BULLYING: THE STUPID AMONG US

WHILE DIRECTING TRAFFIC in a crowded school parking lot, the principal halts traffic in one direction so that cross traffic may pass. The woman driving the first car asked to wait, guns past the school official and offers him a middle finger salute. Her children are strapped into the back seat.

Rounding the corner from the drive-thru window at the local Starbucks, a driver tosses a drink carrier from the window into the ice plant. “That’s littering,” he is told by a customer. “Hey,” he said, “They don’t provide an accessible trash container.” “So?” The situation deteriorates into profanity as his wife and children watch.

A parent refuses to allow his child to attend social studies class if any mention of Islam is to be offered during the state-sanctioned teaching of comparative religions. The parent tells the student to stand up and walk out of class if the subject comes up. “I’ll take this to the Board of Education!” the parent threatens.


BULLYING, AND ITS DEVASTATING EFFECTS, has, again gained national attention. And we immediately focus on what we should do to or for our kids to prevent it. Here’s a different thought: We will not stop bullying in our children until we call adult bullies on their behavior. People will behave stupidly so long as we allow them to.

When the principal – who happened to be me – recounted the incident in the parking lot in a school newsletter, two mothers quietly came in to the school office, independently, to apologize for their actions in the parking lot. Neither was the individual who I saw flipping me off. Still neither will probably do it again.

As the driver at Starbucks pointed to me for interceding saying, “F--- off, pal. She’s the one who’s giving me s---!” I picked up the carrier and stuffed it in the available garbage can. (Not, perhaps, where I might have liked to stuff it.) The driver knows he got caught. Maybe, in the future, he’ll think twice.

The school parent’s child must be served in the public schools regardless of handicap or behavioral issues, but the school is under no obligation to change the state sanctioned curriculum to suit the narrow focus of one individual. This parent should be told to take the child elsewhere. “Please get an attorney, dad." (The school district will win this one.)


THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN ROAD is deeply troubled by the stupid among us, because the stupid among us:

• Vote
• Drive automobiles
• Can own firearms, but mostly because they
• Have children.

If we gently remind the stupid among our adult generation that their behavior is offensive or out of line – and if we do it in a manner that doesn’t prompt us to lower ourselves to their level of stupidness – perhaps we will contribute to a subsequent generation of citizens that can overcome the self-centeredness, aggressiveness, abusiveness and bullying they unfortunately see in their own homes.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

I’LL WRITE GOOD SOME DAY

“I can teach a fencepost to read, but I’ll be damned if I can teach your son literature.”

Mrs. Lundin – commenting to my mother (over a glass of wine) 

about me as a student in her high school 

literature class: circa 1970

BEFORE THE ADVENT OF THE WORD PROCESSOR, weren’t we more measured in what we wrote? Didn’t we choose the elements of language with a bit more care? I’m not a student of literature. Mrs. Lundin, my 12th grade literature teacher would attest that I was likely one of her biggest career failures.

True to her concerns, it has only been since I retired from education that I’ve found the time to read much of anything. I started with popular fiction. Stuff I’d missed. Series stuff. Best sellers from the New York Times. I made sure to read a modern work of fiction - a mystery - written by an author I'd met whose final MBA project was to create a successful business plan. Her plan: To write a commercially successful novel. The result? A 300 page sit-com.  There must be more compelling reasons to read, I thought.

Then I picked up a book Mrs. Lundin had hoped I’d understood some forty years back: Huckleberry Finn. I read slowly. In part because of the dialect Samuel Clemens had mastered and used. In part, because the story was a little like an onion. The more I understood, the more I peeled away, the richer the experience became. Each sentence had something to say. Each took me deeper. My pace slowed. I didn’t want to miss a syllable. And my appreciation grew. Man, this guy can write! How many revisions must Sam have done in order to create this masterwork?


BACK IN WYOMING a year ago, I purchased a copy of The Virginian by Owen Wister. Published in 1913, it is a difficult book to read, partly because the language of 100 years ago is not the language of today. The Virginian is not a novel one simply breezes through. Between its covers is exposure to the wide-open landscape of the wide and wonderful Wyoming high grass range. Morning sunrises that shiver. Long saddle-bound days that ache. Conflict that grows to be played out over months, not moments. And character: character that came to define the persona of the western cowboy and the West itself. Did it just spill out this way or did Wister write and revise and rewrite?

Mary Austin is an essayist who was transplanted from Ohio to the rugged Eastern Sierra by her husband-doctor who hoped she’d give up on being a writer and take on the honorable role of wife and mother. Her collection Land of Little Rain draws upon her explorations of the Owens Valley and the high Sierra around the turn of the last century. Paragraphs that are page length or longer describe in explicit detail a squall creeping across the ironwood basin or the nature of a starving coyote stalking for the kill. Just as Wister defined the character of the western man, Austin defines the character of the landscape.


I DON’T LIKE READING SLOWLY. Or, I didn’t. Now I don’t like reading crap.

I look at what I write and realize that’s what I write. In part, because I have so many skills still in need of refinement. And, in part, because I haven’t exposed myself to good literature. (You win, Mrs. Lundin.) I have something like a shoot first and ask questions later methodology about my work. I blame a computer-as-crutch syndrome because anything I publish today, I can fix tomorrow: correct the errors, whittle on a sentence, or just change something for the hell of it.

Mark Twain, Owen Wister and Mary Austin were afforded no such luxury. Nor were William Shakespeare, James Fennimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, F. Scott Fitzgerald or anyone else whose words saw print prior to about 1975. Perhaps it was because in the day of quill pen or Remington Standard, revisions cost the author a whole bunch of time and a full sheet of paper. Recopying three hundred words simply to change the way a character utters something or arches an eyebrow must have been rather inefficient in those days before electrons. Without a delete button, the great writers of yesteryear were disciplined to think first and write phrases later.

I HOPE THAT I'LL WRITE GOOD some day. As I look at the work of the giants that preceded our generation, I realize that just as I must read slowly to fully appreciate the genius of their work, I must write slowly, to have any chance of approximating a good story. I must think first and write phrases later.

As should most authors. Because, if today’s writers create literature that stimulates no more thought than a sit-com, will it matter if anybody reads it?

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS: FORESTHILL ROAD - ROBINSON FLAT TO SODA SPRINGS

FROM A TINY GUARD STATION measuring about 16 by 16 feet, rangers stood watch over the wild and remote Tahoe Forest while assigned to Robinson Flat. I found this place fifteen years ago. It is where the pavement ends.

Since then, I’ve spent many pleasant afternoons “patrolling” the area with friends: hiking to Duncan Peak for the magnificent panoramic view from the active lookout; traipsing along the edge of a big burn that ran through not long ago; relaxing with a book and a bottle of wine at the edge of the meadow; pumping water from the ancient well and slaking a dusty trail thirst.

The pavement stretches back through Foresthill to Interstate 80. Beyond, the road is a question mark. An inviting sign says: “The Cedars – 17” and “Soda Springs – 25” and the invitation had gone unanswered for a decade and a half. No longer. Today, I would pretend I was stationed at the Flat and patrol the regions to the east, thinking: 25 miles? Piece of cake.

THE BMW GS ADVENTURE is built for anything any road can throw at it. My version has a button that when pushed, elevates and adjusts the suspension so that the bike more smoothly absorbs the bumps and shocks of primitive roads. I once paid less for a house than I did for this bike, so I do not wish to test the limits of the machine – especially in an area where the forest is so thick and the mountains so steep as to restrict helicopter rescue of my broken body. I am glad the road appears smooth.

It appears smooth because it has recently been watered down to limit dust from timber transport operations. It is smooth. Like cake frosting. A guy in a Peterbilt with a load of logs will have no problem. The rear wheel of the Beemer, however, begins a scary imitation of Peggy Fleming, the 1968 gold medalist in figure skating. I determine that I’ll go gingerly for a stint and not be afraid to turn back. In time, the road crosses into a less active logging area. The frosting is replaced by dust. Dust the consistency of cake flour. Smooth. Yes. The road is still smooth, but now it is surfaced in loess – windblown dust – that masks the hard ruts of a summer’s worth of heavy travel. The front wheel seeks a groove I cannot see and cannot steer out of. I drop my feet from the pegs and engage in very dangerous out-rigging.

At one point I stop to find both boots four inches deep in dust and the wheel rims of the great machine buried in the powder. I can’t muscle a turn around, so I plow forward. At an opportune wide spot and I pull over for a rest and a photo. It’s been four and a half miles and 35 minutes, but some on-foot reconnoitering shows the road ahead to be better.

And it is. Soon I find myself in second gear traveling between fifteen and twenty miles an hours. For maybe three hundred yards. Corkscrewing down into a creek drainage, the switchbacks turn wide, steep and gravelly. Counter-intuitively, I must remember to rely more heavily on the rear brake as I tiptoe down the hill. Moving from thick forest, toward the bottom, things level out as the woods have yielded to willows and dried meadow grasses. I crank up but just as quickly I throttle down. Ahead, the road drops twenty-five feet to ford a stream that has recently been crossed. The water is murky. I can’t see the bottom. I edge into it uncertainly, use my feet for outriggers once more and power up and out. The route on the other side looks as if someone bladed it with a bulldozer and called that simple action engineering. The road goes up the side of the stream bank but angles across the slope. Loose rock litters the course. Standing on the pegs, I power up knowing that if I let this thing die, there’ll be no good place to put a foot down and I’ll tumble. It’s about a two hundred yard dash. The suspension absorbs the primitive surface and I can feel rocks being spit from the back wheel. Achieving the top, I stop. Point of no return, I think and then I say aloud: “No way in hell I can go down that slope.”

THE FORMATION OF THE SIERRA is the result of a complex series of events starting as far east as the mid-Atlantic rift zone. As the North American continent is pushed westward, it collides with a static Pacific Plate. Faults and cracks form and through these, volcanic mud is squeezed up covering the surface and filling ancient riverbeds. As the pressure builds, the granitic core of the Sierra tilts as a huge block. Rising to fourteen thousand feet, with the coming of an ice age, glaciers form, chiseling and scrubbing the highest reaches.

For the past eon and a half or so, the relentless uplifting has been battled by relentless wind, rain and ice. Forming in the crevasses, meadows of silt washed down from on high. Ringing those meadows, peaks whose height yield no growing season. In between, forests of fir and pine top lodes of gold bearing quartz. Crossing it all, roads ranging from Interstate 80 to this one.

BEYOND THE CREEK, Foresthill Road scales a minor ridge. Still rough, it is frequented by this season’s deer hunters, thus better traveled and more passable. At the crest, a fine view of the Royal Gorge of the American to the east and Snow Mountain to the north. A quick descent takes me to “the Cedars,” a privately held section of rustic summer homes set about the edge of one of those mountain meadows. A large common building – perhaps a lodge held communally by summer residents invites a visit. But a “No Trespassing – Area Patrolled” sign voids the urge. Wonder whether such trespass was the purview of the ranger back at the Flat?

White cumulus clouds have gathered atop the ridge dividing the enclave of cabins from Soda Springs and I-80. Later in the day it will rain. I really want to miss the storm. I figure I’ll chug forward, but thankfully, the remaining eight miles are graded and the path fast.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS I have experienced in life that I hope never to experience again: knee surgery and divorce. Add to that: Foresthill Road from Robinson Flat to Soda Springs. Nasty, steep, dusty, rutty. But then again, spectacular and subtle. I may have to think this over.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

BACK TO THE PAST: STATE ROUTE 128 – WINTERS TO NAPA VALLEY

THE OTHER DAY, I found myself on the road to Napa to visit a hospitalized friend. Interstate 80 makes an efficient route just as Burger King is efficient with lunch. I chose California 128, which begins in Winters (off I-505) and winds up at the coast. The last fifty miles of 128 from Cloverdale to Route 1 is the stuff of legends, but the section from Winters to the Napa Valley provides graceful in-saddle relaxation and a few sections of challenge. Here are a very few notes on what I found:

DOWNTOWN WINTERS. If you, like I, grew up in a small town where everyone knew who you were, take heart that such places still exist. Main Street, Winters CA, is two blocks south of route 128. The downtown bank isn’t a multi-national. The realtor has his own name on the door. The Buckhorn Steakhouse provides world-class fare with area wines from small growers. My noontime found me eating a burger at the Putah Creek Café and eavesdropping on the conversations of locals about the sheriff’s race, today’s unseasonable temperature and somebody’s new baby boy. My lunch prompted me to tell the waitress that most burgers are nothing special, but this one is to die for. Nicely browned, garnished with fresh local produce and sitting atop a bun that never saw the inside of a corporate bakery – if one is destined to have coronary artery disease, this is among the most enjoyable ways to get it. Dive in. Don’t look back.

LAKE BERRYESSA. Not the most picturesque of reservoirs, the turnout at Monticello Dam, west of Winters, affords a pleasant view down the course of Putah Creek. A small resort rests at the bottom and the still waters of Putah Creek provide great fishing and invite a swim on a hot afternoon. At the dam site, the endless efforts of tectonic forces uplift and bend once-seabed into what is now the Coast Range of California. Easily seen are the layers upon layers of sediment that predate just about everything but the big bang. Off to the west, shoreline is a matrix of clustered oaks on a golden-grassland palette. Berryessa is an Anglicization of "Berrelleza" – surname of Basque settlers who first settled this and many other tranquil Coast Range valleys. Somewhere off in the distance, livestock still graze near where the Zodiac of the 1960s did one of his awful deeds. Moonset from this vantage point, one imagines, both warms and chills.

SPANISH MOSS. West, the road rises and settles into various valleys and swales. Where the temperature and humidity are optimal, long arrays of Spanish moss hang from the arms and chins of the valley oaks like beards of a Tolkien character. Its presence gives the woodlands an ethereal quality that goes unnoticed by passers-by seeking the ethereal quality of the redwoods yet another two hours west. Still the soft blue-drab beards and muted light invite fantasies of trolls and animals that talk and young maidens carrying baskets to grandmas. A picnic along the side of the road in early spring or late autumn seems in order.

THE NICHELINI WINERY. Established in 1890, my first visit to Nichelini was the result of stumbling upon it when driving north out of Fairfield with friends. I believe we purchased some wine in a jug, but three decades (and too much wine from jugs) may render the memory a bit fuzzy. One of the oldest wineries in all of California, Nichelini produces absolutely premier wines from local vineyards. Their Chiles Valley Zinfandel accompanies nicely a tri-tip dinner from the Buckhorn in Winters or that picnic under the Spanish moss. Plan on finding space on the rack at home and buying a case. Open for tours only on the weekend, and with limited parking along the windy route, too many people race by and miss this California heritage business.

STATE ROUTE 128 and sister route 121 (directly into Napa) do all the verbs we riders seem to like: sweep, twist, lilt, rise, fall, challenge and invite. My friend’s illness provided an unhappy counterpoint to this delightful route, yet the route provided a delightful counterpoint that would not have been achieved on the Interstate.

A quick scan of two of my habitual monthly reads: Rider Magazine and the BMW Owner’s News, finds that most articles about travel are from those who have journeyed great distances for their story: Alaska’s Haul Road, the Blue Ridge Parkway, California Highway 1 – even globe trotting through Africa or around the world. Yet, in most of our backyards are roads people travel for days just to visit. Leave us not overlook these gem-like local routes in our quest to find something special. Special is right here.

RESOURCES:

www.buckhornsteakhouse.com/ Info on the Buckhorn Steakhouse and Putah Creek Café

www.nicheliniwinery.com/ Established in 1890, the Nichelini Family is the oldest continuously operating family owned winery in the Napa Valley.

http://visitwinters.com/  This site is devoted to providing information about Winters, California to residents and visitors alike.

THE OLD TIMER

SOMEWHERE between here and the Owens Valley and home again, I lost a favored tool. I suspect I left it on the dresser at the Mt. Williamson Motel in Independence. I recall looking at it several times as I was packing the BMW’s panniers and loading my pockets for the ride home. Wallet. Watch. Note pad and pen. All of these found place on my person in one of the dozen or so compartments in my Motorrad pants or jacket. But the pocket knife – a single locking-blade Schrade “Old Timer” with a “Delrin” handle and a nickel-silver bolster on the hinge – sat on the corner of the dresser as I did this, then that, in preparation for departure. Gotta put that in my pocket, I thought to myself each time I saw it, always immediately distracted by some other task.

FOR A TIME, I owned an original Isuzu Trooper II. It was called the Swiss Army Knife of four-wheel-drive vehicles. Tough. Versatile. Dependable. For a time, I owned a Kawasaki KLR 650 – dubbed the Swiss Army Knife of dual-sport motorcycles. Tough. Versatile. Dependable. For a time, I owned a Swiss Army Knife. It proved not to be as advertised. The stainless steel blade failed to keep an edge and was nearly impossible to re-hone. The built-in corkscrew hyper-extended itself and would no longer settle into its nest in the handle after the first pull on a stubborn bottle of red. The scissors didn’t cut and once the tweezers were lost, my fingers always searched out their cavity like a tongue finds a missing filling. The Swiss Army Knife was chic and versatile, but it didn’t do any task particularly well.

Not so the Old Timer. Sure, it hadn’t the facility to pull a cork or a splinter, but its steel blade took an edge nicely and was up to any whittling, carving, smoothing, slicing or trimming task asked of it. I’d carried this tool for eight to ten years, certainly longer than any other pocketknife I’d ever owned. Others had been lost. A black handled Buck stuck into a picnic table and forgotten up in the Lakes Basin. A Bokker “Tree” busted when used to pry something it was not engineered to pry. A Case dropped between couch cushions somewhere. Several cheapies, I know, are resting in the cobbles of the streambed of Chico Creek out in front of a house on Bidwell Avenue.

The Schrade Old Timer, however, was different. In part because of its elegant design: a smooth simple 2 inch blade that folds nicely into a rustic handle. In part because of its ease of maintenance: a couple of swipes across an oiled whetstone as part of my Sunday evening ritual while barbecuing lamb or chicken. In part because the machined hard edges of the Delrin handle had been softened by constant use over the decade: splitting tape on a box, opening an envelope, whittling a stick into tender for fire starter, slicing an apple for lunch or cleaning fingernails. Always something.

Until that day in that motel. I know it is still sitting there. Or that Maria, the housekeeper, has added it to her collection of derelicts left by forgetful hostliers.


A MONTH AND A WEEK have elapsed and I am more assured that the thing will not resurface. I decide to drop a couple of twenties on a replacement. But none of the local stores sell Old Timers: neither the Home Depot/Lowe’s chains nor the independents. The hardware stores seem to have buyers that acquire product from the same sources so all of the inventory in all of the stores is all the same. On-line, I discover that Schrade no longer makes the Old Timer line. My heart sinks. While the good news is that a similar model may be had for half the price, the bad news is that the new knife looks to be of far lesser quality than my original. “Imported,” the entry admits.

I’m okay with imported. I ride a BMW; drive a Nissan and a Civic. But, still, I feel as if I’d lost a piece of quality that I will never regain and think about calling the Mt. Williamson to see if the thing had turned up.

Instead I decide to go for a ride. Perhaps I could head up to the Lakes Basin and find that Buck still stuck in the picnic table. It’s only been 30 years.

I pull my riding pants from their hanger and something heavy hits my sock-clad right foot. It directly impacts a bunion sending a shock wave from foot to brain. Reflexively, I kick and whatever it was skitters under the cedar chest, ricochets off the wall and lays peeking from beneath the cabinet’s edge. In the inkling prior to dousing the closet light, I see the nickel-silver bound hinge and a trace of Delrin handle.

The Old Timer had been caught in a pocket or a fold of the riding pants – and I’d painstakingly checked them all. I pick it up, open, close and open it again, run my thumb across the blade’s edge and promise myself that I’ll hone the steel as soon as I return from the day’s ride.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

JOURNEY TO THE COMSTOCK -- HENNESS PASS ROAD

CALIFORNIA’S FIRST RECESSION probably occurred in the 1860s. That’s when the labor force, seeking to line their pockets with gold scooped from the American, the Yuba and the Feather, discovered that there wasn’t as much gold to go around as had been advertised. The bubble burst.


Recessions are times when those of entrepreneurial spirit make hay with creative, out-of-the-box thinking. Thus, the Truckee Turnpike Company organized to shepherd frustrated gold miners eastward from the dying Mother Lode of California to the booming Comstock of Nevada.


Today, the Henness Pass Road is found on many maps. I carried three: The AAA’s Northeastern California, DeLorme’s California Atlas and Gazetteer, and the Forest Service’s Tahoe National Forest Map. According to each of these, the route begins in Camptonville (eastern Yuba County off State Route 49), rumbles through the rugged heart of Sierra County and ends in Verdi, Nevada near I-80. Interestingly, on the ground, only in Verdi is there a road marker citing Henness Pass Road. At Camptonville, one doodles around until finding that the only route out of town that’s not the state highway is called Mountain House Road. It is marked as Sierra County 293, then becomes SC 302, then SC 301 although the maps don’t share these designations commonly.


There would be much more “doodling around” this day. Perhaps some of the adventure in adventure touring is the thought that you may, at times, be hopelessly lost.



A WEST-TO-EAST TOUR of this route provides a study in contrast between the verdant west side and the arid east side of the Sierra. Early on, to the north, the Alp-like Sierra Buttes rise from the thick fir forests along the drainage of the Yuba. Logging is active in the area so even after three month of summer drought, the road may be muddy based upon the dust control activities of the timber harvesters.

Cresting a ridge, a long descent into Milton Reservoir is rocky and taxing. Once there, two gunite dams hold back a tiny stream creating a pool, perhaps a hundred years old that is silting from the incessant work of storms wearing away the high arêtes that ring the area.

In another lifetime or two, the pool will be rendered into meadow.

Henness Pass itself is a mere 6920-foot draw that, were there not a sign, one would pass over without notice. 30 miles south, the Donner Party attempted to scale the crystalline cliffs of the pass now named in their honor. An honor that would be un-noted and unnecessary had they attempted a route only two days walk further north. A Virginian named James Beckworth, trapping in the 1840s discovered that the further north one traveled, the less daunting the passes of the Sierra. Peter Lassen capitalized on this and, in the Comstock Rush of the late 1850s and early 60s, so did the Truckee Turnpike Company.

Over the pass, the environs illustrate the rain shadow effect that renders Nevada so dry. Thick fir forests have given way to sparse groupings of pine. Sage invades the bottomlands where modern-day ranchers continue carrying the cudgel first borne by those who chose not to seek silver in the Comstock. The road traces ridges that afford views of flats and valleys named Kyburz, Sardine and Stampede.

The final four miles is an uncomfortable (at least on a motorbike) descent along a twisting road covered in golf-ball sized rocks down a tributary canyon of the Truckee. Reward for this is dusty adventure is a few minutes in a delightful river park in Verdi, Nevada with manicured lawns and access for kayaking, trout fishing or just reflection.







Resources:

http://www.ncgold.com/Museums_Parks/syrp/henness.html “Nevada County Gold” blogs about parks and recreation in the South Yuba drainage.

http://www.ghosttownexplorers.org/henness.htm “Ghost Town Explorers” provides direction to many historic places otherwise passed by. A nice link!


© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press


Note: The following graphic provides information on the “rain shadow” effect that the uplifted Sierra affords lands to the east. This graphic regards the area around the Owens Valley and is posted in the park at Independence, CA, but explains nicely why things are the way things are.

THE WILD KINGDOM -- US 395 AT MANZANAR

THE LATE MARLON PERKINS, once director of the St Louis zoo, visited my next door neighbor a couple of times while I was growing up. Mr. Perkins directorship was not his claim to fame; rather, it was his association with Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Every week, we children of the sixties would rivet ourselves to our black and white TV sets, engrossed in natural tales of life and death in the Wild Kingdom. Almost to the point of comedic-ness, each quarter hour segment would end with a safari-suited Marlon Perkins intoning something like: “The Brewers Blackbird has only his combined ability for rapid flight and dive-bombing predators like Ford Falcons with poop to help him survive in the Wild Kingdom. As people, we can’t fly off into the air for protection, so we need protection from Mutual of Omaha.”

Hap Andrews, an independent agent, lived just down the street. By the time I was twelve, my folks had me covered for five grand.

I mention Marlon Perkins and the Wild Kingdom because one thing we never saw was a predator actually taking prey, crushing the smaller in the jaws of the larger and then rending its lifeless form into bloody chunks of breakfast. Too graphic for television’s then sensibilities.


THE WILD KINGDOM came to mind six weeks back while I was exploring the Manzanar Japanese Relocation Center in the Owens Valley. Afoot, I’d taken to walking through sand and greasewood and one hundred degree heat exploring the far reaches of the enclave; places not visited by those touring in air conditioned Nissans and Toyotas and Hondas – all imports from Japan. Ironic, ain’t it?

Returning at mid-day the mile-and-a-half from the cemetery near the old Victory Garden, a small storm of dust catches my eye. It moves rapidly into my vision from left to right, the source of which was obscured by sage and mesquite. My attention arrested, I note a tinier dust devil racing in front of the larger one. Amidst it, a panicked squeak. Repeated. Squeak. Squeak. Squeaksqueak!

The larger draws closer to the smaller and, in moments, the dust explodes with a tiny, shrill shriek.


BACK HOME there are two dogs. Jax, the senior Aussie mix, enjoyed a storybook life until Edward, the junior, a Lab mix, brought this paradise to a reality-based halt. In the back yard, Jax may claim the red rubber ball or the Nyla-bone or the Kong, but the persistence of the interloper always leads to fisticuffs and, ultimately, the little black lab trots away with his smiling mouth clutching whatever the prize was. Jax eyes Edward ruefully as Edward looks over his shoulder, victorious, as if to say, “Look what I have.”

Such is life in the Wild Kingdom, I always say, running my fingers deep into Jaxie’s thick shoulder fur.


IN MOMENTS, trotting out of the dust cloud, a dusky-grey coyote, no bigger than Edward, proud and tall, clutches the hapless gerbil or squirrel or bunny in his iron-like jaws. He trots light and victorious, looking over his shoulder. The predator spots me and freezes.  He eyes me in much the same manner as our Lab eyes our crestfallen Aussie - tauntingly - as if to say: “Look what I have.”

Such is life, I think, followed by: I must find out what happened to that little life policy.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

BAR MATE -- EUREKA, CALIFORNIA

“IF YOU’VE MET ONE PERSON with Alzheimer’s disease, you’ve met one person with Alzheimer’s disease.” The old man had moved from just around the curve of the full service bar at an oyster house near the wharfs in Eureka California.

I’d completed a grueling 200-mile day – short but made treacherous by winding dirt roads and fifty-mile-an-hour head winds. Eschewing my usual lodging, the Best Western chain, I opted for the classic Eureka Inn. Built in the 1910s, the old hotel sports a huge redwood paneled lobby with an inviting rock fireplace – always with a robust log burning – and both a classy restaurant and a café. I lacked reservations, but this Monday night only four of the 126 rooms appeared occupied, if my count of automobiles in the lot proved anywhere near true.

A shower at 6 PM perked me up and by 6:30 I’d hoofed it north eight blocks to the waterfront. The walk proved good after hours being beaten nearly to death in the saddle. I sought linguine and clams but found the oyster bar. Unlike the Eureka Inn, this establishment teemed with patrons. Each two- and four-place table was occupied and with the exception of two or three odd stools at the bar, there was no place to light.

“Bar’s fine,” I said to the hostess.

“To drink?”

“Sauv Blanc. What’da you have?”

“Handley and Firestone. The Handley’s better.”

I knew this and apologizing for ordering white wine, explained that sautéed scampi would probably be a nice accompaniment, given that there are no clams on the menu.

“You don’t need to hear about the specials.” It was a statement not a question. I liked this barkeep.


THE HANDLEY ARRIVED but not before a couple came in looking for a seat. The old gentleman round the corner, stood, hailed them over and said, “This’ll give you two together. I’ll just move over here.” He boosted himself on to the stool to my left setting a glass of red on the counter.

“How’s your day goin’, sir?” I asked, expecting the light talk that soothes the end of a long day.

He lifted the glass to his lips and then moved it away. “Not so good. So so, I’d say.”

I studied him for a moment. “We’ve got a warm place. You’ve got a nice glass of… what is that? Merlot?”

“Cab Franc.”

“Cab Franc. You going to eat?”

He took a sip and smiled. “Well, tonight was supposed to be date night, but…”

I didn’t want to know but what.

“…but my wife, she couldn’t make it through this time.”

My bar mate had been an aerospace engineer living down in Mountainview (California) for a career. He’d worked on Saturn rockets and Polaris submarines. “Did anything they wanted me to do. Used to be I could design 'n' build an F-18 out of a shoe box.” He laughed and slapped my knee. Then he pulled back, perhaps thinking he’d been too familiar.

“They have a great residential facility up this way for folks like…”

I didn’t get his wife’s name.

“I started noticing long ago, but three years back, I knew I couldn’t take care of her any longer, so we sold the place and come up here.”

He took another dainty sip. Then he asked: “What brings you up here?”

“What makes you think I’m not a regular?” I asked. “I mean I’m sittin’ here at the bar like a regular.”

He laughed and slapped my knee again. “Because, son, I’m a regular. Come here every Monday night with the wife.” He paused. “Sometimes she can make it though and sometimes, she can’t. Tonight, not so good. Now, you?”

I told him about my day, an aborted motorcycle trip up the rugged Lost Coast over something only approximating a road; followed by a battle with the north wind’s teeth that I nearly lost on the oceanfront out past Petrolia.

“Wisht I could do that,” he said.

My dinner arrived. “Go ahead,” he said.

“So,” I ventured, “I know you’re caring for your wife, but how’re you caring for yourself?”

He paused. I could feel the Rolodex of things done being flipped in his head. “Used to go Elk huntin’ up on the Snake in Idaho. Ever been there?”

I shared with him about my earlier-in-the-summer ride to those very parts.

“There’s a place up there where the bank’s about this high.” He held his hand about three feet off the floor. “And the river just slips by and across the river there’s a huge meadow that sweeps up hill into the forest. Always see elk. Always see elk.”

He nursed his drink.

“For myself, now-a-days – at eighty-one – I just think of myself sittin’ on the bank of the Snake. You know the place. With a fly rod and watchin’ them elk. And listenin’ to the wind and the water kinda whisper.”

I’d finished my dinner and was sopping up the buttery sauce with a piece of sourdough.

Then he added: “Makes me wish I’da learned to smoke a pipe when I was younger.”


WE CHATTED a bit further. My glass was empty, my plate removed; his glass still two-thirds full. I rose to pay my bill, but turned to him and patted his tired shoulder. He grasped my hand there and held for only a moment.

“Your wife’s got a good man lookin’ after her,” I said.

He nodded, but I felt him shrug. “I hope so.”

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

1000 WORDS ABOUT SEPTEMBER MORNINGS IN ELK, CALIFORNIA

REMAINING LOST: USAL ROAD TO THE LOST COAST (MENDOCINO COUNTY)

ONE WOULD HAVE TO KNOW that Usal Road exists in order to be interested in taking it. There is no sign off California State Route 1; just a gravel skirt leading to a cleared path, wide enough for a rugged vehicle, heading up the mountain to the west. I’d seen the marking on the map. Clement Salvadori rode it and wrote about it in Rider Magazine. It has long been on my list of routes to explore. Usal Road traces the Pacific Coast twenty miles north of Fort Bragg splitting off the state route once it heads inland. It connects Rockport, which used to be a town, with Whitethorn, a location that may be nothing more than simply a place name.

This area of California is known as the Lost Coast. At the mouth of Usal Creek, the Sinkyone group of Eel River Athapaskans may have summered or wintered in the meadow. If they did, they probably hunted elk and black tail deer along the course of the creek up into the hills that overlook the Pacific Coast. Their trade route may have taken them to what is now preserved redwood. Certainly, along the way, they were struck by the immensity of it all. The relentless surf. The eternal glade. The towering redwoods.

Modern man approached things differently. Usal Road follows no stream course; rather, it switchbacks upward for a mile until one is afforded a magnificent view of the ocean several thousand feet below. Then it slides back down the mountain on the inland side, crosses an unmarked stream and heads back up. The road is unsurfaced, dusty, rutted and rocky. There is no place to stop to behold the view because the road is narrow, the avenue for passing or pausing non-existent. Even on the most stable of vehicles, this mountainous route catches one’s breath. Drivers pray their brakes will hold; and that no one happens to be coming up in the opposite direction.

On the Beemer, I glanced down the bluff to the roiling surf breaking over shattered rocks and offered general prayers.

It is a six-mile route from CA 1 to the mouth of Usal Creek. After 45 minutes, it was clear that the only reason the road exists is because a few intrepid boar hunters keep taking it. Way out toward the primitive camp, a road grader stands cloaked in decades old weeds. I suspect the operator finally said “To hell with it!” hopped off and walked back.


THE MAP SHOWS that Usal road progresses about 30 miles to Whitethorn. But at the Sinkyone Camp, a sign is posted: ROAD NOT MAINTAINED BEYOND THIS POINT. I considered the bulk of the last hour as I examined the course of what lay ahead: a scar that rumbles over the hummocks and slumps of the next hill and ask: Who says it was maintained this far?

Several groups of campers had staked out remote sites and morning campfires smoldered into wisps of fragrant smoke. I set the bike on the side stand and hailed a bearded man.

“Road any good?” I asked, pointing past the sign.

“The fellow with the hat’ll know,” he replied cocking a thumb over his shoulder.

Six or eight campers spotted me. All wearing hats.

“Nice bike,” one said as he approached.

After pleasantries and comments about his motorcycling youth, our conversation quickly turned to matters at hand: the condition of Usal Road beyond up to Whitethorn.

“I did it in a pickup last year, but, hell, I got me stuck in a rut that musta been eighteen inches deep. Had to drop a tree and pitch the log into the crack and drive up on top of it. Kinda snuck up on me.” He laughed and eyed the motorcycle. “You could do it, I suppose.”

A few of his compatriots gathered as we mulled the options. Soon, a woman, seventy-five years of age at least, clad in ancient khakis and a weary plaid shirt wandered up and listened to our exchange. She’d found a pine needle and was cleansing the gaps in her teeth with it. After a moment, she interrupted. Pointing at my shiny German motorcycle and then up the road, she looked me in the eye for a moment. Then she shook her head.

“Bike as beautiful as that,” she said, “should NOT go on that road.”


I MUSCLED THE BIG GSA about and made my way back to Highway 1. The Lost Coast would remain lost.


RESOURCES:

www.native-languages.org/sinkyone_culture
Culture, history and genealogy of the Sinkyone Indians.


www.stateparks.com/sinkyone wilderness
Sinkyone Wilderness State Park information. Park overview, detailed park information, maps of park, links to nearby parks, links to park related businesses.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press