Greetings
Cohort:
Typical
northwest rainforest weather this weekend in Talent ORegon. Sara(h) just
came in with mud up to her elbows and the batteries are not getting the
charge needed to maintain the fridge. Oh well. Such are the tribulations
of all this high tech living.
One thing this place and weather are good for: We are supposed to go morel hunting this afternoon.
Umpqua Hot Springs, a.k.a. Toketee, is north and east of Talent, where my Talent'd friend Kathy lives with her husband and dog and cat. According to the hot springs guide book the place "is so popular, especially on summer weekends, that it might be advisable to take a bathing suit with you. You might have to wait your turn to share a rather crowded pool." No such luck. I had it all to my self. The interpretive center at the carpark tells how the hot water, bubbling up from the magma dome dissolves the silica in the rock and then as the water flows out of the ground on the wooded bluff above the North Umpqua River the silica is left left behind. Over eons of time the spring has made itself a very fine tub, sort of like a hollow stalagmite, just the right size for several people to soak in. I can well see why it is such a popular place; the view is grand. Volunteers have built an open shelter and sunny benches and the place is at the far opposite end of the cleanliness scale to Ash Hot Spring.
Graffitti
found in Toketee hot spring shelter: These words for all to ponder: What
makes the hunter honourable, and the farmer beastly?
Well... says who? I can see the hunter being romantic and the farmer
pastoral, but not beastly. Hunting takes life and produces immediate results,
farming takes land and patience and much more labour. Perhaps it is the
land that is really at issue. The farmer clears the land and is at odds
with the hunter. They are worlds apart. It is really like comparing apples
and oranges... With apples one can make pie. With oranges one can make
odouriferous decorations.
Doyle
lives in the southwest quadrant of Portland, on the twelfth floor of a
highrise condo with a view over the city. The morning sun blasts in through
a glass wall so it is an apartment for an early riser. Twelve floors make
it a little more difficult to outrun the elevator but I can make it up
to the seventh before my heart rate goes up. On a clear day one can see
Mount Hood on the horizon while closer to hand one can see, below in the
river, the sub used in The Hunt for Red October tied up at the ORegon Museum
of Science and Industry. Portland's
Sister City in Japan is Sapporo so On Friday morning Doyle took me
to the Japanese Garden. High above the city's tallest buildings on a hillside
to the west the garden climbs in terraces of carefully tended lawns and
grottos where the huge indigenous old trees stand over the plants manicured
in the Nipponese style.
And thence to the Chinese Garden... Suzhou is Portland's Sister City in China. (Does that make Suzhou and Sapporo cousins of some sort?) The Chinese Garden comprises a city block downtown where the old historic Portland meets the traditional Chinatown. Truckloads of stone and plants--some full sized trees--were brought from Suzhou to create this classical Chinese Garden of Awakening Orchids. Winding walkways and open pavilions define this landscape of plants, water and stone, architecture and poetry, in the Ming style.
Tonya met me later in the day and we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner.
Now I have enough leftovers for about three days on the road.
And the odo turned up 1,100,000 miles. Time to get the oil changed and the chassis lubed.
Norman met me at the Chimacum SKP camp and invited me to his Medicine Wheel Study Group meeting. Good, it was, and I learnt some new things. And Sara(h) now has an addition to her ever growing name: Tail-In-The-Way.
Roy
led the Medicine Wheel group through a purification. Then there was
an awakening of the spirits of some new drums and a lively discussion of
a current topic of interest to all. At the end of the meeting I gave him
one of my fobs and he spoke a benison by way of acceptance. Thank you Grandfather
Roy, you honour me. Kloshe Kawkwa.
Hannah, Karen, Paul and Isaac hiked with me at the Indian's Eye near Tonopah when they came to visit the El Dorado hot spring so now I am hiking with them to the Dragon's Lair. Its great bones lie in rusty repose where men tried to build walls to keep it in and other men tore them down alas too late to let it out. Now at least we can go to see the sodden remains of this magnificant beast.
As a clew to finding the cache at the mouth of the cave Puck, Snorky & Zipper wrote: Be quick, be nimble, waste no time. The Dragons Lair is right behind. Twenty feet more to his black door. In your ears, hear his roar. Slip into the slot and reach to the right. Grab the box before you die of fright.
At dawn here on their hillside farm, where they raise horses, and each other, the temperature was 39f. The furnace of The Cat Drag'd Inn is working hard but at least there is no wind to wrap its icy tendrils around my extremities and make my nose run.
During our walk along the dragon track we watch colourful rock climbers inch their way up the face of The Castle towering above U.S.2 on the far side of the Wenatchee River. Isaac takes off his boots at the crossing of NoName Brook, now a raging torrent of frigid Spring meltwater. His bare feet offer better traction on the bridge of tree limbs than the smooth leather soles.
We played with dominos on the floor by the fire, building a long sinuous construct of branches and crossings, up stairs and down slides, and then watched a video titled The Way Things Go. I recommend it to you.
During the 50's and 60's in Leavenworth a popular winter activity was
ski jumping. Another cache we went to find is right by the bottom of the
ski jump where their grandfather Byron once practiced, and jumped on his
way to a tri-state ski championship, perhaps with olympic hopes and dreams.
Now the town in its entirety is a Bavarian Theme Shopping Park where tourists
come by the busload to shop in theme shops and view the locals dressed
in theme costume. Even the dogs are theme bred.
Left
Wenatchee Lake and Leavenworth behind Sunday after a super supper and headed
south to fuel at Ellensburg. Next morning noticed that the odo still says
1,100,000. Have I not just driven nearly three hundred miles? The land
certainly looks different.
Coming across the Blewett Pass on U.S.97 the tall dark wet forest to the north gives way completely within a few miles to the rolling scrub and irrigated fields of the Columbia River valley. Along the highway, signs on the fences tell you which crop is growing in each field: Potatoes, Mint, Alfalfa, Potatoes... And there is a traffic information sign: Signs on Roadside Fence Indicate Crops - Next 14 Miles.
The Wildhorse Sculpture in Frenchman Hills overlooks Wanapum Dam (Is Bush going to rename those hills too?) and I-90 wends on past all of that, and four rest areas, towards Spokane. At least 300 miles.
The bus took on 92 gallons of diesel.
So I took apart the odometer--been in here several times before; the
metal tabs you have to bend to and fro are going to fall off one of these
days--and found the miles dial had split so each time the little gear came
round to index it the split opened and the gear slipped past. There are
six of these dials, miles to millions, so I traded the miles with the millions--it
will be a long time before it has to index in that position--and put it
all back together with the numbers indicating the supposed three hundred
additional miles. Now I have to drive somewhere to see if it works.
My
travel has come to an end for the summer I think. In the woods north of
Spokane there is a ranch/camp/resort by the name of Kaniksu.
I cooked here the summer of '99 and just the day before yesterday when
I was visiting some friends on my way through a small farming community
south of the big city of Spokane my friends asked if I would like to stop
for the Summer and use up the leftovers from then. Now here is a chance
to work the kind of job I like most.
Only 3,000 feet MSL here give or take a hundred maybe, nestled in the southwest corner of Kaniksu National Forest. Surface water gurgles in the brooks, tall trees, cedar and fir mostly I think, stand all round, and some days are rainy and cool while most are usually warm and sunny. There are squirrils and other four-legs for Sara(h) La Gata to chase, or be chased by, and there are also a few of the rare and endangered spotted-owells to be seen lying about on the duff. Near my campsite there is a pond full of pet trout.
The only problems seem to be the bugs, as one might expect, and the people who delight in bickering among themselves about the way things should be done, and the people who complain about the cooking. The north woods moose turd pie storey seems to have no effect here. Already it has been relayed to me that "if he is going to [be] here then I am going to leave." Oh well. One less mouth for me to feed. There is a light intermittant rain now. I want to get started in the kitchen sorting and cleaning, the first meals are to be served this weekend, but first I think I will go look for some morels.
Some of the relatives of my sister Susan's husband must live along the
road into Kaniksu. His name is Rice and a camp on the north shore of Deer
Lake is named "The Rice Pad, eh".
That gig at Kaniksu didn't last through the opening weekend. I don't believe I'll ever know all the gory details and it really doesn't matter any more. The Board of Club met and decided that the president had acted without their direction, outside her authority (despite that--so the storey goes--they had advertised for a cook), and that the membership base did not warrant having a cook, and that, and now I am reading between the lines: they didn't like my cooking after all.
Oh well. At least they gave me a hundred dollars for cleaning their kitchen.
Two days to set up and two hours to pack. I have to admit I was pretty much depressed over the whole matter. Now it is back to "Plan A" and picking up on all the visiting hastily set aside on their behalf. Such are the vicisitudes of this life. I'm still happy I'm not living in some 8-5 commuting 'twix 'burbs and work place. I think I said this once before: there wouldn't be much to write about there. Which may be why so few of you have the time or inclination to write me.
Oh Well.
Wal-Mart Saturday night, and an escapist movie. I thought about going for a long walk but the weather was nasty for walking; even the upscale joggers were taking shelter from the thunder and rain. After much consternation and sorting through all the options: I'm an additional four days behind where I would have been had it not been for this side trip; another long lost friend from the past has surfaced not too far off to the other side of my route who would be nice to visit; it is Memorial Day Weekend and I would do well to sit still and wait for the tide of traffic to ebb; the old "I may pass this way but once" conundrum, so how do I make the best of it?
I finally decided I wanted a good soak, and then it occured to me that I'd already taken a good soaking, and not just in the rain. Plus I'd already collected some information on a couple of geocaches near the two nearby hot springs. Plus, they were somewhat on the way to where I wanted to visit friends next over between Missoula and Bozeman.
U.S.12 where it crosses IDaho is called The Lewis and Clark Highway and follows the Wild & Scenic River Corridor of the Lochsa River. Very wild and very scenic. One must drive slowly cos of all the twists and turns; it is not a fast road and much of it has no shoulder although there are numerous wide spots, paved and not--a few even designated as Official Vistas or Rest Areas. No fuel nor fast food for 110 miles; not even any slow food. I don't believe there is any other place like it in the Lower-48; even The Lonliest Highway in America has more pit stops. The three "emergency call box" phones are a new feature since I was last through here; they are ten miles apart in the wildest section. That was two day-hikes for a Second Class Scout.
From the west, coming in from Moscow, my first stop was the "Rivers Edge" geocache. Pretty easy find. I set Sara(h) La Gata out on a tether so she could enjoy the stop also. She's hunting whilst I'm searching. What's the difference? Warm rain and windy from the south, good weather for a skinwalker. The clew said to follow the middle trail but when there's four trails, which one is the middle? The one with the baby poopie diaper and the three beer cans was my choice and I found the cache right off. Thanks to Elkmilk for this little diversion along the road.
Next along my Way was Weir Creek Hot Spring. No room for The Cat Drag'd Inn in the trailhead widespot so I figured there would be no room in the spring either and went on. Next along was Gerry Johnson Hot Spring and Campground. They are actually two separate places near to one another. The campground was closed, the wide spot at the hot spring trailhead was full so I went on a bit to the next empty widespot. That was closer to where I wanted to be for the second geocache anyhow.
Not too much luck finding this cache. The GPS was having a hard time getting a satellite signal in under the trees, it was raining like all get out again, and just as I'm giving up on that a battered old pickup painted faded forest service green pulls up alongside The Cat Drag'd Inn. I slithered out from under the dripping trees and went to see.
This guy, Gerry, just likes old things but as the conversation develops he sees an opportunity to raise some money. His storey, like so many of those who live along the "Blue Highways", and like mine is getting to be, is one of despair, resignation, struggle with a system turned perverse. A year ago I would have bought his bike, it was a nice machine he had laying in the back of a near empty pickup, but this year I cannot afford the fifty dollars he wants for it. And, I tell him, it would be better he keep it, for a lifeboat for when he finally does run out of gas. I give him five dollars and hope he has enough gas to get beyond the wild part of this river.
We are still shaking hands when a hitchhiker walks up and asks if Gerry is going east. Nope, Gerry's pickup is pointed west and the guy looks at me. I'm headed east but it may be hours before I move from here. So he stands in the rain. He's been walking in the rain for a couple of miles at least since his last ride let him off back at the hot spring. After a bit more of poking about looking for this cache I'm about to give up on it when I discover that I have the coordinates entered incorrectly. It is back there, at that hot spring wide spot. I tell the hitcher that if he is still here in an hour or so when I come round again I'll pick him up and he begs to go along--it would be better than standing in the rain.
This wide spot is wide enough to U-turn The Cat Drag'd Inn and I am no sooner up to speed when a truck going the other way tosses a rock into my windscreen. SMACK! and there is a six inch ten pointed star burst just at the lower edge of the wiper area. Damn! to say the least. After all that three hundred and some miles on The Haul Road along the AlasKa Pipeline and young Master Ian hitting the sign post, now the windscreen breaks. I've replaced this not inexpensive piece of glass once before. This one came from a used up Superior in a bus graveyard in Canton OHio. The hardest part is not the paying for it, but rather the search for the glass.
Oh Well...
In any case we finally found the geocache. The clew here was a poem: windfall / rootball / rock wall / thats all. And there it was, tho it took me twice around the windfall to find it.
I left my rider off at Lolo. He's headed south and I'm going north.
Now I want to sit and think about all that has gone down over the past
week. Maybe month. What has Karma got to do with this. Which Way am I going?
Or going wrong.
Nonetheless, I am moving again. I just dispair of ever getting
anywhere.
And: Water sets the example for the right conduct under such circumstances. It flows on and on, and merely fills up all the places through which it flows; it does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions.
And so it is that I follow my ups and downs across America, for that is my Way.
Yesterday wandered through the Black Hills. The last time there was back in the Sixties, in the Yellow Van, with a patrol of Scouts. This time it was me and La Gata, and Oso conMigo. I left them to guard the bus and went for a walk. Harney Peak is the High Point of South Dakota and so it has a special attraction: there is one in each state. I've done/climbed/bagged five of them now but Harney is the first with this quest in mind of climbing the High Point. The others are all from incidental side trips along the road to elsewhere. Except Mount Washington, in New Hampshire and I lived there for a while. Climbed and drove to that summit, flew once, to make up for several of the other state high points.
The Willow Creek trail is shared with equestrians from the northern trailhead to a horse-parking area just below the last flight of stairs to the tower on summit. Clouds of buzzing flies rose from piles of road apples at each rest stop and switchback and the piles seemed to get closer together as the trail grew steeper and the switchbacks became tighter. In some places, climbing over the water-bars was akin to ascending a flight of giant's stairs or like running low hurdles and I wondered how the horses managed; the long legs of a horse might be more the right size than mine. But it was the road apples and their attendent flies that piqued my interest at the moment. Not all these piles had a retinue in attendence and so I am moved to ask: How long, for how many days, does the essence of excrement maintain its attraction for the flies? After the road apples are dehydrated will a good rain reconstitute them?
Access to Mount Rushmore has changed a lot since I was last here. I
don't remember much of the condition of the roads nor from which direction
I approached in the 60's. The drive up from Keystone must ascend two thousand
feet if it ascends an inch and I'll bet it is better than a seven percent
grade. It was a bull-low climb. I've been here as I said so I was not planning
to go again, nonetheless I was taken aback by the parking fee. Eight dollars!
And the guards are confiscating nail clippers and other implements of the
American Way of Life. Probly won't let you bring in your own water bottle
either.
At
first the signs were not as ubiquitous as those for Wall
Drug South Dakota but they were a lot bigger. Billboards proclaiming
SPAM!
I must admit the first thing that came to mind was the unwelcome junk that
shows up in my email--this despite having three tins of the pink pork in
my cupboard next to the mac&cheese, between the chess biscuits and
the basmati rice.
After the second such billboard I became intrigued but still hadn't made the connexion. Must not have been hungry enough. Or too busy with the traffic. Finally, after driving a few miles past the exit and seeing signs for Hormel, and Chili, the blues and yellows of the billboards made sense and I found a place to turn around and head back.
In the language of the disclaimers one finds on food packaging these days, in the SPAM Museum Tour Guide it says: This SPAM(TM) Museum contains no artificial stories or preservatives. Items within may be replicas or substitutions but the truth is there. Let's face it. You can't make this stuff up.
I recommend a serving for everyone. Single size or family, however the SPAM Museum "is most delicious in large groups." Its that kind of place.
Dave lives in a new house in a new development somewhat west of Chicago.
We worked together for a year or so at Palmer Station and he has been very
kind in remaining on my Dinner List since then; maintains a good wine cellar
and a fine grill. But his new neighbors leave something to be desired.
I wasn't there but a few hours and they were phoning up the local constabulary
to complain about the Gypsy circus wagon taking up residence in the vacant
lot. What about their property values and what about the safety of their
children? Having a Hippie Van on the corner is not in keeping with their
white picket fence and manicured lawn covenants. Fortunately the officer
who came to investigate was more adventurous. They only asked me to cover
the URL emblazoned across the stern of The Cat Drag'd Inn. Seems
it was giving some of the kids ideas not in keeping with their parents'
stuffy middle class values.
Somewhere, somewhen... Camptown, on s.r.706 in Bradford county, Pennsylvania, Stephen Foster wrote a song about the Camptown Racetrack. ...five miles long, doo-dah, doo-dah... Even at the village speed limit of 25mph there was not town enough to contain a five mile racetrack(Unless maybe it was pretzel shaped?), nor to finish singing the song.
And
then there is New York. Sometimes following the wiggly line on the map
is fraught with problems--steep hills, sharp curves on narrow terciary
roads, STOP signs in the strangest places--other times there are
the most serendipitous surprises. Taking the truck route around the center
of Glens Falls, past a great belching paper mill, over the most chuckholed
road so far on the tour, brought me out right next to the Hyde
Collection Art Museum. A museum a day keeps "driver's butt" at
bay. Like shopping, park at the far end of the lot and walk. The Hydes
made their fortune in paper during the last century and now this museum
is in the family home. Besides the art collected there, the architecture
and furnishing of the home is itself a museum and is so listed on the National
Register of Historic Places. Another place well worth getting off the interstate
for.
At another maple tree, in a rest area back along the road apiece, she was out to the end of her thether and managed to get up in the tree. Cats are second only to Tenderfoots when it comes to getting tied up in their work. Fortunately I've not forgotton how to climb trees. My training as a Cellar Saver back in Dalton, and a few days with the Paramus Fire Extinguisher School were put to the test.
We are visiting the son of a long ago friend who now has a kid of his
own and another on the way. Amazing isn't it? This generational progression...
Does this make me a grandfriender to the little one?
A bushel of mail at the post office to answer and a long list of projects to work on over the next few weeks whilst I cogitate upon which way next. For now I think I will take a nap and then see about unpacking the little truck.
Here a gap there a gap... This tale is related in starts and stops, mostly written in rest areas and mailed from truck stops. Now the bus is berthed at home port for some odds and ends of maintenance. Probly the worst that happend in the past few thousand miles was the broken windscreen. Next maybe was a flat on the toad which I found upon returning from a visit to the Hyde Collection Art Museum in Glens Falls. Hard to say what the best was. Knowing that Kathy is so far surviving her bout with C A N C E R?; the two silver spoons gifted me by Doyle?; breaking bread along the road with old friends and new? All and more were special times and good memories.
Thank you for all your good wishes and help. And especially, from some
of you, for your continued correspondence.
Love, ajo
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier
shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me. --Sir Isaac Newton
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Copyright © 2003, A.J.Oxton, The Cat Drag'd Inn , 03813-0144.