"My Trip"...Vignettes: 1964

I wrote of those "vignettes" of that high school post-graduate trip as being as fresh in my memory as if the experiences that produced those memories happened within the last few months. Virginia Woolf called those recollections a result of  "moments of being".....when our very consciousness is focused on the moment at hand and the experience becomes part of our whole...it becomes part of what we are. All the other moments are ordinary and pass by without notice or impact on our lives, though they are part of the time-journey of our lives. However remembered, accurately or not, the moment of being becomes indelible. I think that they form the basis of our growing wisdom of life. Their nature is not always good and they can be hurtful. One's life experiences come out of one's environment. Those memories (pleasant or unpleasant) are formative.

The backdrop to the memories of that youthful trip up the Owens Valley was the clear and intense light that almost blindingly illuminated the landscape and made all seem other-worldly when contrasted to the smog-bound Los Angeles vistas I grew up with. One could see forever. There was no haze, unlike what one might encounter in the present day.

Standing as if ghostly milestones, shuttered cafes, gas stations, motels and ranches in various states of decay dotted the route. Many were adorned with faded "For Sale" signs bearing phone numbers with obsolete area codes.  Most of these structures are no longer evident now but for an occasional stone fireplace or foundation. I believe the prosperity of the Valley had been drained away with all the water that went to Los Angeles, and once the aquaduct had been completed the thousands of men employed to build it were gone, the ranches and farms failed and then closed and lay fallow, and there was little recreational traffic heading to the high mountains. Hence there was not the customer base to deliver the revenue these small businesses needed to survive.

Little Lake (now no trace), Olancha, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop...like beads on a rosary...all sleepy stopovers or small towns in 1964. I knew an old man, full of colorful stories, who claimed he saw a gunfight on  Main Street (395) in Independence when he was just a young boy. It could have happened. Who knows? All these towns are fated to a symbiotic relationship with the Sierra to the west. In a sense these places are like pups suckling at the teats of an indifferent mother.
The Sierra gives life to these towns because, other than serving the needs of the tourists that travel through, there is not much else the population can do, hemmed in as they are by the Dept. of Water and Power.

To be Continued...
SRH

Looking North on 395 in Olancha