05.22.08
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background, San Joaquin Valley at 3:56 pm by Dan Jensen
Accounts vary as to the starting point of the Hockett Trail. Most reports have it that the trail started at Visalia, and some specify the Union Army fort in that town. Other sources report that it began at Hale Tharp’s ranch on Horse Creek, now under the high water line of Lake Kaweah. The likely explanation for these variations is that the trail did indeed begin in Visalia, particularly in light of the fact that the Union Army participated in its development, but that in 1862 no actual development work was needed below Horse Creek, thanks at least to Tharp himself, to say nothing of Valley traffic on the Jordan Trail, the Dennison Trail, and Butterfield’s Overland Stage route between Saint Louis and San Francisco.
The Overland Stage
As far as segmenting the trail is concerned, Horse Creek is probably not the best natural terminus for the first leg of the Hockett Trail. The best spot for an end to this initial segment is probably the gap between Limekiln Hill and Lemon Hill that forms a gateway between the Kaweah Delta and the Sierra.
There is some question as to what route the Hockett Trail took between Visalia and the Sierra, but it is most likely that the trail followed a route similar to the present-day path of Sierra Drive (State Route 198), given knowledge of the locations of area settlements and other trails in the early 1860s. The Jordan Trail, for instance, is known to have started near Rocky Hill, just south of Sierra Drive. One of the earliest settlements in Tulare County was probably a bit north of Sierra Drive, on one of the branches of the Kaweah River:
“The southern portion of Mariposa county so cut off, shall be called Tulare county. The seat of justice shall be at the log cabin on the south side of Kaweah creek, near the bridge built by Dr. Thomas Payne, and shall be called Woodsville …” — Act of the California Legislature, 1852
Woodsville, first settled in 1850, was in the neighborhood of the present-day Kaweah Oaks Preserve, seven or eight miles east of what would later become Visalia. This was the site of a historic massacre of white settlers by local “Kaweah” Indians in December 1850. From 1858, the stage road between Stockton and Los Angeles went through Woodsville. It seems it would have been silly for the Hockett Trail to miss Woodsville, though the Overland Stage was moved north to Placerville a year before construction on the Hockett Trail began. Knowing this, it seems quite likely that the Hockett Trail approached the Sierra south of the Kaweah River.
The best route to take today is therefore along Sierra Drive (SR 198). This takes us from downtown Visalia, directly past Kaweah Oaks Preserve and the site of Woodsville, and also directly past the Jordan Trail historic landmark at Yokohl. After passing over the easternmost branches of the delta, the route approaches the portion of the Sierra that appears to be sinking into the Valley, allegedly due to a convection cell in the mantle beneath Visalia. As one travels toward the hills, there are hills buried beneath ones feet.
Sierra Drive’s hillside approach continues to be the likely route of the old trail as it turns northeast toward Lindcove, Goodale, Citro, and Lemon Cove, inasmuch as keeping closer to the river would have meant encountering floods in Winter and Spring.
As the route leaves Lemon Cove, it’s likely that Sierra Drive strays from the original route by climbing the slope south of Lemon Hill, but we can’t exactly travel through the dam, so we stick to Sierra Drive.
See Exploring the Southern Sierra: West Side by Jenkins & Jenkins: Highway 198 Car Tour (T84).
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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05.21.08
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background at 11:51 pm by Dan Jensen
From the first crossing of the South Fork Kaweah River above Three Rivers (elev. 962 ft) to tree line on Hockett Hill above Owens Lake (approx. elev 6700 ft), the Hockett Trail is, with few exceptions, a forested trail. Even the Coyote Pass alternate over the Great Western Divide is well-forested. The only places where trees do not accompany the trail are where it crosses the Malpais lava flow and large meadows such as Tunnel, Mulkey, and Burnt Corral Meadows.
There are few places, however, where the woods that accompany the Hockett Trail could be rightly described as rain forest. Perhaps portions of Garfield Grove might be described as such with some imagination, but the original Hockett Trail didn’t even have that (it was routed below the grove on a sunny ridge).
There are streams, but nearly no lakes. Kern and Little Kern Lakes were born of landslides in 1867/8, after the Hockett Trail’s creation. Kern Lake is more of a marsh at present than a lake, and will soon be a meadow. Little Kern Lake might necessarily need to drop the adjective from its name.
The southern Sierra Nevada is drier than the rest of the range, but there’s no lack of growth, and in many places undergrowth. In fact, the southern Sierra has forests and even chaparral at elevations where there would only be tundra in other parts of the range.
I’ve often encountered forest fires on or near the Hockett Trail. That ought to surprise no one, with all the sunshine and firewood at the ready.
I missed the 2002 McNally Fire, which spared the Hockett Trail, but managed to burn nearby Hockett Peak.
Little Kern Lake during the West Kern Fire.
The year after the McNally Fire, I had planned to backpack up the Little Kern River, but the
Cooney Fire got in the way. My friend Juan and I backpacked up Kern Canyon instead, where we witnessed the
West Kern Fire. Two years later, the Kern Fire struck the Kern Canyon. The next time I planned a trip up the Little Kern River was in 2006. That year, the
Tamarack Fire got in the way. The Kern Canyon was hit again by the Grouse Fire in 2007. Every one of these 1000+ acre fires—except the McNally—were ignited by lightning.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background, San Joaquin Valley at 7:28 pm by Dan Jensen
Looking back millions upon millions of years ago to the tectonic events that gave birth to the San Andreas fault and California, earth scientists have been striving to determine what forces might have caused the southern Sierra Nevada to lose its root about 3.5 million years ago. It’s a good bet that a range of strange goings on in and around the southern Sierra has been caused by delamination of the subcrustal root of the Sierra: the further uplift of the southern Sierra, subsidence of another portion of the Sierra, tremors and volcanos, and who knows, maybe the 1969 Mets.
One particular event comes to mind: the supervolcanic eruption at Long Valley only 760,000 years ago. You may skeptically inquire, “only 760,000 years?” Bearing in mind that if that infamous supervolcanic explosion-implosion was caused by that splitting of the crust 3.5 million years ago, 760,000 years doesn’t sound like that much. It is as though the initial delamination occurred two weeks ago and a resulting supervolcano then occurred just three days ago.
I don’t mean to venture any conjecture about the probability of major eruptions at or near Long Valley in the immediate future, but rather, I wish to submit that whatever general process existed under the southern Sierra Nevada 760,000 years ago is likely to still be an active process. There’s likely to be something very big going on down there.
What was our first clue?
Perhaps our first clue was the abnormally thin crust under the Sierra.
Where is the crust at its thinnest? Curiously enough, the crust under the Sierra appears to be at its thinnest from around Mount Williamson south to Olancha Peak. This zone includes the highest peaks in the Sierra, and the Hockett Trail cuts right through the heart of it.
Then again, maybe our first clue was the abnormal activity detected in the mantle under Visalia.
The “mantle drip” cell that earth scientists have been investigating lately is thought to be centered approximately below Visalia, and the arc of its circumference cuts deeply into the western Sierra; deepest at the Hockett Plateau. Clearly then, the Hockett Trail cuts through the heart of this zone as well.
Then there’s that other clue: the subsidence that CalTech researchers have identified as roughly centered at the Kaweah Delta. Again, this is the domain of the Hockett Trail.
Oh, and one more thing: why does it appear that the western Sierra is rising west of the Kern Canyon Fault? Could recent activity along this fault, which the Hockett Trail follows from Trout Meadows to Golden Trout Creek, betray some tension caused by convection in the mantle west of that fault?
It seems like a lot is going on under Hockett country.
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Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background at 2:23 pm by Dan Jensen
The Hockett Trail was first chosen for its efficacy as a trans-Sierra route, and specifically chosen by the Union Army for its usefulness as a trail between forts in Visalia and the Owens Valley. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, the route of that old trail also traces the native range of California’s distinctive sport fish, the California golden trout. In addition, the Hockett route follows streams east and west of that native range. This makes the Hockett route an ideal route for the sport fisherman.
The three watersheds of the golden trout are, from west to east, the Little Kern River, Golden Trout Creek, and the South Fork Kern. The Hockett Trail followed these streams from its crossing of the Little Kern at Wet Meadows Creek, down the Little Kern Valley, up Kern Canyon, Golden Trout Creek, and finally the South Fork Kern.
“Here the trail branches, and there are two routes to Big Cottonwood, two or three miles further on. Both routes are plain. The one following up the east bank of the stream leads over a low divide between Little and Big Cottonwood, and brings one finally to the last-named. Here is an ideal camp; wood, water, grass, and trout are in plenty. The wonderful golden trout of the Sierras are here, in overwhelming abundance. It is no exaggeration to say that the poorest angler can here at almost any time of day catch strings which would drive the frequenter of local streams wild.” — Hubert Dyer, Sierra Club Bulletin, 1893
The attractiveness of the Hockett route isn’t limited to the Kern watershed. On the west side, the Hockett Trail followed the Kaweah River from the Kaweah Delta to the headwaters of the South Fork Kaweah. On the east side, the Hockett Trail followed Cottonwood Creek, stocked with golden trout since 1876, before dropping down “Hockett Hill” into the Owens Valley and turning north toward the Owens River, yet another notable fishing stream of the region.
Today, the Hockett Trail route and the trout streams along it enjoy wilderness protection from South Fork Campground on the west side to the outskirts of Horseshoe Meadows on the east side, largely due to the creation of the Golden Trout Wilderness in 1978. Unfortunately, fishing on the lower Owens River is not what it was before the Los Angeles Aqueduct, though efforts are being made to restore the stream. As for the state of the trail itself, it is not wholly maintained, and segments of the original trail were completely abandoned as far back as 1969 and 1940. Much of the original route is now paved over, and some of it has been under Lake Kaweah since 1962.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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05.20.08
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background, San Joaquin Valley at 7:56 pm by Dan Jensen
The trans-Sierra supply route of the Civil War period commonly known as the Hockett Trail was completed in 1862-63 for two functions:
- moving miners and supplies to and from mines in the Coso Range east of the Sierra.
- moving soldiers and their supplies to and from Fort Independence (AKA Camp Independence). This was primarily to defend and promote the interests of white settlers against local Indians.
The first function, the commercial reason for the trail, is the reason why the trail was named after the Visalia businessman John Hockett. For this same reason, the Hockett Trail may also rightly share the name “Coso Trail” with the Dennison and Jordan Trails.
The second, military function is the reason why it was also called the “Trail to Fort Independence”. Hockett and the Union Army worked together in developing the trail.
The Hockett Trail found other uses before it was even completed. It served as a route for discovering and accessing new Sierra peaks and valleys. Mineral King was discovered by a hunter on the Hockett Trail crew in 1862 (Hale Tharp later claimed to have visited Mineral King earlier, but even if he did his visit had no historical impact). Ranchers appear to have used the trail to move their livestock to the Hockett Plateau during the drought of 1863.
Though the Hockett Trail was the primary trail across the southern Sierra throughout the late 19th Century, it probably did not serve the Cerro Gordo mines, as they were not generally known until after the Hockett Trail lost much of its purpose as a supply route with the completion of the McFarlane toll road over Greenhorn Mountain in 1864, the opening of a stage service on that road in 1865, and the end of the Owens Valley Indian War in 1865.
The city of Los Angeles gained dominated trade with Cerro Gordo by 1868, and her geographic advantage over Visalia became clear. By 1905, as work on the Los Angeles Aqueduct began, Owens Valley was in practical terms within LA’s city limits.
The completion of Mineral King Road in 1879 diverted traffic away from the westernmost segment of the Hockett Trail, but it may have made the rest of the trail even more popular. The original Hockett Trail, often labeled the Trail to Fort Independence, can be seen skirting around the end of the Great Western Divide on area maps throughout Sequoia National Park’s first decade (the 1890s).
“The Hockett trail was made in early days, and to-day it remains a plain, well-blazed track from Lone Pine through to Visalia.” — Hubert Dyer, Sierra Club Bulletin, 1893
Mountaineering, golden trout, and the establishment of Sequoia National Park kept the trail popular into the 20th Century. The first people to climb Mount Whitney, America’s highest peak until 1959, were fisherman who used the Hockett Trail to get to the Kern River, and the Hockett route continues to give sport fisherman access to some of the most striking freshwater fish in the world.
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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05.19.08
Posted in Sierra Nevada, Background, San Joaquin Valley at 2:47 pm by Dan Jensen
Much of my childhood was spent in the towns of Hanford and Tulare, in a region once called the Tulare Basin, not far from the dry bed of Tulare Lake. This name “Tulare Basin” might have had more meaning before Tulare Lake was drained for wheat and cotton, but it’s still got that “basin” feel to it, or perhaps “sink” is a better word, with the way the heavier air settles down into it. It’s more than just the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley.
At about the time I became a teenager, I bicycled from Hanford to the brink of the Sierra Nevada, and watched the ghostly hills emerge one-by-one out of the Valley haze. I remember the sense of wonder in coming so close to something other than table-flat. I remember the soft, round foothills jutting suddenly out of the Valley floor like whales breaking the surface of a sea of orange groves.
There’s a remarkable story behind those whales that I had not heard about until quite recently.
I was taught in college that the earth’s crust is thicker under continents, and thickest under mountain ranges. Think of it as a characteristic of any floating object: the more that you see floating over the surface, the more there is under the surface; only there’s much more under the surface, as with an iceberg.
It turns out that this is not the case with the southern Sierra Nevada. This mountain range is more like a catamaran than a conventional boat. Under the highest portion of the Sierra, the crust is thinner than 30 km, and the crust doesn’t exceed 35 km in thickness under most of the crest of the High Sierra, as well as the Great Western Divide. All this is thinner than the crust is under Fresno.
The Sierra Nevada is hence thought to have lost its root. Layers under the range are thought to have separated, or “delaminated”. If this occurs to an iceberg, one would expect the iceberg to settle down into the water a bit, but that all depends on the relative density of the ice and the water. What happens when a mountain range looses its root? What happens if chunks of crust are dropped into the upper mantle? Some geologists appear to believe that delamination under the Sierra may have created a deep convection cell that led to even more uplift, and possibly an ancient supervolcano. What’s more, that convection cell appears to still be around, and very much alive.
Let’s take a conceptual hike. Start at Long Valley Caldera, where one of the world’s great volcanic events occurred
760,000 years ago. Walk across the Mammoth divide, past Devils Postpile National Monument, and down the San Joaquin River to Fresno. For much of your hike across the western slope of the Sierra, you will be waling over another anomaly: there is no clear boundary between the crust and mantle beneath your feet: you’re crossing the “Moho Hole”. You’re also walking over a gigantic “high-velocity drip” convection cell. In some areas, the convection cell presses up on the crust; in other places, pieces of the crust are dripping down into the mantle.
So what does all this have to do with whales?
Look at those whales east of Visalia, then look at the foothills along other parts of the western Sierra Nevada. The latter emerge gently from the plain, but the former shoot right out of the Valley floor like sinking ships, and that’s just it: they must be sinking, and there’s more than thirsty farms at work here. As they sink, sediments from Sierra streams settle in around them, burying the the foothills themselves. What we see, then, are not foothills but mountains.
The Tulare Basin is more than just a stagnant basin that happens to be adjacent to the Sierra Nevada: it is part of the Sierra, and not just because it sits on the low end of a great granitic incline. Likewise, the southern Sierra Nevada is much more than just a giant slab of granite. When realizations like these dawn upon us, so too are we reminded that science is more than an accumulation of knowledge: it’s a thing of beauty.
Don’t take my word for it, of course. No doubt I’ve read some of the science wrong. Read it for yourself and let me know what you think:
George Zandt, University of Arizona, 2003:
The Southern Sierra Nevada Drip and the Mantle Wind Direction …
George Zandt, Hersh Gilbert, Thomas J. Owens, Mihai Ducea, Jason Saleeby & Craig H. Jones, in Nature 432, 2004:
Active foundering of a continental arc root beneath the southern Sierra Nevada in California
Jason Saleeby and Zorka Foster, CalTech, 2004:
Topographic response to mantle lithosphere removal in the southern Sierra Nevada …
Elisabeth Nadin and Jason B. Saleeby, CalTech, 2005:
Recent Motion on the Kern Canyon Fault, Southern Sierra Nevada, California …
©2008 Dan J. Jensen
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04.03.08
Posted in Igneous Range at 6:45 pm by Dan Jensen
The sleepy Aegean waves licked up the white beach, warm and low. Up the shore, a cottage clung to the low shoulder of the island and howled. It howled and it screamed, and it ejected something out its flank, which began a slow ragged rotation and fell flat and motionless upon the ground.
The young man turned to the midwife, averting his eyes from the bed, and flinching under the violence of his love’s screams. The midwife handed him another bloodied rag, which fell to his feet. He picked it up and lobbed it through the doorway.
He looked out, and stepped out for some air, as the world began to sway and whiten. He spiraled downward.
He heard the frail, alien crying of infants. He heard his love humming a broken lullaby, and he woke with a jolt. He found his face to the floor. He pushed away the floor, righted himself, and turned round until he found her. She hummed euphorically, but weakly and laboriously. He held her hand. She smiled, blinked, and closed her eyes. Her neck eased as she fell into sleep. Two infants laid against her breast, braced by pillows.
The midwife sent him out for the doctor. He completed the chore, but not quickly enough.
“And Nymphodorus, in his Voyage round Asia, says that there are nowhere more beautiful women than those in Tenedos, an Island close to Troy.” —Athenaeus
Cynthia and her brother were taken into the care of different families. The couple that took Cynthia soon moved off the Island to find employment in the city, and left the boy as the last remaining Greek child of Tenedos, which was perhaps why he was named Apollo, for the Island had been known by Homer as a sanctuary of Apollo.
It had once been a Dionysian isle of vineyards, beaches, and—surely—beautiful women. Since Greece ceded the Isle to Turkey in 1923, it has been systematically cleansed of Greeks. Though technically a treaty violation, the cleansing was in strict accordance with the times. Turkey expelled Greeks. Greece expelled Turks. All in the name of national unity.
The decades following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and those particularly after the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955, were times of Greek diaspora from ancestral lands they had inhabited since before the Turkish invasions. Soon after Cynthia learned to walk, her guardians vanished suddenly and she was given over to the care of the Church. As she was learning to speak smatterings of Greek and Turkish, she changed hands once more. She found herself on an airliner with a strange man and woman. During the long journey, she woke several times, each time having to readjust to the strange surroundings, which would sometimes change utterly. She would find herself in a small seating space, in a corridor, in a large space of loud, echoing voices. She woke as she was being carried through the night. The adults spoke to her in affectionate voices, but often spoke anxiously and hurriedly. They took her to a house unlike any she had ever seen, where there was another adult, a boy, and an orange dog. The boy was bigger than her, but not much. He showed her a toy train, several cars, and then brought her a stuffed bunny. One of the adults approached and said something to her, but she could not understand anything that was said.
@ 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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03.30.08
Posted in Igneous Range at 8:10 pm by Dan Jensen
Soon after the Mission came to California, Judge Adroushan went up to San Rafael to train with a new guide dog. He returned with a 17 month-old golden retriever named Kale, a wholesome name that the gastronomist found suiting. Though Kale would be a servant to the Mission, the Mission did not distinguish between blood relations and other parishioners, so it was that in his adolescence Kale gained full Missionary status, which meant that to the Mission children he was like a brother with a few incidental chores to perform. He always loved to play catch, or go exploring, and he would not complain if a child abruptly snuggled up to him during one of his many naps.
Kale was a peace-loving parishioner. He avoided cats, escaping their conniving company with his nose and tail down as if they were apt to do him harm, or worse, emit a loud noise. He did not like loud noises. Thunderstorms would compel him to run off into some dark corner of the house and release his bowels. Fireworks would do the same. He even seemed startled by the sound of his own voice. He could seldom be teased to the point of letting a single bark out, whereupon Kale would freeze and look right and left for the source of the sound, as though he were wondering if there was a dog in the vicinity.
All that said, Kale was not a jittery fellow. He would never bite, or even snap his jaws. If he needed your attention, he’d lay his snout on your knee, or if the situation was more urgent, he could ever-so-gently grasp your arm with his jaw. He was—in the absence of gunfire, fireworks, or thunder—wholly reliable, though you wouldn’t want to leave the back gate open, because he would slip out as predictably as air from an untied balloon, and proceed to wander every bit as randomly as molecules once liberated. He would inevitably be discovered surrounded by admirers. He was a charmer.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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01.14.08
Posted in Igneous Range, Sierra Nevada at 10:00 pm by Dan Jensen
The job was good medicine, but Armen would feel even better with cash in his pocket. Inconveniently, his paycheck would be deposited directly to his bank account, so he’d need to take a bus up to the Valley to get his hands on it. When he got to the bank, he couldn’t remember his PIN, so he bought a couple cans of soda and decided to walk home. Not wishing to walk the narrow, bus-stuffed highway, he opted to hike home by way of the north rim.
He caught a shuttle from the Village to the Lodge, and hiked up to the rim from there. The dry season was well under way, and the black oaks and manzanita had begun their long, slow roast. As he ascended the south-facing wall, his boots slipped a little with every step on the eroded granite. He’d stop occasionally to inhale the aroma of slowly burning vegetation.
Above the falls, the route turned up Eagle Peak Creek, passed behind Eagle Peak, and then crossed Eagle Creek. So many eagles on the map; he looked upward to check the sky. It occurred to him that the cliffs of Yosemite’s sunny side must be a great habitat for buteos. The thermals must be incredible, he thought, and the visibility for predation—unsurpassed.
Where the trail passed El Capitan, he turned off trail, over the summit to the rim, where he sat down to soak up some sun. While gazing over the massive granite cliff, he eyed a pair of turkey vultures soaring upward on an afternoon thermal. Their wings teetered nervously as if they were each on a high wire. He lay back on the stone floor, and played his best possum. He watched the soaring vultures through the shield of his eyelashes. He thought of his sister Cindy, how she so loved to play possum for vultures, and how she’d made such an art—or religion—of it. He let himself drift off to sleep for a moment.
He returned to the trail, and proceeded west behind Fireplace Bluffs and the Cascades to Foresta, a pleasant, shaded, residential community above the canyon. “Foresta” was an appropriate name for the place, but not for long. He wound down the road to the falls as night fell, and continued to tromp blindly down into the canyon. His feet began to ache. At one point, the white stripe of a skunk bounced out in front of him. Rather than running off into the bushes alongside the road, it proceeded to lead Armen down the dark road; an unwelcome guide in the dark. Together, they crept around yet another Eagle Peak—the one that stands above the community of El Portal. Armen managed to get to his cabin without stumbling over his escort.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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12.15.07
Posted in Igneous Range at 10:59 pm by Dan Jensen
| Through the airliner’s port window, a sea of tiles surged up and down. The tiles, each a distinct shade of rust, formed a great flowing quilt. “Rust,” he remembered the cowboy’s voice, “is the fire that burns iron.” He could imagine the smoldering fire spreading slowly across northern Bombay, consuming just as respiration consumes, out of control like the respiration of a cancer or a conflagration, devouring the great city; that city of hope and opportunity. A city of tolerance. An Indian city, no doubt, but forever a British city, and a Muslim and Persian city too. Rotting at its core with the foulest poverty. The slum capital of the world in an age of slums, though it still retained its grand old Imperial name Bombay. |
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Not for long. The Mosques were burning, the Parsis were dying off, and even the Gujaratis weren’t welcome.
He wondered about the mathematics of misery. What is the misery of a million miserable souls? Is it a million fold, or is it the same as one? Is the misery of a million more than a single mother in mourning?
He braced himself, not so much for the landing as the arrival.
“Name.”, the customs agent recited, as he received the passenger’s passport.
“Mehrzad Kariyani” was the reply.
“City of birth.”
“Pasadena, California”.
The traveler sensed suspicion in the agent, or perhaps he imagined it.
“Religion”
“Parsi.”
The agent gave him a second look, and then let him pass.
The traveler unlocked the door to his room and dropped his suitcase on the bed. He snapped it open, and lifted out a dark green outfit. After changing into the long sleeve shirt and pants, he lifted out a black topi and pulled it over his head. He dug into the suitcase and removed a small pill jar. He opened the jar, dumped out a capsule, and put the capsule in his change pocket. He pulled a circular strap and a pair of binoculars out of the suitcase, attached them, put the strap over his head, and adjusted it. He dumped the contents of his rucksack out onto the bed. He then flipped the binoculars down over his eyes, and pulled the headgear off his head and placed it into his pack, emptied it out onto the bed, slung the pack over his shoulders, and left the room.
Walking through the hotel lobby, he turned and approached the front desk. “Excuse me sir. Would you happen to know where I can find a hardware store, say, where I might find screws and such things?” The man at the desk responded, “Certainly, sir. There’s a shop just two or three blocks from here, up Veer Nariman Road.”
When he’d found the shop, he looked around, the finally asked the shopkeeper if he had any cable cutters. The shopkeeper then said something in another language that seemed like an order to a young man, who immediately ran off. “My assistant will return shortly with the item you have requested.” The traveler nodded and continued to browse through the shop. After the assistant returned with the cable cutters, the American purchased them, along with some rope and a pair of gloves. Outside the shop, he stuffed the purchase into his pack, looked up the street, and began walking back toward the Astoria Hotel, but stopped short the Churchgate rail station, where he planned to catch a train to Charni Road. Not quite up to fighting the crowds, he opted to walk instead.
He paused in front of an old fire temple for awhile, then continued down to Chowpatty Beach, bought some bhelpuri, and sat there watching the street performers, dispossessed, and the fun seekers until sunset. He resumed walking, first further down the beach, then he spotted a griffon vulture soaring westward, and followed it toward the towers of Malabar Hill.
After awhile, he came to a place where one side of the street was forested, as it were a park, behind a wall. The traveler strolled in and out of the light, following the barrier as he walked. As he passed out of the reach of a streetlight, he stopped along the wall where a gap in it had been patched with steel fencing, now rusty from the Bombay weather. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the cutters, and snipped two strands of the fencing, then returned the cutters to his pocket and continued walking. He made several right turns, and was soon at the gap again, and quickly pruned the fending a little more. On the forth pass, he walked directly toward the gaps and slipped through it without pausing.
He walked quickly through the forest, then stopped, and moved the cutters from his pocket to his pack, and slipped the capsule out of his dime pocket. He squeezed a green paste out of the capsule and wiped the paste over his face. He pulled out the binocular-cap. He slid the strap over his topi, adjusted it, and pulled the binoculars down over his eyes. He then put on the gloves and proceeded through the forest. The calls of birds still echoed through the forest. He heard the startling call of a peacock. He paused, and followed the growing smell of death among the trees.
His nose led him to what resembled a large petroleum tank, such as might be seen at a refinery, only this tank, perhaps ten meters high and three hundred around, was made of stone. He then began walking from tree to tree, inspecting each tree momentarily, and following a wandering path around the tank. Inspecting the trunk of one tree more thoroughly, he pulled the rope out of his pack, wove it around his torso and each leg, and then around the tree.
He then scaled up the trunk, then wormed out onto one of the main branches toward the stone tank, and removed the night vision glasses. From the branch, he looked down into the roofless tank, seeing the dim contrast of corpses against stone. He lay there against the branch, occasionally adjusting his body for comfort, and saw the silhouette of a vulture in an adjacent tree. He smiled through the green mask, and started to hum pleasantly. He then began to sing in a cracked whisper, “when I think of heaven (deliver me in a black-winged bird) …”
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