Month: March 2017

Mendocino Moment – 2

Richard Gylgayton2 Comments
They are all gone into the world of light, And I alone sit lingering here; – Henry Vaughan
My father\’s grave
After the synchronous phone call from Jeff I continued my drive up to Mendocino and the beautiful coast of California that I love so much. Over the past few weeks my thoughts had turned to my father, who died too young back in the Spring of 1988 just a couple of months short of his 61stbirthday. He had been sick for quite a while, from an illness that no one could figure out. (As usual, that’s another story and I’ll probably get to it someday.) He’s buried in a very old cemetery in Healdsburg called Oak Mound, at the top of a hill, nestled within a few unostentatious sites. His own resting place is marked with a flat headstone issued by the Veterans Administration. When we laid him to rest in that place, his grave was within the shadow of a large tree. The tree has fallen since then. Such is the way of nature. But someone used a saw to carve a crude seat in the trunk of the fallen tree. Such is the way of human beings.
A crude seat, but a nice thought
I had not visited the site in many years. Of all the family members and friends I have lost in the last couple of decades, this is the only one whose remains are stored in the earth. My father was a converted Catholic, and it was my mother’s wish that he be buried in that way. I suppose that desire might have had something to do with all that Last Days of Doom nonsense, though my mom was really not much into the details of her born faith. More than likely it was my father’s wish, not my mother’s. Nonetheless there he is, and I’m glad of it, because when I need to I can travel there and sit in the sun and talk aloud and pretend he is listening to me, something he didn’t always do when he was alive.
I find cemeteries comforting in the same way that reading history consoles me. I really can’t explain why. Everything is impermanent, even cemeteries. The headstones erode and the trees fall. Yet when I am in a place like Oak Mound or Mountain View in Piedmont I feel as if there is a permanent silence that is audible. There is no sense of spiritual haunting or fear.
Chatting with my father
I mention that because most people are anxious about cemeteries. I understand that. Cemeteries remind us of our own mortality. Perhaps that’s the whole point. Human beings have been revering and remembering their dead since before recorded civilization. Archeologists use burial sites as a source of knowledge. But here in America we do everything we can to remain ignorant of not only our own passing, but the passing of others. When my wife died the company I worked for at that time gave me seven days of “bereavement leave”. Compare that with the 90 days that was offered for the birth of a child. There is no greater evidence for our purposeful yet unconscious obliviousness of mortality in a country that celebrates the myth of the self-made man than the disparity between those lengths of time.
So I had a little one sided chat with the Old Man. He’s been on my mind recently because I am about to embark on making a living professionally again, and I’m determined this time to work for myself and be my own boss. I’ve never done that before. And I have never considered myself to be an entrepreneur. As I mentioned in a previous post, my dad was a real “horse trader” for many years, a classic go-getter who always seemed to have the pedal to the metal. So as I make my transition I have been thinking about him a great deal. If the father can do it why not the son? Even a son who has already outlived his father. While sitting in the sunny warmth next to my father’s headstone I thought of that Billy Collins poem, The Dead:
The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
I wasn’t ready to close my eyes yet so I made my way to the car and continued on my way to Mendocino. I had another appointment with a spirit that had passed to her own transparent tour boat, because the next day, March 15, was the anniversary of my wife’s departure, suddenly and unexpectedly gone without warning three years before.
Candace 1980 – Honeymoon at the Mendocino Hotel
Candace and I spent our honeymoon in Mendocino. It was our first trip to that part of the coast and while we returned to the Sonoma Coast many times during our marriage we never spent any significant length of time back in that town. While we were visiting in 1980 we hiked the Fern Canyon trail in Russian Gulch State Park, which is just a couple of miles north, and my plan was to repeat that walk and make some photos and see how the wet winter had treated that special trail. I wanted to do that on March 15, but after making some dawn pictures that morning, the rains came back and I decided to drive south and visit yet another cemetery. The forecast for the next day looked good for hiking so I delayed my hike and instead got back into my car and pointed my way south down Highway 1 to the Evergreen Cemetery just south of Manchester, located at the intersection of Mountain View Road.
Mendocino Hotel – Balcony – November 2015
One of the most attractive elements of the practice of photography is revisiting and reimaging a location over the years. I’ve lost count of the times I have photographed Evergreen and have done it so often that I feel as if I almost know the pioneers that are buried there. I have watched the stones erode and become more difficult to read since my first visit in 1981 or 1982, I’m no longer sure of the exact date. My friend Georgia’s parents lived in Gualala, which is about 20 miles south of Manchester, and we were occasional guests in those times. That was the period where I really began to fall in love with the Sonoma Coast. All those towns have local cemeteries, and they vary in style and location. The graves in Evergreen go way back to the mid-19th century, though it is still used today by several families that have plots there. Unlike my father’s grave, these are people unknown to me, and yet when I am there I sense their historical presence.
The McMullen stones

Just like the digs and explorations of archeologists we can walk through an old cemetery and get a sense of what times were like 150 years ago in California. The most obvious is the fact of shorter life spans and death in childbirth. The most heartbreaking of these is the McMullen plot where a total of six small gravestones marking the decease of infants form a line next to the larger monument to the parents, Samuel and Jennie. When I first visited Evergreen there were very few trees providing shade, but over the years, particularly at the McMullen site, I have observed small seedlings grow into mature trees year after year. Eventually, long after I am gone and no longer photographing they will tumble, just like the tree that was once over my dad’s grave.

Broken, later repared
And I have watched the headstones erode, break, and fall over. On return visits I have viewed the formerly collapsed stones returned to their upright elevations and the damaged stones repaired and renewed. But no one can keep the wind and rain from wearing away the names and dates of human beings who lived and loved in a very tough world, and who then closed their eyes to spend eternity rowing a glass bottom boat over a planet vibrating with tension and technology. What must they think of our insistence to ignore our own eventual passing as they float above us in the soundless spirit world?
John and Margaret Galloway
I have watched the gravestones of John and Margaret Galloway wear down over time. On this visit John’s headstone had fallen over, and Margaret’s is now very difficult to read. I wonder who they really were and how much they cared for one another. Were they always in love or was it a marriage of convenience? Were they happy? All these are unanswerable questions, and the kind of thing that has been occupying my own mind for three years now. I remember with clarity the 35 years I had with my own soulmate, and yet, just like the headstones, the memories are stretching back with tension and creating a series of longitudinal markings that make up the chapters of my own life. I have no stone to visit for my wife. Her ashes are in an urn at the top of my refrigerator, along with those of her mother and brother. When I have a glass of wine or a martini in the evening, I raise my glass and look up, but I never see the transparent bottom of the boat that they likely travel in together, hopefully with Jim, father and husband, who left many years before they did.
The Doctor\’s Angel
My last stop in Evergreen is always what I call “The Doctor’s Angel.” It’s the most elaborate marker in the site, very much in the style of some of the plots in Mountain View Cemetery. It marks the resting place of William Oliver Davis, M.D. who I assume was the local physician in the later part of the 19th and early years of the 20th century in that area. Born in 1862, died in 1911, he was only fifty when he passed away. I think that he must have been a beloved man to have such a splendid statue keeping watch over his bones. When I stand there I sometimes wonder if he was the attending physician at the births and deaths of all the McMullen children and if so how hard it must have been for him to watch the sequence of small children appear like brief lights before heading directly to the spirit world. What a lifetime that must have been; all these people who likely knew one another now at peace in a little corner of California, blessed by the wind and rain from the ocean in the winter, and the hot dry sun in the summertime.
I returned to my car and took a few deep breaths. It had rained on the way down from Mendocino and during my entire visit in Evergreen the air was sweet and clear. So was my mind. All the colors in the hills and fields were vibrant and saturated even though the dour grey sky was blocking the sun. Despite the fact that I had dawdled in two cemeteries in the space of 24 hours, there was joy in my heart. It feels good to be alive. It’s a gift. And we have to remember that every moment of every day. We have to. Yes, the times we are in now are fraught with strangeness, rage, racism and a millennial sense of doom and gloom. But are our times really that much different from those of the McMullens, Mr. and Mrs. Galloway, and the good Doctor Davis? The Buddha taught that life is filled with suffering, and that our reason for suffering is because we are attached to life in an unhealthy way. The Zen teacher Yuanwu said in a letter:
“In the present time, those who want to draw near to reality must boldly mobilize their energies and transform what is within them. You must not cling to wrong knowledge and wrong views. You must not mix poison into your food. You must be uniformly pure and true and clean and wondrously illuminated to step directly into the scenery of the fundamental ground and reach the peaceful and secure stage of great liberation.” (Translated by Thomas Cleary, from Classics of Buddhism and Zen, Volume Two, page 181; Shambhala Books)
Perhaps that’s easier to say than to do. But it must be done nonetheless. Otherwise we just waste the small amount of precious time that has been granted to us before we head off to that other world and from our own glass bottom boat observe a realm below us that we might have missed when we actually lived there. Here and now is our fundamental ground, and we make the choice to live it fully, or not live it at all.
Evergreen Cemetery in the early 1980\’s

 

Evergreen Cemetery in the early 1980\’s -Candace, David and Georgia
Evergreen Cemetery in the early 1980\’s -Candace, David and Georgia

 

Meaningful Coincidences

Richard GylgaytonLeave a comment
The Carquinez Strait looking south from Benicia
Ever since I was an undergraduate I have been influenced by Jungian psychology. And of all the concepts that Jung described, the idea of synchronicity has always been the most resonant for me. The term is familiar to most people, most likely because of the hit song by The Police. I’m not sure that the song really has much to do with the concept as defined by Jung, though the lines “many miles away something crawls from the slime / at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake” reverberates in a Shadowy sort of way. We’ve all experienced those moments when multiple spontaneous events transpire that seem significant and yet have no causal connection. Those types of occurrences are filled with meaning, and they surprise us because they appear out of nowhere and rise above the routine affairs that occupy us every day. There’s a tinge of magic and mysticism to them, at least for those of us who are paying attention.
Recently as I have been gathering material for posts in this blog I’ve been digging back into my archives to discover previous writings that trigger memories. That is all part of what I am calling The Tension of Memory. Recently I discovered a piece that I worked on in 1993. It was a spiritual autobiography and an attempt at a memoir. I had forgotten about it. Little nuggets of the past like that are always exciting to find, and this one contained a remembrance of the day I learned Transcendental Meditation. (I have incorporated it into this post). I shared that encounter with my friend Jeff, back in my St. Mary’s College days, in 1974.
Then a week or so later as I was traveling to Mendocino for a three day trip of photography and negative ion experience (more on that at another time), synchronicity suddenly materialized. My friend Jeff has lived his whole life in the amiable town of Benicia. He makes his living as a realtor and has probably been a part of the selling and purchase of most of the homes in his hometown over the years. He’s a lifelong friend, and though we don\’t see one another as often as we should, our relationship is typical of old pals. It’s like reading a familiar book chapter by chapter, separated by reading sessions that might be a year or two apart. I’m lucky to have many friends like that.
Toll Plaza while talking with Jeff
My route took me through Benicia. Interstate 680 crosses over the Carquinez Strait at the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. It’s a quick drive from my place and I always think about Jeff when I drive that road. Geographical elements seem to be a trigger for memories in addition to old pieces of writing. As I was driving to the toll plaza and got my FastTrak unit ready, the phone rang (which I answered hands free, of course). It was the default ring that I use for all incoming calls, the Ennio Morricone theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I was just leaving behind a frustrating and unexpected traffic jam and was looking to get some miles under the tires.
It was Jeff. Calling out of the blue mysterioso spaces of synchronicity. The familiar voice said to me: “You’re on my mind. I thought I’d give you a call.”
“The reason you’re on my mind is because I am just about to drive across the Benicia Bridge.”
“Oh stop it! You’re kidding me. How cool. How cool.”
He went on to tell me that he follows this blog and that he was at some sort of “seminar about vibrations and quantum mechanics in the field so its sounds is if some resonation went across the universe there.” (It didn’t sound like a real estate seminar, and I’ll have to reach out to him to get the details.)
“There are many mysterious things that happen that skepticism has no explanation for,” I said. I suppose I’m a part time skeptic at moments like that. I hope I didn’t sound too pedantic.
We went on to talk about baseball and the San Francisco Giants, as Jeff and his wife had been down in Arizona for Spring Training, and then we wrapped up the call.
Afterwards I laughed for the sheer joy of the spontaneity of this encounter. There I was caught in an unexpected traffic jam that was holding me back from making rapid tracks up to a place that I had been looking forward to visiting for weeks, and just as the road cleared, Jeff called and everything became an enigmatic metaphor.
You cannot explain why synchronicity happens. There’s no answer for it in the scientific view, and it can hardly be described in words that specify the experience. One can only just revel in the marvelous quality of the non-causal connection that seems to have a root that cannot be pinned down. It’s as if poetry arrives unbidden for a few moments, spreads a bunch of magic, and then evaporates, leaving a perfume of familiarity that is based somewhere deep down within the psyche. And that place is not the bottom of a dark Scottish lake. It’s more like an ephemeral glimpse of paradise.
As I traveled up the coast afterwards this experience was on my mind, and memories started to flow like a stream running with cold spring rainwater. I recalled that many years ago Jeff had given me a copy of a book titled The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas. I still have that book and pulled it out of my library when I got back from my trip. You can find a PDF copy of the book here. I recommend perusing it. I haven’t read it in many years, but it is in my reading queue once more.
Mendocino Arrival
In Mendocino I was preoccupied with memories as well, not only memories of my wife (I was there to observe the third year anniversary of her sudden passing as well as to make photographs), but memories of times forty years ago when experiments with psychoactive chemistry, meditation and alternative ways of experiencing the universe were at the forefront of cultural experience. I had some meaningful conversations with a friend who lives in that little village about those times and how it seemed that changing the world radically was a distinct possibility. And Transcendental Meditation was part of all that wobbly world of metaphysical miasma.
That was a heady time. (That pun is intended by the way!) There were many alternative spiritual paths available and many of them were strongly present in the public eye. A lot of them were fringy or cultish, but it was a more innocent and less millennial atmosphere than the shallow nineties and the current insanity of America. TM teachers and lecturers were soft spoken and held regular introductory seminars on college campuses. There was no talk of God, divinity or spirituality. The active words were \”stress management\” and \”mental health.\” TM is easy, they emphasized, and will clear away your stress so that you can be happy and productive. The seventies were a less cynical time. These were honest people with a real methods that worked. The less curious type of people laughed at them, or accused them of preying on an unsuspecting public looking for pie in the sky. That’s understandable, but I think that attitude was and is the result of fear of the creature at the bottom of the lake.
Mendocino Morning
I went to my first lecture in late spring of 1974, only to discover that I didn\’t have the $75.00 (an enormous sum of money for me at the time) for the initiation fee. I became very motivated for a summer job that year. (The price for that today is roughly 13 times that amount! Spiritual inflation?)
The only employment I could find that summer was a dismal low-paying, mind-grinding position selling subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times over the phone. I did this for six or eight weeks, earned enough for the fee and some extra money for the school year and quit, to the disgust of my father whose view was that I should spend every waking moment pushing potential subscribers on the phone in order to make as much money as possible. I hated that job! Of course I could not tell him what I was planning to do immediately upon returning to SMC. There was plenty of time for him to be irrational about that later.
Upon my return I discovered that several of my friends had been initiated during the summer and were already meditating. They were all exhilarated and excited about the experience. I reattended the lecture series and discovered that in order to begin the technique I had to give up drugs and alcohol for two weeks before the initiation. Yes, I was a lazy man in those days.
The author in dopier and lazier days
Looking back on it I realize how strong my psychological addiction to cannabis was. I was actually disappointed and unsure of my ability to give it up for a measly 14 days! It was so much a part of my life. It was all around me, each day, consistently. There was always a buddy smoking a joint in his or her room. A half dozen times a day the opportunity would arise: when I did a radio stint at KSMC, or went for a walk or dropped by a friend’s room. It was a persuasive and consistent part of college life in California in the mid-seventies. (It probably still is, but the dope is more powerful.) The absence of alcohol would be no problem. I drank moderately and carefully. Marijuana was another matter. I did what I thought was my best and managed to stay sober for seven to ten days. It was tough to be strong about it, but somehow I managed.
Eventually the Saturday that we had scheduled for initiation rolled around and Jeff and I got ready to go. We were to bring with us a clean handkerchief and a few flowers, which we stole from the flower boxes in front of the dormitory. We stopped to purchase handkerchiefs at a drug store on the drive to the TM Center.
The center was a non-descript house in Walnut Creek close to where I actually live at this time. We were greeted at the door and asked to wait in the living room. I was a little nervous, the same way as when visiting the dentist, but it was balanced by a sense of accomplishment. I was doing this because I wanted to, and had saved up the money myself. Eventually I was guided to a back room that overlooked a colorful garden and met my teacher. I don\’t recall her name, but she was attractive, a white woman with long black hair. She wore western style clothes and was cheerful, but radiated a cautious and serious demeanor. If I had met her in the grocery store I would not have recognized her as a teacher of meditation. She could just as easily been a bank teller.
She explained what we would do. We would first offer the flowers and the clean cloth with a prayer of thanks to Guru Dev, Maharishi\’s teacher, who had recovered this long lost technique of meditation. Then she would give me my mantra and I would meditate by myself for ten minutes. She would then check on me, and then I would meditate for 10 minutes more. Simple and easy.
She took my flowers and handkerchief and placed them on a table in front of a small and simply framed picture of Guru Dev. Then she began to speak in Sanskrit. I was touched by the sudden sacredness and ceremony of this moment. I had no thoughts, no expectations of my experiences to come during meditation. I was exhilarated and happy. Some new world was opening before me, a journey, and yet I was not thinking about it in that way. I just lived the moment.
When I meditated by myself in a small room the effect was immediate and profound. My breathing slowed, my heart rate dropped, my limbs and muscles relaxed like gelatin, and I dropped into my own thoughts like a scuba diver in the ocean for the first time, exhilarated by the freedom of movement in a new environment. I felt as if I was floating on the inside, and dreaming while I was awake. My teacher checked on me. All was well and I continued.
I remember having a big goofy smile on my face at the end of the second ten minutes. I felt like an idiot in front of my attractive teacher, but I supposed she knew that and was used to it. I met Jeff in the living room, he had been initiated concurrently, and we went back to the college where all the other meditators swapped stories with us about their own initiations.
The author as enlightened lazy college student
I had passed through a metaphorical gate. Stepping through it was no different than taking a walk during an autumn afternoon. For the rest of that year, my last at SMC, we would meditate individually in the mornings and meet in groups in the evening. Meditating in a group seemed to enhance the effect. My roommate and I meditated each evening before dinner. It was a comradeship that contained a spiritual link, though we didn\’t think of it in that way. Stress management and relaxation were still they key words. I thought about it in a sacred manner, but did not speak of it, or proselytize, keeping Lao Tzu in mind.
Since then meditation has always been part of my life in one form or another. I no longer practice TM. I fell away from the movement as time passed. The “guru” element was not something with which I was comfortable, and when yogic flying got added to the mix, well, that was just too weird for me. As I mentioned I’m a part time skeptic. (Here are some links to the pro and con on that technique.) I have always been secular in my approach to metaphysics, simply because that seems practical. I suppose that’s why I incorporate so many Jungian concepts into my daily experience of life.
Thus my phone call with Jeff, while suffused with mystery and meaningful coincidence, was simply a phone call. And my trip to Mendocino, which was also a metaphorical passage through a gate, was simply a trip. The big mysteries of life are really not transcendental. They don\’t come from some “other place.” They come from the universe inside us, and are part of us at all times. It’s just that most of the time we are too preoccupied with thoughts and desires to pay any attention to the mystery that is with us at every moment of every day and night. We are all lazy, whether we are looking for Enlightenment or not.
When the voices rise from the bottom of the lake, all we have to do is be grateful and listen to them.
Thanks for the phone call, Jeff. I’ll be in touch soon.
The Glory of Mendocino

 

Mendocino Moment – 1

Richard GylgaytonLeave a comment
March 15, 2017 (The Ides of March)
Mendocino at Dawn on the Ides of March 2017
This morning at dawn I watched the sun attempt to cut through the thick overcast of morning clouds over the Mendocino Headlands. The fog was backlit by a pink and rose colored light that changed to a rich yellow and gold. For a little while the gray overcast was like a cold watercolor wash with little eddies of cloud lazily roiling through one another. The ocean was a rippling mirror tainted with moving fluid cracks, unable to create a pure reflection of the sky. It was a stunning sight.
But the sun lost the battle and the clouds won out. At this moment, the ocean is pale and the sky is just a overlay of disinterested dirty white. The landscape is still beautiful, but it teaches us that everything changes and migrates to other moments and that moods and internal states of mind are as malleable as the weather and climate.
Three years ago, about this time of day, my life shattered in an unforeseen and unexpected way. I have spent the last three years gradually putting the pieces back together.
What have I become? A better man? A wiser person? A hero? A fool? An artist? A wanderer in years of pilgrimage like Franz Liszt in Italy?
“All of the above” is the answer to that multiple-choice question.
Experiences that have not yet blossomed seem to be waiting on the horizon. Every one of them is here right now as a possibility. It\’s useless to conjecture about what life would be like today if she had not died. It was what it was, and it is what it is.
Romantic love is a sweet mask that hides our inner turmoil. We love passionately because deep down we feel that love will conquer all things. And it does assuage the little personal events that seem so important to us and that can seem so insurmountable when they appear in our lives. Love can help with those trials. And it\’s pleasant to share life with a partner. There’s no harm in masks, if we remember that there is always something different behind the persona that our partner wears and that we also display to them.
But Love cannot conquer death. Nothing can. Everything is impermanent.
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” outlasts us all and counsels us all, for it is the source of all things. But the manifestations of that divine energy are impermanent, constantly changing shape and taking on new forms. When we understand that fact then we are free.
It’s challenging to be liberated from our illusions. And it hurts to acquire freedom. But the air is clear and fresh when we have escaped our expectations and find our experience existing on the other side of suffering. Even if only for a short time.
There’s an old Sicilian proverb that says: “The young are arsonists. The old are firemen.” Life stuff blows up constantly. Being open to wisdom means we can put out the fires when life detonates. And when the smoke clears and the ashes settle we can see the sun rise again the next morning and accept the gift of yet another day. Even if the sun does not burn away the overcast.
Looking south from the Mendocino Headlands while the weather makes up its mind.

The Tension of Memory: 1

Richard Gylgayton1 Comment
Mount Diablo from Acalanes Ridge
Thursday morning I arose to a beautiful early Spring day. The first little hint of March warmth had emerged, and there were birds singing and Finn was restless. I took him for a long walk and gave him breakfast and then grabbed my camera bag and left him behind to travel up the flanks of Mount Diablo by myself for the first in three years. I was compelled to have a little picnic at a location that I remembered. A memory had arisen because of that last post I wrote about my father.
Mount Diablo from Acalanes Ridge

I have lived within sight of the mountain for almost fifty years, ever since I situated myself in Contra Costa County to study for my BA in English at Saint Mary’s College of California. My roots here go very deep now, probably just as deep as the roots of Diablo. You can’t help but see the mountain when you move around this area living your daily life. While it’s not extremely high (3849 ft.) it dominates the horizon simply because the rest of the geography consists mainly  of low rolling hills. And the view from the summit on a clear day is spectacular. And depending upon where you are when you are looking at it, the mountain can seem bigger or smaller, as if it is actually shrinking or growing within your own vision as you move about.

Most of the time I take the mountain for granted—I don’t go up there as often as I used to. I suppose that’s due to the fact that for many years I was busy with my job on the weekdays and my family took up my time during weekends. I used to hike there before the kids were born, and while we would go up there now and then for a picnic, years would pass between excursions. But since my kids grew up and my wife passed away memories come back to me with a sort of tension. They compel me to re-experience the old places that I haunted and to recall the events that transpired as my youth turned to middle age. Now that I have reached my sixties the compulsion to recapture memory has become a daily practice.

I don’t want those memories to evaporate as I grow older. I want to be able to savor them in the way that life should be savored. Because time is always too short. The tension of memory is like an elastic band pulling me back to my past while I remain rooted in the present. That tugging is one of the great pleasures of aging—pleasures that sometimes seem few and far between. Ageing is not for sissies.

Snow on Mount Diablo – 2009

So when I woke up Thursday morning I knew I had to go up the mountain again and I had to go alone this time. Finn was not happy about it, but I needed to do some thinking and make some photographs. And while I love being with my greyhound companion there are times when I need space for myself. I picked up a sandwich for myself at my favorite deli, and within a half hour of driving I went back in time 46 years.

There’s a picnic area just past Rock City that I am fond of. Back in the fall of 1971 just as I was starting my college years at St. Mary’s, my Mom, Dad, brothers and my paternal grandmother and I went up to that spot and had a wonderful lunch. I think it was sometime in October. It may have been the first time I was ever up there. I had just started school and was adjusting to life in the dorms and I remember I was still feeling a little homesick. My father took a picture of us all that day. There’s no date on the print but the brown grass is a giveaway to the fact that it was Fall. I remember being shocked by how hot it was in Contra Costa County in September and how dry the hills were. I had spent the last four years of my life in Oxnard living just a couple of miles from the ocean where the weather was always cool and sometimes foggy.

A picnic spot in 1971

On the far left is my Grandma Mellie, my father’s mom, who had traveled out from Tyrone PA. My mom is in the pink skirt (not the best view, but typical of my father’s humor). That’s Paul in the tree (he was always a tree climber and occasionally fell out of them) and Chris with a movie camera. (I wonder where that film is?) I’m concentrating on eating. Looks like burgers for lunch. We always ate well. Note the ubiquitous coffee pot on the camp stove that was sitting on the BBQ pit made from rocks. Back in those days coffee was a beverage you had with lunch and dinner, not something you only consumed in order to wake up in the morning. The coffee was cheap and came in a can. I hated coffee in those days. It was vile stuff. I’m still amazed that people buy the crap that comes in cans and consider it worth drinking.

A picnic spot in 2017

On Thursday I found the spot again. The oak tree that was right next to the table was very old and quite large as you can see from the photo. The tree is no longer there, but there is a stump, and the same table. I sat and ate my sandwich and it felt splendid to have come full circle. The tension of memory was perfectly balanced; I was in the past and the present at the same moment. We tend to forget the fact that we actually live in one long moment of Now. The Past is in our recollections and the Future is in our expectations while the time clock of our life ticks away the moments.

The experience of being there again felt larger than life, one of those moments when all the pieces fall together in a synchronous way and you just have to laugh at the wonder of it all. 46 years had passed, and so much had happened. For the first time in three years I felt very much at peace with all of it and realized that I was finally starting to live again. I have attached pictures to this post of what that spot looks like as of Thursday, which is now in my memory as the past while I sit here typing this post in the present moment. I remembered the older picture as I ate my lunch so I took a couple of shots from the same angle. It’s the same picnic table and the same BBQ pit, 46 years later. It was a fine old tree. I have no idea what happened to it.  But even specimens of quercus lobata are impermanent, though they can live for hundreds of years.

Looking southwest from the summit road – March 2017

After lunch I drove up to the summit and lo and behold there was snow by the side of the road on the back side of the mountain. Though a snowfall on Mount Diablo now and then is not uncommon, witnessing it is always extraordinary. The road to the summit was closed so I was unable to see the view to the east. Sometimes on a clear day you can see the Sierra from the summit building roof.The view in the other directions from the summit road parking lot was stunning, despite some haze. There is still a lot of moisture evaporating into the atmosphere and the mid-afternoon sun creates a high-contrast light that is challenging for photography.

Quercus lobata – Rocky Point Picnic Area

On the way back down before heading home I made some pictures of some of the other old oaks in another picnic area. As I was shooting I could hear cyclists whizzing down the road and sweeping around the long curves of the highway. I’ll have to go back there at another time of day to capture the good light, but I think that any time of day is a good time to make an image. Photographs are little moments of frozen time. Like memories they depict an experience from the past that still lives in the present. When I photograph I feel as if I am living in a long present moment that stretches in two directions behind me and in front of me. And that same tension that I mentioned earlier lives within the image, taking me back to the time when the experience was recorded and resonating with the memory that lives in my head. I love that tension. It makes the ordinary seem extraordinary.

When I returned home Finn was glad to see me. He always is. Isn’t that the wonderful thing about dogs? They forgive us our transgressions immediately upon our reappearance. The next time I head up the mountain, which will be soon, I’ll have to leave him behind once more, because dogs are not allowed on the trails and I want to revisit some old walking spots that I have not seen in decades. But I know he will forgive me just as the tension of memory absolves me when I return to the places that mean so much to me and that I will continue to describe in words and photographs.

Beware of bikes on blind curves
“You left me alone, but I forgive you.”