Russell Frank: We Are Beautiful, Willful, Cranky and Magic

Today I would like to introduce you to some of the characters I met over the holidays just as a reminder that the world is full of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.

The Letter Writer. At a Christmas party in West Chester I met a woman named Peg who eagerly checks the mail every day. She’s neither expecting money nor an offer of admission to the university of her choice. She’s waiting for a package containing 12 letters.

She wrote one of the letters a year ago and sent it to Friend 1, who agreed to forward Peg’s letter, along with a letter of her own, to Friend 2, who agreed to do the same with Friend 3, and so on. It’s called a circle letter and it seems to be an Amish tradition.

It’s Friend 11’s turn now, which means that any day now, Peg will receive all the letters and decide whether to keep the circle going for another year. I may start my own. I like the idea of having 12 letters from 12 people for the 12 months of 2012. I imagine the letters could, in some small way, capture the mood of this moment in American history.

The Winter Campers. Some friends in California have a family tradition of gathering at Big Sur between Christmas and New Year’s to camp, hike, eat and drink. They do it during the last week of the year because the weather is likely to be cold and rainy, which means that they’ll practically have the place to themselves.  

Alas for them, but happily for me, the weather was gorgeous, which meant we had to share the beaches and the cliffs with other visitors, including those who might have gone skiing if there had been any snow in the mountains. We saw otters, sea lions, condors and whales but I could have spent entire days watching waves crash against the rocks. 

One of the campers, a guy my age named Lenny, grew up without electricity or running water in northern Alberta. He and his brothers contributed to the family finances by trapping small game and selling the pelts. Big Sur was the farthest south he had ever been.

Another, David, set up a canvas tent as big as the average bedroom in a contemporary American house and warmed the campsite with a propane heater. This was camping at its most deluxe, but I, wimpily, slept on a bed in a heated cabin, which was even more deluxe.

Also among us was a Mexican guy named Riccardo, whose brother died recently. As Riccardo showed us some footage he shot of his brother singing “O Sole Mio” in a Venetian gondola, tears streamed down his cheeks.

The Scavenger.  Kenny and Maria have a sweet little weekend house on the Sonoma County coast, where the Russian River pours into the Pacific Ocean. Kenny likes to find a redwood log on the beach, hook it up to his kayak, paddle it upriver to his house, winch it onto his truck, haul it to a sawmill and have it made into lumber. Maria likes to gather the smaller items that the river deposits onto its banks and incorporate them into her artwork.

In a cabin across the river lives Bill, a 91-year-old writer who was lamenting the lint and hairs that clung to his wool coat. “This coat would pull the feathers off of a flock of chickens,” he said.

The Sculptor. In a geodesic dome on a knob of land above Guerneville, another Russian River town, lives Karen Ryer, who quit practicing law to sculpt and teach stone carving. She’s tiny, tough as nails and lifts slabs of marble like they were loaves of bread. Here is what she writes about her work:

“Stone is a fundamental element of the earth. It is billions of years old. It is a basic building block of civilization. It is a visceral instinct to shape it. It is beautiful, willful, cranky, and magic. Those of us who carve it are in love with it, and cannot stop carving. We are listeners to the earth, and we carve because we must shape the sound of the earth, the feel, the color, the solidity, the very life of rock. We hope when you look at and touch what we carve, you feel the same.”

Isn’t this what all of us do — writers, mourners, artists, hunters, gatherers – shape our lives from the fundamental elements of the earth? Here then are two simple sources of inspiration, should the winter doldrums set in once the afterglow of the holidays has faded to black: 1. Get out in nature (I hear that some researchers are contending that there is such thing as Nature Deficit Disorder). 2. Meet someone new.