Dragging vs Hauling

October 30, 2016 JG 4 Comments

My sweet little hiking companion has done his fair share of dragging a$$ on our hikes this month. How could he not be gleeful and as full of energy as I am, up in these amazing, pine-carpeted trails?

The truth is, he is just like me: a little out of shape, occasionally short of breath, interested in taking his time, and taking it all in. Most hikes, he lags behind me while I whistle for him. And then, just when I wonder if I need to go back and look for him, his sweet little face appears from behind a trunk or around a curve. And usually, once or twice, he comes tearing. Top speed. Brace yourself: if he takes a curve too fast his back legs go sliding out from under him and he will slide right into you.

Today, though, was different. Today he must have known it may be our last hike for a while. He didn’t drag – he hauled. And as a consequence, I spent 6 miles looking at his fluffy tail wagging around, as if it were waving for me to hurry and catch up.

On the Road, United States

Going for Gold

June 19, 2015 JG 2 Comments

They came for the gold. They were a little late, and they weren’t quite in the right place, and the competition did a little better, but they found enough, close enough, to keep something going until someone hit it big. And then it ran out, and so did they.

Bodie’s story is typical in the Sierras: boomtown gone bust. Here, it’s even more typical than its successful counterpart, boomtown gone boom. For every Reno, there are ten Bodies, most of them long disintegrated into scraps of wood and metal strewn around the mountains, in places no one ever goes. Why one survives better than another is anyone’s guess. In the beginning, it’s about ore, but in the end, chance makes the decision.

I first came to Bodie when I was about 13, on a vacation with my family that based us near Lake Tahoe and took us on day trips like this one, through the smaller towns on the east side of the mountains and then out six miles of dirt road in the heat and dust. In my memory, we rode here in the back of my uncle’s blue Toyota panel van, named Squirt, after the soft drink. It is a magnificent sight, coming up out of nowhere, the buildings nestled between hills, rising above scrubby manzanita and the sandy ground with just enough consistency of shape and variation of color so that you can tell there is a town, even at a distance.

The last time I was in Bodie was 25 years ago. It was the summer after my high school graduation and somehow I lucked into a trip to the mountains with my mom, uncle, and grandfather. No sisters. It was right before my grandfather unraveled into the abyss of dementia. I knew it was starting though, because he kept telling the television to slow down, and asking why the picture had to change so fast. (A sentiment, to be honest, I now share with him.) Between outings, I pulled a blanket onto the windy lawn behind the condo and read Bukowski’s Women, in what had become a burgeoning love affair with his debauched misogyny that even now, I betray my feminist instincts to devour.

I had been given my very own Olympus OM-1 as a graduation present, and this was the first of many trips on which it would accompany me. Even then, they were hard to find. I loved the feel of its weight in my hand, the click of the lens as I switched between f-stops, the ratchet of the film being clicked into place. I lugged it up into Lundy canyon with me, photographing columbine. And then, I took it to Bodie.

Bodie was founded in 1859 after gold was discovered in the hills. The cache wasn’t great, and compared poorly to the mass of silver found in nearby Aurora. Twenty years later, gold-bearing ore was discovered and the town boomed to around 6,000 people at its height. It was big enough for a bank, a red light district, and gymnasium called the Bodie Club, which sported both workout rings, and cold beer.

Bank Fare

Gas Station

It bustled with business, a train track was built, families laid claim. Miner’s organized into a union, and Chinese workers built a Chinatown on one end of town. But by late 1880, mining booms in Montana, Utah, and Arizona began to pull people away. Despite a resurgence in the early 1890’s, when cyanide processing allowed a second-pass at discarded mill tailings, the population continued to diminish, until the 1910 census recorded just 698 people, mostly families, still living in the town. By 1932, when a fire demolished much of ‘downtown,’ Bodie, it was down to 120 people.

The Remaining Safe

My memory of Bodie is mostly of the wood, and the wind. On that visit 25 years ago, the story of the town was different. It was of a place people had left in a hurry, due to a fire in the mine. Food plates were on the table, clothes still hung on hooks, pottery and goods still lined the shelves of the store. I may have made that story up to match the pictures I took, looking in through six-pained windows at a yellow pitcher, a table setting. The wood warmed a reddish brown in the sun, grooves worn deep in the pattern of its grain by the wind, heat, and cold of the century it stood there. Curtains, edged in lace and slightly tattered, frame the scenes.

Now, Bodie has a proper parking lot and a restroom, and the day I was there, a google-camera car was in the lot. The driver got out and put on a photographic contraption to walk the main streets of town, so soon you can experience it from your desktop.

The Google Car

But the wood is the same. Even when the sacred photographic light of morning has passed and the amateur professionals are packing up their tripods, the wood still glows weathered and warm. The picket fences that remain have grown skinny and rickety over time, their moorings less secure.

I assume this was a barber shop?

The buildings stand proud against the few defined streets. The hotel is there (no guests), and the Bodie Club. The mercantile is now a museum/foundation shop. The piles of debris, or of trash – wood, cans, bits of tin and leftover shoes – have grown a little larger as time wears down structure. Trash as artifact and memory. Reminders.

Reminders.

The wind is still predominate. Bodie is nestled in a crook of hills and as you walk upwards past the mine, toward the hilltop, the wind falls down against you, whispering secrets as it goes. When you walk the main street out of town, to the north – to where a bank and a brothel once stood – you hear little but your footsteps, the breathing of the dog that follows behind you, panting against the heating sun. The wind blows across the top of the metal stanchions that mark property lines and Do Not Enter areas like the sound of a drunken cowboy blowing across the top of his beer bottle in mockery of your wander. It slips quickly through the spaces left between shrinking wooden slats, pulling splinters of them with it, beckoning you in, just a little closer, just come here for one minute, it has something to tell you. Don’t leave yet; your time will come soon enough and it will be here, whispering, long after you have gone.

Main Street

On the Road

7 Steps to a Better Road Trip

April 27, 2015 JG 1 Comment

Road Trip!

I was westbound on highway 60 in Arizona, between Wickenberg and the 10, when a friend texted to say he was planning his first ‘significant’ road trip, and wanted to know what tips I could offer. I’m a little late in responding, but he called me an expert, so I feel obligated to take his request seriously.

I’m picking a lucky seven of tips because road trips shouldn’t be ruined with too many rules. I’m on the road again when writing this, this time in the Eastern Sierra; I adhere to all of these, and they’re still working for me.

1. Use a Map – The Old School Way

Los Angeles is huge, and I’ve caved to using Waze to get around it. It’s an excellent tool, and a damaging crutch. As a result of my GPS-addiction, it’s taking me much longer to get to know LA than it would have in the old days, when I looked at a map – you know, a paper map – before leaving home, and wrote down directions. It was a method less adaptable to changes in traffic flow, but a great way to get to know the place where I was driving. I’m not saying buy a Mapsco of the entire USA, but don’t be afraid of an old fashioned map to chart your main route. It doesn’t mean you won’t wander off of it. It simply allows you to see the overview of the geography you’re entering. The lay of the land around the road that you are on.

2. Take the Blue Highways – The Journey is the Joy

On an old-school map, the less developed roads, those more rural, but still paved, were blue. The notion of sticking to these was made famous in William Least-Heat Moon’s book of the same name , which chronicled his journey on the small roads of the USA. Depending on time and distance, it may not be possible for you to stick to these completely. Honestly, it may drive you crazy, and be horrible advice. But if you wanted the fly-over approach, you’d be in a plane, not a car; interstates, bless them for what they give us, are the fly-over drive. The reality remains that most of America happens off the interstate. Admit it, when you are driving a stretch of I-40 that bumps up against the old Route 66, you want to pull off the highway and hop onto that crusty, weed-pocked stretch of broken asphalt, for nostalgia if nothing else. I say: do it.

3. Revel in Kitsch

Whether you are on an interstates or a dirt road to some historic monument, revel in the kitsch at hand. It’s everywhere, and it’s AWESOME. Ever seen a sign for Wall Drug? If you’ve driven on I-70, I-80, I-90 west of Chicago, or trekked the Everest circuit, you’ve seen a sign, or a sticker, for this place. Maybe you missed Wall Drug but made it to Little America, smack dab in the middle of Nebraska. Maybe you’ve visited the Biggest Ball of Twine (a goal I’ve yet to achieve – and there’s a dispute about who really owns the claim), but you saw the largest red pepper or the Corn Palace. These are the big guns, but the little ones, the ones that truly flavor the road, are even better. Stop for gas on the Navaho reservation and buy a dream catcher. Stop at the meteor crater in Arizona and see where NASA trained astronauts to walk on the moon. Taste the fudge at some olde time candy shoppe by the road. Buy magnets in the shape of the states, or patches from all the national parks, or a random trinket from Teapot Dome. Steal a street sign with your name on it. Actually, don’t do that; it’s illegal. The line between history and kitsch has something to do with nostalgia, is very blurry, and should be entirely entertained at as many roadside stops and historical points of interest as possible.

4. Listen Local, Read Local

There is no better way to learn a place than these two things. Local radio, even if it’s being pumped in by syndicate from far away, gives you a great taste of where you are. When I moved to Dallas, I found there are no fewer than seven Christian stations on the FM dial. One trip across West Texas, I listened to AM radio, half of it in Spanish, for about 100 miles out of El Paso while literally watching tumbleweed roll across the highway. Last week, driving out of LA, I listened to Rush Limbaugh on a local station. You don’t have to like everything you hear. But it helps understand a place to know what they may be hearing. Similarly, local papers are the absolute best way to learn what’s going on where you are eating lunch, spending the night, or pulling off the road for a hike. They’ll tell you who’s in office, who’s trying to get them out, and who got arrested last week. They may also tell you what music or food you must not miss in town.

5. Eat Local

This is a no-brainer, and it’s easier than ever, with every small town sprouting a brew-pub, and every small town diner being covered by Anthony Bordain or that Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives dude. Don’t rely on Yelp. It’s a construction. Ask at your cheap motel, your campground, the local bar where you may have stopped in for a drink. A bartender always knows. Whether it’s frito pie, pozole, philly cheesesteak, or a farm-to-table mesclun salad with a seared farmed ahi tuna steak, it’s going to be better when someone in-the-know recommended it to you. Asking a local for a recommendation is like attempting to speak even crappy Spanish in Mexico: people will be pleased that you care enough to engage at all, and the help will flow from all directions.

6. Let There Be Fritos, Cheetos, and Doritos

So yes, eat local, but let’s be serious, you are on a road trip, and there is a food situation that goes with that. It is frequently one that is accompanied by Tums, and that’s ok. I drove across country one summer with a lactose-intolerant friend who insisted on eating a DQ Blizzard every day, at least once. I got so tired of pulling over for DQ while craving a Slurpee, that I made him go into a Circle K in Arizona and ask where the nearest 7-Eleven was. They told him to keep going straight (we were on I-40) until he got to California. Likewise, my college boyfriend and I had a rule that, if he tried to get me to eat Cheetos or Peanut Butter Captain Crunch for breakfast three days in a row, I was allowed to kick him out of the car. That said, I have enjoyed my fair share of drive-thru fries, drive-up cranberry lime-ades, over-sized gas-station Chewy Sweet Tarts, and a flat of raspberries or strawberries bought by the side of the road, and you should to

7. Talk to Strangers

I know our parents taught us not to, but you’re a grown up now, and you can make your own decision. Talking to strangers – and, more importantly, listening to them – is one of the absolute hands-down best parts of a road trip. On my way to Joshua Tree a couple weeks ago, I stopped off at PioneerTown (see number 3, above) and had a great conversation with a guy named Rick who lived there. While Spanky made friends with his Jessie May, Rick told me the story of the etched silver Native American figure pin attached to his well-weathered hat. Turns out Cecil B DeMille had given it to his clairvoyant Mohegan grandmother when they sat next to one another on a flight. Last night, outside a bar and pizza parlor in the Sierras, I met a private pilot for a wealthy family who regularly flew them between their 12 different homes in the US and Mexico. The night auditor at a hotel I stayed at in Dallas, TX was a descendent of Quanah Parker, and I met the two jokers above at a temple in Burma, and traveled with them for a week. The possibilities are endless, and endlessly joyous.

The truth is a road trip is all about your attitude. My car no longer has functioning cruise control, which leads to right leg cramps on long trips. The seat is starting to collapse, which sometimes makes my back hurt. I could let these things bother me, but what’s the point? I’d rather find the local country station, slide the window down to let in the sweet smell of spring blowing off tree buds while I sip on a lemonade purchased by a road-side stand. Whatever your attitude, do one more thing: wear sunblock on your window arm. If you do nothing else I recommend, I promise you will thank me for this one.

On the Road, United States

Vernita Falls

October 21, 2014 JG 1 Comment

There are no pictures, because you are driving and you have to keep going. No pictures but what will burn itself in the memory centers of your brain, just like light burns onto the chemicals of film, the chemicals of photo paper, for you to pull out at a later date and remember. No pictures but what you make on your mind, and what you recall from it because something you see now, through the windshield, tickles something you saw before, in a picture, in a museum, through an airplane window.

90 takes you over the first set of mountains, into the fog, by the sleeping ski slopes, and out the other side. Past Vernita Falls, Dallas Road, Coffin Road, the famous (who knew) Teapot Dome Gas Station. Out past the vineyards, the apple groves in the process of being harvested – apples so big and ripe you can see them from the highway – past the wind turbines and burned fields. Frequently, you want to stop, take a photo. Frequently, you wonder who names these places, and how.

My maternal grandmother’s name was Vernita. She died two weeks, almost to the hour, before I was born. In her honor, my middle name is her first name – because my mother didn’t think Vernita was a nice thing to do to a girl in the 70s. But who, out here, in Eastern Washington State, who knows when, had this same uncommon name, and gave it to a waterfall I don’t have time to stop and see?

Onto 84, crossing the gorge into Oregon, you travel behind a truck filled with sweet onions, their papery skins flying off behind and a waft of onion scent trailing you both over the border. The land dries, the wind flies, dirt dances up into whirling dervishes of land, lost in its own silent prayer.

Occasionally, an ancient barn will crumble by the roadside. Next to it, the new one, the house built in the years between the two. Occasionally, next to it, nothing but land, nothing but the hills, and the freeway, nothing but these dilapidated remnants of America’s agricultural past. Sometimes, the remains are of a cabin, no town near, no river, no….nothing, but the skeletal remains of Manifest Destiny’s westward expansion and the casualties that came with it. Dead dreams by the side of the road. Road kill of a different kind.

And then a car on fire, fully engulfed in flames. And then a strip mall: Kohl’s, Best Buy, Starbucks, Target. You could be anywhere, but you are here, wherever it is. Soon it is southern, eastern Idaho, northern Utah, the Snake River cutting deep through high dry mesas, creating a fertile green farming valley. Somewhere, the rock is volcanic, black and sharp, and then everything is red, rust-colored. Out 80, into the mountains, the snow fences begin, lined up and waiting for the weather to come like a farm of solar panels waiting for the sun.

And then Wyoming. Wild, wonderful, heart-breakingly gorgeous, with the green aspen turning gold and the black trunk of cottonwoods striking out behind yellowing leaves, along the riverbeds, up the valleys between hills. Trains snake through the canyons, hug the red-rock cliffs, slither low on the prairie behind the scrub brush and sage, carrying the loot of virgin land. They fade into the distance the same way Vernita Falls faded behind you, the same way the distance fades into fall – nostalgic, fogged over, waiting for weather to come.

On the Road

Bessie

July 17, 2014 JG 3 Comments

Yesterday, I hit the 100-day mark since returning to the States. It’s a completely arbitrary milestone, especially since I left the country again less than two months after I returned, but I’m back now, for real, and reality is setting in. With decisions to be made (where to live? what to do?), bills to be paid, and responsibilities to attend to, my attention has refocused to my trusty steed, Bessie, a beloved 2000 VW station-wagon.

Bessie, clean and pretty at the beginning of the road…

And dirty and well loved at the end.

Bessie and I have been on many adventures – 185,053 miles worth. Together, we have lived in four cities, driven cross-country at least twice horizontally and four times vertically, and tolerated more than our share of derogatory comments about station wagons and child-free soccer moms. Last summer, we survived no fewer than 9,000 miles together, though the heat and a two tires didn’t make it the whole way.

Among the places she’s taken me is the Middle Fork of the Crazy Woman River.

It is possible Bessie has been better to me than I have to her, though she’s gotten me back with her fair share of expenses. It will be a sad, though much awaited day, when I have been re-employed long enough to replace her with a vehicle that has, oh, I don’t know, decent cupholders and someplace to plug in my phone.

Guarantee: when the heat is gone, the snow comes early. On the pass outside Bozeman during an early snow fall. Bessie makes an excellent tripod.

This morning, as a matter of routine maintenance, I took Bessie in to get her tires rotated. (Don’t be impressed – it’s probably the first time ever.) When I handed over my key, the tech at Discount Tire asked me if there was a special lock required to get the tires off. Without pausing I looked at him and replied, “Hell no. It doesn’t take more than one midnight tire-change on the streets of DC for me to get rid of the locking lug nuts.”

Don’t be impressed by tire rotation; this mirror was cracked for two years before i replaced it.

After 14 years, it is easy to forget some of the incidents Bessie and I have shared, but that simple question – is there a special lock on the tires – was enough to take me back ten years, to a time I lived in DC right after grad school, and en-route to meeting a friend for dinner, turned a corner too tightly and hit my tire on the metal gutter-guard on the sidewalk edge. My right rear tire went from full to flat in half a block, and I limped Bessie around the corner and into a blissfully available parking spot.

My dad taught me to change a tire early on because he considers it, along with proper use of duct tape and WD40, one of life’s essential skills. But after loosening four of the lug nuts on this tire, then struggling with the fifth for an extended period of time, I remembered being told about the lug nut key when I bought tires five months earlier. The tech made a big point to inform me I better not to lose it. And then, apparently, he never put it back in the tire-changing kit.

Bessie in the Tetons, on a happier adventure.

It took a good two hours for AAA to send a tow to Georgetown on Saturday night, but it was worth the wait for Ulysses, a wanderer of the Southern States with five children and a ‘good woman,’ this one, finally, after the other three. He seemed aptly named and he ferried Bessie and me into the far east side of Capitol Hill, to an all-night tire drive-through garage with cars lined out the roll-up store-front and partway down the street, waiting to buy used tires that were stacked as high as the garage roof.

Ulysses refused to drop me off, alone and conspicuous, so late at night, and so we sat in the idling cab of the tow truck for 30 minutes while he regaled me with stories of his travels, until it was our turn to pull in to the shop, where people without cars walked up to the pay window and left with paper sandwich bags of something other than tire parts. We had a store like that where I went to college; a Snapple cost $25 and came in a bag with a fun surprise, if you catch my drift.

The mechanic seemed tempted to file locking lug nuts under “white people problems,” and I can’t say I blamed him. After confirming multiple times that I understood he may strip the nut and I may need to buy another, he went at it, first with a compressed air impact wrench and then with a variety of other tools I have no ability to name. I’m not 100% positive one of them wasn’t a crow bar. At last, it came off, and Ulysses insisted on changing my tire for me, since that’s what AAA paid him for. Tire changed, spare on, Bessie was ready to go. I tipped Ulysses $20 and paid the mechanic his $35, and figured it was a cheap price to pay for such an adventure.

Through rain and sleet and snow (and the windshield, which has been replaced at least once).

Worth Packing In

the little truth of traveling

On the Road

Dragging vs Hauling

Going for Gold

7 Steps to a Better Road Trip

Vernita Falls

Bessie