I would like to introduce you this month to a long­
time friend and mentor, Gulley Jimson. I first met
Gulley at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.
Eleven of us rattled down the coast via Highway One
in a faded blue 1948 Volkswagen van. The year was
1962 At 19 1 had begun emulating certain groove
cats in a disgustingly post-adolescent fashion: Mose
Allison sweaters, an English tweed coat, a pipe and
matching leather pouch. Miles Davis records, a Mort
Sahl sneer, late evenings in coffee houses discussing
Kerouac. Shoot, San Francisco was the “Beat” capital
of the West Coast and here we were! Guys with berets
and cigarette holders engaged long-stemmed ladies in
earnest conversation on every street corner. Seedy old
men [Communists I figured] lurked around
bookshelves. Over by a stack of Das Kapital and The
Daily Worker, I saw a substantial poster which said:
“It’s not the Vision I had. Gulley Jimson ”
“What does that mean?” I asked my buddy.
“No idea. Never heard of a guy named Jimson.”
Next fall I became earnestly acquainted with the
infamous Jimson. My notions about art and the
creative process forever changed.
I haunted the college art department that year.
Fabulously quirky things occurred in art departments.
Painting and poetry got all mixed up with saxophone
music and Satsuma plum wine. This was the time of
art “happenings.” A bunch of students might get
together, say, and beat some sticks together in the
student union , while some guy rolled around the floor
trussed up in a gunny sack Very avant garde Living
art, you know.
The spirit of Gulley Jimson permeated the very air
art students breathed in the 50’s and 60’s. Occasional
whiffs of Ayn Rand also blended with the smell of
linseed oil and mineral spirits.
And then, wonder of wonders, my aesthetics
professor, Graham Conroy suggested we read Joyce
Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth There was Jimson.
Sixty-seven years old, feisty, impoverished,
iconoclastic, given to fits of fancy and artistic rage,
suffering the pratfalls of daily existence, art
intoxicated and visionary. Like Sherlock Holmes
before him, Gulley has become for me real as living
flesh. Consumed with the need to create, the painter
Gulley Jimson endures any privation, flouts
convention, undoes those close to him in a singular
pursuit of art. Jimson considers William Blake [Old
Billie] one with true artistic insight, one who gets his
inspiration direct from ‘The Horse.” Blake saw
angels perched in trees. Gulley Jimson constantly re­
invents his visual world as well, driving to place the
shapes, images, colors, and textures down on a surface
Gulley thinks big. Epic subjects are his meat. The
FaHc- Fhe Creation. Lazarus Rising from the Dead
He likes to paint on walls:
“But what knockeds me down was the east end
wall. Twenty-five by forty. Windows bricked up and
all smooth plaster round. Sent from God.”
Gulley constantly sees the natural world mimicking
art. The keen-eyed artist/poet refashions nature with a
painter’s eye.
“Clouds all streaming away like ghost fish under
the ice. Evening sun turning reddish. Tree along the
hard like old copper. Old willow leaves shaking up
and down in the breeze, making shadows on the ones
below. Need a tricky brush to give the effect.. .”
“Half past morning on an autumn day. Sun in a
mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop. All bright
below. Low tide, dusty water and a crooked bar of
straw, chicken boxes, dirt and oil from mud to mud.
Like a viper swimming in skim milk. The old serpent,
symbol of nature and love.”
Looking through Jimson’s eyes, the world is in a
process of constant artistic transmutation.
‘The candles kept growing into silver porches, and
the flowers walked under them like green girls with
chorus hats. Their flames looked at me like the eyes
of tigers just waking from sleep ”
I suppose I’m most deeply indebted to Gulley
Jimson for his advice on viewing painted art. No
aesthctician could have done it better. This is straight
from the horse’s mouth. Try it, gentle readers on
your next museum visit. It works.
Gulley: “Don’t look at it. Feel it with your eye.
And first you feel the shapes in the flat - the patterns
like a carpet. And then you feel it in the round Not
as if it were a picture of anyone. But a coloured and
raised map. You feel all the rounds, the smooths, the
sharp edges, the hollows, the lights, the shades, the
cools and the warms. The colours and textures.
There’s hundreds of little differences all fitting in
together. And then you feel the bath, the chair, the
towel, the carpet, the bed, the jug, the window, the
fields, and the woman as themselves. But not as any
old jug and woman But the jug of jugs and the
woman of women. You feel jugs are like that and you
never knew it before.”
Tucked here, between mountain,s hush and ocean,s roar, our eastern
scenery runs deep green with trees. Spruce trees loom there,
outnumbering the rest, on dark mountainside walls: Picea sitchensis,
Sitka spruce, the most coastal of coastal trees. Sitka spruce trees hug
the shoreline - seldom growing more than 15 miles from Pacific
saltwater, they have one of the narrowest ranges of all trees. And,
shrouding the thin coastal margins from the balmy north-central
California coast to Alaska,s tundra margins, they have one of the
longest latitudinal ranges of all trees In our own neck of the woods,
short second-growth spruces cover clearcuts in dense, shadowy stands.
But our remaining old-growth coastal forests abound with giants -
massive cylindrical trunks, often more than 6 feet across, often more
than 200 feet high. Some spruce have 100 feet of bare trunk towering
below their lowest branches. Some tower to 300 feet, and may be
included among the tallest trees on Earth
Look close: rumbled mosaic bark breaks apart in scales of brown mid
reddish-grey. Sharp, pointed needles bristle stiff, hurting hands that
grab them. Shallow roots creep along the ground, tripping hikers and
playing hell with concrete foundations. Soft cones dangle with papery
scales, while spiky tree tops point skyward. Symmetrical branchlets
protrude at near-right angles from yet larger branches, while big
branches protrude at lateral angles from llte trunk. These largest
branches become stout, horizontal beams on the older trees, providing
mossy, perched nesting sites for birds, such as the marbled murrclet
(which now vanishes with the big trees). Accumulated, organic
branch-top crud creates shallow rooting sites for huckleberries, ferns,
and seedling trees. On older trees, branch ends sway, dangle, and
droop, long strings bristling with needles, pointing to the ground.
Sitka spruce,s success as a coastal tree lies in this design. Tree
roots need air, and shallow' roots fare well in our soggy soils - with
these shallow roots and a mild tolerance for salt, spruce can grow right
to beach and marsh edges, creating forests of "tidekind spruce" where
other trees do not grow. With strong but light wood, it is a tough
tree, tolerant of stiff coastal winds. In summer, when the forest goes
dry and most trees struggle, spruces catch coastal fogs. (Here, summer
fogs come in thick and wet, on southbound sea currents and upwelling
waters, which brings summer,s hot, dry air into contact with chilly
water from the ocean,s deep depths.) Sharp needle points gather
condensation into dripping droplets that funnel and tumble down drooping
branch ends to thirsty roots below. On a foggy day, old spruces make
exist outside of the few, officially protected pockets on the Oregon
coast, and every ancient tree toppled by the wind is a
statistically-sigmficant local loss. Seldom are spruce trees allowed to
reach the age where they grow the thick, horizontal branches that once
supported shaman, s gear mid seabird, s nests Seldom are spruce trees
allowed to reach the age w here mature, dangling branches form,
efficiently catching fog drip (and therefore summertime fog drip is
dramatically reduced in "managed forests," a fact that may compromise
(he long-term competitive advantage that spruce has held among coastal
trees since its genesis.) Meanwhile, in the moist coastal comers of the
British Isles mid elsewhere, seeds from this coast reforest degraded
lands, long ago stripped demi of trees to fuel the Industrial
Revolution, a history which seems to be repeated on each new, occupied
continent.
Go out, mnong the spruce trees. Stand among the big ones and look up,
where drizzle falls on foggy days, and vast branches have supported
centuries, burdens. liiere is a historical depth to match that height,
liiere is something to be found there which deserves attention, which
demands that we reconsider our own peoples, treatment of the spectacular
forests which occupy the narrow, coastal margins.
For a enlightening, introductory discussion of spruce forests on the
Oregon coast (mid several other enviromnental zones of this region), see
Stewart Schultz, s The Northwest Coast: A Natural History. (Timber Press:
Portland Or., 1990).
R
R ESTAURANT
Casuaûÿ Tdegant (Dining
Located in the
Cannon ‘Beach Motel
1116 5- Mendaci.
(503)436-0908
— at
CANNON
BEACH
‘Reservations Suggested
L ig h t Lunch 1 2 :0 0 -4 :0 0
‘J lomemade soups, chowders, bread
a n d delightful desserts
Dinner Served 4:00 -10:00
A w a rd winning chowders, unique salads
pasta, seafood, stea ls a n d chiclen
Recommended by:
Morthwest Best Biaces
(Mouth o f the Columbia
Mattonai geographic Traveller
rain.
Spruce trees can live for well over a thousand years. It is not
uncommon to find trees, still living, that stood kill when Columbus Has
learning to take his first, toddling steps. Ancient spruces still stand
in local State Parks, like Ecola and Oswald West: huge living things,
persisting witnesses to entire centuries when these beaches buzzed with
Native American life. To these north coils , peoples, giant Sitka spruces
served as a pillar, connecting the Earth to the heavens, serving as a
conduit between these two realms. As such, giant spruces were landmarks
of intermediate cosmological ¡lower. Filings too powerful to be kept in
the mundane world were placed in lateral spruce branches. Shamans
perched their ceremonial regalia in high branches for off-season
storage, les, they become tainted by the workaday world. (Rumor is,
shamans would hold meetings, sitting in the lower branches of gnarled
spruce trees, such as the "Octopus Tree" of Cape Mearcs, and lookout
platforms were built amidst pruned tree top limbs ) I luman burials,
enclosed in split cedar coffins, were sometimes placed in heavy,
horizontal spruce tree branches (a practice which continued until quite
recently in some remote parts of the British Columbia coast).
Tall, straight trees held particular power for children: afterbirth
would be placed at the tree.s base to ensure an infant,s health and
growth. Later, when the child grew out of its cradle, the cradle, too,
would be placed at the tree.s base to help the child grow upright.
Later still, "baby teeth" would be placed there, so that new teeth would
come in straight. Also, spruce boughs were used as charms, carried by
hunters, fishers, or whalers. Bristling with sharp needles, boughs gave
protection from evil - prior to ceremonies, brooms of spruce boughs
would be used to sweep ou, the longhouse, ridding it of bad power.
During important ceremonies, people who dozed or misbehaved were whacked
unceremoniously with spruce boughs.
But there were more mundane uses of spruce, too. Thin rootlets would be
steamed, split, and woven into a number of things: water-tight cooking
baskets, gathering baskets, food storage baskets, woven mats, or
conical, waterproof basket hats. Spruce thongs shored up joints between
cedar pieces in the sides of houses, canoes, and boxes. Branch wood was
fashioned into digging sticks for roots and clams, roasting sticks,
harpoon shafts, and a host of other tools. Spruce pitch, heated and
strained of its impurities through colander baskets, served as a chewing
gum and a salve for skin irritations and other ailments. Mixed with
other ingredients, spruce pitch was also used on torches, as a glue, or
as a waterproof coating for canoes or hunting and fishing tools. One
could eat its inner, cambium bark, which has mild laxative properties.
One could chew its light green new needle growth (used by some today as
a hops substitute in the brewing of beer), acrid and citrus like, an
excellent source of vitamin C. There was not much one couldn.t do with
spruce.
The peoples of Europe have regarded spruces somewhat differently. A
nuisance to early settlers, spruce trees were toppled anti burned, making
room for grazing land and low-yield "stump farms." Later, technological
advances would speed up the process, and dynamite blasts shot stumps
sky-high. Commercial spruce logging took off, too, during the First of
our World Wars, when spruce wood, lightweight and strong, caught the
attention of aiqilane manufacturers "Spruce camps" sprang up along the
coast, to support the airborne war effort, marking the first moments of
intensive logging, roadbuilding, and construction along much of the open
ocean coast. Cannon Beach included. Ironically, Oregon coast spruce
littered the fields of Europe, and word is, when the armistice was
signed, toppled, ancient. Cannon Beach spruces were left on the ground
to rot.
Commercial coastal logging brximcd al ter the Second World War, and has
proceeded with few interruptions ever since. Spruce trees have been
cleared at an unprecedented rate, a cataclysmic sweeping away of the old
forest - most of our ancient trees have been fashioned into toilet
tissue and dimensional lumber, newsprint and cardboard boxes, to feed a
global consumcrist frenzy. Gone are the pillars to heaven: in the
contemporary cosmology of capital mid consumption, the spruce stands for
little more than wood fiber. Pre-European spruce forests no longer
C a su a l D in in g
O v e r lo o k in g th e P iestu cca R iv e r
Spirits •
dot Sandwiches
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(5 0 3 ) 9 6 5 -6 7 2 2
PACIFIC CITY, OREGON
Cannon Beach
In Coaster Theater Courtyard
Established 1977
Featuring Northwest, California
& Imported Wines
Collector Wines From 1875
Through Current Vintages
Featuring Over 1000 Wines
Wine Racks, Glasses &
Wine Related Items
W ine Tasting
Every Saturday Afternoon
1-5 PM
Different Wines
From Around The World
Each Week
Open 11 AM 5 PM - Closed T im .
436*1100
124 N Hemlock
P O . Box 652. Cannon Bench O R 97110
BEE-BEE
By Maya
Bee-Bee I don’t kno
What to make o f you!
Bee-Bee flying over
The sea
Maya D œ lcy 8 years old. Arch Cape
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