You Might As Well Grow

Well, I have seen my future and it's my present. We're visiting a dear friend who recently moved to a northern California community, and everyone here seems to be a gray-haired boomer in jeans and hiking shoes walking dogs or one another. It's a place where left-leaning is the middle of the road and folks are concerned about the world and their arthritis in equal parts.

We stopped at a beautiful roadside chapel built for nondenominational prayer, meditation, and spiritual renewal. It was designed by James Hubbel and dedicated to the memory of a young man "who believed that art is the intermediary between the physical and the spiritual". (I would agree with that young man, although I think nature can be an intermediary too.) The chapel is as much a sculpture as it is a building. Its spired cedar roof is curved as though in flight. Within are molded redwood seats, mosaic floor designs, and exquisite details wherever your eyes might wander.

A fellow in overalls and construction boots was playing a wooden flute in the light of a stained glass window. He courteously stopped when we entered and gathered his things to leave, despite our encouragement that he continue.

"No," he said, "this is your space too."

But we saw him again outside sitting patiently on a bench in front of the teak wood door, his flute on his lap, a nearby fountain murmuring its watery song. He introduced himself: Steven, and said he first moved to the area in 1974.

"We were gonna live off the land and change the world," he said, sounding both wistful and ironic. It didn't work out exactly as hoped, but he's still here, after all these years.

Apparently marijuana became the main industry in a nearby town, and its effects have not been positive. But Steven told us about a bakery not far from here called Franny's: "You'd be lucky to find a bakery that fine in Paris!" and a seriously good restaurant called Uneda Eat.

And  he told us about local art classes, movie nights, even tango, led by an excellent local instructor. He recommended the latter: "It's an exquisite form of communication between two people," he said. He cautioned our friend to carefully choose the events she attends, because the possibilities are so numerous it's easy to become ensnared in social commitments.

It was starting to sound like summer camp, but it isn't easy, navigating solo in an unfamiliar setting. I have so much respect for my friend who has moved to this place and is making a life, fixing up her modest house, working in the community garden, swimming and walking, finding what there is to love here. I don't know if I'd have the spirit to start all over again.

But in a way we're always starting all over again. For just as we're becoming used to ourselves and our routines, things shift, and we're in a whole new chapter in an accelerating sequence of events. We look around and see ourselves everywhere, fading figures in faded jeans.

We took a detour on the way back to see an old abandoned house surrounded by a profusion of pink ladies. There was something hilarious and outrageous about these silly lilies, as pretty as they were.Who even planted them, I wondered, and when?

But they continue to grow, delighted with themselves, even as the house behind them falls apart.