Berkeley Tuolumne Camp: The Way Back

11 August 2022 The Berkeley Times published an article in the Knox Book Beat titled "Real Treasures" reviewing Phil Coffin's The Way Back: A Journey along the Tuolomne River and the Berkeley Camp that Rose from the Ashes of the Rim Fire, which  mostly narrated selected details of a long phone conversation he and I had about the camp, his attachment to it, why he wrote the book, and some of both his and my thoughts about camp community life, diversity, forest management, choices made about rebuilding after the Rim Fire of 2013 and the influences of the Indigenous people of the area. (Photo is Phil, man of many talents.)

An expanded version of that review is on my LinkedIn page, referenced at the end of this blog post, because I want this blog piece to be mostly "before, during and after" photos of the Camp itself, with only minor comments from the review. I just think it's a place, a few people and viewpoints that need to be seen, rather than discussed or thought about abstractly, so it's more of a photo album than a review.

(Photo - rafting high up along the South Fork of the river.) 

Phil's book begins with a wonderful bike ride along the Tuolomne River from Camp to Oakland, with commentary on the the histories, landscape and communities he traveled through.

(The name Tuolumne Pronunciation: (Too WAH lahm nee)  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/En-us-tuolumne.ogg   () is of Native American origin and has been given different meanings, such as Many Stone Houses, The Land of Mountain Lions, and Straight Up Steep, the latter an interpretation of William Fuller, a native Chief. Mariano Vallejo, in his report to the first California State Legislature, said that the word is "a corruption of the Native American word talmalamne which signifies 'cluster of stone wigwams.'’ The name may mean "people who dwell in stone houses," i.e., in caves.) (Wikipedia)

The second part is many beautiful and heartfelt stories about being a camper, staff person and "community member" at Berkeley Tuolumne Camp himself  -- 

and then a good-sized portion on the fire, forestry and rebuilding of the Camp, with ideas and questions about how to rebuild the community and spirit of the Camp as well. It's well written, has many pictures, maps and good stories -- an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

You can pick up a hard copy of The Berkeley Times review at local independent bookstores or East Bay Media Center on Addison between Milvia and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley, or through The Berkeley Times, P O Box 559, Berkeley, CA, 94701-0559. It's the 9th Annual Poetry Edition, too, so there are lots of other things to read and art in it as well. Thank you, Wyndy Knox Carr

“I just had to write this book,” Phil Coffin said of The Way Back: A Journey along the Tuolomne River and the Berkeley Camp that Rose from the Ashes of the Rim Fire. He worked there in the ‘90s, and “It was a real gift for me as a kid.” “It’s a Berkeley institution; like Peet’s, Saul’s and the Ashby Market.”

(A lot of the high resolution photographs of the Camp are from Rick Williams Studios - thanks for posting!) 

 

 

          2012 - Cabin, "green cart," firewood and volleyball. Coffin wrote a history and nature guide to the Camp in 2001 as an Environmental Studies project while at Santa Cruz, the last year he was on Tuolumne staff, then worked in environmental education, wrote outdoor science curriculum for elementary and middle schools, built school gardens, led weekend bike trips, “served disadvantaged youth in tough neighborhoods” in New York City and the Berkshires before managing Berkeley’s Echo Lake Camp and now working for East Bay Regional Park District on conservation and planning.

Mighty nice trees, and many campers and staffpeople commented on how wonderful the shade was on hot days.

 

 

 Another Rick Williams photo of the river and walkway. Beauty!

“Looking back on those summers, ‘the playing field was so equal in terms of the hierarchy in our community. Race, class, and socioeconomic status didn’t matter as much as in the outside world,’ says Rachel Amare, who worked on Rec Staff and started attending Camp again with her own family years later as the Camp Nurse. Because the work environment was mostly free from racist, sexist and homophobic barriers, staff could be themselves and flourish creatively…We represented Berkeley.” 

And then... Summer of 2013 -- Rim Fire. First smoke in the distance, minor alarm, then -- evacuation and emergency personnel took over. (Some of the most dramatic photos are from Berkeleyside, who don't allow reproduction, 

but here are a few of the fire and destruction. This one on Harden Flat road is pretty brutal, and they don't get a whole lot better...

This was one of the ones a lot of us saw "back home," but others you can't even tell what they were or where they are / were on the grounds. :-( 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 Wah, again.

 

:-(

 

The loss of so many trees and the surrounding forest is a really hard part.

 

The bridge was "saved" but smouldering.

 

 

Once an assessment had taken place and money raised to rebuild from the Friends Of Berkeley Tuolomne Camp (FOTC) and the City of Berkeley, design and building began and over 2000 trees were planted by volunteers. <3  

The tent cabins look pretty bare in this 2021 picture, but at least they're there and welcoming campers, after a lot of new walkways, hiking paths and facilities were put in! 

A lot of the following photos are from the FOTC website, with details about events. Rigel Robinson cutting the ribbon, play area and amphitheater, stairs to the small falls, green chairs under a ramada thingy, lifeguard and beaverhead rocks

et cetera! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It will be up to the new staff and campers to make it funky again… incorporate influences from Green Day to Chez Panisse to Blondie’s Pizza to Tower of Power and bring that ‘East Bay Grease’” Phil said.

It was “devastating,” but also a “renewal and opportunity.” “The Camp community has the responsibility of embracing new staff and campers.” “I’m inspired (by the) rebuilding.” “One of the most accessible camps in the nation.” “Check it out. It’s incredible.”    

“It brings out the best in people and the best in Berkeley.” “On the river and walking the trails (you) fall in love with the earth.” I’m ready. Let’s go!

 

If you're interested in the Camp or any of the aforementioned issues concerning it, I encourage you to contact Phil or purchase a copy of The Way Back at

philipcoffin@gmail.com for $20 and $5 shipping, although it is also available on ebay and at Pegasus Solano and downtown.

 

Long version of "Real Treasures," Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, Berkeley, CA, USA. (13 August 2022)  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/real-treasures-tuolumne-camp-wyndy-knox-carr?trk=portfolio_article-card_title  (13 August 2022)

Litany, Law & Love

Published 7 July 2022 as “Litany, Law & Love” in Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, © Wyndy J. Knox Carr. 

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke and Ann Fisher-Wirth sent me their Look at This Blue: A Poem and The Bones of Winter Birds; and Burrell Speights gave me Two Neighborhoods in Harlem, including “Berkeley, California ’68; Haste Street and Telegraph Ave.” when I dropped a five-spot into his hat while he was playing flute on the BART Plaza. Wonderful “news!”

Hedge Coke’s book Blue links journeys in California’s ecological devastation, domestic abuse; military, legal and gun violence; species extinction, racism and Native genocide to her wish that “California, come home, / somewhere beyond brutal lies beauty.” A prodigious “assemblage” from Coffee House Press in Minneapolis.

“Mission blue butterfly, /from coastal chaparral, grasslands/… small, delicate gossamer-winged/…fringed in long, white hair-like scales/ undersides spotted/ wingspread 1-1.5 inches,” “in 1929, the State of California forcibly removed/ 400,000 Mexican American people/ from their state, their country of birth.” “Indian Act of 1850… legislature authorized arrests/ of any vagrant Natives to be hired out to highest bidder/ Native children to be indentured…”

List upon list of marvelous names and horrific decimations that yearn to be declared aloud in homage as well as shame, trumpeted toward action and change.

“Call for country, accountability, justice. /California, California.”

Burrell Speights twoneighborhoodsinharlem.com chronicles his discovery of “another style,” “Latin music” and dance (salsa) during the early 1960’s that led to his love of charanga handmade wooden flute and “this exciting music.”

He also describes “our house being across the street from the (People’s) park and right in the middle of the action” of “demonstrators…teargas, police, sheriffs and National Guard troops to get to class or the library,” where he narrowly escaped from “five or six Alameda County Sheriffs…running right at me…(who) had 2-feet long clubs gripped tightly in their hands…each, at least six feet tall and weighed no less than 250 pounds.” (!!!)

These truths must be told! (photo 1969 Dwight and Telegraph (c) by Harold Adler)

Ann Fisher-Wirth has an “extensive connection to Berkeley, 1957-68,” her “Mother lived” here “till 1996, and my oldest daughter still lives there.” The Bones of Winter Birds is an exquisitely crafted and carefully selected and constructed book of poetry.

In the first poem, “October: A Gigan” I was immediately captivated by her voice, the scene, her feeling conveyed of an “exhausted” summer where “we could find no joy,” and then “Balance     Gratitude     Breakthrough…/ Then it will come, the new” in the last lines.

Awe-inspiring art makes presence and presents of the past and future exist for us in the here and now. Fisher-Wirth does it again and again on every page. She knows of “Fukushima,” “nightmares,” “grief,” “I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel blah,” “grease-caked, coal-black stoves beside the limp lace curtains” and “the man who wants to kill me/ runs his hand along my thigh.”

But in the same breath, the same poems: “Tenderness,” “Your life melts around you/ like moonbeams,” “I love you just the way you are,” and teaching in prison,

“hours pass, laughter comes./ Halting or in a rush, words come./ They listen to each other, bear each other up…”

“You feel me?”

Yes. There is nothing to say about a good poem, a good story. Only embrace our own souls. Be in it. Let Love Move Us. From here to there…

“Out of the earth they come

and all things gather their separate radiance…” 

Ah!

Gaps We Ache To Close

 from 9 June, 2022 The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat, © Wyndy J. Knox Carr.

“Family is the psychological nutrient…”

Dr. Julianna Deardorff, Assoc. Professor, Community Health Sciences, Berkeley Public Health

Poems, tales, myths and dreams are so healing, truthful and vital that some subtle meaning-bending or a kind of “skewed” utterance is assumed to be present and tolerated “in translation.” Isla Negra or Kyiv may be thousands of miles away -- the point is that we deeply seek to listen and hear; to “grasp” each other’s’ words and experiences.

California Institute of Integral Studies’ online talk and book name two gaps we ache to close: “On Indigenous Voices and 

Restoring the Kinship Worldview.” Then they add one more: “Precepts for 

Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth”

 -- GOOD IDEA! There is no Planet B!

Wahinkpe Topa and Darcia Narváez brought us principles culled from his “applications for education, sustainability, wellness and justice” and her study and experience of “moral development and human flourishing from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

“Early life experience,” “sense of the living earth,” “movement and partnership with people, nature,” an “evolving nest system of care.”

“Non-binary,” “non-dominant” “potential for complementarity.” “Our species knows these things.” Words and ideas like soothing salves to aching hearts and parching brains.

California Institute for Community, Art,and Nature’s presentation with AIM participant Fred Short and editor Kim Bancroft also exemplified these concepts in Short’s real life journey of rough times growing up, foster homes, being a fighter and then when “my life started” when he got involved with AA, spiritual meaning, “good communicators” and “Indian causes.”

The Story of Fred Short – American Indian Spiritual Leader tells how elders, Indian ministers, sweat lodge, sun dance and other ceremonies; “hunting, fishing, hoop dancing,” “spirit walks” and the “running team” slowly but surely caused his “conversion” back to American Indian Religious Freedom activism and “a way of life” “of community,” “family as medicine.”

This is not to disregard cultural appropriation of Native wisdom.
“Elevation of whites once again to be the primary exponents of Indian (others’ indigenous) religion and culture,” (Vine Deloria, Jr.) needs to be constantly self-identified, released and exposed to fresh air.

Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 article, “WhitePrivilege and Male Privilege” named the blindnesses that warp global and local communities and relationships. 

It is still “an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.”

Underline systems here. Arbitrarily. Choose and we…

“Resist division of any kind,” Fred Short said.  

Persistently realign with recognition of shared values, goals and processes that will show  “gratitude for interconnectedness,” “pay attention,” let our “senses …see clearly…activate.”

“Everything and everyone belongs to Mother Earth and we talk to each other and that gives us joy.” 

Topa, Narváez and Short all kept echoing these Ancient / “New Age” Berkeley creeds.

A dense yet brilliant Cal “Arc Benders” Public Health panel also yielded up two echoing and global summations of human need: 

“Bold, broad and targeted investments in multilevel, interdisciplinary and intergenerational teamwork interventions with communities early on are strategies for optimizing wellbeing,” (Prof. Neal Halfon) and 

“Family is the psychological nutrient…delivered in the contextual environment.” 

(Dr. Julianna Deardorff ) 

We yearn to listen, understand, feel understood and heal. TOGETHER.

Rev. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said 

“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”

Restoring, rebalancing, reciprocity, remembering, relationship. 

Our shared “history” of six million years of evolution and 300,000 years together as homo sapiens is much longer and deeper than the quick blip of “digital” “nuclear age” time.  

Whether we know it or not; from neuroscientists to garbage collectors to agribusiness barons, we ache for more humane, connected, nature-based lives.

 

Yes. Every moment, every word. We are changing the world.  

Saving Her/It/Us/Them… We are a “kinship of relation ship, reci procity and renewal.”

The Dance of Deference

is OVER. We are NOT GOING BACK. My Mind, My Body, My Freedom. No more, no less...

Angry? Am I ANGRY? Of course I'm angry. This has been a long, hard road in a long, glorious, but often painful and difficult life.  

Just because I'm a woman and was born a baby girl.

 

Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Janet Yellen was asked what reversing the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling would mean economically for the country; Yellen responded, "I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades." She also said that keeping women from accessing abortions "increases their odds of living in poverty or need for public assistance".

Thanks, guys, and Grandpa's Old Patriarchy Party females. You've been working on this since Watergate, and NOW WHAT? Not everybody is with you on this thing, and the planet frankly has bigger fish to fry. Thanks A Lot. 

 What am I reading? The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale #2) by Margaret Atwood, The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende, and the Future of Democracy book group is reading Fascism: A Warning, by Madeline Albright.

Because the enforcement of “writs of assistance” signed by British Colonial judges were being irregularly “served out as general search warrants that did not expire,” “between 1775 and 1760,” the Fourth Amendment “Privacy Right” was Constitutionalized particularly in defense of colonists’ persons and property. Our independence as sovereign human beings.

Wikipedia says “The Fourth Amendment was the Framers' attempt to protect each citizen's spiritual and intellectual integrity,” as well. John Adams was to later assert that the court battles preceding the Declaration of Independence and Constitution over these particular rights were the "seeds of the American Revolution."”

WE never allowed the government to pry into our private lives in the 1950s (we thought). We had just “defeated Fascism in Europe!” No jackbooted thugs coming in and kicking down doors in the USA! (see Jan. 6^th 2021) (Brionna Taylor home invasion and murder) (Tulsa massacre 1921…) At least not in the lily-white suburbs and tract housing, anyway. The House Un-American Activities Commission damaged lives and destroyed livelihoods searching for Communists, both real and imagined, but was eventually exposed and defeated as the government overreach it clearly was.

WE were, in the ‘60s, sexually “liberated” and “free.” But something was wrong… Women realized how brutal and deeply rooted misogyny was, in spite of The Pill, the “Sexual Revolution” and the equalized education system we grew up with. Even in the organizations working to keep young men from getting drafted, we couldn’t “make policy, not coffee.”

We hit the Glass Ceiling like the carefully designed and maintained brick wall that it was. We suffered, sorrowed, struggled, staggered and far too often deferred and despaired before overwhelming power. THEN we “raised our consciousnesses,” spoke out, worked our way up to dignity and rebelled; physically and legally; individually and together.   

Muriel Rukeyser said “no more mythologies,” Adrienne Rich said “the personal IS the political,” and The Second Wave of Feminism was born. The Equal Rights Amendment failed to get states’ ratification to pass, but at least we had Roe v. Wade.

By confiscating property and people’s labor; raping, beating, imprisoning and killing us with judicial and state-sanctioned impunity, the British aristocracy, military, spies and gangs kept the Colonists in check. WHY WOULD WE WANT TO GO BACK THERE? WHY CREATE A (another) TOTALITARIAN STATE IN THE USA?

Eliminating Roe v Wade gives law enforcement and random intruders the means and encouragement to spy, press charges and enforce domestic terrorism. WOMEN ARE GOING TO DIE. There are already too many of us being trafficked, harassed, underpaid and exploited. Just STOP!

Back-street abortions are just PRIVATE LYNCHINGS of WOMEN, disproportionately affecting BIPOC, Southern, rural and poor families, of course. Reproductive health care is HEALTH CARE. For live, mature women, our families, children and communities as well. Every child a wanted child. Every State a Free State...

We have better things to do than fight this battle for Liberation all over again! If you hate abortion DON’T HAVE ONE. If you're a man or past childbearing age, gender differing, unmarried or asexual, you could lose the rights to your bodily choices and legal integrity, too.

The Dance of Deference is OVER. We are NOT GOING BACK.

 Angry? Am I ANGRY? Yeah, angry. Angry, tired, smart, old and  

determined and patient as Hel herself.  

What am I reading? The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale #2) by Margaret Atwood, The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende, and the Future of Democracy book group is reading Fascism: A Warning, by Madeline Albright.

 

America, forced to swallow the British parliament's Intolerable Acts of 1774 as Mother England, Spain and France stand by.

Remember this one? Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett ALL lied under oath to the U.S. Senators interviewing them about protecting Roe v. Wade under stare decis, the precedent set and practiced as law for nearly 50 years. It's a sad day for our democratic republic when not only are politicians bought off, fooled and manipulated by the power-brokers and tyrants, but the Supreme Court Justices, too.

The Dance of Deference is OVER. We are NOT GOING BACK.

What am I reading? The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale #2) by Margaret Atwood, The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende, and the Future of Democracy book group is reading Fascism: A Warning, by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.