Blue Highways: Quechee Gorge, Vermont

Unfolding the Map

Stand on the edge of the rift in the earth.  Feel the wind racing up the sides of the gorge and blowing on your face.  If you dare, look down to the bottom, 165 feet below.  While William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) crosses the bridge over the gorge and moves on into New Hampshire, we'll stop for a moment and think a little about the symbolism of gorges and things that disappear into the earth.  To learn where you might make friends in low places, make a descent to the map.

Book Quote

"....The road crossed Quechee Gorge, an unexpected hundred-sixty-five-foot-deep sluice cut through stony flanks of the mountain; a couple clutched the bridge railing as they uneasily peered down into the gloom."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

In the Quechee Gorge downstream of the Quechee Gorge Bridge looking back. Photo by "AustinMN" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Quechee Gorge, Vermont

As you may have gathered in previous posts, I love mountains.  Thrusting out of the earth with craggy and intensely defined features as in most young mountains, or gently rising in tree covered glory, like many older mountains, I've always found them to be metaphors and reminders.  They are metaphors of barriers in our lives, and at the same time of the heights we can reach.  They remind us of how small we are in a large world and, to a greater extent, in our universe.  They also have metaphorically served as gateways to heaven - a great number of the gods that our human cultures have created have either lived on top of mountains, or going up a mountain was the way to reach them.  Think of the Greek gods that live on Mount Olympus, or Moses climbing the mountain to receive the commandments of God.   There is a continuing trope in literature and comics about the man scrambling up the side of the mountain to find truth.  I recently watched the first movie in the latest series of Batman movies, Batman Begins, and Bruce Wayne has to scale a mountain to reach the monastery where his training will begin and the unveiling of his mission in life will occur.

But this post is about gorges, the exact opposites of mountains.  In fact, gorges can be thought of as hills or mountains in reverse.  They sink into the earth, sometimes thousands of feet, so that one standing on the edge of a gorge might get a sense of vertigo.  To ascend a mountain takes effort, desire and hard work.  To descend a gorge is deceptively easy and, in some cases might be totally unexpected if one falls off the rim!

Whereas mountains are metaphors for our goals, and as barriers calling forth our best efforts to overcome, gorges seem, to me at least, to have much darker meanings.  I've been trying to think of literature that I've read where paths that sink into the earth have had a positive connotation.  It is down in the earth where some of our deepest, darkest fears and horrors have lurked, at least in our cultural sensibilities.  If mountains reach toward heaven and take us closer to God or the gods, gorges, caves and other places that take us into the earth take us toward places that we fear - the deepest recesses of our minds and psyches, Hell, and ultimately death.  Think of Dante descending into the Inferno, Frodo swallowed up in the Mines of Moria, or Orpheus heading into Hades.  Where the earth cracks, darkness is usually present.

This might be overdoing it a bit for a gorge like Quechee.  After all, the pictures I've seen of the Quechee Gorge show a beautiful river carving a slice in the rocks amid trees.  But there are deeper gorges, which but for the intrepid drive of humans might be inaccessible today.  The Hells Canyon on the Snake River, the deepest gorge on Earth, has a wonderful story attached to it about how it was created, combining mountains and gorges and their meanings.  The Grand Canyon was, for all intents and purposes not fully explored until relatively recently in human history.  And talk about barriers - if mountains are frustrating at times until one finds a pass through them, gorges can often be impassable.  I related in a previous post how the Spanish explorers, upon finding the Grand Canyon, almost found the boundary of their explorations and had to make herculean efforts to cross it.  Of all the gorges in the world, the Grand Canyon is still the gorge where the most people die each year (mostly due to human ignorance, ineptitude or the unnecessary taking of risks).

The lowest point on Earth lies in a gorge under the ocean.  The Mariana Trench is a place of fascination to scientific explorers, and a place where, for the rest of us, creatures live that appear to be drawn from our most horrible dreams.  The deepest gorge in our solar system lies in a place that we haven't even visited yet - Mars.  The Valles Marineris puts the Grand Canyon to shame, with a depth of up to four miles and a length that is much longer.  It is interesting that Mars, a future goal of exploration by humans, has all of the metaphors discussed here in gigantic scale - the deepest gorge and the highest mountain (Olympus Mons) yet discovered in the solar system.  It seems to embody, in one planet, our hopes as a species, the barriers and obstacles that await us, the heights that we can reach and the depths in which our fears reside.

It's taken me a while to like gorges.  As I mentioned above, I was always drawn to mountains.  Frankly, I get vertigo looking from great heights straight downward.  On a recent visit to the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico, which on approach is barely noticeable until one is right on top of it, I could barely look down from the bridge to the river more than 600 feet below.  Yet standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, which is immensely bigger, I had a false sense security rather than seeing the danger, as if what I was looking at was somehow less imposing because it didn't seem real.  It was beautiful, almost as if I was looking at a painting of the Grand Canyon rather than real life.  Some years ago, when I happened upon the New River Gorge in West Virginia, however, I was stunned by the beauty of the place and the thoughts that it brought to my head.  I even composed a piece of poetry standing at a viewing spot near its edge.  I now appreciate them for what they are, a part of the same geology that heaves up the mountains and in a way, their own metaphors for challenge and growth.

If gorges can be gateways to those things we fear, they are also passages to unknown places and discoveries that are wonderful and fulfilling.  When we look at mountains, we look at them as challenges to conquer.  We don't necessarily climb mountains to find out who or what is there, we climb the mountain because it is a mountain.  But for me, when I see a valley or a gorge or some other place slipping down beneath the earth, I wonder what or who is down there and what they might be doing.  I speculate on what sights might be seen there or wonders that might be uncovered.  I think about what the perspective might be from the bottom - whether it will be quieter or more calm below than up on top.  I've often heard that standing at great heights, people often feel drawn toward the edge and even over.  Perhaps this feeling that I have is the more benign version of that strange urge - in this case, an urge to climb down and discover.

I think about LHM's couple, standing on the edge and peering uneasily into the mist shrouded depths of the Quechee Gorge, and I understand the uneasy fascination of the deep places.  Life is not only about walking on the plains, but climbing to the high places and descending, at times, to the low places.  Whether climbing up, or slipping down, one is still assured of discovery, learning and growth.

Musical Interlude

I'm nothing if not tenacious.  In search for songs about gorges, I stumbled across this little thing called Scenic Gorges by Boats.  It's an interesting song, sort of catchy in a funny punk kind of way.  Not only that, but I figured out how to embed it from Grooveshark.  Enjoy!

Blue Highways: Alder Creek, New York

Unfolding the Map

We are now climbing into the Adirondacks with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), Ghost Dancing straining, and we will again reflect on mountains, their majesty, their age, their wisdom, and our admiration of them.  At least I will.  To see where Alder Creek is located, start climbing toward the map.

Book Quote

"I went up into the Adirondacks at a point where they form a virtual wall, and Ghost Dancing labored making the ascent.  No sun in the forest and twelve degrees cooler.  The ancient Adirondack Mountains are much older than the old Appalachians they merge with; consequently, they tend toward roundness with few sharp outcroppings.  Adirondack ('bark eaters') was a contemptuous epithet Mohawks gave to some degenerated tribe so poor it had to eat trees.

"I bought gas in Alder Creek and asked the pumpman what winter was like in the mountains. 'This,' he said and held up the stump of a little finger.  'Frostbite.  Snowfall of a hundred forty-two inches last year, forty-five below, wind chill seventy below. That's what we call winter.'"

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 6

Junction near Alder Creek, New York. Photo by Rick Ehrenberg and posted at ViewPhotos.org. Click on photo to go to host page.

Alder Creek, New York

Never having been to the Adirondacks - I've only really skirted them as I drove through New York - I can't comment on their beauty or the effects of their great age upon them.  But I love mountains, both young and old, and for different reasons.  I grew up in the California Coast Ranges, which are relatively young mountains, about 3-4 million years old, that range near the coast of Northern California.  The immense forces that raised these mountains are tied in with the plate tectonics of the west coast of North America, and where near my hometown the Mendocino Triple Junction of the North American, Pacific, and Gorda, as well as the meeting place for the San Andreas and Mendocino faults with the Cascadia subduction zone.  In other words, it is a cauldron of plate tectonics and this cauldron has created forces which has heaved up the mountains in which I played and explored when I was young.

I'm trying to think of what might be the oldest mountains that I've visited?  The Appalachians would certainly qualify.  The forces that built the mountains may have begun as early as a billion years ago, though 540 million years ago is a good midpoint to think about in terms of when they began to take their present shape.  However, one person disputes this, writing that they are really very young mountains.  I am in no position to agree or disagree.  However, on the gut feeling side which is totally unscientific, they seem to be old mountains to me.  Though my visit in them reminded me of home, I still felt that they were different in some way, that if they could talk they would be older, wiser, and full of stories that my young coastal mountains could not know.  Another mountain range, the Blue Ridge Mountains, which I drove along for a while, might be about 400 million years old, which would put them a close second.  These old ranges, with their wooded sides, eroded and gentle slopes, are beautiful and home to a history as varied as the people who have trod, hunted, fished and settled on and in them over time.

The Sierra Nevada, another mountain range with which I'm quite familiar, is a mystery to geologists.  There is a camp that claims that they are relatively old, at 40-80 million years old, or almost an infant, at 3 million years old.  I have always thought of them as young mountains, given that they are so stark and craggy, and perception is everything, I guess.  If you look at a person and think that he or she is young, then for all intents and purposes he or she is until the truth is revealed.

The mountain ranges I currently live near, the Sandias and Manzanos, formed about 10 million years ago, the result of the geological forces associated with one of only two continental rift valleys (the Rio Grande Valley - the other is the Great Rift Valley in Africa).  These certainly make them older than the mountains I grew up in, but younger than most of the other mountains I've frequented.

From what I've read, the Adirondacks are much more complex than LHM imagined.  The Adirondacks can be considered ancient, because they are made of ancient rock that was created and buried 30 miles below the earth's surface.  The age of the rocks are anywhere from 1-2 billion years old.  However, the forces that pushed them to the surface and created the Adirondacks is much more recent.  Sometime around 65 million years ago, the land began to rise, pushing those ancient rocks to the surface.  Then erosion began to form the Adirondacks, leading to the mountains that are familiar to those in that part of the country.

I love mountains, whether they are old or young.  When camping out at my property in the Irmulco Valley, some of my most serene and sublime moments have come while traversing a mountain ridge and hearing the wind through the evergreens overhead.  The vistas that can be seen from a mountaintop are those that can stay with one forever.  While driving along the Blue Ridge Mountains, just looking down over the fields far below almost gave me a feeling of flying, even though my car wheels were held fast to the road.

On the other hand, just looking at a craggy mountain vista, such as when one approaches the Rockies or the Sierra Nevadas, gives one such a perspective.  When I've gazed upon these mountains looming in the distance, there are times that I feel small and appreciative of the wonders that God or gods, Nature, the Universe, or whatever one might believe in, put on this earth.  I sometimes wonder if they were put here for me to admire, or whether it doesn't matter.

I think the gift of a mountain is simply that we ARE here to admire it, to let the mountain free our minds to imagine what it would be like at the top, or if we are at the top, to wonder what might be going on to those unseen down below.  I believe that whether the mountains speak to us from the ages when the earth was young, or in the blink of a couple of million years, they speak truth.  Their truth is that they are there, fixed and permanent, as marker and metaphor in our lives.

Musical Interlude

Mountains put me in a reflective mood, and so does Stevie Nicks' song Landslide, which uses the mountain both as a metaphor for a change in life, and the potential pitfalls that can occur.  Right now my wife and I are in a place of change, and she has a mountain to climb and is concerned about the potential landslides.

If you want to know more about Alder Creek

I'm sorry, Littourati, but there just isn't anything of substance on Alder Creek.  It might be that the community is just too small.  Here's some links on the Adirondacks in general.

Andirondack Region of Northern New York
The Adirondacks
Wikipedia: Adirondack Mountains

Next up: Forest House Lodge, New York

Blue Highways: Austin, Nevada

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapMy three weeks in Turkey are over, and I'm back in the saddle again riding along with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) as he continues across America.  If you want to see some pictures and posts about my Turkey excursion, go to my Muse Gumbo site.  In this post it's Austin, Nevada, a sleepy hillside ghost mining town that I happened to pass through myself a couple of years ago.  It'll take me a couple of posts to get my Littourati chops up to speed again, but at least we've started!  Click on the map thumbnail to locate Austin.

Book Quote

"On three sides of town, prospect holes riddled the mountains and dripped out mine tailings like ulcerated wounds; to the west, several hundred feet down, lay a flat desert valley disappearing into the Shoshone Mountains on the horizon. Main Street, also U.S. 50, made a straight and steep run through Austin, then down the mountain and off across the desert. The side streets were hard-packed, oily sand, some with gradients that would test a donkey, and the rutted sidewalks, washing down the slope, still had their Old West canopies. Because Austin is without level land, many of the houses had been built into terraced cutouts so that from their porches people looked down onto the roofs of buildings along Main Street."

Blue Highways:  Part 5, Chapter 7

Photo by Chris Ralph at The Rock Hound's Corner Click on photo to go to site.Austin, Nevada

On our trip out through Nevada, we drove through Austin.  I remember driving up from a plain into some mountains, cresting, and then a steep drop on Hwy 50 through town as we looked out on the flat plain below stretching toward the next set of mountains.  Austin seemed unremarkable to me then, and because we were on a schedule we didn't stop but kept moving right along.

However, it was remarkable in one way in which LHM also finds of interest.  Before I visited Hazard, Kentucky in the Appalachians, I had never seen cities or towns laid out along a steep hillside before.  I thought it extremely cool that towns could have streets overlooking other streets, and porches of normal houses overlooking other houses' rooftops.  To lay a city out in that way really fascinated me, even though I could see the logic of the layout.  The only other way to lay a town out in a deep valley with steep hillsides is to follow the valley, which could lead a town to stretch for miles and miles.  In the day of the car, that would not be such a problem, but in the days before cars when many of these towns were being laid out, that would have made it very difficult for people to go to do basic tasks such as get supplies and food.  Keeping the town compact would have been much more important.

You find a lot of these types of towns in the mining areas of the west.  On a trip into Arizona, my wife and I visited Jerome, a small mining town perched high on a mountainside.  The town was built into a mountainside so steep that one of the buildings actually, over the course of time, slid from one street down to the next.  Another mining town in Arizona that we visited, Bisbee, where a certain color of turquoise is found, had a similar layout.  Walking the main street meant walking uphill as the street followed what used to be a gulch.  Taking side streets up from the main street often meant a steep climb.  If one lived in Bisbee and didn't have a car, one would be in really good shape from the daily workout!

On our trip through Nevada, the only other place we visited that had a similar layout was Virginia City.  But if you want to eschew the tourist areas, you probably won't go to Virginia City because it's whole purpose now is to cater to tourists.  The main street was full of all kinds of kitsch, but we did find a very cool little museum on a back street, steeply downhill from the main drag.

Living in a town like that, I can only imagine, would cause a rethinking of privacy.  Presumably, one would want to live higher up, because that would preserve privacy.  If you lived farther downhill, you could be observed by uphill neighbors as well as the people who lived to either side.  In a town that is flat, you wouldn't necessarily have that kind of problem.

But, the perspective engendered with such a town would also be changed.  How one viewed the world would have to be affected by whether they lived up the gulch or down the gulch, up higher on the valley walls or lower on the valley walls.  The light would last longer in the evening the higher one resided, and would arrive earlier in the morning.  Noise from below might be muted, but I can also imagine that echoes from below would be more discernible.  Would a person who lived higher up be more removed and aloof from the town?  Would a person who lived below be more active and sociable by necessity?

I don't have answers to these questions, I just pose them as thought exercises.  However, one thing is clear to me through all my travels.  If humans choose to live somewhere, well, they find a way to make it work whether it's temporary or permanent.  Certainly, there are examples of abandoned towns and cities all over America and the rest of the world.  However, most of those places enjoyed, even for a few evenings in the case of the shortest lived, the human activities that attempt to build a community.  Austin, Nevada is but one place, in the middle of a naturally arid and harsh landscape, where people succeeded. in building something long-lasting.  Obviously, we succeed more often than we don't.

Musical Interlude

It isn't that I loved O Brother Where Art Thou (I really did), but I really like the song In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.  It shows that everyone in their situation hopes for better things, even if the utopia is completely rooted in their own experience.  We used to joke that our dog, who was rescued, hit the big rock candy mountain when she came to our house.  But I too would like to reach the big rock candy mountain.  Who wouldn't?

If you want to know more about Austin

Austin, Nevada
Ghosttowns.com: Austin
The Historical Society of Austin, Nevada
TravelNevada.com: Austin
Wikipedia: Austin

Next up: New Pass Station, Nevada