La Conchita, CA

The rains were heavy here last week. The rain lasted for almost 2 weeks. It was soggy. It was gloomy. The ranches that dot Route 66 here in the high desert vanished beneath a blanket of mud and debris. There is much devastation, here and all over Southern California. There are people from other regions of the country laughing at our demise right now. "HA! Sunny Southern California! HA! That's what they get, damned hippies!"

Freeways were closed due to snow, black ice, 20 foot sinkholes. 2-ton boulders fell down hillsides onto roads below, making them impassible. Tides were high. Sandbags were filled. Lytle Creek was darned nearly washed off of the face of the earth.

Darned nearly.

Then there is the sadness in my heart called La Conchita. La Conchita is a place that I had not heard of until a few days ago, as I was watching the midday news. There was a helicopter flying over this little coastal community, videotaping the people below as they prepared for the worst.

Unfortunatrely, the worst has happened!

I watched with the same horror that I felt as I watched the World Trade Centers get smashed a few years back. This time, the terrorist was not human; this time, Mother Nature is the one who took that town and those people.

I wish that I could watch the news and not see the grief, the utter and pulsating sadness. Yes, pulsating sadness - the kind that rips through the soul of a mother and a wife as she watches with indescribable sadness, a man digging and searching for his family, hoping that they will at least be breathing.

No, they weren't!

Wouldn't you know it? There was a camera crew, right there, with a mic in this poor guy's face, as if he were going to give them an interview. Gimme a break, would ya? The guy just lost his wife and three of his four daughters. And to add to the grief, the man also lost his friend, the owner of the house, who gave it up to live in a Tee-Pee in the front yard, so that this guy who lost his family would have a place to live, a place for his girls to call home.

I didn't want to bring anyone down with this. I think of La Conchita and it makes me think of this place, Silver Lakes, and how quickly it can be swallowed by the Mojave River. The Mojave River bed is normally dry; it hadn't raged as it did the other day for over a decade. The bridge was closed for a day because it had been compromised. There was a LOT of water rushing through it. I think about the mess it could have caused, the lives it could have changed, and the damage that would have been made to the homes, the schools, the lives here in the desert, and no matter what I do, think, or feel, it could never amount to what I imagine the residents of that sleepy little coastal town feel right now.

[BB]

What could you feel? Besides loss and grief and sadness? Numb? Angry with officials for not doing what they could have? Angry because there is already a big wet mess in South Asia and now the sky has fallen here in California? ....

It fell and now the mountains are sliding down into the valleys and the rivers are eating up entire livelihoods, roads are buckling and people are hurting and angry and wondering what the hell it was that made God and Mother Nature do this to them.

I pray for the people of La Conchita. They may not be the kind of people whom others care to know or even to know about, but I do know that one thing is sure: None of us wants to go through the pain that they are going through, and if we had to, we would be damned lucky to know that our neighbors were closer to us than family.

In fact, some of our neighbors would move into a tee-pee in their own front yards so that a family could have a place to call home.

I think I am going to go down the road and check on Verdine. She's 86, lives with her cat.

Maybe I'll take her some coffee.

Goodness, it is great to be alive, to know that if I had to, Robert and Sabrina might not move out for me, but they'd let me pitch a tent in their front yard.

--Aunty

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