Pt. Reyes Station Part One

Black Mountain. 1998. C. MacDonald.
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I did not have a happy childhood, though not nearly as bad as most. But one thing I remember was my parents taking me out to Drakes Bay near Pt. Reyes Station in Marin. I was probably 10. It was a cold dark beach with only a dark plexiglas enclosure to keep the harsh winds off.

Still I loved it immediately. I do not why.

We went into town and ate at Vladimir's. This must have been 1967 or 68. Vladimir, an old crusty Czech was a lot of fun. I had my first oyster there and I hated it. But I loved the country. Loved Inverness. Everything about it, even as a boy.

Years later I would return, but did not connect as deeply until 1991 and 92.

It was during the Gulf War and I was very upset by it. I got up one morning and said to my wife, "We need to go on a retreat and get out of here for a day or so."

Strangely (grin) she agreed.

"Where are we going?"

"There is some place on the coast. I can almost see it, but I really have no idea."

"Are you crazy?" she laughed.

"Yes, you know that. Let's go. It'll be an adventure. I am probably being silly and stupid, I know."

It was a Saturday and we did not have kids, so we went. Just drove West.

From the Napa turn-off to Pt. Reyes Station is beautiful country. It moves from touches of France to a rugged Scottish landscape around Nicasio. The area is dominated by Black Mountain, which looks like a large hand patiently knuckled down.

We swept around Nicasio, went round back of Black Mountain, climbed the crest and spilled into Pt. Reyes Station.

The town has a simple magic and openness that is immediately apparent. We stopped in at the local restaurant for a drink and walked into Toby's feed barn, which, to this day, is a favorite haunt of mine.

"Where do we go next?" she asked.

One of the things I always appreciated about my wife (now Ex-wife) is that on the road we would transform. She would admit the same. I'm not sure we ever really had a bad road trip (okay, maybe the one to San Diego, but that was my fault entirely).

We would get in long discussions and laugh and explore and it was really very good. We'd still be married today if we just lived on the road in a motor home. (I'm kidding).

Good woman. Good trip.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Two

Still not exactly sure of where we were going we continued on West over to Inverness. I saw Vladimir's sign and smiled, remembering.

I wondered if he was still alive (of course, Vladimir, who was old in 1968, will outlive me by at least 40 years. He looks exactly the same and still tends bar. We will revisit him later).

With Tomales Bay on the right and the dark Inverness hills on the left we kept ahead...looking.

Then I saw it.

St. Columba's Episcopal Retreat House.

How did I know? I just did. To this day I cannot be sure if someone somewhere did not mention it and it just bubbled up, or if this was just a spiritual draw. Life can be mysterious, if you let it.

We drove up the darkening street to the top and found a deserted parking lot.

We got out and walked into the lower level of a medium sized and awkward old building.

I am not Episcopalian, but Presbyterian (sort of) which is close.

A middle-aged man named Tom came out from around the large kitchen area and greeted us. He told us Vespers was at 5 p.m. with Father Phil.

It was 4:30 so we walked around. Up the hill through the Stations of the Cross. We laughed that there had actually been something to find after all.

She looked at me and said "maybe you are not always crazy."

"Yeah, we'll see."

The war was still troubling me and I am not so very good at politics.

We entered the main wooded sanctuary just before five and sat down. I wondered about meeting lots of other people, but no one came at all. A few minutes after five a large man with big spectacles and long dark robes entered and smiled.

I liked him immediately.

He invited us into the side chapel and said we could start.

We had no idea what to do and Father Phil gently and with no small humor led us through the service. Just us three.

He would often look up, grin and say "this is the part where you read the next line."

It was very sweet.

Afterward, we had a timeof mutual prayer. I poured out my feelings about the war, as did my wife. He also was deeply saddened. We joined together. "Where three or more are gathered..."

Though strangers, we hugged afterward and we left and went home feeling very full and touched.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Three

The common area mid-level at St. Columba. A magnificent view of Tomales Bay. Click to see a larger view.
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The relationship grew with St. Columba’s, but alsways the larger draw was The ocean...the various beches...Limantour, Drakes Bay, Abbot's Lagoon and North Beach.. Over the years many of my friends would visit, retreats were held…some would actually live and work there in the community. They would meet others, some would marry locals, others find deep spiritual roots. All because we took a little adventure on a Saturday in 1991.

The room above is just below my usual room, St. Jean Vianney.

I led a retreat there in 1992 with a group of college students on Hermeneutics. I taught them how to interpret ancient documents, scripture. One ended up going to Princeton, another to Regent; several others found other schools and have become teachers in their own right.

When I visit now, it is not uncommon for people to hail me on the street, even though my visits are only six or so times a year.

But there is more to tell. Little snapshots from a relationship that began 38 years ago and are held inside like a family album.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Four

Behold the Lamb Bone

During Holy Week leading up to Easter, they have a Sedar celebration at St. Columba's. They have a ceremonial meal that the whole community (turns out Father Phil was not utterly alone, just often at Vespers at 5). We ate bitter herbs, baked eggs and went through the liturgy of a traditional Jewish Sedar.

The Lamb of God is a potent symbol of God's love, yet when Father Phil lifted up a hock of meat from the communal pot and said "Behold the lamb bone!" there was some laughter and lots of grinning.

Perhaps the two really meet there. I thought I heard God laughing, yet also solemn.

Later we went upstairs into the alter area and there was the traditional "stripping of the alter" to give the feel of what it was like to have Jesus suddenly taken away and absent. It was solemn in contrast with the food and wine downstairs. I think about it often as I enter vast churches and it is just as empty.

As father Phil passed by me at the end, when the alter was naked and alone, he looked down at me.

We had now known each other for a few years.

He smiled at me in a way that said volumes between us.

My eyes said back "yes, I know brother. I know. This we share."

He nodded and moved on. Soul to soul. Simple.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Five

I was in seminary in the town that ironically is now my home in San Anselmo.

I hated it. The classes were antiquated and boring and utterly lost. I could not stay awake and God seemed absent though there was much sincerity.

I was saved by a little boy. Adam.

During my first semester, back in school, my wife told me she was pregnant. I was ambiguous until he emerged and he is one of the great lights in my life.

The "Wange" as we called him.

Not long after his birth I was still in school and Miles and I hit Vladimir's late one night. It was cold, rainy and mostly deserted. We were both poor.

We shared a drink at the bar. Vladimir, who we now had come to refer to as the "Czechoslovakian horny man," poured all of us a drink and we dried off and talked as men sometimes do..laughing, ribald, teasing.

I new we did not have the ante for a full spread of food...not even close.

But Vladimir is old school and I know a bit of old school myself. So I invited him back to his own kitchen, but my arm over his shoulder and told him our plight.

He laughed and said we should find a good table outside.

Kaebassa, kraut, a good bottle of wine, lots of bread. Miles and I ate like kings and thanked God for Vladimir...a man I had first met when I was ten and I was now fast approaching 40.

I wrote the following poem for my son Adam that night as the rain fell down and Miles sat back:

THIRD ADAM

Little man

With no words

Your eyes sign

The final joy

The intimate curiosity

The simple relationship

And love

Which all the lost sons

Yearned for.

Not Beyond words

Not despite them

Nor denying

But before them

In your living

Being

Adam.

Joy and Light

Amid the darkness over

The Face of the Earth

You are the kick

Of Future Faith

The hope to be held

In anxious hands

The love to be given

Beyond, despite, and before

All words.

We alike await

The gentle

Hands and

Word of God.

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Next...treasure hunting and falling out of the bed.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Six

This cup, this bread. St. Columba Retreat House.
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By the way, for once, all the artwork on all these blogs will be my own. Every piece is mine.
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Pt. Reyes Station Part Seven

Cow tamped
Coarse sand
Dimpled down to the
River's edge
Where stalk and root
And lillies pillow
Bedding down to
Water.

The old barbed fence
Creaks with the wind
As the water silently
Snakes home.

I am a stranger
Here
And the Crow
Asks me what I'm doing
Sitting here
In his marsh.

"Have you come to
Pave
White boy
Flesh-man?
Or will we soon
Be rid of you
Back to your world of
Words and
Plastic?"

I understand the
Pull of Mother Earth
The luxury that is
Simple being
Like the flow
of water
Or the glazed-eye cow
Or the green frog
outstetched in the
Delicate shallow.

But the ground of being
Speaks: By toil shall
We eat from good
Mother Earth
By the sweet sweat of our
Piltdown brows
And if the truth be known
Mother breaks our backs
Of hope
Looking for our Father
in Heaven.

So I am thankful
Father
In the mid-breath of labor
For the silent water
And the pad and stalk
And for children
And the air off
The ocean
I am so thankful
For my friend
And a good walk
And for the quiet
Now.

Can I take the river
with me?
Take back its
Silence?

Pt. Reyes Station Part Eight

He has had many names in his 12 years. His older brothers liked "Adam: so it was. But soon his incredibly round head gave way to other names. The one that seemed to stick was "The Wange" after a short verbal burst by Jabba the Hut where he so "Oh Wangee-cokebah...Iyesba-chow cowa wookie".

Or some such nonsense.

So Adam became "Mr. Wangee" or simply "The Wange".

He was well known by this, to the extent that many of my students at the time had no idea his name was "Adam". "Oh..you mean The Wange" they would say.

"Yes."

Well, when the Wange was between two and three we took a private trip to Pt. Reyes. We stayed at the retreat house. We went out to dinner at Vladimir's, who made good sport of The Boy. Later we walked back to the retreat house, laid down and I read him stories then he curled up in his bed and we hit the lights.

At 2 a.m. KUUURPLUNK!

"Gehhaa...ohhh," The Wange said.

I was quick out of the next bed and held him.

"You fell out of your bed," I said quietly.

"Nah-huh...ger...poppa," said The Wange.

"It's okay sweet boy. Daddy's here."

I tucked him back in and stroked his hair.

"I fell out of the bed," The Wange said.

"Yes, you did" I laughed a little bit.

He laughed.

We still laugh about it.

The next morning we went to Drakes and a young puppy, a dalmation, came to play and be our dog for the morning. These are the best dogs because they are free and they are totally available but then go home and chew up someone else's shoes, or cords and yelp and need shots etc. But for the day, they really work.

I ran down the cool and misty beach as did The Wange and the dog and then we saw it.

Treasure.

There had been a shipwreck off the point and all manner of stuff was washing up the beach. Silverware, engine parts, fishing balls the size of bowling balls, broken dishes. The beach was full of it's demise.

The Wange crept up to an old portal attached to some wood and said "This is what I want. It's treasure Daddy."

Well he no longer calls me Daddy and I no longer call him The Wange. He calls me Papi and I call him Adam or simply "The Boy". But we still have our treasure from that day. I treasure it like I treasure him and the adventures we have had and will have in days to come.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Nine

Pt. Reyes has also been a natural testing ground of sorts. That sounds bad, but the place just has a way of uncovering what is.

Put simply, the gracious of heart and mind thrive there, a few others have not.

You may accuse me of being petty. I am not. For example, my Ex-wife feels as free there as I do, as she should. Despite our many differences it is holy ground to both of us. It makes me happy to think of her at the retreat house we both found that day.

[Editor's note: I talked with her on the phone and she believes the retreat house had been casually mentioned by author Parker Palmer, who is really fantastic, when he visited Sacramento earlier that year. I do not recall this, but it may well have happened. The timing is about right...and Darrell Johnson and I spent a wonderful afternoon with Palmer and picked his amazing brain together for several hours in 1991. I still read his works and highly recommend them.]

I once took a woman I was dating not once, but twice, to Inverness. Though a stange Pagan, she claimed to have a Jesus epiphany as we sat and talked under the huge pine trees. She said (this was her claim, I cannot, nor will I attempt to verify) that as we sat and talked she had some tangible sense of Jesus just above me.

This is not unprecedented, but I tend to be skeptical.

Both trips ended badly. Later I would understand why when more was revealed. A proclivity to cruelty that I had not forseen. I now understand why I was unwardly troubled in Pt. Reyes. I have only, in 38 years, had four bad incidents there. She accounted for two of them.

The other two? Oh you must know I suppose.

One was when I missed how sensitive my oldest son was in adolescence about his own growing pride (good pride) and I threw him in the surf. It was a huge mistake and I apologized later and humbled myself. I also lost my glasses in the surf at the same time. A very poetic justice.

Then I also left my camera once on the beach as my later-to-be first wife and I walked on the beach. When we came back. It was gone. Stolen.

To those four monor incidents, I have thousands of amazing memories, pictures, paintings and experiences. The few you see here are the tip of an immense iceberg. I hope you will keep reading.

Pt. Reyes Station Part Ten

For many years we always went to Pt. Reyes on Father's Day. Barbequed shrimp, steak and chicken next to piles of salad, good wine and usually started off with garlic and butter oysters on the half shell.

The Point Reyes National Seashore was established by President John F. Kennedy on September 13, 1962. It's protection was expanded under the Clinton administration and under the vision of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

As such, it boasts some of Amercia's most pristine waters and therefore it's most healthy oysters and sealife.

A "Johnson's" oyster is almost beyond description.

I have been on junkets up and down the West Coast, from San Diego to Seattle. I have had the oysters of Puget Sound paraded in front of me.

Peh! Their thin drabness is nothing like the smallest plump and full explosion that happens in your mouth as you slurp up the real thing.

There are two culinary things that Pt. Reyes has that do not exist anythere else on the planet. The first is the orgasmic cheese that comes from the creamery in town (the "Red Hawk" oh God!); the other are the oysters that breed in the shallows of Drakes Bay and the estuaries in the area.

When I was ten years old I had my first oyster in Inverness a stone's throw from Vladimir's. It was wretched.

Now I know different.

It is the water. Make no mistake. This is just one more reason we must fight this destructive administration and their social Darwinism. It sounds trite, but we will never again have a real oyster. Worse, we will breath pollution, eliminate the ozone layer leading to mass amounts of cancer and skin lesions, and be forced to watch 72 different versions of Fox programming 24 hours a day.

It will be bleak, ugly and utterly wrong.

Even the oysters in the bay would rather be plucked and lovingly eaten for their beauty than be slowly downsized, poisoned and made extinct.

We all die.

So, go while you can.

Tosco-B, when he was just 7 was sitting at the table at Drakes. His long legs were dangling and he was humming and thinking and smiling.

His Papi had brought him on just another Father's Day to have water gun fights and dance with the surf and eat good food. But he was looking at the big drummed BBQ and the oysters the young man was cooking.

He was deliberating. He saw the garlic being added and butter into some of the sheels, and bbq sauce in others.

His older brother scoffed and made a joke.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I wanna try one."

His face lighted up as he took the first bite. "I like it" he said shyly. Then he ate the rest and wanted another.

Later I took pictures of them running on the beach with abandon. The painting above is of that day.

the end

Looks like Reese is petty a small miscolored bear. Loki the Lug. 

Prep for Thomas' birthday party 

Overheated. 

See ....? Poot's. 

POOTS! (I kid you not..on the way down we stopped at "Poot's House Of Cactus"...dang! 

The Conversation starts... 

Tim Spews! 

Reese and Loki wrestle. 

Hannah getting high. 

Tim "Carnies" does the fire thangy.

Tosco turns 21...sorta. 

Strange faces. 

The guys 

Family Picture.