EASY DOES IT

By Fran Dayan

        This morning she felt her life was passing her by, that she couldn’t do this rigorous gambit into the wild anymore. It was really not all that wild in this gem of an ancient hot springs in the heart of Carmel Valley. It was breathtakingly achingly beautiful.                                                                            

            The sunlight playing on the intensely green leaves of the forest of old sycamores, birches and pines, leaves rustling in the wind, looking up sheer mountain cliffs reveling in the pristine rugged beauty of Tassajara.  Granite rocks taking you down to the ice cold stream that runs through the valley. Once reaching it, you immerse yourself deeply, feeling part of the beginning of the knowledge of beauty.

            The stage ride down was a hot, one and one-half hour, fourteen mile bumpy, gravely extremely curvy road where a few who drove it themselves had died driving off the road and down the mountain. At the end of the road stretches a pristine wilderness with hot springs and a cold stream running through it. It took her breath away every time, it made her ache with happiness. She had been coming most of every year for 40 years, it kept calling her back.

            This morning her body hurt so badly after sleeping on a hard tatami  in a cold cabin and the night before sitting on chilly rocks looking up at the vast brilliant sky. It was getting harder to walk to the hot tubs from their cabin, her back ached, her leg had shooting pain and spasms. She was feeling too old and achy to be here. She thought to herself. This is the last time you should come, you must say goodbye”. Like leaving a lover you can’t make love to anymore. But it was so beautiful how could she leave it forever?

            This back and forth dialogue continued all day and into the night. It was too strenuous. It was too beautiful to leave forever. 

            Finally she settled into a calmed state with the realization that she in fact was older now and had to accept the changes in her body, make love to this exquisite wilderness differently, love her body differently. No long hikes, no walking in Berkinstocks,  a more comfortable more expensive, warmer cabin closer to the hot tubs. No scrambling over rocks to the Narrows. Maybe not come every year. She’d work it out. She had to. She couldn’t leave it for good. Life was too precious to give up on the beautiful things you love. “Just easy does it” she thought.

Fran Dayan

ANGER

LUCILLE HAMILTON

Anger is alive in me.

I've swallowed it for so long,

like a sword-swallower,

flaming it down my throat.

I don't recognize it

until its bitter taste

overcomes the soft words of placation

striving to push back the stark,

brutal truth of some injustice

that has its primal root in my being.

Sour, corrosive bile is the price paid

for such denial,

buckling our bodies in a swamp of inertia

and self-defeat.

A choice with no victory.

Recognizing this aspect of myself,

even bowing down in recognition

of the salvation it offers,

breaks apart the strong hold of fear

that expressing anger has,

and let's me learn what service 

anger - and its truth - bring to me

and to all from whom 

I withheld my truth.

2013


Lucille Hamilton - Lucille grew up in N.J., on the cliffs opposite NYC.  Wrote poems as a teenager. 

Graduating college, she worked in London, Rome, briefly living in Vienna beforereturning to work 

as an R.N. in NYC.  Upon retirement, she moved to California and began writing with the Sonoma Writers Alliance.

THE SADDEST DAY - THE DEATH OF THE KING

By Fran Dayan, 2007

Two years ago we were looking for a place to move to from Berkeley, We found it in an ad “cottage near a creek” falling in love especially with the enormous tall Oak spreading it’s branches protectively over the little green house and a curvy path to it.          

We brought our cats who have devoured its wildness, the creek, the open space with trees and squirrels talking. Bringing in the cats at night finally due to wild raccoons or the occasional mountain lion citing.

When we first came the huge trunk of that magnificent tree was simply in close proximity to the house eve. The Oak so tall you had to lean way back to see the branches and so many birds flew above chatting. Everyone who came marveled at it’s magnificent spread of cool in the hot Sonoma sun.

I worried about the branches breaking and hitting the roof in the wind or rain but the landlord said, “I’ll give you $400 to do with it what you can. If you want more I’ll raise the rent.” So we did some but not what is required of a 300-year-old King/Mother. The other smaller oaks ringed it.

Two days ago we saw that the tree trunk was slipping into the roof. It happened that quickly, a large crack at the side of the kitchen window appearing, right opposite the tree. The ceiling seemed to be bulging. That was Sunday.

Monday I phoned the landlord who was in disbelief. “I will not hurt that tree, you will just have to move out while we fix the house. I’ll come by later.” My Native American neighbor said, ‘talk to the tree’ ‘Why are you so worried?’ that was before she saw it. I was nuts, my reality challenged at every turn.

Later that day, a tree man, the landlord and my neighbor saw what we saw. We then heard: ‘It’s too risky’ ‘do not sleep there’, ‘you were right Fran, You were right.’ ‘The whole tree must come out.’ The pathway over roots had killed the roots further destabilizing the tree, even beyond the rotting and the lopsided weight of the branches. How disgusting and repugnant that my warning about the tree being in jeopardy was all true.

The air of death is upon me. Everything around me is painted in death. Everyone who has seen this tree says ‘no not that wonderful tree!’ We walk about numb and dissociated. We will sleep in our R.V. while the forklift arrives tomorrow and begins to break up and chip our tree to dust and fire fodder.

How many people have loved this tree? Our neighbor is talking to the tree fairies who say they are ready to leave the tree.

I think the tree is tired and needs to lie down. They have found a large rotten          opening in the trunk base. The cats are as crazy and as sad as we are. I must think of some positive perspective, some good from this, but I cannot today.

Aftermath

The tree has fallen piece by piece, swung away from the house with ropes, down and hauled away.  Eight days of one man scaling the tree, wrapping the tree piece by piece in ropes. The jarred sawing of a branch or log falling down and men dragging heavy chunks of oak away. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces. The sweet pathway that had killed the roots hauled away and another made, no more tree, no more problem.

Over the years the tree had drifted gently over the house reaching out it’s riotous branches to the light probably for several hundred years. The house was planted underneath it. In the end the house won. This was so traumatic for me, a lesson in change and lack of control. How we will probably hold on to life just like this, not realizing that we are slipping down. If that still gives us 20 years to live, that’s a long time, if our minds and our genetics will hold out. This is bringing me to a conversation about death and how to do it.  But not right now.

Fran Dayan

                                                                                               

A GIANT FELL IN THE FOREST

ROBYN MAKARUK

"Shush", she said to her seven-year old granddaughter, who was badgering her for a story before going to bed.  "I will tell you the story of our people, the Ko-Kwel".

"Our ancestral Homelands once encompassed more than one million acres that included all the watersheds of the Coquille River system from the ocean to its headwaters and along the south Oregon coast as far south as Cape Blanco and Port Orford.

We were a peaceful Tribe.  Most of our permanent villages were located at places where year-round food resources were abundant. Along the coast, estuary shorelines and sheltered coastal bays offered food of all sorts, and travel by canoe was easy. Other villages were located in the interior, where streams and rivers full of fish, and valleys where deer and elk wintered provided all the food we needed.  These villages were where we built our plank houses made of timbers from the densely forested mountains and valleys. One day, a 200 foot giant cedar fell in the forest.  It had been hit by lightning and slid down the mountain into the middle fork of the Coquille River.  When it made its way downstream close to one of our villages we saw it as a sign.  Men from our Tribe guided it ashore and its abundant gifts provided our village with three 20 foot canoes, and enough timber to make four plank houses.

The Seasonal places in the uplands and interior valleys away from the estuaries and coast were hunting and food gathering areas used by our and other Native groups.   When our Ko-kwels and other groups gathered for berry or nut harvesting, or root digging, or at hunting and fishing sites, it was a time for celebration and for renewing old relationships and making new ones.  We returned to these places year after year, and as you have learned, we still celebrate these annual events like the Mid-Winter Gathering, Restoration Day Celebration and Solstice Dances in response to our ancient Ko-kwel traditions.

In 1851 and 1855 when our Chiefs signed treaties which ceded more than a million acres of our Ancestral Homelands to the US Government they were never ratified by the US Senate.  Because of this, our reservation lands and other considerations promised in the treaties never materialized and our People were denied permanent Tribal homelands.   Finally, more than a hundred years later on June 28 1989, Congress passed a law which re-established our Tribe as a federally recognized Native Tribe.  This is known as the Coquille Restoration Act.  This Act re-affirmed our Tribe as a sovereign government and validated its authority to manage and administer political and legal jurisdiction over our lands and resources, our businesses and our Tribal community members. It also restored the Tribe's eligibility to participate in federal programs and to receive federal funding to provide health, education, housing assistance and other services to Coquille Tribal members.

So today, sweet one, you are of the new generation of our Ko-kwel Tribe.  You can show us how to uphold our ancient traditions and be a beacon of light in our Coquille Tribal Government. You have the opportunity to serve on our Tribal Council, become one of its Officers.  You can become a forester, a physician, officer of the law, a lawyer, a teacher, anything you wish all because your ancestors fought to preserve those rights.  Whatever path you choose to follow, you will have your grandmother's blessing".

2013

TEXAS SEASON

LUCILLE HAMILTON

For me, Texas is a mythical state:

Everything there's over:

size or rate.

Girls are prettier,

senators are wittier,

passing the buck,

along with chuck

wagons.

but why can't they let bygones

be by-gone?

Men are taller,

wearing boots.

Someone's always in cahoots,

with the law, still called "wild west."

Sheriffs still wear a vest

with pockets, kerchiefs handy;

always makes 'em look real dandy.

This, despite the famous Texas heat,

'cause it makes 'em look real neat.

Men are courteous,

women southern flirteous

And when the subject comes to oil

it begins with cooking with pure cholesterol;

(It's all that fryin' 

that keeps them dyin').

I'd better keep this up-to-date;

there's some news as of late

about a Senator named Cruz.

Now, he's a one who's a real doozy -

erring on the daft side of reason:

Batten the hatches, it's Texas Season.

2013