Lifestyle
The River Runs Free
For the first time in more than a century, the Klamath River began flowing unobstructed on Aug. 28 from the river’s mouth to Keno Dam, just below Upper Klamath Lake, opening hundreds of miles of salmon habitat and bringing a generational effort to the brink of completion.
The moment an excavator broke open the last coffer dam holding the river back at what used to be Iron Gate Dam, letting the Klamath River spill into its natural path, it was met with cheers and tears by more than 100 tribal members, environmentalists and officials watching, many of whom had spent years — if not decades — working to free the river from the dams that had choked it for decades.
“It was kind of a magic moment,” says Craig Tucker, a consultant with the Karuk Tribe who has worked for removal of the four dams on the lower Klamath River for more than 20 years. “You know how you have those milestone moments — like when you graduate from college and walk across the stage, and you don’t really feel different? This felt different. It was like something monumental just happened, like the river is now a river, and there were a flood of emotions that went along with that. Lots of hugs.”
But while the sun has nearly set on the largest dam removal effort in United States history, the work is not done and the sun is just rising on what is hoped to be one of the largest restoration efforts on record, a years-long effort to restore the lower Klamath River and its surrounding ecosystem to its natural state.
Work will continue through October to remove the last remnants of the four dams and their ancillary structures, as a team of biologists and ecologists work to manage a significant remaining threat to the adult salmon just entering the river’s mouth. Meanwhile, work is underway to continue replanting and reseeding thousands of acres of land that sat for decades covered by man-made reservoirs, and to open up hundreds of miles of salmon-bearing tributaries and restore them to health.
If you happen by just about any section of the lower Klamath River these days, you’ll likely notice it resembles chocolate milk, turbid and muddy, filled with sediment that had been trapped for generations behind the dams.
“Removing dams is like open heart surgery, it’s traumatic to the patient,” Tucker says. “But you do things to mitigate the impacts.”
Since the earliest stages of planning to remove the four dams — Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle — there have been concerns about the impact of releasing the estimated 15 million cubic yards of sediment trapped behind them. Crews drew down the reservoirs behind the dams in the winter months, so naturally high-river flows would flush the sediment out to sea.
- Photo courtesy of Swiftwater Films
- A tribal ecologist plants native starts in the newly exposed mudflat of a former reservoir.
That was successful, Tucker says, but now the concern is that as the last temporary coffer dams are removed, it will release another flush of sediment — a very fine particulate resulting from years of decomposing, dead algae. The substance is anoxic, meaning it will suck oxygen from the surrounding water when released, and is too fine and liquid to scoop out with a backhoe and put in a truck. Releasing it all at once — or waiting for a rain event that would do the same — could “nuke the river,” Tucker says, killing all those adult salmon just returning to spawn. As such, he says crews are currently releasing 5,000 cubic yards at a time while biologists monitor oxygen levels down river.
“We want to get all this stuff out before the adults would reach Iron Gate, but we can’t evacuate it too quickly or we’ll affect the oxygen levels,” Tucker says, conceding it’s a tricky balance that will continue until those fish reach what used to be Iron Gate Dam, which is expected to happen Sept. 20.
The good news, Tucker says, is that salmon are resilient and can deal with some turbidity, and that no matter what happens, this year will be a singular impact that will pale in comparison to the annual impacts of blocked fish passage and poor water quality the dams created.
“This is temporary,” he says. “It’s not going to look like this forever.”
Meanwhile, work to restore the Klamath River Valley is ramping up. While seeding and planting efforts began in concert with the reservoir draw downs — with ecologists wanting to get native seed mixes on the freshly exposed reservoir floors while they were still saturated and wet — they are entering a new stage.
Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), a subcontractor leading the restoration effort, says teams have spent years planning the restoration effort — amassing a bank of more than 17 billion native seeds and 300,000 tree and shrub plugs — the full reality of the job is just coming into focus.
“We spent five years planning a restoration project that we just now have access to,” he says, explaining that only after the reservoirs were drawn down, allowing the river to find its path through former beds, could crews collect soil samples and test composition. “We are drinking from a fire hose when it comes to learning about our site.”
Currently, he says, crews are hard at work using farming equipment to break up the dry, cracked, clay-like substance that covers the newly exposed reservoir floors, preparing them for another seeding effort. Meanwhile, he says, boulders and rocks — some taken from the earthen fill dams themselves — will be placed on the newly exposed bedrock that once supported the dams, providing important habitat that can provide respite for migrating adult salmon and protection for vulnerable fry. Then there’s all those tributaries, some which have themselves been choked with sediment from decades of flowing into stagnant reservoirs. Coffman says crews will take a case-by-case approach, using equipment to excavate sediment from some, nudging others to their historic footprints, removing fish passage barriers in some and adding fallen trees to create shelter in others.
Joshua Chenoweth, a senior riparian ecologist for the Yurok Tribe, who says he’s primarily responsible for reseeding the 2,000 acres of newly exposed reservoir floor, says crews will begin work in October to reseed areas that couldn’t be reached when the reservoirs were drained, adding they also have 116,000 shrub and tree plugs to plant this year. Chenoweth says the seed mixes are being tweaked — with some species added and others taken out — to fit conditions of each of the former reservoirs. Another round of seeding and planting is slated for 2025.
Tucker says one thing that dawned on him when he was standing at the foot of the valley that once held Iron Gate Reservoir is that the watershed will soon have two big valleys that will soon be restored to a natural state.
“I don’t know of any river valleys of this size on the West Coast that are undeveloped,” he says. “We can really make this a wild, naturally productive place again.”
And Tucker and others underscored that this moment would not have been possible without decades of activism from tribal nations, including the Karuk and Yurok tribes on the lower Klamath, whose culture and sustenance have been interwoven with the river for millennia.
North Coast Congressmember Jared Huffman, who joined the fight in 2012 after redistricting shifted congressional district boundaries and played an important role in the pressure campaign that ultimately brought PacifiCorp, the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary that owned the dams, back to the negotiating table, spent some time on the river last week.
- Photo by Matt Mais/Yurok Tribe
- A recently planted blossoming Menzie’s fiddleneck attracts a painted lady butterfly as a part of an effort to add small flowering plants to the landscape that will aid pollinators.
“Being part of this journey is just magic, so much so that I didn’t mind at all that the river water looked like the Mississippi,” he says, adding that the magnitude of the moment is palpable. “It’s huge. There’s no way to overstate it. This has been so long in coming, and it embodies so many hopes and dreams and long-standing grievances and injustices. It’s very emotional for the tribal leaders who I work with, who have been in the trenches for decades in some cases. You can just sense a new hope and sense of satisfaction. They’re practically beaming with it.”
In a statement issued after the last coffer dam was breached late last month, Yurok Vice Chair Frankie Myers noted the effort was never a choice for tribal members.
“The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free,” he said. “Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today’s events represent a fulfillment of that obligation.”
But restoration will continue, and Coffman says RES’ obligation remains, noting that work and monitoring efforts will continue for a minimum of five years. Ultimately, however, he says the company is bound not by time but a performance guarantee, having promised to meet certain benchmarks — like vegetative cover, trees per acre, species diversity — before the job is done.
“Nobody has ever done something like this before,” he says. “We’re here to see this landscape recover, here to steward it through to recovery alongside our tribal partners, the folks who have been stewarding these landscapes for millennia.”
Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal’s news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or [email protected]
Copco 2 Dam
Build: Copco 2, a 33-foot-tall concrete dam that stretches 278 feet wide and sits between the much larger Copco 1 and Iron Gate dams, was constructed in 1925 as a diversion dam, running water from the river through a nearby powerhouse to generate electricity.
Removal: The first dam removed, Copco 2 was demolished in July of 2023 when the Klamath River Renewal Corporation brought heavy equipment into the area to prep Copco 1 for the drawing down of its reservoir in January. Contractors drilled holes 12 to 15 feet into the concrete of Copco 2, filled them with explosives and detonated them, then used hydraulic picks and other machinery to break down the rubble until it was manageable and could be hauled away.
Restoration: Due to the small footprint of Copco 2 and its proximity to Copco 1, it was not considered a primary restoration focus. Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), says because Copco 2 was built in a narrow bedrock canyon with steep slopes, its infeasible to do much restoration planting around it. As such, he says the plan is to essentially let nature run its course, hoping native plants growing above it will drop seed that will catch in the canyon walls.
Iron Gate Dam
Build: Constructed in 1962, Iron Gate Dam is the lowest of the dams that comprise the Klamath River Hydroelectric Project, creating an artificial lake that can hold up to 58,000 acre feet of water. Standing 173 feet tall and stretching 740 feet wide, the earthen embankment dam was constructed of compacted earth under a waterproof surface.
Removal: Iron Gate Dam was removed from the top down, with excavators removing the approximately 1 million cubic yards of soil and earthen materials. Most of that earthen material was hauled away, though some was used on site to fill a spillway and a massive erosion hole it had created. Work continues to dismantle the last vestiges of the dam, as well as its ancillary structures.
Restoration: The primary restoration areas around the former Iron Gate Reservoir are the reservoir bed itself, which crews began seeding and replanting with native species as the reservoir was drawn down, and its main tributaries, including Jenny Creek, the Camp Creek Complex and Scotch Creek. Approximately 388,000 cubic yards of sediment were mechanically removed. Joshua Chenoweth, a senior riparian ecologist with the Yurok Tribe, says crews are utilizing a different seeding and planting strategy in the Iron Gate Reservoir than those upstream because it’s at a lower elevation with a different climate. As such, he says they’re using a customized native seed mix and planting tress like oaks and junipers, which aren’t found upriver around J.C. Boyle, as well as scrub shrubs. And even within the reservoir itself, there’s variation, according to Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), who says crews are tailoring vegetation different for the valley’s north- and south-facing slopes. “Even within the Iron Gate Reservoir itself, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to vegetation restoration,” Coffman says.
J.C. Boyle Dam
Build: Built in 1958, the John C. Boyle Dam — commonly referred to J.C. Boyle — stood 68 feet tall and 693 feet wide, creating its namesake reservoir that held 4,200 acre feet of water. The farthest upriver of the four lower Klamath dams, it was comprised of concrete and earthfill embankment.
Removal: Existing culverts were used to draw down the J.C. Boyle reservoir, after which crews demolished its spillway portion with hydraulic hammers mounted to a large excavator, progressively breaking the concrete into pieces that could be removed and hauled. Excavators and trucks then removed the earthen portion of the dam.
Restoration: The primary restoration focus around J.C. Boyle Dam is the former reservoir site, which was seeded and planted starting when drawdown began, as well as Spencer Creek and several unnamed tributaries that have reconnected with the river’s main stem. An estimated 40,000 cubic yards of sediment was also mechanically removed. Because the J.C. Boyle Reservoir sees moisture before those downriver, Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), says his crews have started there, using pasture remediators — a kind of farming equipment — to break up the dried clay-like reservoir beds, which Yurok Senior Riparian Ecologist Joshua Chenoweth says have cracks running 2-feet deep in some places. After the soil is broken up, crews will hand plant a custom seed mix, with Chenoweth noting, “Seed germination is all about the seed-to-soil contact,” so the soil preparation work is crucial. Additionally, whereas downriver plantings will see a mix of oaks and junipers, Coffman says the J.C. Boyle area will see more ponderosa pines.
Copco 1 Dam
Build: Built in 1918, Copco 1 is a gravity dam that stands 125 feet tall and stretches 415 feet wide, creating a reservoir capacity of 46,900 acre feet in Copco Lake, which sits in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border.
Removal: Work to deconstruct Copco 1 Dam began with the installation of a “work pad” at its downstream base to allow a stable work area for heavy equipment. Crews then used a drill-and-shoot method to bore a 10-foot-wide tunnel through the dams base, meaning they repeatedly drilled into the dam, packed the hole with explosives, detonated them and excavated the rubble until they’d dug a 150-foot-long tunnel, leaving just a final plug of concrete to keep the water from escaping. In January, crews then blasted this plug, opening the tunnel to begin drawing down the reservoir. The dam was then removed much the same as Copco 2, just on a much larger scale, with crews drilling and blasting it apart, reducing it to rubble that can be hauled from the site by truck. Work continues to remove the last pieces of the dam, as well as the dam house.
Restoration: The primary focus of restoration efforts at the former site of Copco 1 have been Beaver Creek Complex, Deer Creek and the spring-fed floodplain. An estimated 346,000 cubic yards of sediment was mechanically removed from the area. While the Copco Lake area is somewhat similar to Iron Gate downriver, Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), points out that they’re still separated by 30 miles, noting that it’s not uncommon to see snow at Copco 1 after temperatures have warmed significantly at Iron Gate. As such, while the seed mixes are generally the same, Coffman says crews are taking a customized approach to the reservoir. Coffman notes that a lava flow once blocked the Klamath River there, creating a flat, lacustrine valley that persisted for thousands of years before the river eroded it and broke through. After reservoir draw down, Coffman says it was discovered there are natural springs in the valley nobody thought would be there, saying restoration is now being tailored to include more wetland areas to accommodate “pretty significant spring flows that come from the north side of the valley.”
Mohammad Saiyub (above, in a Mumbai quarter on a February day) appeared in a photo that went viral in the early days of the pandemic. He and his childhood buddy Amrit Kumar were hitching home, a journey of nearly 1,000 miles. Kumar, who is a Hindu Dalit, fell ill. Saiyub, a Muslim, cradled his friend by the roadside. Their different religious identities drew attention in a country where communal relations have been polarized after a decade of Hindu nationalist rule. The photo and the story behind it inspired the award-winning movie Homebound.
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DEVARI, India — The legendary Martin Scorsese was the movie’s executive producer although his role was kept secret to ensure the film crew could keep working without attracting media attention. He was even assigned a code name: “elder brother.”
That’s because Neeraj Ghaywan, director of Homebound, didn’t want to go public with his movie until it was ready. He worried its central story might be received with hostility by Indian media — by a country — profoundly changed by a decade of rule by the e Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP.
He need not have worried.
Homebound, is based on a true story: a tender friendship between two boys from a dusty village, one a Muslim; the other a Dalit, a South Asian caste once known as “untouchables.” The movie revolves around their failed attempts to push through the discrimination they face in today’s India as their lives are upturned and imperiled by the Indian government’s response to the COVID pandemic.
“I treaded that path very, very carefully. Like we didn’t disclose about the story for a long time. We were being very cautious,” Ghaywan tells NPR. “I thought: Let the film speak for itself.”
Neeraj Ghaywan is the director of Homebound.
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Kate Green/Getty Images/Getty Images Europe
The film has spoken for itself — helped of course, by the megaphone that is the backing of one of the world’s most prominent directors.
Cannes loved it — a nine-minute standing ovation. Homebound made the rounds of film festivals, gathered up medals along the way, then was selected by India for consideration for an Oscar in the foreign film category. It even made it to the prestigious shortlist — a rare feat for any Indian movie.
Based on a true story
Homebound is based on a New York Times essay from 2020 by writer Basharat Peer. It tells the backstory of a photograph that went viral during the early days of the pandemic in India. The image shows one man cradling another in his lap in the dirt, by the roadside. And that man is clearly unwell.
“Just the care and the dignity, the photograph moved me immensely,” says Peer. “It was a great act of friendship.”
Then Peer discovered the men were Hindu and Muslim, and it drew him in, because of the context of “everything that had come before that in the past 10 years,” he says, referring to the routine vilification of Muslims by Hindu nationalists, including members of the ruling BJP party, and the prime minister himself. Perhaps most prominently this year, in February, the chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, generated an AI video of himself shooting Muslims. It was shared by his party and only taken down after a backlash, and a member of the state’s BJP social media team was fired.)
The two men in the image are garment factory workers: Mohammad Saiyub, a Muslim and Amrit Kumar, a Dalit.
That image captured them as they were trying to get home after the Modi government shut down most industries and transport to prevent the spread of the virus.
But with no work, migrant workers, who survive off low wages, began going hungry — and trying to leave. Economist Jayati Ghosh, who researched India’s COVID response, estimates some 80 million migrant workers tried to return home, walking and hitching rides in searing summer heat.
Peer says it reminded him of the Dust Bowl exodus of the ’30s in the United States. “I was thinking about Steinbeck and the Dust Bowl migrants, which led him to write Grapes of Wrath,” says Peer — except in India: “They’re not running from their Dust Bowl villages. They’re running from the Californias to their villages.”
Migrants died enroute — including the man in that viral photo, Amrit Kumar. “He died of heat exhaustion,” his friend Mohammad Saiyub tells us in a tiny tea house in a crowded Mumbai quarter, where workers sat at stainless steel tables to down steaming cups of chai, boiled in a giant, blackened pot manned by a teenager whose face was largely buried in his phone. Saiyub was in the port city to look for work.
Saiyub says the day that photo was taken, he and Kumar had paid a truck driver the equivalent of $53 for a ride. The cargo was crammed with other migrant workers, desperate to return home. But Kumar developed a fever, and the driver booted him off. “They worried he had corona,” Saiyub recalled.
So Saiyub helped his friend off the truck. Then, he says, “the driver told me, you get on the truck and let’s go.” Saiyub refused to abandon his friend. They sat by the roadside, waiting for help. That’s when someone took their photo. As the image spread online, an ambulance raced to find them.
Too late.
Saiyub ultimately returned home with his friend’s body. He dug his best friend’s grave. “My blood is Kumar’s,” he says. “And Kumar’s blood is mine. We were friends like that.”
A personal connection
Director Ghaywan read the essay, drawn in by that tender friendship between a Muslim and a Dalit Hindu.
There was also a very personal reason that Ghaywan was so affected: He was born into a Dalit family but concealed that information for much of his life, fearing rejection by his upper-caste peers if he told them the truth about who he was.
Ghaywan also happens to be a celebrated wunderkid in Bollywood. He got the backing of a major production studio to make Homebound.
He drew on his own experiences of fear and shame as a Dalit-in-hiding to draw Kumar’s character. “In the film, I poured in a lot of my own shame.” And he hoped to humanize a story rarely told, about India’s downtrodden workers. “I felt there is a strong springboard to talk about contemporary India,” Ghaywan said.
Film critic and curator Meenakshi Shedde said the decision to put money on a movie like Homebound spoke to Ghaywan’s talents as a director, and yet remained, something of a “miracle.”
“In today’s India, you can imagine how daring it is of a producer to put money on a film that’s going against the grain,” Shedde said. The grain she refers to is the stuff that Bollywood is increasingly churning out: films that reflect the Indian government’s Hindu nationalist ideology – with macho Hindu men fighting evil Muslims and proud Indians battling enemy Pakistan.
India’s notoriously prickly censors approved the film for screening in the country, although they insisted on changes that diminished the intensity of the caste and faith discrimination that the protagonists faced. Still, Ghaywan says, “the soul of the film remained intact.”
And then, it was selected as India’s official entry for the Oscars.
It was a striking choice to represent India. Just last year, an Indian movie that critics globally tipped as an Oscar winner was passed over by the same selection committee. Critics suggested that was because it featured a steamy Hindu-Muslim romance.
(NPR sought to speak to the Indian selection committee but received no response.)
Film curator Shedde said she, like many of her peers, were dumbstruck. “How did they end up being India’s submission? OK, so those are, I think, mysteries of the universe,” says Shedde.
Ultimately, Homebound made it to the Oscar shortlist for best foreign film but not the final five.
A very personal screening
After all the excitement died down, Ghaywan set about screening the movie in the one place that really mattered: in Devari, the dusty hamlet that Kumar and Sayoub came from.
The families of two young men whose friendship inspired the movie Homebound gather for a makeshift screening on the balcony of the home of Mohammad Saiyub.
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That day, Gaywan hugged the fathers of Saiyub and Kumar, who were waiting to meet him. Both men, elderly and unable to work, sat on the same wooden bench.
Kumar’s mother Subhawati arrived later, dressed in her best, brightly colored sari, gifted by her daughter. Subhawati, hunched and sunburnt, stood quietly outside, until Ghaywan insisted she sit with the menfolk on the porch. Saiyub is from a conservative Muslim family. His sisters and mother stayed inside the house, his mother only poked her head outside to pass on plates of food for lunch.
After the meal, Ghaywan lined up plastic chairs on the Saiyoub family porch. Hung up sheets to block the light. Set up his laptop. Curious villagers piled in. Saiyub’s mother even drew up a chair.
But one person refused to watch: Kumar’s mother, Subhawati.
Ghaywan pleaded with her. “Your son’s story,” he said, “inspired millions of people.” Maybe if she watched the movie, she would see how big he had become in people’s hearts, and “maybe this will help you in some way to heal.”
Kumar’s mother asks us: “What good will it do me to watch this movie?”
Subhawati is the mother of Amrit Kumar, who was on a 1,000-mile journey home with his childhood friend Mohammad Saiyub. Kumar fell ill and later died. Their story inspired the movie Homebound. When the director arranged a screening for the families of the two young men, Kumar’s mother could not bear to watch.
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It was her son Amrit who kept their bellies full with his garment factory work. Now she works on construction sites for a few dollars a day.
“Amrit used to see my sorrow and my happiness. He took my troubles away. If I watch this film — and Amrit doesn’t speak to me, what is the point?”
So as the opening score wafted from the porch, of a movie about her son’s life and death, she walked away.
I didn’t think anyone would take my Hinge prompt seriously. My ideal first date is … hot yoga. The prompt was partly a joke, written by a friend because I couldn’t figure out what to write. If anything, I figured the prompt would explain the series of yoga pictures scattered across my profile, proving to potential suitors that I wasn’t simply a yoga poser like most Angelenos who view vinyasa as just another workout trend.
I was a “serious yogi,” and to date me would mean respecting my daily practice and being OK with the 3,000 small Ganesha statues tucked into every crevice of my apartment.
Still, I was surprised and slightly amused when Noah asked, in all seriousness, if I would like to go to a yoga class with him and then get dinner afterward. In my effort to go on as many dates as possible as quickly as possible, I said yes, of course. I was a couple of months removed from an eight-year relationship that ended badly. I had convinced myself it would take 100 bad first dates before I found anyone remotely interesting. At least a yoga date for date No. 14 would be slightly more exciting than recounting life stories over drinks at the local bar.
In the texting convo that followed planning our date, Noah and I exchanged music tastes. He is a raver and loves EDM, and I am a Swiftie who also, as it turned out, loves EDM. We learned we attended Chapman University at the same time. We both worked on the Fox lot during the same years. And we share an appreciation for tofu, which he called a “gift from the heavens,” making my vegan heart skip a beat.
Noah and I met at a popular hot yoga studio in Hollywood for our one-hour Bikram-vinyasa fusion date. There was something familiar about him that I initially attributed to having crossed paths in college at some point. In the moments before class, we unloaded our gym bags and shoes into separate lockers outside of the yoga room while exchanging hellos that I expected to be awkward but somehow felt easy and unforced. My interest piqued.
In the yoga room, we set up our mats in the second row. As the class started and the instructor dimmed the lights to an orange glow, it hit me that hot yoga might be a horrible first date idea. We were two strangers, our yoga mats a little too close together, already sweating profusely as the yoga teacher instructed us into sun salutations. I couldn’t decide whether to focus on the class, the poses and keeping my breath slow or if I should try to continuously look cute since this was a date. I kept accidentally catching Noah’s eye in the mirror, and through facial expressions, tried to communicate that I was having fun and in no way subtly judging his yoga practice.
At some point during class, Noah slipped his shirt off and, even through my sweat-filled gaze, I caught a glimpse of his six-pack in the mirror. He met my eyes right as I started to blush, and I looked away fast, embarrassed at having been caught staring. The room suddenly felt hotter and more humid than before. I struggled to steady my breath. Yes, this was definitely a horrible yet interesting first date idea.
The teacher cued us onto our bellies for a backbend sequence. My eyes met Noah’s in the mirror again. This time I turned to look at him, and he smiled a surprisingly familiar smile that meant, “I know this is weird, but I’m having fun too.”
“That was a nice class,” Noah said once our hour was up and we were back in the air-conditioned studio lobby. “It’s one way to see your date sweaty and half-naked.”
I laughed in agreement as we parted ways to shower and change for dinner.
We met again at Cafe Gratitude on Larchmont Boulevard and ordered dishes called “I Am Grateful” and “I Am Remarkable” while recounting the class from our perspectives. He told me about his interest in yoga, how he only recently began practicing as a way to help with mobility. I told him yoga keeps me grounded. I showed off the book I kept in my purse, a story about living Jewishly in modern times, which led to a discussion of how we both grew up Jewish on opposite sides of the country. I liked how neither of us ordered a drink with dinner, choosing water over alcohol as the conversation remained interesting and focused. I liked how he was nice to the server and that his eye contact put me at ease. I liked how after paying the check, he walked me to my car and asked if he could kiss me.
I nodded, and he closed the distance between us. We kissed, and with it came a memory: Freshman year of college, orientation week or shortly afterward, I was at a football party with the girl who would soon be my sorority big. I was drunk and chatty and looking to make friends. I started talking to a freshman boy, and that conversation soon turned to making out, the way most drunken college flirting did back then.
My eyes opened, I pulled away from the kiss. “Have we done this before?” I asked.
Noah blushed then nodded softly.
“Freshman year, I think,” he said, “at a party.”
“A football party?”
“Yes!” He laughed, and I did too.
We kissed again. It was the type of kiss you don’t forget. The type that makes sense.
“Well, we have to do this again,” he concluded.
We said good night. He texted me a song to listen to. I played it in the car on repeat until I arrived home.
Until Noah, I thought an invisible string was only the name of a Taylor Swift song. Now, I know better.
The author is a community builder, writer and yoga teacher. She lives in Echo Park. She’s on Instagram: @allegramarcelle.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Agatha Smithson is that rare person who lacks the gene for self-doubt. Brash and brutally dismissive of anyone who disagrees with her, Agatha is the main character and unreliable narrator of Nancy Foley’s deviously plotted debut novel, I Am Agatha.
If you’re one of those readers who prizes likeability above all else in your fictional characters, you may be inclined to give I Am Agatha a pass. But that would be a mistake. This is a strange, fresh story about artistic ambition and personal autonomy willingly abridged for love. And, all too unusually, the love affair here is between two women in their 60s.
Agatha’s character is inspired by the real-life minimalist painter Agnes Martin, known for her canvases covered in graphs and stripes. Martin lived for years in New Mexico near Georgia O’Keeffe.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Martin was a solitary person, although she had significant relationships with women. Foley, who grew up in New Mexico, says that her novel was inspired by rumors of such a relationship between a friend of her grandmother’s and Martin.
I Am Agatha takes place mostly in the 1970s, with flashbacks to Agatha’s rough youth in Canada and allusions to a hard time in New York, including a stint at Bellevue. New Mexico offers Agatha a new start and an austere landscape that jibes with her art and own personality. Here’s Agatha, in her typical brusque, pared-down manner of speaking, describing the view from the adobe house she built herself high upon a mesa:
My house looks west out over a canyon that although far from any ocean whatsoever yet resembles one in scope and light. This ocean canyon heaves waves of shale and basalt, quartz and silt. Cloud shadows flit across its rock floor like ghost boats.
There is no other place on Earth like Mesa Portales. I have traveled to many places, so mine is not an uninformed opinion. The truth is that there is a hierarchy. Some places are objectively better, just as some people are objectively better than others.
The “objectively better” person Agatha wants to bring to live with her on Mesa Portales is her longtime secret love, a woman named Alice who’s now declining into dementia. But, there are two obstacles to Agatha’s caretaking plan: The first is Alice’s adult son, Frank Jr., who plans to move his mother into a care facility in Taos.
At one point, Agatha and Frank argue over this plan and Frank Jr. drops some bombshell news. Agatha tells us: “I’m startled but won’t let him take my own breath away from me and puff himself up with it.” It’s hard not to root for a character who knows how to sling words around like that.
The other obstacle seems more immovable: It’s Alice’s daughter, Lorna, who’s buried in the backyard of Alice’s house. Years ago, Lorna was murdered by her abusive husband, and Alice likes to sit every day by her daughter’s grave, which is planted with violets and lilacs. I’m not giving much away when I point out that Agatha’s practical, if grotesque, solution to this dilemma is revealed in the cover art of I Am Agatha; metaphorically, that book jacket hits readers over the head with a shovel.
This novel becomes even more deliciously weird as a pattern emerges: That is, whenever Agatha talks with Frank Jr. or other characters about Alice’s welfare, Alice is never present. She’s always taking a walk or a nap or just unavailable.
It becomes impossible to ignore that Agatha is estranged from a lot of people. She makes brief enigmatic references to a falling out with O’Keefe, and an academic colleague, and a parasitic graduate student who’s writing her thesis on Agatha’s art. As a narrator, Agatha turns out to be no more forthcoming to us readers than she’s been to any of these characters — former friends she now regards as antagonists.
In its ingeniously duplicitous narrative structure, I Am Agatha is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s magnificent Ripley novels. Not that Agatha is an amoral con artist like Tom Ripley, but she will do anything to safeguard Alice, her fading love. “We are all of us hunted animals from the moment we are born,” says Agatha, contemplating old age and death. None of us will outrun Mortality, but watching brilliant and wily Agatha try is captivating.
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