TIME TRAVEL

 

JOURNAL

Time Travel

Bill Barksdale, Columnist

When I was a young man in the early 1970’s I visited San Francisco from my then home in New York where I had moved to go to school on the first real step of my journey to discover myself.  I soon learned that Mendocino County had a kind of magical, almost mythological quality for many of the other young people of the time.  I was still, yet, to move back to New York City to continue my studies and life experience.  There was more for me to discover, but I would return to S.F. and never live anywhere but California again except for brief excursions to a couple other places.

I lived in San Francisco for some years, the real golden years of creativity in my mind.  It seemed as though every kind of art and creative endeavor was evolving and somehow mysteriously germinating there at that time.  Mendocino County remained that golden place in the mists of imagination much like the island of Avalon associated with the Arthurian legend, the place where King Arthur’s magical sword Excalibur was wrought, a place of healing. 

Perhaps it’s the giant redwoods, the ocean, the somehow sacred grounds of the Native Peoples who inhabited this place for thousands of years before Europeans – and they still do.  We often take for granted that so called “magical things” are nonsense or fairytales, perhaps they are - but are they?  Maybe “magical” is just another word for creativity.

Many of us who have been in the presence of those trees that have stood for, sometimes, thousands of years and are still alive, you may have felt the spiritual wonder of things that have lived since the time of the great masters that have inspired some of  the world’s great religions.  Yes, it’s true that many don’t allow that wonder in, don’t allow themselves to consider that there is a sacred aspect to life and most especially don’t think that something that has lived for a thousand or two thousand years or more has any special significance other than its monetary value, but what if a human or any other animal had lived that long, would they have any monetary value or would they be beings of amazement, like these trees?

Recently I’ve been rereading a book by author Kirt Wentz called A Place We Can Call Home that I read some years ago.  I don’t recall where I got it, maybe The Book Juggler.  Although it’s a novel, it’s based on an actual event – the catastrophic Chicago heatwave of 1995 in which there were an estimated 739 heat-related deaths, most of the victims were elderly people living alone on limited incomes with no air conditioning. 

In this story, five elderly people on fixed incomes who live in Chicago in 1995 decide to pool their money and share a home.  They can live better, help and support each other and move to a better place where they’re not just surviving but really enjoying life.  They choose to move to a place I know pretty well, the Pacific Northwest, specifically Washington State.  Sometimes the story is a bit too “preachy” for me and doesn’t deal with conflict resolution much, but its premise that working together we can create a better life, is very timely.

The characters visit places I know well, they even visit Willits to ride on the Skunk Train on page 294!  They take a driving trip down the Pacific Coast through places like Portland, where I was born, and the Columbia River Gorge where I lived much of my young life.  They mention Multnomah Falls, one of nature’s wonders and a place that I rode past so many times and visited so many times that I took it for granted.

Recently I was looking at an app on my phone called Watch Duty, a free donation-financed app, that lets the user know where wildfires are happening in real time, and suggesting the safest escape routes.  I urge you to download it to your cell phone ASAP.  Right now there’s a big wildfire in the Columbia Gorge called the Whisky Creek Fire.  For a while the area was closed off to most traffic.  I’ve driven up from Hood River Oregon to the historic Timberline Lodge near the summit of Mt Hood.   

Like here, the forests I grew up in are stressed from drought and have not been allowed to burn naturally so there’s a lot of dry fuel there, and it’s burning.  The Indigenous Peoples of this county took better care of the land then most of us European immigrants have done.  They had a spiritual connection with the living Earth. 

In 1871 members of the Pomo Tribe were forced to march from Potter Valley, their home, to the Round Valley.  It’s said that the Eel River ran red with the blood of the Native people who died at the hands of that unmerciful militia, who herded them and murdered the ones who couldn’t keep up.  If you’ve driven on Highway 162 to Covelo, you’ve crossed over Blood Run Creek that memorializes this ruthless event.

There is also an island in Clear Lake known as Bloody Island where the native Pomo and Wappo people were enslaved by Kentucky immigrant Andrew Kelsey and his business partner, Charles Stone, until the Native People revolted because of the horrible conditions they were forced to endure.  Eventually the Native people rose up and killed their enslaver-rapist-torturers and the U.S. Calvary murdered most of the enslaved in retaliation, thus the name Bloody Island. Kelseyville in Lake County is, I believe, named after Andrew Kelsey. 

It seems sometimes that the pursuit of wealth and power knows no crime horrendous enough to temper that greed and lust.

Perhaps I got sidetracked, but we should at least know the history of the place we live in, especially when we see that same money/power lust trying to dominate even those of us that are not native to this land.  Like the characters in A Place We Can Call Home Again, many of us are trying to survive, even thrive - as supper wealthy people, corporations and some “religions” try to dominate our Nation.  Need I remind you how important it is to vote?

In our often troubled world some humans think little of murdering other humans, where war and gun violence is an everyday thing.  We’re forced to think about this every day because we can’t avoid it in our hyper-connected world. Yet, we’re still creative beings capable of problem-solving.  We still have personal power. There’s mortality, the inevitable end to our lives.  There’s still a kind of mystical place called Mendocino County with its ancient life, with its sometimes traditions of reverence for the land and the perfumed air and the ocean that splashes onto the shore.   

Maybe the kind of legend of Mendocino County that I heard about and began to yearn for as a young man, is truly a real thing.  I certainly have grown here, grown old and grown to love this place.  I never take it for granted.  I’m still in awe of this place.  I don’t take for granted the people who were here first and were and still are mistreated.  I don’t know why life unfolds as it does.  I find myself here.  I try to be the best person I can be.  I try to be kind and honest, and I’m imperfect. That’s the best a person like me can do or be.  I have little understanding of “Life” or why it is the way it is.

In the evening I often look up at the sky as I go outside with my little dog for her last pee of the evening before bedtime.  I look up at the stars, the nearest being trillions of miles from Earth.  Some of those distant stars may not even be there anymore given the time it takes for their light to reach our little Earth.  They may have “Earth’s” of their own. Beings of their own with dreams of their own.  Perhaps those beings and their dreams have long-ago ceased to exist, if they ever did.  It’s unlikely we’ll ever know.  Our own Earth will likely be just another barren rock caught in the swirl of the Universe in time. Perhaps some being is looking at the evening sky and seeing the light from our little Sun, that may have burned out long ago, and wonder about time and if there is other “life” out there

We’re tiny creatures it seems, but perhaps part of something much larger and more profound, perhaps always growing and changing.  Are there other “Mendocino County’s” out there?  Other places that inspire dreams and hoped for life-changes.  I believe there are and that there always will be, even when my body is just scattered particles of dust in space that may become part of some dreamer looking for meaning in life as it looks at the stars, with lots of things they want to do and be.

I don’t mean for this to sound like I think any of us are inconsequential.  Some think that every thought, every action has consequence, has “creation” as an elemental component of it. Like waves of energy emanating out and shaping – what? – existence.  If so, then one might consider their thoughts and actions.  This may sound naive, but what’s the best I can be or do? It’s always a choice. Not always the “biggest” thing.  After all what is “big” anyway?