Notes on a Trip into Julian

Posted on April 17, 2006 in Travels - So Cal

I wrote these after Lynn and I drove through a heavy rain and fog through the Mission Reservations into the town of Julian. We were there for an Easter retreat which she participated in and that I, the agnostic, hid from.

1. A rainy day, me on the telephone. I hear them just fine but they say I keep fading in and out.
2. Rain most of the way. Rain that rises before us. Rain that is a mist, a fog indistinguishable in places from the lichen-covered grey rocks.
3. Dozens of crude crosses at the cemetery of the Mission San Ysabel, flowers affixed to the crux.
4. A bay shaped like a square shovel at Lake Henshaw, with trees growing out of it.
5. Casinos that grow progressively poorer. In Pala, new houses replace trailers/mobile homes. They are making more money from the slots.
6. A sign in the reservation telling passersby to respect the sacred uses of tobacco. I wonder how many people change because of that. Who respects the use of wine because it is used in the sacrifice of the Mass?
7. Broken cloud cover. Blue spectacles staring down.
8. For much of the way we remain beneath the clouds. Then as we approach the Palomar cutoff, the road rises. As we enter the clouds, the rain gets harder. The sound is loudest as we pass a cluster of buildings that offer some kind of obscure Indian experience — a general store, a gas station, and a campground can be had at Indian Ray’s.
9. Got to thinking how sad that this is not the kind of land that would be preserved as a national park. I liked the small crags and defiles. There are rocks you wish to embrace.
10. The rain fog — I loved climbing into the clouds and suddenly being in a rain so thick the tubes of drops were like grass.
11. A lone pine tree or cypress surrounded by boulders as we approach San Ysabel — on a hillock, on somebody’s ranch.
12. Place after place catered to bikers. “Bikers welcome here”. They must have money. I didn’t see any.
13. The white-green buds of alders along the creeks.
14. Inaja Memorial. What is that all about? Half the Cleveland NF places aren’t on the official or unofficial map.
15. Small towns done to look like frontier settlements. Much of it must be authentic. Antiques and occasional candy stores.
16. Bed and breakfasts out in the middle of nowhere. Gareth wondered if the food was any good. I wondered where folks went to eat. Denny’s? Such a place lacked food of any kind except what you could scrounge from the fruit stands.
17. Every few miles a white cross or, at different corners, a cluster of such crosses. Some call this evidence that Latinos are dangerous drivers. I say that it means that Latinos take pains to mark the passing of their dead. If whites set up roadside crosses, they would outlaw the erection of anything other than stone or metal. They would also require exprensive permits.

This is a second list about the town itself.

1. Julian survives because it can draw the crowd that fancies that the life of the frontier West can still exist — the drivers of SUVs and wearers of winter coats made of acrylic fiber.
2. Julian’s sustenance comes from the sale of bric-a-brac — cute angeles, birding equipment, Betty Boop figurines (how Old Western!), knives, candies, etc.
3. These notes about Julian bore me. It’s a stultifying town where the only movement is from shop to shop. The historic society’s plaques tell no interesting story. There seemed to be no whores just people who sounded too good.