North and South - Dust Bowl to Rainforest and Back Again - 2009

 

North and South - Dust Bowl to Rainforest and Back Again

This road trip took place in early November 2009. 

Traveling north on Interstate I-5 from L.A., a motorist must negotiate a series of mountain passes and steep grades. Before reaching the final descent at Grapevine, each traveler can expect to receive at least one wake-up call. It might be a call on a mobile telephone, or a narrow escape in traffic. For me, it was the realization that once again, I was on my way north, through the heartland of California.

 

My first road trip, at the age of three, was on Old-99, precursor to the I-5 freeway that I now traveled. So that my siblings and I could sleep during our transit, we departed L.A. at night. My first recollection of the trip was when I awoke to the smell of overheated brakes on our 1951 Ford. As lighted advertising signs flew by my side window, my father gripped the wheel and told my mother to hang on to the door handle.

 

Somehow, he maintained control and completed a fast rollout into the San Joaquin Valley. Flattened, dead jackrabbits littered the roadway. My father joked that they were called "flying rabbits", because you could pick up one of their flattened dry carcasses and toss it away like a Frisbee. A few live rabbits scampered back and forth through our headlight beams. Soon, I saw a backlit neon sign that read, "Bakersfield" arched over the highway. Although I could not yet read, I assumed that a city with such a grand entrance sign must be a wonderful place.

 

To this day, there is no direct highway link from Southern California to Southern Oregon. After the inevitable trip north on I-5, each traveler must decide which highway to take west towards the Pacific Ocean and U.S. Highway 101. Having stayed in Redding, CA the previous night, it seemed logical for me to take California Highway 299 to the former lumber mill town of Arcata, CA. Also known as the Trinity Scenic Byway, this one hundred sixty mile route would connect me with U.S. Highway 101 North.

 

Having once pulled my travel trailer over the Trinity Scenic Byway, I recalled a very long trip, with many steep grades and tight turns. The trip to Arcata has mountain, valley and river views, all stitched together like a movie. That stretch of highway has only three intersecting highways, none of which connects quickly to the coast. Once one commits to Highway 299, the only choices are to make the full transit, turn back or make your new home in Whiskeytown, Weaverville or Willow Creek.

 

When the local museum features an exhibit on the legend of Big Foot, you know you are far from the beaten path. Our friend, Bob Weaver, tells us that the town is named after one of his ancestors, who won the entire town in a card game. Rather than take possession of an unruly gold mining town, the earlier Mr. Weaver gave the town back to its original owners. His only stipulation was that they name the place after him, which they gratefully did.

 

After shaking loose from the energies of Highway 299, I drove north on U.S. Highway 101. Near sundown, I turned off the highway near my mother’s house in Port Orford, Oregon. On a clear day, the sunset over the ocean along what locals call The South Coast is beautiful to behold. By the time darkness fell, I stood in the coastal forest that is my mother’s front yard.

 

Several days later, my return trip to L.A. was just as beautiful. Although it had rained all night, a large storm cleared Port Orford at dawn. With the highway drying before me, I followed the clouds south along Highway 101. From the Gulf of Alaska to the beaches of Oregon, there is no intervening landmass to buffer wind or waves. Soon after the morning high tide, I traveled south past wave-swept beaches. At the surf line, outgoing and incoming waves met, stacking them up three-high. Standing perhaps thirty feet above the tide line, the countervailing energies of wind, wave and tide held the breaking waves, almost motionless in mid air. With a tumultuous release of kinetic energy, each giant wave would collapse toward the shore. As I saw it, no person or vessel could survive in that maelstrom.

 

As I drove south into Northern California, the temperate rainforest of coastal redwoods lived up to its prior billing. The mists swept in from the coast and rain fell wherever a large grove stood. Where there were no trees growing on the land, no rain fell. As the storm cleared before me, traffic was light all the way to my next stop, in Berkeley, California. Glorious in their fall color, vineyards lined both sides of the highway between Geyserville and Healdsburg, in Sonoma County.

 

Upon reaching the San Pablo Bay near sundown, I departed U.S. Highway 101 for the first time since beginning my trip in Port Orford, that morning. My route included a long causeway on Interstate I-580 leading to the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge. In order to offer one hundred eighty-five feet clearance for two shipping lanes below, the highway approach ramps are steep. Even with a top roadway height of two hundred feet, the bridge fails to provide a good view of the bay. Only from the eastbound causeway could we see the structure, first opened in 1956, shining in silver light.

 

After a night in Berkeley, I traveled east on Interstate I-580, connecting then to I-5 South. Although known as one of the windiest places in California, not one of the many Altamont Pass wind turbines turned that morning. Perhaps it was calm between storms. Once I rejoined I-5 South, I put my Nissan Titan on cruise control. From there, until I again encountered the Ridge Route at Grapevine, it was time to set my mental cruise control and relax.

 

On both sides along I-5, there are small signs that say “Congress Created Dust Bowl”. Although some of these signs stood near fallow fields of blowing dust, others were at verdant locations, thus diminishing the impact of the farmers' message. Although I disagree that Congress created water shortages and fallow fields in California, changing climate and water politics combine for an increased incidence of dust storms in California and throughout the West.

 

At one point, I saw what looked like flakes of gold shimmering above the highway. Had a gust of wind raised a small part of the Golden State into the sky? Although the scene was reminiscent of the previous day’s rainforest showers, it was ominous to see the soil of yet another western state drying up and blowing away in the wind. Which event is representative of where our planet is going? Will it be healing rain or choking dust that rules our world? Only through the questioning of our collective consciousness shall we receive answers to those questions.

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By James McGillis at 06:43 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Edward Abbey - The Bard of Moab, Utah - 2009

 

Edward Abbey - The Bard of Moab, Utah

As I first read author Edward Abbey's book, "Desert Solitaire - A Season in the Wilderness”, I loved both his writing style and his subject matter. In that book, his style was simple, direct and observational; yet personal, all at once. His subject was the old Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah.

 

With rye humor, he wrote about the animals, plants, hoodoos and summer tourists that populated the area around Devils Garden campground. It was there, as a mid 1950’s park ranger that Abbey lived for part of two seasons. His second season ended with a train trip home to the east coast that started at “Thompson” (Springs). Can one think of a more ignominious way to leave Canyonlands than at a railroad whistle-stop on a cold, rainy night?

 

That night, one Jeep with 4-wheels spinning, drove north of Moab on Valley City Road. With the heavy rain, mud flying from the wheels and the engine floored-out, the wipers swept across the windshield just fast enough to smear the red mud away. They were late to the station and flagging down a cross-country passenger train at Thompson was rare and dangerous. With no time to take the paved road, they continued northeast, their wheels barely touching the muddy ground.

 

The driver, squinting through the muddy glass, was sad to see his friend go. The other was heading east to a promised job and money. That need drove the man back home. At Arches, he had experienced the secrets of God’s creation. Later, he was to live in Oracle, Arizona. Between his birth and death, he liked to say that his life took him from Home to Oracle. Now he paid the stationmaster to stop the Zephyr and get him onboard.

 

Thompson Springs had no Fred Harvey restaurant or luxury hotel. It had one diner, one motel and one eternal wellspring of water, which accounts for half its name. Few passengers ever boarded a Union Pacific passenger train at Thompson Springs. The small stop was used mostly to ship cattle or Fruit to market. Situated half way between Green River, Utah and Grand Junction, Colorado, Thompson Springs could just as well have been half way to nowhere.

 

While the bearded man pressed five dollars into the stationmaster’s hand, the eastbound California Zephyr had already passed both sets of green lights. At that moment, no one on the train expected to stop at Thompson Springs.

 

With throttles wide open, the eastbound Zephyr pulled the grade on approach to the old station. The thrum of the engine and the glare of the headlight shot through the night sky. With a touch of W.C. Fields ringing in his voice, the stationmaster declared, “Sir, there is no time to waste. You are leaving here on that train”. As a powerful wavering light filled the depot, the stationmaster realized that the train was about to pass them by. With one hand he shoved the five dollars deep into his pocket, and with the other he threw a lever, activating the red lights on the station platform.

 

Seeing red, the engineer of the Zephyr had no choice but to shut down the throttles and actuate the air-brakes in full emergency mode. As massive brake shoes applied friction to each steel wheel, the engine of the aluminum-clad streamliner shot past the passenger platform. Grinding, creaking, and then shuddering, the engine came to a halt in a cottonwood grove beyond the station. “Peace at last, peace at last”, was all that the U.P. engineer managed to say. Luckily, the train was comprised of ten cars, so Abbey could board the last car, which by then stood creaking at the far end of the platform. 

 

As a town, Thompson Springs survives to this day for only one reason, which is water. As strange as it may seem, at Thompson Springs there is free flowing water in the desert. Even now, residents can pull up to the town's water dispensing station and fill truck-mounted water tanks as needed. "Be sure to shut off the valve when you are done", reads a nearby sign. First used to support cattle and sheep ranching, the springs later made a reliable water-stop for steam locomotives. As Abbey so eloquently decried in Desert Solitaire, the West was changing. When his train departed Thompson Springs that rainy, autumn night, its gleaming silver locomotive no longer required water-stops. The diesel-electric motors powering its drive-wheels made Thompson Springs obsolete.

 

In Edward Abbey’s early writings, a prescient reader may spot evidence of both his inconsistencies and his growing discontent. A serial monogamist, Abbey married often and spent money freely on such icons of consumption as a red 1975 Eldorado Cadillac convertible. Like the pamphleteers of our early union, Abbey used his wit and his pen to wage metaphorical war against despoilers of the desert he loved.

 

First published in 1968, Desert Solitaire elevated Edward Abbey to celebrity status, especially in Moab and the Spanish Valley. In 1974, drawing on his proceeds, Abbey bought a home at 2260 Spanish Valley Drive. There, he reputedly wrote his breakthrough novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. I use the word “reputedly”, but not to impugn or malign the memories of Abbey’s family, friends and neighbors. Publication of The Monkey Wrench Gang occurred in 1975. Is it reasonable to assume that Edward Abbey could write, then have edited and published his opus in one year’s time?

 

Thirty years after his death, if we were to poll current Moab residents regarding Edward Abbey’s legacy, half would love him and half would revile him. If Abbey were to return today, his spirit might align more closely with those who hate him than with those who love him. Abbey was never one to take himself too seriously. His style of self-deprecating humor compares well to Will Rogers or Mark Twain.

 

The Abbey House, as locals call it, is currently on the market for under $300,000. Although the house and grounds need some repair, the current owner has done what she can to maintain a mid-century home with style and grace. The day I visited Abbey's Shrine, there were candles lit upon the mantle. The grounds and outbuildings may look like a Tennessee Williams stage set transported to the desert, but then again, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.

 

Whether new owners repair the house or tear it down, we hope that all future custodians of the property will conserve and retain its large stone fireplace. Local stone, chosen for its pattern, texture and color dominates the outdoor wall of the front entry. Inside, the opposite face of the same structure makes up the fireplace and living room wall. Hearkening back to a time when firewood heated most local homes, stone vents above the hearth circulate warm air into the room.

 

That hearth, as its heart, architecturally defines the Abbey House. If tomorrow, a tornado carried away every stick of the Abbey House, that stone fireplace would stand. Saving the heart of his former home would be monument enough to Edward Abbey, the iconoclastic author and onetime Bard of Moab.

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A Sense of Entitlement No Longer Serves Us - 2009

 

A Sense of Entitlement No Longer Serves Us

Since Navajo National Monument is so peaceful and quiet, I stayed on the morning of October 7, 2009 to enjoy the otherwise empty campground. It was over two hundred miles to my next destination, at Moab, Utah. In order to visit all my favorite places along the way, I would have to stretch geodetic verisimilitude. Today, my intention was to see it all and still be in my Moab camp before the sun descended behind the Moab Rim.

 

I stopped first in Kayenta, Arizona, a city within the Navajo Indian Reservation, or “Res”, as the locals call it. Kayenta is also the southern gateway to Monument Valley, via US-163 Scenic Highway. While US Highway 191 North will get you to Bluff faster, it is a bone-jarring road through unredeemed scenery. Every time I go the fast way, I wish I hadn't. Passing through Monument Valley is now my right of passage to the Four Corners and the High Southwest.

 

Other than an Anglo insurance adjuster assisting a local resident, everyone I saw there was Navajo, or Dine’, as they call themselves. Although Navajo facial features differ from those we might see elsewhere, the youth of Kayenta wore attire indistinguishable from their suburban brethren across the country.

 

While visiting Kayenta in June 2009, I located a field north of town from which emanated the vortex of a regional dust storm. Driving south towards Kayenta that day, I traced the point of origin to a field across Highway 163 from Chaistla Butte. I was amazed to find that a dust storm covering hundreds of square miles could have its origin in one empty field.

 

Ten minutes later, in Monument Valley, I observed ongoing destruction of the landscape. Along Highway 163, several dogs herded a flock of sheep southward toward that fateful field. With no humans in sight, the dogs kept the sheep moving down that parched valley. As it is today, when ancestral Puebloan Indians first inhabited Monument Valley, there was no year-round running stream.

 

For over one hundred years, Anglo ranchers’ sacred cattle and the Navajo’s sacred sheep have eaten the West. Left unchecked, sheep will eat low lying plants down to their roots. One needs to look no farther than the fence lines along Arizona highways to see the damage. When compared to the overgrazed landscape of the open range, the protected area along the roadside is lush with vegetation. Shifting sand and blowing dust have been part of their lives for so long; locals of all ethnicity now take it their moving landscape for granted.

With an extended dry cycle in the West, we must control and curtail grazing in wind-sensitive areas. Allowing further destruction and dissipation of the land will encourage even earlier seasonal dust storms, with attendant early snow-melt in the high country. The issue no longer centers on sacred grazing rites or cattle ranching traditions. Now, the issue is the survival of the Western landscape and all of us who live or play within it. Only when all humans abandon their sense of entitlement will this endangered land begin to heal itself.

As we enter another

 

On this October day, a cold front had cleared the air in the Four Corners region. As I approached Monument Valley from the south, I caught a glimpse of the Abajo Mountains, over seventy miles to the north. Before reaching those mountains later that afternoon, I would cross the Arizona - Utah border in Monument Valley, then on through the towns of Mexican Hat, Bluff and Blanding.

 

During my 1965 visit to Monument Valley, I had discovered a favorite scene. Now heading north, capturing that scene required me to stop and look back. From a mesa top, I had a long view toward the buttes and spires of Monument Valley. Here, the movie character Forest Gump stopped running and returned home. Over forty years after my first visit, the spot was just as majestic and unspoiled as it was in my youth.

 

After departing Monument Valley, I traveled across a narrow bridge that spans the San Juan River. There, serving as the northern gateway to Monument Valley is the town of Mexican Hat, Utah. Home to about one hundred hearty souls, it was there; in a roadside diner, that author Edward Abbey set the scene for the climactic chase in his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Since Abbey set his scenes with geographical accuracy, a now abandoned diner In Mexican Hat may have served as his model.

 

The actual Mexican Hat Rock is a disk of sandstone sixty feet in diameter. Perched as it is on a much smaller boulder, one must invert the image to see the hat. In the background, stand convoluted and eroded landforms of fantastic proportions. With only the San Juan River to carry away the products of erosion, one can only imagine how many thunderstorms in the desert it took to create such fanciful shapes.

 

The next Utah landform of note I encountered was Comb Ridge. The large, tilted-block monocline divides much of Southeastern Utah along a north – south axis. Named for its resemblance to a cockscomb, one can see how the eroded ridge top inspired such a name.

 

Approaching Comb Ridge from the south, the highway first crosses Comb Wash. With the ridge of eroding sandstone looming above, the Highway 163 climbs over the steep ridge. Partially because of space constraints, highway engineers gave us a strong running start down into the wash then up through a dramatic road cut. From plateau top to the bottom of the wash and then to ridge top again takes less than two minutes. With its changes in elevation, swooping turns and potential for falling rocks, the short transit up and over Comb Ridge is both dramatic and memorable.

 

Heading north from Comb Ridge, Highway 163 briefly shares a route with U.S. Highway 191. In the town of Bluff, beneath sugarcoated sandstone canyon walls, the two highways again diverge. There, at a T-shaped intersection stands a remnant from the past known as the old Cow Canyon Trading Post. Since images of the old trading post serve as “Moab Ranch” in my online novel at JimMcGillis.com, I stopped to look around. A rustic buckboard at that location provided a backdrop for pictures of Kokopelli and Coney, two of the characters in my novel.

 

My next stop was in Blanding, Utah. As did Bluff to its south and Monticello to its north, Blanding began as a Mormon outpost and settlement in the late 1800s. Today, Blanding’s simple, clean appearance belies the angst and anguishes many of its longtime residents feel.

 

The collecting of ancient Indian artifacts, locally called “pot hunting” has been illegal on public lands since President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act of 1906. In the 1980s, arrests and prosecutions of several prominent local citizens had curtailed, but not ended the looting in San Juan County. The arrest of twenty-six Four Corners residents in early 2009 indicates that looting of artifacts from graves is still considered by some to be an “entitlement activity”. If Ute Indians from the White Mesa Reservation were to dig up the Blanding City Cemetery in search of valuables, would townsfolk passively accept such behavior?

 

After the recent BLM arrests, the San Juan County Sheriff contacted both of Utah U.S. senators, requesting a federal investigation. The investigation that he requested centered not on possible conspiracy to loot artifacts from our public lands. His main concern was that a phalanx of armed federal agents had arrested middle aged and elderly citizens of Blanding. Included in the arrests was a member of his family.

 

Whether we agree with the tactics of federal agents or not, it is hard to argue against ending what had become rampant grave robbing and desecration of sacred sites. Whether the issue is overgrazing or pot hunting, only when we abandon our feelings of entitlement shall we begin to heal both our relationship with the land and with the spirit of the ancients.

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By James McGillis at 04:15 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Sonoran Desert Soul-Transit - 2009

 

Sonoran Desert Soul-Transit

On Monday, October 5, 2009, I awoke in Quartzsite, Arizona. By Noon, I was “on the road” toward Black Canyon City, AZ. Not wanting to pull my coach through Phoenix, AZ during rush hour, I avoided Interstate I-10. Instead, I “cut the corner” from Quartzsite to Black Canyon City on Highway U.S. 60, via Wickenburg.

 

If the reader is unfamiliar with the territory, U.S. 60 traverses a wide expanse of Sonoran desert. Along with occasional views of irrigated farm fields, one experiences such desert hotspots as Brenda, (named for an old girl friend), Hope (the eastbound and westbound departure signs both read, “You Are Now Beyond Hope”), Salome (Where she danced) and the lesser burgs of Harcuvar, Aguila and Gladden. After going beyond Hope, it was a relief to reach the cheerful sounding place named Gladden.

 

The previous day, the first cold front of the fall season had passed through the Arizona desert. Departing Quartzsite at midday, the temperature was only 63 f. degrees. Throughout the day, temperatures did not exceed 83 f. degrees. For me, a clear, temperate day in the Arizona desert is a rare treat.

 

As I motored along, the open landscape, clear blue sky and white clouds created a peaceful atmosphere. The desert transit allowed time for me to contemplate where I had been and where I was going in life. The old highway served as allegory to my lifelong transit.

 

How wonderful could a week’s vacation be? If you are like me, you spend the "week prior" preparing for the journey. You spend your vacation week living the vacation in real-time. Upon returning home, you spend the "week following" reliving your vacation. Using that formula, you get three weeks vacation for the price of one.

 

As I drove east, I realized that there were issues to address and challenges to overcome, but such is life. Beginning there in the desert, I concluded that I have no problems in my life. Inside me, something said, “Be on the lookout for anomalies in time. They are ready to escort you to your destiny. If you allow their help, you shall live your dreams sooner than you might otherwise imagine”.

 

Pushing our values on to another person no longer works. It is up to each individual to discover who he or she is. The final step in human ascension is to come to loving terms with self. For many humans, allowing self-love is not easy. The distractions of everyday life alone can separate us from our Source. Many of us live day-to-day, with a “here today and gone tomorrow” attitude. If we do not consciously connect with Mother Earth, our lives can become ephemeral, more dreamlike than visceral.

 

The way to achieve “grounding” is different for each person. If one offers, allows and accepts self-love, one instantly feels grounded. Whether its source is alternating or direct, the grounding of electricity through a wire is a one-way process. For all known living things, the Earth is our ground. Our personal electromagnetheric energy fields seek resolution there. The process is analogous to gravity forcing water to seek its own level. That all energy seeks resolution is universal law. As such, it is undeniable.

 

We no longer need opposing energies in our lives. When dualistic thinking is present, new energy travels to ground, disappearing before it can manifest. In human life, the best interactions are win-win. In the sport of fencing, each contestant might score a simultaneous touché to the other's heart. The result is grounding, from one to the other and out to the universe. Whenever two hearts touch, new energy manifests. As with any other grounding of energy, universal law applies. Put another way, "Thousands of candles may be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Love never decreases by being shared." - Buddha ...

 

As the desert rolled under my truck, my thoughts drifted to Jimmy, the boy I was, over fifty years ago. During that period, my inner child had turned inward, longing for the unchanging security of home and family. Despite my early unrealistic expectations about home, family and security, in my fifties I became a nomad. For two years, I lived on my sailboat, WindSong, laying in Marina del Rey, CA. Later I alternated living quarters between WindSong and my travel trailer. From Catalina Island, CA, to the Four Corners region and throughout the Western U.S., I traveled. If nothing else, it proved to me that my core beliefs about home, and security could change.

 

As I observed the scenery that day, I realized that a desert transit is a uniquely human experience. In my imagination, my inner child sat next to me in the passenger seat. Before sharing our thoughts about the scenery around us, we turned and smiled at each Other. Aloud, I said, “Can you imagine doing what I do for a living, and making money too?”

 

The twin subjects of shortage and abundance had entered my mind. A conceptual path toward monetizing my life’s work eluded me. Taking a deep breath and letting it out, I realized that I did not need to know the details of my future funding sources. My contribution was to keep asking the universe for what I wanted, and then to align my energies with the receiving of what I had asked for.

 

A feeling of happiness and contentment washed over me. If ever there was a place where the universe listens to requests, it had to be the Sonoran desert. I spent that afternoon asking aloud for all of that which I desired. Looking as my inner child had imagined it so many years ago, the visual backdrop to my requests was the living desert.

 

In the late afternoon, I reached Black Canyon City, AZ. At the RV Park, I detached my coach, put on my running shorts and drove a mile to the High Desert Nature Park. After two year’s absence from the park, I ran a course made familiar during my two winters living in Black Canyon City. My running course included a desert-garden pathway, which loops around the seventy-five acre preserve. Other than drought, which blankets the Four Corners with its dust, little had changed in the park since I first visited there in March 2005. In defiance of drought, were the Saguaro cacti a bit bigger now?

 

At sunset, from atop that hill, I could feel cool Arctic air pushing south towards Mexico. I was happy to feel that Mother Nature's natural chiller still worked.

 

If our collective consciousness requests it, we may yet see glaciers return to the high country of our Rocky Mountains. Not so long ago, Glacier National Park, MT, had many active glaciers within its borders. If we request new glaciers, can group consciousness create them? Ultimately, the gloomy-doomers may win the day with their global warming scenarios, but I hereby request new glaciers.

 

That night, it was clear and cold in Black Canyon City. Later, I read that Grand Junction, CO had eclipsed by three degrees their low-temperature record for that date. In the Four Corners, autumn 2009 had started cold. Might it also be wet?

 

Events at our next stop, Navajo National Monument, AZ hinted at a possible answer to that question.

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By James McGillis at 03:46 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

A Windy Day in the Desert Southwest - 2009

 

A Windy Day in the Desert Southwest

At 12:30 PM on the first Sunday in October, we departed Casa Carrie in Simi Valley, California, bound for Quartzsite, Arizona. Our overnight stay would be the Holiday Palms RV Park in Quartzsite. As always, the first day of a Four Corners tour is a bit stressful. What have I remembered to pack and what have I forgotten? As it turned out, I forgot the charger for my Bluetooth headset and… my engagement ring.

 

From Simi Valley through the San Fernando, the San Gabriel and the San Bernardino Valleys, I listened to LA News on 1070 AM. The Sheep Fire at Lytle Creek, in the San Bernardino National Forest had broken through its lines and then burned toward the mountain town of Wrightwood, east of Mt. Baldy. As I transited east on the 210 Foothill Freeway, I listened as if I were in the old days of radio. The paid firefighters and the prisoners-of-the-state camp crews cooperated to create firebreaks and to lay fire hose lines up impossibly steep grades of freshly bulldozed earth.

 

White Bear, the DC-10 air tanker made one run, laying fire retardant down on crucial terrain. The P-2 Neptune and the P-3 Orion, both built by Lockheed, Burbank in mid-century could not overcome the masking effects of the swirling wind. Within thirty minutes, fresh winds cleared the ridge-views for the tankers to drop their loads. The same cold front catapulted me east on Interstate I-10 toward Needles and Quartzsite. All of this took place with barely a touch of the accelerator pedal on my Titan truck. The billboard-shaped back of my pioneer travel trailer caught the wind and pushed me forward.

 

When at Casa Carrie, I can hole-up for days at a time, driving nowhere at all. Then, the next trip to the desert takes shape in my mind. Will it include Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Durango, Colorado or Canyon De Chelly National Monument, Arizona, if not the North Rim of the Grand Canyon? That is the beauty of Indian Country. One need not adhere to any particular schedule or route. Here, one’s location is a state of mind.

 

In Blythe, California, I stopped for provisions at the Albertson’s supermarket. Luckily, we had prepared a chicken stew the night before my departure, so I did not have to rely on their heavy emphasis of deli fried foods. To my dismay, the organic wheatgrass that they stock year round was getting a little leggy. I bought a pint container anyway, wanting it as much for the small lawn I can create with it in my coach as for any nutritional value it might hold.

 

When I settled in at Quartzsite, my indoor/outdoor thermometer froze at 75 degrees, both inside and out. Several hours later, neither indicator has budged. If only I had a barometer and hygrometer, I could determine if all atmospheric activity had actually stopped.

 

Quartzsite is 279 miles from Simi Valley. Arriving here with everything I need to survive indefinitely, except for my engagement ring, feels like an achievement. Now that I am on the road, it all gets easier. If I forgot to pack something, I can stop at Wal-Mart and buy it. That type of activity is what keeps the American economy “moving”, if indeed economies move at all.

 

On Friday, October 9, Carrie will fly from LAX to Grand Junction, Colorado. That day, I will drive from Moab, Utah on U.S. Highway 191 North and Interstate I-70 East to “Junction”. At the appointed hour, I will reunite with both Carrie and my engagement ring.

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By James McGillis at 11:48 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

 

The Four Corners States - Fall Tour 2009

On October 4, 2009, we depart for a two-week RV tour of the Four Corners. Our first stop will be Quartzsite, Arizona. After business in Phoenix, Arizona the following day, we will take one night in Black Canyon City, Arizona. From there, we go north via Interstate I-17, through Flagstaff, and then on to Sunset Campground at Navajo National Monument, Arizona. There we shall partake of the best free camping in the Four Corners. We hope to arrive at the campground early enough to view one of its universally famous sunsets.

We arrive in Moab, Utah on October 7, departing there on October 11, 2009. With friends old and new, we shall experience Moab and its redrock neighborhoods. After covering the exciting conclusion of the “24 Hours of Moab” off-road bicycle race, we will head south and west, back toward LA.

The following two nights we'll be at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. With “The National Parks” film showing on PBS this past week, we cannot resist returning to the one place that President Theodore Roosevelt said, "Every American should see". Intellectually, we know that the Grand Canyon is just a big hole in the ground, but this will be our fifth pilgrimage to the mother of all National Parks. If she accepts us into her earthly folds, we shall be pleased.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon sits about as far away from a major city as you can get by paved road in the U.S. From the nearby towns of Page, Arizona and Kanab, Utah, very light pollution obscures the North Rim sky. With a population of less than 100,000, Flagstaff, Arizona, over 75 miles away likewise has only minimal visual effect on the night sky. On nearly moonless nights we shall visit the fabled North Rim. Above, we shall see the Milky Way and a million stars. This time we have packed our four-inch reflector telescope. With its ability to concentrate light from distant objects, we hope to see deep into the night sky.

After the first significant snowfall at the North Rim, Park Rangers close the area to new entrants, other than those with winter hiking or cross-country skiing permits.  Any guests lucky enough to experience a full blanket of snow at the North Rim are encouraged to leave as soon as the road is cleared for travel. The park and lodge staff stay to shut down their facilities, but until the following spring we leave the park to nature. With luck, we shall see no significant snowfall at the North Rim before our arrival. Even so, we must pack shorts and t-shirts for Phoenix and winter coats for both Navajo National Monument and an 8,000 foot elevation at the North Rim.

In the 1960s, upon attaining our first view over and down the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, we said aloud, "That's it." Then, a few moments later we asked no one in particular except the God we had forsaken, “That's it?" Each time we return to the Grand Canyon, we recall those words and that God. In anticipation of seeing the Grand Canyon again soon, we cannot imagine saying anything other than, “That’s it”. Then, a few moments later, we expect to hear, “That’s it?” Whose voice will that be? Ours or the Other?

After two nights at the North Rim Campground, we will hook up and head for home. After descending the Kaibab Plateau, we will pick up Interstate 15 South, near St. George, Utah. Our final night on the road will be at Mesquite, Nevada, ninety miles north of Las Vegas. On our final day, we have 379 highway miles to cover, arriving home on the evening of October 17.

While we are on the road, please join us for updates, here at JamesMcGillis.com.

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By James McGillis at 11:47 AM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link