Travel + Leisure

 

The pleasures of Inis Meáin are simple: a walk along the coast to the thunder of Atlantic swells; a tableau of fissured limestone that glimmers in the mist; the best potatoes you’ll ever taste. At the stone-walled Inis Meáin Restaurant & Suites (353-86/826-6026; inismeain.com; suites from $350; dinner for two $125), owners Marie-Thérèse and Ruairí de Blacam have equipped the five suites with bicycles and fishing rods; oversize beds come with alpaca throws, and 30-foot-wide windows look out onto Galway Bay and Connemara. The real allure is the 30-seat glass-walled restaurant, known for its deceptively basic fish dishes and homegrown vegetables. For dessert, try the seaweed pudding in wild-berry sauce at An Dún B&B (353-87/680-6251; inismeainaccommodation.com; doubles from $98; dinner for two $50; dessert for two $15).

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Nov. 4, 2012

 

Nontraditional designs rarely have found footing in the mountains, where vacationers have preferred that their getaways resemble forest cabins or rambling lodges. Although a blast of flat-roof and glass construction appeared at Lake Tahoe before the 1960 Olympics, the builders soon found that the roofs leaked or collapsed under snow. In time, “Old Tahoe” architecture triumphed, loyal to the gable dormers and sloping earthbound rooflines popular in the Alps and Scandinavia. The style prevailed until now.

Contemporary designs are gaining ground in several Tahoe locales, from Incline Village to Alpine Meadows, from Tahoe Donner to Tahoe City, but they are most abundant in Martis Camp, the new gated community near Truckee. Forty to 50 percent of the more than 100 homes under construction or finished at Martis Camp speak the visual language of the early 20th century International Style: flat or low-sloping roofs, short or no overhanging eaves, open floor plans, and long spans of steel. Exterior ornament has disappeared, and plate-glass walls reveal wide vistas. Lightweight, steel-supported roofs seem more related to sky than earth.

Inside, ambience is achieved through the infiltration of light and the arrangements of space and materials, rather than with the applied ornament of wainscoting and trim.

“In our area there has been a preconception that peaked roofs and multiple layers of details were requirements of mountain architecture,” says architect Clare Walton of Walton Architecture and Engineering in Tahoe City. “Recently we have seen success in utilizing clean lines, especially in the roofscapes.”

But the boxy design doesn’t tempt everyone. A few Tahoe architects contend that for all of its spare beauty, modernism means trouble. “The overhangs of traditional architecture are important, not only for the snow and rain but also for the sun exposure and heat efficiency,” says architect Sherry Guzzi of Sherry Guzzi Architect in Tahoe City. A great house will work well with the environment and also respond to the needs of the occupants, she says.

Contractor Bruce Olson concurs. Most of his luxury homes have blended the pitch-roofed Old Tahoe vernacular with the muscular traditions of architecture in Norway and Sweden, although he also has built modernist-style homes.

“A traditional Tahoe home will incorporate wood, stone and warmer colors,” Olson says. “Some of the more contemporary homes are letting the outside in with glass, but there’s not a lot of wood. Let’s say you’ve been outside all day in the elements, and you come home and your home is all white and spotless clean. To me, that feels cold.”

A home needs to reflect a sense of place, as well, they say. “The (modernist) house could be in Malibu, Spain … anywhere,” Olson says. “It doesn’t define Tahoe. With true Old Tahoe architecture, you’ll have a hard time saying what year it was built. It’s timeless. It has always been more of a romantic style capturing the real feel of the Earth.”

While the modern forms may seem rigid and nonorganic to some observers, to proponents, they encourage an interaction with nature. There is notably “a blurring of the line between interior and exterior through the extension of materials that will run continuously from inside to out,” says Martis Camp Architecture Review Coordinator Vangela Wightman. “A stone tile terrace becomes the stone floor inside; cedar soffit material will extend into an entry and beyond.”

If built right, the new structures blend with their surroundings while meeting needs for both climate protection and cozy shelter, architects say.

“What some may call modern, we think of as organic, a freedom of form assembled with natural materials that contribute to the built place,” says architect Greg Faulkner of Faulkner Architects in Berkeley and Truckee. “How things are made and assembled is important in the work. There’s expediency, honesty and clarity in the structure.”

New materials withstand the effects of a climate that heaps snow on the roofs in winter and sends air temperatures soaring in summer. Triple-glazed glass limits interior heat loss and damage from ultraviolet rays. Concrete-slab floors contain tubes circulating water for warmth. Structural Insulated Panels, or SIPs, form durable roofs, according to engineer Andrew Ryan.

Another shift: The contemporary homes are trending smaller – 3,000 to 4,000 square feet instead of the recent giants besting 20,000 square feet.

“They are working retreats,” Faulkner says. “The house is a tool for recharging fast-paced lives.”

They are vacation homes for a new generation.

“You have a younger clientele coming up here now,” says architect Joel Sherman, of JLS Design in Reno and Truckee, who’s been designing nontraditional homes at Tahoe since 1993. “Whereas 20 years ago you had an old Bay Area sensibility – people who wanted nostalgia and had visions for a cabin.”

Faulkner argues that, in fact, while the details may not mimic historical ornament, they can stir memories. The homes can resonate with historical references differently.

“I think we have histories that we use for reference when experiencing a place,” Faulkner says. He cited as an example a Lahontan house he recently designed, a sprawling Jenga web of glass, reclaimed redwood and stone acquired on site. The massive stacked timbers evoke a redwood grove. Glass walls fitting around existing granite boulders provide visual passages to outside terrain.

“If the place is a built landscape with layers of detail at varied sizes, it can more fully engage the senses; it can be memorable,” Faulkner says.

Architects like Faulkner who appreciate the principles of International Style, Bauhaus and American Mid-Century Modern are excited by the shift in sensibilities.

The Martis Camp design review committee members seemed to have freedom of expression in mind when they wrote codes that encourage diversity. “The ‘Martis Camp Architecture Handbook’ was very deliberately written to be non-prescriptive, and to encourage and support high-quality mountain architecture and well-composed design, regardless of stylistic approach,” Wightman said.

With homeowners also now embracing glass and steel, the sky’s the limit. Or is it?

Sierra Magazine, July/August 2011

MY GUIDE IS PETER CURTIN, brewmaster, founder of the Burren Tolkien Society, and owner of the Roadside Tavern in the nearby village of Lisdoonvarna. He is helping me with my mission to visit the various habitats of the Burren, a 220-square-mile rolling limestone massif on Ireland’s west coast. Today we’re going to the top of bare-bones Turlough Hill, where we’ll search for traces of the people who lived here 4,000 years ago.

Under a pale mist, we navigate yawning rock fractures, fields of scree, and stone walls that have stood without mortar for 1,000 years. The Burren is one of Europe’s largest karst, or continuous limestone, regions. The limestone, which formed undersea 320 million years ago, is laced with fissures through which rainwater seeps, to collect in vast tunnel systems. Ferns, mosses, and wildflowers dwell in the cracks. In places, the limestone has eroded to a calcium-rich soil that nourishes meadows bursting with tiny flowers and thick grasses and more than 700 other plant species. Hundreds of generations of farmers have grazed livestock on the meadows. The Irish government now recognizes local farmers as “Keepers of the Burren” and pays them to preserve the habitat.

Atop Turlough Hill we easily locate the ruins: the remains of a cluster of hut sites inside a large circular barricade of stone. Around us, the slinky mist is replaced by a silvery light mirrored in stone. Fields explode in brilliant green, gray hills roll to a bone-white shoreline, and the Atlantic spreads out in a blue sheet.

Curtin believes that the Burren inspired places in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictitious Middle-earth. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf says, “The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. . . . White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.” That conjures up the Burren, and Ireland itself, well enough for me.

By Laura Read

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

It’s a school with no computers, no televisions, no cell phones, no light switches, no amenities. If you want food or water, you’re pretty much on your own. The classroom is the great outdoors – and the course is survival.

In today’s tough economic times, when people are contemplating living with less, survival classes are attracting plenty of students who believe the primitive world offers an embarrassment of natural riches that not only can make the difference between life and death but also can expand personal growth.

“Five years ago, I founded Adventure Out. It was just me with a few friends helping to give surf lessons and survival workshops,” says Cliff Hodges of Santa Cruz. “The company grew to 20 employees, and now we run programs all over the state. Now every class fills up with a pretty long waiting list.”

Wilderness survival schools have been around since the 1960s, but interest began swelling during the Y2K scare. These days, people have access to plenty of survival material. They’re watching survival television shows. They’re reading survival books, such as “Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere – Alive” by Les Stroud, host of the Discovery Channel show “Survivorman.” They’re checking out survival schools online and through word of mouth.

What neophytes are quickly discovering is that survival schools are not just for Rambo anymore; they’re for Bambi, too.

Most good schools teach that wilderness survival is not only about making a fire, capturing food and building a shelter, though those skills are important. It also requires an intimacy with natural systems. Students learn how things work in the environment around them, and how they themselves fit into that environment.

“We’ll track the animals, but we’ll also relate them to the ecological context,” says Josh Lane, the creative mentoring specialist at the Shikari Tracking Guild in Santa Cruz. “There are so many mysteries at play on the landscape. If we see coyote tracks, we ask, ‘What is it about the landscape that causes them to move in that way?’ It seems to make a real tangible difference for people who are looking for that connection and wanting to feel it. They get immersed into nature, and they see quickly how alive that connection can be in their lives.”

Sensitivity trumps toughness

The paradox is that the most powerful ingredient of toughness is not muscle power, but sensitivity. “Wilderness training always builds character,” says Jon Young, Shikari’s founder. “You have to face your fears. Learning to pay attention to the birds and animals around you brings you right to your edge. If you’re used to a temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit, then a constant temperature of 62 degrees is going to feel intense, uncomfortable.

“And there’s the edge. Your sense of touch, the humidity, the cold wind will take you outside your comfort zone. You slow down, pay attention with your eyes and your ears. You have to be a participant with much more consciousness. Being in touch with nature directly on a consistent basis is going to build the character needed for survival.”

The lessons taught in survival schools can give students the kind of shakeup that might save their lives in any situation, not just the kind of trouble that occurs alone in the wilderness.

“We live in a fishbowl culture,” said Laurence Gonzales, survival columnist for National Geographic Adventure. “Every morning we get a reward: The coffee goes on, and there’s the croissant; it’s lunchtime, and there’s the sandwich. We get rewarded no matter the stupid things we do. That’s great, until things go wrong.” If all you do is watch “Dancing With the Stars,” he says, you’re not taking advantage of human intelligence. “It’s not what’s in your pack that makes the difference in survival; it’s what’s in your heart.”

“Survivorman’s” Les Stroud agrees. Since college, he’s taken numerous survival courses, even lived a primitive lifestyle for a year in a remote part of Canada. “Most of what you need to survive is mental,” he says. “When it’s 3 a.m. and that cold chill is rippling down the spine, it takes more than a fire to get you through the night.”

Wilderness survival schools vary wildly. Some teach what to do when things go wrong, and how to use available equipment to stay alive. Some teach only primitive techniques culled from indigenous cultures. Some incorporate natural history lessons and mental awareness skills. Some go further to forge self-discovery or build interpersonal skills, recognizing that people facing hardships are not always alone.

The schools generally help students shed what they know about 21st century living and plunge them into the unknown, where they must match themselves with nature.

starting a fire took days

“They drop you into the middle of the wilderness with nothing,” says Gonzales, who took two survival courses while researching his book “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.”

“The first thing we did was make fire. We broke a couple of rocks against each other and got an edge that was sharp enough so that we could strip bark off a tree branch.” Gonzales then worked the bark into fibers and made a cord. With another branch and the cord, he constructed a bow drill, which he spun against a wood board with a notch in it until the friction produced a hot ember. “You put the ember into some dry material and blow on it, and you get fire,” he says. Simple as the procedure sounds, it wasn’t easy – it took him two days.

While the course taught Gonzales to build a shelter, navigate without map and compass and other useful skills, the most important lessons, he says, came from the practice itself. “Survival is not so much about technique; it’s about the opening of your mind to possibilities.”

Most of the American schools draw from indigenous approaches to primitive living. In Colorado, for example, the Boulder Outdoor Survival School presents seven-, 14- and 28-day survival skills and field courses in southern Utah based on lifestyles of the Pueblo culture. The school got some buzz several years ago when its instructors were consulted for the 2000 movie “Castaway.”

Closer to home, in Santa Cruz, Adventure Out offers a one-day survival clinic as well as weekend and weeklong workshops in flint-knapping, bow-making, hide-tanning, tracking and other skills. A new program this year teaches about sea-foraging and edible plants during a backpack trip into remote parts of the Lost Coast. Shikari Tracking Guild presents a Saturday series in nature awareness and animal tracking as well as a weeklong course in bird language and a nine-month nature and survival skills program called Native Eyes.

part of society too

Sometimes, individuals arrive at a wilderness training school and discover that it’s not so hard for them to handle the wilderness alone; what’s difficult is getting along when they return to society.

“We want people to realize that they are part of nature, and nature is their home – that they can trust nature, but they also can trust each other,” says John Chilkotowsky, program director of Wilderness Awareness School, an outdoor school teaching survival, natural history and other courses in Duvall, Wash. “It’s the opposite of what we call the ‘sociopathic naturalist’ syndrome, in which people think nature is good and people are bad.

“In our courses, students are learning difficult skills. When we put them out for wilderness tests, time and time again they discover that the way they survive and flourish is through their ability to function well in a community.”

Many schools claim that students leave with a much greater understanding of themselves. “We’re not a therapy camp,” Chilkotowsky says. “But this experience is completely transformative. Part of that is that you have a bunch of people around you who are jazzed up about the natural world: They celebrate that nature is fully alive, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing. That is an immense contrast to our usual experience of some folks who are habitually depressed, expecting nothing to bloom or sing in their day. There’s something elemental in nature that invites you to be who you truly are.”

A person can’t survive a grueling challenge without clarity and connection, according to Stroud. A panicked person will never coax that ember to flame. “Maintain the will to live,” Stroud says. “What’s the first thing you do out there in any situation? You have to refrain from panic. Once you’ve been able to do that, the rest becomes the technical application of your knowledge and skills.”

nurturing will to live

A lost person can become calm simply by taking the first steps taught by most survival courses and in most books: “You assess your own situation,” Stroud says. First, by determining which aspects of the situation are working in favor of survival, and which are working against it. Are you injured? Is nightfall approaching? Then, assess the external environment and the tools and options for survival existing in your surroundings – tree limbs, grass, loose dirt, fire-starting tools, etc.

The most important tool for survival is an internal one, Stroud stresses. If you can manage your mind, by keeping calm and nurturing your will to live, the odds of survival increase dramatically. “The will to live is in most of us – sometimes it’s hidden away,” Stroud says. “None of us wants to die.” —

By Laura Read

MIT’s Technology Review Magazine

In the bare-bones warehouse space of CrossFit West Santa Cruz, rock and rap music thrums over the clamor of some very fit people lifting big weights. Cliff Hodges, the 30-year-old MIT grad who co-owns the new gym, starts his day here around 8 a.m. But a few hours later in the parking lot outside, he’ll meet up with customers seeking a different kind of experience from the workout junkies inside. Dressed for the outdoors, these folks are more interested in reconnecting with nature in the nearby forest. After loading into a company van, they’ll wind upward into the Santa Cruz Mountains above the Pacific Ocean, park, and enter a stand of redwoods and oak on foot. There, the hum of traffic disappears; the aromas of evergreen boughs and dry grass fill the air.

Having grown up two miles away, Hodges understands these woods the way most people know their hometowns: this bush or tree shelters this type of bird or rodent; that animal uses the main trails, while others tread a fainter path. Rounding a corner, he kneels by the hoof prints of a deer, observing that the animal darted off the trail here onto a barely noticeable path that vanishes into the trees. He grins. “In class we’ll spend a lot of time staring at the ground,” he says. “It’s what we call dirt time.”

When he left MIT in 2004, Hodges thought he might spend much of the rest of his life working inside shiny-clean rooms as an electrical engineer, confining his dirt time to weekends and evenings. Equipped with bachelor’s and master of engineering degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, he joined a company that developed flash memory for computers. But within three months, he decided the job wasn’t for him. He missed the outdoors and realized that a college hobby–teaching wilderness survival–was something he wanted to do full time. By the end of the year, he’d left the engineering world and launched an outdoor school and guide service he called Adventure Out. “I was working on the business end and attempting to secure funding for about a month before I quit the job so I could hit the ground running,” he says. The company was offering programs by the spring of 2005.

The leap from electrical engineering to launching a business didn’t seem like much of a stretch to Hodges. “My business sense comes from the analytical education that I received as a student of engineering,” he says. “MIT produces the best problem solvers in the world. Applying those scientific and methodical approaches to small business is easy in comparison to something as complex as device physics.”

Hodges approaches wilderness training a bit differently from many established survival schools. While they may require students to abandon their normal routines for months, he offers shorter workshops, making the outdoors more accessible and less intimidating to deskbound city dwellers. Introducing a broad audience to primitive ways is one of Hodges’s goals. “We need more people who understand that there is more to the world than cars and televisions,” he says. “In the wilderness, our bodies get into a different pace. The body moves in sync with the wilderness. It’s no longer about instant gratification; it’s about ebb and flow.”

In a five-hour introductory course, students learn how to build shelters, start fires, purify water, identify edible plants, and build animal traps. Advanced two- and three-day workshops cover tanning hides, tracking animals, and making arrowheads using a stone-against-stone technique called flint knapping. One-week courses in desert and winter survival give students a chance to delve deeper. Adventure Out also offers classes in surfing, mountain biking, backpacking, and rock climbing. Hodges’s gym, which he opened last spring, is a natural extension for him; CrossFit, a high-intensity strength and conditioning program pioneered in Santa Cruz, aims to prepare the body for unpredictable real-life situations. “We do functional fitness–sprinting, rowing, weight lifting, moving the body through three-dimensional space–so people are better fit for their outdoor activities and outdoor sports,” he says.

Adventure Out programs have been featured in print media such as Fortune Small Business, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, and San Diego Magazine, as well as on regional TV stations. Hodges estimates that 10,000 students have passed through his classes in five years–and more than a few claim he’s changed their lives. “He’s an incredibly talented individual,” says George Cagle, a technical program manager at Microsoft who’s taken three Adventure Out classes. “He teaches you how to become involved in the environment, to realize that you’re part of the wilderness.”

To people who know Hodges well, the switch from high tech to primitive tech is no surprise. Back in college, “he was capturing squirrels in the middle of the city, and taking roadkill and turning it into hide,” says his MIT roommate, Kai McDonald ’03, SM ’05, now a managing principal at a Southern California investment company. “I remember going into the freezer one day and seeing a strange item wrapped in plastic. It was a deer brain, which he was using to tan animal hides.”

As an undergrad, Hodges learned the tanning technique (rubbing hides with brain matter to preserve and soften them) on weekends at a survival school in New Jersey. By his senior year, he was eager to teach the skills himself. He had his chance during IAP. “It was the coldest cold snap that Boston had seen in a decade,” he recalls, “and we had to import all of our materials to our class location, which was right in front of the dome. We built a debris shelter from sticks and leaves we gathered near Walden Pond. We also created fire by friction and practiced water collection. We purified the water by dropping in rocks we’d heated over an open fire.”

Even today, some of the technological advances that excite him most are those that occurred more than 10,000 years ago. Take the bow drill, for instance. “It uses human power to generate a greater force than humans can generate on their own,” Hodges says. “When you look at two sticks rubbing together, it’s not that exciting; but these inventions laid the foundations for civilization.” The drill is made by securing a natural fiber to the two ends of a simple bow, then wrapping the fiber around a spindle. Moving the bow back and forth to rotate the spindle rapidly against another piece of wood creates friction, which generates heat and ignites the wood. The resulting ember is then wrapped in dried grass and blown into flame. Hodges can ignite a flame in 30 to 45 seconds; beginners usually practice for days before producing an ember.

Hodges also employs traditional techniques to hunt deer, wild pigs, and other animals that he uses for food and hides. “For me there are huge elements of sacredness and history to using these skills,” he says. “The thrill and pride I take in harvesting my own food is immense, and wholly incomparable to anything else. It is cultural preservation–maintaining skills that are vanishing.” He spends about 100 hours making the tools needed for one hunt–the bow, arrows, and stone arrowheads. In November 2007 he captured his first black bear, a 450-pound record-breaker. California Fish and Game wardens told him it is the only bear on record caught using a stone point.

Though he has no plans to go after any more bears, Hodges has no regrets about the path he’s on. “People ask me, ‘How do you feel about tossing away your engineering degree?’ I don’t feel that I’ve done that at all,” he says. “MIT taught me the sky is the limit. Everyone there is trying to create something that’s going to have a positive effect in the world.

“There are a lot of people fighting for the environment by preserving open space or working on clean energy. My way is to connect people with the outdoors one individual at a time.”

By Laura Read 

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

In the black of night on Nov. 1, the cemeteries of Michoacán hum with life. Women in woven shawls bow their heads over lumpy graves; men in cowboy hats flash gold-toothed grins in the dark; children dart through shadows, giggling between bites of sweets. Tourists do their part snapping photos, sidestepping unmarked graves, kneeling at marked ones to admire offerings meant to please the dead. And the dead? They’re lurking, for this is their chance to greet family and feast on foods they love. I’m here at Lake Pátzcuaro not only to learn from this ritual, but also to better get to know my 15-year-old nephew, Spenser. 

This part of central Mexico, the volcanic highlands around Lake Pátzcuaro, is home to indigenous people who speak the Purépecha language. After the Spanish arrived in 1522, the willful Purépecha resisted attempts to alter their lives, and now their traditions, although firmly Catholic, are grounded in their pre-Hispanic past. Our home base for the week is a Spanish colonial hotel on Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, the main square of Pátzcuaro, a mid-size town right off the shores of the lake. Our balcony overlooks a patchwork of red roofs and bright adobe walls. Rooster calls echo every morning. It’s hard to leave the plaza, for vendors from dozens of crafts villages have set up for the week to sell pottery, figurines, wooden sculptures, weavings, guitars and more. One block is devoted to sweets shaped like skeletons, skulls and coffins, bought by families to decorate graves. Although the cultural extravaganza here is alluring, on Nov. 1 we head into the country to see the goings-on in Michoacán’s scattered cemeteries.

Above the lakeside village of Tzintzuntzan lie giant foundations of a ceremonial site that was central to Purépecha life before the Spanish conquest. From afar, it looks like a blocky bunker. Up close, we see slim petroglyphs tapped centuries ago into the massive stones. On Nov. 1, Tzintzuntzan becomes festival central as Mexicans arrive from all over to see the candlelit offerings the townspeople construct over gravesites in order to welcome back their dead. This is our first of three cemetery visits in one night. Crowds clog the path connecting the ruins to the Catholic church plaza below. They buy food and crafts. I buy a shot of tequila at a roadside stand, while Spenser drinks lemonade. Teenagers swat a ball of fire with sticks in an ancient game that, according to some interpreters, pits the powers of darkness (the players) against the sun (a cluster of burning twigs). Inside the church, a priest gives blessings for a small fee. 

At dusk, we venture into the cemetery, where families are picnicking around headstones decorated with food, candy, drinks and flowers. Some offerings are elaborate, their candles cuffed with luminous paper wings. Others are spare, a sprinkle of flower petals in the shape of a cross. In the twilight, I snap dozens of images with my camera flash respectfully turned off. Spenser, a keen photographer, uncharacteristically quits after taking just a few pictures. Is he bored, I wonder, or queasy about intruding? I watch for clues he’s having fun, but gather little.

Our guide, Henry Wilds, discourages us from tasting the street food we see here, but some in our tour group ignore him, and gorge on smoked almonds and a steamy stew of rice and chicken. Tzintzuntzan will have a late night of dancing and feasting, but we leave it behind for the quieter doings of Cucuchuchu. The Day of the Dead is practiced in a million ways in Mexico, from “Discos for the Dead” in cities, to single-night Thanksgiving-like feasts at home, to the quieter cemetery vigils around Pátzcuaro. Wilds, a Day of the Dead junkie who has attended more than 30 festivals here, prefers the quiet ones. “There will be a lot of people here in Cucuchuchu, soon,” he whispers as we tiptoed through an archway into the stone-walled cemetery. Grave offerings here are simple – arched or squared-off frames clad with marigolds and other flowers and footed with food baskets topped with hand-embroidered linens. Knee-high candles warm the cemetery with winking light.

When a family welcomes Spenser and me into their circle, I plug away at conversation, relying on budding Spanish and facial expressions to convey my sentiments. Spenser doesn’t want to practice his Spanish yet and wanders off. He’s more an observer than a talker anyway. I’ve learned to connect with him in other ways – a glance, a shrug – and settle into silence. 

In many parts of rural Mexico, villagers illuminate roads and paths with kerosene lamps to make sure their hallowed kin return safely to the graves, for lost souls can cause trouble on Earth. At our final stop, the village of Arocutín, lanterns extend for blocks, as do tour buses bearing visitors to an eerie midnight bell ceremony. Tourists – mostly Mexican, but also North Americans and Europeans – cling to the lighted church, which sags with age, but I abandon the light to wander among the graves, where I find families huddled around campfires, laughing, telling stories, scolding children – as if it’s market day. I think that if we could see their ancestors’ faces, we’d find them chuckling, too. That’s how scores of Mexicans imagine their departed – laughing, playing jokes, as if content with where they are. 

Alone in the far corner of the graveyard, I face a problem: how to start a conversation when no one has invited me to speak? Should I ask, “Who’s buried here?” What if a mother answers: “My son, who died last week,” and starts to cry. The woman I ask in fact responds with, “This is my husband. He died 10 years ago.” I do not look away from the yellowing photograph of that once puffy, earnest face, as I might have done before coming here. Instead, I soak it in. I have never been comfortable talking about the people I know who’ve died – friends, family – even distant acquaintances. 

On the Pátzcuaro square, vendors may be suggesting a sweeter way to handle death. They sell sugar or chocolate skulls and upon request will squeeze your name in loops of frosting onto the skull’s forehead. By nibbling the skull labeled with your name, you metaphorically eat your own death, incorporating death into life. “Mexicans are better friends with death than we are,” Wilds likes to say. I hope I’m absorbing some ability to sit someday more comfortably with death.

Where is Spenser? He is on his own. After the bell song, we find each other in front of the church, where an old woman beckons us into a courtyard. Over a steaming cauldron, she extends two cups of brown ponche, a mixed fruit and alcohol drink I’ve read about, and waits for us to taste it. Spenser and I lock eyes. Floating raisins look like bloated bugs. We want to receive her gifts, yet don’t want to get sick. Spenser takes the first gulp. I wash mine down, too, joining the two of us in fate. Rather than churning my gut, though, the liquid comforts me, like a mellow apple cider. 

The next evening, Wilds takes us to a “secret” cemetery (whose name no amount of bribery would release), where friends of his are in vigil. Right away, Spenser darts away. This time I don’t stalk. A seated woman motions me to kneel beside her. Soft as dough, great arms billowing over an apron of lace, she queens over baskets of fruit and the Frisbee-like loaves called “bread of the dead.” To my surprise, she tries to give me a banana. “I can’t take food from the dead,” I say. She meets my refusal with a resolute face. In the end, I’m given loads of fruit, candy and bread. When Spenser reappears, his cheeks are riding high. “They gave me so much food,” he says with a laugh. He unzips his backpack to reveal a bounty, breaking off hunks of bread and passing them around to the rest of us. We savor the bread’s sweetness, praise his kindness. I realize that while my intention with the trip was to introduce Spenser to indigenous culture, instead, he’s given me a gift – his trust and friendship, and the memory of his generosity, which mirrors the selfless sharing demonstrated by our Purépecha hosts. 

Back home, like Wilds, I’ve become a Day of the Dead junkie. As for Spenser, his mom reported he grew an inch during his week in Mexico. My mom, who lives near them, said when she asked Spenser about the trip, he talked a blue streak.

By Laura Read

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

On Dec. 20, 1996, Bay Area teenager Harley Augustino and his dad, James, a 48-year-old developer and political activist, lost their way on cross-country skis in a brutal Sierra snowstorm. When darkness fell, they carved out a snow cave and huddled in it. Every half hour they stomped around outside the cave to warm up. Snowflakes soaked their hoods and faces; the bloated sky hung so low it seemed as if they could almost touch it. If they could just sit out the night, Harley thought, the storm would clear and they’d ski to safety.

Two and a half years later, on May 31, just after midnight, Portland resident Amy Horne began hiking up Mount Hood’s West Crater Rim route. The excursion came after weeks of education and training. Clad in layers of new fleece and storm-proof outerwear, the 44-year-old research director felt a mix of excitement and dread: Yes, her guide was one of the best in the area, but this ambitious climb would test her physical skills beyond anything she’d ever done, and she was nervous. Ten hours later, as she crossed a snowy slope, the mountain roared and an avalanche crashed down on her.

On March 23, 2003, Nicole Chupka, 38, a French and math teacher from Carmel Valley, and her friend Judy Rowe skied up a ridge near Donner Summit’s Castle Peak above a Sierra Club hut where they planned to bunk for the night with friends. At 4 p.m. she reached the top of her desination ridge and prepared to crank some turns, but the snow that had looked so alluring from afar was instead stiff as glue. On her fourth arc, Chupka’s body veered left while her right ski zoomed straight ahead. Her right hip twisted weirdly and collapsed, tumbling her into the snow.

Incidents like these are all too familiar to people who study mountain accidents. “You could write a textbook on each one about what not to do with your winter vacation,” said Laurence Gonzales, an author who for 35 years has explored the origins of sports accidents. In his recent book “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why,” Gonzales probes both the causes of accidents and the strains of human nature binding their survivors. While bad weather triggers many winter accidents, something more fundamental often puts people in the path of disaster: “We tend to act on auto-pilot,” Gonzales said recently from his home in Illinois. “The more hazard you are exposed to without getting hurt, the stronger the auto-pilot. We do what we’re rewarded for doing; we avoid what we’re punished for doing. All mammals behave that way.”

When you pair that auto-response with variable conditions present in the backcountry, where unfamiliar features and threatening storms can easily disorient weekend warriors, the risk factors soar. Simple mistakes that in milder weather cause nuisances are now the currency of death. Here, three very different incidents share themes that help us understand how to survive, or better yet avoid, tempting fate in the winter backcountry.

“We shouldn’t have been there”

That Friday afternoon 11 years ago, the Augustinos thought their three-hour tromp would be a cinch. “The weather was fine,” said Harley, now 29. “Usually when there’s a big storm, it hits San Francisco several hours before Tahoe, but there was no rain in San Francisco that morning.” Forecasters had predicted bad weather. But the two had hoped to finish their tour before it hit. That didn’t happen. “We were on a ridge when the storm rolled in,” Harley recalled. “It was just snowing. My dad and I were used to that: It’s nice to ski in the snow.” But when they about-faced to return to the car, they descended the wrong way into unfamiliar terrain.

Amy Horne and her group were on a section of Mount Hood that was very familiar to their veteran guide, but loads of fresh snow and unseasonably warm May weather put the group on a dangerous slope a little later in the morning than they had planned, and this spurred disaster. When Horne had joined a Mazamas club mountaineering class two months earlier, she’d figured she was in safe hands. The mountaineer who would guide her graduation ascent had climbed the West Crater Rim route 14 times. But disaster needs only one wrong decision. Unstable snow conditions and a few judgment lapses formed a fatal collision. Investigators later said plenty of avalanche hazard warnings and clues existed that day, according to a report published in the American Alpine Club’s 1999 volume of “Accidents in North American Mountaineering.” The weeklong cycle of storms had mantled the mountain with new snow, a U.S. Forest Service sign warned of avalanche hazard; and the team’s slow pace put them on an exposed slope after the day’s heat had transformed an underlayer of snow into a stream of slippery granules. Why didn’t Horne’s leaders order a retreat? The accident reports didn’t clarify the details of the guide’s decisions, but Gonzales suggests that the answer lies in human instinct. “People do not believe they can get hurt themselves,” he said. “They don’t believe in their own deaths.”

Risk takers are wired to seek the positive results they’ve had before, despite the dangers. If trouble hasn’t found them in the past, they believe it won’t again. There were 100 climbers on Mount Hood that weekend day, according to investigators. Many later admitted choosing to leave their avalanche beacons (devices that send and receive locator signals through snow) in their cars. A few reported they thought an avalanche couldn’t occur on such a nice day. From her home in Truckee, where she moved a few months after the avalanche for a new job, Horne reflected recently: “We shouldn’t have been there.”

Nicole Chupka, too, shouldn’t have been on Donner Summit slope on that afternoon in late March. A few hours earlier, when she and Judy Rowe had announced to their companions that they planned to make just a few quick turns before supper, one friend had warned that he’d noticed blustery winds outside, indicating an impending storm. The storm would have been only a minor nuisance had Chupka not made another mistake: She forgot that on warm spring afternoons in the Sierra, melting snow coalesces into heavy slop. When the friend tossed them a two-way radio, Chupka joked: “This will be fun to have.”

“It’s telling that when he gave her the radio, she concluded unconsciously that nothing bad could happen,” Gonzales said. “It’s what psychologists call the ‘confirmation bias.’ It’s a deep part of our neurological system. All of the behaviors flow to that one conclusion. We are all suffering from this. It takes an intellectual effort to not do it.”

Later, lying awkwardly in the snow, Chupka imagined that her injury was only slight, despite the pain in her right leg. “As soon as I moved my leg, I felt the pain,” she said recently. “It felt like I was being electrocuted.” Rowe used the radio to call the hut. It was Chupka’s good fortune that two friends there were medically trained, one a doctor, the other a physical therapist. Thinking she might have dislocated her hip, Chupka hoped that with help she could just pop it back in and return on her own to the hut. “I had major denial,” she recalled.

Outfitted for survival

Once the weather plays its cards, the knowledge and tools people carry, and the actions they take in the first hours of trouble, are critical. Cotton clothes do not contribute to survival. Horne and Chupka wore storm-proof outerwear on top of moisture-wicking synthetic fabrics such as fleece. James Augustino was similarly dressed, but Harley wore cotton jeans, a school letterman’s jacket and a hooded sweatshirt. Wet cotton conducts cold and fails to insulate, according to survival experts. After thrashing about in the snow for several hours, Harley was soaked. “We found a tree well, and my dad got some branches to cover us a little bit,” he recalled. “We wrapped around each other to stay as warm as we could.” Their outside exercises warmed them only temporarily. One of Harley’s socks got wet and froze, encasing his foot in an icy cocoon. “It was the longest night I can remember,” he said, “except that the next two nights were even longer.”

The snowstorm churned over the Sierra Crest all night. “In the first morning, the powder was up to my hip,” Harley said. “We plowed through it. Then our equipment started to fail. My left ski kept falling off. My pole broke that second day, and my dad’s boot was coming undone. Luckily we had some duct tape. It’s something I usually carried in my pack.” When the second night arrived, they made a cave in another tree well. “Snow was getting heavy on the branches,” Harley recalled. “We would be huddled together, and a huge clump of snow would fall on top of us.”

James Augustino had studied backcountry survival and knew about snow caves and hypothermia, a deadly condition in which low body temperatures impair mental abilities and shut down the body’s organs. Similarly, Rowe and Chupka had learned about the mountains from past experiences, and Horne had studied mountain survival during her hours of class. The knowledge helped them make important decision in the early stages of their ordeals. “We tend to remember what we practice the most,” Gonzales explained. “We tend not to invent new strategies on the spot. Although that’s not true of everyone; some people just freeze.”

Horne’s mind did not freeze. While the avalanche spun her through a dangerous boulder field called Hot Rocks, she remembered her lessons. Finding herself being hurled downward feet first, she released her ice ax, as teachers had instructed. She also kept snow away from her nose and mouth by punching into the snow that was tumbling in front of her face, so when the avalanche stopped, the snow wouldn’t block her airway.

Chupka’s friend Rowe was prepared with a lightweight snow shovel she used to dig a shelter in the slope. The cave’s protection became increasingly critical as time passed and night descended. The doctor and PT at first couldn’t locate Rowe and Chupka. They returned to the hut for extra sleeping bags, food and clothing, and asked two others there to ski out for help. Four hours after the fall, the two medical experts finally reached the women. Confirming that Chupka probably had a broken femur, they carefully wrapped her in a sleeping bag, slid her onto an insulating foam pad and propped her against a backpack. She refused to get into the cave because any big movement caused shooting pain. Everyone hunkered down to wait. They hoped rescuers would come quickly. What arrived first, however, was a snowstorm.

Thinking forward

Tools and resources are critical to survival, but what often makes the biggest difference in the end is attitude, researchers say. In all three of these survival cases, the victims reported unusual optimism or clarity. These are manifestations of two habits of the mind, according to Gonzales. Some minds are able to focus on the positive; others cannot. Those that do are more likely to survive (as long as they are not entertaining delusions of safety). Another factor is the tendency for perceptions to warp under stress. During the long wait in the chilly cave, the Augustinos maintained good spirits. They joked about football and yearned for Mexican food and beer. “There wasn’t any talk about not surviving,” Harley said. Being optimistic wasn’t so much a conscious choice, he said; “we just did it.”

Horne’s experience was different. While tons of snow tossed her 1,250 feet down the mountainside, she experienced a mental acuity that even now intrigues her. “My thoughts were like banners in Times Square. I thought things like, ‘All I can do is the best I can in the moment, and I’ll see how this turns out.’ There was no point in panicking. I could easily have thought, ‘I’m going to die,’ but I didn’t. My sense of it is that the organism, my self, was so focused on surviving that emotion was a luxury I couldn’t afford. So I was completely calm and analytical.”

Horne’s experiences fit a known pattern, Gonzales said. “There’s a fairly large body of work on perceptual distortion under stress,” he said. Much of it was done with police officers involved in shooting incidents. “Nearly 100 percent of them reported extreme perceptual distortions, including time slowing down, tunnel vision, and odd perceptual points of view. A whole complex of perceptual distortions goes along with tense situations.”

Chupka’s thoughts, too, remained optimistic. “I wasn’t going hysterical or crying,” she said. “I had no fear. My mind was completely present. I’ve gotten into Buddhism since then, and I can say it was the most present I’ve been. I didn’t think I was going to die.” Like the Augustinos, she focused on the business of getting home.

Twins: luck and fate

Amy Horne’s battle with the mountain ended within minutes. “I stopped. I went, ‘Oh, phew.’ ” Then there was a powerful jolt. “I opened my eyes. I could see sunlight coming through the snow, which meant I was near the surface. I dug myself out to the chest. I was going to stand up, but an ache started and I realized I was hurt. I had no idea if I was the only one alive or if I was alone.” In five minutes, a Portland Mountain Rescue team member reached her. One of her climbing partners was alive nearby, but partly buried. The other lay somewhere invisible beneath the snow. An hour later, searchers using probes recovered his body.

Horne was lucky. During the slide, she missed hitting massive boulders; once she stopped, she didn’t suffocate. Terribly injured, however, she was flown to a Portland hospital. Later she learned that the taut rope connecting her to the two other climbers had crushed her pelvis.

The Chupka rescue was trickier. Blinded by fog and snow, neither Chupka’s group nor Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team skiers dispatched by the local sheriff’s office to find her could see each other’s lights. Finally Chupka and her friends spotted a flare. “We were excited,” Chupka said. “They were with us in minutes.” It was after midnight, and Chupka and the others shivered uncontrollably in the early stages of hypothermia. The rescuers transferred Chupka to an emergency sled and guided her down the slope to a waiting snowcat.

When someone reports a person lost in Lake Tahoe’s backcountry, the sheriff’s office dispatches searchers on skis and snowmobiles as quickly as possible. Because lost people usually aren’t discovered missing until late in the day after someone doesn’t return home, rescuers are accustomed to overnight missions in bad weather. However, the Augustinos’ storm was worse than most. It hammered 8 feet of snow into the Sierra. Avalanche hazards prevented an immediate search. On Dec. 23, Harley left the tree-well cave to gather pine boughs in order to spell a “Help” sign on the snow. He felt OK, but he’d noticed that his dad’s speech was slurring, indicating advancing hypothermia. “I don’t remember a panic; it was like I knew what was happening; it was going to happen. I held him and tried to keep him as warm as possible.” His dad’s clothing was better insulated than Harley’s, his feet weren’t freezing in wet socks like Harley’s were, yet he was dying. When James stopped breathing, Harley tried CPR, “but I knew there wasn’t a whole lot I could do.”

Harley eventually emerged from the shelter. “Right when he died, the snow stopped, the sky opened up, and I could ski on top of the snow for the first time.” He crested a ridge and spotted Interstate 80, a snake of gray about 3 miles away in the cottony landscape. He skied downhill toward it, and promptly fell. Now it was 3 p.m. and he realized that if he weren’t smart, he’d spend yet another night out. “I remember wondering if my father had lived a full life. Obviously, he died before his time. But I had a lot more I needed to do and be in my life.” He climbed to a clear knoll. A half hour later, a rescue helicopter zoomed in and picked him up.

Aftermaths

Horne spent four months in a wheel-chair and two years in physical therapy. She used the recovery time to process the accident’s trauma. In a quest to examine every detail, she interviewed people involved, scoured incident reports and wrote and rewrote her recollections in diaries. “It’s a story like too many others,” she reflected. “An accumulation of little mistakes that at other times didn’t matter, but this time did.” Today, she said, she has finished that process. “I don’t want Mount Hood to be my life,” she explained. A senior writer now for UC Davis, she reports having little pain related to the injury. Outside of her busy job, she skies, rides bikes and hikes.

A weakened hip has kept Chupka from skiing since her injury. She does get outside for snowshoe and backpack trips; however, Buddhism is her new focus.

Augustino, too, has experienced a renewal. “Losing my father really opened me up emotionally,” he wrote last year in a letter to Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team members. “I cried a lot of tears that following year, and I learned to trust and accept my emotions.” Augustino finished college, and in the spirit of his dad’s activism, became executive director of a Santa Barbara group that helps low-income residents organize for political action.

“I read on the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team Web site that most, if not all, of these accidents are preventable,” he said. “Unexpected things happen, but there are a lot of things we could have done. We had a cell phone, but left it in the car. Maybe we couldn’t have gotten coverage, but maybe we could have. Now I always tell people where I’m going, and when I’m coming back. Even on summer day hikes, I bring two days of food and more water than I need.”

Why would people who know better err when the stakes are highest? Gonzales believes the tendency is reinforced by messages of American culture. “We’re sold these complex ideas that make us drop our guard,” he said. “The first is we have the right not just to live but also to be comfortable and have fun experiences.” It’s a recent idea, in the grand scheme of things, he said. “The other idea is that everything is safe. You take these attitudes into the wilderness where you’re given a false sense that it is Disney World or something, and it’s not. Your cell phone, your avalanche beacon, your GPS can give you an idea that you are in control: You’re not.”

The good news is that people can change, he said; it just takes practice. Everything people do involves a calculation of risk for some amount of reward. “There’s a scale: Watching a DVD at home is at one end; risking your life in an avalanche is at the other. You have to ask yourself what are you trying to get and how much risk are you willing to pay for that kind of reward.” If life is the ultimate cost, he said, people taking such risks might rethink their choices.

The wilderness trials of Horne, Chupka and Augustino changed their lives. “In many ways my life started on Dec. 23, 1996,” Augustino said. “Ten years later, I at least know that I have given this life of mine a good shot. In many ways, I have had it easier than most, and I’ve tried to do the best with what I have. I am thankful that I was given another chance.”

Freelance writer Laura Read lives in North Lake Tahoe. Her husband, Doug Read, helped found the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team 32 years ago. She has been involved in the team’s education and search dispatch operations for 12 years.

By Laura Read 

National Geographic Traveler

When 19^th century Bohemian immigrants settled in Iowa’s lush Turkey River Valley, they couldn’t have imagined one village would nurture two very different creative passions. The town was called “Spielville,” then, after its German founder, Joseph Spielman. Residents anglicized the name, and quiet Spillville now lures travelers with dueling strains of classical and folk history: It is where the visiting Czech composer Antonin Dvorak produced two celebrated American-themed works, and where two Bohemian farmers carved a lifetime of American images into sculptural wooden clocks. Both tales unfold in a single Main Street museum.

“When people walk in, I see they are thinking, ‘Yeah, right, clocks,’” says Georgiann Eckheart, director of the Bily Clocks/Dvorak Museum. “But when they get into that room, they are awestruck.” More than 40 clocks, some of them 8 to 10 feet tall, were donated in the 1940s by their makers, Frank and Joseph Bily, bachelors who made the town promise never to separate the collection. The clocks are not only keepers of time, but also keepers of history. Panel carvings depict epics of religion, pioneer life, and other influences on the Bilys’ fast-changing world. The “History of Travel” clock documents methods of locomotion, from the canoe and steamship to the car and airplane. The “Statuary Clock” celebrates the Bilys’ heroes, putting Franklin Roosevelt and Michelangelo in the company of Spillville’s first postmaster, J.J. Haug. When tour guides tug a hidden wire, animated figurines burst from moving doors to enliven the clocks’ facades.

The museum also displays artifacts from Dvorak’s 1893 stay, but just as meaningful are the places “The Master” mused and wandered: A spot on the river bank honors Dvorak’s favorite meditation place; The 1860 St. Wenceslaus church contains the restored Pfeffer organ he played.

Complete a weekend at nearby Niagara Cave, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park & Museum, or the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, where traditional “Kubbestol” chairs are exhibited through March. Chow down at Spillville’s Farr Side ($1 hamburgers on Thursdays; $6 fish fries on Fridays) or dine at the Rubaiyat Restaurant in neighboring Decorah. Later, polka or waltz at the Inwood ballroom. Finally, nurture your own creative dreams under homemade quilts at the Taylor-Made B&B. – Laura Read

Spillville is 70 miles north of Waterloo, IA, 150 miles west of Madison, WI, and 165 miles southeast of St. Paul, MN. The Bily Clocks Museum and Antonin Dvorak Exhibit, www.bilyclocks.org. Niagara Cave, www.niagaracave.com. Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, www.vesterheim.org. Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum, www.lauraingallswilder.us/. The Inwood ballroom “dance-and-be-young” schedule, www.spillville.org. Taylor-made B&B, www.taylormadebandb.com; rooms from $79.

 

By Laura Read

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

The air smelled faintly metallic and echoed with thuds. Before me, five Angami men crouched around bloody mounds of raw meat, each wielding a fin-like blade with a wooden handle. At first, I resisted watching the slaughter, but then remembered that observing this kind of ritual — a neighborhood group preparing communally raised pigs for a feast — was precisely why I had come to visit the hill people of Nagaland. As I moved closer, the sounds and scents intensified. In a flash, the panoply of muscled action, the whacking and splitting, the movement of blood and sinew, transcended my original repulsion and became — well — symphonic.

I took a closer look at the hand-hewn axes, and asked, “Were those blades once used for headhunting?” Knowing that many Naga speak English, I hoped the men would comprehend my question. One man paused, a grin lifting his sweaty cheeks. He leapt up and displayed a pig’s head for my examination. They were slaughtering pigs — I had already guessed that by the presence of little hooves. But the ax question? Perhaps it hadn’t been polite to ask.

The hilltop village of Touphema is deep in Nagaland, an Indian state in the eastern Himalayan foothills near Burma. Because of violent infighting over the hope of independence from India, Nagaland has been closed to foreign travelers for nearly 50 years. However, five years ago, the state started a limited tourism program. I went to witness the Sekrenyi Festival, held each year in late February before planting season. But also I wanted to meet people whose ancestors had been headhunters. What were the descendents of headhunters like? Were they at all like me?

By all accounts, the Naga no longer hunt heads. Between the 1870s and the mid-20th century, Christian missionaries persuaded them, village by village, to shift their worship from many gods to one. Originally, missionaries discouraged traditional ceremonies; but today, Naga culture blends church activities with ancient rituals. (Interestingly, Christianity has been a primary choice among many of India’s hill people, who reportedly prefer the religion’s messages of equality to the Hindu caste system.)

So why not wonder if the butchers’ axes were heirlooms passed down through generations, as were Naga houses and jewelry? In the old days, heads were good as gold. A stockpile of skulls ensured healthy crops and fertile woman. Men took pride in their acquired skulls. They wore tattoos to flaunt them. They buried the heads ceremonially, or hung them from trees. Heads were a big deal; head-related tools must be, too.

Depending on whom you ask, “Naga” can mean “mountain,” “fierce people” or simply “warriors.” When I had signed on for this trip — I went with Mekong Tours, which specializes in South and Southeast Asia’s tribal areas, operated by retired Sacramento State University geography professor Bob Phillips — I had secretly imagined I might still be dodging ax-wielding warriors. Would I hear muffled screams in the night, or discover a cache of new skulls?

During my first hours in Nagaland, those notions died quickly. It took but a short walk along one of Touphema’s winding paths to learn that one of the most characteristic noises was not “aiyeeeeee” but “Ooh, ooh, ooh.” The cooing sound indicated acceptance, agreement and enjoyment. It drifted through windows, along foot paths, across fenceposts, and over the sawing noises of meat-carving parties.

Naga territory extends beyond India’s borders. The Naga comprise 20 major groups occupying mountainous terrain between the plains of Assam and the Chindwin Valley of Burma. Their languages (they speak as many as 30 dialects of a language family called Sino-Tibetan) and tools indicate they most likely migrated from the mainland of China. However, socially and culturally some of the groups resemble societies in Southeast Asia.

Touphema is in the district populated by the Angami group. Early 20th century British observers described the Angami as among the friendliest of all the different communities. The historically fiercer groups live a few hundred kilometers to the north, where violence still flares.

I experienced the Angami generosity during my first local supper. Touphema is one of two Nagaland villages — out of more than 1,000 — that have developed modern tourist facilities. Tourists stay in bungalows constructed with thatch roofs, Western-style bathrooms and facades carved with bulls-horns, hornbill feathers (a big-billed bird the Naga revere) and other symbols. The group dining room crests a canyon that plunges into jungle thousands of feet below. As I sliced through a hunk of spicy pork, one of the lodge’s managers, Khrienuo (pronounced Kreeno) Kense, stopped by my table. I had talked to her earlier about how to respect local customs while shooting photographs.

“I would like to lend you one of my mekhalas to wear tomorrow during the festival,” she said, her voice as calm and measured as her clear gaze.

“I would be honored,” I answered; but thoughts of how easily the wraparound skirt, woven of cotton on a back-strap loom, could become untucked and fall to my ankles, made the backs of my knees sweat.

The next morning after breakfast, Khrienuo placed a folded bundle of tightly woven fabric in my hands. To my surprise, the skirt was not the traditional colors of black, pink, and green, but a singular, vibrant shade of tangerine.

“It’s my favorite mekhala,” Khrienuo said. “The locals will appreciate seeing you wear this.”

“They’ll see me, all right.”

The fabric shimmered. Geometric patterns rendered in glossy threads created subtle textures of tangerine on tangerine. I would be wearing the equivalent of spun gold. I would try to do it justice.

From my hips, the fabric hung almost to the floor. At first I couldn’t get the ends tucked firmly at the waist, so Khrienuo showed me how to hitch a corner into a top fold and coax the fabric to drape smoothly to my hiking boots. “Don’t let the wrinkles show,” she said. “They will indicate you are a novice.” Worried I’d unwittingly jiggle the tuck free, I made a belt of my fanny-pack.

“Promise me you won’t unbuckle the bag without checking first that the mekhala will stay up,” Khrienuo said. I waddled out the door feeling like a hornbill in a kimono.

In the central courtyard where the Sekrenyi Festival dancing was to take place shortly, I approached a group of performers helping each other into outfits. Nearby, men and women practiced harmonies. I hopped behind a log to get a closer look without intruding, when I noticed — horror! — I’d brushed against a sticky bush and the bottom of Khrienuo’s mekhala was covered in thorns. Hearing my bleats of distress, one performer paused to help me remove the pieces gently without tearing threads. He leaned so close I could smell the musky scent of his hair. Before returning to his group, he looked me square in the face with an expression of kindness and curiosity. It might have been the first time he had gotten so close to a tourist — I imagined most of us stayed huddled in our groups.

While waiting for the festival to start, I wandered toward an older part of Touphema. According to social anthropologist Vibha Joshi, whose book “The Land of the Nagas” is one of the best contemporary works on the region, in the old days, villages frequently at war surrounded themselves with stockades and ground-layers of foot-piercing bamboo spikes. Wooden gates forced visitors to approach by specific entrances. The arched gate into old Touphema displayed carved images of men holding severed heads. Across its upper beam, someone had painted the words “Thank You” in blue.

The path snaked between mud and bamboo houses built at odd angles up and down hillsides. Roosters crowed, women heaved rice into the air with plate-like sieves woven from cane, and, at a neighborhood faucet, a girl washed her hair. I sat down at an overlook encircled with stone benches. Angami villages contain many such gathering places where elders and leaders hold discussions and make decisions. The Naga are considered relatively democratic. Neighborhood leaders help to settle disputes, and volunteer groups handle social, economic and political issues. The view extended over metal rooftops and across a blue canyon.

Three men and a toddler joined me. One jumped right to the heart of things. “Are you Christian?”

“Culturally, I guess I am; but not everyone from our country is Christian. In America there are a lot of religions.”

“You are mostly Catholic?”

“Some are, but we also have Buddhists, Muslims and others.”

“Muslims?” They seemed astounded. Islam is the second largest religion in India. Christianity is the third, with about 2.5 percent of the one billion population. The first religion is, of course, Hindu.

“In our culture, we try to be tolerant,” I added. They nodded uncertainly. I cast my arms wide. “We embrace — we try to embrace all religions. We are really one, big stew pot — and usually we’re bubbling over a fire.”

When they laughed, I gestured toward the tourist bungalows, their thatch roofs barely visible over the next hill. “Why do you invite tourists here?”

One man lifted the toddler onto his lap. “Because we want to learn about your ways. You are more advanced than we are.”

When I asked what aspects of our culture interested him, he shrugged, as if to say, “You name it.” Finally, he offered, “Your homes are not built close together like ours.”

“I’m not sure that means we have better lives,” I said.

He waved a hand at the tin-roof patchwork on the hillside below us. “Your houses are not like this?”

“Some are. Our houses are usually built in orderly grids between sidewalks and paved streets. But let me tell you this.” I leaned toward him. “Just because a society is advanced doesn’t mean the people are happier or better off than others. For instance, we pass each other in our cars sealed behind metal and glass; you pass each other on foot and say hello. We finish the work day, go inside and watch TV. You go to your town square and play games together. We eat things bought in packages from stores. You butcher your own pigs communally and share food when you need it.”

He then spoke in measured sentences, as if thinking aloud. “We do have many opportunities to meet together. We know each other very well. We understand each other.”

“Do you have less conflict because of it?”

All the men seemed to give half-hearted nods, and then I remember they have had big conflicts — disagreements that have fueled a half-century of internal violence, killings and retaliations.

Back at the festival courtyard, the activities started with chanting and the arrival of 20 Angami dancers wearing heavy bamboo headdresses representing the sun. Singing low, hypnotic notes, they danced in homage to nature, shuffling and bowing in grid and circle patterns. Next arrived a troupe from a neighboring village of the Rengma group, wearing brilliant vests in red, black and white. A guide had explained earlier that their costumes and dance would be related to old headhunting rituals. After a howl from a leader, the dancers worked in circles twisting, kicking, twirling, leaping and stabbing the air with spears. Their energetic movements sent puffs of air spinning through the seated crowd. When one dancer screeched a war cry, my skin prickled, and soon my heartbeat quickened, as if I, too, were dancing madly because the food and fortune of the whole village relied on it.

Later, I was heading for my bungalow when rapid-fire English erupted behind me. “My name is Medo Rio — would you like me to show you around?”

Medo’s black hair swung casually around the shoulders of her gray cotton sweater. Her chestnut-colored eyes glittered above wide cheekbones. She had two friends with her, all of them in their late teens, but she did all the talking.

“It is a very beautiful mekhala you are wearing and won’t you come to my house I would like you to meet my aunt she will give you some tea.” We followed a jeep trail past a kiosk selling soda and batteries, past a fenced-in pen containing three black mithun, the Naga’s favorite buffalo, and up a hill. “I go to school in Kohima (the Nagaland capital) and when I am home here in Touphema I stay with my aunt and uncle.” As we entered the smoky darkness of her hut, I straightened my mekhala. A glowing hearth illuminated portions of the interior. The dark corners dissolved into nothingness.

Medo’s aunt stood up from a low stool. Her mekhala was a rich shade of eggplant. A strand of apricot-colored cornelian beads hung against her violet shirt. She had pinned her black hair loosely in a bun.

I bowed. “I am honored to be in your home.”

“Ooh, ooh, ooh.” She said, grinning and bowing.

“She doesn’t speak English,” Medo said. “Her name is Lhoukuoii Rio.”

Lhoukuoii Rio bent over the hearth and blew the embers to life with a stick of hollow bamboo. Naga roofs don’t have smoke holes, so soot filters into clothing and clings to baskets, wooden plates and vegetables hung to dry from rafters. The flaring fire illuminated shelves stacked with a dozen plates, cups and plastic containers. Aluminum water jugs gleamed from wall pegs.

As Medo chatted, Lhoukuoii heated water and poured me a tin cup of black tea sweetened with sugar and milk. I breathed in the steamy aromas before tasting the tea’s malty richness. “I love the color of Lhoukuoii’s mekhala,” I said. Lhoukuoii answered something in her language that sent Medo into a corner to fetch a folded purple bundle.

“My aunt wants you to have this mekhala she made,” Medo said. “It is almost the same color as the one she is wearing.”

I leaned away in surprise. “Oh, no, no, no. I can’t possibly take such a fine gift.” It was not good manners to refuse a gift, but this one was too much for me to accept. However, I also didn’t want to imply any dissatisfaction with the mekhala. Finally I managed to say, “I would like to pay something for it.” Later I wondered if a gift exchange would have meant more to Lhoukuoii than an economic one, but in the moment, I simply wanted to give her the first thing I could think of, money. In the end, I paid about $15 for it, the going price I’d seen in a craft kiosk.

After we drained our tea, I realized it was now dark outside. “I will use a light to guide you back,” Medo offered.

From a shelf she lifted a shiny soup can. A wire handle extended from two punctures in its curved side. Medo thrust a lit match inside the can’s mouth, and a bit of candle flared. The flicker cast just enough glow to light our way. Through doorways and windows, I glimpsed shapes of people seated around hearths, their soft voices and “ooh, ooh, ooh” forming a quilt of murmurs.

At my bungalow, I could not bring myself to switch on the electric light. I lay on my bed, my tangerine mekhala now wrapped lightly around my legs. I recalled the aromas I’d encountered during the past 24 hours: the tang of raw pork, the dancer’s musky scent and the nutty smoke of the hearths. Together they mingled with the real sharpness of my own sweat. Meanwhile, through the slats of my wooden shutters, neighboring voices from outside continued to purr. 

By Laura Read

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

The nectarine’s skin wrinkled into folds, releasing the sweet-tangy flesh underneath. Before the juice could dribble, I sucked it into the pockets of my cheeks and savored its goodness. I ate another. Afterward, I telephoned Twin Peaks Orchard, near Newcastle in Placer County, 75 miles away from my home in north Lake Tahoe. “I need a whole case of these nectarines,” I said. I would be driving to San Francisco the next day; owner Sheila Enriquez agreed to meet me at the orchard on my way.

A few years ago, I didn’t know a person could easily buy fruit directly from regional farmers. At the same time, many farmers in Placer County, which extends from just outside of Sacramento to north Lake Tahoe, didn’t know there existed scores of people who would pay more for better tasting fruit fresh off the tree. In the late 1990s, they were in turmoil. Experiencing shrinking profits and expanding development pressure, family farmers were selling out. In five years, one sixth of Placer County’s farmland vanished under new neighborhoods and malls. In 1997, 35 percent of Placer County’s farmers were 65 years or older and ready to retire. Half of all farmers reported having no family members around to take over the farm.

What happened next could be called a lucky intersection of forces — a message, a woman and a moment. Things in Placer County reached a tipping point, to borrow the term from Malcolm Gladwell’s book of that name.

From I-80, the route to Twin Peaks curves along stone-knuckled ridges, riverbeds and hollows that typify this section of the northern Sierra Nevada foothills. In June, fields of grass were already turning gold, their drying stalks releasing a smell of roasted wheat that seeped into my car’s air system. At Twin Peaks Orchard, Enriquez greeted me with a hand that felt warm to the bone. Inside the barn sat my box, its 60 nectarines resting in neat plastic liners, blushing lightly.

I reached for one.

“You don’t need to squeeze them,” Enriquez said, the punchy cadence of her speech mimicking the rhythms of the landscape. “Everyone wants to squeeze them. You can tell they are ripe just by brushing them with your finger.”

I pressed the skin of one. It felt cool and silky. I still wanted to squeeze.

Thirty years ago, Enriquez and her husband, Raul, became partners in the 50-acre farm with her stepfather, Howard Nakae, who had grown nectarines, plums, and peaches on the land since he was 5. Howard died last June at age 87. Fortunately, Sheila and Raul had gleaned many of his secrets.

“He had 15 rules to live by,” Sheila said. “One of them is, ‘Don’t ask someone else to do what you can do yourself.’ I know them in my heart, and I live them.”

Twin Peaks is one of a handful of orchards operated by founding families. The first fruit trees were planted 200 years ago by Welsh immigrants who were quarrying granite. In 1848, a prospector discovered gold, and more immigrants rushed to the foothills. By the 1860s, the gold miners had moved to more lucrative mines in the higher mountains. Settlers who stayed behind learned that berries grew surprisingly well, and soon growers around Penryn, Newcastle and Auburn were sending strawberries, blackberries and raspberries by stage and rail as far away as Virginia City, Nev. In 1901, Newcastle shipped 1,862 railroad cars of local fruit. By the 1930s, fruit trees covered 60 percent of the region.

Some of the first orchard owners were Japanese immigrants. Howard Nakae’s father, Yoshichka Nakae, founded the family orchard in 1912. Yoshichka helped many of his Japanese friends purchase property for farms, according to Enriquez, but his life ended tragically. At the time, racism percolated among his neighbors, and in 1932 an unknown assailant shot and killed him. Howard, then 13, stepped into his father’s shoes and sustained the operation alongside his mother.

While business continued to flourish during the early century, farmers couldn’t have anticipated the economic roller-coaster that lay ahead. Setbacks occurred in World War II when manual labor pools shrank and the federal government forced Japanese American families into internment camps. Neighbors looked after the abandoned orchards, and many of the interned families resumed production when they returned. After the war, the economy surged, and by the 1950s, Placer County farmers enjoyed national acclaim for the pears, plums and peaches they were sending nationwide by rail.

But in the 1960s, a pear blight struck. On its heels came a wave of unbeatable competition from Central Valley farms, which grew large quantities of fruit and shipped crops earlier at lower costs. The small farmers’ usual wholesale customers canceled business. Farmers now had to travel farther to sell to stores for lower prices. Profits thinned.

Between 1995 and 2005, Sacramento’s population exploded by 48 percent. Developers purchased swaths of Placer County’s rural landscape for housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls. Land prices soared from $15,000 an acre in the 1980s to more than $80,000. Long-working farmers suddenly imagined themselves dozing in Caribbean hammocks instead of plucking fruit.

“Land prices continued to skyrocket and development continued unabated,” said University of California Cooperative Extension Farm Adviser Roger Ingram. “In 1999, only about 50 percent of farmers surveyed indicated there was someone in the family willing to continue farming. A big majority of them wanted to retire, or maybe there was disability or death. They were wondering ‘What will we do with this asset?’ It was hard to ignore the huge opportunity costs of selling.”

But many Placer County residents didn’t want blacktop to replace their serene landscapes. In the late 1990s, the county supervisors convened citizen committees to guide what soon became “Placer Legacy,” a program to protect the county’s agricultural assets and open space.

Out of those meetings came wisdom, according to the county’s Agricultural Commissioner, Christine Turner. “The growers told the board of supervisors, “We’re very good at growing what we grow, but we don’t necessarily have the skill set for effective marketing.” The farmers asked the county to hire a full-time agriculture marketing expert. It would be the first county-funded “ag” marketing director in California.

The supervisors allocated $68,000 for the program. Right away, a compelling application arrived from someone familiar to politicians and farmers alike. Auburn resident Joanne Neft had community connections, a creative imagination and chutzpah. She vowed to change the shopping and eating habits of a region.

At age 65, Neft already possessed an arc of experience with both agriculture and business. As a child growing up on a Minnesota farm, she had occasionally accompanied her father to the local market. “It was a treat for me to go to market,” she said recently. “My dad would pick the kohlrabi, leave the stems on, peel off the outer skin, and hand it to me. I would eat it as though it were a Popsicle.”

Neft attended Barnes School of Commerce, a private business school in Denver. Between 1970 and the mid-1980s, she operated and owned several businesses in Tahoe City — Patton Lumber Co. with her first husband; North Shore Travel and The Mayfield House, a Julia Morgan inspired Bed and Breakfast inn. She then moved briefly to Long Beach, but missed living in Northern California. “I decided to return to Placer County and change my lifestyle,” she recalled. The decision was based on vegetables. “The thing I enjoyed most was going to the Santa Barbara farmers’ market — being there among the produce. So I went up to Placer County to start my own farmers’ market.” The county needed a manager for the existing Foothill Farmers Market Association. In 1989, she got the job.

In the beginning there was one market, in the town of Loomis, where up to 39 growers filled stalls every Sunday with strawberries, peaches, corn, beans, lettuce and other fresh stuff. Neft then opened another market in north Lake Tahoe. “I knew the Tahoe market would be successful,” Neft said. “People were craving the freshness of the earth and it wasn’t available there.” She was right. In 1990, 67 growers served 3,000 shoppers per week in the Auburn, Loomis and Tahoe City markets combined. Some farmers reported earning $4,000 in a single day. Within three years, Neft was managing six weekly markets.

Her next job was with the Twelve Bridges development corporation, where she launched an education foundation and encouraged the corporation to donate 179 acres for a mandarin orchard available for public classroom use.

By 2001, Neft’s web of connections included movers and shakers who trusted her instincts.

“You cannot pay anybody to have passion,” Christine Turner said. “Hiring Joanne as the agricultural marketing director allowed us to hire someone who has the skills and passion to make it happen, and to pay her for that so she can spend her time working on it.”

To create new markets, Neft spread the news that food bought from local farmers tastes better and contains more nutrients than imported produce found at supermarkets. Her strategy was simple: get shoppers to meet the farmers and taste the fruit, tell true stories about the benefits of locally grown produce and create opportunities for the product to sell itself.

“If we are totally honest when we tell our stories,” she reflected, “people know the difference. Way deep down, people know the difference between fluffy marketing and credible marketing.”

Are Placer County fruits eaten fresh from the orchard better than store-bought? To bolster her message, Neft turned to specialists like horticulturalist Cindy Fake. As the University of California Cooperative Extension Small Farm Adviser, Fake spends most days in the field providing research-based information to Placer and Nevada County farmers.

There are two major factors influencing the qualities of mountain-grown fruit, Fake said. Climate is one of them. “Placer County often has a difference of 40 or 50 degrees between daytime highs and nighttime lows,” she said. “Sugars accumulated during the day when the plant is photosynthesizing, are not used up during the night, because plant processes slow down when temperatures drop. Sugars and flavor components then accumulate in the fruit, making a rich, sweet flavor that is unparalleled in fruit grown in a more moderated climate.”

Dirt is another. Much of the soil that once covered the Sierra foothills has been washed into the Central Valley by rains and other forms of erosion. “The shallow foothill soils have low native fertility,” Fake explained. “Growers amend them with lots of organic matter, which maintains fertility and holds moisture. While the plants’ needs are met in terms of water and nutrients, the plants are not overfed, as they are at many large orchards.”

Finally, the small-farm fruit isn’t picked early, as fruit often is at large commercial farms. Instead, growers allow it to ripen on the tree. “Most of it is sold within 50 miles or so,” Fake said. “If it is shipped, it is carefully packed so that it maintains quality.”

The new marketing program included media, grower, and consumer outreach and education, event-development and promotion, and collaboration. Neft wanted to increase demand and create new opportunities for people to buy produce directly from the farmer.

“Direct marketing increases profitability,” Agriculture Commissioner Christine Turner noted. “It eliminates the middle man, and the farmers get a better price per pound for what they are producing. The consumers get fresher fruits and vegetables, and they know the person who grew them. It also keeps dollars within the local economy.”

Neft enhanced existing tourist events, and created new ones. With additional marketing, she turned an event she had launched 12 years ago, the Mountain Mandarin Festival (Nov. 18 and 19, this year), into a blockbuster. Last year it gathered 35,000 citrus lovers together around the zesty “zipper” fruit, so-called for its easy-to-peel qualities. The festival is all things mandarin — shakes, trees, syrups, salad dressings and more. “We sell in the thousands of dollars,” said Rich Ferreira, who tends 2,000 mandarin trees on his 30-year-old farm, Side Hill Citrus.

A recent new event is the annual Placer Farm & Barn Tour, this year on Oct. 8. Last year it drew 2,500 people who roamed among the oak-wooded foothills to visit working farms and ranches, a historic schoolhouse, wineries and produce markets.

Between big events, Neft hand-carried produce to small events. Anyone biting into a local fruit or vegetable — the kiwis, the lettuce, the pluots, the peaches — could become a convert. “Many times I attended the events myself,” Neft said. “I’d tell people, ‘These are Placer grown peaches just picked this morning. Taste them; they’re delicious.'”

She also served the food. “In three years at the Gold Country fair, we served probably more than 1,000 people,” she said. And she motivated a diverse cast of helpers — from lawyers to bureaucrats, pharmacists to artists … “anybody willing to come along for the ride,” she explained. “One year it was the agriculture commissioner, another, the USDA adviser. Many different people got together and peeled, sliced and diced.” She was not only spreading the news, but also building a community.

Neft worked with University of California students and professors to generate new promotional strategies. The U.C. Sustainable Agriculture and Research Program (SAREP) is a state-wide program based at U.C. Davis that produces research and education for agriculture and food systems. Recently, SAREP researchers have generated reports on Placer County food trends, as well as marketing possibilities for mandarins and Hoshigaki, the ancient Japanese art of hand-dried persimmons.

Fine art figured early in the plan. One year Neft commissioned local artist Everett Jensen to paint 26 portraits of leaders in the city of Auburn for the exhibit, “Auburn 2005: Portraits of a Place.” Each painting featured the fruit in season the day the portrait was painted. Another year, partnering with the UC Davis School of Design, she launched Agro-Art, a festival of visual arts created with fresh produce. That event is now part of the Farm & Barn Tour. She also encouraged artisans to erect booths on farms during the Farm & Barn tour. Now some farms have official “artists in residence” programs.

Finally, the marketing program helped farmers to build markets for “boutique” produce, and price them accordingly. Neft realized that hoshigaki — persimmons that are hand-massaged regularly for a month until the natural sugars rise to the surface — would be a good model.

She tells of how farmer Tosh Kuratomi of Otow Orchards one day charged her $24 for three pounds of hoshigaki. She asked, “How could you possibly do all this hand labor and not be rewarded for your time?” Kuratomi answered, “That’s just not the way it is, Joanne.” In order to spur demand, Neft generated articles in the Sacramento Bee, Sierra Heritage magazine, and the L.A. Times. “My intuition told me, if I’m willing to pay $10 pound for it, someone else would pay it if they understood the kind of effort that went into this product. Every piece is touched probably 10 times. Why would that not have a value?”

When dried, a piece of hoshigaki resembles a palm-sized monk in brown robes powdered with sugar. It tastes something like a fig, only sweeter. “The short story is, last year they were getting $25 per pound,” Neft said.

Neft recognized hidden opportunities. She believed that farmers and their customers could know one another even better if the growers offered overnight farm stays. “People want a connection with farms,” she reasoned. “They want to know something about the person who feeds them.”

Compelling stories came easily to her, quite often in her own kitchen while she was baking pies. Christine Turner recalls the year one grower related that all the apple varieties were ripening at once instead of on their usual staggered schedule. “We had so many apples we didn’t know what to do with them all,” she recalled. “Joanne called the newspapers and said, ‘We have an opportunity here, and the story will have good photos.’ The article about fresh-picked apples in season available at local farms hit the Auburn Journal front page. That weekend the apple growers sold out.”

Years ago, Neft recognized the story opportunities presented by the Satsuma mandarin.

“Satsuma mandarins are seedless, juicy, easy to peel, and healthy,” she said. “They are one of the super foods. They are very high in vitamin C. The white fibrous material in them is high in synephrine. Mandarins are in season at the perfect time of year when we need to have that kind of food in our system.”

Her attention to the crop created a new chapter in the mandarin story. With better marketing, the annual Mandarin Festival attracted visitors from all over California. A Mountain Mandarin Tour of orchards drew 20,000 people last year. A UC Davis study reported that while average annual U.S. Mandarin consumption hovers at about 1 pound per person, in Placer County, it is now 3.5 pounds per person, up from 1 pound in 2001.

“A seed I’d like to plant is that mandarins are the perfect holiday gift,” Neft said. “Last year I shipped over 700 pounds of mandarins. It is the perfect gift because it is a gift of health. Who would not want to receive a box of mandarins?”

A key success has been the Foothill Farmers’ Market. Since 2002, manager Christina Abuelo has orchestrated a growth surge in the markets serving Placer and Nevada counties. In 2002, 83 growers contributed to seven weekly markets. This year, more than 200 growers supplied 16 markets, Abuelo said.

“Because of the economy, a lot of people are getting laid off from other work,” Abuelo said. “The farmers’ market is now their new livelihood.”

Shoppers arrive early at the farmers’ markets carrying canvas bags they’ll fill to bursting with blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, persimmons, plums, raspberries, rhubarb, nectarines, peaches, plums, figs, kiwis, melons, corn, lettuce, broccoli, eggplant, squash, tomatoes, zucchini, flowers, nuts and much more. When asked why they shop at the open-air market stalls available only one day a week, when they can shop anytime at a supermarket, customers say the farmers’ markets help them to eat better.

“This is the way the rest of the world shops for food,” said north Lake Tahoe resident Julie Conover, who travels extensively to produce the PBS adventure travel series “Passport to Adventure.” “A few years ago, I decided less is more. Rather than going to Costco, I come here. Instead of treating myself to chocolate cake, I treat myself to blueberries.”

Has the marketing program changed farmers’ lives? “Farmers will not tell you how much they are making,” Neft said, “but they will say ‘Business is alive now; the business of agriculture has been redeemed.'” Buried in a 2006 Placer County economic and demographic profile is support for that statement. Employment in the county’s agriculture sector nearly doubled between 2001 and 2004, from 400 to 700, reflecting growth in the numbers of grapes and mandarin crops planted, according to farm adviser Roger Ingram.

“Farmers are more aware of what marketing requires and of its importance,” added Fake. “They are more willing to think about different types of marketing, and to try something new.I think growers are prouder of what they do because they know others value them and realize the freshness and quality of their products.”

And, growers and their customers have new relationships. “Every mandarin grower has their customers who say ‘We love your fruit, we like you and we want to buy from you,'” said Highland Orchard owner Tony Aguilar. “They always do come back.”

And farmers are acting to preserve their land forever. “My property will be put into a trust so it can’t be developed,” said Rich Ferreira. But he admits his daughters aren’t eager to run the business. “I hope I’ll be able to continue long enough to where they’ve picked a career and married, and their husbands will want to take over.”

As for the Nakae family, after Howard died, there was talk of selling the farm, but that soon ended. “It will be a family operation,” Sheila Enriquez said. “My stepsister will help, and some of the younger people will be able to work here.”

Deborah Madison, a Davis native who was the founding chef at Green’s Fort Mason restaurant, reasoned you can’t always fit these benefits into traditional economic models. “A more subtle texture can be found in these smaller communities, which has to do with biodiversity, nuance and tradition, rather than just production,” she said recently in an interview from her New Mexico home. “It may be that not many people ever taste that persimmon, but there will be those who do, and it will become a tradition for them to continue eating them. You went to a farm; you had an experience that mattered, something that connected you to a place, a person and ultimately the history of the land. Small farms are vital to the health of any community.”

During Neft’s tenure as Placer County’s agriculture marketing director — she retired this year — she used connections, stories and personal dynamism to fuel a movement. While farmers will always struggle to gain markets and manage setbacks, in Placer County, they now have a community behind them.

“We don’t have to create quality of life,” Neft said. “We can preserve quality of life by understanding who we are and how we are connected to the place where we live. And by caring for it, for goodness sake. It’s so easy to identify that and make it happen.”