Leaving Lake Almanor

Well, today we pack up; tomorrow we head down Deer Creek canyon to the San Francisco bay area. I already miss the peace and quiet, the beautiful trees, moonlight on the water, the bats swooping at dawn and sunset, and the occasional surprise visit by the likes of a pygmy owl or a giant vine maple beetle (prionus californicus). But, we’re returning to the pleasure of many friends and city life.

Random Thoughts on the Election

At an unpleasant dinner in Panama City, Panama, in spring 2004, I was roundly cuffed about by a university professor regarding the Bush administration and the American system of government in general. He was convinced that we are brutal bullies. I say “we” because, indeed, we Americans are in this together. I paid my taxes and I voted along with everyone else in 2000, and the choice was George W. Bush. The professor stomped on my every effort to say that, despite a long history of “re-arranging” Latin American governments, there was another side to my America, one with a bill of rights, enduring human values, a representative government and the ability to transform itself every four years. The relentless professor had been through a divorce recently. I could see why. No doubt his ex-wife felt as rotten and angry as I did.

But even in the darkest days of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration with terrible news of American torture perpetrated in Iraq and hideouts elsewhere in the world, I clung to the belief that things would change...that one day President Bush would turn over power peacefully to another…that our history, constitution and bill of rights are so large and so formidable, no individual president or administration could undo our system of government.

We had another election in 2004. I was disappointed with the result. I felt like one of the butterflies in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem:

“even as butterflies are beaten back
by hurricanes
yet do not die
They lie in wait wherever
they can hide and hang
their fine wings folded
and when the killer-wind dies
they flutter forth again
into the new-blown light
live as leaves.

Time passed, and we’ve just finished another election. A year ago, I would never have guessed at the sweeping vindication of my trust in the American system of government.

The election of Barak Obama is transformative, a watershed event. Born well past the WWII, too young to be drafted for Vietnam – but old enough to have experienced 9/11 with the rest of us. Product of a hippie mother and Kenyan father. Raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. He does represent a new generation of tax-paying, voting Americans, 40% of whom can claim multi-cultural, multi-racial roots. And, I’ll be interested to watch how, as president, he leverages his huge following over the Internet to deliver the modern version of FDR’s “fireside chats.”

I'd heard over & over during the campaign that it would be transformational to elect a black man. I'd poo-poohed this concept, because I thought of Obama as a multicultural, generational-change candidate who is part black (see above). But, at the announcement of his election, I saw that it was not inaccurate to say that he is our first African American president. Which brings me to Abraham Lincoln, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King and Rabbi Sydney Akselrad.


History is a great thing. It shows the power of time and enduring human values. Over the objections of his entire cabinet, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” in Brown v. Board of Education. Martin Luther King declared we shall overcome. He led a march in Selma, Alabama. With Jesse Jackson. With Rabbi Sydney Akselrad, the rabbi who married my husband and me.


When I saw Jesse Jackson in Chicago’s Grant Park with tears in his eyes as Obama’s election was announced, I cried too.

I thought of Rabbi Sydney Akselrad marching in Selma. He was a frail person with terrible eyesight, a keen sense of humor, an outsized humanity, a huge heart. How could he face the violence and anger? He just did.



However it goes in the next assuredly turbulent months and years of the Barak Obama administration, no matter if he takes a course that I disagree with, this particular moment in time is rightfully a celebration of all that America stands for. We have the ability to transform ourselves, not instantly, but just see how quickly! President Bush has been gracious and offers his ready cooperation in the transition to a new administration. Our system of government is still bigger than any one president, any one party, any one component of our society. The pendulum swings…. We may not have perfect government or a perfect union, but I’ll keep on paying my taxes, I’ll keep on voting, I’ll keep on putting the American flag in front of our house at Lake Almanor each day, just as my Dad did.

Wind

At 5:30 in the morning I wait for my computer to power up, in the darkness, watching the hourglass twirl, anticipating what communication might have landed in my inbox in the course of the night.

Outside a low wind passes through the trees. Low and gentle. Low and gentle. Out there in the darkness, my mother, her thin and elegant form, is winding slowly through the dense tree trunks, fanning through the clusters of needles in the tree tops, bringing down upon me this low and gentle wind.

Baubles, bangles & beads

A selection of reasons why I live here.
All rights for specific photos reserved by their owners. Special thanks to Buff & Jerry Corsi for use of their photos and Nina Simon for her song.

Unicorns among the pines

They're small and nondescript, California Tortoiseshell butterflies. Like the unicorn, they are usually unseen -- until the mind perceives them.

Then they are everywhere, flitting like small Halloween hankies through the forests of northern California. What their business is, in the snappish cool weather of October, I don’t know. My guidebook says the species is noted for wild fluctuations in population. Some years none are seen in Lassen Park. Other years they actually cause hazardous driving conditions "because of plastered windshields and slickened pavement.”*

But these butterflies please me. They please me, not the least because I can see them, small unicorns of the forest. They peep from behind the massive, corrogated trunks of old cedar trees, they flap and veer through dry grasses. Perception is all. They tickle my soul.

*“Discovering the Butterflies of Lassen Volcanic National Park,” by Laurence L. Crabtree, 1998

Four Seasons at Lake Almanor

Music by Lerner & Lowe, arranged by Jackie Terrasson, sung by Cassandra Wilson

Free Fall

Disturbed by some uneasiness I awake to the view of the lake from the deck. The moon brands the moving waters in quicksilver. Beyond the idle chaise lounge, beyond the spiral of shadows created by the deck railing, the light pours down into the shining abyss.

My mother must have seen this view. When she was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, we came to this house in the mountains that dad had built with his bear paws twenty years ago. At 83, my mother spent the days laboring at the foot of the deck, gathering up the pine needles and duff thrown down in the annual cycle of the trees. Work as salvation. Dad was already gone.

I turn my back to the scene and curl into the dark embryo of the warm bed. But the moonlight is there, shining at the edge of my consciousness, a trickle, and I know I will not sleep.

Count the increments of time as the moon continues its steady arc over the sky. Parent-child time magnifies even as it disappears. It’s alright. Everything will be alright. In the kingdom of the living and in the kingdom of the dead. Knowing more, knowing less, it is what it is.

First Rain

Evening Grosbeak from Audubon's Birds of America

In between the squalls, the evening grosbeaks, blackbirds, and Audubon warblers gather in the trees, facing the wind, feathers ruffling, to comment on their travel plans.

Clouds hurtle by like movie film. The strong white sun breaks through and, in the dazzling light, the tips of the deep green pines twinkle with a thousand prisms of dew. The breeze shakes the branches and angled sheets of pinpoints fall to the ground in waves of soft sound. Two birds launch themselves toward the morning sun while a dozen of their mates veer south.

Open the door and the sublime scent of the pines and firs rushes in like a boisterous child full of news.

As I write this scrap, looking down from my loft window, I see this year’s yellow grasses offer up their harvest of seeds and fruits. Ah, like these grasses, I have fruits to offer but will never be green again…

But, here is this burst of glory, the first rain in more than three months, connecting us all, heaven and earth, the yet-to-be born and the dying, once again.

October 4, 2008
Lake Almanor, CA

Indian Valley Raptor

I took a drive through Indian Valley on Tuesday. The valley was gorgeous, with all the grasses turning yellow-gold and the sky powder blue and filled with marching cumulus clouds. I turned on the old Stampfli pioneer road that cuts through the valley, and noticed a red tailed hawk on the ground in a field. We stopped to see the prey it had caught. When he saw us, he hopped/ran to take off but couldn’t. A broken right wing. So I fussed with my cell phone (terrible reception) and eventually got 911 and the name/phone of a contact in Westwood that does raptor rescue. Couldn’t reach them, and drove home, thinking about the fate of the hawk. So, I called again from home and got through to the raptor rescue woman. She couldn’t make the drive to pick him up, but told me to take him to the Chester Vet Clinic if I was able.

So….back into the car for a nice hour drive back to Indian Valley. Couldn’t find the hawk but knew he had to be there in the field somewhere. Took a box and my dad’s tough, beautifully woven WWII Army blanket and marched into the field…fortunately, no cows. From the valley I could see the deep V in the mountains that marks the entrance to the Feather River canyon that drops sharply down into the flat California central valley. The wind was whipping up from the mouth of the canyon into and across the field. Scanning through the grasses I spotted movement of a dark object on the ground. It was the injured hawk, a bit more subdued after an afternoon in the baking sun and erratic winds. I held the blanket over him, using the wind to create a tent, then slowly brought it down and folded him inside the box. He was so light. He didn’t struggle or cry out. Back to the car we went, at which point the hawk attempted an escape. What pain it must have caused him. I wrapped more blankets around the box and took off for the vet’s office. It was 4 o’clock and about 45 minutes away.

Five minutes into the drive, the hawk popped up in the back of the car, having slipped between the box and blankets. There he was perched on the edge of the box as I drove 50 MPH down the road. It was an interesting excursion. Would he attempt to fly? Cars whizzed by. Did they see what was inside? I wonder what the hawk thought as the scenery passed at a level and angle that must have been very unfamiliar. I reached the vet’s office with 10 minutes to spare. He was x-rayed and put in a quiet spot. I haven’t checked to see if the wing break was simple enough to warrant the hawk’s salvation. It would take several months of feeding lab mice to it and preparing it for release – a big job. At least he will not suffer from exposure and a slow death. And, he was beautiful to be close to, even in his pain.

Photo of Red Tailed Hawk by Buff & Jerry Corsi

HURT HAWKS 

1

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dram, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.

2

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bone too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance.  I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.  What feel was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
                                                            -- Robinson Jeffers, 1928