The Weight of It All
Tall pines and firs at sunset and moonrise over our home in Nevada City.
Since packing up and moving west four months ago, California has become home. In the Missouri world Kit and I left behind last spring, rains fell for weeks upon end and rivers rose. Here in the Sierra Nevada Foothills and valleys to the east, not a drop has fallen in months. The Dixie Fire and Caldor Fire both continue to burn along corridors north and south of Sacramento and eastward, threatening the foothills where we have been putting down new roots. Air quality levels and possible evacuation alerts are a regular part of our daily conversations and concerns.
Our 1978 single-story home has great bones and high glass window windows in the living room that look out at a virtual preserve of Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines so tall that I must crane my head skyward to see the sunrise over them each morning. At sunset, the tips of the tall pines turn orange when touched by waning sunlight through a filter of smoke. It is at once beautiful, but a cautionary reminder that all is not well in the world around us.
In a fire season that began early and may extend into December, we are struggling to deal with a new and ever-present reality while carrying on with our daily lives. We’ve planted gardens and cast our first vote as California citizens. We’ve eaten at wonderful local restaurants, gone to French films at the Mystic theater, and gotten to know our wonderful neighbors. After reading an article in the Union newspaper about local author Shirley DicKard and her novel Heart Wood, sent her an email and suggested we meet for coffee at Three Forks Bakery and Brewery in Nevada City’s historic downtown. We talked for almost two hours about writing and her novel that was published in May 2020—right when the pandemic put an end to in-person book tours. However, her book has gained considerable attention and thus far has garnered four national awards.
Weather news showing Unhealthy Air Quality in Grass Valley just four miles west of Nevada City.
Our discussion that morning led to a second coffee date and the emergence of what I know is going to be a lasting friendship. After Kit read Heart Wood, he invited our neighbors on Crystal Wells Road to an inaugural Saturday morning 9:30 11:00 a.m. book talk to hear Shirley speak about her novel. After one postponement due to hazardous air quality conditions, the event took place outdoors in our driveway “amphitheater” with chairs and park benches spaced 6 feet apart. Kit made three loaves of Stephenson’s Apple Farm banana bread, one neighbor baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, another brought Madeleine cookies, and Kit brewed a pot of coffee with a dash of cinnamon. The Union newspaper’s publisher, Don Rogers was among the attendees because he is working on a first novel, and because Kit’s invitation promised homemade banana bread and an opportunity to listen to an award-winning writer talk about her first book.
Shirley and her husband Richard arrived with copies of her book for sale—each with a dried oak leaf tucked between the pages. Inside, our harvest table was set up for a book signing after the author spoke about how her book came to be written and read passages highlighting the stories of the four women in Heart Wood whose lives are woven together across four centuries in this region of Northern California. Following weeks of anxiety about air quality and fires, it was a joy to gather outside and listen to a local author whose knowledge of this region’s history, geography and environment is deeply personal and while cautionary, still offers a measure of hope.
Local author Shirley DicKard reading from her novel "Heart Wood".
A week later, I shared a coffee with publisher Don Rogers, not so much to talk about our mutual backgrounds as newspaper columnists, but to talk about writing. He told me about his years as a firefighter before switching to newspaper publishing, and we mentioned writing workshops that we’ve attended. He then laid out the storyline of a novel set in Afghanistan that he’s been researching and writing.
We share a mutual fascination with the country’s history and geography, as well as a deep concern for the 12-13-year-old Afghan girl photographed in a Pakistani refugee camp by NG photographer Steve McCurry in 1984. Recognized around the world as “the girl with the green eyes,” she instantly became the tragic face of Afghanistan during 23 years of civil wars and occupations that began three years after I visited Kabul in 1970 and was able to walk through the streets and markets unescorted, unveiled, and unafraid.
“The Once and Future Afghanistan”—my 8/27 blog—was posted earlier that same morning on my writer’s website, cathysalter.com. I had intended it to be a century overview of Afghanistan beginning at a time when orchards and crops of wheat grew on terraced hillsides and aspects of western culture flourished in Kabul. That Golden Era ended with the rise of religious fundamentalism, civil war, a decade of Russian occupation, life under Taliban and ISIS rule, and the events of 9/11 that led to America’s subsequent 20-year occupation now coming to an end.
As I’d been watching Afghanistan slide into chaos following the recent takeover of the Taliban, I read “The Ides of August”—a riveting article posted on August 16 by former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes, sarahchayes.org. It’s a lucid and informed assessment on the levels of corruption that have been going on in Afghanistan for the past 20 years, written by a courageous woman who knows the culture firsthand. After covering the entry of American troops into Kandahar in December 2001 and fall of the Taliban stronghold there, she stayed for the next decade. Chayes helped a man set up the region’s first radio station. After organizing local men and women, she helped them create the Arghand Foundation—a cooperative marketing handmade soaps infused with a measure of oil from legendary crops and botanicals (pomegranates and almonds) grown in Southern Afghanistan. Sales of the products provided an income that offered Southern Afghan farmers an alternative to growing opium products.
Former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes working in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
While fires here in Northern California keep residents on edge and ready to evacuate their homes at a moment’s notice, hope for Afghans desperate to escape retribution by the Taliban wanes. Half a world away, I feel the weight of it all and wonder, how will it all end?