"Up Helly Aa," reconstructed Fire Festival, or Imbolc in Viking drag?

Guizers with torches at Up Helly Aa celebration in Uyeasound,Shetland.  Before the 19th c., tar barrels, not torches, were used. They look a bit KKKish.

The “Viking” Up Helly Aa fire festival celebrated on the last Tuesday of January (originally held on old Christmas Eve) in the Shetland Isles in Northern Scotland, is not a Norse festival, but a "reconstructed" Victorian Solstice fire festival. I'm not convinced the festival has any Viking roots, though modern-day Shetlanders, proud of their Norse heritage, would probably avow it does. 

The setting of the beacons, or the wards along the coasts and the lit tar barrels rolled downhill are well-attested Celtic motifs. The lit barrels, (my great grandfather also lit on Beltaine in Bantry County Cork, Ireland), evolved into setting a fire a long ship. 

The origin is a bit more obscure, as the Vikings invaded the Shetland Islands during the 9th century, and the fire festival was founded in 1880s—1905, more than 500 years after Norse rule was vanquished. Besides, there were other cultures living in the Shetland Isles since the Neolithic era. They didn’t just disappear with the arrival of the Vikings.

The Vikings, as we know, were not big on sharing the wealth, and 19th century Viking scholars were also not keen on sharing either. When something is claimed as being authentically Viking in Celtic lands, there is often a convenient blurring of anthropological lines, with the idea of Vikings still plundering other cultures a millennia after assimilation.

What cultures in situ before the Viking invasion, are often overlooked, because it doesn't fit current romantic thought. So, rather than observing the overlay with a cultural substrate, we often get skewed cultural theories based solely on later invading cultures—especially in Scotland where the Viking love affair is still in full swing some six centuries later. There is only "I" in Viking. Not even poetic license can alter that.

Shetland (sometimes referred to as Thule in Classical tracts), was no terra nullius before the Vikings invaded. The archipelagos of Shetland, the Orkneys and the Hebrides, also were not considered part of Scotland, which did not become a kingdom until the ninth century. The Latin term Scoti/Scotti referred to the Irish Gaels, whether in Ireland (Scotia Major) or Scotland (Scotia Minor). 

Long before the Shetland archipelago (Scots Gaelic: Sealtainn) was under Icelandic-Norse control, it was a Mesolithic, Neolithic, then a Celtic stronghold—for millennia. The Shetland Islands were originally settled by Neolithic Bell-Beaker peoples, then the Celts and the Picts, and the Scotti, or the Irish Celts—who also celebrated a fire festival on this date as well. Thule was supposedly settled by blue painted people (Picts), it could be a corruption of the word for fire, Iceland was also referred to as Innis Tile.

The first written mention of the Shetland Islands, comprised of some 300 islands and skerries, is from the Icelandic 13th c. epic, Njal’s saga. And of course, redheaded Njal with his fierce temper was probably an Irish-Norse Dubliner. At least one Irish Scotti place-name survived the Viking invasions, Dunrossness, and the islands of Papa Stour (Papey Stóra) and Papa Little (P. Litla) refers to Irish Culdee monks. Brother Island may also refer to those Irish monks. Three island place-names may be of Pictish or even pre-Celtic origin: Fetlar, Unst and Yell—once heavily settled by Culdee monks (Pappay/Papil Ness, Loch of Papil and Papil Bay.) St. Ninian’s Isle too was a papar stronghold.

Another Celtic influenced place-name Muckle meaning “big” in 17th c. Scots dialect, and Rua, meaning red (Old Irish ruiadh), a red granite islet, though Muckle Rua is erroneously identified as a Norse place-name, as is Dunrossness. But Dun is fort and ross is a promontory. And ness is a common Scots-Norse accretion also meaning headland in case one didn’t know what a ross was—a clear indication that the promontory was already aptly named before the Vikings arrived. Nothing to do with a noisy tidal race. 

The early medieval Pictish Bressay Stone,  (It’s in the basement of the National Museum in Edinburgh) with Celtic knotwork and beasties, has an Ogam inscription: “The cross of Natdad's daughter, child of Maqqddrroann,” (OId Irish Mac (son of) Droann. More here.) One of five Ogham stones in Shetland, the inscription is an admixture of Old Irish, and Norn, as the word for daughter is in Norse. Certainly, most of the village names would be of Old Norse derivation as the Irish Scotti didn’t go in big for the idea of towns.

Since the Neolithic era, (4000 BC), people have raised cattle and sheep, and farmed the Shetland Isles. What survives are prehistoric field systems, Bronze Age burnt mounds, Iron Age brochs, and Pictish wheelhouses. The oldest archaeological find, ca. 4000 BC, is a midden at West Voe, Sumburgh. Hard to imagine now, but much of the North Sea was once dry land, Shetland was lightly wooded and the climate was warmer. Neolithic burials include stone cists, and heel-chambered cairns on the island of Vementry, Punds Water and Islesburgh. Skara Brae, Maes Howe, and Ring of Brogar, in nearby Orkney, are extraordinary Neolithic monuments.

During the Bronze Age (2000 to 600 BC), the climate deteriorated, peat bogs spread, and sea level rose. Some 300 crescent-shaped burnt mounds (possible hearths) date back to the Bronze Age. "Ireland was the chief center for the manufacture of bronze and Scotland's early settlers were energetic seamen." Even way then there was a lot of travel between the islands. For millennia, there was Irish contact in the Shetlands, whether by trade, or by theft: a bronze-gilt harness mounting was made in Ireland during the 8th or 9th c. AD, was excavated from an archaeological dig.

Possibly due to a population explosion, or increased warfare, the Iron Age in Shetland saw the rise of massive fortifications: double-walled circular towers, and dry stone brochs—sometimes called "Pictish Towers", but their construction predates the Picts. Ancestors of the Picts, maybe.

Of the 120 Iron Age broch sites, Old Scatness, and the Broch of Mousa (ca. 100 BC), are among the finest preserved examples of Iron Age fort towers. In the case of Old Scatness, the Celts, the late Iron Age Picts, then the Vikings each built atop the old fortifications. Excavations at Jarlshof, confirm archaeological evidence in Mainland, Shetland, since the Bronze Age.

By the sixth century AD, Shetland had become integrated into the mainstream of Pictish politics and life. Artefacts such as painted pebbles and carved symbol stones demonstrate a strong Pictish presence in the islands. Good examples include the ogham script of the Lunnasting Stone, and Christian cross-slabs which include fine examples such as the cross slab and the Monk’s Stone, both from Papil.... From the late 8th century, Shetland was subject to the turbulent impact of the expanding Viking world.—Visit Shetland

The Viking invasions began ca. 800 AD. The earliest archaeological evidence of Norse occupation is in the nearby Orkneys (Viking Shetland was administered as part of the Orkneys, and they were both called the Northern Isles). In 800 AD, a Pictish, or Irish Culdee hoard of silver bowls, brooches, torcs, thimbles, chapes, and a porpoise jaw, was found beneath St. Ninian's church floor on Shetland's St. Ninian's Isle. (See St Ninian's Isle Treasure. St. Ninian AKA Apostle to the Southern Picts).

Human settlement of the island dates from circa 3000 BC and there are remains of several Neolithic burial chambers known as 'heel-shaped cairns'. Little is known of the pre-Celtic and Celtic eras, but when the Norse arrived it is likely they found a religious settlement as the name of the island derives from Papey Stóra meaning "Big island of the Papar" (Celtic monks), in distinction to Papa Little. —Wiki  (see Culdees or papar.)

In 1299 AD, the oldest Old Norse manuscript from Shetland (the Norse called it Hjaltland), was over a duel, where the isle of Papa Stour is referenced. Thorvald Thoresson, accused of corruption, was called "dominus de Papay." In early Irish literature, Shetland was referred to as Inse Catt—"the Isles of Cats." And the name Shetland, like Caithiness, may derive from the Pictish name for the cat islands. Ferocious European wildcats were not your modern moggies.

During the outbreak of Celtic Christianity, when "green" martyrs were seeking hermitages to commune with God, the Irish monks settled on most of the Hebrides, Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as well as the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, the first stepping stone from Shetland to Iceland. Iceland was settled by the Norse, and Celts from the British Isles—including from Hebrides and Shetland.

During the Dark Ages, groups of outlaws and farmers took to the sea from the northernmost reaches of Europe. These seafaring marauders became known as the Vikings. Some of these outcasts among the Vikings were to achieve historical distinction indirectly through dubious means. —from The Struggle against Colonialism and Imperialism in Kalaallit Nunaat

What's interesting about the Up Helly Aa festival is that it completely obliterates any connection with the peoples of the past, other than a nod to 19th century Viking revival nostalgia. It's a wayward case of settler colonialism displacing the preexisting subculture, as a means strengthening an invader's power base to shore up national identity. This was certainly true in Iceland even though Iceland was settled by as many Irish as Vikings. So, what is Up Helly Aa?

According to John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1818), up is used in the sense of something being at an end, and derives from the Old Norse word uppi which is still used in Faroese and Icelandic, while helly refers to a holy day or festival. The Scottish National Dictionary defines helly, probably derived from the Old Norse helgr (helgi in the dative and accusative case, meaning a holiday or festival), as "[a] series of festive days, esp. the period in which Christmas festivities are held from 25th Dec. to 5th Jan." while aa may represent a', meaning "all".  —Wiki Up Helly Aa

But the Northern Isles were once described as "Pictish in culture and speech."  Not Viking. Few Irish pr Pictish place-names survive, except for the northern islands Fetlar with its stone Funzie Girt (Finn's Dyke) a Bronze Age Berlin Wall, Unst and Yell, the second largest island, with 12 brochs, and 15 early chapels—a Culdee stronghold, probably not as enticing to the Norse. The dearth of Celtic "place-names suggest that the Picts may have been forced onto poorer land."There is another school of thought that they are pre-Celtic place names.

Despite many archaeological remains, we have only a patchy understanding of those who lived in Shetland before the Viking invasions of around 800 AD. Immediately before the Vikings arrived, though, it’s clear that Shetland – like much of Scotland - was part of the Pictish culture. By the time of the Viking invasion, possibly two or three hundred years earlier, Christianity had reached the islands. —History of Shetland

The "Northern Isles were the first to be conquered by Vikings and the last to be relinquished by the Norwegian crown." The historical record is weak but Woolf (2007) suggests the Icelandic sagas proclaiming dominion over the Shetland Isles are stories concocted "to legitimise Norwegian claims to sovereignty in the region." Perhaps that is also why a Celtic fire festival, possibly Imbolc, underwent a transformation into Up Helly aa.

An interesting aside: according to the Icelandic sagas, Egil's saga, and the Orkneyinga saga, the Broch of Mousa was used as a refuge for runaway lovers.

I suppose if one is inventive enough, the Norse origin of other island place-names could be challenged: Vementry (Old Norse: "Vemunðarey) could also be derived from a form of Finn, as in Finn's beach: as in Ventry, (Irish: Ceann Trá—which means head beach), which is an anglicization of Fionntrá, in Dingle, Co. Kerry. St. Ninian was also known as Fionnian. M, B and F, in the genitive, take on a v sound. But I'm being linguistically silly.

Maybe it would be more fruitful to look at DNA. Shetland's genetic heritage is 60% Norwegian Y-chromosome DNA (R1a Sigurd), and 40% is ancient Briton (Celts) DNA. The most common male Y chromosomes reflect the most recent migration. Apparently the Norse married lots of local women; as Norse (matrilineal) mtDNA was 30%. However:

[in] Orkney and Shetland, Roberts reported (1985, 1990) that both island populations diverged considerably in allele frequencies from neighboring populations. Roberts concluded that the islanders of Orkney and Shetland most likely represented remnants of an aboriginal gene pool that had changed on the British mainland because of later population movements.... Of the Scottish populations, Orkney [not Shetland] evidently has the closest matrilineal links with Scandinavia. The inhabitants of the Scottish islands share two to seven times more of their lineages exclusively with Gaels than they do with Scandinavians.... mtDNA lineages can be used to identify recent migration. Viking men settled and intermarried with existing populations in Shetland... —mtDNA and the Islands of the North Atlantic

So, with all that intact ancient matrilineal Celtic Briton gene pool intact, do you think their fire customs, celebrated since time immemorial, would suddenly be forgotten and just disappear with the occupation of the Vikings—only to return as a new and improved Viking festival? Methinks this particular fire festival smacks of the neo-Romantic Viking revivalist movement: think truncated Wagner as performed by Viking mummers. (Note that Up Helly Aa is not celebrated in Scandinavia.) 

According to the Smithsonian article, "Up Helly Aa was first celebrated in the 1880s. Before then, rowdy residents would take to the streets to mark the end of the Yule season by burning tar barrels." 

Up Helly Aa is a procession of 1000 guizers celebrating their Norse heritage. Guizers (dis-guisers and galoshins) are a long-standing tradition in the Celtic ream; our modern Halloween trick or treaters are guisers. 

The festival is stapled onto the end of Yule season (see: Burning of the clavie), but even using the old calendar, "Old Twelfth" would have fallen on Jan. 17, not the end of January, which would be Imbolc, the Fire Festival of Brigid.

A parallel story of confusion: an Irish Medieval History Facebook post notes that people erroneously assume the pagan Celtic Goddess Brigid, who represented the light half of the year, was transported into Christianity as Saint Brigid. Ancient customs and religious beliefs were not swept away with the arrival of Christianity and traditions associated with St. Brigid’s day are thought to date from the pre-Christian period. Candlemas is the Christian overlay of Imbolc.

So taking that model for cultural continuance, despite new landlords, I suspect this Shetland fire festival is an offshoot of the festival of Imbolc, and of the pan-Celtic Goddess Brigid, which was a time for a massive spring clean-up, burning old possessions and replacing them with new ones. 

Since Neolithic times, cross-quarter days, that midway point between solstice and equinox, were celebrated with fire festivals. Cross-quarter days were marked via astronomical alignments on ancient monuments: Mound of the Hostages: Hill of Tara, Howth, Newgrange, Stonehenge. The four fire festivals, Samhain (the end of the Celtic harvest year), Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh also mark the beginning of each season. Spring was the beginning of the Roman New Year.

Imbolc might derive from Old Irish í mBolc, meaning in the belly (as in pregnant—bolg — Spanish /Galician bolsa means bag); it might mean purification or, First Milk.

...which arises from the word “oimelc/oí melg” used in the 10th century Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary) which some people have taken to mean “sheep’s milk”. The word “melg” meaning ‘milk’ comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE—the ancestor language of most European languages) word “melg” which means "to wipe, to rub off". Purification/ cleansing was an important aspect of many ancient festivals and “oí melg” is not milking but rubbing, as in the act of cleansing. Further evidence of cleansing comes from the Roman festival of Februalia. The Old Irish word for February is ‘febra’, ‘febrae’ from Latin ‘Februarius’ which in turn comes from ‘februa’ meaning purifications. —Irish Medieval History: February 1st or Imbolc 

Imbolc was the second of the four great fire festivals, with significance placed upon the Light of fire. The Irish word for spring, "errach” thought to be related to the word “airreach” which means hauling and dragging. In Ireland, Imbolc is referred to as the big Spring Clean. "Right up to the twentieth century, on Brigid’s eve, the house was be scrubbed from top to bottom by the women who worked into the night." 

All debris was burned (including floor rushes, beds and bedding). Bonfires galore. Oh, and Brigid is a daughter of the Dagda, and a poet. She is the patron of the hearth, healing, metal smithcraft; and inventor of poetry, keening, and beer making. Ya don't want to piss her off. Burn, baby, burn. Sláinte!

A Bhríd, a Bhríd, thig a sligh as gabh do leabaidh
Bríd Bríd, come in; thy bed is ready

Brede, Brede, come to my house tonight.
Open the door for Brede and let Brede come in.

Imbolc festival in Marsden, Yorkshire. —Wiki

Brigid's the goddess of weather, for an early spring, forget the groundhog, chant this instead:

Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir. 

The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.

Lá Fhéile Bríde shona dóibh go léir (Happy St. Brigid’s festival day to you all)!

Slept on my iPad

Slept on my iPad all night long.
A little known fact, it offers excellent back support
and even stranger dreams.

So, how's your day going? Mac woes

So, how's your day going? At least my MacBook is staying on now. At least long enough to write this. Neil accidentally shut down my MacBook (he doesn't get the idea that you can put a MacBook to sleep). My MacBook has a faulty on-off button, so I always let it sleep. I couldn't get it to power on, and then, I couldn't get it to stay on longer than 15 minutes. It shut down, cold-turkey, at least seven times in a row. As if it were sneezing. I won't mention my external back-up drive that also went on extended holiday from all that sneezing. Probably because it no sooner mounted, then, the Mac shut down. Again. And again. And again.... Chain reaction. Ad infinitem.

At least my MacBook is staying on now. I had a divil of a time to get it to turn on, and stay on—the power supply is challenged. That's how my evening's going. I won't mention my external back up drive went belly- up. Yes, I have a back up drive of my back up drive, but there's been a few organizational file changes and I would've liked to have saved them. Now I need a new back up drive for my back-back up drive.

Old Irish family stories emerging (photos)

We ran into my cousin Katie at the Nicasio Druid's Hall crab feed. Lovely surprise. Old Irish family stories emerging, overlapping, Buried history revealed. The mosaic of our lives. We'll visit her ranch at the foot of Black Mountain (Elephant Mountain!) Connection long time coming.

FOREST KNOLLS CLEAN UP 2 short poems

Dusted with black mold,
salvaged art and journals from childhood
reward me with a blazing headache.

My grandmother's black church shoes
polished up with a gleam, 
50 years later, the insoles still hold
the shape of her bunioned feet.

Tiki Totems

It begins as one tiny memory, and suddenly I am remembering sheaves of information. In the early 1960s, Barney West was carving a totem with a chainsaw, me sitting in the white convertible watching him work as my mom met up with some friends at one of the Sausalito houseboats. The day was harsh and Barney, dressed in shorts, and little else, was swarthy, sweat rolling off his back. She must've told him to keep an eye on me because he was cranky. He bristled. Wouldn't even talk to me. So, I sat there in the car, silent, and watched monsters unfold from the trunks of redwood trees. They glared menacingly from the shadows. Followed me home in sleep.

Ruthless Beauty, Nicasio Reservoir (photos)

Nicasio Reservoir was like glass today. Breathless beauty. Or maybe ruthless beauty. Could also be relentless beauty in that once it has your eye it won't let go, a prisoner, I was, to the sublime beauty of land, water, and sky. Yes, beauty so powerful it hurts, makes us insignificant, something I needed to experience after the massacre in France. Truth in beauty, so Keatsian, I know, but sometimes I find myself circumnabulating the master poets when all else fails. It is my cathedral of light that sustains me during this time of darkness. Sometimes Marin and Ireland are one and the same, certainly for my grandmother, she named our place after her family farm Coom an nOr, Hill of Gold. Yes, ruthless beauty removes us from the paradigm, it's not about our perception of it that makes it so, we are a small part of the paradigm after all. It exist and survives outside our perceptions of the notion of earth which often trivializes the sublime moment of it all, the aha, or godhead. Something outside ourselves. For once.

 (From a Facebook post)

Making Butter

When we were kids, an after-school job at our neighbor's house was to churn butter as we watched Rin-Tin-Tin or Sea Hunt on the old black & white TV.  We were mesmerized.

In those days, TVs were a luxury item, and there were only two to four channels—that often broadcasted snow, depending upon where you lived. Reception was bad in the deep pocket valleys of Arroyo Road. The Stones lived on the Lagunitas side of Barranca Creek. I lived at the end of the canyon on the Forest Knolls side.

I remember watching Les Stone hitching himself up to the top of the tallest tree, lugging up an aluminum arial, and armloads of copper wire. Elaborate arial setups laced to the tops of tall pines worked, until the next big storm. They were like weathervanes. Long flat arial lines from the top of the Douglas fir to the house had to be maintained. A crack in the plastic cable, during a storm, and the line would short out. No TV. Just loud snow. The sound of deep space hissing.

So it was pretty exciting to be able to even watch TV. Stephanie Stone and I were horse crazy so we were partial to Lassie Come Home and Dale Evans and Roy Rogers. Rin-Tin-Tin was OK, because he looked like Ky-dog the German Shepherd—even if there were no horses.

One afternoon, it was my turn to churn the butter. I churned and tumped and churned until it felt like my arms were going to fall off. I churned my way through Rin-Tin-Tin to the 6 O'Clock News. My aching muscles were afire.

Still no butter. When I peeked into the churn, it was clotted, like snow on the TV. A loud thundercrack overhead. Lightning arced and struck the arial. Buckets of rain. In this way I found out that butter won't churn during a thunderstorm. It came down to science. Much more mesmerizing than the TV.

Multnomah Falls

Michael Horodyski Icy Jewel 7176 

An old high school friend posted a winter photo of Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge. It was so gorgeous, it took my breath away. Just thinking about how cold it must be in winter, also took my breath away.

And when we hiked up to the top of Multnomah Falls last summer, I was breathless, too, but for another reason, as my knee wasn't fully healed from surgery, so I used an old ski pole as a walking stick. It was bequeathed to me by the ski lift operator on Crystal Ridge—where we spent a stellar afternoon gazing at Mt. Rainer.

Neil kept telling me I shouldn't be hiking up to the top, but I was determined. it was a personal best moment. I'd been flattened for nearly a year and a half with this knee injury.

With the orphan ski pole, I was able to poke and prod my way up to the top of the first falls. It was muggy. Dragonflies practiced arial rolls worthy of the Red Baron. A storm was brewing somewhere. We lingered, refreshed by the waterfall mist, and lulled by the roaring water. No need for words. We counted rainbows until we were drenched and chilled to the bone.

Coming downhill from the falls was excruciating. I resorted to an odd crab walk, pivoting around the ski pole on alternate steps. I tried hopping, I dragged my injured uphill leg and sashayed. At one point I thought about sitting down and just scooting down on my butt to the parking lot. If only I had some cardboard. But a mile of road rash was daunting. I thought I'd never make it back down to the parking lot to my icepack and pain killers.

I hadn't been to the falls since the early 70s, right after high school. But despite the distance of time, memory was served up correctly. I hadn't forgotten how marvelous Multnomah Falls really are—despite the thundering hordes of tourists seeking the ultimate selfie shots, midsummer. Magnificent Multnomah. Gorgeous gorge. Refreshing—a page out of memory, like the picture stenciled on the cans of Oly my grannie used to sip on hot summer days.

The Mother House at Dominican

During the summer of 1989 we held our 25th annual California Poets in the Schools conference in the Mother House at the Dominican Convent in San Rafael. It was a a big international event with guest poets from several Writers in the Schools programs, and poets from the USSR and Mexico.

Dominican Convent, San Rafael, California, circa 1908 [postcard‘ Marin County Free Library 

The Convent, dedicated on July 21, 1889 in San Rafael, California, was originally the home for nine Dominican Sisters, four postulants and one novice. The same building housed a girls' school plus high school. The Sisters also taught children at St. Raphael's School at Fifth and A Streets. The college was increased to a four-year institution and the first class of Dominican College graduated in 1922. The elementary school and high school moved to San Domenico in San Anselmo in 1965. In 1971, the College became coed, and in April 2000 Dominican changed its name to Dominican University. The Convent burned in 1990, and the Sisters elected to replace the remains with a new, more modern building. —Marin County Free Library 

The Mother House, designed by San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh, was an intricate and ornate four-storey affair, built of solid redwood. A grand Victorian dame replete with cupolas, bell towers and widow walks. There was gorgeous turned woodwork, hidden nooks, lace-curtained vaulted windows and Greco-Roman touches worthy of any fin de siècle grand hotel. Massive grand staircases, fine tongue and groove, intricate tile-work, wall panels of black walnut, oak and rich mahogany patterned veneers.

The Mother House was a living museum. I was attracted to the early California plein-air pastoral paintings worthy of the Hudson Impressionist School, probably hung on the walls when they were still wet. There was a rumor of a Rembrandt. It also contained the usual array of religious iconography, stained glass, and wooden shields, heavy antique claw-footed furniture, and vast carpets of Persian rugs blossoming everywhere.

Christian Burkhardt: Almost Amish

While weeding through an old suitcase full of my grandmother's yellowed newspaper clippings, I found an article on an old friend, a neighbor I used to know a long time ago. A dark clipping of Christian Burkhardt & his horse Brandy pulling a custom racing cart along the backroads of the San Geronimo Valley—a familiar sight during the 1970s.

Christian and I used to go on long trail rides over rough  fire roads starting out from Forest Knolls. One time we went all the way to Mt. Tamalpais along the San Geronimo Ridge, to Alpine Dam, via the the Meadow Club, in his two-wheeled racing sulky prototype made from a bicycle, wire mesh, and aluminum strips drilled out with big holes (to keep the cart light).

Or sometimes we'd go up the Lagunitas fire roads near Kent Lake along Bolinas Ridge, to Bolinas Mesa, and onto what is now called the Palomarin Trail. We'd trot past Double Point, Bass Lake, Olema, etc. The miles flew by, the open air stung our cheeks, we'd pack a lunch and take off down the open road, not knowing where we'd end up.

I taught Christian the English names of plants. I pointed out a primitive plant, Equus, I'd say, pointing to Brandy's tail, horsetail fern (Equisetum). He'd reply in German: wassercandlen. His father was a famous botanist, they were born in Germany, so it made sense that Christian would know the German names of plants. English was his second language.

Christian was super smart and had many odd notions. He was part eccentric, part geek, and almost Amish. He wanted to harken back to a simpler time that never was. Christian once built an entire Model A Ford from scratch, because he could. But he wouldn't drive it. He was somewhat steampunk'd decades before it was reinvented. But then the entire family was most original in thought and manner. The saying, They broke the mold when....applied to the Burkhardts—all of them. Like the Amish people he admired, Christian wanted to be simple, he wanted to be plain. In fact, he did eventually apprentice with the Pennsylvania Amish community.

Christian Burkhardt and Brandy with his prototype buggy made of bicycle parts.

Christian lived with his parents and grannie on a house on a knoll that his father Hans had designed, made of river stone, cement, and floors with radiant heat. Hans loved the trees, and managed to build his house around them without resorting to scorched earth practices. Christian built an elaborate treehouse in a Douglas fir, with cathedral windows, electricity, a record player and a telescope (much to the dismay of Stephanie Stone's parents). That gave Christian quite a reputation. The Stones invested in bedroom curtains.

I don't know what part of Germany the Burkhardts hailed from, but Christian's grannie didn't speak a word of English and she too was pretty eccentric. I remember being shocked when Christian told me that when she was a young girl, his grannie was an ardent fan of Hitler; when he came to their village, she broke her arm falling off a chair cheering for him. It probably saved her life. 

When I was a teenager, I'd found a Nazi dagger up our hill, buried in the dirt above our spring. Our neighbor, German Consul, Old Man Latendorf must've been hiding refugee Germans in the woods. The story goes, when things got too hot, and he too went into hiding, my Irish grandfather stepped in as acting German Consul. First, my high school math teacher, Archie Williams, shook Hitler's hand after he won the Olympics gold medal with Jesse Owens, and now Grannie Burkhardt?

When we were cleaning out my grandmother's house last month, my uncle found the old Nazi dagger, but it was so rusted, he threw it out. I should've saved it, the little black and white enamel swastica was still recognizable, but I didn't have the heart to keep it. It was tainted with too much history. I wasn't expecting it to resurrect and intersect itself here in this blog. But I digress...

Western view from Mt. Barnabe toward Camp Taylor. we grew up on the other side. —Wiki

Back to our backroad explorations. Christian Burkhardt and I discovered that we could cover amazing distances in the racing sulky, much farther than if we were riding astride our own horses. Brandy, a dark mahogany bay Morgan with black points, a white sock, and a star on his forehead, could trot for hours. My horse had died a few years before, so I was truly horseless, no longer riding for Rafter L Ranches, and I welcomed the chance to travel my favorite ridges again.

On the way home from the Mt. Tam ride, we bit off way more than we could chew: we were late leaving Mt. Tam, it was so glorious at the top. A friend of mine, Dale Walsh, was working at the fire lookout, he invited us up and we spent the afternoon gazing out over the ridges of the Bay Area.

Coming back around Alpine Lake to the Meadow Club, we crossed the Fairfax-Bolinas Road, to pick up our fire road home, but took a wrong turn, and ended up on the top of Pine Mountain at sunset. Fantastic views of Mt. Wittenberg, Elephant Mountain, Big Rock RIdge. But we were on the wrong ridge that divided the middle arm of Kent Lake like a peninsula.

I told Christian we needed to veer to the right, and take what looked like a chaparral-lined goat track, but he wanted to stick to the main fire road. He said it made more sense. There was no arguing with him. He held the reins, so...off we trotted to the west. Then towards the south. Wrong way. I threw a fit and got us to turn back towards San Geronimo. But we discovered that there was a fence in the way. We lost valuable time searching for a way back though the fence as we didn't want to backtrack all the way to the Meadow Club. We were also running out of daylight.



We needed to get onto the right fire road that followed the crest of San Geronimo Ridge paralleling Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad bed). I found a portugee gate of sorts, a mend in the fence; we were able to lift the sulky over the barbed wire, and sneak Brandy through a gap in the fence. I laid my vest over the lower wires so he could see in order to step over the treacherous wire. Good thing it was a full harvest moon to light our way. Otherwise we would've had to spend the entire night on the ridge.

After the second summit, I was never so glad to see the first sure landmark, the pygmy sargent cypress forest, and the ghostly serpentine outcroppings. (The San Geronimo Ridge was either Marin Municipal Water District watershed, or privately held ranch lands in those days, now the Gary Giacomini Open Space Preserve is accessible via the Bay Area Ridge Trail. See photos at the Bay Area Hiker's blog. A recent post is on Trailhiker's blog.)

To download this PDF of San Geronimo Ridge, go to MCPOS

I can't remember where we came down off the ridge, but I think it was by De La Montanya's place—we called it the deer camp road (there was an old deer camp on the ridge overlooking the lake, it ran into East Sylvestris fire road and dead ended at Meadow Way in San Geronimo. Of course none of us ever knew that the names of fire roads, or that they even had names. Google hindsight is a wondrous thing.

It was far too dark to follow the ridge to Forest Knolls even under a full moon. To come down off the ridge down Tamarack, or by the Nielsen's place on Resaca Road would have been positively suicidal in the dark. By the time we reached Arroyo Road, it was well after midnight. I was so cold, I wanted to trot alongside the sulky, but I had such painful chillblains, I could barely walk. I was never so glad to get home.

We didn't know it at the time, but when we didn't return home by darkfall, the families began to worry. Christian's father, Hans had sent the sheriff out looking for us, we were gone so long. Even my grandmother was worried, and she never worried much about me coming home after dark. The horse always brought me home. Christian caught hell for being out so late—they thought we'd been injured or killed. No cellphones or GPS back in those days, let alone, access to topo maps, we really were miles from civilization.

Poor Christian was socially gauche (as most adolescent boys are). He was always the little kid who lived down the road. He used to tag along after us when we went out riding. About the only thing we had in common was a love of horses.

I used to give him rides to SF State when we were attending college there during 1974-75. He helped to pay for gas and bridge fare so I was glad for his company as it was a long commute from Forest Knolls to Stonestown.

Christian didn't know his own strength. One time he twisted the door handle right off my old '58 Volvo panel van, not realizing it was locked. But he was also a mechanical genius, so he welded on a new shank and fixed it, not quite as good as new. But close. The handle drooped a bit. I offered to teach him to drive but he steadfastly refused. He didn't want to have anything to do with combustion engines whereas I was always under the hood trying to keep the damned car running.

Christian's father Hans, a botanist, was a pioneer in the process of cloning orchids. He'd hybridize and divide the orchid buds with a scalpel and put them in test tubes filled with coconut water. The orchid clones had to be constantly agitated in order to grow. There was a riot of rare orchids blooming all throughout their house. Christian's mother, Hannah, a quiet dark-haired woman of otherworldly charm, was his lab assistant. She was probably a doctor as well. There was much I didn't know about the Burkhardts.

The Burkhardts left the San Geronimo Valley and moved to a remote valley along the Noyo River during the late 1970s or early 80s. Their nearest address was Sanctuary Station, an unscheduled freight stop on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad freight line, now California Western Railroad line. The Skunk Train took them 20 miles to Willits or to Fort Bragg for provisions, but they were self-sufficient. The fire road into Sanctuary Station and Camp Nine was impassable during the wet season. I visited Christian a few times, as an activist poet friend of mine, Mary Norbert Korte, a former Dominican nun, was their nearest neighbor, and we held several rather wild California Poets in the Schools conferences at Mary's place.

The California Western Railroad, a Mendocino County heritage railroad that parallels the convoluted narrow Highway 20 (Fort Bragg-Willits Road). The CWR runs 40 miles along the Noyo River and Pudding Creek, crossing 30 bridges and trestles, and two tunnels. Northspur, 11 miles north of Comptche, on the confluence of the North Fork of the Noyo River, is the only watering hole, about half-way from Willits. Otherwise there's not much by the way of civilization in the canyon.—Wiki

Dr. Hans Burkhardt was an environmental analyst for Mendocino County, which was in the midst of clearcutting wars, disastrous for the Noyo River canyon. Hans' efforts led to the formation of the Mendocino County Forest Advisory Committee. He wrote a booklet, “Maximizing Forest Productivity” that outlined sound forest practices to sustain a healthy vibrant industry, but corporate forest owners branded him an extremist, along with marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls, EarthFirsters and Judi Bari.

The steam and diesel-powered Skunk Train, on the California Western Railroad.   —Wiki

When I was visiting the Burkhardts, poor Hans was nearly felled by a redtail hawk who mistook his shiny bald pate for dinner. Hans managed to live to a ripe old age of 75, fighting the good fight against big lumber. He's been gone ten years now. The Mendocino woods have lost a champion.

I heard that Brandy was killed by a car...but I'm not sure if that's true or not. I imagine it happened while Christian was driving one of his custom buggies. It would've utterly devastated Christian as he absolutely doted on that horse. I envision Christian living on that homestead deep in the Noyo forest, inventing all sorts of useful and harebrained contraptions. But our madcap buggy rides was surely the stuff of dreams.

News clipping, Rose of Tralee contest, 1973

An old yellowed news clipping I found bagged in my grandmother’s old suitcase, unleashed a flood of memories. Rose of Tralee contest, 1973, can you spot which one is me? I’m the short one in the middle with eyes closed, the only one dressed in red, that's me. I wore my grandmother's handmade lace collar on a bargain table dress, while the other girls were decked out for a polyester ball with Rhett Butler. 

They were something else. Catty comes to mind. I was the hippie chick. I wouldn't wear makeup. But I had to put on war paint for the finale. There were nasty behind the scenes catcalls and comments from the other contestants, like calling me a slut because of my halter dress, and other catty things, like, Maybe you should wear makeup more often. Not said in a nice way. I really did not want to be there. 

My aunt enrolled me as a favor to John Whooley. They were a few girls short—they wanted one contestant for each county. Well, I was short. Waaaay outta my league. My aunt Jane, who was a beauty queen of sorts, was a festival organizer. So I was stuck for the duration. Literally at the last minute, another girl took the county I was supposed to represent, County Longford, leaving me stranded, waiting  in the wings, waiting to go onstage—without a county, until my aunt stepped in, and said we had cousins in Cavan. I was representing them. I stepped into the floodlights smiling. The show must go on.