwind (the wind is behind). Ours was colored like a rainbow. It is attached the mast near the bottom and then pulled up by a pulley until it is secured at the top. Meanwhile, two lines (ropes) are threaded through winches so that the crew can trim it according to the wind. The object is to get it ballooning out in front. Blake had the sail up and Julia was on the foredeck holding one of the thick rope lines not yet secured through its winch. Suddenly the halyard at the top let go and the wind carried the huge sail straight out ahead of the boat. Julia hung onto the line as it ripped through her palms at high speed. She was screaming in pain but determined not to lose our most expensive sail.

“Let it! Let it go!” he father shouted.

She did. The sail puffed once and sank through the air into the water. I ran to Julia. Blake ran to the bow. Daniel grabbed the boat hook. Julia’s hands were raw and beginning to bleed. Daniel and Blake were leaning so far out that it looked as if they would join the sail in the water, but a minute later they were back up pulling in the bedraggled mass of the sail. Glorious in flight, sodden and unlovely as a swimmer.

Sirocco was about 2 years old when we bought her and the sails were still reliable, but by the second summer, the main sail was showing wear. There is a saying that owning a sailboat is like standing in a cold shower tearing up money, so we hadn’t got around to ordering a new main sail. Typically, we would study the weather report that summer and learn that here was a chance of an afternoon storm. Since the storm hadn’t materialized for at least a week, we went sailing. Sure enough, it arrived.

Blake had shortened sail by putting up the smaller jib instead of the bigger genoa. We sail trimmers were working attentively keeping just the right amount of air in it. From time to time, Blake leaned over from the tiller and adjusted the main on its track along the boom. The wind began to pummel us in great gusts. A huge boom like thunder right above us rent the air. We looked up to see the main sail loudly flapping. It had blown out into two pieces.

Just sailing wasn’t enough. We raced Sirocco. Not only did we race it around the yacht club bay, we raced it across Lake Ontario, sometimes in two day races. Thus we were treated to a close study of lightning.

One day during such a storm, three of us were in the cockpit steering and trimming the sails. Daniel was having a break down in the cabin, probably reading. He was sitting on the banquette beside the table. Our budgie’s cage was fastened with a bungie cord to the ceiling and the floor. They were both inches from that steel mast. As those of us up-top tried to keep the boat from swamping, water crashed over the gunwales. It is reported that I shouted, “I wish you’d tell that guy who’s throwing buckets of water in our faces to stop.” Suddenly, Daniel called up, “What does it mean when the mast glows blue?” “Don’t touch it!” three of us yelled in unison. Silence fell. He was alive. What about the bird? Then we heard a very clear chirp.

One day on the St. Lawrence River, Blake nonchalantly wondered why there was a large, orange bleach bottle floating in the water. A second later, with a crash like thunder, Sirocco hit a rock. Everything flew forward and bounced back, including hapless humans. “Is there a hole? Is there a hole?” we shouted. Daniel, who had once again been below, had to dig himself out of the cabin debris and crawl into the fore-cabin. “No hole,” he shouted back. Shaking so hard I could barely stand, I joined Julia and her father on the aft rail, about 4 inches wide and we began the time-honored rocking back and forth employed when you are hard aground. Daniel crawled out and joined us. The boat didn’t budge. But what is that crazy motor-boater doing. He is driving around us, faster and faster in tight circles, each circle building a higher wake. Finally, one big one lifted Sirocco and we floated clear. Our rescuer waved and raced away. I served juice. Eventually, we all stopped shaking.

Daniel was not always below. He was the one who leaped onto the dock as we came to tie Sirocco up. (Blake invariably sailed in rather than using the motor.) One night at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Daniel missed the dock and fell between it and the boat. There was a mad rush to fend off so that he wouldn’t be crushed between the ton and a half boat and the dockside.

The waters of the Niagara River come rushing down over Niagara Falls and down the rapids and roil out into Lake Ontario. On a stormy day, the waves of the lake collide with the rush of the river and create a sort of vortex of water. On one such day, I had my personal safety line hooked onto the boat’s safety lines. So did Daniel, but he got tangled up as we worked on the fore-deck trying to take in the jib. Impatiently, he unhooked it. He had both arms full, struggling to control the canvas. He stuffed it down the hatch and stood erect. A crosscut wave hit us. Daniel fell backwards as the boat leaned. His body was entirely over water. I grasped both his wrists, braced myself and hung on, staring into his face. Suddenly, the boat heeled again and he fell into my arms.

Clara, who was listening to these stories, said after each one, “And then you quit sailing.” Of course we didn’t. Were we addicted to the adrenal rush or the tranquility of a flat sea at evening? Blake sailed for the love of sailing. Perhaps we sailed for the love of Blake.

Sirocco, taken on a later voyage

Reality Hotel: Kern County, CA

Posted on July 28, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

We are universally addressed as girls, although the universe here is miniscule. We don’t actually play golf, so our storage area holds just our purses. In the two weeks since I learned to drive a golf cart, I have become a go-cart cowboy.

We are actually girls despite our combined years – 163. So, by the way, is your aged mother/aunt/ grandma. My grandma remained one until she was over 90.

The golf cart we take to whatever restaurant we can find open in this sleepy mountain village is only half the fun. Which is saying a lot. Taking a left turn on a steep downgrade is as exciting as Magic Mountain.

The other half of the fun is living in the Reality Hotel, so nicknamed by my sister, Georgia,who willfully misread my email telling her that I had moved to the PMC Realty Hotel. It suited our theatre of the absurd experience here.

The Reality Hotel is comprised of three second-floor rooms linked by a balcony and situated above the realty office. My friend Clara, who lives next door, is waiting for a house deal to close in Las Vegas prior to taking possession of a new home here. Did you know that house deals can fall through on closing day? Well at least they can if they involve reservists and Veterans’ Affairs. There is a new deal but … One way or another, Clara’s new home will not be hers until August 30th. Neither will the spare room with my name on it.

Clara has the best room in the Reality Hotel. It has a kitchenette with a little wet bar sink, a microwave and a tiny fridge. She and her cat also have a private bedroom and a flat screen television with a DVD player.

My room next door has no such amenities, but it is large, and well carpeted with balconies on both ends. I can leave both doors open to catch the breeze. If there is a breeze. Most mornings it is 80 degrees inside by 10 a.m. It can get well up into the nineties by late afternoon. There is a ceiling fan over the bed, which is mostly for show. There is a portable fan that works much better, however. The good news is that the cool air falls down from the mountains after 7 p.m. I shut the front door at night, but leave the sliding door to the front , stairless balcony open. Whatever climbs in through that window, Bruno the Bear included, is going to get a very rude welcome.I’ve got at least that much repressed rage going on.

So you get the picture, high desert with no air conditioning. Most people here don’t have it. After all it only goes up to the high 90s here, whereas in the valley it gets up to 110.

I have whined on about the no phone, no internet and analogue TV set in previous posts, so I won’t bore you with that again. I can always jump into the golf cart and come to the house in the pines or go to the internet cafe -which serves nothing and is often locked, but the signal works on the deck. Clara has her first cell phone, a Verizon phone of course. We AT&T-ers are fresh out of luck. I am teaching her to use it and so, I am able to send a text from time to time.

Using Clara’s kitchenette has its own difficulty. Clara always locks her screen door so that Jasmine doesn’t escape. Then she falls asleep. It’s hard to knock on screen and Clara is hard of hearing. I stand there teabag in hand, but, hey, it’s not so bad if you put into room temperature water and leave it for 20 minutes.

Because where else can I get hot tea? Well, at the amazing bakery, which makes to-die-for croissants. The bakery is open from 7 to 2 Thursday to Monday. Then there is La Lena, the Mexican restaurant. Amazingly you can get hot tea there as well as beer with lime, but it’s at the other end of town.

That brings up the question of what to eat and where. It is possible to eat cheese enchiladas three times a day at La Lena. That hard working family does not work on mountain time. They work seven days a week, breakfast through dinner. The pizza restaurant is open from 2 to 7, later on weekends, closed on Wednesday. Their chicken Caesar is made with pre-frozen cubes which puts it a step down from La Lena’s meat. Mommy’s Roadhouse downstairs from Madd Bailey’s bar does a decent Angus burger and closes Wednesday. Then there is the club house which is open for breakfast and lunch every day, but serves dinner only from Thursday to Sunday. In other words, it is closed Wednesday night. The best restaurant is Silva Bella, although the chef leans heavily on milk and the prices are high. If you want to eat on Wenesday, however, that’s the place.

If you are working with food allergies, you are up against even if it isn’t Wednesday.

At least once a week, sometimes more I eat at the house in the pines and cook a family meal that often as well.

I am happy warming up leftovers from the house in the microwave or tossing a spinach salad, but Clara -not so much. Often I eat my gluten free breakfast and then drive her to the club where she eats scrambled eggs and I drink tea. If I order toast, I get a special commendation from the wait staff.

So here upon this bank and shoal of time, we wait for the resolution of our various problems. We wait at the Reality Hotel.

What’s that song: They’re living it up at the hotel California…… Then isn’t there something about “You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave.

Summer Reading: for remote places

Posted on July 27, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

When the cable and satellite fail, what to read?

No it’s not hurricane season or even ice storm season and my bills are being paid on time. To get into this situation, I had to find myself a fairly remote mountain village with no AT&T service and a hotel room with no internet and an analogue television set without even bunny ears. If that sounds like heaven to you, leave a message and I’ll tell you where to find it. But you may have the same problem at a summer cottage.

My packing was sudden and fast, most of it done by others. I did manage to grab 4 books from the unread pile in my den. When they ran out, I found myself momentarily in Los Angeles where I bought 3 more from the mystery section at Barnes and Noble. Then I discovered the Kern County Library in Frazier Park just down the mountain, which has lots of hard cover Elizabeth George and P.D. James mysteries. A friend sent me 2 books from iTunes and this led me to go down to Santa Clarita to buy a mini iPad.

Here’s what desperation has led me to read.

Two books by Gillian Flynn who wrote the best seller Gone Girl and which I will eventually buy for the iPad. I read Sharp Objects first. Camille Preaker, girl reporter, is sent by her boss at a minor Chicago paper to investigate the murders of two preteen girls in her home town, Wind Gap, Missouri. The boss thinks this is just the ticket to get her back on her feet after a stay in a psych hospital. Camille is not so sure since budget limits mean she has to stay with her mother whose first question is ‘When are you leaving?’ Flynn’s female protagonists tend to be strange. Camille is not encouraged to have sharp objects in her possession. Momma locks the knives up at night. Camille is given to long sleeved tops and pants. If that seems strange, the condition of the young girl’s bodies is odder still.

In Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places, the protagonist is Libby Day, 4ft 8in., one of two survivors of her family’s massacre. The other one, her older brother has been in prison for years for the murders of his mother and two sisters. Libby is non-functional, but she has survived for years on the outpouring of sympathy and cash from the public. Now she’s older, other younger pathetic victims are getting the cash and Libby is reduced to having to earn something. She does so by answering a request from a murder club that wants to have the brother exonerated. Since 7 yr-old Libby was the chief witness against him, it is a hard if necessary job to accept. It is doubtful that you will be able to guess who is to blame or why the brother is content to be in jail. But maybe you’re more observant than me.

Nicci French’s (Nicci Gerrrard and Sean French) novel Blue Monday is A Frieda Klein mystery, Frieda being a psychologist working in London. She finds herself treating a man who longs for a red-headed son, he himself being of that colouring. Then a child like that is kidnapped. Should she report this to the police? The kidnapping has striking similarities to the kidnapping of a 5 yr-old girl 20 years ago. But why would the kidnapper wait so long to strike again. And is the patient living two lives, unable in either to remember the other. Frieda teams up with DCI Karlsson in an attempt to rescue both victims.

The last of the 4 books, I brought from home was a Christmas gift, Denise Mina’s Field of Blood. Hinging on the murder of a 3 yr-old by a couple of 11 yr-olds, this was not a book I would have chosen to read, but it was all I had. Paddy Meehan really is a girl reporter, barely 18, from an Irish Catholic family settled in Glasgow. There’s enough ethnic strife to make an interesting book all by itself. Really Paddy, who bears the name of a notorious traitor, is a copy ‘boy” in the early 1980’s, not an easy role in a newsroom full of leering, hardened, alcoholic, male journalists. She sets out to the prove that the children are not solely responsible, and this leads her into the investigation of a much older child murder as well. Young as she is, Paddy has her own idea of how she wants to live. Her family is strict Catholic, but Paddy can’t see the point. After being shunned by her family, she skips one Sunday. The next Sunday, she gives in to her mother’s pleas: the adult children go to please mother, mother goes to please father and father goes as a role model for his children.

In Los Angeles two weeks after I arrived, I bought Donna Leon’s Willful Behavior, Lee Child’s Tripwire and Elizabeth George’s In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner.

Donna Leon is an American writer living in Venice and writing short mystery novels set there primarily and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, a man who is very fond of his professor wife’s cooking three times a day and possibly a glass of something after his mid-morning espresso. In Willful Behavior, his wife who teaches 19th century English literature, especially Henry James, to a roomful of uncomprehending louts, asks him to help a student clear her deceased grandfather’s name. Next thing, the poor girl is dead and Brunetti is caught up in historical crimes: trafficking in Jewish-owned art during the war. A friend of mine had a great idea, write a cook book featuring recipes for the meals Brunetti eats. Too late. Someone already did. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7233570-brunetti-s-cookbook

I thought I had read all the Lee Child books, featuring tough guy Jack Reacher, but I was wrong. Tripwire is the second Reacher thriller. The retired army major has earned commendations and medals in the Military Police, but he spends his retirement travelling by bus or hitch-hiking across the U.S., sleeping in cheap motels, his only possession the clothes on his back and a folding toothbrush. Trouble finds him easily. This time he is digging swimming pools in the Florida keys when a private investigator comes to find him and ends up murdered. Reacher travels to NYC to find out why. There Hook Hobie, a disfigured vet with a hook for a hand, waits warily for his tripwires, one in Hawaii and one in Vietnam to warn him to shut down his scam and leave town. But there’s this one last score….. This adventure takes Reacher back to a woman that he first fell in love with 15 years when she was 15. Now he can finally admit that to her. Or can he?

Elizabeth’s George’s In Search of a Proper Sinner was well underway when I left it in my grandson’s home. I frantically texted -using a borrowed Verizon phone. The reply was, “Is there anything unusual you want me to do with it?” It arrived back up the mountain a few days ago, but since I haven’t finished it, I will write about it and George’s novel Deception on His Mind in a 2nd summer reading post. Coming soon. I will also describe another early Lee Child novel, Running Blind.

Here we are my reading companion and I in yesteryear. (Not.) Just when I think the Lee Child books is too hardcore, I discover she can’t put it down. That was no lady. That was a reader.

Offa This Mountain: an anti-Shangri-la moment in

Posted on July 20, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

When I get offa this mountain, you know where I’m wanna go
Straight down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles Louisiana Little Bessie girl I once knew
She told me just to come on by if there was anything she could do…

The prospect of an uninterrupted three weeks on this mountain, three weeks of sun, pure air and altitude is taking its toll. I’ve put in two already, but now I crave exhaust fumes, crowds, bookstores, freeways at a standstill, lunch at a noisy curbside.

I distract myself listening to the Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek” its raunchy message offsetting the unbearable niceness of life here at the village centre.

I distract myself by driving a golf cart. Turn the switch on. Press the pedal. Silently, it moves off, leaning over as it turns. Yes, it has an a go-pedal and a brake. No rear view mirrors. No directional signals. It has a governor. Which on down-hill runs kicks in later than I think it should. Once you put the brake on, it locks. The only way to unlock it s to press the accelerator. Stopping at stop signs is entirely absorbing. Turning on a hill causes a lean that is entirely exciting. Did I mention I’m a septuagenarian?

I feel like crying “Hi ho, Silver!” although it keeps turning into “Hi ho Silverwear. Don’t forget your underwear!”

Ah, little red Yaris, 2000 miles away in Toronto.

I come romping home to the small hotel in the dark, grab my Elizabeth George novel, take myself upstairs next door to Madd Bailey’s bar, order a Guinness and read. The bar is mine and mine alone.

I can travel – by golf cart or on foot – to an internet connection and a phone. There are of course no actual public phones still extant and no kindly charity has stepped forward to protect the species. I can, however, sit outside the internet cafe even when it’s closed and get online where the miracle of Skype lets me make phone calls all over the world. Try to have a private conversation, though.

The television set in my room seems to be the last analogue receiver in service. I can get a very, very grainy CNN and if I’ve already seen the show, I listen to the sound -The Sixties, Music e.g.; otherwise, forget it.

Yes, I am reading. And reading. And reading. A book every three days. Right now I’m embarked on another Lee Child, a Jack Reacher thriller, Running Blind. Without Fail is waiting at my bedside.

And listening to the Band on my iPod. “I’m a lonely boy/Ain’t got no home.”

Ostensibly, my mission when I’m not involved in the family healing project, is to plan a mystery novel. But I feel like one of the wasted detectives I read about -Vera Stanhope, Wallender, Rebus. In off hours, I just want to retreat to oblivion and music.

But hey, it was distracting to have my hair cut very short and get a bracing Christian message, all for $45 and a very small tip.

“Acadian driftwood, Gypsy tailwind,/They call my home the land of snow/Canadian cold front moving in/ What a way to ride, oh what a way to go.”

Such was my midnight moan, but sitting outside the Bear Claw Bakery having breakfast the next morning, my octogenarian friend warily asked if I would go shopping with her in Santa Clarita. “Just hand me your car keys,” I said as I sprang to my feet. An hour later, down many mountains, we found the mall. She completed her outfits for her grand-daughter’s wedding and I added to my collection of Apple gear – a small iPad

Trouble in paradise

Posted on July 17, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

www.planetware.com630 × 407Search by image Delphi, lying on the slopes of Mt Parnassus high above the Gulf of Corinth

By the Gulf of Corinth, I sat down and wept. Delphi was just out of sight across the water. The water was the improbable aqua/azure blue of the Mediterranean. At night phosphorescence glowed on the waves. Above the pine-clad mountains rose steeply. The air was fragrant with mint and oregano. The sky was perpetually cloudless and the sun baked the earth. When you couldn’t bear the heat, you cooled off in the warm waters of the gulf. Out of the same water came the little fish you ate for breakfast.

All of this I saw through swollen eyes. I felt as if my life had ended with my family. All three of them were still alive, but lost to me.

There was a lot of ironing to be done there. It was Camping Krioneri,where sheets were provided, so my hostess set me to the task. I cried and ironed. I ironed and cried.

One day, fire swept down the mountain. The big bellied planes dipped water from the gulf and dropped it above us. As the day passed the planes came and went and everyone got red-eyed like me.

Many years ago.

I find myself once again in pine mountains under the hot summer sun – no rivers of Babylon here, only the small pond where the coots and ducks and red winged blackbirds rule. Every window presents beauty: towering Jeffrey pines, quacking aspens, steeply climbing green-clad slopes, a distant alpine meadow tawny in the drought. The air redolent of pine, cedar, acrid poplar, sage. Whereas the Greek village was white or bright with colour, little brick runnels of spring water coursing down beside the road, this village is log-cabined or soft green and yellow, the colours actually mandated. The people do not stand in the mid-day sun and shout in Greek about politics. They smile and greet you. They even stop to talk.

Kind of them. But meanwhile … we are struggling with a problem that feels intransigent. We move one step forward and then seem to slide two steps back. You can tell yourself that this is the nature of healing, but it is hard to remember that when you wake up brokenhearted and see such sights outside your window.

Can the eyes of grief bear the gift of beauty?

www.greece.com1024 × 768 Camping Krioneri in Akratas, Greece

Random Notes from Shangri-la

Posted on July 12, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

My last post was called “Of Stillness and Slow Time”, since then things have got more still (stiller?). I am now staying in a small hotel -3 rooms, no wishing well- no phone, no internet. If I hike cross town, that is past as many as six buildings, I arrive at the internet cafe. It is furnished with sturdy tables and chairs and free internet access. Pas du café. Something about a permit as yet not granted. I hear rumours of available phones at, for example, the Laughing Squirrel Restaurant. The laughing squirrel seems to have split, leaving the field to Mommy’s Roadhouse. Excellent Angus burgers and maybe a phone there somewhere. We tried semi-phore. I am on the second floor on a height of land. Smoke signals are out pending an end to the draught. Shank’s mare works. Just walk up and knock on the door. Thus was I summoned to breakfast this morning.

Amazing how restful it is! My smart phone turns into a stupid phone up here where AT&T gets no reception. Still coping with the altitude, I went to sleep at 8 p.m. and didn’t wake up until 6. Blissfully out of touch.

When I first got here I received a relayed call from a shut-in to bring Black American Spirit. I went to the closet to find a black t-shirt made by that company in L.A. that insists on making its garments in the U.S. Only to discover it is the name of a cigarette.

Before I moved to the small hotel, I borrowed the Prius one morning to go to the Bear Claw Bakery for croissants. I couldn’t find the usual electronic key. I grabbed the second one. I walked up to the car, pressed unlock. Got in. Put the key in the coffee cup holder, started up and drove away. I bought the baked goods, returned to the car. The door wouldn’t unlock. I tried again. I tried the other doors. I tried the trunk. It’s a hatchback after all. I took out my stupid phone and gave it a good talking to. I left the croissant bags on the roof of the car and went back into the bakery. Could I use the phone? Wordlessly the chap I call the grumpy baker handed it to me. I called home. Eventually, someone woke up and answered. That remote key doesn’t work. Hasn’t for years. How did I even get the car to go? Hard to explain how to extract the manual key. Help would arrive via golf cart. Meanwhile I managed to get the actual key out of the remote device and unlocked the door. Now the dash kept telling me “no key”. There was a slot below the ignition button. I poked and prodded. I swear I was about to insert the remote key -well, I would have figured it out given five more minutes- when the cavalry arrived.

The town is remote and perched at 5000 ft. The road up is serpentine. For 30 years, people could and did die waiting for an ambulance. Recently, a helicopter pad was built so that emergency patients can be air-lifted to the Bakersfield hospital. Even so, not everyone arrives alive as we learned last week. In addition there are now paramedics stationed here at the new fire hall. Imagine having to wait half an hour to an hour for the fire trucks to arrive in a town of wooden houses and tinder dry forests.

Today the ribbon cutting ceremony for the fire hall was scheduled for high noon. In deference to my low-land lungs, we drove over. “The whole town is out,” my companion declared. “Really?” I replied. “It’s a small town,” she rejoined. In fact it was just mountain time all over again. We stood in the shade with a dozen other people, all willing to chat. Noon passed. Twelve fifteen passed. Gradually others began to arrive. The crowd doubled and tripled. Around 12:25 -I shouldn’t have even noticed of course – the dignitaries arrived. In due course and with blessedly few speeches, events unfolded.

It had taken over 30 years to get the fire hall and much lobbying and in-fighting, marching with banners and the deaths of two beloved residents. Finally Kern County agreed to build it. It cost 9.5 million and came in 10 months ahead of schedule because there were no snow days. That would be because of the 5 year-long drought. President Obama has declared this a disaster area.

The fire hall is a thing of beauty. Since it is our fire hall, we got to tramp through it. It is still waiting for its brand new furniture, but everything seems to be of the best quality. Stainless steel and granite counters. Two person bedrooms with private bathrooms and built in desks set under the window. One room to accommodate a person with disabilities. (Fire halls are also refuges for battered women, as well as collection depots for unwanted new-borns.) A fitness room lined with mirrors. And of course room for the two fire engines.

Some advice, in case you need it. If the great recession has done you in, move to a place like Kern County where the unemployment rate is double the national average. Such places have access to funds because they are poor. The medical health clinic is 40 minutes down the hill beside the I 5, again beautifully new and up-to-date. Another is due to open up here next month, smaller no doubt but no travel necessary. The new library down the hill has soaring ceilings, an auditorium, a beautiful children’s room, computers, a good collection and remarkable art work. Certainly people are here because the cost of living is much cheaper and many are retired so unemployment doesn’t matter as much to them. Nevertheless, there are service jobs available and every second person seems to be a realtor.

For several weeks, we have been trying to identify a certain bird call, almost piercing, two noted, pendulum-like. It seemed to me it must be made by a large bird. We hear it in the morning and then again about 5:30 in the afternoon, often from a tall pine across the road. We crane our necks, we sneak around and peer upwards. No dice. We listen to bird calls on the Audubon app. Perhaps it is a woodpecker. That could account for its invisibility. One morning, the mystery is solved. The singer sits upright on a rock pile outside the kitchen window and pipes up. It is a squirrel.

Of Stillness and Slow Time

Posted on July 9, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

Keat’s sketch of a Grecian Urn from Wikipedia

When the poet, John Keats, wrote the line, “Thou foster child of silence and slow time”, he was talking about a Grecian urn. http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html The urn had survived from the days of ancient Greece and the figures depicted on it were a freeze shot of life in that time: a boy and girl almost kissing, a garlanded cow being paraded off to be sacrificed. Keats expresses envy for these happy people immortalized in their joy. He seems to have written it in May 1819. In 1820, he was diagnosed with consumption or tuberculosis, probably contracted when he took care of his brother, Tom, who died of the disease. Keats died at the age of 25.

But the line keeps recurring in my head here on the mountain. In my last post I talked about sitting still on a rock beside a pond for over an hour, watching and listening to the coots and ducks and red wing black birds, studying the stone itself, the reeds and the water.

After 9 a.m., the birds, who started their serenades around 5, begin to fall silent in the heat with the notable exception of flights of angry red wings after the thieving hawk. As the heat grows, the silence deepens, although from time to time, the breeze rises and the pines begin to purr. The sound will start off down the road and gradually arrive, cooling as it comes. To me it is the most comforting sound in the world.

The village goes by mountain time. Workmen here are even harder to pin down than in the city. The plumber may be a plumber some days. On others he may be a painter, layering oil colours on canvas. The pellet stove repair guy may not regard your emergency as one. Things move slowly here.

I have been nagging myself because I’m no longer filling my days with useful tasks, Then yesterday, I found myself sitting and staring and realized I was just on mountain time.

Healing Surrender

Posted on July 8, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

this poem is reblogged from one of my favourite bloggers.

celiadermontblog

I am not ready to put my burden down
the wind blows through pines
I want to more than anything
sounding a seashell
I am tired with the weight on my body
clouds of yellow pine pollen drift
I feel my great grandmother’s despair
as if puffed from a smoker’s mouth
at being alive and so old that children die
it is high noon on the solstice at 5,000’
I have tried twice to ease my load
even the ducks sit in shade
my place in the world is taken
baby coots with translucent red beaks chirp for food
what remains will be a ward of the state
the house is planted on bedrock
undone and twice fifty-oned
it shimmies as one with the washer
my list of goals continues to expand
the floor stones tight as a drum head
I am beaten
underneath is the San Andreas fault

San…

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Stillness in the High Desert

Posted on July 4, 2014 by joyceahowe/hood

Someone asked me this morning what I do to fill my days here at 5000 ft in the Sierra Mountains of Southern California. The answer is simple: I sit.

I don’t mean I sit and read. Mostly, the book lies face down on the arm of the chair, the computer closed on the foot stool. I start out with good intentions and the next thing I know I’m just sitting.

For one thing, it’s hot. Back home in Toronto, we cherish the idea that dry heat is bearable. The soup-like heat and humidity of the Great Lakes has driven most of us to air conditioning. Up here, few houses have it. In my naiveté, I thought the mountain breezes would take care of that. Not so. And I have given up on the idea that dry heat is better. Parched is not better. Drinking liters of water is not better.

Today, July 4th, 2014, we are having inclement weather. There are small white fluffy clouds drifting between us and the sun. Usually there is snow on Mt Pinos until June or early July. This year it was gone by April. There is a river bed with high gravel banks indicating that torrents of water have smashed through them. Now it looks like a long, narrow gravel pit. Smokey the Bear stands with his upturned shovel warning us the risk of fire is high. There will be no fire works tonight.

I spent an hour earlier today sitting on a rock under a willow tree at the edge of what is optimistically called a lake, really a pond. The water does come down from the mountain but is tightly monitored. It has to be at a certain level – for fire fighting – but it is dangerously low.

Last week an ingenious machine mowed the algae and the cat tales so there is more open water now, but the red wing black birds have taken it in their stride even though their population density is astounding. I didn’t realize they were such a social breed. Each family’s territory must be small. It’s a small pond. But they get along, defending their nests together. I saw 8 or 10 chasing a hawk with a fledgling in its mouth. On the sidelines, another 20 or 30 cried out in protest.

Sitting in the leafy shade with a breeze ruffling the water and cooling me, I disappeared into the background. A mother coot or mud hen with two babies kept diving under water as if to demonstrate the technique, but the baby coots just kept chirping, so she started bringing up bits and feeding the nearest one.

American Coot

Ducks were calling from the other side of the pond and every so often, an unseen frog seemed to answer. Eventually, two ducks swam around the reeds and into the little bay at the foot of the tree. One was much larger than the other, but both seemed to have adult colours.

A red wing landed in the branches above me and began whistling its fat whistle. There was no mistaking the song but he didn’t seem to have his red epaulets yet. The next thing I knew he was gone and a Stellar’s Jay was scolding there.

The breeze was fragrant with cedar from the chips on the path, with the smell of mud and pine needles.

Every so often, a vehicle drove into the small parking lot. Most sat briefly and moved back out. The town was curiously empty on this holiday, but those still here seemed to be doing auto tours. One guy stayed, dragged out a big ice chest and a fishing rod and bade me, “Good afternoon” as he made for the picnic tables farther along the shore. Afternoon? I thought. Another couple made for the archery range armed accordingly.

Every so often, a fish jumped.

What kept me from hurrying off was that I was waiting for a better hiker than me to return down the horse trail. A few days before on a cooler day, I stood waiting on the dusty trail under a pin oak with many trunks. I had learned not to sit out there for fear of ants. I stood there for half an hour, gazing at the mountains and studying the trees, enjoying the breeze that funneled down the hill. That taught me the joy of staying quiet and still and engaging all my senses.

It was my stomach that got me up today. It told me it was well past lunch time. I left my bower and started back up the sun-baked road home.

We sent out a search party on a golf cart to bring home the walker who had made it all the way to the creek and had been sitting with her feet in it.