Ode to Robinson Jeffers
New friends invited us to their vacation home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Hearing the name stirred a vague familiarity, yet I couldn't place this lake geographically. For those similarly challenged, Lake Havasu is a large reservoir perched behind Parker Dam on the Colorado River, straddling the border between California and Arizona. Its primary purpose? An idealistic storehouse for water funneled into two aqueducts.
Envision a monumental stone. This region of the United States resembles such a rock, vast and enduring, painstakingly sculpted into a city. It's hard not to think of the colossal effort - dynamite, grit, sweat - necessary to flatten the area, to make space for homes, strip malls, motels, hotels, and liquor stores, all catering to a burgeoning population.
As the years trickled by, the lake's popularity swelled. The economy, once a trickle, is now a flood, buoyed by semi-clad revelers indulging in fast boating and voluminous beer consumption. The result? Inevitable casualties of exuberance, the lake's edge is often a gruesome find of life lost to unfettered revelry, a bloated and decomposing body.
The journey from San Diego was a sweltering 325-mile trek. The warnings of well-meaning friends echoed in our ears, "Be careful." The simple act of walking from the car to the grocery store was a baptism of fire. A sweltering 120 degrees at noon—a perfect environment for everything but humans.
Under the midnight sky by the pool, the mercury finally dipped to a still-torrid 95 degrees. The beers flowed like an oasis; the pressing heat turned our bodies into parched deserts, thirsty for hydration.
Nighttimes by the pool, especially while vacationing, invite a celestial perspective. The stars, the beers, and the detachment from quotidian stressors set the spirit free. Yet, in such moments, under the cosmic canvas, we're reminded of our insignificance, of our life's pettiness despite our professional or academic triumphs. And yet, some minds meander to another question: Why would anyone choose to live in Lake Havasu?
In the heated air, while nursing my Corona sans lime, my thoughts wandered to Robinson Jeffers, the famed Carmel Point poet. His poem, "To the Stone-Cutters," echoed in my mind:
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
These stone-cutters Jeffers speaks of—they are much like us. We all strive to make our mark on this vast, indifferent earth, knowing it's all ephemeral. Yet, we persist, creating monuments and lives, mockingly defying the passage of time we're subject to. In the ceaseless fight against oblivion, I see a reflection of the relentless, ambitious human spirit that drove Lake Havasu's transformation.
Once, a lot by this lake cost merely $5000; today, homes sell for $700,000. Economics 101 suggests demand drives price, but what fuels the demand here? Amidst the blistering heat, flora, and fauna better suited for a prehistoric era and the omnipresent threat of melanoma, who chooses this as a sanctuary?
As I looked at the vast universe, the question weighed heavily: why did the stone cutters—our metaphorical ancestors—venture here? Who would move here? Gazing at a meteorite's ephemeral flare, I was left with a straightforward resolution:
"Not this stone-cutter."