Blue Highways: Portola, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe continue our exploration into examining selves, going through doors, and seeing the wholeness of life rather than the little pieces that get us lost in the details.  William Least Heat-Moon finds an answer: Humbug (Creek).  I'm a little more positive.  Click on the map thumbnail at right to see where Portola, California and the area of Humbug Creek is located.

Book Quote

"Missourians sometimes speak of a place called Hacklebarney: a non-existent town you try to get to that is forever just around the next curve or just over the next hill, a town you believe in but never get to.  Maybe that's enlightenment - always a little ahead of perception.

"Hindus represent their god of destruction, Shiva, by the yoni-lingam symbols of regeneration to suggest the cyclical movement of coming into and going from being that never ceases.  Even if a man resists belief in the fixity of things, even if he discredits the scope of human understanding, even if he sees a hint of metaphysics between 'cosmic' and 'comic'...he still longs to arrive at a place of clarity.

"Just outside Portola, I crossed Humbug Creek.  I didn't believe it.  Nothing that apropros happens in real life."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Portola, California under Smith Peak. Photo by Leslye Layne Russell at the city-data.com website. Click on photo to go to site. Portola, California

I recently bought, at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, a small piece of art from a Huichol Indian artist.  It is a beautiful piece of yarn art.  The yarn is pressed into beeswax pasted on a board backing.  The artists who create these colorful pieces of work usually are fueled in their visions by peyote, a powerful hallucinogen used by the Huichol and other native tribes to open the doors to the spirit world.

While there were large pieces that showed elaborate scenes with people, animals and plants, and natural features, I was drawn to a circular pattern with points like a star.  The son of the artist explained that the interior represented the person or being that brought the Huichol fire - kind of like the Huichol Prometheus.  Around the center was a pattern representing the doorway between the spirit world and our reality.  A starlike pattern represented the fire, and how it touches all of us in the cosmos, and then outside the circle, a night sky pattern representing the cosmos.

My newest piece of art work - Huichol Indian yarn art. Photo by Michael L. Hess.At almost the same time, I am spending this week teaching ecologism as a political ideology to my political science class at a local community college.  While ecologism can run the spectrum from environmentalism which preaches stewardship and conservation to radical ecology which denies human exceptionalism in the natural world, relegating us to mere parts of the whole, the whole concept keeps bringing me back to the idea of a circular existence.  Therefore, I find it interesting that the universe has synched up, as it were, to bring me to this point in LHM's book where he considered the same questions as he sought clarity.

LHM appears to have gotten his answer on the road.  He finds Humbug Creek and remarks how it is rare to find something so apropos in real life.  I don't really think that LHM thinks it's all humbug.  I think he comes to the conclusion that he is thinking too much.  He quotes a Yiddish proverb: "Man thinks and God laughs."

It is curiously near to my way of thinking at the present time.  47 years after I was put on this earth, roughly 29 years after I graduated high school and 25 years after college, and now three years after getting a PhD, I am beginning to think I think too much, also.  I have spent time in the scientific realm, only to find that no matter what theory I'm putting out there, with no matter how much data I have accumulated, it is simply going counter to someone else's theory that has just as much data to support it.  In addition, my theory will be debunked by yet another theory, with data to support it as well.

In my personal life, all my data and theories have really ended up not serving me well, especially when I don't think of the whole rather than the parts.  My wife and I are learning again how to communicate with one another.  We had approached the parts without seeing the whole of our relationship and putting it in a larger context.  My life's issues and her life's issues have crashed together in a way that has been, shall we say, difficult in some contexts even as it has been nourishing in others.  In many ways that we relate, we aren't even aware of the dynamics of that whole, especially when we are focused on one part or another.

To that end, I'm trying to get back into my creative side.  This side does not try to dissect and understand.  Instead, it tries to experience and feel.  It's been a difficult process because it's not exactly how I was trained in life or in education.  I've been trained to put things outside of me and examine them, observe them and report on them, all very dispassionately.  Experiencing and feeling, especially in a world that does not value feeling and considers it a little dangerous, as been a rocky road for me so far.

But it is a doorway.  Much as LHM drives through Portola, which conjures up images for me of a doorway, to reach Humbug Creek, I am trying to walk through a doorway to learn a new way of viewing the world that will only enhance my old way.  Perhaps without a more whole view of myself and the world, it will always be humbug until I put it all together.  Perhaps this exploration is my own version of getting fire handed to me, a fire that will bring vision in the dark, that will provide a spark to my creativity, and ultimately allow me to fully see what I need to understand.

Musical Interlude

I'm going to include this video - even though the sound is not very good - of Greg Brown, with guitarist Bo Ramsey, singing Hacklebarney.  Greg Brown is a unique voice in America, and I was first introduced to him by my wife, who often heard him in Iowa and on A Prairie Home Companion.  He is married to another unique American singer, Iris Dement.  Of course, Hacklebarney is in the quote above - a fictional town always around the next corner.  It represents the goal we attempt to reach but never quite get there, or the understanding we seek that seems to just elude us.  We shouldn't stop trying, though.

If you want to know more about Portola

City of Portola
Everytrail.com: Hiking near Portola
Plumas County News (newspaper)
Western Pacific Railroad Museum
Wikipedia: Portola

Next up:  Quincy, California

Blue Highways: Beckwourth Pass, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon drives through a low gap in the Sierras, and we go with him.  He's in a foul mood because he's not sure that he's getting anywhere on his spiritual quest.  But life is a journey of intersecting circles, up and down, round and round.  Even though we seem to come back to the same places, it's what we learn and gain in between that's important.  Click on the map thumbnail at right to locate Beckwourth Pass, and let's think about the circularity life.

Book Quote

"At Beckwourth Pass, only a mile high and the lowest route over the Sierra Nevadas, I hardly knew I'd crossed anything.  But the mountains rose again on the other side, and the day became a dim, sodden thing, damp without rain.  Dismal.  The weather saturated me, and it may have provoked a dark fit of musing I fell into.

"...I did have a vague sense of mentally moving away from some things and toward others.  But in the Sierra gloom, even that notion seemed an illusion....I was on a Ferris sheel, moving along, seeing far horizons, coming close to earth, rising again, moving, moving, but all the time turning in the same orbit.  Black Elk says, 'Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.'  A hope."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Beckwourth Pass, California, the lowest pass over the Sierra Nevada at 5,221 feet. Photo at the Sierra College website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Beckwourth Pass, California

I find it interesting that LHM crosses a mountain pass in the Sierra Nevada and doesn't recognize it. However, he is pretty sure that he is moving somewhere, even if he is moving in an up and down circular motion.  We've all been there.

As I write this post, I'm feeling that if I were to describe my life as a Ferris wheel, like LHM does in his quote above, I would be on the ascent.  A couple of years ago, I was at the bottom, and not too sure when I would be able to get out of the doom and gloom that I had put myself into.  My personal life was not good, complicated by too many things.  My professional life seemed moribund.  My self-esteem was horrible.  If I'd had the ability, back then, to step out of the cycle and look, I would have known that everything operates in circularity.  People and their situations rise and fall.

I've written before about my belief in the circularity of life.  It's all around us.  Unfortunately, when one is along for the ride, one doesn't get many opportunities to take a step back and examine where he or she is.  The past seems to hold no lessons for us.  The future looks too frightening to contemplate.  However, our universe is made up circles, discs, and globes.  Everything rotates and spins around a center.

The nature of circles has always fascinated me, because they are very symbolic in how we understand our situations.  If we modify LHM's analogy of the Ferris wheel and put it on its side, we would have a flat, spinning disc.  Now think of times when you've observed or experienced spinning - for those of you my age, a vinyl LP perhaps.  Or, if you ever played on the playground as a kid and got on one of those playground carousels.

If one is at the edge of the rotating disc, the speed at which one moves around the rotation seems great.  Life flies by at a high velocity.  You have to travel a greater distance to reach someplace.  If this describes you, then you may feel like it is all you can do to keep up.  You are constantly buffeted by the wind and everything that is getting thrown at you.  Under such speed, given the rotation, you may feel like you are holding on for dear life and that you could be thrown off at any moment.  Things move in such a way that you cannot know what's coming next, and everything that does come hits you with a smack.  It's hard to keep oriented, and easy to be dizzy.  I've felt that way many times.

Yet if you look toward the center, the more you move in from the edge of the disc, things seems to slow.  Your velocity slows as you move toward the center.  The distance to reach your goal is smaller.  You feel less buffeted, and you can observe more.  There's less disorientation.

If you are lucky enough to arrive at the very center of the disc, then you've reached a stationary center.  You can look out toward the edge and see those poor souls just trying to hold on.  You can see people at various spots on the disc, and the closer toward the center, the more in control of themselves and their lives they seem to be.

LHM seems to describe this very phenomenon.  Unfortunately, life is much more complicated.  We occupy not one but many discs at the same time, and we are at various places on them all at once.  That is why we may have stability in our personal lives, but things at work are spinning out of control.  Or a relationship can be going crazy, but we find stability within our friendships our our families.

But I believe that there is a stationary center for everything that can be reached if we try.  I think that moving toward the center and getting clarity on one aspect of our lives can help move us toward clarity on all the rest.  I've been learning how to reach it for myself, and feel like now, I have moved inward from the edge of the disc to a inner region where things feel like they are more under control.  I may be on the ascent, but it is a controlled ascent.  And if I'm moving more slowly, then when I start a descent (and I know sometime I will) I will be more aware and more in control, and the effect of the descent will be less traumatic.

Ultimately, I believe that we can align the spinning wheels of our lives so that the centers come together.  Again, if you are my age, think of the old spirograph toy, where no matter how many loops you draw, everything still crosses the center of the circle.  If I can gain access to the center of all the circles of my life, then hopefully I will be more observant and more aware of what has happened and what will happen.  I'll be able to appreciate my journeys.  I'll be able to come back to those places I like, and be better able to avoid those that harm me.  And if I reach that center, then when I'm living in the present and I happen to cross a mountain pass like Beckwourth Pass, I will know it.

Musical Interlude

The idea of the circularity of life is a common theme throughout human history and culture.  This simple Harry Chapin song, Circle, caught me the first time I heard it, and I can't hear it even now without it staying in my head for a long time.  I thought it fit with William Least Heat-Moon's feeling of beeing on a Ferris wheel, and his quote from Black Elk.

If you want to know more about Beckwourth Pass

The Beckwourth Trail
California Office of Historic Preservation: Beckwourth Pass
Sierra College Press: Beckwourth Trail
TrailBehind.com: Beckwourth Pass
Wikipedia: Beckwourth Pass

Next up: Portola, California

Blue Highways: Hallelujah Junction, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapAnother border is crossed with this post, and it's a special one to me because it's the border of my home state.  As you'll see in this post, I am a veritable font of no knowledge when it comes to my own state.  It's sad when one has to learn about his state from others, but there you go.  That's what Littourati is for, in part...to stimulate knowledge and imagination.  Click on the map thumbnail at right, and you'll locate the place that has inspired a classical piano piece.

Book Quote

"I headed north out of Reno, crossed into California at an intersection once called Hallelujah Junction because it meant arrival in Eurekaland, then turned west on state 70."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Hallelujah Junction Wildlife Area. Photo by the California Wildlife Conservation Board and at the California Department of Fish and Game. Click on photo to go to site.

Hallelujah Junction, California

One of the projects that has been percolating in the back of my mind would be an actual travelogue.  I have been astounded, even amazed, at how little I know about the state I lived in for 22 years, and where I grew up.  This is the state I have visited every year since then, for about 25 years.  It's embarrassing to me, really, that there are such huge gaps in my knowledge about California.

Here's a little example that my wife continues to relish and gives me a bad time about.  One year, during a visit to see my mom in Fort Bragg, she suggested that we check out a little winery about 10 miles up the coast from our house.  The Pacific Star Winery was a lovely place, dramatically perched on the bluffs.  It had a tasting room, and a little area for a picnic lunch.  The day was bright, as sun glinted off the water.  We started with doing some wine tasting.  As I was speaking with the man who was pouring, I asked him how long the winery had been around.  I was expecting to hear a year or two.  Instead, he said that the winery had started 10 years previously.  At that, my wife hit me and exclaimed "You mean we've been coming to this area all this time and you have never brought me here?"

She had a right to exclaim.  The fact is that my family never really looked any farther northward than a few miles above my hometown.  Fort Bragg sits about 180 miles north of San Francisco, and about 370 miles south of the Oregon border.  All of that area directly north and northeastward I knew nothing about, because we never went there.  I was born in Eureka, about 135 miles north of where I grew up, but remembered nothing about it.  I once went with a friend's family to Benbow, about an hour north, but that's it.  As for the northern interior of California - forget it.  I've never seen one of my state's most striking national features, Mt. Shasta.  I've never seen the rugged wilderness up in that area.  As my wife said, it was if my family's map was stamped Here be Dragons north of my hometown.

But it just wasn't the north.  I never saw much of the Central Valley or Southern California either.  We never traveled farther south of San Francisco than Santa Clara.  I went once to Yosemite National Park, and that was when I was in college.  I didn't visit Los Angeles until I was in my early 40s.  I've never been to San Diego.  The coastal stretch of highway high above the Pacific Ocean along Big Sur exists only in my imagination because I've never been there.  I'd say that as a Californian, I've seen maybe only 25 percent of my state.

My book, should I ever write it, will be called Coming Home: A Californian Discovers California.  From what I know and have read, California is the United States in microcosm.  You can find the most cosmopolitan of people, and the reddest of rednecks.  You will find mountains, valleys, oceans, and deserts.  I've barely scratched the surface of my own state.

Another example.  While many people will know even the tiniest communities in their state, I never knew that Hallelujah Junction existed.  However, I now know that a famous American composer wrote a piano piece inspired by the place.  As LHM travels through California, I will also be on a journey of discovery in a part of the state that I am barely aware of.  He doesn't spend much time in California, but hopefully my knowledge of my own state will increase as I plot his course.

And most importantly, perhaps it will spur me onward to write my own travel book about my own state, a state I barely know.

Musical Interlude

American composer John Adams wrote a piece for two pianos entitled Hallelujah Junction, named after the place in northeastern California.  There are two videos to get the whole piece in.

If you want to know more about Hallelujah Junction

Hallelujah Junction Wildlife Area
Roadside America: Hallelujah Junction Shoe Tree
Wikipedia: Hallelujah Junction

Next up: Beckwourth Pass, California

Blue Highways: Reno, Nevada

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) hits Reno for the night.  Jack Kerouac described Reno's "Chinese lights."  I'm not sure what he meant by that, but Reno has always been in the back of my mind as a place I should visit.  I've never been able to get there, however.  My parents went, in a wild and crazy way and I heard the stories.  Check out the On the Road entry for that.  For this post, I'll talk about my lack of luck in gambling.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Reno is on the map.

Book Quote

"...into hills, along the Truckee River, under a shelf of glowing clouds above downtown Reno, past signs offering CANDLE LIGHT WEDDINGS - NO WAITING - FREE WITNESSES. I stopped near the University of Nevada and put my case to bed...It was one crazy state."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 10

Littourari Intersection

On the Road: Reno, Nevada

Photo by the Reno Sparks Convention Center. Click on photo to go to host site.

Reno, Nevada

In the above link to my On the Road post about Reno, I related briefly the story of my mother and father eloping and racing across California to Reno to get married at one of the wedding chapels.  Of course, that made Reno synonymous with the place where my parents got hitched.

Despite that story and the significance of the place in my personal history, I've never been to Reno.  Even on our trip by car back to my childhood home in Northern California, we bypassed Reno on Highway 50.  Frankly, all I know of Reno I've gleaned from episodes of Reno 911, and I'm not sure that's a comprehensive view of the city.

I also know Reno as a gambling mecca.  My parents liked to gamble, and would occasionally go to Reno to play the slots, blackjack or Keno.  They made regular trips to Lake Tahoe, and since Reno was not that far they'd occasionally drive over to try the gambling there or to see a show if the show looked good.  These trips occurred when I was very small, and I know they left me with a babysitter in Tahoe while they went out and did these excursions.

My uncle and aunt, both inveterate gamblers, made regular stops into Reno.  My uncle died a few years ago, but my aunt and some of her kids still make regular stops into Reno.  I am always envious of them because it is rare that they don't win something.  They are the type of people who after winning $500 in blackjack, and another couple of hundred in Keno, put a quarter in a slot machine on the way out of the casino and hit the $5,000 jackpot.  It kills me...because I have never had that kind of luck...and some people just seem to have it all the time.

I've read about the science of risk a little bit.  It was often employed in my political science studies.  I used to think that when people win big, it's because they are betting a lot.  And in a sense, it's true, but not in the way that I thought.  People tend to be risk-acceptant when they don't have much to lose.  Why not?  Why not let it all ride on hunch?  However, people tend to be risk-averse when they are ahead.  Suddenly, they have something to protect.  This is why those with lots of chips in front of them think a lot, while those who have only a few chips in front of them often let it ride.

But then I think of my mom, the best gambler I have ever known.  She is always calm, cool and never lets her face show what she has.  I've learned a lot from her about how to keep my cards to myself, both playing poker and in life.

There's an interesting passage in Blue Highways about Reno, where LHM reads that a little old woman won a huge jackpot.  "Rigged," says a guy that he's talking to.  The guy goes on to say that the casinos rig the machines so that little old ladies will occasionally win a jackpot.  Why?  It's good business and keeps others coming in thinking that they'll score big.

I'd be a little wary of this kind of generalization usually, because I don't see how they can be that crafty.  Of course, in the age of electronics, they could have the machines wired so that they can control them and cameras trained on them so that they know when a little old lady is working the slots.  But back when LHM was driving through, I don't think the electronic capability was that sophisticated.

However, the guy points out to LHM that you never see scruffy, disreputable people or gambling addicts that are in the casinos every day hitting the big jackpot winners.  And come to think of it, he's right.  You hear about housewives, cute little old ladies or old men, and other photogenic people winning the big jackpots.  They make good stories for the paper and the casinos look good presenting them with their haul or their big checks.  Never do you see the down and out sleep deprived guy with the rumpled clothes and the five o'clock shadow who smells vaguely of alcohol pulling down the Big One.  Why is that?  Might there be something to this after all?  After all, if a casino can tell when one is counting cards, they should be able to decide when someone will win something.  I don't know, but to use an overused phrase, I'm just sayin'.

Musical Interlude

What could be better for a post about gambling than Kenny Rogers singing The Gambler on The Muppet Show?  Takes me back to my teens.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Reno

Downtown Reno (blog)
National Automobile Museum
Nevada Museum of Art
Reno and its Discontents (blog)
Reno Gazette-Journal (newspaper)
Reno News & Review (alternative newspaper)
Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Bureau
Reno Tahoe Blog
TravelNevada.com: Reno
University of Nevada-Reno
Wikipedia: Reno

Next up: Hallelujah Junction, California

Blue Highways: Fallon, Nevada

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) doesn't stop in Fallon, preferring to drive to Reno.  I will, revisiting my own brief stop there, at a city park, in 2010.  Stay awhile with me, and click on the map thumbnail at right to geographically place Fallon.

Book Quote

"I drank my beer and took my case down the road, through the irrigated plain at Fallon..."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 10

The Fallon Theater in downtown Fallon, Nevada. Photo by Brian Butko at Lincoln Highway News. Click on photo to go to host site.

Fallon, Nevada

We stopped at Fallon, my wife and I, on our trip out to California.  It had been a long day of driving and we needed a place to have some lunch before we continued our push toward Lake Tahoe.  It was hot, as it was in summer.  We found a little park in the downtown area.  I remembered a train in the park, and a nice shaded part with trees.  We parked and we found a spot underneath a tree.  Our dog, Zia, was happy to get out of the car and stretch a little.

There were quite a few people there.  It was a weekend day, and I remember a young couple lounging underneath a neighboring tree, kissing once in a while, and then talking in muted tones.  Occasionally the girl, who I remember as being blond, looked over at Zia.  Eventually they walked off, hand in hand, toward another part of the park.

That drive, while a great drive and something that I wanted to do, had been a difficult one for me.  I had recently had issues with a woman with whom I'd grown relatively close in a short period of time, and then just as quickly imploded.  It had put a strain on my marriage.  Even though it had been about six months since I had spoken with her, I was still processing what had happened and why and trying to make sense of it all.

It was a shock to me to realize that I didn't have as much control over life as I thought I had.  I had spent a lot of time as an adult, after a traumatic childhood, trying to limit any further emotional shocks.  My one bugaboo was relationships.  Certain types of people seemed to keep coming into my life and bringing out of me a self that was needy, that feared abandonment.  Of course, everything would play out in this way:  I would meet someone interesting and who seemed interested in me as a person, I would get emotionally invested, I'd get myself into a situation where I felt emotionally abused, and then they'd "abandon" me.  Just like in my childhood.

Of course, not all of my relationships were like this.  There were people with whom relationships ended, either through attrition or because they had run their courses.  That was fine.  There was a beginning, a middle and an end and enough communication where there was a mutuality to the finality.  But the other kinds of relationships, where one minute people liked you and the next they hated you and you didn't understand why...they kept popping up in my life, and I kept getting entangled in them.

As I sat with Megan and Zia in this small park in Fallon, I was still emotionally reeling.  Here I was, 46 years old, and still dealing with childhood abandonment issues.  When would it ever end?

Of course, I was missing the obvious.  My dog was stretched out on the grass beside me.  My wife was putting together sandwiches.  She had been with me for 14 years of marriage to that point, and 8 years of a relationship before that.  She had put up with my issues, even that latest one, and was still sticking around.  The answer was right in front of me...and I was dwelling on something that I thought outlined my failures as a person, but which I should not have let go as far as I did.

I wish it were that easy for me.  All that time, and up to now, the answer has always been very simple.  Yet I often get bogged down in my inadequacies, my perceived failures, my shortcomings.  I don't give enough credit where it is due.  My wife hasn't left me, my true friends haven't abandoned me.  They haven't abused me and have stopped me from abusing myself.  That's where my energies should lie, rather than with the inner and outer demons that still bedevil me from time to time.

As I watched that couple walk across the park to find another place to be intimate, I wished them well and that the course of their relationship would run as smoothly as possible throughout whatever course it was meant to take.  Zia stretched, and I scratched her.  Megan offered me a sandwich, and I ate under the cool shade of a tree in Fallon.

Musical Interlude

Back in the day, I was a HUGE Styx fan.  Sure, they tended to do "concept" albums, and they weren't the most original thinkers around.  But I liked them.  They had good musicianship and in the late 70s and early 80s, I was not old enough to have jumped on the Beatles bandwagon and was still wary of harder bands like Zeppelin.  In particular, Fooling Yourself spoke to me because in many ways, I was an angry young man. Though I'm not really that young anymore, occasionally when I hear this song it reminds me that I always had hope I could rise above personal difficulties.  I mostly have.

If you want to know more about Fallon

City of Fallon
Fallon Convention and Visitors Bureau
Lahontan Valley News (newspaper)
Nevadaweb: Fallon
TravelNevada.com: Fallon
Wikipedia: Fallon

Next up: Reno, Nevada