The Retreat

Just 'cause you're on a highway doesn't mean you're no longer in the middle of nowhere. Hwy 104 was barely 2 lanes, lightly traveled, especially on a wednesday non-tourist-season. There at the trailhead there was... a trailhead. That's all.

It was maybe 5 minutes before the first car passed, and that proved to be about the steady rate. I hitched as a young guy, but not in the last couple decades. Did people pick up hitchikers anymore? I didn't know. VWs are sparser since the 60's. I might be a hard-hiking backpacker (and software engineer for godsakes!), but to those folks in their sports utility vehicles i'm just another serial dirtbag looking for shit to happen.

The 4th car picked me up.

It was a beatup old Ford pickup, the owner a 39-year-old ex-auto-mechanic who, as he told me as he sped just-a-bit-too-fast on the narrow winding guardrail-less precipitously-perched cliffside roadway (in a vehicle he claims has endured 600,000 miles), lost his job after suffering brain damage in a motorcycle accident and now people are afraid to hire him. (And ride with him?) On his day off from his job retraining program (he never finished high school - he's gone thru 20 years of adult life with no idea of how to do algebra or geometry - i can't imagine that - but then i 'wake up' nites believing my legs are DLLs) - he's taking a computer course, of course, he went hiking with his 2 dogs. He wants to be a water quality tech. He has a lot of valid environmentalist views on things. Nature will win in the end, no matter what. Helluva guy. I'd forgotten what an interesting array of folks you can meet outside a cubicle.

As we descended from the mountains and into the foothills (only 2k feet) it got HOTTER.

He left me in Columbia, old gold-mining town, its main street "closed to non-horse-drawn traffic". It's the kind of place i'd spend half-a-day wandering about in normally, but i had a schedule in mind. Called Carol at work, left a message on voicemail. It was 103 degrees. Uh! Where i had to stand to hitch had no shade, and i drank a quart of water. I was dying. There was no traffic - Columbia's way off the beaten path.

But finally a fellow in an old sedan stopped. Retired from Allied Vanlines. We talked about fires and mining and crazy drivers, etc, and he dropped me off outside his trailer park in mid-nowhere, then 5 minutes later pops back out and picks me up again, says he's headed into next town to pickup his girlfriend who's just phoned, said we could've gone straight in if he'd only known she needed a ride. I suggested (in jest) he get a pager. "Oh, no," he smiled - the guy must be 62 - "that would be too much like being married."

Little place where he left me, Douglas Flat, old mining town site but now just standard new strip mall serving the huge houses built on big lots ubiquitous in the brush, relying on the grace of God, CDF, and State Farm to save their asses when the next Big One burns their way. Filled both canteens with ice water at the Texaco, then took up my place on a shadeless corner, no driver expressing much interest in this plight of my own making til an obvious contractor in his working pickup stops, front seat overflowing with tools, papers, coolers, it was like opening the sidedoor on a swimming pool, but he didn't mind. We talked about the goddamned government and lawyers. He wondered what Montana's like. He said he just did work on Bill Gates' parents house. He pointed out the road to it.

He dropped me off at one of these old roadside taverns you see out in the hills, cooler out now that we're up to 5000 feet, but again little traffic and i again despaired at ever getting out of there when a gal in a beatup datsun station wagon stops, rings on her fingers, ring in her nose, good music on the radio, stuff hanging from the car ceiling. Etc. Interesting woman. Bartender. Moved up to the mountains when she married a mountain guy. Apparently that didn't work out - all men are jerks, but she liked the place, and now commutes to a bar in a town of 100 folks where she works summers, and to Bear Valley ski area where she works winters. (She lived in the 100-folk town for a while, but it was too close & personal for her - she had to keep her distance from them - and i thot it was very interesting why - she views her job as a bartender in so much the same way i viewed being a deputy sheriff - folks gotta respect you, because it's your job to keep things in control, and if they know you too well there's the risk of losing respect. But those folks you work 'with' are like a big family, it's important they all get along over the long run - that throwing someone out of a bar (or throwing their ass in jail) is only a very short-term solution - they're still out there, still a part of the community, and you gotta set up to win thru the long term. And: "It's like being at a party that never ends... but i don't have to participate."

She dropped me at Bear Valley, which is small resort kind of situation, not a town at all, ZERO traffic, but she told me about a 4-day music festival coming up this weekend, which i MAY just check out.

Surely i'd never be picked up here, but finally a quiet fellow in an old pickup took me the short distance on to Lake Alpine, a heavily-used recreational lake relatively high up in the mountains. At that point the highway narrows to 1.5 lanes, the grade gets suddenly steeper, and there are warnings about trailer length/width/etc. It was 4:30 pm. NOBODY was going beyond the lake. I waited til 5:30 with no luck, then hiked the 1/2 mile back to Lake Alpine Resort to use the phone. Called Carol at home, got the answering machine, no one's ever home, but neither am i, left updated progress message so she wouldn't worry, told her i wouldn't be back til next day.

It was my plan to stand unsuccessfully out by the highway til dark, then eat some of my remaining roots & berries and sleep under some bush. I hung up the phone. Turned around. Gazed over the resort's outdoor dining deck overlooking the blue lake thru the pines. The few patrons were eating bread from napkin'd baskets and sipping wine. And suddenly it came to me: I AM NOT AN ANIMAL. I AM A MAN. I want to bathe. I want to wear clean clothes. I want to eat real food. I want a soft bed.

With a credit card it is so easy to achieve such basic ammenities. I entered the small resort store. A man had just picked up a bottle of wine to purchase, the kind you'd get for $5 at Albertson's or Safeway. He looked at the tag. "16 bucks!!"

"It was a good year," i told him. Within minutes i had my own cabin AND a new T-shirt. In a few more, a clean body. In a few more, a place on the restaurant deck. I was extremely pleased with myself. I was serene. And it could have gone just fine if people weren't such idiots.

It's hard to get good help at an out-of-the-way resort. I know when i was a ranger at Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, the concession that ran the motel and resort there found a transient digging thru their dumpster one day and hired him on.

So the receptionist, a very nice and gracious lady ("McMillan's my maiden name", she told me. "So why'd you change it?" "I got married." "How long have you been married?" "17 years." "OK - you had his name for 17 years, for the next 17 he can have yours. And for the 17 after that... well i'm sure you'll figure out something.") seats me and tells me my waiter will be Mike and leaves. After some minutes a goofy young fellow comes by and gives me the basket of bread, a glass of water, and the menu. There's like 2 other customers in the place and he's the only employee i see. After a long while he comes back by and i ask him for a Coffee and Kahlua. He seems a bit flustered by the request, which i think rather strange, but i just figure he's really new at this (like maybe he just got out of the dumpster yesterday.) He brings it. I ask him about the special. He gets all embarassed, says no one told him and goes to find out. He comes back and explains the special (lamb curry, very spicy). I say OK, and he takes off. And then i start to worry... Does he think that by 'OK' i meant: "OK, i'll have the special"? I don't like spicy. So i go in search of Mike The Waiter. And find out that he's just Bill The Busser, i haven't met the waiter yet. OK, my mistake. Mike The Waiter takes my order. "Soup or Salad?" OOOOOOh, i'm thinking, salad, after 5 days in the woods, salad will be SOOOO wonderful. "Salad." "We have thousand island, ranch, french, and oil & vinegar dressings." "Ranch." He goes. I wait. And wait. My drink is empty, no one asks if i want a refill. The beautiful view of the lake is blocked by eye-level flower boxes - i can catch a glimpse of it if i sit straight up in my chair and stretch most unnaturally. After a very long time, my DINNER arrives. No salad. "Am i getting a salad?" "I don't think so," he answers, and disappears. I'm sure he's very very busy serving the now 4 customers, now assisted by a 2nd waitperson.

It's a good dinner.

The bill comes. They haven't charged me for the drink. Anyway, this goes on, but in the end i was able to negotiate a salad from Mrs. nee McMillan. It was a standard plate of lettuce with 2 cucumber slices, a cherry tomato, and a single human hair not my own.

It was the best salad i've ever had.

I added the drink price to the bill and left a big tip, then got out of there as quickly and quietly as i could.

In my room, i marvelled at the utility of screens that keep out mosquitoes. In bed, i revelled in the joy of spreading my legs apart if i wanted, a simple pleasure impossible in a sleeping bag.

I dreamed of debugging. I was back to normal.

**

Next AM, up before 6, out on the hiway at 6:20, hadn't even gotten positioned when Cadillac stopped, picked me up, a real estate man who commutes between 2 offices, older guy, used to be regional manager for Studebaker. "I was the man who turned out the lights and locked the door on the west coast." he said. Owns 3 computers, all DOS (GOOD FOR HIM!), programs in C++ & Pascal and is learning assembly. Has a web page: http://www.alcornrealty.com with RealAudio. Said he had 600k miles on his car.

'Lot of old rigs in the Sierras, so it seems.

Dropped at a lonely highway intersection, it once again seemed like no one would ever stop, but it seemed like that at every other, and the outcome was always favorable. My last ride was a Meeks Lumber delivery truck, the driver saying it was against company policy, but... so? He hitched from Michigan toward Kentucky as a teen, was picked up by the cops and spent 4 days in reform school. You could see he was still bitter about it. Meanwhile he'd been a volunteer diver for Search & Rescue for 14 years, has an underwater 'scooter' which i surmised is one of those things Lloyd Bridges used to putt around with on 'Sea Hunt' before he started doing 'Airplane' sequels. He likes to dive the lakes and find things people have dropped overboard. Oh, and he used to be a (100') cliff diver. Likes Tahoe. "Lots to do." Doesn't mind the snow.

Dropped me off at Hwy 50 and i walked the mile to Carol's. She's at work and i've been writing this all day. And at least for now, guess it's done.