Learning Curve

Guest essay by Bruce Brady.

The social history of Laytonville High School is of interest to almost no one except (maybe) Beva. Beva, it is said, owns a copy of every yearbook that ever chronicled the exploits of a senior class at Laytonville High. Beva graduated in 1941 and went on to marry a redwood logger when he came back from the war, had two girls (who both died before they started school) and was the president of the Garden Club for years. At this point, Beva can’t hear and can barely move without hurting and so watches her snowy old TV without the sound as she forever, it seems, strokes Smokey, her cat, and takes little nips from her other constant friend, the bottle of Old Grand Dad tucked-in close to her hip.

The school Beva graduated from was new the year she tipped her tassel and stepped daintily down off the stage. These days it broods over its slow deterioration across from the junk yard and beside its low-slung replacement beyond the wire fence. With updated earnestness, the new school, like the old, and like most of its ilk, somehow suggests a medium security prison. The gym looms over everything, its cost presently a few thousand dollar a win, but this will doubtless drop over time.

On the whole, Laytonville High School remains an unlikely place for revolutionary change, and, indeed, none ever happened there. But happen it nearly did almost a generation ago.

To judge by the standard of the sheer amount of energy, emotion, and money expended, it would not be unreasonable for an outsider to conclude that the purpose of the contemporary public high school is to turn out kids who excel at sports, especially the traditional American sports of football, basketball, and, to a lesser extent, baseball, softball, soccer, track, and wrestling. When you add salaries and transportation to the requisite equipment and the necessary expenses of the needed facilities, the amount of money expended per student is startling: at Laytonville, it usually amounted to about twenty percent of all the money the high school ever had. But this extravagance just so Shelly can play shortstop and wear a uniform is not precisely the subject here: education and its purposes are. Besides, high school sports provide training for patriotism of the proper sort.

Occasionally I’m reminded of why I live around here

Sometimes just a slight shift of the scenery takes me out of the routine and renews my appreciation of the beauty of this place. Those “mystical moments” have been far and few lately as I haven’t really been out on the trails, and probably won’t be until my kids are just a little bigger.

Today I visited a client’s property in the hills to the east of Laytonville. He’s got an easement dispute with a neighbor which is of no relevance to this post. About 30 years ago he lucked into one of the most breathtaking pieces of property in terms of its views. When you stand on the ridge at the property’s entrance and look to the east you can see Black Rock Mountain, which has very little vegetation because it’s a lava formation, the last vestige of a volcano that once towered over what is now Laytonville. My client tells me that at the eastern foot is one of the largest obsidian deposits in California. Looking east but to the south of Black Rock you look over Covelo Valley and beyond to the Yola Bolis which remain snow-capped at the moment.

Looking to the west we had a strong wind in our faces. The wind can be much stronger, which is why he didn’t build on the ridge. To the northwest you can see the King Range. To the southwest you can see the ocean through a valley when the fog is absent.

I did take photos for litigation purposes, but they wouldn’t do the moment justice. Looking at that big chunk of lava and thinking about its duration it kind of reminds me of the relative insignificance of everything we do. The easement fight won’t even register as a blip of memory ultimately even if there is something called the “collective unconscious.” The lava chunk is a dying remnant of an ancient age, probably on it’s last lap on the cosmic scale, but it’ll probably survive the human race unless something of short term precious value is discovered inside it.

Meanwhile, it’s Monday, April 23, in the 2007th year of our Lord. I’m in Ukiah. Probably just as much majesty here in its own right, but it’s well camouflaged. I have to start thinking about tomorrow’s depositions.