One Sunday we drove to Pt. Reyes National Seashore and climbed down a frighteningly shear cliff to a narrow beach that was clearly going to be underwater when the tide came in.  Worse, I was sure an imminent earthquake would drop boulders on us.  Steve was surf fishing, and I guess we were stoned out of my minds, because a seal popped its head out of the water and watched us from the surf, and spooked us the way he stared.  Probably just waiting to see if we caught some fish.  Steve told me the story of how years earlier when he lived in Boston he encountered a talking seal that had the brogue of an old sailor–he often had odd stories like this.  Later I heard a similar story, that Seals, and other animals,  can learn to imitate human language if they are raised around people .  Can’t recall if Steve caught anything. 

first hike, view to the north, Palmdale 7.28.90

On our first camping trip together we took the old Dodge truck down to meet his Mom and Dad in the still-beautiful Joshua forest of Palmdale, California .  Their house is in the slash of green trees dead center.  These are the hills where we scattered his ashes.

Steve and Mickie at San Andreas Fault, looking south

Driving home by way of Highway 395, I saw the Eastern Sierras for the first time.  We camped near Hot Creek,  visited the fish hatchery, camped at Rock Creek Lake.  Our last night out we stayed at Deadman Campground on Highway 108 below Sonora Pass.

We slept on the ground in down sleeping bags, wrapped up like a burrito in a white cotton painting tarp.  In the morning we witnessed the amazing complexity and diversity of one species, a family of scrub jays (and one Western Tanager) that were fat, thin, tall, short, with various personalities in the pecking order as they came down to clean potato scraps from the frying pan.

Pretty sure Steve caught a fish here, he looks pretty happy about something.

On June 24, 1990 Lynn, Steve, and I drove in the Mothership up the coast to search for Steve’s ancestral lands, around Stewart’s Point and Fort Ross, where the Kashiya Pomo tribe lived (some married and left with Russians) in the 1800’s.

Kashiya Haupt family circa 1924

We found the site of Haupt Ranch where his mother Elsie was born, and where the family portrait was taken in 1924.  Steve’s mother is the little blond girl on her mother’s lap on the far right.  The cemetery still has many old stones from his German Great Great Grandfather Charles Haupt on through the early 1900’s.

The old schoolhouse where Elsie went as a child is still standing just south of Stewart’s Point.

Haupt family cemetery in 1990

Steve and Lynn at Haupt Ranch site 

When I met Steve he had a turquoise-blue 1966 Dodge pickup with an oil leak and bad seals.  I thought it was a really cool.  I liked its face  .  .  .  It’s what he came to rescue me in when my 510 blew a gasket on the way home from Oregon.

1966 Dodge camper truck

Lynn sold us this orange 1979 Datsun truck, with a white door, which we used the hell out of–What could go wrong?  Once almost stuck at a campsite with a very steep road out.  I had to get out and walk to lessen the load.  Later we tried driving down a 4×4 road from Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains to Bishop–hey, if it gets tricky, we can just turn around, right?

1971 Datsun 510 Wagon.  I loved this car–the back was huge.  I could carry my whole Tama drumset and a couple of amps and guitars.  I called it Beep Car because it had a weird silly horn.  .  Beep Car made it to Oregon and almost back, then later to Anza Borrego and back.

1971 Datsun 510 wagon

1981 gold Mazda GLC–Stuck in sand wash in Anza Borrego;  almost stuck in Saline Valley in the snow!  A Great Little Car, thanks Darlene.

1957 VW Type III, Betsy at BBRR, July 7, 2007

Betsy, a 1957 Volkswagen van with big custom bumpers–Orcas Island by Ferry 1996, Palmdale, Y2K–blew a rod, thus precipitating:

a Rental White Chevy S10 truck

1981 white Toyota 4×4 “Orca”, because it looked so huge when we got it home.  We bought it in Palmdale after searching for the perfect 4×4 for a couple of years.

1995 Toyota Tacoma, my work truck.  called into service one Christmas when the 4runner blew a fuel pump on the road, 75 miles from home.

1983 Volkswagen Westfalia, Steve’s Dream.  I call her “Babygirl” because she was a creampuff with 54k miles.

And still going, Steve’s prize 1988 4runner, Big Red, that we got from his sister Jo for $1.

Upper Warm Springs Canyon, Death Valley April 16, 2006

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packed for the trip home, 4/24/06

Age 13, first rifle, Palmdale, California

Steve was born in Fargo, North Dakota, and grew up in Desert View Highlands, an unincorporated area between the Amargosa Wash and the San Andreas Fault surrounded by Palmdale, California.  Steve’s dad, a high school teacher and coach, often took the family camping and fishing the Eastern Sierras.  When I met Steve he had all the accoutrement for fishcamping:  stove, lantern, cans of Dinty Moore in a milk crate, sleeping bags, a camper shell, and a battered ’66 Dodge truck called “the Mothership”–and he often talked of fishing and camping. 

I grew up urban in Akron, Ohio, and my family had vacationed in remote Pennsylvania and Canada woods and lakes, Cabin-camping around the Great Lakes.  I had done a little fishing there, too, didn’t like to kill things.  I went to college in Tucson where I fell deeply in love with the desert, and enjoyed hiking.   More of a bird-watcher, I like to build a fire and grill a steak, and would rather watch a sunset than a television set.

Laurie in Art School, 1984

Steve and I had met in 1985 when he would often visit my boyfriend Grif’s roommate.  They were in bands that played at the local pub, where Steve had also worked as a bartender and bouncer.  Steve was a guitarist and singer with an amazing voice,  I was a novice drummer, learning to play on songs that Grif wrote.  Over the next few years Steve and I got to know each other while playing in bands and singing together.  We talked, shared a smoke, and I would give him rides home from band practice.

By 1990 Grif and I were playing music together, but drifting apart.  I had felt bold enough to invite Steve to go with me to Oregon that June of 1990, but he declined.  We were not that close yet, not a couple–and tho I visited his sister and her family in Portland, perhaps it was too weird for him to visit my Mom and Dad.  It was the last time I saw my Dad, as he died a few weeks later.

I went alone, driving my 1971 Datsun 510 station wagon up the I-5 to Portland, back along the coast, then inland to a friend’s cabin in Shasta.

On my way home, the engine blew on I-5 north of Sacramento, just at sunset.  I hitched a ride to the Denny’s in Willows–Steve answered the phone when I called, brewed a pot of coffee, and drove the Mothership to meet me. We spent that night together in a nice motel, towed the Datsun back to Berkeley, and have been tripping together ever since.

We drove the big white truck down sketchy roads, through tight passes, basking in hot springs in the remote desert. Painting, camping, fishing, talking about buying a piece of land with a shack, a creek, views of mountains and not much else. How simple it was then.

Then the foot came down, and we were inching around, as Purcell used to sing.

Late that summer my life came to a kind of halt. Family stuff. Not my family, but close enough to have me deeply entangled, for years afterward.

Did I paint this then? No, I bought spiral bound sketchbooks and filled them with drivel and lists, complaints and yes, ideas, in my unreadable scrawl. Later, much later, I am painting over the bitter tears and nonsense with what should have been. Not too late.