We went to the White Mountains in July; more of a working trip than a vacation. Dylan had once again been invited to co-lead the annual Jepson Alpine Plant Workshop held at Crooked Creek Station every summer. She’s been doing this for years and plans to continue for as long as they ask her back. We’ve been to Crooked Creek twice now since I retired from my long-time acting role of cook, den mother, and chief bottle washer at the end of the 2023 season. Just being in the Whites is somewhat painful for us both—the bonds we forged with the land run deep; it was home. Sad, too, because the Jepson workshop is now our sole connection with White Mountain Research Center, my employer of twenty years. To take full advantage of my time in the Whites, while Dylan was off doing her thing I went on a few solo excursions. Oddly enough, this was my first off-trail hiking since we were here last. (I messed up my knee the day we arrived, trying to relocate the Methuselah tree. Which resulted in surgery.) No telling how long the ol’ legs are going to hold out so this was a fine opportunity to explore a pair of obscure bristlecone groves I’d known of for years but not yet visited. I’d intentionally “saved them for last.” (A Tim-thing…special treats, as it were.) And it was worth the wait—I got to meet some fantastic timberline ancients, both living and dead.
The trip lasted only a week and now we were headed home. Like last summer, we spent our first and last nights on the road at a sweet semi-secret campsite near Sonora Pass. (It’s four-hundred miles from Santa Cruz to Crooked Creek so we do the long drive over two days, both coming and going.) After breakfast we took one final stroll—a casual meander through lush meadows alive with alpine plants in full bloom. Then we embarked on the last leg. The first part, a long drop down the west slope, is one of our favorite scenic drives. In a couple of hours time Highway 108 passes through a succession of distinct forest types that, for us plant-lovers, mark a breathtaking descent into the lowlands. We watch for each type of tree’s first and last appearance: white pine, lodgepole, red fir, Jeffery pine, ponderosa; sugar pine, black oak, white fir, blue oak, buckeye. Down, down, down; past Kennedy Meadows, Strawberry, Pinecrest, Long Barn. And toward the end, the sprawling neo-metropolis of Sonora. (I remember Sonora from family vacations when I was a kid in the 1960s, back when it was a charming little town with roots in the goldrush era. Now travelers bypass the town entirely and drive through the outskirts, zoom!, on a four-lane freeway.)
For coastal dwellers like ourselves there’s a melancholy moment on the last day of any road trip to the High Sierra—you feel it when you’ve left the lovely oak-covered foothills behind and started across those interminable, dreary flatlands. On the Sonora Pass route, transitioning from foothill country to central valley happens to be a rather dramatic event that takes place near where 108 merges with 120: Up ahead you see a gap in the basaltic cap-rock that once blanketed the whole region…a hill on the right with tattered stars’n’stripes on a wooden pole, fluttering in the breeze. After passing through that narrow gap you go around a bend and, just like that, you’re in San Joaquin Valley. Rolling grass-covered hills stretch off into the distance with the truly flat flats beyond. On clear days the outer coast range is plainly visible—right over there!—but during the warmer months it’s almost always obscured by the ubiquitous Valley Haze.
This was a Friday in peak tourist season so the weekend traffic was already crazy at ten a.m. And the day was just starting to heat up. Time for a quick break…unkink the joints, empty the bladder, and get some more coffee. I knew of an excellent rest-spot up ahead, just a few miles below where you pass through that gap and pop out into the flatlands. It’s on the left side of the highway if you’re heading west, marked by a short spur road leading to the top of a low hill sporting two sizable valley oaks that provide blessed shade. Since you’re somewhat above and well off the road, the traffic noise isn’t nearly as loud there so a quick nap is an option. Another plus: one can take a wizz without having to go in search of a discreet hiding place. I’ve stopped there many times.
I climbed out of the cab and hobbled off to pee. Something caught my attention. Movement. What…? Looks like a sick rat. But it’s black, not brown. And that’s when I hear an instantly recognizable mewing sound that changed everything. That’s no sick rat! It was a tiny tiny kitten, crawling through the dust and headed straight for me. My entire world focused to a point and went silent aside from the one sound—a universal cry of distress.
I rushed ahead. Stopped. At my feet was a newborn domestic shorthair kitty, black with white chest and belly and toe-tips; two weeks old at most. Oh, no! oh, no! oh, no!.... I heard those words running in a loop inside my head while simultaneously being hit by a slew of raw emotion, rage predominant. Already outside myself, arms hanging limp at my sides, I just stood there. The utterly helpless little-one, still a week away from being able to go on all fours, was crawling for the sake of crawling—belly in the dirt, screaming for mom. This was without doubt its first venture into the lighted land. Fifteen feet away was a small cardboard box—open, on its side, holding two siblings; one, halfway out of the otherwise empty carton. One was grey with white chest and belly and white toe-tips. The other had markings similar to the one at my feet. They, too, were yelling for their mother. Over and over in my head: …oh, no! oh, no! oh, no!....
What I’m about to describe is a really quite astonishing (but seldom noted) phenomenon—something that I’ve experienced personally and find most intriguing. Namely: how, in times of crisis, multiple things are going on inside one’s mind, simultaneously. Under extreme duress humans can—and will—experience a mad swirl of wordless thoughts mixed up with elaborate mental dialog, all under the influence of a shifting array of seemingly unrelated emotions. All at once; not the way our brains normally work. Such was the case here, starting when I heard the kitten cry.
My first distinct thought was, This is gonna kill Dylan. I can’t let her see this. (Dylan and I are both lifelong lovers of cats.) Followed immediately by: Just turn around and leave…there’s nothing you can do. Just pretend you never saw this and GO. Right on top of that was a crystal-clear understanding that there was no way in hell that we were going to leave these here kittens to die. And finally, outrage: How could someone…?? And they didn’t even put the box in the shade! They just left them here…probably didn’t even get out of their car. I’d turned and started toward the truck but instead went back and grabbed the crawler. Without checking I knew, intuitively, that it was a “he.” The little guy, little more than a handful, was wailing piteously and without cease. Those claws are incredibly sharp! (It’d been a long time since I last held a kitten.) I carried him back over to the box.
Glancing over my shoulder I saw Dylan standing by the truck in the shade. She’d just gotten out and hadn’t looked this way yet. One kitten was still in the box. I tipped it upright and added the two escapees. It occurred to me that three was kind of an odd number for a litter of kittens so I looked around for runaways but saw none. And that’s when I realized: They must have been dropped off right before we got here. It wouldn’t take long to topple the box and the determined go-getter had only gotten a few yards. They were so young! Too young! Their eyes were that weird bluish-grey infant-kitten-color—they’d only been open for a day or two, at most. (Actually, the other black-and-white had one eye still closed.) Otherwise, all three appeared healthy and strong. This wasn’t going to be an especially hot day but a few hours in direct sun with no water or food and they wouldn’t be scrambling around like this, wasting precious breath. Beneath those piercing screams I heard the fingernails-on-chalkboard sound of thirty needle-sharp front-paw claws scratching at the walls of their cardboard prison cell.
I carried the box over to the truck. Dylan watched me approach, a puzzled look on her face. “What’s in it?” In that same instant she heard. And the shock of recognition transformed her puzzled expression into something not far short of horror.
“Kittens. Three of ‘em. Somebody just left them here!”
After a charged pause Dylan said, “What are we gonna do?!”
“I don’t know. But we can’t just leave them here. We can’t leave them!”
“But…what are we gonna do? Where can we take them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. But a town the size of Sonora has gotta have an animal shelter. We’ll just have to go back and find it.” (Unlike pretty much everybody on the planet, we don’t own smartphones.) “We’ll ask around; someone will know.”
I stashed the box in my camper, on the floor, up against the door. I wedged it in such that the box’s four top-flaps were up; this would probably hold them. For awhile, at least. Their pitiful cries were, of course, tearing me wide open. But I barely glanced down while getting the box situated, resolutely trying to stay detached. Meanwhile, I seethed with quiet rage; something way beyond mere moral indignation. I kept thinking, HOW could someone DO this?! I envisioned some faceless but terrible person and the series of actions that led to this criminal act; what it would take to do what they did, wondering if they had kids of their own. Over and over: How COULD they?! We spun around and headed back to Sonora. Off in our own worlds, neither of us spoke.
Well. What followed did not unfold the way we expected.
Ten miles up the road we started coming up on Jamestown, a once-separate municipality overtaken by Sonora’s relentless sprawl. At first, scattered modest homes at the end of long drives, off in the trees. Then houses by the road…a gas station…small businesses, auto shops. No town as such. A stoplight. Waiting for the light to turn green at this four-way intersection, I absently looked about. On the opposite side of the highway, a small sign grabbed my eye. It read, “ANIMAL CONTROL →.” When the green arrow appeared I turned left. We were now on a frontage road lined with generic metal-box industrial buildings. At the very end of this drive was our destination. Amazingly, the place was actually open. (For some reason, I fully expected it to be closed.) Dylan headed in first. I went to grab the box but before I could she was back saying, “It doesn’t look good. A sign on the door says they don’t take kittens without an appointment.” In we went, anyway; through two doors, into a reception area with plastic chairs lining one wall. Behind a glass partition was a woman at a desk talking on the phone. No one else around; the inherently-disturbing muffled sound of many barking dogs coming from out back. I stood there holding my boxful of living, breathing, screaming miracles—a minor tragedy in the making; our problem now. I figured that if this place couldn’t take them off our hands we’d hit every town along the way until we found somebody who would. Whatever it took.
The woman hung up her phone and came over. She glanced at the box and said, “How can I help you?” Our story poured forth. And without any hesitation animal-control lady said, “We’ll take them.” Naturally, I felt compelled to voice my outrage, just to get it off my chest. She’d heard this rant more than a few times but listened patiently. I ended with the standard query, “How could somebody do this?”
“I know! Right? But it happens all the time. All-l-l the time. I hate to say it, but some people are just assholes.” (Well, that’s not exactly how I’d put it but…yeah.)
Sure enough, there was a form that had to be filled out. Animal-control lady handed me a clipboard with the paperwork and a pen. I handed her the box and she looked in, whereupon her face lit up with a big smile and she switched from normal-adult-voice to baby talk: “Look at you! Oh, aren’t we adorable!” At this, I flashed on the fact that cold-blooded animal abandonment is just-another-day-at-the-office-stuff for animal shelter workers the world over—a potent demonstration of how humans can get inured to pert-near anything. She and Dylan chatted while I was filling out the form but brain-spin blocked out whatever it was they said. Without further ado, animal-control lady carried off the box—both of us thanking her profusely as she walked away. The door into the back room closed behind her, the curtain came down, and it was all over.
I’d never even looked at the kittens, much less bid them farewell and good luck.
We stepped out into the sun. It was a beautiful day again…not too hot. Nice. But I felt altered…almost queasy; beset by an amorphous icky feeling. Mixed up with the agitation and nameless disquiet was a tremendous sense of relief—an awkward jumble of emotions. Dylan started around the front of the truck to get back in the cab but before she could get away I grabbed her arm, reeled her in, and the two of us shared a long embrace. When our hugging needs were satiated I let out a sigh and said, by way of wrapping up our mini-saga, “Well, that went about as smooth as it possibly could’ve.”
I started to get back in the truck but spied my travel mug there in its cup holder on the center console, long in need of a refill. So it was back to the camper to retrieve the thermos of road-coffee I’d brewed before we left. Then we could carry on.
But wait! There was one last surprise.
Reaching for the door latch, something inside me cracked wide open. Sensing that whatever was about to ensue required two free hands, I set my mug on the bumper just as the dam burst and for a goodly minute or two stood there and cried. I don’t mean a few silent tears. No: we’re talking full-blown, face-palming man-bawl. I can’t even remember the last time I cried this hard—bona fide sobbing is something that befalls me, on average, maybe one-point-three times per decade; almost always associated with heartbreak or having to have a beloved kitty put down. But this time it came with zero warning. Its abrupt onset shocked me as much as the outburst itself. There was no use fighting this thing; best to just let go and ride it out.
When my momentary breakdown began to ease up I got my caffeine situation squared away and headed back to the cab. Settling into the driver’s seat, I was still whimpering soft and low but didn’t so much as glance over at Dylan, much less attempt speech. To lock eyes with the one I love most just then would have straightaway set off a whole ‘nother round. Besides—perspicacious soul that she is, my wife of thirteen years knew full well what was going on inside me. She may have been having her own cry during my two-minute absence for all I know. To be frank, up to this point I hadn’t even considered how the whole affair was affecting her. Dylan is hypersensitive when it comes to animal suffering of any kind. That alone meant that her experience had been quite a bit different than my own. In any case, it was obvious that neither of us cared to discuss recent events at this juncture. So off we went, retracing our steps of only an hour before. Lost in thought, neither of us spoke for a good long time. (In our day to day life, we’re both comfortable with long stretches of silence.) Passing by the rest-spot on the hill where it all began, a fresh wave of indignation swept through my body. We’d resumed talking by this time but I offered no comment.
In retrospect, my collapse shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It was a foreseeable consequence of having forcibly willed myself into a state of emotional detachment in order to get through what had to be done (refusing to look into the kittens’ faces, for instance). My meltdown resulted from the triggering of a psychic pressure-release valve in the wake of what was for us a traumatic event. What surprised me most was the way bursting in tears had caught me completely off guard; its suddenness. The way it seem-ed to come out of nowhere. On the other hand, this whole deal was probably amplified by the fact that I’ve been wound up pretty tight of late. Like, for the past ten years.
Over the next week or so I thought about all these things. A lot. (In case it’s not obvious, I’m prone to pondering.)
Eventually it hit me: I hadn’t broken down and bawled like a baby on behalf of three abandoned kittens left by the side of the road. No. I was crying for us; for the poor suffering mass of humanity. Things have been particularly insane lately, current-events wise. I cried for Palestine. For Syria. Ukraine. For the Texas flood victims and their families and friends. Ditto, casualties of the latest string of mass shootings and these unaccountably frequent plane crashes. For the inhumanity of mass deportation. For all those decent people, documented American citizens or otherwise, whose jobs—whose very livelihoods—have been eliminated by dictatorial fiat. And for all the other senseless miseries being inflicted on us through the caprice of one mad wanna-be king.
And for three abandoned kittens.
For any devoted catperson, stumbling on a boxful of discarded kittens is going to twang the ol’ heart-strings hard—definitely a tear-worthy matter. But the more I reflected, the clearer it became that those poor little god’s-own-creatures were a proxy for the collective sorrow and suffering that’s going down right now in this beyond-crazy world of ours; suffering that most of us steadfastly shove into the background. What else can you do? Where are you supposed to put all your disenchantment and broken-hearted bitterness and rage? All the sadness for the loss of things that aren’t coming back, ever?
Someone…anyone…tell me.
©2026 Tim Forsell 29 Jul 2025, 19 May 2026
