Hobble Creek Review
| Jamie Iredell |
Monterey: an Essay
The Pebble Beach Company’s website tells me “It is estimated that
nearly 8,000,000 vehicles have visited Pebble Beach Resorts since
1990 to enjoy the sights, sounds and events.”
*
As we know, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra founded La Misión
de San Diego de Alcalá, which became the City of San Diego; and La
Misión de San Carlos de Borromeo (originally near El lago el estero),
which became Monterey, California; and La Misión de San Francisco
de Asís—the City of San Francisco. He was integral in the founding
of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula,
or, the City of Los Angeles. La Misión de San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
became the City of San Luis Obispo. La Misión de Santa Clara,
which became the City of Santa Clara, was also founded by the
venerable Father, and lies in today’s Silicon Valley, where all the
implements are created that have brought us closer to thinking of
ourselves as gods.
*
I attended Catechism at Our Lady of Refuge, in Castroville,
California, my home parish, part of the Diocese of Monterey, founded
by Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra in 1770. There we colored in
Catholic coloring books, and constructed construction paper cards for
our parents: construction paper Mary and Joseph, construction paper
appearance of a construction paper Archangel Gabriel before
construction paper Mary upon the construction paper Annunciation
and the construction paper nativity. We drew symbols of the Holy
Trinity—dove, crucifix, P exed with an X, a Celtic knot—and
celebrated the sanctity of mother and fatherhood, of family. This
construction prepared me for my second of the Seven Sacraments:
Holy Communion.
*
I saw Pope John Paul II in the 1980s when he visited Monterey as
part of the beatifying of Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra. My
mother and I bundled into Fort Ord at three in the morning. Folks
and soldiers had those neon glow sticks that ravers used when they
were high at their parties. I suppose one can now find them
anywhere, at any public event that takes place at night, that they
are not so novel as they were in the 1980s. I mean this was 1984 or
85. I skipped school. The Pope came to Laguna Seca—yes, where they
hold the car and motorcycle races—and there, from a hillside covered
in California brome, we watched the grand papa cart by along the
racetrack at a modestly-Catholic seven miles per hour in his
bulletproof glass Popemobile. Afterwards the Pope celebrated High
Mass at a makeshift altar. I fell asleep.
*
Around the fifth or sixth grade we learned about the California
missions and built models as a homework assignment. I read that the
Indians and Spaniards made adobe bricks to build their missions, so
I made miniature adobes. I built cardboard forms and lined
shoeboxes with them. From my backyard I unearthed earth, and from
the weed-whacked California brome and water I mixed my adobe
mix. Into the shoeboxes mix went, to dry in the sun. Sunlight was
rare, since I lived on the coast near Monterey, where fog prevails. A
hairdryer came in handy, a device of which Spaniards and Indians
alike were devoid. Once dried I stacked my tiny bricks and formed up
walls then tiled a roof. I whitewashed said walls with a watercolor
paintbrush and plaster of paris. My mission. I had no Indians
because by the time I was born almost all of the Indians were dead.
*
After serving as Presidente of the Baja California missions for a
year, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and Visitador-General José
de Gálvez planned to found three missions in Alta California: the
first in the port of San Diego, the second at the port of Monterey, and
a third, San Buenaventura, between these two, as they were
separated by a distance of over 400 miles.
*
Charles III of Spain ordered José de Gálvez, prior to engaging the
Franciscans in the colonization of Alta California: “Occupy and
fortify San Diego and Monterey for God and the King of Spain.”
*
Prior to the naval expedition of Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
to Monterey, Father Fray Juan Crespí and Gaspar de Portolá,
Governor of Alta California, set out overland in search of the port
made famous by Juan Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602. The friar,
governor, and soldiers traveled for six months, clambering through
the manzanita, scaling the cliffs and mountains of Big Sur, winding
through the redwood giants in the valleys, getting lost in the fog.
Crespí planted a cross at the mouth of the Carmel River, and another
on the Monterey Peninsula, both visible from the sea, but they did
not recognize the bay as that which Vizcaíno described and named
for the Conde de Monterrey. Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
chalked this up to divine providence, for instead the expedition had
discovered what they named the great port of San Francisco de Asís,
forty leagues north of where the charts reported Monterey should be
found. Portolá, Crespí, and their party returned to San Diego,
inscribing on the cross left at Monterey, The overland expedition
from San Diego returned from this place, starving. Blessed Father
Fray Junípero Serra’s disappointment could not be contained, for he
said to Portolá, “You come from Rome, but you did not see the Pope.”
During that conversation, Portolá reeked of the mules he and his
men had barbecued daily for food while retracing 480 miles to San
Diego.
*
Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra covered the above distance by
sea aboard the San Antonio in a one-month voyage. He and the
soldiers ate beans, rice, a little chocolate. When Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra arrived at the place where the charts indicated
Monterey should have been, where Father Fray Juan Crespí had
planted his cross and celebrated mass, the Blessed Father found the
cross still standing, littered on and about it by arrows thrust into the
ground and feathers. A necklace of still-fresh sardines hung from a
nearby branch, and mussels piled at the cross base—offerings from
natives, for they witnessed the veneration that the father and
soldiers bestowed on the symbol and recognized it as a talisman for a
god. Later, after the Indians learned enough Spanish at the missions,
they told the fathers that at night the cross glowed and seemed to
grow in size and ascend into the sky. The Indians wanted to make
peace offerings to the cross. This is the word of the fathers.
*
Sebastián Vizcaíno must have exaggerated the greatness of Monterey
Bay in his reports from 1602, for Father Fray Juan Crespí and
Governor Portolá did not recognize it upon traveling there in 1769.
Vizcaíno detailed a port sheltered from all winds. Who knows what
Portolá and Crespí expected, for Monterey Bay is large: 350 square
statute miles. But it is not as protected as San Francisco and San
Pablo bays. The Marin Headlands and the San Francisco peninsula
make for a narrow one mile channel for access to the Pacific,
whereas the mouth of Monterey Bay yawns a good twenty-five miles
across, and Monterey Canyon, dropping to over two miles below the
surface, generates strong currents. Nevertheless, Blessed Father
Fray Junípero Serra recognized the bay as that which Vizcaíno
discovered, and there, beneath a towering oak the Father and
soldiers celebrated mass.
*
L. Trousset’s 1870 painting, “Father Serra’s Landing Place, or
Celebration of the First Mass,” depicts the coast oak at Monterey.
The Spanish flag drapes at the painting’s center, held aloft by a
kneeling soldier. Also raised are Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’
s arms, Eucharist to the sun, like the father’s eyes, as he sings,
“Take this bread and eat it, for this is my body.” Fathers Fray Juan
Crespí and Buenaventura Sitjar kneel opposite sides of the altar,
sheltered by the ship’s sail that dangles from the oak’s branches. The
leatherjackets square the scene, gun barrels resting like palisades.
In the distant bay the San Antonio floats, backgrounded by the sand
dunes of Seaside, and the rolling golden foothills of Mount Toro. And
from that barge a cannon will fire in response to the ringing bell,
and to the muskets’ repeat. And what must the Indian, a Rumsen, be
thinking, at the painting’s lower left corner, as he peers into the
scene from the seclusion of a boulder? What fears or hopes, or
curiosity must gird him? Does he know what lay in wait, the syphilis
and measles, the death of his culture?
*
Saint Charles, or San Carlos Borromeo, namesake of Monterey’s
presidio and mission, was a Medici. His uncle: Pope Pius IV. He
worked through a strain of plague in Milan in the late 16th century,
blessing the sick, dying, and dead. He helped found the Golden
League in Switzerland, an Inquisition-like institution that worked
against the Reformation, and burned “heretics” at the stake. San
Carlos Borromeo is known for his humility and wisdom, and is
venerated even in England, a country that, during Carlos’s own
lifetime, actively became anti-Catholic. Pius IV forced him to live
lavishly, to demonstrate the Church’s power.
*
After celebrating High Mass in the foundation ceremony of Mission
San Carlos de Borromeo de Monterey, Blessed Father Fray Junípero
Serra explored the surrounding countryside. He found over the hill of
the peninsula the river that Sebastián Viscaíno’s Carmelite friars
had named for their order, El Rio Carmelo, and where it trickles into
the Pacific. There on the flat and fertile flood plain spread with
chaparral, the Padre Presidente planned to eventually move his
mission. Pines and oaks fell for the chapel. Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra explored Carmel Valley, through which the river
twists up into the Santa Lucia Mountains. He traveled south to the
Valley de Los Robles, where he discovered another river flowing
north, strong in July. The Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
named this inland river San Antonio.
*
Before that, though, at Mission San Carlos I found the bench
recessed among the roses and that was where we kissed, her lips
balmed, the balm smelling of cherries. This made her lips oily, a
feeling I still don’t like. Last night I kissed my wife and she’d
Blistex’d her chapped lips and that greasiness covered mine. But
every time I feel that I think of Nika in the roses, and I am warm
inside.
*
What a difference between San Diego and Monterey, the former
choked by chaparral of manzanita and yucca, the torrey pines
gathered in wind-gusted groves, constant sun beating its golden club
upon Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’s tonsured head. Then he
came to Monterey, swaddled in fog, the cypress and pines dripping,
clinging to the cold dew-kissed rocks, cliffs tumbling to a roiling sea.
How could the padre have even thought of the two as inhabiting the
same country, a country he called California?
*
With the exception of European-descended humans, Iceplant
Carpobrotus edulis and chilensis is perhaps the most noticeable
invasive species on the Monterey Peninsula, crawling across dunes
and rocks and the open plains along the coast, turning alternately
red and deep green, its blossoms bright yellow or purple. This plant
takes a voracious hold on the soil. My father would rip it out of our
front yard and wheelbarrow the remains to a compost pile far back in
the greenbelt behind our house. Any segmented iceplant shoot can
form roots and today that compost heap is a tangled mass of living
iceplant.
*
In 1960 Sister Mary Boniface Dyrda prayed for the intercession of
Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra while on her deathbed at DePaul
Hospital in St. Louis. The nun had been diagnosed with lupus after
her body one day went numb. Doctors thus removed her spleen and
the Franciscan Sister’s weight dropped to eighty-six pounds. She
prayed to the Apostle of California, believing it the presidente’s time
to demonstrate his place next to God in Heaven. A couple weeks later
Sister Mary returned to her convent, cured. Hers would be the first
of the required two miracles for the Blessed Father’s canonization.
Pope John Paul II beatified Father Serra on September 17, 1987 at
Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, where a makeshift altar had
been erected. From the brome covered hillside where the native
Rumsen might have once roamed before the syphilis and measles
that killed most of them—brought by Blessed Father Fray Junípero
Serra, and his fellow Spaniards—I watched the Pope and this mass
for a while, then I fell asleep next to my mother.
*
The Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders are performed by
Bishops and include the laying on of hands. Confirmations take place
when the confirmand has reached the age of reason. I was confirmed
at fifteen years old in the Monterey Diocese in 1993 by Bishop
Sylvester Ryan at Our Lady of Refuge, where the bishop laid his
hands on me, bestowing my apostolic name of Matthew.
*
Mom took me and my brother and sister to Lake El Estero and to
Dennis the Menace Park, usually as a reward after a doctor or
dentist appointment. She also treated us to McDonald’s. In a 1791
drawing by José Cardero, the presidio and chapel of Monterey lie a
hundred yards from the shores of Lake El Estero. Estero means
“estuary,” oh metaphor-starved Spanish.
*
The summary of chapter five John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat: “How St.
Francis turned the tide and put a gentle punishment on Pilon and
Pablo and Jesus Maria.” These three paisanos get drunk and leave a
candle blessed for Saint Francis burning on the table. In the night,
the candle’s flame lights a calendar, then a loose piece of wallpaper,
then a pile of newspapers, then the entire house becomes a candle for
Saint Francis. Chapter seven: “How Danny’s friends assisted the
Pirate to keep a vow, and how as a reward for merit the Pirate’s dogs
saw an holy vision.” Pirate, an insane old hermit, vows to buy a gold
candle for Saint Francis for the saint’s intercession in the life of one
of Pirate’s many dogs. Danny, Pilon, Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, and
Jesus Maria bring Pirate’s vow to fruition at the Royal Presidio
Chapel, where a candle burns before the image of Saint Francis, and
Father Ramon tells of the saint’s love of animals, and that it is no
sin to love the beasts. After church, Pirate preaches to his dogs in a
bower of Monterey’s pine forest. These dogs Pirate believes to have
seen a vision, and he calls them good and lucky Catholic dogs. The
recovered dog for which Pirate prayed gets run over by a truck.
*
Today, Tortilla Flat in Monterey is bisected by the modern Presidio.
*
In preparation for the Sacred Expedition, lamenting that there were
then no plans for a mission in honor of Saint Francis, Visitador
General José de Gálvez said, “Should God show us his port, let there
be established the mission of San Francisco.” In 1769, on their
overland expedition from San Diego in search of Monterey Bay, Don
Gaspar de Portolá and Father Fray Juan Crespí unknowingly passed
over Monterey Bay and from a mountaintop spied what they thought
to be a great mediterraneo, or inland sea, which they named in honor
of San Francisco.
*
At Monterey the cattle roamed freely in plains beyond the dunes.
The Spaniards slaughtered the beasts in the open the air, at shore,
where today the Customs House leads tourists out to Fisherman’s
Wharf. The offal rotted on the rocks and attracted flies and grizzly
bears, the bears loping in from the Salinas and Carmel Valleys. They
carried off calves when the soldados de cuera could not plunk them
off with their muskets. Bloody paw prints on the sea sage, and drips
dropped into the loamy sand.
*
Throughout European history in California, Spaniards sailed up the
Santa Barbara Channel, and Tongva and Chumash Indians rowed out
to the large ships in their plank canoes, encouraging the men to
come ashore, where there was fresh food and water, for the natives
wanted the glass beads they knew the white men carried. Fearing
attack, cannibalism, or loss of a rare good northerly wind, the ships
continued on past Point Concepcion, to Monterey, where many men
were lost to scurvy. Had the Spaniards landed and traded with the
natives for fresh fruits and vegetables, many men might have been
saved, and California Native Americans’ sad history rewritten.
*
When Vizcaíno landed at Monterey Bay, of the men not already dead,
forty were too ill to continue, including the pilot, two helmsmen, the
cosmographer and scrivener. The local Rumsen told the Europeans of
the acorns that were the staple of their diet. There can be up to sixty
milligrams of Vitamin C in one hundred grams of acorn. But the
Spanish would not eat this heathenish food that would have saved
their lives.
*
Vizcaíno described Monterey Bay as exactly what his Majesty and
his Royal Navy searched for: a perfect harbor for sheltering the
Manila Galleons on their long return to Nueva España from the
Philippines. Vizcaíno exaggerated the harbor’s shelter in his reports,
for it lies open to severe northerly driven weather. Because of this
hyperbole, Portolá would miss Monterey on his overland voyage
north.
*
Upon exploring the interior at Monterey Bay, Vizcaíno and his men
found and named in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the river
and valley that today bear that name. In the river the men
discovered Elk with horns, he wrote, more than three yards high.
Today, no Elk lap the waters at Carmel River. Wineries, golf courses,
luxury sedans, and sports cars wind through the valley instead. And
at the valley’s mouth sits Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio
Carmelo, under which lie the remains of Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra.
*
In high school I took girls to Mission San Carlos. The courtyard
draped with bougainvillea and African daisies, the fountains
gurgling in tune with the swallows’ songs. I knew a stone bench
recessed in a bower of roses. There’s nothing like Christ for drawing
out a girl’s urges. And we’ll get to that, eventually.
*
A writer of young adult and romance novels named Meg Cabot wrote
a series called Mediator. In these novels the heroine attends a school
called The Mission, which is based on the Catholic School of Mission
San Carlos in Carmel.
*
Nika and I went to Winter Ball where she wore an almost see-
through dress. Before stepping into the Doubletree in Monterey, she
scooted across the truck’s seat to me, and our mouths met. Her dress
slipped from her shoulder, her breast into my hand. Her skin was
coffee with too much milk. We made it to the dance eventually,
pulling ourselves together, but afterwards we drove out on Del
Monte Road, to where it goes straight in an open plain under the
stars, where there’s nothing but grass and cows and the distant crash
of waves.
*
French explorer Jean Francois de la Pérouse visited Monterey and
Mission San Carlos in 1786 and wrote that the Rumsen and Esselen
population at the mission “are in general diminutive and weak, and
exhibit none of that love of independence and liberty which
characterizes the nations of the north.” Pérouse says the Indians are
defeatist in their outward appearance, depressed. The native
Californians display characteristics common of the despair found
among the members of a culture that was dismantled, its practices
prohibited. Franciscans shut neophytes away from unbaptized family
members. Missionized Indians largely died from disease while the
healthy were subjected to forced labor.
*
As a Boy Scout I learned wilderness survival at Camp Pico Blanco, in
the mountains of Big Sur, where two hundred years ago the Esselen
lived and were missioned by Father Fray Fermin Lassuen, successor
to Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra as presidente of the missions
of Alta California. The Esselen would barely survive missionization.
There are fewer than a thousand alive today, and none of them lays
claim to their original territory in the Santa Lucia Mountains. At
Camp Pico Blanco I learned to use a green branch of pine to clean
the teeth and mouth, and for vitamin C, for the pine sap contains
this, along with acids that naturally refresh the mouth. I learned to
build a shelter against a fallen log, to cover the shelter with green
boughs thick enough to repel rain. The camp leaders came in the
night and tested the sturdiness of our shelter by hopping atop and
pouring a canteen upon it, to test its weatherproofness. This is what
happens in the land of the Esselen today.
*
The last packet boat full of supplies to arrive in Monterey from
Mexico during Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’s life brought
news that no more supplies nor soldiers could be spared for the
planned missions of the Santa Barbara Channel, as the presidente
had so desired. He wrote to the Fathers at missions San Francisco,
San Antonio, and San Luis Obispo—those nearest him, both
physically and emotionally—requesting they come to Monterey to
receive their share of the ship’s cargo, and so that their venerable
prelate might give his final goodbye.
*
When Father Fray Francisco Palou arrived in Monterey, he found his
old master indeed weakened. But he was up and singing the
Alabanza and the mass, reciting matins, and devoting the Stations of
the Cross.
*
Infinite City, a San Francisco Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit, talks about
the city’s majestic Monterey Pines and Cypresses as endemic to the
region. But they are, in fact, introduced. Cupressus macrocarpa, or
the Monterey Cypress, and Pinus radiata the Monterey Pine, are
endemic only to the central coast, the former, only on the Monterey
Peninsula. But these trees have been farmed out all over the world, a
symbol of stalwartness.
*
The most photographed spot on the Monterey Peninsula must be of
the Lone Cypress off Seventeen Mile Drive in Pebble Beach, a
private drive that tourists can hand over nine dollars to cavort their
vehicle down the bucolic lane to view the multi-million-dollar homes
and this tree. The tree juts out of a rocky headland where the cliffs
plunge to the white-watered waves. It is “the eternal symbol of
Pebble Beach Company," which you can view in person: $9.25
The Pebble Beach Company’s website tells me “It is estimated that
nearly 8,000,000 vehicles have visited Pebble Beach Resorts since
1990 to enjoy the sights, sounds and events.”
*
As we know, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra founded La Misión
de San Diego de Alcalá, which became the City of San Diego; and La
Misión de San Carlos de Borromeo (originally near El lago el estero),
which became Monterey, California; and La Misión de San Francisco
de Asís—the City of San Francisco. He was integral in the founding
of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula,
or, the City of Los Angeles. La Misión de San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
became the City of San Luis Obispo. La Misión de Santa Clara,
which became the City of Santa Clara, was also founded by the
venerable Father, and lies in today’s Silicon Valley, where all the
implements are created that have brought us closer to thinking of
ourselves as gods.
*
I attended Catechism at Our Lady of Refuge, in Castroville,
California, my home parish, part of the Diocese of Monterey, founded
by Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra in 1770. There we colored in
Catholic coloring books, and constructed construction paper cards for
our parents: construction paper Mary and Joseph, construction paper
appearance of a construction paper Archangel Gabriel before
construction paper Mary upon the construction paper Annunciation
and the construction paper nativity. We drew symbols of the Holy
Trinity—dove, crucifix, P exed with an X, a Celtic knot—and
celebrated the sanctity of mother and fatherhood, of family. This
construction prepared me for my second of the Seven Sacraments:
Holy Communion.
*
I saw Pope John Paul II in the 1980s when he visited Monterey as
part of the beatifying of Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra. My
mother and I bundled into Fort Ord at three in the morning. Folks
and soldiers had those neon glow sticks that ravers used when they
were high at their parties. I suppose one can now find them
anywhere, at any public event that takes place at night, that they
are not so novel as they were in the 1980s. I mean this was 1984 or
85. I skipped school. The Pope came to Laguna Seca—yes, where they
hold the car and motorcycle races—and there, from a hillside covered
in California brome, we watched the grand papa cart by along the
racetrack at a modestly-Catholic seven miles per hour in his
bulletproof glass Popemobile. Afterwards the Pope celebrated High
Mass at a makeshift altar. I fell asleep.
*
Around the fifth or sixth grade we learned about the California
missions and built models as a homework assignment. I read that the
Indians and Spaniards made adobe bricks to build their missions, so
I made miniature adobes. I built cardboard forms and lined
shoeboxes with them. From my backyard I unearthed earth, and from
the weed-whacked California brome and water I mixed my adobe
mix. Into the shoeboxes mix went, to dry in the sun. Sunlight was
rare, since I lived on the coast near Monterey, where fog prevails. A
hairdryer came in handy, a device of which Spaniards and Indians
alike were devoid. Once dried I stacked my tiny bricks and formed up
walls then tiled a roof. I whitewashed said walls with a watercolor
paintbrush and plaster of paris. My mission. I had no Indians
because by the time I was born almost all of the Indians were dead.
*
After serving as Presidente of the Baja California missions for a
year, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and Visitador-General José
de Gálvez planned to found three missions in Alta California: the
first in the port of San Diego, the second at the port of Monterey, and
a third, San Buenaventura, between these two, as they were
separated by a distance of over 400 miles.
*
Charles III of Spain ordered José de Gálvez, prior to engaging the
Franciscans in the colonization of Alta California: “Occupy and
fortify San Diego and Monterey for God and the King of Spain.”
*
Prior to the naval expedition of Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
to Monterey, Father Fray Juan Crespí and Gaspar de Portolá,
Governor of Alta California, set out overland in search of the port
made famous by Juan Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602. The friar,
governor, and soldiers traveled for six months, clambering through
the manzanita, scaling the cliffs and mountains of Big Sur, winding
through the redwood giants in the valleys, getting lost in the fog.
Crespí planted a cross at the mouth of the Carmel River, and another
on the Monterey Peninsula, both visible from the sea, but they did
not recognize the bay as that which Vizcaíno described and named
for the Conde de Monterrey. Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
chalked this up to divine providence, for instead the expedition had
discovered what they named the great port of San Francisco de Asís,
forty leagues north of where the charts reported Monterey should be
found. Portolá, Crespí, and their party returned to San Diego,
inscribing on the cross left at Monterey, The overland expedition
from San Diego returned from this place, starving. Blessed Father
Fray Junípero Serra’s disappointment could not be contained, for he
said to Portolá, “You come from Rome, but you did not see the Pope.”
During that conversation, Portolá reeked of the mules he and his
men had barbecued daily for food while retracing 480 miles to San
Diego.
*
Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra covered the above distance by
sea aboard the San Antonio in a one-month voyage. He and the
soldiers ate beans, rice, a little chocolate. When Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra arrived at the place where the charts indicated
Monterey should have been, where Father Fray Juan Crespí had
planted his cross and celebrated mass, the Blessed Father found the
cross still standing, littered on and about it by arrows thrust into the
ground and feathers. A necklace of still-fresh sardines hung from a
nearby branch, and mussels piled at the cross base—offerings from
natives, for they witnessed the veneration that the father and
soldiers bestowed on the symbol and recognized it as a talisman for a
god. Later, after the Indians learned enough Spanish at the missions,
they told the fathers that at night the cross glowed and seemed to
grow in size and ascend into the sky. The Indians wanted to make
peace offerings to the cross. This is the word of the fathers.
*
Sebastián Vizcaíno must have exaggerated the greatness of Monterey
Bay in his reports from 1602, for Father Fray Juan Crespí and
Governor Portolá did not recognize it upon traveling there in 1769.
Vizcaíno detailed a port sheltered from all winds. Who knows what
Portolá and Crespí expected, for Monterey Bay is large: 350 square
statute miles. But it is not as protected as San Francisco and San
Pablo bays. The Marin Headlands and the San Francisco peninsula
make for a narrow one mile channel for access to the Pacific,
whereas the mouth of Monterey Bay yawns a good twenty-five miles
across, and Monterey Canyon, dropping to over two miles below the
surface, generates strong currents. Nevertheless, Blessed Father
Fray Junípero Serra recognized the bay as that which Vizcaíno
discovered, and there, beneath a towering oak the Father and
soldiers celebrated mass.
*
L. Trousset’s 1870 painting, “Father Serra’s Landing Place, or
Celebration of the First Mass,” depicts the coast oak at Monterey.
The Spanish flag drapes at the painting’s center, held aloft by a
kneeling soldier. Also raised are Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’
s arms, Eucharist to the sun, like the father’s eyes, as he sings,
“Take this bread and eat it, for this is my body.” Fathers Fray Juan
Crespí and Buenaventura Sitjar kneel opposite sides of the altar,
sheltered by the ship’s sail that dangles from the oak’s branches. The
leatherjackets square the scene, gun barrels resting like palisades.
In the distant bay the San Antonio floats, backgrounded by the sand
dunes of Seaside, and the rolling golden foothills of Mount Toro. And
from that barge a cannon will fire in response to the ringing bell,
and to the muskets’ repeat. And what must the Indian, a Rumsen, be
thinking, at the painting’s lower left corner, as he peers into the
scene from the seclusion of a boulder? What fears or hopes, or
curiosity must gird him? Does he know what lay in wait, the syphilis
and measles, the death of his culture?
*
Saint Charles, or San Carlos Borromeo, namesake of Monterey’s
presidio and mission, was a Medici. His uncle: Pope Pius IV. He
worked through a strain of plague in Milan in the late 16th century,
blessing the sick, dying, and dead. He helped found the Golden
League in Switzerland, an Inquisition-like institution that worked
against the Reformation, and burned “heretics” at the stake. San
Carlos Borromeo is known for his humility and wisdom, and is
venerated even in England, a country that, during Carlos’s own
lifetime, actively became anti-Catholic. Pius IV forced him to live
lavishly, to demonstrate the Church’s power.
*
After celebrating High Mass in the foundation ceremony of Mission
San Carlos de Borromeo de Monterey, Blessed Father Fray Junípero
Serra explored the surrounding countryside. He found over the hill of
the peninsula the river that Sebastián Viscaíno’s Carmelite friars
had named for their order, El Rio Carmelo, and where it trickles into
the Pacific. There on the flat and fertile flood plain spread with
chaparral, the Padre Presidente planned to eventually move his
mission. Pines and oaks fell for the chapel. Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra explored Carmel Valley, through which the river
twists up into the Santa Lucia Mountains. He traveled south to the
Valley de Los Robles, where he discovered another river flowing
north, strong in July. The Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra
named this inland river San Antonio.
*
Before that, though, at Mission San Carlos I found the bench
recessed among the roses and that was where we kissed, her lips
balmed, the balm smelling of cherries. This made her lips oily, a
feeling I still don’t like. Last night I kissed my wife and she’d
Blistex’d her chapped lips and that greasiness covered mine. But
every time I feel that I think of Nika in the roses, and I am warm
inside.
*
What a difference between San Diego and Monterey, the former
choked by chaparral of manzanita and yucca, the torrey pines
gathered in wind-gusted groves, constant sun beating its golden club
upon Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’s tonsured head. Then he
came to Monterey, swaddled in fog, the cypress and pines dripping,
clinging to the cold dew-kissed rocks, cliffs tumbling to a roiling sea.
How could the padre have even thought of the two as inhabiting the
same country, a country he called California?
*
With the exception of European-descended humans, Iceplant
Carpobrotus edulis and chilensis is perhaps the most noticeable
invasive species on the Monterey Peninsula, crawling across dunes
and rocks and the open plains along the coast, turning alternately
red and deep green, its blossoms bright yellow or purple. This plant
takes a voracious hold on the soil. My father would rip it out of our
front yard and wheelbarrow the remains to a compost pile far back in
the greenbelt behind our house. Any segmented iceplant shoot can
form roots and today that compost heap is a tangled mass of living
iceplant.
*
In 1960 Sister Mary Boniface Dyrda prayed for the intercession of
Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra while on her deathbed at DePaul
Hospital in St. Louis. The nun had been diagnosed with lupus after
her body one day went numb. Doctors thus removed her spleen and
the Franciscan Sister’s weight dropped to eighty-six pounds. She
prayed to the Apostle of California, believing it the presidente’s time
to demonstrate his place next to God in Heaven. A couple weeks later
Sister Mary returned to her convent, cured. Hers would be the first
of the required two miracles for the Blessed Father’s canonization.
Pope John Paul II beatified Father Serra on September 17, 1987 at
Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, where a makeshift altar had
been erected. From the brome covered hillside where the native
Rumsen might have once roamed before the syphilis and measles
that killed most of them—brought by Blessed Father Fray Junípero
Serra, and his fellow Spaniards—I watched the Pope and this mass
for a while, then I fell asleep next to my mother.
*
The Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Orders are performed by
Bishops and include the laying on of hands. Confirmations take place
when the confirmand has reached the age of reason. I was confirmed
at fifteen years old in the Monterey Diocese in 1993 by Bishop
Sylvester Ryan at Our Lady of Refuge, where the bishop laid his
hands on me, bestowing my apostolic name of Matthew.
*
Mom took me and my brother and sister to Lake El Estero and to
Dennis the Menace Park, usually as a reward after a doctor or
dentist appointment. She also treated us to McDonald’s. In a 1791
drawing by José Cardero, the presidio and chapel of Monterey lie a
hundred yards from the shores of Lake El Estero. Estero means
“estuary,” oh metaphor-starved Spanish.
*
The summary of chapter five John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat: “How St.
Francis turned the tide and put a gentle punishment on Pilon and
Pablo and Jesus Maria.” These three paisanos get drunk and leave a
candle blessed for Saint Francis burning on the table. In the night,
the candle’s flame lights a calendar, then a loose piece of wallpaper,
then a pile of newspapers, then the entire house becomes a candle for
Saint Francis. Chapter seven: “How Danny’s friends assisted the
Pirate to keep a vow, and how as a reward for merit the Pirate’s dogs
saw an holy vision.” Pirate, an insane old hermit, vows to buy a gold
candle for Saint Francis for the saint’s intercession in the life of one
of Pirate’s many dogs. Danny, Pilon, Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, and
Jesus Maria bring Pirate’s vow to fruition at the Royal Presidio
Chapel, where a candle burns before the image of Saint Francis, and
Father Ramon tells of the saint’s love of animals, and that it is no
sin to love the beasts. After church, Pirate preaches to his dogs in a
bower of Monterey’s pine forest. These dogs Pirate believes to have
seen a vision, and he calls them good and lucky Catholic dogs. The
recovered dog for which Pirate prayed gets run over by a truck.
*
Today, Tortilla Flat in Monterey is bisected by the modern Presidio.
*
In preparation for the Sacred Expedition, lamenting that there were
then no plans for a mission in honor of Saint Francis, Visitador
General José de Gálvez said, “Should God show us his port, let there
be established the mission of San Francisco.” In 1769, on their
overland expedition from San Diego in search of Monterey Bay, Don
Gaspar de Portolá and Father Fray Juan Crespí unknowingly passed
over Monterey Bay and from a mountaintop spied what they thought
to be a great mediterraneo, or inland sea, which they named in honor
of San Francisco.
*
At Monterey the cattle roamed freely in plains beyond the dunes.
The Spaniards slaughtered the beasts in the open the air, at shore,
where today the Customs House leads tourists out to Fisherman’s
Wharf. The offal rotted on the rocks and attracted flies and grizzly
bears, the bears loping in from the Salinas and Carmel Valleys. They
carried off calves when the soldados de cuera could not plunk them
off with their muskets. Bloody paw prints on the sea sage, and drips
dropped into the loamy sand.
*
Throughout European history in California, Spaniards sailed up the
Santa Barbara Channel, and Tongva and Chumash Indians rowed out
to the large ships in their plank canoes, encouraging the men to
come ashore, where there was fresh food and water, for the natives
wanted the glass beads they knew the white men carried. Fearing
attack, cannibalism, or loss of a rare good northerly wind, the ships
continued on past Point Concepcion, to Monterey, where many men
were lost to scurvy. Had the Spaniards landed and traded with the
natives for fresh fruits and vegetables, many men might have been
saved, and California Native Americans’ sad history rewritten.
*
When Vizcaíno landed at Monterey Bay, of the men not already dead,
forty were too ill to continue, including the pilot, two helmsmen, the
cosmographer and scrivener. The local Rumsen told the Europeans of
the acorns that were the staple of their diet. There can be up to sixty
milligrams of Vitamin C in one hundred grams of acorn. But the
Spanish would not eat this heathenish food that would have saved
their lives.
*
Vizcaíno described Monterey Bay as exactly what his Majesty and
his Royal Navy searched for: a perfect harbor for sheltering the
Manila Galleons on their long return to Nueva España from the
Philippines. Vizcaíno exaggerated the harbor’s shelter in his reports,
for it lies open to severe northerly driven weather. Because of this
hyperbole, Portolá would miss Monterey on his overland voyage
north.
*
Upon exploring the interior at Monterey Bay, Vizcaíno and his men
found and named in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the river
and valley that today bear that name. In the river the men
discovered Elk with horns, he wrote, more than three yards high.
Today, no Elk lap the waters at Carmel River. Wineries, golf courses,
luxury sedans, and sports cars wind through the valley instead. And
at the valley’s mouth sits Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio
Carmelo, under which lie the remains of Blessed Father Fray
Junípero Serra.
*
In high school I took girls to Mission San Carlos. The courtyard
draped with bougainvillea and African daisies, the fountains
gurgling in tune with the swallows’ songs. I knew a stone bench
recessed in a bower of roses. There’s nothing like Christ for drawing
out a girl’s urges. And we’ll get to that, eventually.
*
A writer of young adult and romance novels named Meg Cabot wrote
a series called Mediator. In these novels the heroine attends a school
called The Mission, which is based on the Catholic School of Mission
San Carlos in Carmel.
*
Nika and I went to Winter Ball where she wore an almost see-
through dress. Before stepping into the Doubletree in Monterey, she
scooted across the truck’s seat to me, and our mouths met. Her dress
slipped from her shoulder, her breast into my hand. Her skin was
coffee with too much milk. We made it to the dance eventually,
pulling ourselves together, but afterwards we drove out on Del
Monte Road, to where it goes straight in an open plain under the
stars, where there’s nothing but grass and cows and the distant crash
of waves.
*
French explorer Jean Francois de la Pérouse visited Monterey and
Mission San Carlos in 1786 and wrote that the Rumsen and Esselen
population at the mission “are in general diminutive and weak, and
exhibit none of that love of independence and liberty which
characterizes the nations of the north.” Pérouse says the Indians are
defeatist in their outward appearance, depressed. The native
Californians display characteristics common of the despair found
among the members of a culture that was dismantled, its practices
prohibited. Franciscans shut neophytes away from unbaptized family
members. Missionized Indians largely died from disease while the
healthy were subjected to forced labor.
*
As a Boy Scout I learned wilderness survival at Camp Pico Blanco, in
the mountains of Big Sur, where two hundred years ago the Esselen
lived and were missioned by Father Fray Fermin Lassuen, successor
to Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra as presidente of the missions
of Alta California. The Esselen would barely survive missionization.
There are fewer than a thousand alive today, and none of them lays
claim to their original territory in the Santa Lucia Mountains. At
Camp Pico Blanco I learned to use a green branch of pine to clean
the teeth and mouth, and for vitamin C, for the pine sap contains
this, along with acids that naturally refresh the mouth. I learned to
build a shelter against a fallen log, to cover the shelter with green
boughs thick enough to repel rain. The camp leaders came in the
night and tested the sturdiness of our shelter by hopping atop and
pouring a canteen upon it, to test its weatherproofness. This is what
happens in the land of the Esselen today.
*
The last packet boat full of supplies to arrive in Monterey from
Mexico during Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra’s life brought
news that no more supplies nor soldiers could be spared for the
planned missions of the Santa Barbara Channel, as the presidente
had so desired. He wrote to the Fathers at missions San Francisco,
San Antonio, and San Luis Obispo—those nearest him, both
physically and emotionally—requesting they come to Monterey to
receive their share of the ship’s cargo, and so that their venerable
prelate might give his final goodbye.
*
When Father Fray Francisco Palou arrived in Monterey, he found his
old master indeed weakened. But he was up and singing the
Alabanza and the mass, reciting matins, and devoting the Stations of
the Cross.
*
Infinite City, a San Francisco Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit, talks about
the city’s majestic Monterey Pines and Cypresses as endemic to the
region. But they are, in fact, introduced. Cupressus macrocarpa, or
the Monterey Cypress, and Pinus radiata the Monterey Pine, are
endemic only to the central coast, the former, only on the Monterey
Peninsula. But these trees have been farmed out all over the world, a
symbol of stalwartness.
*
The most photographed spot on the Monterey Peninsula must be of
the Lone Cypress off Seventeen Mile Drive in Pebble Beach, a
private drive that tourists can hand over nine dollars to cavort their
vehicle down the bucolic lane to view the multi-million-dollar homes
and this tree. The tree juts out of a rocky headland where the cliffs
plunge to the white-watered waves. It is “the eternal symbol of
Pebble Beach Company," which you can view in person: $9.25
Jamie Iredell lives in Atlanta. He's written two books: Prose. Poems. a
Novel., and The Book of Freaks. His writing has appeared in literary
magazines such as Opium Magazine, Gigantic, The Chattahoochee
Review, Scythe, and the Literary Review, among others. Jamie designs
books for C&R Press. This piece is excerpted from a book of nonfiction
called "Last Mass."
Novel., and The Book of Freaks. His writing has appeared in literary
magazines such as Opium Magazine, Gigantic, The Chattahoochee
Review, Scythe, and the Literary Review, among others. Jamie designs
books for C&R Press. This piece is excerpted from a book of nonfiction
called "Last Mass."
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