AMOS

 a holiday tale for 2016

I never met Amos but here’s what I’ve been told...

About seventeen years ago, and both recently retired, Amos and his wife moved to their brand new home.  Perhaps it was their first brand new home.  A pleasant place – just this side of heaven – its fresh stucco painted white and its sizeable back yard sloping up to a green belt, shaded by an ancient, pre-subdivision black oak that seemed to cascade stubbornly hard-to-rake leaves heavily late in the fall.  Amos maintained the house with paint and polish, and the yard, planting and replanting flowering shrubs and annuals, ensuring adequate water and mulch.  The result?  A bit of springtime stretching into sultry summers and many evenings watching moonrise while enjoying the warmth of lovingly caressed hands.  Come November, he’d rake those leaves.

At some point, Amos’s wife passed.  I’m not sure how long they were married, but I know that if my wife passed, I’d consider folding my tents and calling it a life.  Clearly I’m not Amos.

Amos turned to the community in which he lived staying active at the lodge on various boards and councils and bocce tournaments. He kept his aging fingers on the pulse of his little way station ‘just this side of heaven.’  He organized transportation for those who couldn’t otherwise make an appointment or, perhaps, shop in 30-mile distant Santa Rosa.  He participated in a kind of meals on wheels – maybe he started it – wherein those laid low by an illness or a loss had something hot delivered until order was restored in their lives.  A fixture in the community, I picture him on morning walks greeting and being greeted by whomever else was out. I suspect that both handshakes and hugs were common.  That’s the way it is in a community.

Perhaps a dozen years into Amos’s time in the neighborhood, circumstances turned the way circumstances do.  Gradually, Amos transitioned from being the support to being provided for.  Instead of driving people in to town, he found himself being driven.  Instead of preparing meals for the infirm, meals began coming his way.  I have no knowledge of how Amos felt about his freedom to assist being replaced by his need for assistance.  I do know – people have told me – that folks signed up to take him places and bring him food.  There was a waiting list.

One June, a few years back, Amos became housebound.  In late autumn, as leaves rained off that old black oak and scuttled down the back yard slope, someone – family, I suppose – decided that caregivers should be employed to assist twenty-four hours a day.  Because the following is part of what paid elder care does, many aides spent hours listening to records or watching television or swapping stories with Amos – or reading or dosing off while he rested – waiting for the moment when he needed assistance to the bathroom or help with nourishment.

At the same time, Amos’s focus during those days turned to ensuring the comfort and caring as much as he could for those whose charge was to care for him: MTV rather than college football; frozen pizza rather than chicken soup.  Or so it was reported.

This I was also told:  It was December 24^th, Christmas Eve, four years ago.  Shift change happened around 2:00 PM.  His afternoon assistant was a young mother who lived on the other side of town.  She had two toddlers, each probably bubbling with the anticipation and excitement that only that night’s visit from Saint Nick could bring.

Around five, the young mom began to stir in the kitchen, preparing Amos’s evening meal, when he called to her from the guest bedroom where his hospital bed was set.  “Julia (I’m making up the name) Julia, come here.”

I suppose Julia came right to his side.  “¿Está bien, Amos?”

“I’ll be fine, just fine,” he said.  “But you.  It’s a special night and you have two little ones at home.”

“Están con su papá. Son bien.”

“They should be with their mother.”

“No puedo. Mi turno no… no…”

I picture him raising a tired hand and, with a bluing finger pointing for emphasis: “Usted será.  You will.  Now please go on home for this evening.  Gracias.”

In the ensuing moments, surely with many conflicting thoughts racing though the young mother-caregiver’s mind, the front door quietly clicked closed as, in the dusk of this special night – Christmas Eve – ‘Julia’ headed back across town.

In Amos’s Little village, emergency service response is, at most, three-and-a-half to four minutes from phone call to arrival.

Amos called 911 shortly after that door clicked shut.

Medics did not revive him.

How do I know all this?  Through a fiduciary, we purchased Amos’s house.  Over the past couple of years, countless neighbors have shared their stories, often reminiscing about a handshake or a hug.  Two – maybe three – have spoken about that Christmas Eve.  Others have asked if we knew Amos personally.

I’m beginning to think I can answer, “Yes.”

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

THE GNASHING OF TEETH WON’T GET THE JOB DONE

Opening a Church of the Open Road discussion

It has been over a month since our great land began the “smooth transition of power,” no matter how unsmooth the process appears this time around.  In those weeks, the awful rancor of the 2016 election has done anything but abate.  Although seemingly magnified now, it is a given that with the upcoming change in administration, some people will benefit and some people will – how do we say this? – benefit less.  Some folks will enjoy gains in wealth and security and personal satisfaction, some won’t.  That, it can be argued, is the normal result of any election. 

But our reaction has been anything but normal.  Or civil.  Fans of the president-elect still clamor for his opponent’s incarceration while foes of the outcome cry for some sort of postponement in the Electoral College process until all the facts are known about out-of-country influences in the campaign(s). These and other doubts, misgivings and finger-pointings are manifested on social media as a mélange of marginally literate tweets and/or barely factual Facebook memes designed to create sides and accentuate differences rather than bridge those differences.  The incoming administration appears to distrust the CIA, the CIA and the FBI struggle to look at the same evidence and arrive at the same conclusion, Congress refuses to take any action that might involve compromise or bipartisanship, while the person on the street has difficulty differentiating between news and outright lies cloaked as news. Meanwhile, no one is receiving the answers they want to hear to the questions they are asking.  The populace seems mired to its axles in the mucky aftermath of campaigns based less upon policy and issues and the better angels in us all, than in flashpoints of innuendo, character assassination and generally nasty behavior.  The result?  A country not moving forward.

Lee Iacocca, in a series of ads for Chrysler in 1992 said, “You either lead, follow, or get out of the way.”  [Actually that quote belongs to Thomas Paine and/or General George Patton.] One can only imagine that power brokers in other corners of the world, seeing our raucous disarray, might be of the opinion that the United States is about to tumble into that “get out of the way” posture.  Not an enviable position for the country that used to be the envy of all others.

So here comes the question:

Viewed through a lens framed by these words…

…form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty…

What positive actions can each of us take, rising above the currents of distrust and anger, to move us forward again as a country? 

The continued gnashing of teeth won’t get the job done.

o0o

A request:  The Church of the Open Road invites your response and you can do it in the comment section of this blog post, even though you may need to go through that “Captcha” authentication process.  Please do.  If you choose to respond on Facebook, where you may have first discovered a link to this post, know that I would like your permission to copy any comment you make* into the comment section of the blog.  That way, we’ll actually have a discussion.  [*You will show up as “anonymous.”]

o0o

What prompted all this?  A buddy of mine and I have been sharing our  - let’s call ‘em “concerns” – about the recent unfolding of events.  Apparently, he’d been having similar discussions with others when his daughter – perhaps growing weary of his bitching and whining, as, I know, many of my family members are – said, “We may be very unhappy with the outcome (of the election) but having repeated discussions of worry and consternation will not help.  We need to change the discussion and start talking about what is most important and then define the actions we need to take with respect to that which we deem most important.”  To which I would add:  “And then act.”

With the help of some “Church of the Open Road” community members such as you, perhaps we’ll begin to formulate a refined discussion and begin to move things forward, lifting ourselves out of the muck, mire and gloom and into a brighter tomorrow.

Thanks, in advance, for your thoughts and participation.

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

NANCY KELSEY – THE UNHERALDED BEAR FLAG WOMAN

Part of the Pinnacles, Carrizo Plain,

Central Coast Range Tour

On a tour of the central portion of California’s Coast Range, I ran into a wanderer.  An unsung, historic one.

Turning left off of CA 166 onto Cottonwood Canyon Road just west of Cuyama, history-geography-trail-guide John recounts the story of Nancy Kelsey, the first American woman to cross the plains and the Sierra into California in 1841.   

Married at age 17 to Benjamin Kelsey she endured the hardships of the continental crossing, carrying a baby in her arms, because she said, the hardships of the journey would surely be less than those of a life without the man she loved.

The man she loved would turn out to be a prolific killer of the native population.  On CA 20 just west of Clear Lake, a historic marker tells of the Bloody Island encounter.  Ben Kelsey had a hand in that.  On the southwestern shores of that lake one finds the little berg of Kelseyville.  Named for him.  But there’s a Kelsey in El Dorado County between Placerville and Georgetown also named for him.  In Eureka, history tells us the Kelseys were turned away because area fathers enjoyed productive and compatible relations with the natives and they didn’t need Ben and his ilk to “fix” anything.

Between traveling into both Mexico and Oregon territory, the Kelseys found themselves in Monterey during that pivotal time in which Americans wrested control of California from the Mexican government.  There, Nancy Kelsey (some say, perhaps with others) was tapped to create the new republic’s first Bear Flag.  Arguably, she was the Betsy Ross of our state.

Ben died in 1888 and Nancy moved to the remote parts of Santa Barbara County we were exploring this day.

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A few miles south on Cottonwood Canyon Road, a derelict firewagon tells us we've arrived at the Sleepy Creek Ranch...

...a wonderful off-the-grid B&B run by archaeologist Bonnie Goller.  

She graciously allows us to visit Mrs. Kelsey’s final resting place on a shaded bank over-looking a dry arroyo.  Not a bad place to spend eternity, I’m thinking.

Upon our return to the ranch house, Ms. Goller shares a bit of the research she has conducted into the life of her nearby resident.  We find that Nancy Kelsey actually lived two canyons over in (you guessed it) Kelsey Canyon.  She gave birth to eight children, many who were prolific in that regard themselves. 

Curiously, etched into a concrete slab next to Nancy’s grave is the surname Clanton.  It seems one of Kelsey’s daughters married a brother of son of Ike Clanton, the gunslinger killed at the OK Corral in Tombstone in the famous dustup involving Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.  Small world.

But the true greatness of Nancy Kelsey's life and legacy - like most women - had much less to do with whom she married than who she was.   

Her adventures are briefly recounted on a plaque placed near her grave by the Oregon-California Trials Association. 

(Grab a tissue then click the photo to enlarge, please.)   

Nancy Kelsey died in 1896, asking only that she be buried in a "real coffin, not something scrapped up with old boards."  Fittingly, she rests in the most sublime of places with Bonnie Goller caring for both her and her legacy.

o0o

A few websites provide insight into her remarkable life: http://cherylannestapp.com/pioneer-women-nancy-kelsey/

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7524959

http://americacomesalive.com/2011/03/24/nancy-kelsey-1823-1896/

Details on the Sleepy Creek Ranch – book and evening or two!: http://www.sleepycreekranch.com/

o0o

The more I travel throughout the west, the more I can trick myself into believing that there were actually very few Americans that actually settled this vast and vacant space.  That few just moved around quite a bit.  It seems that everywhere I go, I run into an historic figure that I know from some place two, three, five, eight hundred miles distant.

Wheels are made for rollin', and mules are made to pack…*

Exhibit A:  John Bidwell, founder of my hometown in the middle of the northern Sacramento Valley.  Destined to become a member of the 39^th Congress, he came across the arid west crossing the Sierra in 1841 with the consequential Bidwell – Bartleson Party, which included Ben and Nancy Kelsey.  A while back, while touring along the Sonoma Coast, I saw a familiar photo of Mr. Bidwell.  Seems he was hired by John Sutter to deconstruct Fort Ross, salvage the redwood to be repurposed at Sutter’s Mill along the American River – certainly a great distance from Chico.  I had no idea.

Mud can make you prisoner, and the plains can bake you dry…

Exhibit B:  Jean Baptist (Pomp) Charbonneau, son of Sacagawea.  As an infant he crossed the northern stretches of what would become our nation with Lewis and Clark.  Adopted by William Clark, he travelled to Europe, there to rub elbows with a German prince and the like.  Returning to the states in 1829, he worked as a guide reciting Shakespeare around campfires.  “Pompy” died at age 61 having been thrown from a horse into a river near Danner, Oregon as he sought fortune in the Idaho Mines.  Charbonneau research led me to the factoid that he spent about thirteen years running a way station on the North Fork of the American about walking distance from my house in Rocklin.

Home is made for comin' from, for dreams of goin' to…

Exhibit C:  William Canfield, a survivor of the Whitman massacre on eastern Washington’s Columbia Plateau in 1847.  A blacksmith back then, he hid in the rafters of his flaming shop until the avenging Cayuse figured all the white folks were dead.  Canfield snuck away (one or two others survived, as well) ending up in the Seattle or Portland area where he caught a steamer to San Francisco, later making his way up the Petaluma River; thence to now-nearby-to-me Sebastopol where he is buried in a cemetery bearing his name.

I was born under a wandrin' star.

In truth, there were many strong and hearty folks who wandered from place to place finally coming to this land, setting roots and creating the foundation for one of the world’s most culturally diverse and economically powerful entities ever.  Many of the heralded pioneers were men.  But far too many of our courageous pioneers were unheralded women.

* lyrics by Alan J Lerner

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

A BRIEF AND INCOMPLETE EXPLORATION OF THE CENTRAL COAST RANGE

The Pinnacles, Carrizo Plain,

Central Coast Range Tour

Were they situated anywhere else in the world, California’s Coast Range would be considered both sublime and spectacular.  Mountain peaks rise over 7,000 feet and valleys ranging from verdant green to desert gold lace the north-south expanse.  Fortunately – or unfortunately – the Coast Range is a distant cousin of California’s higher and more majestic Sierra, thus often overlooked by travelers, birders, hikers, motorcycle enthusiasts and/or general adventure seekers. 

Having settled for a time in the Russian River Valley, exploration of the north-of-the-bay Coast Range has been a delight.  From the rugged Pacific coastline to the heights of Snow Mountain, roads, both paved and graded gravel have led me to the place names of cattle camps, logging sites, hot springs and way stations.  Mostly now abandoned.  Always, there is something new to discover or wonder about.  Always there is the romantic thought: What might it have been like to settle in the middle of this beautiful nowhere? Followed by: Where was the nearest grocery store?  Of course, there wasn’t a nearest grocery store.  Folks settling in these vacant and distant reaches in the late 1800s were on their own, farming, grazing and scratching out a life in a landscape where the average soul would simply wither.

Recently, an opportunity to explore the south-of-the-bay Coast Range presented itself.  The excuse was to follow the San Andreas Fault crisscrossing from the North American Plate to the Pacific Plate.  What I discovered was a delightful more-of-the-same.

Pinnacles National Park:  Perhaps as remote a National Park as any in the system, Pinnacles is a mere 20 miles off US 101 but a world away from it’s traffic, noise, commerce and general hubbub.  Centered on a unique geologic formation, this tiny park – until recently a national monument – is accessed by CA 146 from Soledad or CA 146 from CA 33, but 146 does not go through. 

My simplified understanding of California’s mountain geography developed in college where I learned that the Sierra is a tilted fault block, the Coast Ranges are essentially folded and all the volcanic stuff was in the Cascade Range roughly north of the Feather River.  Reality – brought about through travel – exposes a new truth: volcanic activity happens almost anywhere along the Pacific’s Ring of Fire.  Including the Pinnacles.

There is a small system of trails that link both stubs of CA 146.  In between, the 23 million-year-old remnants of volcanic activity have created weathered domes and, where seismic activity has broken things loose, caves than can, seasonally, be explored on foot.  Climbers climb, spelunkers spelunk, hikers investigate woodland canyons and campers camp under the watchful eyes of circling red tailed hawks; always on the lookout for rare and endangered red-legged frogs.

The Pinnacles deserved far more than the three hours we could commit to our visit.

Details? https://www.nps.gov/pinn/index.htm

Parkfield:  The San Andreas is strike-slip fault marking a six hundred mile stretch of the collision zone between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates.  A strike-slip fault is one where the activity moves laterally or horizontally rather than up and down.  Fence lines that were once straight, roadways that are cracked and now misaligned and bridges with bends in their steel railing all evidence strike-slip faults.

While, in general, the North American Plate is riding over the Pacific Plate, for reasons that escape my level of understanding, the land mass over the Pacific Plate is slipping northward while that over the North American Plate moves south.  Should this continue for another billion and a half years, the Giants and Dodgers will again be cross-town rivals and won’t that be great!

Parkfield is among the more seismically active spots on the west coast.  The USGS maintains a manned station to monitor activity along the fault.  And the little village makes the most of its rockin’ and rollin’ heritage inviting visitors to “be here when it happens.”

It didn’t happen while we were there, and the rustic little café happened to be closed at lunchtime, so we moved on, crossing over to the Pacific Plate, knowing we’d need to schedule a return to Parkfield if we truly wanted to get in on the action. 

Details? https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/parkfield/hist.php

Carrizo Plain National Monument:  The San Andreas Fault forms the eastern edge of the Carrizo Plain at the foot of the aptly named Temblor Range.  The partly paved – partly graded Soda Lake Road bisects the monument from northwest to southeast.  Accessing from Seven Mile Road off CA 58, the initial view is of dry ranchland and sage very reminiscent of the parched areas of Nevada east of Reno and Carson City. 

South on Soda Lake Road, we pass the entry point and the agricultural nature gives way to a dry plain that in March is carpeted with wildflowers.  December, however?  Not so much.   

The further into the monument we travel, the more it felt like we were somehow reversing time.  At the north end of the monument rests the road’s namesake lake, a low point where winter’s scarce rainfall collects and settles.  No outlet.  During the long, hot dry season, the water disappears leaving the largest alkali lakebed in all of California.

To the west, a promontory known as Painted Rock preserves petroglyphs from the area’s earliest inhabitants, the Chumash and Yokuts, among others.  For much of the year, permits are required to make the half-mile trek from parking to pre-history.  It seems that early in the 20^th century, vandals had their way with these antiquities, and the rest of us must pay the price.

Further on, the visitor’s center provides insight into the plants and animals native to the plain.  Nearby, weathering farm implements from a hardscrabble era ending fifty years ago are displayed in a long rusty line against a backdrop of hills that seem older than time.

The closer you look, the Carrizo Plain management team suggests, the more you see.  At one point, my exploratory buddy took a phone call: there is cell service – no potable water – but cell service.  I hopped out of the big 4-Runner to simply hike down the middle of Soda Lake Road.  Within a few hundred yards, I was taken by the grand nothingness of it all – and all the little details otherwise missed by simply driving through. 

Here, the silence is so deep that, at sunrise or any other time of day, you can hear your own heartbeat just standing still. 

The whole thing – the horizon, the desolation, the history – was captivating.  I found myself thinking: What would it be like to settle in the middle of this beautiful nowhere?  Then: I wonder where the nearest grocery store is.

Details? https://www.blm.gov/nlcs_web/sites/ca/st/en/prog/nlcs/Carrizo_Plain_NM.html

Enamored by this too-short visit to California’s Central Coast Range, I vow to return to spend more time exploring.  Although I’m concerned that there may never be enough time to fully grasp the vastness, remoteness and simple grandeur of this land so routinely overlooked by others.

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

THE GHOST OF EL CAMINO VIEJO

Part of the Pinnacles, Carrizo Plain,

Central Coast Range Tour

“There’s a gravesite I try to get to every time I come down this way.”  My explorer buddy John pointed at his iPhone and showed me the X labeled “grave” on the displayed topo-map.  “I know it’s out here somewhere.”

We were trundling over square-cornered dirt roads on the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley.  We squeezed along between the edge of a pistachio orchard and a barbed wire fence on a pair of ruts well suited for his Toyota 4-Runner.  Across the fence, a vast flat, dry surface sloped slightly toward the rise with some prominent sandstone outcrops.  Through an open gate, we followed the road, monitoring our position on his mobile devise.  With a degree of anticipation, we seemed to be moving closer to the X.  Shortly, however, our route curved west-southwest and the grave’s location slipped behind us on the display.

“Always seems to happen this way,” he said, cranking the 4-Runner around.

“Why would there be a grave marked on the map in this desolate edge of Kern County?” I asked.  “I mean, its like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

In the late 1700s, a most vaunted north-south California route was the King’s Highway – El Camino Real.  It served as the link between the missions and presidios established by the Spaniards who settled California intent on cultivating its fertile coastal valleys and Christianizing those peoples who’d sparsely populated the region for millennia.  Coursing from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay and beyond to Sonoma, the Camino brought commerce and trade to the missions and ranchos and a degree to government oversight and security to the missionaries and ranchers.

Some folks, however, weren’t particularly enamored with all the scrutiny that security brought, and an alternate south/north trail from San Pedro to about present day Oakland provided an attractive alternative: El Camino Viejo.  Travelers followed a path across desolate playas and dry hills to get to where they were going.  Some made it.  Some did not.

Back toward the gate, we spotted a set of ruts splitting off in a northeasterly direction, dropping into and out of an arroyo.  I hopped out of the truck to connoiter a bit.  Parallel to our former route, another set of tracks, nearly covered in sage and cattle poop headed west.  The big Toyota eased across the range toward a rocky outcrop.

“Point of Rocks,” John said pointing through the windshield.  “That was a promontory along the old El Camino Viejo.  It’s what folks aimed for as they came from the south across Antelope Valley.”

 

We’d traversed about a quarter of a mile when the road bended north, skirting the edge of the hills just below the rock outcrops.  In the near distance we came across an ancient fenced rectangle measuring, perhaps, six feet by eight. 

Disembarking we approached the enclosure.  Six rough-hewn post were firmly planted in the ground and probably had been for well over a hundred years.  Some sort of greasewood plant grew inside bigger and more robust than any flora we’d seen out this way.  There was no marker. 

An examination of the set of topographic maps we both have on our devises did not indicate the presence of a string of graves along the presumed route of El Camino Viejo.  But, surely, just as history tells us happened during the next century along the Oregon Trail, there must be more.  Why were those sites left unmarked only to be lost?  Where might we learn about the soul who belonged to whatever lay beneath the greasewood and when or how or why this person’s completed journey ended here?  Why was this grave protected and not the others?  There must be others.

After some chin scratching, a few “I wonders” and a short hike to the top of a nearby rise where we could make out the northerly route of our alternate Camino, up toward Sunflower Valley and along the base of the Pyramid Hills, we returned to our vehicle content, knowing that a successful exploration may answer the question asked, but creates more questions to examine.  Such was today’s adventure.

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press