Mountains to Desert

Over Columbus Day weekend we went camping in the San Bernardino National Forest near Mount San Jacinto State Park.  Original plan: Go to Joshua Tree National Park for the weekend. Reservable campsites were all reserved (Because of Desert Trip?). Backup plan: Find a spot with trees on the other side of the mountains. Although the state park was full, the National Forest Service had a handful of quiet, private, sites for half the price. No showers or flush toilets, but I happen to like primitive camping, as do the boys. The girls would rather have some running water, but they compensated by not going to the bathroom very much while we were there.  The weather was perfect for camping, although because of the drought, no fires were allowed. So at night after the kids were tucked in their sleeping bags all cozy, we drank our cups of cheap wine in the dark, peering at the stars between the pine trees. I missed the fire, but the upside was not smelling smoky when we returned.

Despite the complaining and whining about going camping, the kids really seemed to have a good time.  They don't want to disconnect and leave their friends. They are afraid they might miss something good. But the further away from home we get, the more they relax and begin to talk to each other and to us. The youngers spring from the car and head off on an exploration of our site in the forest before we can remind them about setting up camp. Away from the concrete and traffic at home, they jump and laugh and climb and are generally rambunctious until time for a hike and dinner.
******************

I used to reject the notion that to grow in wisdom, a person must travel. We have had conversations with friends (and books) about whether wisdom comes primarily through lived experience that should include travel to exotic locations in order to gain knowledge of the entire world or whether wisdom comes with reading and reflection and conversation.

What is meant by wisdom is perhaps the first question.  Obviously, it isn't just memorizing facts or recognizing landmarks or accumulating content information, or even learning how to process or discover information. Being wise surely must also have an element of seeing outside the self, of being empathetic or compassionate, of loving, - of knowing and loving others, as well as knowing and loving things.

I still don't believe that true wisdom requires travel. But travel does provide a type of knowledge, or a way of seeing, that differs from the kind of knowledge or reflection that happens when you stay at home.  Being dislodged or relocated shifts your view - maybe just a degree or two, and not for very long. And traveling provides the opportunity to meet new people and find they are knowable and lovable, even though you may know that in theory from books and conversations at home. And after traveling, you go home, and home seems more lovable.

Remember the old mnemonic device for spelling desert: you want more dessert, so you ask for two s's. You want less desert, so it only has one s.  Some people love the desert. People who live in adobe homes decorated with bougainvillea, who paint sunsets in vivid golds, pinks, and purples, and who smoke peacepipes and speak in aphorisms.  Ok, plenty of other people, too, but driving by all of these colorful homes made me realize the number of people who chose to settle where less than an inch of rain falls is not small.

I am curious about the people who originally came to Palm Springs to live, or Las Vegas, or any other desert town bulging with ostentatious wealth. Were they people who had something to escape, who had secrets or past crimes to hide, or who wanted to engage in illegal or prohibited activities like selling alcohol, or gambling, or whatever other vices were bought and sold? Why did they settle in the middle of the desert? How did they have the audacity to found a luxury resort in this place?
*****************************************

We didn't actually visit Palm Springs, although we could see it from a mountain top.  But we drove through a few small towns nearby, where dust covers the windows of tin roofed homes so that they looked condemned on uninhabited, but in fact, someone is living there. The high school in one desert town is next to a maximum security prison. Train tracks and an interstate divide a town into thirds in which no one has a good location.  Laundromats and Super Marts and Vape shops line the streets across from taquerias and iglesias. But no one walks the street. You don't see any people, except an old man trimming the lone palm tree in his front yard. Where do they hide in the daytime? Where do they go to work? Vines are withered, fields are dust, creosote is the only thing that grows. Perhaps these really are ghost towns haunting the edge of a glittering high- end outlet mall next to a high rise mirrored casino blinding motorists, preventing any view of the interior - or out.

We had plenty of time on the road to image the lives of those who live in the desert, both the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor.  I have decided I am a mountain person.  I'd rather be high in the trees on a hillside, than oceanside in the sand. Or rockside in the desert, although I did love the warmth of the sun on my arms. The weekend was a study in contrasts in many ways.  I'm glad we made the trip to escape routine, to enjoy family bonding, and to explore a few other wonders of creation.

Wildflowers

Do you see the bighorn sheep?

A zoom lens is on my wishlist

Joshua tree forest

Petroglyphs

Skull rock

Dry land log rolling

The all seeing eye

The color has been added by "vandals."

Natural color. That deep blue may be what desert lovers are addicted to.

Purple mountains majesty

Fiery sunset

Goodbye friends! Outside of the friendly corner bakery in Idyllwild

Genius and its discontents

I just finished reading T. C. Boyle's The Women, Boyle's fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright and his wives and lovers. I like T. C. Boyle's writing, although I can't say I loved this book. It was interesting to read, despite some slow parts, mostly because, although I  am familiar with a number of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings - and some of their structural woes - I was not familiar with the story of the murder of his lover and six other people at the Wisconsin retreat house he had built on family property.  That's not the central idea of the book, but part of the intrigue behind a man who had an ego larger than life.  He was a certain kind of genius and he knew it, but he also spent a lot of time and money convincing other people he was a genius.

The megalomania and obsessiveness that drives certain creative types to ignore the emotional wreckage they leave behind them are curious personality types that are probably disorders but also responsible for some of the world's marvels of artistic creation. Are there some potential artists out there who are over medicated or therapied into being too nice to create?  Is the greatest struggle for the Christian artist the struggle between his soul which must be humble and his genius which must be exalted?  Can the Christian artist disregard and neglect the people around him enough to create a work of miraculous magnitude?

An interesting side note to The Women: T. C. Boyle was inspired to write the story after he bought a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Santa Barbara where Wright lived for a short time.  I didn't realize we were living a short distance away from this place - although I did drive through Montecito a couple times. It's the neighborhood where Oprah sometimes lives and sells her free range chicken eggs.  I'd guess the average home price is probably in the $10 million range.  (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-wildlife-of-tc-boyles-santa-barbara-27234/?no-ist=&page=1

I also picked up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers.  I know that many people love this book and rave about it, and I wanted to like it more - we were practically neighbors to Lake Forest - and then California - but I just couldn't get into it.  It just seemed too self aware and intentionally attention seeking - the narrative voice reminded me a little of a contemporary Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.  Perhaps in a different mood, I could have worked up a little more enthusiasm for it, but I decided I didn't want to spend any more time with it, and I skimmed until the end and moved on.  I'm sure it is a good reflection on the struggle to live in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional world, and a reflection that normalcy comes in a variety of forms.

Now I'm bogged down in James Martin's My Life with the Saints, which I keep on the back of the toilet to read in short bits. It has some good insights and is conversationally written and definitely readable. I especially liked the chapter on Pope John XXIII and his joviality.  But I'm not inspired enough to read it more quickly or often, so my reading burst has come to an end.

Reading in review

           More notes on recent reads:  Much of my reading has been children's books - keeping up with the kids.  As I mentioned, the fifth grader had to read a Hardy Boys book, which was entertaining, and Sing Down the Moon for assigned summer reading. I loved Sing Down the Moon when I read it as a child and again now- it is the touching tale by Scott O'Dell, of Island of the Blue Dolphins fame, of the removal of the Native Americans from their home in Canyon de Chelly to a reservation in Arizona before the turn of the 20th century when the western expansion movement was at its height.  In reading it, the tragedy of this movement in our nation's history is painfully apparent, but the book doesn't seem overly political.  Indian removal was motivated by greed and fear, inexcusable, but fed over time by a variety of occurrences.

Interestingly, Native Americans here in San Diego county, the Kumeyaay tribe, have been protesting a local building project by the government.  A finger bone was found in the process of land removal, and the government called in archaeologists, publicized the finding and released information. Then they redesigned the project with a setback, but now there is a protest, after building has resumed.  There is no evidence that the area is actually a burial ground, but the issue is very sensitive and receiving a lot of press. Misunderstandings abound, but after people met face to face around a table some of the issues have been resolved. A member of the tribe is being hired as a consultant and some other concessions have been made, and right now the building is moving forward.
************************************

In light of recent movie releases, I also just read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This was another entertaining read - albeit darkly so, rightly described as gothic - that I put off for some time, skeptical of the best seller reputation, but since a movie version is arriving soon, the kids wanted to read it, and I thought I needed to check it out. The kids and I flew through it. It is the story of people with special - peculiar - gifts or abilities - to make fire in their hands, to be invisible, to see the future, etc, - who live in a "loop" or a time warp zone where a day repeats itself endlessly in order to keep these "Peculiars" safe. The main character's grandfather was a Peculiar who refused to live in the loop - and eventually trouble catches up with him and he is murdered. His grandson, clueless about this secret identity, but also a Peculiar, proceeds to investigate the clues his grandfather left behind and discovers the loop and the conflict between the Peculiars and their monstrous enemies, the Wights and the Hollowgast.

The book is fast paced and notable for the positive portrayal of the grandfather/grandson relationship - but a weak father/son relationship and a some crass language that sounds teenagerly. We are eagerly awaiting the return of the second book to the library so we can continue the series and see if the promise holds.  It does have an intensity and darkness to the plot that disqualify it as a family read.  For some reason it reminded me a little bit of the Spiderwick books, maybe because of the threshold crossing theme? And perhaps in another mood, I might not like it, as I didn't like the darkness in The Night Gardener.

P.S. I jumped ahead and read the third book, The Library of Souls, great title, instead of waiting for book 2. It was again a page turner, but I'd say it is bit dark for young readers.  All's well that ends well, of course, and I can't remember anything more objectionable than violence. But little relief from the the dark tone and subject matter are offered. I imagine the film all in a shadowy black and white like the vintage photographs that accompany the text.

This book caused me to look closer at some of the vintage photographs around my house of various family members. I couldn't find anything really peculiar about them...

Here is a favorite: the photo of my grandfather looking handsome in a long wool coat holding a cigarette as he gazes toward the camera.

That grandfather used to call me Buckles after my maternal great grandmother, Mrs. Buckles, because he thought I smiled like her. Here are few photos of her as a young woman at her family farm.

My other grandfather and his wife, daughter of Mrs. Buckles, the stylish grandmother.

My other grandmother as a little girl and her best friend:

My parents as pre-schoolers:

Where did September go? Photo dump

October already! The Santa Ana winds have been blowing, so the temperatures have been warm the past two weeks. The kids had a heat day (half day at school) when the thermometer spiked about 90. I even have jumped in the pool a few times with the baby. But this week we may have to pull out some jackets for the evenings, as more temperate winds blow off the ocean.

Reading on the beach courtesy the Little Free Library

A tattered Tiger

Checking out the planes at Speedfest

And the race cars

Dad wins the MRE cookoff challenge!

Looks good, doesn't it?

The winning dish in the second round.

Tunnel jumping at the Children's Museum

A giant magnolia browning

Who wants a cheap fire truck? $27000

A little silo at the garden store

Poinsettia the cow and tutu wearer at the garden store

Tortoise at the garden store

We had a hard time leaving

Who wouldn't want to shop here?

Kids are firmly into the routine of school, practices, and homework now. We had quite a bit of company in September - several friends passing through town for work dropped by for weeknight dinners and a couple families came down from nearby for weekend visits. The upshot has been the house has been staying fairly tidy!

Despite all of the extra-curriculars, the weekly schedule hasn't been too crazy because the kids' events are either local and don't require driving or on different evenings and don't require much shuffling. Cross country, volleyball and water polo are on the schedule. And every Saturday afternoon that ND games are shown on regular tv (we are still using rabbit ears) my husband has to catch up with Notre Dame football, even though they aren't having a very good season. We haven't seen our older boys on the tv screen, although we are always looking for them.  They check in once a week or so by phone or facetime - and we try to send a few text updates. This is one situation in which I highly approve of technological advances.

Good night sun. View from the front door. Come on in!