In the Beginning: Tanya & Joshua
Two of us on a mountaintop living a dream seemed a long way off.
Growing up in what was just becoming known as Silicon Valley we both were attracted to the surrounding mountains and forests.
The foothill habitats of the coastal ranges, offered both the intimate experience of untrammeled nature, and, vistas of the of the impending suburban sprawl that threatened it. Early memories of the scents and sensations of these forests and meadows imprinted a love of our home region in us. We met each other while attending a unique high school- in the waning days of California’s educational excellence, and progressive experimentation. Our public alternative school ‘within-a-school’ offered all the resources of a well funded district with the freedom and flexibility to design our own education.
I credit my interest in farming to a small seminar style field trip, Where I met John Jeavons and toured the original research garden of “Ecology Action” on loaned corporate land, before its development as a biotech campus.
Coming of age, we couldn’t hope to find affordable housing in our home town, and so began a slightly miserable life style of wage earning, edge dwelling creativity in the cheap seats of the San Francisco Peninsula.
I briefly attended Art school in San Francisco, while Tanya trained as a chef. This had turned into working at restaurants, print shops and cafes, leaving us wondering, how we could possibly ever live our dreams of creative pursuits in nature.
Eventually growing desperation lead us to escape. Packing away and selling off our belongings we headed for Mexico, new horizons, new experiences, inexpensive opportunities, and…Montezuma’s revenge.
Traveling the length of Mexico by train was a trip to remember- The late night third class ride from Mexicali through the northern desert was quite an introduction, Desperate to stretch our legs we sojourned on the coast at Guaymas/Los Mochis, then Mazatlan and on to Guadalajara, the state where my mothers father was born.
Winding slowly from the volcanic heights of Mexico City to Oaxaca in a vintage American Pullman sleeper, was memorable- but the whole experience, the heat, the language barrier, stress & illness over whelmed us as we continued south by bus. Following a few rough days on the coast we beat a hasty retreat back the way we had come after only a month.
Upon our return , life in suburbia was the same as we had left it. With new jobs we hunkered down for a period of thoughtful capital development. By this time we had discovered, and become devotees of Tattoo. As a graphic artist, with sculptural leanings, the craft of Tattooing was compelling. The possibility of combining a specialized art with a decent income motivated me to pursue professional Tattooing.
With coaching and equipment from contacts in San Francisco, which was then experiencing the New Tribalism Tattoo revival of the early 1980’s, I began to learn the basics.
With graphic work, peace activism and studies of nature, art, history and political philosophy; dreams of freedom, and a life of Art seemed to be manifesting.
Tanya’s culinary training provided a connection with an instructor of Mediterranean cuisine Rosemary Barron, who operated an exclusive cooking school; Kandra Kitchen Crete, on the Greek island of Crete. We both had commercial kitchen experience and together applied as apprentices. We were accepted, and prepared to travel to Europe as the key staff of the operation run by Rosemary, her Husband Kevin, and their newborn son.
Our trip began overland, traveling as passengers on a Green Tortoise bus- A repurposed Greyhound bus with overhead bunks, a padded platform, two drivers, and a tape deck. We left late at night from an alley behind the old San Francisco Trans-bay terminal, and some time after dawn, were awakened at Pyramid Lake Nevada, where we soaked in a thermal spring the driver dug out of the bank, and were served pancakes from a camp stove.
The four day trip was a welcome precursor to our coming adventure, full of roadside diversions. Arriving at dawn in New York City we were dropped off and thankfully offered a place to land, sleep and shower by a fellow traveler on the way home from her big adventure in the west. This overwhelming city held no allure for us, after each subway trip, we emerged to a street with the same densely populated, tall and brooding city-scape we had left when we caught the train. The culture clash was even more dramatic as we flew to Athens via London the next morning , and slept off our jet lag on an overnight ferry to Crete.
Rendezvousing with our host at the central square of the port city Iraklion, we traveled the coast to a tiny village; Koutouloufari, and our Bungalow.
On our walks to the sea, and nearby villages, we often came across lone goats or sheep, tethered out for the day next to their patch of coarse forage, and spent a little time with them, indulging our mutual curiosity.
Traveling abroad expanded our horizons.
Europe in 1983, the era of Reagan and US Marines in Lebanon, was distinctly anti-American, Graffiti on Crete called for removal of the US Air force base there.
We got to know an an Air force nurse living off base in the village below ours, and added a stack of Stars & Stripes newspapers to the International Herald for our news feed, we got to see the latest Star Wars movie on the base, a surreal experience- with Air force personal standing for the National anthem before the show.
We spent the summer shopping for and cooking Traditional Greek food for American foodie tourists, in a 400 year old house equipped with state-of-the-art Italian industrial kitchen equipment. The clients arrived from their hotel for morning classes and demonstrations where wine flowed before and then during the lunch on the terrace , with food that we cooked in the kitchen as its preparation was being demonstrated in the next room. We rode along on field trips to cultural sites and sampled local flavors and customs. And spent our free time with walks around the village, Eating, drinking, swimming in the Mediterranean, touring the island, reading, and drawing.
Leaving Crete we took the train from Athens and a large ferry to Brindisi, Italy. An overnight train to Rome put us in the city as masses were gathering for political rallies. We spent most of our time there walking, taking in art and architecture, and getting to know the famous cats of Rome.
Ending up in London in the fall we ‘let a flat’ for a month. Our first order of business was upgrading our wardrobe for the cooler weather, exploring the open air markets and resale shops. We spent a month touring museums and galleries, seeing live music & theatre, drinking ales & stouts, eating fish & chips, Cornish pasties, Scotch eggs, Shepard’s pie, Bangers & Mash, and getting our fill of British Television.
During our Greek cooking school experience our British Host/Chef told us she was convinced that we ought to be living in “The City” meaning San Francisco, her home base. The London experience convinced us that the vitality of city life was compelling, but having been poor students in San Francisco briefly, we knew that we would need to earn more money to take advantage of city life. On the eve of that momentous & ominous date 1984.
We arrived back in the Bay area in time to produce and distribute a new years posters featuring Ronald Reagan as “BIG BROTHER.”
We regrouped and found a small apartment and jobs in the Mission district. Tanya was pulling Espresso at a cafe, then baking the graveyard shift at a Noe Valley bakery, I ran a press at a small Market street print shop blocks from Lyle Tuttle’s 7th street Tattoo studio and Tattoo Art Museum. I used my lunch breaks to deepen ties with the Tattoo scene.
As I slowly honed my Tattoo skills, I began donating my time to production of The Tattoo Historian a quarterly journal that Lyle was publishing, eventually he began paying me an occasional stipend.
Laid off from the temporary position at the print shop, I had a difficult time finding another job, commuting briefly by train for more temporary work at the print shop where I had worked in Palo Alto. I ended up at the 7th Street Tattoo shop more and more, picking up tips, meeting artists, observing techniques, cleaning up a little, running errands and then taking over production of the Tattoo Historian.
I wasn’t making much money but this rare opportunity was building the connections that eventually led to a job there as Tattoo Artist. The learning curve was steep, and the skills of the craft challenging. Immersion in the Tattoo scene was intense, and, as I learned the additional art of salesmanship became lucrative. Insights into human psychology, creative symbology, primal atavism, and totemic mythology, became seductive aspects of the practice. As I met and Tattooed a wide spectrum of humanity.
Tattoo changed our lives.
It was hard to imagine a better gig for our urban existence.
I was commuting by bicycle or streetcar. The shop opened at noon, and the doors closed at 6, though there were many times the work continued into the evening.
With a cutting edge creative way to make a living, and a demanding craft I was saving money and doing well. Tanya was inspired to practice, with hopes of following me into the trade.
There was some wear and tear, the work was physically demanding with lots of hunched over meticulous scrutiny of bleeding flesh. When I began Tattooing, using rubber gloves was just becoming the new standard, with old timers grumbling about how they bunched up and made work difficult. The gathering steam of the AIDS epidemic finally convinced the reluctant adopters.
The casual work environment often devolved into a party like atmosphere. The lifestyle was rich and exciting, but eventually the glow began to dim a bit as the gritty reality of of our urban life began to weigh on us.
Nature was calling.
But that call whistled down the sloped sidewalk outside our basement kitchen window, and past our narrow alley window. Our building had a small backyard and I prepared some garden beds and planted a small garden plot. I had been attempting to grow food since I was a teenager, upsetting my mother when I dug up some dormant flower bulbs I didn’t recognize as flowers. I had some success, but always felt challenged by inadequate locations.
My Grandfathers garden acreage in the rich fertile soil & full sun of San Jose had always inspired me. Plants towered productively and flowers bloomed everywhere. When I was young I helped plant some seed that grew into a banana squash that he entered in the county fair under my name and won a 1st place blue ribbon. I was surprised and proud of my accomplishment.
After I discovered that a neighbor had pitched a weekend tent on my garden bed, just as I was recognizing germinating seeds, I gave up. But nature continued the plea.
A tree in front of our building was buckling the cement around its roots into a cracking bubble. One hot summer while hanging out on the sidewalk out front catching the breeze we began helping it, liberating the living soil below. We called ourselves the CHISELERS, and imagined a vast movement of liberators as we surreptitiously disposed of our contraband cement blocks in a bin down the street. I went as far as making a violation tag for the imperiled trees I began to notice around the city, thinking I would alert people that action was needed, I really wanted to help the trees, but other things took my time.
I had been making posters and pamphlets during this period, finding my political voice. The anti-nuclear movement was in full swing and a growing awareness of and outrage for the Central American wars motivated me. I eventually found like minded people to work with. A local group of human potential activists, affiliated with groups around the world; The COMMUNITY FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT based on the teachings of an Argentinian writer and philosopher known as SILO. The local group had tried different names and tactics to expand their program of social change American style. At that time we created a political party; THE HUMANIST PARTY, and began a city wide petition drive supporting the nuclear freeze movement as an organizing tool. We were engaged in good work, inner transformation for social change resonated with me, but the realization of an unspoken hierarchical structure based on a leaders intricate and increasingly secretive dogma eventually created a whiff of cultism that I resisted, and caused me to back away from my commitment to the group.
We moved into a smaller building in a part of the ‘Fillmore district’ then becoming known as the “lower Haight” as gentrification altered the demographics of the former ghetto. we managed to grow a few things in the small yard that our newlywed new landlords reclaimed from the ubiquitous concrete. Our elderly neighbors didn’t appreciate the soil exposed in front, they felt it just encouraged dogs to urinate, and plants made things untidy and needed to much maintenance. We relished the Nasturtiums winding through the iron grate of our window.
Around this time a fellow from the Santa Cruz area came into the shop looking to enlist participants for a gallery show of TATTOO ART. This was to be the 2nd event challenging the legitimacy of the ban on tattooing within the Santa Cruz city limits. By framing the art in a gallery setting the organizers hoped to elevate the art and overturn the dated blue law that had sought to limit the influence of “undesirable elements” in the small conservative beach town of the 1960’s.
The show was meant to be provocative, the 1st show, the previous year had incurred a police presence and sparked a debate over the discriminatory ordinance. The show took place at a small eclectic gallery run by notoriously political artists. As a participant I worked for 2 days on the eager local crowd. The 1st night culminated in a performance at a nearby club by an old friend of my boss Lyle Tuttle; Captain Don Leslie, the tattooed sword swallower and showman. Later that night Captain Don offered me a ride to where I was staying with an old friend, neither one of us knew Santa Cruz well and we got hopelessly lost as we jingled along in his colorful rig, rolling through the late night fog at the edge of town. We eventually got reoriented and he dropped me off before pulling into a Denny’s parking lot for the night. Shortly after the 2nd show, the ban was repealed. With the contacts I had made I made plans to return for more work in the future.
Our Big City experiment was beginning to wear us down.
The thrill was gone and the smoldering fire of our dreams needed more fuel. Becoming independent operators seemed inevitable. My Graduation to Journeyman after my three year apprenticeship came with the opportunity to attend the the International Tattoo convention in Amsterdam and an offer to work for a month at the producers Red light District shop there – Hanky Panky’s – I was the only San Francisco artist actually tattooing on the convention floor that year.
Back home I had begun teaching my self metal working techniques. The seed had been planted in a 10th grade jewelry class, and was further inspired by Lyle Tuttle’s well appointed jewelry bench and his contacts with metal casters. Lyle introduced me to a small production casting shop that made a line of tattoo machines he designed, and an independent jeweler who cast lost wax jewelry from his models. I bought my self some equipment and supplies and began carving wax models for casting, and learning hand fabrication techniques I developed a few designs for production, and began successfully wholesaling enough sterling silver pieces to make it worth the effort.
We left the city, and while staying in Palo Alto with family staged several Tattoo events in Santa Cruz hosted by a local fan. Following the repeal of the Tattoo ban no one had opened a Tattoo shop in Santa Cruz yet, and from our experience there was a demand for the art.
We began searching for a place to live and settled in Bonny Doon- 15 miles up the hill from Santa Cruz, 8 miles inland, at 2000 feet, a location remarkably similar to where we now live. Our converted garage apartment was surrounded by forest, we had well water, and a place for a garden in the sun, open space, open skies and clean air. Between Tattooing and everything else, we played guitar with each other, Tanya was writing songs, testing bread recipes for Rosemary’s Greek Cookbook and discovering herbs. My workbench was parked on the roll up door end of the room, and our home Tattoo studio was at the other end. And, we had our first car, a 1967 Volvo handed down from Tanya’s mother not long after her father had rebuilt the engine.
A Santa Cruz photographer, Jeff Hillier had a day job as greengrocer which left his rented side street storefront Gallery/darkroom/studio empty and closed most days. We arranged to hold shop hours there and began doing a brisk business. Our clients were an interesting mix of young working class scene makers – beach boardwalk tourists never knew we existed, and only a few university students found us.
We were finally able to have a garden again, missing the experience we had while living in a Menlo Park shack a few years earlier, where the previous tenant had removed enough asphalt paved yard to make a garden space, and where, feeling expansive we had our first chickens- A matched pair, cock & hen, of Golden Seabright Bantams.
From 1988 to 1994 we Tattooed as: TERRA NOVA TATTOO. Beginning in SANTA CRUZ CA, then based in our studio within a used bookstore in GARBERVILLE CA.
With frequent trips to SANTA CRUZ for special events and SAN FRANCISCO as guest artists.
Clarifying the Vision
Working, and dreaming, we began to plan for the future. Leaving our Bonny Doon house and cats in the care of a friend we made an exploratory trip north to find “our place”.
It seemed a daunting task. how would we ever find the right place, at the right price? We found ourselves less at home the farther north we went. Traveling on to Oregon, Washington, where we did a little Tattooing, and Idaho to visit with Tanya’s Grandparents. Our land search began to narrow as we realized, we are Californians, and coastal Californians at that. Upon our return to Northern California we contacted a few real estate agents, who showed us what we were hoping to spend would get us. mostly raw, remote land, that was less than encouraging. Returning to Bonny Doon, and some more work, we reassessed.
We decided to return to what seemed the most likely location; Southern Humboldt county, only because it seemed to offer, affordable land, a pleasant social environment, and the sort of terrain that we had in mind. It was Autumn and though not entirely naive, we did not consider, nor had we any interest, direct information or experience with the growing drug war. We hadn’t heard about about C.A.M.P. (The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting), and their helicopter overflights and annual raids by the county, state, and federal task force, or the strident outlaw behavior, and general resentment and tension in the hills surrounding the market hub of Garberville.
We later realized, that when showing us land, local realtors assumed our goal; locating affordable, off-grid land, meant we were intending to grow pot. The few parcels we saw were less than ideal for our actual plans. When in despair we were about to leave town we noticed a small real estate office off the beaten path that we figured we would give a try.
The broker we met was the first one who told us bluntly, that what we were looking for would cost more than we anticipated, and coincidentally had just seen a listing that might meet our specifications. As we discussed the details , we agreed that this offering had potential- A southwest facing slope, not too high in elevation, not too far out, but off the grid, a reliable spring, open space and forest, a rough small cabin with a wood stove, and well maintained deeded access.
By this time we had discovered what were barriers for us. Traversing the dicey county and private roads of the isolated, outback, we quickly determined that being far off the beaten track would be a handicap. Anticipating the hauling of supplies and material for the development of our homestead made us narrow our search. The land we were to visit the next day was around 12 miles from town, and 2 miles off the highway. This sounded promising, it was clear that this region and our resources hardly offered the more ideal rural village model that would allow closer proximity to services, and acreage, This parcel was roughly 1/2 hour out from essentials, most of it on state pavement, and that seemed a good compromise.
We made an appointment to see the land in question the following morning and then retired to a nearby state campground. The fireside conversation we had that night led me to a lengthy contemplation of our fate. Staring into the glowing coals I created a vision of my ideal landscape, a hopeful manifestation of the land we would find and call our home, resolving to find this ideal place of my imagination, I retired.
In the morning we rendezvoused with the real estate broker at the small local Post Office of the nearest settlement, that offered little more than that, and a pay phone. Local commerce had dried up in the last decade, the Post Office was a hold over from the days of larger population during the logging boom of the 50’s, and a welcome feature. Following some pleasantries, we observed our broker pick up a package and his mail, that he lived nearby and therefore had good things to say about the community, another good sign.
We rode in his small 4 wheel drive vehicle slowly up to the property, at that speed the 2 miles seemed to take a long time. I clocked it on the way up the steep dirt track at around 11 minutes. On the way we saw a few houses visible from the road, and others only indicated by narrow driveways and a gate or two. Towards the top we passed by a small school bus that had in it’s destination window the words: ‘expect a miracle’ which seemed auspicious.
As we approached the parcel the narrow track we found hardly seemed to be a road, the broker had not yet been to this new listing, so did not know what to expect. As we powered up the rough, gullied dirt road- he noted that obviously work would need to be done before the road was readily passable. The road leveled out to a lightly wooded clearing, apples still hung on a one of the three apple trees, several cherry trees were bare in the autumn sun, and the view to the coastal ridge across the river valley took our breath away. After a few minutes of tramping about, we caught each others eyes, and nodded, YES, this is it!
The landscape and orientation matched my vision, the template of my ideal was realized, we were convinced in 5 minutes. On the way down our broker offered the observation that now that he knew what the place looked like, that he would be showing it off a lot more. We quickly disagreed with him, by telling him we wanted it, and proceeded to discuss the details before we even got off the hill. He suggested a reasonable offer, we agreed, and we parted with his assurance that he would send us the paper work as soon as possible, after a giddy lunch we bought a topographic map of the area that included the available parcel, and headed back home to Bonny Doon, excited, and nervous.
