When grief needs a voice: Finding comfort in California's 'wind phones'

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred It was a hot and dry summer night in 2019 when the Campbell family drove from Los Angeles to their new desert vacation home in Joshua Tree.As they crested a hill on Highway 62, a drunk driver crashed into their car.Ruby, 17, and Hart, 14, were killed.To channel their grief, their parents — like thousands of people across the globe — created a “wind phone.”Sitting on a patch of desert sand, the wind phone created by Colin Campbell and Gail Lerner consists of a wooden box sitting atop a cabinet with a chair nearby.Inside the box is an old rotary telephone.

There are no wires.But those who want to can pick up the receiver to say out loud the emotions they’ve bottled inside — a chance to reflect, reminisce and, in a way, connect.The first wind phone was created in 2010 by Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki after the loss of his cousin to cancer and then later was dedicated to lives lost in the 2011 tsunami.

“Because my thoughts could not be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind.”— Itaru SasakiIn the San Jacinto Mountains, another wind phone is nestled inside an old wooden toolbox attached to a tall pine tree in the community of Idyllwild.Vietnam veteran Millard Elston, twice widowed, created the phone and the homemade bench where it sits.In the early evening, just before dusk, the sun peeks through the trees and warms the bench.“It’s a feeling of serene quietness and comfort and not feeling pressure or vulnerable,” Elston said.

“It’s just a way of expressing your feelings, when you have nowhere else to go or you just want a quiet time and let the wind take it.”In the San Gabriel Mountains, a blue wind phone stands on a foggy forest ridge near a roadside turnout in Wrightwood.A weathered notebook contains messages from those who have stop...