WJ Seidl on tue 31 may 11
I first "discovered" California in the back of a 1956 Chevy Station
Wagon on one of my parent's trips "west"
to see my mom's relatives living in Ventura. It was 1960. I don't
remember much about the trip, except that one night, we "camped"
(which back then, meant pulling off the road for the night and making
tailgate sandwiches for supper) on one side of a valley.
On the other side of that valley was the screen of a drive in which we
could see, playing "Creature from the Black Lagoon". (It took me some years
to discover the name of the movie, based on the one scene I witnessed
before being scolded into "laying down and going to sleep like a good boy".=
)
I was 5 at the time.
The next trip I made to the "golden coast" was in my late teens just out
of high school; when, filled with a sense of adventure and a longing to
escape my parents and "see the world" I drove myself out there, armed
with no life skills, a 1967 Chevy Belair with big fat Joey Chitwood
tires on the rear, and $400 in my pocket. This was 1974. The recession
had hit, Boeing and Lockheed had laid off hundreds, and you could not
buy a job. I didn't stay long then, either, since you also couldn't buy
gas, even if your uncle worked for Shell, as mine did. Getting back to
the east coast was an "interesting experience", filled with adventures
such as pushing your car to the pumps at night and sleeping in it,
hoping that the station had gas, and would be willing to sell you some
(usually $2 worth) so you could continue on.
But the one thing that I remember to this day above all else, the one
thing I will always remember about California is the quality of the
light in the very early morning, when the sun just peeks over the
mountains to the east and first shines down on the high desert. That
light is like no other I have seen on the planet, before or since. It
has (dare I say it) almost a mystical quality to it. It still fills me
with awe just remembering it.
Whenever I return to the "left" coast, I always rise early, in search of
that light.
You are a very lucky person, Joyce, for living in an area that has that
light. Not nutso, but privileged.
Best,
Wayne Seidl
On 5/31/2011 1:02 PM, MEUNIER LEE wrote:
> Joyce
> In the Mojave desert of California U.S.A. where the
> wind is horrendous this last week but so far the really
> rough stuff has moved on or around before hitting
> our sandy shores (beach front property, as we like
> to say). However, we who reside here in California
> are still nutzo.......
>
>
Vince Pitelka on wed 1 jun 11
I have to agree with Joyce (I usually agree with Joyce on most things) abou=
t
the desert, and I enjoyed Wayne's comments. I grew up out west, and then
attended grad school in the east, taught for three years in the upper
Midwest (Fargo, ND), and have been in central Tennessee for the past 17
years. The quality of light has a lot to do with the humidity level, of
course, but is also affected by elevation (thus the amount of atmosphere
between you and outer space). At this moment I am sitting at my sister's
kitchen counter in Altadena, California, and I love the way the early
morning light streams in the windows (and that's even with the screen of
LA-Basin smog). In humid areas, the sun rises over the horizon lazy and
orange, which of course can be beautiful. In the west, especially in the
desert, the sun rises white-hot and rarin' to go. With so little humidity,
and with a thinner layer of atmosphere in the high desert, it cools off
quickly at night and warms up quickly in the daytime. I have been camping
at the north end of Death Valley in October when it got quite cold at night=
,
but the instant the sun rose over the mountains to the east, it was hot. I
spend a lot of time camping and hiking in the desert while on my annual
summer workshop tour out west, and the quality of light is very important t=
o
me. I love my life in Tennessee, but the West is in my heart and soul, and
I charge up my batteries every summer.
I left St. Louis a week ago Monday and drove to Grand Junction, Colorado,
and then spent Tuesday-Thursday camping and hiking in the Lockhart Basin,
northeast of the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. On Thursda=
y
I drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (a ridiculously circuitous
route from Canyonlands to the North Rim), and then Thursday-Saturday hiking
and camping on the North and South Rims. In Canyonlands we had high clouds
and even some rain, and the sunrises and sunsets were spectacular. As Joyc=
e
reported, there was a lot of wind this past week. On Friday on the South
Rim of the Grand Canyon I did a cross-country hike following the rim in a
section where you can hike for about three miles, far from the access road
and the tourists, and there are some spectacular viewpoints along the way.
I have done the same hike three times in the past, and this time the air wa=
s
clearer than on previous visits, and the Claret Cup cacti were in bloom. I=
t
was warm enough that the wind was no problem for me, and the advantage was
that it kept down the airborne pests - both the small insect kind and the
large mechanical kind - the tour helicopters and prop-planes.
Almost invariably, potters love geology. I loved geology before I ever
thought of becoming a potter. Sitting on either the north or south rim of
the Grand Canyon, about halfway down the wall of the canyon vertically you
can trace the distinct horizontal band of the Redwall limestone. Below it
is a radical angular disconformity, meaning that the beds of rock are
steeply tilted, while the Redwall and the beds above it are horizontal.
Below the Redwall, the beds of rock rise up from the Colorado River far
below and are sheared off horizontally at the Redwall. This spot is known
is the Great Unconformity, a huge gap in geological time when no sediments
were being laid down. What it means of course is that all of those beds
beneath the Redwall were laid down horizontally up to a billion years ago,
tilted by plate tectonics, and then eroded down completely flat by time and
weather over hundreds of millions of years before the sediments that became
the Redwall were finally laid horizontally once again. Staring at that
spot, the Great Unconformity, you get a strong sense of the passage of
geologic time in terms of millions and billions of years. There are few
things that can give that sense at all, and to have the experience sitting
on the rim of the Grand Canyon is transcendent.
Okay, enough digression.
- Vince
Vince Pitelka
Appalachian Center for Craft
Tennessee Tech University
vpitelka@dtccom.net; wpitelka@tntech.edu
http://iweb.tntech.edu/wpitelka
| |
|
