Defining Moments

For my mother, it was Pearl Harbor. For my students, it’s 9/11. For my generation, of course, it was the Kennedy assassination. All of us can answer that question: What were you doing when JFK was shot? Walking to seventh-grade Home Ec, in my case – I remember hushed whispers in the hallway, an awareness of something wrong. And then an announcement over the intercom. It was the day we were supposed to cook a full breakfast in class. We cooked in stunned silence.

My family spent the whole weekend watching television. We’d only had the TV for a few months; my parents wanted us all to be good readers before they let it into the house. We watched the weekend unfold in black and white: the crowds lining the street, the coffin with its ominous music, the two small children holding the widow’s hand.

Fifty years later, friends remember that day, sharing words such as “loss of innocence.” Until then, growing up in the fifties, it had been possible to believe that nothing bad would happen. I realize now that World War II had ended only eighteen years before. But that was ancient history, before I was even born. My father had spent four years as a medic in the South Pacific, but he never talked about it – the memories were too terrible. I did not grow up under the shadow of recent war. We lived in modern times, when things like that couldn’t happen. But then Kennedy was shot, and we learned that they could.

When I first started teaching, I used to ask my students which moments defined their generation. The Challenger disaster? some suggested. The OJ trial? But then 9/11 came along, and I didn’t have to ask.

It won’t be long before my newest students don’t remember that day. Already, many were only small children when the Twin Towers fell. Their memories are of more recent disasters.

As children, we see the past as something finished, an unreal time before we were born, a time when bad things used to happen. And then some new disaster comes along – Pearl Harbor, Kennedy, the Twin Towers – and we discover those bad things can still happen after all.

On the Responsibility of Teaching

This is going to be a crazy semester, with two new classes, a couple old ones, and the college’s accreditation report to edit. For weeks, potential blog entries have formed in my mind, but they’re never finished. I don’t see much time for other things this semester: not writing stories, not keeping a blog – not even going to the mountains (or at least, not very often).

What I do see, having spent yesterday catching up on the first week-and-a-half’s grading, is the responsibility involved with teaching.

I chose the World Literature class because that subject is “my thing.” I did my MA thesis, after all, on two women writing about Africa – one white, one black. I’ve also traveled.

But World Lit II includes the whole world, from the 1600s on. That’s a lot of literature. Nearly 30 enthusiastic students – smart, mature, many of them better informed on some subjects than I am – are waiting to learn not only postcolonial theory, but the mysteries of the Enlightenment and the conquest of Mexico. Not to mention the history of China. How can I possibly do them justice?

At the other end of the spectrum, more than 25 anxious students are hoping my Student Success class will magically lead to their success in college (and life). Can I really help them? Yes, I’ve done the On Course training. Yes, I have the textbook. But will it really work? I’ve just finished reading their introductory essays – many see this class as their last chance. I can only hope to somehow help them succeed where they’ve failed before.

If I spent the whole semester teaching and editing, skipping my mountains, would I succeed with these classes? (Without the mountains, would I survive at all?) But of course, I will go hiking and snowshoeing – that’s what keeps me sane.

And somehow, the classes will work. They always do, I tell myself (wanting to believe it).

So, time to get back to work – back to Tartuffe and the 1600s. Somehow, it will all come together.

Haiku on the Beach

Last month, I posted some Facebook photos of a day at the Oregon coast. When my mother saw them, she wrote a series of Haiku poems to complement the pictures. Here is the complete set:

overcast morning
and wet sand – good walk
to reflect on


three graduate students
have refined skills to build
sand castles


fish ‘n’ chips
and clam chowder on the deck
beach fare


petunias
and umbrella – mom and daughters’ smiles
beach color


craggy rocks
topped with crowds of murres
habitat haven


in afternoon sun
dune shadows on silver sand
cast moving patterns


these days a hand
from granddaughter makes dune climbing
fun again


sail boat reflection
wavers on water – no barrier
to swimming sea gull


railroad trestles
historic reminders of trains carried
a century ago


this bridge spans miles
and connects three generations
with fond memories

When I was small, we spent several summers in Newport. My dad was a marine biologist, and I grew up visiting tide pools. My mom has always claimed I knew a sea anemone from a sea urchin before I knew a horse from a cow. And no matter how hard my parents tried to distract me, I always noticed the Newport Bridge. Whatever I was doing, I’d stop and burst into song: “London Bridge is falling down….”

So, yes, the bridge unites three generations – even though my daughters never met their grandfather.

(Haiku by Betty McCauley; photos by Jane Thomas)

Hiking While Rome Burns

I’ve had this title in mind for weeks. Originally, I planned to use it right after a separate posting on this year’s backpacking, which began in the midst major national debt struggles. What I didn’t expect was that the forest itself would be burning just west of us, with giant clouds of yellow smoke.

This wasn’t the first time we’d hiked while forests burned. In 2003, Rhiannon and I circled Oregon’s South Sister during fires in the Jefferson Wilderness, just to the north. As we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail under sunny skies, we remembered places we loved, now disappearing in flames.

What can we do when chaos threatens? Do we glue ourselves to the television? Or do we hike the Three Sisters while Jefferson burns? This year the chaos has been ongoing, from threats of government shut-downs to actual cancelation of summer school at my college. Disaster looms all around. And still I hike, though sometimes I wonder why.

This was also the first backpacking of my sixties, twenty-one years since the original trip when Rhiannon was ten. Hiking, I’m slow. My body aches; I sense the passing of time. I recycle old questions: What am I doing here? Am I actually enjoying this? And yet, all year I plan for this annual hike.

Sunday, the first day, went fairly well. On Saturday we’d acclimated ourselves by driving up to the bristlecone pines, walking at 11,000 feet. The next morning, we drove back down the Owens Valley and up some amazing zigzags to the Cottonwood Pass trailhead at about 10,000 feet, south of the main Sierra in the Golden Trout Wilderness.

Switchbacks led up through foxtail pines, closely related to bristlecones. It was tempting to photograph every golden snag. I was slow; Rhiannon came back to carry my pack up the last stretch to 11,200 feet. We then followed the Crest Trail – the same trail that goes all the way through Oregon to Canada – around the corner to Chicken Spring Lake.

On Monday, I found myself lagging. This was the first time in years that we’d carried the packs a second day – our goal was Soldier Lake. Sometimes we went downhill – meaning uphill if we came out the full distance on Wednesday. Each bend promised a view of the “real mountains,” but when they finally appeared – the backside of Mineral King, maybe? – they were dim in a haze of smoke.

We rested at the Sequoia Park border. Maybe I’m getting too old for this, I said. Maybe we should look for alternatives: Shorter trips ? (maybe). Lower trails? (but Oregon bugs remain till my school starts). Horses? (worth trying). Lose some weight? (but it always comes back). We gave up on Soldier Lake and backtracked to a tiny stream. Above it, a perfect campsite overlooked a valley, with another valley far below.

And above our camp was a tiny unnamed lake, with pink Sierra primroses blooming among the rocks. Primroses! – suddenly it all seemed worthwhile.

That evening, smoke clouds lifted to reveal hidden mountains south of camp. After dinner, we played cards, using a bear canister as a card table, and talked about previous trips – some spectacular, others discouraging: Seven days across the Wallowas, our second summer of backpacking; later, a walk along the Snake River, where I was so out of shape that we only went a mile and a half.

Maybe it’s OK to be tired at sixty. Sierra trails are hard – they’re covered in granite steps like a giant’s staircase; they go above 11,000 feet. I’m doing better than I did ten years ago.

Tuesday morning we set off again. The sky had cleared; the mountains were crisp. Without the big packs, it was easy to bend down for flowers. One dry meadow was full of tiny monkey flowers and miniature lupine mats, along with a small Lewisia – not to mention the butterflies.

At Soldier Lake, a ridge of rocks still hid the “real mountains.” Rhiannon led us up a gully, and with the climb, I found myself losing momentum again. Too steep, too high – why bother? When I caught up, I found her reading the plant book in a hanging meadow that would have been ideal for mountain goats. “It’s just a bit further,” she encouraged me.

She was right. Just above, beyond the shooting stars and a patch of snow, I watched her disappear through a little notch. Soon she was standing on a mound of rocks. “It’s amazing up here!” she called.

And it was – or at least it should have been. Finally, we could see the real mountains – sort of. Like ghosts of themselves, they stood lost in a shroud of smoke. Rhiannon recognized The Miter, mentioned in the High Trail story, which she’d started the night before.

Below us was another unnamed lake. By the time I caught up, Rhiannon was already in the water. It was chilly, but my quick dip was refreshing. And basking in sunshine afterward, I realized again that it was worth it after all.

Avoiding coming down the gully, we plotted a different course across the granite, stopping for rosy sedum and pale yellow columbine. Circling the ridge behind Soldier Lake took us down and down… we eventually joined a trail in a green meadow of shooting stars – and mosquitoes.

Bad planning – we’d left the bug repellent at camp. One meadow led to another; each time I rubbed my arms, I’d squish half a dozen bugs. (Rhiannon sensibly wore long sleeves.) I flapped at the swarms, breathing them in. My arms went bumpy with welts.

Finally, the trail led into the forest… but uphill. Uncharacteristically, I charged upward – bugs followed. Part way up, we met a string of hikers. “Do you have any bug dope?” I asked a man my own age. He did; I slathered it on. “Thanks – you’ve saved my life!” The bugs continued to whine, but my arms were safe.

That evening, I was exhausted. I think it was the mosquitoes and that long charge up the hill. But Wednesday morning, we climbed again to the primrose lake, setting up the camera to photograph us together. Hiking out that day, Rhiannon generously carried part of my load.

On Cottonwood Pass, we met four men who’d just climbed Mt. Whitney. I volunteered Rhiannon to take their picture. “I’m doing a survey on people’s ages,” I added – “I’m sixty.”

“I’m seventy,” one of the men told us. And further down, we met two women with backpacks. One was sixty-eight.

We were still on the pass when the smoke came in, a giant billowing yellow bruise of a cloud. It followed us down; the sun shone blood-red, and the forest was lit by pale watery light. By the time we reached the main road, the whole Owens Valley was filled with smoke, all the way north past Bishop.

Later, further up the road, my aunt and uncle took us to dinner at their retirement community lodge. Here was another view of aging – could these women, aging gracefully with their neatly coiffed hair, be me, a few years on? Did they still climb mountains? Why am I still so driven?

Maybe it’s the primroses. Maybe it’s the need to visit what can only be reached on foot. I don’t know.

Or maybe it’s the need to “get it while you can,” now, while it’s still possible. My English teaching begins again soon; I share the fears that inspired Andrew Marvell and the other Seventeenth Century poets: But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near. At sixty, that chariot seems closer than ever.

And as the country struggles with its big debt questions, what really counts? Surely, the little things still matter – a daughter’s generosity, the primroses by an alpine lake. For me, it’s still worth the effort to climb those mountains. Marvell, again, on getting it while one can:

Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.

(I love those “amorous” birds of prey.)

Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life….

Big things happen, and ordinary life goes on. Mt. Jefferson burns, so we hike the Sisters. Chaos looms, yet I “tear my pleasures” however I can – even if it’s only by climbing a mountain to photograph the primroses.

A Divided Life

Teaching makes me happy, I wrote at the end of this past semester. Teaching gives me energy. I made those notes because I knew that without summer school, I’d forget what I value in teaching. And with a whole semester of lessons to plan, I’m still trying to convince myself that there’s value in what I do.

For as long as I remember, there’s been a split in my life. On the one hand, science and the outdoors; on the other, writing and literature. I started out in the sciences. Lab jobs led me toward a physics or chemistry degree; with summer field jobs, that goal morphed toward botany and birds.

I like plants. In our family, my ex-husband and one daughter and I all know plant names. We spent years studying birds and plants and monkeys in Africa, later doing rare plant surveys for the Forest Service and BLM. Every summer, I’d alternate between two lives: my forestry editing job during the week, and then long weekends of tromping the mountains of eastern or southern Oregon, finding plants.

But at the same time, I’ve always been a reader and writer. And when I chose to go back to school in my forties, I could imagine teaching writing, but not botany. After five life-changing years in school, I became a full-time English teacher. And it’s been a very satisfying life. I love my students; I love what I teach.

Yet a part of me still craves the outdoors. Since moving to California, I’ve spent more and more time in the mountains. The flora is all new; it was several years before I could recognize most of the plants. Even now, I’m an amateur – but for most of the flowers, I can figure out names from the pretty-picture books. And often I can intuitively guess the family and genus – in Latin. After years of typing plant lists for forestry papers and plant surveys, I can spell them all.

Much of the year, I spend time in the mountains. Living next to the Sierra Range, I find spring flowers blooming from February through August (if I climb high enough). I’ve landed in a great place for botany.

It surprises me that most of my Blog entries have been about the outdoors. I thought there’d be more of a balance – outdoor postings, teaching postings. But when I teach – and when I grade – it absorbs all my attention. When I hike, there’s time to think: about plants, about teaching, about the next thing I want to write.

Hiking and the outdoors add to everything else I do. At one point, I realized I’d just explained four different species of birds – in a poetry class. And now, as I try to move back into teaching, I have to remind myself that teaching, too, enriches my life.

My Daughter, My Colleague

In my own life, there’s a split: Science and outdoors vs. teaching and literature. My daughters seem to have divided those interests between them: Rhiannon studies plants and carries a backpack, while Emily’s finishing a PhD in literature. Because I seem to write more about hiking than teaching, it’s Rhiannon who’s appeared most often in this Blog.

But when I think about teaching, it’s Emily I call. She’s the one in our family who’s gone straight through school without a break, ever since kindergarten. She’s the one who resists learning plants. She backpacks with us sometimes, but she’s not a fanatic. At twenty-seven, she has long since passed me educationally. Proud as I am, there’s a bittersweet feeling, too: Why didn’t I do a PhD? In dividing up the two main strands of my life, my girls should each go much further professionally than I have.

Emily has always had skills the rest of us lack. She’s the one I’ll consult on hair care or clothing. Long ago, I attended a far-off editing conference. Emily, then twelve or fourteen, helped plan my wardrobe for each event, packing clothes and accessories in labeled plastic bags. Where did she learn such things?

This spring, I drove to Oregon right after finals. As soon as I reached Eugene, I settled into Emily’s big red easy chair. She was teaching a Shakespeare class. She’d created some excellent overheads to illustrate paraphrasing and analysis, based on speeches in Hamlet. No one ever taught her these skills, she said, but it was clear her students needed the help.

This is just how I teach, seeing a need and coming up with a handout to teach it. Despite my twelve-hour trip, we spent the next hour discussing teaching. Sometimes we’ve even collaborated on handouts. She’s there when I need help on a literature idea, or when I need someone who understands campus politics.

Talking shop is one of the pleasures of having a daughter who’s also a colleague. Admittedly, we teach different things and in different places, but it’s all English. Emily is working on a PhD in Renaissance Studies; I’ll never do a PhD. But I’m ahead when it comes to teaching experience. She’s never had to deal with teaching five classes at once, as I do at my community college – not yet, at least. And if she gets a good job at a small liberal arts college – if – maybe she’ll never have to deal with that teaching load.

And now I ought to stop posting blog entries and plan my lessons for fall – but first I need to consult with Emily.

Lost Books of Childhood

One of the unexpected pleasures of this internet age has been rediscovering the books of my childhood. Like many people in the fifties and sixties, our family relied on the public library for books. Until recently, I thought many of those books had disappeared. Now, however, through sites like AbeBooks.com and even Amazon, it’s possible to find a dog-eared copy and have it delivered to my own door. How can these small booksellers afford to sell books for a penny, or even a dollar? Do they gain that much on the $3.99 shipping fee? Or are they just book lovers who can’t bear to destroy a book, happy to send it instead to a loving home?

A number of those books have made it to my home lately. It’s interesting which ones I’ve sought out. Sometimes it’s a concept I remember. My sister and brother and I were fascinated by The Upside-Down Boy. Amazingly, one day a set of footprints appeared on the sloped ceiling above our beds – just like in the book! Fifty years later, I found a copy of the original Dorothy Ivens book (from 1958) and gave it to my mom, who remembered my dad stenciling the prints above our heads as we slept.

Often it’s the story and characters that matter the most. Carol Ryrie Brink is best known for Caddie Woodlawn, a pioneer story that’s stayed in print for years. But I have much stronger memories of two other very different books. In Baby Island, two young girls are shipwrecked with four babies. It’s the ultimate girls’ adventure story, a parody of desert island books – there’s even a footprint with a missing toe. We read this to Rhiannon when she was five, her first chapter book. (As it happens, we started it in a hut by Lake Oku in Africa, drawing in various biologists, but that’s another story.) I’ve since given copies to several other five-year-olds.

The other Brink book, The Headland (checked out more than once from the library), is quite different. It’s a long 1955 novel about five children who find themselves in northern France as World War II begins. The story of how the war changed their relationships stayed with me for years, becoming part of my frame of reference about how men and women might live in the world. When I recently rediscovered the book, I found it still just as compelling as an adult – as all the best teen novels are. My daughter Emily, now doing a PhD in English, found it a satisfying read as well.

It’s the place that’s drawn me back to High Trail, by Vivian Breck. When I first read this book as a child in Oregon, I hoped one day to try something called “backpacking.” Breck’s books were among the few adventure stories for girls. There were some about horses, and one about a river trip, but High Trail – published in 1948 – was the one I remembered best. When I tracked it down, I found it was set in my own back yard, in Sequoia National Park.

As World War II ends, Chloe and her father finally go on a long-delayed backpacking trip. But west of Mt. Whitney, her father breaks a leg, and it’s up to Chloe to go for help. As Chloe struggles east over the flank of the mountain, an early storm comes in. Luckily, she encounters two young men, recently back from the war, and for the rest of the book, the three work together to survive the storm and find help for Chloe’s dad.

The book appealed to me because it was about a young girl in the wilderness. From what my maps show, it’s geographically accurate. Breck writes of birds and plants I know. While I haven’t traveled the specific trails in the book – Chloe, unlike me, is young and slim and long-legged – I’ve been nearby. So in one sense, I’m still fascinated by this book because it’s set near a place I know and love.

I’m interested both in what’s changed and what’s stayed the same since 1948. I suspect new trails have been added; a Sequoia historian would know. Chloe and her dad gather wood to build a giant fire against a rock; these days we rely on little stoves. When Chloe needs to rappel down a ledge, the men help her wrap the rope around her body, and down she goes – no harness or special rappelling devices. In fact, that’s how I first rappelled myself, in a local quarry; as I read the book, I could still feel the rope sliding roughly along my body.

As an English teacher, I’m also interested in feminist issues. The fact that Chloe is out on the trail at all was unusual for the times. Most teen girls’ books then – and even now – don’t involve wilderness. Chloe is adventurous, but she’s hiking with her dad. Mom stays home doing whatever moms do – she doesn’t merit much mention. What were the forces affecting both Chloe and her mom in those days, and how did mothers affect their daughters?

It may seem surprising that a man in his late twenties would be a suitable romantic interest for a teenager. These days, that would be odd in a teen novel. But when I look at my parents’ generation, many of those marriages involve age differences of at least seven or eight years.

I’ve often wondered about the women of my father’s age. They watched their classmates go off to die in the war, some of them keeping the offices and shipyards going as Rosie the Riveter – and then the survivors came home to marry young girls just out of their teens. What happened to those older women? I suppose they were the spinster teachers of my childhood, the single ladies doing good works. But what were they really thinking? Where would I find their stories?

And what was the effect on all those young women of marrying men so much older and more experienced? Did it reinforce the man’s traditional privileged role? My mother, with just a Bachelor’s degree, was a faculty wife at age twenty-three. It was only when I hit my teens that she started library school – having first ensured the future of the local library by helping to orchestrate a funding campaign.

High Trail is a teen novel that’s made me ask questions on various levels. I was always a voracious reader; in eighth grade, I read 123 books (which shows how exciting life was). Along with all those stories, I absorbed ideas about men and women and how they were to behave. I was liberated enough, even then, to appreciate books where girls resisted expectations.

I also learned about places – among them, the Sierra Range. Before applying for my current job, I knew nothing of Visalia. But when the rangers bring Chloe’s father out on a stretcher, they take him down through Mineral King to the Visalia hospital. Apparently, I have been here, at least through stories – I just didn’t remember. It makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten, and how my early reading was affecting me even before I even knew it.