list three daring things you’ve done…

A friend asked us to post three things that we did when we were young—those adventures where you look back on and say "I can't believe I did that.” Well, apparently I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I couldn’t choose just three insane moments in my life. True, I was usually with a boyfriend, but not always. And it’s probably not fair to ask me about during exploits, there were too many to list. Probably one reason why I became a writer.

My boyfriend and I hitchhiked up from Marin County to Victoria, BC in the early 70s, slept under a spruce tree in Stanley Park. Then we hitched up-island to catch the ferry from Cape Scott/Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, but we missed the boat, then had to camp on damp moss covered ledges for a few days until the next ferry came in as there was nothing there, not even a gas station, let alone, a hotel. 

The ferry ride to Prince Rupert took  more than 15 hours, we hit huge swells in the open water of the Queen Charlotte Straits. The massive swells rocked the ship around like a toy and everybody was barfing. When we got to Prince Rupert there was no place to stay so we camped in a graveyard on top of a hill and the sun absolutely refused to set, it was June.

Then we hitched over to Prince George where the mosquitos were the size of hummingbirds, the resident moose was not happy to share his boggy meadow with us. Then we hitched down to Banff, and Jasper, and slept in hotel doorways as all the campgrounds and hostels were full. It seemed that all of Canada was on the move. We camped out in day-use picnic shelters. They had wood burning stoves! 

The worst part of the journey was when we got stuck in front of the Columbia Glacier, I resorted to wearing my down sleeping bag as a coat, the ice field was so cold. I looked like a mustard colored abominable snowman in my down bag so no one would stop for us. The toe of the glacier hissed and sung. I wasn’t prepared for that. Then we went over to Calvary (why?), and headed back down through Kamloops, and down the coast to SF. An epic summer journey.

I went to the USSR several times in 1989-91, created a poetry and art exchange (it was Glasnost) and traveled from Kyiv to Leningrad on a train illegally, incognito, sans internal visa, because I was told no, I couldn’t go by the local authorities, then we couldn’t get a train ticket back to Cherkassy. In those days, Americans weren’t allowed to travel freely, without a pass, and certainly not on common trains for the ludí, the people. 

In Leningrad, on another trip, a Soviet friend thought I would like to help restore a fresco in the dome of the Church of Atheism & Religion (St. Isaac’s). To get to the outer dome, we had to climb up an iron catwalk to the top of the outside dome, the iron railing was coming off, it was midwinter, and a long way down to the ground, OSHA would not have approved, but Russia was like Mexico, everything was jerryrigged. When we circled the dome where there was a little door that let us inside the brass dome between the fresco, a tunnel to the inner dome. Wild. We had to leap down to a trapeze net stretched across the opening of the dome (I was scared shitless), then we were suited up in climbing harnesses and ropes, suspended like spiders to clean and scrape the old fresco. Getting back down to the ground was worse. I had never rappelled down a rope before, the marble floor was a long way down, my hair got caught in the cleat and I thought it was curtains. Oh, and neither my friend or his friend spoke any English—just to up the game. 

Another time we walked out on a frozen Ozirkii lake, but when we got to the middle, we heard it crack, the loudspeaker from shore was telling us to get off the lake, but I couldn’t understand Russian. We got off the lake quickly.

We hiked in to Machu Picchu in 1989 the long way, 42 km, through milpia forest fires, and so couldn’t see the Andes, we went through a cloud forest, saw many fantastic Inca ruins over Dead Woman Pass. I rode a pack horse that had never been ridden before, I was stuck with him because we dawdled and missed out on all the good horses. He had no bridle, so I made a hackamore from an old stiff leather lariat. 

We were cantering along a stream when he veered left up a narrow trail and ran full speed to a chicha hut. I had his head in my lap and still he wouldn’t stop. We slammed into that adobe chicha hut sideways, so hard, that dust rose from the roof like smoke. I lifted my leg over the pack frame and let the horse take the brunt. He slammed sideways onto the wall. All the Incan men sitting outside at the bar, scattered like the wind, drinks in hand. The horse got the message, he wasn’t going to lose me. He was much better behaved for the rest of the trip. So when we went up an incline so steep, I fell off his back trying to avoid a tree limb, because my backpack had made me top heavy. I fell under the horse. Luckily he froze and I crawled out from under him. 

Then the train to Arequipa and Lake Titicaca was stopped by the army in the altiplano, and they searched everyone, they bayonetted the natives luggage (looking for smuggled people) because of the Sendero Luminoso uprising. We had just seen the corpse of the defense lawyer of Manuel Febres Flores, outside the Chorillos Tunnel near Lima. It was a hairy time to be in Peru. Tanks in Lima. Car bombs.

Then there was the time the US invaded Tegucigalpa right as we were headed there, oops! We were stuck in the Guatemala Airport for days with no flights out. We had just come from the highlands, had met the Guatemalan army there and in Tikal too. They were not the good guys. Neither were the guerllla. We learned to tell who was who by their guns: AK 47s guerrillero, Uzi, GA. People were being disappeared, including tourists. I had nightmares for years.

I never did get married, though my Soviet friend proposed to me in the lobby of the Hotel Cosmos in Moscow…

Then there was the time a young bear slept on me in Little Yosemite….before I went up Half Dome, I did it twice, why, I don’t know…. And that time in the Galapagos between islands in the open sea with too many people, in a tiny open panga, when a drifting fishnet got stuck in the propeller. Oh, but the albatrosses and flying fish and the dolphins alongside the boat made it worthwhile. 

I won’t mention the time I snorkeled alone in a volcanic crater, called the Corona del Diablo, and a sea lion mistaking me for one of his harem because I was in a black wetsuit, attacked me. Maybe he thought I was a silkie. I had to keep spinning like a top to keep him from biting me. I thought I was going to drown for sure but no one would even know because I was far from the boat. I was a super snorkeler. And I often broke the rules, never snorkel alone. I could never get enough of it. 

Then there was that time I was snorkeling alone, far from shore with a shark in the Bahamas…

I could go on….

URBAN RENEWAL

URBAN RENEWAL

I used to dream the Bay Area was surrounded by snowcapped peaks, 

and I wondered which mountain range I was channeling. 

San Francisco was home, my natal ground,

but wanderlust took me to the Sierra Nevada range,

then north to Seattle, Vancouver, and Horseshoe Bay, 

and then up-island to isolated fishing hamlets, Naniamo, 

Uclulet on the mailboat, we drove to Tofino on dirt roads 

before there was a gringo trail. 

I remember walking along the bluffs below Pike Street Market 

where the native people slept it off from the night before, 

they were littered along the railroad tracks like strange pinnipeds.

The forgotten ones filled the jails, and a nation turned its back 

on the indigent and those of fragile mind and body, 

pushed for urban renewal to clean up the riffraff for once and for all.

The detritus of the past, swept away like a tidal wave before our eyes.

In Vancouver BC, first Gastown, and then Chinatown disappeared.

The streets of Ferndale and Eureka, steam-cleaned. 

There was nowhere else left for the indigent to go. 

Folks rejoiced waiting for fresh-eyed tourists to arrive.

The Marin architect that cleaned up Ghirardelli Square, 

blueprinted the way with cookie-cutter plans for urban renewal.

The underbellies of cities, gutted like fish, stripped of psyche.

It was like an echo, the cavernous gods of tourism, each town

lost more than an inconvenient eyesore. Now, across America,

malls, dressed in brick façades and quaint lamp posts, lie fallow, 

a wasteland of tourist dollars with shops selling teeshirts 

as if to prove residency, and bright trinkets made in China. 

Meanwhile, the indigent moved uptown to sleep on street corners.

Those mountains in my dreams, they were in mourning, 

protecting those who grew up in their shadow.

2/16/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class First final draft.

Emily Carr, Canadian painter & writer, Group of Seven

Autumn, 1922-23, oil, Arts & Crafts style (1913-27) Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

One of my favorite artists of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr,  (Dec. 13, 1871 – Mar. 2, 1945) was also a writer who chronicled the stories of the First Peoples of British Columbia. Carr’s memoir, Klee Wyck, inspired me to travel making a pilgrimage of sorts to the then remote Nootka villages of Tofino and Ucluelet on western Vancouver Island, and later, to the village of K’san on the Skeena River, in the late 1970s, where I promptly got sick and spent a few days camping in the bushes outside of town—to the consternation of my boyfriend, the villagers, and jeweler-woodcarver Vernon Stephens, who had once driven us from the middle of nowhere to another middle of nowhere. Another story...

Though relatively unknown and unrecognized in her lifetime, Carr was one of the first North American Modernist painters to use the Post-Impressionist painting style. She bucked the prim Victorian society and studied art for three years at the California School of Design/San Francisco Art Institute, and later, Carr spent a year in France, 1910-11, where she met the Cubists and Fauvists. Their use of bold color and broad shapes greatly influenced her work.

But upon Carr’s return to Vancouver, no one was interested in her work. She toiled in domestic obscurity for 15 years, managing an apartment complex in Victoria, until 1927, when a piece was accepted to a National Gallery of Canada exhibition where she first met the Group of Seven. She was the only woman painter to be included in the Group of Seven, modernist painters who changed the face of Canadian art

After being told that Canadian totem poles and trees were unsuitable, and simply unpaintable, Carr defiantly went out and painted them anyway—for the rest of her life. She finally gained some recognition for her work when she was nearly 60. After a series of heart attacks in 1937, Carr gave up the rigors of plain air painting, and wrote seven books, winning the Governor General’s Award for Literature in 1942.

I have seen many of her paintings in museum collections, but not this one. A reverse image search referred me to the dubious ArtPoster and Pinterest sites, several titles suggests it’s called,  Lone Cedar, or (Cypress) Tree in Autumn, or simply Autumn, ca 1920, painted variously in Brittany, or in British Columbia.

I have a lino block that I carved in high school that is similar in style. I wonder if I saw her work back then? Where? At the De Young? SF Art institute? I got to see her work later, in Victoria and Vancouver. There was an article on Emily Carr in the Sunday section of the Chronicle, California Living, circa 1972, which contained a retrospective of her work. I saved that article and read it again and again and again. She was uniquely a one of a kind artist.

It took some doing, but I found the painting, it’s called Tree of Autumn, 1922 - 1923, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 44.5 cm, done in the Arts and Crafts style (1913-1927). Collection of Glenbow Museum, of Calgary—which explains why I never saw it, though I’ve been to Calgary, I didn’t visit the museum. Purchased in 1956. Note bene: As of 1990, it’s housed at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Another extraordinary painting I’ve never seen before is First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, oil on canvas, Fauvist style, 101.5cm x 84cm. 1912. Audain Art Museum, Whistler, British Columbia. “In 1912, following a journey up the northern coast of B.C., Carr produced a number of works with First Nations motifs in her new style. However, these works were not well received with audiences in Vancouver and Victoria.”

First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, Fauvist style, 1912. Audain Museum.  Wiki

The West Coast is burning

Oh great, I was sitting outside during a red alert. The West Coast is burning. Ashes from as far north as British Columbia, where there are 560 wildfires, as well as wildfires from WA, Or, and N. CA, were falling on my Mac screen. And now my eyes sting. My throat is raw. All that unshed grief and death of trees playing out in real time.

CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

I once stood toe-to-toe with the Columbia Icefield,

we were stuck beside it for days, hitching south.

It was like standing in an open sky refrigerator, 

we feared we might freeze to death at its foot.

I wore every bit of clothing I had in my backpack, 

and my upside-down sleeping bag as a shawl,

looking like the Michelin Man with strange headgear,
the toe of the bag, a lofty orange helmet.

In that odd get-up, I scared off all the prospective rides.

We were so grateful when the redneck PG&E worker

that picked us up in Oregon, came to our rescue. 

Lord knows why they ever stopped. Maybe
they felt sorry for me, but Bob, with long hair & beard,
was from the camp across the river from status quo.

Over the campfire, we sipped coffee, and were humbled, 

not realizing we too were redneck in our own way.

For a while, the divide between us was diminished.

The vast Columbia Icefield, older than Mankind
taking its first steps, moaned and groaned and seethed
like an old dog on its last legs, rising from the hearth.

We parted company again in Banff, they were like family,

we meant to keep in touch, never did send that postcard.

The idea of global warming hadn't yet been parsed,

nor had it begun its irrevocable spiral. The ice is melting.

Now, you need to take a bus to the glacier's edge.

Soon it will be gone, like all the rest. 

Another snapshot lost in time.

7/8 & 8/15/18

Looking for lost artwork of painter-poet, Boschka (Betty) Layton

Montreal/California Canadian painter-poet, Boschka (Betty) Layton, former wife of Canadian poet Irving Layton, friend of Leonard Cohen, sister to Donald Sutherland, was a dear friend of mine in Guereville during the 1980s.

Her son, Max Layton is searching for his mother, (Betty) Layton's lost work: specifically paintings, drawings, literary mags, etc. Max Layton is working on a project to create a collection of her work online. If you, or someone you may know, have any of her artwork, especially her paintings, he'd love to obtain high quality photos of her work. He was also wondering if you had any photos, memorabilia, or memories to share?

There is very little on the internet about Boschka, so any little bit would help. Betty was an art student at St. John Vocational School in Nova Scotia during the 1940s, and moved to Montreal to found Canada's first avant garde modern poetry magazine, First Statement, with her brother John (Jamie) Sutherland.

Boschka Layton lived near the Peewee Golf Course, on the Russian River, in Guerneville, California until 1983, then moved to Goat Rock, near Jenner, and passed away from pancreatic cancer on Valentine's Day in 1984.

 Apparently her daughter, Naomi Layton lives in Santa Rosa. Her friends, Kat & Boz Williams of Sebastopol have one painting.

 If you know of an artist, or an art collector, or poet, who lived on the River from 1970 to 1984, please feel free to tag them too.  Any information you might have would be most appreciated.

You may leave me a message here, or you can post stories on my artist Facebook page. —Thanks, Maureen Hurley


Boschka Layton (Betty Sutherland) 1921 - 1984
Guerneville Poet Boschka Layton to Read at Copperfield's

VANCOUVER VARIATIONS

VANCOUVER VARIATIONS

It was eerily amazing to see
a huge Iranian rally in Vancouver
students lining both sides of W Georgia St
all the way from Stanley Park to the top of the hill,
to Burrard, the heart of Vancouver's financial district.
Everyone in black, holding green balloons,
clapping and flashing peace signs.
Drivers honking in unison and in solidarity.

6/28/2009

ACROSS THE BORDER

ACROSS THE BORDER

Within hearing distance of Victoria Harbour,
we sit and savor the long white nights;
but we're really south of Friday Harbor, San Juan Island,
So why does twilight seem so much longer
across the border?

6/25/2009

Driving to K’san, Skeena River

Driving to Terrace

I admired the rough beauty of the Skeena River and the glacial sweep of the mountains. We were nearing Terrace. There was Old Terrace where the Indians mostly lived, New Terrace, a government project most likely, and there was a lot of empty road between it and 'Ksan, a reconstructed Indian village near Old Hazelton, that Vernon helped to design. Something to do with national pride. The Gitxsan Indian Nation.

Vernon was nothing like the Cherokee man we met in Vancouver who wanted to annihilate all white folks. But he liked us right enough. He wore a breastplate made of bones in the Cherokee style. Bones that reminded me of the delicate bone of my forearm. Paranoid, I told myself.

Vernon Stephens was driving down the Yellowhead at 110 mph in an old 60s pickup truck. Our packs were in danger of flying out the back of the truck. But I trusted Vernon implicitly. He picked us up in Prince Rupert. Liked our foolhardiness. "Anyone nuts enough to try to hitch out of that place deserves a ride," he said.

I had briefly met Vernon years before in front of the de Young museum (or was it the UBC?) I once spent an afternoon watching him carve a totem pole in the old way. I never expected to run into him again in Prince Rupert, of all places.

Vernon's hair was the most beautiful wavy black cloud I had ever seen. Bob's hair was long, and curly, California style, but he always wore his hair tied back in a knot, like he was secretly embarrassed by it all, and only grew long to be defiant after he got out of the army.

Vernon wore his hair like a bride's veil and he walked with the comfort of the man in touch with his body, his energy directed from his hips led him forward with grace and ease. Bob was head oriented. Like there was this string attached to the top of his head, lifting him up every time he stepped forward. Not of the earth. But then, that was Bob's way.

I'd been with Bob for so long, I'd gotten used to his ways. I'd forgotten about them, actually. Vernon made me aware of it. Made me turn over in my subconscious. Took me two years to realize it. Bob made me unhappy and I didn't even know it.

We stopped off to have a beer in Smithers. Vernon knew everybody there—there wasn't enough room for another chair at our table. "Can I buy you another round?" another face asked. I couldn't even place the name with the face, there were so many buyers.

I noticed that I was the only woman drinking in the bar. This was truly a man’s world. I was gatecrashing.Again. I asked, "So, don't women drink beer around here?" No one answered. The waitress was the only other woman I had seen since leaving Prince Rupert. Rosie was her name. Vernon said she was a great gal. He knew her well. I think. It made me a little envious.

Amazing to watch this man who had the profound respect of all these white folks. Not like the ones who hurled slurs at Indians in other towns. Not like the drunks sleeping it off below Pike Street in Seattle.

Vernon is a goldsmith. A well-known goldsmith. Most everyone around here is wearing one of the chased wristbands he makes for the Provincial Museum in Victoria, and other tourist shops. One of those bands costs more than what Bob and I have to live on for the entire summer.

Vernon takes off his cuff to show us how he makes it convex. I dabble in silver and show him my turquoise rings. I can tell that he is not impressed which makes me sit up a bit, as I'm pretty good at it, but I have no intention of becoming a jeweler, and he knows it.

The beer keeps coming. Soon, I'm slithering under the table, and they all have a good laugh. "She can can't even hold her beer," Vernon says smugly. I feel the implied dig and I slur, "I'm Irish. 100% Irish. We feel it sooner. It's this Canadian beer, it's stronger than our American beer." He laughs.

"Yeah, that’s real piss beer," someone offers. I retort, "Hey, listen, you got to account from my relative size. I am a lot smaller than you guys." And then I pretty much fall into a heap on the floor. Vernon takes my unfinished beer and drains it down. Lifts me up. Says, "Well, we gonna hit the ground. I got to get to Terrace. Thanks. Be seeing you."

Vernon pulled the battered truck into the only gas station in town. It took us two tanks of gas to drive from Prince Rupert to Terrace. We paid for gas. Least we could do. Nothing is close these parts. To go to the nearest bar, you have to drive 40 miles or so. No alcohol on Indian reservations.

Soon we have to take a break, return all that rented beer. There's so little traffic in these parts, the two men just stand there jawing on the side of the road at dusk. Male bonding in action. Twin rivulets track across the road and head down to the Skeena River. My beer frothed into a little well of sacred earth by the side of the road, making me realize, that despite the company, I was very much alone. In retrospect, I should’ve folded my bad hand, and run off with Vernon. But it was not in the cards.

typed 3/1979

SKEENA RIVER

Skeena River and vast glacial mountains
We drink from a pure stream along the way.

Why did Vernon say he hated the river?
Whey did it ever do to him?

Halfway to Terrace we stopped off for a beer

Soon the table was crowded with Indians
and two gringo hitchhikers.

After several rounds, I slid under the table
and all the men laughed because
a woman couldn't hold her beer.
We returned the rented beer to the river.

I’ve backpacked through British Columbia
and slept wherever it suited me.
But in Vancouver there was nowhere to stay.

So we slept in the shrubbery
at the University of British Columbia

and under a tree in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria
only to be awakened by an aphid rainstorm
and to a young man waking the swans with his flute.

And after a hangover from the Beaver Pub
we slept in the shadow of the lofty Empress Hotel.
In Stanley Park where we watched the ships in the Straits.

At Jasper, deep in the Rockies, We slept in a hotel lobby
with other travelers of the thumb

And we snuck into the showers upstairs.
Ah, such heaven.

On the reservation

she was young and big and brown
and seemed so much younger than I.

She looked forward to the day
when she could join the RCMP Academy.
She said her grades were good.

I looked at her in disbelief
and thought to myself, ah well,
one can be miserable in the midst of splendor
but it still is a kind of hell for her.

I have traveled so far to see her hell.
I camped by the Skeena River
in the bushes that night
and I got sick from the water.
Another hind of hell.

3/79

Postcard from Mount Rainier

July 5, 1975, Washington.

Dear Grandma, 

After we went to Victoria, we got bad weather and rain so it spoiled our stay. We took the Gulf Island cruise but didn’t stay long. We went to Salt Spring Island and Galliano Island. A tiny three-car ferry. It sure was miserable being there in the rain, so we went over to Vancouver and to Horseshoe Bay. 

Couldn’t see a thing because of the weather, so we decided to come back to the US. Then the good weather struck on the day we were about to leave. So we decided to stay a while longer and revisited the Horseshoe Bay area. Well worth the bother. It was stunningly beautiful. But the logging industry has ruined much of British Columbia. The air is absolutely foul from the paper pulp mills. Worse than LA smog.

We went up to Garibaldi Provincial Park North of Vancouver, but the only way in is by backpacking. Snow level was too low, so that was out. It had snowed a few days earlier down to 3000 feet, so the mountains were quite beautiful.

We took a ferry across Horseshoe Bay, thinking that the Sunshine Coast would also be as beautiful as Horseshoe Bay, but it was a disappointment. And there was no sunshine We were able to see so many of the sites we missed the last time. Capilano Gorge in North Vancouver was outrageous, an actual granite gorge in North Vancouver with a very bouncy rope suspension bridge. 

In Victoria, we ran into a bunch of people that we had met last year on Salt Spring Island it was a nice surprise. We ran out of things to do in Victoria so yesterday we headed back to the states and got through customs with four 12-pack cases of Labatt’s beer. The customs lady merely said “oh, go on through,” like we were a couple of kids. They usually make you pay duty on any alcohol in excess of 1 quart. We were fully expecting trouble through customs because the bus is a camper van, and they are usually thoroughly searched.

We drove straight through to Mount Rainier. There is so much snow here that one can’t really hike here either. Oh well. I found a warm spring on the slopes of Mount Rainier and soaked my feet from a small wooden bridge. June is not a good month to vacation in the Pacific Northwest. It’s nice now but another storm front is moving in from the coast. We will probably check out the Columbia River Gorge, and  the Trinity Alps, and then head back home in a couple of weeks or so.

Have you heard from Jane yet? I wrote to her in Ireland. I guess I’ll phone when I get back in California to find out when she is returning. Please, tell Borg of my travels as I haven’t sent a postcard. I haven’t yet sent Jane a postcard either. When the weather is so bad I didn’t feel like sending any cards to anyone. As it was, we had to stay in the van or camp out in a museum because of the dreadful rain.

Didn’t get any Dickson tea, but got another kind. I haven’t tried it yet. Barf-o-bits Bob has recovered from his sea voyage quite nicely. I think he just ate too much salmon as he won’t touch the stuff now. If you’re wondering why my writing is so messy I’m writing on top of Bob’s head. It’s the only level spot. 

Love, Baba