In May, 2004, the
Eagle fire torched some 9,000 acres in Southwest Riverside County. Orange and
yellow flames whipped to frenzy by Santa Ana winds fireballed through Dorland Mountain Arts Colony near Temecula. The colony's nine
buildings -- cottages, studios, kitchen, music room, etc. -- burned so hot even
the windows melted. Rare books, paintings, records, administrative records, Mrs.
Ellen Dorland's concert Steinway, two other pianos, and everything else --
destroyed. Typewriters in the soot, twisted to a melted mess.
In the 1930s,
Ellen Dorland, an internationally renowned concert pianist, and her
mathematician/musician husband, Robert, homesteaded 300 acres southeast of
Temecula. With a getaway in mind, they built an adobe cabin where artist
friends visited and recharged. Ellen's friend, Sergi Rachmaninov, the Russian
pianist, often visited, playing piano for evening's entertainment. Ellen
sometimes performed intimate concerts there. Students drove all the way from
Pasadena for lessons.
Robert built a
pond to collect water from a natural spring, a magnet for birds and beasts. The
Dorlands liked their getaway so much, they eventually moved full-time onto the
property. Keep in mind Temecula was little more than a dusty cowtown at the
time, and the Dorland property was remote and wild.
In the late 1970s, after visiting artist retreats in the East, Ellen and her
environmentalist friend, Barbara Horton, decided to convert the Dorland property
to a retreat similar to those they saw. Over the years, they added six redwood
cottages designed to accommodate writers, musicians, painters, sculptors,
photographers. They added more buildings for caretakers, a shed for
maintenance, a large kitchen house where communal meals were prepared and
served.
Dorland's
reputation as a serene yet artistically charged place grew. More than 1,200
artists came over the years to find alone time, the serenity of nature, the
starry skies, the camaraderie of other artists, conducive to exploring their
art. The redwood cabins were rustic, spare, yet cozy. Without electricity,
resident artists wrote by the glow of kerosene lamps, heated their cabins with wood stoves, showered with water warmed by wood. No TV, no
easily accessible WiFi, there simply was no excuse not to work. Many great
noteworthy works have been produced here. Alice Sebold, author of "The
Lovely Bones," worked on her rape memoir "Lucky" in a Dorland
cabin.
But the fire.
The fire
incinerated all that.
Dorland Mountain
Arts Colony didn't give up. It's been a community effort to resurrect the
colony, the board of directors taking an active role to raise money to rebuild.
Slowly, funds permitting, the colony reincarnates. Some relocatable buildings
have been installed for staff. Two cabins, architecturally inspired by those
designed for Katrina victims, are up and running. The new cabins feature modern
conveniences the old cabins lacked. New cabins sport electric lights,
functioning kitchenettes, and best of all, air conditioning. The old cabins
baked in the summer heat. Now thermostats control the cool. Wood-burning
stoves, though, still heat the cabins, with Dorland providing the wood.
In dawn's pink
light, Janet Roberts, writer, hikes down the road to Highway 79 and back up the
incline to her cabin. It's a meditative outing, a way to germinate and solidify
ideas. After her walk, or before sleep, she engages in an hour of yoga. "I
need my yoga practice," she says. "It really helps to calm me and
keep me focused on the writing."
With classical
music drifting through the screen door, she sits on the front porch of her
writer's cabin, sips green tea from a yellow cup, and drinks in the expanse of
rolling, brush-covered hills that eventually lead to the city of Temecula about
eight miles away. Hummingbirds of iridescent green plumb nectar from nearby
yellow brittle brush. The sights and sound of Southern California are new and
exciting to her. Very different from her native Philadelphia. Plus she has
spent the last decade or so in international service, seven years of it in
China. The SoCal landscape offers new surprises with each turn in the trail.
While in China,
her parents died, and so did her cat. She returned stateside needing a place to
collect herself, sort through her grief, and immerse into the memoir and poetry
she had in mind to write. She'd been to writer's retreats before, but since she
would be in San Francisco, she wanted one on the West Coast. She longed for a
quiet cabin in the mountains, and discovered Dorland online. It sounded
perfect.
And Dorland has
been good for her. She wrote 50,000 words on her memoir and polished a poetry
collection she's tentatively titled "Reflections, Reflexions, and
Refractions." As a bonus she penned 70 haikus, connecting words to nature.
She took the words of Albert Einstein to heart: "Look deep into nature and
you will understand everything better."
She marvels at
the cottontail rabbits nibbling shoots trailside, the deer camouflaged amid the
chamise, the songbirds trilling from oak branches. Casting bird seed to the birds
is part of her morning ritual. Some oaks survived the fire, their serrated
leaves rattling in afternoon breezes. The sights and sounds of the land inspire
her work.
Roberts studied
literature and writing at the University of Wisconsin Madison and has the
equivalent of a master's from University of Oxford, England. She's taught
writing, both fiction and non-fiction most of her life. She's found a writing
rhythm here.
Up early,
frequent walks, sometimes three a day, yoga, reading, writing, quiet meals. She
doesn't have a car, but Dorland staff drives her to the Temecula Farmer's
Market on Saturdays for fresh produce and a bit of fish. She eats very little
meat. But like Virginia Woolf who she quotes: "Who can possibly write well
if you haven't dined well," she enjoys her meals. She makes good use of
the cabin's kitchen. But she's been at Dorland almost three months, some days
never talking to another human, and admits to feeling a bit isolated at times.
It's been good for her, sure, after all she wanted mountain-cabin solitude,
but: "Be careful what you ask for," she says with a chuckle.
Pre-fire Dorland
featured a common room big enough to accommodate gatherings. Evenings, with the
work done, artists often relaxed after dinner with glasses of wine or gin and
tonics to talk about their work, about their lives, about how damn hot it was
that day.
Amie Charney,
Dorland board member, says such a facility is high on the wish-list.
"We're working to establish Dorland as a gathering place for local artists
as well as out of town residency artists," she says. "We want Dorland
to be a focal point for art in the region."
A writer and
poet, Charney has herself done a Dorland residency, and like so many, became
enchanted. She's become an advocate. As a board member she looks for innovative
ways to raise funds to bring Dorland back to it's full glory, she says.
Toward that end
they the board started an Associated Artists program. For $100 annual fee,
residents artists who sign up before hand, can paint, write, photograph, or
simply be on the grounds Monday and Tuesday between 10 a.m and 3 p.m
Associated
artists can use the Dorland logo on business cards, letterheads for promotion.
They can choose to be included on lists that help promote artwork. Discounts
are offered to those who want booths to sell their art at Open Studio Days,
mini-art
festivals that promote local art.
Jill Roberts,
Dorland director, says the colony is accepting applications for residencies
that last anywhere from one to eight weeks. The cost is $300 a week, you supply
your own food.
Dorland is a
hymn, an adventure, a confluence. From watching closely as an ant lugs a seed
to its underground colony, to climbing a trail to view the chaparral-covered
hills from the heights, to sitting in the gazebo reading words of Basho, to
fingering chords on a cabin piano, to drinking coffee on the porch at break of
day, life and beauty intersect at Dorland.
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