Steve Barth | Ronin Journalist

Habit of Excellence

A profile of UCSB women's basketball coach Mark French

By Steve Barth

We tell ourselves that competition is the American Way. We convince ourselves that conflict and confrontation are so healthy that we practice them not only between groups but also within them, whether in sports, business, or our own families. We idolize winners, jealous of their sometimes abominable excesses. We despise the losers, dismissing their noblest qualities.

Mark French doesn't think it has to be that way. As he begins his tenth season coaching the UCSB women's basketball program, he has tangible proof that there are viable alternatives.

Coach Mark French retracts his long legs and leans forward in his office chair to interrupt a long discussion of the philosophical imperatives of his program.

"Let's not be naive," he says. "I will get fired if we don't win a certain number of basketball games."

This might be obvious talking to any other college coach. However Coach French rarely talks about winning. In fact, he doesn't talk about basketball as much as one might expect.

Not that his job is in question, since his team has posted six straight winning seasons. Women's Basketball at UCSB has come to dominate the Big West Conference and climbed to the top 20's in national rankings. The Gauchos won Big West tournament championships in 1992 and 1993 and went on to NCAA tournaments, where they advanced as far as the second round both years. They also were Big West regular season champions in 1992 and 1996. French has twice been honored as Big West Coach of the Year.

Other coaches might achieve records like this, but some will destroy their young players self-esteem in the process. "You can win games and still not be happy," understands senior guard Erin Alexander. "Winning is still a big thing, but not the first thing."

To French, winning basketball games is only a way of measuring progress towards more important goals'not how his team performs on the court, but how they perform over the course of every player's life, long after they have given up competitive basketball.

When games are not going so well, French has been known motivate the team by questioning what kind of doctors, lawyers, and mothers his women will be 30 years after the clock runs out. He believes that athletic scholarships should do more cover players' college expenses and that his coaching responsibilities go beyond turning his players into the best athletes they can be. So while he is proud that former Gauchos like Lisa Crosskey, Erika Kienast '92, and Becky Brown '93 went on to play professional basketball in Europe and the Pacific, he is more proud that Kira Anthofer '89 is a marketing director for local McDonald's and was Miss Tall USA last year; that Brown is an executive with Enterprise Rent-a-Car; that Susie Matthews '92 is a physical therapist in Flagstaff; and that Krista Gannon '93, who was the 1994 NCAA Woman of the Year for California, will graduate this year from Stanford Law School'just to name a few examples.

The coach considers himself as much an educator as any professor, but one with an advantage few teachers have. A professor has a few hours per week over a single quarter to influence a student, while the coach's players invest an average of 3,000 hours in his program over the course of their college careers.

With a training regimen that emphasizes communication skills and ethical principles, French inverts the priorities found in most competitive athletic programs. "He wants his team to perform at the highest possible level," says Robert W. Kuntz, UCSB Assistant Chancellor and a fan of the program. "First as caring, concerned, contributing human beings; second as high achieving students; and third as fierce competitors on the basketball court."

The Gaucho recruitment pitch promises top high school athletes to turn them into "givers rather than takers." Gauchos are required to perform community service and visit schools and youth groups, teaching basketball and being role models to local children. They adopt needy local families at Christmas. Even when French asks for money for his program, it likely isn't for something like a larger travel budget, but for something like an outreach coordinator so that his team can spend more time with local schoolchildren.

"We don't use the win word around here. We talk about excellence. We are asking our women to have excellence become a habit for them in lots of areas of their lives," French explains. "Basketball is merely a vehicle for us to work on that principle of developing excellence individually and as a group."

French adds, however, that the program's philosophy does have direct impact on the court. "Most of the skills, philosophies and principles that our program is based on far transcend basketball. But they also help our basketball team be a much more functioning, effective group of people."

The Program

Whether they are sharpening offensive and defensive skills in the gym or building strength and endurance on the track, Gauchos are constantly seeking to exceed their own expectations, over and over.

"Let's practice what we preach!," shouts Cori Close as the team sprints past. Checking her stopwatch with one hand and pointing to her heart with the other, she adds, "No limits! That comes from in here!"

Close '93, who was the first athlete to win UCSB's Distinguished Senior Award, is one of three assistant coaches aiding French in his quest. The others are Barbara Beainy '92 and Tony Newnan '92. They are the only Division I team in which all four coaches have returned to their alma mater. (See box)

The uniqueness of French's program begins with the young women he recruits from high schools'but only if their life goals equal their court skills.

"Coach French knows the type of person he wants for this program," says sophomore Stephanie Shadwell, recruited from El Cajon Christian High School. "He will take a better person over a better athlete."

Impressed by the team's potential and French's philosophy, some of the most sought-after high school athletes have chosen Santa Barbara despite offers from dozens of other schools. "It is a unique approach that makes sense to a lot of bright young women," French explains.

Consider Kristi Rohr, who begins at UCSB this year. Rohr was not only three-time Santa Barbara County Player of the Year, but also graduated from Santa Ynez High School with a 4.4 grade point average and does volunteer work through her church. When French visited her family, Rohr entertained them with 30 minutes of classical piano.

"I was thinking, I want to be like her when I grow up," he remembers.

Although she had many other offers, Rohr says she chose UCSB because of the coaches' dedication to their program and their seriousness about winning a national title. "They are on their way to the next level," she says. Rohr also loves French's philosophy. "He cares about you as a person, as well as a player. He wants to know how you are doing and what your goals are."

Even before his philoophy hits the boards, French lays out the concepts in three weeks of classroom sessions.

"Obviously the women will have different communication skills, different work ethics, different tolerances for synergy," he explains. "We sit down before practice starts and give them a lot of scenarios about how this philosophy works."

Lady Gauchos will constantly hear shouts of encouragement from their coaches and teammates. The last across the line gets more support than the first. Comments are always positive and the coaches take extreme pains that what they say not sound negative even by comparison to other comments. If two players collide, say diving for a loose ball, they make sure to apologize before bad feelings can begin.

"Some kids come in with the ability to talk with others about issues that are really important. Some are petrified by the idea," French explains. "We need to teach them how to say things without being accusatory and use a good tone of voice."

Other teams may use team-building exercises, but not to the same extent, says Close. "To have to grow as people, to have their lives touched by teammates, to learn to communicate at the tough level that we do, brings the college basketball experience and the college experience in general to a whole new level," she says. "Mark is one of the few people to demand the whole package."

As a result, the women of the team are just as close off the court. They live together, study together, and if one wants to go to the movies, they very likely all go.

Gauchos are taught that their personal best cannot come at the expense of their team members, an issue that can plague men's teams. "Many male athletes want to score a lot of points, to have tremendous statistics and be the lead scorer on the team, to be the one who is most highly publicized."

Highly competitive women athletes can sometimes be just as self-centered. "They may have been in [high school] programs where their coaches were primarily focusing on them, with mom and dad keeping track of every single point and going nuts if the scorekeeper missed a rebound," French explains.

But he adds that it's really so natural for women to cooperate that more often he has to remind his players to shoot. "They want to be part of the team. They want the affiliation, the friendships, that strength of a group striving to meet goals. So you have to make some women understand that scoring a lot of points is really what the team needs. If I was coaching a men's basketball team I doubt I would have to contend with that issue."

Alexander keeps both in perspective. The 5'6" guard leads the team in points, but emphasizes the importance of cooperation among, rather than competing between her teammates. A team that is so competitive internally "might be successful up to a point," she says. "But they will never be the best."

"Most women approach the game of basketball differently than men do because I think most women approach life differently," French supposes. "Women show their emotions much more freely and openly than men do, whether we are talking about athletes or non-athletes. You can use that within a team concept, if your women understand how to control and channel it to be very productive."

French meets weekly with every student on the team. At these half-hour, individual meetings, French talks with players about their games, their schoolwork, their lives. If two players are having trouble resolving conflicts between them, French will bring them in together to mediate. French's own manner of speaking to players, individually and as a team, demonstrate the kind of exceptional communication skills found in the best managers. He listens intently. He probes with sensitivity. He apologizes when necessary.

Gauchos are required to spend four hours per month during the off-season doing community outreach, either individually or as a team. Most of them do this as part of the Gaucho Outreach program, which last year visited almost 30 elementary schools. "Two of our players will go and talk about basketball, but they also talk about gangs, staying in school, what it is like to be a woman doing things that are still a bit unusual in terms of aggressiveness and being physical," French says.

French also sets very high academic standards for his players. Their academic statistics are paraded in the team literature. Over the course of his 18-year coaching career, French has graduated 98 percent of his athletes. Since 1987, 16 players have been honored as Big West Scholar Athletes more than any other team in the conference. On campus, members of his team have taken home UCSB's "Golden Eagle Ring", awarded to the male and female intercollegiate athletes with the highest grade point average, four out of the last six years. The six players who graduated last year had a combined GPA of 3.36.

French's coaching style has earned the admiration of Paula Rudolph, who as UCSB's Title IX Coordinator is responsible for gender equity issues. She nominated French last April for a staff citation of excellence (he was one of ten to receive the award). "He is able to motivate without controlling, and to push his athletes without making them feel attacked or diminished in any way," she wrote. "Women who are coached by Mark French leave UCSB knowing that they can rely on themselves, that caring for others is ultimately more important than winning, and that they can push themselves without sacrificing other values they hold dear."

The Game

At home games in the UCSB "Thunderdome," the bleachers are filled with young families. One benefit of the Gaucho Outreach program is that local children bring their parents to watch the team. Attendance, which averaged about 60 per game when French took over the program, now averages 1,000 or more.

UCSB English Professor Steve Allaback grew up on men's basketball, but through watching the Lady Gauchos he has become equally passionate about the women's game and rarely misses a home game. "The overwhelming sense that I get watching Gaucho women's basketball is a kind of controlled recklessness," he says. "It's very exciting: fast, furious, fun and fascinating."

On the court, the teamwork and communication skills French teaches translate into a formidable defense and an excellent fast-break game. In contrast to men's basketball, where brute power and dunk shots dominate the action, the women's game tends to be marked by more finesse and more attention to the fundamentals. When Amy Smith receives a pass at the post, she can turn, jump and shoot with tremendous grace. Erin Alexander is amazingly accurate with her 3-point shots fired from beyond the key. More than anything else, however, the Gaucho's strength is that by knowing and trusting each other so much, they achieve levels of awareness and synchronization in their teamwork that other programs can only pay lip service to.

Alexander points out that this coordination gives the Gauchos a powerful edge. Even when playing the most competitive teams in the division, they know that even if they can't match opposing players one-on-one, they can still out-cooperate. "As a team, we blow them away," she says.

"We play so aggressively on the court that the other team sometimes seems truly intimidated. They can hardly believe that our courteous and respectful young women so can be so hard on the court," Allaback adds. "They play hard defense, get the ball, and push it as hard as they can to the other end of the court, keeping the other team on the defensive all the time."

But Allaback, who is UCSB's faculty representative to the NCAA, also admires the way the Gauchos demonstrate their intelligence and sensitivity on the court by always being respectful of their opponents. "When they lose, which is the real test of the character of a team, they don't sulk. They might be disappointed, but they are never bitter or hostile," he says.

One reason French is so obsessed with philosophy is that he doesn't want women's basketball to imitate the worst excesses of men's basketball. As the women's game increases in popularity and two professional women's basketball leagues get set to begin in the United States, he says, "I'd like it to be equal, but that doesn't mean we have to have all of the bad parts, too. I think we can learn from the men's basketball experience nationwide and try to stay away from that."

What French wants to avoid is the "trash-talking, referee bumping, on strike-because-I'm-only-making-$1.6 million per year kind of athlete that dominates our sports pages." He cannot see the logic of rewarding bad manners and outrageous behavior on the court, then expecting fans to act differently in daily life.

"It is okay to scream and yell and be an idiot on the basketball court, but not okay to do that on the street? I don't understand that. I don't think we are teaching the right lessons," he complains. "Too many sources in our society [tell a child] that if you dribble well you can get all of this adulation and still be able to be any kind of person you want. It seems counterproductive to both the individual and society."

(French has also been known to ask students in the stands to refrain from yelling insults at visiting teams.)

"To me, one of the biggest reasons it is important to win basketball games is because I think we are moving in the right direction here in terms of what sports should be all about," he adds. "I'll bet there are a lot of UCSB alumni coaching little league, elementary and high school teams. For them to hear about the success we are having in our program is great, but also for them to get a glimpse into how we are going about winning all of these games might encourage them to do it in a way that I feel would be more beneficial to society."

The Coach

The 18th Century essayist John Ruskin once said, "The greatest reward for a man's hard work is not what he gets from it, but what he becomes by it."

French has adopted the quote—with modifications—for his program. It is one of the many useful aphorisms, from ancient Greek philosophers to corporate management gurus, which the coach is constantly collecting to guide inspire himself and his team.

French was raised in Bakersfield, where his father coached high school baseball for 35 years. When he came to UCSB, he majored in political science, but playing varsity basketball for two years under Coach Ralph Barkey and pitching baseball for four years for Coach Dave Garrie. After earning his BA in political science from UCSB in 1973 he went to University of the Pacific, where he would eventually earn his Master's in physical education.

He was assistant men's baseball coach at UOP when he was offered the position of head coach of their women's basketball program in 1979. French admits that the first women's basketball game he saw was as the head coach of one of the teams playing. He isn't proud of that, but it wasn't unusual at the time. He never would have guessed how much he could learn from his players at the same time he was teaching them.

"I was a fairly typical male athlete of my generation, who prided himself on not showing emotion. [Now] I am moved to tears and show it on a fairly regular basis," he says. "I think I am a better human being than I was 20 years ago because I have learned to show people that I care."

By the time French returned to UCSB in 1987, he had already turned two college programs around. After posting five winning seasons at UOP, French was named Nor Cal Coach of the Year. He moved to Idaho State in 1983, and rebuilt their women's basketball team. The UCSB women's basketball program had begun in '72, but after several years of rebuilding, UCSB had it's first Division I winning season in 1990-91 and hasn't looked back since.

Would French have been as successful with his approach if he had stayed in men's sports? He admits that it is easier with a women's program. But he points to other UCSB coaches with a very similar philosophical approach. "Greg Wilson, an unbelievably successful men's and women's swimming coach, has a philosophical belief that is very similar although the way he puts that into practice is different because swimming is a whole different venue," French says.

The Test

The strength of Gaucho teamwork was tested last spring. Although they were Big West regular season champions with a 22-5 record, including a 12-game winning streak, they lost in the conference tournament March 10 to University of the Pacific by only a single point in the last seconds of double overtime. Doubling the blow, they were not chosen to play in the NCAA tournament, which their season record should have assured. Instead, they were offered a slot at the National Women's Invitational Tournament in Amarillo, Texas.

Then on March 12, 1996, the team was shocked to hear that Erin Alexander's longtime boyfriend Jeff Rio had been killed in an accident that rainy morning on US 101 near Gaviota. Rio was a popular and respected assistant football coach at Santa Ynez High School who would be mourned by 5,000 at his memorial service. A devoted fan of the Lady Gauchos, he once gave each player a rose after a tournament defeat. He was scheduled to begin at UCSB this fall.

"He was a great young man whose approach to life far transcended football," French remembers. But the coach adds, "Even if we hadn't known Jeff so well, it still would have been a great tragedy for the team because we all cared about Erin so much."

As soon as they heard the news, players and coaches crowded into the Goleta apartment where Alexander lives with several other players. Over the coming days, they took turns looking after Erin and studying for finals, while condolences poured in from the community which had become so fond of these women.

"It made us realize that basketball is pretty close to the bottom of the list when it comes to the grand scheme of things," Alexander recalls. But she agreed with team members who felt Rio would not have wanted them to abandon their post-season opportunities. It was Carl Rio, Jeff's father, who brought Erin to school for her first practice after the tragedy.

Eight days later in Texas, Gauchos played wearing bracelets bearing Rio's initials and football jersey number, 66. "I knew it wasn't going to be like any other game," says senior Amy Smith, Alexander's teammate and roommate, "that it wasn't going to be easy to stay as focused or positive as it normally is.

After UCSB's first-round loss to LSU in overtime, Carl and Mary Ellen Rio flew to Texas to be with the team. With emotional and physical exhaustion taking its toll, the Gauchos fell 12 points behind in the first half of the semi-finals, against Illinois State. Alexander missed shot after shot, but teammates kept passing her the ball and in the last 14 minutes she scored on all but one of her attempts. UCSB caught up and with less eight seconds left, Alexander fired from beyond the key. The team held its breath while the ball circled the rim before finally dropping through the net to win the game by a single point.

That gave the Gauchos a chance for the second-place consolation title. But they would have to face Western Kentucky, a team that had been a regular at the NCAA tournament for a decade and three times had gone to the Final Four. Undaunted, UCSB took an early lead, only ceding the advantage to W. Kentucky once in the first half. Alexander was again playing at the top of her form.

"I was thinking about him a lot," Alexander says about Jeff Rio, "but because I was playing well it gave me a kind of peace."

Alexander made 27 points, becoming only the second Lady Gaucho to pass 1,000 total points by her junior year. Team captain Dio Aguinaldo finished eleven points and seven assists in the game. Co-captain Lauren Goldstine racked up eleven points. Amy Smith scored fourteen. Stephanie Shadwell and Amy Hughlett each scored four. Sasha Scardino scored six. When it was over, the Gauchos had won 77-61.

Alexander was honored as the tournament's top scorer, and more importantly, she was given the NWIT's Jack Hall Award for spirit, pride and leadership. As the crowd gave her a standing ovation, she stepped onto the court arm-in-arm with Carl and Mary Ellen Rio.

With six new players on the team and ten out of 15 either freshmen or sophomores, the 1996-97 season will test the consistency of the Gaucho program. Alexander says she "doesn't see a loss on the schedule."

Coach French's goal is a national championship in the next five years. An NCAA title would really give him a chance to influence young coaches.

But no matter how many championships the program may bring home in years to come, the 1995-96 season will remain the Gauchos ' proudest, even if it will also be remembered as the saddest.

"I've been coaching 17 years and have had lots of experiences. None of them even came close to the sense of awe that I have for these women and what they were able to go through, coming out of it with such magnificence," French says. "I was proud of them first because they dealt with it, and second that they dealt with it so effectively that they were able to go out and do something else that was tremendously important to all of them. That was a double win."

womens basketball,teamwork,Mark French,UCSB

The Power of Words

While I was an English major at UC Santa Barbara, I came to believe in the power of words, and hoped I might some day conjure their magic, stringing a few together on a line that would cause readers to open their hearts to a world of strangers. I imagined these magic words might be a passage in a novel, a scene in a screenplay, or maybe a page in a magazine. I didn’t expect them to be a few lines scribbled in a truck stop and faxed to a television station in the middle of the night.

On January 16, I was driving home through the desert listening to the first news reports of the earthquake which had just struck the Hanshin region of Japan. The chaos that had followed the Northridge quake the year before had seemed cataclysmic enough. But as day was breaking in Kobe, it was quickly obvious that the scope and scale of destruction was many times worse.

In 1983, just after graduating from UCSB, I found myself living alone in a Buddhist temple in the old city of Kanazawa. Although my reasons for living in Japan were complicated, I was one of those Americans for whom a first visit to Japan felt like coming home. As a journalist, I later came to specialize in explaining the impact of Japanese culture on modern business. I had even written some fairly impassioned pleas for reason in the fractious political climate that exists between the US and Japan. I had recently joined the staff of the Japan America Society of Southern California, a group with more than 3500 members which has been working for mutual understanding and friendship since 1909

I knew that the Japanese government would be responding to the earthquake, but I felt I should do something. Yet if there was anything I had learned in Japan, it was that respecting someone’s privacy was usually more important than it was to notice their need. To do a kindness for a stranger is only to embarrass them by noticing their distress and to oblige them to repay you for your aid.

But Japanese society has both rules and exceptions. Japan had not hesitated to help Los Angeles after the Northridge quake. They had contributed $3 million for cleanup efforts through the Japan Business Association. Any effort we were able to offer would only be repaying their kindness from the year before.

So I wrote up my argument and by midnight we were faxing the notice to local radio and television stations. The facts needed no manipulation. The eerie synchronicity was unmistakable. Only one year after the Northridge quake the suffering and destruction in Kobe made us realize how lucky we were—and are—in Southern California. The same people who had rushed to our aid now needed our sympathy and support.

By the next morning, the Kobe Relief Fund became an equal partnership of the JAS, the Japan Business Association and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. Within days, we were receiving a thousand checks per day. Within a month we had received more than $1 million in donations and to date almost $1.8 million. I have recognized the names of classmates, teachers and friends from Santa Barbara. We added the money to an account in Japan which was making direct grants to quake victims.

We originally expected that most of the relief money raised locally would be from American corporations. While we have received many generous corporate donations, more than ninety percent of the donations came in amounts of less than $250.

Many of the approximately 10,000 contributions came with heart-wrenching letters. One woman wrote of tears welling up because the images on television reminded her so much of being a little girl in postwar Japan. Others recalled how their lives had intersected with Japanese travelling through America, or on their own travels to Japan. Many, many of the letters came from residents of the San Fernando Valley, including some whose homes had been damaged or even destroyed. Children all over Southern California told children in Japan to be brave and clean up.

Over and over, these letters used the phrase, “My heart goes out...”

Too often these days, pages in the media are devoted to the fault lines of the US-Japan relationship. These stresses are exploited by merchants and politicians with their own agendas, who profit from discord at the expense of average citizens in both nations. Those people hire English majors, too. However, the outpouring of love from Americans to Japanese sends a very different message from the rhetoric of a trade war—a message that our relationship is built on a deeper foundation than greed and therefore remains unshakable.

I have been writing professionally now for 15 years, but I no longer have any illusions about the power of words. The 10,000 people who opened their hearts to Japan didn’t do so because my words were clever. Only because they were true.

There is magic in that, but it isn’t mine.

Published in Coastlines Magazine

Great Hanshin Earthquake,Kobe

The Brothers of Caldey Abbey

It was a strange place to find him, this Caribbean character out of a Jimmy Buffet song. True, he was still bumming around the islands. But this was a Welsh island; it was January and just above freezing. Without knowing him as he was before, it was obvious Brother Paul was a changed man.

Because of a New Year’s storm, I was a day late making the crossing to Caldey from the mainland. From my hotel room in Tenby, I’d stared out at the Severn Sea watching fishing boats in Tenby’s ancient stone harbor break loose from their moorings. One boat had sunk. But because low tide completely drains the harbor, all the captain had to do was wait until then and pump her out.

Finally now, three miles off the south coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales, the long, low island grew as the boat approached. The buildings of the monastery appeared above the rough cliffs and fields of gorse.

Isolation is a concept invariably associated with small islands and lofty mountain peaks. It is no accident that many of Britain’s western islands have at one time or another been used as a refuge for men seeking to withdraw from one world as they aspire to another. Maybe no man is an island, but that doesn’t stop a lot of them from trying. And while Caldey is only a mile and a half long and less than ¾ of a mile wide, this slow and gentle island has been attracting men looking to change their lives for past 1,500 years.

No one met me at the stone jetty on Priory Bay so I made my own way up the old road. Father Robert, the abbot, welcomed me when I tentatively rapped the gargoyle knocker on the door of Caldey Abbey. But then he hurried away. Caldey’s material welfare depends on the influx of tourists who overrun the island during the summer and drive the monks behind the fences of their private enclosure. The brothers’ spiritual welfare therefore depends more on the solitude of these quieter cold months. He left me with a map of the island and introduced me to a young man from Llandovery who had fled to the island to cram for his A-Level exams. Neil offered to give me a tour.

Caldey’s Welsh name is Ynvs Pyr, “the Island of Pyro.” Pyro began Caldey’s monastic tradition when he retired to the island to live as a hermit in the 6th century. Others followed, and Pyro became the first abbot of a Celtic monastery. One dark night, according to legend, Pyro got drunk and fell down the well.

Not far from the modern abbey, completed in 1912, Neil and I explored the Benedictine priory, which was built soon after the Norman Conquest on the ruins of Pyro’s community of wattle huts. The Norman monastery operated until Henry VIII suppressed all the monasteries in 1536.

The island changed hands many times after that. Ninety years ago an amateur archaeologist, the Rev. W.D. Bushnell, retired to Caldey and restored the priory, which had even spent some of the intervening time as a brewery.

The modern monastery was built by Anglican Benedictines, led by Abbot Aelred of Painsthorpe Abbey in Yorkshire. In 1928, the entire brotherhood abandoned the island. At the request of the Pope, they were replaced by Cistercians from the Belgian abbey of Scourmont.

It was very cold. Neil left me and returned to the guest house for his seventeenth cup of coffee. I wandered around, snapping pictures. The land behind the monastery was littered with automotive history: dozens of derelict vehicles in various stages of decay.

In the shadow of a WWII amphibious lander, someone was welding. Sparks popped off the burnishing rod, flaring in the lens, reflecting off his goggles, and making his gray beard look like it was on fire. When I coughed he looked up and I asked if he minded. He just grunted and went back to work.

Click. Intrigued, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Welding. What does it look like I’m doing?” There was something strangely out of place about his voice. Something familiar.

“I mean it looks like you’re making that gear from scratch?”

“Made the whole da—“ he mumbled something “bike from scratch and odd parts.” He closed off the gas, took off his glasses, and looked at me. “Here.”

He led me into the garage. In the corner, a low motorcycle squatted in disarray.

“It works?”

“Of course it works!” he said irritably, but then picked up something meant to be a muffler. “Well, usually it does.”

Neil had mentioned that one of the friars was an American ex-Marine.

“You must be Brother Paul?”

“Who are you?” Then, “Where are you from?” “California.”

He swore and clasped my hand. “I’m from Florida,” he laughed.

Our conversation took on a different tone. Brother Paul rolled a cigarette, offered it to me first, then fished in the pockets of his tattered bomber jacket for matches.

“I’m something of a maverick around here,” he confessed. For instance, he loves to ride his bike around the island’s tracks, despite complaints that the noise terrifies the sheep. Leaning closer he admitted his secret dream of scaring one to death because he was dying for some ‘chops. The monastery is vegetarian. “You know what I really miss about the States? Porterhouse steaks.”

 

“So what are you doing here?”

His answer began with a string of good-natured obscenities and imprecations.

“I just got my stability,” he said. He explained that he’d been here for three years and had recently taken the further vows of a man intent on remaining in the Order for life. Usually, a monk is expected to go off by himself to be sure of his decision. Brother Paul had just camped on the far side of the island.

Father Joe, the chief mechanic, came in. Brother Paul introduced him as “my boss.” Father Joe had sewn a scapula onto his jump suit, although the hood was more for the cold than for monastic effect. Brother Paul seemed uncomfortable talking now, so I made an excuse and left.

Each monk on Caldey is an expert on something, Neil had told me. One is the baker, one works at the dairy with some of the island’s secular tenants, two make Caldey’s famous perfume, Brother Paul and Father Joe are mechanics. I found Brother James, who Neil described as “the public works type,” tooling around on a roto-tiller hitched like a tractor to a cart.

“Can I take your picture?”

He stopped, shrugged. “It takes nothing from me,” he said in a heavy accent. “Wait!” He adjusted his beret and his sheepskin vest. “You think I look French?”

The monks are all fairly close in age now. All in their 50s and early 60s. But while some like Brother Paul have only been there a few years, Brother James has been on Caldey on and off since almost from the beginning. I helped him load slate into the cart and then patch parts of the road where the rain had made potholes.

Brother James came to Caldey when he was 24. He was sent just to help out for a while. He is now 60. He had entered the order in Belgium when he was 16. “I confess I cried like a baby in my straw mattress on my first night. But only once.”

In the 60s his abbot at Scourmont asked Brother James to take a Rover full of supplies from the Belgian Congo to Zaire.

“But I don’t know how to drive.” Brother James protested.

“You’ll learn.”

He was gone six years.

Suddenly Brother James straightened up. “We’re late,” he said and started up the road to the abbey. Neil was out in front of the guest wing shouting for me to hurry up.

During the day, as they go about their chores, the monks appear as they are. Muddy Wellingtons, mended sweaters, scarves, bomber jackets... scattered around the island. At sext, as they do many times during the day, for lauds and mass, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline, the monks exchange their dirty work clothes for robes and scapula and file into the choir stalls of the Abbey Church. When they come together in song and prayer, they blend with each other’s voices in the Gregorian mode:

...As it was in the beginning, is now,

and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

They sing with varying expressions and degrees of devotion. Their voices range high and low. Brother Paul leaned back in his choir stall, his eyes were far away, his mouth working the prayers. He appeared to be somewhere painful in his own past.

Exiting the chapel, they file down the red stone floor of the cloisters as a line of humility. With Neil and I in tow, they filled the refectory, a huge dining hall under a high beamed ceiling with a tiny electric heater burning in the massive fire place.

The room could easily have seated a hundred people, but there were only about a dozen brothers left and a few guests. In the Middle Ages there were 14 Cistercian monasteries in Wales. Now there is only one.

Lunch was yams, potatoes, soup, and baked fruit. Talking in the refectory is not allowed, although this doesn’t stop the brothers from communicating. Neil reported he has seen Brother Paul and his “mates” engage in riotous exchanges of contorted faces and shaking fists across their wooden bowls. Brother James is the cook as well as the road mender. With a point and a thumbs-up he signaled that the biscuits were fresh.

Armed with Father Robert’s map I set off across the island after lunch. The map was roughly drawn but carefully annotated with warnings like “Passable, with care, at very low tides” and “Beware of the Bull.” But instead of the lighthouse I ended up exactly where I didn’t want to be: I walked hght into the bull.

When I passed the garage, Neil and Brother Paul were in earnest, quiet conference. But when Brother Paul saw me coming, he began berating the junior. “Would you believe this guy?” They both laughed. Neil had apparently been asking for serious advice. He has a very high opinion of the American monk. He excused himself to get to his studying. I leaned against the workbench and waited for his story.

Brother Paul sucked on the stub of a cigar. “I spent my whole life” he explained philosophically, “chasing the Almighty Dollar.” Born and raised in Florida, he went to Korea with the Marines. Then he bummed around the Caribbean for 20 years. He made good money running charter boats out St. Thomas, augmented by what he alluded to as quick trips “south of the border, if you know what I mean.” But he also alluded to trouble with the law.

As is so frequently the case, money proved to be Brother Paul’s undoing. Eventually the tax laws caught up with him and he gave it all up and traveled to Europe. He visited Caldey several times, as I was visiting now. Then one day he reappeared banging on the door and said, “I want to be a monk!” He is about as monk-like as an ex-pirate can be, but monastic life is giving him time to study, something that he never had before. Now he was preparing for his final vows.

*  *  *

In a paneled alcove of the sitting room, Father Robert and I had tea. He laughed at my surprise on finding the brothers so active and casual. From the outside we try to imagine the contemplative life. Either we picture ascetic monks frozen in the lotus position or lost in some repetitive, mindless task. We do not entertain the image of one replacing the transmission on a Land Rover. Contemplation, the Abbot emphasized, is an attitude not an action. The brothers try to simplify life by removing some of the distractions. “It is contemplative in the sense of making space for the awareness of God... that is the atmosphere of the whole place.”

They still follow the rules laid down by Benedict in the 4th century, but monastic life is not as strict as it used to be. Initiates must be able to convince the Order that they are sincerely seeking God and that they will be able to accept monastic discipline. They also have to be Roman Catholic, 21 and have no dependents.

“And of course,” Father Robert added, “they have to be willing to spend a lot of time praying.”

Despite all the coffee, Neil slept through dinner.

I was the only visitor in the dining room, which was now dark and somber. Brother Paul swept his arms angrily until I got up and took what he considered a hefty second helping. Then one by one the brothers exited the refectory to leave me eating all alone. I could hear him laughing behind the kitchen door.

*  *  *

I had little time in the morning. The weather was turning again and, afraid of being trapped on the island by the coming storm, I was leaving on the early boat. Brother Paul walked me down to the landing. We could already see the boat approaching against the white buildings of Tenby. He clucked his tongue and told me the Abbot had been disappointed when I didn't join them for vigils at half past three in the morning.

I didn’t tell him that I’d found a racy thriller in my room and read until dawn. He probably would have understood.

It started to rain. We crowded with other islanders under the rusted roof of a shack. Brother Paul talked about leaving soon on a pilgrimage of sorts to Israel. I could imagine him wandering through a Middle Eastern bazaar with the backpack of his old life and the robe of his new one.

By way of saying goodbye, he asked, “You sure you didn’t bring any of that ol’ Black Label with you?” But his eyes were smiling into mine. He didn’t need the scotch. He’d found something that now suited him better.

Paradise, too, is a concept invariably associated with islands. Caldey has no barrier reef, no blue lagoon or swaying palms. But there are many different kinds of islands. And many different kinds of paradise. Someone threw the bowline onto the deck at my feet. Brother Paul, hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket, turned to walk back up the road to the abbey. I saw him there, isolate and still. He stood apart, but far from alone.

 Originally published in Santa Barbara magazine September 1987.

travel,Caldey,monastery,monks

The Secret History of Rocks

Santa Barbara Magazine

Tom Dibblee

By Steve Barth

Geology is destiny. What would Santa Barbara be if it were not so tightly embraced between the mountains and the sea? Without its geology, it would not offer the dramatic vistas and backdrops, but neither would Santa Barbara have the idyllic, insulated climate. Without the climate, the area could not support such profuse and diverse vegetation, which in turn supports a host of wildlife. And let's face it, without all of these things, most of us would have settled elsewhere.

"I can remember every place I have ever been," geologist Tom Dibblee says, "but this is my native country." It is his simple answer to why these rocks mean so much more to him than any of the other 40,000 square miles of California that he has seen.

Late one winter's afternoon Tom and I sit on the crest of an alluvial fan above Mission Ridge, along with Dibblee's cartographer and friend Helmut Ehrenspeck, extrapolating the universe—as it were—from a grain of sand. Tom's long, weathered fingers alternately point across the landscape and trace contours across the map.

"Santa Barbara County is sedimentary geology," Dibblee begins. "The mountains are a very thick series of layers, mostly formed under the ocean, uplifted by crustal movements into mountains that tilt towards the south and dip under the channel."

Behind us loom Cathedral Peak and the toothy ridgeline of Mission Pines at the head of Rattlesnake Canyon. The late light picks out the exposed sandstone ledges of the Matilija formation, the oldest, hardest layer of sediment, upended to form the ridge. The Coldwater sandstone, just downhill, accounts for the rocky outcrops that are a signature background in Santa Barbara landscapes. These outcrops are counterpointed by the red clutches of toyon berries all over the hillside.

"These mountains are pretty young, geologically speaking," Dibblee says. The mountains themselves are less than six million years old, uplifted during late Miocene and early Pliocene epochs when the Santa Ynez fault developed. But the sedimentary marine deposits from which these mountains are made would have been laid down on the sea floor between 15 and 60 million years ago. Those sediments, of course, would have washed out to sea from a previous generation of mountains. And the alluvium on which we sit represents the next generation, as erosion carries grain after grain down to the sea where it will settle, solidify and return in an endless process of geologic karma.

We can see the Santa Monica Mountains 60 miles to the east, and west 20 miles to Gaviota. But while the sun sets just beyond the Channel Islands, Tom and Helmut speak mainly of the complicated piece of Santa Barbara's geological history that we are sitting on. The alluvial fan is a hill: part of ancient mud flows that gushed from Rattlesnake Canyon one particularly dark and stormy night about 50,000 years ago, sweeping up ten-ton boulders to spread its slurry across the lowlands. The mud and rocks long since solidified into a layer of conglomerate, only to be uplifted and tilted by subsequent geologic forces, then shaped and gouged by streams, and overgrown by conifers during the cold centuries and chaparral during the summers of geologic time. Even later, the Mission Ridge Fault developed and lifted a portion of the fan, redirecting streams around it.

Where the road cuts across the strata, clearly showing the alluvium sitting on bedrock that was tilted and planed flat, fossils still glint in the boulders of Matilija that tumbled intact from the ridge. Maroon circles of softer Sespe stone appear as indented circles. But even these boulders contain mixtures of older formations. "These pieces are conglomerates within conglomerates," Ehrenspeck laughs. "This is all temporary. Eventually, this will all end up in the ocean, where it will form new sedimentary deposits. Then it will come back as mountains and the whole cycle will repeat."

I've seen this view hundreds of times, but never with their eyes. In his field, Tom Dibblee is a legend of almost mythic proportions, having personally mapped more than one-quarter of California's geology. Ehrenspeck, an accomplished geologist in his own right (with a mountain named for him in Antarctica), has so far edited and published 67 multi-colored geologic maps based on Dibblee's seven decades of field work—with hundreds more to come.

To walk these hills with Tom Dibblee is to watch him communicate with the earth. He reads the land the way others read the newspaper. In the way that letters resolve themselves into words and phrases, offering up ideas and information, the ground whispers to Dibblee the secret history of the planet. The story he hears is one that few of us can even begin to comprehend: that over the long perspective of geologic time, the roiling movements of the earth are as fluid as the convection currents in a teacup; and that the firmament on which civilization is built is as tenuous as the leaves floating on the surface.

Though not quite as old, Tom is a bit like one of these rocks himself: a chunk of local history—a conglomerate of two of Santa Barbara's oldest families, the Dibblees and de la Guerras, broken off to find his own destiny down the stream of time. Born in Santa Barbara in 1911 and raised on the family's land-grant Rancho San Julian near Gaviota, Dibblee found his life's calling in tow of a geologist hired to search for oil on the property when Tom was only 13. With a degree from Stanford, he worked for oil companies for 16 years, then spent 25 years with the US Geological Survey. After "retirement" in 1977, he returned to Santa Barbara with his wife Loretta and volunteered to map the entire 1.2 million acres of the Los Padres National Forest. That contribution—worth an estimated $1 million—earned him a Presidential Volunteer Action Award from President Reagan in 1983, just one of his many honors.

That same year, friends and colleagues got together to establish the Dibblee Geological Foundation, so that Tom's hand drawn field sheets would be published. Ehrenspeck adapted color cel-animation techniques to affordably overlay the geologic color-codings and other markings on top of standard topographic maps. The Dibblee maps show fault lines, the different kinds of rock exposed to the surface, along with indicators about their tilts and trends. Among those who use them are seismologists, hydrologists, paleontologists, geographers, conservationists, planners, archeologists, hikers, oil companies and insurance agencies. But the maps are so colorful that they have been mounted more than once simply as art.

Meanwhile, Dibblee has also served since 1978 as a Research Associate at UCSB's Department of Geological Sciences, where a new generation of geologists endeavor—literally—to follow in his footsteps.

No other field geologist comes close to the number of square miles he has mapped, but Dibblee's fame derives not just from the volume of his work, but from the simplicity of his methods and the profundity of his observations. With nothing more than a blanket and food thrown into a cloth bag, he would disappear into the wilderness for a week at a time, rapidly marking up quadrangle after quadrangle (a topographic "quad" is 7 x 10 miles). He makes only one concession to the elements. "I like to be down in the cool canyons on a hot day. But on cool days like this I like to be on the ridges to get an overview," he says. "But you have to do both to see the geology."

Dibblee works without the aid of even a rock hammer or compass—just a hand lens. Yet his identifications, observations and measurements are as accurate as those taken by any high-tech expedition. He can trace the flow of an ancient streambed from the grain of an exposed outcropping of rock, or tell what kind of rock lies below from the vegetation or exposed soil covering it. He just knows what the rock is and what angles it rests at.

"He's been over every inch of this land, so he knows what he's talking about," Ehrenspeck says. "He has this incredible understanding of the interrelationship between topography, vegetation, land forms and what has happened to the rock strata underneath. And he has an uncanny sense of exactly where he is, which is extremely valuable when scrambling through impenetrable chaparral‑covered terrain. It's this intuitive knowledge of the land and everything about it which gives him the skills to interpret the geology underneath."

Some of his observations have seemed almost prescient. He and colleague Mason Hill were the first to suggest that the two sides of the San Andreas Fault had slid as much as 350 miles—simply by comparing the sequence of rock formations along its length—20 years before the horizontal movement was explained by plate tectonics. He predicted oil in a Cuyama Valley sandstone, later named the Dibblee Sands, that other geologists had written off as worthless. He and Ehrenspeck recently found remains of several ancient Southern California volcanoes previously unknown. The importance of other of Dibblee's past observations are still unfolding.

Not all of the land he maps is undeveloped. Although Tom admits the remote quads have been more fun, the urban maps are more in demand. Los Angeles city planners have digitized his maps as their official database. "The Northridge earthquake created demand for the areas I mapped long ago," he says.

Although he turns 86 this year, Dibblee is still doing field work. Among his projects for this spring, he and Ehrenspeck plan to spend several days on Santa Rosa Island finalizing notes Tom began in 1938.

Late for dinner Tom, Helmut and I reluctantly head back to the car in the twilight. Despite his age and fame, there is a kind innocence about Tom Dibblee. After spending literally decades in solitude, he is a man of few words and much humility. "It was just routine work for 60 years," he quips.

Yet there is also an obvious love between the old geologist and the old stones, a bond that is eloquent and joyful to behold. It is like an embrace when Tom stops for a moment and leans his lanky frame against the Matilija boulder, stretching to ease the pain of recently bruised vertebrae.

Helmut says, "Look at this rugged man against these rugged rocks."

I look, and I begin to read the history on Tom's face.

Tom Dibblee,geology,Santa Barbara