Some o' this, some o' that...

~~~

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

~ Mark Twain
~~~

aaah... phooey. Another bad week. More work lost.

...sigh...

So today I'm just doing some misc posting. A bit befuddled Iyam, but I know that as they say, "this too shall pass."

I've been meaning to share a website that my longtime friend, Greg Burke, shared with me. This link goes to the galleries of Manuel Libres Librodo Jr. Wow. This guy is outstanding. Cruise his galleries, there are many to choose from and his work... well, I'm shooting for this level of quality and proficiency. Let me know what you think of Manny's photography.

I received an email from young Bill Buck, he of Perfix Beach and Muhu Tasen fame. Bill is the young man I met many years ago at Grampa Semu's last foundation, Muhu Tasen. I talked about Bill in this post, beach bound... the Perfix place.

One of the really good parts of getting older is when I get to see someone who is much younger, that I knew when I was much younger and they were really young, and witness the work they are doing, knowing I may have played a part in their growth. How could I have known that some teenager sitting in the sweatlodge at Muhu Tasen watching those red hot stones come inside carried on a pitchfork by me some 20 years ago would touch on my life this far down the road? And that his interests are another example of how the earthbound traditional native America continues to slowly touch the hearts and minds of many Americans. I have no doubt that as much as the hippies were a monumental influence on the '60s and '70s so were the injuns. Tribes like the Hopi embraced the appearance of these headband wearing longhairs as part of their tradition's prophecies.

This world, on a personal level, is quite often incredibly small. I was talking to a close friend today about just that. We agreed that co-incidently this world is but a mote of dust in an incomprehensibly large universe... the scale of difference between the smallest and the largest is truly infinite. That line of thought gets me thinking about Tom Robbins' clockworks... Living in this immensity I really don't grasp boredom. There is just sooo much to do, always... and to know about the clockworks... reality is always stranger than fiction.

I digress. Again.

Bill Buck...

Bill sent me a link to his new website:

Bay Wild - Wildlife in Urban Areas

Here is the text from Bill's email:

Dear friends,

It’s been a long time coming and now BAY WILD, our website exploring wildlife in the Bay Area with videos and multimedia, is live on the web.

You may or may not know that since I was a lad, I’ve had a powerful commitment to ecology and this project fuses my background in environmental activism with my career in communications -- all converging on my home of 20 years, the San Franciscio Bay Area.

Our Bay Area has one million acres of open space and wildlife preserves, yet 490,000 acres are under threat of “suburbanization” -- the size of 16 San Franciscos. While there are good examples of healthy wildlife habitat, the threats of development, existing economic challenges and uncertainties of climate change will be putting new pressure on wildlife populations here and all over the world.

So we will bear witness to what’s really going on out there -- to provide insight into what’s working, examples that may assist urban areas around the world facing similar issues. And all with an entertaining style.

We’ve started the non-profit organization BAY WILD to administer these efforts and we'll continue to cover stories that highlight wildlife/human interactions -- with a focus on positive solutions.

So I hope you enjoy this beginning. Please take a look around the site and help us spread the word!

With just under 5 weeks left until the election I sure hope everyone living in the US who is of age is registered to vote. I know here in Eugene we get around 90% voter turnout for a national presidential election. How does your community do?

Use it or lose it.

Which of course leads to this statement I've become scarily fond of recently:

"Only (fill in number) days left to cancel the election. Emergency, emergency, emergency..."

My political trust level is running low these days...
~~~

“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

~ Will Rogers

~~~

back to the beach... but not just any beach... the Perfix Beach...

~~~

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

~ Isaac Newton
~~~

Here are some of my older images from the Guadalupe Dunes and Perfix Beach. All taken with my old Pentax film camera and Kodachrome slide film. Mostly from the late '80s but I have been Guad Dunes to Point Sal fan for years and some are from the late '70s as well.

Interesting that just south of Point Sal lies Vandenberg AFB. A US military missile facility that I have come to know... fairly well... we have a personal relationship that goes back a ways.

Mostly tho' it was Pt Sal State Park that got me going to that part of the coast. And then it was going to the Guadalupe Dunes (north of Pt Sal), at the west end of Hwy 166 (which is also Main Street through Santa Maria)... that hooked me and kept me exploring its many, many moods.



All seasons look different at the Dunes. My favorite time of year was around Thanksgiving and Christmas -- when the rain would come and then be followed by sunny days -- because the rain would compact the sand and it made it easy hiking. But it didn't really matter because the place was always beautiful and the best thing to happen there was the banning of ORVs. That act changed that whole section of coast because the only access was by walking. But on some days even the ORVers' trash took on the specter of art...



Admittedly it could be the sand itself... the line of dune edge after a windstorm reshapes it...



or the play of light from the low sun on the dunes. A time of day that few saw (or see) because the Dune road was locked at sunset (and still is if my memory is correct). And it was that light, the last 1/2 hour of the day, when the sky was cloud free and the air crystal clear, that would bring me to ground - sacred ground.



This place is a place I have dreamed, in deep detail, never anything but beautiful... once even flying over whale and dolphin and foaming waves sitting astride a pelican... it was never boring spending time there. And I was in shape and able to get up and down the dunes w/ ease... there was always something new or surprising... or just beautiful. Beautiful is a word that fits the place...



... no matter which way one turns, its there again. And this... place, is one of those places where I could not walk without feeling a kinship with the indigenous families who once spent a fair share of their year living -- generation upon generation -- and sharing these same vistas...



and that sand, always new patterns...



But the end point was always... the beach... that wonderful stretch of ocean meeting the land, here...



where I could fish, alone...



or not quite alone...



or maybe spend a day just sitting on the porch...



With eternal gratitude to those who cared for this place... who care for it still...
~~~

“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

~~~

Dear friends...

“Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families.”

~ unknown
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That quote made me laugh because it is funny... and for me not true. I have a great and wonderful family and mostly they're family and friends. But for many I've known family was... well... a boil on their backside.

I've been blessed with some great friends. Some go back decades and a few have been steadfast over these many years. Some have become as close or closer than my blood relatives. Some, like Pablo, the bond goes beyond explanation. But Lord, thankee for my good friends!

One of my best all time buddies, legendary among my closest friends and family was my dog Lance.



Lance was with me for about 13 years... he was a fixture when I was working with Grampa Semu and the folks out at Muhu Tasen. He went with me to Opal Creek and down to southern Oregon for my year at Crump Lake, working for The Nature Conservancy. A great watchdog, a funny guy who wasn't big (he weighed in at about 35 - 40 pounds) he behaved like a King of Hounds. He understood a lot of English, could speak none, and was a great judge of character. As handsome as a dog can get Lance carried himself like a champion and was a true canine athlete.



When I started taking him out to Muhu Tasen, Grampa had a "no dogs" rule. But I was a single guy with no family and couldn't -- wouldn't -- leave Lance home alone. So Grampa made him stay in the truck and I could take him out, off the land, for his breaks. After about 2 or 3 months Grandfather recognized the quality of the dog Lance was and gave him permission to be one of "the dogs" while I was there.

Lance loved water, was a great swimmer, and never hesitated to get wet. If he had a drawback it was his tendency to chase cows (which came back to haunt him when he became a senior... we were living on 5 acres in the woods west of Eugene and had a neighbor who kept 3 cows. One day Lance took his doddering old self over, I guess, to harass the cows. I got a call from the neighbor while I was at work that Lance was in her field and that I better come and rescue him. "Rescue him?" I thought... well it was true, he needed rescuing. The 3 cows had him backed into a corner of the pasture and without his fresh legs and youthful vigor they had him buffaloed. Or cowed... a sad day I'm sure for a dog that never failed to get cows moving.)

But when he was young... he was fast, could jump and make it over a 6 foot fence... anywhere I could hike he could. Of course he was still a dog... but he had his guardian angels. On one of our many backpacking trips into the Manzana River area of the San Rafael Wilderness area of Central Cal he had managed to get a fox tail into his ear and it had worked itself deep enough to begin causing him grief. Unfortunately, it was dark and we had no tweezers and no flashlight. (OK... I know, safety first and all that...) But we used to hike into the Manzana under the full moon after the area had been closed for the season because of fire danger. At night we could see any forest rangers and hike right by 'em and get to our old Indian camp, where we would be out of sight from the trail... and heck, we were young and would never do anything like avoiding the government or its agents or agencies now...

Opal Creek tho' was Lance's home.



He fit that camp like a glove. The other camp dog, Turk, was a big old dog (probably a Bernese Mountain dog), neutered and gentle as could be and he and Lance were best buds. The only wrinkle was when George would come into camp bringing his dog Cody, a big old Doberman. Now Cody was a sweet dog in his own right... but for some reason, he and Lance just never hit it off, except with a bang. And a snarl and a major growl-a-thon and a wrestling match...

In fact those 3 dogs all died like within a year of each other. Turk was buried at camp, Lance was laid to rest on a ridge above the half-bridges and Cody... George owns a bit of property down river from camp near the Elkhorn golf course and when Cody died George took his backhoe and dug a pit that could fit Cody's favorite couch and laid Cody to rest on that couch.

Turk was Jawbone Flats' official greeter. He never failed to bark at a hiker but would usually do so while he was laying somewhere where he could see the road leading into camp. His "woof" was a "WOOF" and could be heard quite a ways away. But if we were in our cabins sometimes Turk would bark and not stop so we'd yell "Turk!" and he'd stop. When my daughter Robin was a baby in camp she grew up with Turk and Lance. Her first word came one day when Turk let out his usual "WOOF" and out of the blue Robin lets out with a "Turk!" Not "dad" or "mom"... "Turk"... heh...

Of course Lance and I shared many of the favorite spots in the west I'd acquired after years of exploration and discovery. My sidecreek in the Sierra foothills east of Fresno near Pine Flat Lake, the land east of Santa Maria off of Hwy 166 near the Cuyama Valley and of course the Guadalupe Dunes and Perfix/Paradise Beach. When I'd get dropped off at the Guad Dunes for a few days Lance of course would go too. And he loved that spot. Hiking the dunes or going down to Perfix... he was a fan of my fresh Perch, caught in the surf and cooked over an open fire skewered on a stick. When Marty and I would hike the dunes we'd generally hike to the highest dunes and take our breaks, admiring the view. Lance would inevitably fall asleep laying in the soft sand and warm sun. When he did Marty and I would sneak down the dune and hike up to the peak of the next dune and watch Lance, waiting for him to wake up. He'd wake up and look all around... then he'd see us and charge down the dune and sprint up to our new sittin' spot. It was one of our favorite Lance games.

Amazing, the bond of affection that grows between animals and humans. Lance was truly the best friend I've ever had. He is missed... but remembered with great love and gratitude for sharing his time here with me (and his many other human friends). A meeting of souls and a partnership that can never be duplicated but certainly was meant to happen... thanks Lance... I miss you my friend...

beach bound... the Perfix place

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

~ Teilhard de Chardin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(since posting this I've been in contact with one of the folks responsible for keeping the memory of the Dreamkeeper Cabin, Paradise/Perfix Beach and the Journal alive. I found Bill Buck's email address and asked for permission to post some of his pics from his gallery here. Turns out there was a reason the name "Bill Buck" sounded so familiar... we had met out at Grampa's place in 1988 during the summer after he had graduated from Righetti High School in Santa Maria. In his email he mentioned a "groundbreaking sweatlodge ceremony" he had attended out at Muhu Tasen. In 1988 I was very busy with Muhu Tasen and remembered a young fella named Bill Buck. He also mentioned another young man that had been there that summer, America, Abbie Hoffman's son. Gads, what a world and how small -- in spite of its 6 billion folks -- it really is. Made smaller by this wwweb thingy... So, since I posted this the other day, I've added a few more pics. Thanks Bill Buck!)

Bummer... I'm sitting here with my head racked by a cold. I've worked 7 days straight and I get to spend my 2 days off feeling crappy. I was gonna take a trip to the coast today with bro' Marty, tonight is the full moon, a lunar eclipse no less (just after sunset) and a minus tide at sunset. The temp is supposed to be in the 50s... sigh... I continue to conclude I was born 200 years or more too late. Unless I were to be a believer in reincarnation... but I'm not. I don't know. I know I've had dreams of places and times I've never been but such is the mystery. And a mystery I prefer to leave it. I suppose I may find out when I get to that point of passing over, which may, you know, be just a dark, final, dead-end. Not knowing what really lies at that point is one of the motivations for making this life worth the investment of sincerity in life's effort.

I mean really... when I think about Perfix Beach and what its like spending time there... comparing that to this modern day ratrace filled with war and massive starvation (still some 35,000 people a day dying from starvation and the diseases of malnutrition) I have to ask, "what have we really accomplished?" Have we improved the state of humanity? Do all our plastic googaws provide satisfaction? Have we accomplished anything worth writing home about? If the creator were to show up today, could we say "look at what we've done to your garden! Isn't it beautiful?" And mean it?

My attraction to -- and relationship with -- nature, relies on some inherent sense of belonging, of sharing. But working for a system that does not value what I do... really makes me a hypocrite. Unavoidable, but still...

Consider your most favorite spot in nature. How does it make you feel when you are there? How does even thinking about it make you feel? Now... consider if it had been a spot shared by generations of your family, with your ancestors' bones interred there as far back as memory itself... we all come from such places. Indigeneity lies at the root of all our family lines, somewhere way back when, we all were from somewhere... and every somewhere has such a place that is special, beautiful and sacred.

Perfix Beach is surrounded by sand dunes, in fact it takes a climb of several hundred feet to get to the top of those dunes. To the south access can be gained along the shore by scaling rocks from Pt. Sal and from the north by crossing Mussel Rock. but to get a sense of that place it must be viewed from above.

This is the view of Perfix from atop the Guad Dunes, looking south.

(These pics are borrowed from Bill Denneen, with permission, and their use is sincerely appreciated. Many thanks Bill! Here is the page of Bill's pics.)

Many, many times have I stood at this spot and marveled at that view, timeless, shared by so, so many... just behind this spot, tucked into one of the many folds of this massive hill of sand, lies an old midden mound.



Sometimes, atop these dunes the weather will expose a chert arrowhead.





From the very highest point of the dunes, on a clear day, looking east you see the Sierra Madre mountains and the Cuyama River cutting through them as it wends its way from the Cuyama Valley (Highway 166 follows the Cuyama River) and the drainages of the Caliente Hills, the Chorizzo Plains and Mt. Pinos. On the clearest of days Mt Pinos itself can be glimpsed, some 80 miles or so away.

Here is Bill, loaded with his backpack, standing at the slope that was the most direct descent to the beach. I ran into Bill a few times out here, often I was alone and he had groups of folks with him. A lot of times I would avoid people all together.

When you get down to the beach you cross a small creek that cuts off the Guad Dunes from the old Minetti property (which may have been purchased and included in the greater preservation efforts) and then down to the beach. When on the beach there is a small arch of rock:



and depending on the vagaries of the winter storms the arch may be nearly buried in sand or stand some 10' overhead. Winter storms move the levels of the beach sand up and down... changing the beach year to year.

Half way down the beach there used to stand a very unique cabin. Now gone, burned down, its demise a mystery which carries some rumors... the cabin was built up against the hill, above the highest of tide lines. I don't think I ever slept there but one time, prefering instead to camp at the top of the dunes, on the edge overlooking the creekbed and Minetti's property. For years there was a diary kept at the cabin which visitors signed and made unique entries... comments, poetry, drawings... and it took me years to find it online (after finding it once before) but thankfully, someone, I'm assuming Bill Buck, has made parts of that diary a webpage(s) of some interest for folks like me who remember:

NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL KEPT BY NRH
AT THE "DREAM SEEKER" CABIN





And when on Perfix Beach, which most likely has no other people on it, you enter a special world. A world I will get back to in the future, both literally and here on the blog. But for now... Perfix Beach is where I first met Pablo. Brought to meet me by Hoos nahil and Somis awil. I was fishing, camped at the dune top, and hanging out at the arch when they came around the hill, crossing Mussel Rock. A perfect place for a meeting that had great implications for a major turn in my life. Little did I know then that the short, mustached, and very winded and huffing man, dying for a cigarette, complaining about such a long walk was destined to become one of my best and closest friends. Unfortunately... I can't ask him if that walk was worth his effort. But... knowing the intertwining of destinies that was to come Pablo wouldn't have had it any other way.

aaah, Paradise... or, the Perfix Beach...

"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war."

~ Loren Eiseley

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a tough post to figure out exactly where to begin... I mean most beginnings aren't without some pretext, some other event precipitating a beginning. I mean that may be why I don't accept the "Big Bang" theory, or "The Creation" story... for me infinity is just that, infinite. No beginning, no end, reaching forever in all directions and all at the same time but in all times and all the time. Seriously now... everything is a really big topic. Too big in fact to wrap our little minds around. And that is part of why I don't often delve into the topic of God/god. Everything is just too darn BIG a subject to comprehend.

But I will try, dear friends, I will try...

I suppose the best place to start would be that afternoon/early evening in Thailand, winter of 1973/74 sometime, when I had an epiphany. A real bloom of consciousness and conscientiousness. I was at a friend's bunglow, looking out at the rice paddies, stretching to the far horizon, and I realized how much I loved that place, how beautiful it was. And because I had made so many friends among the Thais I loved them and loved living among them as well. The town I was in, Takhli, was just a small burg, north of Bangkok. Very rural, mostly farming and life was slower and more relaxed than I was used to as a citizen of the US who had grown up as a kid for the most part in the greater Los Angeles area and its hectic pace.

This epiphany was something I had never encountered before and rarely (if ever) since. I knew that I no longer wanted to be part of bombing these short, smiling, brown folks any more. My mind had stretched from the paddies of Thailand into the paddies of Cambodia and Laos, the places that my work in the ES-11 mobile photographic labratory was an instrumental part of targeting for our bombs. And I didn't like that.

When I was discharged from the military and returned to California my folks had moved to Santa Maria, on the central coast, just a bit north of Santa Barbara. When I first moved there I did not have a clue how monumentally important this place would become in my life. It was here that I encountered the Chumash, Grampa Semu, political activism, environmentalism, spirituality and my relationship with the creation. Oh yeah... and barbecued tri-tip.

After 4 years in the Air Force I had managed to mature (just a little) from that 19 year old who had gone away from home on (yes another) new beginning. The Air Force provided me with an excellent education in photography as well in electronics. The electronics never came into play again (and like an unused muscle atrophied into oblivion), but photography has been a part of my life for a long, long time (and is why this blog is here). Hopefully it will be with me until I go blind (heaven forbid) or pass over (the great adventure)(or the ultimate end of it all, no one truly ever knowing until the moment arrives and then never sharing in spite of many attempts at explanation, none of which I deem credible).

But there I was. A new town, another new beginning and oh my... another great adventure.

So, what is a young veteran to do? Well, I had my GI Bill with a great educational benefits package. So... I enrolled at Allan Hancock College. And how could I have known, after a mediocre attempt at education in the public school system and a totally failed attempt at Jr College after High School (the So Cal beaches and girls in bikinis had more sway over me then did staying in school), that I would have my world expanded exponentially? Thanks to the fateful meeting of some wonderful fellow students who remain my best friends (family now) and a collection of instructors who were of a caliber I can only consider great, I became immersed in learning with an appetite for knowledge that surprised me. Where my years in High School were typical and my effort mundane, college was like the world's best carnival. Gads, there was sooo much to learn, so much fun to be had and such growth for me to undergo.

And of course there was the vast open lands that stretched from Santa Barbara to the south, Bakersfield to the east, Atascadero/Paso Robles to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west. And I would roam a really big chunk of it. Primary to this tale of course is Pt Conception. To the Chumash and many other tribes, the Western Gate, the place of departing for souls passing from this earth. THE LAST PERFECT PLACE? is an article from the May '07 LA Times Magazine about Pt Conception with a bit of its history and what it faces or may face in the future, plus some excellent photos from Wiliam Dewey.

One of my first political actions was with the Chumash at Pt Conception. A small core group of locals had started a blockade of the proposed site with access through Hollister Ranch easily secured a campsite was established and it was there that I took my first sweatlodge. There exists controversy about both the Chumash and their traditions in regards to Pt Conception and about those Chumash people themselves. In this piece, An Answer to Brian Haley’s Commentary on the Chumash Western Gate, author Theo Radić writes an excellent rebuttal of the anthropologist version of indigenous history and the view of those people themselves, within the context of a society that had been driven into seclusion and secrecy by the predations of the Spanish Mission system and then by California's explosive growth in the second half of the 19th century:

My belief is that all the European and American textual sources which they rely upon reveal only a tiny fragment of the Traditional Chumash culture, and that to go into depth in the available written material is not to go into depth in the ancient Chumash culture. The 8,000 years of Chumash presence in the region around Santa Barbara should humble an inquirer. How can the awesome scope of such a culture, emerging from eight millennia with profound silence, be truly known scientifically speaking? Haley refuses to realize that what he doesn't know about the Chumash is staggering compared to the available written data he has access to. The countless hundreds of millions of (needless to say, undocumented) couplings between men and women that have occurred in this area of California for eight thousand years up to the present day, producing unknowable lineages all over the land, are of course part of the vast ocean of information to which Haley has no access. And yet he bases his conclusions on the erroneous belief that he knows what these genealogies are. In his first preface to Handbook of the Indians of California, Alfred Kroeber wrote: “The vast bulk of even the significant happenings in the lives of uncivilized tribes are irrecoverable. For the past century our knowledge is slight; previous to that there is complete obscurity.”

And, from my experience in Chumash country... it is not just a place that has a history of indigenous occupation but a spiritual palpability, a presence that is felt from the slopes of Figueroa Mtn and the hidden reaches of the San Rafael Wilderness, to the beach that the surfers called Perfix, to the slopes of Mt Abel and to all the hills, valleys and creek beds of that whole region. Of course that sense of the area took time for me to access and to register in my conscious, but the experience began at Allan Hancock College. Because it was from there that my explorations started as I learned from instructors and students both the cool places... and the places that were/are special. Like Perfix Beach... (I will get there)

One of those people was AHC biology instructor Bill Denneen, who was a very active environmentally minded presence in the area, especially in his efforts to preserve the biological integrity of the Guadalupe Dunes complex. At the time (late '70s) the Guad Dunes were a haven for the off-road vehicle crowd. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) the dunes were also habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, and the dune buggies were a very destructive presence.

And I will add a caveat here. I am by no stretch of the imagination a tightwad or an extremist. I understand that within every group, every subculture, there is the "bubba component." Every group has their bubbas. No matter how responsible the group, how credible their message, how mundane their activity, there is that group that gives them all a bad name. It was that group that spoiled the ORV experience for all the others. The bubbas are those who refuse to follow the rules of respect, that litter and break their beer bottles, that trash far more than they ever should. The bubbas ruined the Guad Dunes ORV experience for those who would have respected limits on access, who hauled out their trash...

In fact Bill (who must be about 150 by now) is from all that I can tell, still a very active presence in the area. But there were other instructors who were just as big an influence on my personal evolution.

(to be cont'd)

The BIG water...

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

~ Saint Augustine



I remember as a kid up in Washington, going to the beach with my family to dig razor clams. I'm sure being a little one I didn't do a whole lot of digging. I don't remember much except that it was always cloudy. I do remember how good those fried clams were (and still are... although my mom's have always been the best, I won't be having those anymore... sigh...). Nothing like fresh fried clams.

When we left Washington we moved to Bakersfield, CA. A city far from the ocean. But it is a city that exists in a place that once was covered by salt water. We used to go to a place called Shark Tooth Mountain and dig around for shark's teeth. And funny how things are in life... back then we didn't know that it wasn't the shark's bite that could do damage to a person's health but the digging in the soil. That site is notorious for containing the spores that cause Valley Fever. My mother conracted VF and I suspect that her getting sick played a big part in our moving down to the LA Harbor.

When we finally settled down in San Pedro we lived just below Rolling Hills Estates on the east slope of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and we had a pretty nice view of the LA basin... Long Beach and the harbor area all the way over to Orange County. My dad was friends with one of the Harbor Masters and I remember us going with him on his boat. We also used to go to the Long Beach Naval Shipyards and tour the Navy vessels when they'd come in and dock there.

My dad loved that stuff, being a WWII vet and all. But it was the ocean... almost always nearby in my life.

When I was discharged from the Air Force in 1974 I moved to Santa Maria where most of my family was living. Moving to Santa Maria got me back close to the ocean. While kind of a sucky town, Santa Maria has a great location only 15 miles from the Pacific and the Guadalupe Dunes and Perfix Beach. Its a wondrous place... one of these days(/years) I'll get my old Kodachrome® slides scanned... those images are probably some of the best photography I've ever done and I'd love to share them here. Many of you may know those dunes not knowing you know those dunes... ya know. Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments was filmed there. And for those of you not as old as Moses (The Ten Commandments is an old movie...) a more contemporary view could have been had if you have seen Johnny Depp in the 3rd installment of Pirates of the Caribbean:

Of course I was Pirating around those Dunes long before Depp! It was a favorite spot for that crew of troublemakers I hung around with in college at Santa Maria's Allan Hancock College, which is truly one of that town's saving graces... Even after bro' Bagley had gone on back to Texas and bro' Jim had drifted north brother Marty and I would go with Lance the wonder dog and hike the dunes a lot. Many times I would have Marty or someone drop me off and I'd spend a few days with my dog, camped up on top of the Dunes, hiking and fishing, taking photographs... aaah... such was the life, splendid isolation. In fact that area has been the focus of a few of the most intense dreams in all of my life... and some of the most intense awake moments of my life. I can't say enough (not here anyway, watch for the book!) about the Dunes and my experiences on the central coast.

But... now that I'm living here in Orgon I'm a bit further from the ocean and I miss it. But it is only 60 miles away. Last week Marty and I went over to the coast two seperate days. I've driven the coast highway many times since living here but my actual trips to go the beach have been few in all my years here. I love the ocean, the beaches, and I see it with my own unique perspective. The first trip was just a day to go hiking and I took my camera. The second trip was specifically taken as a photo trip. I watched the tide table and the time and planned for a day when low tide was at sunset. As luck would have it there was also a bit of weather hanging off the coast so there were some clouds in the sky too...

So, here you go. Enjoy a day (well... actually two days) at the beach. These were all taken at Hobbit Beach, just north of the Heceta Head Lighthouse (the rocky point you see in my pics is Heceta Head's north side):











As always I love selling my photos, contact me ( allan_e@efn.org ). Non-Profit Orgs can use my images w/o charge, with permission and photo credit. All images copyright Allan Erickson, 2007

Opal Creek... getting there...

When I was living at Opal Creek (1989 thru 1992) a good friend of mine - Greg Burke, I've linked to his photography under the 'friends' links - showed up with a group of folks from Bend, Oregon to spend the weekend at our big lodge. He was amazed to see me living in the heart of what at the time was Oregon's biggest front in the battle between saving or cutting old growth timber.

Well, to tell the truth, so was I. I mean here I was living in this beautiful old mining town which was inside a locked gate 10 miles up a gravel road deep in the Willamette Nat'l Forest... how the heck did I get there?

I was living in Santa Maria, California, driving forklift and truck for a large hardwood lumber company (JE Higgins as a matter of fact). Due west of Santa Maria is the Guadalupe Dunes. In 1980, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife report called the Nipomo Dune Complex “the most unique and fragile ecosystem in the State of California” and ranked it #1 on a list of 49 habitats in need of protection.

The dunes are a magnificent pile of sand, the highest dunes anywhere along California's coast. I used to spend copious amounts of time there, camping near the top of the dunes, hiking, taking photographs, fishing and just enjoying my splendid isolation. Just to the south of the dunes is what the surfers used to call Perfix Beach. A beautiful stretch of wild coastline that was no less than a 2 mile walk from whichever direction you decided to hike in from and home to a magnificent, right-left break, often with a good curl or even small tubes. And you could camp right on the beach. Seals, deer, coyote, mountain lion (!), pelicans and nine million species of shorebird. Dolphins and an occasional humpbacked whale... all lived or visited. I was in good company.

My friend Mark brought what he described as a very close friend of his from Texas out to California. That Texas friend was Paul, soon to be known as Tincup (see previous post). Like I say... it was a two-mile walk, from anywhere, to get to Perfix beach. When the sand was dry it was loose and gave way underfoot, making hiking a task. I was fishing the surf for perch one fine autumn day when I see my friends way up at the top edge of the dunes.

When they finally got down to me Paul was winded. Heh... now thats an understatement... he was huffing and puffing! And the first thing he did when he was on the beach? He lit up a cigarette. And I wondered at the time, what the heck was this soft, out of shape property manager doing hiking all this way? He came to meet me.

Cool.

Little did I know that Mark first would find Opal Creek, invite Paul when a job opened up, and then invite me when another opening was available. In October of 1989 I made my first trip to Opal Creek...