ANOTHER RETURN TO SIMPSON CAMP

 …a Memorial Day Tradition…

 

On or about Memorial Day in good years, I’ll make the trek up to Simpson Camp (western edge Glenn County near Mendocino Pass) with a loved one or a few to reminisce about 1960s-era visits to that old sheep camp with the sheepherder who worked the area forty years before. [Details are recounted in “Eden Indeed: Tales Truths and Fabrications of a Small Town Boy” pages 186-203] Our family reveled and relaxed in the beauty and solitude of the cool evergreen forests, velvet soft glades and clear starry nights. 

     In 2020, we fulfilled one of Mom’s final wishes and held a memorial for her at Simpson Camp, leaving her beloved shillelagh tucked beneath a fallen timber. Within months, the devastating August Complex fire roared through searing the trees, wiping out any sign of the camp, and leaving only a trace of white ash where Mom’s stick had lain.  

 

Back in the sixties, a small cluster of oak trees grew at the top of the ridge, visible from camp. Dad said it looked like a Greek Chorus, whatever that was. On a clear day, standing near to those oaks, looking west, one could see the fogbank of the Pacific shore; looking east, Lassen Peak: the whole of my northern California growings-up. As we lunched after Mom’s memorial, I called a granddaughter and a nephew to visit that stand where they watched as I drove a wooden stake in the ground, observing the knowing nods of those from the next generation.

 

This recent visit found the old camp regenerating. Amid the blackened spires of standing deadwood, thickets of gooseberry and chemise were taking hold. The meadow was back and foresters were awork downing some of the standing deadwood and yarding it into piles for later care; all under the ever watchful gazes of a couple of circling red tails.

     Curiously, that copse of tiny oaks had somehow survived the great fire. My stake in the ground was still my stake in the ground, confirming that, at some time-point in the future, I’ll witness ~ and be one with ~ the rebirth of Simpson Camp.

 

Photo Album 2025

 

Stepping out of the car at the top of the ridge.

 

Life returns to the meadow.

 

Someone has replaced the Zibe’s sign lost in the fire. (I had hoped to do this.)

 

 Nail of particular importance (see page 201-02)

 

Jethro waits for Dad (me) who needed an 'alone-time' moment back at camp.

 

Final view of the road winding down the hill.

 

My stake in the ground.

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press