We all have stories to tell of bizarre events
and ridiculously unlikely meetings—of practically unbelievable incidents that
cause an otherwise normal day to suddenly freeze in the present. Time seems to
slow to a crawl, or feels compressed. And when these things happen, on occasion
you experience them as if you’ve somehow stepped aside and are watching things unfold
from the sidelines. And incidents that fit this description can instantly transform
a worldview based on the assumption that human lives are ruled by randomness
and chance.
That’s certainly been the
case for me: having long since abandoned belief in any traditional conception
of a “higher power,” I’m nonetheless convinced that there’s some innately mysterious
influence at work and play in our lives—orchestrating, pointing the way, or providing
timely wake-up calls with a gentle nudge. But what that enigmatic influence is:
truly, I don’t know. And I’m fairly sure that no one has effectively come up
with an adequate explanation. My conclusion, after decades spent pondering the
matter, is that we are simply part of an active, intelligent, and creative
Universe acting on itself. I call it “The Grand Swirl.” This much is certain:
life is one colossal, unending miracle of creation and there’s a lot going on that
we don’t understand. We tend to forget.
I try not to. While I may
not exactly lead a “charmed” life, I have
been exceptionally lucky (not to be confused with “fortunate,” though I am
that as well) and my life, at times, gracefully takes on literary qualities and
things play out like some universal allegory. I’ve not had a single brush with
the supernatural but seem especially prone to improbable meetings, often in out-of-the-way
places. Which have had the effect of supporting my conviction that, at a deep
level, everything about our world is intertwined.
Early March, 1997, at the remote hot springs
in Saline Valley: one of those nondescript events that’s later revealed to be a
major juncture in the time-line that defines one’s life.
Just after sunrise, Diane
and I were walking up the dusty road. We’d driven over from Lone Pine the night
before and, delighted to be back, eagerly anticipated our first morning soak. The
low sunlight’s sumptuous radiance was quickly spreading across the desert, revealing
details of terrain that would disappear as the day progressed, and subtle colors
that would become dull and indistinct. Imposing mountain ranges encircled the
valley…a profusion of deep silence: these somehow adding to the feeling of
security and comfort bestowed by his amazing and truly unique place. It still
felt like home to me; in past years I’d spent much of each winter living here
on the cheap—free camping, unlimited hot water—and had made many lasting
friendships.
We had two pools to choose
from. The larger—known as “the Wizard pool” (after a local character who built
it many years ago)—is warmer and by far the more popular. Approaching, we saw
half-a-dozen soakers in the larger pool, all men, talking and laughing loudly. Diane
wasn’t very enthusiastic about joining them. “I don’t know… Sounds like a
buncha rowdies.” Seventy yards away, “the volcano pool” (significantly cooler) was
unoccupied. Like most Saliners, I preferred the Wizard pool at this early hour and
replied, “Well, let’s at least go check it out first. Could be there’s somebody
we know in there with the rowdies.”
They sure enough were a
jovial bunch. Most of them were a group of friends from Plumas County camping
together. As we walked up to the pool, Diane spotted one man wearing a hat emblazoned
with the name of a ski resort in Wyoming, on the west (less popular) side of
the Tetons: GRAND TARGHEE. Before
moving to Lone Pine, Diane had lived just a few miles down the road from this fairly
obscure ski resort. Her earlier disdain for the potential “rowdies” vanished.
She met the hat owner’s eye and asked if someone gave him the hat or he’d actually
been there. He had.
“I used to live just a few
miles down the road from it…skied there all the time.”
“No kidding! Had some great powder when I was
there.”
So we dropped our packs and,
just like that, found ourselves in the company of new friends—not an unusual
state of affairs in Saline Valley. It’s a place where common ground is sought
out by total strangers and, when found, put to the plow. At the least, people
quickly determine which members of the Saline-regulars tribe they both know.
The cheerful banter and
laughter hardly paused during that fateful soak. I say “fateful” because
meeting the owner of that Grand Targhee hat, Jim Battagin (known to his friends
as “Dr. Goose” or just plain “Goose”) presaged the end of my relationship with
Diane. Dr. Goose—a very pleasant, insightful man with a dry wit and a twinkle
in his eye—lived outside Quincy, a small town surrounded by heavily timbered
country at the northernmost end of the Sierra Nevada. His description of a
quaint logging town in a picturesque valley and of his homestead at the edge of
a meadow—with an off-the-grid solar-powered house he’d built there—definitely piqued
our interest. We promised to visit. (This, a variety of promise that’s often
little more than social formality.)
But we dropped in on our
new friend only a month later at the tail end of a road-trip to the Blackrock
Desert of northern Nevada. At that time, I considered myself essentially married.
(Diane, a newly minted nurse, had in fact left her husband to start a brand new
life with me.) But it was becoming increasingly apparent that she wasn’t all
that happy living at our remote outpost—a virtual shack (with fabulous views) miles
from town, at the end of a long dirt road—and working in the austere Owens
Valley. The semi-desert country was foreign to her. More and more, she missed
having a network of women friends and we weren’t dealing with our conflict…as
people often don’t. But I had no desire whatsoever to move elsewhere.
So when we visited Jim
Battagin in Quincy she instantly loved the quaint little mountain town, and all
of his many kind friends. A month later Diane abruptly left Lone Pine (and me)
for Plumas County’s literally greener pastures. Not to downplay my shock and
dismay, but it was a fitting move for her and proved to be for the best.
The following morning, in the Wizard pool again,
there was talk about going on a hike. Dr. Goose mentioned wanting to search for
wildflowers. (He was, in fact, a professional botanist.) He lamented not yet having
learned much about desert plants and hoped there might be someone staying at
the springs who knew the local flora. Before I could say anything, Diane spoke up
for me: “Tim knows the plants.” The earliest spring flowers happened to be a
burgeoning prospect at this time but only in certain places. Dr. Goose turned
to me with a questioning arch of eyebrow. Placing myself at his service with a little
bow, we made plans for a late-morning excursion up a wash draining some nearby
hills—a place I knew from past experience would have early-bloomers aplenty.
A
bunch of us ended up going: several of the Quincy contingent plus two men from
Berkeley who’d been in the pool both mornings. Les knew me slightly from previous
trips. Rich and I had never met. He was more animated than his somewhat dour
friend; both were married but without their wives along. Rich had a gentle,
soothing voice and struck me as an amiable, very kindhearted man.
That was one fine walk.
After a wet winter we found undersized, understated flowers in abundance. I was
impressed by the enthusiasm all these un-macho men displayed, falling for the
subtle charms of tiny desert plants. Dr. Goose and I were on our hands and
knees spouting Latin names—in our element, becoming fast friends fast.
Late
afternoon found us heading back to camp. The sun had just set behind the
towering Inyo Mountains and, glad to finally be out of its intense glare, we
took a rest in a narrow section of our wash where it cut through basalt bluffs.
We all sprawled in the sand or lounged on bedrock slabs polished smooth by
thousands of flash floods. I happened to be sitting closest to Rich. He’d
overheard our talk and knew Diane and I lived in Owens Valley. We began talking
about what it was like actually living there. His own ties to the Eastern
Sierra went deep: Rich’s grandparents were Owens Valley natives—they’d owned
land near the town of Benton and had also lived in Bishop. I’m unclear on the
details; Rich himself had never resided in Owens Valley but one or the other
(maybe both) of his parents had. He spoke fondly, with something close to reverence,
of a life-long connection to the region. I told him about my own love affair
with the Eastside and the circumstances of my landing in Lone Pine in the early
1980s.
Rich
told me of his particular fondness for the little town and its spectacular surroundings
and of how he’d stopped there so many times over the last twenty-plus years
during trips to Saline Valley. My talk of settling there in 1983 triggered a
memory that caused him to hark back to that particular time and about how
there’d been a really first-rate café in town right around then that was “sort
of a health-food store,” as well. Hearing this, my head snapped up and I looked
at him hard. Gazing off, he continued: “It was this funky place there on Main
Street, in the middle of town. I forget what it was called…it went out of
business years ago. But they served great home-made food. And they had Peet’s
coffee!” (This gourmet brand—an amazing commodity to find in a backward place
like Lone Pine—was, in those pre-Starbuck’s days, sold only in a small chain of
coffeeshops in and around Berkeley.) “I loved going there and tried to stop every
time I passed through. What was it
called?” (This last, to himself.) “They had amazing sandwiches and soups,
with fresh-baked bread.” Rich was remembering hard. He was staring at the
still-sunlit Last Chance Range but from that far-off look I could tell that
what he was actually seeing was the interior of that café. Me too. Vividly.
“One time—it was early
spring…right around now, in fact—I stopped in on my way here. They had a
bulletin board on the wall behind the cash register with a few things posted. I
noticed this little scrap of paper tacked up. It was…sort of a poem….” (Now I
was rigid with attention and looked over at Diane, sitting a few feet away. She
was staring at Rich’s face with wonderment, her mouth slightly open and eyes
wide.) “…a poem about spring. Springtime in Owens Valley. It really moved me…just
seemed to capture the true feel of the land. And I took it. It’d been there
awhile already and I thought, ‘what the heck.’ I had a friend who did
calligraphy and she copied it out beautifully. Then I framed this thing and gave
it to my mom. She loved it…had it in
her bedroom for years. But she died a couple of years ago and it’s in my office
at work now.”
Diane
and I looked at each other, astonished. And she said, in a neutral, matter-of-fact
tone, “Tim wrote it.” Because, well, it was
a matter of fact. I was the author.
After dropping out of college I moved to
Boulder, Colorado and lived there from 1979 to 1982, working several jobs to
support a bad rock climbing habit. Toward the last I began working on an all-climbers
window cleaning crew but got laid off in November. I was out of work, nearly
broke, winter was coming, and Boulder had started to get to me. So I decided to
make a break of it and head back west. The only place I knew of in California
that could really feel like home was
the east side of the Sierra—somewhere, anywhere along the stretch of Highway
395, with craggy peaks on the western skyline. I’d been up and down ”the
Eastside” on family camping trips since childhood and loved the entire region;
it had all the mountains, desert, and wilderness I’d ever need.
I
began my quest for a new life the following January after a stint in Ventura,
staying with the folks and working odd jobs. My best friend from Boulder had
recently moved back to California as well. Gary’s parents had stakes in a time-share
up at Lake Tahoe and the two of us got together there. My plan: go east from
Tahoe into Nevada, turn right on Highway 395 and begin searching for work and a
place to be.
At the end of a fun week
the two of us said our goodbyes. I stood there waving as Gary drove off,
climbed into my car, and turned the key to begin the next phase of my big
adventure. But, incredibly, my trusty ‘71 Toyota Corona failed to start: it died,
there in front of the condo. It had been running fine until that moment. Maybe
it was from the cold—I don’t know—but when I turned the ignition key, something
deep in the engine broke, rendering my formerly reliable Japanese sedan worthless.
Having it towed to a nearby auto repair shop burned most of my meager savings.
The mechanic told me “the gear on your jack-shaft stripped out” and he’d have
to pull out the whole engine to replace it. My twelve-year-old car wasn’t worth
fixing, he said.
My father ended up driving
all the way from Ventura to rescue me and my possessions. I had less than $100
to my name when it was all over. And so, instead of making a new start, ended
up—at twenty-four years of age—back in my home town, living with my parents.
With no money, no wheels, no job, no prospects.
My
father, taking pity on me, loaned me money to buy another car. Instead of a car,
I exchanged $3000 for a used Toyota pickup—in fine shape and a great bargain.
With it came a cab-high camper shell and home-made padded flooring in the
truck’s bed. (The woman who owned it had recently married; she and her husband
had moved into an apartment complex and couldn’t keep three vehicles there. She
hated parting with her truck.) This piece of good fortune turned out to be a
defining moment in my life. The flooring may have been what turned me into a
pickup gypsy—there was just enough room to curl up right on the soft floor in
my sleeping bag. I set up the camper to make it livable, with a wide shelf
above one wheel-well running the six-foot length of the truck bed. It held
plastic milk crates full of clothes, food, and cooking equipment, with more
space underneath. Curtains. It was my home-on-wheels for the next decade.
For a test run I drove my
new rig up the coast toward Montecito to visit an old rock climbing haunt in a canyon
nearby. I hadn’t been there since before moving to Boulder and actually go lost
(not unusual for me) on the maze of winding roads, ending up at a dead end that
turned out to be a trailhead accessing Forest Service land.
Finding myself at a new place,
I figured I might as well take a little stroll. Within minutes, two guys passed
me running back down the trail. (This was some while before trail running had
become a “thing.”) I’d done some mountain trail running myself in Colorado so,
on a whim I hailed them—well after they’d gone past—ostensibly to ask for
directions. Back then, this was something quite out of character for me; I was
still a shy-person. But we struck up a conversation, talked about trail
running, and it turned out that these two lived—of all places—in Lone Pine. I
told them it just so happened that I was getting
set to resettle somewhere on the Eastside and that their town was to be my very
first stop. One of the men, Dario, told me to be sure and look them up. I could
find him or get his whereabouts at a local eatery: a place called “Country
Road.”
One
week later I rolled into Lone Pine—it’d hardly changed since I was a kid—and
parked along the highway. I planned to walk up and down the street and look the
place over for a few minutes before pressing on but, in the exact instant I
stepped onto the sidewalk, Dario stepped out of a shop that my truck was parked
in front of. “Oh, hey, you showed up!” We chatted for a minute before he said,
“Come on over to the store and I’ll introduce you to Robert.” We angled across
the highway (“Main Street” in Lone Pine) and walked into “Country Road Café and
Food Store”—half café, half health food store—where I was introduced to the
proprietor, one Robert Frickel. Instantly, I knew he was a kindly soul and a
brother of mine. I just knew. Late 30s, former hippie-type…trim and fit and,
like Dario, an avid distance runner. Briefly, I told him my story.
In my truck, in a bucket,
were the window cleaning tools with which I intended to make a living. So I
told Robert, “Look: if you feed me, I’ll wash your storefront windows.” Grinning,
he instantly replied, “Go for it!” I quickly learned that this was how Robert
operated: he’d welcome strangers, especially willing ones, with open arms and promptly
begin to formulate some sort of plan involving them. My first meal at his café
was a turkey sandwich made with two thick slices of Robert’s freshly baked,
whole-wheat bread. Instead of iceberg lettuce it was stuffed with alfalfa
sprouts and grated zucchini. I sat at the counter behind a deli-style set-up
and watched him deftly prepare it with loving care. Afterwards, I fetched my
tools and cleaned the big front windows.
So:
I arrived in Lone Pine and within ten minutes had two new friends and a job. Of
course, I ended up working at “the store” but never made a dime. Robert always had
six or eight people working for him, all part-time. Most of them got paid while
others—like Dario and me—put in a few hours here and there just for the
scrumptious meals and a warm, inviting place to be. In short order I was doing
clean-up jobs, making baked goodies, washing dishes, or helping mop up after
closing time. Within a few days I’d met people who would become some of my
dearest friends. I loved every minute of being there. Robert fed people—in more
ways than one. I made money by hustling odd jobs and got in with the little-old-lady
crowd; there were lots of widows around town and word quickly spread among them
that there was this nice young man who was happy to scrub grimy kitchen walls
and fix fences as well as clean their windows.
It
was still winter when I showed up in Lone Pine on March 12th. But Spring
was starting to happen in the valley. The Sierra, on the other hand, was blanketed
in deep snow. (The winter of 1982-83 had been monumental.) After a
reconnaissance as far north as Bridgeport—where it was most definitely still
winter—and some days spent up in the Buttermilk Hills behind Bishop, I headed back
to Lone Pine and camped (parked) up on picturesque Movie Flat in the Alabama
Hills. It was warmer and prettier there.
It had been cold and windy
when I first arrived (still was, off and on) but there were some lovely days. I’d
been around for a few weeks and, while the wind often howled and the mountains
were still buried in snow, life was slowly returning to the desert lowlands—on
the wing, popping from holes, and sprouting from the sandy soil. I was riding
the crest of a wave of good fortune, experiencing new things on a daily basis,
and was falling in love with the land in a fashion not unlike the way a young
man falls in love with a woman. Frequently almost penniless but brimming with
energy and enthusiasm, I felt my boundless potential. Each day arrived packed full
of promise and I’d awaken to a view of Mt. Whitney turning pink on the Sierra
crest, start my day with an exploratory walk among the golden granite outcrops
of Movie Flat. Or I’d climb on the many rock formations scattered about—my own
private climbing area, with 14,000 foot peaks for a backdrop. Every week or two
I’d climb one of them. This was a personal frontier, my eyes and heart open to
it all. Each morning I’d wake up thrilled to be where I was. It’s impossible to
fully capture the raw, unprocessed joy of those days but this was absolutely
one of the most nourishing portions of my life.
So,
I was acutely aware of my surroundings, noticing daily vernal advances, and after
a few weeks got an idea: I’d write brief weekly “reports” about the state of
the season—sort of like weather reports—and post them on the corked bulletin
board behind the cash register. Knowing Robert would approve of anything
creative, I didn’t bother to even ask. So, one sunny morning, drinking a second
mug of coffee in my camp out on Movie Flat, I jotted down a few recent
observations and tacked it up that afternoon. Had thought to post one weekly
but…I’m not sure why…never wrote another.
Just a couple of months later,
I scored a “real job” (of a kind) working up north on a trail crew for the
Forest Service, out of the town of Bridgeport. I’d landed it through making the
acquaintance of one Lorenzo Stowell—the Wilderness Foreman there—who I’d met
one day, washing dishes while he was eating at the lunch counter. We became
friends and I worked for him in the High Sierra backcountry just north of
Yosemite Park for ten weeks, starting in
August. Then, after the contract job ended in October, I spent that winter and all
my hard earned wages traveling and climbing.
Next April I was back in
Lone Pine—nearly broke again—ready to make another go at settlement. In town, I
ran into one of the women who’d waitressed at the café the previous year. Chris
needed a lift back to her car, parked some ways out of town. On the drive there
we were getting caught up and she remembered having a message for me: “Oh—there’s
a thing I was supposed to tell you! Last year, you wrote something and put it
on the bulletin board. Yeah? Well, some woman came in one day for lunch and saw
it. She really liked it, I guess, and copied it down. This same woman showed up
again last summer while you were up in Bridgeport and asked me to tell you that
what you wrote had been published in some kinda “poetry journal” or something,
somewhere over in the Bay Area. I don’t remember exactly what else she said.”
For laughs, I’d told Diane this anecdote about
my first (and only) published work—that’s how she knew what Rich was talking
about. All of us sitting in that obscure desert wash in the middle of nowhere
were flat-out amazed by the improbability of this meeting. The odds of Rich’s
ever meeting the anonymous author of what he considered literature were exceedingly
low…but it happened. Diane: she’s long gone from my world and I haven’t seen
Rich or Dr. Goose since. A couple of months later, though, Rich sent me a Xeroxed
copy of the version done by his friend, as promised. (One of them had changed
the format somewhat—making it at least look
more like poetry.)
Frankly, I was not
impressed and actually feel slightly embarrassed by the piece; it was neither
intended to be a poem nor does it read like one. I didn’t think of myself as a writer then, much less a poet. I’d scribbled
this thing down on a scrap of paper in five minutes and tacked it up on a
corkboard behind the register in a funky hippie restaurant that served
wholesome food made with love—a place with a caliber of dining experience few
would expect to find in a moth-eaten tourist town catering to fishermen. Apparently,
though, more than one person liked the little snippet so it did some good.
And through twisting channels, a precise
passage of time, and a nostalgic bend in a conversation with a stranger, my faux-poem
flew back home.
Well, here it is:
SPRING
PROGRESS REPORT
Alabama Hills Section
Lone Pine, California
As of Saturday, March 26, 1983
A
few swifts and violet-green swallows have arrived.
The
ravens are beginning to fly in pairs.
Lizards
are coming out.
Desert
sparrows, rock wrens and house finches
are singing.
A
few bees and ants are out but no flies or
no-see-ums
to speak of.
Shrubs
are starting to green.
Approximately
twenty varieties of flowers
are
blooming.
No
butterflies yet.
Snow
level at about 7000 feet.
Wave
clouds beginning to form over Sierra crest.
Moon
will be full in two days.
©2016 by Tim Forsell 17 Apr 1999, 24 Oct 2016
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