"A Clean, Well Lighted Place"

I wrote this several years ago. I tend to think of the ditch I mention as mine, but I've recently rediscovered the fact that it looms large in other people's memories and affections, too. Maybe sharing the memories benefits us all.

I have friends who live in the mentioned subdivisions; houses that we used to call McMansions are now considered just standard suburban homes in standard neighborhoods. Just so any of you living there know, I don't hold it against you, really I don't! Now, if you served on the city council that covered the ditch, well - I do hold that against you. Sorry.

********************************************
Every day for most of my life, I've looked at the same hillside to the east. Our valley is ringed by the Sierra Nevada range and its foothills. I've usually lived in the northeast part of the valley, close to the foothills on two sides. They're rarely green; usually they're brown or yellow with reddish volcanic rock showing through the sage and dried grass. They were great places to climb, play hide and seek or catch lizards when I was a kid.

Over the years, the city has slowly crawled up the flanks of the hills. First, there were only ranches at the base. Then, a few houses sprung up low on the hill – trophy homes taking advantage of the view. When I was 12 or so, a hospital was built there – again, fairly low on the hill. More recently, the ranches at the base have given way to upscale subdivisions. I mourned the loss of the last ranch, knowing full well that the owners made a bundle on the sale and were undoubtedly less grieved than I was.

With the upscale subdivisions came the sprawling golf course. Now there's man made irregular Kelly green patches snaking almost all the way to the top of the hills. They're visible from clear across the valley, a change I'm not used to. The bright green just looks odd next to all the yellow, brown and red.

With the golf course came the palatial clubhouse, a veritable castle halfway up the slope. In an odd way it reminds me of a medieval fortress. It's lovely, I guess, and the view is stunning, but I resent it. I liked the unimproved hill.

The hills to the north have sprouted crowns of houses, large homes on tiny lots looking out over the valley. Soon I'm sure the subdivisions will climb up to meet them, but right now they perch there, seemingly disconnected. I watch the tops of the nearby hills and worry. One is Canoe Mountain. I don't know if that's the actual name or not, but it's always been called that. It's shaped like a canoe; I worry that the distinctive shape will soon be obliterated by a new neighborhood.

The trophy homes are multiplying now. Yesteryear's impressive designs looked dwarfed and dated by their new neighbors.

Yet, with all this going on, I was unprepared for the way the hills looked yesterday. They look ripped and bleeding, huge swaths cut into the incline and leaving exposed areas that leak pink and yellow. I have never so clearly understood what John Denver meant when he sang about "scars upon the land." It looks like strip mining, but it's not. They're putting in more houses.

I tried not to think about it. I tried not to worry about the fact that for the first time, the actual contours of the hillside are being altered on a large scale. I have enough to worry about. We need a new roof, I need to see the dentist, my daughter is leaving for college, my garden needs tending, my children need tending... Construction is inevitable, change is inevitable, and I can't use a lot of mental energy decrying it.

I thought I'd handled the stress very well. I apparently had not. As often happens, the stress leaked into my sleep.

I dreamed I was property shopping, uncharacteristically with a fairly large group. We were looking at places that had survived as little farms or ranches. The plan was not to convert them to new neighborhoods, but leave them untouched. In my altered reality, my friend Vickie was planning on using one slightly small, ramshackle property with a tall, skinny house as an art gallery. I was beside myself with glee.

It was not as exciting, though, as discovering an open stream. We found that several of the places had this stream running through or by them. We stood on the spot where it flowed under the street, watching the fish. Because it was a dream reality, the fish were a very unlikely mix of saltwater fish, koi and some utterly fictional varieties. I decided that people must have let their fish out of their tanks into the wild. I resolved to buy the neighboring real estate immediately. It was disorienting to wake up and discover that none of it existed.

I don't need Sigmund Freud to tell me what that was all about. I try not to bear grudges, I really do, and I usually do pretty well. I know I bear the city a grudge, though, from 25 years ago.

Easily my favorite feature of the yard I grew up in was the irrigation ditch going through the pasture. My parents wouldn't allow me out there by myself until I was eight years old, fearing that I would drown. A reasonable fear, surely, but I don't think it would have been an issue with me. I'm not a big swimmer, and I've never accidentally fallen into any water. I'm not generally a physical risk taker. Besides, it was usually only a foot or two deep. If I fell, I could just stand up. Anyway, from the age of eight on, I spent hours and hours out there. I rarely missed a day in warm weather. I caught minnows, I inner tubed, I sailed my toy boat. I dug bones out of the bank, convinced I'd discovered a dinosaur even when my mother assured me that it was a cow. I studied the moss, the snails and anything else I found. I watched and photographed the ducks, hoping we'd get a nesting pair and a brood of fuzzy ducklings. I sat on the low footbridge, kicking the sparkling water into the air. I learned that mud, immediately applied, would mitigate the effect of stinging nettles.

In the winter, the ditch often froze enough to permit ice skating. My parents would have to break a hole for the horses to drink through, and when the ice was two or more inches thick they deemed it safe to skate on. We never broke through; even if we had, the deepest spot on our property was only about 3 ½ feet deep. We would have been wet, but not in danger.

Since I was the youngest, my skates were usually hand me downs. When I was about twelve, though, my parents bought me a beautiful pair of pale blue leather ice skates. I tied gold pom poms to the toes, and felt glamorous wearing them. Wobbly figure eights were as fancy as my skating got, but I loved gliding back and forth between our fence and the bridge.

After it left our pasture, the ditch went only a short distance before it went under the road, dropping a number of feet on the other side. The water pouring down from the pipe laid under the street dropped about four to six feet before it hit the ditch again, and had dug a deep hole underneath, the deepest spot I knew of anywhere in the ditch. Neighborhood kids loved this swimming hole. It was the only spot we knew of that was over-your-head deep. Just about everyone except me liked going through the pipe, to shoot out the other side and plummet through the air. I wouldn't even float under the bridge in our own pasture; I surely wasn't going to go under the street in a dark and narrow pipe. Everyone swore that you could breathe just fine, and that it wasn't scary at all, but I still refused to try it. I hopped out well ahead of the street, afraid that if I waited too long I'd be sucked in.

I'd followed the ditch for about a mile upstream, to where it emerged from a large pipe under the street. From there, you had to go quite a ways upstream before you encountered open water again, so I knew that the city occasionally buried the irrigation channels. Still, from our house to the river, a considerable distance, the ditch flowed unimpeded. I was sure it always would.

Then I came home from school one day and found bulldozers in my back yard. I was fourteen years old. The city had decided to bury the ditch. My parents knew, but had chosen not to tell me, knowing how upset I'd be. The heavy machinery was preparing the channel for the culvert they'd be laying.

I thought about all the memories I'd made, and the fact that there would never be any more. I realized that I didn't even have decent photos. My camera was malfunctioning; the shutter was sticking, and pushing hard enough to take a photo jostled the camera so that the resulting image was blurry. Despite this, and my mother's insistence that I would be in the way and get in trouble, I grabbed the camera and ran for the pasture.

My spot for quiet contemplation was marred by roaring, beeping machinery. They were working their way through from our neighbor's yard and had just started on ours. I took photos of the rest of the ditch, capturing blurry images of my sacred place. The water looked like chocolate milk, not like the crystal clear water I was used to. It tore at my insides to see things this way, but I couldn't imagine not even saying goodbye.

As well as the smaller footbridge, we had one large bridge made of heavy timbers – old railroad ties and the like. It was tough enough to drive across, and it was where I'd stood to sail my wooden boat, unrolling the ball of yarn attached to its stern. A tractor picked the bridge up and threw it aside, splintering it.

I never should have gone back out the next day, but I had to have one more moment with just me, no workmen and no machines. It was awful. They'd stopped the flow of water in preparation for laying the culvert. Instead of twisting and turning, everything in my ditch was now straight. No more banks, no more plants; it was squared off and lined with gravel. It was sterile and straight sided. There would be no more ducks, no more fish, no more inner tube rides. My heart broke.

I didn't go back out until after they'd laid and buried the pipe. I rarely went back out after that. It just hurt too much. This old childhood hurt can still bring me to tears. I lost a friend or family member, lost them rather cruelly.

During my junior year of high school, our debate teacher had us read "A Clean, Well Lighted Place." I don't remember anything about it other than the title. Our assignment afterward was to write about our own clean, well lighted place. "Everyone needs a place for reflection, for decision making, for a refuge from the world, " he told us. He asked us to write about our own. Then, we'd be asked to read our essays out loud to the class.

Far and away, the most popular answer was, "my bedroom." For most teenagers, their room and their car are the only places they truly feel are theirs. I struggled to write something mainstream, but I just couldn't do it.

The debate teacher and I did not get along. Later in the year I left his class and the debate team; we simply could not work together. I was sure he would find something wrong with my essay. I wrote about the ditch, sure that his first complaint would be that an irrigation ditch through a dusty horse pasture could not qualify as clean.

My essay began, "I no longer have a clean, well lighted place. I lost mine three years ago." I was a teenager, with a life far different from my life at age eight or ten. Still, I felt the loss of my meditative spot acutely. There were times I needed it, and more such times were coming.

I described my love for this simple, watery spot. I told about going there when I was in pain, as I did at age 12 when I found out my best friend was moving away. I described celebrating, exploring, decision making, regaining my equilibrium when it was shaky, anchored by this beloved place.

While I was reading, my overriding emotion was anger. I was still angry at the city. I was angry at a disliked teacher for making me bare my soul in front of my peers. I was angry at the thought of being ridiculed; I was sure someone would. No one was going to be able to relate to a deep, emotional connection to a ditch, I was sure.

I even described that horrible last glimpse before they laid the pipe without letting too much of the sadness through. I described feeling adrift without the place I had used to recharge my batteries. Then, I gritted my teeth and braced for the comment period.

Anger was manageable, controllable. I was prepared to continue feeling angry. I knew I could get through the nasty comments and the low grade I expected.

Instead, I was undone by understanding. I had been so together, so articulate. Then my friend Wendy spoke.

"I was really moved by your description of how it was cut straight and square," she said, and went on to say that she truly felt that was a desecration. She hadn't even finished the first sentence before I was in tears. I had not expected this. Someone understood. Someone sympathized. I began to bawl. I couldn't even speak; I mouthed, "Thank you."

I don't remember my grade. (I do recall that, uncharacteristically, the teacher had nothing critical to say.) I will always remember, vividly, how Wendy's kindness felt. Any loss is more bearable when it's understood.