Digression - Butterfly causes Typhoon

An example of a trivial pursuit causing serendipitous results.
When I began writing 'Honored Dishonored' (pre-publication title), I needed some 'magic wand' to deliver catatonic Earnest out of Cong territory in Cambodia. I'm trending away from fantasy, so I used plausible reality. I wrote about him being discovered by a special forces unit. With the FBI/CIA likely to be nervous about my story starting at the Blue Cube, I did not want to use SEALS. Never having served in the armed forces, nor taken other than a political interest in Viet Nam, I chose to have him rescued by a top secret Spanish Special Ops unit, partly because I know some Spanish, partly because the reader would accept a Spanish group as never having been heard of.
I up-linked a photo of a crucifix statue (Los Altos Hills/Cupertino CA) to Google Earth years later.
Months later. Joan of Arc (Spain) commented favorably on my crucifix photo.
Weeks later, Google photo group 'Friends of Spanish Legion' issued me an invitation to join with my crucifix. I went their group site--all combat photos. Where did I fit in?
I searched the web and found http://discovermilitary.com/special-forces/spanish-legion/ with plenty of sex toy ads. (thank God my blog attracts travel and outdoor adventure ads) The text on this site is very difficult to read--dark charcoal letters on black background. I did learn that the Spanish Legion is based on the French Foreign Legion, but only accepts Spanish citizens. Before leaving, I watched a combat video from Afghanistan.

So, I'm going to change the manuscript to read 'Spanish Legion' vice 'Spanish Especialistas'. Yes Virginia, Spain has special ops.

Now, I'll probably be accused of leaking Spanish secrets and visiting a porn site! 

Road Chronicles 000304 - HITTING THE ROAD

Disconnecting from the Power Grid            February 2000

The weekend after my last workday Rita fell and punctured her jaw. She had low potassium levels and had to be taken to the hospital emergency ward and pumped up with intravenous potassium. We spent the rest of February putting wheelbarrow loads of “spare” stuff in the gurney so that we would “fit” into the motorhome; Putting the finishing touches on the towing rig; arranging personal affairs (including) mail forwarding, and arranging to get hold of the rest of my 401(k).

On the last day of the month we almost pulled up stakes and headed out. Well it was raining a monsoon by the time we were ready to hook up and Rita was hollering at me instead of helping. If she would have helped we would have hooked before the monsoon hit. As it was I got completely drenched and sidetracked by her yelling and the great deluge, I forgot to pull the plug (30-amp that is). I stopped just out of the stall and was extremely depressed, what with emergency hospital bills too. I straightened the prongs with my pliers and hoped for the best. We headed for our first monsoonal drive thru the mountains on the way to Scott’s Valley.

Santa Cruz to Bakersfield

Early March 2000

In Scott’s Valley they decided that the electric cord was still good (this electric cord problem was to give us much trouble downstream, until we got to Minden). We spent about 3 days watching the stock market and the soaps in the RV Shop’s lobby and sleeping up on the rack (well sort of) by the garage. They checked the wheels and also found nothing wrong. They still groan when we pull off the freeway and negotiate city streets at 15-miles per hour. They did 'rotate' the front tires to see if it improved the problem. The big reason we went there was for power jacks. I was not about to go on the road manually jacking the rig every time we stopped. Of course the market was plunging all of the time we were there.

When they finished we headed down the Coast Highway to Pajaro River and then along the river to the junction with Interstate 5. We had thought of stopping once we got to the Central Valley but everything was going so well we decided to press on to Bakersfield.

We stopped just before the freeway onramp. I guess I had the emergency blinkers on and a bunch of other stuff and may have overloaded a circuit, because halfway down the valley I realized we had no lights and no cruise control. We had head and tail but no signal lights. So that was my first experience handling an almost 60-foot train of vehicles down major freeways in heavy traffic in failing daylight and no way to signal to other drivers what my intentions were.

By merging slowly we managed to just piss off half the commuters, but the scary part was at the end of the freeway off-ramp in Buttonwillow, where we had to make a left turn in heavy traffic with only headlights.

It was probably during the drive down the Central Valley that Rita discovered it was more fun to ride up front with me and watch the scenery than to lie in bed in the back and scream bloody murder. She also learned to use the cell phone to call ahead and assure that we had a place to stay at night.

We stayed at a trailer park advertised as a RESORT. Well it had a swimming pool and a hot tub but it was no resort. The spaces were gravel with the only two nice features: a good utility post and a slab of concrete with a redwood table. I found the fuse that controlled the cruise control and signal lights and if it blows again I will pull to the side and be back on the road in about 5 minutes.
This is the first file I have written on my new computer with one of those little robots watching. The dog is wagging his tail and sniffing. I should give him something to do, but I’m too busy.

Plugging in at this campground tested my bravery. Luckily when I threw out everything I saved my galoshes and I knew where they were. So the first thing was to don my galoshes and stand in about 3 inches of water while plugging into the shoreline.

It rained and rained and we waited for a clearing and warming before heading over Tehachapi.

Bakersfield was our first clue that we were leaving civilization for red-neck country. I guess they have a country western museum there and it has a story with it that I am sure you know better than I care about. I also found out that lots of red-neck communities don’t have mailboxes and you have to look for the post-office, even at midnight. There were also lots of red-necks living in crumbling trailers and a drug pusher who drove around in an old laundry truck delivering his wares. The red-necks in East Bakersfield also had a roof decoration we were to become used to--old tires on the roof, thrown up there to keep the plastic sheeting water-proofing in place. We have been told that the Okies in West Bakersfield call a roofer instead.

Bakersfield to Mojave

Mid March 2000

Sometime around the middle of March we headed out. I got to listen to my favorite Western radio station that I always listen to when climbing out of Bakersfield to Tehachapi. That’s about the only place I listen to country music because it is a good station and it lends itself to the enjoyment of the mountain road.

I had wanted to have lunch in the quaint little town of Tehachapi with Rita. I was amazed to see that the quaint little town now had an Albertson’s, McDonalds, Burger King, ad nauseum. Well it was not quaint any more. Disgusted by the march of the cookie cutter we turned around and left hungry.

It was fun listening to the old Los Angeles radio stations while driving through the Mojave to Yermo where we spent the night at a KOA run by a spikey-haired lesbian. It was a nice park and a welcome relief from the Bakersfield ghetto park.

The next day, we drove to Baker and then through Shoshone to the Amargosa Valley, which the internet had implied contained a nice park with trees by a river (later determined to be the radioactive Amargosa River). But Amargosa Valley looked pretty desolate and we drove to 95 where we found Fort Amargosa. This is a trailer park that is near no shopping centers or stores -- the RV equivalent to a company town. We had read about Pahrump but imagined it to be nothing more than 3 casinos, 3 golf courses, and 9,000 RV dwellers, all clustered in a valley of wineries (which was close to the truth).

So we headed north, to known territory of Beatty. Beatty doesn’t look the same in an RV in the afternoon when you have to spend the night as it does from a car on a days tour from Death Valley. We stayed the night under some nice trees in a nice park. But Beatteites profess to buy their groceries in Pahrump. Whore houses are all over the place and you have to be reminded of them constantly. And the only place we could stay with an internet hookup was on a little triangular patch of dry grass between a trailer with loud rock music and another with a mean dog. So we Headed south again to Pahrump.

Leaving the highway (95) there was little promise of anything more than mesquite widely scattered and sand dunes. But as we broached the pass the Pahrump Valley spread marvelously before us and we knew we had found a sort of refuge from the wind whipped wasteland called Nevada.

Baby-Boppy

Our cat has always been terrified on Motorhome runs for propane. He would either hide in a corner under the bed or under the driver’s seat. It was probably on the run from Scott’s Valley to Pahrump that he decided to examine the foot petals. Being in open country with no pending stops I used gentle persuasion to discourage him. Eventually he decided to ride on my lap. Now soon after a departure he generally spends most of the trip on my lap, forgoing trips to the food or water dishes and the litter box and sometimes fascinated by the scenery going by. Most of the time he sleeps. In camp when the door opens he runs the other way. There is at least no danger of him running away. At night he snuggles between us, especially on cold nights.

Pahrump

It seems that a newcomer to Pahrump once asked “Does the wind always blow this way” and the response was “No, sometimes it blows the other way.”

Well Pahrump is the biggest place I have ever seen where it looks like the majority of the population lives in Motorhomes, Trailers, Mobilehomes, or Gringohomes (my nickname for one of the other three homes which has beed modified with cinderblock and plywood additions.

It has Bloomberg and Money Magazine, a movie house with 3 movies, reasonably good computer paper (which you have to buy at the grocery store), pizza parlors, a winery, an Albertsons, a Blockbuster, 2 (now) hardware stores, several nurseries, an RV parts and repair shop, and a snow-capped Mount Chuck (named after me). It has lots of Ravens (my totem). One of the better features of Pahrump is its bird life: we enjoyed watching the roadrunners, magpies, ravens, and California Quail; although we felt that the latter were traitors for having crossed the California border. Pahrump had an excellent Italian restaurant, but I guess the Bavarian owner-chef screwed the books and now it is an empty shell.

In springtime, the wind howls like hell and at least 2 cottonwoods fell over, one on the nice pullout trailer of a neighbor. Radioactive and caustic dust devils range the valley filling your car and home with alkaline and radioactive dust. There are days when the sun replaces the wind and you wonder why you hated the wind. The park we stay at is The Cottonwoods. It is an old place populated mostly by red-neck roustabouts.

It’s virtue is, that it is too far for Rita to walk to the casinos for free drinks, although we have visited Sam’s, a cowpoke bar where I took my life in my hands by too loudly screaming that Doctor Laura Schlessingbottom the talk show pseudo-psychologist was a Yiddish bitch (actually I may be more Yiddish than I think--see Minden). I guess I got away with it because dudes not bitches rule in cow country and there aren’t too many Yiddish cowboys.

Rita and I had lots of arguments in Pahrump during this stay (always about alcohol) and I took to frequently walking the streets at night. These streets have no lights and almost no dwellings. And it is not so pleasant to walk down a pitch dark country road on a moonless night with the wind howling and blowing dust everywhere. You can hear coyotes (they may or may not have been coyotls) howling occasionally (although I did not know what one sounded like then). Every now and then, a cowpoke from a local bar, or some teenagers on the way to a score, would whiz by about 80 miles per hour with blinding headlights and I hoped they wouldn’t run into me or shoot me. Then I would be blind again while my eyes adjust to the dark.

The RV park managers are Jack-Mormons and friendly and easy to get along with. Looking back they have been our best landlords over the year. Although, I have no great love for Mormons, it seems that Jack Mormons are pretty regular folk.

I do like Pahrump BUT:  the stupid Nye county government wants to bring in water from the nuclear test site and that is a shame because the valley is naturally protected from the radioactive water by a circle of mountains; almost everyone you meet lives in a movable house; the town is booming too fast and will soon be much larger than I want; everybody is depressed; and then there’s the wind and heat. But there is probably a lot of money to be made here.

We registered the Saturn as a Nevada vehicle and registered to vote and even though the Nevadans said we could vote again in the primary, we passed it up, knowing that we had already absentee-balloted in San Jose and didn’t want to cheat. We ate at the Italian restaurant, the BBQ pit, and the casinos where we gambled.

The IRS got our payment and the 401(k) came in (minus a hunk of money held out to pay for the fire-fighting in Idaho). We checked the mail late in the afternoon and when we saw the check we high-tailed it to Lost Wages and I entered the Schwab door 15 seconds before they closed for the day. All that without quite red-lining the water. Remember Saturns are cheap cars, not performance cars, so they are much better in flat steadily moving traffic than in traffic jams or coming over the hill from Pahrump.

Although not particularly dressed for the occasion, we decided to take in some of the Night Life and visited the Venetian. Rita Gambled a little and then we went “UP?” to the Grand Canal. I have to admit for Disneyland it was pretty nice. No sewage in the canal and at first I thought the sky was real. After a few seconds I remembered that it was an overcast day outside and realized that they only had a few scattered clouds “outside.” And then I saw God’s trap doors and fire extinguishers screwed into the sky.

We ate at the Chicano restaurant run by TGIF and I complained that the Venetian had an image problem, because all of the Venetians were Ffillippinnoss (mis-spelling attributed to the way the islanders seem to have trouble with spelling consistencies).

When we arrived in Pahrump there was still a lot of snow on Mount Chuck and the nights were cold; but, as I worked on the 1040 forms, the snow dwindled and the days became hotter and hotter. The Choice to leave was based on HEAT, SUN, and WIND; although the wind probably let up by the time we got to Utah.

The Thursday before Easter, we took a drive up the Pahrump side of Mount Chuck. Topo and AAA maps were unclear as to whether the road connected to the West side or not. AAA needs to add a LOCKED GATE symbol to their map.

On the Talus slope we had a close encounter of the third kind with a troop of Bible Shakers. I told Rita they were probably Snake Shakers, but subsequent investigation in town seemed to indicate that they just were reveling in God’s Natural Splendor before the holy event.

Higher on the talus slope, we came across a strange canyon carved right out of the talus slope which though deep seems to begin and end on the talus slope with no obvious connections to either the higher canyons nor the valley. It has a name and people recreate there, but I forget the name.

Up high we ran into the last vestiges of snow and a few other travelers. People leave dead bodies up there. I looked at Rita and then thought of the guy in prison that would value me as a sex object and decided she would not be another statistic.

At the “top” of the road was a locked gate. I am sure that if I was in the mood to trespass I could have followed the road on the other side and found the lodge. But I am getting too old for such foolishness without having a significant purpose, so we turned around. Rita watered the piñons while I stood guard. It could be pondered how I can spend so much time in Pahrump and visit Las Vegas and not see my daughter Lisa and her Area-51 husband. The  …   <<<EXPLITIVES AND WAISTED WORDS DELETED – WHAT’S THE USE???>>>  …

Road Chronicles 000201 - OLD AND ROLLED

Pair of Dice Lost

February 1, 2000

Dave,

"Well I entered your address in my address book and sent you an email, but I don't see the mail and I don't see the address, so I screwed up again. If you got the big email let me know--it was bit long. To suffice:

I lost my job.

I have a month to move.

I plan to become a Nevada citizen and live in Mexico.

I have a lot to do in 30 days.

Rita is puking and has the flu.

It's raining like hell.

You can reach me at 555 555-5988 ground line for 30 days.

555 555-4567 Nokia Cell--will monitor irregularly after 20 days don't leave a message.

555 555-1234 3-watt Motorola Mobile--to be monitored on the road.

Tomorrow I get my radio and fan off my desk and ask the mob what it is that I am not supposed to remember so that I will understand what it is that I have forgotten that they are worried about. Hope the men in black didn't bother you.

Maybe you can give me advice as to how to set up a Nevada residency, a mail forwarding account, Nevada vehicle registrations, etc.

You'll be hearing from me as emergencies allow

Sorry the other note was much longer and I don't have time to repeat it all today as I am pushing daylight.

Cimarron Charlie

(charles and rita jac)

A Passing Thought

February 27, 2000

Charles:

I hope you will print this out for RITA. Thank you and good luck. When you guys settle down if you want to find me I will always be at whoami666@hotmail.com or at martinscamkars@yahoo.com.

"Mr. Washington was a HARD-CORE LAWN freak. His yard and my yard blended together in an ambiguous fashion. Every year he was seized by a kind of herbicidal mania. He started fondling his weed-eater and mixing up vile potions in vats in his garage. It usually added up to trouble. Sure enough, one morning I caught him over in my yard spraying dandelions.

"Didn't really think you'd mind." says he, righteously.

"Mind, mind!----you just killed my flowers." says I, with guarded contempt.

"Flowers?" he ripostes. "Those are weeds!" He points at my dandelions with utter disdain.

"Weeds," says I, "are plants growing where people don't want them. In other words," says I, "weeds are in the eye of the beholder. And as far as I am concerned, dandelions are not weeds-----they are flowers!"

"Horse manure," says he, and stomps off home to avoid any taint of lunacy.

Now I happen to like dandelions a lot. They cover my yard each spring with fine yellow flowers, with no help from me at all. They mind their business and I mind mine. The young leaves make a spicy salad. The flowers add fine flavor and elegant color to a classic light wine. Toast the roots, grind and brew, and you have a palatable coffee. The tenderest shoots make a tonic tea. The dried mature leaves are high in iron, vitamins A and C, and make a good laxative. Bees favor dandelions, and the cooperative result is high-class honey.

Dandelions have been around for about thirty-million years; there are fossils. The nearest relatives are lettuce and chicory. Formally classed as perennial herbs of the genus Taraxacum of the family asteraceae. The name comes from the French for lion's tooth, dent-de-lion.

Distributed all over Europe, Asia, and North America, they got there on their own. Resistant to disease, bugs, heat, cold, wind, rain, and human beings.

If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them "weeds," and murder them at every opportunity.

Well, I say they are flowers, by God, and pretty damn fine flowers at that. And I am honored to have them in my yard, where i want them.

Besides, in addition to every other good thing about them, they are magic. When the flower turns to seed, you can blow them off the stem, and if you blow just right and all those little helicopters fly away, you get your wish. Magic! Or if you are a lover, they twine nicely into a wreath for your friend's hair.

I defy my neighbor to show me anything in his yard that compares with dandelions. And if all that isn't enough, consider this: Dandelions are free. Nobody ever complains about your picking them. You can have all you can carry away. Some weed!”

               by Robert Fulghum                                                                                                                                                             1989

Martins

Fire and Ice preview 7 - Sardine Lakes

Climbing higher, Scott could see grassy knolls where the footpath led. Mounting the first of these knolls, he caught first sight of Lower Sardine Lake. Impassable scree hemmed in the lake on two sides. The lake seemed to have been created when a retreating glacier dropped its rock burden, as it melted, damming the waters above to form a lake type known as a cirque lake.

Scott lay down his daypack and walked back down the trail to capture the explosion of water from the rock wall with his wide-angle lens. He walked a little farther down and caught an exposure of the cascades falling off Mount Lewis. He captured the surrounding elevations. He shot a picture of the rim of the lake and Great Basin, as it spread all the way past Salt Lake City. He found the prettiest flowers growing out from a clump of rocks.

Scott thought of the biker he had met in Big Oak Flat, as he tied a hook on his spinning rod with a single pea for bait. He was now grateful for having bought bottled peas rather than cans. He could reseal them. He cast his line. He hoped to relax for a while and regain his strength. Before he could say “Robinson Jeffers and John Muir” he felt a bite. Boy! This was a hell of a lot better than fishing down at the lake. He brought in a beautiful Golden Trout. God, if only Sean had been there. They both could have been proud.

Scot reconsidered. Sean would not have liked this. He would have stopped at Walker Lake and scorned his father for being such a pussy that he would climb a mountain in order to catch naïve fish. He would have stopped at the first lake that gave him a bite and would never have been curious about what the trail could lead to. If he got as far as this lake, he never would have wondered about Upper Sardine Lake. That was a basic difference. Scott had always been curious. What’s around the bend? What’s at the end of a highway?

Sean only liked McDonald’s hamburgers. Once, Scott had taken him to a Wendy’s. Sean had behaved as though Scott had taken him inside a satanic church. Scott liked Wendy’s. He even liked sushi, though he could seldom afford it.

Scott now knew he could catch food. This knowledge gave him the gumption to push on farther.

The trail to Upper Sardine Lake proved short. When Scott arrived he checked the altimeter again--almost 10,000 feet. He had never climbed so high before. He looked out from the brim of the lake. Lower Sardine Lake rippled below. Mono Lake glittered below like a small gem, unbelievably far down.

A sheer rock wall formed the south side of Upper Sardine Lake. A, sort of, tiny tropical jungle grew thick below the west wall. The very tropical looking plants grew in the shade cast in the afternoon by Mount Gibbs. Scott wondered how such tropical appearing plants could grow at such great altitude. Of course, they were not really tropical. He wondered why they looked tropical.

The way up led to the northwest, up a narrow glacier-blocked passage. The glacier made the climb higher problematic.

He continued to fish as he pondered the glacier. He could use the protein. He caught two more golden trout with such ease that the sport seemed unfair for the fish.

Scott strolled away from the lake and found some thick grass growing nearby. He had gardened as a youth. These shoots looked just like onions. Curiosity overcame him. He tore some of the blades out of the soil. He chewed on them one at a time. He took care not to eat too much at once. No doubt remained in his mind. He had found wild onions. So besides the granola bars and other snacks, he now knew he could eat fresh trout and wild onions up here.

He knew the pass was close by. Even God was close. With God shining on him so favorably, he had to try. He looked at the sky. Clouds screamed by so close that they seemed as close enough to touch. Maybe he did. The breeze had picked up to downright blustery.

He hid his fishing gear from passers by and set out.

Scott owned an ice axe, which he had never used. It hung on his wall at home to create atmosphere. This was the atmosphere that the ice axe had been created for. Still there might be a way. He followed the trail to the glacier. As he got closer, he could see that the glacier had melted away from the eastern sunny wall, leaving a crevasse that swallowed him up to his thighs. He could brace the pointed end of his walking stick in the slippery icy surface and wedge one foot, and then the next, higher. Sometimes he braced with his hips or his arms against the edge of the glacier or the rock wall. When he did so, he felt the cold locked up in the ice.

The heat of the day was ebbing. The glacier responded by creaking and groaning. Scott was excited. It was the first time he had heard a glacier talk. How mystical!

The surface of the glacier was uneven--shaped like scooped out little hollows known as sun cups. The sun cups indicated that the glacier had been there for a long time, melting and freezing on the surface as the weather dictated. Scott would have time enough to build and furnish a house, waiting for this glacier to melt away.

He looked back. What he saw surprised him as to how far he had climbed above Upper Sardine Lake. The glacier was not that long, maybe a few hundred horizontal feet.

The early afternoon shade from Mount Gibbs protected it from melting away.

At last, he reached the top of the glacier.

He found himself in a sort of dry cirque that was full of large chunks of rock rubble.

Fire and Ice preview 6 - Bloody Canyon

Scott hiked west along the lakeside trail. It began as a walk in the park. Quaking aspens lined the shore. They waved at him on with their friendly leaves. The forest remained his steady companion on his left, offering cool shade. He listened to the lake lap the shore as he walked. As he neared the west end of the lake, the trail left the lake and traversed the perimeter of a bog, with marsh plants growing by the edge of the lake. Towards the farthest distance from the lake, he found a beautiful, pastel-colored Tough-Leaved Iris, requiring a portrait in Ektachrome.

The trail turned back towards the lake and began to climb. Water gurgled, teasing stones.

The trail followed the southern stream bank.

A fast hiker from Berkeley, California, startled Scott. The hiker only had time to say he was in a hurry to make it to Tuolumne Meadows before a lightning storm moved in from the south.

Scott passed a sign that announced Ansel Adams Wilderness. Now he knew he was in God's Country. Nothing could go wrong. He tried to imagine how it had looked on the first day Ansel Adams had seen it.

A group of three hikers passed. Scott asked them about the weather. They said they had not heard of any bad weather other than maybe a cold front moving in from the north. They did not have much to say. They were from Germany and spoke relatively little English. Scott pondered how much German he would be able to speak if confronted by hikers on a trail in the German Alps--not much, he had to admit. They wore little lederhosen and funny little hats. They seemed to have much greater lung capacity than Scott. The stream cascaded white off rocks below the, now, very steep trail.

The trail crossed the river by way of heavy rocks. If the trail would end on this side, as his topographic map showed, Scott would just as soon cross as low as possible, before the rock grew steeper and less stable. He balanced himself with his walking stick, occasionally planting it in the upstream riverbed to keep from falling in. The trail on the north side of the creek became more rigorous than that on the south side. He soon came to regret the crossing. To the north of the creek, he found himself walking more and more across rock scree, with no protection from the hot sun and rising wind.

Scott had to slow his pace, to recover his breath. This side of the canyon had some advantages. He could now see across Bloody Canyon to the south side, and scant vegetation permitted him to see the stream. As the distance to the river increased, so did his thirst. He found himself drinking more and more of the water he was carrying. He hoped to find potable water higher up.

The trail mellowed to a steady, but strenuous, climb. He remembered his hiker’s altimeter in his daypack. He took it out and read it. He had climbed to 9,500 feet. Not bad for an asthmatic, even if he did need to pace himself.

The trail became a little less barren and a little more like an alpine path. Flowers grew here and there amongst the broken rocks. Clouds had moved in from the North Pacific to modify the heat. There was a God.

Scott rounded a bend. Up ahead appeared what looked like a rock wall with water shooting from it as if from a fire hydrant. The white fountain, charged with air, shot out almost twenty feet from the rock wall, before plummeting headlong to the streambed far below. As the trail passed near the side of the fountain, he heard a mighty hissing, as from a large liquid snake, as the undulating fluid rushed full force through the sharp granite rocks that served as its spout.

Climbing higher, he saw that the fall originated from an extremely narrow micro chasm that it had carved in the rock.

Fire and Ice preview 5 - Walker

Scott gave up fishing for the day. He made himself as comfortable as he could for the night, and sat enjoying the wilderness. He had hiked in from Sawmill Canyon over a low ridge. Another low ridge lay to the North, between Walker Lake and Bohler Canyon. The eastern end of the lake could not be seen from his campsite because of a ridge that jutted out on his right. If he looked hard, he could see 11,500-foot Mount Louis. When he looked due west; he had a clear view of Mount Gibbs at a mighty 12,764 feet. Bloody Canyon crested at a lower ridge between Mount Louis and Mount Gibbs. He wished he could go up there. What must it be like up there above 10,000 feet? That was where he would find Waylan’s Sardine Lakes. Maybe, if he felt better during the next two days, he might try it.

The sun set early on the lake, with Mount Gibbs towering almost vertically above. The blue sky continued to glow. He wished he had caught a fish.

Scott found some freeze-dried lasagna and some pudding in his pack. He set about preparing dinner--not much. He longed for a Wendy’s burger and a king-sized Coca-Cola with small cubes of ice floating in it. He could swear that as the sky darkened he heard a loon out on the lake. He did not sleep well. A down bag and a tent did not compare favorably to an apartment in Silicon Valley. He continually heard things--bears or pigs maybe. He nervously shut his tent flap and keep out the wild animals.

He slept fitfully, anxious for daylight. He lay awake, while the first dim glow appeared in the east and grew. Soon Mount Gibbs burst into flame with the first sunlight to touch earth within sight. His down bag had kept his body warm and his tent had kept the night breeze off his head. Nevertheless, he suffered from a cold induced headache. His bed in Sunnyvale had never held such an appeal as now.

A purring noise grew out on the lake. A small aluminum outboard appeared from the east. Scott knew the ridge hid a dam to the east with an access road. Scott saw a man in a green fishing vest and a sky blue baseball cap through his field glasses. The man propelled his boat with a very small Evinrude motor.

Scott forced himself out of the sleeping bag. He fixed freeze-dried bacon and freeze-dried eggs. He followed this with some Cappuccino coffee out of a can full of Cappuccino powder. He longed to be cooking bacon and eggs in his kitchen back home. His back ached from leaning over the cook fire. Now, the ridge extending south from Mount Gibbs had become a bright wall.

The meal helped to warm him up. He checked the thermometer--35 degrees and the sun had been up for a while.

While he ate, the fisherman disappeared.

Scott still felt weak from the altitude, exposure to the wind, and the climb in.

He decided to do a little macro photography. He mounted his macro lens on his 3x macro extender. He rigged up his flash on a special arm that would bring it close to the subject. He attached a homemade wire frame, which he had made from a wire clothes hanger. He could pre-focus for the frame and then he could be sure that anything in the frame was in focus. He tried this for several flying insects.

Following insects around with the cumbersome frame proved exhausting. He removed the frame and got down on his hands and knees. He found many insects, black ants, black flies, vinegar flies, and damselflies. Somehow, it never seemed so backbreaking and knee-scraping to shoot butterflies back home.

He walked into the trees above camp for a healthy bowel movement. Although nobody could see him, he still felt the need to hide behind a tree.

He tried fishing for the rest of the day, but caught nothing.

Scott’s evening meal featured freeze-dried veal cutlets and powdered mashed potatoes.

The fisherman never returned and Scott saw nobody else all day long.

The night was colder than the previous night.

In the morning, Scott checked his mini-maxi thermometer and found the temperature had fallen to 28 degrees.

Scott ate the same boring breakfast as the day before. No fishermen appeared. He had the lake to himself, whether he wanted solitude or not.

Nevertheless, he felt up to climbing, just to see how far he could get. He was fairly confident nobody would disturb his campsite.

Scott hung his food from a branch in a plastic bag, concealed his camp the best he could, and prepared to leave. He had a small daypack, which he had packed inside the regular pack. In it, he put three boxes of raisins, three granola bars, dry flies and small bait hooks, three rolls of film, and a sweater and a jacket in case it got cold. He chose his best camera body, a 100 mm lens, a 35 mm lens, and a macro/tele-extender. He placed most of these things in his pack, including two plastic canteens of water, his ultra light Daiwa fishing pole, and a first aid kit. He hung his favorite camera around his neck, ready for a shoot. On the other side, he hung his bota bag full of water. He wore his felt backpacker hat. He began hiking with his L.L. Bean walking stick with a pointed metal tip. He had an optional screw on rubber tip in his pants pockets with a hunting knife. The walking stick served another role as a camera monopod with a screw mount.

Fire and Ice preview 4 - Hiking In

At times like these, Scott resented his father, Douglas. Douglas had smoked Camels. He had been so cheap that he had chain-smoked them to the nub with a toothpick, like doobies. Scott did not waste time with negative thoughts of Douglas. After all Douglas, born in 1900, had spent his best years in the Great Depression. Fortunately, Douglas had died when Scott was only six years old. Otherwise, instead of taking asthma medicine, Scott might have lived life in an iron lung.

Scott had begun to wheeze badly on the last upslope. The trail now tilted down. He could see through the trees to the other side of the canyon. Thank God, the trail kept going down. Scott paced himself. In another ten minutes, he began to catch glimpses of sunlight glinting off the water through the trees. The lake was close.

As he pushed on, he could see larger expanses of the lake through the trees. He slowed his pace so that he would not be noticeably gasping for breath. He did not want to appear weak if he ran into another human being. There could even be a bear waiting for him and he might have to run.

Soon he could see the near shoreline. The trail leveled off. He stood in the woods gauging the length and breadth of the lake. There was nobody in sight. There was no sign of anybody at all--no smoke--no music--no nothing.

He could hear the water lapping the shore in the breeze. Young aspens lined the shore, shaking their leaves in the gusty breeze. A duck drifted on the lake. A fish jumped out of the water about forty feet offshore.

He had the whole place to himself. His fear of finding inhospitable campers abated. He suddenly felt a need for other people. Strange things sometimes happened when there was no one around to observe, like the tree that falls silently because there are no ears to hear. He decided to camp in a shady glen, a little ways from the foot trail in case some aberrant people showed up.

Scott chose a good place for his tent, on level soil; but not in a gully; not in the sun, and not too visible. He wished there were a camp table. He hated eating off the ground. There were no boulders around where he could sit either. He could get by without a place to spread out his topographic maps. That would provide him with a deeper wilderness experience. He had wanted to lose himself in the wilderness experience. That was before he had become so tired on the trail.

Scott had packed an ultra-light folding chair. He unfolded it and sat down. At least he had a back support and his butt was raised off the ground. A Tedral tablet and some water helped the wheezing to subside. He could tell it would be a cold night. The wind suppressed the daytime temperature and the clear sky would provide no celestial blanket after dark. Autumn loomed just around the corner. Snow came in the high sierras. He broke out his ultra-light spinning rod. He fished for three hours--not a bite. He could see the fish, but he could not catch them. Scott had chosen to come here to fish, based upon Sean’s love for fishing and his own inability to hike long distances. Scott was not a good fisherman. He had hoped he could learn from Sean.

Fire and Ice preview 3 - Lee Vining

Scott enjoyed photographing the lone aspens, dressed-up in their fall colors and, gracefully reflected in serene Siesta Lake.

Scott did not stop again until he reached Lake Tenaya, in the dome region. A short distance beyond Lake Tenaya, he had spotted the swaying red and blue spider webs hanging off the side of Fairview Dome. He marveled at the climbers hanging on those blue slender threads over vast smooth expanses of smooth granite.

His breathing became labored as he experienced an asthma attack.

He wished he could climb real rock faces. He had read a book on hand and foot holds, and on climbing chimneys. He felt he could climb a little wall using the toe-jam holds that he already knew--just to be able to overcome, small climbing obstacles to reach otherwise easy destinations.

Scott stopped again, at Tuolumne Meadows, to watch the peaceful Tuolumne River sliding silently beneath the thick wooden bridge. Off to the south rose Mount Lyell. In a day or so, he might see it again from a totally new perspective.

He took a few Kodachromes and moved on.

At 9,845-foot Tioga Pass, Scott left the park. A short distance below the pass, he stopped in at Tioga Pass Lodge to enjoy the view with a Heineken.

Below the Lodge, he photographed his way past Tioga Lake and Ellery Lake.

He caught sight of the undrinkable waters of Mono Lake, on the desert flats below, when he rounded some outside turns.

The highway entered a deep canyon and virtually plummeted all the way to 6,780-foot Lee Vining, a small town on the edge of Mono Lake--a drop of over 3,000 feet in about 12 miles.

Scott’s asthmatic breathing eased as he lost elevation from the pass to the edge of Mono Lake. He strolled down the main street of Lee Vining. He found a bookstore at the north end of town. He purchased a paperback by John Muir that would fit in a pocket of his pack.

Scott filled up his tank at the local gas station and headed south along the edge of the salt lake. The highway began to drop. Within a few miles, he reached a sign that read:

“SAW MILL CANYON ROAD -- WALKER LAKE à.”

Walker Lake, named after the famous mountain man, was one of two Walker Lakes. The better known larger lake was to the east and just north of the town of Hawthorne, Nevada.

Scott followed the turnoff towards the smaller Walker Lake, just southwest of Mono Lake, California.

The dirt road climbed rapidly into a narrowing valley. Roads like this caused the water temperature to go up in the engine of his old Dodge K-Car. The car rode low and scratched the high rocks with its undercarriage. He hoped he could reach the trailhead before the engine overheated.

The road curved to the right to re-cross the large talus slope. He spotted the red head, yellow body, and black tail and wings of a Western Tanager in a small piñon tree. He would have missed it if it had been sitting in a real tree. He knew the tanager as a harbinger of the nearby open conifer forest. It favored open conifer forests between mountains and deserts. A short drive farther over the rough dirt and gravel road, and the road climbed suddenly and steeply to the trailhead parking lot, just within the less open conifer forest.

Scott set the brake, turned off the radio, and killed the overheating engine. Dust from the road had turned his white K-Car to a ruddy tan. He opened the door and let the forest in--air fresh with the scent of pines and cooler than the desert floor near Mono Lake. The quiet filled the void left by the engine’s roar. The engine ticked its heat away. Except for scattered birdsong and a slight brushing of pines against each other in the afternoon breeze, there was no other sound--no traffic--no tires on macadam--no brakes--no radio.

He looked around the trailhead.

Only one other vehicle used the space--a bronco. He worried about hoodlums breaking into his car. Then he reconsidered. What hoodlums would follow that bumpy dirt road all the way up here? Besides, no one could even see traffic on this road.

Nobody knew Scott was here, except Terri--and the biker. He hoped she had found the note he left her--the note that told her where he would be. What if she had not seen it? What if she had thrown it away? She could not have thrown it away. Now he began to worry. She never cleaned. He had forgotten to specify that it was Walker Lake, California--not Walker Lake, Nevada. She was probably well on her way to drinking herself into a vodka induced deep slumber by now.

He took time to ensure that the radiator had not popped a leak and that the engine was not dripping oil. He wondered where the driver of the Bronco had gone. Maybe they would be neighbors.

He broke out his unforgiving Pivettas and lashed them on to replace of his cheap soft driving shoes. He removed the pack from the passenger seat and carried the gut breaking mass over to a granite boulder. He sat on the boulder and backed into the shoulder straps.

Maybe it was just as well Sean was not here. If Sean had not harped on it during the ride he would have now. “If you really want a hernia why don’t you just find a job as a car jack? You could probably make more money and not have to be late on my child support. yak . . . yak . . . yak.”

Scott slipped into the pack straps and tried to stand. God it was heavy. When he felt the full weight on his shoulders, he vowed to try to pack smaller packs in the future. Was it really that important to carry a lens for shooting vinegar flies, a lens for shooting canyons, a lens for shooting big horns, and a lens for shooting a never to be found nymphet on the trail across the canyon? He adjusted the waist belt support and snapped it shut. He had gained weight since his last time out.

Each step across the trailhead hurt. He tried to calculate how far he had gone and how far he had to go, before he ever reached the trail.

Considering how far he had driven up from the desert floor, Scott was surprised at how much of the trail was still up hill. Downhill stretches existed, but not enough of them. The trees closed in, allowing only small rays of scattered sunlight to filter through. Maybe he was on the wrong trail. If Sean were here, he would never admit it; but alone, with no Sean and no dog, those questions raised their ugly heads. What if the lake had been drained or closed due to contamination. What if there had been a forest fire.

The lake, if it existed, would be just below 8,000 feet--more that one thousand feet higher than Lee Vining. His lungs could feel the difference, especially with a 60-pound pack on his back.

Fire and Ice preview 2 - Big Oak Flat

Thick fog enveloped the apartment complex in the morning.

It was now or never. Scott showered his last shower and ate his last easy meal of Quaker granola. He stacked the dishes in a sink full of suds to keep the ants away.

He could barely carry his heavy pack down the stairs. He was not especially strong. He had had at least two hernia operations. He liked to bring his living room with him on a hike. As it was, the pack was 60 pounds. He would have packed a television if there had been room.

He drove a cheap and undependable K-Car, but he could afford little else what with child support and medical bills.

Scott drove the road to Yosemite slow and blind. The fog lifted a little going through Oakland, but settled in with a vengeance by Carquinez Straits. Scott would have thought, with all the refineries burning their waste fuel in the towering chimneys, there would have been enough heat to let in a little sunlight. Fog blanketed the San Joaquin Valley so thickly that he had to drive many stretches of the highway at 15 miles per hour.

The radio said there had been a pileup in the fog North of Fresno on Highway 99. Twenty-four cars had become involved with an 18-wheeler grocery supply truck and a full gasoline tanker. The tanker was on its side and a clean up crew attempted to offload the fuel to protect nearby streams and prevent an explosion. At least three dead bodies had been recovered. The incident had been reportedly triggered when an alcoholic woman had steered her Volkswagen across the double line into an oncoming semi. Both the Volkswagen and the semi had avoided colliding somehow, but the reactions of other drivers to avoid each other had set off a chain reaction. A field correspondent had interviewed the husband of the errant driver, who had said that he was facing bankruptcy due to her liquor bills and court costs. An officer had said that the court costs they had were nothing compared to what they would have after the damages and injuries were tabulated.

The fog offered no relief until Scott entered the foothills. It finally lifted before he arrived at Big Oak Flat.

Having crossed the foggy morass of the delta into the sunnier lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada, Scott felt he was entitled to a reward. He could not afford a champagne brunch, but he had a little money for supplies and food.

He bought a fresh supply of fish eggs and some stove fuel at the sporting goods store.

A delicatessen made submarine sandwiches. Scott bought a hot Sloppy Joe and a large Coca-Cola. He sat outside watching the traffic go by. He felt lonesome without his son to share it with.

A Honda Gold Wing pulled up to the boardwalk. A Willie Nelson look-alike climbed off with a black leather vest and a black bandana on his head. “Goin’ fishin’, huh?”

“Yeah!” Scott responded cautiously.

“Where you goin’?”

“Walker Lake--You know--Bloody Canyon!” Scott tried not to look the biker in the eyes.

“Bloody Canyon, huh. That’s a short hike in from the trailhead. You look like you’re gonna do some climbin’.”

“Yeah! I thought I might mosey up Bloody Canyon.”

“Ever been there?”

“No!”

“How long you gonna be?”

“Maybe four days!”

“Gwan! You got enough stuff for two or three weeks.”

Scott didn’t want to tell this Hell’s Angel wannabe that he had two camera bodies, four lenses, and a lot of other photographic equipment packed away. He found it easier to admit to two weeks. However, if this guy knew he would be there for two weeks, he might come by with his friends, kill him, rob him, and toss him off a cliff just for fun.

The biker’s eyes drilled into Scott’s forehead. “I said it looks like you got stuff for two weeks.”

Scott returned to the present. “Yeah--two weeks--why?”

“You look like you could need some help. You don’t look like you’re experienced with the high country. You got any peas?”

“Why peas?”

The biker pulled off his bandana and wiped road grime off his face. “You better go to the general store and get some peas. If you really plan to hike up Bloody Canyon, you’ll find two lakes¾Lower Sardine Lake and Upper Sardine Lake. Upper Sardine Lake is almost at the foot of a glacier. You can catch Golden Trout in there. It is so far out of the way, you’ll be all by yourself. Those goldies’ll bight on peas. They hardly even know what a human looks like.”

Scott finally took a good look at his new friend. “Hey you’re really being friendly. I was put off by the bike and the bandana.”

“Just because I ride a bike don’t mean I’m lookin’ for a fight.”

“What’s above Upper Sardine?”

Biker, “Well there’s a glacier on the north side leading to Mono Pass. End of Summer--it might have melted away from the wall to let you pass. Above the glacier, there’s a cliff and a rock scree. You can scale the rock scree, but it’s unstable and you might fall. You can climb the wall though. It’s only about twenty feet, but you gotta use hand and footholds to make it. You could fall offa that too. You get up past the wall and the scree and it’s a Sunday afternoon stroll to the pass. You get through the pass and you can see from Mount Lyell to Tuolumne Meadows.”

Scott, “Why are you so nice to me?”

The biker laughed. “Don’t mind my bandana, I like people.”

“You got a name?”

“My handle is Waylan.”

Waylan shook Scott’s hand and went on past the barbershop to the motorcycle shop.

Scott finished his Sloppy Joe. He crossed the street and bought two small bottles of peas. He bought bottles, because they could be resealed.

The shade of fir trees painted stripes across the road to Yosemite, like the bars of a prison window.

Butterflies still flew in and out of these shadows. He paid for a ticket at the entrance to Yosemite. The guard told him he could not drive into the valley anymore. Scott did not care. He was headed up over Tioga Pass to Nevada.

Fire and Ice preview 1 - Scott Heath

“Look, Darlene, I’ve paid all of my child support and I’ve paid half the hospital expenses for more than a decade. Why can’t you just let me slide a little this month, so I can have some money to have fun with Sean? You know my credit’s good and you’ll get paid back. It’s not as though I won’t pay his expenses while he’s with me.”

The phone on the other end went dead. The line had that buzz that meant Scott could place a new call. There was no one to call. He sat there in the late August heat and watched a lightning storm pass--the first storm of the summer and the rest of the week promised to be hot--even for Silicon Valley.

Scott Heath replaced his two-man tent with his one-man tent. He cut his food rations in half. A tear ran down his cheek.

Scott went out on the deck and cried in the rain. It was not right. That woman had run roughshod over him ever since they had married.

Scott had cheated on Darlene. She had driven him to it. She was like being married to Mother Teresa. He had subsequently been involved in a bad accident. They had been on the lam after the accident.

Darlene had saved all of Scott’s paychecks for her get away. He had tried to make up for the single time he had cheated on her. He had gotten a new job working for a heavy manufacturing company that made armored vehicles. He had been busy helping to develop new armor plating that could take a direct hit from a top of the line Russian tank and survive. She had thought he was cheating again. Again! There had never been an again! He had no longer loved her. He had only been working hard for his children. When she had left, she had taken all of his money from six months wages, minus only the money that had been spent for food and rent.

Darlene had left on a Greyhound Bus. She had known he could have gone to the authorities. He could have gotten a restraining order to keep her in the state. She had known that if he did, they would catch up to him about the accident. If she would have done her part, the accident might not have occurred.

After Darlene had left, she had taken him to court for non-payment of child support. What a joke. He had not had any food in the refrigerator, nor had he had any money for lunch when she had left. Luckily, he had been reimbursed per diem for his company trip to New Mexico, on the following day. He had been able to buy enough Campbell’s tomato soup to survive until his next paycheck. As the mail came in, he had found out that he had become six-months in arrears on all of his payments. Child support! What a joke.

The authorities had tracked him down and served him with papers for the accident. That had been seventeen years ago for God’s sake. She had kept thousands of miles and thousands of dollars between him and his son all this time.

Scott put on ‘Sketches of Spain’, by Miles Davis, and turned up the tape deck. He returned to the living room floor where he had assembled his camping paraphernalia.

He organized his possibles in his pack the best he could.

As the sun lowered and the shadows lengthened, he went out on the deck and cried.

After while, Scott saw his best friend Terri drive up and park. When his tears had dried, he went over to see her.

Terri, “Son’s not coming, huh?”

Scott, “Darlene bleeds me of every penny, and all I get is a slap in the face.”

Terri, “Well, you need to get away by yourself and relax. Bring me something when you come back.”

Scott, “What do you want?”

Terri, “I don’t know. Use your imagination. I’ll pray for you.”

“It’s not fair. She gets all the tax write-offs and all I get is bills. She gets to go to the events at school and I just hear about the doctor bills.” Scott looked out her window at the 3,000-foot Santa Cruz Mountains. “Well, I’ve never been high before. I wish Sean was with me to enjoy it.”

Terri, “Write down where you’re going and when you expect to be back. If you don’t come back I’ll notify the authorities.”

Scott, “What are you gonna do?”

Terri, “Oh, I might have my friend over from Wal-Mart with her husband and kid.”

Scott, “They hate me.”

Terri, “You’re hateful.”

Scott ventured, “I’ll think of you every night before I go to sleep.”

Terri, “Any bears up there?

Scott, “I don’t think they go that high.”

Terri, “You ready to go?”

Scott, “I can move up my schedule and leave in the morning. One good thing!”

She, “What’s that?”

He, “Well, if he’s not going, I don’t have to carry a bunch of stuff he likes.”

“Why is that good?”

He frowned. “He likes canned goods and I like freeze-dried. The space and weight saved can be used to carry a zoom lens a macro lens and an extra camera body, not to mention a lightweight tripod.”

She, “That’s all you have--your camera?”

He, “Well I have you for my best friend.”

They kissed and hugged.

She cried a tear. “I’ll pray for you every night.

Scott wrote down his destination “Walker Lake and Bloody Canyon” on a paper towel and set Terri’s vodka bottle on the note so it would not blow away.

He returned to his apartment and finished packing. He had three first aid kits and they took up so much room. All right, the big one got packed. It would not be good--up there alone and no first aid.

He went to bed and turned on KGO talk radio with the sleep button so it would go off in 90 minutes. The conservative host was on, yapping about husbands who don’t take care of their kids. Scott thought about smashing the radio, but then he would not have a radio.

Sleep did not come easily. Scott’s apprehension grew as he contemplated hiking so far out, alone in the wilderness. Scott’s son, Sean, had picked the needles out of his arm two years ago when he had fallen in jumping cholla cactus. Before that, Scott’s dog had saved him from hiking right off a cliff and a hundred foot drop, when he was hiking at night. His dog was gone now and his son could not or would not come.

Diamonds in Baja preview 9 - Johnson Canyon

Frank read the Los Angeles Times and saw his picture. He retrieved a flashlight, a plastic canteen, and a Swiss Army knife from the saddlebag. The tourist site yielded a University of Arizona Jacket that somebody must have removed and forgotten. Maybe they had been afraid that some mentally challenged hunter would mistake them for a wildcat. Some visitors had left unfinished drinks in the trash--enough to fill his plastic canteen. It was not much, but it would do if he kept out of the sun. He found a good brown paper bag to use to carry things.

He had never doubted that they were looking for him. He used the Swiss Army knife scissors to cut his hair, so his golden locks would be less conspicuous. A meal of sausages and whiskey was followed by another joint and then by sleep.

☼

Although the night was very cold, Frank settled for a stick of pepperoni for breakfast to get an early start. He must have regretted leaving the bike behind, but they would be looking for a biker. Maybe he could retrieve it on the way out. He started hiking down the mountain before the sun was up. He was freezing. He hungered for the warmth of the valley.

The steep trail offered a rough descent with repeated tight switchbacks. He took a bad fall, when he accidentally stepped off the trail onto some steep scree, in the dark. His left hand was bleeding. Frank was up to it. He wrapped his hand in his spare bandana. He kept moving. The trail became easier as the promise of sunlight revealed the lay of the land. He left the steeper terrain behind. By late morning, he reached the upper reaches of Johnson Valley road. He slowed now. The valley heat was already sapping his strength.

A long walk down the road brought him to a wide spot in the canyon. A grove of cottonwood trees grew here in a triangular recess, against a steep canyon wall. This hideaway was warmed by the canyon mouth nearby, but Frank was in no mood to take on the midday heat. He needed to rest-up for the walk that lay ahead that night. He staggered into the grove and found a clearing, in the corner of the cliff face, where the soil was relatively level.

Coyote melons sprawled on the floor of the clearing connected by looping fat vine stalks. Some of the vines were as long as thirty feet. He knew the coyote melons by their gourds and by their five lobed palmate leaves. The gourds were about five inches around and looked to be ripe. Frank had grown up in the Mojave Desert, in Barstow, and so had a passing knowledge of desert flora and fauna. He knew that the Indians had used the roots of the coyote melon for soap. The leaves of a closely related plant, the buffalo gourd, made an effective poultice for flesh wounds. He dug up some roots and gathered some leaves. Then he mashed them up. He cleansed his wounded hand with the leaf soap and applied a root poultice. He held the poultice in place with his bandana.

He cut open a melon and tried to eat it. It did not taste very good, but had lots of moisture, so he cut open some more until he had topped off his canteen.

Finally, he rolled up his leather jacket around the shotgun, and used it for a pillow. He napped in the shade by the clearing.

Diamonds in Baja preview 8 - Stovepipe Wells

Late in afternoon, the Raider broached Towne Pass into a panorama of Death Valley. If the Mojave had been hot, then Death Valley was searing. The Sand Dunes, however, were somewhat obscured. There, before Jerry and Irene, was a towering swirling cone of sand and dust, like a tornado, pirouetting off the highway towards the Sand Dunes.

Jerry pulled over to watch.

He whipped out his trusty Olympus 35 mm and took several pictures as the sand cone rose higher and drifted to the east-northeast. Eventually the cone of swirling dust began to lose its conical shape. It dissipated into a more conventional wall of sand, as it drifted eastward and slightly north into the Grapevine Mountains.

When they first saw the storm, it was just across the highway from the resort, but traveled away from the oasis and right over the stovepipes. Out by the Dunes were ancient stovepipes sunken into the sand to reach water.

☼

Jerry’s mind wandered to the time when he had spent the night sleeping out there. He had made reservations at Stovepipe, but his car had overheated late at night. He had slept on the other side of Towne Pass until 3:00 am. He had poured some water in the radiator and had come down to the resort, but he had been embarrassed to show up so late. He had gone out near the edge of the Devil’s Cornfield. There he had set up his Celestron telescope and tried to find the comet (which had been the purpose of the trip). Instead, he had found a raven. The raven had launched off Tucki Mountain and levitated as if it were a butterfly in a Carlos Castaneda vision. It had not moved its wings, but had just floated like a spirit. That’s when he had adopted the raven as his totem.

☼

The sheet of dry rain now blew across the north-south highway and through the passes of the Grapevine Mountains on the east side of Death Valley.

Irene, “I’m hungry! We gonna get some comida or watch sand blow?”

Jerry, “Sorry! It’s cooling down now, only about 90 degrees, so I guess that’s the last sandstorm of the day. Let’s go eat!”

Jerry drove on down to Stovepipe Wells Resort, well above the floor of Death Valley on the west side. He parked under the shade of a large spreading tree. There was a cacophony of jungle birdcalls emanating from that tree.

Stovepipe Wells was easily the most romantic resort in the valley because it had limited accommodations, and so fewer tourists. Its prices were low to attract travelers from places like Germany, France, Russia, and England. They spoke with exotic dialects! The motel sat higher up and further north of the competition, giving it cooler temperatures. Jerry had always hoped to come for the saloon with live entertainment.

Occupying the office was a husky woman with a nametag that read ‘Svetlana.’

“Da! May I help you?”

“Is your name really Svetlana?” Jerry asked.

“Da!”

“How come a Russian woman is running a resort in Death Valley? I mean; we would have expected to find a Death Valley Dorothy, or a Stove Pipe Wells Shortie!”

“I am eemmigrant! Your ancestors, eemmigrants! I same as your family! Can I help you?”

“Well, first all, what kinds of tropical birds are out in that tree? It sounds like the Amazon Jungle! How do you keep tropical birds in the desert?”

“Niet! Is not tropic birds! Is one raven, who very happy! Perhaps he happy see you! Perhaps he happy ‘cause he find a sucker.”

“I don’t believe it!”

Irene was in no mood to cook dinner. “How about food? Is there someplace we can eat?”

“Da! Over there ees restaurant, which serve food in half hour. When you finish, saloon ees good. Got Country-Western, you like!”

“Thank you!”

Jerry and Irene sat in the shade of the large spreading tree waiting for the restaurant to open. Sure enough, looking up into the tree revealed that all of that noise indeed emanated from one very happy raven, a single raven who was not just going caw, cu, or cree.

Irene contemplating Svetlana, “When you visit Mexico don’t you expect Mexicans?” Irene grumbled. “When you visit Death Valley, don’t you expect to see the borax miner’s daughter?”

“Remember when we went to Las Vegas?” Jerry reflected. “We went to the Venetian and expected to see some Italians. Remember how most of the people in the Venetian were Filipinos?” he paused. “Hey, don’t knock it. I heard on 60 Minutes that the Russians are going crazy over American Country Western music. They have their own C and W groups. And the Japanese are going crazy over traditional American Jazz.”

Irene shook her head. “Kind of ruins the ambiance. I wonder if Russians like Mariachi.”

Jerry threw his hands in the air. “Maybe the Japanese do.”

☼

The restaurant finally opened. Jerry had a tri-tip steak and Irene had ‘Death Valley Trout,’ which must have been imported like Svetlana. They shared a carafe of Mirassou Cabernet Sauvignon.

After their meal, they walked over to the saloon. They spent several hours drinking and listening to the music. A Marty Robbins look-alike sang songs like ‘Cool Clear Water’ and ‘Streets of Laramie.’ The songs carried them away in visions of the pioneers who had lost their lives to this parched wasteland. Just as they were about to leave, ‘Marty’ did a rendition of ‘El Paso,’ so they had to have one more drink. Irene smiled, grabbed the swizzle sticks and out they went.

Jerry, “What do you want those swizzle sticks for?”

Irene, “I think they’re cute. Look, one ees a miner’s pick and the other ees shaped like barbed-wire.”

“Since when did miners use barbed-wire?”

“Since those people came through in the covered wagons.”

☼

They groggily followed the dark highway down past Devil’s Cornfield to the Junction where Highway 190 turns south. A blinded bobcat stared into the headlights and then ran off. They saw a coyote jogging along the side of the road. Finally, lights appeared far to the south and eventually became larger.

What Furnace Creek Ranched lacked in atmosphere, compared to Stovepipe Wells, it made up for with its accommodations--for a higher price. It had golf, a large swimming pool, a choice of restaurant or coffee shop, tennis, and even stores for shopping. For some unexplainable reason, it had no live entertainment at the bar, just drinks! Jerry and Irene went to their room, across from the pool, and got ready for bed.

Jerry was ready to shake off the excitement of the day. “Sure glad we lost that Frank guy or whoever he was.”

Irene brought the newspaper in from the Raider and closed the door for privacy. “Why don’t you look in the newspaper and see if there’s a story.”

Jerry thumbed through the Los Angeles Times. It was huge, compared to the bay area papers. He turned to the California and Local news. “Hey, sweetheart, that was Frank that we saw! They’ve got a picture of him.”

“Does it say anything new?”

“They say he might have been responsible for a shotgun reported stolen last night from a Mojave police car. They say that he they believe he is headed for his stash of diamonds, somewhere in the desert between Pahrump and Panamint Springs, and that California and Nevada Law Enforcement have extended their shifts and increased their vigilance. They are hoping to apprehend him within the week. Hey, the diamond market has gone up since he stole them. His diamonds are supposed to be worth forty-four million on today’s market.”

“Are there any peectures of his friends?”

“No! They don’t even mention them.” Jerry walked to the bathroom to brush his teeth. “I suppose sex is out for tonight?”

“Posiblemente, I may have no sex again, Jerry!” she said earnestly.

At least they had a comfortable room with no scorpions. The only bugs were those that buzzed around the yellow light outside.

Diamonds in Baja preview 7 - Shoshone

Mose awoke early--Arturo had rolled over and hugged him, murmuring about how much he loved him. That was enough for Mose. He walked outside in the early morning light, down to the turnoff for Shoshone.

An all-night automotive shop sat at the junction with its faded blue neon sign glowing like a Halloween pumpkin--“Auto Repair.” The big tow truck squatted, covered with morning dew--like a spider waiting for a fly to hit its giant web that extended across the desert from Death Valley in the North to Kelso in the South and from Afton Canyon in the West to the Nevada border in the East--to snag a hapless motorist. Pumps dispensed gas outside, east of the garage. Customers drifted in all night long from the Interstate, traveling to and from Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Customers had to summon the lone nighttime mechanic from his noisy garage onto the dark tarmac to collect his gas payments.

☼

It was here that Frank, Arturo, and Mose had car-jacked the diamond broker five years ago. They had had no way of knowing who he was. They had been simply looking for a free ride to Pahrump. Frank had insisted that they stop on Ibex Pass to examine the man’s locked case. They had known what they would have to do--at least Frank had known--when they first saw the tiny sparkles from within the case, like stars on a cloudless new moon night.

☼

Back at the motel, Mose took the keys and drove the van to the other end of town to avoid being recognized. There he filled the tank in anonymity. He bought a newspaper to see if the story of Frank’s escape had broken in the press. Reluctantly he walked slowly back to the motel to wake Arturo.

They picked up McMuffins with Coca-Colas for breakfast and headed north. Mose drove up the gradual slope of State Route 127 towards Shoshone, a long drive on a two-lane road through the sparsely vegetated and dusty desert. Mose put on some Wes Montgomery in the tape player to make the miles go by easier. If Arturo had been feeling better, he might have insisted on Santana.

Eventually they reached Ibex Pass, at 2,072 feet. Crossing Ibex Pass brought them out of San Bernardino County, across an indefinite boundary, and into Inyo County. The surveyed boundary may have been indefinite according to the government; but Ibex Pass was a distinct watershed in the lives of these two men, more than just the point of no return to Baker, which sat at only 923-foot elevation. Mose had blown a head gasket on Ibex Pass years ago, and had miraculously coasted all the way back to the auto-repair shop with the tow truck and the neon sign in Baker.

☼

It was here that they had dumped the body of the dead broker. It had been Frank, who had brutally strangled him with the broker’s own leather belt. It was Frank, who had kept the broker’s jewel encrusted scorpion silver buckle as a souvenir. Once the broker had died, they had all known in that instant that they could never go home again. It would have meant a potential death penalty for each of them, if the authorities were to apprehend them--and that is what happened.

☼

Mose and Arturo crossed silently through the pass, neither of them inclined to review how they had spent the following three years.

Ten minutes down the road, they reached the welcome sight of Shoshone with its shady cottonwood trees on the Amargosa, or Bitter, River. The Bitter River was so bitter sometimes that a person could smell it, but not so much in the springtime.

They made a beeline to the Crowbar for a couple of cold beers. There was nobody in the bar and a lady had to come over from the café to tend the bar. Rustic, ancient, dusty mining equipment and mining photographs hung on otherwise plain walls. The old-fashioned jukebox on the south wall was lit up, so they figured it still worked.

After a frosted Coors and Fats Domino’s ‘Blueberry Hill’ on the jukebox, they sauntered into the adjoining café for a couple of cheese melts. Mose had a tall iced tea and Arturo had a Mountain Dew. Someone had let in a cheese-loving bee. It kept buzzing their plates--when it was not flying around the gauzy curtains, looking for a way out to the sunlight. Arturo got a headache watching the bee and said he was going back to the bar. Mose finished Arturo’s sandwich and followed.

They had a few more beers in silence. The bar tender returned from the café and said he did not want any overnight parking on his property. There was a trailer court down the road and across the street where they could rent cheap storage space.

They drove over to the trailer court and rented a slot for six days. After they shit and shaved, they walked over to the communal restroom facilities to cool off in the warm saline shower that sprayed out of a salt encrusted fixture.

It was too late for anything else that day, so they got some sleep so they could get an early start the next morning.

Diamonds in Baja preview 6 - Green Mojave

The 18-wheeler was coming down the highway in the dark with one light out. It did not see the woman carrying the baby. She began shrieking in terror. The truck made impact.

Jerry awoke with a start from his dream state. Somebody was hollering.

“ . . . Sheet! Damn! Ouuh sheet! Did chu do thees to me Jerry? ’Cause eef you did . . .”

“Hey! People are trying to sleep! The sun’s not even up yet. What the Hell’re you squawkin’ about?”

Irene was shaking. “You did it! I’m through with you! The trip is over! Let’s go back! I will take all of my chingararas out of your place and find a new place to stay!”

“Hey! ¡Mi corazón! I love you!”

“Then why deed you put that scorpion in my pantaloons?”

“Scorpion? Oh shit!” Jerry jumped off his cot--being very careful where he stepped. “Where is he?”

“He’s right over there! What you wanna to do, take heem home for the kitty-cat to play weeth?”

Jerry cringed as he gingerly stepped over the sharp stones and captured the scorpion in the matchbox from the table.

“I just want to examine him.”

“Am I going to die?”

“I dunno! Give me a minute!”

Jerry fumbled through the SUV for his bug book. He found it and turned pages endlessly. “Guess what?”

“I dun’t know!”

“He’s a Mojave Green. You’re lucky! Your gonna live, but you will be in lots of pain for several hours.”

“Lucky! What you mean lucky! Eat hurts like hell! I can’t even walk!”

“Where did he bite you that it hurts so much?”

“On my puussee, idiot! Where did you theenk he beet me?”

“How in the Hell did he sting you on your pussy?”

“I dun’t know?”

“Did you make sure your clothes were all off of the ground and shake them before putting them on, like I told you?”

“No, Señor! I deedn’t!”

“Lucy, what am I going to do with you?”

“I’m sorry, Ricky! Let’s go home play cards with Fred ‘n’ Ethel?”

“Nope! You won’t ruin our vacation by being contrary. You were warned and you messed up, but you’ll live. Anyway, you’d be feeling better before we could even get back to Bakersfield. Now where’s breakfast?”

“What? ¡Vete a hacer puñetas!”

“Just kidding! Red Mountain is just about a half hour from here. But it’s your turn to drive.”

“¡Puto!”

“Alright! I’ll drive, but you owe me. I suppose I have to pick up all of the camp stuff by myself?”

“You damn right, Gringo!”

Jerry cleaned everything up and changed out of his geek clothes into his desert duds. When he was done, he hardly looked the same.

☼

The only place that was open in Red Mountain was The Red Mountain Café and Cantina.

They parked around back to shade the Raider from the early desert sun and went inside. Irene limped like a two-dollar whore.

Mostly locals were inside, except for a biker sitting by himself. They sat up front and watched the street to see who else in town was awake. Jerry ordered the Red Mountain equivalent of a Grand Slam breakfast and Irene ordered some chorizo with a Margarita.

Jerry snickered. “That chorizo won’t help!”

Irene frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You can’t poop out the pain--it goes away on its own.”

“Shut up! I love you, but shut up!”

“Tell you what! I’ll throw in an extra treat. We’ll stop by the Stove Pipe Wells cantina tonight and have some drinks and check in late at Furnace Creek Ranch!”

“Oh! I love you! And I thought I would have to sleep with Señor Scorpion again tonight.”

The biker paid his bill and walked out.

“Jeez! Geraldo! It’s him again!” she whispered.

Jerry looked out the window. Sure enough, it was the same dude. “We should pick up a paper before we leave town and take it with us. It may have a picture of that Frank guy. That may be him.”

The truck delivered the newspapers to the café and one of the waitresses placed them in a sales rack. Jerry and Irene finished their meal and bought one of the newspapers. As they turned to go out, that same biker was heading out of town on the same bike with a thunderous roar.

A few moments later, they headed out in the same direction as the biker.

☼

Frank--riding free--soon out-distanced them. He turned off onto Ballarat Road towards Sentinel Peak. He buzzed the ghost town of Ballarat and headed up the mountain towards the Panamint City ghost town.

He waited patiently for the last tourists to leave for the day, all the while pretending to enjoy the scenery. He was careful to lay his jacket inside up on his bike, at the ghost town, to hide its emblem, and he kept his face averted from the tourists. Finally, the last tourists left and Frank was alone.

There was a trail, Johnson Canyon Trail, which led up close to Sentinel Peak. He followed it a short distance until it became too steep. There he hid his bike behind a thick Utah Juniper. He climbed to the pass, from where he could view the great expanse of Death Valley.

It was cooler up here--8,200 feet above the sea--the sea that he had watched so many times from his San Quentin cell. Frank was grateful that he had thought to buy matches and a cook stove. He would spend the night on the summit. He set up a makeshift camp and rolled a joint. Tonight he would enjoy the smell of pine needles, by a campfire, and not worry about rat droppings or the police. It felt so good he hardly noticed the cold.

☼

Down below at 1,050-foot elevation, Jerry and Irene had stopped to prowl around the ghost town of Ballarat. Jerry had told Irene that the road into Death Valley over Towne’s pass was a 13 per cent grade. He thought they should wait until the relative coolness of afternoon to cross over.

When they left, driving towards Panamint Springs, Irene reminded Jerry that the radio news the day before had said that Frank had been arrested near Panamint Springs. Jerry thought it was probably a coincidence.