art work

Some recent wire sculptures. I am enjoying  the shape and feel of lines in my hands and seeing them in wire.

A few weathered pieces of wood that have found a home in our garden. I like the similar lines of the wood and the columbines. I did not see the lizard until it was pointed out to me. Now I see it all the time.

road trip part 2, steelhead fishing in Idaho

I caught my first steelhead yesterday on a egg sucking leech.

The steelhead was where he was supposed to be, holding steady in the deeper part of a pool on the Salmon river a few miles north of Stanley, Idaho. He was a male, a big brute with the beginnings of a hooked jaw and shy of the net so I ran him up on the gravel. He gasped in the air while I fumbled for my camera. Across the river was the game warden and a crowd to watch the excitement but I was alone on the far bank. Come on, the steelhead said, dispatch me or something. Impatient at last, the fish flopped and was in the water. Eight hundred miles that fish had swum, entering the mouth of the Columbia river last summer, no yokel from New Mexico was going to stop him from swimming the final few miles upstream. I took a picture of him flopping in the shallows and watched him swim into the deeper water.

Steelhead begin showing up in the upper reaches of the Salmon river in early March and continue through the end of April. 30,000 of them are counted at the Sawtooth hatchery north of Stanley. Another 40,000 counted at the Patsimeroi hatchery fifty miles downstream. Those numbers exclude all the fish caught by anglers and commercial fishermen along the way. And they do not reflect the numbers of wild steelhead that return as well. The numbers increase every year. A success story. Idaho Power has underwritten many of the hatcheries in a successful attempt to mitigate the effect of their dams and power plants in the Columbia river system.

There are so many fish that the hatchery gives away fish on Mondays and Thursdays to people with valid fishing licenses. And they supply food banks in the area with thousands of pounds of fish in season. These are "Run A" steelhead, 20 to 30 inches, 4 to 10 pounds. The brute I caught was average, two feet long, about six pounds. "Run B" steelhead are bigger, 30 to 36 inches, 10 to 18 pounds.

In July the Chinook salmon come into the Salmon river. They are also hatchery raised. They are 40 inches and 20 to 40 pounds. I will be back for them someday.

The Sawtooth mountains surround the Salmon river. They were snow covered and jagged as their name implies. I clomped through snow banks to get to the river in mid April. It was a warm day. The temperature was in the fifties with fog in the morning and sunshine later on. There were lots of fishermen. But close to a hundred miles of clear flowing river alongside the road to fish.

What else to remember?

Ospreys in the trees watching for smelt in the shallows. Smelt being young steelhead released now that are beginning their journey down to the ocean.  Elk in the fields, shedding fur but still wooly around their necks.

 A seven year old girl below the Buckhorn bridge fighting a steelhead. She was gangly with stick thin legs and she was holding on to a light spinning rod, her butt low and behind her for  traction. But the big steelhead was stronger than her. Now she was in the water, the swift current over her red tennies. Shrieking her lungs out, then her Dad was over, laughing and holding her around the waist and she wasn't done yet, no sir, she was cranking on the reel for all she was worth. She needs a harness, I said to the guy next to me on the bridge. He said, yeah but that’s number four she's had on since I've been here.

There were stubble fields with willow thickets along the ditches and a ring necked pheasant and a black bird with a patch of red on its wing. I crossed the forty fifth parallel just north of Salmon, Idaho, half way between the equator and the North Pole. I watched  the steelhead at the Patsimeroi hatchery jump the last of the small dams before the hatchery, almost done with their long journey home.

Road Trip

Road trip!

 I got a late start from Santa Fe heading north. I drove through Chama then west to Pagosa Springs and Durango. I thought I would stay in Moab but Moab is no longer the sleepy town of twenty years ago. Even in the dark I could see the Ramada Inn and Auto Zone in place of the funky restaurant I ate at years ago. Sometimes you want a place that was special to you twenty years ago to remain the same. Corporate America has found Moab and I could not find any back roads into the canyon country in the darkness so I continued on.

Twenty miles before Price, Utah my inner clock said pull over so I did and slept under the stars a mile off the interstate. I slept but not well, waking to a gray dawn. I drove onward over Solider Summit with solid white snow banks lining the pass at 7,500 feet ,April 16, 2010 five hundred miles north of Santa Fe.

I had white knuckles on the steering wheel north of Provo coming into Salt Lake City There were six lanes of traffic, one way. Too much for a country boy from Santa Fe. I was tired and my stomach felt tight. 

North of Ogden I passed a road sign for the Crystal Hot Springs. I continued on a few miles and pulled off the interstate for gas. I debated. A hot springs. What could it be? A few miles back. So what. What was I doing, where was I going. What was the hurry. I drove back and turned off at the exit and drove on a broken blacktop road to the Crystal Hot Springs.

It was closed. But there were people in the pools. I went into the office. Closed, the attendant said. He hesitated. Just one of you? Yes, I said. What the heck. Come on in, We‘ve opened it up early for a big family gathering.

Outside the sun was shining weakly through morning haze. The springs are at the edge of the Wasatch mountains that rise to the east of the Great Salt Lake. Halfway up the slopes the white snow rose eternal toward the blue sky. Cottonwoods arched over the pools. Geese honked from the sky above. Blackbirds were in the surrounding green fields. It was springtime. I was where I wanted to be.

Six dollars for the day. A quick shower. Three pools of various temperatures. Two swimming pools. A funky water slide that was being started for the youngsters in the large family. I stepped into the middle pool. Hot water. Just right. The kids were running up the steps of the water slide. Now shrieking as they slid down the slide into the arms of their parents. Wearing oversized life vests and waddling side to side, they ran as fast as they could to the top of the slide to do it all over again. And again and again.

There was a salty taste on my lips as I dunked my head. The water is the Great Salt Lake percolating down in the ground until it meets hot earth and comes up heated and mineralized in the springs. Water to wash me clean, water to take away my sorrows. I relaxed. I tried the other pools and drank cold water from the tap. I asked why the springs were still funky and affordable. Too far from Salt Lake City to fix up, the attendant said. Plus, Utah people are cheap, he smiled. Crystal Hot Springs is rated one of the top six waters in America for healing. Later, I sat at a park bench underneath the cottonwood trees. Their barely green buds were a canopy above me.

Later that day  I was in Meridian, just west of Boise, Idaho. It was the end of a big day. Epi's is a Basque restaurant I had read about and, by golly, driven a lot of miles to eat at. Christi, the proprietor, was flattered to hear of my many miles driven. Asked what I wanted, I said, everything!

Christi and the wait staff tried to bring me everything. A cup of red bean soup would not do, another bowl of fish chowder was brought out. Just to try it, she said. The salad that came with my meal was good but I needed to have the green beans and beets too. Lamb stew was served and then a plate of sliced leg of lamb was brought out because I, might like it too. Flan  and homemade raspberry sauce for desert. I think Christi was like this with all her customers because one party that was coming later had sent roses for all the tables and she called everyone hon and when I told the chef that the lamb stew that had mushrooms and a reduced burgundy sauce was a masterpiece, Christi gave me a hug. I waddled out of the restaurant, slower than the boys at the waterslide but eager enough to return when my stomach would let me. I thought, this doesn't happen to me in Santa Fe, is it me or is the wide open spaces. I don't know but I do know; I'm on a road trip.

San Francisco Getaway

Musings on a  trip to San Francisco in the fall of 2010

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 Thursday at noon. Claudette and I ate at Chez Panisse in Berkley. I made reservations three weeks earlier, lunch was worth the wait. White linen napkins on the table. Friendly staff. Excellent food.

 

Claudette was impressed. I had wanted to impress her. We were on a romantic getaway weekend to San Francisco and the Bay Area. I wore a different hat today, not the driven, multi tasking contractor but instead the middle aged husband, equal partner in the ‘next’ phase of our marriage. (after the child is grown and out of the house) But it was taking time and adjustment for us to get there.

 

Decisions made for desert. The huckleberry and apple tart crust was crisp and flaky, just right with the tart sweetness of the fruit. Coffee-chocolate almond ice cream with bittersweet chocolate sauce came for Claudette. She tasted it, cupped the bowl closer and lowered her eyes.

 

“If my husband wants any of my desert, I may leave him.” she told Anton, our waiter.

 

“Pass it here.” I said.

 

She did.

 

I tasted. Cold and sweet, coffee flavor on my tongue then bittersweet chocolate coming over the top of the cold sweetness. Just right. I held the bowl close and then pushed back across the table. Laughter. And more banter. And the ice between us broken after the stress of getting up at five am, driving to the airport, flying, renting a car, etc.

 

On the way out of the restaurant, hand in hand, relaxed and content, I exclaimed, “When was the last time I sat down to a two hour meal and wasn’t impatient to get out of there after forty five minutes!”

　

Friday. Oysters on the half shell at Drakes Bay, north of San Francisco. One dozen between us, a lemon and hot sauce on the table. Salty and sublime. The ocean in a shell.

 

Drakes Bay lies within the Point Reyes National Seashore. We spent the night at a hostel within the Park boundaries, lulled to sleep by rain on the roof. The hills run down to the sea, finger canyons lead to rocky coves. Lovesick elephant seals cavorted on the beach, trumpeting loudly through their fleshy noses.

 

We walked out to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, set on a rocky promontory jutting out into the Pacific Ocean. Waves lined up parallel to the shore, breaking offshore, their tops whipped back by the wind and casting a mane of mist over the surf.

 

I ate trail mix, a handful at a time, picking the wasabi kernels from the mix and tossing them aside.

 

Claudette said, “Give them to me. I’ll eat them.”

 

And I did.

 

Point Reyes Lighthouse was built in 1870. Augustine-Jean Fresnel designed the lens that are named after him. The lens and brass mechanism that are the inner workings of the lighthouse were built in France, shipped to Boston for inspection, repacked and shipped around Cape Horn, (pre Panama Canal) unloaded at Drakes Bay, hauled on wagons to the rocky promontory and finally hoisted down the side of a cliff with block and tackle to the lighthouse location. Then assembled, first lit December 1, 1870.

 

The light can be seen 24 miles out to sea. Jewel like gears and bearings turn the lens surrounding the light, (originally lit with whale blubber) creating the blinking effect. The Pont Reyes Lighthouse blinks for a one second duration every five seconds, that is it's signature. Each lighthouse has a different signature, allowing ship captains to consult their logs and determine where they are along a coastline. Many lives have been saved by the Point Reyes Lighthouse.

 

Later, walking back to the car from the lighthouse, I ate more trail mix.

 

“Are the wasabies to hot for you?” Claudette teased.

 

I tossed one on the path and stepped on it. Claudette giggled.

 

I picked out five wasabi kernels and handed them to her. She ate them.

 

“Why are you giving me grief about the wasabies?” I asked.

 

“They taste better with grief.”

 

Laughter. Then a roar from my gut. And her laughing too. A hug and a kiss. Rightness in the universe. The rubber band that exists between us, stretched too tight at times, slack at other times. Now. Just right. How so? What needs us for “right tension” so that romance and interest, independence and dependence, flourishes?

　

Saturday. De Young Museum in San Francisco. An exhibit of Post Impressionist Art, on loan from France. Gauguin. Cezanne. Rousseau. We stood in front of Starry Night Over The Rhone by Van Gogh. Thick paint on the canvas. Night time at a harbor. Reflections of stars and shore lights on the water. Parallel brush strokes that could have been done by a child’s thumb. Van Gogh must have been there at the moment, painting in a hurry with crude lighting. He knew what he was doing. The painting radiates, pulsates with color and brush strokes, almost plastic in its movement.

 

The day was gray. Clouds lowered upon our heads and we walked to the Japanese Tea Garden, close by in Golden Gate Park. An old high school friend of Claudette’s was with us for the day. We walked past one hundred year old pine trees, two feet high. Bonsai. Beautifully formed and cultivated to bring the world close in.

 

We stopped by a pond, its bottom green with moss. Green grass ran to its edge. Small green shrubs, each manicured precisely lined the opposing bank. Larger shrubs and trees behind them. Bamboo beyond them. Then larger trees and finally the pines of Golden Gate Park above them. Shades of green and layers upon layers. All designed for contemplation and intimacy. We visited and rested, sitting on the bench until our time was done.

　

Sunday. Last day. Early run at dawn along the bay under the Bay Bridge. Photographers lined up along the causeway to capture the light upon the water. The ripples on the bay lapped pink and blue black under the bridge. Pleated clouds mirrored the colors of the water.

 

Claudette and I ate at David’s Diner near Union Square. Eggs, lox and rye bread toast and tea with milk. The couple next to us passed over a spare pancake and syrup. It was her first pancake ever. She was from South Africa, he from England. Older than us. Chatty. First time in San Francisco. They had booked a bus tour of San Francisco later in the morning.

 

“What do you do?” Claudette asked.

 

“This.” he replied.

 

One hour left before a mad dash to the Oakland airport to go home. A generous hearted person at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art gave us guest passes to see the Bresson photography exhibit on the third floor.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson traveled the world, chronicling it with his camera. In black and white. The entire floor was devoted to his work. So many gems. Photos of people, depicting character. Photos of action, frozen in space. Photos of patterns in nature, patterns between nature and people, patterns of shadow and shape. Did he see the important moments as they happened? Did he see them before they happened? Did he create the moments? I could not deny the important moments he defined, what surprised us was that there was so many of them.

 

On the plane now, headed home. A basket full of precious moments clutched between us, my wife and I. Slippery time all around us, always hard to manage. But I felt infinite possibilities before us. I squeezed Claudette’s hand and held her tight.

 

yard sale, personal growth, sons

In the midst of stock taking and personal growth and mid life crisis and therapy,  I cleaned out the garage of all our belongings and accumulated possessions. Our son is twenty four and we have been in the same house all these years. It was a lot of stuff.

Boxes of books. Boxes with receipts. Boxes with color polaroids and negatives in sleeves. A pumpkin costume that my wife sewed and our son wore on one of his first Halloween ventures in the neighborhood. (with us, of course) Camping gear: Backpacks and life vests and cross country skis and the boots to go with them. Fishing poles and reels and crazy tangled fishing line and lures in a torn plastic bag that I promised to go through one day and never did.

I was good for two hours max each day, going through the stuff, deciding which to keep and which to put aside for a garage sale. They brought back memories and feelings and the decision making about what to keep interfered with the feelings. I was exhausted after two hours of this emotional sorting.

 Part of me wanted to sit down and relive the camping trip to the Weminouche and the potatoes we cubed and fried for breakfast and ate with oj and coffee and eggs. The skillet was there, still blackened from the campfire. The set-aside silverware and mugs were there in the bin we used for camping.

There was another part of me that was doing the ‘hard’ work. Letting go of the past and moving on. Making room for the new and all that rot. I did need more room in the garage because it was overfull and I was dividing the garage in two and making one half an art studio for myself. Necessity and stock taking had dovetailed in this enormous project.

Every day I would look at the mountain of stuff in the front yard and get tired. I plugged away at it for the better part of a month before I was done.

Yard sale day came. I went over all the stuff with my wife. She made suggestions. They were not her projects; the yard sale and the mid life crisis. I took everything  next door where my neighbor was having his yard sale. We were combining. I gut checked with him on some old tools I was getting rid of. An old brace and bit set, an old hand plane, a folding tape measure. They were tools that my father had give me, that in turn, his father had given him.

I asked Eric, should I keep them? They are all I have of my father and of his father. There is nothing else. Should I keep them and give them to my son? Eric looked at me with benevolent, neighborly, good friend eyes and gently took the tools from my hands and put them on my truck seat away from the yard sale stuff.

I hadn’t dealt with those feelings. I had been running hard from my father and all he represented all these years.

There are no pictures of my father, mother, sister or relatives in my house. My parents lived in the same city as us when our son was growing up but they never babysat or took our son on trips. He never slept over at his grandparents house. My father kept me from his parents, I kept my son from my parents. I was not safe with my parents as a child. I did not feel my son would be safe with them. The sins of the fathers, they do live on.

Here I am at fifty five years of age, exorcising my past, eviscerating it and  I am holding all that is left, tangibly of what my father gave me. And I do not want it, any part of it.

But, just maybe, it is not about me.

Perhaps there is someone who might care about having something that belonged to his father’s father’s father. My son. My beloved son, who does not feel what I do. I will keep these tools and give them to him and tell him the stories that go with them.

How when I was a child my father rebuilt the heads of the green 1950 Chevrolet sedan he owned with Jack, the master mechanic who lived three doors down from us on Eagle Street in San Francisco. How his father used the folding tape measure in work he did as a pipe fitter on the docks in San Francisco before World War Two. And, perhaps, how his father used the brace and bit to bore holes in the logs he used in his well drilling business.

I will give the tools to my son and tell him the stories and let him do with them what he will.

John McCracken

 

In the summer of 2008 I and a crew of five helped John McCracken, a minimalist sculptor living here in Santa Fe, prepare 100 pieces for a show in New York. I had remodeled his house for the past three years and the helping him with his work grew out of that. These sculptures were 8 and 10 ft planks in different colors, laid up against the walls of the gallery in different numbered groupings. The carcasses were plywood; colored polycarbonate resin was then "poured" individually on all six sides of the carcass. Carefully. All through this process I wondered what the big deal was, about the sculptures and making them too.

Life was good that summer. We worked, but not too hard. Good food, learning, always learning and lots of drama amongst the crew of five and the dreams and hopes of all spelled out at the communal lunch table and no one seemed to be worried about finishing until the middle of August when John finally realized that the deadline for shipping was in 20 days. And then we suited up and started sanding 14 hrs a day, 7 days a week. All of us. Two work stations inside the studio and one in a portable tent outside. Air conditioners. Industrial fans. Respirators. A stationary sanding machine for sanding the ends of the planks at precisely 90 degrees. 36 grit, 50 grit, 80 grit, 100 grit, step by step by step until we were wet sanding with 1500 and 3000 grit. And then polishing with super cut and fine buffing paste.

I thought I knew something about sanding from years of woodworking but I did not. And as we sweated in our suits and pored over scratches that were mostly invisible to the naked eye with big wattage lights I began to get a inkling of what tremendous efforts went into these planks. And maybe people felt some of that effort when they stood in front of the serene inert colored planks.

At some point, before the time crunch, I asked John McCracken to explain to all of us what we were doing, what was on his mind about the doing, after sixty years of sculpting, mostly by himself. Us helping him was the first real help he had had, and was mostly driven by necessity, I think. He told us in garbled fashion with hand waving and gestures; as well as it is possible to convert thoughts and feelings about space and dimension and color into words. We saw some old slides of him building the same plywood boxes and nailing them together with ten penny nails! A long time ago. It was his life, creating things.

We finished waxing the last of the planks the evening before the truck came to take them away the next morning. By then we all knew how to wield the big orbital buffers like they were an extension of our selves. The half moons that the buffers laid out on the colored plank's surface were even from side to side and lapped each other steadily and rhythmically. We had, in a short and intense time, developed a sense of touch. Necessary for that kind of work.

I went to New York and saw the show at the David Zwirner Gallery. I stayed with a friend of a friend near the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan and "did" New York day and night for four days until I was "done" and came home. Lehman Brothers collapsed the day I left New York for Santa Fe.

John McCracken died on April 8, 2011.

His art is in major collections and museums throughout the world.

Orchard Bloom

Our apricot tree started blooming earlier this week and the bees were on the blossoms as soon as air temperature would allow them out of the hive in the mornings. The noise of bees at work filled the air and the scent of apricots was overpowering. Inspired, I wrote this poem. 

Now, the apricot petals are falling in the wind and littering the ground with white. It is a once-a-year event, spring; and I enjoy the signs and wayposts close to home. 

ORCHARD BLOOM

Branches to Heaven

Abound

With life, limb

And sound

Honey bees

Abuzz

White linen set

And fuzz

Daytime murmur

Above

Song of Spring

And love.