Author: sarabrown

Everyday starts with a question mark, who am I going to connect with, what is going to happen today?

I woke up in the suburbs of Santa Rosa one more time, swung through last night feeling like a cat left out in the rain, went to a movie then to sleep feeling a bit low and overwhelmed. Today, I didn’t speak with either of the two women that I thought I had a good lines on setting up interviews and doing the work of the project. Neither panned out, both fell through for their own reasons and that’s just fine as its all a learning experience.

I am learning so much everyday out here in this life, practical humorous solutions such as boiling morning eggs outside a dive bar at 930 in the morning. The cocktail bar has a handy electrical socket that’s alive right outside its front entrance so all the hard am drinkers are walking right by me as I nonchalantly hold an actively boiling pot of water in one hand while checking social media stuff with the other.

I am also learning the practical flow of connection to the women I will eventually actually interview. Both women that I didn’t finalize the interviews with were through more conventional connections; one being a friend of a friend, the other also a friend of a friend on the board of directors for a women’s shelter and following through with contacting the shelter’s manager and then to the client herself. Both experiences are so good to go through and both women, this time, passes on participating.

I decided to devote today to being relaxed and taking care of business at the same time, sometimes I get all twisty in needing to go! go! and today I was not going to subject myself to anxiety of any sort. Here I am in Santa Rosa again and at loose ends so I do errands after successfully boiling my breakfast eggs for the next week (yes!) I make a little plan for my day which includes going up to the Kmart that I had heard had been devastated by fire and thought that American retail institution would be striking photographically for my project. Then I would find the nearest Starbucks and get the online work done for the day that accompanies The Nature Of Refuge on a daily basis. As my day progressed I kept trying to find the nearest Starbucks, thinking that I’d do the work then and go photograph in the later afternoon when the light was more interesting, but each Starbucks that the Google Lady was directing me to was in a Safeway and I don’t want to work in a Safeway. I want to work in a free standing Starbucks that is generic and corporate but has everything I need in my work environment and is not compounding generic on top of generic by being a Starbucks in a Safeway – feel me?

The day turns into me finally just deciding to make my way up to Kmart and then I’d find the nearest free standing Starbucks and take care of that business. I follow the Lady’s voice as she directs me to – a heap of burned out gunk, Kmart is just gone, a mountain of cordoned off garbage waiting to be swept away by the powers that be. Kmart’s and its employees tragedy are in the process of being neatly and relatively quickly, swept away.

But then I look to the left behind and I see a little motel that is still eerily recognizable in its fire disfigurement, and right next door is, wait for it – a free standing Starbucks with a big sign proclaiming its openness. The cosmic order falls into place and again when the practical, magical Purpose presents itself in my life, I just have to laugh, it is always so perfect and blunt and literal.

Here is The Way, all signs pointing in This Direction.

I get my camera, I change into my fire-walking boots and go out shooting. The stories pierce me, the smell of burned out everything makes me uneasy. I can walk right into a disaster zone and so far, no one stops me. Anyone official is so busy taking care of their own business so I barely register on their radar. I am discovering that since I give zero fucks in life and what you are ‘supposed to do’, this attitude is quite helpful in what I am doing now and how I’m going about navigating this project– if I approach each situation with an air of purpose and relaxed ease, people assume I know what I’m about and leave me to it.

I photograph, getting lost in my frame, the story that is starting to unspool around me, my zone of focus and at the same time, letting go of awareness.

Just, frame, click, frame, click; my happy unconscious place even in the midst of all this destructive sadness that the fires have wrought. I move around the property, the burned out, warped doors are grabbing my attention the most, something so poignant in their lost purpose, free standing and bent with no rooms behind them in which to open up to, no more temporary refuge that a motel holds for a traveler.

I observe that two women are talking to an official looking man for quite awhile, they look busy and I won’t go over and introduce myself, they become background as I concentrate on the visualization I’m engaged in. The time comes that always does when I’m wrapped up in shooting, the story comes to an end inside me and I’m ready to put my camera down, I’ve captured what’s here for me specifically to capture, its hard to describe, I’ve caught with my butterfly net and its time to pack up and go.

Go, to the Starbucks right next door.

I get my tea and unpack my computer and plug in and all that stuff and get to the work. A woman then comes up to my table asks if I had just been next door taking photos and I recognize her as one of the women who were talking to the official looking guy. I get to my feet immediately as she introduces herself as the owner of the motel, the aptly named Americas Value Inn. I shake her hand and tell her how sorry I am, now the emotional connection to the visual story comes together, how it should be, I should always feel the story I’m telling, not hold myself separate to other’s fear and displacement and destruction. I don’t have to internalize it, that would eventually become immobilizing, but definitely feel it and then share it, and then release.

The woman is lovely and small and strong, her name is Hemma and we talk of the reality of the last twenty years of her life is gone in a hot instant, the motel was her business and her family’s business, but also their home. Hemma speaks of the responsibility to her aged parents, her former employees, her community. I speak back about what I’m doing with this project, why I was taking photos, holding the space of compassionate listening and witnessing. I spoke of my belief that tragedy gave community a whole new level of meaning, disaster transcending connections with one’s neighbors and family members.

Hemma’s daughter walked up at one point, Nikki is her name and also lovely in her strength and listening, watching her mother and myself speak and connect in that moment. I asked f Hemma would be willing to be interviewed; she had so much to do, not the right time. I gave her my card and said that if she changed her mind, to please call, I’d love it if she were a part of the project.

But Hemma and her daughter Nikki are part of the project, the three of us connected here at Starbucks, we spoke with understanding and interest, we looked into each other’s eyes and saw a commonality there, we felt each other. Hemma showed me her sadness and fear and also her bravery in just a glance and the pitch of her voice, Nikki showed me the love of her mother in the set of her shoulders and her protective gaze, she listened though and became part of the circle.

I am here now writing this and Hemma and Nikki are gone and I don’t feel like I will hear from them again but I came to this Starbucks and their motel to have the experience of documenting and witnessing a piece of their story today.

This is what my day is about.

This is the nature of refuge.

To view the complete interview with Michelle, please go to vimeo.com/243592339

I know nothing of of what it means to flee for your life. I know what it means to run – run away, run afar, run toward, but i know nothing about hearing the roar and smelling the suffocation of my literal life burning down around me and then taking off, running for my survival. These women do. And all their neighbors in the Journey’s End Mobile Home Park in Santa Rosa, CA.

A month ago, wildfires sprang up in the Sonoma County, Napa Valley, East Bay spontaneously and right in the midst of populated communities, more then anytime previous in this area. Southern California has been burning for years but the range has also escalated and become more severe down south and the wildfires have spread north, the whole state seems to be on fire now.

This is what climate change looks like.

Another thing I didn’t know anything about at the beginning of last week, was how I was going to connect with the women in this ravaged area. I am just beginning my journey with this project and i have these ideas, but reality is just throwing yourself into the deep end and seeing what happens. So I decided that I was going to just go see what i could find in Santa Rosa when I set off a few mornings ago. I had connected with a lovely old friend who was now living in the area and he had connected me with a friend who had a friend in a local women’s shelter and i was going to call her later that day. I also had stopped by the local Vet’s Building that had been a hub of shelter and outreach when the fires were raging and talked to the loveliest people there. The people working  there had their stories of the anxiety and overwhelming emotion that they had experienced and still were in the aftermath of reconstruction. A woman at the Vet’s Building had given me a name at another shelter to touch base with, i was following my nose and seeing what would flower. I decided I needed to see up close the fire before I went to these shelters, I needed to have a real sense of what these women survived before I could ask them to share a piece of what happened with me.

So I went driving in a direction that had been mentioned that had fire damage. I was pulling off the highway and there I was taken by surprise at Journey’s End. A mobile home park that is completely and utterly gutted by fire, twisted and destroyed and all that is left are these blackened echoes of human life, our relationship to the word “home” made farce by pure destruction.

The emergency fence had an access point in it and i walked through, me and my camera. There was a gentlemen like a ghost sitting on the curb near the entrance, I walked over to him and asked me if he had  a home here, he said yes and proceeded to tell me his story and weep and share his vulnerability with such dignity and truth, he is his own story in what the fires have illuminated. After that experience, i walked on, taking photos, framing the heartbreak, this story was why I was here. To learn and be a witness to this level of vulnerability. As I made my way to the back to the row of about 10 mobile homes that were still intact and relatively unscathed compared to the around 170 homes that were burnt to the ground. The stark contrast between the homes that were burnt and those that are not, was dreamlike strange.

And in all of this, I found Michelle and then, her friend Jan. There was a local news van and I saw a that some kind of interview was happening.  I saw a woman, so far all I had seen was men and though they were beautiful and totally willing to share their stories with me, i was here to witness the women. I spoke at length with Michelle’s partner while she was busy and then she was shaking hands and walking away from that group – would she want to talk to someone else on the heels of her first interview, was I being to intrusive? Her partner assured me no, and he walked me over to Michelle, I introduced myself and told her what The Nature Of Refuge was about and that I’d be honored if she would tell me a piece of her story and answer my questions. She was completely gracious and open and ready to do the interview right on the spot, she didn’t miss a beat, this woman is on a mission to save her community and she will talk to anyone to help further that cause. Michelle had one of the few homes that the fire had spared and she was fully charged and activated in saving Journey’s End, being an advocate for all her neighbors , and be at the head of the fray in wrangling through the bureaucracy and shady dealings that surround the park’s reconstruction.

Michelle Trammell: strong in her faith, brave, committed, activated, overwhelmed, determined, transformed.

During the interview process with Michelle, her good friend and neighbor arrived and watched as I spoke to Michelle on camera. I found out that Jan Davis did lose her home in the fire. She lost everything. Jan told me she left her house running in her nightgown with one of her two cats and her purse under her arm and thats it. Everything else was left behind and is gone. Her beloved guinea pig, her plants, her sweet sanctuary, her life as she knew it; vanished. Jan had been then unofficial welcome committee to all the other Journey’s End residents, a person you come to when you need advice, need to get something done, when you need help you came to Jan. Now Jan needs help, needs the kind of help that is unimaginable, and thankfully she is receiving help and it keeps coming but she is shaken to the core, her sense of self rocked. Jan is strong and brave and she is living in the epicenter of her primal vulnerability and I see her and witness and honor her fear.

Jan carries three framed magazine images that represent the fire destruction in her life with her where she goes. She has a yellow plastic bag that she carries them in and they help her make some kind of sense in her life experience, they are her talismans and a through line of sorts. These three images help make her feel safe in a situation in which there is no safety.

Jan Davis: devastated, vulnerable, brave, strong, terrified, resilient, lost, determined.

This is the nature of refuge.

I drove from Oregon through the northern tip of California on my way to Reno, Nevada yesterday.  It was epic; snow, rain, mountains, desert, all  one undulating day. I passed through Hat Creek pictured above, and it was the first time I saw the damage from the fires that have been raging the California landscape for years. This strange devastation occurred during the fires in this area in 2014 but it was still so bleak and blasted that it stopped me in my tracks. The wind blew hard and forever and it was cold. I took photos and felt the silence sink in. Its recovering here, so slowly, but fire – it burns deep and changes irrevocably.