Unprecedented change

(and the more things stay the same.)

On day nine of a record-breaking California heatwave, Hurricane Kay threatened to make the closet sweep to our state of any hurricane in decades, and Queen Elizabeth died. The 96-year old monarch was holed up at Balmoral Castle under the watchful eye of doctors and corgis. Though my opinion is mostly based upon old photographs and repeated watchings of The Crown, I do think she was in her happy place. I imagine her ghost —dressed in Wellies, woolen jumper, and gardening hat— lifting up from the bed and floating right out the window. The dogs probably witnessed this transformation, as did the horses nickering and whinnying in their stalls. They wouldn’t need to see footprints on the grass to know that she was now, and for eternity, free in the comforting embrace of the wild.

Maybe that’s me projecting my own feelings onto the Queen. In these last boiling days, I’ve given up my hikes in Griffith Park. The air is stifling and smoggy. The dust from the trail seems to rise and never fall. The place that has, for so long, been my refuge is, with its brittle weeds and crumbling hillsides, a stark reminder that, here on earth, escape is a temporary concept.

The heatwave is catching us unaware. Our power grid can’t keep up. The Queen’s death at age 96 is taking people by surprise. From my desk, I don’t see the dead grass, but only the green trees in my back yard and I understand how we might conceive of ourselves as invincible, and the sprinkler-fed world ongoing and everlasting.

“Dry ravel” my geologist walking pal once explained, is the explanation for the tiny rockslides along my usual trails. These miniature spills of pebbles and sand happen spontaneously when there is no longer enough moisture in the earth to hold things together. Since learning this term, I can’t help but notice the signs of land shift everywhere I go.

At three-o’clock in the afternoon, on day nine of the record-breaking California heatwave, it was 107 degrees on the grounds of Pierce College in Woodland hills, where I met with the grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter of John Ehn. Born in 1897, Ehn was an actual trapper, a teller of wild tales and a self-taught artist. His built-environment, “Old Trapper’s Lodge,” (demolished in the 80s to make room for the Burbank airport expansion) seems to have been an attempt to share his enthusiasms with the world. With the demolition of the buildings of Old Trapper’s Lodge, the bulk of his painted concrete figures and a “Boot Hill” cemetery were designated California Landmark 939.5, and moved to remote parcel of Pierce College where, subjected to the elements and fluctuating opinions, they have remained. After a recent decision by Pierce College to remove the statues, remaining Ehn family members are considering next steps. You can read more about the ongoing saga here and also here.

Pine needles crunched beneath our feet as we surveyed the damage done to Boot Hill during the very recent removal of numerous concrete tombstones. Spikes of rebar protruded from the ground, bits of broken vintage glass insulators sparkled dimly in the dirt, and, in one case, a pair of concrete feet had been separated from their body. From nearly every vantage, it seemed that the eyes of a life-size or larger than life-size figure were upon us. It might have been a little eerie, save the exclamations of Ehn’s grand-daughter, Marsha.

“The Gentleman over there is Uncle Clifford their first born, the one to the right is Aunt Rosemary, she’s the youngest, she led the video with Huell Howser. Bell, the beauty is my sister. She’s still alive. Lovely Louise is my mom and Aunt Lorainne, her sister. They’re dressed like dancehall girls, which was right out of my grandfather’s imagination because they travelled, six of them in a small trailer, across the United states trapping and skinning hides. They didn’t have a fancy thing to their name.”

She explained that Ehn had asked Claude K. Bell to teach him to create concrete figures. Bell is the creator of the Cabazon dinosaurs, and also the population of photogenic cowboys and “Calico Belles” resting on benches around Knott’s Berry Farm. Ehn’s first project with Bell, a self-portrait, stands at the top of the hill. His mouth is set in a firm line, his eyes look far and away. This figure like many of the others owes its realism to the fact that it was made from a life mask.

“Grandpa put bandages over our eyes, a tube in our mouth and plaster of Paris over our mouths and made casts of our faces,” Marsha explained. She tells me she’s the only one not featured in the assemblage due to her claustrophobia. “I just couldn’t last under all those bandages,” she said.

When I listen to the recordings I made at Pierce College, I can hear the wind blowing and the sound of crows in the trees. I can hear the fabric on the surrounding construction fence billow and flap.

What, to relatives of John Ehn, looks like a family scrapbook, is seen from an entirely different vantage by the college. Trash or treasure? It’s an ongoing question that often turns these built-environments to dust. How do we cherish the passion of a long-dead relative? How do we clarify or contextualize the sometimes grim vision of a guy born in the late 1800s who travelled the country in a trailer trapping and skinning animals? Why must we stomach it? How do we make sense of this stuff? Why do we want to? What is art, anyway? Who decides?

I don’t know, but I’m curious to hear all the answers.

Today, the firm lid of the heatwave seems to have lifted a bit. Hurricane Kay, demoted to a “tropical storm,” left a wake of dense humidity and a few scattered showers. The sky is unusually cloudy and bright, and the leaves on my backyard trees seem lifted by recent rainfall. The Queen rests in state at Balmoral. I read conflicting stories about whether or not Prince Charles, a long-time vocal environmental advocate may, in his new role as King, have to button his lip.

With each day, the pile of flowers in front of the castle expands.

Meanwhile, the Ehn family has been given until October 17th to remove the remaining figures from the grounds of Pierce College.