The Odd Little Opera House in the Middle of Nowhere
A flat tire in a ghost town outside Death Valley. A sweaty nightmare for most travelers. But for Marta Becket, the beginning of a dream.It was 1967. While her dusty tire was attended to, Becket wandered off to a dilapidated recreation hall nearby. Inside, she saw a stage caving in, walls covered in mud, and floors warped from flood damage, but as she peeked through the cracked door, the structure whispered to her. We could make magic together.When the allure of California called, Becket—a lifelong New Yorker who was then in her 40s—answered with a singular passion few have matched. An artist to the core, trained to dance, paint, and play piano, Becket cast aside her Broadway life and moved to Death Valley Junction (population: a handful), setting up shop in the squalor. The place had potential, after all, even if only she could see it. This project would be her opus.Courtesy of Amargosa Opera HouseRenting the theater for $45 a month, Becket paid for repairs and got to work painting an ornate mural depicting a permanent audience on the walls, with cherubs rejoicing on the ceiling. She changed the building’s name to the Amargosa Opera House and, in 1968, began performing original dances and acts for a few people at a time—or sometimes none at all. It wasn’t about fame, it was about freedom.But fame came nonetheless. National Geographic wrote about her, as did Life. People were curious to see the ballerina in the desert. For more than four decades, Becket performed on her fixed-up stage, delighting and inspiring countless theater lovers willing to make the trek to nowhere. View this post on Instagram A post shared by DH Callahan (@callahandsome)Along the way, Becket became owner of the entire town, which she turned over to a nonprofit organization that now oversees Death Valley Junction, including the opera house and an adjoining hotel.Becket would have turned 100 this year. Though she died in 2017, her legacy continues. Business operations took a hit during Covid, but the opera house still offers daily tours and hosts sporadic shows on that famous stage.“Even if you’re not an artist, you have to appreciate what she was about,” Amargosa Board of Directors President Fred Conboy says. “She was a courageous and audacious woman. There’s nobody like Marta.”The post The Odd Little Opera House in the Middle of Nowhere appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
Paddling Out with California’s Older Women Surfers
On a chilly Saturday morning, Pam Orr drives to Campus Point at the University of California, Santa Barbara, surfboard in her backseat. It’s been a stormy few days. She and her five friends have been texting all morning about tide reports, wave height, and swell direction, unsure if surfing is a good idea. It’s the first time in a few months the women’s schedules have aligned. So they go.By the time Orr rolls up in the palm-tree lined parking lot, across from dorms where she went to college over 40 years ago, the rest of the women are already there, including Vanessa Kirker, who grew up in North San Diego County. She went to Moonlight Beach every summer but never touched a surfboard until she was her 60s.Marianne McPherson, 68, is there, too, with her red matte lipstick and a torn rotator cuff. Her doctor told her not to surf, and if she’s honest with herself, she’s dreading this. Nevertheless, she stands by her car (emblazoned with a ‘Bichhin’ license plate) on an artificial grass changing mat Orr gifted her.Orr, meanwhile, is “vibrating stress.” A 63-year-old third grade teacher—her classroom door has the kid’s names written on bright surfboard cut-outs—her week consisted of incessant rain that kept her students stuck inside. She still has a pile of essays to grade. She shouldn’t be here. But the chit-chat is a distraction, and she welcomes it.“I have your tennis racket.” “Do I need my hat?”“The booties stick, so they don’t necessarily land where I want them to land.”Gauzy fog lingers over the ocean beyond the fence, beckoning. The women unzip long, shiny bags and lay their boards down on the wet cement. They pull sweatshirts over their heads and begin the transformation. Ann Wilbanks, who has dirty blonde hair “proudly going silver,” asks if the wetsuit with neon blue calves Orr takes out is new. She nodes and jokes. “It’s baggy on me. I was like, ‘Have I shrunk?’” The women slip salt-soaked wetsuits onto bodies that have skied mountains, cycled hundreds of miles, raced sailboats, swum in triathlons, birthed babies, and cradled grandbabies, pulling and tugging until the spongy neoprene sticks like a second skin.Photo Credit: Florence MiddletonOrr, Arkin, and Kirker wait patiently for a wave.Go to any coastline, and you’ll find that women have continued to reclaim their place in the surfing lineup. Look closer, and you’ll see an abundance of laugh lines on more and more faces of women lured by the beauty and thrill of the ocean.It’s hard to say how many older women surfers there are in California. Nearly a third of the 60 members of the San Diego chapter of The Wahine Kai Women’s Surf Club are 50-plus—a number that tracks with their three other West Coast chapters. The San Diego Surf Ladies Community, a former nonprofit that’s now a Facebook group, also has its fair share. Co-organizer Alexia Bregman, 51, says there’s a circularity that comes with surfing older. “There’s a wildness to the ocean that we don’t have in our lives anymore. The wind is in your face and the water is spraying you and the sense of play from being a child comes back,” she says. “It invigorates and reawakens something in your cellular being.”Despite growing up in the ’60s in the heyday of Gidget, the movie-turned-television-series about a sassy teen girl surfer, surfing came much later for the Santa Barbara women. Careers and children took precedence, with some watching instructors push their kids into the waves instead. After her children grew up and she had more free time, Orr, for one, finally decided it was her turn. She discovered Salt Water Divas, a Santa Barbara group created by then-46-year-old Toyo Yamane-Peluso in 2012 with the goal of getting more local women into surfing. To date, there are more than 600 members. Doug Yartz, owner of the shop Surf Country, teaches most of the lessons.Photo Credit: Cole NovakSan Diego Wahine Kai members hit the waves in Pacific Beach. Orr took her first lesson on Mother’s Day eight years ago. She remembers second-guessing her decision shortly after signing up. “[I worried,] What will people think of this older woman going out and wanting to surf? Then I saw this older man with white hair, and he got a surfboard and walked down to the beach,” she says. “I thought, Well, nobody thinks twice about an older man.”The second lesson went poorly, and she almost didn’t continue. A “Never Give Up” sticker she saw on a car afterward led her to the friends she regularly surfs with now: Nancy Arkin, a retiree from the US Forest Service whose daughter is a global surf photographer; McPherson, a mid-level manager at an aerospace company who always wanted to surf but grew up near Oregon’s frigid waters; and Mary Johnson, a retired physical therapist who is dedicated to keeping active. They were a formidable foursome for a few years. The group expanded when two lawyers who changed careers joined later: Kirker, a therapist who often saw surfers while open water swimming and thought, I could do that; and Wilbanks, an art and antique dealer from Connecticut who spends have the year living near her grown kids, including a daughter who encouraged her to surf.“There’s nothing I’ve ever done athletically that gives you that feeling of power and speed [like surfing],” Wilbanks, 65, says. “It’s like dancing on water.”The women all took lessons through Salt Water Divas and gravitated toward each other because of their similar ages. They found they also shared athletic backgrounds, a level of comfort in the water, and another trait, perhaps the most important: stubbornness.“We were taught to accept the world as it sees us,” Kirker, 66, says. “Learning to surf in your 50s and 60s is not accepting the world as it sees you but accepting you for yourself.” Photo Credit: Florence MiddletonVanessa Kirker, Pam Orr, and Arkin suit up in the UC Santa Barbara parking lot before heading down to the water.The parking lot this morning is nearly empty. Campus Point is known for being beginner-friendly, often crowded with college kids, but every now and then the women have had to contend with jerks—teenage boys, mostly, who try to take every wave. Often, they’ll move to another spot or let the boys know it’s time for them to share, with letting a little of their annoyance come through in their voices.It’s not always the boys, though. Once, at C Street, a more aggressive and advanced surf spot in Ventura, a woman yelled at Kirker for accidentally dropping in on her. Kirker apologized, but the woman still berated her, shouting, “What are you doing? You don’t belong here.”Kirker said nothing, got out of the water, and cried. As a family law litigator for 30 years in a profession dominated by men, she’d had enough of feeling like she didn’t belong. She didn’t want to surf angry, and her board sat in her garage for four years until the pandemic started—around the time she shifted careers, which she attributes to surfing. She was tired of fighting with people. Today, the wet weather holds the promise of fewer people. The women wax their boards, slip on booties speckled with grains of sand, and, one by one, head to the beach path. Their wetsuits squeak as they walk past the humble Marine Science Institute and over a driftwood-laden rocky shore. Johnson, the oldest of the crew at 71, has wasted no time snapping on a surf cap over her short, white hair and is the first one in the water.Arkin brings up the rear, holding a longboard with a hook she’s attached so she can grip it better. Her forearm has a fish tattoo with a Buddhist design for freedom. She’s headed towards Poles, a left break named after three poles that used to mark an underground water intake valve. A bonus, they joke later, is that it’s out of range of the surf camera that continuously streams on a giant TV in Yartz’s shop. Arkin paddles out, the whoops and hollers from her friends already mixing with the screeching of the seagulls.Courtesy of Polynesian Cultural CenterWomen have been surfing for a long time—as far back as the 17th century in Hawaii and other Polynesian islands (the daring Princess Kelea of Maui was legendary)—but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at any surf magazines before the ’70s, when women got their own professional circuit. Even then, it took two decades for lifestyle brands to embrace female surfers—usually ones that were blonde and conventionally attractive—in their marketing campaigns.Representation in the sport has long skewed young, white, and male, but that’s changing. Women surfers who identify as queer, BIPOC, and curvy have led the way in advocating for a more inclusive surf culture. Older women surfers are a smaller subgroup, though no less loud. When they’re not chasing waves, they’re in Facebook groups and Reddit threads, piping up whenever someone asks, “Am I too old to surf?”The Santa Barbara women might still be outliers, but they say it’s becoming more and more common to see others who look like them—although it’s not something they fixate on. “I forget about the age thing when I’m in the water,” Johnson says, adding that she does get a kick out of surprising people.Photo Credit: Cole NovakSan Diego Wahine Kai member Carla Verbrugghen catching a wave at Tourmaline Surf Park.Letting go and living in the moment is one of the draws of surfing. But it’s also a practical strategy, as timing is everything. No wave is ever the same. Then there’s the added variable of age, which comes with decreased flexibility or slower reactions that can make it challenging to pop up, ride a wave for a while, and try out fun tricks. “We don’t have a pop up. We have a lumber up,” McPherson likes to joke. The women have all experienced their share of injuries—broken toes and fingers, head gashes, face cuts and bruises—but it’s not enough to stop them.Though gravitate toward cruisy waves, aware of their bodies’ limits, they are still addicted to the excitement of getting better and better each year. The friend might never go pro, but they have certain advantages that age brings: acceptance, patience, and unapologetic enjoyment of something they can claim as theirs after a lifetime of caring for others.“We’re like these little lights out there communing in the surf. We all respect and honor each other’s individual experience. And we’re not in relation to anyone. We’re not someone’s mother, someone’s wife, someone’s daughter,” Kirker says. “It’s really freeing.” Photo Credit: Florence MiddletonArkin and Kirker ride to shore.The waves are better than they expect this morning. The water is glassy, meaning there’s little wind, the smooth sheen ideal for surfing.The women are the only ones in the water except for two surfers who are far enough away to leave them alone. Johnson paddles to catch a wave. Kirker, the crew’s most vocal cheerleader, yells: “Go left, go left!” Johnson stands up, compact and still as a statue, and rides the wave nearly all the way to the shore. Kirker hollersl “Woooohoooo!”A big part of the joy of surfing is being with each other. Some of it is a matter of safety, knowing that if they wipe out or have the wind knocked out of them someone will be there to help. But it’s the camaraderie that keeps them going out together week after week; everyone else knows to make plans around their surf schedule.“There’ll be days when I don’t catch anything,” McPherson says. “But the enjoyment of being together and celebrating your own successes with an audience of people who love you, and celebrating their successes—it’s double the adrenaline.”Nearly all are partnered, with husbands or boyfriends, but most of their men don’t share the stoke. Surfing has become a defining feature of their identities, met with a combination of raised eyebrows and subtle boasts. McPherson’s cousin will often introduce her to others and say, “This is Marianne. She surfs every day.” (She doesn’t.) Now McPherson straddles the back of her board, lipstick still intact. Kirker is nearby and waits with the others for a good swell. Orr also sits close, her brown-blonde bob she has yet to dye now dark from the saltwater. The rocking of the ocean relaxes her shoulders.“I just feel like the weight’s off,” she says. “It’s because I’m here,” Kirker says. Orr laughs.In an instant, the calm is broken. Orr spots a potential wave. She lies down on her board, turning its nose around toward shore. Everyone cheers. “Go, go, go!”Careful not to strain knees that need replacing, she pops up for a few seconds before tumbling backwards into the water. “I blew it,” she says when she’s straddling the board again. “That could’ve been a nice, long wave.”They all flail at some point, limbs flying everywhere, boards bouncing along the whitewash. “Come on, bitches!” Kirker says one time to the waves, furiously paddling, only to have them fizzle out.It takes a lot for everything to be in sync, and learning how to cope with failure is one of surfing’s greatest lessons. There’s joy in that, too. “You tend to become competent in the things you do at a certain age,” Arkin says. “But what’s been really fun for me is being incompetent at something new.”Yet Arkin and the other women are far from incompetent, catching numerous waves, a testament to the number of years they’ve taken lessons together not only at Campus Point, but at surf clinics in Costa Rica and Mexico. They’ll also travel around California together—every Memorial Day for the past eight years, they’ve headed down to Beacons in Encinitas. Just today, they’ve been out for nearly two hours. Onshore, more people are strolling along the nearby cliffs, while college kids in wetsuits stand at the edge of the water, about to paddle out. “I’m getting cold,” Arkin says, metal in her finger from a surf injury stiff. They all agree to stop soon. As they wait for the last few waves, Kirker hums The Monkees theme song. “There’s just something about the ocean that makes me want to sing,” she adds.Photo Credit: Florence MiddletonNancy Arkin carries her board at Campus Point in Santa Barbara, CaliforniaThe women carry the boards back to their cars. The parking lot is busier, and a 20-something-year-old wearing a UCSB sweatshirt walks by with an older couple, presumably his parents. One of them sees the friends pulling terry cloth surf ponchos over their heads and smiles. They don’t notice.There’s talk of going to Starbucks afterwards. Over coffee and chai, they will laugh at obnoxious men on dating sites, reminisce about raising athletic children, and share their personal surfing stats from the Dawn Patrol apps they all have on their Apple watches. (Johnson had 11 waves, with one at 20 mph, nearly twice the average speed.) And they’ll make plans to go surfing again tomorrow.For now, the focus is on getting warm. The clouds have parted. “Here’s your sunshine!” Kirker says. “Well, I had more good biffs today,” Arkin says, brushing her wispy hair.Kirker won’t hear it. “I thought you did fine.”Photo Credit: Cole NovakSan Diego Wahine Kai members catch a party wave.Today, they’ve emerged both tired and triumphant, the ocean leaving them breathless at times. When they go home, they will be unable to fully articulate the feeling—of being themselves, of being together—but it is one they will continue to chase. Because with so much life still ahead of them, they unabashedly want more. Since she began surfing, “my whole world is better,” Kirker says.She sits down on the side of her white cargo van with a “Soul of a Mermaid, Mouth of a Sailor” sticker and pours a jug of water over her head. McPherson towels off, her shoulder fine, at least for right now. Wilbanks helps Johnson slither out of her wetsuit.Orr is the last one to return. In the back of her mind are the essays she still needs to grade, but they don’t seem as urgent. And, like the rest of her friends, she doesn’t ever foresee a time when she’ll stop surfing. “When I started, I thought, I’ll probably be able to do this for, like, five or six years, and then I won’t be able to do it anymore. But look at Mary. She’s my hero,” she says. “And now I think, God, I hope I can keep surfing as long as her.”The post Paddling Out with California’s Older Women Surfers appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
Finding Catharsis at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort
Up, down, forward, repeat. Taking steps through thigh-deep water is usually pretty straightforward for me, an able-bodied person. But it turns out simple motor skills become a lot harder when the water temperature lingers in the same range as the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Alaska in autumn. Every nerve in my body is bracingly alive in the 48-degree water, aware of each pebbled contour on the floor, and awakened anew as I gingerly step into the next pool, this one a balmy 103 degrees Fahrenheit. The first walk-through is a shock. By the fourth, I feel enveloped by an unexpected sense of pleasure. Or is it pain? I’m on the Kneipp Walk at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort, a “contrast bathing” experience where practitioners wade through alternating hot and cold pools to supposedly reduce inflammation, stimulate circulation, and jolt the system into a heightened state of awareness. I had resisted even bothering with it—I came to the resort to relax, but I found myself buzzing with energy. I left at peace, but not via the route I expected. Courtesy of Murrieta Hot Springs ResortTo me and many other parents, summertime sometimes feels like a tumultuous lack of routine rather than an idyllic vacation captured on film to achieve maximum Instagram envy. Every week brings a new camp for my elementary school-aged son—and, with it, a new wake-up time, drop-off point, and rules for what to wear, when to eat, and who’s in charge. By the time we establish a groove, it’s time to move to the next activity. When my son felt rudderless and anxious, I tried to absorb some of his feelings to lighten the load. By the end of the summer, we were both drained.So, I thought, what better way to celebrate back-to-school than by recharging at a hot springs resort. In… August? In Murrieta, a nearby Riverside County city where late summer temps average 91 degrees? I figured if I couldn’t consciously release the tension I’d held over the past few months, then by God, I would sweat it out. Photo Credit: Beth DemmonI was already familiar with the hot springs resort routine—submerge yourself in murky, steaming pools and let the calcium, boron, potassium, and other silky-soft minerals wash over your now-slippery body in a nourishing bath for the mind and spirit. Drink water. Wear sunscreen. I was ready, with my fellow mom friend Kim along for the ride, who needed a cosmic top-off as much as I did.“I just want my spirit to leave my body for a little while,” I texted her the day before we departed for the resort. “Just like, become one with the void momentarily.” I didn’t realize how prescient my words would become. We had an unexpectedly full schedule of activities for our overnight stay—dinner, drinks, a sleep ritual massage, a sunrise sweat class, aqua yoga, and a sound bath to top it all off. That didn’t even include our own exploration of the property, which features a second-story cedar sauna room with panoramic views, a geothermal mud experience, and pools and hot tubs of all temperatures scattered across the 46-acre, newly renovated property. Glancing at the itinerary sent a twinge of anxiety rippling down my spine. Too much, too much, I thought. But I needed to get out of my rut, my carefully guarded tendency to stick to what I know and pooh-pooh the unfamiliar. I would go with the flow—the carefully tailored, jam-packed flow. Courtesy of Murrieta Hot Springs ResortI hadn’t signed up for a heart attack at the hot springs, but about five seconds into a hardcore fitness class that kicked off promptly at 7:15 am, I thought I might be on the verge of one. I don’t do Crossfit. I do yoga (often the sleepy kind). Thrown into the gauntlet of physical activity, my mantra was “Be open to the experience.”I had to keep reminding myself of that as the trainer introduced me to a new, special kind of torture: medicine ball burpees. I reminded myself when I pushed a sled across the padded floor. I reminded myself on the exercise bike. And I congratulated myself when I managed to limp my way out of the gym and slide into the pool for aqua yoga which, as it turns out, is surprisingly demanding on one’s balance and muscles. By the end of the session, my face barely cleared the water line in the 101-degree tub. How was it not even 9 a.m. and I was drained of energy and ability, all the looseness of the previous night’s massage evaporating into an all-too-familiar sense of mental and physical fatigue? Why did I allow my journey to recenter get commandeered by a to-do list? Hadn’t I come to escape that exact pitfall? Where did the balance between being flexible and being comfortable fall? Photo Credit: Beth DemmonAt least my last scheduled activity—the aqua sound bath—required zero physical effort.I, somewhat laboriously, leaned against the back of the tub with Kim and ten other participants, our bodies circling around a small collection of singing bowls gently guided by two specialists working in tandem. It wasn’t my first sound bath, but it was my first time experiencing it in water. As it began, the balmy, mineral-laden liquid acted as a conduit for the sound waves, pulsing through the water in an all-enveloping vibration, resounding gutterally through my entire core and shaking me from the tips of my fingers to the backs of my eyes. My eyes closed involuntarily, my spirit lost in the reverberations. I saw myself from a distance. My entire self: wife, mother, friend, individual—everything and more. I saw my guilt for time away and my desire for more of it, the past that led me to this present, my ability to adjust to the unexpected and to hold fast to my own limits. I knew who I was and what I was capable of. I just needed the space and grace to find myself again.By the end, more than one person had tears on their face, each salty drop adding to the communal waters. Once more, the pain had given way to release. My catharsis had not arrived the way I’d expected. But it came all the same. Photo Credit: Beth DemmonDos and Don’ts at Murrieta Hot Springs ResortDos:Get a massage. After soaking in hot mineral pools all day, your body will be primed for relaxation. Drink lots of water. There are fill-up stations all over the place. Use them.Bring a water bottle, sandals, sunscreen, and as little else as possible. Don’ts:Bother bringing cash—the entire property is conveniently cashless.Bring food, other than maybe some small snacks. Instead, opt for one of the onsite snack bars or restaurants like Guenther’s Lounge.Drink a lot of alcohol. Trust me.The post Finding Catharsis at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort appeared first on San Diego Magazine.
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