Burg Savvy

The coordinates of home
Editor’s Note: This week we introduce a new columnist. Penelope La Montagne has lived in Healdsburg for 25 years. She has been a small business owner and lives on Fitch Mountain near the Russian River, where she studies the mountain and the river, writes poetry and works as a real estate agent. Penelope’s column will run once a month.
California hills
tanned prides of mountain lions
tell my heart I’m home.
You can know a town from a lot of different angles. You can know a town because your in-laws live there, and you know where to get a good meal, you pick up your wine club shipment here or make an annual pilgrimage to float down the river. When I landed here, I knew I wanted to know this place deep. Andy Goldsworthy, the ephemeral artist, says that knowing a landscape requires that you winter and summer in a place for no less than ten years.
Before coming to Healdsburg 25 years ago, I had moved 37 times. Born into a military family, a gypsy since birth, after college I just kept moving. By the time I got a new address printed on my checks, it would be time to move again.
And then, Healdsburg happened to me. I had passed through town during my eighteenth summer, on my way to teach swimming and canoeing on a dammed up stretch of Mayacama Creek at a Campfire Girl camp on Highway 128. I remember driving through Alexander Valley, and saying to myself, “I’m gonna live here someday.”
That someday came in December of 1989. My first home in Healdsburg was what was to become the late Myra Hoefer’s Ivy House, with the staccato sound of chopping carne asada and salsa fresca coming through the shared wall with El Sombrero. Eventually, I bought a riverfront cabin on Fitch Mountain, where I live today, watching the river rise and fall, watching Healdsburg grow, and change.
There is a tangible sense that people here love where they live. Overheard conversations about last night’s sunset, or comments of what a gorgeous day it is wafting through the air like butterflies attest to this. If I had a dime for every time I’ve had people say to me, “We are so fortunate to live here,” I’ld have a lot of dimes.
My personal theory is that the river, lacing silently around Fitch Mountain, and touching the town on the way to the sea, gentles the people here. We have been a community, with a unique sense of wholeness. Recent evictions and rent hikes have challenged that cohesiveness, that sweet sense of alliance and folks’ ability to live here because they love it.
Raymundo Gutierrez is one of those people. He has picked grapes here for Rafanelli Vineyards for 10 years. Turned down for affordable housing he’d been waiting to move into for a year and a half, because his income was calculated during harvest, when he worked two shifts and his earnings were high, his family was set adrift.
His three children have been in school here all their lives. He traveled to Fresno to pick stone fruit, and returned in hopes of working the harvest, but Healdsburg rents have become prohibitive.
Bunking in temporarily with a family in Santa Rosa, his children were exposed to a young man in that house committing suicide. They are back in Healdsburg in another place they cannot stay for long, praying they will encounter an open door.
Multiply this scenario by a hundred. Upheaval, anxiety, a sense of rejection, hopelessness. Right here in River City. No one facing eviction, or displacement is asking for a handout. They are asking for a fair exchange for the labor they provide and the love they give to this town.
Penelope La Montagne is a former Literary Laureate of Healdsburg. She is a poet and is a Realtor at a local real estate brokerage.