The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Shambala Redux

Shambala Resident

Reagan Memorial Site

Air Force One

There are some ordinary experiences that are just so pleasing that you want to share them. Which brings me, at least temporarily, out of hiatus status.

Clearly, the Reagan Library and Shambala have nothing in common, except for the pure joy both locations provided to and for me.

I was backing out of my parking space at 6:58 on Friday morning, a not unusual time in and of itself, but for me to be doing anything other than rolling over in my bed, even on a workday. I signed up for a continuing education seminar some month or two ago, in part because while so many continuing education classes are lengthy, and boring, this particular group usually puts on a good one, where the professionals can take something new and useful away for future application. But another reason was where it was being held, the Reagan Library. A couple of years ago I visited the JFK Library in Boston, and it still remains one of the most gratifying locations and tours. A modern edifice right on Massachusetts Bay, the architecture uses light to a most effective degree, such that the inside feels liberating, and increases the sense of nostalgia and history in some way I cannot quite explain. I was curious about this West Coast Republican version not only because I admired and admire Ronald Reagan but because I was hoping for a similar experience, this time smack in the desert of Simi Valley.

The sun was just coming up as I traversed the highway on the still moist air morn. I am given to listening to the radio on car trips, but decided that the sound of my tires and the occasional bird as I watched the bubble like shadow of my car and the changing hills, some smooth, some rocky from the 170 to the 5 to the 118. How is it that I so easily reject this fresh time of the day in favor of sleep? What a fool? Or was I appreciating this cool early sunshine because I so seldom awaken early enough to consume it? The traffic was contstant but not oppressive, and I was at the Library just before 8 a.m. I got out of my car and walked toward the manicured front of the adobe building, typically Californian, so distinct from the East Coast style under which I was introduced to a Presidential Library. As I walked over a little "bridge" of sorts I noticed that the cool air was merging with the warmer air that would soon replace it, and a chime interspersed the greeting of the birds twittering as they darted from tree to tree. The mountains in the distance were all smooth light and darker crevices. I could see a bench overlooking a vista and wished I could stop and sit there rather than go to a room where I would be listening to a cacophany of expert lawyers for six hours-- what I must do before the 4 p.m. tour of this lovely place. Such courses are fairly expensive, even with discounts. I was there. Ethics is my trade, so I dutifully followed the signs. Fortunately, the room turned out to have large windows, several of which were covered to allow for projection if necessary, but still enough of them to allow a relaxed gaze toward the mountains when the need arose, without loss of attention.

The course was all right. I am at an age now, where, while I certainly learn new things to better do my craft, the urgency just is no longer there, or is it the idealism? It matters not. Nothing seemed more perfect than being there, and learning was a good price.

The seats outside the actually well stocked cafeteria overlooked a second vista, and I sat with two colleagues in the umbrella'd shade wishing a lunch hour would not go quite so quickly. The still summer Valley breeze brushed us as we returned to our legal edification, but 4 p.m. was not far off. I noticed the tail of the F-14 on the grounds from my seat. I could not wait to take a look at a real Air Force One, which I knew was a long corridor away, the 707 that was in actual use from 1973 to 2001, as I would later hear. The Library closes at 5 and one of the presenters was about five minutes into the 4 o'clock hour as certainly he was permitted to do as a sitting Judge, but I was eager to bolt.

I did not get to savor as I would have liked, the story of this particular President, as I had when I was in Boston and it was JFK whose history I was exploring. Enough for a taste that will bring me back, perhaps one day soon, for a leisurely stroll in a history I remember well, for I was a young adult during it.

I suspect that I pictured an Air Force One of the 1990's movie with Harrison Ford (was it 1990's?), far larger than ANY plane could possibly be, full of wood and ornament. I have never seen the cockpit of a commercial style jet and seeing the volume of instrumentation was astounding. Happy that this plane, housed in a huge, windowed hanger where one side was entirely squared glass, was not going to take off I had no need for my usual fears about flying. It was, a plane, albeit one that had special sections cordoned off and cultivated with furniture of sorts, more than any plane that I have ever flown in provides, but still as with any plane, a bit claustrophobic. Yet, I'd look at a picture on the wall and the space, like the one where Mr. Reagan or any President during that period had his desk, and a kind of cot that opened out (with seat belts to be placed across the shoulder, the chest and the legs (if you were lying down, as on a gurney), for the President and in the next "room", for the First Lady. Somehow I couldn't imagine Mrs. Reagan taking a long trip and sleeping on such a cot. But she did. And there she was sitting on the closed "couch" in the photo, as I looked at the actual space today, years and years later. There were tables, plastic as in any plane, but significantly larger. A conference room with a big chair, with seatbelts. The one that the President sat in on the way, say to Berlin before the wall came down in 1989. There was something about this walk through history, cramped and small, but massive in the waves of the past.

So many glass cabinets to look at, videos, but i had one other thing to see before the 5 o'clock closing, the memorial site where the President is buried. I remembered still the day of his service, five years ago, nearly, isn't it? The view which the President sees now for eternity, in a sense. There were only a few people there, part of a family, and a guide, a veteran from the Korean War. The marker with a parenthesis of a wall and a favorite quote. I would have liked to sit there, with him, this stranger, but not a stranger. Not today. Another time, Mr. President.

On the way back, the sun was behind me again, going down. I watched another shadow bubble of my car and considered a day well spent. The next day, I travelled much the same road, but this time the 170 to the 5 to the 14 and Acton, California, and a second visit to Shambala, the Preserve started by Tippi Hedren to house, care for and love big cats, Tigers, Lions, Servals, and a Liger, improperly traded and mistreated sometimes, by people who foolishly buy them and keep them, or use them for things like small circuses. They cannot be released into the wild, so they live out their days there, protected. Saturday was an afternoon Membership Party, with raffles and sales of Big Cat related items, and a silent auction, and a buffet lunch amid the little lake and the long grass and the spacious enclosures of the friendly looking but insistently carnivorous residents. People say that Hedren is "not nice". For me, it is an irrelevancy, since I can appreciate what she has done for these creatures, including getting legislation passed that protects others of their kind, and I have no personal relationship to worry about. She is serving a purpose on this earth that many of us can properly envy. I hope I can one day join it, or one like it, when I take down my shingle. I left with contentment at the preservation of these animals, some nearly 20 years old, as well as my membership hat and tee, and some other parting gifts. I'll be back sooner than later. There is something to be said for a life less urban. And respites of the kind I experienced this Friday and Saturday, that like music itself, soothe the savage breast.