| western watershed romance |
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I escaped into the Sierra for a
few days, a frequent need for my pining soul that pines to live among
the pines again. Driving force was my annual autumnal reverie with
little red salmon, those beautiful little scarlet fish that flood the
streams to actualize another chapter of their lives, the final chapter,
in the scene of memory that breathed them into life. Originally planned
to fish the Feather basin rather than my usual haunt, the Truckee - I
just knew the Truck too well, so further north seemed better for
bettering the relationship by experiencing reds in a more novel
setting. Assuming I caught my fish early, I'd planned a hike way up in
the Middle Fork Feather, which I'd only explored by boot once. But in
the back of my mind - given how labile this year has been, with Nature
(fires), with society (plague, riots), with me (vertigo) - I'd reserved
the Truckee in case the Feather blew. And blew the Feather did - I
found the roads to the creek I pined for blocked by cops, no doubt due
to a wildfire, a nascent one, since before I split my abode, I checked
on the accessibility via the USFS, and my creek was open. But that
ain't the cops, and that ain't firsthand info, so I threaded my way
languidly to the Truckee, rolling through Quincy and Graeagle and
Sierraville in a lazy autumn sun.
It became an experience of memory's
myriad expressions: nostalgia, rehashing, and regeneration, and their
subtle, profound differences. I'd reenact the ritual with reds in the
setting of 2012 and 2018; in complement, I'd mosey down a trail high in
the North Fork American drainage I'd hoofed in 2015. Nevertheless, time
promised that the fish I'd touch, the birds I'd hear, they'd be
different individuals, albeit still the same species. Nostalgia tinted
my drive - only songs from my late teens flowed through my tape
player's speakers, since that's when I stopped buying tapes. Old punk
rock - so good - Angelic Upstarts, Avengers, Agent Orange, of course
the Misfits - such beautiful simplicity, yet each of those bands
uniquely expanded the ideal spawned by the Ramones. Exuberant, that
music - it really was - is - the music of youth, gushing with pristine
energy, unbounded, which curses punk bands that reform far beyond their
prime with a pathetic, hollow mimicry. Then, much to my surprise, a
Smashing Pumpkins tape - Gish.
I loathed Siamese Dream
- way too polished, way too sappy, just fuckin' way too sugary sweet -
even now when I think of it, I wanna puke. Pretentious, arrogant. But Gish, fuck - a good
hair-metal record, a good classic-rock record, in that vein, along with
first-wave Jane's Addiction and the Rolling Stones'
late-'60s/early-'70s shit. An intimacy pervades it, a lust, a sweet,
innocent lust, and as "Rhinoceros" and "Snail" flowed out my speakers,
I daydreamed of She, She of violet eyes and sunlight-yellow hair and
snowy skin and carnation-pink lips, naked, in a dark room, on a dark
bed, relaxed, playful, us, together, young, the evening sun pouring
through the blinds painting us in gold and shadow. Something I never
had, of course - I was too scary and too scared and too stony for She
back then. Fuck, I essentially remain that way now.
Drifted by many people as I rolled
through those rural towns to my reenactment, faces extinguished by face
masks, stifling my ability to read 'em, understand 'em, communicate.
Nevertheless, their bodies, either excessively bulging or needlessly
winnowing, bespoke a life lived poorly - gluttonous for food, or
gluttonous for drugs, signifying a dearth of meaning in life. Their
business was brisk, and no doubt recurring, at the convenience stores.
But as I've realized - and as so many experiences in the Wild have
reminded - these people: they're not bad. Irresponsible? Sure.
Self-destructive, lacking self-awareness? Absolutely. Uncritical?
Without question, as revealed by the amazing number of people driving
solo with fuckin' surgical masks (are they afraid they'll infect
themselves?). But they're not bad, not malicious, most of 'em, just
weak and unrealized and very deeply rutted.
Looking at them, I saw part of me.
I reached the trib in early afternoon,
intending to hike down to the reservoir to tempt up a smallmouth or
two, or maybe a trout - reds, like silvers and kings and chums, are so
much more aggressive at dawn, so I planned on leaving the dance to the
following morning. But the allure - I only see reds once a year, if
that, while I see smalls and trout much more frequently, so on the trek
down, I skirted over to the creek, telling myself that I was just gonna
scout it, not fish it. My discipline failed me, however, when all the
brilliant crimson swaying in the little creek flooded my eyes and fired
my desire - out came the rod, on went the jig, and then followed the
classic pattern with Pacific salmon - a motherfuckin' grind, with very
few becoming vexed enough to strike the lure. I fished through dusk and
ended with only two reds in hand - not enough, especially since they
curiously measured smaller than in my previous dalliance. So in montane
darkness, I picked my way along a dirt road for a nearby primitive
little camp I'd found back in 2018, a perfect, quaint little camp,
found it again, then grubbed and settled, the naked sky open to my
eyes, the glittering, ancient stars that Diviciacus and Thoreau and
poor old George Donner and poor old Captain Jack and so many others no
doubt once ogled. Stuffed in tight to my bag to escape the montane
chill, I slept.
Pre-dawn indigo, coffee down, some
fruit, a touch of meat, then at the creek at dawn's turquoise light,
and, again reflecting the classic pattern - I attained my self-imposed
goal (five fish) quickly, stowing the rod and then just wandering
around the little trib, a trib I've known, from both the professional
and private sides, for many years. It was surprisingly tidy for being
visited by so many people - almost no litter, and, yeah, a creek
stuffed with fish. Wish that respect would reach beyond to other
watersheds, which so frequently, and so dishearteningly, humans trash.
For a hunter, of the fish or bird or mammal kind, such sign - it's
fucking stupid, cluing others to productive hunting grounds and causing
overexploitation. Too, of course, is the cheapening - all that garbage,
it's a product of civilization, and the fucking point of getting into
the Wild is to escape that civilization, not drag its detrital remains
along. Anyway, the absence of such detritus lightened my load a little,
though it still felt ungodly heavy - the vertigo that'd clung to me for
the last month, it felt like it'd filled my boots with concrete.
Nevertheless, I kept bumbling around as the sun and wind rose in
collusion, admiring the birds, the ever-friendly Mountain Chickadees
chattering joyfully at me, the soft, lush fringing meadow at my side -
such a lovely theater for a sweet, quiet autumn afternoon with She, a
lovely image that infiltrated my mind frequently, slipping in through
images of what the rest of my day should be, most picturing me
recoiling back home and laying on the carpet, booze in hand and then in
body, my rutted default. But as I stomped maladroitly back to my car,
my better self persevered, scolding me that to fall back so early to my
valley home - it'd be a fuckin' coward's act.
So I popped over the divide and then
down a chalky dirt road, shed my pack of all fish-catching stuff, and,
like the creek I plied in past lives, struggled down a trail of a past
life. The subalpine world braced me, rolling its pure autumn wind
across the scoured granite and through the chiseled junipers and red
firs and western white pines, a perfect, pleasant flow - not too hot,
not too cold. Perfect. Fragments remained of my past life - a
picturesque western white along the trail, the towering massif
overlooking all with wizened, ancient eyes, the little shimmering lakes
breathing their ripples in time to the wind. But freshness abounded,
too: the graceful robins rising from the stony ground in perfectly
smooth arcs, and the solitaires singing their warm, sweet melodies.
Despite the concrete boots I started hiking with, which threatened that
I wasn't gonna get more than a mile, if that - they lightened, so much
so that I could've gone as far as I did back in memory's time had I not
needed to get back to my little valley house at a reasonable hour. A
reminder - despite the feeling of worthlessness, of incapability, that
stains my soul, so often I can get shit done beyond what I think I can
do.
And not only me surprised me about what
could be accomplished - my little one-dollar Japanese station wagon
bore out the same phenomenon. On the drive in, I bounced the car down a
hill - barely - with big gnarly crests and troughs, one that years back
I didn't roll down. My caution was stronger back then, which the
vertigo and associated symptoms had certainly weakened. Wasn't 'til I
hit the bottom of the hill that I realized my peril - too late - and
then the quandary of if I could make it back up plagued my hike,
frequently splintering into my mind like jagged shards. But as my body
unfurled a bit, my mood likewise improved, and I figured that if I got
down it without damaging anything or getting stuck, then a way had to
exist to get back up it. So in evening light, hike done, muscles
stretched, into the car I got and to the base of the hill I got, and I
scanned it - imposing. A rolling solid-dirt ocean of
foot-and-a-half-high crests and troughs dominated the road's width,
with the clearance of my cheap Japanese car much less. I first tried
worming my way up slowly, but no dice - just not enough clearance, and
I wisely retreated rather than just gunning it and hoping for luck,
which would've required catching air across those troughs. Dicey. I
espied a less traveled little spur road that arced around the bouncy
ocean, so I swung the wagon onto it and found it even more impenetrable
- a big pile of rocks separated it from the main drag, a big pile too
big for my car. Only one option remained: zipping, somehow, up the main
drag. I noticed that the flattest stretch was right against the right
edge of the road, which looked possible if the wagon chewed into some
manzanita - the paint risked being scratched, but I deemed that a
harmless slight. So I breathed deeply, encouraged the car with a pat on
the dash, then zoomed right up that edge with remarkable ease, with
just a little bump and grind on the driver's side, a bump and grind the
car took with aplomb.
Once clear of the hill, I immediately
pulled off the road to pull off my boots - I left 'em on in case I'd
gotten stuck and needed to use some leg muscle to jostle it free - so
my feet could breathe, but also for a pause to relish the
accomplishment - my body and my mind and my car, we fuckin' did it. An
amplification of ability, from my mind somehow pushing my body to its
limits, then my body pushing my mind, and then both transferring that
energy to the inanimate horse I rode and ride all over California with.
Down down down back to my little valley
home then, in a lusty golden sunset, and I pined to still be in the
Wild at such time, but civilization - it, too, has its place, and I had
the dawn and a streaking-cloud sky earlier in the day to stroke my
soul. Back to my little abode, repository of past lives, as well as the
current and future ones. The desire lingered in me to relive those teen
years, plus the fantasy of those teen years, the past reality and the
past fantasy. But Nina Nastasia's beautiful song "One Old Woman" rang
in my ears, and I realized it applies to more than just old wrinkled
women on the brink of death - applies to middle-aged dudes, too.
"I know I'm not allowed to hold on too
tightly to what has gone."