Did my time in the California Conservation Corps

I was 18 years old in 1979, and had been raised in a homogenous suburb of San Francisco called Castro Valley. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I had started Junior College and that brought forth no answers either. What I needed was a major change---something that would get me out of my parent’s house and be an adventure too.

Someone had told me about the California Conservation Corps, a program run by the State of California for young adults age 18-23. They were planting trees, working in the forests and mountains, and making a difference in the community---this definitely appealed to the romantic sensibilities of an 18-year-old girl. I imagined meeting young men with long dark hair and closely trimmed beards that would appreciate a girl who was scented with patchouli oil, wore Birkenstocks, and listened to Dan Fogelberg and CSNY.

I went to the State of California employment offices where I applied and was accepted. They requested a 1-year commitment, though this was a contract that could be broken if need be. I was instructed to buy 2 pairs of brown Lee jeans and a pair of work boots---they would provide the khaki colored shirts with CCC patches and the hats that I would wear.

“Basic Training” was a 3-week induction into the CCC. I arrived in Angel’s Camp with my new uniforms, my bottle of patchouli oil, and with hopes of meeting other like-minded young men and women to bond with.

I became aware fairly quickly that the C.C.C. wasn’t what I had imagined it to be. The girls who I had already encountered in my barracks weren’t very friendly---they seemed hard-edged---much more street-wise than me. I was already feeling out of place here.

These girls had a mission, and it was to make this my life as miserable as possible. They had begun to harass me, threw away my patchouli oil and short-sheeted my bed.

My anxiety was rising, but I knew that once I was transferred to San Luis Obispo, that everything would change. I would be able to bring all of my personal items---my guitar and records and clothes for leisure time. I would have to leave my Golden Retriever at home though---a fact that grieved me terribly.

I got through this mini boot camp and headed for SLO. We had shared cabins here, so there would be more privacy and perhaps more tolerance for individuality.

I began to meet people and started working on some of the projects assigned me. The projects weren’t that bad---I wasn’t planting trees, but we were doing some work in the community, and we even assisted with mop up work at some wild fires in the area.

My disappointment---what made this the worst job ever---was that in my naiveté I didn’t understand that a lot of the kids who had joined the CCC were actually from the “streets”. Some had been diverted from the legal system, some had terrible family problems, some were just looking for a place to escape to---like me I guess.

My cabin roommate seemed friendly enough. I even brought her home to my mom’s house for a weekend to hang out. She was from Merced or Modesto or somewhere like that, and it seemed like we could get along---that was until her boyfriend accused me of giving her Valium---I don’t know where she copped the V. --well, the guy actually threatened to kill me.

I felt helpless and ill equipped to understand the culture that I had landed in, or the hostility directed toward me. I was a nice person, always friendly and open. I just didn’t get it, and I was getting scared.

There was a pregnant girl at this camp. She had a boyfriend who claimed to be the nephew of John Forsythe, the actor of Dynasty fame. I had made the mistake of getting a little too close to said Dynasty star nephew, not knowing about the pregnant girlfriend of course, and before I knew it I was being threatened in the bathroom by his girlfriend and her pals.

I think that I had a panic attack the next day, and had to be taken to the local emergency room for observation.

I called my mom and cried “uncle”, and the next day she sent my brother-in-law down to pack up my stuff and bring me home.

In my wildest imagination I didn’t think that I would find such cultural diversity, or kids with such varied personal histories. I had seen bullet and knife scars on some of the young men at that camp, and I had never really experienced that kind of “I’m gonna beat your ass” mentality among my peers at home.

I didn’t find Dan Fogelberg or hang out among the redwoods, but I did come home with a little more life experience, which isn’t such a bad thing after all.

A few words about Dan Fogelberg - A confessional of sorts

I learned of Dan Fogelberg's death at 6 AM on a Monday morning. As my favorite news anchor read the brief obituary, I literally doubled over in tears. My husband climbed out of bed and came toward me to be of some comfort. He looked at me and said, "I know, honey".
How could he possibly know? Over the past 8 years, I had lost my 40 year old brother to a traumatic brain injury, divorced and remarried through dramatic circumstances, slowly watched my mother fall into the depths of dementia and die, lost a stepfather, dealt with my husband's own bout with prostate cancer, and slammed head on into middle age. My mom died just a year ago, and the loss is still fresh for me. Dan's death seems to amplify a grief that has been growing for years.

I was raised in an emotionally explosive home, and music was my favorite hiding place. My first true love was Neil Young. I wrapped myself up in his music, and imagined that he could heal all of my hurts and keep me safe. At the tender age of 13 I spent hours in my room with Neil, my only friend, and the only person who understood me. I started playing guitar just so I could play and sing his music. I’m convinced that his music saved me somehow, and protected me from harsher realities. I loved Crosby, Stills and Nash too, and throughout the 1970’s, I immersed myself in music.

Enter Dan Fogelberg, my shining light and romantic ideal, some kind of beacon of hope for a lost and longing 17-year-old girl. My sister had a copy of his album “Captured Angel” and she let me borrow it. For a teenage girl, it was a most passionate and sensual experience. It increased my longing and yearning, but it also made me feel hopeful and embraced at the same time. I felt that Dan somehow "got me", and this gave me something to cling to.

Okay, I admit that I was terribly in love with him, and fantasized that if he could just meet me, that he would fall terribly in love too, sweep me away to his Colorado castle of love, and provide me with the unconditional love and connection that I felt that I never had. Of course there was the bonus of passion and love and incredible sex!

I yearned and ached for Dan Fogelberg. Somewhere inside of myself I believed that I knew who he was. I knew that he was sensitive and emotionally available, and I knew that he had all of the answers to my questions. I knew that he could somehow perfect my life. He had no flaws. He could keep me safe from a world that I felt was dangerous and unpredictable. These were my unshakable truths.

I never missed an opportunity to see him in concert during the 1970’s. He toured the Bay Area several times when he was at his most popular. Funny though, as I sat at these concerts, I somehow felt as if my life was passing me by, and that I would never be the person who I imagined that I might become. Somehow I just didn’t measure up to the golden pedestal that I had placed Dan upon. I would sit at these concerts in tears, because part of me went there with the hope of somehow meeting Dan. I went to hear the music yes, but I also went fantasizing that he might actually notice me. Perhaps there was a way back stage? There never was, and this left me feeling empty and disappointed.

Many years later, my sister and I went to see him in Northern California. I hadn’t kept track of Dan, or how his music had changed or evolved. In fact, I really hadn’t given him very much thought since I was in college. Having the opportunity to see him again was kind of exciting, and that old yearning seemed to be stirring within me.

We were seated at a front table at a very small venue. I could practically touch my former fantasy man. You would have thought that I would have been in some sort of ecstasy, and filled with gratitude at this opportunity to see him perform again. I know that this was years later and that I had evolved as a person, yet I was surprised when I noticed that I was filled with anxiety and hostility toward him. How opportune it was then, that I was able to finally get Dan’s attention.

I proceeded to get really drunk during the concert, and I kept yelling, "sing Netherlands", which is a song that he no longer could perform since having throat surgery, and "how about a Scotch, Dan"? assuming that he most certainly would want to join me in my merriment. Imagine my shock then when he turned to me and said in a less than friendly tone, "why don't you have another Scotch?" I was mortified.

After the concert, I felt angry and rejected. Poor Dan didn’t know that he had been in a one-sided and dysfunctional relationship with me for 20 years. How could he have known how much expectation and desire that I had projected upon him, and how could anyone have ever lived up to that in the first place?

A couple of years later, I returned to the scene of the crime. I think that I needed some kind of closure, and I guess that I still had a score to settle, with myself.

It was a good concert. It couldn’t have been a lovelier setting among the vineyards and the rolling hills of the Napa Valley. He performed beautifully, exuberantly. I sat in the audience with the same sister, sipping wine, the 17-year-old girl within me still feeling that void, while the 40-year- old silently wept for her injured child within.


On this night, I could finally see Dan Fogelberg not as some sort of romantic super savior for that lost 17-year-old kid still imprisoned within me, but as a figment of a child’s imagination.

Ironically, I could have apologized for my miscreant behavior from years earlier. My husband was born in Peoria Illinois, and his mother Mary lived there for most of her life until her death in 2006. A few years ago, we were visiting her in Peoria and I happened to mention Dan, since he was born and raised in Peoria as well. Mary said with some delight and pride, "I play bridge with his mother Maggie every week." “Really?” I exclaimed. Well, I may have actually squealed! Secretly, I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. I envisioned Dan’s gold records in Maggie’s living room, and had a faint hope of being invited over to her house for a visit.

Unbelievably, my mother in law had an inside line to my former love idol. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the conversation faded back to other matters, like what she needed from Schnuk's Supermarket, and where we would dine that evening.

I ended up meeting Maggie Fogelberg at my mother-in-law's funeral in 2006. She came in to the memorial, and we stood there and spoke quietly for a few minutes. We talked about my husband's mother, and we talked about Dan, and I told her how much he had meant to me over the years.

She was the proud mother of a man dying of prostate cancer. I never asked Maggie to put me in contact with Dan so that I could apologize to him. At the end of the day, it was enough that I was able to honor his mother. It was enough.

The morning that I learned of Dan’s death, I was not only grieving the death of a man who had symbolized my unmet needs and my desire for unconditional love and connection, I was coming face to face with my own disappointments, regrets, and the realization that I couldn’t go back and make different choices in my life. I was grieving the passing of my own youth.


We exchange Christmas cards yearly with Maggie, and my husband and I sent her a sympathy card upon Dan's death on December 16, 2007.