Wilderness

A few nights ago we watched the movie "Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America",  released in 2005. It was one of the most inspiring documentaries I have ever seen.  It reminded me that there is so much I don't know about the history of the wilderness preservation movement in my country. There have been decades, centuries, of passionate work which happened long before I, this tree-hugger-hippie child, was even born.  I call myself that tongue in cheek of course, just to make light of the fact that each generation seems to carry the perspective that we create the world we know.

It is an auspicious time to be celebrating wilderness, as the fall equinox has just passed, the harvest is in full swing, the air smells like warm flowers, ripe fruit, dry grass... what else? Memories?

While I am out blackberry picking other years come back to me. I can hear the school bus coming down the road carrying my boys home. I am out in the patch near the house, picking into my big tupperware bowl. They climb off the bus, and wave to me, maybe walk over and pick up an apple off the ground to eat for snack. We had eight old apple trees which always bore every year in the rich aluvial soil of the Elwha River Valley.

David Brower would be elated to know that the Elwha dams, both of them are in the initial process of removal. Twenty years ago I was involved in testimony concerning the community impacted by those dams, as they were directly above our home, and a failure could have been catastrophic. Yet, the very worst aspect of them was that they destroyed an incredibly large salmon habitat. The Indians were wronged immeasurably by their construction.
It seemed like a long shot that we could secure a government decision to remove them. There was a crack in one of the dams, and it was up for being recertified according to safety standards. It could not be certified to codes, and it could not feasibly be repaired.  The time to start the process of lobbying for it's removal was seized.  Twenty years later, removal begins. It has taken this long, and I thank those who stayed with the process. Maybe in our lifetime we will see the return of the legendary "Elwha King" salmon. I dream about that fish, even though I only know it through stories my Indian neighbors told me.

I will go out to pick more berries, to make the seedless jam again, remembering when it was for the kids' peanut butter and jelly lunch sandwiches. I can still bring them jam, even though we are all in different homes now. We remember the Elwha, and watch the news unfold. The largest dam removal project ever undertaken,  a reason to celebrate the equinox.

Gravenstein Apples to a Legendary Wedding Dress

This morning I am with my folks.  We crunched into cold, freshly cut gravenstein apples for our first part of breakfast. I watched them close their eyes for the first bite, and I could literally see childhood memories flowing out like an aura around them. We had a gravenstein tree in the first house I lived in, from 1956 to 1967. Now that I think of it, that was the first home they purchased with their growing family. They moved in with four children, ( I was 5 months old) and they moved out with Eight.

The apple tree bordered our alley, and was large, but not prolific for some reason. We waited all summer watching those apples form, not picking them green to toss them for sport as kids love to do. That tree has made it into a song my brother Tom wrote called "If You Don't Like the Rain, Go Back to California". It was our island when the backyard flooded during winter rains. It was the site of our Barbie gardens ( our Barbies liked to get dirty). It was the place a kid could climb up and hide when the world became too much.

While Mom ate her apple slices she began to talk, " I remember when I first saw an Apple in California that cost 10 cents. I was so shocked. When we were little we lived around orchards and had all the apples we could eat." I asked about when that time in California was, which took us on a little journey into her young adult life. I could feel the magic of the fruit bringing forth memories which were so strong, at times she had to stop and breath through a sob.

She told of being in San Fransisco after college, living at the YWCA, and then in a rooming house as she worked for the Veteran's Administration. Dad was finishing college at Santa Clara in San Jose,  a year behind her in college at that point because of his time serving in WWII. The year was 1947. Mom chokes up when I ask her how she decided to stay in the Bay Area, even though her hometown was Portland. She wanted to be near my Dad, and they would walk the streets of the city on weekends, dreaming of the life they would have after they were married.

Mom's mind shifted to a girlfriend she had who was a co-worker. .....had just gone to a fashion show and saw a gorgeous wedding gown, she told mom she had to see it. It had been the finale of the show, with matching bridesmaid's dresses too. Mom and her friend went to the store together where it was being sold.  It cost the huge sum of 138.00. That was the fabulous dress she ended up wearing, and it lies preserved in a cedar chest now. She spoke of wanting to write a note with the dress history and leave with it with the dress in the box. She has been doing this these days, leaving notes on her projects, in 'case'.


Three of her daughter's wore that dress, feeling like princesses. Not every marriage lasted, but wearing the dress was a great thing all by itself. Slipper satin is what the cleaners told me it was made of. I hand repaired the cream colored lace around the sleeves and the bodice, feeling the history in my hands. Kate Middleton's dress resembled it very much, yet Mom's dress is far more elegant. I'm sure you would agree if you saw the two side by side.:)
 
 We went from the taste of old fashioned apples, ones which are rarely grown these days because they don't keep, to a string of memories of my Mom's life when she was in the prime of her youth. I could see her eyes brighten while she recounted the various jobs she had, and all of this before I even existed. The wedding dress was the precursor to my being ushered into the world. Inconceivable, really, to think of how it all happens. How people fall in love, and then make children and then grow old, and watch their grandchildren begin the whole dance again.
 
I shall make applesauce, and fill their house with the smell of cooking apples. We will eat our memories, breath them in, laugh about the past, and catch a little sob here and there too.

Movie Reviews

Sweet Land - 2005
Sweetly inspiring to this wanna be farm wife. No steamy scenes, or violence, it left me feeling peaceful.
I wanted to take it immediately to my parents, and sit with them as we imagined our own great grandparents coming to farm the land and having to somehow learn English in the process.
I have never seen a film which so accurately depicts the shear exhaustion of work by hand at harvest time.

The Grocer's Son  - French., subtitles, but worth it. Contemporary and still very French, the life of a family in a rural area, who run a small grocery store. This is a perfect statement on why small business is important to community, and the complex family dynamics are darn real.

Thank goodness for netflix, eh? It has never been so easy to get little Indie films as it is now.