Walking In Their Footsteps

Spring--Fort Ross Road

Moments of awe and grace are so very unexpected. The tight ess curves of Highway 1 above Russian Gulch demand one's full attention and gazing out the window at the hazy blue expanse of the Pacific and its coast is more a case of sneak peeks while keeping one's eye firmly on the road. Yet yesterday as I indulged in one of those seruptious glances, a red-tailed hawk appeared in my field of vision at the road's edge.  So close that I could see individual definition in the feathers of its mottled brown underside, beak and rusty orange tail feathers.  It seemed to rise from nowhere with such a huge wingspan, upturned smaller feathers at the tips of the wing reaching skyward as it soared away on the warm air currents.

The silence of the roadside at Styla Grove evokes inner calm and peace.  A concert of small birds filters through the underbrush while the limbs of a massive tree undulate their scarred length toward the light and are inhabited by myriad circular spiderwebs of every size. Apple blossom petals float slowly down from the trees in a graceful ballet onto a carpet of new grass. Birdsong provides theme music. Apple blossoms struggle on trees where lichen has stubbornly taken hold and drapes itself in long hairlike streams.  

 

I was hesitant to walk the path through the redwood and fir trees to what was once Styla's open meadow--muddy, uneven and littered with branches the path is somewhat more than I think my knee was ready to attempt yesterday. I have not been to that magical place for a very long time; yet, have a memory of vivid wild iris around a small pond.

It has been too long since I have been out alone drinking in the earth's peace. Cawing of a crow or rook, chirrupps and rustling of small birds in the underbrush, sounds of the air moving through the grasses and trees.  Rusty green poison oak leaves hug an old fence whose wooden cross pieces and pickets are worn and weathered--bleached to a soft silver.  The low insistent moan of the sea remains constant.

Along the darker portions of Fort Ross Road, a few turkeys hustle across the road and into the dense forest.  Their dark sillouettes are barely visible against the dark trees.  At the crest, dark shapes of hawks float above the newly green hills.

Few wild flowers are along the road that is usually bordered with bright California poppies and wild iris--too early, not enough rain who knows. Fields of wild mustard are in evidence at the vineyards closer to home.

It's about the light--its always about the light but especially in the early days of spring.

Henweigh's on Highway 116 for sheperd's pie for lunch.  

 

Family Faces

 "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us we see the past, present and future."  

Gail Lumet Buckley

I often look at Parker and Mason as being very different from one another physically.  Parker is dark-eyed and dark haired, Mason has bright blue eyes and lighter hair and skin.  On the surface, it seems a night and day picture.

Yet paging through my images of grandson soccer earlier this week, I found an image of Mason during a recent soccer game.  Intently focused on the ball, he strains to move faster with his tongue between his teeth and his face serious and sober.  I realize that there is something familiar about this image--that I have seen it over and over in soccer captures of the last few years. The planes of his face, the set of his shoulders--in all of it, I see the same elements as in Parker's face and body as he runs down a soccer field.  In that one brief moment of recognition, their shared genetics stare at me from the screen and the brothers' images become interchangeable.

It surprises me.  I don't know why it should--often in rummaging through family photographs taken today as well as years ago I see the faces of the people who belong to me.  Nathaniel as a young child looks very much like my father at 5 or 6.  Parker stands with the same stance as Nathaniel and I very much resembled my late Aunt Betty when younger.

It is true that all of this is encoded in our DNA, very much the stuff of science and the random luck of the genes.  For myself, I love the feeling of continuance that I have when these small moments jump at me from a picture or the screen. The past and present coalesce in the faces of those I love and a small moment of grace occurs. 

 

Grins, Grace and Gratitude...

 

Parker loves to run.  His young body moves down the soccer field with effortless grace. Often, he smiles from the sheer joy of participating in the play and his hair flying in the wind ruffles and falls. I love the ease with which he and his brother, Mason, move--their bodies responding unconsciously to the demands of today's game or at play.  Sometimes I can see their father in their stance or the way they move this way or that.

Through my lens, their intense focus on moving down the field and on the soccer ball is written on their faces along with the highs and lows of team play.  Parker was really fatigued from continually running as forward the entire first half of the game this morning and I could see his body begin to stumble some.

My telephoto lens affords me the ability to capture nuances of expression that are not apparent when sitting on the sidelines in a lawn chair as I did when his dad played. Blessed.

 

 

Wandering Away From Winter

Fence & Lilies
Originally uploaded by cheryldoran-girard

Red-tailed hawks floated gracefully over the broad greening hills as I drove north on Highway 1 towards Fort Ross. Their rufous and white colored underwing feathers warm against a faintly blue sky. Sounds of the Fort Ross' bell, running water and surf surge greet me as I exit the car on the westernmost side of the Fort Ross complex and senses are assaulted by the enticing salty tang of the ocean that dissipates quickly in the cool, foggy air.
This impromptu trip to Fort Ross is spent in the meadow adjacent to the Call House and on a bluff above the Pacific.
Behind a low lichen-covered picket fence is an overgrown meadow where yellow wildflowers abound. The riot of color is softened by weathered grey picnic tables scattered amid the ocean of waving yellow blossoms. It is the meadow, the flowers, me and my lens for a good two hours. Clumps of creamy fat lilies rising out of deep green foliage their yellow stamens pushing out like the tongue of a small child taunting an older sibling. A majestic eucalyptus with shaggy blossoms hanging from its lower branches holds court in the back corner of the meadow. Fallen logs lie amid the yellow profusion.
Following the sounds of deep grunts and a higher-pitched bawling, I make my way toward the edge of the bluff. Below lazing on a rock are a mother harbor seal and her pup. She is a lovely pale gray and the smallish pup has far darker fur. I guess my movement along the edge of the bluff alerts the mother and she squalls somewhat more loudly while lifting her short doglike face upward. I'm surprised she is so obviously at rest on the rock when there are a number of folks fishing from the rocks in close proximity.
Making my way across the bluff to shoot a large clump of lilies against a fence, a soft slithering noise at my feet causes a quick look down to find an almost pencil-thin garter snake sliding quickly away in the underbrush. Its distinct black and white striped body moving sinuously sideways. The low-growing under brush gives no sense of the snake's length and I wonder how big these reptiles become.
My final shots are of the oddly developing pinecones and flowers amid the evergreen branches. This spur-of-the-moment field trip didn't include packing the usual bag of reference materials, journals and watercolors.
The day begins to grow colder as I rest on a carved bench at the top of the bluff to merely drink in the wondrous sense of be able to be out and about at the end of a long, cold and wet winter.

Thoughts From the Backseat: What's in a name?

Talking Over the Play
Originally uploaded by cheryldoran-girard

T-ball season has begun. Parker and Mason are on the same t-ball team--the "Red Sox." So named because their Dad didn't want to be the Yankees and his volunteer job as assistant coach provides a modicum of special handling when it comes to these things.
So--while driving home with Mason and Parker Saturday, I had the benefit of their instruction about the etiquette of names in their t-ball world. First of all--you can't call Daddy, "Daddy" when attending t-ball and its contingent practices and games. You have to call him "Coach Nate" like all the other kids AND (this is totally VERY IMPORTANT!!) Mason is to be called Mason and not by his family diminutive of "Mae, Mae" or "Mas."
We never got to other relevant rules but I'm sure they'll come to light over the months between now and the end of t-ball/baseball season.

Small Moments-Snail

It was the shell that caught my eye as I was loading the back end of the Highlander yesterday.  So absolutely perfect--it was about the size of a small marble with copper shading to brown-orange to a pearly apricot hues.  It wasn't particularly large for a snail--I've seen far bigger with shells the size of fat brown walnuts. However, as it made its way through the water soaked concrete on the drive, it was one small image of perfect.  Its feelers waved back and forth as its glistening gray body slid slowly through the water flowing down the drive.

Mason and I stooped and filmed its progress.  I thought that he might touch or crush him but he was thoughtful and careful.  The moment passed quickly--less than thirty seconds-- yet, the image of a perfect creature and Mason's voice have remained. 

 

 

Best Day Of My Life*

He sat across from me at the dining room table and scrunched up his little face wrinkling the nose and grinning from ear to ear all the while eating cheese crackers and I thought to myself, “this is the best day of my life.”

Later as he patted the wet sand and said, “Deet down, Nan.”  I thought to myself, "I'm gonna get wet. What the hell--this is the best day of my life."

And when he pounded a huge rock rhythmically with a piece of driftwood and said, “Build house for Nan.”  I thought, again, "This is the best day of my life."

Soon we were making music together beating on large rocks with different sized driftwood and laughing all the while.

He fell asleep in the middle of my bed, his “Tractor Book” in hand.   As I watched his chest rise and fall and his little body totally relax, I knew this was the best day of my life.

Thank you, sweet boy.

Happy Valentine's Day....

 

*Reposted from 7/26/2006

 

Letters--From the Past and to the Future

It occurred to me this morning that the recent snow storms in the East would have appeared in Papa Doran's cash journal as footnotes with, perhaps, the unusual amounts of snow noted but no descriptive comment.

A recipe written on the back of a brief note written by my grandmother during my nomadic years of the early 1970s, Papa's comments of weather, deaths, and daily news; and, certainly, my father's iconic 1950s images are reminders that each life between the birth and death dates on a tombstone was full and worth honoring.

And so, in the digital age, I write.  I write because I have wished for forty years to find an ancestor's handwritten journal and have finally realized that the journal I seek is in the notes at the bottom of a page in a cash book, a the list tucked into a book, or the yearly note and cards from a woman in Ireland distantly related to my grandparents.  I write, I hope, for a young person in the future, who, like me, needed to know the people from the past.

Lastly, I write for myself as I yearn to document the daily life of my world and the people in it (especially those I love), the beauty of this planet that leaves me awestruck, and to honor those who came before.

 

Thanks, Dad

"I was pretty proud of that picture," he said a year or so before he died.  His voice stronger than I had heard it in a long time.  It was the only time I ever heard him speak of his accomplishments.  It was his interest in photography that moved me along the road to yearning to have the skill to make images--very specifically a  night image of a pink-hued peach blossom with a dew on its petals. I think was taken in our backyard on Green Street.  

The images of the moon above a country road and the riot of autumn leaves reflected on a rural lake came later--much, much later.  By the time I found them, I had the skill to frame them for his walls.

 

His slide shows were times I looked forward to both as an adult and when I was a kid.  They covered events and people I knew well and loved.  These and his "old school" paper photographs recorded our summers at the beach, Easter outfits, dances, graduations and holiday celebrations. Eventually, his grandchildren became the central focus for his lens. By the time his great-grandchildren came along, he had either lost interest or was too old and ill for more than life's daily struggles.

I wish that I could gain access to the archive of slides that were left when he died in July 2004.  I wonder where those many slides have ended up now.  It would be wonderful to be able to see them again and digitize them so all his family could enjoy them.

For now, it is best that I am grateful that his images created a passion that today is mine.  Thanks, Dad.

 

My Reasons To Be Grateful...

 

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