The Economy Hits Home: Takeaway Café Closes its Doors

For a while I thought the disasters had eased. Last month the government didn’t close. Apart from some major tornadoes and record river floods, the natural world seemed almost to have forgotten us.

And then I found that Takeaway Café had closed.

Even the sign is gone. All that remains is a small typed message on the door: “We must regretfully close our doors due to economic conditions.”

It was my closest place of business, my corner shop – at least, my corner-of-the-mall shop. It was the place where I could chat with the proprietors and eat a packet of Kettle Chips while waiting for a Kilkenny salad. It was the place where I bought breakfast casserole or spinach quiche for visitors, lasagna for book group, beef stew for a birthday party.

So where will I find a “home-cooked” meal? Where will I get the extra bacon bits for my weekend omelet?

It’s not that I can’t cook. I can, but living alone, I usually lack both inspiration and time. When I do suffer a fit of good intentions, my fridge fills up with moldy peppers and lettuce.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. Things aren’t going well around here. In the next block over, three of seven houses are empty, their lawns overgrown, torn curtains or blinds in the windows. (How is it that empty houses always have ragged drapes?) The news suggests that things will only get worse.

If an excellent local business like Takeaway Café can’t make it, who can? I only wish I’d known to fill my freezer before they closed.

Happy Mother’s Day: Publishing My Mom’s Haiku Book

I sometimes joke that to earn enough to retire, I’ll have to work till I’m 84. It may be possible… at 84, my own mother teaches “Write Your Life” at her community college, sits on the board for an adult day care center, and participates in at least four reading or writing groups.

She also shares her Haiku at poetry readings, and for years her friends have begged her to publish a collection. So about a year and a half ago, my sister and I helped her create a book.

My mom chose 160 of her favorite Haiku poems. Mary and I searched our computer files for pictures to complement them, pictures that would look good in black and white – no delicate fall colors or bright reds on greens. Our brother Tom and Mary’s son also contributed photos.

Ten days before Christmas, as soon as her grades were in, Mary started playing with layouts. She emailed me each new draft, and in between creating exams and grading papers, I proofed poems and suggested formatting changes. Within a week, we had a book.

If this were a traditional story, we might have sent the manuscript to a publisher, waited months for a response, and given up after a few rejections. But as my mother said, “I don’t have time to wait.” We chose to self-publish instead.

Poets have a long history of self-publishing. In this case, we took it a step further, with photographs and a professional binding – not to mention an ISBN number. Within days, we had the first copy in hand.

Writers have a disadvantage when it comes to recognition. Artists sell directly to their customers – a painting sold can feel like instant success. Writers can’t sell stories in the same way. To sell our work in a local bookstore, we first need to please a publisher in New York.

In this case, self-publishing was the way to go. We’re happy with the way the book turned out, and so is my mother.

Readers have commented on how well our photos fit the poems. I found it surprisingly easy to find the right ones. A Haiku poem, like a photograph, captures a moment in time, and at its best, it reflects on that moment. Often, we’re “seeing” in the same ways.

Once the book was out, my brother created a website for it. You can see sample pages or buy the book ($14.95) from Tom’s site or through Lulu.com.

My Spirit Sings – Haiku by Betty McCauley
http://www.bettymccauley.com/

I’m glad we’ve been able to create this “legacy” while my mom is still around to enjoy it. And I hope I’m still as active at 84 as she is. Happy Mother’s Day!

Camping Alone: Spring Break at Joshua Tree

For weeks I’d dreamed of the desert. I’d drift off over a stack of grading, and the images would appear out of nowhere: red cactus, green Joshua Trees, golden rocks.

Spring Break came late this year, tied to a late-April Easter. I started for Joshua Tree on Sunday afternoon, the car full of grading and gear, and drove straight east into an orange moon that rose like a bridge over the highway ahead. I set up my tent by moonlight and spent a lazy morning in camp.

Later I drove up to Hidden Valley, remembering previous trips. The first was in 1980, when Rhiannon was a baby. In March of 1994, longing to be somewhere completely different – somewhere far from Douglas-fir trees – I put both girls in the van and drove south from Oregon, putting 2,800 miles on the car. We all climbed on the rocks.

Most memorably, I sought refuge at Joshua Tree when I learned – the morning after leaving Emily at her expensive LA college – that my editing job was ending. I trudged the Hidden Valley trail in the August heat, sand in my Birkenstocks, pondering the future. In fact, that loss pushed me to teach more classes, which eventually led to a full-time job – much closer to J-Tree, as Rhiannon and the other climbers call it. Now I could join them.

This time I knew to wear boots. I also knew where to find the first glimpse of a bright red Mojave mound cactus. Climbing a rock, I saw a distant barrel cactus with yellow flowers. But the sky was hazing over; the rocks seemed dull in the mid-day light.

By the second day, I’d figured out the rhythm. Up with the sun, and a morning of exploration while it was cool and the light was crisp. Then, as the sky bleached out and the rocks lost their texture, an afternoon of grading. Finally, more exploring as the boulders regained their golden evening glow. Or that was the theory.

In fact, the morning’s adventures tended to last till mid-afternoon, and the grading… well, yes, the grading. It’s always the same on these trips – I bring great intentions and a big stack of papers, and somehow it’s always too hot, too cold, too windy, too bright, too dark… and the same essays come back to town, unread. Maybe I should just cut the outings short and grade at home.

But this time I did fairly well. I actually worked during the afternoons, reminding myself that flat light means boring pictures. I sat at a shaded table at Cottonwood Springs, or in my own camp, or at a picnic area where foreign tourists scrambled up rocks. And I did finish one stack of essays. So that was progress, sort of.

More important were the hikes. I found cactus blooming – six kinds – and purple verbena and bright red paintbrush. I climbed Ryan Mountain and repeated the 49 Palms trail, lined with barrel cactus and chuckwalla lizards – a trail I’d once hiked with my friend Mary. This time, a talk with hikers on that trail led to a musical campfire evening. (Go where you want to go, and you’ll meet the people you want to meet.)

Sitting by my own fire on the last night, I thought about my first solo camping trip – three and a half weeks across the west in 2004. (See today’s other Blog entry.)

I haven’t done another trip that long, but since moving to California, it’s become a tradition to visit the desert over Spring Break: Death Valley, Organ Pipe in Arizona, Joshua Tree. Deserts have the earliest spring flowers, and I like camping where it’s warm. Camping alone in a wet Oregon forest just wouldn’t be the same.

Alone? “Aren’t you scared?” “Don’t you get bored?” No… it’s not scary, and I never run out of things to do. I do try to camp surrounded by friendly families. If I called for help, someone would hear me. But so far, I’ve never needed to shout.

National Park campgrounds are the best. At J-Tree’s Indian Cove, each camp backs onto its own slab of granite. The skyline fills with tiny people exploring giant boulders, as my own girls once did.

That last evening, I sat by my fire, alone but surrounded by humanity, and typed on my laptop. Nearby, the couple beyond my boulder sat by their own fire, flames lighting the rock behind them. Further away, someone beat a monotonous rhythm on a drum. At the group camp down the valley, cheers and shouts erupted at regular intervals.

I wanted to stay forever. Why go back? I had the wilderness, plus all the technology I needed: a laptop that usually worked, a good camera, a reliable Subaru full of rechargers….

But I knew it was time to deal with the rest of the semester. Still, I’m already thinking about the next trip. It’s nearly summer….

Camping Alone: The First Solo Trip, 2004 – A Journey Through Rocks

Sitting alone by the campfire at Joshua Tree this spring, I found myself remembering my first solo car camping trip.

It was 2004, and I had no money. But I did have a few weeks between summer and fall terms, and all spring I’d been thinking about joining Rhiannon in the Rockies – how else could we do the annual backpacking?


In late August, I set out in my old blue Subaru, heading east across Oregon. I was nervous, though not about being alone. I was worried the car would break down before I was out of the state, dashing the dream I’d nurtured all year: just get in the car, alone, and drive… It was hard to believe the trip could actually happen.

Late that evening I stopped at Ochoco Divide, a familiar campground – just far enough from home (about three hours) that it felt like progress. In the morning, I spread my badly organized gear across the table to sort: these things to use, those to put away for later. (And of course this reminded me of our first trip across the Sahara, in an ancient Land Rover so full of spare parts that the extra weight itself led to additional break-downs.)

That afternoon, heading toward Idaho, I found myself beginning to relax: if I could make it beyond the Oregon border, maybe nothing would stop me.

I did make it beyond the Snake River. I camped across Idaho – at a sand dunes park, and the City of Rocks – and then at several places in Utah and Colorado. Thinking ahead to the Rockies, I looked for the highest hike at each camp: the top of the Bruneau Dune, up to Delicate Arch at Arches, a breathless walk to a viewpoint at that first 10,600-foot pass on Colorado’s Interstate 70. (I wasn’t expecting that one – neither was my car.)

During our three days of backpacking at Rocky Mountain, we reached 12,420 feet – the highest I’d ever hiked, before or since. After a day huddled under the tarp in snow and rain, we arose to blue skies. At the top of Tanima Pass, we found roseroot sedum blooming in the snow.

When I started that road trip, I feared I might be bored. How would I spend my evenings? What would I think about during those long days of driving? I packed maps and travel guides and notebooks and books on tape.

But in the end, the problem was lack of time, not lack of things to do with it. By the time I’d found a campsite, put up my tent, and heated a meal, there was hardly time to scrawl a few notes before crawling into my sleeping bag. The notes are still in that notebook, barely legible; I dreamed of one day having a laptop and a way to charge it. When picture cards filled, I had to beg Rhiannon’s colleague or my nephew in Santa Fe to download the photos onto a CD.

I found I liked traveling alone – I liked it very much indeed. I learned all the tricks of living on the cheap. Gas cost less then, and along with the canned soups and mashed potato packets in my car, the cheapest meals were the Polish dogs or burritos at the gas station mini-marts. Sometimes I’d heat a kettle on the camp stove and wash my hair.

By the time I’d driven west through New Mexico and Arizona, I was ready to travel forever. “A Journey Through Rocks,” I called the trip later, sorting my pictures; everywhere, there were arches and passageways and gaps in the rocks – not to mention the ancient houses in built into the cliffs at Mesa Verde.

One of the last stops was at Santa Monica Beach, where I was joined by Emily and my brother – it seemed that everyone ended up in California. (It was just a year later that I drove my 26-foot U-Haul to the Central Valley, followed by Emily in the blue Subaru.)

Driving the long straight miles up Interstate 5, I finally resorted to entertaining myself with story tapes. School would start within days. I’d been on the road for three and a half weeks, but I didn’t want it to end. I’d found it was possible to travel alone – possible, and very enjoyable. And I’ve been doing it ever since.