[forthcoming in the Lund Barnacle]

Louise Blight’s recently published book, Where the Earth Meets the Sky: A Story of Penguins, People, and Place in Antarctica https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Louise-K-Blight/243376424 is an enthralling read or audiobook listen.

It came to my attention via an unexpected email from its author two years ago recalling her summers’ attendance at Lund Farm Day Camp in 1973 and 1974. That led to an exchange revealing that Louise lived for a while in the first house on the boardwalk later replaced by Nancy’s Bakery. Afterwards she attended UVic, earned a PhD in wildlife and conservation biology and began a distinguished research scientist’s career that included a three months’residence in a hut on Ross Island in Antarctica.

The book about that residence is distinguished by the author’s accomplished writing style, ranging from lyrical descriptions of crystalline landscapes to graphic reports of pissing and shitting into containers that have to be stored and shipped off-continent to avoid contaminating the pristine environment. Another of its themes is coming to terms with grief attendant upon the untimely deaths of her father and sister. Framing her narrative is an impassioned commitment to the scientific effort to document, understand and reduce the ongoing catastrophe of human-caused climate change.

The book is notable for its detailed accounts of rigorous scientific practice, of the lives of Adelie penguins—at times cute and at others brutal– and their neighboring predators, the fierce leopard seals and skua gulls, of the other-worldly beauty, starkness and violence of its topography and weather, of the historical and present-day society of its human inhabitants, and of the ordeals and exaltations her sojourn provided.

I think those accounts can have special resonance with life at the other end of the road in Lund, which Louise reported she’d recently passed through on the way to a research expedition censusing gull and cormorant populations in Desolation Sound.

Many international reviews and appreciations of the book are available through the publisher’s website, but the Lund connection is further significant because of another personal encounter  converging on the seventies daycamp. During a brief visit in late August 2026 my wife Jan and I were introduced in the pub by Peter Uhlmann to his colleague and local resident Evan Adams, film star and Chief Medical Officer of the First Nations Health Authority. It took just a few moments to discover that he too attended the camp along with his sister Maureen and Elsie Paul’s daughter, Marlane, at ages 7 and 8. I found a scanned photo in my phone of them swimming in Sliammon Lake during a field trip. Further correspondence determined that Louise Blight and Marlane were part of the same extended social group during high school.

And here’s a reason to include all this local gossip.  Sandy Dunlop, the editor, said I could write a review of Louise’s book for The Barnacle of about 500 words. To get started, I thought I’d check out what Google’s Gemini would come up with, and in five seconds it produced an informative, accurate review that could have saved me time and effort and confirmed my fear that the human brain is becoming obsolete. But then I realized that AI could not yet replace the particulars of experience, memory and community.

Thursday August 20

After a multiple year absence from Lund induced by a wish to travel to new places abroad and also to the  need to distance ourselves since having sold Knoll House, in early summer we decided to return to there, though only for a brief visit.

The lengthy journey began at the SLO airport where we learned that its first leg, to San Francisco, was indefinitely delayed. We were rerouted to LA, where the flight to Vancouver was also delayed, threatening a missed connection to the last leg from Vancouver to Powell River.  Despite the spectacular views from the small Pacific Coastal plane, rather than eager, I was apprehensive about how I would feel and  we’d be received at our destination. I decided to elevate my mood with microdoses of a gummy for the rest of the trip. Upon arrival we connected amiably with the car rental agent who knows Tai and Theo. Things warmed up further during a delicious meal at the Indian restaurant across from the Mill, including a can of Zunga beer brewed down the street.

We couldnt meet Sandy, the editor of the Barnacle as planned because she was just recovering from a bad fall which left her hospitalized and recuperating far south of town.

The AirBandB rental cabin perched on a cliff above Lund delivered its promise of elegance, privacy, a hot tub, magnificent views and a 138 step staircase down to the water.

Friday August 21 (more…)

First meeting took place last night.  Of the nine people enrolled, two were no-shows, three cancelled in the last minute, and one person I’d never met, Chris, friend of Sequoia, took part.  That made five of us.  The last minute cancellations had me discouraged, especially since they consisted of three preferred members, and after I’d spent alot of time organizing, preparing the session on Wendell Berry, cleaning house and setting up refreshments.  Nevertheless I felt exhilirated throughout the two hours and afterward.  My personal intention to share some of my teaching, scholarship, and personal history with beloved City Farm colleagues was fulfilled. And  it was unexpectedly enhanced by the presence of Chris a Navy Veteran, outdoor enthusiast, Diablo Canyon Supervisor, who had done the homework with interest and care.  Most enjoyable for me, still the inveterate English teacher, were the moments of close reading when hidden meanings and patterns of the words suddenly came to light through group scrutiny.  There’s hope that the sessions will continue.

Copied below are some preparatory documents. (more…)

September 19, 2024 4:00 p.m. South Terminal Vancouver Airport

The entry Lund Retreat/Transitions 2021 is pertinent reading here waiting for the flight to Powell River. I wrote it during my stay at Knoll House hiding from the exposure I felt after the tributes marking my retirement from leadership at City Farm.

The entry concluded with an expression of confidence that continuing ownership of Knoll House would fill the gap created by that second retirement and our upcoming move from 35-year residence on Albert Drive.

But since then, real-world changes reversed that 2021 prediction.

One was taking up two new projects in SLO which filled the gap—initiating the Prefumo Creek Restoration and Enhancement Project and serving as a Director of our new residence’s Homeowner’s Association.

Other changes bore directly on Knoll House. After 28 years, the responsibilities of absentee ownership were growing beyond what we could handle at our age. We’d hoped to pass those on to our son by gifting him the property at present rather than as inheritance, but he declined the offer. That meant a major reason to keep the place—our annual summer stay there with his family—was no longer guaranteed.

After Jan and I spent our 2023 summer vacation traveling in Europe rather than in Lund, we both felt ready to sell Knoll House.  The most difficult consequence of that decision was having to ask our ten-year tenants to move elsewhere. But fortunately they found a way to buy it through a tenants-in-common agreement with their next door neighbor.

So after our first summer absences from Lund since we moved away 44 years ago, I planned to make this the last trip, in order to establish closure and say goodbye.

September 20 8:00 p.m. Knoll House

Today this all changed again, due to new real world causes.  First was the effect of waking up here this morning.

Another is recorded in an email exchange that took place after my hitchhike up the highway from lunch at Nancy’s bakery:

On Sep 20, 2024, at 3:36 PM, Frank…wrote

Steve, something bigger than me intervened today.
What an amazing event!
I’m glad you were hitching a ride.
Amy, my wife and I would love to get together when you are in Lund next.
All my best, Frank

———

Hi Frank

I’m grateful for your lift and our conversation, but even more for your amplification of it here.  I thought this trip to Lund was going to be a good-bye to the place, but it turns out, unexpectedly, that it’s a return… to the place where the past is present.

Two hours later, Jan phoned and relayed Joe’s surprise invitation to his home in Ketchum for this Thanksgiving. I called to thank him and Amy, and then the conversation led to our continuing connection with Lund, even after the sale of the property. It ended with discussion of their idea for a multigenerational vacation next summer on Savary Island or at an airBnB on the mainland.

Drink the air
Clear spring water

Float on silence
Forest bathing

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Louise Blight <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 9:46?PM
Subject: Message for Steven Marx
To: <[email protected]>

Dear City Farm SLO,

Would you mind passing this on to Steven Marx?

Thanks very much.

Dear Steven,

I recently came across your Flickr photoset about Lund and The End of the Road, and was immediately transported back to the 1970s and the Lund Farm Day Camp. I attended for two years in a row, an experience that was – unsurprisingly – unlike anything I had done before, and a transformative time for me as a nerdy and introverted kid. It was a great thing you did there, probably for everyone who attended. So after all this time I wanted to say thanks to you and Jan for running it.

It appears that the two of you continue to do great things with your community in California, so thank you for that also.

Louise

Louise Blight, PhD

Adjunct Associate Professor,

UVic School of Environmental Studies

and Principal, Procellaria Research & Consulting

Salt Spring Island, BC

[email protected]

Dear Louise

As you can imagine, it was a great treat to receive your email with its blast from the past.  Another example of the internet’s annihilation of space and time, it came to me and Jan while on a river cruise on the Danube in Austria the week after we concluded a difficult process of selling the property we’ve owned in Lund to our ten-year tenants, Tai Uhlmann and Theo Angel, the couple who we worked with to organize the Lund Reunion memorialized in the Flickr photoset you found, which itself was the climax of the great film they made about the place: “The End of the Road.”  (available here https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Ronnie-Uhlmann/dp/B07WP6TKY6)

Another connection your message awakened was an article written by one of your fellow campers, Anna Gustafson, published in the Lund Barnacle p.32

Your note strengthens the collective memory of that mythic place and era.  I do remember you as a quiet and serious but very curious kid, and it’s wonderful to learn that you grew up to become a professor and entrepeneurial scientist. I’d love to learn more about your activities than what I gleaned from a google search.

Jan and I returned from Lund to California in 1979, where I finally completed my abandoned PhD dissertation and she became an attorney and elected official (among other roles). In 2012 I retired from teaching English and Environmental Studies at Cal Poly University and returned to an endeavor much like Lund Farm Day Camp, CityFarmSLO.org.

We continued to spend time in Lund every year with our two kids and 4 grandkids until 2023, when we all felt the need to move on.  But your message reignites the old flame, and I feel deeply grateful for it.

Yours,

Steven

Hello Steven,

Thank you for your warm reply. The rivers of the past seem to be converging on the present. I was just in Lund last month, for the first time in about 35 years. I was there doing fieldwork with a couple of colleagues, censusing the gull and cormorant colonies of the Salish Sea: we started our field season in Desolation Sound, and launched our boat at the Lund ramp. It stirred up lots of memories for me; after I finished high school I moved to Lund (in 1981 I think) for about a year and was the baker at the restaurant for much of that time. I lived with my then-boyfriend in the first house on the boardwalk past the parking lot, long since torn down and replaced by Nancy’s Bakery. (After that I followed my dad to Victoria and started university.)

Then the other day I actually saw Gerry Kariaganis, who is married to an old friend from undergrad days that I have just reconnected with after about 20 years. I remembered him from Powell River days as my parents also knew him; this week he told me a story about going home to his cabin on your farm one day and finding the door open and a sheep in his bed.

And of course we drove past your old farm last month too. I had no idea that you two had continued to own it for so long.

You asked about my activities. I mostly study birds – mainly marine birds over the years, but various species these days – and work in conservation. One of my main roles these days is co-chairing the birds specialist group of COSEWIC, the scientific body that assesses threatened species in Canada. https://cosewic.ca/index.php/en/about-us/cosewic-members.html

One of the places I’ve worked a lot in my career is Antarctica, and I’m just finishing a book manuscript about that. A couple of years ago my partner Iain and I moved to Salt Spring Island, so we’re settling into the community and our garden here. I’m so impressed that you’ve created Lund Farm Day Camp writ large in San Luis Obispo.

Jan, good luck on your reelection. If we lived in California I’d volunteer for your campaign.

Louise

Hi Alexander

I came across your film as accidentally as you came across my Shakespeare at Swanton website.

As part of general downsizing efforts, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Jan, sent a beautiful Afghan dress she acquired in 1972, when we homesteaded in the woods of British Columbia, to a friend born and still living there, who took a photo of it, worn by her daughter riding a ropeswing on the property their family leases from us.

Seeing it reminded me of another woodland use of the dress in 1999 at Swanton Ranch. So I googled the old website to download a picture of it worn by  a student playing Hermia in scenes from A Midsummernight’s Dream that the class filmed there.

I was amazed to find the link to your “Shakespeare at Swanton” video and astounded to watch it.

I’m still pulsing with the world wide web of connections it activated. Parallel surprises of happening upon a relic in the course of searching for lost treasure—lost through fire and aging and through the digital loss of “bitrot” and software updates.

And parallel grief for the losses of Time: 1960’s back-to-the-land hippies turning 80, ’90’s English majors now in their ’40’s, a 2021 forestry student graduated and out in the world.

And the transformation of it all, through memory and art, via the alchemy of Shakespeare.
___________________

March 2024 Postscript: A further variation on the theme of Alex’ video and this post.  Shortly after this entry was written, Cal Poly University erased the whole website which included “Shakespeare at Swanton” from its server. Almost two years later, the site was resurrected from its 404 grave on a different server with a new URL–smarxpoly.net–which allowed for the link here to be reactivated. Thank you, Ty Griffin, for all the work you did to make this happen.

The “Atmospheric river” is still flowing.  The drum solo of rain on the roof hasn’t stopped since arrival here yesterday morning.

Before departure from the South Terminal, the agent announced that unless the pilot found a hole in the clouds to allow visibility the flight would go back without landing.  But the young captain with delicate wrists and blond hair flowing over her epaulets brought us in smoothly to the cinder block shack of an airport that hasn’t been improved at least since our arrival here in 1970.

I haven’t yet stopped loving this weather.  The compensation for drought in SLO, the heightened coziness of the wood fire, friendly cats and house’s silence, the 14 hour night and half-light of day inviting intermittent sleep, the absence of stimulation and obligation permit words to flow from thoughts and thoughts to flow from words.

This trip has been intended as a retreat to allow processing of recent events that are taking on the appearance of a life transition. “Retreat” has several associations with this place: its mythic remoteness at the end of the road and the time and expense it takes to get here, the initial retreat from war and society that brought us here from New York in 1970, the  summers of 1996 and 1997 holed up to start and finish my book, “Shakespeare and the Bible,”and the writing and meditation retreat on Cortez Island I attended in 2010.

Meditating hasn’t yet happened here, but this journaling may better serve my purposes.

Life transitions are times when the future seems undetermined, subject to the vagaries of chance and choice, when the present holds promise and danger, when the past reopens.  This one was brought on my long-anticipated retirement from the position of Executive Director of City Farm SLO.  The result of the successful accomplishments of our two young staff members, Kayla and Shane, whose salaries were financed by generous new supporters, it became clear that finally the organization could survive and thrive without me.

At the advice of a canny professional fund-raiser, a campaign was planned to mark the changeover in leadership with a public celebration targeting people of means and influence.  The admission price was $50 along with discreet requests for additional donations. Using a well-tried method for non-profits to generate support and money, the theme was to be a tribute to my past dedication. Kayla focused publicity on her photo of me tending our sheep that recalled the literary archetype of the old shepherd I’d explored 40 years ago in my doctoral dissertation. I sent personalized invitations to all the friends and relatives for whom Jan and I had addresses. (more…)

[for our  53rd anniversary]

In the living room within these walls
Snug we sit on the softened sofa
And watch the dance of pixels on the screen
Replacing our extinguished hearth.

I recall the cozy chesterfield
Where we cuddled in front of the fire
While the storm roared in the hollow,
Our future but a threatening swirl.

Could we then have seen ahead
Our joy and comfort half a century hence,
Before the plague began to rage,
That moment might have lost its treasured worth

Like this perilous time’s, when every minute counts
When 25 million precious minutes since
Cannot be taken from us
By whatever now our future holds in store.