The Faire
After visiting Skull Rock, I decided to pick up the camera and photograph anything that seemed suitable. I visited the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden and the Huntington Library several times a week during lunch and after work. I brought my camera along and took thousands of pictures. Flowers, displays, anything that looked interesting.
Somehow I knew that I needed to keep busy, especially during the quiet periods at lunch and after work and during the weekends. The weekends were the worst, with long stretches of alone time where my mind could do evil things and think bad thoughts.
Whenever I felt myself sinking into grief and depression, I found something to do or some place to visit. Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave Desert Preserve, and dozens of other national and state parks became priorities. I also took boats out to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara.
I visited Amboy Crater as part of a driving trip from Santa Monica along Route 66. Anza Borrego State Park. Coachella Valley. Death Valley. The Devil’s Punchbowl. Eaton Canyon. Forest Falls. Idyllwild. Leona Valley. The Living Desert Zoo and Botanical Garden. Moorten Gardens. Mormon Rocks. Morongo Canyon Preserve. Moro Rock. Nojoqui Falls. Oso Flaco Lake. The Palm Springs Tram. Quail Gardens. Santa Ana Botanical Gardens. Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. Sequoia National Park. Shambala Tiger Preserve. Silverwood Lake. Tehachapi. Tillman Botanical Gardens. Torrey Pines State Park. Vasquez Rocks. Among many, many other places.
I was running from grief, but at least I was running toward beauty.
My next door neighbor, Sandra, and I began talking and we took a few trips together. She was about my age and had immigrated from Canada because a controversial cancer treatment required a two year waiting period after she was given six months to live. She didn’t have many good things to say about the Canadian medical system. She came to the United States because she could get that operation almost immediately. It saved her life.
Together we visited Joshua Tree National Park and a dozen other places. One trip to Joshua Tree was particularly interesting because it snowed. Can you believe it? Snow in the middle of the desert. That was a fun trip.
Sandra was good company. She understood something about survival, about fighting for time when the clock is running out. We didn’t talk much about Claudia or about her cancer. We just drove and looked at things and existed in the same space without demanding anything from each other.
Soon it was time for the Renaissance Faire in Irwindale. The last time I had been there it was in Devore, but they’d since moved it to what I felt was a better location. It was closer to me, and it was huge. Built behind a flood dam with lots of trees, it was a beautiful spot for a fake medieval town.
Richard and Claudia Lowe kissing at the Renaissance Faire in Devore, California, before her illness
The last time I had been to the Faire was with Claudia, before she got sick. We spent a day wandering through the dusty lanes of Devore, watching the jousts and the shows, eating turkey legs and drinking mead. At some point a performer named DanWill pulled her into one of his bits. I still have the picture of them posing together, Claudia laughing, DanWill in full costume with that mischievous grin. She looked healthy. She looked happy. She had no idea what was coming.
DanWill the performer holding Claudia Lowe while Richard Lowe looks on at the Renaissance Faire in Devore – the photograph DanWill remembered years later
We had to leave early that day. The dust from the Faire caused a massive asthma attack. I had to use an epipen. One moment she was laughing with a performer, the next I was stabbing a needle into her thigh in a dirt parking lot while she fought for breath.
Now I was going back alone.
One thing I can tell you is it got hot, and I mean hot, during the Faire. There were days when it was well over 100 degrees and it was a dry, uncomfortable heat. Every day during Faire, one or two people would pass out from dehydration or heat stroke. The royalty paraded through in elaborate costumes that must have weighed twenty pounds, and everyone bowed to the Queen as she passed. Musicians played. Dancers performed.
People ate full course meals at long wooden tables, turkey legs and bread bowls and meat pies, washing it all down with ale and cider. The whole place was a fever dream of color and noise and sweat.
I spent a lot of time wandering around the Faire with my camera. Sandra went with me once, and I don’t think she really liked it. She didn’t partake in any of the festivities and walked around with a sour look on her face. It didn’t matter to me. I was having fun.
I didn’t realize how caved in I was until someone at the Faire approached me and said hello.
I think I jumped out of my skin.
Sandra saw everything. This man and his daughter performed with fire, and he was just being friendly, walking up to introduce himself. But I was so introverted and grief stricken that I didn’t even see him approaching. He apologized for startling me, then introduced me to some of the other performers.
It was the first time I’d started to become part of any group in over fifteen years. Taking care of Claudia, working a full time job, and trying to survive a malicious stepson took all my energy. During those years, my world consisted of my house, the block where I lived, and work. That was it. That was the whole universe.
Later that day, DanWill approached me. He remembered Claudia. He remembered that photograph. Out of all the thousands of people he performed for every season, he remembered her laughing in the Devore dust.
He didn’t know about the epipen in the parking lot. He didn’t know she was dead. He just remembered her joy.
I didn’t know what to say. The past and present collided right there in the middle of a fake medieval village.
Then he pulled me into one of his bits, some improvised comedy involving a hapless peasant who had wandered into the wrong part of the kingdom. I played along badly. That made it funnier. The crowd laughed. DanWill winked at me and moved on to his next victim.
Something shifted in that moment. I wasn’t just watching anymore. I was participating.
The Faire runs for seven weekends, with a long three day weekend and one extra day for schools. That first year, I went to every single day and photographed everything. The jousts. The parades. The magic shows. The royalty in their impossible finery. The vendors hawking swords and leather goods and flower crowns. The belly dancers. The musicians. The fire performers. The crowds of people in costume and the crowds of people in shorts and t-shirts. All of it.
I’d created a website a few years before called renaissancefaire.net (now renaissancefaire.net), and I posted all my pictures to it. Somehow the people of the Faire found out, and suddenly everyone wanted their picture taken. It became a kind of routine where people would check my website after every day to see if their picture was there. I didn’t charge for my pictures. It was a way to return something to these people who were being so kind to me.
It was during this time that I met DanWill properly, along with the members of the court of royalty, the guilds, many of the players, and many other people. I probably met more people during those seven weekends than I’d met throughout the whole of the rest of my life.
And then I met Marjhani.
She was a belly dancer from a group called Oojahm. Meeting her changed my life.
That’s a story for the next chapter.