A colorful spot in Markleeville's business district

Marie Bravo is a study in contrasts. She yearns for a time when Markleeville was an active vibrant town with shops, visitors and a sense of vitality. On the other hand she is often absent from her business pursuing larger causes and bigger issues.

On a warm, humid, August Friday, sitting in her spacious yard in the shade of elms and willows, Marie speaks to a time when Markleeville was a simpler more welcoming place with more buildings, shops and visitors.

"You know there used to be a yarn shop, art gallery, bookstore and coffee shop here and I'm an anachronism. I'm the only one left. Small locally owned and funky" she muses. Summing it up she says, "It was alive then, now it's dead in spirit."

Customers drift into her shop singly or in groups of two or three but at one point a group of about 10 arrives.

"Oh my goodness," she exclaims. They come from Hemet, Copperopolis and various points west where the temperature today is 108 according to one gentleman.

Her shop, named Awesome Wear, with total lack of understatement, is the Quonset hut on the left side of the main drag just after the gas station. The yard and her house are adorned with peace signs that greet passersby. The theme continues inside the shop " CodePINK reads one tee. Numerous tie dyed tees, scarves and women's dresses, long and flowing like the late '60s, line the racks.

Marie is an activist. As area coordinator for CodePINK, a "women's initiated and directed creative non-violent direct action anti-war and social justice group" that "welcomes men too," Marie keeps busy. "We are against all war, not just Iraq", she said. "There are better ways than war for conflict resolution. As a substitute teacher I tell kids to use their words and not their hands", she continues, "so why can't we as adults do the same." Marie is proud of her activism. She's walked the halls of Congress for CodePINK, been arrested in San Francisco with Daniel Ellsberg, participated in camp Pelosi and will be going to Denver by train with a group of women to "sow the seeds of a peaceful more sustainable world."

Marie grew up in Rome, an upstate New York town. After a year at Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan she transferred to Sacramento State where she majored in art, with an emphasis on painting. After graduating she continued school saying, "I was in college for eight years but I never did get a masters."

Travel, being "a hippie" and working for the State of California occupied her until 1980 when she moved to Tahoe, followed by a move to Markleeville two years later. In 1986 she opened her shop on the front porch of her house. The Quonset hut was then storage for the gas station; before that it had been a lapidary shop, according to Marie.

Awesome Wear sells some nice stuff. The customer from Hemet says, "nice place you have here, it's beautiful."

Indeed. Marie points out fair trade items: hand woven scarves from Indonesia, Bolivian dresses, Guatemalan Tipico beadwork and accouterments. The colorful, contemporary and vintage clothing, featuring natural cotton, is nicely done, mostly by Marie who tie dyes in her basement. An odd assortment of thrift shop items round out the collection.

The garden behind the shop is wonderful. A stone path winds by a Dr. Seuss arbor. Varieties of rose, iris, red clover, hollyhock and daisy surround a vegetable plot. Lettuce, potatoes, garlic, carrots, beans, peas, collards and raspberries grow, some doing quite well but others with too much shade.

Split almond, almost four chords worth, stacked alongside the shop will provide heat during the winter. Fresh tie dye hangs on a line just outside the basement.

The conversation in the yard continues.

"There was a pizza shop, beauty shop, craft stores and I used to waitress at the restaurant and the Toll Station" Marie says. Small birds scatter as a Cooper's Hawk does a low pass over our heads, arcs in a 180 over the street and lands on a branch directly above. It sits for a moment, then flies off, heading east. A few minutes later it's back, invisibly vocalizing from a nearby elm.

A Harley passes, ripping the silence with its staccato bark, eliminating conversation and thought. Another passes, then another and another. A bullet bike, under full acceleration, northbound, front wheel off the ground, passes with a sound like ripping canvas amplified many times over. A cement truck rumbles north.

A line from an old Bob Dylan song keeps rolling around in my head. "She's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back, she can take the dark out of the nighttime, paint the daytime black."

Awesome Wear; hours 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily in summer, weekends fall and spring. (530) 694-2305 call first.