CROSS COUNTRY #22 The Big Three

Barry: Up and down, around and around, in ever tightening circles. Accelerate, decelerate, brake. Over and over again. Our destination was only fifty miles away but the drive seemed to drag on forever. The sky was blue, the ocean turquoise, the river, a sheer drop a thousand feet below on our left- Emerald green. The color of Goldie’s face was something in between - before it turned white. She tried a weak joke. Something about turning our Van Gogh into a Jackson Pollock.

Eventually, our roller coaster drive came to an end. Goldie opened up her eyes and ate a cracker. We were just a few miles from Eureka , it was 7:30 p.m and we would stop for the night. Goldie did some quick research and recommended a b&b in Ferndale Oregon, a Victorian village just 5 miles off the highway. A quick call revealed that the b&b had rooms available, the cheapest with a detached bath at $85. We spotted the establishment as we drove in, but decided to continue a little further to see what else might be available, perhaps a place not listed in the AAA book.

Indeed a few blocks further was this beautiful newly restored Victorian inn called The Victorian Inn. Sensing an opportunity for something a little more interesting (no, we haven’t learned our lesson yet) we went in.

Goldie: Matt Dillon could have walked by and moseyed up to the long, wooden bar and it wouldn’t have surprised me. Here we found out who Black Bart was, having eaten in a saloon of the same name in Flagstaff and seeing reference to him in a cowboy museum in Arizona. He was a legendary stage coach bandit whose reign extended all the way here.

Barry: The proud hotel owner insisted on showing us every room - each one different and only one was occupied - we chose the least expensive, a charming but small room with a fireplace. The first room. We returned with him to the room only to hear "we’ll take it." coming from the open door.....

Goldie: A sweet older couple from Alaska took the room. Got to know them in the lobby, he’s being transferred down here to start up an old newspaper pulp processing plant. Careers out here are so different to NYC. Meanwhile after the $85 dollar room, rates went up to $120, then $140 for rooms with lace cloths, elegant drawing room drapes, Victorian claw footed tubs.

Barry: We were offered our pick of the nicest room in the place for the same price - $85. Goldie thinks her stage whisper "We can always go to a b & b down the block for $85" may have greased the process.

Resisting his offer of dinner downstairs, we walked a few blocks to check out the competition. Menu looked good - artichokes. Just then an overly greasy teenager came out and paused to tell us "the food here is really good." Smelling a rat I probed him. Seems his uncle is the chef. We returned to the hotel for dinner.

Goldie: Dinner commenced with fried artichoke hearts that melted in the mouth...mmm.

Barry: We strolled Ferndale village the next day. It was our kind of town. Spotless, interesting, authentic and no other tourists. Originally settled by Danish farmers in 1852, it became prosperous with its creameries (locals called the creamery owners’ homes "fat palaces".) Interesting how much presence the Danes had in this country. We ate Danish in a Danish village in Nebraska, drove by Danish Solvang in California, now here.

(Incidentally we found Capetown a few miles from here. It would have felt like home had we been willing to drive a few more winding miles to visit it. It had been a stage coach stop on the coast.)

Goldie: After living in Cape May Country, New Jersey for fifteen years it was hard for me to get excited about seeing more Victoriana. Ferndale redeemed the genre, it is unadulterated by modernity. There are no trolley tours or fake brick-a-brack, no horse and buggies making pretenses at evoking times gone by.

Wandered into a small art supply store to find a cluster of women learning tromp d’oeil painting onto plates and furniture. They each have contacted a different master of this art around the world and imported that person if possible, or his/her input into their circle. Small town doesn’t necessarily translate to unsophisticated, we’ve learned. One woman had been to South Africa and recommended a needle point exhibit in Pretoria. On the other hand, when they asked what I do and I answered "I’m a rabbi." Another woman asks: "Isn’t that something Jewish?"

Barry: A short drive brought us to Crescent Beach, the most pristine beach I have ever seen. Even the cemetery was unusual, beautifully stacked up the hillside in little tombs. This triggered us to debate conscious burial practices (we really do talk about stuff like this - doesn’t everybody?)

A few days previously Victor had suggested a Jewish Renewal cemetery. A place "where one can play poker and howl." I think he was jesting, but why not? Why do cemeteries have to be so dead? Why not create cemeteries or at least memorial gardens in town squares or playgrounds, or cancer parks, places where people will come. Why separate living from dead - its all one continuum anyway. Why is sadness the only emotion permissible?

Instead of spending money on elaborate funerals, could we create a new paradigm where the money is funneled to landscapers, artists, etc. Perhaps even small archives where each person’s life story is recorded and one item to remember the individual by is saved. Etc. Conscious deading I call it. Goldie wasn’t won over.

Goldie: Won over? You didn’t mention that your model includes cremation. I find for myself and many of those I serve that they don’t want to leave this world incinerated like garbage, dispatched as ashes and air pollution. I love your ideas about increasing the effectiveness of the mitzvah called "zachor" - sacred memory.

There’s another mitzvah, called "kvod ha met", honoring the physicality of death, which takes the care and transition of the body as sacred. We use "taharah", for example, gentle washing and preparation of a body for burial by a team chanting psalms. We have "shmirah", sitting with a body until its burial. This frees the soul in its travels to the next realms of being, knowing others will take over the mitzvah of "shmirat ha guf" care of the body for it. These final acts of caring are also lingering acts of love organized by those whose mourning is most acute.

As a kid I attended Quaker schools (Friends), the graveyard was one of our playgrounds. Filled with massive blossoming trees and copper beeches, it was a glorious space. We knew the names on every head stone and leaping from our perch on one stone to the next would chat to the occupants. Funerals took place outside our classroom windows, it was a normal part of life. In Europe the women would gather in the cemeteries and chat with each other and to their ancestors while rolling the wax for havdallah ritual candles against the stones in the sunlight.

Barry, what a stimulating thought - bringing renewal to the idea of cemeteries!

Barry (getting warmed up): And it’ll be an intentional cemetery! People of all faiths. Take one of these denuded hills, plant trees instead of tombstones, as the bodies decompose the trees grow bigger. We’ll be breaking new ground!

Barry: Back to Ferndale. We wondered through the nicknack stores, ice cream parlor and a museum of kinetic sculpture (home-built human-powered whimsical contraptions that are annually raced on land, sand and in water...shaped like a space ship, huge racoon, etc.) then tore ourselves away to hit the road.

The Redwood National Forest gave us the opportunity to awe at the tallest trees in the world. We hunted down The Big Tree walking past many very big trees on the way. Quote.

Barry: "What is the big tree anyway?"

Goldie: "Harvard, Yale, and Penn."

I don’t know how they know it’s the biggest. Like the others, you can’t see to the top. 350 plus feet tall, their root systems only extend 10 feet into the ground. They have no diseases and natural predators except man (who predates everything) and if undisturbed they can live to 2000 years. Their cousins, the Giant Sequoias, which live inland, are wider in girth and live up to 3000 years.

Goldie: Local papers and shop windows are filled with controversy and dramatic political action to save redwoods, salmon, pelican...you name it.

Meanwhile it feels like every Redwood in the world is being carted down the mountain in endless streams by huge hearse-like eighteen wheelers which we pass white lipped on the curves.

Barry: I told Goldie when I die, plant a Redwood tree and attach a little plaque to it with my name on it. That way I’ll be remembered a lot longer and not waste forty square feet of planet. Oops, one day you may have to climb 300 feet to read the inscription.