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

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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)

of caveats, big trees and etc...

In thinking about this project- the blog and writing about Opal Creek - I felt a need to stop with the writing of my trip to Jawbone and give some background of how I came to be offered this tremendous opportunity. I'm not going to take you back to the womb but as an adult I feel certain steps, actions and encounters prepared the way.

I was in the Air Force from 1970 until 1974. My 4 year tour started and ended in Texas and was instrumental in my maturing. I was very fortunate and avoided VietNam and drew a year's duty in Takhli, Thailand. I was a 23 year old white guy who had never been east of the Mississippi River. I had heard from the older guys in my squadrons who had gone to Thailand that it was worth expending some effort in finding duty there and while stationed in Clovis, NM at Cannon AFB the chance arose and I volunteered. I worked in photo reconnaissance as a lab tech, processing strike film from F-111s. I had been trained in two photo fields; first as a photo equipment repairman and then as a photographer/lab tech. We were a mobile unit, all modular, self contained with generators, air conditioning, even our own water tanks. We could be set up or torn down in about 6 hours. We could process color or black and white film, do printing, copying, had a maintainance shop... except for the occasional whacking of the top of the head ducking thru the low doors of the walkways connecting the trailers it was a sweet set-up.

When I left the states in 1973 it was early March, springtime. When I landed at Takhli RTAFB, Thailand it was summer. It was still March but when the transport plane doors opened it was bright and it was hot. And hot is an understatement. Everything outside was so bright it looked like it was all overexposed by at least one full stop.

I adapted quickly and loved my stay. I made many Thai friends and lived off-base as much as possible. I ate the local food and disdained the chow-hall (except on Sundays, when it was hamburgers and fries...). I loved my fried rice, monkeyball soup and panang curry. To walk the main strip at dusk with the lights coming on, the bands warming up and the street full of people and food vendors... and the delicious aromas... wow. Satays and chik-a-bobs (shish kebab) fresh off the bbq grill... mmm... and top an evening off with some bahmee wan... mmm...

We worked right next to the flightline and many a night's break was spent having a meal and cig on top of the trailers watching the rice bugs under the street lamps and enjoying the quiet without fighter jets blasting their engines coming or going or being tested in the revetments. The sound of incoming F-111's was the sound of work. Pilots would stop in and drop off the film from their bombing runs over Cambodia, we'd process it and every hour or so run the developed rolls down to the de-briefing room where the pilots would score their strikes. Most pilots were nice enough guys - for officers - and only a few were real cowboys. Interesting bunch those pilots.

But I'm digressing. When in Thailand I had an epiphany. It was a very real, palpable experience of connection. So different was that culture from that of hometown USA I experienced an intense empathy and love for the Thai people and their beautiful, hot country. My conscience bloomed and the notion of helping to bomb short, poor, brown people became unacceptable. Though while I was convinced by those older and wiser to not rock the boat, to "enjoy my stay" and simultaneously stay out of trouble, my "career" as an activist had sprouted.

The first hints of my blooming activism appeared while I was attending Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA. I had seen a Native American fella around campus and introduced myself one day. We became good friends and through him I met Grampa Semu Huaute. At the same time my brothers in arms - Marty, Al and Jim - and I had begun doing Sweat Lodges and we were having a blast. Young, healthy and full of ourselves, we accepted the gift in the spirit it was offered and would hike miles into the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest to be able to sweat next to running water and spend time in the hills and woods. We also participated in the protest by the local Chumash of then Cali governor Jerry Brown's plan to locate an LNG port at Point Conception, west of Santa Barbara. To the Chumash and other tribes Pt. Conception is the Western Gate, the point where the souls of the deceased depart for Shimilaqsha, Chumash realm of the dead.

Around 1980 I moved to Fresno and hooked up with Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation. Cathy and Dave Garner had a shoe-string budget, great hearts and a wonderful program with lots of good volunteers helping them and the wildlife out. I raised baby birds, cared for injured adult birds, learned how to feed a dove and a hummingbird... helped the Garners at their place in the country... major props to Dave and Cathy because now, 20+ years later they are still going strong. (well probably not as strong as back then but I won't even get into the "old age" schtick, lets just say they are still active and leave it there soz I don't dig my self a deeper hole with folks I admire as people, friends and as people who make their dreams work for them)

And here, to pause a bit... you can probably see that as my conscience is blooming, the influences around me are becoming very nature oriented. And the nice thing? As a photographer a lot of this is recorded on film and I'm loving the anticipation of digging into my slide files and digitizing many of those images and bringing them online. There is a story to tell here, and as a fellow Oregonian who has shaped my view of the land and whose writing I admire greatly, Barry Lopez says, in his essay Landscape and Narrative:

The power of narrative to nurture and heal, to repair a spirit in disarray, rests on two things: the skillful invocation of unimpeachable sources and a listener's knowledge that no hypocrisy or subterfuge is involved.

I try and avoid the hypocrisy but rest assured there is no subterfuge here.

More in a bit...