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Category Archives: Americana
pas·to·ral [pas-ter-uhl], Pastoral, American Pastoral
A couple of years ago, Richard Taylor – or, maybe, Tracy, or, probably, both – recommended that I read Philip Roth's American Pastoral. It just seemed slow. The plot sort of fluttered around, like a moth around a light. Yes, there were passages that were like a flash going off in a dark room; illuminating a moment, a scene, that perfectly caught the sixty's disintegration, but it wasn't a moment belonging to my generation – more my parent's generation – and I couldn't warm up to it. Not liking a book recommended by two people whose judgment I respect and I usually agree with – although, I suspect, I am much more low brow in my tastes than they are – is disconcerting. Even more so when the book wins the Pulitzer Prize and is on almost everybody's list of great American novels. Still, as much as I wanted to like it, I didn't.
Eventually, I learned to live with the disappointment.
A couple of weeks ago, Catherine Santos gave me a copy of Nevil Shute's Pastoral. Shute had the common decency to put, across from the front page – PASTORAL, n. A poem which describes the scenery and life of the country. (mus.) a simple melody. As I read Shute's Pastoral, the lights slowly came on.
Both books are describing the scenery and life of their time. Some physical scenery, but more emotional scenery. And the description in both books is much softer and simpler than the actual, horrific events that are taking place. The horrific events are the background to the simple, everyday actions of the protagonists. Like falling in love or being overwhelmed by despair.
Shute's pastoral takes place on a RAF bomber station in England during the early part of World War II. It is a love story between a young pilot and an W.A.A.F officer. It is a soft – I can't find a better word – story of hope in a world of horror. The hope is bright; the horror dim. For example:
She got a letter from him punctually by the first post on Tuesday morning, and read it in the privacy of her room. She answered it on Tuesday afternoon, when she was supposed to be resting for the coming operation, which was Düsseldorf. She spent the night on duty out at the group W/T station. That night twenty two machines left Hartley Magna. Sixteen came back, one landed in Essex, the crew of one bailed out near Guildford, and four failed to return altogether.
Roth's pastoral takes place in New Jersey as the post war generation's world starts to fall apart. It is a world that the hero, Swede Levov, a second generation secular Jew, thought had been made safe by America's prosperity and the orderliness of his life. But the hope of the young lovers has been obliterated and Swede had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no
sense. He carefully learned the rules only to find out that The old system that made order doesn't work anymore. All that was left
was his fear and astonishment, but now concealed by nothing.
The books are strangely complimentary, although strangely might not be the right word, because it is hard to believe that
Roth didn't know about Shute's Pastoral when he wrote his American
Pastoral. Together, the two books are terrific.Hell, American Pastoral by itself is terrific.
A roundabout trip to Death Valley and back: back
Sometime during the night, the wind came up. I mean really came up. The next morning, Michele sort of slept in while the wind tore at our bag and erased our view by filling the valley with dust.
We packed – packing being defined as throwing everything in the back of the truck as quickly as possible – skipped coffee, and headed for the nearest coffee shop. Of course, the nearest coffee shop was 30 minutes down the fan, 15 minutes on a paved road, another hour on another dirt road – where we crossed the dry Amargosa River that I had crossed on New Year’s Day 1982 when it was covered with a thin layer of ice – and, finally, another 45 minutes on a paved road to Baker. Ready to break our fast.
After breakfast, we got on the highway from Las Vegas to Barstow that was pretty crowded with cars on heading back to LA. It was a big change from the day before.
Our plan, yesterday, was to go for a hike to Ashford Mine in Death Valley, but the wind put the kibosh on that. We both wanted to go walking somewhere – yesterday, we had walked less than we wanted because of the Golar Wash fiasco – but we really didn’t have any place in mind. The good news was that we had a lot of time in which to talk about it. First on the highway we were on, then on the road to Mojave.
After lots of discussion – lots of discussion because we had lots of time as the road went on and on – we decided to go for a short walk near the Tehachapi Loop and see if we could find a place to walk near the Kern National Wildlife Reserve in the Great Central Valley.
The Tehachapi Loop is on the rail line between Bakersfield in the Great Central Valley and Tehachapi Pass about 3,300 feet higher. The actual loop is the railway making a 360 degree turn and crossing over itself. I used to go by the Loop often on the way to Death Valley and once camped there but I was surprised to see how popular it has become.
We even ran into a couple from Holland.
Neither one of us had been to the Kern National Wildlife Refuge. It was in an area I used to drive through when I went out with a girl from the Great Central Valley but I had not been there since 1961. We figured it would be fun to see a couple of valley towns and check out the Refuge but we did not hold out much hope for the refuge being much of anything. The Valley was great with miles and miles of farms and small towns. The towns were much healthier than we expected with both the downtowns and the parks action packed on a Sunday afternoon.
When we got to the Kern National Wildlife Refuge, we were blown away. OK, bad choice of words, we were blown away trying to get into the Mad Greeks for breakfast hours earlier in the wind – but we were very impressed. It was a great place to end our trip, an oasis teaming with wildlife.
As the sun went down, we headed home. (Double clickable.)
A roundabout trip to Death Valley and back: post 4
The next morning, Michele – safe and sound in our beddy-bye with a wind break, just in case the wind comes up – slept in.
After a leisurely breakfast, we went for a walk. With the winter rains, the desert is alive: everything is happy and growing. We are used to flowers blooming at certain places, but what is really happening, all over the desert, is that certain flowers, at certain times, are growing and booming at certain elevations. At the elevation we were camped, lots of Eriogonum inflatums are growing. It is not one of my favorite plants but it is definetly one of my favorite plant names. Inflatum because its little stems are hollow and look like they have been inflated.
After our walk, we reversed our trip into the mountains by going down the alluvial fan on the other side, taking us into the Panamint Valley. Across the dried lake bed, we could see an active mine and, a couple of miles to the right, the alluvial fan we would be going up to get into the Panamint Mountains. From camp, last night, we could see the lights of a mine across the valley below us, but as we drove down the fan, we began to get an idea of its size. Double click on the second picture to get an idea of how big the mine is.
According to the Briggs Mine
information – prospectus? – they pulled 550,000 ounces of gold out of
this mine. At an average of $400 per ounce – maybe a number that is
high, but considerably under what gold is selling for now – that is
$220,000,000. It starts to make sense that they are moving all that dirt
and rock.
As we drove along the west side of the salt pan of the lower Panamint Valley, our plan was to skirt the pan at the southern end, go up the fan into Coyote Canyon / Goler Wash, and then follow it up over Mengel Pass to Stripped Butte Valley. We soon ran into trouble.
A steep, rocky section of the road, like this, is called a waterfall – usually it is dry, but, in this case, it was wet and slippery – and calls for a little coordination with the spotter telling the driver where to put the truck wheels. In our case, after trying the slippery part, I directed Michele to try a different angle and directed her too close to the edge. The road gave way and we were stuck: lodged off the side of the road on top of a big rock jammed under the front suspension and the rear wheel trying to slip even further off the road. Our concern was, that if we slipped too much, we would roll onto our side.
About two or three miles back down the road, we had seen some people camped; so I decided to walk down there for help. Fortunately, I ran into a couple of guys on their way up the canyon, in a nice Chevy 4 x 4, to try their luck, and, after going down to the other encampment to ask for help, the five of us – literally four men and a boy – headed back to the fiasco site.
As an aside; the driver of the Chevy was a Predator pilot, stationed near Las Vegas. According to the company brochure, the “Predator is a long-endurance, medium-altitude unmanned aircraft system
for surveillance and reconnaissance.” However, Predator is also armed with Hellfire missiles, so our new friend, here on for a weekend adventure, spends his work days – in a an air-conditioned building near Las Vegas – killing unsuspecting terrorists in Afghanistan. These terrorists are not really terrorists, they are unsophisticated, dirt poor, tribesmen, many with poor weapons and bad eyesight, that pride themselves on their manly warrioriness; and killing them – as Michele said – from a place near Vegas just seems wrong. But, he was helping us, so, not that wrong. End aside.
Unfortunately, none of us had a tow rope. Mine is in my garage – I know, worthless place to keep it – and the pilot’s was in his garage in Florida. After some general milling around to get the rock unjammed, another guy, in a Jeep Wrangler, showed up – and he did have a tow line. I am amazed at how easily the Jeep, with it’s big honker tires, was able to drive up and down the waterfall. We attached the line and he pulled us out -driving backwards – and then just continued to pull us up the waterfall.
After we got pulled up the waterfall and everybody left, Michele and I started back up Goler. I have been lots of places that were too steep or too wet and steep to get up, but this was the first time everything had turned to shit so fast. We were both rattled. We found it hard to be sure which road we should be on, let alone enjoy all the flowers and cactus.
After we missed a turn, to calm our nerves, we took a late lunch break under some cottonwoods on a short side road to the house where Charles Manson and his posse held up years ago. Now your first thought might be You are going to Charles Manson’s former house to calm your nerves? Actually, we thought we were on a different side road, but what ever bad Karma was left on the road when Mason left, was burned off by the last 25 years, or so, of sunshine and we left in a better mood than we arrived.
It still took us a while to get
over the pass including some wrong turns so we were very happy to look back and see the end of Golar Wash.
But, looking the other way, we had a long way to go including a short stretch where Howard and I had trouble a couple of years earlier. Then Howard did most of the work and, now, I would have to do most of the work. But, again, the short stretch turned out to be pretty easy going down hill and we soon got to the Geologist’s cabin. The Geologist’s cabin is double clickable.
There sometimes comes a time
when driving on rough roads is no longer fun, you just want to get
there, where ever there is, and that time had definitely come. Saying goodbye to Stripped Butte Valley, we picked our way up the road as fast as
we could, watching the sun get low.
After we left Stripped Butte Valley, we went down a very long Warm Springs Canyon and then down a huge alluvial fan into Death Valley. We were just in time to set up camp with a spectacular view (double clickable). After dinner, we sat by the fire feeling much better about the day.
To be finished here
A roundabout trip to Death Valley and back: post 3
Per our plan – such as it was – we left the road just outside of Trona. We drove on an historic route used by the Bennett- Arcane party, led by William Manly, as they escaped from Death Valley in 1849.
As an aside; after the Bennett-Arcane party stalled out in Death Valley – which they had sort of wandered into by mistake, but were unwilling to head south to get out of – William Manly made a 500 mile round trip across the unexplored desert to get help and then came back to save their lives. Years later, Manly came back with Bennett to look for silver and, after splitting up, Manly failed to meet Bennett at the rendezvous. Even though Manly had saved his life once, Bennett left him to die. But Manly got out again, and returned to his farm near San Jose; end aside.
Almost all roads that transverse a mountain range in the desert, start by going up an alluvial fan to a canyon into the mountains. The Escape Trail, as this road is sometimes called, is no exception. Gaining elevation as we drove up the alluvial fan; we started to run into more flowers, and get better views back into the Searles Valley and the town of Trona. There were several side roads, but we had no problem finding our way with all the great signage.
As we continued to climb towards the ridgeline of the Slate Range, we started seeing more flowers. We drove by a blooming creosote – the creosote, Creosote larrea, is a nasty plant and a worse mother: the plant secretes creosote juice, or what ever it is called, which is the same stuff used to protect telephone poles, and it drizzles to the ground; killing anything, like baby plants, that is near the mother plant – next to a gorgeous, purple desert lupine Lupinus sparsiflorus.
Higher, when we looked back, the Searles Valley had finally disappeared
but we were now high enough to see the Mojave Aster Xylorhiza
tortifolia. As the road got higher, it got steeper and rockier. As
we got to the pass through the Slates and started down, we could see
11,049 foot high Telescope Peak in the background with a dusting of snow
on top.
Almost all the way down to where we are going to camp, we have a great view! And warm weather with no wind. (Be sure to stop and double click on the panorama below.) At camp, we barbecued chicken thighs, potato slices and fresh asparagus. A very nice day.
To be continued here