The Rim Fire

California is on fire. The 200-mile Rim Fire is devouring homes and forcing evacuations. Now it is threatening San Francisco's power supply in Yosemite, as well as its water source--the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir--just four miles from the blaze. As of this morning, it's only 5% contained.

That rock was perfect for thinking on.

One of the areas currently under severe threat is Berkeley Tuolumne Camp, where I spent the first sixteen summers of my life with my family. It's just outside of Groveland, nestled in the trees along the south fork of the Tuolumne River. It smells like kit kit dizze and warm, dry pine needles.

When I tell people about my camp I feel like I'm in that episode of This American Life called "Notes on Camp," in which non-camp people have a hard time truly understanding the experiences of their camp friends. No matter what I say to people in my life who have never been to camp--or to BTC in particular--there is virtually no way to convey exactly what it has meant to me.

BTC is not a sleep-away camp for acne-ridden pre-teens. There aren't counselors assigned to cabins, no rows of bunk beds or missing-retainer scandals. There are camp-wide activities, but none of them are mandatory. There are sports courts and a swimming hole, a dining hall with a circle of green Adirondack chairs just outside the main entrance. There's a camp store. A rec hall. Stone showers with no ceilings so you can look up at night and see the stars. Families stay in cabins with canvas roofs, and many, like mine, drag their bed frames onto the deck and wake in the morning covered in pine needles and a whisper-thin layer of dew.

We certainly did love our tie-dye.

I made some of the best friends I've ever had at camp, and they truly have become my family. Every evening before we were summoned to dinner by the dining hall's big bell, my family and our friends would have Happy Hour down on Lower Beach. Not many people ventured down there, so for the most part we had the river to ourselves. My dad and my best friend Sara's dad, Lee, would play their guitars. The grown-ups would excuse themselves just long enough to walk up the path to the camp-organized Adult Happy Hour and return with paper plates full of mini quiches and chocolate-covered strawberries. We "played" horseshoes (and I mean that in the broadest sense of the term) and waded barefoot in the water looking for fool's gold. My absolute favorite memory in all my years at camp was standing ankle-deep in the river with my closest friends--Sara and Julia and Alex and Eli--and building rock sculptures with rocks the size of our heads while our families drank wine and told stories on the beach. When I think of the time in my life when I have been most at peace with myself and with the world, that is what I remember.

And now Stanislaus National Forest is burning, and Harden Flat Road is burning, and there is a hellish orange haze above my camp. The City of Berkeley has doused the camp in fire retardant, but with both the growth potential and terrain difficulty listed as extreme and the blaze pushing eastward, there's little for me to feel except sick to my stomach. I think about everything this camp has given to me, all the people who are so much like family that I have to remind myself we don't share the same blood, and it's difficult for me to imagine a greater loss. I grew up in this place. I threw handfuls of sand into the air when I was four and called it Fairy Dust. I played badminton with Sara until one in the morning when the the court lights went off. I took the pottery classes my mom taught and wove pine needle baskets on the beach. My friends and I rafted down the river to the old concrete bridge at Naco and then walked back along the road with our inner tubes around our heads like inflatable necklaces. We hiked upriver during Quiet Hour ("In your tents or out of camp, please. Thank you") to Breakfast Rock and Small Falls, which were so piddly one summer that Emiliano stopped them with his foot. For the rest of my life I will experience no greater sense of anticipation, like a levee about to collapse, than staring out the window of the van on our way into camp when the roofs of the first tents came into view across the river.

Camp is in my thoughts, and may it be in the thoughts of anyone who has ever loved a place so much that it feels like a tangible part of them.

My brother is there right now. He emailed me this screen shot from his phone.

The Panopticon

I recently finished a new book by Jenni Fagan called The Panopticon. It's based on the model conceived by philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham and later adopted by Michel Foucault, of a circular prison with a watchtower in the middle, so that the prisoners can be observed at all times. There are no lights in the tower so no one is ever really sure when it is staffed; this turns the prison into a sort of self-policing unit. In theory.

While I had some issues with the Panopticon in the book--mainly I thought it was misused--I thought the book itself was fantastic. The narrator, Anais Hendricks, is a juvenile delinquent raised in foster care. She is thoughtful and hilarious and completely complex. Without giving anything away, here is one of my favorite moments of the book, in which Anais is hearing the charges against her for the first time in court:

"Well, first on the agenda is the gratuitous vandalism against Lothian and Borders police department. This included deliberate destruction of police property and costing the police department thousands of pounds' worth of damages. Also, there is the second time that you have stolen a school minibus from outside Rowntree High School, but this time you"--the woman scrolls her pen down the report in front of her--"drove it into a wall?"

     "I drove it into the wall both times."

     "Something was different the second time, Miss Hendricks?"
     She raises her eyebrows, stops, like she's asking a pub-quiz question. The other three panel members look to see what I'm gonnae say.
     "The second time it was on fire," I respond after a minute.
     "Correct."
     Brilliant. A correct answer. What do I win?

Amazing, right? You should all go read this book. 

Many Things

I've been pretty awful about keeping my blog current, so here's what's been going on lately:

1. On August 5th, for some inexplicable reason, I was writing 2030 on all the receipts.

2. I was entering a customer's phone number into the UPS WorldShip software yesterday and realized that I'd forgotten my own cell number.

3. A couple weeks ago there was a hummingbird trapped in the cabin (one of the shop rooms). It was batting its wings against the sky light despite the fact that there was an open window just three feet from it. Matt and I borrowed a ladder from Luis, the gardener/handyman, and Matt climbed up. When he cupped his hands around the bird--I kid you not--it squeaked.

4. A woman came down the path to the shop pushing this stroller-like contraption, except instead of a seat there was a metal cage. Inside were two Siamese cats. I helped her to her car with her purchases (after all, she had to push her cat stroller) and when she opened her trunk there was a blue recycling bin inside with about ten crumpled lotto tickets in the bottom.

Baxter takes Matt for a walk.

5. There's a long story behind this statement, but I'll spare you the boring details and just say that on a hike with Matt up Turtleback Mountain, I may or may not have smelled a slug. In my defense, Matt did it first.

6. I was sitting on the grass outside the studio at Crow Valley one day last week when my mom was glazing. I had my National Geographic Traveler out and was reading an article about ten "tantalizing" road trips. On one page there was a picture of a road near Beijing that was a tunnel running right along a sheer cliff face. Every fifty feet or so there was a window carved into the cliff so you could see out into the valley. According to the article, the entire tunnel was dug by hand; it took twelve people six years to carve it out using only eight-pound hammers and steel drill rods. I showed the picture to David, the 26-year-old Italian staying with Michael and Jeffri, and all he said was, "We have that in Italy." Determined to impress him, I showed him a picture of this incredible vineyard on the side of a volcano in Portugal, where each vine had to be planted in its own separate hole in the volcanic crust. David's response? "We have that in Italy."

7. I bought 29 books (for $29!) at the Library Fair on Saturday, yet evidently I still found it necessary to check out three books from the library today.

8. A few weeks ago a woman came into the shop and bought this green stoppered bottle of Penny's that had been sitting on the shelf for five years. It was a gift for a friend, so she wrote a little note to include with it in the package. Because we were busy I couldn't take it straight to the shipping room--I had to set it on the counter in the kitchen until I had a free minute. Syd walked into the kitchen and shouted to Penny, who was glazing in the studio, "Pen! Guess what finally sold!" Penny was delighted and Syd was delighted and Janet, when I told her about it the next day, was also delighted. Fast forward to two days ago, when a box appears in the shipping room with the original Orcas Island Pottery shipping label on the top. I was worried I'd entered the address wrong and it couldn't be delivered, even more worried that the item had arrived broken and the customer was shipping it back (though this has never happened--if something breaks, the person just calls). Highly anxious, I cut into the box and removed its contents. There was a note inside from the woman who'd returned it, saying that her friend had sent her a gift and was "a lovely person but need not buy [her] anything." She asked that we credit the gift-giver's account or, if not possible, that we donate the money to a local nonprofit. I was intrigued and took the note and the unopened item into the shop to open it with Janet. I sliced the packing tape, unrolled the cardboard...and there was Penny's green stoppered bottle. Janet and I lost it. After we caught our breath, I asked what I should do with it. "Put it on Penny's desk," Janet said, "with a note that says, 'I'm baaa-aaack!'" I did just that. The next morning I was wiping out pots in the yard and I heard riotous laughter coming from inside. I looked toward Penny's room and she was standing next to the window looking back at me, holding the Post-It note and slowly shaking her head.

Fallon Does MLS

As both of you may know, from time to time I like to watch a soccer match. Or two. Or, like, every soccer match ever. And there's a chance--by which I mean 100%--that if you were to name a starter in Major League Soccer I could tell you exactly for which team they play. And, of course, I love me some Jimmy Fallon.

Imagine my delight, then, when mlssoccer.com posted this video of Fallon "jokingly eviscerating" MLS players for their unfortunate headshots. The accuracy of his assessments is mind-blowing. I even agreed with his description of my adorable rookie Sounder DeAndre Yedlin, to whom my mom and I lovingly refer as the "Little Yedlin Boy." (And no doy Will Johnson looks like someone just shot his puppy--he plays for the Portland Timbers, for God's sake! I'd want to cry, too!)

The Water Rolls Down the Drain

It's been a while since I gave you a photo update, so here you go!

Behind the cabin at Crow Valley Pottery

The Crow Valley studio

This is near the top of the hill I call Lucifer's Playground because your leg muscles erupt in flames--very nearly literally--whenever you attempt to scale it.

A portion of my jogging route

Mary Jo & Linda's house is the one at the top of the hill straight across the valley.

My kale, broccoli, and strawberry suppliers

Oyster beds at Crescent Beach

One of my summer projects

An Evening

Crazy unreal view from their deck. Straight
ahead, right at the base of the tree line, is the
road I take into town.

My mom was just on the island for a week, glazing and firing in the gas kiln at Crow Valley Pottery to get ready for the opening of the Potters Festival. The other night we and our friend Margie were invited to dinner at the home of our friends Mary Jo and Linda. Now, Margie and MJ and Linda are three of my very favorite people on the planet (and my mother, I suppose, should also be counted among the power elite), so after the dinner invitation I didn't think my day could possibly get any better. That is, of course, until I saw their house.

Does this not look like something you'd find
in a home decor magazine?

It is undoubtedly the closest thing to my dream house I've ever seen--possibly even closer than in my dreams. MJ and Linda operate Lone Cow Farm, so they have acres of pastureland for horses and cows. (Inga, the farm's "lone cow," recently died and the animals there now belong to neighbors. MJ and Linda joke that they're changing the spelling to Loan Cow Farm.) Linda bakes incredible wedding cakes and makes jams with berries she picks herself all over the island. She has a special jam kitchen separate from the house.

Their sprawling ranch house sits on the tip-top of a hill overlooking the valley and Fowlers Pond. They have an orchard and a rose garden and a long deck covered with potted plants that runs the length of the house. Swallows have built nests in the eaves and in the dozens of bird houses--one in the shape of a slanted barn, one a re-purposed canteen--hanging on the wall outside. I lost count of the number of guest rooms they have, but each one is more wonderful than the last: framed black-and-white photos and paintings of farm animals; curtain rods made from croquet mallets; vintage posters; lampshades covered with pine cone seeds. They have lofted ceilings and rustic wooden floors, shelf after shelf of cookbooks and plant encyclopedias. They have the greatest greenhouse I've ever seen, and it's inside their house. They have a barn and brightly colored Adirondack chairs and the most pillowy-looking hammock I've ever seen. Above Linda's kitchen is a bunk house with five beds, a bathroom, a kitchenette, a reading nook (I do so love a good reading nook--hell, I even love a mediocre reading nook), and a wood-burning stove. Everything is cozy wood and golden lamp light.

A corner of the bunk house.

It's the kind of house that you can't imagine ever belonging to anyone else, so inextricably linked to its inhabitants that if they ever pass on to the next world (and I firmly believe that's an if--these women are indestructible goddesses) I've no doubt the house will vanish right along with them. You walk in the front door, which doesn't even have a lock, and even though it's not your house you feel like you've finally come home.

One wall of the greenhouse.

We sat on the deck, drinking wine and popping handfuls of warm nuts sauteed with brown sugar and rosemary, crackers with apricot earl grey marmalade and fresh goat cheese from a farm down the road. We wandered through the garden and Linda showed us where they planted a different type of rose bush on the grave of each of their pets. We discussed our favorite public radio programs over lemon pasta with basil. As the sun set, casting a fuchsia tinge on the clouds that promised a thunderstorm that night but never delivered, we ate rhubarb pie and sipped Linda's homemade rhubarb liqueur. We discussed to which remote corner of the universe we would banish Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman and Jodi Arias if only we could. And we laughed: Mary Jo, who loves nothing quite so much as an entertaining story; Linda, whose eyes squint nearly shut when you really get her going; Margie, whose husband passed away several months ago and so her laughter is equal parts guilt that anything in the world could possibly make her smile and relief that something finally has; my mama, with her radiant, maternal smile that you could dedicate the rest of your life to philanthropy in developing countries and never feel you deserve; and me, wishing I could stay in the presence of these four women whom I so admire for the rest of my earthly existence. We all laughed. Five voices erupting into hysterics, but so unified that I believe if you were to drive up the road past their house you would have heard just one--a single, continuous peal of laughter.

In that house, with those people, I stopped feeling like the little girl I'll probably always be: the girl who's afraid to be where she's not wanted, who uses sarcasm and a smile to deflect the fact that loneliness is shredding her up inside. I stopped worrying about what I'll do if I don't get into grad school, or how long it will take me to find a job once I'm home. For one evening I could sit at a kitchen table and quote Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and feel protected and happy and loved. For that evening I was a woman in her dream house.

What the HELL?

This is the most profoundly revolting, barbaric story I have ever read. So, naturally, I'm sharing it with you.

Soccer Referee Killed and Quartered by Fans in Brazil After Fatally Stabbing a Player