RETURN TO SIMPSON CAMP

…the Subaru’s third big adventure…

Long-time readers will know that a place called Simpson Camp holds a special place in my childhood heart.  On my to-do list has been to share this distant locale with my wife of nearly thirty years.  Recently, taking the long way home, I did just that.

State Route 162 heads west out of Willows to the defunct lumber berg of Elk Creek.  The store there burned a year ago, but the gent who owns the place has been visiting daily cleaning up with the dream of reopening the place, or so reports the matron running the town’s café/gas station/inn.  The old guy was a much younger guy 40 years ago when he frequented the wholesale house of my employ to pick up salables for his remote grocery.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t drop in for a Coke and some Corn Nuts.

Grindstone Canyon is a long and deep valley carved by its namesake creek.  Fires regularly race through this barren, rocky and dry landscape, usually with little impact other than to refresh the scant soils.

Back in ’53, however, efforts to quell one had devastating results for one nearly forgotten crew.

Up the road we pause to let Edward out of his Subaru to stretch his legs…

…little knowing that coiled and lurking in the grass would be…

It’s a long forty miles from Willows up a windy CA162.  The pavement ends at Alder Springs where the route enters the Mendocino National Forest and is known as Forest Road 7.  Much more nicely graded than I recall, the Subaru Forester seems to relish the gravel and the curves.

Most folks who fly through Glenn County on I-5 must think the parish is little more than a string of impoverished towns in the bottomlands along the west side Sacramento River.  But on its path to Mendocino Pass, SR162/FR7 climbs to over 6500 feet passing through forests and meadows rivaling those in the Sierra. 

After some connoitering and reconnoitering, we found the spur road that leads to Simpson Camp.  Fifty years ago, Dad’s hiking buddy, Zibe Simpson, marked the turn-off with a red bandana tied to a roadside shrub.

The last time I’d visited the area in 2010, the road into the site was eroded and impassable.  Knowing this, we parked the Sube at the top of the ridge and walked down the glade. 

Down the hill quite a distance, a copse of firs juts into the meadow.  The sight of this stand brought a familiar stir to my innards.  

 We hiked through knee-high mule’s ear... 

...successors of the very one’s Zibe’s boxer, Jovanna lazed in back in the 60s…

…until we came upon a handcrafted sign nailed high in a fir.  (I know the story behind that sign.)

This was where we’d camped some 50 years earlier, although the official Forest Service sign had been removed, according to the ranger in Covelo, “to not attract folks who might damage the archaeological remnants.”   

I remember that Zibe showed us where to find arrowheads.  I remember that there used to be an old Wedgewood stove standing beneath these trees.

Looking from under the shade of the firs, I found where our old Coleman canvas tent had been erected…

…and the ring of stone that once confined a campfire that held off the gathering dusk… 

…a fire around which Zibe Simpson told stories of running sheep up this way in the summer months, herding them with Model A Fords and picking off coyotes intent on thinning the flock.

I remember falling asleep, fifty years ago, with a cool evening breeze washing over my face, dreaming of tending sheep on this pleasant hillside thinking no place on earth could be better.

Not much is left of Simpson Camp: just the fire ring, Zibe’s hand-made replacement sign and the memories. 

After an hour or so of exploration, my wife and I (with Edward the lab-mix), hiked back up the hill.  I’m not sure she came away knowing what all of my excitement was about, but a part of me was reminded that few places on earth could be better.

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press

OROVILLE-QUINCY HIGHWAY: REVISITING FROG ROCK

[October 2003] IN QUINCY, CALIFORNIA, where the old Western Auto store used to be, the Oroville-Quincy Highway heads out of town following Spanish Creek a little ways and then cuts over the ridge to Haskins Valley and Bucks Lake. Bucks is a gorgeous high mountain PG&E reservoir that we used to frequent when I was a kid. A family in the neighborhood had a chalet up there.

Their son, two years my senior, told me that three workers died in the construction of the dam. As an eight-year-old, I pictured their bodies in suspended animation in the rock and concrete. I never wanted to set foot on the dam itself. It gave me the creeps. All dams do. To this very day.

The Oro-Quincy Highway is the back way home from Bucks Lake, the alternative to Highway 70. It twists around ridge ends, crosses logged clearings and splices stands of Doug Fir and Ponderosa Pine. Within twenty minutes, one descends several ten- to thirteen-percent grades from high, white granite to thick, oaky mixed woodlands and chaparral. The highway winds down past Lake Madrone, to Berry Creek, and past the turn off to Feather Falls.

Continuing down the hill toward the Sacramento Valley, the route crosses Lake Oroville on a new suspension bridge almost directly above where California’s first suspension bridge originally spanned the Feather at Bidwell’s Bar, the ancient seat of Butte County. The historic old bridge was moved to be the centerpiece of Oroville Lake’s interpretive center. It warrants a visit.


BACK IN THAT HIGHER COUNTRY, a piece of granite (or basalt or some mixture thereof) is nestled in the waist-deep manzanita. About the size of a small house, it looks as if it were carved into the shape of a frog poised and ready to jump about twelve-and-a-half miles to the ridge on the other side of the Middle Fork of the Feather.

Forty years ago, in our 1954 Ford Ranchwagon, we were rattling our way to the friend’s family cabin on Bucks Lake up the “graded” (read: “horribly unpaved”) Oroville-Quincy Highway when we found this formation.

“Looks just like a frog,” my brother Bill exclaimed.

Dad stopped. We got out and crawled all over it. Chafed our bare knees and wore raw the heels of our hands on that rough, crystalline granite. Then we stood. In the distance were mountain peaks and dainty lakes that would fascinate us for a lifetime. As kids, we could see forever. Hell, we could touch forever from the top of that rock if we just closed our eyes and imagined. I didn’t however. I didn’t want to lose my balance, fall off the rock and end up like those guys inside the dam.


SINCE THEN, THANKS TO THE U S FOREST SERVICE, the road has been nicely paved, but the manzanita hasn’t added more than another six inches: the growing season so short that the pines and firs haven’t yet made root-hold.

This October day, the sky was bright blue. The air cool enough to moisten the nose and stab the lung a little bit, but sweet as only true mountain climes afford. The morning chill had melted so I could switch off the heated handgrips. My black leather jacket absorbed some sunshine. A young bald eagle circled overhead.

Aspens told me that the first frost had occurred – but everything else told me it wasn’t winter yet.

And the Great Frog Rock? Well, it is made of rock.


DAD HAD STOPPED. So could I. Again I would chafe the heels of both hands.

From atop Frog Rock there were 360 degrees of ridges, forests and granite outcrops. I could see and feel forever – touching distant peaks I’d now climbed and dainty lakes I’d now paddled.

Forty years vanished.

A journey on the road is not always of the road.

© 2003, 2010
Church of the Open Road Press