Muse and Imagination Find Common Ground

Mid-afternoon heat beats against the southwest face of Composer’s Cottage. My first two days here I shared the view up Lupine Canyon with a rattlesnake, who had taken possession of the front porch wood pile. He/she emerged only with the sun’s full blaze, but soon decided that even limited exposure to my zoom lens was risky and moved on.

The last time I came to Dorland Mountain Colony was in March, 1984. Covered with poison oak rash within a few days of arrival, I began a short story about a young woman who arrived in the chaparral-clothed hills vaguely itching for a life goal. For almost 15 months after my return to “civilization” this piece sat, half-written, in a file; only by coming back to the land that sparked it could I complete the story.

This is my third stay at Dorland, a working retreat for writers, artists and composers in west Riverside County--the only artists’ colony in Southern California. It’s a far cry from the life I knew, from high school to just past college, in Orange County suburbia; an even farther cry from my present home in downtown Long Beach. Nevertheless, this 300-acre parcel of nearly undeveloped land has become a place where I am instantly comfortable, despite or perhaps because of the no-telephone, no-electricity, no-company colony ways. (Although several artists stay here at a time, in four separate cottages, mingling is minimal. Kerosene lamps and propane stoves and refrigerators are our “electric” appliances.)

Three weeks outside L.A.

I still can’t find Pegasus, Lyra,

Scorpio, the ram’s head or the fish--Jupiter’s above the hill

but move the hill or me and

where’s the god?

Both dippers lost . . .

(from “Light Years,” 1983)

During my first Dorland residency of October-November, 1983, I tried to use a star map to interpret the night sky. Yet now, 20 months later, I still can’t name any planet or constellation with confidence. I’m much better at identifying chaparral birds, however, and am improving on plant recognition. Intimacy with life forms I never recognized before has strongly influenced my writing--from the uncontrollable spillage of poems during my first residency to now, when part of a novel-in-progress is set in these hills.

Always a residency brings surprises, internal and external. Vivid dreams, while a bright moon shines through my glass-paned front door. (Could the old tales about a connection between madness and moonlit sleep have merit?) Poems I didn’t intend to write that seep onto paper anyhow. Sudden, almost off-handed revelations about fictional characters--because here, while I spend five summer weeks away from the press of contemporary life, there is time to think.

Deer have come in very close to Composer’s several mornings. A Cooper’s hawk sometimes tries to warn me out of the central grove of coast live oaks. Plants I haven’t noticed before--the big, bladder-like pods of loco weed, the orange witch hair of the parasite, dodder--catch my eye on late-afternoon and early morning hikes. Trying hard this time to avoid the three-leaf pattern of poison oak, I managed to pick up only a low-grade, soon-healed case of the rash.

Owls visit near the cottage, most nights; coyote can be heard yipping after prey on distant hills in the small hours of the morning. And Reuben is still here.

At eighteen Reub don’t care for snakes.

He’ll stare them down glaucoma-eyed.

Forked tongues can’t flick him off.

The coyotes gave up years ago,

the hawks don’t even look.

Reuben locates branches, hands

and rubs. Knows what will stroke . . .

(from “Reuben and Mrs. D,” 1983)

Reuben, now a 20-year-old orange and white cat, has begun spending some afternoons on my front porch. He was Ellen Dorland’s pet until the end of 1983, when the colony’s elderly founder, a classical musician, was forced by ill health to leave this land. At 97 (or 99--no one is sure), Mrs. Dorland is now in a nursing home, but her spirit can still be felt in colony operations. (Mrs. Dorland’s cat can also still be felt, but not by rash-phobic me. I talk to Reuben through my screen door, and put bowls of water outside after he sacks out in the bushes.)

When the midday heat grows too fierce, one can always go up to the main pond in the oak grove, to float through cattails and water lilies for a cooling respite. Assuming, of course, one is brave enough to dare the fish: small, intensely curious beings who think any finless thing entering their water must be edible. My first swim in what Mrs. Dorland liked to call the “lake” began with five minutes of reconsideration, thigh-deep in weeds, while the fishy circle around me thickened.

Dorland’s land-locked. Oh, we have two lakes

the size of bathtubs.

Springs feed down from the hills

under sandstone and scrub

to our pipes and our dreams.

Sunfish and carp in the ponds . . .

(from “The Right Madness

at Dorland,” 1984)

In the 1930s Robert Dorland, Ellen’s scientist-musician husband, installed the pipes that feed water down to the pond from higher elevations. But aside from erecting a few buildings and assuring themselves of a water supply, the Dorlands changed little on their property. In the early 1970s they arranged a gift-sale of their acres to the national organization, the Nature Conservancy, and an agreement was reached to establish an artists’ colony on the land. Construction of the colony began in 1978. Dorland opened to its first guest artists in late 1979.

That the colony continues reflects the strong determination of a small group of people, the nonprofit organization’s board of directors. Earlier this year there was talk of temporarily closing Dorland, due to lack of funds in an era of shrinking public support for arts organizations. But through a revamped administrative plan that replaced the colony’s two full-time positions (director and caretaker) with part-time help supplemented by considerable volunteer labor, Dorland has stayed alive. Small financial contributions and occasional help with chores are also now asked of residents, to cover some of the costs of what once was given free.

At the moment, only past Fellows who understand colony operations and some artists who applied last year are allowed to inhabit the cottages. However, application forms now available for 1986 residencies will be reviewed by the admissions committees beginning in September, according to Elisabeth Des Marais, executive director of the colony’s board of directors. (For information, write to P.O. Box 6, Temecula, CA 92390.)

Meanwhile, those of us lucky enough to inhabit terrain that fuels creative energy sit tight for a few weeks or a month, and work, and wait--for what may surprise us.

. . . Inside

the snake and I

drink tea and watch.

We rattle as we shift.

Then hiss and type.

(from “Squamata,” 1983)

All poetry and fiction excerpts copyright Penelope Moffet, 1985.