Living my dream in the Eastern Sierra

That May 17 Lone Pine camping trip I mentioned in my previous post (written, uh, nearly half a year ago) wound up changing my life. Sometimes, dreams really do come true. Turns out I'm living mine in the Eastern Sierra at long last!

See, the photos above aren't from the Lone Pine camping trip. The first is on a hike to Crystal Lake, high above Lake George, in the Mammoth Lakes basin. And the second is at Gem Lakes above Rock Creek during a late August hiking excursion near where I'm now living in Long Valley.

After the Lone Pine camping trip, I stopped in at Elevation to chat with the owner, Kastle Lund, a vivacious, sharp outdoorswoman with a great sense of humor and encouraging spunk.

"The Mammoth Times is advertising for a writer," she announced when I walked through the door. "You should apply."

She knew I'd been dreaming of living in the Eastern Sierra. But I thought they might want someone with more reporting experience. So much of my New York Times career was administrative, and then the freelancing was heavy on culture vulture stuff, not hard news reporting.

"They won't want me," I said, careful not to get my hopes up while simultaneously feeling my heart leap with a prospect I'd not considered along the Highway 395 corridor: MAMMOTH.

"They're desperate," she asserted. "So they'll LOVE you. Do you have a university degree?"

"Yes."

"Do you have newspaper experience of any kind?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Well there you go."

Turns out she was right. I emailed Diane Eagle, the editor, that very evening. Unlike some of the other applications I'd sent into an apparent void, Eagle's response was immediate.

"Thank you SO MUCH for your resume. When can you come for an interview?"

Her SO MUCH told me so much.

I drove to Mammoth at my first opportunity, which was in late May, after a Sierra Club camping trip over the Memorial Day weekend on Santa Rosa Island for three heavenly days and nights.

Diane practically offered me the job on the spot. "The five hour drive home should be enough time to make a decision," she asserted in what I later regarded as wishful thinking.

But I had some concerns, principal among them was that the town of Mammoth Lakes is a hodgepodge turn-off despite its glorious location in a spectacular mountain basin. Largely built in the late 1970's and early 1980's in strip mall fashion with huge parking lots dominating far-flung shopping centers and storefronts, it really did feel as if there was no there there (to borrow from Gertrude Stein).

It was also clear to me that the infrastructure of the Mammoth Times itself needed a lot of work. Worse, their reputation apparently wasn't so great. "It's a joke," one person told me, "but you should go for it anyway!"

Kastle, of course, agreed. "You have to change your life," she said when I stopped at her store on my way back from the job interview. "If it doesn't work out, at least you've had a great summer."

So yeah, when Diane formally offered me the job, I accepted. I had stalled for awhile, but just before yet another Sierra Club trip in mid-June, this time to the Black Hills of South Dakota, I had made up my mind. I could always leave at the end of summer.

Well, why would I ever want to leave when I have day hikes such as Crystal Lake, shown below, within a 10 minute drive of where I work? This past summer, I hiked up there a few times before work (about an 800 foot climb from the Lake George parking lot) - great way to start the day!



So here we are into the autumn and I'm loving Mammoth more than ever - probably because I don't exactly live in Mammoth. I found a place ten miles south of town, a loft studio apartment above the garage of a ranch house in Long Valley with glorious views out over rangeland to the White Mountains in the east (I can see the sunrise from my bed in the morning, not to mention the star-splattered sky at night), and the Sierra Nevada immediately to the west - hundreds of hiking trailheads literally at my back door! Living outside the town limits gives me a greater sense of privacy than if I lived right in the heart of town politics. Also there will be less snow, I'm told, even if it's colder.

And though covering the Town Council is torture, I mostly look forward to my job each day, which has included perks like going to Yosemite Valley to cover the YARTs bus at the beginning of the summer. Turns out the Mammoth Times is NOT a joke but does some really good work. Diane is an amazing colleagues, one of the best editors I've ever worked with certainly in terms of creating a sense of teamwork and appreciation.

And, in a perk that has nothing to do with my new job but maybe with the location, my new long-distance honey, Grant, visited me from Idaho for two weeks in late August and we enjoyed numerous good times. Here's a shot of us up at Mono Pass, 12,000 feet, above Rock Creek.

All things considered, this has been one of the most joyous seasons of my life.

Mt. Whitney and the Eastern Sierra from the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine

Okay I love this shot. I took it on Monday, about noon, before I headed home, before my tire blew out at high speed on Highway 14 just entering Lancaster. But hey, at least it didn't happen on the 395 north of Mojave out of cell range - or even further north on the 395. I would have been standing on the side of the road in the windblast chill of the Southern Sierra shadows waiting for a CHP to happen by.

Maybe it was somewhere on the dirt roads of the old Alabama Hills and maybe even when I stopped to take this photo that I ran over a shard of glass or rusty nail dating to some western film shot there in the 20's that lead to the flat tire. In any event, I made it home safely. But I keep thinking about the Eastern Sierra, which has called me back again and again over the years and decades, ever since my father first drove me through in the summer of '74. Thinking about it so much, in fact, that I just signed up for a Sierra Club hike to Lone Pine Lake on May 17, with a two-night car camp in the Alabama Hills.

So can you identify Mt. Whitney? Hint it's the tallest mountain in California, but it doesn't look that way in the photo.

Another Reason to Dread Dental Cleaning

Now I understand why my mother told her dentist's office to never, ever, ever again schedule her with the hygienist Jeanne. That was 20 years ago. It wasn't anything about her cleaning techniques, it was because of her relentless pessimism. I've been scheduling Jeanne for three years and although I'd indeed noted her contrarian streak, it wasn't so awful for me to purposely blacklist her.

Well yesterday I found out why my mother, as usual, had made a wise call all those years ago. Maybe it's because I'm currently between traditional jobs, trying to do something new and creative in my life, that I'm extra protective of my hopes and aspirations and approaching things with optimism. And that doesn't have anything to do with reading "The Secret" (which I never will). It's to do with being a naturally positive person. I believe that if you project what you want in your thoughts, you are more likely to put active energy into achieving your dreams.

All of which is to say I'm actively seeking employment as a writer or communications consultant. I emphatically do not want to work in another thankless administrative job for an oppressively inflexible corporate hierarchy, where personnel files are routinely padded with lies and negativities just in case they need fire you. (Um, yes, they actually do that, so please don't suggest I work as an HR person because that's the ultimate corporate sell-out.)

So Jeanne suggests doing xrays. I said no, because I'm currently uninsured and am paying for everything out of pocket.

"You're no longer with the Times?" she asked politely - yet with just a hint of glee that here might be an opportunity to hear all my misery.

Except, I'm not miserable, and I intend to keep it that way.

"No," I replied, "I left the Times in September. Everything is shrinking in the newspaper industry."

"Oh, it's terrible," she agreed. "So you asked for an exit package?"

"Exactly. And it's worked out quite well. I've been freelance writing for the Sun, but I'll need to find some kind of part time or temp job soon because they don't pay very much."

"Lots of people unemployed now," she noted as she nudged my head to one side and prodded open my mouth. "It's really hard. All those people losing everything. All those foreclosures. I know someone at Bear Stearns - who knows what will happen to him? But you'll be fine. You'll find something."

"I'm not worried," I mumbled, sensing that she was eager for a sign of desperate fear on my part. "One great thing about typing 125 words per minute is I can always find a job doing secretarial work if I'm desperate."

"What column did you write for the Times?"

"I didn't write a column. I was hired as the office manager and was also a freelance writer there."

"Oh, if you were an office manager, you can work anywhere!" she exclaimed, grabbing on to the administrative aspect. I'm sure she meant well, but secretarial is precisely what I'd like to avoid now.

"Yeah, and do shit work for the rest of my life," I replied, well aware that I sounded offensive and pugnacious. "For assholes," I added.

Jeanne likely has her own complaints as a dental hygienist, but I wonder if she knows just how awful it is working as a secretary or administrative assistant, as the jobs are now called. You have endless responsibilities with zero empowerment. I'd say 90% of those jobs mean working for assholes. Seriously, "The Devil Wears Prada" is not so far from the mark.

There are exceptions to the assholes, of course (there were even a few exceptions at the New York Times, but that didn't include the most recent bureau chief, unfortunately, who really did wear Prada). Years ago I had two great bosses at Pettit & Martin in San Francisco. But that was when I was when I was fresh out of college. I'd like to think I've pulled myself up a few rungs on the ladder since then. Jeanne wanted to make me feel like I haven't. Well I wouldn't let her. I wouldn't! I insist that I'm a few more rungs up the ladder now!

Calmly, I say, "I'd really like to get a job that allows me to employ my writing and communication skills."

Jeanne pulls me head to one side and forces my mouth open a bit wider as she picks away at my teeth. "But do you have any writing credentials?" she asked dubiously.

Aside from my Berkeley education? Apparently Jeanne hadn't heard the part about how I'd freelanced for the Times.

"I have a whole pile of clips and references," I said patiently. "That should help, but it's no guarantee." I began to doubt myself, and my plans. But then I rallied. I won't let her bring me down. I won't!

She scrubs away at my teeth. "Well you can always write in-house for WaMu. They need people to write their newsletters."

"I do know an executive mucky-much at Wachovia," I said. "He might know of an in-house newsletter writing job."

"There you go!"

"But that would be kind of boring," I concluded.

"Well you can't have everything."

"Well I'd like to try for something I'd really enjoy doing before I give up and write PR releases for megabanks for the rest of my life. The work I'm doing for the Sun is great. Unfortunately it doesn't pay very much."

"What's the Sun?"

"It's the local weekly here - there's three: Studio City Sun, Sherman Oaks Sun, Encino Sun. I've been covering local politics and stuff."

"Oh, yeah, I like that paper - but they don't deliver it to my house, so I have to pick it up at Jennifer's Coffeehouse."

I told her I'd ask my editor why they aren't delivering it to her street in Studio City.

Jeanne was still warming to her topic of my future career as an assistant. "You could go to a head hunter or a career consultant and they might have suggestions of places to apply that you might not have thought of."

That's actually not a bad idea, I thought. She's right.

But then she continued. "There're also agencies that help place personal assistants. You know, lots of people like celebrities need assistants need help assisting them with their lives, paying their bills, picking up their kids, picking up their laundry..."

Yeah, that's just what I had in mind! If I followed Jeanne's advice, I'd likely commit suicide before too long, my dreams glinting like shards of broken glass on the path behind me. My old bureau chief would attend the funeral, shaking her head sadly and remarking upon my inability to accept my station in life. "And to think she had aspirations of doing something more than picking up the mail for me downstairs!"

"How old are you now?" Jeanne asked at this point.

"29," I reply stubbornly. Sending her impatience, I concede, "Fortysomething."

Jeanne sighed. "Ageism is also a problem these days. That makes it even harder to find work." My mouth is firmly pried open, so I can't reply. I'm helpless against the vision of myself headed out to pasture, my usefulness to society over and done with, even though Social Security checks won't be arriving for another few decades. "But you'll be fine," she adds reassuringly. "You'll find something."

"Well, I can always move somewhere else for a job," I said, feeling increasingly hopeless. After all, I'm well aware of the competition for writing jobs in L.A.

"Yeah," Jeanne replied with a sigh of resignation, "but where else is there to live?"

I was astonished that Jeanne apparently lacked the imagination to consider anywhere other than Los Angeles as a desirable place to live. "Uh, Paris, Amsterdam, New Mexico, Boise Idaho..."

"Buenos Aires is supposed to be cheap," she suggested randomly.

"I don't want to live there."

"You'll be fine. You'll find something."

"No, I won't!" I suddenly screamed, jumping out of my chair as dental implements crashed to the walls and floor. "I won't find anything that I really want! That's what you're implying! I'm doomed to be a secretary or office manager or administrative or personal assistant or whatever you want to call those shitwork jobs for the rest of my life because, let's face it Jeanne, I'll just be lucky to find a job anywhere now, right? Right Jeanne? Isn't that right?"

Jeanne was cowering in the corner at this point, clutching at dental floss.

"It's okay if they don't deliver the Sun to my street," she said meekly. "Is that really what you're angry about?"

Healing in the Broken Places

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
-- Emily Dickinson

I had just turned sixteen when my father shared this poem with me. Four months later, he was dead.

On that long-ago June morning, I stood looking at the body of the father I had loved so much, frantically attempting to absorb it all at once in an effort to remain sane, saying to myself over and over again, "You can handle this, you can handle this."

Behind those words I knew that a whole future had been annihilated and that in fact it was going to be very difficult to handle the coming days, weeks, months, and years.

Heartbroken frankly is too small a word to capture the sense of devastation. Among all the feelings that swam in my being that day, above all I felt keenly how my future was instantly and irrevocably altered. I could not conceive of a future without him but I had no choice but to begin to conceive of one. I had an intense desire to make it okay all at once somehow, to feel as if my life and my future had not been destroyed, that my heart was not broken. But of course it wasn't okay, and I had to survive somehow without dying inside.

He was a good father -- not a slacker father, not an absent father. A father who took me horsebackriding in the Santa Monica Mountains. A father who took me to the Sierra Nevada, camping under the immensity of star-packed heavens. A father who spoke in loving tones. A father who was fun, who all my friends wanted to come along on the Girl Scout camping trips because he was so much fun. A father who read poetry aloud beside a blazing winter fire with classical music playing in the background. A father who instilled in me forever a love of the outdoors and of culture in all its forms. A father who taught me how to live even as he suffered from depression.

A fainting robin father, as it turned out.

Tending a broken heart was the task of my future. At first there seemed to be no hope. But as time slowly crawled by and the painful immediacy of grief lay further and further in the past (yes, time is the great healer), I learned in future days that the heart does mend, that it does heal strongly in all the broken places, and that there may indeed also be a greater capacity for joy, because the sadness and the suffering and the loss have cut so deep.

But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes allow myself to wonder what times we might have shared in the future - something as simple as a conversation on the phone with my dad. I still miss him every day. I've just learned to live with the missing.

This is a deeply personal post, I realize, but I have been haunted by melancholy ever since I learned that Heath Ledger had died. Although I did not know him personally, I am of course affected by the premature death of a young father - who also happened to be an immense talent of aching complexity, who was not likely a suicide, but who placed himself so closely to danger that a tragic accident was made possible. I cannot help but feel tremendous compassion when Michelle Williams publicly says, "My heart is broken." It takes courage to admit that even to yourself, let alone to a faceless mob. You are at the crossroads of the darkest night, having to reimagine your future without the one you loved ever again in the days to come.

So this post is dedicated to Matilda, who lost her father at the threshold of memory, and to Michelle, her mother, who has promised that "she will be raised with the best memories of him." Those best memories take on an extraordinary power throughout the future, literally keeping you afloat in times when your heart feels it is sinking with despair.

God bless.

An Immense Talent, A Tragic Loss

"They're reporting that Heath Ledger died," my sister Cindy said. I was hunched over my computer, writing a difficult piece, and she'd called me from work. "The news is just breaking."

"What???!!!" It couldn't be true. Not him. Please let it not be him. I got off the phone and rushed into the living room. Nothing yet. Then onto the Internet for a search. Didn't find it at first. Then there it was. The strewn pills. The suggestion of suicide. Heath Ledger, dead in New York at 28.

It was one of those sick-stomach stand-still moments, like when my mom told me that JFK Jr's plane had disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic.

It was true, of course. Later reports would be more accurate, more respectful. The pills were not strewn, it was likely a tragic accident.

Although I didn't know Heath Ledger, I had tremendous admiration for him as an artist. He was clearly a genuine talent. His performance in "Brokeback Mountain" was up there with the greatest of all time, hinting at the character and integrity of the human being behind the performance -- a heterosexual man, with the guts to tackle that material.

But I had a weird feeling of premonition when reports came out last September that he'd split from his fiancee, Michelle Williams, the mother of his 2 year old child. "Not good," I thought. If the images I saw of them on television the night of the 2006 Academy Awards were in any degree reflective of the truth, they looked like the archetype of young genuine love.

For that to have gone wrong, even after they'd had a child together, suggested something very wrong. Whether it was Hollywood, too much too soon, pushing him too hard with its sick falsity and emphasis on box office, or the lure of partying opportunities, or fear of intimacy, self-loathing, or all of the above, who knows? Often, the most sensitive and perceptive humans are the ones who suffer the most from melancholy, self-doubt. And then, enter the prescription drugs or the alcohol or what-have-you and the stage is set for tragedy.

This is a very very sad day. My heart breaks for all who knew and loved him. I know the pain of heartbreaking loss. The wound heals even as it always bleeds.

Memory, Brokeback Mountain

"The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he"d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands."

-- Annie Proulx

Mediocracy?

"As a result of being caught up in our cultural trance, we in America no longer live in a democracy; we live in a 'mediacracy'. The media is so heavily influenced by its corporate sponsors that even the world's events are editorialized into opinion pieces. As far back as 1880, John Swinton, a writer at The New York Times, was quoted as saying, 'The business of journalists is to destroy the truth.... We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.' This sentiment continues today: Because advertisers who finance the news are interested in creating good consumers who buy their burgers, they have no interest in helping us look or think outside the box."

- Alberto Villoldo, PhD, in "The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power and Grace of the Earthkeepers"


I'm inclined to agree with Villoldo, pictured above, but I think it's about a lot more than buying burgers. At the same time, I'm still very much inclined to stand up for what remains of true journalism: those who are not employed by the corporate entities are still very much about uncovering the truth. And it's essential to what remains of our democracy. Whether and where their voices and what they uncover may still be heard - and by how many - is another important question.

Anyway, Villoldo's main point is not to gulp down everything you hear on the morning or evening news and to cultivate what he calls nonjudgment:

"You see, when you practice nonjudgment, you refuse to automatically go along with others' opinions of any situation. In doing so, you begin to acquire a sense of ethics that transcends the mores of our times. This is important today when the images of the media have become more convincing than reality, and our values -- liberty, freedom, love, and the like -- are reduced to sound bites and empty platitudes."

I say amen to that.