Any proper poet has a desert in their soul and I had not visited mine in weeks, so yesterday Melanie and I drove out to the area where I did most of my growing up, Imperial County, California.
This is the southeasternmost county in the state, a land of bleak hills, sand dunes, alkali dirt, canals and farm fields. And small desert towns like dusty jewels on a beige apron.
The sky is very high here, high enough to produce hail without any clouds while the temperature on the ground is 101°F (January 1, 1972). The center of the valley is more than 100 feet below sea level. We always said it's actually harder to get a sunburn with an extra hundred+ feet of UV-filtering air between you and the sun.
We first moved there in 1951, in September, I think. And I finally escaped in June 1980 with a short sojourn in Oregon before returning to California, but to the greener pastures of Orange County. I've been back on daytrips five or ten times since then.
This time, I couldn't find the old homestead, our little ten-acre farm on the very edge of emptiness. I knew where it was, but you can't get there anymore; the main road in is blocked by a huge hazardous waste dump, and the smaller side roads are all atop dirt canal embankments. I taught Melanie some of the language of canals: drops and checks, gates and drains, weirs and siphons; and the difference between a zanjero (ditch rider) and a hydrographer (water clerk).
I showed her some of the houses we lived in back then, or at least the addresses, since many of the homes are gone. We had fun, even if we didn't stop for a special quesadilla (a savory puff pastry filled with pepperjack cheese), a treat that seems only available in that place.
We spent about six hours on the trip, a little over 200 miles round-trip. I feel as if I've found another piece of my soul again. Life is good. Have some chocolate.
Hugs,
Joyce
Comments
Holy ground
Thank you for sharing your journey with us, Joyce. I hope you returned with soul refreshed and an old song in your heart.
There is something about the landscape of the place where we grew up — its climate and features, landmarks and distinctive sights and smells — that burrows deep in the heart and soul. To return for a visit, however brief, is like traveling back in time. Even if the place has changed, the memories that are triggered have not.
I was not that fond of the place where I grew up, and I bugged out as soon as I was free to do so. No regrets, even now. And yet, even for me, to return to that place is to connect with who I once was, and all of the people I might have been, if I had walked out by a different road. It is my source, and whenever I’m there, I stand on holy ground.
— Emma
Yeah :)
It's true. I feel refreshed when I visit the desert. I don't have to go quite so far to have that effect, though; nearer patches will do, like Anza-Borrego or Joshua Tree, but I felt the need to actually see some of the places that felt like home at one time. When I got back home, I used Google Maps to calibrate a journey to the old farm with minimal travel on dirt roads for next time.
Hugs,
Joyce
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
My family moved from North Carolina……
To California about a year before I was born; that would have been in 1959. They moved into De Anza Cove in San Diego County, but left there and moved to Hollywood while my mother was pregnant with me. I was born in Los Angeles County in 1960 while my family lived in Hollywood, but we moved from California to Florida when I was two.
My father was an aerospace engineer for Lockheed Aircraft in Hollywood, but took a job with Martin Marietta Aerospace which moved the family to Florida. He was then poached from Martin Marietta by GE Aerospace, working on the Gemini and Apollo projects. When GE lost their contract with NASA as the Apollo project was winding down, my father was transferred by GE to their Schenectady, NY operation, which moved us to upstate New York - which gave me my first experience with snow, lol.
Eventually, I ended up back in Los Angeles for my undergrad studies, attending USC and thus closing the circle. Years later, I took my spouse and children to see where I spent much of my childhood in Florida. The house in Cape Canaveral where we lived is now a condo development - the dirt road the house was built on just a block from the beach no longer exists. The house in Merritt Island my parents moved us to a few years after arriving in Cape Canaveral is still there, but the two small Norfolk Island Pines I helped my father plant in the front yard were easily 20 feet tall after several decades of growth. The brand new elementary school I attended the year it opened, Lewis Carroll Elementary School was still there - looking much older of course. The entire area is of course much more grown up than it was in the mid-60’s, so much so that I hardly recognize anything. Of course, the change in perspective from a ten year old to an adult probably contributed to that as well, lol.
As children, I remember my sisters and I being very upset and depressed the first time we drove across Schenectady. The difference between an old city in New York and a newly developing area on Florida’s Space Coast couldn’t have been more drastic, and even depressing at that age. But in the long run, it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me - moving from a state that would become a deep red bastion, and ending up in an area that has proven to be much more progressive and welcoming to a transgender woman.
One of the advantages to being born in California was the ability to have my birth certificate corrected. Between California and New York State, I have been very fortunate regarding updating my official documents after transitioning. I have also been fortunate to live in an area which protects my rights, and provided good medical care for my transition.
Of course, I could do without the snow and sub-freezing temperatures, lol.
D. Eden
“Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir.”
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Home soil
For me it is the mountains of east Tennessee. My families have been there for eight generations (from me) and I love to travel over the mountain roads to cemeteries and homesites of my ancestors. The problem is that they have been so long in that small area virtually every place and person is family related. What I really like to do is sit in a cemetery and talk to the person in the grave hoping to receive an insight into their life. Sometimes it really works. Too many of the old family cemeteries are being forgotten and neglected and the access roads are in terrible shape. Just not enough money to go around. Thanks for reminding me to reminisce for awhile.
Pippa NewHouse
Rocky Bayou
My ancestors settled in Rocky Bayou, Arkansas, in the 1820-1830s, coming from Eastern Tennessee. It's remote, and you can no longer reach the place without a mule, a boat, or a 4WD vehicle because the roads into it were cut when the Interstate went through 50+ years ago. The family cemetery is there. Backpackers and mule campers love the place, partly because of the fishing, I think.
Hugs,
Joyce
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Depopulation
Those beloved mountains and valleys are depleted of people now because of movement from subsistence farming to working in factories. The population there in 1880-1930 was 10x what it is today. Starting in the 1920s families moved north to the factory jobs. My grandfather went to Sandusky, Ohio working for US Gypsum. The 1930 census showed about 40 families from Tennessee in Port Clinton, where they lived. All of them were our relatives or close friends. My mom's uncles boarded with my father's family. My grandfather was killed in an accident at the sheet rock factory and the family had to move back to Tennessee to live in abject poverty until the CCC took in my father. In the 1950s many people left for Ohio especially to work at Armco Steel. Probably 200 of my family went there. Then several big companies came to a local town and provided many good jobs and prosperity. That just led to more movement out of the mountains. Now most of the former farm land is used for forestland for lumber and wood pulp for paper, hence the poor roads. The logging trucks just destroy the roads. It's sad that what were once vibrant communities are gone. No one is there.
Pippa NewHouse