reincarnation!!

after a lonesome and spider-filled 2 months…. the miracle i’ve been praying for has finally happened…

a new cling has arrived in my cabin!!

i mean… pardon me….. his name is slink.

he’s young.

he’s spry.

he’s sleek and sassy.

i love him already.  (okay, i’m easy… but still).  the first interaction was startling – i caught him snoozing on my sweatshirt stack, and he wasn’t expecting to meet me so suddenly.  but saturday morning he was sitting on my windowsill, sunning his back against the morning light, and quietly waiting to lock eyes when i emerged from bed.  it was a beautiful and long moment.  we sized each other up, made introductions, established our lifelong friendship, and i even gave him “the talk” about mr. roadrunner outside.

it pretty much feels like a total rebirth.

and it was a timely one, because it’s been a totally nutty past couple weeks!  (hence the lack of posts, which i’m so sorry for!!)  in this time between the holidays, which is already an infamously slippery slope, we’ve had a lot of moving and installing of pieces to do (which has kept us out of full-time creating mode), and on top of it, two of the closest people in my life have come out to visit.  it has truly been some of my most treasured time out here, but also made me realize that my departure from j-tree is suddenly looming on a very tangible horizon.

still not sure where that horizon is… but all too swiftly (almost in the span of a single night), it went from being a notion i was very openly avoiding, to something i actually have to deal with.

which ultimately is okay, because it wont ever really be a goodbye anyway.  but that’s not even worth discussing now….

slink and i have a december desert to love, creating to do, adventure to unfold.  and things to update you on!  let’s see here….

two weeks ago, steve and john and i spent a day in the low desert, retrieving a bunch of steve’s work from a gallery.  i’m talking a giant trailer and suburban full of pieces, including a tryptic with three 10 or 12 foot masts.  steve and john did most of the heavy lifting while i stood around, loosened bolts, laid down protective carpet, and cheered.  luckily, steve has acrobatic skills as well as all other imaginable talents, and he was, without hesitation, hanging off the top of the masts, fireman’s-pole-style… hammering out the 40 pound kinetic mounts, and hauling them down on his own. 

to top things off, ruth had packed us a ziploc full of their famous (and by famous, i mean secret and legendary family recipe, passed down through generations) peanut brittle.

now let’s take a nice pregnant pause here.

this stuff may be…. MAY BE….. one of the very best things i’ve ever eaten.

i kid you not. 

i may have mentioned my unbridled obsession with peanut butter.  peanut brittle is an old, old fashioned traditional recipe, arguably the first type of candy ever made…. apparently appeared in cookbooks back in the nineteenth century.  i was fortunate to gain an appreciation for the art of peanut brittle making as a kid, since my grandmother and her sister have famous family recipes as well, and still make it for us around christmastime (along with my other favorite treater… popcorn balls).

i was thrilled, upon googling peanut brittle history, to find that the candy has been linked to a “lumberjack folk hero” named tony beaver (perhaps a distant relative of my grandmother’s family, the weavers?!!).  apparently, in a stroke of genius, tony beaver uses peanuts and molasses to stop a major flood, creating peanut brittle in the process, which he then delivers as a special treat to the town he has just saved.

i’m just saying…. he could very well be my great, great, great, grandfather.  and either way, i think in order to get the recipe from steve and ruth, i’ll have to at least pretend so.

my god is that stuff heavenly.  but moving onwards…. 

the other episode of heavy-lifting excitement around here was the day steve rented a forklift.  we’re going to be installing two large pieces down in manhatthan beach on friday, and so two weeks prior, we dismantled them from their locations around the property, and loaded them onto the trailer.  i won’t lie, i was initially hoping to get a shot behind that forklift wheel.  but after watching steve maneuver that thing flawlessly around the sandy, sloping property, i was intimidated enough that i was content climbing ladders, rigging straps, and walking alongside… keeping the 600-pound pieces of metal balanced while he drove them to their resting place.  ruth helped as much, if not more, than i did.  it was an exciting day all around, and while we lost two amazing and enormous pieces, we got to replace them with new ones we’d retrieved from the gallery, and perhaps more excitedly, shift older pieces around the property to new locations and watch them come to life in a whole new setting.

steve designs his pieces to interact with the landscape in such beautiful ways, but it’s so fascinating to see how that happens, and to see how a piece can shift and change so dramatically depending on where it’s placed.  perhaps most exciting and rewarding was the shifting of the new birdhouse, which is finally in a location where it looks awesome, and we all love it (including the birds, which have been making many rental visits, pooping on the roof, and fighting for tenant occupancy as steve takes pictures).

next came patagonia photo shoot day.  absurd!!  climbing with todd one day, i was fortunate enough to meet a friend of his who he’d been eagerly telling me about, greg epperson.  greg is a world-renowned climbing photographer, who also does a ton of freelancing for patagonia, as well as others, and happens to be an incredible woodworker and artist in general.  such a thoughtful and kind guy.  he lives in a striking, minimalist house he designed and built himself, right on the edge of the park boundary.  it’s interior is pouring with light, is structured using clean, subtly-angled lines, and has no doors… only open flow of rooms and spaces.  his photos are innnnncredible.  take a look for yourself.  it’d be a dream come true to be capable enough to climb in some of those places, and get to have him photograph.  the only thing better than experiencing those moments would be experiencing them and also getting to capture and preserve one of those split-seconds so brilliantly.

anyway, we were climbing one day, and as i was describing the work steve & i are doing, greg got excited about the idea of coming out to the studio to see it and shoot photos.  so he shows up one afternoon, makes sure steve and i are wearing some nice bright patagonia clothing, and lets the shutter go for a few hours as we weld, plasma cut, and grind away.  (steve, of course, let’s me get all the attention and do most of the work).  a smiling greg shot about 750 photos, pared it down to about 100 that he sent patagonia, and passed along his two favorites to us.  sounds like he’s hoping to come by again sometime soon, but it was a pretty interesting experience, regardless of what comes of it!  and if a welding picture, or a picture of steve, showed up in the patagonia catalogue one of these days…. it sure wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world....

..photos by greg epperson..

aside from all the excitement in the studio, we’re slowly but surely working on some new pieces, which has – as always – been a damn amazing process, and i can’t wait to see where they go.

and geez… having two amazing visitors in the span of 9 days has been truly unbelievable.  it’s one thing to be out here experiencing what i feel like has been some of the most defining (if not the most defining) periods in my life.  in such a short amount of time, this place, and of course these people, have come to mean so…. so much to me.  to be able to share that with people who are such an important part of your life is just the best feeling ever.  i really have no words.

as usual there have been too many good moments to list them all….. smoky woodstove days and nights… epic dinners, talks, moments, absolutely everything with steve and ruth… desert sunrises and sunsets from bed, from the studio, from the top of ryan mountain… a couple nights of bbq ribs and shots of patron (ruth was the first to order) at pappy’s… the purchasing of hambam’s… the stirring of peanut brittle, and the over-cooking of lentil soup…. even an insanely epic multi-pitch climb up the longest route in the park as it snowed (yes, it snowed!!  heavily!!)…

but one of my favorites was the morning adam and i spent in wonder valley, an area here which i’ve become entirely captivated by.  for me it epitomizes in many ways what’s so powerful about the desert… and what only setting foot in that landscape could possibly convey.  it’s a section of the high desert, east of joshua tree, east of 29 palms (where the marine base is), out where you truly feel like the end of the world might lie.  back in ’38, the government enacted the small-tract homestead act, selling 5-acre plots of land to homesteaders, in order to encourage a boom in desert population and entice weekenders seeking refuge from the city sprawl.  it worked, and parcels of land sold by the thousands, especially after the war, with tiny one-room cabins springing up literally overnight on postage-stamp properties as far as the horizon could see.

but the mass movement was doomed from the start, as it was nearly impossible for the desert to sustain infrastructure, electricity, and water services with that type of capacity.  by ’76 the homesteading had stopped entirely, and houses were abandoned by the hundreds.  what remains is a windswept panorama that is already other-worldly – a flat barren expanse flanked by a horizon of deep purple foreboding mountains – and is now littered with remnants and ruins of one-room cabins across every line of vision.  but amidst all the debris, what seems like a small but resilient fringe culture has emerged and endured… embodying some combination of grit and diversity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and pure human willpower.

few landscapes i’ve witnessed have so evocatively reflected the dimensions of human struggle against the natural landscape, the illusions and dreams of more than a generation of americans, and the raw power of nature when it has no sympathy.

it is impossible not to allow the stripped and barren landscape to alter one’s sense of self, and place in the world in a similar way.  never have i felt such a constant and palpable sense that i am human.  against that backdrop, play the concerns of this crazy time we are living in – the economic rollercoaster, the endless political insanity, the social conventions, even the altruistic instincts to be somebody who solves problems, fights injustice, does something… fucking anything…. to make an impact.  those things are all intimately a part of who i am and what i think about on a daily… on a momentary… basis.  but there are moments between moments here, where i realize that all of it…. all of it… falls away…. in greater perspective.  those are the moments that often move me to tears for nothing more than the beauty of this place, the beauty of our existence, and how i am overwhelmingly thankful for who i am, and for the people i love.

treaters!

thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year.

hands-down.

i spend it in nebraska every year with my entire dad’s family.

that’s right… brunswick, nebraska… population 110.  googlemap it (my favorite thing to do), and you’ll find a tiny grid of 3 or 4 streets, with the post office and elementary school highlighted.  zoom out, keep zooming out, yes…. keep zooming out, and eventually something else will come on the map, i promise.

my dad’s family has been going to brunswick for thanksgiving every single year since my dad was born.  i’ve never spent thanksgiving anywhere else.  in fact, with two exceptions (aly, your famous thanksgiving potluck once… and just this past saturday with steve and ruth) i have never even eaten thanksgiving food anywhere else except nebraska.  it feels almost sacrilegious, i must say.

why brunswick?  the full story is too long to describe, but essentially my grandmother grew up there during the great depression, living off almost nothing, raising a few pigs, and eating radish & butter sandwiches (to this day, she still loves them).  with ridiculous determination, and a miracle or two, she eventually ended up in chicago and met my grandfather.  later on, he decided to build a log cabin back in brunswick, to preserve and to commemorate the place that had represented so much hardship, and yet so many good memories, for my grandmother’s family.  and so it was built.  and the first of many legendary thanksgivings were celebrated within its splintered walls. 

my grandfather has passed away now, and my grandma lives most of the year outside chicago.  but she still goes out to brunswick every fall around thanksgiving, and again in the spring – where she can separate from the chaos of the rest of the word, visit with cousins and siblings who are still within a few hours’ drive, and wake up to the prairie she has always loved so much.

and for the week around thanksgiving, the population in brunswick doubles, or maybe triples, as my family descends upon its empty and manure-scented streets.  there’s still the blue shag-carpeted and crooked remains of the house my great-grandmother josephine weaver (aka great granny with the wheels.. she had MS, and thus both legs were amputated) lived in, which we call the hotel jose.  and my grandma recently bought the empty school house, installing a shower in it, so it can be used as a bunkhouse for overflow. 

in general, it is just a massive love-fest.  as i pull in the driveway every year, before i can get the car in park, the cabin door flies open and out everyone pours, hooting and hollering, waving arms wildly.  the receiving line lasts forever, at least it seems so.  it’s one of the best feelings i experience all year long.  that, and walking into the glow of the cabin to see the familiar old quilts, buffalo bill drawings, decks of cards everywhere, and heavy wooden beams strung with cast iron skillets that were brought across the country in covered wagons. 

we shack up wherever we find room.  i’m usually on the pullout couch, which is my favorite, second only to the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace.  the hunters always sleep elsewhere, either in the hotel jose, or in the schoolhouse, and are up at dawn to walk the fields.  back in the cabin, the kitchen smells of fresh coffee and maple syrup, and a massive breakfast is being assembled with pancakes, coffee cakes, fresh squeezed orange juice, fried local eggs, and a platter of bacon and sausage as heavy as a small child.   eventually someone spots an old maroon woody station wagon rounding the corner of the driveway, and shouts “the hunters are home!!!”  the doors pour open once more, and everyone trades hugs with the smelly suspendered men as we assemble for a massive group photo with the pheasants and quail. 

in brunswick, four main activities prevail:

1)     hunting pheasant.  this is generally a male-only activity.  women are technically allowed to “hunt”, but by hunt, i mean walk along with the men and help flush out the birds.  the last time i did this, i was referred to as a “walking chick”, and was also instructed to carry a thermos of hot cocoa and some dixie cups.  but don’t get me wrong.  most of the time, we’d rather be hanging in the cabin anyway.  there’s something amazingly refreshing and comforting about slipping into a traditional female role for a few days, and i think we’d all secretly agree, we love it.  and while the men love hunting to fulfill the very primitive instinct of putting food on the table… they, too, are mostly in it for the intangibles – the experience of walking the prairie at sunrise, of communicating so intimately and magically with the dogs, and of being with each other.

2)     cooking.  this is generally a female-only activity.  actually, i think it is always a female-only activity.  the only time i’ve seen men set foot in the kitchen is to do the dishes, or to steal pickles from the fridge (i see you, kyle)

3)     eating and drinking.  in no moderation.  which has absolutely everything to do with the utter success of activity #2.

4)     playing cards.  a game called pitch to be exact.  at basically any hour of any day (except for between the hours of 1am and 5am, when the superior game of MITCH is played by a select and destined few) you can find a pitch game going on in the cabin.  wednesday night before thanksgiving, we used to have an annual rollerskating party.  since the nearest “rink” is now an hour away, we instead have a massive pitch and pizza tournament… complete with a full bracket, a trophy engraved with the winners and runners up**, and a pre-tourny singing of the national anthem as we all stand and face the wooden-framed photos of our ancestors above the fireplace.  yup, not kidding.

{** except for when heavy drinking on the part of all participants has led to a lack of recording and remembering who the actual champions were.}  

thanksgiving day itself is always ten times more chaotic, with an influx of even more relatives.  the traditions are too numerous to list, but always involve a counterfull of the best pies ive ever…. ever… eaten, and a thanksgiving play in the evening.  we used to all participate in the play, but these days it is pretty much single-handedly acted, sung, directed, and produced by my genius... and soon-to-be-famous... cousin, bret.

and every evening, as the hours seep from night into morning, the most secret, and epic of thanksgiving traditions ensues.  my cousins kyle, ardie, sister betsy and i huddle around a dimly lit card table, drinking whiskey out of tea cups and gravy saucers, and hand after hand of mitch is played out, while the mortals look on.  what follows is too sacred to list here, but minute-by-minute records are kept in the mible (mitch bible), which itself is stored in a secret location within the cabin^^.

{^^ but if evan reed had fulfilled her mitch pledge class duties during thanksgiving 2010, the mible would instead be stored in a vault, buried deep in the nebraskan earth.}

we come from all across the country to meet up in brunswick, and we will be doing so as long as we all live.  there is no place, and no people, in the world that better remind me how truly thankful i am.  and more than anything, the holiday is about my grandmother... mary lee… granny… treater.  she is the true matriarch in our family.  never have i seen someone command more respect and admiration than she does, but somehow with her cherished smile, her giant cushiony hugs and her bright pink fingernail polish, she also generates more love than anyone should be lucky enough to feel. 

i’m pretty sure she invented the word treater.  either way, it epitomizes her approach to living, which is a contagious combination of appreciating the very simplest of things and constantly giving to others. 

when she holds your hand (which she does most times she’s talking with you), the world melts away… when she picks up a crossword puzzle, it’s completed before you can even read the first clue… when she tells stories in a room full of raucous people, you can hear a pin drop… when she sets foot in the kitchen, i’m pretty sure miracles happen… and when she makes the thanksgiving toast every year, we all cry.

 (thank you, sister gladys, for loaning me your camera while we were there, and for sending me your pictures too!!)

this year, i gave her a hardbound copy of my thesis dissertation.  it was dedicated to her (as well as to my sister betsy).  it was my dad’s idea to bring it out to nebraska, and i had almost forgotten about it.  thinking it was maybe a silly gesture, but agreeing anyway, i gave it to her, wrapped in a bow, the day before thanksgiving.  reading through the dedication, she burst into tears.  my grandma is a beautifully emotional person, and i have seen her cry many times, but never have i seen her lose composure that way.  she kept showing it to my relatives, and each time she’d open to the page and pass it to them, she’d choke up before she could speak, and pour her head in her hands.  it was making us tear up just to watch her.  that night as my aunt helped her into bed, she came back out, looking for it so she could bring it in with her as she slept.

in all seriousness (i’ve explained this to a few people now)… i’d have done the entire five years of grad school for that reaction alone.  it meant a thousand times more to me than any degree ever could. 

really was one of the best moments in my life.