GREAT POTTY STOPS ALONG THE OPEN ROAD - RIVER BEND PARK OFF HIGHWAY 70: OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA

First in a series.

TRAVELING STATE ROUTE 70 from the valley to the Sierra, one can be captivated by the richness of one of the world’s most productive river valleys, the ruggedness of one of California’s most scenic river canyons and the sublime nature of the forested transition between the Sierra and the Cascade. Once in the mountains, the US Forest Service provides ample campground, picnic areas and rest stops for the traveler who is enjoying nature when nature calls. But in the agricultural flatlands, choices are limited to the occasional convenience store where you may not want to buy a bag of Doritos, or the occasional fast food joint where you may not want to buy a kiddie meal.

OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA is the seat of Butte County. Highway 70 skirts the town’s western edge. Configured as a freeway along this section, it is easy to whiz by town and forget that, somebody may have to go.

After many journeys through the area, I stumbled into River Bend Park. Located at the west end of Montgomery Street and built through a joint community effort involving local funds and service club labor, River Bend offers clean restrooms with stainless steel facilities. Nosing around the park, one will find that it is an outstanding place to take a fatigue break. River Bend has individual and group picnic facilities with heavy steel charcoal grills and solid concrete tables. Sites are spaced throughout acre upon acre of groomed grass. Certainly a nice place for a mid-afternoon snooze, if warranted.

(c) Paradise Post

Provided at River Bend is an Outdoor Fitness Course, a project of the local Rotary Club. It is considered state-of-the art and is designed for low impact cardio-vascular health and fitness for all levels and is located on this site. It consists of four stations, each with directions for the various activities. After hours in the saddle, it provides an excellent means by which the rider and limber up those unused muscles, bones and fibers.

River Bend Park is located at, well, a bend in the Feather River, perhaps five or six miles below Oroville Dam. The park is situated on the inside or depositional side of the turn, the opposite side of the river is a bluff that constantly erodes as seasonal changes in water flow eat into its soft composite. The river’s deposition affords a smooth gravel beach which is designated a swim area.

A recent November visit found me concerned about a rotten smell the closer I got to the river. I was ready to be disappointed because the entire facility looked so clean, trim and well maintained. Approaching the river, the submerged chunk that appeared to be waterlogged was actually the remains of a Chinook salmon who had previously spawned just a little bit up stream. Further investigation found several of them. Terrific news that the salmon are back and an interesting lesson that mother nature’s natural beauty and rhythm isn’t always the most sensorially pleasant.


OROVILLE IS AWASH WITH HISTORY from the discovery of gold to the discovery of Ishi (purported to be the last stone-age human living in North America) to the construction of the world’s largest earth-fill dam. But if one doesn’t choose to explore this rich and interesting area, know that one of the better potty stops in all of northern California is just off the highway.

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NOTE: The “Church of the Open Road” hopes to add more area photographs of this and other “Great Potty Stops of the Open Road” as the series continues.

Readers are invited to suggest their favorite “Great Potty Stops” in the comment section of this post. The “Church” will investigate.


RESOURCES:

Butte County’s "101 Things to Do": http://101thingstodo.net/oroville/14.shtml

Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds. University of California Press. 1961. The classic biography contrasting the Last Yahi’s life before and after his contact with modern man.

Nadeau, Remi. Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of California. 5th edition. 1999.  "A delightful, humorous and historical look at the towns and mining camps of California to be enjoyed by both the casual reader and the serious history buff." - Placerville Mountain Democrat

Talbitzer, William. Lost Beneath the Feather. Bill Talbitzer, 1963. Compiled and written by a long-time Chico Enterprise Record reporter, Talbitzer shares stories of the section of the Feather River inundated once the pool behind Oroville Dam filled. Available at the Lake Oroville Visitor Center.

FOLLOW-UPS, UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS II

Our crack fact-check team here at the Church of the Open Road offers these follow-ups, corrections [and apologies] to previous posts:

TO A GUY NAME JIM - The “Church” apologizes: A correspondent informed the Church of the Open Road that some yahoo in Washington State had sponsored an initiative to change the Washington State seal to incorporate a tape worm underlining the concept that the state’s tax system was sucking the people dry. The “Church” was able to identify said “yahoo” and contacted him out of the blue, electronically suggesting some unkind things about himself and his appreciation for how his tax dollars were spent. Jim, a veteran and a citizen, (and a motorcycle rider) responded with far more civility than was offered by the “Church.” And the Church, proverbial hat in hand, realizing that it had stepped well beyond its middle-of-the-road belief system, (hopefully) graciously apologized.

This post makes that apology public. Jim: Thank you for your service. Thank you for your point of view. And know that it is an honor to read it, disagree with it and (finally) understand the tongue-in-cheek nature by which it was offered. And even if it were not offered in humor, you, sir, deserved better.


REGARDING BOTH SIMPSON CAMP (posts: May 12, June 10, July 10, 2010) AND BRUFF’S CAMP (post: November 8, 2010): Recall that when searching for places visited decades ago, it was discovered that place names related to those enchanted spots were no where to be found on current maps of the two unique and separate areas.

The Church is a little concerned that when a place name is removed from a map, the history of some individual is lost to the proverbial dustbin and the exceptional lessons of their perhaps-judged unexceptional lives will be forgotten.

Bruff is a case in point. Bruff sent his company forward without regard to his own well-being. He cared for the properties of his company to the detriment of his health. He comforted others who traveled the Old Lassen Trail, showing them kindness, compassion and ultimately the way to safety while standing fast in his commitment. He nearly starved.

Without the map listing, would anyone look through the annals of gold rush history to find that he shepherded hundreds of fortune-seeking immigrants to their goals? And how would what-he-did challenge us to help others in our time, if the place name is removed?


REGARDING “AUNTIE DaVONNE” (posts: October 20 and 28, 2010): On this Veteran’s Day, after staging a valiant come-back from emergency surgery, “Auntie DaVonne” declared victory and left this place to be with her late husband who predeceased her a mere six months ago (post: April 8, 2010).

There are things about love that, if people claim to understand ‘em, they probably are just blowing smoke. “Auntie DaVonne” understood love. She understood commitment. She understood her faith to a degree that others may swear to, but never realize.

Dear Sister Lisa: Those of us who understand far less, know that you are in that special place on the other side of the netherworld, now fully embraced by love – the love in which you so passionately believed. Time to rest, dear woman.

The circle is unbroken. The circle is never broken.

THE “ROMANCE” OF BRUFF’S CAMP: PONDEROSA WAY – TEHAMA COUNTY

I am informed that it is difficult travelling down the Sacramento Valley, on account of the moisture; and that there is no river conveyance and the stream is very rapid, and obstructed with bars and snags. And that the mines are exceedingly unhealthy.

J. Goldsborough Bruff:
October 21, 1849 in

Gold Rush

ON THE ROAD, in the saddle, riding through hills and forests and glens and weather, it is easy to romanticize those who have gone before. Those whose evidence of passing is a mere place name and, perhaps a foundation overgrown with vines or a rock chimney devoid of house. We travel in and out of these remote places dreaming daybreaks of melted mist and days ends of fiery sunsets, which give way to carpets of stars across a milky way. In between these dawns and dusks: placer mining rich with gold scooped from the stream bed, or boundless pastures upon which cattle graze, or clear pines felled for posts and rails or cabin walls. A Maureen O’Hara-type has a hot meal waiting and a few terse words that enhance the sexual tension. Pretty soon the credits roll: Republic Films.

A fellow named J. Goldsborough Bruff suggests things probably weren’t quite that way.

Poyle spent another weary day, chasing deer in vain. Only observed a few, at a distance. Baked a cake with some mildewed pinola…

November 18, 1849

ALONG THE PONDEROSA WAY somewhere between the old Campbellville Lookout and Payne’s Creek, where the Lassen cut-off – having traced the narrow divide between Deer Creek and Mill Creek – intersects it, there’s a Forest Service sign marking Bruff’s Camp. I don’t have a picture-taken-personally because it’s been forty years since I went that way. A revisit is on my short list of trips yet to take on the BMW.

BRUFF HAD POSITIONED HIMSELF as president of the Washington (DC) City and California Gold Mining Association. This assembly of 65 incorporated to journey west in late 1848. Many historians consider Bruff’s writings to be some of the best sources of information on the Gold Rush. Most compelling are the months he spent in the foothills of the Sierra / Cascade. Perhaps 30 miles from early settlements in the Sacramento Valley, yet with supplies and wagons deteriorating, he sent his party forward while remaining behind to care for the group’s sundries. His encampment along the Lassen Trail proved to be a highway for many emigrant parties and, as he waited his own rescue, he assisted others with their passage west. Assistance meant providing game; constructing shelter out of wagon remains; ensuring the fire was always burning; ministering to the ill and burying the dead. Deep in the evening of October 31, an aged oak collapsed…

A large limb, capable of making a couple of cords of fuel, had to be cut off, and then the long heavy trunk pryed with levers and rolled off… …and there lay a shocking sight – An aged, grey headed man and his grown son, with their hips buried in the ground, their ghastly eyes turned up in death!

November 1, 1849

THE PARTY THAT WAS TO RETURN for Mr. Bruff, did, indeed – however they came only for the provisions they’d left in his care. They did not return with the horse he had loaned. He did not leave camp with them owing to the fact that he carried “journals, drawings and mineral specimens” he chose not to leave behind. His former colleagues refused him further assistance. So Bruff dug in. He weathered drenching rains and low snow. He loaned goods to passers-through, chronicling meetings with good people (a Mrs. O’Brian and “two curly-headed girls”) and selfish…

A couple of men ask’d me for the loan of a camp-kettle and axe as they were about to cook a meal close by. I readily loaned them the articles & they made fire against a tree trunk. I had worn a gum poncho & tarpaulin hat, but the rain held up for a while, and I took them off and threw them into my tent, while I went to a camp near by; on returning, the strangers were gone, with the loaned articles, my poncho and hat. I hope their gratitude will meet its reward.

November 6, 1849

FOR SEVERAL WINTER-SEASON MONTHS, Joseph Goldsborough Bruff lived in the foothill hinterlands just east of the Northern Sacramento Valley until he and two others were rendered so weakened and ill that they had to abandon camp and follow Lassen's cut-off into the lowlands.  He ended up at Lassen's Rancho near the confluence of Deer Creek and the Sacramento River where he was called upon to make good on the debts of others in the company who preceded him to the outpost.  Behind him, he left the bones of covered wagons, the bodies of those who could march no further and the scattered skeletons of promised riches - riches that seemed so real to the legions who ventured into the western wilderness back in '49, '50 and beyond.

I THINK ABOUT BRUFF as I explore the gold country canyons of the American, the Yuba, the Feather and of Butte and Chico Creeks and those lesser streams that flow west from the Sierra into the valley. I think of him when I see a place name or an overgrown foundation or a naked rock chimney. I think of Bruff and am reminded that the settlement of the west was perhaps ten percent romance and ninety percent hard luck.

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NOTE:  Like Simpson Camp on the Mendocino National Forest in the Coast Range, I can no longer locate Bruff’s camp on any of the following: The US Department of Agriculture’s Lassen National Forest Map, the US Department of the Interior Geological Survey Quadrangles, or DeLorme’s California Atlas and Gazetteer. But I’ve been to Bruff’s Camp and I’m going back some day.

RESOURCES:

Bruff, Joseph Goldsborough, Gold Rush; the Journals, Drawing, and other Papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff, Captain, Washington City and California Mining Association, April 2, 1849-July 20, 1851. Ed. by Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines. With a foreword by F. W. Hodge. California Centennial ed. New York: Columbia University Press. 1949

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

MY TRIP TO UMBRIA – YESTERDAY

…in total about a third of the state [is] termed “Mediterranean”

because of climatic analogy with portions of the old world.

Winters are mild and in most areas have considerable sunshine,

interrupted only by the occasional cyclonic storms

that bring most of the yearly precipitation.

David W. Lantis in

California: Land of Contrast

1970

ABOUT MID-OCTOBER, when the sun rides low across the southern sky, when dawn breaks late and evening settles early, when frost may render the roads slick, particularly when following a thick, wet “cyclonic” storm, the riding day is abbreviated. Tours to the high country must wait until the spring thaw. Trips to the Pacific shore involve slicing through chilling banks of fog. A “day ride” might last five hours – starting around ten in the morning and ending well before four. Thus afforded such localized a radius, one rides the common roads looking for the uncommon element: the something missed the hundred previous times the road had been run.

Home base is amidst a suburban cancer – a house within row upon row of similar abodes. Saving grace in this locale is that an escape route exists. One that requires waiting through only one traffic signal. Therefore, on a good day between one of those “occasional cyclonic storms,” I can be coursing down narrow two-lanes, through pastures, orchards, vineyards and flower farms. In moments, I am no longer living on the fringe of Sacramento. I am wheeling through the old-country farmlands of north central Italy. I am in Umbria.

A TINY ROAD leads away from the highly traveled two-lane. Mandarins are found up this way in the late fall. And Christmas trees – fresh in the ground.

AS CONGESTED AS THE REGION CAN SEEM at times, the vast expanse of the Sierran foothills is rural orchard and pastureland.  [Note:  Click on the picture.  It will expand and you can get a gander at the very cool blinder on the horse in the background.]

TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the Romans built aqueducts throughout what is now Italy, distributing water not only to Rome, in the central peninsula, but throughout hamlets, villages and cities across the region. Were it not for this infrastructure, perhaps the Christian Church of nine-or-so centuries back would not have relocated its spiritual center to this dry-summer paradise. In California, 1900 years later, we built canals and flumes to transport water for mining, lumbering and agriculture…

…storing some of that water in ponds or reservoirs that nicely reflect the golden hues of autumn.

VILLAGES IN ITALY were crafted out of marble and granite and have stood for twelve hundred years. Here we see an occasional rock-hewn wall.

…and “old” may be defined as something new when great-grandpa built it for the bride he brought out from back east.

ALONG THE ROUTE OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC, packing sheds became transshipment points for area fruits, vegetables and nuts. Repurposed, this one in Newcastle houses antiques shops and a delightful Italian restaurant called La Fornaretta. Sicilian (not Umbrian) fare with great service, local wines and loads of good cheer.

The oldest part of Newcastle looks frozen in time.

AROUND ANY BEND one may find a barn that looks as if its better days have passed by. But, the relic still protects a load of irrigation pipe and a serviceable Caterpillar tractor.

TO THE LEFT OR TO THE RIGHT may be another of those capillary roads – one that feeds a cell or two of ranch or farm life just around a knoll or across a one-lane bridge.

Living the dream, this entrepreneur probably left the rat race and opened Rancho Roble Vineyards. Producing a handsome and substantial Barbera to be enjoyed with seared marinated flank steak, or with pastas heavily drenched in tomato-based sauce.  (Complimented greatly grilled lamb and roasted vegetables last evening.)  I suspect that the majority of "maturing" Americans would rather do what this gentleman’s doing than be - what's the word? - rich.


I DIDN’T RIDE FAR THIS DAY: only fifty-six miles in about two and a half hours. But I returned as if I had just visited the old country – where life is borne of the earth and its bounty; where time is as easily judged by the position of the sun in the sky as by a wristwatch; where people wave and take a moment to smile. And where the proprietor is kind enough to ensure that the case of wine tied to the back of the motorcycle is secured so that it won’t fall off during the journey back to reality.

RESOURCES:

La Fornaretta Restaurant, 455 Main Street # 4, Newcastle, CA 95658-9359

GENERALLY, during my first visit to what to me will be a new Italian place, and if they serve it, I always order Linguine con Vognole. I’m looking for flavors that marry the rhythm of the vast Mediterranean Sea with the intimacy of a small, passionate Italian cucina.

LINGUINE WITH CLAMS, when properly prepared, has a broth that lingers. Like a view across an Umbrian valley from a summit in the Dolomites. Or a love affair. A taste that begs to be savored for longer than the dinner hour. Sweet. Steeped in garlic and herbs. Just enough salt to remind us of our common origins in the sea.

Last night’s broth rekindled warm, summer memories of the Cinque Terra – which is as close as I’ve ever been to Sicily. Even on this morning after, that marriage of vast sea and intimate kitchen lingers and I salivate.

from “My Dinner with Paul Newman”

© 2008 Church of the Open Road Press

Newcastle, California: www.newcastlecommunity.org

A website dedicated to the interests of the community, community businesses and visitors.


Rancho Roble Vineyards: www.RanchoRoble.com

Following the tradition of California’s 19th century Italian winemakers, Rancho Roble Vineyards ® planted the historic Barbera wine grape rootstock [which] thrive in the micro climate and soils of this region. This vintage reflects the golden afternoons and shady oak evenings…

from “tasting notes”

2007 Rancho Roble Barbera label

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT II – NETHERWORLD IMPRESSIONS OF COUNTY ROAD 31 AND STATE ROUTE 128

Sometime, between about 55 and 60,

the herd begins to thin itself.

And it’s the herd I’m in.

I THINK OF THIS as I motor across the valley floor on what is a now-familiar route. Back to the east, a few shafts of morning sunlight slip over the mountains and under a low ceiling of clouds. In moments, the promise of daybreak will be gone, absorbed in the velvet layer of moisture that blankets the region and renders the landscape gray. The morning is not warm, but it is not cold. I am in the midst of a netherworld – a neither-this-nor-that environ – similar to the one separating last night’s wakefulness from sleep. It’s a good thing I know this road.

I wonder, as I advance into the next turn, if Aunt DaVonne is somehow in a netherworld of sorts: unwanting of the oxygen tube forcing the breath of life into her, but equally unwanting of the alternative. Today, I’m told, for the third or fourth time in the too-recent past, the device supplying O2 will be removed. “Can’t keep the tube in there too long or the lungs will forget how to function.”

I EXHALE THROUGH MY NOSE and the inside of my Shoei helmet's visor fogs. The road disappears. Riding blind at 55 to 60, I push upward on a tab to crack open the face screen. The condensation melts away. Again I see the muted colors of the mid-autumn landscape. The valley’s beauty subdued. Its aromas of fermenting grass stubble and derelict melons have soaked into tiny, leaden water droplets that fall to the ground. A fence line parallels the road. Its wooden posts, once erect, tilt at odd directions, bases rotted away, suspended by the strands of wire the posts, initially, had been engineered to, themselves, suspend. Two hundred yards west, the fence disappears. But it never goes away. For as long as I choose to be aware, the fence continues, always disappearing into the gloom. Always two hundred yards ahead.  And I smell moisture.


MY MIND WANDERS to the netherworld – the ill defined place between the here and now and the somewhere else. I wonder who populates this undefined place: who they are, how long they might stay, where they might be headed; but mostly: are they still with us?


THE ROAD RISES from the valley floor and into that low blanket of cloud cover. Its cloak thickens. Then, after a distance, as the pavement twists and sweeps upward, the mantle disappears. The fence is gone, too. Ascending, I pass the familiar concrete dam on Putah Creek and its reservoir, then through stands of valley and blue oaks and thickets of scrub. The road dips into pastures of golden grasses recently laid flat by the rain. The land here is sectioned off. More fences. Country folks scratch livelihoods, raising dry vineyards or irrigated pasture or, maybe, a Christmas tree farm. A paintless, weathered barn balanced on an ancient rock foundation and its attendant cattle shoot faces the highway. Back from the road a distance, a derelict Atlas moving van with faded lettering and an artful curve to its prow provides covered storage for silage or equipment. Primitive, scrabbly dirt roads exit to the left and right of the pavement, curling around knolls and into hidden and, perhaps, enchanting homesteads. Each one is gated to protect what’s in there from what’s out here.

Topping a ridge, I find slivers of blue sky, but only slivers. Thin cirrus ice crystal arrays, harbingers of tomorrow’s storm, already lace the highest atmosphere. Though the temperature has slightly risen, when I snap closed the Shoei’s face shield, my breath fogs the damned thing up.

I stop to wipe it clean, pull out my word processing device and begin to type these words. Kind passersby see the BMW propped at the side of the road with one pannier open. They pause to ask if I’m okay.

I am, I say, thanking them.


THIRTY MILES AWAY, a loved one has, by now, been freed of her ventilation. She is no longer in the netherworld between self-supported breathing and not. I hope to see her in the next hour or so, but wonder if somehow, we might have passed along the way this morning.

Then, damn it all, I think about the thinning herd of which I am a part and realize: Auntie DeVonne is, too.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

THE PURGING OF THE POCKET NOTEBOOKS

FOR DECADES, I have carried small spiral-bound notebooks around in my shirt pocket keeping shopping lists, directions, phone numbers, project dimensions, notes on road conditions, and story starters or random thoughts for later use.

Today, in policing the house, I uncovered more than a half dozen of these primitive Palm Pilots. I set myself to purging any page that had writing on it, saving only the aforementioned random thoughts. Most of them, I think, are original and they are listed here:

• You can’t be getting your nails done and cry poor at the same time.
• I’m a little ticked off about anger management.
• Being stupid protects people from getting old.
• If you set the bar just so, everybody can do excellent.
• Lord, grant me the enough wealth to be enlightened, but enough creature comforts to not have to bother.
• The less well read a person is, the more sure they are of their beliefs.
• Decisio-terrorism:  The act of sabotaging a decision arrived at through group consensus.
• Arrange the facts to support the conclusion.
• How do we avoid what happened before and what do we create when we do?
• Not all who grow grapes should make wine.
• The end of an appointment cannot be before it starts.
• The closer they are to chickens, the better children will behave.
• The grass may not be greener, but you still may want to hop that fence and chew on it a while.
• Defensible decisions receive support because they are defensible decisions - not because somebody asks for the support from colleagues or underlings.
• People, forever, will fall short of expectations they do not know exist.
• Where does a UPS truck go to die?
• Get even: be the reason the other line moves much faster.
• Prosperity is not what one can afford, but what one can afford to give away.  
• I was workin’ on learnin’ a song when you walked through the door.
• There are 100 routes from here to there.  Just find ‘em.  Heck, just find one.
• An idea, well proffered, moves giants.

THE GOOD NEWS is that I now have eight or nine little notebooks with varied numbers of blank pages in each; all ready for more service in support of my weakened faculty for remembering a thought. Or a grocery list.

THE ROPE SWING

ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON we built a rope swing with an old Firestone tire we’d dug out of the creek bank. We had to toss a line over a branch about a mile up in the sycamore tree on the west side of the house. Didn’t get it over at first. Had to tie something on the end of the rope so we could get the heft to fling it over.

First we tried a smooth, old river rock with a big, fresh chip in one side that had just been plowed up out back in the orchard. Every couple of tosses the rock slipped out of the loop we’d cinched around it. Once it hit Vanella – Nilley we called him – on the side of the head and he went home crying.

Switched to dad’s hammer, which I’d snuck from his workshop. A beautiful, old, leather-handled Estwing. Grip worn to a shine from years of various around-the-house jobs. Dad came pedaling home – rode his bike to work: we only had one car – and told us that wasn’t what the hammer was for. We rightly figured he meant crow bars, vice grips, pipe wrenches, hand axes – just about anything else that could be found in the shop – as well.

There was this galvanized metal bucket out back of the house that mom used exclusively for hauling ash from the Franklin stove out to the orchard. I swiped it from where mom kept it. We tied one end of the rope around its bail.

Muster, another kid from the neighborhood, said we should fill it “this much” full with water. So we did. Old Musty swung the bucket like the pendulum on the cuckoo clock in our dining room, back and forth. Back and forth. Each time a little bit further. Soon he was making great, sweeping circles with the water bucket at the end of the rope.

Then, using this magical boy judgment that some kids possess, he let the rope slip and race through his dirty palm at just the right instant. The bucket rocketed skyward, arcing and clearing the branch on the very first throw and falling to earth with the water exploding out of its busted bottom when the bucket hit the ground.

Soaked hurrahs were sounded all around. And slaps on the back. Musty was a genius! A real whiz!

Nilley, by now, had come back – a red bandanna wrapped around his forehead – and stood a distance away at the property line leaning on the white rail fence.

Both ends of the rope were in kid hands. While I tied the muddy, black-side-wall Firestone to one end of the rope, Calvert, a kid from next door, shinnied up the great sycamore tree and wiggled out on to the limb. He hoisted up the other end of the rope, did a couple of wraps with it and tugged on it a couple of times. Finding things secure enough to suit the mind of an experienced boy of ten or eleven, Calvie dangled his legs off the limb, found the rope with first one foot, then the other, slipped his butt off the branch and descended the rope hand over hand.

The once derelict tire now hung about two and a half feet off the ground and since Nilley looked so forlorn but so interested, Calvie waved him over. In the gathering dusk, he enjoyed the first ride.


I DON’T THINK WE USED THAT ROPE SWING for more than the waning hours of that summer day and a little bit of the next. To be sure, we spent more time engineering the swing than we ever did riding it.

We get together now, the fellows of that industry – except for Nilley: AIDS overtook him five or six years back. The rest of us, Calvie and Musty and me, we get together and drink beer and smoke cheap cigars. Proving we’re big boys now.

We talk about good jobs and bad politics, failed marriages and lingering loves. And tell a few jokes. Never have talked about building the swing in the sycamore tree. Hell, I may be the only one who even remembers the whole event.

I keep meaning to ask Calvie, when I see him, why – if he could shinny up a tree to secure a dangling line to a branch about a mile up in the air – why we had to dedicate an otherwise perfectly fine summer’s afternoon to trying to toss that damned rope over the tree limb in the first place.

But by the time I remember the question, the party’s broken up and everybody’s gone home.

© 1997, 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

JUST-PAST-DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT: YOLO COUNTY ROAD 31

A MID-MORNING NECESSITY in Napa finds me racing westward across the floor of the Sacramento Valley. Seventy-five miles behind me, the sun has crept over the summit of the Sierra. The season’s first drenching rain occurred yesterday and extended into the evening. This morning’s rays work to slightly warm the air and dissipate the season’s earliest Tule fog.

Life had dealt Auntie DeVonne a bad hand. An internal infection needed to be staved before an operation could repair the faulty heart valve. The abscess, however, wouldn’t respond to antibiotics and the infection’s growth now inhibited respiration. During the storm last night, DeVonne “coded.” Something much more invasive was necessary. But what of the weakened heart? According to the surgeon, Auntie’s circumstance was “like being on the third floor of a house where the first floor was totally involved in flames. You can wait around or you can jump out the window. I’ve got the net.”

There would not be time for breakfast on the road this morning. Or pictures.


COUNTY ROAD 31 beelines west from Davis. Once out of town the farmland looks laser flat. In the slightest depressions, cool air pools. Clinging, earth-bound sheets of gossamer fog mark these low spots: rimmed silver on top by the rising sun, but filled with icy daggers as the rural road slices through. Even with the heaviest of riding gloves the chill, like an x-ray, finds each of the 54 bones in my hands and tries to freeze them – and their connecting tissue – solid.

Under the broadening expanses of clear sky, yesterday’s rainfall begins a fermentation process on fresh wheat stubble in the neighboring tracts. The air assumes a sugary fragrance, as the landscape outside the fog pools turns golden. A field of rotting watermelon smells particularly pungent and rich. As does the windrow of eucalyptus planted several yards south of the pavement just beyond an irrigation canal. The BMW’s on-board thermometer reads 48 then 50 then 52 degrees. My black leather jacket absorbs some early morning warmth and an involuntary shiver transfers it to my body.

Straight ahead, the lower reaches of the Vaca Hills of the Coast Range bask in this just-past-dawn early light. But the season’s first storm had been significant. Up the mountain, fresh moisture soaks the top few inches of soil and the lower few feet of atmosphere. Vaporous wisps fill the east-facing hollows of seasonal creeks that may have come back to life. At the crest, a bounteous pure white blanket of moisture lay peeking over, so much like disheveled bedclothes pushed back against a footboard after a raucous and intense night of passionate and long-awaited frolic.

Sure enough, once over the little nameless pass and into the Monticello Valley where now rests Lake Berryesa, the sun’s work has not begun. The road enters the bank of fog, perhaps never to exit this day. The cold x-rays work against my hands to stiffen them and render them numb all the way to Napa. But the recent warmth and sweetness of the Sacramento Valley at dawn lingers and comforts me.


AND CONTINUES to do so as I sit outside the ICU, awaiting word.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

OCTOBER INCIDENT AT THE LOCAL SUPER MARKET

I'll get you, my little pretty...

...and your little dog too!

- Margaret Hamilton

circa 1939

SIX O’CLOCK on a Monday. Middle part of October.

I am in the quick check line. Local Super Market. My night to cook. Take ‘n’ bake pizza. Baby carrots. And some odds and ends. Whole bean coffee. Bag of English Muffins. Half gal of ice cream. You know, guy stuff.

The line is delayed by a price check.

Attractive women frequent upscale stores such as these. Knowing this, I partake in a clandestine past time and scan the line behind me.


YES: BEHIND ME. An older woman. Two, maybe three customers back. Dressed in darkness. Cloistered in walking calamity. Slightly hunched.

Quick details. Nose: small protuberance, left side. Cheeks: Rouge over putty. Eyes: sunken, red, poorly over-lined with yesterday’s mascara. Fingers: gnarled, arthritic, worn.

Her withered bosom rising and falling with each clattery breath. Clutched against that bosom: five red aerosol cans. Two of whipped cream. Three of Raid.  Bound up in a plastic produce bag and pinched into the crook of her elbow: one perfect red delicious apple.

My bones shudder, joints seize with cold. A spasm jolts me, neck to tailbone. I inhale but cannot expel the breath.

Turning stiffly toward the checker, caring not one whit about paper or plastic, I pay for my purchase and leave.

I do not look back, what with my knowledge of Lott’s wife and all.


I DON’T KNOW. It just kinda scared me…

© 2010
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