KCBX: Telling the story of “Godmother of the Dunites”

Give this interview on KCBX a listen (4 minutes). Besides hearing more about our Halcyon Days project, you will hear an excerpt of Ella’s radio interview from the 1950s, and an excerpt from our play, The Morrigan.

The Dunites remain legend in California Central Coast communities.

Ella Young described the Dunites like this:

I remember the Dunes—all sun-slant, sea-going pelicans, and perturbed sea-swallows and sand-pipers—on a day when the folk of the Halcyon Temple gave a picnic. John and Agnes Varian took me in their car to the beach. Gavin Arthur was there and Ellen Janson, the poet, with her husband, Maurice Browne, and their small boy-child, Praxy. They had a car, and soon we all piled into it, and raced southward to where Point Sal showed purple-blue against a sparkling sea and a sun-filled sky. Ellen and Maurice told us (Gavin and myself) of hermits who lived in that sky- devastated wilderness. Lived year in and year out, for they had found hidden oases where willow trees grew and water could be had for the digging. Every hermit had an oasis all to himself. It was his territory. He needed to be about two miles away from his nearest neighbour. His little tent or cavelike shack must be securely hidden: it must not afront any eye, even his own. He must feel that he discovered it, stumbled upon it by accident so to speak, when he returned from a foray, seaward with net and clamfork, or landward to a lettuce field or carrot pleasaunce. The hermits, nurtured by Providence, could meditate on eternity, write verses, or in beneficent mood ray out blessings to the Universe.

(Flowering Dusk)