Start counting..week one

I began counting my weeks when school let out in June. Then I stopped, or the days simply escaped from under my barefooted feet. After awhile I would just make up a number. Now it is real. I am on the real week one. My friends have drifted back to West Portal for a few days of hubbub followed by a year of teaching without me and I'm spending my days collecting berries and chanterelles in the wet north woods. Yes, berries and mushrooms!!! Jon proposed a hike to find the beavers, and we managed our way through cedar swamps and bogs to look at a pile of sticks in the rain. The delight was in the getting there. We were shoulder deep in ferns and under a canopy of maples and low and behold berries. Crimson little gems. They were not hidden they were just dangling there in the drooping wetness of it all. Jewels.

This was a place unlike any berry patch I had ever encountered, not like the Himalayan berries of the coast, cascading into the Russian River. (Those hairy little beasts were discovered when teacher friend Debbie and I paddled to the Guerneville bridge and back this summer. ) They are not at all like the blackcaps of New York, where long-sleeves and armor are required to tackle the brambles and the bees. It was field, and meadow, and gully after gully of dripping red raspberries like I have never seen before!!

And to top that off, I moved a leaf only to uncover a bush, right next to the thicket of berries, blueberries. Tiny, easy, tumbeelina sized blue balls trickled into my hands and into my mouth.

Oh, I have never been so unprepared for berry picking. We managed to get a few mouthfuls, a few handfuls and then we needed room for the golden chanterelles we had spied near the car.
I prepared a North Woods meal, complete with brats and no mustard. Truly delicious!!

into the clay

I'm into the primitive thing and ever since the passing of our summer program along the Mighty Onesquethaw, (circa1999) I’ve been outta sorts, disconnected. Luckily for me, hubby Jon (pictographs) is an old flint knapper and rock art hound. This means we spend hours searching and documenting ancient sites with pictographs and petroglyphs. We keep our noses to the ground for flakes and rock aliments. I do get my fix. I find mud and fire and all sizes of hiking trials here in California each spring, summer, winter and fall, but nothing like the freedom of an open field, a woodlot, a riparian area and a few stonewalls during a New York heatwave to remind you what it’s all about.

I’m reminded of long “upcreek” walks where we unearthed crayfish and slid on limestone slides. We lifted moss from the creek’s pools and draped our hot bodies with green bikinis for fashion shows. The days were sweltering, so any excuse to stay soaked was fine. Often we took the newly formed blonde clay from the curvy banks and pinched pots only to discover animal tracks covering our creations the next day. For refreshments we picked blackcaps and wild onions and declared ourselves worriers of a firebreathing clan. And on the those few fortuitous, yet still steamy afternoons, we searched for the mother of all snacks, a watermelon we had left floating in the shady depths of the creek, near the old Sycamore bridge. We did everything.

So, at one point this year Joann and I decided a substitute was needed. We found a place with life, a history and a person with natural charm. This is how we met Priscella Queen of the Desert. I liked her first off. We talked on the phone and she provided an unsolicited weather report. I relayed one back. This was going to be the place for Joann and I to have our little rendezvous, the one no one gets invited to. I was excited for the workshop (3 days, but we missed one). We coiled and recoiled the micacous clay mined on ancestral property in the Galestio Basin in New Mexico.

Priscilla’s (www.priscillahoback.com) pots were all cured and ready to be fired in a pit and each one survived the process with special black cloudbursts embedded inside and out.

I learned that it is all about hand-building and structure. Joann’s pot clasped (which only means she should get one of mine). Someday I want to actually cook with mine. The clay casserole styles are popular but I’m thinking about outdoor fires and cooking in the adobe or cob oven just like our wondrous host Priscilla did for the final day’s feast.

DArjit it!!

This is the stuff. It is the bomb (www.darjit.com). Having never attempted any 3D work, and certainly having no experience with cement or concrete (oh, well I did spend a summer jiggling the side of pools with Steve the pool builder), means this is a gigundo learning curve for me. I made mushrooms some posionous some edible and all made out of darjit.

Others had very clear ideas of what they wanted and they created large animals and birdbaths, and even a butterfly chair. TFace made a water/splash sanctuary for me. She used our specially hand collected oh-so -long- ago shells and now it sits outside and she has returned to her college bike riding art school life. And me..well stuck in Fogland.

Teresaface

She arrived clutching a largish balljar. It was wrapped in red rags and a towel. She had had it on her lap on the plane from Minneapolis to SFO. She told me we had collected them on a beach in California when she was little and now there they were in my kitchen. The shells were varied, non- descript, yet clearly not store bought. It was to be part of the art project, part of the mosaic in the sculpture she wanted to design on the weekend. We were getting ready to take a class with a funky arty material call Darjit at the Mosaic Institute of Art in Oakland.

I can smell it

It really does happen. Close encounters with marine life right outside my door. Have a look at me and my playmates.

not moving yet

You can hear them first, before you see them, since it takes a great force to make the little white plane/birds lift off the base. And then they click, and click some more. You can stand around and wait. It is a smelly place and there is wind, but it takes a bit for lift off.

That's me. I'm waiting for lift off. Freedom has its own challenge. Choice. I'm responsible for all that happens during my escape. My list grows and time shrinks. Im not really moving yet. Just like this gadget I discovered at Fort Mason. Even the winds of the afternoon couldn't make them fly. They are rated to move at 15 miles per hour and up to the top bar when it reaches 25 mph . I'd like to try it...I hope I'll know when I am at top speed.