ECHOES OF THE PAST

Every moment has its time. Stuck in time and in space, we look out onto our visual landscape, and we see that place in that moment. There is no beginning, and there is no end. That is the way that we view the unfamiliar. During the Fall 1998 I visited Eureka, California, with my wife. After a week of sunshine and seeing the term “fog city” on many signs, she queried, “Does it get foggy here?” Her scope of experience in that place was limited. What she knew about Eureka was limited to that scant period in time.

When we view a familiar landscape, no matter how big or how small, we see more than what is there. The familiar clouds our cognitive senses. We see the past as well as the moment. In our kitchen, we see the moment. The dishes need to be put away, the newspapers taken out, and we note for the one hundredth time that the latch on one of the cabinet doors needs to be fixed or replaced. But we don’t know how to fix it or if that specific latch is still available. Our mind is flooded with past memories. That mini-landscape is not static. It is a compilation of both the present and the past. The same is true of all landscapes, and that may account for why people become very attached to places. It is in part why people come to love places and why my wife and I will remain in Simi Valley.

To best appreciate Simi Valley, you must be aware of the past - both its history and pre-history. For the more you know, the more you see; the past is in part mystery and wonder. There is its dynamic geological past - always changing and evolving, usually slowly but sometimes catastrophically. There is its natural history. To understand the present, you must understand its past. The first human residents were what we refer to as “Indians.” They came with a culture and that culture evolved over time. Other people came and went. Some left an imprint on the land. Others did not. We have been left with archaeological deposits from their lives. Many of their place names - from their last cultural existence - are still with us whether or not we recognize what is before us. “Simi” was the name of the Chumash village at the western end of the valley. “Tapo” was the name of the large village in Tapo Canyon. The names of most of the canyons and places that have come down to us from the Spanish were derived from the Chumash Indian names for those places. Even some of our transportation routes, especially during the Spanish/Mexican and early Anglo-American periods, started out as Indian trails. The Spanish/Mexican period of settlement too left its imprint on the land. The most unequivocal place name of Spanish origin is Santa Susana.

Our perception of and attachment to place may be why some residents of our fair valley resist change. It may be an attachment to the past, a longing to not lose the present and a feeling that somehow those echoes of the past are tied in with our own mortality.

                                                                                    Mike Kuhn

11-9-04