Thursday, March 20, 2008
Beautiful Trash
I moved from the city to the forest. Cities seem a prison to me. They are tight places where nature is either planned into boxes in the form of parks or it sprouts out of the cracks of sidewalks, trundles in vacant lots and gets squashed on the pavement. Nature is across the bridge, over there, somewhere else, separate.
I live in a neighborhood with minimally controlled landscaping. It is landscape au natural. It’s a place that I consider to be the antithesis to city living. Nature is right here, in my face, when I walk out the door.
Still I feel the need to go places where I cannot see traces of civilization to get closer to nature. And in these seemingly untouched places I find traces of us everywhere, albeit much more subtly than in the city.
In my quest to get further and further into nature itself I continued to carry the city attitude that nature is over there, separate, a place I needed to find. And when I got there I found that someone else had already been there too. There is no such thing as a separate nature that is over there, untouched. This is a fabrication of an ideal, of some better, purer state of the world than that in which I currently find myself.
One of my favorite very touched-untouched places is the floor of the Grand Canyon. It seems to me about as remote and far away from civilization as I can get. Yet thousands travel the Colorado River through the 200 plus miles of majestic canyon each year. We carry out all of our waste, we try to leave no trace of our passage, we try to preserve that remote wildness that we yearn to believe exists so the group a day behind us can believe that they too are in the wilderness. And while we do that we marvel at ancient Anasazi ruins, and their literal writing on the wall. We stop at a boat abandoned on the shore by an expedition in a previous century. We feel a sense of continuity finding evidence that someone else was here too. We leave the traces left behind by their presence and call them artifacts. They were and remain a part of the landscape that we are moving through as visitors, separate.
In my own place, in the Yuba watershed, I can go to places that look untouched until I look a little closer. And there we were, here we still are. Sometimes the evidence is overwhelming – A hillside blown away by hydraulic mining; sometimes the evidence is subtle – a piece of screen sitting on the cobble under the water; sometimes the evidence can be almost invisible – the seemingly pristine watershed with a coveted ‘Wild and Scenic’ designation is actually one of the most complicatingly engineered water systems in the state of California, and therefore the entire country.
We rely on this nature for our very survival and our every action affects the environment. There is no separation between it and us. We are it. It is us. The environment reflects our attitudes, our views and our values. To explore the landscape is to explore the workings of the minds, attitudes and psychologies of our civilization. There is no standing separate observing the landscape; the viewer of the landscape is as much a part of the landscape as is the river.
I spend time in the wilderness looking for signs of ourselves. I take photos of the evidence of our own presence, our own artifacts. Much of what I find are the discarded, unwanted things that nature has begun to change, making it seem once again its own. From these photos I create paintings transforming trash into paint on a panel – bringing things back to ourselves in the form of art.
I live in a neighborhood with minimally controlled landscaping. It is landscape au natural. It’s a place that I consider to be the antithesis to city living. Nature is right here, in my face, when I walk out the door.
Still I feel the need to go places where I cannot see traces of civilization to get closer to nature. And in these seemingly untouched places I find traces of us everywhere, albeit much more subtly than in the city.
In my quest to get further and further into nature itself I continued to carry the city attitude that nature is over there, separate, a place I needed to find. And when I got there I found that someone else had already been there too. There is no such thing as a separate nature that is over there, untouched. This is a fabrication of an ideal, of some better, purer state of the world than that in which I currently find myself.
One of my favorite very touched-untouched places is the floor of the Grand Canyon. It seems to me about as remote and far away from civilization as I can get. Yet thousands travel the Colorado River through the 200 plus miles of majestic canyon each year. We carry out all of our waste, we try to leave no trace of our passage, we try to preserve that remote wildness that we yearn to believe exists so the group a day behind us can believe that they too are in the wilderness. And while we do that we marvel at ancient Anasazi ruins, and their literal writing on the wall. We stop at a boat abandoned on the shore by an expedition in a previous century. We feel a sense of continuity finding evidence that someone else was here too. We leave the traces left behind by their presence and call them artifacts. They were and remain a part of the landscape that we are moving through as visitors, separate.
In my own place, in the Yuba watershed, I can go to places that look untouched until I look a little closer. And there we were, here we still are. Sometimes the evidence is overwhelming – A hillside blown away by hydraulic mining; sometimes the evidence is subtle – a piece of screen sitting on the cobble under the water; sometimes the evidence can be almost invisible – the seemingly pristine watershed with a coveted ‘Wild and Scenic’ designation is actually one of the most complicatingly engineered water systems in the state of California, and therefore the entire country.
We rely on this nature for our very survival and our every action affects the environment. There is no separation between it and us. We are it. It is us. The environment reflects our attitudes, our views and our values. To explore the landscape is to explore the workings of the minds, attitudes and psychologies of our civilization. There is no standing separate observing the landscape; the viewer of the landscape is as much a part of the landscape as is the river.
I spend time in the wilderness looking for signs of ourselves. I take photos of the evidence of our own presence, our own artifacts. Much of what I find are the discarded, unwanted things that nature has begun to change, making it seem once again its own. From these photos I create paintings transforming trash into paint on a panel – bringing things back to ourselves in the form of art.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Beauty
A friend posed the question - what do I get from interpreting beauty creatively? That’s a question I ask myself often. Beauty is one of those things that seems to cause all sorts of issues. It has been assaulted and declared dead over and over again by the art world (oh, mavens of the value of beauty). What is it in the first place? It seems to be a shifting and changing concept that relies on context for most people’s experiences. The notion of what is beautiful appears to be limited and arbitrary all too often. Cultures dictate what is supposed to be beautiful – young thin women get a yes while old wrinkled women get a no. A flying hawk – yes. A hawk squashed on the road – no. But these cultural dictates also shift and change from culture to culture and through time.
Beauty gives pleasure. It satisfies and pleases the mind. Satisfaction, pleasure, peace of mind: Isn’t that what everyone wants? If there is such a limited notion of what constitutes beauty then the mind is very limited in what will satisfy it. Most of one’s time is then caught up in not being satisfied. Therefore most of the time beauty is being sought out - this is not a beautiful thing or a beautiful experience so I’ve got to go find something else that is – something else that will satisfy me. Time and effort are spent trying to preserve and hold on to that beauty when it’s found. But the beautiful woman always grows old. A car hits the soaring hawk. That beautiful thing or experience will always change. Nothing stays the same. So the search continues.
But if the concept of beauty expands, then the searching can slow down and even stop. The mind can be satisfied with what it has, the eyes with what it sees. Why should there be such a separation of beauty with the changing of states? Why can’t the old woman be just as beautiful as the young girl? Really not much has changed: the old woman is the young girl. The same applies with the thing that has died.
While I was in New Zealand a friend took me with him to work. He was monitoring the penguin burrows. He would pull out baby penguins to show them to me. They were very cute yet I never photographed them. Instead, I was captivated by the cow. It had plummeted off the cliff above some time before my arrival. Its body began to assume the contours of the rocks on which it died. The brown and white markings of its fur seemed to echo its new rock contours. It lay there with its head facing the ocean with a certain serenity. I found it quite beautiful. My friend was irritated with me. He showed me what was supposed to be beautiful. And it was. To him that was what was worthy of attention. But the cow had a beauty just the same. There is a peace and satisfaction in not being repelled by what is not supposed to be beautiful, to see the beauty in what is not supposed to be beautiful.
Beauty can be found in anything by anyone. To see it one just has to do away with dichotomies and preconceived notions of what is supposed to be beautiful and what is not. This is one of the things that scouring the riverbanks with a camera has shown me. It was a strange and liberating day when I discovered that trash can be stunningly beautiful.
Beauty gives pleasure. It satisfies and pleases the mind. Satisfaction, pleasure, peace of mind: Isn’t that what everyone wants? If there is such a limited notion of what constitutes beauty then the mind is very limited in what will satisfy it. Most of one’s time is then caught up in not being satisfied. Therefore most of the time beauty is being sought out - this is not a beautiful thing or a beautiful experience so I’ve got to go find something else that is – something else that will satisfy me. Time and effort are spent trying to preserve and hold on to that beauty when it’s found. But the beautiful woman always grows old. A car hits the soaring hawk. That beautiful thing or experience will always change. Nothing stays the same. So the search continues.
But if the concept of beauty expands, then the searching can slow down and even stop. The mind can be satisfied with what it has, the eyes with what it sees. Why should there be such a separation of beauty with the changing of states? Why can’t the old woman be just as beautiful as the young girl? Really not much has changed: the old woman is the young girl. The same applies with the thing that has died.
While I was in New Zealand a friend took me with him to work. He was monitoring the penguin burrows. He would pull out baby penguins to show them to me. They were very cute yet I never photographed them. Instead, I was captivated by the cow. It had plummeted off the cliff above some time before my arrival. Its body began to assume the contours of the rocks on which it died. The brown and white markings of its fur seemed to echo its new rock contours. It lay there with its head facing the ocean with a certain serenity. I found it quite beautiful. My friend was irritated with me. He showed me what was supposed to be beautiful. And it was. To him that was what was worthy of attention. But the cow had a beauty just the same. There is a peace and satisfaction in not being repelled by what is not supposed to be beautiful, to see the beauty in what is not supposed to be beautiful.
Beauty can be found in anything by anyone. To see it one just has to do away with dichotomies and preconceived notions of what is supposed to be beautiful and what is not. This is one of the things that scouring the riverbanks with a camera has shown me. It was a strange and liberating day when I discovered that trash can be stunningly beautiful.
Beauty
A friend posed the question - what I get from interpreting beauty creatively? That’s a question I ask myself often. Beauty is one of those things that seems to cause all sorts of issues. It has been assaulted and declared dead over and over again by the art world (oh, mavens of the value of beauty). What is it in the first place? It seems to be a shifting and changing concept that relies on context for most people’s experiences. The notion of what is beautiful appears to be limited and arbitrary all too often. Cultures dictate what is supposed to be beautiful – young thin women get a yes while old wrinkled women get a no. A flying hawk – yes. A hawk squashed on the road – no. But these cultural dictates also shift and change from culture to culture and through time.
Beauty gives pleasure. It satisfies and pleases the mind. Satisfaction, pleasure, peace of mind: Isn’t that what everyone wants? If there is such a limited notion of what constitutes beauty then the mind is very limited in what will satisfy it. Most of one’s time is then caught up in not being satisfied. Therefore most of the time beauty is being sought out - this is not a beautiful thing or a beautiful experience so I’ve got to go find something else that is – something else that will satisfy me. Time and effort are spent trying to preserve and hold on to that beauty when it’s found. But the beautiful woman always grows old. A car hits the soaring hawk. That beautiful thing or experience will always change. Nothing stays the same. So the search continues.
But if the concept of beauty expands, then the searching can slow down and even stop. The mind can be satisfied with what it has, the eyes with what it sees. Why should there be such a separation of beauty with the changing of states? Why can’t the old woman be just as beautiful as the young girl? Really not much has changed: the old woman is the young girl. The same applies with the thing that has died.
While I was in New Zealand a friend took me with him to work. He was monitoring the penguin burrows. He would pull out baby penguins to show them to me. They were very cute yet I never photographed them. Instead, I was captivated by the cow. It had plummeted off the cliff above some time before my arrival. Its body began to assume the contours of the rocks on which it died. The brown and white markings of its fur seemed to echo its new rock contours. It lay there with its head facing the ocean with a certain serenity. I found it quite beautiful. My friend was irritated with me. He showed me what was supposed to be beautiful. And it was. To him that was what was worthy of attention. But the cow had a beauty just the same. There is a peace and satisfaction in not being repelled by what is not supposed to be beautiful, to see the beauty in what is not supposed to be beautiful.
Beauty can be found in anything by anyone. To see it one just has to do away with dichotomies and preconceived notions of what is supposed to be beautiful and what is not. This is one of the things that scouring the riverbanks with a camera has shown me. It was a strange and liberating day when I discovered that trash can be stunningly beautiful.
Beauty gives pleasure. It satisfies and pleases the mind. Satisfaction, pleasure, peace of mind: Isn’t that what everyone wants? If there is such a limited notion of what constitutes beauty then the mind is very limited in what will satisfy it. Most of one’s time is then caught up in not being satisfied. Therefore most of the time beauty is being sought out - this is not a beautiful thing or a beautiful experience so I’ve got to go find something else that is – something else that will satisfy me. Time and effort are spent trying to preserve and hold on to that beauty when it’s found. But the beautiful woman always grows old. A car hits the soaring hawk. That beautiful thing or experience will always change. Nothing stays the same. So the search continues.
But if the concept of beauty expands, then the searching can slow down and even stop. The mind can be satisfied with what it has, the eyes with what it sees. Why should there be such a separation of beauty with the changing of states? Why can’t the old woman be just as beautiful as the young girl? Really not much has changed: the old woman is the young girl. The same applies with the thing that has died.
While I was in New Zealand a friend took me with him to work. He was monitoring the penguin burrows. He would pull out baby penguins to show them to me. They were very cute yet I never photographed them. Instead, I was captivated by the cow. It had plummeted off the cliff above some time before my arrival. Its body began to assume the contours of the rocks on which it died. The brown and white markings of its fur seemed to echo its new rock contours. It lay there with its head facing the ocean with a certain serenity. I found it quite beautiful. My friend was irritated with me. He showed me what was supposed to be beautiful. And it was. To him that was what was worthy of attention. But the cow had a beauty just the same. There is a peace and satisfaction in not being repelled by what is not supposed to be beautiful, to see the beauty in what is not supposed to be beautiful.
Beauty can be found in anything by anyone. To see it one just has to do away with dichotomies and preconceived notions of what is supposed to be beautiful and what is not. This is one of the things that scouring the riverbanks with a camera has shown me. It was a strange and liberating day when I discovered that trash can be stunningly beautiful.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Breaking the Silence
A year of silence on this site is quickly coming around the corner. I suppose I can call it a sabbatical. A shift needed to happen. Then it began whether I was ready or not - whether I welcomed it or not. The past months have been a time of change.
This past Friday I took my co-workers rafting. It was my day to teach the staff something for professional development. Let me backtrack to put this into more of a context. I am working at Coloma Outdoor Discovery School on the banks of the South Fork of the American River. Twice a week I dress in bloomers and a straw hat adorned with ribbons and bows (thanks Mom) to teach 4th graders about the lifestyle of the 49ers. The other days are spent hiking with them to teach them about the natural history of the area, taking them to Gold Rush related sites, and then talking to them about stewardship for the earth. Although we teach on the bank of the river, for most of my co-workers it has become a backdrop that they no little about.
I needed to show them the river. While on the river I stopped periodically to read some of my past writing for the South Yuba River Project – the dialog with Beatriz Terrazas, and, and a few other things to put that into context. Primarily the theme was learning how to listen to the river and the importance in doing so. I spoke briefly about the shift that happened to me twenty years ago when, at the age of thirteen, my dad took me rafting on the Kern River. I related that to the shift that happened to me this past year, first on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and again in New Zealand.
At the end of the evening, Sara was riding with me as I drove back to the put-in. She wanted me to talk more about the recent shifts on the Canyon and in New Zealand. Where they physical, mental, spiritual shifts? I paused. This was my answer: While I was in the Canyon, especially at Thunder River, the place reached inside me, shifting, turning and tweaking things so I can never see it again like I had before venturing into it. It’s something that I have tried to explain to others but it always comes out sounding like gibberish. Recently I read a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Two of the characters had been abducted from their world and whisked away into the fairy world. Daily, when they returned to the realm of humans and tried to explain their miserable predicament, nothing they said had any relevance to anything they meant to say. They used complete sentences that structurally made sense, but had no relation to what they actually intended to say. They wanted to cry for help but ended up telling the complete history of fox hunting in England instead. I feel like this when speaking about the Grand Canyon, New Zealand too.
Last year I realized that confining my work to the South Yuba River and the constraints I put upon it was far to limiting. Now I am expanding. I’m going to see if I can somehow untangle the gibberish.
This past Friday I took my co-workers rafting. It was my day to teach the staff something for professional development. Let me backtrack to put this into more of a context. I am working at Coloma Outdoor Discovery School on the banks of the South Fork of the American River. Twice a week I dress in bloomers and a straw hat adorned with ribbons and bows (thanks Mom) to teach 4th graders about the lifestyle of the 49ers. The other days are spent hiking with them to teach them about the natural history of the area, taking them to Gold Rush related sites, and then talking to them about stewardship for the earth. Although we teach on the bank of the river, for most of my co-workers it has become a backdrop that they no little about.
I needed to show them the river. While on the river I stopped periodically to read some of my past writing for the South Yuba River Project – the dialog with Beatriz Terrazas, and, and a few other things to put that into context. Primarily the theme was learning how to listen to the river and the importance in doing so. I spoke briefly about the shift that happened to me twenty years ago when, at the age of thirteen, my dad took me rafting on the Kern River. I related that to the shift that happened to me this past year, first on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, and again in New Zealand.
At the end of the evening, Sara was riding with me as I drove back to the put-in. She wanted me to talk more about the recent shifts on the Canyon and in New Zealand. Where they physical, mental, spiritual shifts? I paused. This was my answer: While I was in the Canyon, especially at Thunder River, the place reached inside me, shifting, turning and tweaking things so I can never see it again like I had before venturing into it. It’s something that I have tried to explain to others but it always comes out sounding like gibberish. Recently I read a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Two of the characters had been abducted from their world and whisked away into the fairy world. Daily, when they returned to the realm of humans and tried to explain their miserable predicament, nothing they said had any relevance to anything they meant to say. They used complete sentences that structurally made sense, but had no relation to what they actually intended to say. They wanted to cry for help but ended up telling the complete history of fox hunting in England instead. I feel like this when speaking about the Grand Canyon, New Zealand too.
Last year I realized that confining my work to the South Yuba River and the constraints I put upon it was far to limiting. Now I am expanding. I’m going to see if I can somehow untangle the gibberish.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Peeing on My Head
It’s the fifth day I’ve been home sick this week. It’s not entirely a bad thing, aside from feeling like the walking dead and speaking with a voice that caused my brother to ask me if I had been smoking for the past sixty-four years. Since there is no way I can deal with fourteen 4th graders I am excused for showing up at my current job as an outdoor education instructor and I can actually spend some time doing activities such as photo editing and writing that I can do without needing to speak, breath on anyone or move more than my fingers. I have also been able to pick up a book that I have been meaning to finish for about the past two years – Cadillac Desert, the quintessential book of the mismanagement of water in the West since the Mormons came traipsing across the land in search of God’s land. Since I have had a full time job and little time to do things, I am finding being sick rather enjoyable. When friends call me on the phone they comment that although they can barely hear me, I sound like the most joyful dreadfully sick person around.
I am also able to spend time in my basement dwelling – yes I have upgraded from the toolshed to a basement. The introvert in me is loving being sick. I rarely get full day at home lately, let alone DAYS. I’m getting to know my dwelling. Mostly this is good. I have realized I can’t fix my closet door - which is leaning inward, resting against my clothes. But I have been able to reason the logic of the light fixtures in the ceiling to replace three light bulbs that have been burned out for months.
However, I have become more acutely aware of some of the routines of the older couple residing in the house above my basement. They never leave. And they must stay really well hydrated. I know this because I have a loft bed which places my head less than three feet below the ceiling. My head placement and, much to my chagrin, their toilet placement are a bit too close for my comfort. I can hear every nuance of their streaming urine. Without a doubt I can tell you that trying to sleep in with regular peeing directly above your head is not a restful experience. In fact, it has become something of a pet peeve.
The peeing is always followed by the swoosh of the toilet flushing. As I obsessed about the unfortunate toilet placement, my mind started to wander to the flushing too. I began to hate the toilet flush almost as much as the peeing. I countered the irritation with my own harmless passive aggressive solution to see how hydrated I can keep my own body, even matching my peeing with theirs, but in protest - NOT flush the toilet (luckily I live alone…)
Interspersed between toilet flushes from above I read Cadillac Desert. I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to grope for words that describe how I feel when I read this book. Disgust, anger and guilt for living in the West all come to mind but don’t do the feelings justice. My obsession grew, thanks to the book, to wanting to know just how much water is flushed down the pipes above me in a day.
I found a website www.h2ouse.com to help me out. It states that 3.61 gallons are used per flush. 18.8 gallons is the daily capita use with an average of 5.17 flushes a day. These statistics do not come close to representing my upstairs neighbors. They wake around 6:00 AM to feed their 31 year-old pony Brandy, and go to sleep around 10:30 PM. On average the toilet flushes twice an hour, but to keep it consistent with my per capita statistics I will state an average of 1.2 flushes an hour during the day (sometimes there is a double flush). A few times during the night there is more travel to the toilet. Per capita we now have 21.6 flushes per day or 78 gallons per capita of water flushed down the toilet with an upstairs total of 156 gallons. (holy crap!!! As I write, this is the first time I had actually seen these figures.)
My first instinct was to become the environmental savior of the day and rip their toilet out and tell them to invest in a nice chamber pot. But instead I kept number crunching and discovered that if they only had a dual capacity flush toilet they may only use 66.6 gallons a day up there. During my recent trip to New Zealand I noticed that the majority of toilets I came across were dual capacity flush. And that is in a country that rains buckets of water and has very few people. If they can do it, can’t we in the West who, by water standards, shouldn’t even be here in the first place to flush toilets?
Most of the kids I work with, when I ask while sitting on the banks of the South Fork of the American River, have no idea where the water they use comes from. My most depressing answer is, ‘the gutter.’ I get this one almost every week. We are sitting by a river, kids, a river!
An average flow on the South Fork of the American River is 1,200 cubic feet per second (CFS). There is a rock named Gunsight in the middle of a rapid named Troublemaker directly upstream from where I sit with the kids. At this flow the top of the rock is not yet covered. In a long glance that equates to 2,487 toilet flushes passing the rock. It would take my upstairs neighbors 57.6 days to flush the flow of water past Gunsight. Sounds insignificant. But that’s two people. My town of Nevada City has approximately 3,000 residents. If everyone flushed like upstairs (daily flushings compressed to one moment of time) Gunsight would not only be covered, but the river would be in full flood stage with 31,271 CFS crashing over it. If all Nevada City residents flushed a toilet only once all at the same time it would take enough water to have a healthy flow of 1,500 CFS, higher than the average summer flow. That’s a staggering amount of water literally taken out of our rivers and flushed down the toilet.
I can hardly begin advocating always peeing by a tree or bringing back the chamber pot. But, if I ever were in such a position to build my own house, it would sport a composting toilet. Low volume toilets even seem to pale in comparison. Why do we need to flush everything away anyway?? Why not grow a garden from all of our shit and piss instead of sending rivers to treatment plants?
I am also able to spend time in my basement dwelling – yes I have upgraded from the toolshed to a basement. The introvert in me is loving being sick. I rarely get full day at home lately, let alone DAYS. I’m getting to know my dwelling. Mostly this is good. I have realized I can’t fix my closet door - which is leaning inward, resting against my clothes. But I have been able to reason the logic of the light fixtures in the ceiling to replace three light bulbs that have been burned out for months.
However, I have become more acutely aware of some of the routines of the older couple residing in the house above my basement. They never leave. And they must stay really well hydrated. I know this because I have a loft bed which places my head less than three feet below the ceiling. My head placement and, much to my chagrin, their toilet placement are a bit too close for my comfort. I can hear every nuance of their streaming urine. Without a doubt I can tell you that trying to sleep in with regular peeing directly above your head is not a restful experience. In fact, it has become something of a pet peeve.
The peeing is always followed by the swoosh of the toilet flushing. As I obsessed about the unfortunate toilet placement, my mind started to wander to the flushing too. I began to hate the toilet flush almost as much as the peeing. I countered the irritation with my own harmless passive aggressive solution to see how hydrated I can keep my own body, even matching my peeing with theirs, but in protest - NOT flush the toilet (luckily I live alone…)
Interspersed between toilet flushes from above I read Cadillac Desert. I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to grope for words that describe how I feel when I read this book. Disgust, anger and guilt for living in the West all come to mind but don’t do the feelings justice. My obsession grew, thanks to the book, to wanting to know just how much water is flushed down the pipes above me in a day.
I found a website www.h2ouse.com to help me out. It states that 3.61 gallons are used per flush. 18.8 gallons is the daily capita use with an average of 5.17 flushes a day. These statistics do not come close to representing my upstairs neighbors. They wake around 6:00 AM to feed their 31 year-old pony Brandy, and go to sleep around 10:30 PM. On average the toilet flushes twice an hour, but to keep it consistent with my per capita statistics I will state an average of 1.2 flushes an hour during the day (sometimes there is a double flush). A few times during the night there is more travel to the toilet. Per capita we now have 21.6 flushes per day or 78 gallons per capita of water flushed down the toilet with an upstairs total of 156 gallons. (holy crap!!! As I write, this is the first time I had actually seen these figures.)
My first instinct was to become the environmental savior of the day and rip their toilet out and tell them to invest in a nice chamber pot. But instead I kept number crunching and discovered that if they only had a dual capacity flush toilet they may only use 66.6 gallons a day up there. During my recent trip to New Zealand I noticed that the majority of toilets I came across were dual capacity flush. And that is in a country that rains buckets of water and has very few people. If they can do it, can’t we in the West who, by water standards, shouldn’t even be here in the first place to flush toilets?
Most of the kids I work with, when I ask while sitting on the banks of the South Fork of the American River, have no idea where the water they use comes from. My most depressing answer is, ‘the gutter.’ I get this one almost every week. We are sitting by a river, kids, a river!
An average flow on the South Fork of the American River is 1,200 cubic feet per second (CFS). There is a rock named Gunsight in the middle of a rapid named Troublemaker directly upstream from where I sit with the kids. At this flow the top of the rock is not yet covered. In a long glance that equates to 2,487 toilet flushes passing the rock. It would take my upstairs neighbors 57.6 days to flush the flow of water past Gunsight. Sounds insignificant. But that’s two people. My town of Nevada City has approximately 3,000 residents. If everyone flushed like upstairs (daily flushings compressed to one moment of time) Gunsight would not only be covered, but the river would be in full flood stage with 31,271 CFS crashing over it. If all Nevada City residents flushed a toilet only once all at the same time it would take enough water to have a healthy flow of 1,500 CFS, higher than the average summer flow. That’s a staggering amount of water literally taken out of our rivers and flushed down the toilet.
I can hardly begin advocating always peeing by a tree or bringing back the chamber pot. But, if I ever were in such a position to build my own house, it would sport a composting toilet. Low volume toilets even seem to pale in comparison. Why do we need to flush everything away anyway?? Why not grow a garden from all of our shit and piss instead of sending rivers to treatment plants?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Three Weeks, Three Deaths
Three Weeks, Three Deaths
July 18, 2006
Driving into the parking lot, our boats stuffed into the back of the pick-up, our conversation ended abruptly with the sight of flashing lights. A crowd of people huddled leaning over the guard rail stretching as far as they could across the expansive space above the water.
Hastily we grabbed our gear, our eyes shifting, not wanting to partake in the drama below the rail. We only wanted to kayak on the South Yuba on the perfect day – the summer solstice. Perhaps if we were fast, we would also be invisible. Nobody would notice us slipping past as we clambered down the rocks to the river, silent and slippery like the brown fish.
Yet we were stopped at the top. You are our first line of defense, he said. You understand the river much better than we. We can’t get down there fast enough. You go. Find him, he said: Blue shorts; In his forties.
A group of three standing on the put in rock pleaded with us with their eyes. Find him please. He is a good swimmer. He swims every day. In a pool. He doesn’t understand the river. Blue shorts, 40 something became a person.
Jason told them he could be stranded on a rock. He said the water is warm. There is a chance. But it was a lie. Everybody knew it. Nobody wanted to say it. How could you say it to those eyes? I remained silent. Very silent as if I were only a ghost too.
My timing was off. We peered behind rocks. We strained our eyes to see below the surface. I pleaded with the river to not reveal the blue shorts. I missed strokes. I scrambled from low in the eddy to avoid slipping away. There is no use pleading with the river. It does not care. It does not stop or ease for anyone’s worried mind.
The river becomes choked with rocks. It drops. We could not pass. Nor could a body supporting blue shorts. The walk around was a relief. He could not be there. I could breathe again. I could paddle on the summer solstice without fearing finding those blue shorts behind every rock.
Cory passed us. He had been crying. He had been there to hear the man cry out for help.
A red helicopter thumped through the canyon. Its rhythm beating between the canyon walls before we could see it.
We paddled. We swam. We basked in the sun on a rock. The river was vividly alive, as were we.
He had not been found when we returned for the truck. They were packing up the tents from the parking lot. People milled around, hushed and somber.
Mark Ray. A piano teacher from Manchester, England. Days later the newspaper article was pinned to the park bench by the guard rail.
The following day, June 22, was my grandmother’s 82nd birthday. I knew it would be her last. Early that morning I called to wish her a happy birthday but she could not come to the phone.
The same group of three as the day before on the South Yuba hiked down to Euchre’s Bar on the North Fork of the American to paddle for two days in solitude. After passing through the first canyon of mossy dark walls, green water flowing over glowing white granite and waterfalls I began to cry. This trip is for my grandmother, I said. To Grandma.
She died nine days later. I never had the chance to speak to her.
Helen Tartol – Giant Gap, North Fork of the American River: for you always
July 4th I returned from Chicago after my grandmother’s funeral. On the fifth I drove across the Sierra Nevada to meet some friends on the West Walker River. Past Lake Tahoe,a garbled and distressed voice mail from Jess. I called when I reached Nevada. It took her three tries before I could understand her words through her tears. Sam died kayaking in Norway. My body went cold. Silent tears.
As I slid my boat into the cold desert river I knew that it was not for me. After a quarter mile of the eleven mile rapid that constitutes that stretch of river I got out of my boat and walked back to my truck as the others continued.
Two days later we paddled on the South San Joaquin. Its beauty is breathtakingly alive. I was the river. The river was me and all of us - including Mark, Grandma and Sam.
July 18, 2006
Driving into the parking lot, our boats stuffed into the back of the pick-up, our conversation ended abruptly with the sight of flashing lights. A crowd of people huddled leaning over the guard rail stretching as far as they could across the expansive space above the water.
Hastily we grabbed our gear, our eyes shifting, not wanting to partake in the drama below the rail. We only wanted to kayak on the South Yuba on the perfect day – the summer solstice. Perhaps if we were fast, we would also be invisible. Nobody would notice us slipping past as we clambered down the rocks to the river, silent and slippery like the brown fish.
Yet we were stopped at the top. You are our first line of defense, he said. You understand the river much better than we. We can’t get down there fast enough. You go. Find him, he said: Blue shorts; In his forties.
A group of three standing on the put in rock pleaded with us with their eyes. Find him please. He is a good swimmer. He swims every day. In a pool. He doesn’t understand the river. Blue shorts, 40 something became a person.
Jason told them he could be stranded on a rock. He said the water is warm. There is a chance. But it was a lie. Everybody knew it. Nobody wanted to say it. How could you say it to those eyes? I remained silent. Very silent as if I were only a ghost too.
My timing was off. We peered behind rocks. We strained our eyes to see below the surface. I pleaded with the river to not reveal the blue shorts. I missed strokes. I scrambled from low in the eddy to avoid slipping away. There is no use pleading with the river. It does not care. It does not stop or ease for anyone’s worried mind.
The river becomes choked with rocks. It drops. We could not pass. Nor could a body supporting blue shorts. The walk around was a relief. He could not be there. I could breathe again. I could paddle on the summer solstice without fearing finding those blue shorts behind every rock.
Cory passed us. He had been crying. He had been there to hear the man cry out for help.
A red helicopter thumped through the canyon. Its rhythm beating between the canyon walls before we could see it.
We paddled. We swam. We basked in the sun on a rock. The river was vividly alive, as were we.
He had not been found when we returned for the truck. They were packing up the tents from the parking lot. People milled around, hushed and somber.
Mark Ray. A piano teacher from Manchester, England. Days later the newspaper article was pinned to the park bench by the guard rail.
The following day, June 22, was my grandmother’s 82nd birthday. I knew it would be her last. Early that morning I called to wish her a happy birthday but she could not come to the phone.
The same group of three as the day before on the South Yuba hiked down to Euchre’s Bar on the North Fork of the American to paddle for two days in solitude. After passing through the first canyon of mossy dark walls, green water flowing over glowing white granite and waterfalls I began to cry. This trip is for my grandmother, I said. To Grandma.
She died nine days later. I never had the chance to speak to her.
Helen Tartol – Giant Gap, North Fork of the American River: for you always
July 4th I returned from Chicago after my grandmother’s funeral. On the fifth I drove across the Sierra Nevada to meet some friends on the West Walker River. Past Lake Tahoe,a garbled and distressed voice mail from Jess. I called when I reached Nevada. It took her three tries before I could understand her words through her tears. Sam died kayaking in Norway. My body went cold. Silent tears.
As I slid my boat into the cold desert river I knew that it was not for me. After a quarter mile of the eleven mile rapid that constitutes that stretch of river I got out of my boat and walked back to my truck as the others continued.
Two days later we paddled on the South San Joaquin. Its beauty is breathtakingly alive. I was the river. The river was me and all of us - including Mark, Grandma and Sam.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Meditations
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Meditations
Again I showed up at the 49 bridge on a perfect paddling day without a boat. The river a milky green ribbon.
Jessica and I spoke on the phone at about 12:30 pm. I was still in my pajamas and drinking coffee. She was dropping her husband, Steve, off to paddle and wanted to know if I wanted to meet her there for a hike.
Once we dropped down from the trail to the river. Steve and his friend were just upstream. They paddled to us and reported time both spent stuck in the same hole.
Back to the bridge after the hike. More paddlers there. Matt. He wanted to hike. I declined. He wanted to watch me take photos. I said no. Just leave. Just leave. Please leave me alone.
On the flat slab of granite Christopher and I stood a year ago I sprawled out on my stomach, right hand dangling in the water until I could no longer press the camera’s button. The strap held the camera to my wrist. The hand red and slow.
Sitting on the slab I waited for my hand to return as I willed the sound, the smell and the feel of being there into my body. But I could not force it to stay.
Foam loitered in corners rising up and down like breath. Remains of something fibrous wound around a bare branch. I worked around them but returned time and time again to the two faceless figures in long hemp robes meditating downstream, melding into the rocks as the sun set, still and quiet. Did the sound, smell and feel meld into their robes to stay?
Meditations
Again I showed up at the 49 bridge on a perfect paddling day without a boat. The river a milky green ribbon.
Jessica and I spoke on the phone at about 12:30 pm. I was still in my pajamas and drinking coffee. She was dropping her husband, Steve, off to paddle and wanted to know if I wanted to meet her there for a hike.
Once we dropped down from the trail to the river. Steve and his friend were just upstream. They paddled to us and reported time both spent stuck in the same hole.
Back to the bridge after the hike. More paddlers there. Matt. He wanted to hike. I declined. He wanted to watch me take photos. I said no. Just leave. Just leave. Please leave me alone.
On the flat slab of granite Christopher and I stood a year ago I sprawled out on my stomach, right hand dangling in the water until I could no longer press the camera’s button. The strap held the camera to my wrist. The hand red and slow.
Sitting on the slab I waited for my hand to return as I willed the sound, the smell and the feel of being there into my body. But I could not force it to stay.
Foam loitered in corners rising up and down like breath. Remains of something fibrous wound around a bare branch. I worked around them but returned time and time again to the two faceless figures in long hemp robes meditating downstream, melding into the rocks as the sun set, still and quiet. Did the sound, smell and feel meld into their robes to stay?
Sunday, January 08, 2006
No Picture Taking
No Picture Taking
Sunday, January 8, 2006
Maidu Ceremony
The Maidu Indians lived in Nevada County before there ever was a Nevada County. They have a history with this river. To begin the New Year I had been invited to attend a Maidu ceremony calling back the salmon to the South Yuba River.
This was an opportunity I accepted with eagerness. It seemed a logical and necessary thing to do to begin reconstructing a usable past of the river - Begin with the people who have known it the longest.
Yet as the day grew nearer I met it with a continued sense of trepidation directly connected to my feelings of guilt. At the root of the guilt was my perceived sense of being a foreign invader taking something for my own use and contorting it to fit into my own contexts and designs.
Feeding this sense of guilt and separatism was a show of Zig Jackson’s photography that I saw in Omaha’s Joslyn Art Museum a few weeks ago. That Jackson also received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute magnified my feelings because of our shared educational origins and therefore in my mind I manifested a heightened personal connection and responsibility to his artistic statements based on a superficial coincidence.
Zig Jackson succinctly describes my unease with a single photograph and relentlessly drives the point home with photographic series entitled Indian Man in San Francisco and Indian Photographing Tourists Photographing Indians. Jackson sits on a park bench in Golden Gate Park wearing a Plains Indian headdress. Behind him bison are fenced in. He had erected a sign, also appearing in several other photographs, next to the bench:
ENTERING ZIG’S INDIAN RESERVATION
Private Property
No Picture Taking
No Hunting
No Air Traffic
New Agers Prohibited
The last restriction was a huge concern to me. I very much want to distance myself as far as I possibly can away from the ‘New Ager.’ Jackson criticizes the tendency for those seeking spiritual guidance to take what they deem fit from his culture and disregard the rest. A just criticism. Our own culture has taken just about all that it could from the Native American culture. I don’t want to be a part of taking more. New Agers Prohibited.
Yet participating in a ceremony like this is a sincere form of acknowledging that the Native Americans have a beautiful belief system that is undervalued and virtually buried by our own culture. How valid is the gesture?
I think of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings after Japanese wood cut prints. Van Gogh’s paintings were created with sincere admiration for an art he had newly discovered that moved him greatly. They were beautiful paintings, but the Japanese characters Van Gogh included were meaningless lines approximating symbols from another culture. The paintings were not Japanese wood cuts, but something that would always remain European painting no matter how much he tried to emulate another culture’s sensibilities.
But how can I be critical of those New Agers I distance myself from when I, myself, just participated in a Maidu ceremony to heal the river and not be a hypocrite? I was a curious ‘tourist’ stepping into a sacred ceremony that I knew nothing about, investigating a gap that I find missing within my own cultural context. I even violated another of Jackson’s prohibitions. I brought my camera. If Jackson were there he could have photographed me photographing Indians and I would have been included in his unnerving series Indian Photographing Tourists Photographing Indians. No Picture Taking.
The ceremony was yesterday morning. We gathered at Edwards Crossing under rain heavy clouds and traveled in a procession to Spring Creek.
My camera hung from my neck. As Bill set up an altar I, through my camera lens, greedily became absorbed with the textures and colors that were being built into something with meaning beyond the objects themselves. But once the ceremony started I experienced it through my own eyes, not a lens.
Standing in a circle we conjured a palpable sense of love and concern for the river. It was powerful and it was real. Three women cried. I knew I was experiencing an expression of connection to the earth, denied to us by our own culture, through people who have been living the connection since arriving here. I know that it exists. I know that it’s a real thing that still exists. There is an ancient lineage honoring the river that has its own language to clearly articulate the connection that so many of us feel but seem unable to adequately express. But it’s still not my language. I don’t feel I can adopt this one that is not my own, even as perfected and honed as it is. But I can remember the feeling of knowing and experiencing a language and a palpable connection that exists for this particular river. I can carry this with me until I find a way to clearly articulate that connection myself.
I wonder if Zig Jackson would condemn me for doing this.
It seems to me that it would be so simple if we had a something of a universal language for this like Esperanto. Then there would not be separations formed by guilt or disdain stemming from appropriating parts of different cultures that seem to have gotten it right. I would not wonder if Jackson would condemn me. I would not feel skeptical and critical of others adopting ceremonies and ideals from various cultures while I simultaneously freely appropriate the things from myriad cultures that work for me. But Esperanto has never taken off in this world as of yet as far as I know. Tensions persist.
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