Piute Log...Rod the Goat Man 2001

1 Jul (Sun)      Woke up so stiff and so sore…could barely squeeze my thrashed, scab-covered hands into fists. [This, from three days of sawing up a gigantic lodgepole that had fallen into a narrow spot on the trail in the Buckeye Canyon.] Leaving today to get horses shod. ◦◦◦◦◦ Hit the trail a little after noon. At the Hidden Lake junction, turned off to check that trashed campsite right by the river. Red, bringing up the rear, cut the turn and in doing so his pack box clipped the sign, knocking it down (post all rotted). Thanks a lot, Red! Another chore to add to the long list. ◦◦◦◦◦ Then, just minutes later, had me another little equine-related NDE [near-death experience] up on Bamboo Flats. Up ahead I saw goats which meant that Rod Davis was on the loose. Haven’t seen him for several years now though he comes through this country at least once pretty much every summer. Some years I’ll receive messages from backpackers along the lines of: “We met this funny old coot with goats who said that if we saw the ranger to say ‘Hi.’” Rod, now 78 (just did the math), is still travelling solo and climbing mountains, always with at least one goat, sometimes with his dog as well. Anyway, he came over the rise and I saw the smile-of-recognition spread across his face. Each goat had a crisp, new, rain tarp covering its tiny load; bright blue and kinda billowing up at the sides. Piute stopped without me asking and stood stock still, staring straight ahead, ears on full alert, a full-body quiver. And then, with no warning, he blew up [western-ese for “went apeshit”]. He crow-hopped, reared, danced a little jig, spun around a couple times, and smashed into Woody for good measure. Full-on rodeo. Fortunately, we were in an open spot. I dropped the lead rope, went for the horn, and just held on. After a good long while (maybe three or four seconds) I began to wonder why he wasn’t cooling down at least a little. I had my back to Rod and the goats for most of this but at one point glanced over my shoulder and saw that they were still coming toward us. I yelled, “Rod! Get ‘em back!” but he kept advancing. “Rod! Get ‘em away! Get Back!” He stopped. Goats stopped. Piute continued trying to rid himself of me so that he could run away and maybe save himself. “Rod!! Get ‘em outa sight! I’m gonna get hurt!” The old man—who is very deaf—just stood there while I screamed (more like wailed), “ROD! Can’t you hear me?!! GET ‘EM AWAY!!” Finally he got the message and led them back over the rim. Before they were fully out of sight, I was able to execute an emergency dismount with fairly clean three-point landing. Tied my horror-struck saddlehorse to a stout sapling. The other two, by the way, had remained calm throughout. Piute and I, on the other hand, were both shaking with the adrenaline-squirts. I walked over the crest of the hill to go have a little chat with Rod. I was pretty steamed but we shook hands. “Hey, I’m always glad to see you, Rod, but I could’ve been killed back there. Or worse. Couldn’t you see that my horse was going bananas? Why didn’t you get ‘em off the trail? You know that a lot of horses freak out when they see these little monsters of yours.” He said, “Well, usually if a horse spooks a little he gets over it pretty quick. I saw two other packers today and their horses were okay.” I gave him the “stern ranger lecture” and admonished him to get his entourage well off the trail whenever he sees livestock coming. ◦◦◦◦◦ No further mishaps. At Cranney’s, both Craig and Scott, the new packer, told me about their own not-so-pleasant encounters. Scott’s story, a lot like mine: horse wigged-out…Scott, yelling at Rod to get ‘em the #$&@! away…a clueless Rod totally ignoring him. The old man has a real blind spot where his furry pals are concerned. Hopefully I’ll see him again when I come back in and can reinforce my message. ◦◦◦◦◦ Stopped at the Old Ranger Station and copped a shower at Greta’s. Looks like she just got back from the Tahoe fire—gear strewn everywhere. Ran into her in town but she couldn’t talk. She looked haggard. Tomorrow, I’ll be ferrying horses back and forth most of the day but have to stop by the office so she can tell me the full story. 

                                                                                   →  3 visitors       →  11½  miles       

 

The following day was spent helping ferriers and shifting stock. After work, I drove to Mammoth for supplies and witnessed a big lightning fire that was taking off in earnest. Next day:

 

3 Jul (Tue)     Eerie sunrise with Bridgeport Valley full of smoke from that new fire down near Mammoth, sun weakly lighting the Sawtooth through ruddy filter. ◦◦◦◦◦ Got away at a respectable 11:30 with giant load of supplies in tow. At Cranney’s, visited a bit with Scott. He seems pleasant enough. Craig told me that he’s one of those know-it-all types, which can be irritating (to say the least) if you have to work with them. When I arrived, Scott was training a couple of green horses. Turned out I had a sort of replay of the first time I packed out of Leavitt Meadows Pack Station in ‘87: Doc Grishaw, who I’d only recently met, was working in the yard when I showed up that morning. He hovered around the whole time—furtively watching how I brushed and saddled and loaded the horses, assessing my skill level and indeed my very character. (I’d been forewarned by Jim Kohman, who’d gone through the same screening process two years previous.) So I kept my eye on Doc, furtively watching him watching me. Same with Scott, who was clearly sizing me up. And just like with the Doc, he eventually couldn’t stand it any longer and came over to offer a couple of little “helpful hints.” ◦◦◦◦◦ On the trail, met a big family group of fourteen interrelated souls heading for Roosevelt Lake. Rode up on them right at my ranger sign, which several were just then perusing. (Love it when this happens.) Had a fruitful contact. A half-gaggle of children various sizes clustered around. As always, they wanted to know the horses’ names. “No, don’t touch his face! Just stroke him gently on his neck. That’s it.” Toward the end I asked if there were any questions. Boy of maybe eleven raises his hand like he’s in class and I point my finger at him. “Does lightning ever strike the ground? Around here, I mean?” Another storm was brewing and there’d already been some distant thunder. “Sure! All the time,” sez the ranger. I see eyes open wide. “See that big pine tree over there with the black scar at the base? That’s from a fire that started when the tree was hit, maybe fifty years ago and the bark’s partly grown back. If you were to cut that tree down, you’d probably find half a dozen burn scars where the bark and then new wood grew back over them.” A bit later, I was talking with three backpackers on their way out when the family group caught up and started passing by. Here came that boy again, with a couple of adults and more kids. “Hey! There’s something I forgot to tell you.” Everybody gathered ‘round and I got all serious and talked slow. “Some time back the world’s top lightning-ologists got together with all their data and they figured out—don’t ask me how—that lightning strikes Earth’s surface…three…thousand…times…per second. You think about that.” ◦◦◦◦◦ Ran into Rod Davis at the Fremont junction. He was camped at the site the trail crew uses, off in the forest and hidden from view. He knew I was coming back in today and, hoping to meet up again, Rod and the goats had been patiently waiting up on the hillside. After spotting me, he tied all three to trees and hurried down to catch me. We talked a while. Neither of us mentioned our little fiasco of 7/1. Rod took pictures of me and the horses. (He’s never done that.) When I was about to ride on he said, “I’m really glad to see you again. We waited here a couple of hours and I was about to give up on you. We’ve seen each other so many times that I’ve gotten to feel like I’m your friend.” Really touched, I said, “Well, you are my friend, Rod.” A warm parting handshake. I’m thinking maybe Rod knows his mountain rambles are numbered and that this could be our last meeting. What a character! Obviously a loner and a bit odd. I don’t recall him ever mentioning his wife and now I can’t recall what he did for a living. He’d been a cowboy, in Montana, when he was young. He’s a Seventh Day Adventist and has been a vegetarian for thirty-plus years; walks every day with his four-legged friends. May you stay forever young, Rod Davis. ◦◦◦◦◦ Back at the cabin, two couples, packs off, checking out my rock collection and digging it. The usual, “Did you find all of these around here?!” A very nice visit. Always gratifying to meet people who truly appreciate this place. Yet another couple was camped nearby, on this side of the river, and I later saw them meandering around the upper meadow during a particularly wonderful sunset with near-full moon, pink mountains, purple clouds and shifting moody mists. They were getting the full dose and I felt happy for them.

 

            →  24 visitors         →  1 lb. trash bits        →  10½ miles 

 

 

                  ©2024 Tim Forsell                                                                   27 Dec 2024                    

Piute Log...On Living With Bugs 2001

 First trip of the season in to the cabin…just starting to get things in order. (Putting up the drift fences is one of the first chores when opening up. Lest the horses decide to leave.)

26 Jun (Tue)      ◦◦◦◦◦ After lunch and coffee I got the front drift fence into a standing position. It’s completely thrashed and not much of a barricade. (Still, it looks like a fence and that’s usually enough to keep horses in.) All that’s left now is the across-the-river section of the back fence which requires two people to drag across. Mosquitoes positively HORRIBLE. I was sucking them up my nose and down my throat; trying to breathe through clenched teeth and not through the nose. Which is tedious, in case you’ve never tried doing that. Life in ranger-world, oh, boy. ◦◦◦◦◦ And, speaking of insects, here’s another gritty tale of living in the backcountry: After lunch, I “had to go.” Stepping into the shitter, I was greeted by a diffuse cloud of teensy weensy bugs that drifted out the open door like smoke. I knew what they were: moth flies—minuscule critters not much more than 3mm long…actual flies shaped like moths, with broad, fuzz-covered wings. Totally harmless and for the most part inoffensive. They lay their eggs in mucky places like shower drains and…outhouses. (They’re also known as “drain flies.”) I see them in the outhouse all summer long and, most mornings, find a few that bivouacked in between sheets of the roll of TP. On this day, conditions must have been ideal. I was witnessing a fresh hatch.Several thousand in a grand exodus, heading for the promised land. Never seen this before—this swarm thing. Must be the warm, humid nights. But because I was, ahem, in something of a hurry I plopped down on the seat and did my business. As I sat their, scores of the little buggers flew out of the triangular gap between my thighs, making their escape. I could feel (barely) these insubstantial critters bouncing off my bum, heading for daylight. A somewhat disconcerting sensation. Kinda disgusting, to be honest, even by my fairly lax standards. ◦◦◦◦◦

 

28 Jun (Thu)     ◦◦◦◦◦ Flies just awful. Saddling up, the greenheads were assaulting the horses. Tied to the rail, all three stood there totally helpless until I got their saddles on and was able to hose them down with bug juice. Piute, who seems to be particularly thin-skinned, had probably a hundred and fifty gnawing on his chest and legs and privates all at the same time. It was a ghastly sight. Imagine what that must feel like! These gargantuan horseflies with creepy-looking green eyes carve out little chunks of flesh—leaving holes big enough that blood oozes from them. They cluster like hogs at the trough around the small, open wounds they’ve created, sopping up the blood like alien vampires. Poor Piute was covered with hundreds of welts. The equines really suffer at this time of year. At least when they’re out in the meadow resting they can stand side-by-side and alternating head-to-rear, swishing their tails to keep the wing-ed devils off each other’s heads and chests. ◦◦◦◦◦ More bugs bugging: On the way over Kirkwood Pass we entered several “yes-fly-zones.” For long stretches, we’d be literally swarmed by face flies. Veritable clouds of ‘em surrounding the horses and my humble corpus, buzzing ears and eyes and bouncing off eyeballs. Harmless, non-biting dipterans apparently designed strictly to drive one mad. On both sides of the pass and all the way down to the Forks of Buckeye we’d enter and then leave these fly-controlled zones. They’d be horrible for a stretch and then, just like that, totally manageable. ◦◦◦◦◦

 

               ©2024 Tim Forsell                                                                           18 Dec 2024                   

Piute Log...Good Day On the Trail 1996

 28 Jul (Sun)     Rained a bit in the night—most unusual. I woke a couple of times hearing the telltale patter. Only got down to 53°; downright sultry. Feels weird, it being this warm at dawn. ◦◦◦◦◦ Today was a day to recharge the batteries. Woke up beat. Stayed beat. Did nothing work-like and napped repeatedly. After two long days of trailwork plus hours in the saddle getting there and back, I needs a rest. Not used to laboring in semi-tropical weather, sweatin’ like a pig. The last couple of days I’ve been vaguely aware that I was working way too hard in the humidity. Whenever I’m work-working, I go at it like “a man possessed.” Trailwork, for me, has always been a sort of penance; a way to vent pent-up angst—an outlet for the wild energy I used to offload on a regular basis, scaring myself silly on solo climbs or slogging up peaks. For whatever reason, I’ve never figured out how to pace myself like a normal human being. My pattern, repeated over and over, is to go like a racehorse until exhausted. No surprise that I wake up on morning-afters like this with a knot in my back or neck or just plain toasted and have to stay home to recuperate. ◦◦◦◦◦ Two sets of visitors stopped by today, both of them stock parties. The first bunch was from Reno: “Jack-the-wagon-man,” along with his two exceedingly wholesome teenaged kids and an old friend. It’s been a few years since we last met. Jack, so I’m told, is a renowned wagon expert. He usually comes up with the emigrant trail historians who search for artifacts as a way to locate and map the exact route. Jack’s special talent is identifying any rusty chunks of iron they find with their metal detectors; if it’s part of a wagon or cart, he’ll know what it is. (An aside: Jack is building a stagecoach replica in his garage. When I asked him how it was coming along, he mumbled something about hoping his wife wouldn’t divorce him.) Anyway, they were on their way to Tilden Lake [in Yosemite NP] but took a little detour so that Jack could show his son and daughter the old cabin where their parents spent part of their honeymoon. I held the kids’ horses while they took a quick peek inside and it warmed my cockles, watching their reactions. ◦◦◦◦◦ Roused from one last nap in the late afternoon, had a cuppa coffee, took a short stroll, and (finally!) installed the hammock. 

 

About this hammock: In the early years, I had it up in a seventy-foot-tall Jeffrey pine. This stately pine grew straight up the side of a thirty-five-foot vertical cliff. Its lowest limbs curved down to the top of the little bluff, which is how I was able to monkey my way up into the tree in the first place. There was a perfect spot to hang the hammock just a few yards below the top—a great location for a cozy aerial perch, with sweeping vistas of the whole upper canyon and Sierra crest. Unfortunately, this tree was across the river and several hundred feet up a steep hillside. The stiff, ten-minute hike from the cabin made it a little too far away for regular after-work relaxation. So, starting in 1994, I installed the thing closer to home: forty-some feet up a mature lodgepole pine, just yards from the cabin at meadow’s edge. Leaning an old aluminum ladder up against the trunk got me to the lowest limbs and, after thinning some branches, the climb was a cinch. I spent a lot of time up there, usually in the evening after work. I’d often bring one of the cats along. How? In my daypack, zipped in with just his head poking out. The cats didn’t care much for the trip up but, once in the hammock, clearly enjoyed being there. In fact, on occasion one of them would climb up on his own and join me. (The cats always climbed down, unassisted.) ◦◦◦◦◦ Relaxing (‘slounging,’ I called it) in a hammock up in a tall tree is mind-altering. Partly, I think, it’s from being up off the ground, all safe’n’secure; partly from what trees do to you when you’re resting in their arms. ◦◦◦◦◦ Case in point: One year, a Wilderness-outing group showed up at the cabin when I was home. College students. I was visiting with them when one young woman spotted my hammock. I could see she was extremely curious so I said to her, “Wanna try it out?” Her face lit up. “Can I?!” I ended up letting anyone who wanted to climb up and spend a few minutes in my hammock while the rest lunched. Almost everybody took me up on the offer. They came down, aglow. The following summer, I met another group from this same school; same leaders. One of them informed me that the previous year’s participants all agreed that the high point of their trip was the ranger’s hammock. “They couldn’t stop talking about it,” he said. 

 

[Continuing] Got it up and was slounging away when two fellas on horseback appeared out of the trees, splashed across the river, and headed for the cabin. It was the pair I’d seen a few days ago when I was working down around Fremont  junction. We barely spoke that day. They were heading for Beartrap Lake and seemed to be a big hurry so I just waved ‘em on by thinking, Uh-oh…there goes trouble. (Both, all westerned-out with big pistolas and outlandish Bowie knives strapped to their hips—not a good sign.) ◦◦◦◦◦ At any rate, here they were. As the pair rode into the yard I hailed them. Heads swivel, searching. “Hey! I’m up here!” They both look around some more, look up. Finally, one of them sees me. Shocked expressions. Me, in a conversational tone: “Hello there. What can I do for ya?” This was their last day (heading out tomorrow a.m.). Told them how to get to Howard Black’s camp. I’ll go see them in the morning. It’ll be too late but maybe I can at least educate them a little.

 

 →  6 visitors             → 1 mile             → hammock up!

 

29 Jul (Mon)     Feeling a bit livelier today. More of this weird weather; a bit cooler at dawn but cloud-puffs already forming. And we know what that means. When I walked out to get the horses, my legs were soaked up to the knees within seconds. I’ll say it again: never have I seen the grass this high. Normally, it’s just wet feet on a dewy morn. ◦◦◦◦◦ First off, rode up to Howard Black’s camp, expecting to find the usual: trash in the firepit, stressed-out horses digging trenches around the trees they’ve been tied to all night…the usual transgressions. ◦◦◦◦◦ Turns out I was wrong for once. My visitors were just finishing packing up. Their horses were tied to trees but resting easy. Camp was immaculate: I was dealing with two seasoned pros. They introduced themselves—Bill Smith and…Bob Smith. Not related. (Caught myself before making some inane, utterly predictable wisecrack.) Bob, from Fallon. Bill lives near Sacramento. Lifelong pals; late 40s or early 50s. These two have been going into the mountains together for thirty-some years now, they said—their main leisure pursuit. Told me how last night, sitting by their fire, all the talk was about was me up in my hammock…wondering how it came about that that guy managed to score their dream-job. Both expressed, in their own words, wistfully, that my scene was their personal notion of the ideal life. Bill: “How did we mess up so bad? Get ourselves tangled up with women and kids and mortgages and commutes? Where did we go wrong?” But they’re both still passionate about the mountains—real Wilderness aficionados. We shook hands and they told me I’d see them again. Made a couple of new Piute-friends today. ◦◦◦◦◦ Headed for Fremont Lake. Red, of course, freaked out when we rode right past the cabin. He figured he was done for the day. We pressed on, leaving his friend Valiente behind yet again—a small tragedy, in Red’s world. ◦◦◦◦◦ Down Middle Piute way, crossing the river, the mystery of what happened to the missing merganser family was resolved: They moved. Downriver! Which means they all floated through the gorge—mostly whitewater as of now. Still nine merganserlings, much bigger now but still nowhere near flight. ◦◦◦◦◦ Started running into a strung-out group bound for Tower Lake. A hiking club from Indianapolis, Indiana (of all places). Every summer they take a backpack trip in a different state. Now, these folks all appeared to be regular middle-class Americans. Hard to put a finger on it but there was this subtle air about them; almost like they were from another country. Very pale-skinned, yes, but they didn’t even talk funny. Still, it was glaringly obvious that these folks were “not from around h’yar.” Turns out there are actually 18 of them in two separate parties (10 in this one). They’d all flown to Reno and rented cars. Get this: the two groups start out at different trailheads, meet halfway, exchange car keys, and shuttle each others’ rigs back to the airport. This is how they always do it. Self-shuttling! Brilliant! I applauded their logistic prowess. ◦◦◦◦◦ On to Fremont. It was after noon by this time; thought maybe I’d run into the trailcrew on lunch break. Just past Chain of Lakes junction, ran into them, already back to work. They’ve gotten a lot done since I last came through here. Talked to everybody (but mostly with Mark) and tossed out complements freely. Mark noticed that I had my little folding saw and asked if I could do some lopping for them—a few hanging limbs, out of reach. Everybody was amused to see me standing on Red’s saddle, sawing away. Mark took photos. Told him that it’d probably get us in trouble if he put one of them in his slide-show. (An inside joke: a few years back Mark put on one of his fabulous slide shows at some Forest Service muckity-mucks gathering. Various head honchos and sub-honchos were appalled to see all these photos of tanned, shirtless, overtly healthy trailworkers flagrantly disobeying allthe safety rules—no long-sleeved shirts, no gloves, no goggles, no hardhats, no sawyers’ chaps! Egads!) ◦◦◦◦◦ Doubled back to Fremont where I ran into a group of—count ‘em—twenty Boy Scouts. Singled one of the leaders and went to work on him. The old two-separate-permits trick. But he knew the rules; knew that I knew that he knew the rules, had no excuses, blah bla blah. Unaware that I was going to let him off, he weaseled and squirmed while I chastised him—the usual dance, in a word. Nice fella…looked just like John Muir. After a thorough interrogation, he showed himself to be very conscientious; a trash-hauling fanatic. I explained the reasoning behind the group size limit. Also told him that, for me, this was a hard rule to enforce seeing as how it allowed horse-groups of 15 with an additional 10 pack animals for a total of 25 head, not counting the packers. I haven’t been able to get too riled up about oversized hiking groups since this one incident, years back: Right in the middle of bawling out a preacher with 18 sheep in his flock, here comes a full-on Bart Cranney mid-summer caravan. Three packers, 15 dudes; probably the full complement of pack mules—well over a hundred steel-clad hooves churning the trail to smithereens. When the parade had passed and the dust cleared, preacher man fixed me with an ironic, questioning look, like, “You were saying…?” It was my turn to weasel and waffle. ◦◦◦◦◦ Ran into two guys with fishing poles at the PCT bridge who went with the 7 head that I’d seen back in Walker Meadows, grazing away behind one of those portable electric fences. Had myself another excellent visit with two thoroughly professional backcountry stock users; people who truly care for the land. They asked lots of good questions. So uplifting to have good encounters with private stockmen for a change—two in one day, no less! Typically, these are my most frustrating, most demoralizing encounters. ◦◦◦◦◦  One last meeting: a lone hiker on the Long Lakes trail. I rode up on him from behind and sensed that something was wrong. (Huge pack with stuff tied all over the outside seemed a little off for a solo backpacker.) Turns out this guy was an assistant scout leader. And, despite having a map in his hand, he was lost. More like confused. Got the poor assistant scout leader pointed in the right direction and assured him he’d get there by dark. He’ll be beat. I tend to not ask temporarily-lost people how they managed to get themselves that way—too embarrassing for both of us. ◦◦◦◦◦ Gave Red his head. Dashed home under full steam. Seriously gray up ahead. It’d been threatening for hours and finally started to rain. At first, the sun was still out. Gorgeous: pewter-gray sky, sun glinting off raindrops. Very high romance-coefficient. It came down hard for a while then stopped just as we pulled up at the hitch rail. Good smells, good lights, good timing. A good day.

 

→  15½ miles      →  43 visitors       →  3 lbs.trash       →  50 feet lopped

 

 

          ©2024 Tim Forsell                                                                          23 Sep 2024                    

No More Sound-of-Silence 2024

THE SUMMER I TURNED SEVEN, my family spent several days at Lava Beds National Monument. This was 1965, the year we went to Oregon on our annual summer vacation. Lava Beds is way up in northern Siskiyou County, close to the border. It was our first time there and we all fell in love with the place. In fact, Lava Beds is where my life-long fondness for open, sagebrush country took root. But the thing that made the greatest impression on me during our initial visit, hands down, was the lava tubes—horizontal caves formed by tongues of red-hot lava that start to cool and harden on the outside while their still-molten interiors ooze onward. Back in those days you could rent one of those old-fashioned Coleman gas lanterns at the visitor center and explore the tubes on your own. For a boy my age, this was quite a thrill. And it was here, during one of our underground adventures, that I got to experience Total Silence and Utter Darkness for the very first time. At the terminal end of this one lava tube, we all sat down and got comfortable. My dad then turned off our lantern. No one made a peep. I remember being awestruck—no claustrophobia or panicky feelings; nothing like that. “Awed” is the word. The air—the space—felt thick and heavy. I waved my hand right in front of my nose: nothing! Having two of my six senses all of a sudden just switched off stirred up some sort of primal emotional response. Whatever it was, it was exhilarating. 

            Sad to say, this was both my first and last encounter with Total Silence. Due to an ear injury, since my mid-teens I’ve been listening to this high-pitched monotone drone that emanates from somewhere inside my skull: eeeeeee!-weeeeeeweeeee-weeeeee! I’ve lived with this tedious background noise for all these years now and it’s still tedious. And weird, having known all along that this “sound” is nothing more than a fabrication—a fiction contrived by my brain. In any case: no more absolute silence for yours truly. 

The shrill humming in my ears is the result of stupidity: a sixteen-year-old me playing with dynamite (figuratively speaking). At school. In the back room of my chemistry class. Yes, that’s right—a classic instance of “chemistry experiment, gone awry.” As it turns out, this was perhaps my dumbest exploit ever and I paid a steep price. And am reminded of it daily. Oh well. Chalk it up to the not-fully-developed teenage brain. 

My junior year of high school I took two semesters of chemistry—Chem 1A and 1B, both classes taught by my all-time-favorite educator, “Mr. Robertson,” who is right there at the top of an imaginary list of life-changing mentors. You see, my chemistry teacher, Hank Robertson, was a bit of a climber and mountaineer. Somehow, he obtained my parents’ permission and took me rock climbing during Easter break, with ropes and chocks and carabiners; the works—an experience seared into my memory banks. It was two years before I got to go again but, after that first time, I was already hooked. (“Here, ya go, kid…the first one’s free!”) To further seal my fate, starting right after classes ended in June, Mr. Robertson led a summer-school backpacking course—and that’s how I came to take my first hiking trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

So you could blame a certain chemistry teacher for my dropping out of college to pursue a dangerous sport that would become my life’s chief focus for fifteen years. Which led me to move to the Eastern Sierra where I was a backcountry ranger for two decades before taking a job in the White Mountains and spending two more decades living with the bristlecone pine. [Hank Robertson passed away in 2020, age eighty-five.] 

 

My lab partner, Fran, and I were Mr. Robertson’s pet students that year. We aced all the tests and quizzes. Both of us loved the class—the formulas and equations; breaking down chemical reactions on paper; the beautiful logic behind it all. (Fran went on to became a pharmacological researcher and professor at UC San Francisco.) We used real Laboratory Equipment: graded pipettes and Bunsen burners…test tubes and beakers and delicate balances; handled hazardous chemicals. But it was the man at the front of the room who brought the subject alive. Hank Robertson was one of those unforgettable teachers: handsome, charismatic; always neatly dressed, with that all-important twinkle in his eyes. He certainly had a way with young people—great delivery, wry sense of humor, and an infectious enthusiasm. He’d joke around between periods but during class Mr. Robertson was all business, with a look that would shut everyone up pronto. Like all great educators, he was teaching us how to think. With it came a challenge: You! Figure it out! This was an intoxicating approach for students eager to learn. Mr. Robertson made chemistry fun. He called me Tim-o-thy, and Fran, Fran-chess-ca, pronouncing our names in a mock-formal manner; clearly enunciating the syllables in a way that somehow made us feel respected, even loved. Feelings that were reciprocated.

            The next fall, I very much wanted to have Mr. Robertson again. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach any other classes for seniors. But there was this one option…. 

During my second semester of Chem 1 there was a guy named Ron, a senior, who worked by himself in an adjoining storage room where the chemicals and surplus lab equipment lived. We both ran track (Ron, on the Varsity team; me, a lowly JV) and would see each other at practice after school. I wouldn’t call him a friend but we knew each other. It turns out that Ron was the latest of what must have been a long line of Robertsonian acolytes. He, too, got introduced to rock climbing and later became a serious climber himself. So, while our class was in session Ron was in the storage room performing experiments and getting regular class credits. “Directed Studies,” it was called. Periodically, I’d wander back there to see what my teammate was up to. Ron had his own key to a locked cabinet where the, shall we say, more interesting materials were kept. On occasion, he’d pull a glass-stoppered bottle or two out of the cabinet and put on a little demonstration for our eyes alone. I recall the time he poured out a little two-inch-tall, cone-shaped pile of potassium permanganate and lit its apex. The pile didn’t actually ignite but instead sort of smoldered, shooting up a thin stream of (probably toxic) smoke like a tiny, tiny volcano as it slowly imploded. Very cool! 

            So I signed up for a semester of Directed Studies, mostly to be around my favorite teacher. I was provided with an instruction manual and a copy of the key to the locked cabinet and it was off to the races. Every Monday, Mr. Robertson handed me a vial of Mystery Fluid. My task: using a variety of analytical techniques (a process called “qualitative analysis”), tease out the Mystery Fluid’s chemical constituents. The fact is that I barely remember my senior year of high school. So what exactly did I accomplish in that cramped storeroom? I really can’t say. With little in the way of supervision and no set schedule, there had to have been a lot of goofing off. There are only a few specific events I can still recall and they all center around certain, ahem, extracurricular activities.

Now, I’m fairly sure that Hank Robertson didn’t show Ron those mad-scientist party tricks. This is years before the internet arrived, mind you. As near as I can tell, the demonstrations Ron staged on my behalf were like schoolyard rhymes—things faithfully passed along from generation to generation. (In this case, by nerdy Chem 1 veterans who took Directed Studies.) One day, while class was in session, I took a break from my qualitative analysis. Prank time! With a 250ml beaker half full of nitric acid in hand, I strolled out of the storeroom and casually placed it under the hooded vent at the front of the room. There was a test that day and the room was silent. With no warning or fanfare, I switched the hood on prior to slipping several paper-thin strips of copper metal into the beaker. In moments, a dense cloud of orange smoke (which I now know to be highly toxic) began billowing from the mouth of the beaker. Quite dramatic! As expected, this caused quite a stir. With an impudent grin, I turned and fled back to my science cave. I shot a glance at Mr. Robertson who was slowly shaking his head, lips pursed—a not-necessarily-angry expression that showed subtle hints of amusement. Or so I imagined. He said not a word. I was his golden boy and could get away with stuff.

            Most fun of all  (thank you, Ron!) was messing around with nitrogen tri-iodide. Here’s what you do: Take a few crystals of pure iodine—little ones, roughly the size of a sesame seed—and place them in a petri dish (a shallow glass container about the size and shape of a mayonnaise jar lid). Pour in just enough ammonium hydroxide to cover them. Within minutes the shiny, metallic-gray crystals expand slightly and turn brown. Using forceps, transfer the what now look like minute clumps of mud to a second petri dish to dry. When the ammonium hydroxide evaporates, the little particles—tuh duh!— are a brand-new substance called nitrogen tri-iodide (NI₃). Note that NI₃ is a very curious compound—it’s highly unstable. So not-stable that the slightest vibration, even a loud sound, causes it to spontaneously disintegrate. That is, explode. (Instability-wise, nitroglycerine ain’t got nuthin’ on NI₃.) So here’s the fun part: while they’re still damp, one can scatter these innocuous-looking granules in classroom doorways or beneath desks. If timed just right, unsuspecting students entering the classroom or sitting down at their desks experience what feels like a tiny explosion going off underfoot—an unnerving sensation, to say the least. Confined betwixt shoe sole and floor tile, the tiny particles detonate with a sound and force equivalent to that of cap-gun “caps” going off.[1] A peerless prank! What a hoot! You should see the looks on their faces, ha ha!

            An important caveat: when handling NI₃, it’s essential that one do so while the stuff is still damp—that is, before it has fully transformed into hyper-volatile NI₃.

            One day, I had an inspired idea. Time to up the game: instead of those measly little crumbs, I’d prepare a substantial hunk of nitrogen tri-iodide! To that end, I took the biggest crystal in the Iodine jar and gave it the standard treatment. After transferring the thumbnail-sized brown lump to a fresh petri dish, I placed it on a shelf inside one of the floor cabinets to dry and went back to whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. What my intentions were with regards to this little hunk of trouble is a real mystery.

             Somewhat later it occurred to me that the lump might be getting dry, in which case it needed wetting down. The eye-dropper was over on the lab bench along with the jug of ammonium hydroxide. I clearly recall opening the cabinet door, gingerly pulling out the petri dish, and lifting it to eye level for close inspection—to see if the lump was sufficiently moist. It didn’t appear to be very moist. In fact, it looked pretty desiccated. My last thought: I’ll just carry this over to the bench and wet it down with the eye-dropper. 

Maybe all it took was my breathing on the thing but what happened next was this: like magic, the harmless-looking brown lump turned into a magenta-colored cloud comprised of nitrogen gas and vaporized elemental iodine. Several grams of nitrogen tri-iodide blew up in my face with a sharp-edged, earsplitting !!!BANG!!! that decibels-wise was probably equivalent to a deer rifle being fired ten inches from my nose.  

Things got kind of fuzzy at this point. Stunned, with a still-intact petri dish in my hand, I reeled out into the classroom (An instinctive impulse, perhaps, to let everybody know I was still alive.) All eyes were on me. Mr. Robertson was slowly shaking his head, wearing a dour expression with not a hint of humor about his tightly pursed lips. If he said anything I didn’t catch the words because all I could hear just then was a piercing, high-pitched whine through ears stuffed with soft putty. Turning back into the storeroom, in shock, I saw someone’s visage reflected in a glass cabinet door: some idiot in blackface. You see, the face in the reflection was stained a brownish-purple color, with prominent white rings around both eyes—the explosion had blown my glasses off. The front of my shirt was the same color, as was my left arm. (Lucky for me, vaporized iodine isn’t a deadly poison.) Uncontained, the explosion produced nothing shrapnel-like. Still, if not for being a glasses-wearer, it’s likely that my eyes would have been damaged. As it was, my ears took the hit. Several days went by before my hearing returned to normal but once it did there was a residual, high-pitched whine droning in the background—the sound I’ve been listening to without respite for half a century.

            Significant details of this fairly major life-event are lost to me. Some of them may be buried in my subconscious. For instance, I have no recollection of being reprimanded by my beloved mentor. (Mr. Robertson dressing me down? That I’d remember.) So far as I know, teachers from neighboring classrooms didn’t rush over to see what had happened. There were no repercussions: no being marched to the principal’s office; the police weren’t summoned; no call made to the miscreant’s parents. (My folks never knew about any of this.) It’s hard to believe there were zero consequences; if this had taken place today, what sounded for all the world like a gunshot coming from a classroom might have led to a full-on lockdown—years of active-shooter drills kicking in automatically…pandemonium spreading like wildfire. The po-leece definitely would have been involved. A teacher would be in hot water. I’d have been suspended, just for starters.

My my my, how things have changed! This was 1976—two or three ages ago…a bygone era where any youngster could walk into the nearest dime store[2] and, without parental consent, buy a box containing twelve rolls of cap-gun caps made with REAL GUNPOWDER. As every schoolboy knew, caps could be used to fabricate what we kids called “bombs” (e.g., home-made incendiary devices that burned, fizzled, or exploded). Incredible as it now seems, it had not yet occurred to any of the millions of parents in our great nation that twelve-year-olds oughtn’t be permitted to buy things made with REAL GUNPOWDER. Or that kids on skates or riding skateboards should maybe wear some sort of protective gear. Me: I was one of those non-psychopathic-but-very-keen firebugs who started playing with matches as soon as they were within reach. At eight, I set a neighbor’s dry summer lawn on fire with a magnifying glass (we were frying ants) and burned my hand tamping it out so as to forestall the mortification of reducing my best friend’s house to ashes. At eleven, I discovered the box of bullets for my dad’s 22 caliber pistol—well hidden, he thought—and pried the heads off a bunch of them to get at the gunpowder. At thirteen, I started a flue fire by lighting opened-up, inverted paper lunch bags that floated up the chimney like little hot-air balloons. (No idea where that idea came from.) At fourteen or fifteen, a “bomb” made of strike-anywhere match heads wrapped up inside multiple layers of tinfoil went off in my hand as I was squeezing the thing into a densely packed ball prior to hurling it against a wall. (The burns were minor.) And these are just a few choice examples. There are many more. Amazingly, I got away with most of these misdeeds. (The flue fire, which took place at around five a.m. when no one else was up, went out on its own after ten utterly terrifying seconds.) But not all of them. (Those missing bullets; that one got me in deep doo-doo.) As a budding empiricist, all through my youth I considered these and similar shenanigans to be legitimate forms of scientific experimentation. I always had this misguided sense, belied by the facts, that I knew what I was doing and was in complete control. Truth be told, this has been a recurring theme in my life—one that I still grapple with.

 

As for my damaged ears: for the most part, chronic tinnitus is one of those things you can just tune out. It’s barely noticeable unless I’m in a quiet room, say, or in bed at night. The problem is, I simply adore the sound of pure, unadulterated silence and have always been  drawn to places and situations where you can’t hear a damn thing: grottos and caves; abandoned mine tunnels; mountaintops on windless days. 

For years I lived and worked at a remote educational facility, high in eastern California’s White Mountains (“HOME OF THE ANCIENT BRISTLECONE PINE, WORLD’S OLDEST LIVING THING”). Crooked Creek Research Station, at 10,150 feet—few workplaces are as noise-free: miles from a paved road; no major flight paths overhead; very little vehicular traffic. Visitors often commented on the quiet. Some found it a little unsettling. Others loved it. Every so often, I’d tell the ones who spoke positively about the quiet how much it meant to me, personally, adding, “To me, perfect silence is a kind of music.” 

I was pretty much in charge of the station but my official job-title was “cook.” Most days, I’d get up at four-thirty to make breakfast for my guests. Walking to the kitchen, usually in the dark or first hints of dawn, I’d almost always pause for a few seconds and listen to the magnificent sound of absolutely nothing. In the spring and fall, when it’s still fully dark at five a.m., I’d stand there beneath a firmament ablaze with stars and listen for the music of the spheres. These pre-dawn reveries were sweet but, alas, somewhat sullied by my brain glitch—prominent against the impeccable aural backdrop; an acoustic fly-in-the-ointment. Thanks to that bone-headed teenage stunt, the sanctity of raw silence exists only in my imagination. On the other hand, the buzz in my ears has helped me maintain a durable sense of gratitude for the miracle of hearing.

 

   ©2024Tim Forsell                                                                      12 Sep 2024

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[1] I realize that readers of a certain age will have no idea what a “cap gun” is or what sort of mischief a tweenage boy growing up in the 1960s could get into with a few rolls of caps at his disposal. Google it.

[2] Another anachronism! A “dime store” is the equivalent of what is now known as a Dollar General.

It's Waves, "All the Way Down" 1992

 epiphany (ĭ-pif’-uh-nē) n., pl. –nies. 3a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something. b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization. (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4^th ed., 2009.)

 

LABOR DAY WEEKEND WAS OVER, thank god. Now that everybody had gone home, a nice long ride was in order. Time to look in on some far-flung corners of my bailiwick. So after finishing up the usual morning chores I caught and saddled Pal and we headed off for Emigrant Pass and points beyond—a long patrol into some gorgeous  country up on the Humboldt-Toiyabe/Stanislaus boundary. Another top quality day in the mountains but I’ve already forgotten whatever went down, aside from something well out of the ordinary that happened on our way back to the cabin.

            Coming down from Long Lakes, at the foot of that last big grade…feeling pretty pounded after twenty-some miles and eight hours in the saddle, topped off by that last set of switchbacks. With only a couple of miles to go, we pulled up at the river crossing in Lower Piute Meadows. Pal was parched—he hadn’t had a drop all day long (this one absolutely refuses to drink from lakes and ponds) so I dropped his reins, knowing from hard-earned experience that failure to do so would result in them being ripped right out of my hands as soon as the big palomino foxtrotter got two hooves in the water. 

Whenever your equine cohort needs rehydrating you’re presented with a golden opportunity to relax and have a look around. (Enjoy the break—this may take a while.) So while Pal slaked his jumbo thirst I sat there in my leather high chair and got lost in the dancing sparkles made by sunlight glancing off the lazy river’s glassy surface, straight into my eyeballs. The miracle of polarized sunglasses allowed me to gaze at this hypnotic spectacle for as long as I wanted without being permanently dazzled. Meanwhile, the upper West Walker was doing what rivers do: taking the watery path of least resistance on a long, downhill slide to its next temporary resting place (in this case, following a brief layover in Topaz Reservoir, fields of alfalfa in Smith Valley, Nevada). Sitting there, I recalled how it looked—and sounded—right here at this very spot back in mosquito-ey June when the river was tearing along, all froth and liquid white-noise.

The Lower Piute ford is flat and free of obstructions—important features, particularly for packers leading strings of mules. (During the spring flood, hidden obstacles can turn a mere stumble into full-blown calamity.) Well over a century ago, Basque sheepherders and their tenders used this crossing. Sheep men supplying mutton to hungry miners during the Aurora and Bodie mining booms were among the earliest horseback visitors to this part of the world but, before their arrival, the Shoshonean peoples whose name these meadows now bear waded across at this exact same spot when the water was high—for millennia. At this time of year, here where the river meanders through a series of pocket meadows, the ford is still fairly broad but only inches deep. Just a little ways up-river, what’s left of the West Walker has already slowed to an almost silent crawl after one final boisterous tumble over an expanse of cobbled bed. Beyond that, farther up-canyon, the river’s gradient dwindles to almost nothing in the span of a few hundred yards. During the spring runoff, it slows incrementally through this stretch and as the river settles down, first boulders then rocks, cobbles, pebbles, gravel, and sand drop out in turn until the sluggish current carries nothing weightier than silt and organic matter—the very reason this string of meadows happens to be where it is in the first place. 

The ford has a coarse gravel bottom of mostly small pebbles and DG (decomposed granite)—a coarse mix of quartz and feldspar crystals along with smaller fragments of darker minerals including mica, which reflects sunlight and adds a little bit of sparkle to the scene. By mid-July, when the water has slowed way down and is considerably warmer, algae colonizes the gravelly bottoms. This thin layer of underwater  vegetation turns the river bed a hard-to-describe color: sort of a dark-khaki green with orangish-tan undertones. Light reflecting off the bottom creates a false impression that the water itself has taken on this, what some would call, “yucky” color. By the time August rolls around, the upper West Walker is typically little more than a mid-sized creek, kept alive by residual snowfields clinging to cliffs and gullies up on the crest. 

            Back to the now & here. Low-angle late-summer sunlight slanted into the gently murmuring remnants of what had been a minor torrent just a couple of months before. Me, sitting there on Pal’s back, idly watching the river roll on by with those delightful flickering sunbursts bouncing off the back of my skull. Out of the blue, something else snagged my attention. Actually, two things materialized in my visual field—two separate phenomena, both of them somehow linked to those dancing sparkles. Both had completely escaped notice even though I’d been staring right at them. 

Clearly visible on the river’s near-glassy surface was a striking honeycomb pattern consisting of discrete, polygonal “cells.” Roughly six to ten inches in diameter, each one had a slight indentation near its center, like the little dimple you see when a whirlpool is starting to form above a bathtub or sink drain. These isolated bits of swirling current, I could see, were little eddies. Each one was  rimmed on all sides with identical rotating cells, all of which were separated by distinct but subtle boundaries. (In other words, they had “edges.”) As it happened, the lighting was perfect and I was able to focus on individual cells as they slowly passed by and saw how some would curl into their neighbors and merge while others divided in two. At the same time, an entire network of stripy shadows shimmied on the orangish-tannish-khaki-colored river bed—an offset mirroring of the eddy-cells’ edges visible on the surface. These criss-crossing lines formed a grid of filamentous shadows of varying widths and shades of gray. (Imagine if you will, shadows cast by an open-meshed fishing net lying on the surface—a net made out of some sort of make-believe multi-strand cordage, each segment simultaneously unraveling and re-raveling while the whole thing undulates in a sensuous,  rhythmic manner most pleasing to the eye.) 

Moments before, staring at those flickering sunbursts, almost in a trance, my mind was adrift. But this new show had me wide awake and rapt. It so happens that I’ve observed a similar play of wavering shadows on other stream beds without giving them much thought. But on this one particular sunny afternoon I really saw them—really saw them—as if for the first time. (This may have been due to my weariness; I know from experience that fatigue can unlock a part of the brain that lets you see things through a different lens.) There was a lot going on here—things that I’d completely overlooked. A wordless thought appeared in my mind, the gist of which was: Amazing: the countless hours I’ve spent sitting beside streams and rivers…watching them roll by, gazing into their depths.  All my years in the mountains, completely unaware of flowing water’s hidden complexities. So much going on in there that we’re not even aware of!

Now, every so often, when some weird or inexplicable natural phenomenon grabs my attention, what I’ve come to call “the inner scientist” suddenly rises up and takes the helm—a hyper-objective, emotionally detached version of Me who observes things with an empirical eye…some nerdy guy who talks inside my head using my voice. (It’s a subtle thing; often, only later will I realize he made one of his appearances and weighed in on something.) It was, in fact, the arrival of the inner scientist that caused regular-me to snap to attention and focus on the various things I was looking at. The following is an account of what inner-science-guy observed:[*]

The presence here of these compartmentalized eddies is owing to the river’s shallowness and its smooth, flat bed. (Deeper, faster-moving water and a rocky bottom would result in a more homogenous mixture of currents.) Water flowing along the bottom is slowed by drag. This draws water from near the surface which in turn creates upwelling currents, initiating localized rotational flow as a means to absorb the drag. Discrete “pods” of swirling water begin to emerge due to the meeting of neighboring currents—currents that are moving at varying speeds or in direct opposition—which causes invisible boundaries to form between adjacent compartments. Meanwhile, down-stream flow (that is, horizontal flow) induces the contents of each pod to begin rotating around a vertical axis, creating an incipient whirlpool—a vortex. Sunlight reflecting off each eddy-pod’s faintly indented, rimmed surface exposes the presence of three things in ceaseless motion: a vortex, the pod’s shifting two-dimensional shape, and its outer edges—all this on a shifting tide of low amplitude waves (the reason why the shadows on the gravelly bottom appear to undulate). And as for those undulating shadows: the darkish, swaying lines are a result of refraction—the bending of light as it enters a new, largely transparent medium. Light striking the ever-so-slightly uplifted outer edges of each eddy-pod is refracted through the body of water at different angles, casting that weird pattern of roughly polygonal false-shadows—“false,” in the sense that nothing is actually blocking the sun—on the river bed. All of the pods are connected, edge to edge: an endless fleet of eddies…revolving amoeboid bubbles rimmed on all sides by others of their kind…each and every eddy-cell a manifestation of chaos and randomness operating according to physical law. Shrinking, swelling, colliding…merging and dividing…giving way in a seamless chaotic anarchy. All the while flowing onward as one united body.

Then, again out of the blue, something else happened: I—that is, regular me; non-science-guy me; the bone-tired ranger who just wanted to get home and out of his filthy uniform—was pervaded by a certain clarity. I was, just like that [snap fingers here], in possession of a Great Truth. It seemed to have been triggered by that last point: flowing onward as one, united body. But no words or conceptualization were involved. Logical thought was bypassed. What appeared in my mind came fully formed. The following is a crude rendition; the best I can come up with. And it won’t sound like much. 

This entire river—all rivers—ALL WATERS!—are one colossal entwined network of currents within currents within currents…a turbulent confusion of waves and swirling eddies, interacting without cease: one thing. One GREAT BIG MOVING THING!

Mental-flashes, epiphanies, whatever you care to call them, don’t fare well in translation. Note that the words above don’t add up to a literally true statement: not all lakes and ponds have watercourses flowing in and out of them, after all, and many streams and rivers don’t empty into the great Earth-spanning ocean. (It so happens that the river in question, the West Walker, drains into a land-locked sink—the Great Basin.) My Big Insight was founded on the somewhat fuzzy notion of all waters being one water. Here, it was something I actually visualized via a host of fleeting images. For one  brief moment, I saw all this in my mind and knew. But that was just one facet of what took place. The real meat of whatever it was that lit up my mind (again, there’s no way to adequately describe this) was a convoluted, deep understanding of what nature-as-one-colossal-interconnected-network actually means, big picture—of grasping instantaneously the essence of a top-tier, universal truth. Nature as an interconnected whole is a broadly held philosophical/religious precept—a thing that, as an undeclared pantheist, I’ve understood to be true for half a century. The difference here was that this wasn’t something that I thought or believed to be true. Unfortunately, saying “I was possessed by a profound yet simple, wordless understanding,” even with sincere and humble intent, sounds like ostentatious blather. The fact is that any attempt to describe an experience of this nature will fail to capture its core truth. Words can’t convey the emotional impact. In any case: it hit me hard and “felt” like something genuinely insightful. 

I should make clear that incidents of this ilk befall me from time to time, always without warning—maybe a dozen big ones and others less impactful, beginning in my early teens. As for trying to express the overall feeling behind these…things-I-don’t-even-have-a-name-for: this may sound silly, but the thing that comes closest to capturing the feel of them is that venerable cartoon lightbulb-over-the-head motif. More to the point, the farcical comic strip character (outstretched arms, saucer-eyed, goofy grin, sweat drops flying) with gleaming light bulb in the thought-bubble over his head denoting the unforeseen arrival of a Great Idea or Perfect Plan. That works for me. As for the weirdness factor: there have been a few semi-hallucinatory apparitions, yes. Usually, time slows to a crawl and things get real quiet. Also, there’s this peculiar zooming-in sensation: seeing things or scenes as if magnified—preternaturally clear…hazy around the edges. I can say categorically that it’s nothing like being on LSD or psilocybin mush-rooms. These “visions” don’t last long. Maybe five or ten seconds. And, once over, bang, I pop right back into normal consciousness—typically with an unvoiced Whoa! THAT was weird!-type reaction. For me, the so-called “big ones” are accompanied by waves of gratitude for having been gifted with something extraordinary. Sometimes (as if these events need validation) they come with a bonus: one of those delicious up-the-spine frissons. Unfortunately, within seconds, whatever it was that just stopped me cold dissipates like smoke, leaving in its wake a sort of residue. There’s a sensation analagous to the anguish of waking from an incredibly stirring, vibrant dream—one of those dreams that fade away and then are just gone even as, still three-quarters asleep, you desperately try to hang on to its memory and message. 

Nonetheless: these experiential gifts-of-the-gods tend to have lasting effects on my thinking and morph into vivid, easily recalled memories that remain potent even though the remembrance may only vaguely resemble what actually went down. As for that riverside epiphany: though not as powerful as some, this one comes to mind now and again. It has proven to be a handy allegorical tool, a stepping stone to further imaginative speculation. To illustrate what I mean: What I saw in the river that day came back to me when I first learned of the following—

 

Over the last few decades astrophysicists have firmly established that galaxies, once thought to be randomly distributed in space, are in fact grouped in clusters. Clusters of from dozens to up to several thousand individual galaxies are found gathered together along linear galactic “filaments“ or in planar “walls” and “sheets” separated by all-but-empty voids hundreds of millions of light years across. Such “supercluster complexes,” largest organized structures in the known universe, are held together gravitationally by aggregations of the mysterious dark matter, forming web-like networks—Networks that, in computer simulations, I recall thinking, bear a passing resemblance to those curious shadows I saw on the river bed. These web-like configurations, astrophysicists tell us, can be envisioned as “an immense cosmic froth” or “galactic foam.” All right, then! We’re talking about something beyond our ken, an enormity so utterly unfathomable that pondering it for more than a few seconds at a time leads to existential distress. All of it, though—everything contained within this incomprehensible vastness, whether it be thin air or fire or flowing water or even galactic foam…all of it—is subject to the same natural laws that shape our world and our daily lives, reiterated at each and every scale in fractal fashion. There’s spacetime. There’s energy. There’s energy in the form of matter, matter in the form of feverishly vibrating subatomic particles. There’s perpetual movement and change…time’s perhaps illusory arrow. There’s chaos and entropy. 

At bottom, one could simply say that It’s all waves…waves, ‘all the way down.’

I’m thinking of dancing shadows and the patchwork of dimpled eddies at this very moment. What I saw in the river that afternoon while sitting on the back of a tall blond horse—deep in the backcountry, dog-tired with aching knees—serves as a good practical metaphor for how the entire Universe works. The whole big-bang shebang.

 

  

 

              ©2024 Tim Forsell                                                                 14 Sep 1992,  28 Jun 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[*] This narrative was pieced together at a later date. I was seriously baffled by these revealed river-secrets. Because I very much like nature puzzles that involve physics, this watery event received an inordinate amount of mulling over. In all honesty, though, I still don’t understand what I saw and some of my conjectures may be way off. The science of fluid dynamics is, after all, a field of daunting complexity.To make matters worse, chaotic systems of all stripes staunchly resist being understood the way scientifically inclined types like to quote-unquote “understand” things. 

 

On the Incidence of Ocelli in Felis catus

ARE YOU A CAT-LOVER? If so, what follows may be of some interest. If you’re more of a dog person but have some background in the life sciences or natural history, read on. (And don’t be put off by the title, which is meant to lampoon an antiquated style of writing once found in stuffy scientific journals. This piece isn’t at all technical.) 

By one estimate, 42 million households here in the USA have one or more feline occupants. If your household happens to be one of the 42 million and it so happens that there’s a pussycat of the tabby persuasion in residence, please go and find her or him at this time. We’re going to perform a little hands-on demonstration that requires a cat; ideally one with stripes. (Tabbies make great subjects but any breed with tiger stripes and/or spots will do.) If your kitty is presently snoozing, all the better; let the sleeping cat lie. For the purposes of our investigation an immobile, dead-to-the-world specimen is actually preferable. Asleep or awake, if a suitable feline is not readily available just whip out your phone and google “cat images.” Scroll until you come across a good close-up head shot of any striped version of Felis catus, the common house cat.

Now: observe your sleeping pet (or acceptable online image). Right above the subject’s eyes you will see two small, dark-colored patches of fur—to be more exact, parallel-sided or possibly lens-shaped vertical “bars,” each flanked by two lighter-colored bits. For reasons unknown these dark, slightly elongated spots mark the place where the cat’s eyebrow whiskers arise. In your run of the mill black-and-gray-striped tabbycat, the whisker-encompassing central portion is always black; in the orange or gray models, it may be faint or absent but if present will invariably match the cat’s overall color scheme. With tabbies, coat patterning on top of the head—that is, the area betwixt the cat’s ears down to the bridge of its nose—ranges from slender converging stripes to an almost solid black, brown, orange, or gray patch (again, depending on the cat’s overall color scheme). Regardless of pattern, the crown markings narrow and then end abruptly in the vicinity of the two dark-colored spots. This goes for gray tabbies, ginger tabbies, orange and whites…regular tabbies with white chests and bellies, Maine coon cats, plus a few exotic breeds like Bengals and Abyssinians. Worth noting: the eyebrow whisker-spots tend to be most pronounced in those domestic strains bearing a residual resemblance to the common housecat’s direct ancestor, the African wildcat—first tamed in the Fertile Crescent around ten-thousand years ago. 

People who spend a great deal of time around cats eventually learn that most if not all stripy-coated individuals sport some version of the just-above-the-eye markings. But, after having noted their curious association with the eyebrow whiskers, it appears that even fanatical cat lovers give them little or no further thought. Here’s the thing: cat fanciers, even dyed-in-the-fur feliphiles, haven’t the faintest idea that those ubiquitous tabbycat markings are technically known as ocelli—“eyespots” to us regular folk. And there’s nothing random about our still half-wild pets having eyespots on their foreheads. They are in point of fact a survival aid; a special add-on bit of biological trickery whose function is to divert would-be predators. Lots of animals have them. (More on this in a moment.) Feline-style eyespots have presumably been around for millions of years; probably since shortly after cats were first invented, back in the Miocene epoch. 

Back to the (preferably sound asleep) kitty that you have by now located. Look into their adorable fuzzy face while concentrating on those two spots. To help achieve the objective of this hands-on investigation, you will now be asked to deploy a useful visual technique—we’ll call it “defocalizing”—which consists of nothing more than crossing the eyes slightly; just enough to make everything slightly blurry. Anyone can do it! Defocalizing has the effect of expanding your peripheral vision, making it a cinch to spot movement within a large and complex field of view. It also facilitates distinguishing subtle or hidden patterns that are either inobvious or flat-out invisible when looked at directly. This nifty trick has been used since time immemorial by hunters, birders, field biologists, and, in all likelihood, by…guess who? 

So. Cross your eyes slightly. Once you’re good and defocalized, look at those spots again. Now that the subterfuge has been pointed out, you should see a pair of wide-open eyes staring straight into yours: eyes with vertical pupils flanked by paler-colored irises—unmistakable, unambiguous cat eyes. (Assuming a live feline was not to be found and in its stead you’ve located a good head shot: using an index finger, block your view of the eyes so as to not obscure the eyebrow-spots…defocalize…and voilá!) 

What you’re looking at is a cunning deception—just one of many forms of defensive mimicry. Mimicry, like camouflage, is a passive means employed throughout the animal kingdom to help avoid injurious—possibly fatal—interactions with other organisms. There are a number of distinct, named strategies but I will mention only the one at play here, automimicry, wherein one part of an organism’s body resembles another part. Automimicry is used to great effect, for example, by the hairstreak—a small butterfly with delicate “tails” that project from the lower portion of its hindwings. These filamentous tails bear an astonishing resemblance to the hairstreak’s banded antennae. Together with other markings on the hindwing, they combine to produce a “false head.” Predators attacking this ersatz head might get a mouthful of wing instead of a tasty snack. Kitty’s counterfeit eyes are another textbook example of automimicry. 

An astonishing array of animals have independently evolved eyespots. These include butterflies and moths, caterpillars, fish, snakes, lizards, birds, and mammals (with insects being the vast majority). Insect ocelli, however, don’t meet the criteria of being a form of automimicry as they tend to resemble eyes belonging to some much larger fictitious creature. Instead, the basic idea is to elicit a startle response that might throw off a predator, giving one or the other party an opportunity to make a hasty getaway. A classic example is the Io moth, which bears outsized, strikingly realistic-looking eyespots at the center of each hindwing. Ordinarily these false eyes are concealed but when threatened by a predator the moth spreads its forewings to expose them, instantaneously conjuring a downright scary visage out of thin air. In many instances, butterfly and moth ocelli are uncannily lifelike, often with strategically located white dots that artfully create the illusion of light glinting off a moist, black orb. At any rate—finned, furred, or feathered, being confronted all of a sudden by a pair of glistening, inscrutable eyeballs is going to get your attention. It’s easy to see how the ocelli ruse might stop an attacker in its tracks, even one that’s much bigger and more powerful than its prey.

What about cats, though? It’s fair to ask how having fake eyes right above their real eyes could be beneficial in terms of the cat’s survival. Let’s not forget that predators get predated, too—especially their young. So, one possible scenario: great hairy beast on the hunt stumbles upon a fast asleep cat but, seeing the mock eyes and assuming its potential dinner to be awake and alert, thinks twice or maybe thrice about taking on all those sharp teeth and claws. This is a fairly implausible set of circumstances given that it would require the potential victim to be in deepest slumber—doubtful for such a    hyper-alert creature, especially one away from its den (or human habitation!) or at the very least hidden in a secure place where full repose is feasible. Another, more likely possibility: cat on the prowl passes beneath a predator waiting in ambush—say, one crouched on a limb or rock ledge or circling silently overhead. (In case you’re wondering: above ground ambush predators might include a larger feline species or, if the potential prey were one of the smaller cats, hawks, eagles, or owls.) And here’s where the real beauty of the subterfuge comes into play: from above, those sham eyespots appear to be gazing upwards, right into the lurking predator’s eyes. The savvy hunter, finding its cover blown, is unnerved enough to hold back. Or, shaken by being detected, unintentionally makes a sound that alerts the would-be victim, giving it time to flee or at least get into a defensive posture. Now: look down on your passed-out pet and imagine yourself a hairy beast about to pounce on its next meal. Get into defocused mode again and see the menacing glare of two wide-open eyes drilling straight into yours, just daring you to try. Keep in mind that predators will frequently forego a strike once they’ve lost the crucial element of surprise; going after prey that’s on the defensive, regardless of its size, is often deemed too risky due to possible injury.

So how is it that this eyespot-thing has managed to stay under the radar? Frankly, I’m shocked that it took me so long to figure it out. You see, I—ahem!—consider myself something of a cat expert; I’m familiar with the nictitating membrane and the tapetum lucidum…know of the carpal pad and the righting reflex…know what “flehmening” is and how it relates to the vomeronasal organ. With a lifetime of experience behind me, I can assess any cat’s mood in an instant through its facial expression, tail movements, and overall body language. I’ve been known to inform people, in a mock-ostentatious tone (but only half joking), that they are talking to a certified Cat Psychologist. So I’m a bit miffed that it took me a good half-century to spot the eyespots, particularly because they’ve been—pun intended—staring me in the face all this time. Clearly, I’m not alone here; no one else seems to have noticed them, either. This, I find hard to believe. Nonetheless, thus far I’ve been unable to locate a single reference to ocelli in cats—online, or in any of the several books about camouflage and mimicry that I’ve read. 

 

Now that you, too, know that many cats wear a set of false eyes on their foreheads, here’s one more bonus item; a bit of feline minutiae vis-à-vis the old chestnut about cats “sharpening their claws.” Which, it turns out, is erroneous—a widespread misconception that has been promulgated for centuries if not millennia. The sharpening-their-claws fallacy, accepted the world over as gospel truth, falls into the category of those things we’re told as mere toddlers (“Look, Melanie! Fluffy’s sharpening her claws!”) that we accept unquestioningly and in due course pass on to our children. And they to theirs. Well, cats are not—I repeat, not—honing their claws when they’re up on hind legs, gleefully shredding your sofa or out in the backyard going after small trees. Cats engage in this quintessentially feline behavior when they’re feeling sassy and fixin’ to go on a tear…maybe after a good long nap when, all of a sudden, they’re chock full of energy. Ever notice that devilish gleam in their eye as they assault the upholstery while you’re yelling Stop it! Stop it! and being completely ignored? Well, what’s going on here is that kitty is feeling really really good—ready to rock and roll!—and Nothin’ feels better than arching the ol’ back and stretching out the toes! Ahhhh!

Everybody knows that as cat’s claws grow, the innermost layers periodically slough off leaving fresh, sharp tips behind. Without a doubt, those weird little curved “nail clippings” are shed during routine scratching sessions. But note: you don’t find them liberally scattered at the foot of their favorite scratching-post, the now tattered and frayed corner of your sofa. No. Instead, every so often you find one stuck in the carpet or laying on the kitchen floor by the food bowl. Think about it: those extraordinary retractable digits of theirs are kept folded up all day long, like toes crammed into too-tight shoes. Imagine how exquisite it must feel when they sink them into the pliant fabric of your BarcaLounger’s armrest and give ‘em a nice long strrrretch! 

So here’s the skinny: Tiger/Cinderella/Peaches is not “sharpening” his or her claws. Their claws don’t require maintenance. It happens automatically. What they’re doing is more or less the feline equivalent of knuckle cracking—an annoying habit. 

 

                  

                  ©2024 Tim Forsell                                                                    28 Jan 2024