Gavin Fine Art & Design

Art, Life, and a Beach Flag

El Nino's winter storms of 1998 brought a huge partially burned tree down the rain-swollen San Juan Creek. Like a large migratory animal, it came to rest in the creek's Doheny Beach estuary where it was immediately recognizable and somehow "adopted" by all who saw it.

This tree, which appears to have died in a fire, once lived upstream, in some canyon by some tributary of this river. During every rainy season the flooding waters would erode the river's banks that crept ever closer to tree. Finally over many years, or perhaps in seconds during the 1998 floods, the last earth and rock of this tree's foundation was washed away, and this once anonymous tree embarked on its new life.

The following years, storms and the river again touched this tree's life — and ours. After standing guard in the alluvium, this beautiful natural sculpture was swept out to sea and we all watched anxiously as our friend made its way down the coast to its new home, new life, and new family of admirers.

Those of us who knew it at Doheny were relieved to see that it had again survived and was still part of our lives. Those who now saw it for the first time had a new special friend.

Then came the storm of September 11, 2001. A violent cloudburst suddenly struck, creating a raging flash flood that immediately engulfed many of our lives' foundations into this dangerous and uncertain torrential river of life that washed away its familiar banks and swept many of us out to sea. Most of us were overwhelmed and nearly drowned. Some were never to be seen again.

We survivors drifted, wondering what would become of our lives. We floated in still uncertain seas, wondering how the world had changed, until the tides of time brought most of us back to shore where we reassessed and reestablished our lives, finding our families and friends anew. This flood ended our old lives and gave us new ones. It has changed all of us forever.

This event has also given this tree a new life with a new meaning. Someone has placed a flag on it, and this beautiful and random "confluence of influences" continues to unite many of us as we share in its story and journey.