Giving Birth: An Oregon Story

Conception

My husband Dan affectionately laughs at the notion that everything in life happens for a reason. Having been cradled in the arms of sadness while watching my railroaded dreams disappear, I have come to understand that my life has kept to its own mysterious schedule. At twenty-nine I remember sorrowing about a loveless existence, and a decade later I rode my bike, sobbing, down the streets of Eugene because I thought I would never have a child. But all the time, I was, often unwittingly, unfolding my own Oregon story.

In the spring of 1977, I was teaching at a private school in Ojai, California. The students were difficult, and I was at odds with another teacher. Then one day, a six foot three, strawberry blond, bearded fellow came striding down the hallway wearing a red plaid flannel shirt, jeans and work style boots. After one look at his kind blue eyes, I was smitten. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. The next thing I knew Dan and I were in a small room with a piano and he was playing his song about the meaningful people he had met on his life's crooked mile.

For a week we taught together and celebrated at the end with a dinner up in the Ojai hills. Our common love of literature, nature and earth based spirituality ignited a romance. Like a ready cake mix, we found our missing ingredients and became a couple. Biweekly, we ran side by side through the neighborhood California orange groves, sucking the succulent oranges while watching the sun set behind the paper thin hills. By June, it was love.

Dan had made plans for a summer job with a friend who lived in Chiloquin, Oregon. We packed simply and rode up North in his orange Chevy van. As we crossed the border into Ashland, the magic of previous visits there returned. We wandered through Lithia Park and watched Shakespeare's Tempest in the outdoor theater on a thunderous summer night. Then we made our way to Chiloquin and up a seven mile dirt road to Randy and Susan's hand-built house which bordered a national forest and an aspen grove.

Susan was pregnant with her first child and maintained the chickens, goats and garden. Randy was working in the building trades. Their homestead had an outhouse, a well, and no electricity. To take a bath, hot water was heated on the wood stove and poured into the bathtub sitting in the living room. Guitar strumming became our entertainment. We also had horseshoe playing, story and musical potlucks. That first Oregon summer in 1977, I felt like I had been reborn in the 1800s.

Chiloquin was a cowboy and Indian town. I would walk down one side-street to the co-op grocery store and then walk down the main boulevard which had a bar, a hardware store and a cafe. What enthralled me, however, was the Klamath Indian Reservation. Susan and Randy were both part Lakota, reclaiming their Native spiritual rituals. They took us for a visit to the small reservation and introduced us to Chief Edison Chiloquin and his wife Leatha.

I was honored to have Chief Chiloquin shaking my hand against a backdrop of rawhide teepees, a wooden trellised outdoor dining room bordered by a rushing creek. We feasted on salmon and fry bread. Sitting around the fire, we listened to tribal history. When the federal government came to buy up the Klamath land, Edison refused to sell. He wanted a traditional village site as a legacy for the youngsters of the tribe. Camping on this piece of land we now sat upon, Chief Chiloquin lit a daily fire. He refused to move. Finally through years of prayer, an act of Congress gave Edison and the tribe these 200 acres. Hearing the evening echo of the steady drum beat amongst the trees, we entered their sweat lodge full of admiration and reverence for this tribe who was trying so desperately and deliberately to maintain their forgotten way of life.

Known as the “teachers,” Dan and I spent the majority of our summer in and around Chiloquin. Though I loved the herb and mushroom searches and the first stirrings of wanting my own child while meditating under a grove of aspen trees, my heart wasn't sure if back-to-the-land living was what I wanted. Dan had a friend in Eugene, so we made a journey north.

Eugene's collegiate, cultural atmosphere breathed energy into my literature-loving brain. We walked the quaint neighborhoods finding wood-shingled houses built in the 40s and lush vegetable/flower gardens. The wide bike paths along the Willamette River and the abundance of juicy blackberries overwhelmed me. I felt a community connection I hadn't found down in southern Oregon. On our return to Chiloquin, we detoured to the coast highway and drove towards Port Orford. I had grown up loving the warmth and spaciousness of California beaches, but the Oregon coast's natural ruggedness spoke to my soul, seeping into my home seeking consciousness.

Dan drove us by the farmhouse he had spent a winter in. With his German Shepard Louise, he had taken up an offer to rent it for that season. He fondly remembered his days of meditation, yoga, pure vegetarian cooking and the Faulknerian characters he met in that stretch of country. Parking on the ocean's edge with a view of these giant towered rock formations in the ocean, I felt the sunlight kiss my face and watched the birds fly quietly overhead. I was in paradise. As we walked up the sandy cliff to the van, a strange visionary scene appeared. I opened the driver's side van door and before I could scoot inside, a slender, girl with reddish blond hair and a mid-calf length dress, got into the van ahead of me. My heart told me this was my future daughter and her name would be Aspen. Little did I know then that Aspen Louise would indeed be born, but it would take fourteen more years.

Our Chiloquin summer ended with a clogged well, too little work, frazzled nerves and strained relations. Surprisingly, our friendship endured with Randy and Susan. Susan would later remarry, to a man named Mark, and they would become our daughter's Godparents. But this Oregon story is slowly rolling along.

To Be Continued...

(c)2011

Life's Crooked Mile

Nearing thirty my heart told me I was ready to meet my soul partner. I had had several long term relationships and thought I was deeply in love. After each break up, however, the missing pieces became visible. Friends laughed as I confided my confident belief: “I will know when I meet him that he is the one.” Even now as I write these words I am mystified by the magical coincidence of love. But then as I have continually reminded my dear husband: I believe there are no coincidences.

We met at a private, residential high school up in the hills of Ojai, California. We were both substitute teachers for the Spring Break week. Most of the students were on a school-sponsored ski vacation. Our job would be to “entertain” and “possibly teach” a group of male foreign students who chose to remain behind. The Friday before my assignment began I drove up to the school to meet with the lead teachers and the director. As I walked through the main door I spied a rather tall, blond, curly haired, slightly bearded fellow strolling towards me. Dressed in a red plaid wool shirt, jeans and heavy hiking boots, his kind blue eyes and inviting smile immediately drew me in. Like in a Broadway musical my heart went zing and a quiet voice inside me spoke: Here He Is!

We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Dan told me later he had no idea why he made the next move. But as we stood frozen and entranced by each other in the middle of the hallway, he spied a small, open room with a piano inside. As if being reeled by a fishing line into this room, suddenly we were sitting together on the piano bench and Dan was playing me a song he wrote: “On My Life's Crooked Mile.”*

“Maybe a thousand people have passed through my life
In the last few years
Ther've been friends and enemies and lovers
But the distinctions are no longer that clear
And time it always passes, and they come and they go
like opening and closing doors
it gets harder and harder to remember all the faces...
But I'll always remember yours...”

I was smitten with him from the very beginning. But as we were to work together for a solid week, I deferred thoughts about our potential relationship until the following Friday. Almost immediately we discovered we worked well together. Over coffee we planned several activities and lessons we thought these students might enjoy. The lessons flopped; the outings to parks and games of basketball and tennis received a lukewarm reception. During one of Dan's tennis matches, I unconsciously walked too close behind him and with his racket swinging back for a serve he hit me in the mouth. Apologies flowed freely but this event has become a humorous touchstone for the beginnings of our romance.

What our foreign students truly wanted was a field trip to Hollywood. We secured two vans and set as our educational destination the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. We left early in the morning for the several-hour journey. The museum only appealed to a few of our students and we finally agreed to cruise Sunset Boulevard and stop at Grauman's Chinese to view star foot and hand prints. Afterwards, we found a small and delightful ethnic restaurant and it was this meal that brought the most smiles to our guests. When we made it back to Ojai we sighed with relief: no one had gotten hurt and no one had gotten lost.

Friday finally arrived and we were both exhausted. My head rambled with thoughts: What's going to happen now? Will I ever see Dan again? Isn't this relationship meant to continue? Like shy and gangly children we both kept alluding to the end of our teaching job and wanting to do something to celebrate our success. Dan mentioned a unique restaurant up in the Ojai hills and a date for dinner became a reality.

Since Dan was renting a room from one of the teachers in Ojai, I drove to his place and then he drove us up through the mountains and canyons of Ojai to Casa Landucci. This restaurant is by far the most romantic place I have ever been. Nestled in the midst of a wide ravine and surrounded by rugged and lush hills, we sat on the deck sipping our wine and feeling nature's blessing upon our meeting. We talked and talked, ate and drank, as if we were the only survivors of our species at that time and at that place. We found ourselves totally comfortable in each other's presence and as many lovers before us have exclaimed: we felt as if we had known each other for years.

“Get you to the highway
anyway away from here, I raced
from Oregon to Guatemala
sweet liberation I've chased
and with all the hard lessons that bought me
I stand before a thousand more
but of all of the friends' loving arms that have caught me
I'll always remember yours...”


And today after our first hikes through the Ojai terrain and after our first runs through the California orange groves, and after packing all we owned in two vehicles and moving to Oregon and after raising our now twenty-one year old daughter, we have known each other for years and those thirty-four years are only the beginning.

“There is so much I wanted to say to you
before you touch that dial
but it mostly amounts to thank you, for being,
On my life's crooked mile.”

*“On My Life's Crooked Mile” song lyrics by Dan Fuehring

© 2011