Kathryn Abbott – voice in my mind

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My Mom died last month. It was a Sunday evening, just before 7:30, when she stopped breathing. Gathered around were her husband Don, daughter Janice, a hospice worker and myself. She was 72 years old and had succumbed after an eight year battle with lymphoma. I called our brother Billy at his home in Michigan with the bad news. Within a couple hours a van took our beautiful mother away.

Kathryn Abbott was a remarkable woman. She married and raised three children in Michigan, divorced and moved two of her kids to California, remarried and eventually retired to a splendid beachfront home in Australia. Along the way she taught yoga, played guitar, led meditation groups and spiritual sing-alongs. In addition to her career as an interior designer, she was a very special resource for Don in his psychological practice. Mom had so many friends, and she maintained loving contact with them.

Don and Kathryn Abbott in Michigan,  September 2014

Throughout 2014 we helped her stay in the game as long as possible. Even as her cancer surged she maintained her goal to get to the wedding of her grandson, Little Billy. Although confined to a wheelchair, she made the flight to Michigan and highlighted a wonderful wedding and reunion. She entered home hospice upon her return to California so that Don and I could take care of her. Janice flew in from Australia just as Mom’s dignity became imperiled. My sister slept in two-hour blocks for three weeks, jumping out of bed with each call for help… until we could help our mother no more.

For over fifty years Mom nurtured and protected us as best she could. She loved and cared for me as a child, assisted me as a young man and emotionally supported me throughout my life. She was there to hold and comfort me, whether I needed help making a Halloween costume, choosing a college course or starting a new job. She and Don retired to Australia for twelve years, evoking much Skype and many a flight across the Pacific, but they returned last year hoping for better health. Now she is gone…. forever.

I am glad we were able to share all those years of happiness. I was able to tell her everything I had to say. But this month my birthday and Christmas came and went without her for the first time. I find myself remembering the past summer, when I could find her reading peacefully in her downstairs bed, ready to talk about anything. The sunshine used to stream through her window. It is late December now and her bed is empty. The skies are gray and I can’t seem to get warm.

If there is somebody important in your life absent or stricken with illness – they are your hidden treasure. Go to them now, even if you are upset or embarrassed, and tell them you love them, while they are still there. Once they have left, the chasm of loneliness is very deep and you will need a few remembered words from them to bridge it. Mom recently told me that she loved me and had enjoyed our talks… her voice still echoes in my mind. It is the treasure I am left with.

The Desert Bighorn – edge of existence

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When I think of the Hidden Treasures of Southern California I often consider many fleeting encounters I have had with amazing desert animals.  These are often moments of surprise and discovery for both human and creature.  Soon the apparition is gone and you are left standing there to consider a vacated presence.  Perhaps you don’t even get out of the car to hike and have a look – but you still know they are out there.  Some preservation group has made certain of that – right?  Well.. yes, I suppose that’s so.  But what if they didn’t?

Bighorn ram at attention  [by Melinda Dalton]

Have you ever wondered what SoCal deserts would be like without coyotes, mountain lion, bobcat or bighorn sheep?  Well, I have and it would be truly miserable.  We would have to explain to young people how we let our wildlife ecosystems collapse due to unchecked human encroachment and native habitat destruction.  We would have to scientifically address entire cascades of failure towartd safeguarding such precious commodities.  I can’t help but focus specifically on our friends, the desert bighorn.  They are so much more like us than we know, because we do not usually see or interact with them.  They are busy hiding among the rocks, protecting their young, shielding their vulnerable circle.  Yet they are a living treasure, enriching us all.

I think of the people whom we have long entrusted to protect such essential animals.  They have worked and sometimes fought to preserve our region’s unique wildlife legacy.  So many of these folks have been at it since the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s that we assume they will always be there.  But they won’t and the future currently promises less water and far fewer conservation dollars.  Many organizations have lost funding that was promised or which was traditionally available.  They tell me that social media, newsletters and remote education programs are now the keys to informing the public.  This information, often provided at tremendous cost and effort by truly dedicated individuals, is what allows us to monitor the struggles of our protected herds, now living on the edge of existence.

Marcus assisting members at Bighorn Institute

Last weekend I visited the Bighorn Institute of Palm Desert for the annual members meeting.  They’ve pioneered bighorn conservation for over 30 years and many of their founders are still leading the effort.  Theirs is a very personal obligation to save the small endangered herds of peninsular sheep still hanging on within the San Jacinto & Santa Rosa Mountain ranges.  Toward this end they have rehabilitated injured animals for captive breeding and wild release, erected protective fences, studied all forms of mortality and kept up the population records.  These feats are laborous and detail-intensive, especially when you factor in disease control.  Extreme care is needed when handling these sensitive creatures.  These are not like animatronic props at Disneyland.  These represent some of the last remaining bighorn around the mountains and foothills.  The numbers are simultaneously encouraging and frightening.  The San Jacinto herd, for example, is up to 35 adults after a past low of just 18 animals!

Meeting residence near Bighorn Institute

Yet due to budgetary constraints the institute is without $115,000 in promised funding.  This is a big deal as keeping track of multiple herds takes plenty of spending money.  They must use helicoptors to assess a population or make captures and they maintain a fleet of vehicles for field work.  Other equipment sometimes comes with tough choices.  A standard collar might cost $400, but the GPS collar they really need costs as much as $3000.  The list goes on, but the point is that revenues don’t last long.  So, recently when their feed barn burnt down they had to turn once again to their private supporters to get it replaced, and they did.  But these very generous individual donors ultimately cannot make up for an uncommitted public.

Everybody must agree that the local bighorn belong here with us – forever.  The years to come may well include the worst drought and scarcest resources that we have ever known.  If our desert amigos are to survive, more of us must define survival as a successful future for both ourselves and our wild friends.  We must embrace a stewardship of our biosphere that is stronger than a recession or dry spell.  Even if that means considering a bighorn life more important than a human life!  We will someday be defined by our compassion toward these vulnerable beings living so near but just outside our reach.  The simple truth is that we want them there!  We need them there!

Fenced foothills by Bighorn Institute of Palm Desert

Take time to hike the foothills and watch for these hooved neighbors.  They do not resent your presence if you come and go in peace.  They are also curious about you, but the poor critters are out there scrambling for their lives!  Let’s not let them down.  Support wildlife in a way you never have before.  Put aside a five dollar bill every month and after six months send this cash to your favorite nature cause.  Write a quick note to them as well.  You will be sending a clear message that native wildlife matters.  If you send it to the Bighorn Institute, you’ll be helping to protect one of the great Hidden Treasures of Southern California.

Many thanks to Jim DeForge, Aimee Byard, Kent Roberts, Fay McClung, and Marcus for their kindness.

The San Gorgonio Pass – corridor of life

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If you live in Southern California, chances are you’ve driven right through it. Even if you live elsewhere in the U.S. there is still a very good chance that you’ve glimpsed it in the movies.  It is a quintessential slice of our American landscape, yet it is rarely named and quite often overlooked.  I am speaking of the San Gorgonio Pass –  gateway to Southern California.

Although its actual summit is at Beaumont, 2,600 feet above sea level, the heart of the pass scoops through Cabazon, where the valley gap is narrowest and both the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains soar nearly 9,000 feet upward to the north and south respectively.  This makes the San Gorgonio Pass one of the deepest mountain passes in the 48 contiguous states and an absolutely critical route for human transportation.   There is simply no getting around it.  

Old Time Locomotive Traversing San Gorgonio Pass

But it is also a critical wildlife habitat and corridor.  The ongoing exchange of plants and animals through this passage is a crucial and vastly unappreciated process, one which ensures diversity among both desert and coastal species.  This is the reason why it is so important to maintain wildlife culverts under freeway and railway lines.  Roads and rails have impacted the ecosystem in the pass for well over a century, as evidenced by our postcard of interest.  This image comes to us courtesy of Agua Caliente Cultural Museum.

Here we have an old-time locomotive steaming through a typical pass vista.  See the snow-dusted peaks, those grassy foothills, the parched desert floor?  This progression is part of our continental consciousness.  It is a storybook journey in our minds.  Whether you’ve been there or not, you just know it goes to a special place.  The locomotive is chugging through a magical land!  

What makes the San Gorgonio Pass so unique, enigmatic and improbable?  Well, like the geologically surreal Cajon Pass to the northwest, San Gorgonio was created by the San Andreas fault.  The pass is in fact a long slip running parallel to the fault.  Remember, we are talking about the edge of the North American plate here.  If SoCal were to slide off into the Pacific Ocean, this is where it would happen.

I ask you to stop there sometime.  I know you are on the way to someplace else, still take a moment, pull off at Whitewater Canyon and soak in the unusual energy.  Of course, there’s a slew of giant spinning windmills (as seen in a thousand car commercials), but look closely at the sifting landscape, sloping eastward to the Coachella Valley.  Feel the wind whipping past you, the power of life itself flowing down this timeless track.  Know that the crust below you is being subducted into the molten mantle.  You and all the life around you stand on a vital seam of our living planet.

If you cannot get there personally, please enjoy the postcard or do a little more research on your own. And by all means, read my new novel Desert Gold, which features the landscapes mentioned in this blog.  Thank you for joining me in rediscovering a wonderful Hidden Treasure of Southern California: the San Gorgonio Pass.

Kyle Samper