Grandma Renner’s Crape Myrtle

More on the subject of trees and plants: This is a good time to point out that our crape myrtle bush is blooming better than it has since Sue and I dug it up from my Grandma Renner’s former yard on Jefferson Street.

Grandma Renner had sold her house in the late 1980s and had died in 1998, and by 2004 her former house was slated for demolition. It had stood vacant for years, and the current owners were holding it on speculation that the entire block of adjacent houses would soon become a motel or chain restaurant or two.

My mom called me the first week of March 2004 to let me know that she had learned the house—a sturdy brick home built in 1957—was slated for demolition, and soon. They were gonna bring in dozers and push it over like an old shed. The speculator-owners were already cutting down and chipping up all the trees on the three or four properties they owned in that area.

On the sunny but cold afternoon of Sunday, March 7, 2004, Sue and I drove past Grandma Renner’s old address on Jefferson Street and were surprised to see the house was still standing. Sue noticed that the crape myrtle was still there, next to Grandma’s kitchen door.

I glanced at her and told her, “If you want to try to dig it up, I will help you.”

Until then, we had refrained from outright ripping-stuff-out-of-the-ground, because it wasn’t “ours.” But now that the house was clearly being torn down, I decided there was no reason not to take whatever we wanted.

So we went inside the house and poked around. The doors were unlocked. Bums had been in there; the place was trashed. It was hard to see. I was kind of glad they would be tearing it down.

We took a bunch of rocks that had extended a retaining wall in back, where Grandma’s rhubarb and wisteria had been, and other rocks from where she’d had an iris bed between her yard and the Bernskoetters’ next door.

We found some daffodils poking out of the ground, and took them.

But the crape myrtle was the biggest deal of the day. What a job that was! That clay soil out on Jefferson Street was so hard to work. I can’t imagine how sad Grandma Renner must have been to leave behind her rich black garden soil when she moved away from Elm Street—soil that had been tilled and amended and cared for since the 1800s.

But it had rained fairly recently, so we could at least get a shovel into the clay around the crape myrtle—meaning the job would be tough but not impossible.

There had been two crape myrtles, both planted soon after Grandma, Grandpa, and my mom had moved into their new house in 1957—one that bloomed lavender and stayed fairly small, and this pink one, which got big but took a while to start blooming. They were on each side of the kitchen door.




So the crape myrtle had plenty of time to become well established. During its first couple of decades at 1418 Jefferson, it had been watered and fertilized and tended by my master-gardener grandmother. I remember as a teenager getting on my knees and trimming out dead branches and pulling autumn leaves from the thicket of trunks at the base. Even then, the crape myrtle’s highest branches were tickling the soffits of Grandma’s one-story house.

I’m sure it got very little care those last years when the house was vacant, if it received any care at all. Maybe the Schaefers, next door, occasionally hit it with some water. I wonder.

Anyway, we certainly had our hands full—this was an enormous shrub to be digging out of damp clay without the benefit of a backhoe. We had sharpshooter shovels, a heavy-duty branch trimmer, and some stout hand trimmers. Hah!

We dug a deep trench around the root ball, grimacing each time we had to sever a large root. We took turns chopping into the stiff soil while the other reached into the hole and hauled out the heavy clay.

We ran into our biggest problem when we had to figure out how to detach the root-ball from the earth beneath it. We could tip the shrub back and forth a little, but it was still firmly attached to the ground with earth and roots. We couldn’t get “under” it.




The neighbors spotted us and came over—the Schaefers, Grandma’s dear friends, now grown elderly themselves. Ralph offered us the use of a regular spade and a pitchfork—which weren’t quite what we needed—then he got the bright idea of us using a chain to pull it out.

Sure, what the heck. He fetched his heavy chain, which had a hook on each end, and a piece of scrap carpeting. We looped one end of the chain around the root-ball, cushioning it with the carpeting, and hooked the other end of the chain around the part of Sue’s truck chassis that holds the back bumper on.

Well . . . you live and learn, huh? Here is what happened. Sue did a great job of gently, gently tugging on the root-ball with her truck—what a fine touch! But all of a sudden, the chain dug into the carpet, creasing it, and cut right into the middle of the root-ball, darn near splitting it in two. Arrrgh!

A huge lack of foresight. The chain and carpeting didn’t end up working like a “spatula” at all—it was more like a knife! Next time, if we ever have to do this kind of thing again, we’ll position the chain where we want the thing to be severed!

And it also bent Sue’s bumper in the process. Yep. (And it’s still bent to this day!)

But apparently, as it turned out despite my worry, we hadn’t damaged the taproot too badly. And our action did get the shrub to detach completely from the soil beneath it.

The next project was to lift the freaking-heavy plant with its wad of moist clay soil into the back of Sue’s pickup. We had trimmed off the branches quite a bit, but it was still rather spiky and poked us a lot. So we wrapped it in an old pink plastic shower curtain we use for such purposes, hefted it onto the tailgate and pushed it in, and then drove it home to Elm Street, where the soils are black and loose and full of nutrients, earthworms, and life.

Digging the new hole for it was incredibly easy, like digging into a piece of moist chocolate cake. It was as if the soil in our yard was accepting, embracing, the tired old, new plant.




By March 18, they had demolished Grandma’s old house on Jefferson Street; it was just a pile of bricks. But by that day, I was sitting in our backyard, contemplating the bedraggled crape myrtle, and daring to hope: “Go man, go!”

To look at it now, you would never know the crape myrtle had experienced such adventures.




[Addendum: For a photograph of Grandma Renner and her crape myrtles, see my post here.]

Tagged, Sort Of

This is one of those Internet things. Or I bet it could also go through e-mail, like a chain letter. At any rate, my friend Jane received a “tag” and played along on her Flickr site, then, instead of naming ten new people to “tag,” she left it open for all her readers. She said, “If you want to participate, consider yourself tagged. If you’re not interested, consider yourself untagged.”

So it’s about self-disclosure. You’re supposed to provide a photo of yourself, and then list ten things about you that your readers may not know. So here’s my bit.

1. You can’t tell from this blog, but I’m pretty tall, 5 foot 10. Throughout elementary school, I was generally the tallest one in my grade. But instead, the other kids made fun of me because I had eye alignment problems.

2. The eye alignment problems are the next thing! I had two surgeries on my eyes as a real little kid (ca. 2 and 3 years old) to correct (first) crossed eyes, and (next) to fix my overresponse to the first surgery, when my eyes turned outward too much. Surgery 2 left me with eyes that didn’t stay in alignment no matter which eye I “used.” (I developed alternating vision, which I still have—no 3-D movies for me; bah, humbug!) Later, I had a third surgery to “fix” the alignment problem, a cosmetic correction just in time for puberty. The outcome, which still stands today: If I “look through” my right eye, the left one is aligned; if I “look through” my left, the right eye goes off on a tangent (up and to the right). So I basically always use my right eye, especially when I’m in public. My right eye always gets tired, and the left one never does.

3. As a kid I was a huge fan of the Carpenters. You know I can still sing right along with all the lyrics. Total memorization. I often wonder if steeping so much in those downer lyrics didn’t feed my tendency toward depression. I do think Karen had an incredible voice. I wish she had survived. I believe she would have eventually come around to jazz, or Broadway, or standards, or something like that. By now she’d be a beloved, classic entertainer. Oh well.

4. I went to graduate school to become an editor of books. Most recently I worked at a scholarly press for about thirteen years—then was laid off last October when the press’s worsening financial status was no longer tolerated by the powers-that-be. I was the most junior editor there, hence my layoff. Now I’m a freelancer, and now I spend my days doing things an editorial assistant can do. So at age 43, I’m looking at new careers.

5. In college I worked at a large, nice, independently owned pet store, Sunshine Pet Shop in Columbia (now defunct). By the time I graduated, I’d worked there four years and had become a manager. I specialized in fish and got a huge thrill when I could help my customers be so successful that they started getting more tank set-ups in order to acquire different kinds of fish, or start up a saltwater tank, etc. Even after graduate school, I worked at a pet store in Phoenix for a while, as a saltwater specialist. (I used to have a lot of aquariums!)

6. I’m a member of the Mid-Missouri Bonsai Society, but I don’t do bonsai myself. My sweetie, Sue, is currently a copresident of the group, and I’m a member mainly so I can help out at the shows and other events. Yes, in our backyard we have tons of bonsai trees in various stages of development. Sue is really, really good at this art form, and taking care of her trees really makes her happy.

7. Sue and I have been together since August of 1993, so this week it’s sixteen years for us. We’ve had our highs and lows, but at this point I think our relationship is stronger than it’s ever been. And it’s great to be able to say that.

8. I’m a huge Star Trek fan. When we were kids, my brother, Paul, and I used to play “Star Trek” in our backyard with the other kids on our block. For some reason I always wanted to be Dr. McCoy. I loved his drawl and his crusty and heartfelt comments.

9. I adore old cars—not the hot-rod kind, but the kind that look just how they did when they rolled off the assembly line in whatever year they were made. As a teenager, I built a ton of 1/24 and 1/25 scale models of old cars. I wanted to build a car model representing each year, through 1959—all Fords (you could definitely call us a “Ford family”—my mom’s brother-in-law in Detroit was big in the company). And yeah, my models were pretty good. I entered contests for a few years and my Duesenbergs and Packards took the first prize away from several annoyed boys and their street rods and monster trucks. Heh-heh-heh.

10. In second grade, my handwriting (printing) was so impressive that I was the first kid in my class to be selected to the “Cursive Club,” which was a desk in the back corner of the room with materials where I could start practicing making cursive letters, while the rest of the students worked on their printing. Pretty funny, today, since my handwriting is so nasty—it’s practically a code, that only I can read. Hah. And I can hardly write in cursive at all anymore; my signature looks like a cardiogram. Go figure!

So there you go. If you’ve read this, then consider yourself “tagged.” . . . Or not.

Whatever.

Josephine Weber and Her Trees

Now that I’ve shown you what that big Norway spruce looked like coming down, I’ll tell you a little about the history of those trees.

As far as my personal experience is concerned, the tremendous conifers across the street from Grandma’s house were basically, “always there.” Everyone in our family enjoyed the view out the front windows of the house, because it was like a forest of spruces—very Old World and Germanic, it seemed to me. As a child I enjoyed collecting the cones from the sidewalk—and then discovered I didn’t particularly enjoy having my fingers covered with sticky sap.

Dad mentioned that he has always enjoyed the special sound the wind makes when it blows through conifer needles—from both the Norway spruces and the big pine tree just east of them, in the same yard. Thus they provide not only some shade to our front yard in late afternoons, but also a quiet music as the wind blows.



When you look at aerial photographs of this town taken during the last half of the twentieth century, it’s easy to locate the corner of Broadway and Elm by the big dark green patch of the massive conifers.

Wanting to learn more about the history of these trees, I talked to my Mom and Dad, since they both were born and grew up in direct sight of the yard at 601 Broadway, where these trees are.

The little house, on the southeast corner of Broadway and West Elm, is one of the oldest homes in the area still standing. My dad’s maternal grandparents rented a room in the simple, one-story house in the 1880s when they first came over from Germany and before they built the house next door to it at 215 W. Elm (and then made two other homes across the street, including the one I live in today). (Long story.)



Somewhere in there, Caroline Weber, a German immigrant and widow, and her daughter, Josephine, came to own the house at 601 Broadway; after her mother died at the age of 96 in 1933, Josephine stayed on and lived there, alone, practically her whole life.

But she wasn’t exactly alone. My mom and dad remember her as an incredibly nice neighbor lady. A tremendous Cardinals fan (she listened to each game on her kitchen radio), she understood how baseballs from the neighbor kids’ games, played out in the middle of the street, naturally could end up in her strawberry bed, or in her beans and tomatoes, and she tolerated the kids stepping carefully into her garden to retrieve their stray balls.

In addition to her strawberry patch and garden, Miss Josephine had a cistern, a well in her backyard, and she made fantastic angel food cakes in her little bitty kitchen and sold them to people “uptown.” Since her baking utilized only the egg whites and thus orphaned dozens of egg yolks, she occasionally called across Elm Street to have my grandma send one of her boys over to pick up a Mason jar full of the bright orange yolks.

This was during the Depression and World War II, so you know nothing was going to waste. My grandma made custards and super-omelets with the yellow bounty. And my dad still talks about what it felt like to carry those glass jars across the street. He says it was like grasping a jar full of squishy golden eyeballs.

(There’s a picture, huh?!)

My dad also remembers all the other goodies she baked—cookies, rosettes with powdered sugar sprinkled on them, and so on—as well as her nifty pet canary that sang constantly, and her devotion to the Cards. She was happy to chat with neighbor kids about baseball heroes Stan Musial, Marty Marion, and Enos Slaughter. No wonder she was so popular!

What a great neighbor, huh? She was in her fifties during this time.

I am trying to remember if I ever knew her, or if she had gone on to live and die at the St. Joseph’s Home by the time I came along and was old enough to have a clue about anything.

One thing is for sure, her house and its forest of trees have become almost an archetypical landscape in my consciousness. It is like a tiny gingerbread house in a deep Alpine forest, which has no witch—instead, it had been the home of a genuinely kind lady. (Such women used to be called spinsters, or old maids . . .)

And big pines are certainly uncommon around these parts. Shortleaf pine forests once dominated the southern part of Missouri, but they were gone long before I was born. And spruce trees are unusual, as well; I don’t think any are native to the state. So Josephine Weber’s stately conifers created a miniature boreal forest here on Elm Street, something that feels very different from the scrubby, jungley oak-hickory woods around here.

I asked my folks about the trees—the pine and the two spruces—and they consulted with each other and looked at old photographs. The pine tree’s definitely the oldest, and the two “matching” spruces are apparently different ages. A photo my mom took in 1954, with her brand new Argus camera, shows all three conifers: The pine is biggest, the spruce that was just cut down was in the middle (in terms of both location and size), and the other spruce, which still survives, is on the other side of the walkway.





Mom has a painting she made of Miss Josephine and her house and trees, which dates to about 1949, and it shows the trees even smaller. So we’re guessing the spruces were planted in the 1940s. The pine tree is certainly older.

Both my folks remember Miss Josephine stressing out, in later years, with fears that rowdy neighborhood kids might play with fire beneath her big trees on Halloween night and accidentally ignite them in a spectacular blaze. And yeah, there used to be a huge carpet of pine needles under there. I guess she tried to rake them up each year as October drew to a close.

After Miss Josephine passed away—in the 1960s, I guess—her house was remodeled at some point and became a hair salon by the 1980s. It was still a beauty parlor (“Sil-o-ette”) in 2001 when we bought Grandma’s house. The salon and its people were good neighbors to us; they specialized in old ladies’ cuts. All day long, sedans would pull up to the corner and “little old ladies” would work their way out of the cars and onto the sidewalk, and shuffle carefully up the steps to the front door, while their husbands found street parking somewhere and waited.

But a few years ago, the salon owners decided to call it quits, and after a few other enterprising hair stylists have tried and failed, and after a half-assed exterior paint job with an icky orangish color of paint . . . the little house now sits vacant, needing tuck-pointing, wanting someone who will care.



Obviously, this memoir is about much more than just some big ol’ trees. It’s about the memory of a single woman who died long ago but whose memory deserves to live on, despite her lack of biological progeny. The trees in her backyard have been hinting reminders of her life, but now they, too, are starting to go.

So I don’t know. It just seemed important to say something.

Timber

A giant fell last week, right across the street from us.

The easternmost of a pair of stately Norway spruces had died over the past year or so. It was a gradual death, and needles and twigs have been sprinkling from it this whole time.

And instead of letting the tree fall on its own and having insurance pay for any damages and cleanup (such as potential damages to our property), the landlord who owns the property hired some dudes to cut it down. And despite their filthy dirty mouths and lack of protective clothing and eyewear, they actually did a good job. They cut it down on Saturday, August 8.

Between then and now, they have cut off the branches, sliced up the trunk, and hauled the whole thing away on a trailer. Two heavy loads.

Today, the landlord, per his usual style, scalped the grass under it really good. His riding mower made a lot of racket because of all the sticks and little branches that remained. But whatever. It's his lawn mower and his lawn. (Such as it is.)

Sue and I took pictures as they cut down the tree. Sue, with her awesome camera and more-awesome timing, got the nifty-cool sequences. I took pictures from our second-floor window. It was pretty amazing to see that huge tree go down.

. . . Next, I’ll tell you a little about the history of these particular trees and the shrimpy little house they have towered over for about as long as I’ve been on this earth.

Meet Beth

I've been keeping pretty busy recently. One of my recent projects is (once again--yawn!) to put some effort into developing some healthier, more balanced habits. Like eating more healthy food--but gosh it's so convenient to hit a restaurant.

Anyway, I've also been trying to clean up this place of late. Being a freelancer, I'm finally spending quite a lot of time here at home, and I've finally looked around and gone, "Criminey, I need to clean up this place!"

But I do have something to share with you. In this case--if you are woodchuck-phobic, don't look any further, or you'll be offended.

Yes, I do know that they burrow like crazy and have a tendency to breed like, um, rodents, and that they love to eat up one's vegetable garden. Let me try to explain.

Here's how it started. See, we put feed out for the birds. That's okay, it's normal. But the squirrels tend to hog up the feeders. So to keep the squirrels away from the bird feeders, we've been pouring a little bit of field corn out under the walnut, well away from the bird zone.

To be funny, we put the corn in an old wooden bird feeder that was falling apart. It looked like a little house. You have to admit it's cute.

Anyway, a woodchuck or two have located this cornucopia of corn, so they've learned to visit the squirrel feeder.

Which is to say: We didn't invite the woodchuck(s). They appeared on their own. And so now we're "subsidizing" two types of mammals in order to get them to leave the bird feeders alone. It's like a payoff, or a bribe.

No, we're not going to shoot "Beth" (we call the woodchucks "Beth," short for "Beth DeWoody," a memorable character from a favorite episode of AbFab--long story). But I'm not keen on them getting any ideas about burrowing under our sunporch.

So far, the bribes are working. And we're enjoying watching our chubby little cornfed pals.

It's cute how they get along with the squirrels . . .

Felini Restaurant: Eat There!

This is one of my very favorite restaurants in Columbia, for several reasons. And I worry about them—Columbia has a very competitive restaurant scene, and I’m not sure many people know what to make of this restaurant.

So here is why I love Felini. The links I include below are to Columbia Daily Tribune articles; here is the Felini Restaurant Facebook page.

First: The Owners

Felini is locally owned and family run. More than that, the owners, the Canhasi family, are immigrants, Kosovar-Albanian refugees who are trying like nuts to live the American dream. Learning about their story makes me predisposed to wish them well. They came to America after a harrowing journey out of their homeland. They got factory jobs, worked their fingers to the bone, scrimped and saved, polished their English, and kept their dream alive in their hearts. They passed their citizenship tests and are now proud Americans.

They had been restaurateurs in Kosovo, before the war. Their restaurant there was also named Felini, after the Italian film director. The spelling reflects the Albanian spelling of the Italian name. The Kosovo Felini was destroyed during the war.

So if the Canhasis can make it, that means the American dream of “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is still . . . possible. Still alive. So if you ever think to yourself “God bless America” or “buy American,” make sure to patronize the restaurants and other businesses of people like our ancestors, who came here willing to work hard, to reap the benefits of their life’s labor.

Second: The Food

At Felini the food is wonderful. The Canhasis know their business. The food is excellent, although it may not be exactly what we’re used to eating. I don’t know about you, but Albanian cuisine is new for me. And at this point—I suspect because Columbia’s not quite ready for Albanian cuisine—the Canhasis have gradually turned the restaurant into a full-fledged “Greek” restaurant—albeit with a few traditional dishes from their own country.

Among the latter have been Tava Sautee, a rich, stewy blend of vegetables, tomatoes, chicken (if you want meat; or you can get it with just vegetables), topped with mozzarella and cooked and served in an oven-proof clay bowl. Another favorite is Qoftethes, which is seasoned ground beef filled with mozzarella cheese and topped prettily with thin, looping lines of mayonnaise, served alongside a mild rice pilaf, roasted potatoes, and (when the restaurant first opened), a small side of cooked beets.

Alas: The menu has recently changed again and the two dishes I just described are no longer on the menu—I suspect because they’re too heavy for summertime eating in Missouri. The menu has instead expanded on chicken and fish dishes, as well as sandwiches—the Greek kind, on pitas. They are trying to get more student business, I think. Although their prices have always been very reasonable, I think the sandwiches offer diners lower price tags.

I am hoping that when the weather turns chilly again, they’ll bring back some of their heartier dishes, even if it’s just for one night a week as a special. These dishes are one of the big things that set them apart.

At this point, the only dish on the menu that seems especially Albanian, and not Greek or Italian, is the Kebobs Appetizer. I have to tell you, though, that if you’re expecting chunks of grilled steak on a skewer, you’ll be surprised. The beef is ground, seasoned, and formed into link shapes. If you get it as an appetizer, they are artfully arranged like spokes on a small, homemade bread round similar to a thick-crust pizza, atop marinara sauce and with mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, feta, and parsley.

Another great thing about the food is its presentation—the meals are harmonious in terms of flavors, textures, and colors and are beautifully decorated with sauces, garnishes, relishes, and vegetables. My favorite meal there is the Rainbow Trout dinner, which includes a grilled, whole trout (minus the bones), rice pilaf, steamed vegetables, tzatzike sauce, a few dollops of their buttery-light flavored feta cheeses, and crispy potatoes. It’s so pretty it makes me smile when they bring it out for me.

Among the Greek and Italian dishes are gyros, chicken souvlaki, tuna calzone, chicken modiga, grouper primavera, Mediterranean salmon and shrimp (prepared en papillote), dolmathes, lasagna, lamb chops, and a Greek combination platter.

Each dinner table receives a homemade Albanian-style pita, which is something like a big, hot dinner roll—raised, not a flatbread—with olive oil for dipping.

Our favorite appetizer is the Greek Dip Medley—a simple combination of hummus, taramusalada, and tsatzike served with warm triangles of Greek pita bread—but so artfully presented that you can’t help but enjoy the view of it before you dig in. (And now I’m addicted to taramusalada—my first bite of it, and I was going, “What is this stuff? It’s terrific! I could take a bath in it!”)

There are two dynamite soups available, as well: Avgolemono (chicken, orizo pasta, egg, and lemon) and Domate Supa, which is an incredibly rich and flavorful blend of fresh chopped tomato, celery, parsley, oregano, romano cheese, and red wine, simmered slowly. Sue says she could take a bath in this: “Compared to Campbell’s, it’s like tomato soup from a parallel universe, where everything’s way, way better.”

The desserts include two traditional items that you just have to try: The Piano Cake and the Galaktobureko. The former is difficult to describe, but features interlaced vanilla and chopped-walnut chocolate cake to form “piano keys.” The latter is a chilled Greek custard baked with phyllo pastry and served in a small pool of sweet, light, cinnamon syrup. Mmmm.

Third: The Ambience

You already know that the feel of a place means a lot to me; it’s reflected in the way the servers treat you, the way the place is decorated, and how many distractions there are. At Felini, you feel like a guest in someone’s home. It’s a nice home, with nice furnishings, so you want to sit up straight, wear something casual but nice, and display good behavior—but because it’s someone’s home, you are encouraged to have a wonderful conversation and to have a good time.

That’s how it feels; it reminds me of my Grandma S’s house, where the food was fantastic, the conversation was sparkling and spirited, and where singing might erupt at any minute. Maybe I’m simply describing what others might call a European or Old World ambience.

They offer a substantial selection of wines and beers, but even with the flaming-cheese appetizer, the restaurant is absolutely not a rowdy college hangout. Hooray!

Sue and I love to come here after the symphony, to have a beverage and an appetizer or dessert. (Sue loves to have a glass of Macon-Lugny les Charmes Chardonnay; I love it that they offer Clausthaler n/a beer.) It’s comfortably laid-back, our concert duds go okay with the surroundings, and the libation and food is just right for a bite on a night on the town.

There are no obnoxious TVs hanging on the wall, and the music they play is from the Old Country. The Canhasis have decorated with dolls, costumes, rugs, and other items from Albania.

In general, they’ve put a great deal of themselves into the restaurant; they’ve created a little slice of their homeland for us to enter and enjoy. What a huge treat for us!

So eat at Felini—and pass it around.

Addendum (June 10, 2010)

I'm sad to report that Felini Restaurant has closed its doors. Man, oh man, am I going to miss them! I wish the Canhasis the best of luck in all their future endeavors, and I thank them for sharing a taste of their homeland with me, and for inspiring me to be a better cook and hostess.

And if they decide to open a new restaurant hereabouts, I'm going to be first in line to check it out!

--JS

Cahokia Mounds, Part 2

Even though a few weeks have passed since we were there, the scene at Cahokia is still on my mind. Part of it is the fact that for hundreds of years, this was the center of a busy, progressive civilization . . . that has vanished. That is always a sobering thought.

But I also keep returning to the fact that they built a mountain where there had been none. As a community, they did this. Why? So there could be a mountaintop for their leaders to stand upon.

I have always been mindful of the connection between landscape and inscape, so to speak—the symbiosis between geography/scenery and mood/attitude. There are certain landscapes that seem to have an almost universal influence on our human psyches—the river makes us mindful of constancy, progress, inevitability, change, flow. The ocean, with its monthly cycles of tides and its breathing pattern of waves washing in and out, gives us a sense of peace, of completion, the circular unity inherent in the notion of polarities.

And mountaintops make us feel like Jesus. The broad view, the elevated mind, the scaling of heights, the reaching of accomplishment. I think that every human religion has at least one or two mountains that are held sacred—Mount Sinai, Mount Fuji, the Himalayas, Kilimanjaro . . . the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona from which the Kachinas are said to originate . . . even the New Agers in Sedona imbue the cliffs and buttes of that region with spiritual power.

And I think back to all the places where I have gone repeatedly to commune with nature and with my higher self (for want of a better word), or with God or Brahma or whatever you want to call it, and in nearly every case, elevation was involved.

South Mountain Park in Phoenix, where I could see the entire Valley of the Sun spread out before me.

Shooting Star Bluff at Gans Creek, Columbia, Missouri, where I can see the creek burbling along below and deer and turkey wandering around on the flat bottomland beyond that.

The mountains at Priest Pass, Helena, Montana. Or Mount Ascension. Or even just Sugarloaf, the relatively minor hill overlooking our house when we lived there.

There is nothing like the view from a bluff or a mountaintop to help me clear my head. It is interesting to know that that sense connects me with prehistoric humans, as well as those who will succeed us.