In the Gutter......

I walk around the block where the business is located in Santa Fe Springs nearly every afternoon. The one mile (or 1.5 miles via an extended route) is covered in just over fifteen minutes. I usually walk with my eyes turned down to the sidewalk or the street pavement along the gutter. This habit resulted in my walking into one of those "Help Wanted" posts that look more like a gallows than anything else. Specifically, I bumped my downturned forehead on the horizontal arm that hovered over the lawn at about 5'6" elevation.

CLUNK.....I found myself sitting on the lawn. Had I been hit with a baseball bat?...A 2 x 4? There was a distinct metallic clang at the instant just before I looked about from my sitting position. "How did I get there?" ....I looked up and saw the 3x3 arm of the "Help Wanted" sign post. "OK...was I bleeding?...."Where in hell did my glasses go?"....."How embarrassing...Did anyone see me?"...."What was that grit on my tongue?...Oh-Oh, I chipped my tooth."

All of the above happened in the course of ten seconds or less. I got to my feet, gathered my dignity and glasses and resumed my walk, all the while feeling for blood and for a big knot to appear on my forehead. They never did...not even a bruise appeared within the days following.

So, not having learned the lesson, I still walk with my eyes on the immediate ground in front of me.
I do avoid the areas along the path where those "Help Wanted" sign posts are planted. I like to see where I am treading and the lowered head position is conducive to pondering and meditating along the way.

Often, I will cross paths with several employees who are out for a jog or a brisk walk. For some reason these guys wear sweatshirts, hoodies, or winter jackets while jogging on the hottest of days.
I imagine they are sweating off the pounds. We always exchange the "V" for victory finger salute.

One of these men and I exchanged a quip when I saw a strangely colored wooden ball on his desk. He had picked it up while running...and he had many more oddities nestled in a tray with the ball; strange handtools, a railroad spike, screwdrivers, bits of metal, unusual screws and nails. I recognized a fellow observer of the gutter....and a collector of the detritus cast off into the streets in mysterious ways.

I have often thought that it may be possible to earn pocket change by dragging some type of mobile magnet along behind me with the express purpose of gathering the steel and iron bits I see littering the gutters. I would not only make a bit of cash, but I would be doing the good Americans who work in the area a huge favor by removing the vicious-looking nails, screws, and shards of metal from the paths of their vulnerable tires. I almost always kick the worst of the things over against the curb or pick them up and throw them into the bushes along the way. I can't kick them all out of the way...I would never get around the block, and then I might also be suspected of doing the St. Vitus dance.

I think it time to tell you what I have found, though the list is not all-inclusive:

Mobil Phones (broken), a fully charged land-line remote phone ("too far from the base"), a shattered iPod, a walkie-talkie type phone, circuit boards, bundles of corrugated cartons, functioning cigarette lighters, super-hero torsos and limbs (plastic only), shattered pill boxes, notebooks, combs (left on the ground), an empty wallet, playing cards, religious metals, a silver chain, a gold chain, tokens, license plates, hub caps, radiator caps, sandals, shoes, socks, shorts, a belt, a flattened cat that had attained the status of dried jerky, brochures for improving sexual prowess (in Spanish and English...and I did not feel the need to call), some empty tube of numbing ointment that prolonged one's ability to perform in bed, empty condom packets and the discarded contents of such (all concentrated on a short section of a particular street near the Fed-Ex depot), springs, car parts, washers of all size, fast food containers (predominantly McDonald's), dead birds, dead squirrels, dead rats, dead possums, hair nets, ear plugs, pens, pencils, nuts, bolts, sheetmetal screws, wood screws, machine screws, eyebolts,
a toilet seat, copper pipe fittings, a bottle cap collection (?), dolls, a child's car seat, metal stampings,
cheap costume jewelry, a bra, wire forms, hinges, a shotglass and so on and so on.

In all the time I have walked those streets I believe I have never found cumulatively more than a dollar in small change.

I read many years ago that archeologists found a buried Roman town in a mountain valley in Southern France. There was no memory of it and no trace of its existence on ancient maps and documents. No one knew its name at the time of discovery.

Somehow, I see a connection between the street litter and this town.

SRH

Mammoth

Reflections of a Sunrise

I first visited Mammoth in my early twenties when I decided I wanted to ski...that would be in the winter of 1972. Over the next several years I became an intermediate skier at best....moguls always got the better of me, but when it was all just right the exhilaration of being the first to ski down a slope of new fallen snow is difficult to match. I forget the name of many of the runs, but the "Bowl" was my favorite. It was the back side of the main mountain, perhaps the blownout crater of the volcano. Upon first sight my companions pointed out specks at the bottom of the vast sloping field of snow. The specks were skiers, just barely discernible as human figures probably 3000' below. The one memory that most stands out was a fall that sent me tumbling, sliding and rolling for maybe two to three hundred yards down the slope. When my companions caught up with me, expecting to see a broken body, I was laughing at the fun of it all, not the least bit harmed.

Mammoth is a different place now because of commercialization and the growth of the second home sector. I remember clearly driving out to a vast windswept meadow just outside of town back in the old days. The wind literally howled and ripped the snow off of the meadow and into huge drifts along the road. I had no idea that the meadow, decades later, would be the site of a golf course and townhouse/condominium complex. We owned and sold two of those homes in the nineties. Kids grow up and lose interest in going to the mountains with Mom and Dad. I closed the last home alone, carrying away a few possessions in the SUV. Turning off of 395 at the Hot Creek turnoff I pulled the car over and gazed back at the mountain and the Minarets far beyond. Tears came to my eyes as memories and emotion swept through me. That was the end of an era in my life and that of my family's. I did not return to Mammoth for many years....perhaps ten or twelve.

The picture above is of the bluffs visible from the balcony of our second and last home.


I found Mammoth town was nearly shut down that October afternoon. The last of the tourists had headed home and the citizens were resting in anticipation of the coming November snows and holidays. The streets seemed abandoned, there were no waits at the few restaurants still open, and rooms were available at any house of lodging one selected. Mammoth was catching its breath. I had never experienced the town in such a state. It struck me how dependent the local economy was on the tourist trade. As it happened that coming winter was a bust. Snowfall was low, the economy was still strangling finances, the tourists did not come and many people were laid off......Pray for snow this coming winter.

I arose very early the next morning with two objectives in mind....to shoot the rising sun as reflected by the western ridges and bluffs, and the fall colored aspens.....and to drive into the San Joaquin River canyon before the road was closed to private cars at 7:00 a.m. It was damnably cold. My fingers were so numb that I was reduced to a fumbling fool with the camera equipment.

To be Continued

The Minarets from Hot Creek Road

 

Bishop to Mammoth....

Aspen Trees along  Bishop Creek

The drive down to Bishop was "ever-descending", for at a point in the road the whole of the Owens Valley stretching North and South of Bishop was revealed. It was breathtaking. Bishop appeared to be no more than a bug smear on the windshield. None of the landmarks were recognizable. I think I met only two or three cars on my way down and no one was visible behind or ahead of me on my side of the road. It was early afternoon and I wanted to be in Mammoth later in the day and find a room for the evening. A few more side trips around the neighborhoods of Bishop brought me into the Paiute Indian district.

I have no idea if the proceeds from the Paiute Casino trickle down to all the tribe members. That is the usual arrangement. However there is little or no evidence that any such flow of cash has improved the general condition of the reservation homes and environs.

The Paiute Indian War in the mid-1800's was a tragic conflict and it took the course of most such conflicts between the native Americans and the miners and settlers. The town of Independence was the site of Fort Independence....established and manned by U.S. Cavalry units expressly to subdue the Paiute bands that wandered the valley attacking isolated mines and ranches.

Tribes......We are all members of a "tribe". We don't think of ourselves as members of a tribe....but I think we are...... perhaps not in the popular sense or the strictly defined sense. But we belong to large groups of individuals loosely allied in classes defined by education, economic opportunity, race and culture, geography and environment. Passage from one's tribe to another is difficult if not impossible. Without overdrawing the analogy, that apple core demonstrated in a very real sense the difficulty in achieving transition from one "current", or tribe, to another.

When I was a teacher escorting my high school students on field trips I observed the boldest, most confident punks (they were punks with behavior problems) when in their social milieu, hesitate and virtually cower when required to enter a music hall or museum. They felt terribly inadequate and insecure when confronted with what to them was a different world. But then, I wonder how I would contend with Buckingham Palace and an audience with the Queen.

Not everyone thinks alike. Not everyone shares the same values. Not everyone has the same education...... Interests conflict. .......Ambitions are different.


I made preparations to leave Bishop...buying Sheepherder bread at Schat's, filling the tank at the Shell station, buying odds and ends at Von's and Target. Then on to Mammoth Mountain and the High Country and to a bed.

SRH

Red Foliage/Red Mailbox........Bishop

"Raglan Road......."

"On a quiet street where old ghosts meet,
 I see her walking now
 Away from me so hurriedly, my reason must allow
 That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay.
 When the angel woos the clay, he'll lose his wings at the dawn of the day."


These are the closing lines of an Irish poem set to song. It has haunted me from the first time I heard it sung by Luke Kelly. Others have tried, but he has captured the essence of the heartbreak contained in the words. He sings the song almost as a dirge, in a strong, direct and almost harshly masculine voice.



"I saw the danger, yet I walked
 Along the enchanted way.
 And I said let grief be a falling leaf
 At the dawning of the day."



"Well I loved too much; by such and such
 Is happiness thrown away."


You Tube has a video of this song performed by Luke Kelly.



The poem was written by Patrick Kavanaugh, noted Irish poet. There is a video of  Patrick reading
"Raglan Road" on YouTube. The personal story behind the poem is touching.

SRH

West of Bishop....High Country...and an Apple Core

The Only Sound Came From the Wind and a Stream

That long and "ever-ascending" drive took me to this vista looking west to the rugged peaks of the main Sierra ridgeline. Lake Sabrina lay a few miles further in the valley below. Campgrounds were closed, or being readied for closure by forestry crews as barricades and signs were placed before the entrances to the sites. There were probably no more than fifty people in the area....most at Lake Sabrina. I think this view rivals any other view that one could find elsewhere in the Sierra. This was a place where one felt alone and unconnected to the world of man. I wondered what it would be to die here surrounded by indifferent nature. But for my sense of self, I was no more than a deer standing on a bluff.



Into the Gorge

To my left a rushing stream tumbled through rocks and down a gorge on its way to some of those ditches that watered Bishop. I stood on the banks and stared at the water rushing by for a long time. All my life I have been fascinated with water tumbling along a streambed. One of my earliest memories is my pretending to fish with a safety pin tied to a string. That particular "stream" was running in the gutter along the curb in front of my house. I was probably three years old. I had hopes that just maybe a fish would come down stream. I can see that clear water and the glinting pin as if I leaned over that curb just yesterday.

The "Eddy" Swirls in the Lower Left

I purposely ate lightly on the trip, ignoring the clock that so rules our lives in telling us when it is time to eat, whether hungry or not. While standing above the stream pictured above, I ate an apple, gnawing every bit of flesh from the core. When finished, I tossed the core into the stream aiming for the white water, but falling short, the apple fell into an eddy swirling adjacent to the rushing current. The apple core bobbed and swirled within the eddy, making a counterclockwise circuit that carried it just to the edge of the main current where it met the pull of the two forces...the eddy pulling it back and the stronger current tugging it forward into the main stream. Over and over again the core was pulled back into the eddy. It never did escape the little cove in which it was trapped.

We are all caught up in the pull of our present lives.....a type of spiritual gravity that is a product of our environment, our genetic makeup, our upbringing and exposure to experience, and our education.
I saw in that apple an analogy to those who struggle to leave the pull of their own life's eddy in a search for a better life, or in the search for knowledge of self and soul. Poverty, lack of education and of opportunity, ethnicity, language and parentage are some of the forces of gravity that pull one back from change and growth and personal happiness. Transcending that pull and entering into a different current is not easy. It requires the conscious choice to change and an effort that could try the soul.
Think of the gang member, or the minority student, or the poorly educated  individual who wants to
rise above his or her current status. The societal barriers are immense. Or think of the person who finds that the job, or a marriage, or the social group is unfulfilling. Change is a huge challenge.

All this in a lifeless apple core. The damn thing disappeared from sight, perhaps lodging between stones or washing up on the bank of the stream. That is an end no apple core could want.

SRH

A Day in Bishop....October 2011

The "High Country"...I love that expression...it is fraught with rugged and romantic meaning to me:
Clear and open vistas, streams, wildlife, snowfields on the high peaks, meadows, silence, wildness, chill at sundown, bright stars and the Milky Way, sighing pines in a breeze, fluttering aspen leaves.....and perhaps a sense of aloneness, a facing of oneself and a sorting of what is important.

Like most travelers to the Eastern Sierra, I passed through Bishop on my way to Mammoth and the fly fishing streams and lakes of the "high country".  Bishop represented the near-end of the journey. One could relax knowing that some portal had been passed through....the trip was almost over. Perhaps a stop at Schats and almost always a topping of the gas tank at the Shell station constituted my acquaintence with Bishop.

Turn Left at Mumy Lane off of W. Line

But I had always wanted to spend time exploring the immediate countryside that surrounded Bishop. There were the treelined lanes that started in town and stretched straight out into open land and usually ended at a ranch or simply died out in the sagebrush. Fall colors had begun to paint the trees in yellows, golds and reds. I found several of the treelined lanes off of West Line Street and walked for several miles up and down Mumy and Reata Lanes. A number of "ditches"...streams of crystal clear water...crossed under the lanes, bringing water to the croplands and grazing fields to the east. Each ditch was identified as to owner, though I wondered if any of them were still alive because the ditches looked as if they had been flowing for decades. These waterways played, and still do play, an important role in the development of Bishop. They existed long before the suburban sprawl that has grown up around the perimeters of the town, and represent the result of the complex water-rights issues that had to be worked out by early settlers.

West Line was also the road to the high country lakes west of Bishop. I had time and I had always wanted to visit those lakes. Lake Sabrina (Sa-brine-ah as the locals call it) is the largest and closest.
Taking a left, I drove up an ever-ascending road into golden aspens and pines. But that is another story.

SRH






"Ditch" Water Passing Under Mumy Lane

The High Country West of Bishop (From Reata Lane)







"My Trip".......Sierra Vignettes from 1964

Mid-June, 1964


The stark grandeur of the Sierra rising up out of the Owens Valley stunned me. I had never seen such a thing in person. Nature, and the wonders it presented on that trip, formed an impression that has lasted to this day. I had always been intrigued with the idea of being a Forest Ranger. It seemed a romantic and rugged way of life. And though I had been accepted to Loyola University and was to start classes about eight weeks hence, I resolved to look into the Forest Ranger opportunity as a transfer to Humboldt State in Arcata in my sophomore year. As it happened, I found the curriculum at Humboldt dauntingly science-oriented and I decided to go on at Loyola U.

I have never lost my enthusiasm and joy at seeing those landmarks I discovered for the first time in 1964. They are like old friends and represent some sense of permanence and continuity in the world.

The standouts are......

Red Rock canyon with its multi-hued mud towers arrayed like some ancient fortress; the scene of many an early cowboy movie and completely accessible back then; with names and graffiti carved into the lower columns, some dating back years....

Red and black cinder cones dotting the valley floor; some overlapping others. Ancient lava flows, now frozen, gushed from those cones and flowed for miles. The highway had to be cut through those flows. The basalt palisades just before Little Lake rose almost two hundred feet above the floor of what had been the bed of the ancient glacier fed Owens River on its way to southern Death Valley to form a number of lakes.

The "Hubcap Capitol of the World" in Pearsonville. A vast junkyard of old cars with racks of hubcaps arrayed for hundreds of feet. Hubcaps, back in those days, were made of metal and mostly chrome plated. Pearsonville is no longer the hubcap capitol of the world. It looks forlorn and abandoned now, there being no evidence of management.

Owens Lake, dry and glaringly white in the afternoon sun. At that time the minerals and salts of the lakebed were "mined" in ponds where briny water evaporated under the hot sun and left crystalline residue that was scraped up and bagged for shipment to chemical processing centers. The different colors of the crystals were startling...reds, oranges, browns, ochres and greens. I remember fierce winds raising monumental clouds of salt and mineral dust over the lakebed as we drove south on our way home,

The "Ghost Trees" that dotted the valley floor north of the Owens Lake. The valley floor had once been fed by the Owens River all the way to the Lake. Once that water was diverted by Los Angeles, the stands of trees that grew along the river course and its tributaries began to wither and die. Many were still standing, but dead and bare. They disappeared over the years and I sometimes wonder if they were a figment of my imagination.

Manzanar, the "Re-location" center for the Japanese-American detainees during WWII. All that remained in view from the road was the stone guard-house that stood at the entrance of the center.
A bit north was a large hangar type building that served as a hall for the detainees. Manzanar has been made into a monument and tours are now conducted for visitors. Forty-eight years ago it was a desolate and forgotten place...but not forgotten by the people who were forced to live there for years.
On the western edge of the reserve there is a white obelisk towering above the camp cemetary. There are only two graves still marked by stone monuments. In one of them lie the remains of a two year old child. I found it touching to see hundreds of small paper origami birds and ornaments windblown through the sagebrush and desert terrain....all left by visitors. Many had faded messages handwritten in Japanese or English.

Olancha....on the map, but really a gas stop and a few commercial establishments, the Ranch House Restaurant being the only notable one. The inside is still hung with the pictures of Hollywood stars who had stopped in for food while shooting on location in the nearby mountains. I remember the huge cottonwoods shedding the "cotton" from their flowers in such quantity that the roadside looked buried in snow drifts.

Independence, Lone Pine and Big Pine.....Small towns that were stops for tourists and served local needs. My impression is that Independence and Big Pine have diminished markedly as businesses faltered or the old owners retired. They were charming in my eye back then. They still are.

Bishop....the metropolis of Owens Valley with several traffic lights and a modest golf course. Home of Jack's Restaurant and Schat's Bakery, or Bakkery, as they liked to spell it. We stocked up on Sheepherder's Bread, the best bread I have ever found as a base for a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich.
So a tradition was born....I never fail to stop tat Schat's for Sheepherder's and other baked goods.
Jack's Restaurant was old when I visited it on that trip forty-eight years ago. I believe some of the same waitresses are still working there today. They are a sassy bunch, but get the job done.

Sherwin Grade...back then this section of 395 was the death trap for any car, for that matter most cars, that had any issues with overheating. I wonder if any cars existed at that time that did not have cooling challenges when climbing mountain grades. That overloaded, swept-fin Plymouth we were in certainly didn't meet the challenge. We had to resort to the aforementioned canvas waterbag slung over the front bumper to refill the radiator while parked alongside the road. Sherwin Grade climbed around 2000 feet up from the valley floor along a tortuous route that tested all vehicles. It is now a four lane road and is an easy drive in modern vehicles.

Tom's Place....A landmark stop that has stood at the top of the Sherwin Grade for a very long time. My father stopped there as a boy when taken to the Sierras on family vacations, so I felt some kinship with his experience of the place. A restaurant, a bar, a grocery store, a sporting goods store, and a bait shop.....all under one roof. The gas station pump was outside next to the hitching post. And one could spend the night in one of the small cabins across the road. Tom's Place had it all.


This marks the end of my trip though the past...of my introduction as a teenager to the Eastern Sierra.

Going forward I will recount that October, 2011 trip.

-Continued-


Red Rock Canyon



The Eastern Sierra