We felt like we were in a horror film.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, you’re on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, the day is drawing to a close, and…<\/p>\n
It’s just that we saw a sign for the Inyo Craters.\u00c2\u00a0 And wanting to experience everything in this life, wanting to see the natural wonders this far from home, we took a left off the main road.<\/p>\n
Not that I’d been on the main road before either.<\/p>\n
You see they get a lot of snow in the Sierras.\u00c2\u00a0 A TON!\u00c2\u00a0 So much that a great number of the mountain roads don’t open until summer.\u00c2\u00a0 As in now.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never seen the Mammoth Scenic Loop without a closed sign.\u00c2\u00a0 So, intrigued, we took it.\u00c2\u00a0 And found ourselves in an uninhabited pine tree forest.<\/p>\n
And that’s where we saw the sign.\u00c2\u00a0 And feeling like we didn’t need no stinking instructions we didn’t take a look at the posted map, we just followed the dirt road.\u00c2\u00a0 Through one junction, and then another, to the point that I was now worried, not having dropped any bread crumbs, that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the deeper we went into the woods, the greater the sense of our mission.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, these craters had to be here SOMEWHERE!<\/p>\n
And then, MILES from the macadam, there was a sign that it was another 1\/2 mile.\u00c2\u00a0 Where ultimately, seemingly further than that, we found an outhouse, and a parking lot, and a SHITLOAD of mosquitoes.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I didn’t think they flew this far west, never mind this high, but when I slapped my neck a few feet from the car and saw those telltale wings and blood in my hand I knew…it was man against nature.\u00c2\u00a0 And nature always wins.<\/p>\n
Now the trail sign said it was a 1\/4 mile hike.\u00c2\u00a0 Which, at this point, I wasn’t trusting.\u00c2\u00a0 As we walked by redwoods, both standing and fallen, I realized we were a long, long way from home and my Eagle Scoutness was starting to freak.\u00c2\u00a0 But I told myself it was still only 6:30, it wasn’t going to get dark for another couple of hours.\u00c2\u00a0 But just as I was calming down, figuring we’d make it back to the car, I started to freak about finding the pavement again.\u00c2\u00a0 Ah well, forward.<\/p>\n
And just when we were about to turn around, off in the distance, up a small hill, we saw a railing.<\/p>\n
And when we stumbled up the hill, we were confronted with a giant HOLE!\u00c2\u00a0 Not caused by an asteroid but seismic activity.\u00c2\u00a0 And a further scramble to the right brought us to an even HIGHER crater.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d been laughing, that after all this work the natural wonders wouldn’t be so wonderful, but these WERE pretty cool.<\/p>\n
And after contemplating God’s work, we turned around and were confronted with…two trails.<\/p>\n
Uh-oh.\u00c2\u00a0 Which way had we come?<\/p>\n
I checked the cell phone.\u00c2\u00a0 It said we had access.\u00c2\u00a0 But sometimes you push the buttons and it turns out you don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to find out.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally convincing ourselves we hadn’t seen the picnic table on the right on our way in (but we were staring at the railing\/crater!) we went to the left.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I recognized the giant pine cones.\u00c2\u00a0 And, fifteen minutes later, we were back at Felice’s Lexus.\u00c2\u00a0 Whew.<\/p>\n
And we made it back to the main road too.<\/p>\n
And feeling emboldened, when we finally got to the main drag, I suggested going north rather than south back to Mammoth Lakes.<\/p>\n
Upon assent from Felice I steered the car onto a highway I hadn’t traveled since 1975.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d forgotten how desolate and beautiful it was.<\/p>\n
My goal was June Mountain.\u00c2\u00a0 That far northern ski area ultimately purchased by Mammoth.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the skiing was tougher on the BOTTOM!<\/p>\n
And after a dozen or so miles on 395, we hit the junction.\u00c2\u00a0 We turned left.\u00c2\u00a0 And were confronted with the kind of scenery people fly to Colorado for, but was here in our own backyard.<\/p>\n
We hit a mountain lake, JUNE LAKE!\u00c2\u00a0 And then a small fishing village.\u00c2\u00a0 And ultimately June Mountain.\u00c2\u00a0 Which was bare on the bottom, but so steep I now understood why people rode the lift down at the end of the day.<\/p>\n
And then…\u00c2\u00a0 With a towering edifice of rock just a mile or so away, I told Felice we had to drive deeper into the heart of darkness.<\/p>\n
The road was twisting.\u00c2\u00a0 Towards what we believed would be a dead end.\u00c2\u00a0 And then we came around a corner and were confronted with a waterfall so vast and powerful that I could only think of its brethren in Yosemite!\u00c2\u00a0 Way high up the mountain.\u00c2\u00a0 Hundreds of feet above our automobile.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this WAVE of water.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought of the runoff in the plateau above.\u00c2\u00a0 How the melting snow slid down into a puddle and then off this CLIFF!\u00c2\u00a0 It was almost scary, like if we got too close we’d be swept away.\u00c2\u00a0 And the mountain came right down to our feet.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no gradual incline, just sheer rock face.\u00c2\u00a0 It was ASTOUNDING!<\/p>\n
And then, as we drove away, we were confronted with more peaks where God and nobody else lived.\u00c2\u00a0 With spire tops and crop tops.\u00c2\u00a0 Flanked with snow here, bare there.\u00c2\u00a0 Pencil-thin waterfalls in spots, STREAMING down the rock.<\/p>\n
And in the rearview mirror was a mountain so spectacular that I had to stop the car and get out to look.<\/p>\n
And still we powered forward.\u00c2\u00a0 I figured this road had to be a loop.\u00c2\u00a0 It ultimately had to connect with 395, the main highway.\u00c2\u00a0 But mile after beautiful mile passed, and we just saw landscape and no people.<\/p>\n
But then, VOILA!\u00c2\u00a0 395 was in sight.\u00c2\u00a0 We got back on the highway and pointed our car towards Mammoth.\u00c2\u00a0 But at the June Lake turnoff, we had to stop, I had to get sustenance, I hadn’t planned to be on this spacewalk for this long.<\/p>\n
And after setting a package of beef jerky on the counter, I went into the men’s room to relieve myself.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I came out Felice was deeply into it with the clerk.\u00c2\u00a0 A fiftysomething man with a sunny personality.\u00c2\u00a0 He was pointing out the four types of trout you desired to catch in the lake.\u00c2\u00a0 There were pictures of them on the back of the hanging t-shirts.<\/p>\n
And discussing fish, and the fact that this guy didn’t, we became friends, he started telling us his story.<\/p>\n
He’d grown up in San Diego.\u00c2\u00a0 And had moved to Mammoth two college credits shy of graduation.\u00c2\u00a0 Then to Hawaii, where he drove a Porsche and worked at a hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 And then on to study martial arts in Tokyo.\u00c2\u00a0 And then back to the mainland, back to Mammoth, where he ran a hotel, improving its business forty percent in two years before the owner fired him and he ended up living in a trailer up here in the middle of nowhere, making $10,000 a year.<\/p>\n
But he liked it.<\/p>\n
But what about ROMANCE?<\/p>\n
Women didn’t like him.\u00c2\u00a0 That was a running joke on Kauai.<\/p>\n
And that’s when the conversation turned.<\/p>\n
He’d been married.\u00c2\u00a0 For thirteen years.\u00c2\u00a0 But she left him for a man she’d known two weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 He gave her time to come to her senses, but after a sojourn to Arizona, having given her enough time to realize what she’d sacrificed, he was confronted with the fact that she was pregnant, and not only over him, but done with him.<\/p>\n
Everywhere he went, he sent her letters.\u00c2\u00a0 Couldn’t they just be friends?<\/p>\n
But she wouldn’t answer.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, years later, she wrote back.\u00c2\u00a0 Told him she was married with two kids, and to never ever write again.<\/p>\n
But he came back to the mainland to search for her.\u00c2\u00a0 And couldn’t find her.\u00c2\u00a0 But one day, telling the story to a guest at the Mammoth hotel he ran, he showed this woman his ex-wife’s picture and she exclaimed THAT’S MY NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR!<\/p>\n
He told her to make the connection for him, and to stay in touch.<\/p>\n
But he never heard another word.<\/p>\n
And now he’s here on desolation boulevard.\u00c2\u00a0 With plans for the rest of his life but nobody to share them with.<\/p>\n
As we walked out of the mini-mart, close to forty minutes later, Felice and I stared at each other speechless.\u00c2\u00a0 And when Felice finally spoke, after the better part of a mile on the highway, she said he seemed so LONELY!<\/p>\n
I figured his fantasy about his ex-wife was keeping him alive.\u00c2\u00a0 We all need something to keep us alive.<\/p>\n
And as we drove in the fading light back towards Mammoth, with the highest peaks in the continental United States painted in front of us, lit up with the final reflections of a sinking sun, I started singing "Big Sky Country".<\/p>\n
I told Felice there’d been this guy.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d recently died.\u00c2\u00a0 Chris Whitley.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d made an acoustic album for Columbia.\u00c2\u00a0 But when he wanted to change sound, to Hendrix-styled electric guitar, the label wanted nothing to do with him.\u00c2\u00a0 They dropped him.\u00c2\u00a0 He made some indie records thereafter, but now he’s gone.<\/p>\n
Felice asked me if that debut album had been a hit.<\/p>\n
I said it had sold quite well.\u00c2\u00a0 Foremost because of "Big Sky Country".<\/p>\n
Now when this over
Over and through
And all them changes have come and passed
I wanna meet you in the big sky country
Just wanna prove, mama, love can last, yeah
Like hallelujah in the big sky country
Just like forever and ever is why
Be getting over in the big sky country
Be kissing time, kissing time goodbye<\/em><\/p>\n\n