Blue Highways: Keddie, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapTrailing along with William Least Heat-Moon, we stop with him at a spring near Keddie, California.  It is nice to dump our city water and drink deeply.  It is deeply satisfying to stroll in the dappled sunshine underneath the trees.  To see approximately where we are located, click on the map thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"North of Keddie, the road passed a spring spilling from the side of a broken cliff.  I emptied my jugs of city water and filed them with purity from the rocks and drank a pint to clear the pipes, then walked up into the trees to dispel the jounce of miles.  The sun, breaking through now and then, cast long slopes of light down the mists, and for a time, the vapors of humbug evaporated."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Old Keddie Resort gas station. Photo by Chanel M. at Flickr. Click on photo to go to site.Keddie, California

When I mapped this site I really couldn't guess where, north of Keddie, LHM would have stopped.  So, instead of trying to mark the exact site, I just put a marker in Keddie since it is the nearest place that he mentions.  The next series of posts and their corresponding map points will have some guesswork involved - for instance, where he turns around on Lassen Peak, and where exactly he stops along Hat Creek, so please bear with me.  If you happen to be a really hardcore Blue Highways fan and have found these spots AND have recorded the coordinates, feel free to send them to me if you'd like to improve my accuracy.

Two things capture me in LHM's quote, above.  First, he writes about the glories of a spring rushing from a cliff by the side of the road. Elsewhere in this blog I've written about rivers, oceans, and how water is so important to me personally.  However, most of my experience with water has been with those two manifestations of this resource.  Springs, however, were not something that I was familiar with.  I remember seeing one spring as a teenager.  We own some property out in the wilderness, and our neighbor, a German who was extremely industrious, ran a pipeline three miles to a spring halfway up the side of a mountain and used gravity flow to bring the water down to his house where it turned a Pelton Wheel, therefore providing his home with both clean water and electricity.  After that, I don't think I saw a spring until I was well into adulthood.  At least, I don't remember any other encounters.

After leaving home, I lived mostly in cities, and my experience with water was either on rivers or by lakes.  I love lakes and rivers, really any bodies of water.  But I experienced the power of the simple spring on trips into Big Bend National Park when we'd drive there from San Antonio for long weekends.  A hike with my wife along the Mule Ears trail brought us to a spring, and in the middle of the desert the spring was surrounded by an explosion of life.  The spring provided water for plants and animals.  Plants provided shelter and food for animals and insects, which in turn provided food for other animals.  In the silence of the desert, suddenly there was noise - bees buzzing and birds chirping.  It was astounding what a little bit of water could do.  On another trip, I hiked out to a large cottonwood in the middle of the desert, and found that it grew on top of another spring.  Again, the amazing proliferation of life around this little bit of water was incredible.  Underneath the boughs of the cottonwood animals and insects went about their daily routines.  The tree dripped water.  Just feet away was the sun-blasted desert, where water was scarce and succulent plants had to store it within their bodies.  But within a 25 foot radius, somewhat abundant water changed everything.

On a hike in the Sandias, we went looking for a spring and found one at the head of a rushing rill of a river during a particularly wet year.  A spring is deceptively simple.  Water flows from below the ground into a pool, where it begins its journey downhill to wherever it ends up.  However, a spring never ceases to remind one of how important water is to life.  It used to be that a spring meant purity.  But now, because of agriculture and farming, springs have become as polluted anything else in our environment.  One must purify water even from springs bubbling out of the ground before it can be drunk, lest one get giardia or some other nasty gut parasite.

The second thing that strikes me about this passage is that LHM walks up beneath the trees to stretch and clear his lungs and head.  Nothing puts me in a better mood, reflective but not melancholy, than being under trees.  The sunlight, pushing through the leaf cover of the trees, dapples on the ground creating interplays of light and shadow as the leaves move to a slight breeze.  The air is cool because trees create their own small ecosystems and environments.  For me, the feeling is one of peace and opens up the mind to oneness with the world and a reflective but positive look at past and potentialities.  There are two scenarios for me which would constitute heaven - eternity next to an ocean shore, or eternity in the dappled sunlight beneath trees.

Musical Interlude

A spring is a great example of the circle of life in motion, so today's musical interlude is Circle of Life by Robin Spielberg.

If you want to know more about Keddie

There isn't much on Keddie as it is a small place.  Unfortunately, it seems to be known more for a gruesome multiple murder, committed after LHM passed through, than anything else - though it also is along the historic Western Pacific train line.

Steam Train Stop at Keddie (video)
Wikipedia: Keddie
Wikipedia: Keddie Murders

Next up: Lassen Peak, California

Blue Highways: Quincy, California

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapQuincy, California serves as a backdrop for William Least Heat-Moon's reverie on "humbug," on a Sunday where everyone is at church.  I take a look at my own relationship to to my church, and wonder if I could use a dose of "humbug."  To see where Quincy is located, click on the map thumbnail at right.

Book Quote

"Quincy was a clean mountain town, empty and quiet but for a church bell. It was Sunday with a vengeance. Sunday in the churches, yes, but also Sunday in the streets, alleys, fields, even in the heart of the pines. Sunday is the day bells toll, the day funny papers come out - and with good reason. While the citizens sat under arched ceilings and spoke with their various gods and saviors, I scuffled with humbug in the Laundromat."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 11

Photo of Quincy, California by Anne at City-Data.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Quincy, California

I still go to church.

I sometimes wonder why I go to church, but I drag myself out of bed every Sunday morning, get dressed, eat something really light, and drive with my wife down to the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center on the University of New Mexico campus.  We get there around 8:30 a.m. and participate in the choir practice.  Then we sing in the 9:30 mass.

A number of developments in the Catholic Church have really made me question my commitment to the institution.  I'm not really questioning my faith, which is personal.  However, I could easily stop going to Mass and walk away from the institutional Church and probably not miss it.  The Catholic Church and its leadership, some 50 years after Vatican II brought about liberalization within the Catholic Church and made it more accessible to its people, seems to be determined to revert back to a patriarchal hierarchy.  The Church has decided that women, who make up at least half its members, will not be allowed to hold many of its most meaningful positions.  It has decided to put emphasis on certain “sins,” i.e. abortion, gay marriage, and cohabitation, while putting other sins that are responsible for deaths - and I'm thinking especially of wars here - on the back burner.  It has sheltered pedophiles and made excuses about their actions and blamed the victims rather than dealing directly and meaningfully to the horrors it sheltered.  Rather than confronting its problems, it decides to dogmatically ban chalices not made of silver, and choreograph its members to bow at a appropriate times within the Mass.  All the while, it faces a shortage of men willing to fill its needs for priestly functions.  Perhaps worst of all, it has marginalized and drummed out, through silencing and excommunication, many of those who respectfully disagree and present alternative visions of what the Church could be.  My wife compares the churches actions to those in denial, like a man rearranging deck chairs on a sinking Titanic.  Yet, the Church's general attitude, especially to those that question, has been something on the order of “if you don’t like it, feel free to leave.”

And yet, I still go to church.  Maybe it’s because emotionally, and even in official Church documents, I know that MY church stands for something.  I capitalize "MY" because I still claim some little bit of ownership.  MY Church still is able to surprise me and say meaningful and relevant things.  People within it, beleaguered though they may be, still stand up for justice and empowerment of the poor.  It was because of MY Church that I was raised to believe in what is right and good.  I still know good people that have stayed within the Church and still do good works even though the Church seems to not care at best or even try to block them at worst.  The fact that they stay and continue to see and use the Church as a vehicle of hope instills that same sense of hope in me.

LHM seems almost derisive of such people who sit in buildings while bells ring, talking to their "Gods" or "saviors."  He seems to see it as little better than sitting in a Laundromat on a Sunday afternoon and coming to a clear pronouncement of “Humbug.”  Humbug on everything, including your damn religion.

I’m not sure I agree with him.  As I learn to center myself, to know myself better, I have realized that there are many vehicles toward this goal.  Psychotherapy, self-actualization, prayer and worship…they are all avenues to personal reflection on our lives, our relationships and the things that demonstrate both our malice and our love toward ourselves and others.

But sometimes, as I struggle with life’s big questions, and turn my gaze toward a Church that sometimes appears more interested in channeling my thoughts toward obedience rather than toward personal growth and a closer relationship to the spiritual side of the universe, I wish that I too could utter a word and be done with it.  I fantasize that one word could drop all the curtains concealing the truth and give me the freedom to explore without the expectations of an increasingly out-of-touch institution.  It might be too easy of a solution, but I sometimes wish that I could also just say “Humbug.”

Musical Interlude

If going to church was like this - well, I certainly would enjoy it a lot more and may even be able to do backflips down the aisle like Jake in The Blues Brothers.  Just not too early in the morning.  I often wake up on Sunday to gospel music on our local radio station and it can sometimes be too peppy for this decidedly not a morning person.  Enjoy James Brown as he tears up the pulpit!

If you want to know more about Quincy

Feather River College
High Sierra Music Festival
Plumas County Visitors Bureau
Plumas County News (newspaper)
Wikipedia: East Quincy
Wikipedia: Quincy

Next up: Keddie, 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