Walking In Their Footsteps

Spring--Fort Ross Road

Moments of awe and grace are so very unexpected. The tight ess curves of Highway 1 above Russian Gulch demand one's full attention and gazing out the window at the hazy blue expanse of the Pacific and its coast is more a case of sneak peeks while keeping one's eye firmly on the road. Yet yesterday as I indulged in one of those seruptious glances, a red-tailed hawk appeared in my field of vision at the road's edge.  So close that I could see individual definition in the feathers of its mottled brown underside, beak and rusty orange tail feathers.  It seemed to rise from nowhere with such a huge wingspan, upturned smaller feathers at the tips of the wing reaching skyward as it soared away on the warm air currents.

The silence of the roadside at Styla Grove evokes inner calm and peace.  A concert of small birds filters through the underbrush while the limbs of a massive tree undulate their scarred length toward the light and are inhabited by myriad circular spiderwebs of every size. Apple blossom petals float slowly down from the trees in a graceful ballet onto a carpet of new grass. Birdsong provides theme music. Apple blossoms struggle on trees where lichen has stubbornly taken hold and drapes itself in long hairlike streams.  

 

I was hesitant to walk the path through the redwood and fir trees to what was once Styla's open meadow--muddy, uneven and littered with branches the path is somewhat more than I think my knee was ready to attempt yesterday. I have not been to that magical place for a very long time; yet, have a memory of vivid wild iris around a small pond.

It has been too long since I have been out alone drinking in the earth's peace. Cawing of a crow or rook, chirrupps and rustling of small birds in the underbrush, sounds of the air moving through the grasses and trees.  Rusty green poison oak leaves hug an old fence whose wooden cross pieces and pickets are worn and weathered--bleached to a soft silver.  The low insistent moan of the sea remains constant.

Along the darker portions of Fort Ross Road, a few turkeys hustle across the road and into the dense forest.  Their dark sillouettes are barely visible against the dark trees.  At the crest, dark shapes of hawks float above the newly green hills.

Few wild flowers are along the road that is usually bordered with bright California poppies and wild iris--too early, not enough rain who knows. Fields of wild mustard are in evidence at the vineyards closer to home.

It's about the light--its always about the light but especially in the early days of spring.

Henweigh's on Highway 116 for sheperd's pie for lunch.  

 

Family Faces

 "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us we see the past, present and future."  

Gail Lumet Buckley

I often look at Parker and Mason as being very different from one another physically.  Parker is dark-eyed and dark haired, Mason has bright blue eyes and lighter hair and skin.  On the surface, it seems a night and day picture.

Yet paging through my images of grandson soccer earlier this week, I found an image of Mason during a recent soccer game.  Intently focused on the ball, he strains to move faster with his tongue between his teeth and his face serious and sober.  I realize that there is something familiar about this image--that I have seen it over and over in soccer captures of the last few years. The planes of his face, the set of his shoulders--in all of it, I see the same elements as in Parker's face and body as he runs down a soccer field.  In that one brief moment of recognition, their shared genetics stare at me from the screen and the brothers' images become interchangeable.

It surprises me.  I don't know why it should--often in rummaging through family photographs taken today as well as years ago I see the faces of the people who belong to me.  Nathaniel as a young child looks very much like my father at 5 or 6.  Parker stands with the same stance as Nathaniel and I very much resembled my late Aunt Betty when younger.

It is true that all of this is encoded in our DNA, very much the stuff of science and the random luck of the genes.  For myself, I love the feeling of continuance that I have when these small moments jump at me from a picture or the screen. The past and present coalesce in the faces of those I love and a small moment of grace occurs. 

 

Grins, Grace and Gratitude...

 

Parker loves to run.  His young body moves down the soccer field with effortless grace. Often, he smiles from the sheer joy of participating in the play and his hair flying in the wind ruffles and falls. I love the ease with which he and his brother, Mason, move--their bodies responding unconsciously to the demands of today's game or at play.  Sometimes I can see their father in their stance or the way they move this way or that.

Through my lens, their intense focus on moving down the field and on the soccer ball is written on their faces along with the highs and lows of team play.  Parker was really fatigued from continually running as forward the entire first half of the game this morning and I could see his body begin to stumble some.

My telephoto lens affords me the ability to capture nuances of expression that are not apparent when sitting on the sidelines in a lawn chair as I did when his dad played. Blessed.

 

 

Wandering Away From Winter

Fence & Lilies
Originally uploaded by cheryldoran-girard

Red-tailed hawks floated gracefully over the broad greening hills as I drove north on Highway 1 towards Fort Ross. Their rufous and white colored underwing feathers warm against a faintly blue sky. Sounds of the Fort Ross' bell, running water and surf surge greet me as I exit the car on the westernmost side of the Fort Ross complex and senses are assaulted by the enticing salty tang of the ocean that dissipates quickly in the cool, foggy air.
This impromptu trip to Fort Ross is spent in the meadow adjacent to the Call House and on a bluff above the Pacific.
Behind a low lichen-covered picket fence is an overgrown meadow where yellow wildflowers abound. The riot of color is softened by weathered grey picnic tables scattered amid the ocean of waving yellow blossoms. It is the meadow, the flowers, me and my lens for a good two hours. Clumps of creamy fat lilies rising out of deep green foliage their yellow stamens pushing out like the tongue of a small child taunting an older sibling. A majestic eucalyptus with shaggy blossoms hanging from its lower branches holds court in the back corner of the meadow. Fallen logs lie amid the yellow profusion.
Following the sounds of deep grunts and a higher-pitched bawling, I make my way toward the edge of the bluff. Below lazing on a rock are a mother harbor seal and her pup. She is a lovely pale gray and the smallish pup has far darker fur. I guess my movement along the edge of the bluff alerts the mother and she squalls somewhat more loudly while lifting her short doglike face upward. I'm surprised she is so obviously at rest on the rock when there are a number of folks fishing from the rocks in close proximity.
Making my way across the bluff to shoot a large clump of lilies against a fence, a soft slithering noise at my feet causes a quick look down to find an almost pencil-thin garter snake sliding quickly away in the underbrush. Its distinct black and white striped body moving sinuously sideways. The low-growing under brush gives no sense of the snake's length and I wonder how big these reptiles become.
My final shots are of the oddly developing pinecones and flowers amid the evergreen branches. This spur-of-the-moment field trip didn't include packing the usual bag of reference materials, journals and watercolors.
The day begins to grow colder as I rest on a carved bench at the top of the bluff to merely drink in the wondrous sense of be able to be out and about at the end of a long, cold and wet winter.

Letters--From the Past and to the Future

It occurred to me this morning that the recent snow storms in the East would have appeared in Papa Doran's cash journal as footnotes with, perhaps, the unusual amounts of snow noted but no descriptive comment.

A recipe written on the back of a brief note written by my grandmother during my nomadic years of the early 1970s, Papa's comments of weather, deaths, and daily news; and, certainly, my father's iconic 1950s images are reminders that each life between the birth and death dates on a tombstone was full and worth honoring.

And so, in the digital age, I write.  I write because I have wished for forty years to find an ancestor's handwritten journal and have finally realized that the journal I seek is in the notes at the bottom of a page in a cash book, a the list tucked into a book, or the yearly note and cards from a woman in Ireland distantly related to my grandparents.  I write, I hope, for a young person in the future, who, like me, needed to know the people from the past.

Lastly, I write for myself as I yearn to document the daily life of my world and the people in it (especially those I love), the beauty of this planet that leaves me awestruck, and to honor those who came before.

 

NO POLITICS ALLOWED...

I’m slogging through Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol; and, last evening, found some wonderfully descriptive passages (see below) relating that the Library of Congress in Washington, DC is the most beautiful building in the world.  While my experience of these things is severely limited, I agree.

 

The Library building is a such stunningly lovely place that one wishes to absorb its grace through one’s pores.  During my one excursion there, I found myself wishing to be surrounded by its elegance always.  That feeling hasn’t tarnished over the years since that brief visit in October 2000.

From it’s elegantly appointed halls to sweeping (marble) stairwells to the Reading Room chamber and an exterior appointed with fountains with representations of mythical figures this building is a tangible symbol of what we can achieve as Americans.

Musings of a Bookish Mind...

I am a reading slut!  Since the days of Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins, books that lived on the shelves at 201 Green Street, I read everything that comes my way including the back of this morning’s cereal box or the small print on the ketchup label. 

Turning the page and falling asleep with book in hand have been part of a nightly ritual that started in childhood.  Some teens, my own included, sneaked out of the house at night to party.  I would sneak into the bathroom, pillow and book in hand, lie in the dry bathtub to read until the wee hours by a night light left on for my younger siblings.

I come by this fascination with the printed word honestly.  When Dad died there were stacks of books three feet high along the wall by his chair.

I like my electronic reader. That being said it isn’t anywhere near as satisfying as turning the page of a book. 

Hard cover, soft cover, large and small books are my friends.  They are an escape in times of trouble, an education in times of need, and old friends that I invite in for an intimate and solitary evening more often than not

Musings

I don’t live in the place where I was born and, still, years later I miss the place where I grew up. I miss the seasons, extended family, and sites that trigger memories of my growing years.
I have no wish to return there to live; however as the holidays approach, I find myself yearning for the sight of vividly colored leaves and the sound of gently falling snow.
It’s just shy of 50 years that I’ve been away from the place that I was born, spent my childhood and grew to young adult. It lives within my heart as clear and alive as though it were 1964.

 

Rain in the Vineyard

Barn in Vines II
Originally uploaded by cheryldoran-girard

September 19, 2010 Schlusser Road Vineyard, Forestville

I woke this morning surprised--manageable pain in my knees!! Gathering rain and camera gear, I took a few ibuprofen (just in case), loaded the back of the Highlander and gave myself the gift of time and creativity. Days free or almost free from pain come seldom these days.
The occasional drone of motor traffic on River Road intrudes only slightly into the soft murmur of small birds and gentle sound of mist dripping from the vines. As often happens when I wander the backroads of Sonoma County, I become immersed in the silence, images in my viewfinder and solitude.
The dark outline of an old barn is silhouetted against a spreading oak tree and varied greens of the vines. Silvery strips above the vines flutter and glitter in the almost still air. The vines are heavy with fruit and foliage. Tendrils of vine curl up or downward--some with drops of moisture at their end points.
Common ravens perch among the vines and between the rows seeking breakfast and occasionally squabbling over some prime edible among the weeds. Their incessant cawing overshadows the soft chirrups of the smaller avians.
Dew laden webs adorn every available surface of the pipes adjacent to the vineyard. It's rusty surface shiny with water in the morning light.
A bee seeks shelter under the wider portion of the car wipers then flies on. According to "The Bee Movie," they aren't supposed to fly in the rain.
Continuing on Westside Road towards Healdsburg, I find the path that once so reminded me of the Frost poem "A Road Not Travelled" has given way to a fenced horse enclosure and steel building. The trees that overhung the entrance have been removed and further long the winding backroad, I find that old haunts like Westside Farms, where we used to come for pumpkins and mark the advent of the Halloween season are on the sales block. It stands obviously empty its fields seemingly abandoned to encroaching wildness with weeds and barns standing silent.
Sadly, this is just one of many signs of the recession along the backroads and throughout towns along the river.

Reminisence

On overload from a day spent re-living old memories and sorting through slides, I finally put the huge container of family memorabilia aside for another day. Images of old friends and family long passed away or moved on to different lives.

Faces in the slides warmed my heart. My dear Nana with a beautiful smile seated among her family at some backyard event on Green Street in North Andover. Rick Bryan, Carol Ota, Paul Smith and others from high school who have passed on. Myriad posed photos in Easter outfits, prom dresses, at graduations, weddings; and, best of all, my children and grandchildren with those young and loving faces that still melt my heart.

As one grows older the past becomes seductive. It was the time when all was possible, when bodies were invincible and those we loved would live forever.