Mr. Nunes’ bison bull calf, Lagunitas, ca. 1982 (photos)

While scanning my tear sheet archives, I stumbled across some poor scans of old photos…. If I ever find the negatives….Mr. Nunes feeding Nickel, the bull calf bison while a scandalized Hereford heifer looks on incredulously as he feeds her hay to the stranger. Lagunitas, ca 1982.

I wonder what the heifer thought of the bison? It looks like the only romance going on was with the hay. Old Man Nunes was so proud of his little bison calf. What was he thinking? (Besides the price of beefalo.) Bison are completely unpredictable and are bulldozers when it comes to fences.

There's a backstory, bison are part of the fabric of my childhood. When I was a kid, there was another bison—yes, we called them buffalo—in Nicasio right by the church. The only reason why Belle the Buffalo stayed put in the church pasture was because she liked the other cows. I used to save my buffalo head nickels and named them all Belle. 

Tuesday was bank day at school. I was in second grade. We had a little manila envelopes with rope ties and we were encouraged to save a nickel or a dime a week so I put all my most treasured coins, Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels, and liberty dimes in those little envelopes thinking that I would get the same ones back again later from Bank of America, in the old brick Grandi Hotel in Point Reyes.

Then one hopped up Saturday night some hoodlums came out and shot the poor buffalo for no reason at all. Or, so the story goes. We were all devastated. Or so I thought, you know how gossip misdirects itself.  As it turns out, she up and died for no real reason. That’s the official story. Maybe it was natural causes like age, or disease. But I suspect some guys did shoot at her. It was that kind of an era with loaded gun racks across back windows of pickup trucks.

So, when Nickel showed up, we were all insane with joy. I used to take my grandmother up to the ranch for a visit (today would’ve been her 130th birthday). It was a case of Meet the new family pet, Nickel. I wonder what happened to the little bison when Old Man Nunes died. He was fence-resistant as I recall. The bison, not Mr. Nunes. 

Now there are fancyass palaces on Portola Road (the fire road to the Lookout) once my own private Eden, and I can't imagine they'd tolerate a wayward bison.

Both Tony Senior and Tony Junior have crossed the rainbow bridge, and Nickel, too, I presume. I always meant to collect Tony Junior’s folklore. Too late. I heard that the youngest brother, Mel Nunes, who was a few years ahead of me in school, became a volunteer fireman for the Woodacre Fire Department—still lives at the ranch. Maybe I’d better pay him a visit before it’s too late.

Unforseeable music

When I was young, I was asked if I would like to have a piano, and I said no, behind my crocodile tears, I wanted to play so badly, but sadly, I said no because all the piano tuners and musicians I knew were blind. Because I thought you had to be blind in order to become a good pianist, I said no. One of the musicians was Lennie Tristano, the famous jazz musician. I went to school with his son, Steve. And Kent Weaver was the local piano tuner. An early image I have of them is strolling down the low road to Lagunitas, a small country road, arm and arm, with someone who was sighted, leading the way. One time my friend was at a party in a little shack, deep in the woods, the weed was good, but it began to rain on their parade, the shack leaked, and it was too dark to see their way home, so Kent, the blind piano tuner, led the way home by heart.

Notes on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, renamed the Marginalian, posted an essay on Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. I had no idea that that Carson was a poet who became a biologist. Makes perfect sense. She was channeling the music of the hemispheres. 

When I was a child, I noticed the disappearance of bluebirds. I was confused, thinking they were a kind of robin because of their red breasts. But the robins abided. How was that so? Were the blue ones boy robins? That idea was a conundrum.

As a child, I was always making similes and mixing metaphors, but I sorrowed for the loss of the bluebirds from the ecosystem. And for a long time, the spring was silent as avian populations plummeted because of the long-term cumulative effects of DDT in the ecosystem. Hardest hit were the apex avian predators. I’m not sure why bluebirds were on that list, but they were.

I had to wait until I was nearly 30 before I saw another bluebird again. One time we were trespassing in a rancher’s field near Goat Rock in Sonoma County, when suddenly bluebirds burst into a cloud around us. I was transfixed. This was about the same time when I took up the mantle of poetry. (I was a late bloomer—as dyslexia dictated what I could do.) 

I remember puzzling over an article on Carson in the Sunday paper supplement explaining the effects of Silent Spring—which also already had profoundly affected me, though I was a child. A convergence of time and place, as it were, though I wasn’t yet ten.

And, of course it wasn’t just the bluebirds that were disappearing, but also the peregrine falcons, the hawks and the eagles too. A classmate’s father, Mr. McBride, had captive peregrine falcons, and sometimes he brought them to the marshy wetlands below Lagunitas School in San Geronimo. 

I remember him unhooding the peregrine, whose little hood bells tinkled like distant water, and I love the way they soared into the blueness of sky and then dived down faster than the eye could see, to strike down a pigeon mid-flight. I was transfixed.

At a summer party in Point Reyes, I met Brian Kervin’s father, Monte, who single-handedly saved the peregrines from extinction. Monty was a biologist who was an expert on the plight of the peregrine falcons. While he was doing a bird count, he noticed that when the birds sat on their nests, their thin eggs collapsed because of the cumulative effects of DDT in their systems.

Monte set out to save the peregrines from extinction. He scaled treacherous cliffs, stealing peregrine eggs from their eyries, and replacing them with marble eggs, invoking their wrath, as they dive-bombed him as he rappelled down the cliffs. He hatched peregrine chicks in incubators, and returned them to the wild—thus saving the species from the brink of extinction.

When I met Monte, I had come full circle. Of course, I had read Carson’s work in the 1970s, but I didn’t pick up the poetry connection, and I’m delighted to know that poetry is the foundation of her beginnings her underpinnings—because my love of science and the natural world is what led me to writing poetry. 

And of course, poetry is what saved me, giving me access to my poor locked brain, my intellect, hobbled by the chains dyslexia. And all the bluebirds, how they soared!

See THE MAN WHO LOVED FALCONS

• TWO BLUEBIRD MORNING
• baby bluebird (photos)

• BLUE COYOTE, 2/4/04

• Journal entry, 4/21/92 housesitting

Fist fight

Questions: How do I frame the story? How do I get out of the story? Resolution: an epiphany to uncover an emotional truth. Plot your strategy. 

Setting: Lagunitas school, eighth grade.  Wanting revenge, she used her tactics, and was a good mimic, and that way she was able to fly under the radar to avoid ostracism and unwelcome attention. But there were times when she could not avoid conflict with her classmates. Backstory, she was bullied one time too many. Her motivation. Her crime: she embellished upon a story she overheard, and then told it to to someone she thought she could trust, a friend. But she miscalculated the malevolent power of gossip or slander, and the cost of defending one’s honor. A lesson learned. The moral breakdown and disappointment are central to the story. She didn’t see the the flaw in her thinking versus outcome. But she was already feeling marginalized and overwhelmed, having been relentlessly bullied during the past couple of years in school. Yes, she wouldn’t have done such a thing if she had really thought about the consequences. If anything, it made the whole problem worse and made her even more of an outcast. Going to high school took some of the sting out of the disenfranchised hell she had created for herself.

Open wounds of childhood

When I was a child I was busy saving myself, because the usual suspects were MIA, my parents having long since fled the scene of my upbringing for the seductive smoky darkness of Northbeach bars. My default parent, my grandmother wasn’t the sentimental type. If I did something stupid, she’d grumble under her breath, so I learned to hide my wounds. Like that time I broke my arm. But there were times when hiding open wounds was impossible. We were walking home from catechism class at St. Cecelia’s, savoring the sweet chewy splinters of a Big Hunk bar one overcast winter afternoon. We took the low road because it was safer than the highway. Not many cars on the road in those days, but there were fewer bullies. Burly Charlie Vollenweider and his lanky friend Chalmers Ingersoll, atop the cliff above the highway, waited for us: me, Kathy and Marie Nielsen, and the Nunes girl—little Catholic girls running the gauntlet. I was relieved the boys were stuck on the cliff. They jeered and lobbed rocks at us from the top of the cliff. We ran from the barrage of rocks. One hit my head with a crack that sounded like a baseball connecting with the bat. I screamed and ran down the road, sobbing, my knees buckling under my chin as I fought the road rising up to greet me, a wash of hot blood trickling from my head. When I got to Arroyo Road, to cross the highway, a driver appeared by chance, and slammed on the brakes. I remember a green Pontiac.Was it my aunt? A neighbor? A stranger? They drove me home. My wound was dressed by my grandmother, adept at triage, having raised four boys and as many tomboys. The sheriff was called, and of course, the Vollenweiders were summoned, and accused me of lying. The immigrant divide was playing out in our living room as Mr. Vollenweider raged on like a prosecuting attorney, you could see where Charlie got his bullying skills from. Charlie smirked at me. It was my word against his. I was a mere child, not yet ten. So, nothing ever came of it. Who would’ve believed a child? Three witnesses and an open wound weren’t proof enough. The doctor finally arrived from Pt. Reyes, with his little black bag in tow, diffused the tension, but I couldn’t stop shaking. The light he shined in my eyes was like a knife. They wouldn’t let me sleep, and the headache numbed my senses. In hindsight, Old Man Vollenweider was protecting his son. But whenever I brush my hair, the dent in my skull, and a small betrayal knot of scar tissue where that rock pierced my scalp, is a constant reminder of the battle scars and injustices of childhood that we all carry. That afternoon I learned that the bullies came in all sizes and they always win.

8/17 Write On! With Susie Terence

A HOARDER OF SMALL THINGS

I am a hoarder of small things with plain stories to tell 

if you look closely enough. How that one lone yellow die, 

buried in the dirt—its lost mates, long gone—

still hankered for the darkness of the leather liar’s cup 

that tumped down on the mahogany bar like a fist

at Speck McAuliffe‘s Lagunitas Lodge. He rolled the dice.

The long mahogany bar was my runway, sticky as flypaper, 

where I could crawl and observe the adults up close. 

My aunts, thirsty after picking berries in the creek,

amid sizzling crickets and relentless summer heat, 

nursed tall Tom Collinses garnished with lime, while I

was thinking of the pies that my grandmother would make.

And Old Pete, the last real cowboy, a mule skinner,

perched on a stool at the end of the bar that no one dared use, 

rolled his cigarettes one-handed, and lived out back 

in a Slipstream, with his strawberry roan in a makeshift corral.

And Speck wiping down the bar with a threadbare rag,

told stories punctuated by a nasal Boston drone 

by way of the Mission, like a politician or petty king.

Those ivory dice decided the transitory fate of so many, 

from who was going to buy the next round, calling out

from snake eyes to boxcars, was there enough time 

to knock back another one, or to leave the wife behind?

After all, it was midday. In the cavernous darkness of that bar, 

time itself was suspended. On leave. But no one ever turned 

down the politics of a free boilermaker or a whiskey neat.

I listened to their unfinished stories that bled like old wounds, 

ate the odd snack of stick matches or cigarette butts, seeds  

that even Pete’s mean old green parrot, rejected.

He swore like a sailor every time that liar’s cup hit the bar, 

and churlishly rejected my childish offerings,

no matter how carefully I tried to disguise them 

amid the hulls of sunflower seeds. His baleful yellow eyes

like small suns followed me as he edged closer 

to grab my finger, his black leathery tongue 

and cruel beak seeking revenge on all humankind.

8/10 Write On! Susie Terence 

• See part 1, The collector

Greengrocer

Mr. Bagley returned home with a truckload of unsold vegetables. He drove a dusty-blue pickup the color of a humid sky, kitted up with produce bins and green doors that propped up to make a canopy. He must’ve had a greengrocer route similar to the Lucas Valley milk route in central Marin, over the hill, because we never saw him set up anywhere in the San Geronimo Valley. He was fairly new to the area, his large family took up two pews in the Lagunitas church. I didn’t know anything about them or where they came from. It was an unlikely convergence of events that became a moment etched in time. I was playing with Rosemary and Danny Magnussen. Taciturn Mr. Bagley didn’t say much as he counted out the day’s profits, a mere bowl of change. But his wife took it all in stride and cooked up a massive pot of rice and leftover vegetables. I remember sitting at a makeshift table on a large bulldozed flat, two old wooden doors on sawhorses turned into a table. It never occurred to the Bagleys to send us home. We were all invited to the meager feast, grubby neighborhood kids, no one was excluded. After a hard afternoon of playing kick-the-can, and hide-and-seek, yelling out olly-olly-oxen-free, come out, come out wherever you are, we were scabby wains as ravenous as vultures. I remember a mob of kids sitting around that makeshift table, seated on long planks or on tree stumps, scarfing down mountains of rice and butter, with zucchini and ketchup, like it was the last supper. I never tasted anything so good before. There was something holy and profound in that moment. It could’ve been a Dorothea Lang photograph straight out of a migrant worker camp. Mr. Bagley, sunburned and worn out from a long day selling his vegetables, gazed at us with watery eyes, then cracked open a beer, took a long drought from the amber bottle, then leaned back to take it all in as he smoked his cigarette down to the nub. In retrospect, they were probably on welfare, like many of us, the 50-pound sack of rice, from a food bank. Sometime those who had the least were the most generous. They didn’t stay long in the valley, they moved on to other pastures. Hopefully they were greener ones. What I remember is the indigo sky and the watery stars. And then, the long walk back home in the dark.

This evolved from a Facebook comment.

RIP Naomi Judd

Note bene: I never know where my next writing idea will come from, where it will go, or what spawns an idea, usually it’s because of a Facebook post that serves as a trigger, I write a comment which leads to another comment, and so on. I never expected to be floored by the death of Naomi Judd, someone I didn’t even know. But there you have it. It seems Facebook style Wakes are becoming a thing. This is a developing piece based on a lot of hear-say (stet) as I only knew her on on the periphery. Call it 1° of separation if you must. So bear with me as I uncover a West Marin story.

A new Facebook friend, activist Sandra Birnhak, who grew up with Diane/Naomi in Kentucky, said she went by the name Naomi back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, so maybe she changed her name back to her given name, Diane when she was in LA, with her then husband, Michael Ciminella, before moving to Lagunitas. She was only 17 or 18  when she had her first daughter, Christine, in 1964. 

Sounds like Hollywood wasn’t kind to her—in her autobiography, River of Time, she mentions about being molested by an uncle, she abandoned by her husband, then, at 22, she was raped by an ex-con heroin addict. I don’t know how she wound up in the San Geronimo Valley, but it was a haven of single mothers. Since I only knew of her peripherally, I’m still piecing together the stories… 

Backstory: The Judds once lived in Speck McAuliff’s apartments above the post office in Lagunitas (where I once lived as a young child before my parents split up). Then they moved up the road to north a cottage on Tamal Road next to the House of Richard (a hippie store), and they also lived on Resaca Avenue as well.  

Selling the city house

prose meanderings for next poem

I am sure there were moments when I felt cherished as a child. But when I think back on the details of my early life, it was a constant upheaval of movement, water circling the drain. My grandfather‘s death brought about the first major shift, the city Victorian was sold, the aunts and uncles scattered in all directions. The cavernous house that had sheltered many lives, with its basement flat for my aunt and uncle, the marble steps leading to the first floor where the kitchen and the living room were separated by a large paneled foyer, with pocket doors—and the serpentine stairwell that led to the top floor—really the attic filled with bedrooms that my mother and two aunts shared. The house sold. It’s hard to imagine eight kids raised in that old house, it must’ve been filled to the rafters with noise. Four boys on one side, four girls on the other side. The uncles all moved out after they were drafted, fully fledged, but the all the aunts all stayed in the family home, including my mother. With two married couples, one in the basement, with its own kitchen, it was still a crowded house. I don’t remember my father ever being in that house, but I suppose he was. After the city house was sold, we had briefly moved down the road from my grandmother’s summer house, to live in Speck McAuliffe’s apartments in Lagunitas. I don’t know how long we lived there, not long, because my father disappeared soon after, and I was packed up and sent to live with my grandmother on Barranca Road.

This old house

The old house in limbo, decades after her death, is in purgatory. The floorboards have given up their tiles to reveal buckled plywood that sheds layers like the pages of a book, a story of word and wind.

I remember my uncles, one just home from the Korean War,  pounding nails into the joists as I peered down into the basement below. I was fascinated with the darkness hidden beneath our feet, as we walked from bedroom to kitchen, past the expanse of living room to dining room, and the front door. I must’ve been looking out that door into the summer light as I headed toward the kitchen, my toes finding a jagged edge of wood as I thrust a bare foot forward.

Perhaps I was hungry or just careless but the splinter buried so deep that bright blood blossomed like poppies in Flander’s Field.

I don’t remember who removed that sprinter, my grandmother or an aunt, it was large. When we say splinter we think of something small. But this was massive, larger than a needle, more like a pencil, but that may have been an exaggeration. I was young.

But my blood was written on those floorboards, and in that sacrifice, I opened up a part of myself and let the darkness in, the floor spoke of time passing. It wasn’t the original floor of the old house, but a copy, subjected to the idea of modernization.

One for Billy Joe Bianchi

Bill Bianchi 1/16/1950 - 9/4/2020

Thinking of you lots, these days, Billy Joe. Like the song, you’ve been on my mind. I was talking to Dennis de la Montanya the other day. A rarity as I hate talking on the phone. We used Messenger. Even worse, with video. No way to hide how we’ve all aged. I remember when we were young, during the 1960s, Pacific Bell set up mobile labs in the San Geronimo Valley Horseman’s Arena, and we rode down to see what the future might entail. Inside the trailers were telephones with video screens. Cumbersome things. I thought it would never come to pass. But here we are. Do you remember? Phone calls to the future, or to the dead. Dennis had sent a photo of the San Geronimo Valley baseball team. Suddenly I was remembering watching you playing baseball at Lagunitas School, running, top of the ninth, the bases were loaded, we were all yelling slide, slide, home run. How you loved baseball. You could’ve been a contender. Or at least a major league pitcher with that throwing arm. Do you remember that first kiss? Or the time you took the old truck into the lower field, with your sister Cottie and me trailing along behind, little pests that we were—how, as you spun us circles in the dirt in that old Ford, it was as exciting as any carnival ride. But the passenger door flew open with the centrifugal force, and you grabbed my arm as I hovered in space, my legs flying like little flags, the dirt spinning past me. It was the closest I ever got to solo flying. But you didn’t let go of my arm. You didn’t let go. Brave, you are. Blessings upon you, old friend. Blessings. May you walk the bridge in peace. You gave the Big C a heroic fight. Showed it what a home run really meant. Bring the team home, Billy Joe. Bring it home. It’s OK to let go. Walk on. 

William Bianchi obituary

Home Run

We were talking about baseball the other day. Old Lagunitas School friend Dennis de la Montanya was checking in, because of the evacuation. We reminisced about the past, I wanted to see a photo of his father Dean the Milkman, whom I was crazy about when I was a child. Was he is handsome as Dean Martin, the face I remembered? After Dean was killed, Irene married Joe Bianchi. Dennis sent me some photos, among them, a junior league photo of our San Geronimo Valley classmates. I posted it in our San Geronimo Facebook site. Names crawled out of the past: Marc and Wayne Peacock, Johnny Kaufman, the Fahey brothers, Jeff Sousa, and Dennis. No Billy Joe. I guess he had moved on. But in the intricate basket weave of memory, his presence was winnowed. He was our star player. We thought he’d go onto the big leagues. Someone, perhaps Liz Haas, complained that in those days, girls weren’t allowed to play baseball. And she was a good player. I remember one afternoon, everyone gathered at the baseball diamond at Lagunitas school, there were so few of us, that girls and boys played on the same team. It was late afternoon with long shadows, and Linda Gregg hit a home run, her ponytail was a golden stream of sunlight as she ran the bases. Billy Joe Bianchi slid into home. Slide, slide, slide. The bases are loaded, teammates on both sides cheered. Slide. Safe. And now Dennis says Billy Joe is going down for the final count. Bases are loaded, but Billy Joe gave the odd a run for their money.

Three generations of de la Montanyas, Dean, Sr., Dean, Jr., & Dennis 

Marin watersheds

1898 tourist map of Marin replete with trails and creek names.

The creek where I grew up one has many names, and I even wrote a poem about all the name changes. I realize that all those names represent a slices of history. Who came first who came second who came next. Of course the Miwok names are lost. The creek I grew up on, was once called the Arroyo de San Geronimo, which runs from White's Hill/Woodacre to Shafter's/Inkwell where it joins Lagunitas Creek. We called the whole thing from Woodacre to Shafter’s, Lagunitas Creek. But we were wrong.

The headwaters of Lagunitas Creek is Lake Lagunitas on Mt. Tam. All those Marin reservoirs including Kent Lake, are filled by Lagunitas Creek, and its sibling, Carson Creek.

Was a time the old name of Arroyo de San Geronimo Creek was applied all the way to Pt. Reyes Sta. and Tomales Bay. I found it on an old Rancho map.

After Samuel Taylor set up the paper mill, the bit of creek that ran from Shafter's pool to White House Bend was eventually called Papermill Creek, and just to confuse things, also Lagunitas Creek.

A. Van Dorn’s 1860 map of Marin labels the stretch of creek that goes from Woodacre to Pt. Reyes Sta. in its entire length, as Arroyo de San Geronimo. The paper mill is marked on the map but the creek wasn't yet called Papermill Creek. Probably Arroyo de San Geronimo morphed into Papermill...but Lagunitas Creek was one ridge to the west, not in the San Geronimo Valley.

The creek that ran from Woodacre to Shafter's was NOT called Lagunitas Creek though it runs through the town of Lagunitas (more on that later). As kids we called the creek San Geronimo, Creamery, Forest Knolls, Lagunitas, even Papermill Creek, depending upon where we were located....same creek, different names, depending on one's whim.

The map above predates the construction of the reservoirs, and you can see that the long north-south creek following the San Andreas faultline, where Kent, Alpine, Bon Tempe, Phoenix, and Lagunitas are all located, is clearly marked as Lagunitas Creek.

Today's town of Lagunitas didn't yet exist, it was a 1910 subdivision. Some say that the real Lagunitas was where Shafter's RR spur and water tank, along with the Log Cabin were located, at the sharp bend where Arroyo de San Geronimo joins Lagunitas Creek. Lagunitas Canyon had several logging camps, hence the name, Lagunitas. But there’s more to that story because there was also a Lagunitas above Ross. Kent Lake wasn't yet there....

1875 NPCRR picnic and campout at the Shafter's RR spur and water tower at the Inkwell,
where San Geronimo Creek joins the MOUTH of Lagunitas Creek. Note the use of the word "mouth." As in terminus.

Facebook friend, Steve Tognini wrote: Don’t forget that the section from the inkwell to Pt Reyes station was called Daniels creek after it was arroyo San Geronimo and before it was Papermill creek. Also, early on Lagunitas creek in Lagunitas canyon ended at Carson creek and that junction down to the inkwell was called Big Carson. Lagunitas canyon and the community of Lagunitas in that canyon consisted of Lagunitas ranch, Lagunitas dairy, Liberty ranch and resort, Lagunitas gun club, Malliard cabin, Kent cabin, Masons cabin, shafter/Howard sawmill, possibly a Malliard saw mill and the logging community.  It’s this community that voted for Lincoln in 1864. This is also the area where the little lakes existed and where the Lagunitas name originated from. Once the dams pushed this community out the name migrated down into the area it occupies today.

I said, Niice Steve. Yes, my family used the Big Carson name, and though I know where it is, I didn't understand why. Makes more sense now.

Pretty much all of Marin voted for Lincoln.

It seems our concept of where creeks begin and end is on really shaky ground. It sounds like our definition has also shifted. And that there is a huge uneasy conflation of all the Lagunitases into one thing. 

A revelation that Lagunitas Creek spilled into Big Carson creek that ended at Shafters, and another creek name was introduced at that junction. Daniels creek. I guess it didn’t last long before Daniels Creek succumbed to Papermill Creek. Who was Daniels anyway?

I always found it puzzling that some kids called San Geronimo Creek—Papermill Creek—as there was no papermill in the SGV. So renaming the Forest Knolls Lodge Papermill Creek Lodge is a weird misnaming that happened in the 1970s. It was always the FK Lodge, founded in 1907, when I was growing up in the 1960s.

I suspect June Berensmeyer, who, to the consternation of local valley folks, often muddled valley history, is ultimately the source for renaming the Inkwell as a plural entity.

According to my grandmother, the San Geronimo Valley, there were vernal pools from Flanders field and at the Woodacre turnoff, and at Dickson Ranch, and the Dougan/French Ranch, and on the back side of the golf course for starters. Even more pools during my grandmother's time. So we do come by the name fairly.

But I’d bet in Lagunitas Canyon there must have been another string of little lakes where the dams are now.

Steve said I read an article from the magazine Outdoor Monthly, 1875, I think, it’s on the SGV Stewards page, that describes hikers dropping into Lagunitas canyon from above and walking past the “little lakes”. If the name originated in Lagunitas canyon, and I believe it did, then it follows that the little lakes would be in the Lagunitas canyon. Our town of Lagunitas did not exist in the SGV as a place until much later so I feel that likely removes the valley from consideration for the location for the lakes. Pretty evident that names changed and moved from place to place. I think it key that we remember that Lagunitas canyon was the first place that held that name.

I said, Steve Tognini  yes, that story makes sense....except there were also many vernal pools, my granny loved seeing them from the train. And of course, she said that’s how Lagunitas got its name....
Some modern map resources on watersheds, since some people don't know their watersheds, or where their local creeks drain to:

http://www.marinwatersheds.org/resources/maps

Full-sized download, here: 33 megs, 6165x4904 pixels -- which works out to 16x20 inches if it were printed at 300 dpi.

From a Facebook post

SIREN CALL

Classmate Steve Tristano in Oregon 1952-2015

SIREN CALL

We were in 2nd grade, Mrs Burge had left the room,
Lennie's son, Steve Tristano climbed up
onto the piano bench to bang out a boogie woogie,
we were all rocking out—until she returned.
Busted. Instead of praising him, she raged
and let out an anachronic scream
that ripped open the fabric of the universe.
The planets cowered as Steve took the brunt of her anger.
In that way, we knew jazz was bad, very bad.
A siren call, a farewell to arms. An addiction.
And with that, Steve slipped off his moorings a bit—
the descent into darkness had begun.

8/11/17

Tristano & Son (Amie Street)
Sutton & Tristano

FIRST SWIM

FIRST SWIM

I rode my red mare to the back of Kent Lake
for the first swim of the season. Sweet May.
Far from civilization, I had the lake to myself.
I climbed out onto a wide stump,
a relic from the drowned ghost forest
from when the dam was made,
in order to dive into the ink-dark water.
(I was skinnydipping. Who needed a suit?)
I launched, a perfect arc, mid-way in the air, 
I realized, it was not deep water, but the sky
and scuttling clouds reflecting off a mudflat.
I had to flatten my angle to pull off
a shallow bellyflop in a foot of water
in order to save my neck, literally. 
No one but my indifferent horse witnessed 
how I hit the mud hard, while the lake 
clapped a one-handed encore
that reverberated in the deep canyons.
My belly and breasts were scraped raw,
my neck and ribs hurt, I was winded.
So I lay in that mud incanabula, taking stock
wondering if I could ever move again,
wondering who would find me weeks later
lying face down in the mud. All that exposed flesh.
Shame drove me. I crawled out of the fine silt,
a mud monster, garlaned with red ribbons,
and lucky to be alive... foolish, impetuous youth.

My horse turned a blind eye, 
tearing at the tender new grass
as if it were her last meal.

4/12/2017

Summer of Love, etc.

You know the Robin Williams line—even if he didn't say it: if you remember the 60s, you weren't really there. But we were really there. What my classmate Robin should have said: Remembering the '60s is tricky, at best.

I grew up between worlds and times in the San Geronimo Valley, a rural enclave in West Marin which was rapidly becoming an alternative lifestyle destination. A lot of interesting folks who shunned the cities and suburbs wound up in The Valley, as it was called. It was an uneasy marriage of radically different worlds.

I attended Lagunitas School District—LSD (I know, 'splains a lot). I was straddling the old redneck ranchers' world (living with my Irish Victorian grannie), and the Flower Children dancing in the dawn of a New Age—and me, trying to toe the mutable line. Not an easy task.

During the late 60s, I attended Sir Francis Drake High School—the only high school (emphasis on the word high) in the nation to shut down a local draft board.  We were a pretty radicalized group of kids.

Our student body president was Jared Rossman from Fairfax. That last name should ring a bell—as his older brother, Michael Rossman, was a key figure in the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964. On the eve of The Summer of Love, we marched to town and shut down the San Rafael Draft Board. Our school made the cover of Time Magazine and the 6 O'Clock News. And we gave the FBI a new client list.

When the school district took away our buses, I was the roadside kid hitching home from school. This is how I met most of the rock musicians of that era, Ken Kesey and his cast of Merry Pranksters, and boarded Further, etc.

During the Summer of Love, I was pretty straight, I was also very young. I was 14—a mere 'tweenie. Between worlds. What I remember most from that era was the original 1967 "A Gathering of the Tribes Human Be In" in Golden Gate Park. It was a protest gathering to counter a new California law to make LSD illegal. Timothy Leary famously said from the stage, "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and then came tripping out through the audience to give my mom a hug.

A Beatnik and a Project Artaud painter, my mom was one of the first artists to embrace the hippie movement. She was at the epicenter of The Summer of Love. Mom dragged me through the Haight early and often. Sometimes our worlds intersected. I was a wide-eyed kid trying to take it all in. A vicarious bystander. Sure, there was fallout, growing up like that in unchartered territory. But I survived the social revolution more or less intact.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was meeting future mentors of our generation: Richard Alpert ("Ram Dass"), Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras, Gary Snyder, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jerry Rubin. Most of the bands who played in the parks were our near neighbors in West Marin: Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

For some reason, though we lived in the epicenter of this sociological turmoil, it's hard to write about it so, from time to time, I whittle away at it, in search of the through line. Memory's always a work in progress.

I told former Sonoma County poet, Colorado Arts Commissioner Art Goodtimes, a mushroom aficionado, that I had a wild mother who claimed I was an amanita child. As if that explained things. We laughed and blamed the drugs.

I was living out in rural West Marin and commuting into the suburbs to go to school, holding onto a dual life between worlds while most of my friends were defecting, tuning in and dropping out, and running off with bands or the circus. It was some crazy times. Somehow we grew up between the Be-in, The Summer of Love, and the Kent State Massacre. This was our legacy.

Yes, we were really there. And we do remember. Robert Frost wrote: The best way out is always through. We survived the 'tween years—we could see no other way out but through. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Declining coho run on Lagunitas Creek: It's the damned dams, Stoopid!

An Open Letter to Alastair Bland:

Who, in an article, Big Rains Bring Both Good and Bad News for Salmon, for of newsdeeply.com, wrote that: "Lagunitas Creek and its lower tributaries, have been lined with bank fortifications and berms that confine the streams to their main channels..." are the real problem for failing coho salmon runs ... Not.

Hmm, Mr. Bland, and there are few berms on Lagunitas Creek. Unless you're referring to the dams on upper Lagunitas Creek, they are called, you know, flat-out dams, not berms. I  ridden every inch of that creekbed from the Inkwell to Tócaloma. There are berms at Jewel, but that’s about it.

As to your reference to all the damage to the lower tributaries, you're way off mark (have you ever heard of primary investigation vs using Wiki as a reference, bolstered by a Marin Municipal Water District quotes. Nice touch, BTW. Lends a real air of authenticity.

Has it also ever occurred to you that MMWD just MIGHT be part of the main problem? Not exactly an unbiased source. Think about that for a moment. I'll wait. Five dams. Has the penny dropped? Oh, right. Dams! MMWD's bread and butter. Ka-ching!

One main tributary to Lagunitas Creek (other than Olema Creek), the San Geronimo/Creamery Creek does not have extensive berms either, and certainly not any new channeling, and the fish runs were huge when I was a kid. There was a fish ladder at the golf course (see below), but it didn’t impede the fish run. The golf course (and pesticides) did.

I know damned near every bend of these creeks. (And most of the tributaries). And I have swum in, or ridden most of the streambeds. On Lagunitas Creek, south of Kent Lake Dam, Devil's Gulch Creek, another main tributary, has NO berms whatsoever... never had them, so this is bogus info. Total bullshit. Olema Creek, ditto. Cowshit might contribute to the problem in Point Reyes. But I have seen silver salmon runs where the water was roiling with fish in cowshitted water.

There was a fish ladder (at Roy's Dam) on the San Geronimo Creek in San Geronimo. Unless the fish ladder was later removed, SPAWN's claim to fame is somewhat hyperbolic. The fact, that in 1997, the fish were still navigating San Geronimo Creek, suggests it wasn't a problem. I distinctly remember going to the ladders to watch the coho navigate the steps in the 1970s.

It is possible that the SGV Golf Course radically changed the structure of the ladder ca. the late 1980s, early 1990s, and I wouldn't have witnessed it. (From what I can gather, upon further sleuthing, the fish ladder was in disrepair, and fixed in 1999 and Roy's Dam—if you can call it a dam— was removed). But I’ll also mention again that the golf course used pesticides to keep the weeds off the course. 

Maybe Andy Giddings has more specific info on the SGV creek fishladder as his father was Fish & Game Warden for the San Geronimo Valley during the 1950s-1980s?

BTW, Fish also made it all the way up to our tertiary creeks, Barranca and Arroyo during the 1960s. 

On San Geronimo Creek, where it meet Lagunitas Creek, Shafter's Pool was dammed during the summer, but that practice stopped in the late 50s, early 60s. It was a seasonal dam, a summer swimming hole for kids. It had zero impact on coho runs. And the salmon were still plentiful. No other dams on the creek. So what exactly are you talking about?

The silver salmon and the coho runs declined in the 80s-90s, there's something else at work: like over-fishing and lack of spawning grounds. Oh, and the biggest "berm" of all, Kent Lake Dam—is probably the biggest reason of all why critical fish habitat was destroyed. Add Nicasio Dam to that list. Most of the Mt. Tam dams date back to the 'teens" so they didn't have a huge recent impact on failing coho runs of the 1990s.

Lake Lagunitas dam was built 1872, Alpine Dam 1917, Bon Tempe 1948, Kent Lake (Peter's) Dam, the largest reservoir, in 1954—it was still filling up in the late 50s. The dam was raised 45 feet in 1982, after the drought of the 70s. Nicasio Dam was added in 1962.) And then there was the drought. Did I mention drought. As in several back-to-back long-term drought cycles?

So, to be clear, Lagunitas Creek (and its three forks) is dammed at Lake Lagunitas, becomes Lagunitas Creek the First, which drains into Bon Tempe Lake, then to Alpine Dam, (with a name change to Big Carson), then to Kent Lake Dam, then to Lagunitas Creek the Second, at the confluence of San Geronimo Creek. Note: they are full blown DAMS not berms.

And then there's Nicasio Creek, which flows from the Nicasio Reservoir (1962), to Platform Bridge, where it joins Lagunitas Creek— another damned dam, to the mix. That's the source of the problem. All the damned dams.

FYI: From Kent Lake to the sea, Lagunitas Creek is a wild creek through Samuel P.Taylor Park, through Jewel, around the bend, past Devil's Gulch, past McIsaac's Ranch, my cousin's Gallagher Ranch at Elephant/Black Mountain, to Point Reyes Station, to the Point Reyes bridge....still NO channels or berms, on to White House Pool, that I can recall—then it empties into Tomales Bay... Even Olema Creek is not bermed. So, what are you talking about?

Seriously, this sounds like a spin from the self-serving organization, SPAWN (litigious Todd Steiner's Salmon Protection and Watershed Network) which began its alternative truth campaign in 1997, and has been wildly successful at obfuscation and litigation...probably leading to some of the factoids in your article, a case in point. It's the damned dams that are the problem. And droughts. Did I mention the droughts???

Otherwise, a good article...

Google Maps screenshot of San Geronimo Creek headwaters. Roy's Dam was at the golf course, where SGV Rd turns up to Nicasio road.

Becky Dart: Born to Run

Me and Becky Dart ca. 1969. The fence is cribbed so I had her a while.

Once upon a time I had a sorrel mare so fast at the quarter mile, no other horse could beat her. When Becky Dart ran, it was like riding the wind, or a barrel down the rapids. She exploded with energy so fierce, it was hard to stay mounted. Of course, I rode bareback, and had thighs of steel. I was addicted to speed and she was born to run.

The thrill of riding an animal faster than any other four-legged creature on earth, save the cheetah, or antelope—neither of which you can ride—was euphoric.

My five-year-old mare came from Olema Ranch and cost $500. In those days there wasn't much readily available information on the pedigrees of horses. Most pedigree stories were passed down by word of mouth while standing at the corral gate. My aunt's friend Chuck traced her pedigree chart, the long hard way. At first, he thought her pedigree was forged, then he said that she was valuable as a broodmare, as her bloodline was that of champions. Of course I had no idea.

Becky Dart carried the same ancestry as California Chrome—right back to the Darley Arabian—they were Drinkers of the Wind. I had the fastest horse in West Marin. I rode the wind. No one could beat that horse at the quarter-mile. But at the two-mile marker, on the old Lagunitas railroad bed in Samuel P. Taylor Park, I was always left eating crow. Or dust. My competitive mare wouldn't give up until she was thoroughly winded and sobbing for breath.

I pored over that pedigree chart, the size of a coffee table, and memorized the names of her ancestors all the way back to the thoroughbred foundation sires. Her pedigree was studded with Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes winners: she had Triple Crown winners on both sides of the family tree. She was related to Man o' War, (1917-47) one of the greatest Thoroughbred racehorses of all time, through War Hug. And one jockey's name appeared again and again: the famous racing icon, Willie Shoemaker.

I remember watching Willie Shoemaker riding the legendary Candy Spots to victory at the 1963 televised Preakness. I was starstruck.

Becky Dart's great-grandfather was Three Bars (1940-1968.) Other than a wide blaze, she looked like him. Same tiny ears, dished face and teacup nose, reflecting Arabian ancestry. she even held her tail up like a flag when she ran. The mare was a bit slenderer, though. And she had scarred knees.

How the mare came to that ranch in Olema, her sire, Dart Bar, owned by Bill Cowan, was from McNeal, AZ), is a bit of a mystery. But her scarred knees suggest something went wrong and she was not racing track material. Retired from the track before she even began. But she carried the legendary names of Three Bars, and Dart Bar.

A cowboy at the Olema Ranch mentioned she wore braces as a foal, that's why her knees were bald. She was probably sold at auction to the knackers, or a claims race, and was rescued by those cowboys who ran the dude ranch. For a cripple, she sure could run. She had a palomino sister at the ranch too, also out of Dart Bar.

That spring, I put my mare in Mary Bianchi's pasture to graze on the lush grass. I checked on her after school and she was fine. But that evening, I had a hunch something was wrong and and I found her down and sweating.

Nothing should've gone wrong, but it did. She had colic, and though I walked her for 18 hours, she never got better, she'd twisted her colon—peritonitis had set in. No way to save her. She died in Edie Lehman's sand arena, where I worked as a exercise groom—after a long, and violent struggle.

I never got over watching her die like that, screaming, and rearing over backwards, to escape the pain. The vet ended it with a foot-long needle to the heart. I always meant to write about her, never quite managed to do a decent job of it. A snippet here and there. A horse like that leaves a deep sinkhole in the mind, and I had backfilled it with grief.

I worked for the Lehman's training stable, and showed their horses at gymkhanas, I collected armloads of blue and red ribbons, but I didn't want to own another horse, losing her was devastating. She was big and beautiful, there was so more of her to love. There was nothing much left of my childhood landscape. Sometimes I dream of my horses running free on the slopes of Mt. Barnabe, and wake up with an inconsolable sense of longing.

I had to wait decades for the internet cute animal memes to parade forth in order to find this page on Doc Bar...which led to this post.

My brother Guy, and a relation—who, I'm not sure.

Bleeding Hearts (photo)

Bleeding hearts; 40 years ago, I fell down a scree embankment above the creek and dislodged these bleeding hearts. Feeling sorry for them, I took them home and they took root. So they're about 40 years old (and a whole lot older than that in the larger scheme of things). They bloom faithfully every year. My valentines.

I got a new camera yesterday. I toasted mine on NYE, taking pix of Pt. Reyes. It got its sensor burnt at Schooner Creek, by reflections. And then light meter went to the dark side. I found I could coax it along by bracketing, but what's the point? And the camera I had my eye on was the next model up Panasonic w/ the Leica lens. AND the price had dropped by $160! Over the moon. Zoom isn't as good as it could be, but I can control F-stop, shutter, etc...lots of features. We'll see.

added 2/2017

New Clothes for School

Me and Micaela Wall, August/September, 1965.

Throwback Thursday, end of summer, 1965. Me & my best friend, Micaela, getting ready for our first day of school. We were about to become big, bad 8th graders. Of course it was hotter than Hades...and I was modeling my new wool duds.

I was so excited to have real new clothes, a rarity, that despite triple-digit heat (Indian Summer), I'd persist in wearing them the first day of school though they were winter clothes. We're talking lined heavy wool skirts and mock turtleneck sweaters more suitable for East Coast winters, than autumn in California.

I'm wearing an itchy green mohair sweater and an acetate rayon-lined pleated green and white wool hounds-tooth checked skirt, both at least two sizes too big, so I could grow into them. I never did. Nor did I ever grow into the size 8.5 white shoes—I took a few tumbles running in those floppy clown-sized shoes. I took to sliding down our hill in them like skatefboards. I was so glad when they finally wore out. Of, course, I got in trouble for wearing them out so quickly.

This particular winter outfit was from a fancy department store, I.Magnin in San Francisco. It was a big once-in-a-lifetime fairy godmother gift shopping spree from a neighbor, for being a big girl. Rites of passage.

Poor Micaela didn't have a fairy godmother. So her red velvet dress with the black velvet ribbon, was a prized possession. Truth be known, I would've traded her dress for what I was wearing. Already I'm wilting in the heat while Micaela looks relatively cool in her cotton velvet number. 

We rarely got new clothes (my grannie's annual Christmas gift was quaint white cotton underwear sets from Macy's), so my extended family sometimes bought me winter clothing, as if preparing me for life's extreme challenges. No fair weather clothing, ever. Or sailing.

My new duds were gleaned from rummage sales and church bazaars, or my grannie made them. Every so often, there'd be a cock-up where a girl would recognize her old clothes on me, and cruelty ensued. I felt so shamed when the Tomasini girl from Nicasio sliced my ego to ribbons, sullying my favorite new dress.

I'm holding a peacock feather long before Marin was associated with them. Note the white shoes. Winter 62?, or 1963.

Micaela's father refused to buy her anything. Even used. So we had to make do. I sometimes gave her my old clothes, already old to begin with, but she soon outgrew me. So, that didn't work. I could sew, I had learned at an early age to make doll clothing on my grandmother's ornate black and gold 1928 Singer sewing machine. I also sewed my fingers up a few times too. I taught Micaela to sew on the ridiculous toy sewing machine her father bought her.

Our white shoes have taken on the patina of dust, last year's long jeans, now summer cutofffs. Summer of 64?

We couldn't afford new material or patterns, so we were inventive. Micaela and I re-made most of our own clothes repurposed from other people's old clothes. Late night sewing fests with that toy sewing machine revving like a race car, was our idea of a fun sleepover.

Shopping was not like today where you can go to any mall,  anywhere in the world, and get the same name brand clothes. Terra Linda's Northgate Mall hadn't yet been built, and the flagship Corte Madera shopping center (1958) had a Monkey Wards, a JC Penny's, a tux shop, a Cala supermarket (a new concept), and not much else. One of the first post-war modern suburban malls, built in Seattle, in 1950, also a Northgate, followed by Stonestown in San Francisco, 1952, ushered in the concept of modern shopping as we know it.

I can't remember if Micaela bought this red velvet A-line dress or if it was something she made from another old dress. But it was a score. Probably a gift from her stepsisters: Tina or Sonia. The only ready money we had was from doing errands for neighbors, or babysitting at 25 cents an hour. And we were far too young to get very many jobs. I'm sure there's a story behind her dress. There were stories behind all our clothing. 

I suspect Micaela's pin was liberated from the Sausalito Trade Fair or the Village Fair. When it came to high fashion, we made do with smoke and mirrors and creative makeovers. It helped that my absentee mother was a costume designer, so there were always bags of interesting clothing scraps stashed in our basement.

We were the teenybopper queens of repurposed clothing. Perhaps the most extreme clothing makeover, was when we took a conservative 50s style, long green corduroy pencil skirt, and split it in two along the seams lengthwise, to make two mini skirts (sideways). It was Micaela's score so I got stuck with the back half of the skirt, and had to work a kick-pleat and zipper hole into my design. A strategically placed pocket came to the rescue. 

Clearly, that top photo with the wool skirt that I was so proud of, was from the pre- miniskirt phase. When we wore our new twin mini skirts to high school (in 1966-67), we both got into trouble, turned into the office by different teachers, even though we had tights on, and were covered up to our necks. Busted. With the brevity of our skirts, we'd triggered an unknown indecency rule. No matter that Mary Quandt had pioneered the look in 1964. And Twiggy was the rage.

I think we were both sent home from school that day for testing the limits on how short a mini skirt could be.

My grandmother made my 8th Grade graduation dress trimmed with Irish lace. It had a purple empire ribbon decked with real bluebells of Ireland (campanula) under my non-existent bust, ca. 1966-67.