Delays are inevitable; sometimes they’re even profitable. I stayed longer in Reno than I had intended on the hope of sneaking into the U.S. Naval Air Station Fallon, about an hour east of Reno. (After all, the military is another featured player in 2002 America, and it didn’t seem right to neglect it completely when I was hanging out in the neighborhood.)

Fallon is where the crème de la crème are trained at schools like Top Gun, and a D.C.-area acquaintance is a retired naval aviator; so when I realized I would stay in Reno for more than a few days, I contacted him. Despite his—and his highly placed Fallon contacts’—all-out, last-minute efforts, it was not to be. The military have a few things on their plate these days, and there’s no room for spontaneity. But a visit still may be possible if I make it back to Reno before the book is done, so something good came out of the attempt. view photo

 :: California Dreamin’ ::

Eventually, however, I did leave Nevada. I followed Heat Moon’s route and entered California via Hallelujah Junction, half expecting clouds to part and angelic choirs to burst into song; but as usual my imagination was working overtime and I got no more assurance of being on heaven’s doorstep than did the hopeful settlers who named it. From there, it was only a hop, a skip, and a jump to Humbug Creek, where Heat Moon practically heard laughter from on high and I ruminated on how short the distance between hallelujah and humbug often is.

Ten miles or so west of Portola, though, I saw a sign for Plumas-Eureka State Park; ever the optimist, I headed into the hills in search of a little bit of heaven. This time I found it: The 5,500-acre park offered both natural beauty and historical interests. Huge, towering conifers sheltered my site, and there were excellent views and trails at the park’s glacial lakes.

Eureka Peak was the focus of an 1851 goldrush, and the park visitors’ center has a museum full of mining memorabilia and restored company-town structures. The museum includes the skis of local legend “Snowshoe” Thompson, who used them to deliver boom-era mail over the mountains. He inspired the hardworking hard-rock miners of the Sierra Buttes Mining Company to let off steam by racing down the peak’s slopes on makeshift skis; they then caught the mining tram back up. This little diversion gave birth to one of the first ski slopes in this country.
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 :: Going With the Flow ::

But the campsites were generally closer together than I liked and the construction that commenced early in the morning—right behind my site—didn’t amuse this night owl, so I planned to move on. A conversation at the bathhouse, though, perversely made me stay.

The bathhouse was some distance from my site, so I took Uli to be sure I wouldn’t forget something crucial and have to hike all the way back again. As I got into the car to leave, though, a man parked next to me remarked upon my license plates. (My plates are surely the best conversation starter a writer could ever ask for. Who would have thought that all those years of sticking with the District—through more thin than thick—would finally pay off in such a way?!)

Don and Anne Stalter are classic members of the counterculture that flourishes in California; they travel in an aging van and have a very low tolerance for the population density and noise that mark more and more campgrounds these days. He was a ‘60s IBM dropout (“I’ve seen both sides—I wore the suit and then I took it off”), and she was a free spirit who got him hooked on travelling. For years they traveled the way Heat Moon did, just pulling off by the side of the road for the night. Now, though, they told me, you can’t get away with it, and they have been forced into campgrounds. The authorities seem to take a dim view of free spirits, and the feeling is surely mutual. view photo

 :: The Benefits of Tolerance ::

We commiserated and traded campground war stories about neighbors with monster generators that would wake the dead and 12-year-old hellions on bicycles, and they recommended some bare-bones, lightly populated campgrounds down toward Lake Tahoe. (“You need to see parts of it you wouldn’t see with people from Reno,” said Anne. That one really amused me. Perhaps I should have stuck up for my “people from Reno,” but I didn’t see any point in making a point.)

I was strongly inclined to take their advice; but as I headed back to my site I reminded myself that my natural tendency to seek solitude in nature wasn’t necessarily the best thing for the book. So rather than heading south, I compromised by staying another night and checking out the park before continuing north. It was another lesson in the benefits of tolerance: If I hadn’t stayed, I wouldn’t have gloried in the classical guitar played by the man across the way, or gotten my Recommended Daily Allowance of hugs from the little girl across the other way, or been able to have my first campfire since Alabama. The Lord surely does work in mysterious ways. view photo

 :: A Snowball In July ::

From Plumas-Eureka, I headed for Lassen Volcanic National Park, where the Sierra Nevadas meet the Cascades. The southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range, Lassen Peak was active for about seven years in the early 20th century; in 1915, it sent an enormous mushroom cloud an estimated seven miles into the stratosphere. Like many geologically young and ornery areas, the park is steep and jagged; its roads are not for the faint of heart. The switchbacks are dizzying, but one can’t afford to get dizzy, for berms are virtually non-existent and no guardrails protect the unwary from precipitous drops. Lassen gave me two of my favorite—and rarest—treats: I looked down onto clouds from land and made a snowball in July. Never mind that the snow looked like it had spent the night in a DC gutter—it was snow, and I was happy to see it, even if it was no longer virginal. view photo

 

 ::A Mountain High ::

Now I was on a real mountain high, and primed to revisit one of the most imposing and mystical of American peaks: Mount Shasta. I got into the town of Mount Shasta late at night and slept well in my tourist-trap-priced motel room, but awoke to find both town and mountain bathed in a yellowish-gray smoke screen that had wafted down from the Oregon fires. I pulled into a shady spot in the parking lot of a natural-foods store to re-think my day, and got into the cooler to see how bad the ice situation was. As expected, it was dire, so I ambled into the store to see if I could replenish my stock. I could have purchased a new Indian-cotton skirt, or some wheatberries, or some organic greens, but there was no ice in sight. Guess it was too unnatural.

So back in the parking lot, I ate the vanilla-ice-cream soup left over from a half-pint I got the day before, then smoked a cigarette as aging flower children (carrying their organic produce and herbal supplements in re-usable cloth shopping bags) glanced at me suspiciously. I imagined the natural-foods police coming to get me, hands cocked on their carrot-stick holsters: “Best move on, lady, and take your capitalist-produced, chemical-laden animal by-products and cancer sticks with you. We don’t like your kind around here.” view photo

 :: Postum and True Believers ::

I moved on to the Mount Shasta Supermarket, where Postum—a wheat bran-based coffee substitute that nobody but old farmers drank when I was a child—sat on the shelf alongside certified-shade-grown coffee beans, and the really bold could purchase designer biscotti along with their organic veggies. But the supermarket had ice, which was what mattered most at the moment. As I refilled the cooler in the parking lot, an old lesbian in a floppy hat (her friend or partner was quite butch in her Western hat and boots) giggled at my Key West Chicken Store bumper sticker and told me she was originally from there. I had noticed a travel agency right near one of the town’s street banners—“Where heaven and earth meet”—and had wondered where one vacations if one lives in paradise. Here, perhaps, was an answer: Key Westers retired to Mount Shasta, and vice versa.

Now, I wear mostly cotton, and I enjoy growing and preserving my own food when possible, and I listen to old Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young albums; so you might be forgiven for wondering why I seem to be turning on my own kind. The answer is simple: Conformity puts me off, whether it comes in the form of the standard-issue, navy-blue suit of Washington, DC; the severe, designer-label black of SoHo; or the shabby, tie-dyed chic of graying hippies and dreadlocked Caucasian teen wannabes. I consider myself an environmentalist, but think people who spike trees and put loggers directly at risk of death or maiming should be tied to those trees for a few weeks (or months) so as to have time to consider the wisdom of their actions. And I don’t believe that manure is any purer or holier than chemical fertilizer. In short, I tune out pre-set wavelengths and don’t trust anyone who thinks that anyone who disagrees with them is morally inferior. So it was indeed best for all concerned that I move along.
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 :: Pennies From Heaven ::

The smoke got heavier as I headed north, and I resigned myself to living with the haze that looked like nuclear winter and smelled like a cheery bonfire. I turned west on route 96, which hugged the Klamath River in its narrow gorge; the scenery was spectacular despite the low visibility. At one point I stopped to take a photo of smoke-shrouded, tree-lined slopes, and then noticed that the bank down to the river was covered with blackberry canes bending under loads of glistening, black fruit. I stuffed myself on the sweet, juicy berries, and filled a pint baggie as full as I could; the baggie went into the cooler for another night’s dessert. Those blackberries were pennies from heaven you’re not likely to find—or be able to pick—on any interstate.

At a tiny burg called Happy Camp, I turned north again on a road my AAA map didn’t identify but warned was closed in winter. Any road that’s closed in winter is a road that’s sure to please me, and this one took first prize: I think it may be my all-time favorite blue highway, and that’s saying quite a lot. The scenery was breathtaking, the road challenging, and the plants and trees gorgeous—plus, in the three hours or so that it took to make my way slowly over the mountain, I didn’t see more than a score of vehicles. These seemed to be driven by impatient locals who would probably shoot me if I were responsible for more pokey blue-highways enthusiasts cluttering up their mountain, so I will say no more. But if you ever find yourself going west through Happy Camp, be sure to hang a right and head out of town past the post office. Assuming you don’t get run over by a local or go over the edge, you won’t regret it.

A chance encounter with a National Forest Service fire-crew duo in my last campground yielded a name, a number, and a crack at getting into a fire camp. So now I’m delaying in Grants Pass, Oregon in the hopes of getting closer to the action.

Stay tuned for next week’s installment. . .
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