Eastern Sierras: Fall

Sept. 24, Tuesday    

High up in Bishop Creek Canyon is a small group of cabins for rent, Parchers Resort.  It has been a favorite of mine for many years, giving me the experience of mountain forest, early and late. Streams crash down over boulders and downed trees, aspens  golden leaves dance to the windsong, and the canopy of pines soughs  a mighty bass swaying high above me.

The honest simplicity of its scale seems a valuable contrast to L.A.'s luxury aesthetic and civic power.   

It's been a few years since I went to the Sierras in the fall, and somehow the rigor of early mornings has been conveniently forgotten.  It's cold, dry, still, perhaps 28 degrees, and the cabin is too. 

The small heater takes its time to warm the front room, unmindful of the bathroom and bedroom.  There's no wi-fi, cell service, and no electrical appliances - everything runs from propane tanks and generators. I make coffee in an old fashioned percolator, and 9 cups takes a half hour.   Still, we're up and out on South Lake at seven, a clear morning, dressed warmly.  But my LA-tempered body craves comfort, and the first hour and a half require a level of fortitude I  haven't had to summon for this purpose - exercise, healthy eating, and chores have their debits instead.

What I love is that in the wilderness, one earns every pleasure, but that bounty isn't always a given.  Impervious Nature, wind, rain, cold, humidity, implacable need for food: all humbles me, returning me back to reason and flow.
   

Sept. 25, Wednesday

Hike to Long Lake from South Lake Trailhead in Bishop Creek Canyon.  The day began cold again, and we left at about 11.  The sun was warm on the trail, the shadows cool, and bits of snow coated the mountainsides and darkened trailside vegetation.  In several places the aspens are already yellowed, but mostly are about to turn, remaining greenish yellow.  The willows are full of fluff, the meadow grasses turning golden, the flowers gone, and the stillness full and waiting, like an old man sitting on a park bench.

I haven’t hiked to Long Lake for many years, and remembered the descent, the shapely lake tucked against the mountain, and the island-like shoreline. 

Clark’s Nutcracker, Mountain Chickadee, Dark-headed Junco, White-Crowned Sparrow, Belding’s ground squirrel, golden mantled ground squirrel

I think this is Chocolate Mountain at the end of Long Lake

I was just amazed at the powerful jumble of geologic 
activity that is visible here, though I can't identify or describe it.  I just know something amazing happened here to bring all these colors, textures, and vertiginous experience together.

Kath had a hard time with the hike,  experiencing altitude sickness, though she hadn’t had it on past trips.  
I feel quite bad about not noticing - she's been to the Sierras several times before and not been ill.  Perhaps she was tired from the jet lag of flying in from Rome.

John is ill with a severe gout attack and stomach upset. 

He is managing to fish, but I am pained that he is in such discomfort.

Saw the Space Station pass over in the early evening - the glowing sphere was pinkened by the sunset glow - how remarkable.

Thursday, Sept. 28

Fish Lake Sabrina, drive up to North Lake

We fished the inlet here, catching lots of fish.  The water was about 6 feet lower than this summer.  The aspens hadn't really peaked - late because of the plentiful snowfall last winter, and warm summer.  One thrill, a bald eagle sighting.

North Lake is also beautiful, and lonely and high up.  Katharine loves the Sierra; I hope she is finding it refreshing after her blazing hot Italian summer experience.  

I walk from Parchers down to Willow Campground in the afternoon.  A path runs east parallel to the highway, perhaps a mile or so. The sun warms the canopy of aspen, slightly golden, and again the tumbling stream, dashing down the mountainside, all so quiet, the quiet of autumn, a sense of slowing, of release, of peace.

willow fluff

Friday, the 29th 

We drive home together, leaving a bit late, taking our time.  Home is very warm, the turquoise pool is sparkling and waiting.  Southern California, so easy, so lovely, our home so comfortable, welcoming, cozy.  I wish I'd seen a snowstorm, though.  Or a mighty wind and rainstorm.

Art: Carolyn Castaño: Art after the post-Chicano movement

Ms. Castaño spoke to WPW, my women painters' group, last week at luncheon.  She has an impressive art education, SFAI and UCLA. 

Her materials are mixed - gouache, acrylics, 
watercolor, painted on large pieces of watercolor paper, usually affixed to the wall without frames. There are also light boxes, which make use of the appearance of images on media screens - the high contrast, over-saturated, crisply-defined lines, the flattened perspective.

Her seemingly bright and simple palette displays well on these, but I suspect,also commands the viewing space. Large drawings in the Southwest Airlines terminal at LAX are bold, absolutely distracting from the chaos of baggage claim.  They announce so vividly:  you are here, in Los Angeles, a very singular world.   

She's rooted in a Latina-feminist perspective, though her imagery appears very contemporary.  It's narrative, historical, and figurative, driven by a kind of funereal iconography, deaths-head molds and portraits made of ancestors and cherished, images of lost souls, their faces whitened, impurities of skin and bone disappeared in their now-eternal slumber. 

The Narco-femmes series is insightful and saddening - the objectification and obliteration of the female, of the possibility of real human development based on family, nurture, and slow deep growth sacrificed for the ultimate commodity experience - the drug high. I think of Millais' "Ophelia".

I see confident, bold line shaping forms with faux-primitive colors, thinking of Fauvism, composition drawn from the Pattern and Decoration Movement, Central American textiles, and outsider folk artists (le Douanier Rousseau's Garden of Eden work).  I also think of late Hockney's drawings on the iPad of California palm trees, and Hockney's early fine portrait drawings. Matisse's late collages from "Jazz" seem another reference.

There's a smoothly-integrated synthesis that's referential to art history, and yields a body of purposeful, thoughtful work offering a perspective to those attendant at the shifting plates of cultural diversity, at the "babe struggling to be born", second generation.    

   

The Golden Age Myth: Psychoanalytic Read

Things were better back then...all these changes are decadent and we're all corrupted and Dystopia is us...

I came across an interpretation that suggested that discontent about the present and nostalgia, devaluing the current state and way of things, is part of aging - of letting go of life, "it's not so good anyway, so might as well resign myself to death"...

It's a doomsday device, faulty reasoning that feeds into a loss of a positive attitude in old age - which causes faster cognitive decline.