chapter 1 – high flying bird

in mid january i finally gave in to the proddings of brother max to fly west for some cross country skiing in the sierras. the reason for my reluctance, of course, was that flying is one of the chief sources of carbon dioxide emissions and therefore flies in the face – no pun not intended - of my constant goal to reduce the family carbon footprint. it’s gotta stop! i tell you, as a society we have to quit forfeiting our children’s future by coming up with a way of primarily living locally while secondarily reaching far shores – for simple adventure and communication as well as for access of materials and knowledge that may be useful for that local living. hey, we can do it; after all, the mound builders did it, presumably with tag teams of runners, the phoenicians did it with sailing ships, and societies all through history surely done it in huge hunk of cool and inventive ways. anyway, thanx max for the prodding and horsebadaddies for the air miles (“miles for mules”) that made it possible. i left my home in pennsylvania furnace (that’s my hamlet in pennsylvania, named after the iron ore furnace located there in the 19th century) on february 6th and made it to the pittsburgh airport in time to look for some steelers memorabilia for max (birthday february 5th) and something keen for sophi and jeremy as well. i struck out at the gift shop and headed to ticketing, carefully placing my immense backpack on the scale for whisking away to the innards of my plane. i said to the attendant “did you get my guitar?” and she looked at me real odd and my first thought was she was messing with me. but then i knew it was, alas, just me being me again and i raced down to the gift shop, with all the made in mexico and china steeler gear i refused to buy, and there stood my guitar in black stand up case with people milling around it on all sides. big plume of relief and back up to ticketing, check my guitar and pack, and she tickets me through chicago to san francisco. all set i head for security and stand in line and get to the front and hold out my license and what the ticketer give me and the agent says “where’s your boarding pass?” and i argue like nonsense that the bar coded little idiocy i had was what i needed. back up to ticketing to the self check in screen – obvious now, that’s how they do it these days, get my boarding pass, head to security, back in line (longer this time), eventually get to the front, pass thru like world traveler and on to the conveyor and off with the shoes and empty pockets and now on the other side safe with no bells nor buzzers. whew! safe at last… ‘cept for the bottle of wine for sophi and max in my carry on pack (security gal was nice but i’m sure was thinking “hey dumbass, don’t you know you can’t take more than a 4 oz. container of liquids on a plane dumbass?” back up to ticketing for the 4th time (one for each oz.?) and an attendant bend the rules and put the wine in a box and whisk it thru into the belly for free. back to security and this time it’s a go and i’m finally in my seat above the belly in the throat of the plane in my seat like a tooth with other teeth waiting uncleaned for our appointment in chicago. midway airport was good for recycling bottles and such, not like poor pittsburgh still stuck back in bessemer days where it all gets thrown in the rubbish and down to the town dump. on to san francisco and i slept the whole way with sleepy towns dreaming in kansas and twinkling lights seen through clouds if i would have been awake to see them. i landed with my shoes on and ready to see max on the tarmac probably driving some old pickup with a homemade cap and police all around him drawing guns and max just smiling like “i didn’t know you couldn’t drive out on the runway”. but he was safely inside and i was glad to see him, hugs all around and down to baggage then on to the prius and into the california night.

chapter 2 – magoon’s

the next day we did a hike on the beach under the full moon with dante (one of the world’s foremost dogs, like simon only more of a gentleman) and on the rough cliffs and back to max’ new expensive home now worth half the price cuz the market lost its bottom. what a nice place for max, not bad for a guy who yused to wear his cross country shoes all around nederland and boulder cuz he – like me – didn’t make enough from his geophysical job to buy the proper soles. saturday was the big day – on to magoon’s! – but at that early hour we didn’t even know the place existed. took a hike to the top of the mountain through the 7 levels for a grand view of the farralons and the sea all around when really just to the west and all blue with white caps. back down and now on to davis for the grand meeting of minds – horsebadaddies far out on a mental limb, byronius reined in by sheer force of will, max like a centrifuge with worlds upon worlds swirling around him, me like the anchor of sanity, tim looking punky with long hair and dread eyes like a sheep among fanged and madly wolves, and his dad kim stanley robinson like a prince with many nobles poking him with silly questions of life on other planets like he’s the oracle of ages. i was honored and never thought to get his autograph but all that regret was forgotten once we got to magoon’s. but first we rented my skis and on to pollock pines and the best western motel. we bedded in and drank a beer and out into the night to find, like a shining shimmering citadel of dereliction – magoon’s, in its trampen glory and our future lives probably dangling from the end of a broken pool stick and blood running out on the alcoholic floorboards. but all was cheer and heroics within. we met enough characters to fill a steinbeck novel, centered on the one great activity of karaoke. sheena sang first, a big dumpy girl with bad hair but good voice, just like patsy cline, i think she was patsy cline, reincarnated there on the floor of magoon’s. and then a girl with all eyes on her so pretty and romantic, the place stopped breathing waiting for the siren to launch from that curvy throat and… oh, like a toad it was and the hardache softened and back to billiards and beer and just let the poor girl be, all croakly and such. then it was the dee jay himself, a quiet man whose gentility mirrored the song he chose to sing, a cuddly thing about a little kitten, a pussy if you will, with lyrics lovingly describing her adventures in the rain, in an oven, with a razor, that is, wet pussy, hot pussy, bald pussy it was and we all sing along innocent like cuz pussies and magoons is like the square root of negative one. everyone thought it quite cute, an innocent departure from the night’s debauchery. i was called up next and, reinforced by beer, quickly proved i was not the second coming of j.c. fogerty as i growled my way through fortunate son. but none the buffoon in the saloon called magoon’s was prepared, no one had changed the sign outside to reflect a new beginning, the burgeoning of an age, when horsebadaddies took the floor to sing “one bourbon, one scotch, one beer”. i dint know if all the locals would mob him like a hero or tear his arms off for desecration of all things decent as he mocked his way thru the song, rasping into the mike, sometimes off in the corner like back at pugh street in his own little derelict world forgetting the crowd, even then shunning george thorogood all together as i heard him sing “save our city” and “the end is always near”, little pieces to a doors song i don’t know which. max took a rain check on the imitation game and pretty soon back to drinking and horsebadaddies strikes again, giving a girl 25 quarters to load the juke box and up comes acdc with “let it rock” and “sin city” sung like god from the moon it was so loud and delicious. all things must pass is the best song ever written for a reason – cuz the moment of madness come to an end when we stepped out of magoon’s into the clear night – all over, might as well go home, take the plane back over kansas with the sleeping towns so down and below like dorothy and the lion in the meadow fulla poppies full on to pa. and wake like a nice dream about kittens wet in the rain..

chapter 3 – tells peak

but on to the motel and it was all so real and out into the morning via route 50 and up the curvy roads where first no snow but then an abundance at the trailhead and we changed out our flatland leathers for the boots to ski like max knows all about it, a smart trimmer of trails like back in a restaurant in nederland in the poverty days of no proper shoes. we had the swish of the scottish with us that day cuz someone preceded in the snow, except where we took a wrong turn barely outta the picnic area and penalize ourselves an extra mile-and-a-half. but we mostly rode a sleek track like a bric a brac all the way to the bunker, that is, the van vleck bunkhouse solitary in a meadow six miles in and standing stately in the shadow of the crystal range. that night mr. winter blow in a foot of powder and all skiers love the snow but something of a bummer for us, the tomorrow lumbermen plodding on and making fresh trail and laying it down exhausted to within a mile of our target, the summit of tell’s peak. max was gamely given that day, doing his best but the curse of leprosy was upon him, flesh of the foot sloughing off and blisters big as balloons appearing like a cancer on his toe. this was our introduction to the skins, skinny flaps of fur fastened to our skis to hasten and hurry up hills too steep with gravity for the grasp of a smooth and naked ski. we covered 12 miles that day, sixx up and sixx back and finally resting in gasping repose on the chairs at van vleck, just enuff gumption left to muster a custard of clambake or whatever else’s chard we could conjure from our packs, all cooked together w/ a belt of liquor, compliments of horsebadaddies, the living incarnation i suppose of karaoke joe w/ his hideous assemblage of scotch and bourbon and four bottles of red wine. all this w/out the benefit of flowing water, all the pipes at the bunkhouse frozen solid so we melted snow and ate from dirty bowls and shmoozed ourselves on wine and liquor, finally off to sleep in the hinterlands of exhaustion. in the morning it was up and at ‘em, a little slow perhaps from the night’s shmoozing, horsebadaddies up first to check the weather and each in turn off to the latrine like a modern day building, better than most of third world houses, to do our business, not like last time to the bunkhouse (for me in 2004), where our deposits were made in the bank, the snowbank that is. a look at the forest service map, plotting our course from bunkhouse across the meadow whilst we came but then turn right at the landing strip, take it to its end to a sneak off to the left through the woods and on to the lower slopes of the crystal range and tell’s peak – still not tellin’ – the best way to mount the mountain. but horsebadaddies have secret hidden knowledge of routes and scams and things you never loined in college, pulls a book from his pack and proceeds to read while he skis – quite impressive, we thinked, until we seen the title of the tome, “how to win friends and make them do crazy shit”, and we see we’re his next victims. he says, “go thataway”, which with horsebadaddies always means straight up, in sheer defiance of topographical logic, much like poor max of seuss fame pulling the grinch up those impossible cornices. but by goddamn we listened to him! did we not, like he had some sort of personality pull on our senses – moral, never listen to someone named horsebadaddies for one, and trust your surveyor’s instinct for another, for after all, max and i spent sixx years at the orienteering game, when horseman was simultaneously upstairs in the attic playing with his toys. so up we went, exhausted like, horseman with his mental bull whip cracking and causing us to wince out reluctant strides from our skins through the cruel and powdered snow. all the while we skied forward there lay to the south an honest to goodness tried and true trail, trackless of course, but respectful nonetheless of terrain and wise to the best route to the top of tell’s. but we were in the clutch of the horseman and when light run out for the day we find ourselves on a mountain spur with lake lois not yet in sight and the full brunt of the mountain still to conquer on the next day. back down we go, not bad now cuz we’re in our own glide steps, sixx miles back to the bunker and a second night of baptism w/o water, forced to use the horseman’s wine and we finish three dragoons, leaving the last for the next and final night before returning to trailhead. the last day of skiing we get smart (sort of), and arrange a cut off so as to avoid the off route landing strip, and find our track at the far end of the strip and into the woods we go, the four of us yes, max, horseman, me, and we din’t know the secret stranger, tho max surely had an inkling he was there with stinking breath on his neck. he threw off his cape of deception where the slope got steep and we donned our skins, there he was – the grim leper – ready to take max and slough ‘im to a buffin’ and a balloonin’, feet now bruised and bleedin’, beyond repair, the very soul of turtox squirmin’ at the destruction of tendon and bone. max then plays it smart and bargains for life if only allowed to return to the bunker and me and the horse continue our folly like there’s any chance we could make it to tell’s w/o wings and skins and skins and wings and flying things and fins for fish to glide to an easy destination, like maybe i could ride on the back of the winged horsebadaddies, a pegasus of mad sorts, but all this just a delirium dream for one sickened by snow and feeling the crack of a whip on his neck. we reached our spur of the day before and the sun and sky and snow was magnificent as we headed off toward the lake and all was good and thru the woods where the slope returned with a menacing cant, like straight up it seemed, and still the hot whip of the horse on my back, “move mule, straight up you go, you say you tired mule? i’ll give you something to retire about”. so we finally get to a flat spot and the trees part and we can see the beginnings of the peak off to the left and it’s obvious now that the only sane route is up the ridge smack dab in front of us but too late: the only access to that madness was far below on aforementioned respectable trail far to the south of our bullheaded scamperings. so the horse says “to the left, we’ll take the peak by force, it’ll never suspect we’ll be coming up the scarp face”, like it’s an enemy we’re stalking, not an ecological extension of ourselves, something we could befriend if approached with the right notion of reverence.. we finally get to a spot with the snow of course three feet deep in amongst some trees semi sheltered from the alpine gale and i know this is it, topographical and personal conditions finally converging to reach an endpoint to my travels. i half expect the horseman to continue on w/o me, mad ahab on his quest to kill a mountain of a whale, but he shows a constraint i din’t know he had and we both take a replenish, our last tortilla bulging with peanut butter and grape jelly, a nasty repast even when starving, then head down the mountain and back to max at the bunkhouse for a bottle of wine and to dine on the best that freeze dried food can offer. and there we were, out the next day, breaking trail and suffering never stopped, an endless trek thru deep snow all the way to the parking lot, no kinda “all downhill from here” or “got the worst behind us”. but worth it it was, esp. with a beer waiting in the car and on to the next chapter of life – a rendevous with madness, epicenter sacramento.