The Carrizo Plain

The Carrizo Plain

Driving down the washboard dirt road

Soft and inviting like an old wrinkled blanket

are the Caliente and Temblor Mountains

with their contiguous rolling hills

surrounding the flat, lonely, grassland of the Carrizo Plain.

Soda Lake, the heart of the vale

an alkali wetland,

a three thousand acre ephemeral pool

almost dry, it leaves

a glistening breadth of sulfate and carbonate salts

Wind picks up the particles

and creates a majestic, white spire

that swirls its way toward the heavens.

The San Andreas Fault is unmistakable here

the point where the Pacific and North American Plates join.

A steep arroyo marks the site of their union.

This unstable marriage has left scars on the Temblors

with offsets thirty feet high.

California condors forage this plain

Sandhill cranes winter in the marshes.

Spring rains nourish a variety

of flamboyant wildflowers.

Painted Rock emerges from the eastern grassland

a distinct sandstone formation

pushed up millions of years ago by a brutal quake.

It juts out of the prairie like

bones of the earth.

Some crevices take on the

characteristics of a skull

two hollowed eyes stare toward the base

of the Caliente Mountains.

I walk around the perimeter in awe.

Colorful moss and lichens grace it s surface.

Blackened ceilings in the shallow caves indicate

camp fires once burned in them.

There is a holy feel to this protrusion.

Faded red and black paintings made by ancient shaman

remind me of the Chumash tribes who survived on the

Tule Elk and pronghorn antelope of the region.

A painted rattle snake,

an eye,

or is it a sun?

I wonder what spiritual meaning did these symbols

hold for their painters?

And then my biology teacher asks

"Two hundred years from now, will archaeologists

uncover graffiti on the side of buildings and hypothesize

that it is some sort of spiritual pictogram?

In memory of Dr. Jeanette Rollinger. 

__________________________________________________

A lot of my poems are in memory of people that I loved.

Jeanette was my biology professor and this was a field trip for her Natural History of California class. I turned in this prose as my report for that field trip back in 2004. 

Jeanette became the best friend I ever had. My sons called her "Aunt Jeanette," and I was closer to her than I am to my own sister. She beat cervical cancer when she was in her thirties. At 52, she had just found the love of her life and was planning her wedding when she found out she had pancreatic cancer. 

It has been four years now, but I still miss her so much. She touched so many lives and put so much good into the world.