Left Coast Cowboys

When we first bought this land, we had nothing but a tent cabin to sleep in. Every night we used to hear the coyotes howling. However, we only saw one once. He was large as a German Shepherd, glossy and completely unconcerned as the dogs jumped up and down on the tent cabin bed barking at him. He threw them a disdainful glance and loped past us down the path. We haven’t seen or heard one since. Until, John the Baptist and Louis told me recently that they’d seen two large adult coyotes and two, maybe three, younger ones playing in the brush around the barn. We laughed and dubbed them Wiley, Wilma and the Kids.

Now the large male seems to have staked out the barn and pasture as his territory. I’ve seen him twice in this past week. Which given the nature of coyotes, probably means he’s been lurking around here all the time. Both times he’s been strolling along the dirt road from our back gate up to the vineyards. I’ve had more time to observe him than you usually get with coyote. He’s not the scrawny coyotes that I used to see raiding garbage cans in LA. Or the skittery little coyotes you sometimes see in the southern deserts of California. And, believe me, this is no buffoonish Wile E. Coyote. From his glossy pelt, bushy tail and loose-limbed lope to his arrogant glances, it’s clear, this is Coyote, with a capital C, the Trickster God of Native American legend.

One depiction of Coyote as a Man-Animal-God. Source: Wikipedia.

Coyote features in a lot of Native American myths, sometimes as a man-coyote God and sometimes even as the Creator. The local tribes that would have lived around Sonoma, the Pomo and the Miwok, especially revered Coyote and had numerous legends about him as Creator. In Miwok tradition, Coyote Man comes into the West with his son, Red-Tailed Hawk, and makes the the Pomo people from mud and the Miwok people out of sticks. In other legends, Coyote and Silver Fox sing the world into being. Pomo mythology has Coyote and Lizard creating the tribe on the shores of Upper Lake (just up the Silverado Trail in Lake County) from  sticks. Another local tribe, the Ohlone, have Coyote fathering the tribe after Eagle carries him to Mount Diablo (the tallest mountain in the Bay Area). Probably most of us are familiar with the Coyote myth from the Navaho detective books of Tony Hillerman that mix tribal lore with modern day police work on the Navajo reservation. There Coyote plays his more traditional role as Trickster, who sometimes helps man by fooling monsters that would hurt the tribe and at other times shows up man’s own foolishness with his pranks.

Here's the road to the vineyards that Coyote has claimed as his own, now looking appropriately mythological.

The bottom line: Native Americans knew their coyotes. Coyotes weren’t the biggest predators on the block (especially back in the day when there were wolves, Grizzlies and a lot more Mountain Lions.) But you could easily argue that they were the smartest. One of the blogs in my blogroll is The Daily Coyote, the diary of a woman who has been raising Charlie, an orphaned coyote pup. She reports that Charlie, now a teenager, can open kitchen cabinets, walk as silently as a cat, and figure out any gate she puts in. Add to this native intelligence, the arrogance that our coyote seems to have. Other than our resident Mountain Lion (who only seems to make cameo appearances since he has a huge State Park to roam around in), coyotes would be the biggest predators around here.

And our coyote’s done what even Pitbulls in San Francisco have not been able to do: he’s intimidated Oscar, who like his namesake Oscar de la Hoya, is usually unaware that he is not the biggest dog on the block. This morning, as Coyote loped by, Oscar jumped up on the dining table (because standing on a table makes you look REALLY BIG) and barked furiously. But he certainly wasn’t going to run after Coyote, who never broke stride, even as he gave Oscar a contemptuous glance over his shoulder.

Here's a dramatic recreation of Oscar barking at Coyote through the window from the table.

Lucy, on the other hand, is petrified.

She's spending her indoor time hiding behind the bathtub.

And outdoors, she's still always seeking protective cover.

As for little Oscar, he’s been busy marking all the territory around the barn with his own special brand of Oscar essence. He’s not ready to take Coyote on. In fact, I think there is a bit of hero worship happening. After all, here’s a pointy faced, prick eared canine who is obviously in charge.

So here's Oscar, in a Native American patterned chair, practicing his best Coyote look.

Today we faced the final and most daunting physical task of our winemaking, getting the Cabernet picked, crushed and into primary fermentation. We have four varietals, but we’ve planted more Cabernet than the other three put together. So we knew, whatever we’d gone through with the Mourvedre, Grenache and Cinsault, we’d need at least to double that for the Cabernet harvest. Luckily, Cousin John came to the rescue. And Cousin John is definitely someone you want on your side in a pinch. He’s sort of the Indiana Jones of California as he works with archeology teams uncovering Indian burial grounds as well as performing half a dozen other varied careers. In addition, he spent his formative years in Sonoma, so he knows where all the bodies are buried. Especially when they are Native American bodies. Stuff like that always comes in handy.

Another of Cousin John’s identities — he’s a forager. He runs around Sonoma picking things and making foodstuffs out of them. Or more often making alcoholic beverages from them. Sometimes he hits (his Walnut cordial), sometimes he misses (we’re not talking about that strawberry wine fiasco). But he’s a guy who could live off the land if he needed to. He’s also the kind of guy who will work for grapes. So we just had to set aside some crushed grapes for his own little fermentation and he was happy to help. More on that later because Cousin John’s idea of winemaking is a little more radical than ours.

Anyway, another great thing about Cousin John showing up was that I could finally take pictures of our process, such as it is.

Here's Cousin John dumping a bin of grapes off the top of the crush pad into the crusher/destemmer. Usually I do this. But I get more grapes in Andy's hair.

Speaking of grapes. We had loads this year.

Here are two vats of picked grapes. We had FOUR total. That's what is known in the industry as a "sh*tload of grapes." (Actually this would be nothing in the real winemaking world, but it's a lot for amateurs.)

So hours and hours of grape processing later, we finally came to the end of the last vat.

Wait! Here's Cousin John dumping the last grapes into the hopper. That means Harvest 2009 DONE!

Remember I told you Cousin John has a different philosophy of winemaking than we do? Well, let me put it this way. Remember this dude, Mr. Natural?

Let's just say Cousin John is his spiritual son.

When I say Cousin John is Mr. Natural Junior, I mean he ferments the way the Sumerians would. He don’t need no steenkin’ UC Davis yeast, he don’t need no steenkin’ sulfite, he don’t worry about no steenkin’ clean practices. Actually, I couldn’t bear to take pictures of Cousin John crouched in front of his bin of Cabernet combing through the grapes and crushing it with his bare (and unwashed) hands. Given how Andy makes me practically do a surgical scrub up before I even contemplate looking at our fermenting grapes. Well, let’s just say Cousin John’s method is painful to my eyes. But Cousin’s John’s Cab will be fermenting on the our crush pad, so we’ll see who makes the better wine in the end.

Hey, Cousin John’s Cab. That sounds like a Grateful Dead song!

Come drink Cousin John’s Cab

As natural as the tide

Drink it plain or with a scone

Cousin John’s Cabernet stands alone.

Okay, digression. But it’s not out of context to think of counterculture figures when you are around Cousin John. Here’s another example: we went for a walk down our redwood creekside trail to show Cousin John the Miwok or Pomo grinding stone we’d found. The Native tribes around here traditionally subsisted on a flour they ground from acorns. So wherever you find a seasonal creek and oak trees in Sonoma, you often find a grinding stone. Well, Cousin John put on his Indiana Jones hat, started rooting around in the moss and found half a dozen more on the same site!

Here's our grinding rock. Think of a gigantic mortar and pestle.

Here's Cousin John lifting back the moss and finding six more!

And here he explains the geological and cultural significance of the grinding rock.

Actually, there is technical term for these things that isn’t “grinding stone”. (John says that would be something portable.) These would have been grinding spots developed on migration routes and used over centuries by numerous tribes.

After this adventure, we ended the day with a cassoulet I’d been slow cooking all day.

Cousin John had three helpings and pronounced it "restaurant quality".

Did I mention how much I like Cousin John?

Note in the interest of full disclosure: Cousin John is not my cousin, but the cousin of my eccentric friend Julian. But after today, we’re adopting him.

The last day of our roadtrip started with a near fight. See Mom was born during the Depression, she knows the value of a dollar and she doesn’t waste food. So I indulged her when she carted the remains of her chicken fried steak out of Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace. I figured there was plenty of time to talk her out of taking it in the car. But Saturday morning when she brought it out of the motel refrigerator and started loading it into Old Paint, a confrontation was necessary. Suffice it to say, the chicken fried steak was left in Bakersfield, but for the hours long drive back up to San Francisco, it kept being mentioned.

Mom: “Are you hungry?”
Me: “A little.”
Mom: “Sure would be nice if we had that chicken fried steak now. . .”

Our route home led back up I-5, but the itinerary was loose. We’d traveled down I-5 and we thought we’d go up it a bit, then figure out where to veer off. At some point, we decided we’d swing by the Steinbeck Center in Salinas and headed off that way. That led us into very interesting territory, land I thought looked more like the High Plains of Texas — complete with tumbleweeds and oil derricks. The Prius, Old Paint, performed like a champ as we cruised out of Bakersfield with Buck Owens tunes cranked up.

Surprisingly (at least to us) a lot of the lower Central Valley is big oil country. These are the Lost Hills oil fields owned by Chevron.

I found this area strangely beautiful with miles of plains and large mountains in the distance. But then I'm a big fan of the High Plains country of Texas.

A giant tumbleweed threatens Mom and Old Paint.

Closer in to the mountains and we entered wine country.

Then, as we veered off I-5 and headed toward Salinas, Serendipity took over. Which is often the best part of a roadtrip. That point where your plans go a bit askew and you wind up seeing something you didn’t plan on, but in the end makes the trip.

The exact spot where the Rebel Without a Cause entered immortality.

Our first brush with Serendipity was the point where Route 41 met Route 46. Suddenly, a sign informed us that we were at the James Dean Memorial Intersection, the exact spot where Dean entered immortality. There is only a small plaque, the monument is in the town of Chalone in front of the Post Office. But the intersection is enough. It’s as eerie as the famous crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 40 in Mississippi where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil. You can feel, even in the daytime, that a tragedy took place here.

The Eagles said it best: "James Dean. James Dean. You were too fast to live. Too young to die. Bye Bye.

From that point, the Serendipity just kept happening. In fact we were giddy with it. So when we saw a small historical marker telling us the Mission of San Antonio de Padua was 22 miles off on a side road, we said, “What the heck”. I have a vague goal of eventually seeing all the historic original Missions of California. Since I’d been able to check off Mission San Juan Capistrano off my list, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to get a two-fer.”

After a short while, it seemed as if maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. We drove out for miles into seemingly nowhere. Then we passed a sign saying we were entering Fort Hunter Liggett, which we later found out is the largest US Army Reserve Command post with over 165,000 acres. All we knew at the time was that there were a lot of tanks  and rifle ranges pointing at the road and we observed to each other hopefully that maybe on Saturday they wouldn’t be shooting. More miles into rifle ranges and we finally came to the base gate where a friendly  MP let us in the gate. Of course, I hedged our bets by identifying Mom as the widow of a decorated veteran of two wars. (Turns out, if you have a piece of picture ID and a valid insurance card, they let you in.) So you drive on and on for six more miles and there, in the middle of a wide open field of oaks is the third Mission founded by Father Junipero Serra, this one started in 1771.

Want the real Mission experience? San Antonio de Padua looks and feels much the same as it would have back in the 1700s.

This is Franki. She's an artist in her own right (see her website at http://rakusculptures.com) and she mans the information desk at San Antonio. She's a wealth of information about the Mission.

For my money, if you can visit only one California Mission, this is the one. Why? Because at Mission San Antonio de Padua, you’ll get the closest to the real experience of what it was like for the early California Padres. While most California Missions are now in the middle of built up towns, you can’t see anything but fields and oaks from St. Antonio. If there are few visitors and no cars, you can imagine you are back in Alta California. Add to that an incredible museum which covers both the Padres’ experience and that of the local Salinas Indians, as well as beautifully intact buildings, the wine-making rooms, original grapevines and fruit trees planted by the Padres, and this is a very special experience. Even better, the Mission is conducting some innovative programs such as retreats, including an Artists Retreat, where you room in the Mission and recharge in their unique spiritual environment. (I couldn’t help thinking this would be a brilliant place for a Yoga retreat. Quick, someone plan it.) Find out more at the website.

The center bell was the first one cast in California. The olive tree to the right was planted by the original Padres. Mission San Antonio is full of such treasures.

The exhibits are heavy on the Native experience. And apparently, this was one of the few Missions where the Indians actually had a positive experience. Which is always a big plus in my book.

Although Mission Capistrano was the first Mission to produce wine and olives, San Antonio was right behind them. Surprisingly, this olive press from the 1700s isn't much different form the first wine press Andy and I used at Two Terrier Vineyards.

The original burnt brick arches are still standing. And the countryside is pretty much unchanged from Padre days.

With the day waning and having spent so much time at the wonderful Mission San Antonio de Padua, we hit the road for San Francisco. We took a quick turn through Salinas, both to pay homage to John Steinbeck and to James Dean who appeared in the movie version of East of Eden. Lovely town and worth a visit on our next roadtrip. As the thunderclouds rolled in and the rain pelted down, we rolled into San Francisco.

We only had time for a drive-by in Steinbeck's home town. But it looks to be worth a return visit.

It’ll take us several days and several posts to process all we saw, so expect more about our roadtrip. But we’re calling this a huge success. We saw everything we expected and wonderful things that we did not. And even if Mom didn’t quite “get” Buck Owens and even if that chicken fried steak had to stay in Bakersfield, she was a willing and able participant in a truly epic roadtrip.

Thanks, Mom, for flying Wing Man.

(For anyone who doesn’t get the reference, the title of this post refers to the song “The Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons, the rocker who was greatly influenced by Buck Owens and introduced his music to the Rolling Stones and other rock musicians who incorporated his guitar licks. See my post on Gram Parsons here.)

More pictures from this day’s adventures here.

I was hoping the St. Joseph’s Day festivities at San Juan Capistrano would be more local festival than slickly produced event, and luckily it was. To celebrate the return of the swallows to the Mission, I think the town had corralled every school kid from 5 to 18 to be in the ceremonies. You had First Graders dressed as monks, parades of Kindergardeners in sparrow costumes, and high schoolers doing Mexican hat dances and Spanish fandangos. Then there were the Historical Society people, the town dignitaries and the Mission Docents, most of whom managed to get themselves kitted out as Vaqueros, Spanish grandees and their ladies. I got the impression that anyone who was anyone in San Juan Capistrano was affiliated with those groups. And good for them. They’ve done a great job preserving and promoting the “Jewel of the Missions”.

Too bad they were seriously upstaged by the people who probably have the greatest claim to the Mission: the original local residents, the Acjachemen (pronounced Ah-ha-shay-mon) Indians. 

Full disclosure here: I’m always on the side of the Indians. While I have a thing about visiting the Missions of California, I quickly bypass the dioramas and exhibits talking about how tough the old Padres had it. Instead, my first stop is always the Mission burial ground. Every one of them has a large mound that is the mass grave for the Mission Indians who were coerced, converted and sometimes even enslaved into building the Missions. They died by the thousands of hard work, disease and sometimes heartbreak. The size of the mound usually gives the best indication who really had it tough in those days.

Jacque gets the crowd going with a traditional story.

That’s why I shoved my way through the monks, the sparrows and the grandees and headed directly for Jacque Tahunka-Nunez, who was leading a group of Acjachemen in full Native dress. Jacque’s website lists her as a master storyteller, teacher, singer, director, writer and cultural consultant. Let’s add to that electrifying personality, spiritual guide and inspirational speaker. At one point, Jacque took to the stage to tell traditional stories of Acjachemen life and spirituality. She managed to get several dozen kids from the audience on stage with her and organized them to chant, dance, do sign language and use Native American instruments in a respectful manner. The best part was the wonderful way she told a simple Acjachemen children’s tale but mixed in philosophy, codes of ethics and respect for the earth in such an organic way that the kids probably didn’t even know they were being “taught”. In fact, I can’t think of another storyteller who could pack that much meaning and depth into seemingly simple stories. Well, maybe that guy  in the robe who told parables. Okay, so I’m a big Jacque Nunez fan. (If there are any California teachers out there, book her quick. She travels to schools giving her presentations. And believe me, a half hour of Jacque is almost a semester’s worth of learnin’.)

The Kings and Queens were cute, but totally upstaged by the Indians.

As I wandered around the huge Mission complex, no matter what was playing on the big stage, I kept running across the Acjachemen quietly injecting a note of spirituality and gravitas into the proceedings, something that was missing from the other scheduled events. One of the best moments was when Jacque and her group performed a sage burning and led the entire audience in saluting the East, North, West, South and then the Earth. 

At another time I passed the Acjachemen performing a quiet ceremony in the Kiitcha, the traditional Acjachemen willow and tule dwelling that has been recreated on the grounds. Next they were performing a traditional song in praise of the birds. They showed up at the bell ringing ceremony, in fact one of the bell ringers of several decades is himself an Acjachemen.

But I haven’t mentioned the birds yet, have I? Well, we were warned that the days of swarms of swallows overhead are long gone. As Capistrano has been built up, the fields and flowers that provided insect food are shrinking. In fact, our friend Juan at the gift shop told us of a Freeway overpass we should go to down by the creek where we’d see more swallows. 

The swallows did return. They were a little more colorful than you thought.

So all during the morning, I scanned the skies, the walls and the palm trees for signs of swallows. I could hear them and every now and then I’d see one. But if you didn’t know this whole thing was about the swallows, you could easily forget about them. 

With ONE notable exception. Every time the Acjachemen started chanting, swallows popped out and started flying around. How beautifully appropriate. Just like the Acjachemen were at one time, the swallows are being pushed, if not toward extinction, at least out of their traditional patterns. But don’t count the swallows out yet.

Jacque and her son Jackson perform traditional dances.

Jacque told a wonderful story about the discovery of a sacred Acjachemen relic at the Mission in the Seventies. The tribe was invited to celebrate the discovery. As part of the ceremony, they walked around and around the Mission courtyard chanting:

Atim oh wah

At ah hoh lay

At ta hey ta lay

Which Jacque explained means:

We are the people.

And we are still here.

Yes they are. I say Acjachemen and swallows unite. Keep the cute kids in swallow costumes, but let the Acjachemen run the St. Joseph Day festivities.

Miscellanea

I did see more than the Native Americans. The Padres at Capistrano had a killer garden, one I’m going to copy. Although I still don’t think it will be fox-proof. They also made the first wine in North America at the Mission. You should see their crush pad!

I have hundreds of great pictures from the festivities here, but haven’t had time to label them.

I bet that one slipped right by you. Some of my Black friends used to joke that, when they finally got a Black History Month, it was February, the shortest one. Now it seems, we’ve designated a month for Native Americans. And it might as well be February what with Thanksgiving and the fact that we check out and start thinking Christmas thoughts immediately after the turkey. In fact, it seems the government can’t even agree on what to call this month. Some sites call it Native American Heritage Month, others American Indian Heritage Month or even American Indian and Native Alaskan Heritage Month.

Well, whatever we are going to call it, I’ve got two great documentaries I’d recommend as good starting points to understanding what I guess we are supposed to get in touch with this month: the contributions and place that Native Americans have in our nation.

The first is The West, produced by Ken Burns and written and collated by Geoffery C. Ward who wrote all of Ken Burns greatest documentaries. While not strictly a documentary about Native Americans, this documentary features them heavily, since what examination of the West could leave them out. But their contributions, culture and tragedy is handled much more in depth than the usual examination of Western America which jumps from the Plains to the Reservation to the Wild West Show and drops the subject there.

And by the way, if you’ve found the pan and scan of old letters and photographs grew old in Baseball, Jazz and The Civil War, fear not. One of the incredible things about this documentary is that Burns & Co. take so much of it outside. To the real West, the West that — in spite of all the development, the exploitation and the abuse — still exists. There are incredible aerial shots of buffalo stampeding, and places like the Bad Lands, the Southwest and the Plains just being spectacular. A side benefit of viewing The West, is that you will find yourself calling your Congressman and demanding more protection of our western heritage sites. At least, I hope you will.

Another wonderful thing about this documentary is that it doesn’t attempt to relate history, although it does that very well. It’s main purpose seems to be to explain the dream of The West. What did it mean to the Anglo, the Spanish, the pioneer and the people who were already here. The usual all-star line-up of great actors brings historical words to life and larger-than-life characters like former Texas Governor Ann Richards are interviewed. The series begins with a quote from Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday who posits that “The West has to be seen to be believed. But also may need to be believed to be seen.” The goal of this documentary is to make us believe in The West through the eyes of the people who were drawn to it. Almost disproportionately, the series shows us The West through the eyes of the people who believed they were placed exactly here by a higher power.

On a personal note, I’ll disclose that I own this series and watch it at least once a year or before every road trip into sites in the West. I always get something new out of it with every viewing.

The next series is 500 Nations, which has the direct goal of explaining the totality of the Native American experience. The most astounding lesson to be learned from this series is the massive diversity of the Native American world. There were Indians who built and lived in cities, those who were nomads, those with matriarchal societies and others with traditional hunter/gatherer lives and societies that were more advanced than those of their European invaders. Even tribes that inspired our Founding Fathers with a new idea of a Democratic government. What is also illuminating is how much interaction these widely diverse societies had. Tribes in Minnesota wore shells from the Gulf of Mexico, Aztec and Mayan nobility wore turquoise mined on Navajo land.

The series is produced by Kevin Costner and somewhat marred by his deadpan codas at the end of every chapter. But he’s a minor distraction. The series is a great, sweeping introduction to nearly all segments of the Native American experience, from East to West, from North to the South of Mexico. One of the strongest aspects of this series is the liberal commentary by contemporary Native Americans from a wide range of tribes.

I should note that both series come with companion books, both of which I own. Both are well worth the purchase price.

Obviously these two series are a starting point. I’d also recommend trying to attend a Native American Pow-Wow. There are a surprising number of them, at least in California. I’ve always found them simply by Googling just those keywords.

Both The West and 500 Nations are on Netflix. And both companion books are available on Amazon. Rent the series and read the books before Thanksgiving. And remember who saved the Pilgrims’ bacon as they starved in a land the local Wampanoag knew as a land of plenty.

Photo of Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce by Edward Curtis.