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Joan

A Sacred Duty

I climbed the sweeping broad steps, passed between the towering columns of the grand old building, walked through a pair of heavy oaken doors, and entered the hushed antechamber. The familiar place, the auditorium of San Fernando Junior High (nee San Fernando High School), had been transformed into a secular temple for the day. People spoke in whispers. American flags draped the walls.

 

 

On November 7, 1972, I voted for the very first time. I was a member of the first class of eighteen-year-olds voting for US President after the passage and ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution in July 1971. The Vietnam War was in full tilt. President Richard Nixon was running for a second term against Senator George McGovern. The buzz around the election was deafening.

 

The auspiciousness of the occasion was a bit intimidating. The pride I felt in being a “real adult” with the rights and responsibilities of a full citizen pushed me forward. My shoes clicked on the tile floor as I queued up behind the handful of my fellow citizens waiting to vote.

 

I scanned the long and narrow, high-ceiling foyer. At both ends were arrayed several voting booths. Sturdy and tall, built of dark wood, and the size of a phone booth, each was draped with a privacy curtain of vertically striped canvas. Some stood vacant, the curtain drawn back and inviting. Other curtains, pulled closed, revealed only the voters’ knees, ankles, and shoes, while protecting the voters' privacy of choice from the public eye.

 

“Name?” asked the first gray-haired woman sitting at the check-in table.

“Joan Griffin”

“Address?”

“556 North Brand Boulevard, San Fernando.”

She found my entry in the long list of names and checked me off.

“Put your signature here.” A younger woman, as conservatively dressed as the older women who bookended her, pointed at the line next to my printed name in her own book of lists. “Be sure to sign your full name.”

I took the pen and with great care wrote my first, middle, and last names in my best script, then pushed the book back. The woman scrutinized my entry before passing me on to the third clerk.

“Here’s your ballot.” The immaculately dressed and coifed woman held out a long, sheathed card. Then, noting my youth, she stood up, unfolding all five-feet of herself, and added in a grandmotherly voice, “Have you done this before, dear?”

“No, ma’am. This is my first time voting.” I spoke in the steady confident voice of my new personae—liberated female college freshman—but I’m sure she caught the ample dose of nervousness mixed with my bubbling pride.

She pointed me to an open voting booth to my left and reminded me to use the special pen waiting inside to put an X in the boxes beside my choices.

“Thank you.” I turned and approached the booth, feeling empowered and anxious.

 

I removed my marked-up sample ballot from the large macrame purse hanging on my shoulder, stepped into my booth, pulled the curtain tight behind me, and took a deep breath. Pressing my papers flat on the small shelf, I pick up the pen and was surprised to find my hand shaking. Another deep breath. I marked my ballot slowly and with great care. I took great pleasure in voting against Nixon and The War, voting for McGovern and The Peace Movement. 

Filled with pride and a deep sense of patriotism, I swept back my curtain, dropped my ballot in the box, and strode through that sacred space and outside into the bright light of that brisk and breezy autumn afternoon.

Dances with Dragons

Another glimpse into my memoir, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. JMTers and PCTers we met on the trail would pass along snippets of advice or warnings about obstacles and challenges ahead. Sometimes the story was complete and helpful, sometimes it was more a scary mystery than informative advice. Cappy and I began to call the warning tales Trail Legends. This is the story of one of those Trail Legends.

 

            I tossed my backpack up onto my back with one easy motion.

            That’s right.

            TOSSED. BACKPACK. EASY.

            My pack had become an integral part of me, rather than an ungainly piece of luggage strapped awkwardly to my back and shoulders. Like a camel has her hump, like a crow has her caw, like a shark has her fin, I had my pack… and we were one. Not only had its shape become my shape, its weight become my weight, and I knew exactly where, in its myriad of inner and outer pouches, each an every one of my possessions was hidden. Packing, unpacking, accessing, and carrying had all become second nature, instinctive.

            It was satisfying knowledge that gave me growing confidence. And confidence I would need, as this was the day we would face and ford Silver Creek—Trail Legend Number Two.

            We’d been hearing rumors about the treacherous Silver Creek water-crossing for two days. It seemed every person on the JMT had something to say on the subject of the Silver Creek Waterfall. Those headed north, mostly long distance PCT hikers, mumbled warnings as they strode swiftly past, disappearing before one could even ask a question. Fellow SOBOs, gathered at trail-side rest stops, compared what they’d heard, and attempted to assemble bits and pieces of information into a cohesive story.

            The gist of Trail Legend Number Two was that the sweet little meandering Silver Creek would grow into the powerful Silver Creek Waterfall… which just so happened to land directly on top of the trail, pounding downwards to sweep travelers off their feet and down the face of the mountain. The story left us with a dozen questions and no answers. The day before, I’d written in my journal about the Trail Legend.

 

The river is full and fast, they said.

You have to pass under a waterfall, they said.

It’s dangerous, they said.

It might be impassable, they said.

 

            So it was with this odd combination of confidence and trepidation that we set out that beautiful morning. The morning’s hike was mostly downhill, first through lovely green meadows, then through pine and fir forests, always following the Silver. Twice, we crossed the creek in thigh-high water.

            We stopped everyone we met to ask about Silver Creek and its waterfall crossing. The NOBOs, muscled and tested as they were from nearly four months on the trail from Mexico, all seemed to confirm what we already knew, but offered little advice about how to approach the crossing beyond, “Be careful,” before rushing off.

            “Obviously, all these people survived the crossing, so could it really be that bad?” I asked Cappy, my mind working on the problem.

            “They’re all so much bigger and stronger than we are. Remember yesterday, at the lunch stop, that bearded guy said people had gotten knocked down the hillside and hurt?” Cappy worried out loud.

            “If it was just one group with the story, I’d think they were pulling our legs,” I said. “But everyone seems to be telling the same story.”

            “I know,” Cappy agreed. “That’s what makes me worry.”

            We’d had this conversation a half dozen times just between the two of us, trying to wrap our brains around the obstacle and come up with some sort of a solution. I told myself to not think about the waterfall anymore, to just wait and see, but that was like telling myself to not think about pink elephants. It was all I could think about.

            

            The gentle trail ahead turned into switchbacks that would take us steeply downhill alongside the plunging Silver Creek. Before descending, we stepped off the trail to stand on a granite hump right at the point where the cascading creek first leapt off the edge. I looked over the side to watch the water falling and bouncing for hundreds of feet. Cool air rushed up from below amplifying the roar into a cacophony.

            “Somewhere down there, we have to cross under all this water,” Cappy shouted above the din. Looking down the mountain for some indication of where the trail and the creek would meet again, I couldn’t see past the tumbling water and its cloud of spray.

            I raised my open hands to signal that I shared her disbelief.

 

            It was well after our morning break when the trail stopped dropping, leveled out, and became a nearly flat path, a shelf, cut across the face of the granite canyon wall. Trickles of water from snowmelt higher up made their way haphazardly downward, darkening the bronze-colored stone. Trees stood tall between us and the sun, and vegetation lined the path on either side, carpeting the ground with green moisture-loving ferns and shrubs.

            According to Cappy’s map, we were just steps away from a face-to-face meeting with Trail Legend Number Two. The same creek we’d admired two hours earlier as it leapt into thin air was about to make a reappearance as its alter ego, the crashing end of the waterfall.

            Walking, I searched ahead, trying to bend my vision around each next curve of the trail, in order to catch a first glimpse of the watery obstacle. Emerging round one of those curves, striding directly towards us, was a figure straight from the pages of Outlander. Had we been transported to the Scottish Highlands? Or had he walked through a time warp into the Sierra?

            He stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders that made his backpack look like a child’s toy. His hair and beard were a thicker, longer version of the curly ginger fur that covered his muscled arms and legs.

            “Hey, Ladies!” his deep voice greeted us from a dozen feet ahead. A broad smile spread across his warm and friendly face as he approached from the south. “I’m Bear!” His PCT trail name was an apt moniker; he did resemble a great big cinnamon bear, rippling with muscles.

            “Hey,” we both responded. This was our last chance to learn something helpful about the fast approaching crossing.

            “Can we ask you about the waterfall?” Cappy said quickly, before he could vanish.

            “Why sure, Little Lady,” he beamed, his gold-green eyes twinkling under bushy brows. “What is it you want to know?”

            A floodgate of questions burst from us both.

            First Cappy, “How far is it? How high is it?”

            Then me, “Does it really fall on the trail? Is there any way around it?”

            “Whoa there. It’s not so difficult or scary as all that. If you do exactly what I tell you to do, you’ll be safe,” he assured us, putting one paw-like hand on Cappy’s shoulder and the other on mine in a calming, reassuring gesture.

            Bear remained there in the center of the trail with us for a full five minutes, while he gave us step-by-step directions for approaching and passing safely through the infamous waterfall ford. He gestured with his hands and used his body to demonstrate proper stance and movement, like a sensei in his martial arts dojo instructing his students in The Way. And we were good students, scrutinizing every movement and hanging onto every word.

            It all boiled down to three things: First—Pass through one at a time, enter slowly, then get through quickly, so you’re not inside too long. Second—Stay way over to the left, with your shoulder right up next to the canyon wall, so you’re behind most of the water. Third—Unbuckle your pack, so if it goes over the edge, you don’t go with it.

            "Oh, Bear! Thank you so much!" Cappy and I talked over the top of one another showing him how grateful we were.

            Relief and a smidgen of confidence began to return. We can do this, I thought.

            We waved farewell to Bear, our Trail Angel Sensei, whose appearance was so perfectly timed it felt like Trail Magic, and watched him disappear around the corner headed north.

            Less than a-quarter-of-a-mile down the trail, we put his advice to the test.

            The siren’s call of the water reached out to us, drawing us in, long before she was visible. Cappy and I walked side-by-side, slowing our pace, stretching our vision to find the first sign of what had taken on the personality of a water-breathing dragon. The trail curved slightly to the left hugging the curving canyon wall.

            I saw a flash of white and reached out to clutch Cappy’s arm.

            “Is that it?” I whispered.

            We took a few more steps, my hand still on her arm.

            “Yessss,” Cappy said, breathing out what had become obvious.

            We stopped in our tracks to watch the living thing as she danced atop the rocky ground shining wet from the mist that hovered like a cloud. The roar at the top of the cliff, two hours earlier, had been loud. At the bottom, where the water pounded on the stone, she was deafening, yet beautiful, in the way live dance music is floor-poundingly beautiful, even when it makes your ears ring.

The fire hose of water fell straight down the cliff from above. It bounced once, right on the footpath, and fell again. The trail disappeared into the bouncing froth. Shards flew. Foam boiled. The gush roared. Twenty feet ahead, the footpath reappeared. This was it. The Trail Legend was true after all. We really did have to walk through a waterfall.

“Stay left,” Bear had said. “Lean into the cliff, then walk straight.”

I stood on wet rock, watching the water. Calculating, I prepared myself.

“Okay,” I said. “On the count of three,” I breathed deeply, sucking in courage.

“One…

"Two…

"Three!”

I plunged forward, head and shoulders down. My feet found solid footing on wet granite. The torrent flew over my head and past my right shoulder. The backspray of frigid water engulfed me, more airy foam than water. I gasped. I shrieked in shock… then in delight!

It wasn’t difficult after all, like wading through thick bubbles. It was exhilarating, thrilling, wonderful! I slowed down to savor the last steps of my stroll through a waterfall.

Cappy waited behind, watching from the other side. I found her eyes and waved across the white dragon’s back. “Come on!” I yelled, raising both arms in the air in triumph.

She waved and hollered in return, her voice swallowed by the roar of the falling water between us, her meaning making its way across without it. She celebrated my triumph with me.

“It’s fun!” I hollered, knowing she couldn’t hear my voice. I took out my disposable cardboard camera, with its last remaining shot, and carefully took aim at Cappy completely engulfed in a halo of foam and against a backdrop of bronze-hued rock.

After she emerged, we stood, wet and ecstatic, looking back at conquered Legend Number Two and laughed. We clinked poles in a metallic high-five and stood for a long time admiring the mighty and graceful falls.

Where minutes earlier I had seen only her power and the danger, felt only my fear, I saw sublime beauty—turquoise and white cascading downward over glistening
rock, polished to marble and carved over eons by torrents and trickles into sensuous curves.  

[First and last photos are mine. Second and third photos were taken by Caroline Hickson.]

 

Cornucopia - Preparation & Plenty

 

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day” from New and Selected Poems, 1992

         

When it comes to travel and adventure, I’m a planner and organizer. I love it when I have everything dialed out—details researched, decisions made, lists created, piles gathered, bags packed—well before departure day. It’s probably obsessive, but it bolsters my confidence and sense of control when all my ducks are lined up. I’m free to be spontaneous in the midst of an adventure and enjoy the moment when I’ve allowed myself to be obsessive beforehand. 

Of course, this has also been my approach to my memoir writing project, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. To kick off entering the final leg of this writing journey—the very first steps of the challenging final leg—I'm sharing a chapter that didn't make the editor's cut. Stephen King calls that culling process "killing your darlings." This "darling" of mine is a bit of a prologue to the grander adventure story.

 

 

It was June 2006. I sat on the dark Oriental rug in my living room amidst mounds of the food and supplies that were destined to be packed into four shipping boxes. My food caches would be mailed ahead to specific pick-up locations along the two-hundred-mile trail. One cardboard box, already packed, taped, and addressed to Red's Meadows Resort, where we'd be on Day Five if all went according to plan, sat off to the side. It contained five days’ worth of meals—four planned days of hiking plus one extra day, just in case we didn't make the distance we intended.

I filled in the label on a second box, addressing it to myself at Vermilion Valley Resort, where I intended to pick it up on Day Nine. It contained meals for four days, one for each walking day, plus an extra. Red's Meadows and Vermilion Valley (known among hikers as Red's and VVR) were both commercial campgrounds situated on the border of the wilderness, a short hike off the JMT, and they would, for a moderate fee, provide caching services to JMT and PCT thru-hikers. When I finished addressing box number two, I set it next to number one and turned my attention to the third.

Picking up food cache at Muir Trail Ranch.

Container number three would travel to Muir Trail Ranch. Located halfway along the trail, at about the one-hundred-mile mark, Muir was more remote than Red's or VVR, so charged hikers more for its caching service. They also required supplies be packed inside a heavy duty, five-gallon, plastic paint bucket with a secure lid. It seemed they had a rodent problem, and plastic kept the wildlife out of the people food. I pulled the bucket to my side and began the packing process for the third time.

           I'd started a few hours earlier with several shopping bags filled with the food and supplies I'd purchased over recent weeks spread all over the floor. Slowly the bags' contents became mounds, which were sorted and organized into smaller piles.  

           Then I'd begun organizing the food, measuring and packaging individual portions into bags for thirty traveling and eating days. Thirty little bags of mocha or chai. Thirty of Gatorade. Thirty medium bags of nuts with dried fruits. Thirty of assorted powerbars. Thirty of cookies.  Thirty lunches. Thirty freeze-dried dinners, all pre-tested and chosen for cooking ease and savory flavors. Each of those placed into larger Ziploc bags, one for each of the five legs of the hike. Five little bags of hard candy.

All measurements and calculations were based on a three-thousand-calorie-per-day diet that included plenty of proteins (for keeping muscles strong) and ample fats and carbohydrates (to maintain consistent energy).

            “Three-thousand calories a day. Now that’s a lot of food!” I said aloud, though no one was there to observe me sitting like an island in a sea of Ziploc bags.

I'd learned when hiking I'm rarely very hungry at breakfast time and never in the mood for breaking out the stove in the morning cold, so I planned to eat a pair of protein bars. My chilly morning’s true pleasure came from a steaming hot beverage, so I’d put my efforts into measuring and pre-mixing various coffee ingredients into the smallest Ziploc bags.

For lunch, when I’d be starving, I planned high protein options with lots of carbohydrates. Summer sausage, spicy and fatty, was my favorite backpacking lunch protein, but once opened it would only last two days unrefrigerated. I’d eat it first, then alternate between the tuna and peanut butter.

For dinners, I’d fire up the stove and cook hearty dehydrated entrees. I'd used Enertia brand before and loved their savory, no-mess meals. Hot tea would top off my evening meals. Between meals, I planned to snack on nuts, dried fruit, and more bars. Tangerine-flavored Gatorade and hard sugar candies mid-afternoon would give me that extra energy boost I’d need. I measured, weighed, counted, and packaged until I had ten sets of bulging plastic bags.

Making dinner on the trail.

Nine days finished, two shipping containers to go. Still arrayed across the floor on three sides of me, were twenty-one days’ worth of food in little organized piles. I’d carry six of those remaining in my backpack on the first leg. For leg three’s nine days of walking I prepped ten sets of meals for the plastic paint bucket going to Muir Ranch Resort. That left five for the final box being mailed to the packhorse service.

Just thinking of the packhorse service made me a little nervous. The location along the trail where we wanted the fourth food cache was nearly twenty miles away from any town or supply facility, so we’d arranged for a horseman to pack in our food and meet us right on the trail. Those arrangements were causing Cappy and me anxious concern. The other three advertised their services online, and we’d made arrangements over the phone, but the packing outfit had been difficult to contact. Our first calls went unanswered. When they did respond, their messages were garbled and missing key bits of information. The fee for a horse and rider to make the trip out to the trail was expensive, and meet-up directions were vague. The food drop was a necessity, however, so we were determined to make it work.

Packhorse & Cowboy after delivering food caches.

"We’ll meet the man on the horse without difficulty. I'm sure of it," I told myself out loud like an aphorism—things said aloud sound more certain.

I refocused on packing. Despite my concerns, I was excited. Packing boxes for mailing was a tangible step towards making my adventure dream come true.

I put the food in first, sturdy dinners in a pile at the bottom, then the more fragile lunches on top. I stood the bags containing protein bars around the outer edge, circling the stacked meals. That would hold them tight without jostling during shipment. On top, I placed my personal care and first aid supplies, with the softest bits—undies, socks, and shirt—on the very top. Last, I filled the empty space with crumpled newspaper and sealed the lid.

 

Cappy, Jane, and I planned to step onto the trail on Wednesday, July 19. I’d drive down to Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite’s high country early to acclimate, on Sunday, July 16. I’d mail my food caches two weeks before D-Day on July 5. So, I intended to have everything ready to mail before the Fourth-of-July weekend began.

 [First two photos were taken by my hiking partner, Caroline. Third photo was taken by "Zoe".]

Fish Out Of Water at Camp Gold

A small stream flowed through Camp Gold. Dammed and widened into a small pond under the shade of tall trees, it was kept richly stocked with trout exclusively for young fishermen and women. Dad and I took part in an organized father-daughter fishing activity one afternoon. A good sport, Dad patiently followed the leader’s directions to guide me through the complicated task of putting a bait worm on my hook — a “night crawler” pulled from a cardboard cup of soil and worms we’d picked up at the camp store where we’d checked out my orange-colored fishing pole. I wrinkled my nose, but didn’t let go when the long, pink worm wiggled and contorted each time I stabbed it with the small barbed fishhook. And I had to stab it a few times to get its long body to stay on the hook. When I’d finished, the poor thing looked like I’d tied it into a big, ugly, painful knot.

Next, Dad showed me how to get the bait and hook out into the water. The trick was to gently cast it into the pond without entangling my line with any of the dozens of other lines being tossed about by the other father-daughter pairs encircling the pond. Inexperienced young fisherwomen sent their lines flying this way and that, and lines crisscrossed first to the left, then to the right, sometimes three and four at a time. It was a bit like a circular firing squad, the result being entangled lines galore.

Miraculously, fish managed to get caught despite the chaos! I yelped each time there was a tug on my line. Usually, it had just caught or been caught by another young angler. But once, the tug came from an actual fish!

Dad, seeing the tip of my pole dip dangerously toward the water, grabbed it halfway up and held it steady. “Reel it in,” he said. There was excitement in his voice, though not nearly as much as there was in mine.

“What do I do? What do I do?” I squealed! I gripped the handle of the pole with my left hand and the handle of the spinner in my right. I was concentrating so hard on the fish and the pole that time seemed to stop and the other people and their noise seemed to disappear.

“Don’t rush now. Very slowly, turn the handle this way,” Dad said, his bushy black eyebrows pulled together in concentration. Still steadying the pole for me, he put his large, free hand over mine and together we turned the handle and began to pull in my fish. After a few turns, he removed his hand, but held it close by at the ready.

When my fish began to emerge from the water, Dad helped me swing the pole to the side and bring the sparkling and wiggling trout to dry land beside us. He grabbed the line, and the fish flopped and thrashed on the ground. “Take it. Take it,” I said, pushing the pole towards my father.

“No,” he answered. “It’s your fish. You get to finish this.” His dark eyes were serious and his deep voice modulated to keep me calm.

Together, we held the wet slippery animal, while Dad worked out the hook.

I don’t remember how we transported my catch to the cleaning area or anything about that messy process, but I remember taking the cleaned fish to the back door of the mess hall. I remember the kitchen staff accepted my prize, wrapped it in white butcher paper, labeled the package with my name, and placed it in an oversized refrigerator.

The next morning, at breakfast in the huge, rustic mess hall, my name was called on the loudspeaker. Dad and I stood and waved from our wooden benches, and a white-aproned waiter wound his way across the room to deliver to me my own cooked catch. Head and tail still attached, its round black bead of an eye staring directly at me, my fish greeted me. Dad showed me how to pull the head, tail, and backbone out with one smooth movement.

“I’ve never had fish for breakfast,” I laughed, my fork poised.

I offered everyone in the family a bite of my prize catch, but I ate most of the moist white meat and much of its crunchy, salty skin all by myself.

Shake, Rattle & Rock!

     “Rumble… Rumble… Rumble… BOOM!”
     I perked up at the first distant sound. Then was swept by a wave of anxiety as the the sound grew closer and louder — like a locomotive approaching the house across the front lawn — like rolling thunder coming from below my feet.
     The deep resonating BOOM was so intense, my bones vibrated.
     The light in the bathroom winked out. The room went black.
     I leaped to my feet, but before I could process one single thought, the Earth contorted. Like it was made of putty, the ground beneath me bent and twisted.
     Reacting on pure instinct, I lurched toward the bathroom door intent on fleeing to safety in Mom and Dad’s adjacent bedroom. The floor rose to meet one foot, jarring me, then fell away from the other, nearly pitching me on my face.
     On the bathroom’s threshold, I gripped the doorframe with both hands.
     The walls moved.
     The floor moved.
     Clinging to the house, I struggled to ride along as it writhed atop the bucking Earth. My right hand moved up with the wall on my right, while my left hand moved down with the wall on my left. Then the right was pulled down, while the left was yanked upward. At the same time, my feet rose and fell with the fluid ground, like I stood atop an inner tube surfing a class-four rapid.
     There was a momentary pause, barely a second, before it all began again. During that brief pause, I released my death grip on the door jamb and ran from the bathroom, through the open door of my parents’ bedroom, and launched myself onto their king-sized bed alongside them.
     The rolling and roiling began anew as I landed. The three of us crawled to the head of the bed and lay staring out the window into the pre-dawn morning. We watched as the water in our swimming pool sloshed back and forth so violently it generated a tidal wave that crashed over the top of the garage, leaving the pool half full. Then the masonry wall surrounding the backyard seemed to faint into rubble.
     All the while, the roar continued. In the foreground of sounds, like a high pitched aria, was the crash of falling objects and the tinkle of breaking glass; in the background was the Universe-consuming bellow of the Earth and everything balanced on its thin skin twisting and groaning and ripping and growling in a discordant, deafening din.
     My sister, who had miraculously slept through the first half of the tumult, was awakened when her small television dove off its shelf onto her bed. I heard her long frightened wail as she ran to join us on the bed. She landed as the quake slowed and quieted and skidded to a stop.

     It was moments after six on the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 1971. I was sixteen and in my junior year at Sylmar High School. I was up early and in the bathroom, as I was every school day morning, because I had an A-period class that began at seven o’clock. When the quake hit at 06:00:41, I’d been fully dressed, fully made-up, sitting at the vanity in the main bathroom arranging the long curls I’d just released from their hot-curlers.
     The Sylmar Earthquake occurred on the San Fernando Fault that ran through the San Gabriel Mountains into the northern San Fernando Valley. It measured 6.6 on the Seismic Scale. Its maximum horizontal acceleration, however, was three times what it should have been, more like that of an 8.5 quake. The “Rumble” came from the 6.6. The “Boom!” resulted from the acceleration. They say the ground and everything on it would have been “weightless” for a moment during that acceleration. At the time, the Sylmar Quake was the third largest in modern California history, after the earthquakes in 1906 in San Francisco and 1933 in Long Beach.

     Immediately after the quaking stopped, we were up.
     “What should we do now, Wallace?” my mother said, as we stood in the dark. Her words were clipped, her face pale, and her eyes just a little wide and wild. I could tell she was gripping her panic hard, trying to appear brave for us girls.
     “Let’s start by getting dressed,” Dad said, as he pulled on the first clothes he could lay his hands on.
     Then he turned to me. “Joan, where’s your transistor radio?” He was sitting on the bed tying his shoes.
     “In my room,” I said immediately. “On my dresser.” I was still shaking, but I found Dad’s directness and obvious plan of action calming.
     I moved towards the hallway. Dad looked at my feet. “You have shoes. Good. There’s going to be broken glass. Be careful. I’ll be right behind you.”
     Slowly I moved from the bedroom-end of the long house towards the kitchen and, beyond that, my bedroom, which decades ago had been the maid’s quarters, so was situated at the far end of the house next to the pantry and service porch. I passed through the living room and dining room. Normally dimly lit by street lights, the rooms were dark.
     Dad came up behind me with a flashlight he’d found somewhere, and we worked our way forward. Nothing was where it was supposed to be — furniture had shifted position, table lamps lay across the carpet, paintings were missing from the walls, books and nicknacks were scattered about in haphazard piles. In the dining room, Mom’s china cabinet’s face-first fall had been broken by the dining table, so it lay suspended at a thirty degree angle. Before tipping over, it had flung open its doors and remnants of Mom’s fancy china dishes lay beneath it.
     At the doorway separating the dining room from the kitchen, we were brought to a halt.
     The kitchen looked like each cupboard had exploded, spewing its contents across the room. Upper and lower cabinet doors hung open. The floor was beyond ankle-deep in shattered jars and bottles, everyday dishes and glasses. Even the drawers were wide open and splattered with debris from above.
     On top of all that chaos, both the double oven and the refrigerator had done their work. First, the doors of the frig had opened, milk and orange juice, fruits and vegetables, salad dressing and eggs had been launched like frosting atop the cupboard contents. Then, in what looked like a battle scene, the stove and refrigerator had toppled over and lay flat on their faces atop the pile.
     The refrigerator completely blocked the door. Dad and I were standing there, staring at the carnage, when Mom and Diane joined us.
     “Oh, Wallace! What are we going to do?” Mom said. The tightness in her voice was back.
     As we stood staring, the rumbling and shaking began again. I grabbed Dad’s upper arm with one hand and the door jamb with the other and held on. Mom threw her arm around Diane’s shoulders and leaned against the wall. The temblor’s convulsions were not as big, not as long, not as loud, so not as scary. Expecting it to go on and on and on, I held my breath until it stopped, then I breathed again.
     “Dad, can you boost me up?” I asked. “Then I can climb over and get to my room.”
     “There’s an awful lot of broken glass in there,” he said, craning his neck to peer over the avocado-green blockade to get a better look at the kitchen floor.
     “I’ll be careful,” I said. I was calmed by having a mission, a purpose. I would feel calmer still by doing something.

     “First, let’s see if we can push the frig over far enough for you to squeeze through the gap, then you won’t have to do any climbing.” Dad handed the flashlight to Mom. Diane and I lined up with Dad, placing our hands on the broad side of the barrier. “On three… One, two, three!”
     We all pushed and the heavy metal box shifted half a foot, bulldozing the pile in front of it.
     “Again… One, two, three!” It pressed against the fallen stove, and they both moved another few inches. The gap opened almost enough for me to maneuver through.
     “Last time. One, two, three!” The gap widened, and I was able to slither into the kitchen.
     Taking the flashlight from Dad, I picked my way across the top of an eight-inch-deep layer of broken dishes and food. There was barbecue sauce and dill pickles and frying pans and juice glasses and salad bowls and olive oil and rice and cookies, all smashed, all mixed together in a slow motion science experiment gone bad. The powerful smells of vinegar and grape jelly filled the air.
     It took several minutes, because when I got past the kitchen to the service porch, I had to shove the washing machine out of the doorway and walk over the pantry’s contents. Finally, I came to my room, and pushed on the normally open, but now closed, door. My dresser had moved away from the wall to bar the door. I pushed and shoved (later I’d tell a joke about huffing and puffing and blowing the door down) until I could squeeze inside.
     My radio, lay in the middle of the floor.
     I picked my way back to the pantry-kitchen door, where I could see Dad and Diane across the kitchen. I held the radio high and called, “Got it!”
     Dad saluted me.
     Diane yelled, “Yay!”
     “Dad, instead of walking through that again, I’m going to go out the back door and walk around. You can let me in the front door.”

This is not our home, as I have none. Photo from USGS.

     It was getting a bit lighter outside. Pale pink above the hills to the east hinted of the impending sunrise. I walked around the house and onto the front porch. Dad and Diane were waiting there, they’d stepped outside onto the porch to watch the sky. Mom stood in the doorway. The sky looked to be filled with smoke, but the clouds were made from dust kicked up by the Earth’s shaking. Several sirens wailed in the distance. Not a single moving car was visible from our corner lot. Not a single electric light shone in the early morning.
     Another aftershock struck as we stood there — not as big, but almost. There was a deep rumble. a long rolling wave, and a final thud. My heart rumbled, rolled, and thudded with the temblor, while I held on to the wall and my breath. Then it was quiet again.
     I switched on the battery-powered radio, extended its antennae, and dialed through the static looking for a station broadcasting news and public safety information. A calm, deep male voice solidified out of the static. He announced that the Veterans Hospital in Sylmar, very near the epicenter, and just a few miles from us, had fallen into rubble. People were missing. He also reported that the Van Norman Dam, sitting in the hills several miles away from the center of the quake, had developed large cracks and might collapse. There were mandatory evacuations of thousands of families who lived in the dam’s shadow. Fortunately, that didn’t affect our neighborhood. He interviewed emergency personnel who directed us to “shelter in place,” stay home, if we could safely do so. The Red Cross was setting up an Emergency Shelter and Distribution Center at San Fernando Junior High, a four blocks down the street from our house.

     “I think I should check on the neighbors,” Dad said. “One of you girls want to join me?” He looked at Diane and me.
     “And your folks?” Mom said, still standing, frozen in hesitation, in the doorway, unsure if it was safer inside or out.
     While Dad and I checked on old Mrs. Greene next door, the Burlieghs across Fifth Street, and our backside neighbors, the Werrings, Mom and Diane stood rooted on the porch.
     A short time later, we all slowly drove the eight blocks to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Workman Street, where we found them safe and sound, and surrounded by a mess as big as our own.

In the following hours and days the mainstays of daily life I took for granted were altered:

Photo from USGS.

    •    Water mains were broken, electrical lines were down, natural gas was shut off, phone lines were out, and stores were closed. We had to depend on water trucks for drinking and cooking water, stand in line to use the payphone booths set up on corners, and cook meals over charcoal on our backyard barbecue. We and our neighbors flushed our toilets with buckets of pool water, but others used the port-potties placed on every block. For a few days we picked up food packets at the Red Cross center, because supermarkets and corners stores looked like our kitchen.
    •    My school, Sylmar High School, also close to the epicenter, was closed for two or three weeks. The science wing, where the chemistry classrooms and my homeroom were located, was closed much longer, maybe to the end of the year. Diane’s school, San Fernando Junior High School, with its many early century buildings condemned because of severe structural damage, was closed even longer.
    •    Around town, scores of older buildings — businesses, schools, homes — were destroyed or so severely damaged they were condemned, including the beautiful two-story main building at Morningside Elementary School directly across the street from our home and a cute, old, river-rock-sided house on our block.

Businesses were severely damaged in the 1100 block of San Fernando Road.

    We were lucky. Our house, built in 1930, long before modern earthquake-proof building codes, was structurally undamaged — just a few extra cracks in the plaster. Even the swimming pool came through without breaking. Lots of stuff was broken, though, and the backyard wall had to be rebuilt, but within a few months, everything would be put right.
    The damage was seemingly random — one thing stood steady next to another that fell and shattered. Prior to the quake, Mom and Dad had been painting the dining room. In order to move the heavy maple china cabinet away from the wall, they’d emptied the top several shelves of all Mom’s fine leaded crystal glasses. They’d set the glasses on top of the upright piano in the den, where they’d be safely out of the way.
    During the earthquake, the china cabinet fell over, and the few pieces left inside were shattered. But the upright piano, which stood on caster wheels on a Spanish tile floor, rolled instead of tipping. It rolled away from the wall, it rolled along the length of the wall, and it rolled back towards the wall. The tall crystal wine glasses and goblets on its narrow top rode along. Only one wine glass fell to its death. A top-heavy goblet on the very edge began to fall, but was saved by the wall, where it lay balanced at a forty-five degree angle until we discovered it later that afternoon.
    Over the next days and weeks, there were hundreds of aftershocks, some nearly as large as the initial shock, but most a good deal smaller, yet still terrifying. Each time, no matter the size, I froze, held my breath, feeling and listening for the rumbling sounds and the rolling, quivering sensation. Each time, it felt like my heart stopped for just a fraction of a second before jerking back into its rhythm.
    We spent those days cleaning up the messes, swabbing the walls and floors with buckets of chlorinated pool water only after shoveling the kitchen debris into big dumpsters the city placed on every block. It turned out that some combination of the ingredients that drizzled together down the front of the kitchen cabinets or splashed there after crashing to the floor made an effective paint stripper and linoleum dye.
    I’d forgotten, but my sister Diane reminded me that the National Guard set up roadblocks to prevent looting and keep out looky-loos. Only those with ID showing a residence in San Fernando or Sylmar were allowed to pass. She recalls returning from across the Valley after showering at a friend’s house and being stopped by the uniformed officers, who only waved us through after Dad produced his driver’s license showing our address at 556 North Brand, San Fernando.

    California is a land of earthquakes. As a California girl born and bred, I was familiar with the little wiggling of the ground, the swaying of a chandelier, that momentary sense of unease as the ground shifted. I’d experienced dozens and always dismissed them as no big deal — even laughed at them, considering the gentle rolling of the ground as lightheartedly as a roller-coaster ride. That attitude of bravado was a California teenager’s badge of honor.   
    Until February 9, 1971.
    After The Big One, something in me changed. I suppose in today’s language we’d call it PTSD, but not back then. To this day, nearly a half-century later, my body panics of its own accord whenever the ground rumbles. It could be as simple as the shimmy caused by the passing of a large truck, or it could be the authentic quiver of a small quake, but my body reacts without my permission. My breath catches, my heart skips a beat, a burst of adrenaline shoots through my cells, and I freeze. When my brain catches up to my body, I can tell myself to breathe, and I can laugh at myself, but the initial reaction is completely out of my conscious control.
    There’s something terrifying about not being able to trust the Earth — not being able to know, without a doubt, that the ground will remain solid and dependable beneath my feet. Because, if I can’t trust the Earth, the solid ground, what can I trust?