Stopping by the Roadside on a Cloudy Afternoon

Weather like this always feels portentious. The air is fairly still, but the sky is filling with angry clouds. An hour north of the city, way up at the summit traversed by Lucas Valley Road, you come to Big Rock.



This stretch of Northern California has an other-worldly feel, which is not surprising given that the Star Wars movies draw heavily from this environment for their depictions.

In fact, just a hop, skip and a jump at far less than hyperspeed from Big Rock is Lucas's headquarters.

Though I think of myself, primarily, as a writer, a major way I process information of all types is through visual stimulation. Colors, angles, shadows, visual patterns of all sorts unleash my words. My continuous goal is to try and provoke visual images inside the heads of others with these words.

On the visual side of my career, I've published photos offline, as well as here and on my companion blogs, especially Sidewalk Images.

But I think if I could be reborn as another type of time traveler, it would be as a painter.



Since that seems not likely to happen, let me tell you about the tours of not only Big Rock Ranch, but of Skywalker Ranch, which is a bit further down the road, that I was so kindly given today.

The 1890s Victorian mansion Lucas has had constructed as his home and office is one of the most impressive private buildings in California today. It is massive, but elegantly constructed with astounding portions of stained glass, in-laid wood, and curving walls. Every window looks out onto a separate vista: Only of the natural world; none of the other buildings on the Ranch can be so much as glimpsed.

Much of the artwork knocks you out, because he has originals, but in order to truly appreciate it, I'm afraid you have to be a big fan of Norman Rockwell. There is a heavy air of nostalgia for bygone eras in this place, which is very, very quiet.

You almost need to whisper.

I was reminded of another enormously influential figure: William Randolph Hearst. We Californians deliver such people to the world at large, even as we claim them as our own, identify with them on all sorts of levels, and expect them to be just like us.

Which of course, once they reach this level, they cannot possibly be.

There were many other impressive parts of the tour, including his world-class sound studio, his vineyard, the Inn, the organic gardens, and the herd of cattle. Most of the food in the cafes appears to be harvested onsite.

Let's return to the vineyard. Did you know that the grapes harvested here are bottled by Frances Ford Coppolla into his wildly popular line of wines? I didn't.

It makes sense, given that Lucas and Coppolla, as members of the small club of true non-Hollywood success stories in American film, have long been good friends.

(I've met both men over my life here, just in passing, but that is another story.)

My favorite part of the Lucas mansion is its two-story library, with a winding staircase in the center of the room, a fireplace, and a very large collection of books about mythology (Joseph Campbell, etc.)

The Star Wars stories are deeply ensconced in myths, of course, occasionally painfully so. But it is hard to fault an artist like Lucas who, in an age when fewer people study the classics -- or even read books! -- has devoted his life's work to updating and re-interpreting Oedipus particularly, but many other mythic characters so successfully, using modern technology and communication channels.

I'm a fan for that reason. George Lucas, in my eyes, is one of our great educators in the modern age. He's done what great teachers have tried to do for generations, by bringing our collective intellectual past into the classroom, making it all newly accessible, trying to seduce each successive generation of kids to locate the context for their pains, their trials, their successes, their failures, their dreams and aspirations.

We all go through all of this; none of us escapes any of it. That is a universal lesson. Today's visit, just at a particularly vulnerable time in my own life, was reminder of these essential truths.

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