VACATION & EVACUATION (September 30, 2020)

           The adjacent hillside cemetery is a quirky treasure in its own right, half-neglected but still in use. I spotted gravestones from 1880 to 2016, including Martha Hindman’s from 1940. Many decedents were military veterans. Fenced family plots contained touching mementoes — toys and baseball caps, miniature replicas of fly fishermen, tractors and RVs. A few included sun-sparkled carpets of polished stones or beach glass. Biblical inscriptions were favored. Epitaphs linked married couples. “He was a diamond in the rough. She, the setting that made him shine.”  Down on its luck, the hill crest somehow combined the ancient roots of a pioneer site with the stubborn resilience of country neighbors. Quaint, poignant, even haunting.

            In downtown Sisters, Nancy and I spoiled ourselves with 6 a.m. sorties to the local bakery. Then on to the first-rate grocery store for fresh produce and dairy products. All local shopkeepers and most residents were conscientious about mask-wearing and social-distancing. Unfortunately, most tourists seemed oblivious. This caused us to forego craft shops, museums, galleries and groups. But we’d anticipated that before leaving home.

            Away from town, pandemic negligence also became a problem. For example, we had hoped to hike around a celebrated alpine lake. But hundreds of tourists crowded the shoreline and shallows, with no masks in sight. We quickly decided to conduct most of our sightseeing from inside the car. Still, the natural scenery was lovely, even on wheels. Enjoyable excursions included a loop up and over a Cascades pass, a meander alongside the serene Metolius River, and a side trip on National Forest service roads to lunar lava fields. Back in our friends’ handsome sanctuary, we took pleasure lounging, reading and writing.

            One unpleasant surprise was the return of Nancy’s migraines. This condition had debilitated her when we’d lived in Italy but disappeared when we’d moved to the foggy, overcast Monterey peninsula. Now, perhaps due to a combination of elevation and bright glare, she was struck down again and laid up for several days. By recuperating indoors, she brought it under control and, by the end of our visit, was on the mend.

            Home Again  

            Our return leg back to the San Francisco Bay Area was smooth and uneventful. We’re encouraged by this maiden voyage and plan to repeat it. As a variation, we’ve booked a guaranteed-hygienic rental house on California’s northern coast for early December. We like the promise and prospect of quarterly excursions. Periodic absences from our protective but confined retirement community seem one practical strategy for making extended isolation work.

EVACUATION: GETTING AHEAD OF AN ILL WIND

            A Rude Surprise

            Nancy and I arrived home from our Oregon vacation on August 15. We spent the next few days unpacking, catching up on email correspondence and squeezing in a cluster of video and in-person medical appointments. Evenings found us faithfully watching the Democratic National Convention.

            As the week advanced, our attention was increasingly focused on the nearest exploding wildfire. This blaze started in the coastal redwood forests of Santa Cruz County, over the ridge and southwest from our Portola Valley retirement community. By Thursday, August 20, governmental authorities were publishing twice-daily fire-progress bulletins. Friday morning, the health-and-safety situation was rapidly deteriorating. Sixty thousand acres had already burned, and the fire was only 5% contained. Due to an outburst of simultaneous California fires, our local firefighting crews were understaffed and overextended. To up the ante, the National Weather Service issued a Fire Weather Watch in anticipation of approaching thunderstorms and possible dry lightning over the coming weekend.

            Our community’s Executive Director encouraged Independent Residents with cars to initiate voluntary self-evacuation. While this recommendation was couched in terms of individual prudence, Nancy and I appreciated that early departures would also free up community staff to concentrate on helping less mobile residents in the event of a mandatory mass-evacuation order. We also preferred to avoid the panic and press of a possible campus-wide surge, especially at night. So we began making contingency plans for a quick family getaway.

            First, we compiled a merged his-and-her list of items to take, distinguishing “Have-to’s” from “Nice-to’s”. Contemplating the possibility that our self-evacuation might soon be followed by total shutdown and even destruction of the community, our inventory substantially exceeded the stuff-and-sprint contents of a conventional “Go Bag.” In addition to essential credit cards and medications, we included financial and legal documents, key hard-copy files, contact coordinates, laptops and cellphones, cables and chargers, a suitcase full of clothes for each, toiletries, reading and writing materials, a cache of cash. Also, three family photos and two boxes of archival journals and letters for Nancy’s new blog.

            As usual, pandemic precautions complicated everything. We tossed in extra masks, hand sanitizers, disposable gloves, plus a week’s supply of food (cans but also perishables in an insulated cooler.)

            We began brainstorming about safe destinations with breathable air, reachable within reasonable driving distance. Several preliminarily appealing candidates were swiftly foreclosed by fire-blocked access. Scrolling south on her cell-phone map, Nancy spotted Morro Bay. I jumped on the computer and phone and, by Saturday evening, had locked in a Vrbo rental house for a one-week contract with immediate occupancy. Committed to leaving, we packed our bags that same night and collapsed into bed.

            Deteriorating conditions Sunday morning, August 23, convinced us we were making the right move. Winds had shifted to the southwest, driving the fire in our community’s direction. Smoke and ash outside our apartment was thick and acrid, billowing down the adjacent slopes. The lightning storm was approaching fast. We filled out our Self-Evacuation form and notified apartment neighbors and the community’s Director of Resident Services of our imminent departure. Loading the car, we drove out at noon. (While I set the GPS, Nancy made a final walkabout inside our apartment, taking leave of a lifetime of treasures just in case.)

            I was surprised freeway traffic was so light. I’d imagined lots of other folks would be making a parallel dash. South on 280 to 85 to 101. A gobbled drive-through lunch at In-n-Out Burgers in Morgan Hill. On through Salinas, Paso Robles and Atascadero. For 200 miles we drove in or under smoke. At last, Morro Rock’s imposing bulk dominated a blue skyline. Door-to-door in four hours.

            Our Vrbo cottage was plain and adequate, to put it diplomatically. We spent a decompressing week taking walks in clean air, reading, cooking and working on our blogs. Phone calls and a Zoom meeting confirmed that our retirement community had dodged a bullet. The Residents’ Emergency Coordinator wryly remarked, “We were only one wind shift away from a mandatory Evacuation Order.” Portola Valley authorities announced it was safe to return home. Nancy and I made the trip north exactly one week after rushing out.

            We’re now safely back home, thankful to be resettled in our community apartment. As an index of this conflagration’s gravity, between mid-August and mid-September our San Francisco Bay Area suffered an unprecedented siege of 30 consecutive days of dangerously unhealthy air quality. Eerie colored skies were nationally publicized. Today, a blue vista graced my window. In the pre-dawn sky, Jupiter beamed like a beacon for the first time in months. 

            Meanwhile Oregon has arguably been hit harder than our own California. After our visit, our friends Bob and Valerie fire-proofed their Sisters house and made their escape eastwards through Idaho and Nevada, en route to their winter refuge in Borrego Springs, California. They are in our daily thoughts and prayers.      

            Let me share three preliminary takeaways from our family’s near-brush with incendiary terror:

• As our Governor says, “If you still doubt Climate Change, come to California.” Rising temperatures, chronic drought and consequent wildfires are our new normal. We need to treat these natural disasters as cyclical certainties.
• When those emergencies occur, seniors in particular need to be prepared and nimble. We’re not as quick-thinking as we used to be. Our judgment is as creaky as our knees. Hesitation is risky. Have a plan, make your lists, pack your bags and hit the road.
• In such quick-quick, gotta-find-a-place emergencies, forget about searching for the perfect berth. Rental-property platforms’ top-rated listings won’t be available on short notice. If owners and agents are listening to the same Breaking-News bulletins you are, they’ll have no incentive for granting discounts. In this persistent pandemic, rental houses will still be a surer social-distancing bet than hotel rooms. But take what you can get at your chosen destination. Be content with safe shelter. Then sanitize as you enter for peace-of-mind.

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED READINGS

THE GEOGRAPHER’S LIBRARY by Jon Fasman

            One of many advantages of living with a discerning spouse is that she can encourage you not to give up on a slow-starting novel. This clever, menacing mystery intertwines two incongruous plotlines: medieval alchemy and small-town New England journalism.

            A glowing cover blurb compared this author to Umberto Eco and John Fowles. We both thought this was marketing overreach. A more telling clue was the fabulously successful publication two years before of Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE.

            Literary pretensions aside, I enjoyed the chance to vicariously revisit Ashgabat and Dushanbe and to glimpse the Baltic shores of Talien. A further treat was the respectful reanimation of the cryptic vocabulary and paraphernalia of alchemy, often rudely dismissed and derided by modern science.

            A sleuthing romp for locked-down entertainment.

THE RIDDLE OF AMISH CULTURE by Donald Kraybill

            Agile Aging followers may recall my 2019 blog post celebrating a cordial encounter with the Miller family on the California Zephyr over the Rockies. Patriarch Dan and I have since become regular pen-pals, and he graciously sent me this gift to help answer my stream of questions about his Amish culture and community. The book is a weighty hybrid, combining an academic cultural-anthropology treatise with a personal testimonial. Professor Kraybill is well-qualified for both. Wikipedia calls him the foremost living expert on Old Order Amish. He’s also an admiring neighbor, having nurtured close relationships with Amish friends during 70 years of residence in Lancaster County, PA.

            The riddle in his title is intriguing: “How is it that a tradition-laden people who spurn electricity, computers, automobiles and higher education are not merely surviving but are, in fact, thriving in the midst of modern life?” The evidence of that success is impressive. The Amish are the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Over 90% of their youth, despite bombardment by secular temptations, elect to permanently remain within the fold. And with some delays and detours, their economy is skillfully transitioning from small-scale agriculture to artisanal microenterprises and tourism.

            Kraybill’s solution to this central puzzle is complex and engaging. Among the hooks anchoring successful “tribal” resilience, he flags intense religious commitment, centuries of persecution, mutual support and a vigilant determination to resist modernization. Accepting the futility of total isolation, the pragmatic Amish bishops maintain a strategic balance between separation from, and cohabitation with, the outside world. Separation is re-enforced through a comprehensive code of conduct, extending from dialect and schooling to labor, entertainment, dress and transportation. To achieve accommodation with the secular authorities, they negotiate legal compromises and exemptions. The antithesis of quaint hobbits in buggies and bonnets, this faithful minority astutely manages social change by “moving cultural fences.”  

            For me, the most thought-provoking part of Kraybill’s analysis was his summative comparison of Amish and modern societal values. To his credit, he is not a sentimental advocate of the community. He frankly concedes that “Amish culture remains entrenched in provincialism, sexism and traditionalism.” But he also unflinchingly critiques the self-indulgence, consumerism, and alienation too pervasive in modern society. One provocative inference he draws is that the two systems have directly contrary priorities and impacts: “Tilted toward the rugged individualist, modern culture easily tramples on the weak. Amish culture, tilted toward the community, easily suffocates the strong.”

            Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kraybill encourages both systems to learn from each other. I must say that I found the Amish dedication to social responsibility and burden-sharing particularly appealing during this period of disdain for mask-wearing and passion for partisan combat.

SIMON THE FIDDLER by Paulette Jiles

            Here’s another charming Wild West saga by Paulette Jiles. This one’s a tangential prequel to the author’s prize-winning NEWS OF THE WORLD. That gem’s quirky protagonist, Captain Jefferson Kidd, is now limited to a cameo appearance. Taking his place as leads are two worthy substitutes: a determined frontier violinist and an equally courageous immigrant governess.

            Again we’re in post-Civil War Texas, as demobbed Confederates cower to avoid recognition and Union commanders begrudgingly relinquish control to civilian authorities. The poet-novelist writes lyrically of hurricanes, cactus and wild horses. Again she demonstrates a sensitive perception of relations between the sexes. And an ear and smile for frontier dialogue. (I loved the immigrant Irish proverb, “God is good, but never dance in a small boat.”) There is brutal violence too, yellow fever and dastardly deeds. But music is the linking strand, sustained with confidence by a writer whose Acknowledgements thank fellow members of her performing band.

            A zippy drama, with players you come to deeply care about. Can’t wait for the movie.

COMING OCTOBER 31: Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World