Camp Meeker Beat by Tom Austin - January — 2020
So it has come to this. How did we get here? This century is one-fifth over! Okay, okay, nineteen percent of you’re one of those schoolmarms who insist the century started in 2001. I scoff at your pedantic point! Round numbers rule, baby!
Even if it weren’t a new decade, the turning over of the New Year represents a pause, an interregnum between the Christmas hurly-burly and the beautiful gray quiet of January. Yes, I am a big fan of January, cold dark and wet though it may be. There is time to contemplate the New Year, the new decade, the new era in which Camp Meeker finds itself. As easy as it might be to wring the hands over what has been lost – and there is plenty – I prefer to focus on the blank slate that is before us. What new traditions will take root in Camp Meeker? What bright new souls will begin living here?
Remember, bright side. Let the jaded city folk on the 101 corridor make their jokes and look down on us poor benighted west county rubes. Let ‘em, I say! Some of the best, most creative, most generous, happiest, and – dare I say, the best-looking people make their homes here in this second-growth forest. What will they create this year? A new novel or poem? A hand-held quilt? A personal best in the two-mile run? A new crop of enlightened young minds? A new song? I will lay my copper on the barrelhead and stoutly aver that ALL of these things will come to pass, courtesy of the hands, hearts, and minds of Camp Meeker. Sure, okay, none of it will make the evening news. No one will top the best seller lists and appear on Jimmy Fallon hawking their wares. That’s not what this is about. That’s not what any of this is about. That is all mere scorekeeping. The joy is in the making. The jewel is still a jewel, though it be not mounted in a fancy gold ring. Every time an artist puts pen to page, needle to thread, spice to pan, shoes to ground in the daily work of creation, the world becomes, by inches and degrees, a better place. Because of you. Your life is your art. Make it happen.
Speaking of work, I need to do mine: my job is to give you news. That is sometimes tough in Camp Meeker, a place where nothing happens joyously. The rainy season is well and truly here, allowing us to stop worrying about fire and start worrying about floods. There is news there in that Richard Seaman, who singlehandedly started Fire Safe Camp Meeker (FSCM) from nothing, has stepped away from that role. The good news here is that the good work FSCM did under his aegis has acquired its own momentum, with the successful application for a grant to create a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). That work will continue, as will the work of all of us individual residents as we harden our homes, create defensible space, and get better tied in with our neighbors in the common defense of our homes. Job well done, Richard!
In other news, LandPaths, our Sonoma County conservation nonprofit heroes, have completed their acquisition of Ocean Song, a 400-acre jewel off Coleman Valley Road, after a long and diligent process. I feel a special connection there, as that is where I made the best decision of my life, saying “I do” to my lovely wife in front of friends and family. If I do say so myself, that was an epic party, and the string of great decisions (most of them my wife’s, natch) that led to that epic party started with our choice of Ocean Song as our venue. LandPaths does far too much good work to summarize in the paltry space left to me in this month’s column, so I will end by teasing a future column where I can tell you far more about the work they do.
So that’s it, Camp Meeker. The New Year lies before you like freshly fallen snow. What will you do with it? What mark will you make? What song will you sing?
