Bile for rich, love for nature

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy”

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--This is a column that you hope a friend never hears about from another friend who runs across my blog. The reason is simple: it is biting a generous hand.

My wife and I recently vacationed in Indian Wells, staying with an old family friend. Call her Dorabella. She is one of the finest people I have ever ever known: ebullient, politically savvy, a rabid liberal Democrat, the epitome of the happy warrior.

My problem is that Dorabella lives in a gated community. Let me hasten to point out that she is not rich. The reason she can afford this lavish place is that she owned a home near the beach in Southern California for four decades.

She sold that valuable property three years ago, moving here in the Coachella Valley desert. As they say in the real estate business: “location, location, location.”

The name of Dorabella’s community name speaks volumes: Dorado Villas. It is a complex of 10 condominium areas each with its own swimming pool, hot tub and tennis court.

The complexes are surrounded by date palms. The lawns are as carefully manicured as the magnificent Masters golf course in Augusta, Ga. The silence is often eerie, broken only by lawn mowers, airplanes and the twittering of mockingbirds.

The owner of one villa near Dorabella lives there just one week a year. A nearby gated community may be the poshest in America. Bill Gates owns a home there so he can play golf without being bothered by the hoi polloi.

I cannot help detesting such wealth. I have always resented the rich and their huge houses. It seems grossly unfair that they should have it so cushy while so many people struggle to make ends meet.

Gated communities, offensive from the perspective of this once poor kid, reveal such an enormous gap between the Haves and Have Nots. They symbolize the class warfare launched by President Reagan, polished by President Bush II and abetted by soulless Republicans and Democrats who betray their class.

Not even the Democrats have the cojones to note that class war is rampant in America. But The Nation as usual tells the truth: “Concentrations of wealth in America approach Gilded Age levels…America has become a nation of Wal-Mart wages for the many and private jets for the few.”

Giving our hearts away

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, /

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: /

Little we see in Nature that is ours; /

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

--Wordsworth

This desert country is paradise for the nature lover, a heaven-on-earth I all too seldom visit. So it is particularly wonderful to commune with nature, to roam the Great Outdoors

In the surrounding Mojave Desert, we visited Joshua Tree National Park, home of the twisted, spike-leafed Joshua.

In the park is Keys View (5,458 feet) with a fine view of the San Andreas Fault--or it has if there is no smog. The fault, the ever sliding boundary between the Pacific and the North American plates, runs from near the Mexican border to northern California.

Mormon pioneers are said to have called them Joshuas because they seemed like the Old Testament prophet, Joshua, waving them toward the promised land.

On another day we drove to the nearby Living Desert park in Palm Desert. The first stop is mandatory: a butterfly cage. The beautiful creatures are so unhurried. Watching them is like the restfulness of seeing fish in a tank. Hummingbirds grace the cage, their reds, purples and greens gleaming in the sunlight.

One day I drove to the Salton Sea, an inland body of saline water south of Indian Wells. The shoreline of the lake, 226 feet below sea level, teems with gulls, pelicans, grebes and stilts.

Nothing new to add to my life list. But it is ever fascinating to watch an egret hunt. The bird stands stock still for a long time then darts its spear bill at prey.

The biggest birding delight of the vacation was to watch a roadrunner scurry across Dorabella’s lawn. Once it carried a twig to its nest in a lime, pausing below the tree, its tail alternately touching the ground and slowly rising above its back.

No wonder the roadrunner is a comic favorite in the American Southwest, delighting birders and nonbirders alike.