field notes:

7.4.2003

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.

--James A. Garfield

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly
considered, perhaps as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.

--George Washington
First Inaugural Address

To the States or any one of them, or any city
of the States, Resist much, obey little.
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully
enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city
of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.

--Walt Whitman

We go forth all to seek America.
And in the seeking we create her.
In the quality of our search shall be the
nature of the America that we created.

--Waldo Frank

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

--Thomas Jefferson

The inner peace of a well-integrated life is something that must be continually achieved; the outer peace of a world in which nations live together in a spirit of brotherhood is something that must be continually earned.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

posted by Lisa Thompson on 9:38 AM link | comments []

7.3.2003

Five Brooks Pond

[Bay Area Hiker]

Featuring the wood drake

[Canadian Wildlife Service]

and the common moorhen

[E Nature]

posted by Lisa Thompson on 9:58 AM link | comments []

7.2.2003

Yesterday I said that it's the job of elders to become weird. This idea comes from the Celtic wyrrd, which means to have one foot in the other world. The English weird has several meanings that are tied up with fate or destiny, and still other meanings in the supernatural realm.

Being wyrrd as you can be doesn't mean wearing cowboy boots and shorts downtown, wearing face paint of local red clay, and reading from remembered bits of your own bad poetry. Unless, of course, that's your particular thread to pull.

I've found my threads here in the lovely isolated town of Inverness, just far enough off the beaten path to allow me the freedom and the time to find them. A part of me has always known that I needed to get away from the pressures of conformity to blossom into my better self. Southern California was never the right place for me. There, like most places, there's a big rush on to be just like the next gal, only a funnier, sexier, hipper, richer version of her. I've tried playing that game, but eventually always found emptiness and lack of meaning which I attempted to fill with elements from my own shadow side. That still represents a foot in the other world, but the nature of the connection could be enough to drag a person out of this one.

These days, I follow my strong interests and impulses towards water, place in nature and ecology, poetry and myth, writing, the djembe, and certain political and social activism. Sometimes I talk to myself walking down a tree-lined path; and while throwing the ball into the water again and again each day for my dog, I recite out loud as I memorize poems; often, I prefer my own company to that of anybody else's; and lately, I've taken to adding almond butter to my chocoloate ice cream.

I'm not an elder yet, but I think I've got a pretty good start on being weird. I hope my weirdness will be an inspiration to my neices and nephews, and any other young people that happen to be watching. Getting older hasn't turned out to be so bad. I'm much more comfortable in my 42 year old skin than I was in my 20's or 30's. I don't question or second-guess myself quite so much. It's not that I'm more confident--I got tired of waiting for confidence. I'm just being me.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:38 AM link | comments []

7.1.2003

Sometimes I think of this as the edge of the world. I live in one of the last homes in Inverness before homes give way to parkland and beyond that to the Pacific. We're only an hour and a half from San Francisco or Berkeley, so bookstores, restaurants and the shows of the city are easily gotten to. But the thing is, I don't want to leave. Many days, I never leave the enclave of Teacher's Beach, and mostly when I do, I only go so far as the town of Inverness: a market, post office, gift shop and an eatery. Driving to Point Reyes Station, fifteen minutes away, where the stores are slightly bigger and the produce is organic, becomes an event I work myself up to.

This feeling of isolation is helped by the setting of my home. Even the neighborhoods here feel rural, but within the neighborhood I'm in, my home is apart. To find us you have to travel a private road, and my cabin isn't to be found until the road turns downward. From here I look out my high windows over a sea of trees, and know that beyond them lies the sea itself. I rarely hear cars, or any of the sounds of man leave the quiet hum of my computer. When I walk down the path from my house to the beach, I am alone with the trees, the creek, the birds and the knowledge that only a few of us ever walk this path. As it slopes downward I see the water lying before me as I approach, and I know what the tide is. Prints in the sand are more often deer or raccoon than human. And I know by sight most of the humans who walk on this beach, even those who cross at low tide: I know their shoeprints.

I don't begrudge them their passage.

The people who share Inverness, Point Reyes Station, and all of west Marin, share this bond with the land. Walking with any of my neighbors and friends always includes a moment when we say, My god we're lucky to be here, or, It's just so beautiful, isn't it? I feel that every day. Every day I'm informed by gratefulness. It's a love for place that grows: it includes a fierce protective sense, a duty to preserve.

The people who live here include ranchers, artists, buddhists, naturalists, writers, craftspeople, and various professionals and workers. Each town has its unique flavor. In Bolinas, some folks I met said they refer to Inverness as Inwardness. It's quite accurate. They wondered where people gather, asked me where the center of town lies. You see people at the Inverness Store, but the gathering place would have to be over in Point Reyes, at the Dance Palace, or the Bovine Bakery. We have to leave Inverness to seek a gathering place, except for the most intimate of gatherings. That suits us. If you walk the roads of Inverness, much is hidden, kept inside. You see glimpses through blackberry brambles and viney garden gates of people's lives, but much remains private, solitary.

I haven't spent my whole life here like many have. There are long-lasting friendships and neighborhood links all around me. But informing those relationships is a tendency to the solitary. It's palpable. In Ireland, they say that it's the job of elders to be weird, to stretch your being out into the furthest reaches of your most particular self, in order to show the young that it's okay to explore the eccentricities of the soul. Well, you see a lot of that here. Even the flyers on the post office bulletin board reflect a rich, weird inner life.

For myself, I say that here I've found my voice. I'm listening hard to the songs around me, the rush of the northwest wind through the trees, and the rhythmic tapping of woodpeckers as they store acorns in my cabin walls; to my footfalls on a redwood path and the gentle parting of water around me as I swim. I'm following those voices that call my heart to sing, or that break it open into tears. I'm listening for ways to become weirder.

*

Please visit us at Ecotone today as we write about How We've been Informed by the Place We Live
posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:42 AM link | comments []

6.30.2003

From the top of Mt. Vision yesterday the familiar terrain of the park (pdf) came apart like pieces of a puzzle, almost indecipherable. What surprised me the most was how close Abbott's Lagoon is to Drake's. My quotidian experience of the park's landscape are formed and limited by the roads. Because a turn onto Pierce Point Road is necessary to get to Abbott's, my sense of where it lies is 'off that way'. It feels quite far from not only Drake's but from every other "destination". I drive to Chimney Rock, or to the Lighthouse, or to Kehoe Beach or to Limantour. Rarely do I walk from one of these places to another, both because of distance and the limits of time. The exception to that sense of two places connecting in terms that I have travelled is Drake's and Limantour.

One of my first outings in the park was a day's paddle, also my first kayak trip, in Drake's Bay. We put in at Johnson's Oyster Farm in my friend's folding kayak and paddled in wonder at the leopard sharks and bat rays under our boat. We lunched on the spit and told stories from our lives. That day I first heard the word Limantour, and that's how I viscerally "know" that Limantour and Drake's are connected, both cradled by the spit. I've also looked in on Limantour and Drake's Bay from Chimney Rock, so I "know" that proximity by sight as well. But driving to these two places requires opposite directions. Limantour feels like a separate place, knowing it only from the road.

I don't have a copy of California Place Names here, but if I did I'd want to look up Mt. Vision. Certainly I've been up there before looking down over the park, but yesterday gave me new perspective. Perhaps it was named "vision" because of some similar experience.

If the 30-year-old plans to create an urban center here hadn't been fought and the park created in its place, my experience of the land would be completely different. I'm sure there would be a road going directly from the Abbott's Lagoon Ranch Estates to the Drake's Bay Oyster Bar, and from there, it would be only a short drive to the Limantour Beach Vista del Mar community.

The few roads we have in the park help keep distance mysterious and primal. A trip to Mt. Vision puts it in perspective. Cheers to the people who fought for this park, and won.

* * * *

Tommorrow is another group blogging topic opportunity at the Ecotone. We're posting about one of two topics: 'How we are defined by the place we live NOW, or how we are defined and shaped by the place we have lived in at some point'. Please join us if you'd like.
posted by Lisa Thompson on 8:28 AM link | comments []