The dead of winter where I live, is the time the gates of
heaven open and water comes down every few days to bring life and green the
land. There is nothing dead about
winter here.
Only a few hours’ drive, the deepest snow in the United States can strand travelers even today, just as it did the Donner Party over a hundred
and seventy years ago. You can certainly think of that swatch of California as
being in the dead of winter. The story of the Breen and Donner families is taught
in fourth grade of every California school. DH was told he’s descended from the
same Breens, and so we’ve earned the right to reside over those lethal hills and
past the freezer zone, on the beautiful always spring-like coast.
I don’t write this to make you jealous. ‘All y’all,’ seized by cabin fever and
thinking just about now that you’ve had enough winter, take heart and some hot
chocolate. Sunny is not all it seems.
“A sunny place for some shady people.” This
saying by a clever writer, made me think how vivid writing works. It’s about
delineating. It’s about marking contradictions, pointing differences, making a
line that pops.
California is all about lines. It’s a land of extreme if adjacent
climates. A state that shines in exploration even as it cultivates a shady
subculture of folks running away from this that and the other, including norms
of decency held onto by older cultures in older states. It’s a tantalizing contradiction
from which great human dramas are born, told, written, filmed, and like all
life— eventually evaporate.
Reminding the creative self to cherish these lines, and raising
a glass of soymilk to the sunshine.
