A Dream

Looking at the clock when I awoke, I saw the numbers 4:5, but not the third number.  I'm guessing it was a 7 or an 8 because when I actually sat up the clock showed 5:01.  I had just come out of a dream that really spoke to me, and I hope will speak to you as well, so I'm recounting it here while I still remember it.

The dream began with a call from a close friend who was facing the task of cleaning up the kitchen after a gallery show somewhere.  I'm not sure if she was in an art museum or a sales gallery that had hosted an First Friday type event, but that wasn't important.  What was important is that the kitchen needed cleaning, specifically the oven where something had run over and burnt onto the floor of the unit. My friend, Cathy, was quite upset, and I did what I could to calm her, including taking apart the oven and letting the pieces soak overnight.  Everything would look better in the morning.

The next morning a group gathered at Cathy's house, men and women of roughly the same age, 25-30, some parents, some not.  We were standing around her kitchen counter and talking about the task at hand.  Somehow, in the manner of dreams, we no longer seemed to be as concerned with the cleaning of the kitchen and talk turned to introducing children to art.  Cathy had a medium sized screen with various images and e-books, and was going through them as she talked.  She opened one image, and quickly closed it back down.  I was standing across the counter from her, and noticed only the image of a Devil's Tower shaped formation, or possibly it was something from southern Utah or eastern Arizona--you know the type of red rock formation I'm talking about.

Watch for (Red) Rocks

Sedona, Arizona

Dec. 3rd, 2010

The picture was a cover photo of a book and there was text as well of which all I could read was the title, The West.   As I said above, Cathy had no sooner opened the image on the screen than she set it down.  I spoke up.  As we were talking about introducing children to art, and their reactions to that, I felt it important to point out that we needed to make sure that children understand that our words might not mean the same thing in different contexts.  As an example, I chose to talk about the meaning of "The West."  Mind you, I have no children, have never had children, and was very clear about that.  But inside my 25 year old head (and in my head and heart, I am 25--I have no idea who that 68 year old man is who looks back at me from the mirror), I could remember being a little boy, growing up in Montana.  And to this little boy, I pointed out, "The West" meant cowboys and indians.  What will a child think if we talk about the West, and instead of showing him action, we show him rocks?  The first example that came to my mind was a photo I took near Perma, Montana that I named "Iconic Montana."  It is a scene of a group of horses caught running across a hillside on the Flathead Indian Reservation.   It seemed to me, that as a young boy, this image would much more likely jump to the fore as an image of "The West."

Iconic Montana

Perma, Montana

April 15th, 2013

No cowboys or indians, but how can you have either without horses?  But not more than a couple miles away I had taken another picture that surely could be considered "iconic Montana."  This picture, captured just east of mile marker 102 on Montana Highway 200 shows the Flathead River in the foreground and the Mission Mountains, covered in snow in the back.  I grew up knowing that one of the nicknames for Montana is "The Land of Shining Mountains," and even before I knew that "Montana" is the Spanish word for mountain, I knew that the native people had used "shining mountains" to describe my homeland.  Still, it seemed to me that this image would appeal to adults more than to children.

The Flathead at Mile 102

Perma, Montana

April 22nd, 2017

Another image came to mind as we discussed the topic, one that I had captured roughly fifteen miles east of the first two.  This image, which I have named "Montana Amish," was taken at the Amish owned Mission General Store at St. Ignatius, Montana.  And while most people probably don't think of the Amish as typically Montana, a horse and buggy tied to a hitching rail, certainly conjures up life from the 1800s, doesn't it?  Couldn't this image as well signify "The West"?

Montana Amish

St. Ignatius, Montana

March 11th, 2014

As I thought about the three images, I suggested that, at least for a boy, the scene with the horses would probably come first, the buggy second, and the mountains third in any discussion of how do we envision "The West."  My guess is that a young girl would probably put things in the same order, while an adult might well choose the mountain image first.    I'm open to anyone trying to change my mind on that.

Just before I woke up, I thought of a fourth image (I'm ignoring Sedona for now).  One that I think would capture a young boy's imagination even more than the running horses.  Definitely a scene from "The West," this photograph screams, to me at least, "look where we are now!"  I took this photograph during the Homesteaders' Day parade in the small town of Hot Springs, Montana, in 2013. but I've seen the same parade entry in other years.  

The Modern Indian

Hot Springs, Montana

June 9th, 2013

Again, ignoring the original scene from Sedona, Arizona, the rest of the pictures were all taken within a 25 mile radius, all in Montana, all on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and, to my mind at least, all signify "The West."  And at that point, I awoke.

The Bridges of Bridgeville

The 1925 Bridgeville Bridge over the Van Duzen River
Closed to vehicular traffic today and replaced by the modern bridge whose shadow you see crossing the picture from lower left to middle right. If you enlarge this picture by double clicking on it, you can find my friend Carl on the bridge and one of the teen-agers, in a white tee-shirt, under the bridge.
Taken at Bridgeville, Humboldt County, California
1/24/07

In the February 2007 issue of Smithsonian (which arrived in today’s mail), travel author Bill Bryson reminisces about growing up in the Des Moines, Iowa of the 1950s. He talks about the number of children that filled the streets, the parks, the playgrounds, and he makes quite clear the fact that the children were outdoors playing all day long. What he implies is that it was safe for the children to be outdoors and on their own. In June, 1962, we moved from the rural community of Colusa, California, in the Sacramento River Valley to El Cerrito, a bedroom community directly across San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate. This was the summer before I turned twelve, and for the next twelve years I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. By the time I moved back to Montana in 1975, I had lived fully half my life in the suburbs of the City by the Bay.

I often think back to those days and wonder if life really was that much simpler, or if my parents were just naïve. I can remember riding my bike into downtown Oakland. My best friend Roy and I spent entire days climbing on the cliffs in Tilden Regional Park. We’d take the AC Transit buses across the Bay and spend a day wandering around San Francisco. We were in Junior High School at the time. In many respects I’m glad I don’t have children of my own. I’m terrified when Gypsy runs up to the edge of the cliff overlooking the Pacific. How would I react if it were my child about to throw himself into the sea? How could I even consider letting him ride his bike into any part of Oakland? How could I conscience him wandering the San Francisco streets alone?

The last time I visited San Francisco was ten years ago (well, nine plus to be precise—in 1997). That year I made eight trips to the City, mostly to see the SFBF as I refer to John—the San Francisco Boy Friend. The final trip was to attend my thirty-year high school reunion, with John, the SFBF, at my side. I haven’t been back to the Bay Area since then. It’s time for a visit. Besides, the 40-year reunion will be this year.

One of the trips ten years ago was made in the company of the Rev. Bob Varker, at that time the United Methodist Campus Pastor at The University of Montana. Bob and I traveled to San Francisco to begin the process of setting up a spring break experience for the students involved in Campus Christian Ministries. We were looking specifically to have our students work with the folk at Glide Foundation, an outreach program affiliated with Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. One of our meetings was with a woman who had a teen-aged daughter. I expressed my concerns about the difficulties and dangers of raising children in the 1990s, and the woman told me I was right to be concerned. She added, however, that I was probably concerned for the wrong reasons. It seems that in the 1990s (and I doubt that things have changed much in the past ten years), the main danger to our children was other children. Children kill or maim other children to get their sneakers, their jackets, their jeans. It gives a whole new meaning to the term “peer pressure.”

Cleft in rock cliff above Swimmer's Delight
(Had the water been higher and the temperature warmer, I'd have been tempted to strip off and jump in.)
Van Duzen River flowing through Van Duzen County Park
Humboldt County, California
1/24/07

Since 1997, I’ve made fewer trips away from home, and since 2001, the only metropolitan areas I’ve visited have been Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. I can’t say that I’ve seen very many children in either city. In Missoula when I’ve been out late at night, I’ve been amazed at the number of young people who are milling around downtown after midnight. I’ve heard policemen say that they’re afraid to go down certain Missoula streets alone after dark. I can only imagine what it must be like in larger communities.

For the past year, living in Smith River I’ve seen a few children and adolescents, but almost no one of high school age around town. In Crescent City, and to a lesser extent in Brookings, Oregon, I have noticed high school aged youth on the streets, and for the most part they seem to be wandering aimlessly, as the song says “with no particular place to go.” Visiting Arcata, home of California’s Humboldt State University, I’ve seen groups of high school aged youth gathered in the town’s central plaza—looking as if they are homeless. Now admittedly, I’m at the point of becoming an “Old Fart” if I haven’t already passed that point, but shouldn’t we be doing something to help our youth? Is it even possible to get things back to a point where our children are safe from each other—and our adults are safe from our children?

I don’t have the answers to these problems—problems that frankly impress me as being intractable. Somehow parents stopped parenting and left children to their own devises. I guess that’s the main difference in my mind. Certainly when I rode my bike into Oakland, it wasn’t because my parents didn’t care. Rather it was that most children’s parents did care and took responsibility for their children’s upbringing. Most kids my age knew right from wrong, and knew that our parents would be certain to correct us, should we cross the line. I’m not sure that parents today correct their children, or that children today expect anything from their parents. This worries me. And maybe I’m just out of touch.

Pampas Grass, considered a noxious weed here
Growing above the Van Duzen River
Near Bridgeville, Humboldt County, California
1/24/07

Yesterday, Carl and I drove off in search of photo opportunities, heading south to Eureka only to find the fog become increasingly dense the further south we drove. About twenty miles south of Eureka, we turned off US 101 onto California 36—one of the mountain roads that connects the coast with the Central Valley. In this case, 36 runs between Fortuna at the west end and Red Bluff in the Valley. We were quickly out of the fog as we drove through Hydesville, Rohnerville, Riverside Park and Maple Grove. We passed through a town whose name has intrigued me for years—Carlotta. Carlotta, unfortunately, was no Spanish dancer. She wasn’t even wearing red. What can I say. We stopped briefly at Humboldt County’s Van Duzen Park and even more briefly at Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. We finally stopped to eat our lunches in Bridgeville, a town with a population of 300 according to the city sign. I have no idea where they hid those 300 people. As I wandered around, camera in hand, I had the feeling that the entire town was “Posted—No Trespassing.”

What ties Bridgeville in to my theme of today’s children and youth is that the largest structure we saw in this town was the Bridgeville School. The school was bigger than all the houses in town combined. They must draw their student body from the homes hidden in the hills. We stayed in town long enough that the School released its inmates and I saw two items of interest—two scenes that reminded me of growing up in the 60s or of Bill Bryson’s 1950s Des Moines.

First, a couple of teen-agers came down the street, passed me where I was changing lenses at the car, and crossed the 1925 Bridgeville Bridge. After stopping for a while to thrown things off the bridge, rocks I presume, they wandered off the far end and made their way down to the Van Duzen River below. In time they were joined by other youth until a small group of them had gathered in the shadow of the bridge to break chunks of ice and smoke cigarettes. I have no idea how long they remained at these tasks, because we left before they did. I guess that in Bridgeville, instead of going behind the barn, you go below the bridge.

The other thing that caught my eye was a group of younger children walking down the only street in Bridgeville to go to the Post Office. What was noticeable was that there were five children and four dogs. The dogs were all on leashes, and the dogs were larger in some cases than the children. These were not Gypsy sized dogs. These kids all looked like they were having fun the way we used to do. (Well, I never smoked under a bridge, but I did break ice.) I would hope that such fun is available in towns larger than Bridgeville.

Kids and Dogs
Bridgeville's One Street
Bridgeville, Humboldt County, California
1/24/07