Author Archives: chivarnado

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #14. The Tale of Broken Tail (March 9, 2012)

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QUAIL MUTTERINGS #14.  The Tale of Broken Tail

(March 9, 2012)

 

The writing and publishing process for my children’s book was quite different than for the memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire. For one, I had the privilege of working with a wonderful local artist, Dorothy Mushet. She owns the Banner Queen Art Gallery inJulian,California. After I wrote the manuscript and formatted the text around the descriptions of the future illustrations, along with my own poorly executed attempts at sketching them, Dorothy painted the pictures.

 

The Tale of Broken Tail is actually a true story. My mother, “Gramaset,” accidentally dug up a nest of three baby ground squirrels and then took responsibility for their care, sharing the experience with my daughter, Kali. They raised them until they were ready to live on their own. I felt the story needed to be told.

 

While writing this book I had numerous encounters with squirrels, usually just outside my bedroom window. One day, a scraggly old one looked through the glass at me, less than three feet away, barfed into the dirt, and then lay down on top of the rock wall for a couple hours. I don’t think he felt very well. Another day, one came down the boulder and looked in at me, dug a hole, relieved himself and then buried it. Many, many times I’ve watched them staring in at me for prolonged periods of time. “What?” I’ve asked them. It happens so often it’s become the norm.

 

When I asked Dorothy if she would be interested in illustrating this book she told me that my mom had asked her for two paintings: one of a wolf and the other a ground squirrel. Unfortunately, Mom had passed away shortly thereafter and Dorothy felt a little guilty.

 

“Really?” I asked. “Maybe I can play on that guilt a little.” This seemed to provide a little incentive.

 

I gathered various photos of Mom, Kali, our dogs… but still needed some images of ground squirrels. I had one morning left before I would take the pictures and manuscript to the artist so I went outside with my camera. Almost immediately a ground squirrel appeared on a rock. Lacking much faith in the likelihood of getting this little guy to cooperate I decided to ask his permission, just in case. I told him that he could be a star in my children’s book about squirrels. Well, I kid you not, this little ham let me follow him around for a good half-hour stopping here and there to pose for me. He sat on a stump, lay in the grass, stood on a rock…

 

I delivered my photos and read the story to Dorothy and her ten-year-old grandson. She watched his expressions while I read and noticed how interested he was. She also began to realize what a big project this was going to be. Her relatives were coming to visit soon and she would have to get things ready for them so she wouldn’t be able to start right away.

 

Dorothy called the next morning. “I’m going to start today!”

 

“Wow. That’s terrific. I thought you were too busy right now,” I said.

 

Evidently, providence was at work. When she was arranging the bedroom for her company two sketch pads fell out of the bookcase in front of her. Picking them up she realized that they were just the right sizes for the book illustrations and decided that my mom was trying to tell her something. Both of us got goose bumps.

 

For the next six months she sketched and painted. When she needed more photographs of ground squirrels one appeared outside her kitchen window and willingly obliged. She got her twin grandsons to pose for her so she could paint her pictures more accurately to scale. These photos are funny. How she managed to get ten-year-old boys to cooperate is testament to her being a good grandmother. They would ask her, “Which one am I, Kali or Gramaset?”

 

This whole process has been an interesting adventure. Now that I’m a grandma too, I hope that I can carry the legacy with honor. There are so many stories to tell with no shortage on fodder for the imagination. Our family has lived in this rural canyon for five generations and the Native Americans before that. If only the boulders and trees could talk.

 

 

Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader. Her children’s book, The Tale of Broken Tail, and her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire, are available on www.amazon.com. Chi directs The Dance Centre of Ramona. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, can be found on www.chivarnado.com.   

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #13: Three Walks (January 21, 2012)

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QUAIL MUTTERINGS #13.  Three Walks (January 21, 2012)

 

            We’re already three weeks into the new year! Can you believe it? 2011 seemed to have disappeared in record time leaving me feeling a little at a loss. Sure, we all tend to agree that each year appears to fly by quicker than the previous one, but it’s one thing to just talk about it and quite another to allow yourself to feel it. It can be a bit unsettling. The only remedy I know of, even if only temporary at best, is to go out for a walk. Not a power walk or a run, but more of a stroll. So that’s what I did. Three times this week. I sandwiched these jaunts between work, tax preparations and a variety of other time consuming, stress producing activities.

On Tuesday morning, after my morning exercises but before teaching the afternoon ballet classes, I wandered across the dry creek and the green sloping field across the dirt road and headed Northish. I stepped over an old, dead tree trunk that had fallen down the week before. I’d been throwing out hay for the horses and goats at the time and heard the crash of the branches breaking, but didn’t know exactly where it had come from.

When I got over to the upper field the green grass carpet sparkled. Each blade of grass was tipped with a dewdrop. Yes indeed, I thought, the fairies have been here. I remembered the lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when I’d played the part of the fairy at Coronado Playhouse.

“…And I serve the Fairy Queen

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be.

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours;

In those freckles live their savours.

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear…”

I lingered by the old Model-A truck frame, enchanted by the beautiful sea of diamonds, catching the early morning’s rays of sunlight before the wash of warmth coming over the ridge would alter their form. It felt magical for the moment.

On Wednesday morning I decided not to go for a run, but to take a walk instead. This time my dog, Job, and I headed back into the canyon. Brrr was it cold! Jack Frost had come to visit that night and turned the whole creekbed into a winter wonderland. Everything was coated white. The bushes, the grass, the sticks lying on the ground… All was frozen. It was a dazzling display of a winter’s kiss.

Further up the dirt road I passed another old Model-A. Icicles hung from the back bumper like stalactites. Far more perfect and appealing to my eyes than the strands of icicle lights hung everywhere during the Christmas season. They’re nice too, but really, there’s no competition.

Job followed his nose as we started up the mountain. He stays with me pretty well, but he likes a little freedom too. We walked through The Pretty Place, a small meadow with a creek running through it that sprouts thousands of delicate wildflowers in the spring. We’ve called it that since I was a kid. Just up from there I noticed the wild violets coming up. It’s only January and I don’t recall them so early before. The lilacs are even starting to bloom.

Once up top, at The Saddle, I was finally in the sun. It felt wonderful after being in the shade of the mountain all the way up. I looked across at the lovely blue-colored Cuyamacas in the distance and heard the water running, far below, in the Kimball Valley Creek. This water often comes fromLakeSoutherland on its way to San Vicente Lake.

I turned around to head back down the hill and paused to let the sun’s warmth sink into my back. This is nature’s therapy at work. I didn’t want to leave. After a few minutes, I nodded to my dog and we began our descent. With each step I noticed the muted crackle of the half-frozen twigs breaking beneath my feet. It was a familiar, somehow comforting sound of being in the moment, in the countryside, enjoying being alone on top of the mountain.

My third walk of the week was on Thursday with my oldest daughter, Jessie, who’s visiting fromChinawhere she teaches English at a university inLianyungang. It’s terrific that the Chinese New Year is almost two months long! At least her vacation is. She’s spending a couple days here with us, every so often, to get her dose of country air. She says the pollution there in the big cities is just awful. We walked briskly down the dirt road and then up a hill. This increased heart rates and forced us to breathe deeply and enjoy the views.

As I write this our son, Chance, is taking the Greyhound Bus back up to ChicoStateafter a long break between semesters. Soon, I’ll need to start picking out music and choreographing for the studio’s spring production of Rapunzel. Somehow the magic of this week’s walks: the ‘fairies’ dewdrops and Jack Frost’s visit, have helped inspire my readiness for the creative tasks that lay waiting for me in this new year. I now hope to ponder and wonder more, and watch, without trying to plan so much. It sounds worthwhile, anyway. Doesn’t it?

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #2: Chorus of the Frogs – January 9, 2011 (One year ago)

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QUAIL MUTTERINGS #2:  Chorus of the Frogs – January 9, 2011

(One year ago)

          

          I lay here in bed at 3:30 AM listening to the beautiful chorus of frogs. My window is cracked open allowing the sounds of the symphony playing down at the creek to drift into my consciousness. Normally I’d probably miss out on this Overture de Croak, but I have a nasty head cold which is keeping me awake. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It’s probably been close to a year since I’ve had one. Everyone around seems to have had several since I have so I guess it was my turn.

We’re so fortunate to have had such an abundance of rain recently, enough so the creek was running even in December. This was a local record since I’ve been around. We’ve had over sixteen-and-a-half inches of rain this fall, in just a couple of months. In fact, we had over ten inches in two weeks! The run-off has keptKentand me busy digging trenches to keep the dirt road from washing out. Aah, the pleasures of country living.

The road leading into our place is more than a half mile long. The first part of the street, nearest Mussey Grade, is better maintained. There are a couple folks with hearts of gold who enjoy playing on their tractors. As one progresses further into the canyon there are fewer of us and the bulk of the maintenance falls onto those willing to roll up our sleeves and do the work – by hand, with shovels. By the way, there are only a couple of us. And then, once in the canyon, there’s just us, with more real, unpaid work than we can handle already. We just have to pick and choose the jobs that are screaming the loudest or the ones that are threatening to ruin some project we’ve already sunk our blood, sweat and tears into.

On the occasion when outsiders come in to fix something for us, or simply to visit, one thing usually registers in their minds. And this is that they have somehow stumbled back into perhaps the 1930’s, a time when things took longer to accomplish, with a lot more planning and time investment necessary. Everything seems more difficult here. There are no paved roads and the dirt lane is narrow and canopied by old oak trees making deliveries with large trucks practically impossible. The landscape is steep and unyielding with rocks and boulders literally everywhere. Everything we do here requires a hike – not like walking onMt.Woodson’s paved road orIronMountain’s wide trail. This is more goat terrain.

Our washing machine is out on the side porch and the clothes line accessible only by a hike up the hill. The garden, where we pick our dinner, is up the mountain even farther. We turn our two horses loose during the day so they can forage for themselves while munching down the fire hazard. If they don’t come home by supper time we have to walk back into the canyon to fetch them. The goats and chickens, as well as the horses during the night, are a traipse over to our west side. Keeping enough firewood cut, split and collected is a time consuming and fitness insuring activity.

In other words, ours is not a life of convenience. Nor is it exactly ‘simple’ or ‘slower’. But these days we know that a simple life is usually more difficult and a slower pace probably entails more physical labor. Not always, but it’s funny – the choice of words in our language. It’s not to say that our lifestyle is not rewarding. It most definitely is.

The other night as I went to bed – with my window open a little, of course – I heard a porwil’s three-syllable call. It’s one of the most comforting sounds I know. A barn owl screeched a couple times in the distance. And yes, the chorus of frogs. Have you ever noticed how deafeningly loud and robust they can be and then instantly quiet? It’s almost as if they are all aware of a single music conductor waving his wand to play and then sharply cutting them off. And then luring them on again, one section of the orchestra at a time, building to a crescendo and then falling away again: all night long. What perseverance and passion. The ebb and flow of the symphony parallels our lives. If we slow down and listen, we might, perhaps, become more in tune with our own surroundings, our community, and the world that we live in. We’re each a single instrument – important in our own right. But together, as part of the orchestra, we can do wonderful things.

Until next time, may your life be full and blessed as you take the time to enjoy your walk or sit in the garden. Don’t miss the symphony!

Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire, is available on www.amazon.com. The Tale of Broken Tail, her children’s book, should be coming out this spring and she is currently working on a novel set in her father’s Mississippi homeland. Chi directs The Dance Centre of Ramona. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, will appear on Ramonapatch.com every month or so. Please visit www.thedancecentreoframona.com & www.chivarnado.com.