Sheila's LiveJournal

Every year, on the first Saturday in October, the little village of Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mountains of California, puts on an Art Walk/Wine Tasting event. It's a lot of fun to go to, and I've attended seven, counting by the glasses in my cupboard. You pay a fee – this year it was $25 – and you get a pretty wine glass which you carry up and down the road to the different galleries, gathering samples at each stop. A lot of very fine wineries based in Temecula come up to pour their wines, and there's always food, cheese and crackers and fruit, and usually live music too. This is where I first tasted Barefoot wines, a favorite of mine now. A trolley runs along the route if you need it. This year we were a party of six people and had five dogs along with us, and we couldn't have used it if we'd needed it (we didn't). One year, they had a horse-drawn trolley which was a great attraction for the children who'd come along with their parents.

I enjoy this event, and usually browse the galleries and craft stalls looking for unusual Christmas gifts. Idyllwild is an arts community, with a thriving culture of artists of many kinds, and an internationally known, private arts high school where I taught creative writing for several summer camps. Since I have a small cabin just outside Idyllwild, I often come up to the mountains during the year, but the Art event has to be one of the best occasions of the year.

Making this even more special was the fact that my oldest granddaughter had invited her just-found birth-father to meet the family and enjoy the village scene. I am so happy for her: this is something she's always longed to do, and he seems overjoyed to get to know the daughter he never knew he had. As if the wine itself wasn't enough, this was pretty heady stuff!

The only negative thing was that it rained, not hard at first, but enough to soak through my sweatshirt to my t-shirt. We had umbrellas, but they were in the car. The dogs put up with it just as we did, which is to say not without some complaining. I think that the weather must have affected the number of visitors because the crowd didn't seem as dense this time as in other years. That's not good for the artists and craftspeople. We bought three kinds of bread at a bakery and left a bit early to go down to my daughter's house at the foot of the mountains. There we were joined by another daughter and her family, eager to meet my granddaughter's “New Dad,” and we had a great barbecue (It wasn't raining down there, of course).

Now I have to find where in Long Beach I can get bottles of the port wine I fell in love with this time!