pick a number between 74 and 77.
oh yes. you
are correct. that is the number of
degrees…. in fahrenheit… that the high-desert presented to me when i returned here
last tuesday after a week of holiday celebrations back on the east coast.
it is also the number of degrees it has stayed since… all
the way into a cloudless 2012…
it is absurd!!
and amazing!!
but i must say, it certainly takes some getting used to
seeing christmas lights alongside rich pink skies. and it was still hard for me to believe i’d be ringing in
the new year without a bitter cold ski mountain or frost-slickened sidewalk to
parade on.
and so, faced with the holiday weekend ahead of me,
there was very little question at all as to how i would spend it: sleep hardly at all, spend as many
daylight hours as possible in the park and climbing, and spend the starry
nights in pioneertown at pappy’s.
steve & ruth had been wanting to come out to the
park some day we were climbing, to watch, and see what all the fuss was
about. i, of course, had been
eager to help that happen, and to share this other part of my life with
them. luckily, todd had called up
and was heading out on new years eve, starting at 5am, to help his friend milt
attempt to climb 57 routes on his 57th birthday (this is now
something i may have to start doing.
if i begin now, i may be able to actually do 57 by the time i am 57). they were going to be climbing in
indian cove, a beautiful, wind-sheltered bowl in the northern part of joshua
tree, isolated from the rest of the park by a rugged, almost uncrossable (there
are no trails that go through it), wilderness called the wonderland of rocks. indian cove is thus enclosed by 300
degrees of gorgeous, towering, rockpiles.
there are hundreds of formations, with hundreds of routes, all within short
hiking distance.
thanks to todd gordon and gina barrera for the photos.
we showed up on saturday morning, met john as well, and
got to join the team of supporters, who were stringing ropes and preparing
routes so that milt could just hop from climb to climb on his mission. while it was already amazing just getting to be
out in the park and climbing a ton of routes with such a good crew of friends, by far
the best part was when todd offered to get steve up on the rocks. there was a slight (but only really slight) hesitation (or maybe it
was just politeness), at first. but
as soon as todd began digging shoes out of his bag and taking off his harness
to offer it up, steve was agreeing to get on that rock in a heartbeat (not that
i was, and obviously neither was ruth, surprised). he climbed right up onto the rock as i belayed, and as ruth proudly
looked on. it was freaking
amazing. being out there with the
two of them made me one damn happy gal.
it was pretty ironic because the night before, they had
invited me up for a yummy ruth dinner, and to watch a documentary about
climbing that had showed up in their netflix queue. it was called vertical frontier, and told the history and
legendary evolution of climbing in yosemite, narrated by tom brokaw, and
featuring commentary by a whole ton of famous climbers. yosemite, and especially the free
climbers who now populate its soaring walls (they solo climb without any
protection at all), seems to be the highlight of news attention lately, with feature
articles in national geographic and highly-rated segments airing multiple times
on 60 minutes.
that movie night had capped off what was actually quite
an exciting day for steve & ruth, and me included. we sold a piece to a couple that day, which steve and i had
been working on since thanksgiving, and which we are nearly (but not yet)
finished with. the couple has
apparently been dreaming of owning one of steve’s pieces for at least two years
now, and had come by during the art tours back in october, eyeing the
raven kinetic (my favorite), which had unfortunately just sold to another family.
they had visited steve
& ruth and the studio multiple times since then, and finally fallen in love
with our newer piece, the hummingbird. it has two big stainless steel forms (one “driftwood” bird
form, and one circular form), each with 4ft long veins to catch the wind, which
are mounted atop two different bearings on an 8ft steel mast. at the base of the mast, where it joins
the rock it is mounted on, we welded an endless screen with hidden
climbers (remember the recent piece with the climbers on the copper blocks?),
who scramble and throw themselves up over the stone and a foot or so up the
mast. we put the patina on the
whole thing just before i left for the holidays, which was as exciting a
process as ever to watch the colors transform and come alive.
while i was gone, cherishing a precious week spent celebrating
(three separate times!) with family (and generally eating way too many sweets
for my own good), steve essentially finished the piece. not completely, but enough that my
naïve, refusing-to-face-the-future self was totally surprised! i was of course selfishly sad, at
first, but soon came to appreciate how amazing the process is regardless,
and how interesting to step back for the first time, and see how it came
together in steve’s brain. and of
course ruth’s brain too… because the discussions, debates, and honest feedback
along the way are all amazingly integral (and really some of the most enjoyable
components) in how a piece such as that evolves.
when i flew back east this time, i flew out of vegas
instead of LA. best decision yet. i traded 2 (or 3, or 4 with traffic)
hours of smog-filled, sprawl-flanked driving for 3 (or 3.5, or 4 because i had
to pull over so many times) hours of spilling across an epic mojave desert at
the end of the world. on the way
to vegas i drove at about 11pm… in the pitch black. i don’t think i have ever experienced darkness like that
before in my life. i drove for
hours, literally, without seeing a single
light. the stars were so
incredible i had to stop the car multiple times. it was absolutely amazing. and all the more bizarre to emerge on the other side of the
desert to a scene that could not be a more polar opposite. really… hard to imagine a starker
contrast than the mojave desert and the city of las vegas. especially at nighttime...
but just as exciting (and probably more) as the drive to
vegas was the drive home…. this time in the daylight. and better yet, as the sun was preparing to go down. i drove through amboy, california…. a
deserted, 7-building town where the horizon was blue and the earth glowing red,
and roy’s motel café called your name from miles away. and as the sun finally went down, i was
hurtling through beautiful, desolate, windswept salt flats, and then…. with the
last bit of light (i literally couldn’t have timed it better), i passed through
wonder valley. man, it was a hell
of a way to come back to my desert home.
we spent the week putting finishing touches on the
hummingbird and working on the newest piece which i am most excited about! yes, i realize i say this every dang
time, but so far, i truly mean it.
although i guess i won’t jinx anything yet, and will keep my mouth shut
for the time being. the piece has only just begun. you’ll get
some pictures of the progress soon…
so then the new years weekend rolled in before i knew
it, and two days of incredible climbing in the park gave way into evenings of total
chaos...
i was at pappy’s all night saturday and sunday, squeezing
through hoards of heavily-boozed desert revelers to deliver the jars of tequila
and plastic cups of champagne that would keep the party rolling long into the
morning. we closed pappy’s from
3-6pm (totally unheard of) on new years eve to set up for the evening. we shuffled rental tables, lit the oil
lantern candles, hung streamers and sparkly tiaras, and were briefed on our
“fancy” new years menu (meaning lemon rosemary glazes replaced woodsmoky bbq
rubs). it was a brief, but
welcomed, calm before the storm… and we capped it off by toasting shots of
tequila before we swung open the heavy wooden doors to the line of cowboy boots
and sequined jackets waiting eagerly outside the windows.
the dancing started well before the band even went on, we
ran out of wine glasses and shot glasses and pitchers and prime rib, and we
couldn’t even stock alcohol fast enough for how quickly it was
disappearing. but thankfully we
had more than enough bottles of cheap champagne for the midnight toast…. enough
even to have leftovers to spray all over the crowd as they cheered and kissed
their way into 2012. i didn’t
leave until after 3am, and i cleaned up more broken glass than i knew was
possible to create. but when i
finally walked out the back, through the dusty open-air beer garden, past the smoldering
bonfire, and sat down in the seat of my car, the quiet was finally, and
miraculously, all around me. i
rolled down my windows and drove extra slow down the cherished canyon road
home…. weaving my way amidst silhouettes of rock piles and joshua trees against
the blackened starry sky. i was
thinking back to how truly incredible the day was, spent in one of the most
beautiful coves of the park, on one of the most beautiful days of the year,
getting to climb and be with the people i love most out here. in many ways, they have become family
to me, and this place, clearly a home.
given that i had to be 3,000 miles away from the rest of the people i
love most, it was one of the best new years i could have imagined.
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