Plumbed?

Attended a dinner party a few weeks ago that turned out to be a gathering of writers and aspiring writers. The hostess, Anna Del Rosario, has made a fine art out of staging these sorts of salon-style groups around a table lavish with continental fare and the eclat of her renown hospitality. I sat next to Bruce Henderson, prolific author of non-fiction, admiring his gracious generosity in answering, at the expense of his melting desert, the flurry of questions about publishing. Earlier in the evening, I had cornered Bruce in the kitchen to ask him about his report from the trenches that fiction is dead. "They're stacking up on agents' shelves. Nobody's reading them."

The next day, guest columnist Timothy Egan wrote in the New York Times

"The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet? I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate."

You must Read the rest to grasp what's going through the minds of the unpublished.

Hustle Kid

Parents feels so much more enlightened these days. We can't help but invest all that evolved parenting know-how in orchestrating success for the kids. We pull in the guard rails, measure the stepping stones, and engineer downtime. Or not if we know what's really good for them. Sometimes you just gotta step out of the way and let them fall out of the tree, catch head-to-toe poison oak, endure a little bullying, or cold-cock the bully when the inertia breaks. (All of which our resident specimen kid has done.) My good friend Benji wrote about the pleasures of an untethered boyhood in The Last Kid Picked. Sorry Benji, but the marketing strategy for this book was all wrong; today's mothers of boys need this book even more than they need Sheridan, Hobart, or Murkhoff/Eisenberg/Hathaway. I laughed. I cried. I learned to better understand how men work by learning how they play (outside of the play-date or organized league sports) as boys, and if more women read this book, they'd relax more around their sons and give their lovers/partners/husbands a lot more slack.

And so it is with the number one son. When he pitches from one stepping stone to the next in his dream to work in the recording industry/music business, you wanna just lay it all out for him. "Look, kid, it's a dying, if not dead, industry. And there's a protocol to the way it works. And, no, you can't just email the station manager and get them to play your music." But he believes. So you go "Give it a shot." And you hold your breath and wince for the tree limb to break.

The rising star over our friend, Pete Walsh, an 18-year-old talent who was born with a guitar extended off one hand and a capo off the other, along with Neil Young-like vocal chords, has captured Malcolm's imagination in a way like nothing else related to music or his entrepreneurial bent. By recent accounts, on his way to his father's downtown office, where he spends many of his afternoons, Malcolm walked into 55 Hawthorne Lane, the home of several radio stations owned by Cumulus Broadcasting. He signed in, went upstairs to 107.7 "The Bone," and hit up the music director. Yep, post-9/11 world and all. He got in even though he didn’t have an appointment. He popped open his laptop and played a Pete Walsh mp3 for the guy, who apparently liked the song. Wrong audience, though, for Pete's fluid mystical tones. Malcolm walked away with the music director's business card and some bumper stickers.

The playgrounds of today may be safer, more stylish, and parent-approved, but the boys play the same when you get out of the way.

The Olive in the Bay

Let's raise our glasses to the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Yep, that would be today according to a main headline above the fold in this morning's Chronicle. So, meet me at the 21st Amendment on 2nd and De Boom St., but get there before the parade ends because we'll never get a seat at the bar otherwise. And if you're not from around here, you won't get it. Not the way San Francisco gets it. Is there anywhere else in the U.S. staging a parade today? My scientific research (the first page of a Google search) indicates not, and it's been my understanding since I first visited this city in April 1981 that the "there" here isn't a big red bridge, or an old-money industrial legacy built out of fire and gold, or legendary baseball. It's the Irish Coffee, the Gimlet, the Mai Tai, of course the Martini straight up with olives, and now wine, wine, wine and wine. It's about the woe-be-gone days of three martini lunches, of after-hours house parties where someone's always playing Gershwin at the piano and someone else is pouring cold viscous fluids through a coil strainer into chilled glasses, of Gin Fizz brunches with the ghosts of discourse and fine manners at the WashBag. And while that may answer frightening questions for some, it intoxicates others with a sense of conviviality and community carried on a spirit of accomplishment and economic optimism (or denial) in this city, this only city by a bay with an olive in it. I wonder if Brown and Forman have a float in the parade.

Call It a Night

My grandmother had big hands. Peasant-worker hands with thick, short fingers. They were great for kneading bread dough, knitting weighty afghans, and pulling root vegetables out of the dirt. I got my grandmother's hands. Work today felt like I was plucking my eyelashes out one by one with them. Clumsy, thick-moving, and p-a-i-n-f-u-l. The cold virus I've been deflecting like bumpers do to pinballs scored the big, bell-ringing, neon-flashing prize on me today. Prose, in a word, sucked. Days like this need to end with a spit-polish over the resume. Crap, wrong economy for that. Gram liked to bake. Her sturdy hands cut apples the perfect size for pie and her solid fingers fit the crust up against the bottom and side of the pie plate with not a smidge' of room for air to bubble. On a day like this, Gram would show up out of the blue with an apple pie. Like she knew. Follow that with a little bourbon and honey, call it a night.

Watch Your Step

A bit of paranoia starts to set in when one month a black widow shows up on your back step and the next a scorpion appears poised to wipe its eight feet on the mat of your front step. I said I like bugs; I didn't say come for cocktails! But word seems to have spread, and on a recent morning I stumbled over this millipede all curled up like a bum sleeping on my stoop. He stayed for a cup of coffee, we talked about the weather and set off on our respective days. I told him the neighbors serve Peets with a shot of whiskey, if he wants to wake up over there tomorrow.

*sent from a foreign computer. hope it works!

Hawk Watch

This morning broke with the urgent, incessant, and mournful calling of a hawk rising out of the thick fog that erased the small valley beyond the back yard. Rising out of that fog (and the middle of a spectacular view on a clear day), a lone extra-wide redwood tree provided a place to rest. Through my binoculars, I could see it was a fully mature red-tail. I could also see it was uneasy. Its head scanned all about. It shifted on its talons with a yearning to take off again, but
something impeded its mission. The fog perhaps? It called and it called, its lonesome screech stretching out over the fog line and disappearing into the mist somewhere in San Rafael. It would take off from the tree top, soar across the fog bank towards Mill Valley, then back across again towards the bay. It would return, rest, and call some more. Finally, around 8:30, it took off for the last time. It headed towards Mill Valley, but this time, when it returned, it was followed by another hawk, one about two-thirds its size and with the pale gray and white markings of a juvenile red-tail. I don't know if adults accompany juveniles along their coastal migration; I'll have to look it up. I couldn't help but be reminded of a recent tough-love talk I had with Maggie about why she shouldn't return from her travels in Europe with only pub-crawls to account for. Our wayward wanderer, wildflower in the wind.

Who Can Kill the Combustion Engine?

There's a giant California wave undulating through the crowd of "change" fans with Henry Waxman the latest change agent to rise out of his seat with his arms in the air. We Californians are a rowdy bunch, and we like our transformations impolite, immoderate, sweeping. Fed up with an ineffective legislature, we got this wave going years ago with first a governor and now ordinary citizens turning state-wide propositions into the rule rather than the exception on the ballot. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have the temps running the office while the staff is playing finger flick football in the conference room, but you gotta love our pluck. Twenty percent of energy's power from renewable resources by 2010? Go for it! Reliable, high-speed public transit between San Francisco and L.A.? Bring it, baby! Help people acquire more alternative-fuel vehicles and fund research for renewable energy. Huzzah! Sure, only Prop 1A providing 10 billion dollars to plan the high-speed rail actually passed, but damn we're saucy (as well as sly for pinning Pickens' greed and sick of picking the scabs of our '00/'01 energy crisis. Make no mistake though, Props 7 and 10 will be back.) You can't help but wonder how deeply even California's nervy nature can penetrate the sludge that fuels the combustion engine of Washington, but it feels right that the state sueing the government to allow stricter greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is the one to lead the way. So, the question is how, and this is where California needs to walk the talk to make Washington make change real. The internal combustion engine was the main driver of the industrial revotuion, yet no one can argue that it is the Frankenstein of progress. Revolution implies making something new out of something old, a retread, if you will. We all know it's not a new set of tires we need, but something on the order of discovering the wheel. It's got to be altogether other, and we're thinking the "Eureka!" state is the place to birth such innovation, am I right? It doesn't escape notice that it was the California Energy Commission who killed the electric car, but that was before we took matters into our own hands. Reading the morning's news accounts of Waxman's victory, a Californian can't help but shed a hopeful little tear of joy imagining the resurrection of the electric car (this time fueled by alternative renewable energy sources and who knows what better) and other utopia-mobiles (are you thinking of the Jetson space-car too?), hopefully building a whole new auto industry that will transform the economy with mass employment and wealth and well being for all. Indeed, sipping a latte before we head out to the Prius to get to yoga class, we're all dreaming of the new California power in Washington turning our freeways into paths of enlightenment where lightweight vehicles made of organic materials safely drive zen-like speeds of 40 miles-an-hour purring oceanscape music out of their tailpipes.

Auto-industry lobbyists might see Waxman's victory as bad news for Detroit, but they don't need to be such downers. If we get this right, the auto-industry will not only recover, it will be stronger, leaner, and healthier (kind of like it got a blue algae "seachange" spa treatment). It's the wave, the new wave, if you will, and you don't have to take my word for it. Even Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez saw it in describing the democratic party caucus decision: "You could almost feel the votes move in the room." Peace out.

Treading Water and Ding Dongs

I am always uncomfortable with those books that writers write about writing. Annie Dillard's A Writer's Life, Anne Lamot's Bird by Bird, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. I read them years ago, and they each left me feeling like the guy who reads about weightlifting while eating a package of Ding Dongs or those people who take photos in museums and videos of aquariums. Writing this blog requires a good dose of humility. I think the assignment was to write about writing or to offer some insight into this luxurious form of on-the-job training. Part of my deal with the devil to lead a writer's life, it is his way of keeping me fit by making me tred water even though I'm exhausted from all the laps in the literary pool. But blogs need purpose, a niche, and here the Lady just wanders and thinks about things often unrelated to writing. I've always kept journals not because, like most people I want to record the moments that add up to a life that one day will unveil its meaning. I write them because I have a lousy memory and a very hard time processing my thoughts for speech. It now goes by the label Attention Deficit Disorder, which makes people like me and Malcolm and so many others for whom I now have great emphathy hate talking on the phone and cocktail parties and stay out of jobs like teaching, sales, and motivational speaking. All I knew when I started writing journals, and still know to this day, is that I have to wrestle every moment with my concentration, to filter through distractions while aligning my thoughts into a sequence that produces a coherent idea that never comes out right anyway when I say it. The process of thinking just takes too damn long. But with writing, I can take all the time I need to process the thought (and as an English major, it helped to have long stretches of time to reread or rewrite the line, the paragraph, the page.) It occurs to me that the Lady needs to stop wandering and find a niche. Except for the obvious and cheeky, I'm open to suggestions.

There. I forced myself to write about writing today and now I have a craving for chocolate.

Pour, Baby, Pour

David Benjamin, author of The Joy of Sumo and The Last Kid Picked (and other sure-to-be-discovered novels) and his better half, Junko Yoshida, E-in-C of EETimes print, made an overnight pit-stop here on their way from NewYorstraliapanadarisconsin. Benji was unusually quiet (Benji is NEVER quiet), but we assumed it was the globe trotting. Turns out, it was a touch of food poisoning from some old sushi. One wonders whether the same gurgly stomach and disquieting mood lingers after revealing in his weekly screed that a friend of a friend's daughter, "age 19, up and decided to write a book, went ahead and wrote it, and got published the first time out, just as easy as pissing down his leg." Now I know how food poisoning feels! Benji, who just finished the first edit of The Fenwick Wonder Boys, "believes that when one writer succeeds, even an upstart who's never paid his dues and has no idea of the real ordeal of writing and isn't even old enough to drink much less drink himself to death like Somerset Maugham or F. Scott Fitzgerald, all writers succeed." To Benji: please pass the bourbon, don't bother rinsing out the glass, and keep pouring til I have to take a piss.

Progress and a Prayer

Progress: Update on the tether and Malcolm's sense of stewardship: He's looking for community service projects. Whaaaat?

Prayer: he picked up all 347 pages of my manuscript, considered the plop factor, and said, "You know, if you shrink this down and bind it, you could call it a day!" (Please, please learn the value of "beginning, middle, and end." Before I die.)

Abstinence-Only Education: How's that Going for Ya?

(More posts to the ol' flog than usual while I conduct some research to fill in a vacuum created by a touch of writer's block.)

One thing about having kids well into your 40s, a friend recently confessed, is that those estrogen surges that keep you up at night coincide conveniently with 2 a.m. feedings, frequent visits from the night-terrored toddler, and childhood illnesses for which the wee hours favor fever, pus, and poop. For those of us who started families much earlier, we are grateful for these extra hours to catch up on our reading. More specifically, reading defined as a crash-course on the recent history of the world our late-parenthood peers optimized with advanced degrees, entrepreneurial pursuits, travel (that would be Jennifer), and career superhighways. When Mother Goose and Harry Potter displace literature, PTA meetings replace social-political discourse, homework supervision becomes your higher education, and harnessing the adolescent mind your only outlet for critical thinking, that's two decades of serious ground to cover. And so it was, between the hours of 2 and 5 this morning, I endeavored to bring myself up to date on an issue surprisingly relevant to this very topic: abstinence-only education. (You snicker, but just wait.) The recent issue of the New Yorker features an article by Margaret Talbot on the outcome of the red-state Christian paradigm to engender their youth with conservative attitudes towards sex and sexuality. In Red Sex, Blue Sex, Talbot does a thorough job of exposing the abstinence-only education myth. I have nothing to add. I'm recommending it here as one of the best cautionary tales of all time.

In those states populated by Christian evangelicals who teach abstinence-only education, the lesson appears lost on their daughters. Presumably to ennoble their heirs with the the promise of secure marriages, large families, and happy futures, abstinence-only educators inform the sexuality of their youth with messages of shame, sin, and foreboding. Consider the consequences once those young couples bring that particular brand of sexuality to the marriage bed. You got it: high divorce rates. Some of the highest in the land. (Ironically, teenagers who live with both parents are more likely to be virgins than those who do not, the article reports. Can you say legacy?) It appears, unsurprisingly, that few evangelical teens get to realize the virginal marriage, though they do bring along their ill-informed attitudes (and presumably end up passing them on to their own sons and daughters.)

Consider some of Talbot's points (some written verbatim, some edited for space) based on findings in a government study of adolescent health known as Add Health, national studies, and interviews with family-law scholars and sociologists -- all cited correctly in the article:

*On average, white evangelical Protestants make their sexual debut shortly after turning sixteen.
*Evangelical Protestant teenagers are significantly less like to use contraception
*Only half of sexually active teenagers who say they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time.
*By contrast, sixty-nine percent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or other trusted adult consistently use protection.
*More than half of those who take a pledge of celibacy before marriage end up having sex before marriage, not usually with a future spouse.
*Communities with high pledge rates also have high rates of STDs
*In some schools where celibacy pledge rates exceed thirty percent, the special identity is lost and the formula collapses.
*Red-states populated by social conservatives have the highest rates of divorce and teen-pregnancy, while blue states had the lowest rates. Red states had lowest media age of marriage; blue states had highest. People in red states tend to marry earlier - in part because they are more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than seeking an abortion. Yet nationally, women who marry before their mid-twenties are significantly more likely to divorce than those who marry later.
*The paradigmatic red-state couple enters marriage not long after the woman becomes sexually active, has two children, and reaches the critical period of marriage at the high point in her life cycle for risk-taking and experimentation. The paradigmatic blue-state couple is more likely to experiment with multiple partners, postpone marriage until after they reach emotional and financial maturity, and have their children (if they have them at all) as their lives are stabilizing. (Couples who marry later stay married longer; children born to older couples fare better on a variety of measures, including education -- There's that pre-40/post-40 parenthood thing.)

You get the picture. One of the most fascinating parts of the article is an examination of the new middle-class morality. According to Talbot, middle-class moral teenagers"see abstinence as unrealistic and are not opposed in principle to sex before marriage, they just tend not to practice it because it puts too much at stake. They are tolerant of contraception and abortion but are more cautious about premarital sex. They want to remain free from the burden of pregnancy and the embarrassments of STD. They are happy with their direction, generally not rebellious, tend to get along with their parents, and have few moral qualms about their nascent sexuality." Evangelicals might want to check that out.

Talbot goes on to review the drawbacks of both red-state and blue-state sexual attitudes and behaviors, and then she offers some well sourced recommendations. A must read for parents just beginning their families or those sending theirs off to face these issues on their own. Thankfully for them, I'm learning as I catch up on the culture, that the Internet, celebrity sex scandals, all-sex-all-the-time-TV, and sex-driven commercialism hasn't completely destroyed it while I took the stroller for a walk around the block.

Sunrise Yellow Noise

I have never been able to memorize a single poem either, except this one, which stuck the first time I read it decades ago:

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait 'til judgement break
excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
interrupt this ground.

Emily Dickinson

Post script: where ever it was I first read "Ample Make this Bed" (Sunrise Yellow Noise seemed a catchier blog title), the last line read: "break this hallowed ground." That's how I memorized it and recited it all these years. In fact-checking my punctuation, the version I looked up along with every other source I went to after that, uses what reads less ironic (or balanced, if you like) in comparison.

Raptor-otica

Unless you're an avid birder or in kindergarten, the whole migration thing isn't exactly an academic turn-on. Ah, but then you've probably never been to Hawk Hill this time of year. And if you're still not interested, you're probably not a raptor geek. If you are, Hawk Hill is the most erotic biology field trip you'll ever take. Hawk Hill is the raptor geeks' porno convention, where we raptor groupies go to see Red-Tails, Coopers, Sharp-Shinned, Swainsons, Red-Shouldered, Broad-Winged, Kestrals, Peregrines, Merlins, and even Ferruginous Hawks, Rough-Legged Hawks, and the Golden Eagle, if we get lucky. Hawk Hill is the eastern facing promontory in the Marin Headlands at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. It offers a panoramic view of the Pacific, the Golden Gate, San Francisco Bay, and the Richardson Bay all the way over towards Berkeley and Oakland. It's where the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory conducts its raptor watch every year. For everyday raptor buffs with the right pair of binoculars, raptor-watch is a veritable skin-flick of raptor migratory behaviors. For the hundreds of volunteers who work in two-hour shifts counting the population of the raptor species that find their way to Hawk Hill, however, it is a serious empirical exercise. Raptors are a bellweather species. Since they are at the top of the food chain in their ecosystem, declines in their numbers can indicate problems within that ecosystem. What makes Marin the go-to peep-show for raptor counting?

By the time many raptors reach the Golden Gate Bridge, some of them have flown from as far as Alaska and Greenland, Tennessee and Virginia (banding programs tell us). Once they arrive, they suddenly stop at the Golden Gate and linger for long periods of time like tourists in the 70s who discovered our sensuous temperate weather and penchant for hot-tubs. But instead of hot-tubs, the warm thermals and updrafts on the wind-facing hills entice these birds of prey to join the big raptor orgy. Well, it may look that way, but something more amazing (and scientific) actually is going on. Embedded in North American raptors' genetic code is not only the instinct to migrate to the southern hemisphere, but an orientation for the only two ways to get there if they've never been before: the coasts. Juvenile raptors have no imprinted route south. But they know if they get to the coasts, it will lead them to where they need to go. Now, birds prefer to fly over land, which they can do most of the way. Problem is that little gap between Marin and San Francisco counties. That they don't like. So, it's not actually an orgy among the raptors at Hawk Hill; they're all hanging out on the thermals playing truth-or-dare to see who takes the leap over the gap. Most do, though some don't.

Next year, I get to join the banding program for the raptor observatory. But for now, because I'm not allowed to deflect my attentions outside the writing discipline, I am enjoying my own little hawk hill peep-show right here on the Corte Madera ridge. Today, I spotted two red-tailed hawks, a juvenile red-tail, and a cooper's hawk. Talk about a turn-on!

Before I Wake

Dear, innocent Malcolm asked me recently where I wanted to be buried. ("God help me, what's he up to now," I had to ask myself. "Planning portfolio strategies already? Good luck weasel, it's all soundly invested in your name in a little place called the Drew School where you are having the time of your life right now.") So, I said, "For lord's sake, don't bury me! I love bugs, and I'd hate to think of them making a meal out of me after all I've done for them."

"Like what?" he asked, dubiously. "The pest guy comes every few months to keep the spiders and scorpions out of my room, right? How is that eco-friendly, Mom?" (. . .sarcasm oozing out his ears and onto the cell phone text pad from which he has not lifted his eyes for the last hour.)

"Rosemary and thyme pellets, dear heart. They sprinkle rosemary and thyme pellets that create a barrier. Them herbs don't kill." (Say "them herbs" out loud; odd.)

"Yeah, right Mom. That stuff doesn't work. No way they do that!" (tap tap tap tap tappity tap tap)

Surprise, surprise. Yet another denial (lick index finger, tick off imaginary check box) crowding out some really fine attempts by us and an eager set of young, idealistic teachers to wedge service learning into his rock 'n roll psyche. California's looming drought? "Mom, it rained today." The economy? "A Mac Book would be really cool for my birthday." Improvement in John McCain's poll numbers? "If you paint a little fuzz under his nose, he looks like Hitler." Starving children in Myanmar? "We saw a picture of kids who look pregnant!" "What's it going to take," I ask myself fretfully. It's not like we don't model the social consciousness and encourage him to join. We do this all the time, but if it doesn't come in the form of hella' lyrics with a nimble guitar stream and a muscular bassline, it ain't happening. Actually, that's not entirely true. I give him points for taking a side in the discussion. Heck just observing his surroundings is a sign he's pointed in the right direction. What's really going on? I've noticed more and more socially and politically impassioned kids these days who feel empowered to get involved. God love 'em (and their heart-swelling headlines in the local paper.) Other kids, however, take longer. My guess: The sensitive ones, the ones who took great offense when contractions woke them out of a warm, oceanic slumber and started pumelling them through the birth canal, are not entirely convinced of their ability to protect themselves if, God forbid, something bad happens to mom and dad, more narrowly defined in their eyes as "tour guides to my freakin' future." Boys are especially vulnerable. Right from the get-go they learn, "we like you better when you mask your fear and keep your feelings to yourself" and "don't worry, you'll grow up to be a soldier and learn to shoot a gun, and we'll all be safe." You gotta wonder. . . are we scaring them shitless? Remember the nuclear attack test sirens that sent us under the desks? Ever notice how much faster the boys contorted themselves into those tight little spaces?

I think Malcolm, who's a pretty anxious kid to begin with, when he sees the hurricane a comin', checks, checks, and rechecks the health of the tether that holds him fast to the steady stake we've secured to this uncertain world. Nothing new; lots of parents do it. What to do for the ones who need more convincing? My scheme: show Malcolm a few photos of his tether (me) in some of the places I love in hopes he might be compelled someday to ensure their longevity. (Mwa ha ha!) And if that fails, at least he'll know where to scatter me when the time comes:

Yosemite Valley,









the creek at the cabin, just below the water barrel where nature hospitably toppled a Ponderosa pine to fashion the world's best foot bridge.










and Blue Slides, where I can hang out with some of my favorite people.

Idaho

Idaho is one of those vast lands dotted with grand features of endless farms next to coniferous mountain ranges all laid out under an eternal sky that, when not heartbreakingly blue, struts its weather like no other. Rain clouds gather with the breathtaking grace Audrey Hepburn used to command the billowy skirts of her gown on the red carpet. Winds searing through the enduring prairies stir the soul like the long slow moan of a new lover across the light and shadow of spent bed sheets. And rain falls with the purr of a sleeping newborn, pure and clean and forgiving. I spent a few days in Idaho to visit my brother and in that short time, I was greeted by a little bit of all of that. Especially memorable was a long hike up to Stevens Lakes on the western side of the Bitterroot Mountains. Eric is a rugged, impatient kind of guy who ironically spends hours upon hours of his spare time photographing the minute and beautiful details of nature. We knelt at fungal altars of several brilliant mushroom species. We magnified with his macro lens the crystallized riddle of frost on fall leaves. We bushwacked our way to uncharted vistas that only poets and painters could replicate. There’s a sense of the wild still left in that corner of the west, plenty of room to distance yourself from civilization, even if it’s the Starbucks look-alike five miles from the nearest residence or the near empty parking lot at the mall. It’s that frontier essence that makes Eric ache when he sees densely packed developments spread their commercial loins across unspoiled territory. But enough remains of the vastness, so go, if you can, and soon. It may take a few more decades before it looks more like Los Angeles, but according to Eric, a little piece of its heart gets ripped out when another farm gets sold.

Lifeboat

Posted on my other blog: languageandarchitecture.blogspot.com

A Perfect Day

Jack London wrote 1000 words a day. Once he was done, he entertained guests, worked on his farm, invented cool stuff, soaked in whatever exotic locale he visited. Today, I attempted the same. I think I managed 1000 words, give or take, in about seven hours. I think Jack London had a lot more free time in his day than I did today. But, still. . . once I reached my allotment, I came back to life. The other life, which, if we get really creative, has it's exotic moments: Pick up Malcolm at the ferry. Drop books off at the library. Prepare dinner. Clean kitchen. Refill hummingbird feeder. Mix a margarita (they're back!). Return some phone calls. Not bad, in a day. But the highlight was the first hour of writing. I hike the fire roads on the ridges of Mt. Tamalpais, and for that first hour, I create the scenarios that will fill my pages later. Notebook in hand, I traipsed the trails. During that first hour today, I had the pleasure of hearing:

Wild turkey (gobble gobble gobble)
Two hawks (Screeeeeech! Screeeeeech)
Numerous hummingbirds (zzzft zzzft zzzft)
Stellar's Jays (one that cawed, another I swear mocked the call of a hawk)
Woodpecker (tatatatatatatatatat)
Nuthatches (tswit tswit tswit)
At least three deer loping through the leaves
Countless lizards scurrying through the leaves
A snake's slither through the leaves
(Each leaf dweller has it's own cadence)
Squirrels rustling among the oak branches
Countless unidentifiable song birds
My breath in between.

A simple day, uncluttered in its own way, yet lush in another way. Tomorrow, I spend the entire day at the new California Academy of Sciences. I've been waiting a long long time for this day. I invited no one. I plan to linger and absorb. My dream job is to write for the California Academy of Sciences publications. Science nerd, yup.

Summer's End

Brought Maggie to the airport this morning. International terminal, United Flight 954. Everything felt the season turn. Brian and Malcolm bid teary farewells by 7 and left the house without their usual banter, carrying more on their shoulders than backpacks. At 7:45, Kirk tipped back a last cup of coffee and departed for Ukiah. Their goodbye hug stretched well past where they normally leave off. It'll be a month til we see him again, which feels as long as the shadows stretching past the oaks near the driveway, but a blink compared to the three months she'll be gone. Did I mention the cat puked on the new doormat? And the dog snuck up on the couch? I didn't care; I could have used a good wretch and a soft spot to ease the emptying of what was a full and frantic summer. In the hour before we left, I showered and dressed as Maggie sipped her tea and read the comics, packed a few last minute items, put on her make-up, fashioned a couple of earrings out of bottle caps and wire, collected her stack of library book returns, arrayed dirty laundry and wardrobe rejects over her bedroom furniture and floor, printed out some sheet music, and emailed a few friends. That's Maggie; that's the tambourine she taps against her jeans as she moves through our lives. Hours have passed since I walked back into the house, which is now a cavern. The only sound I've heard all day is the occasional acorn plunk against the roof. Plunk! Plunk-plunk. Roll-roll-roll. And at the rooftop's edge, nobody hears my heartbeat stop. It is the sound of summer's end. Of children reaching the rooftop's edge. Of others fleeing to far-away-lands to find their way. Their acorns litter my sloping hillside. I've lost count. The temperature drops. The sun tilts back. And the treetops slouch against the fog's sigh.

Blog This!

Blog-worthy things that have crossed my path lately:

At Scala's Bistro on Union Square, our party of three entered the bar. No tables were available. Suddenly, my attention was caught by a kind-faced man waving at us. "Shouldn't waste a whole table on just one. I'll sit at the bar," he said as he scooped up his martini and cocktail napkin and took the seat at the end of the line. As a writer, I want to build my character by telling you this man was rather short, bald, and somewhat portly. But such descriptives fail me the most beautiful creature in sight. It wasn't that our dogs were tired or we were dying of thirst; we could have headed over to the Saint Francis for our booze. It was this: he was a good neighbor in a world that has lost touch with the concept. My friends are from a few neighborhoods over, a place called Reston, Virginia. I lifted my shoulders in pride at how grand, how escquisite my city looked under the tweed vest and wool trousers of this gentleman. This San Franciscan. Pay it forward.

The Hawks are coming! A red-tail's screech woke me out of my decadent Saturday morning slumber. I nearly tripped on the bed sheets as I leaped into my slippers and ran out to the street. There on the top of a lone redwood, a broad-shouldered commander surveyed the morning's smorgasbord of mice and moles below. It turned its head in my direction, and as if to say "you think this is swell. . . " lifted off and soared over the tree tops. Coming home from Muir woods the day before, just before we reached four corners, I spotted its cousin on a tall pine. "George, stop!" I yelled to my Reston-friend. And as he did, the raptor spread its majestic wings across the entire view of the distant foothills.

Speaking of birds, Jinx caught a hummingbird and ate it for lunch. Isn't that some kind of sin? Some sort of line crossed for which she is heading to cat hell? I wasn't home, but the sin is probably mine. I have pots full of trumpet-shaped flowers and a hummingbird feeder that lure them to our deck so that I can relish their luminescent beauty as I sip my morning coffee. One of these visitors, after gorging on the hibiscus, turned left instead of right and got trapped inside the house. Jinx made a meal of it and Malcolm hurried upstairs with the vacuum, following the trail of feathers before his mom got home. He knew. Cat hell, fraught with licking, scratching, feral felines, here I come.

Come a little closer, girlie!

When I first saw her, I thought she looked familiar. With the naked eye (and my glasses) and at a safe distance, though, I didn't see any markings. Whew! A black widow would really throw off my day. Ah, but this beauty is such a gorgeous specimen. So still, so sleek, so peaceful. She'd make an easy close-up nature photo for the blog. I grabbed the camera and took a macro photo. You know, way up close. Nose to nose with nature. Only when I magnified it on the image viewer did I spy the red hourglass on her belly. Talk about a close call!

Girlfriend Interrupted

While hiking recently, a good friend and I were talking about high school. Her son is going through what I did. I shared a story about junior high when my mother made me tell you we couldn't be friends anymore. (Mom was afraid of all the "different" things you were doing. They were all afraid, weren't they?) I told her how I was instructed to say the words directly to you. I was so obedient, I actually did it! Concerned for her son, my hiking pal asked what it was like to lose my best friend. I said it unhinged me from being certain about what I loved. Going to the commons with you, to that portal in the brush, where we found a big empty space and sat on the dirt to eat cucumber sandwiches. The hippie hang-out we made in the cellar of my house (to your taste because you had more of it). The plays we wrote and performed (you mostly, you were more creative). Snowball fights, girls against boys. You painted your bedroom walls red, white, and blue and had a candle in the shape of Spiro Agnew’s name when I didn't know who he was. For a couple of summers, we swam in your family's pool, which was the coolest thing going in that neighborhood. And you showed me how to smoke cigarettes behind the pool fence. These things were certain in girlhood; absolute, eternal, and easy to love. They made me certain I was going to be cool like you. But then I said those words to you, and I knew I was giving up my right to choose for myself, and I knew that was not cool. I remember that day, the jeans and flannel shirt you wore over your dark tee. The home-made, kelly-green kettle cloth dress I wore. The cirrus clouds in the painfully blue October sky. The dying grass on the side of the school building where we stood. I remember because I was so ashamed.

After that, school was filled with uncertainty, especially in the conflict between my family’s athletic ambitions and my passion for creative writing. When high school ended, I achieved neither because I couldn’t choose when I was given the chance. I went away, and I would have gone farther if the Pacific Ocean didn’t stop me. I started from day one making very deliberate choices, each one a celebration of abandoning fearful obedience and restoring certainty. Mom feared there were too many "Mexicans" in California; I moved in with a Latina, a black ROTC student, a Japanese "study abroad" student, and a really wild red head! I switched my major from kinesiology for a future in sports medicine to English for the pleasure of creative writing. And shortly after arriving in California, I promised: no more dieting. Take me or leave me. In my family, women struggled with weight. I was initiated into dieting at age twelve (normal weight) and ended up thirty pounds overweight by the time I left for college. But at UCLA, where I chose to attend over my mother’s protestations, where I chose to risk her disapproval by staying fat, soon I was fifteen pounds lighter. And soon after that, another fifteen. Forever. That was cool.

But I’m still not. In fact, I laugh with my family at how fearlessly uncool I am. I don't swear. Never did drugs (after trying once or twice). Have no adventure stories. Except I married a guy who did all of the above. Mom didn’t like him at first, but I knew what I was doing. Now he walks on water in her eyes, while we live adventurously by a different set of rules. One of them is to keep the kids safe, while letting them take risks and choose for themselves. Because in high school, I let others choose for me, while I watched you become an artist. I admired your uninhibited expression and the brashness it sometimes took you to break through. I watched you and learned that by choosing for yourself, even if it was risky, you got something I want for them: Authenticy.

Life is getting short. I'd ask you to forgive me, but I'd rather you just know that our girlhood friendship supported me even after I abandoned it. Authentic friendships do that, don't they? It has always meant more to me than you knew. If that means anything to you.

P.S. I kept two things you made me while we were still pals. A tag from a birthday gift on which you wrote a (kind) limerick about me. And a little card you made with your picture. They are in a box with things like poems my father wrote before he died, a bracelet he made me when he was in the hospital, a balsa wood satchel that smells like the woods behind my grandmother's house, and a broken MIA bracelet. In other words, irreplaceable treasures.

Rhythm and Muse

Beverly Egan is a nursing student at UCLA. One of my daughter's best friends. Bev is the first outside contributor to Language & Architecture, a poetry blog I started for my own work. I revamped it to include other voices because it had gone dry. The novel is my master.

Bev might actually be writing lyrics, I'll have to ask her. If not, though, it's certainly lyrical.

Enjoy. www.languageandarchitecture.blogspot.com

Screaming

I spent two days revising chapter eight. Last night, eager to mix Friday margaritas, I inadvertently saved chapter five over chapter eight. First, I did it on my computer's hard drive. Oblivious to my stupidity, I did it again on my external hard drive. Two days of work. I'm officially swearing off margaritas until this is over.

P.S. Luckily, I have an unrevised copy of chapter eight on a flash disk. Guess how I'm spending the weekend?

Meet Ed

I enjoyed a week's worth of memories in two days at the ol' Fuller cabin. That's what happens when you find yourself in the middle of a gravelly sage-filled valley surrounded by fir-covered mountains that release ribbons of somniferous creeks and dusty corduroy trails onto your doorstep. You let it go. All of it. That first fresh morning when you push back the tent flap and thrust your face into the honeyed light that comes at 2000 feet, whatever you left behind is forgotten. Lots of blog material.

In this installment, I'd like you to meet Ed. (Click on photos to enlarge.) Ed is the kind of guy you've gotta meet before you die. A classic in the true sense of the word, and if I haven't emphasized it enough, they don't make them like Ed anymore. But they should. Ed is a friend of John and Eileen Fuller, who with their adventuresome son Johnny and delightfully poised daughter Dana, joined us for the last weekend of Camp Gravelly. How Ed ended up at the cabin, I'm not sure. Something to do with picking up Savannah, aptly nicknamed Savi and sweet as peach pie, who also joined us that weekend. Ed flies a de Havillan Beaver sea plane. He's been at it since 1964. Ed was on his way home to Canada from a two-month job in southern California. Somehow, John (the Dad) got Ed to fly double-dutch with Johnny (the son) to pick up Savi in Ukiah and land at the airstrip next to Lake Pillsbury; a mile or so from the cabin. Since it was on the way to Canada, I guess. Doesn't really matter. What's important is that we got Ed for two days.

The first thing you need to know about Ed is that he's recently recovered from a broken neck which he sustained while turning a back flip on a trampoline. The second thing you need to know is that Ed is 65. He's pretty darned fit and trim for a guy his age who's been through something like that. But he's practically Superman for the other thing he's been through: his son's long, traumatic recovery from a brain tumor. We learned that when Ed was telling us about the marijuana plants they grow. But stuff like that, in fact everything we learned about Ed, it wasn't designed to impress or boast. Stories of his adventures sort of tumbled out of him almost involuntarily into conversations that he didn't initiate. He'd walk up to you in his pressed olive drab shirt tucked into a neatly belted pair of cargo pants looking like a park ranger, and usually ask a question about the place. Or the surroundings. Or the history. He was curious. Then something you'd say would trigger a story from Ed's memory. He told Brian "the one" about pissing while piloting. (Brian asked.) Evidentally, his secretary nagged him into taking her up. She put coffee in a thermos, and after they'd finished it, he had to get rid of some. So, he set his gauges, told her not to touch a thing, and went in the back of the plane to relieve himself into the empty thermos. I guess he dumped it, and when he got back that day, he washed it out real good. Next day, the secretary brings in the thermos of coffee, pours herself a cup, takes a sip, and cries "this coffee tastes like piss!" Brian figures it's a bit fantastical, the story. But that's the point. That's Ed. Ed enjoyed our campfire coffee; it's course enough to strip tooth enamel. And he enjoyed the cocktails. Especially, Ed liked his beer. But never before flying. When we were on the lake, he was drinking water and examining flight maps. Soon, he learned through radio communications that the northern California coast was fogged in and smoke from the wildfires nearby rendered him flightless for another night. So, he asked how the jetski works, got a quick lesson from Johnny, then took off to buy a few sixes, which he shared with the other beach bums. No fuss. No bother. Just another chance to live it up another day. At the end of the day, shootin' the shit, sitting in a misfit collection of folding chairs on the back porch, facing the mountains in the orange glow of kerosene lanterns, finishing off a few bottles of California red. . . it's your place, but you get the feeling you're in Ed's element.

The morning he left for home, Ed doffed his cap, bowed, and said "I thank you for your hospitality." We escorted him out to the air strip, where I asked if I could sit in the Beaver. I have a fear of heights, so no way I'm gonna ever fly in the thing, but I wanted to play with the toys. Saying our goodbyes, Ed invited Kirk and Brian to go fishing with him at his place in Canada. He didn't describe a picturesque house-on-the-lake kind of setting, but he tossed in a fish story that made you picture it anyway. As he hoisted himself into his seat, he said "yep, fishin' out the front door." And off he went with his maps, overnight bag, and thermos.

Ooh La La Twighlight Vixens!

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Brian Fuller Day, our 23rd wedding anniversary, and Bastille Day, last night we dined at the Left Bank in Larkspur. It's my all-time favorite restaurant, and not just for the food, although I could order the Salade Nicoise every day of the week. The Left Bank blends "neighborhood hangout" with cozy brasserie elegance. It's where the locals go when they want to dress up and still hang loose. It encourages chatty bar crowds and large tables around live entertainment, while tucking the romantic diners into secluded little corners with low light and quiet. The Left Bank keeps things entertaining by promoting the heck out of its French connection. Last night, they honored Bastille Day with burlesque dancers. Sexy, skirt twirlers in fish net stockings and ruffled underpants doing semi-striptease acts on chairs, daring upside-down leg-splits in the air, and feather festooned fan dancing. Oh, the fan dancing! It wasn't Paris' Crazy Horse, but it was a wonderful reminder. Vive la difference! Vive les Vixens! http://www.twilightvixen.com/

P.S. Happy 20th Anniversary of Brian Fuller Day

On July 14, 1988, we were seven months pregnant with Maggie. We owned our first house in a "transitional" (giggle) neighborhood called Fox Pointe, in Providence, Rhode Island. We furnished it with hand-me-down furniture, an IBM 386, and a shelf of VHS tapes that were later stolen in one of many burglaries in that neighborhood. So, twenty years ago today, then-Governor Ed DiPrete declared "Brian Fuller Day." That's him with the Guv in the photo. Really! He's probably reading the fine print on the declaration, which DiPrete personally delivered to the UPI bureau in the basement of the state house. Now why would the busy governor go out of his way to lavish such time and attention on a young up-and-coming journalist? Such a busy, busy statesman, who ten years later pleaded guilty to state charges of bribery, extortion, and racketeering? My brain was drowning in hormones at the time, I don't recall the reason. Please have mercy and remind me. In the meantime, we celebrate Brian Fuller Day every year, and I'm sure Brian would be happy if y'all used the same excuse to lift a glass of your favorite spirits tonight.

Diary Excerpt

Brian went to the cabin with Malcolm. After a few days of no phone calls, I missed talking. Brian's got a great ear; he'll listen to anything and no matter how mundane, he'll respond as if it makes a difference to him. I love that, and take advantage of his goodwill as much as I can. Especially since I started writing the book and go days sometimes without leaving the house. I was beginning to tremble the way Buddy the Dog does whenever the cat crosses his path. The cat he can't chase or he'll get the $@*% kicked out of him. So I began a little diary that week. I didn't blog because I'm not kidding, this stuff was as interesting as chicken bouillon. But I needed a blog posting. I took an entry from one day in the diary in which I waxed on writing. (in my head, that came out "waxed on whiting"). I give you, July 10th:

July 10: No hike today. Lazy. Woke up to a crisis: no high test coffee beans and no cat food. (Actually, ran out of the cat food last night, but I just left her outside to fill up on moles and mice.) Zoom zoomed off in the Mini at 8 a.m. to avert the crisis, and an hour and a half later came home with an extra large Americano and Iams. Aaaaaaand a new skin care regime (adios, Mr. Franklin), eggs, zip lock bags, Burts Bees lip balm (not the kind that turns your lips white), cilantro, sun block, and seltzer water. I wish I had a dime for every hour I waste shopping for cheaper face products that will reverse the signs of aging. I wish someone had told us way back to invest in cosmetic companies. Sipping my luke warm Americano, the rest of the day, I updated my reverse outline. Can I tell you a secret? I don't have an outline for the book. I was too antsy to get going, and outlines only work if you know what you're doing. But to keep track of themes and conflicts and notes for revisions, I backfill an outline. I had three chapters to backfill, but as a result, I saw so many mistakes. I want to go back and fix them, but Sooz sez "Plow ahead. You can go back." I want to say, "but I've got ADD. I'll forget it all in 10 minutes." But she assures me that I could come up with a different edit for the same sentence each and every day. So, I could go back every day, or I can wait til the revision. She promises that no matter what, I'll have an edit for it, even if it's not the same one I had today. I will trust. But I did go through a bunch of chapters and write notes in margins. For the whole day. Except the hour I talked to Mary. I was so happy to see her name on my caller ID. She just got back from Bali (and a retreat before that.) Mary and I have an understanding: we rarely talk because we know we'll never get off the phone. And we both have our art to be selfish about. But as I said earlier, I was just backfilling the outline and it was MARY. Mary and I talk about great stuff. Inside stuff that can reinflate the soul. We did try to limit it. She started off by saying, "Can you talk or are you working?" I said, "I've got five minutes, but then I've got to get back." I don't ever have to explain to Mary. We might have stopped after, hmmm, 45 minutes? An hour? When we got going, my soul realized how thirsty it was, and it wanted to swim across the Bay in a conversation with Mary. By the way, I don't think chapter nine works. I think I have to rewrite it. I know. I know. Deadline. . .

Fear Itself

What if we all stopped caring about what everyone thinks? What if we just blurted out the truth? All of it. Our secrets, lies, hidden truths, peccadillos, what shames us, what hurts us. At the moment, we know truth can hurt. But if we all stopped caring what everyone/anyone thinks, it wouldn't hurt. "Who cares?" we'd chime and proceed to talk about lawn care products. Wouldn't that burst a few venom balloons! My wish, my most earnest deep-gut desire, is to speak (write) without worrying about how "Nails" is going to respond. "Nails" is skilled with venom balloons. When were were growing up, "Nails'" existence edited everything until we couldn't open our mouths or take a step out of the house without pausing to consider how "Nails" could construe it into . . . well, anything more would be amo for "Nails." One day. One day I'm going to write without fear of "Nails." And it's either going to be the day I say "Screw Nails!" or the day "Nails" isn't around any more. Thing is, it's not so much "Nails;" it's the people who care about "Nails'" influence. Simplest solution: let's all stop caring about what "Nails" thinks. Has "Nails" earned our care? Do we owe "Nails" something? Say it with me, people: "Free Screaminglady! SCREW NAILS!"

Fear itself

Previous post deleted.

Wildlife Fix

It wasn't much. A rustle in the bushes got me to turn on my path. Then a leap. A blur. A shot across the pale dusty gravel behind me. The stretched canter of a cat. A bobbed yellowish-white tale on a beefy set of tawny haunches, black feet. Then more rustling as it entered the chaparral on the downside of the ridge. The last time I saw a bobcat on Mt. Tam, it was about five years ago. Two of them, actually, sat stoically on the branch of an oak tree as I passed under. I didn't notice them until they were straight over my head. I walked on, keeping my quiet truce with Mother Nature. Today, I kept it -- not so quietly -- by calling Buddy (my Jack Russell Terror-ier) off his shit-disturbing chase. I wish I had more time to go out and watch for wildlife. As it is, I combine it with my one-hour daily hike to the top of the Corte Madera ridge. Many times, I'm hoofing it up, head bent over my stride, when I hear something I've come to learn is more than just a lizard or a field mouse darting into the dry grasses. Usually it is a hawk above or a deer ahead. Or, if I'm lucky, the more rare Peregrine Falcon, coyote, or wild turkey. Alarmed by my intrusive presence, they are usually heading in the other direction before I get a good long look. I haven't had a lot of sightings over the last six years on this particular hike or the previous six years on other Mt. Tam trails, but that's probably because I'm on trails. It's wildlife; it knows what the trails are for. It doesn't matter. What I've seen so far, it's enough for me. Heck, an unusual mound of scat is enough wildlife for me.

My So-Called Writing Life

Most of my written words are going into the novel these days. Other things have entered my life that take some time from my so-called work day. One day at a time, right? Today, as part of my research, I'm watching the Roman Catholic Mass in Latin! Who'dathunkit? Sunday we drove up to the cabin to see some of the bulldozer work on the property. Here's what I found on the side of the road on the way up:

Postcard from Honduras

Friends are asking about the wayward Fuller in Honduras, so I thought I'd be lazy with this week's blog posting and use her material instead. The photo to the left is not one of hers but it is the reason she went there.

Hi guys!

I didn´t really think I´d get to email you for the restof the trip, but we ended up hanging out in a town for a while and I have time to kill.

I am literally having the time of my life. I miss you guys, but I wish we could extend our stay a few months... we have almost finished building the house here. I´ve become a master mason and have been spending all day in the hot hot sun (it hasn´t rained during work day yet) laying mortar and bricks. Let me tell you, it is amazing. there are these awesome little kids who hang around the worksite. I love them all so much. I have so many pictures of them messing around and I know I´m going to miss them like woah.

On our off days we go site-seeing. One day we went zip-lining over a waterfall and then hiked under it (remember when Laurel and I went canyoning? like that, only without safety gear... way more hardcore.) the food is pretty good. The hotel food is varied, and not always authentic or good. but the portions are HUGE! every day for lunch we go to the house of a family who has a habitat house and they cook us these AMAZING meals. Today was one little girl´s birthday so there was food, decorations, dancing and a piñata. so much fun.

I´m taking plenty of pictures, so don´t worry. I can´t wait for a hot shower (ours are cold...) and a hot bowl of pasta e fagioli when I get home. (I´m thinking I may drive home on Friday night, even if it´s really late. Is that okay if I get home at like midnight? I really just want to crash at home with you guys and detox for a few days.) I miss you guys!

did you ever pay my PGE bill or get my ring from laurel? I really miss that ring.

lots of love,
Maggie

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Wait For It

In East Greenwich, RI, last Saturday night, we warmed our backsides against the earth-friendly burn of enviro-logs crinkling in the copper fire bowl on John and Deb Walsh's patio. As John and Brian conferred over the state of the globe, Deb and I took note of leafless maples, birch, and willow in her backyard. She said, "Sometimes I sit up in the cupola (it's a seaside town), waiting. I look out at all this loss, this emptiness, and I know something's coming. I never know what, of course. Just knowing something is coming is what makes this so beautiful." I wanted to ask if she'd read my last posting of similar theme, but I didn't want to retreat to the literal too quickly. So without speaking, for a few moments we waited together. It was uncharacteristically balmy for a December night. The radiating bowl was enough to warm our chilled parts. The moon lit the sky with a pastel teal that reminded me of the northern lights I once saw in Denali, Alaska. The twigs and twisted barren branches we admired cast a filigree of shadows that levitated lively over the matted patches of grass and frozen dirt. Ordinary objects ordinarily overlooked commanded the landscape: a red wooden storage shed placed catercorner on the grounds, the weathered wooden fence, the telephone wires segmenting the sky scape, the row of rectangular houses lined up like yellowed dominoes. I was taking it all in, this mild expression of the season. I knew the real thing, the abominable part I remembered loving as a kid and hating as a young adult was just days away. We were heading back to Marin in two days. Turns out, we escaped a blizzard by mere hours.

It's easy to take in the beauty in the spareness of the season back in the temperate Bay Area; all you need is an extra layer and a fashionable scarf. It's a short wait, though, before the magnolias and acacias start to bloom. But in New England and other regions where real winter happens and happens and happens, they take it like a beating and sport the wear and tear like prizefighters. When it's over, they will tell you it was worth the wait. And not just for what comes next.