And then the Romanians Arrived...

 

It was late afternoon and Paul and I were sitting in our camp chairs at the edge of an empty lake, little waves lapping at out toes, as we savored the first beer of the day. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, my truck parked behind us, our tents set up on the sandy beach and the kayaks beached off to the side. It had been a long and dusty ride back in to this seldom visited part of Lake Mohave, but the payoff couldn't have been better. We were all alone; had been since we pulled in two nights ago. True, the fishing had stunk but the campsite was one in a million. The star-filled skies at night complete with coyote serenade. The crystal clear water. The moon like landscape of the Mohave desert. Up on the gravel ridge above camp, a line of Gamble's quail trotted along. A ground squirrel rustled in the bushes. Vultures hovered effortless above us in the stiff breeze off of the lake. Not too many places left in the world where you can drive up to a lake and just park and be completely alone. We were feeling quite content and not just a little pleased with ourselves.

And then the Romanians arrived.

The silence was broken by the sound of the twin inboard motors of a 30 foot cruiser as it roared around the point of the cove and turned directly for our beach. We watched with irritation as the pilot expertly cut the engines at just the right time and the big boat cruised gently into the sandy beach. A lady in a bikini and a black lab hopped out and secured the bow while the captain, a big burly man with a healthy beer gut, surveyed the scene with his hands on his hips. He looked at us. He looked at our fishing kayaks. He looked at us again.

“HEY YOU GUYS! THERE'S A BIG BOIL OF FISH RIGHT OUT THERE! FISH EVERYWHERE MAN!” He then reached down into his live well and pulled out a massive striped bass.

We both jumped out of our camp chair in disbelief and looked at at the lake. The man started laughing uproariously. “NO MAN, I'M JUST MESSIN' WITH YOU. THERE'S NO BOILS. NOT TIL AUGUST OR SEPTEMEBR. WE CAUGHT THIS ONE EARLY MORNING. WAY UP LAKE! “HA! YOU SHOULDA SAW YOUR FACES! YOU COME TO DINNER TONIGHT. WE EAT THE FISH!””

The big man disembarked from the boat with surprising agility and strode up the beach to greet us. We shook hands and he introduced himself as Orlando. “THIS IS BEST BEACH ON THE LAKE. THE OTHERS? TOO MANY PEOPLE. YOU SHARE WITH US, WE SHARE DINNER!”

As good as his word, a couple hours later, he waved us over. “Come, my friends. Have some dinner with us!”

We followed him back up the beach to his camp and introductions and beers were exchanged. Orlando was a big burly guy with an oversize personality that reminded me of John Belushi. I capitalize his dialogue because that is how he talked—with gusto and boundless enthusiasm. Elena was his wife/girlfriend who sat aside in a chair with a book and only committed to the conversation in quips. And Sergio was a stern, tall, muscular man who had appeared out of nowhere. A quiet man with a thicker accent, he was doing all the cooking. Apparently, he had driven in on the same trail he had and had quietly made camp unobtrusively back in the shrub. They were Romanians, we quickly discovered, who were living in Las Vegas.

Ah, Romanian mafia, we thought. Orlando could've have been the big boss and Orlando was the muscle. Not that we cared at the moment as they passed out cheap beers and Sergio produced the hot fried bass with fresh pico de gallo and tortillas. If I have had better tasting fish in my life I don't remember it. And something that good is not something you would forget. “HAVE MORE! HAVE MORE. HAVE ANOTHER BEER!”

The conversation quickly turned to fishing. They say love is the universal language, but I disagree. For men it is fishing. Though for these guys fishing and love were synonymous. They were passionate. On this lake they were primarily interested in the big stripers but when we told him we were focusing on largemouth—and had been skunked so far—they proceeded to tell us what what we were doing wrong. Being what passed for locals in this place, we listened intently to their advice. Seems like we were in the wrong part of the lake. We needed to be on the other side and near the places where the lake constricts.

“WE TAKE YOU THERE TOMORROW! WE'LL PUT YOUR KAYAKS ON THE BOAT AND TAKE YOU ACROSS. OR YOU CAN DO STRIPER FISHING WITH US IN MORNING!”

As the beers flowed, the phones came out and Orlando started scrolling through his fish pictures. Bass tournaments (I CAME IN THIRD!), to ice fishing in Northern Nevada. (WE ARE FROM COLD PART OF ROMANIA. WE LIKE THE SNOW) Orlando was especially proud of his phone apps. “YOU NEED ONX OUTDOORS. BEST APP. WORTH THE PRICE. AND THIS WIND APP. LOOK. IT PREDICTS THE WIND AND THE DIRECTION. VERY HELPFUL. STARLINK! YOU NEED STARLINK. NO CELL SIGNAL OUT HERE!”

Sergio took me aside and started showing me pictures of tuna fishing in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. I asked him if he had seen any whales down there. He then proceeded to tell me a story about hooking a whale in a twenty foot boat We talked sharks and manta rays and the current political climate in Mexico. “I no longer feel quite safe down there,” he confessed..

We started talking about where we were from, where we had fished, where we wanted to fish. Turns out they had originally settled near Vail, a place that Paul had also lived near. They started comparing notes-- talking about places they knew—Beaver Creek, Minturn... “MINTURN! NOBODY KNOWS MINTURN,” Orlando roared uproariously. He thought it was the funniest thing. Turns out they lived in similar places at similar times. It was a small world, I observed. “YES! YES! SMALL WORLD!”

Suddenly on this empty beach in the middle of the Mohave desert, a couple meat cutters from Arizona and a couple of Romanians from Las Vegas, were all best friends. And why not? We had this beautiful place, interesting company, delicious food and cold beer.

And it was, indeed, a small world.

Precious Memory

 

I love dreams: the weirdness, the plasticity, the ethereal quality of them. Often I lie in bed in the morning and play with them in my mind. You can probe them, shape them, and sometimes even continue them.

Memories are much the same. The same plasticity. Scientists say that every time you take a memory out of long term storage and review it, you change it ever so slightly. It's easy to distrust memories for that reason. And as the years go by, sometimes you wonder if they ever happened at all.

For instance I remember riding my mountain bike through Fry Park, a backcountry meadow near Flagstaff, and from out of the trees ran a herd of elk. They actually ran along side of me for a while, before speeding away and crossing the road and disappearing into the woods on the other side. In my memory some were bugling. It is one of my favorite memories. As I've retold the story and reexamined in my mind, I had began to doubt it's authenticity. Surely it hadn't happened like that. Surely, I just saw them running close by or crossing the road in front of me and just embellished it. And of course they weren't bugling in the daytime...

But then it happened again.

I was riding my gravel bike out on Sycamore Canyon road. As I came up over a hill, I saw a herd of antelope crossing the road. Half were across the road and half not, when they noticed me coming. Both groups turned and ran down the side of the road. As I was on a downhill slope, I was moving quickly and soon had antelope running on both sides of me. For one thrilling moment, I was part of the herd! Oh to be an antelope running free through the desert! For a brief second I maintained pace with these beautiful graceful creatures and then they shifted into another gear. With jaw dropping speed the antelope on my right surged ahead, bounded across the road and both groups vanished into the desert hills without a trace.

Leaving just a memory.

It confirmed the old memory and what I already knew to be true: riding a bicycle down desert roads or forest trails, you see more wildlife than even hiking. You are on them so quickly and quietly that they are caught by surprise. (Earlier that day I had rode through a herd of range cattle who just stood in the road and stared at me—making me slow to a crawl and weave carefully in between them). I shouldn't have doubted the memory. I should have celebrated it. Even if it wasn't 100% historically accurate, it was emotionally genuine. And like all great dreams and memories, should be savored without guilt.

The Crux

 

As I near retirement, I've been thinking a lot about my place in society. Like a lot of people, I am frustrated and angered by the increasing complexity and relentless commercialization of absolutely everything. Technology is spiraling out of control and is being weaponized by the corporate profit monster as means of selling us yet more subscriptions and crap we don't need. Our very attention has been commodified. We are caught in an elaborate shell game in which we are ultimately the rubes. Knowing this and escaping it, however, are two very different propositions.

The feeling isn't exactly new. I've always felt a little out-of-step with society. As I slowly succumbed to the wage-slave rat-race, there has always been an internal itch that knew there was a better way to live. This feeling isn't unique. Many wrestle with it. And it is this complex dilemma that is explored in depth in the the new novel, Crux, by Gabriel Tallent. Crux is a story about two teenage aspiring rock climbers coming to grips with their dreams and their families and their obligations and reality. Dan is a gifted genius-level scholar while Tamma is a brash, irrepressible force of nature. They are bonded through their linked and dysfunctional families and the transformative art of rock climbing. They dream of something better. Bigger. Purer.

Dan when explaining to his high school counselor why he's considering not going to college, says:

“It means opting out of the valorized status economy. Live in a vehicle. Sleep in the wilderness. Work, but only save up enough money to keep climbing. Own little, buy less, and see wild, beautiful places while there are wild beautiful places left. I love climbing. It's the only thing that's kept me alive these last few years. That and this friendship that I have. My mom is not a stable person and sometimes I think that I may not be stable, either. All my life people have called me gifted and sometimes I wonder if really what I have is anxiety and depression, if my giftedness isn't really a terror, which I carry around, all the time, and which spurs me to perform at a high level. Terror that the world is fundamentally insecure. That the bottom could drop out of it, at any time. That if I am not brilliant and high performing, my parents will stop loving me. But, also, terror at myself, at who I may become. So maybe my giftedness is not going to translate to a great life... Maybe the ordinary thing, the college and a career thing, it's not gonna work for me. So maybe I need to turn back and face it. The terror, I mean. When I look around, it's everybody living these purposeless lives they don't understand, lives they don't enjoy, forced from one thing to the next, working jobs they hate for a life in which they find no meaning, and it looks like there's nothing else, no hope or beauty anywhere, in anyone's lives, no one knows where to find it, no one knows where it went, or why its gone, everywhere you turn there's no hope, no chance, no way forward, no one I ever met sees any point in it, no one thinks anything is possible, and at the same time, they can't stop grinding for money, and I don't want that for myself, I don't want to go to school and have people tell me what things mean so I will be content and effective working whatever job comes after. I am suspicious of the well-accepted answers. I want to go out there in the desert and see for myself. I want to stay up nights in the back of the truck reading... And when I look at who's going to college, I mostly see kids that want to get a degree and be credentialed to get jobs and have things and security. I don't want that; I want to go out onto the White Rim with my friend and climb sandstone towers at the peril of our lives, swim in the Colorado River, wander slot canyons, and search out Anasazi ruins hidden in hanging valleys. It is one of the last places, maybe the very last place, where you can still dirtbag in America the way the old-school climbers did. You can sleep in canyons and washes at night with other climbers, all with campfire, beer and weed, frying up tacos beneath cottonwood trees while people play guitar and read poetry. There are risk-takers, misfits, and weirdos out there. People searching for meaning, measuring their lives not by how insulated they are from the vicissitudes of fortune, but by their incandescent proximity to the real. And my buddy and I, we would do something great, something extraordinary, we could forge a life glorious and risky, honorable even: Full of beauty, every moment, no matter how scary, how painful, how difficult, full, at least, of the gorgeousness of real places and real people, totally unlike the skid mark I see stretched out before me—if we get this chance I think we could go to the very ends of the earth and stare off the side and come back with a story to tell. My buddy, she believes that such a story might change this nation for the better, at least a little bit, and I'm not at all sure that she's wrong.”

Wow. If only I'd been that self-aware and literate at that age. Still, even he cannot break the bounds of expectation. In the end he does what everybody wants him to do:

“I wanted to go with you,” Dan said, “but I couldn't face it it. There's something wrong with me. I'm scared all the time and I'm scared of all the good things.”

His story touched home for me. I wasn't a teenager, but I was very young when I was hanging out with Mark and Joel, spending hours climbing around on little bouldering problems and debating the meaning of life, what our future should look like and just enjoying the outdoors and friendship. At the time, I was working full time in the grocery store, but I was also playing in a band, writing novels and had just secured a literary agent. The future looked limitless.

Alas, the bonds of gravity and society are strong. I never did breakthrough. We never climbed anything of note and I never sold a novel. Slowly, ever so slowly, that menial job, that at one time was going to be just a colorful footnote in my biography, became my life. Mostly I hated it. The long physical hours, the erratic schedules, , the soul-crushing weekends and holidays, the emotional demands of dealing with the public on a daily basis. I know it wasn't the ideal life. But, you know what? The truth is there a damn few “good” jobs in a rural area (and living in a city was nonnegotiable). And the easy path isn't easy. I worked my ass off. And I paid my bills. For someone like me there was no safety net, so there was no alternative. I made a home, I raised a family. I had fun when I could. I had many mini adventures. Though I have a few regrets, mostly I feel I did the best I could.

Now as I near retirement, I feel like that kid at the base of the boulder. The future, though possibly short, is wide open. I will soon be free and, this time, I'm hoping I will make the most of it.

Memos from the Mountains

 

It had been a long time since I headed into the mountains, too long, and though I am a desert rat at heart, the mountains are an important and much needed yin to the desert's yang... It's only six hours to Durango. With a good start you can be there by noon... Forgot how much I yawn at altitude... I forgot how changeable and volatile the weather is. Sunshine and blue skies one minute, thunder lightning and hail the next. The mountains create their own weather like a mad abstract painter...The trout rise in the evening when the lake is glass, but trying to anticipate that, trying to find a logical pattern in the weather, was impossible. Even the wind doesn't know which direction to come from...

The fish. Let's just say it will be a long time before I'm happy catching 10 inch stockers out of Arizona ponds again... The water. Wow. It flows, falls, rushes roars out of the mountains with infinite exuberance. It pours forth, giving itself away with selfless abandon. Sitting by a desert stream is relaxing. Standing by a raging mountain cascade is exhilarating... 

I did that Vallecito Creek hike years ago. But I remember so little of it. Walking up the first three miles, I could not believe how utterly spectacular it was. How do you forget something like that? High on a granite ledge above the raging gorge, we turned a corner and below us was a beautiful waterfall framed above by a snow-capped pyramid peak. It was so beautiful that I just started laughing out of pure joy...

Can't remember the last time I laughed out of pure joy... Waking up in the night cold, shivering. Pulling the mummy bag up over my head and face to warm up... The pine pollen coating everything in a fine yellow dust...long conversations around a campfire. It's almost impossible to be anything but content and relaxed around a campfire in the wilderness...

Probably one of the great camping sites of my life. For once, I was perfectly content to just sit in my camp chair and enjoy the view...

Scenes from a Desert Road Trip

 

Treasure Hunting

 

“Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting/ So much as just finding the gold”--Robert Service

A few months ago, Debi had a yard sale and, while we got rid of precious little junk, we did get to meet a lot of our neighbors. One of them was a young man who had just moved into his father's house diagonally across the street from us. Immediately he was taken by the amount of rocks scattered all over our yard. It turns out he was a serious rock hound and, after asking to walk around the yard, started asking silly questions like “Where did you find this one?” Our answer was invariably a shrug and the reply, “In the desert somewhere.” He found this lackadaisical attitude towards prospecting maddening.

But it did start off a relationship and he has visited us several times since to talk about our explorations. We have compared notes about what we know about the local area and it soon became apparent that there was one major mystery in the area. We had all heard of Camp Verde blue agate but no one had ever found any or even knew where to find it. Our neighbor said the only reference he could find was the phrase, “in a wash east of Squaw Peak”—a very large area to be to sure. Invariably, our visits would end in the promise we'd go out and look for it some day.

A couple weeks ago, some day arrived and we made arrangements to go out for the day. But first a little research was necessary. Snooping around the forums and reddits, I found multiple mentions of rock hounding in the Camp Verde area. They were all maddeningly vague—even to what they were finding. Rock hounds are cagey when it comes to their “spots”--even going so far as to deliberately mislead and leave red herrings. For good reason. Especially on the internet. How many times have I witnessed a favorite scenic outdoor place overrun and destroyed by YouTube/Twitter/Facebook fame? Who wants their favorite rock area picked clean?

But still there were clues. In the Camp Verde mentions, there seemed to be three predominant geographical references: Brown Springs, Rodeo Flats and the Squaw Peak mine. All three areas are located are located off the same forest service road east of Camp Verde—though all are miles apart. The next clue was a YouTube video of rock hounders finding all sort of groovy blue gate pieces. There as absolutely no mention of the location except for the “Camp Verde area.” For most of the video the camera is pointed directly at the ground so there was little or no geographical landmarks visible. Still, watching it with the neighbor and stopping it quite often—we found one brief glimpse of the background scenery. There we were able to freeze the frame and take a screen shot for reference in the field.

After poring over a topographical map of the area and identifying some likely jeep roads and interesting areas, we were off. It was a beautiful Arizona winter day. Not a cloud in the sky and temps in the 60s. After the gray short days of December and January, it felt great to be headed outside and on an adventure. It had been a long time since I had been out that way. Some of the area I remembered fairly well and others not so much. The drive itself was fun—with the “crew” telling stories of other expeditions and adventures. Finally the road crossed a flat, cow-covered plain which we all agreed had to be Rodeo Flats. Here we found a nasty, overgrown two track that headed up towards the mountains. I felt this was the most likely trail—and since I was driving—we “agreed” this was the best route.

Admittedly, it didn't look promising. The terrain was nothing but gnarly black basalt and catclaw that a huge herd of cattle was grazing down to nothing. The only shiny things on the ground were the fresh glistening cow pies. Still, we had a ways to go to get up into the mountains. It had been a while since we'd been out doing some serious off-roading. I've never really understood the folk that do this strictly for fun. The slow crawl over giant rocks, the bouncing and lurching, and the often treacherous drop offs are a challenge, but I wouldn't exactly call it fun. Usually, I am impatient to get to where I'm going, but on this day, I kind of enjoyed the drive. It was good to know that, where outdoor adventure was concerned, I hadn't lost my nerve.

“Do you have any idea where you're going?” Debi asked.

“Of course not.”

A little later the road narrowed and the drop-offs got higher.

“You're going to get all all killed.”

“She always says that,” I told our passenger.

The road got even rougher.

“I hate this. I'm never going out with you again.”

“She always says that, too.”

I think our neighbor was pretty impressed. Or was wondering what the hell he had gotten into...

As we gained altitude, the views started to look more like the picture we took. Still the rock did not look promising-- still that gray, nasty basalt-- although ridges of it began to emerge from the mountain instead of just the scatted boulders. We came over a pass and alongside the road was a stake signifying a mining claim. Aha! Another clue. We must be close! We drove on past the claim a suitable distance and I found a spot big enough to park the truck. We all tumbled out and, after establishing that we were very, very close to where the video was shot, scattered in different directions.

At first there didn't seem to be much. Some glimmers of quartz here and there but nothing unusual. I took the dog and hiked up the road. It was a lovely day and if we didn't find anything at least I'd get a little exercise. The trail climbed pretty hard and finally dead-ended in a small canyon. I hadn't found anything. On the way back I reasoned that I obviously wasn't going to find anything by staying on the road, so I cut off and climbed a nearby hill. Right away I started finding all sorts of interesting rocks. Grape bubble rock, quartz clusters, and even a few thin layers of, yes, blue agate.

In the end, we all had discovered or own little pockets of treasure and when we met back at the truck we had fun comparing our discoveries. After much ooh and aahing, we piled the rocks in a bucket and stowed them in the truck for the drive home. Of course, the rocks themselves have no monetary value. And we have no idea what to do with them (they will undoubtedly be dumped in the desert yard with countless other remnants of rock hounding adventures), but I think we all knew it wasn't the treasure so much as the challenging game of finding the treasure that was the real prize. Everybody needs adventure and some sort of treasure hunting in their lives whether it's finding Indian ruins, rock hounding, gold prospecting, thrift store browsing, used book store exploring, eBay surfing, mushroom hunting or whatever.

What's yours?

A Drive to Pierce Ferry

 

When I was a kid, one of our family traditions was that of the “Sunday Drive.” Probably once a month in good weather, Mom and Dad would get in the car, stop at a store for a six-pack of beer, a couple of sodas and some snack food and head out. Sometimes the object was to “visit” someone. Sometimes it was just to visit the lake shore. In either case, random back roads were engaged as it it gave an opportunity to slow down and, well, enjoy the beer. Even from a young age I really enjoyed the drives and I continued to participate well into high school when most teens could no longer tolerate their parents. I just enjoyed seeing new things, taking the road less traveled and exploring even in that modest manner. To this day, I still love a good road trip. I am perfectly entertained by just looking out the window and watching the scenery roll by.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I took three days to go to Laughlin, Nevada and visit our son. Laughlin's kind of a unique place. A casino town on the banks of the Colorado River, it has been called the senior citizen Las Vegas or the Redneck Strip. For us, it is a convenient staging area. The hotel rooms are dirt cheap, there are multiple dining options and dive bars within walking distance along a scenic river walk and the place is surrounded by glorious desert and the great river itself. Last time we were there, we explored an old gold mining camp in Eldorado Canyon way out on the remote reaches of Mojave Lake. This time I wanted to go somewhere else I'd never been—Pierce Ferry, considered the end of the Grand Canyon.

Fueled by casino coffee and Cinnabons, we drove out of the river valley through the sharp-toothed peaks and the middle-finger rock that guard the river. Back through Golden Valley--one of those recently common sprawls of housing in the middle of nothing; its existence relying solely on cheap land prices. And back to Hwy 93-- AKA “the Racetrack” from Kingman to Las Vegas. Halfway to Las Vegas, though, we made a right turn at Dolan Springs and into another world.

Dolan Springs was like something not of this country. A ramshackle, almost third world collection of shacks, shanties and haphazard businesses that were built randomly among some of the largest Joshua trees, I've ever seen. Cows wandered through the middle of the “business district.” As we drove down the narrow two lane blacktop through the scenic Joshua tree forest, we were surprised to see so many houses seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Where did these people work? Las Vegas? Were they all snowbird retirees? Doomsday preppers? We passed many water tankers and noticed many of the dwellings had water tanks attached so apparently there was little or no ground water. Where was the water being shipped in from? How much did it cost? So many mysteries there.

We passed to the turnoff to Grand Canyon West—a newly developed resort on Hualapai land. You may have seen pictures of the Skywalk—the Plexiglas balcony hung over the edge of the Grand Canyon. For the lovely price of $66 per person you can walk over the Grand Canyon. No thank you. I have no quarrel with the Indians monetizing their land. I just have no need to subsidize it myself. Now we had the road all to ourselves, passing only one truck loaded down with Grand Canyon rafts headed back up the hill. Here, the Joshua trees became really thick. One of the thickest stands of endangered plant anywhere in the world. They really are amazing things to see. So unique and almost comical. It is hard to stand next to them and not smile. My wife spent most of the trip trying to figure out how she could grow one in our yard. Answer: not likely. Joshua trees need a very specific climate and conditions to grow—a fact that makes them rare and acutely susceptible to climate change. One study estimates that 90 percent of the Joshua tree population will be gone by the end of the century.

We passed through one more unlikely community in the middle of nowhere called Meadview. A small side town dominated by the strange sight of a church in the middle of the desert---looking like something out of New England. A scenic pullout gave us a brief view of upper Lake Mead. Yes, there was still water in it. From there the road twisted down, down, down eventually turning into gravel. Now we were all alone and slowly drove through a rich agave/cholla/barrel cactus desert full of arroyos and dry sandy washes. My kind of country. Down and down we drove. Ahead we could see the mud banks of another arroyo and rounding a corner saw that a river, seemingly appearing out of nowhere like magic, flowed before us. End of the road.

“Are you kidding me? This is the mighty Colorado?” Debi asked aloud.

Indeed in this huge landscape of emptiness, the river did appear modest. On closer inspection, however, it was a quiet force. Exhausted from his tumultuous tumble through the Grand Canyon, the river here sighed and relaxed. Still, there was a quiet power to it, the current deceptively quick and strong. As we walked along the sandy banks, it was hard not to both feel relaxed and energized at the same time. There are a few special places like that in the world, in nature. Places that contain an intrinsic energy, a spirit, a soul. They may be different for every person, but rivers—especially desert rivers—have always been that kind of place for me. I can understand why people drop out, become “river rats” and devote their lives to the place. It's hard to be stressed out standing next to a river. It's hard to be unhappy.

All too soon it was time to get back in the car and retrace our drive. Still, the spirit of the place would linger in me for quite some time. That was a drive worth taking.