Igneous Range

Sam woke in Walker’s dark camp under a light evening shower. He was aroused by the pestering of raindrops striking his face. Walker heard him stirring. He greeted Sam and asked him if he’d had any luck.

“She’s gone,” Sam whispered, which was the best he could manage at the time.

The cowboy was rearranging the campfire’s fuel with an iron rod. He stopped, and nodded.

Walker and Buck sat silently by the fire with Sam lying outside the smoke zone throughout the night.

Sam rolled over and coughed until he spoke. “How’d I get here?”

“Oh! How indeed. Our packer brought you down off the mountain. At least that’s what she told me.”

“She—your packer. Sue.” Sam coughed.

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“Where is she?”

“Oh she went after your friend.”

Sam rolled onto his back and hacked out a couple more coughs.

At dawn, Walker got up to prepare some coffee. He offered a cup to Sam. Sam didn’t drink coffee, but he accepted the cup.

Sam sat holding the cup, his eyes agape, focused on something far beyond the trees.

The sound of horse hooves grew slowly out of the woods, and Sue followed soon after on horseback.

“Any luck?” called the cowboy.

“Not really.”

“Well you have a seat and have some lunch before you head back out.”

“Well I see the phoenix hunter is coming around.”

Sam sat still, holding his cold cup of coffee.

Sue dismounted and set the horse out into the small meadow nearby, and then walked up to Sam and sat by his side.

“Well we’re happy to have you, at least. Any idea where Cindy and Armen went off to?”

“He says Cindy’s gone,” the cowboy interjected.

“Gone. Gone where?”

“Gone.” Sam said, nearly beneath his breath. “In the fire.”

“I guess it was time,” Sue observed.

Sam threaded his eyebrows, puzzled, then he leapt upon her and growled out, grabbing her neck, “what do you mean!? Maybe it’s time for you, too, huh?” But just as quickly, he folded over in a fit of hacking coughs.

Sue rubbed his back. “I’m sorry, Sam. That was uncalled for. Let me get you some water.” With that, Sue got up and retrieved Sam’s overturned tin cup.

After a long while, the cowboy spoke. “Son. There’s something you prob’ly ought to know.” He paused to give Sam a chance to prepare to listen. “This is going to be hard to believe, but I can’t think of a better time to try.”

“Cindy is not like most people, as you know. There are a few rare individuals that respond to these mountains differently than most. The thing is Cindy’s not the only one. She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last.” He paused. “I know. I met her—someone like her—a long time ago. I thought that when I lost her in a fire, I thought I’d never see her again. Well, son, I have to tell you that Cindy proved me wrong.”

Sue interrupted. “Sam, you know what a phoenix is?”

Sam shook his head.

“A phoenix is a mythical creature—something like a bird, though some stories say it could take human form. A phoenix is resurrected in fire, just like a redwood grove, or these mountains. It builds a f–”

“So you’re saying,” Sam began as he shook his head with indignation, “that Cindy’s a—a myth.”

“More like a mountain range,” the cowboy said aloud to himself.

“Wha—” Sam began.

“No,” answered Sue. “No, Sam. Not a myth. Of course not. Here. I’ll get you more water.”

Sue returned with some water from the kettle, and sat next to Sam. She didn’t dare put her arm on his shoulders. “Walker,” she turned to say, “wha’d’ya say we give the guy a break?”

“Sounds good to me, Miss Boswell.”

music: Bob Dylan, You’re A Big Girl Now

Armen pulled his thumb back and turned to walk. He felt the traffic rush by, and though for a moment how he had come to trust the traffic so much that he could turn his back on it when it was so dangerously near. He’d never really thought of that before, at least so far as he could recall.

He turned back to post his thumb up over his shoulder again, and again and again.

A microbus rushed past him then came to an abrupt stop on the shoulder. Two surfboards were mounted on the roof, and two surfers were mounted in the front seats. Armen hadn’t thought of the ocean until that moment, but when he got up to the passenger side window he asked, “heading to the coast?”

He walked around town and into a diner. He found a newspaper amid the detritus of someone’s meal, and took it to the next booth. Not much there. He dug a pen out of his pack and circled a couple blocks. At the pay phone outside he found a couple addresses. He jotted them down in his notepad.

In the library, he looked through local maps in the reference section. He looked for a rugged, undeveloped spot where he might spend the night.

The next day, Armen went to the state employment office and got more leads. He took a job busing tables, and hung onto that for a week. He followed up on other leads, and got a job as a janitor at the university.

The university campus sat above town, well-spread upon three broad ridges. There were grassy slopes overlooking Monterey Bay, oak woodlands, and deep forests of Coast Redwood and Douglas Fir. Wooden footbridges crossed high over deep, shaded ravines. It reminded him of his mountains, and sometimes a lone student walking through the woods might remind him of Cindy. She might cradle a book in her forearm and have a bookpack slung over her shoulder like a quiver, and this being Santa Cruz, her attire might not be the farthest thing from that of a wood nymph. It didn’t take his eye much prompting, for one sees what one wants to see; not that he wanted to see her, but something in him did.

Armen had no problem passing as a student, especially at this particularly liberal UC campus where the only grades assigned were “pass” and “no record”. This was Santa Cruz, after all, and he had access to a custodial key ring. He could blend in enough to sneak a shower, lounge in one of the libraries, or even sit in on a lecture now and then.

One day, Armen discovered the name “Cave Gulch” on a campus map,  and set out one weekend to see what that gulch had to offer, and indeed, he found a cave there, and continued to find more as he explored over the following weeks.

When Armen graduated, he took his biochemistry degree and got an unrelated job at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park. Soon after he started there, he discovered tha the water there was pure mountain water from the Sierra. Just then he realized that the water he was drinking was from O’Shaugnessy Dam, that project conceived in the wake of the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906 and infamous for having broken the heart of John Muir. He began drinking coke and bottled water. Coworkers would sometimes ask, “why do you drink bottled water when you can drink mountain water from the tap?” Armen didn’t care to sound righteous about it, so he’d say “because I know people who crap in Hetch Hetchy for that very reason,” which was not actually a fact so far as he knew, but he also figured he couldn’t have been the only one to think of such a monkey-wrench prank.

Armen had seen the great pipes of the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct many times. He sometimes made a point of visiting them, if only to stand there watching them, as if they might speak.

Armen grew restless, living among the sophisticated astroturf liberals of the West Bay. He began to have nightmares about living with vampires. He could have rented a place in Palo Alto to avoid Hetch Hetchy water, but that was all that was different about Palo Alto. He could hardly hide from the vampires there, so he began to look for work elsewhere, and “elsewhere,” in Armen’s heart, would have to be closer to the Range.

Maps generally depict the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles as hundreds of miles apart, and their residents would have you believe it were thousands, but the facts on the ground establish that the two cities are adjacent. They are nearly standing in the same space.

There is a secret passage that will get you right from one of these sister cities to the other. It is well known, but because of the obvious implications of such proximity, it is rarely acknowledged. It begins at the faucet. One need only squeeze into the tap and swim upstream. Follow the water, and you will find just how far these two cities are apart. Go to San Francisco, and have a drink of water. Follow the drink to its source, and you will find yourself looking down into Los Angeles.

As you follow the water from North to South, you will find yourself swimming from West to East. You will eventually surface at what was once Hetch Hetchy Valley, but you need not stop there. Swim on up to Tuolumne Meadows. You’ll still be in San Francisco. That’s San Francisco water you’re wading in. Continue upstream until you get to the Los Angeles City Limits, also known as Tioga Pass.

The Hetch Hetchy project was billed in part as a fire prevention measure, made in response to the great fire of 1906. In reality, Hetch Hetchy was just another Owens Valley. It wasn’t so much about fire as it was an over-abundance of sunshine. The residents of the Golden State had found their sunshine; it was just a matter of time before someone asked for a drink.

Sunshine is the fire that nurtures the young shoots in Winter, turns the fields to gold in the Spring, and ignites them in the Summer and Fall. The heart of the wildfire is the solar fire. Sooner or later, that fire would lead California to water. That is just the Logos of California.

The presence of the City of Los Angeles just east of San Francisco is no violation of nature. It is, rather, a natural fact. Los Angeles grabbed Owens Valley because Owens Valley provided a cheap and easy source of water. Los Angeles took Owens Valley from the white ranchers of Owens Valley for the same reason the ranchers took her from the Paiutes. That’s just the way Mother Nature operates.

One day, a position his the Federal job board that seemed a breath of fresh air. It was a job at what amounted to a sewer plant; a lab tech job, which would match his degree, and it was on the Range; not in the haunted lands of the golden trout, but at Yosemite. He copied his SPF-50s and wrote up fresh KSAs and mailed them to Yosemite. Several days later, he got a call. “I just want to make sure that you understand this position involves frequent exposure to sewage. Do you understand that?” Armen paused, then he assured the man on the phone that he understood fully. The man then reworded his question, just to make sure that Armen understood, and Armen repeated his answer. The man didn’t seem to believe Armen, but he offered the job to Armen regardless.

The southbound bus rolled into the Fresno Greyhound Depot at daybreak. Armen stretched as he stood up, picked up his paperback and notebook, and stepped up the bus aisle with his hands stepping from seat to seat. After claiming his pack, he picked up a Sunday Bee, sat down against the depot wall, and scanned the front page. He looked out across Broadway, and dug out the classifieds. After locating the jobs section, he slid a pen out of his notebook binding and circled several ads. He paused, and crossed out several of the circles. He looked out across the quiet street, got up, and heaved on his backpack.

He walked up to Fulton Mall with the fat Bee in his right hand and his notebook and paperback in his left, and he followed Fulton to Armeniantown, where his old church had stood before it burned down. He half-expected the old Armenian Presbyterian church to be there still. The orthodox church was still standing, not far away, laid out like a prostrate crucifix, in the old world style. He ambled toward it, dropped his pack, and sat on the steps to read the news.

After some time, the church doors opened, and people began to appear for services. Armen lifted up his pack, and ascended the steps. He apologized in Armenian to one of the greeters at the entry for his appearance, and asked for permission to attend services with his backpack, explaining that he’d just returned from college. The old man seemed to recognize him, or something about him, smiled, and welcomed him.

Though Armen’s family was Protestant, he respectfully wove his best sign of the cross as he entered the sanctuary. He seated himself in the second row from the back, and read the Armenian and English text that arched above the altar: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” He settled back into the pew for the service and liturgy, absorbing the warm incense and Armenian chant. The great saints overhead basked in the mingling firelight of the candles inside and the sun outside. The church interior glowed as though it were a great brick candelabrum ablaze. He felt the ancestral Armenian love of fire arise in his veins, and leaned back like a sun worshiper on a hot park bench. He nearly spread his arms along the back of the pew, but then thought better of it.

After the liturgy, he picked up his pack and hiked up Ventura Avenue and First Street, and navigated the massive grid to his grandparents’ home in the prematurely aging heart of the city.

“Grandma,” Armen started over the sandwich she had prepared him for lunch.

“Yeasss?”

“Do you still have m—do you still have those baseball cards?”

“In the garage. Over the car.”

After lunch he looked through his old Topps cards, some in sleeves and some in stacks. Coming upon his 1976 Brooks Robinson, seeing the glossy green of the turf and the contrasting orange, black, and white of Robinson’s uniform, he stopped and stared, as his vision turned inward and into the past. He rubbed his eyes, as if it might change what they saw as they looked back and turned back to the present. A pragmatic frown flashed over his face, and he got up and looked for the yellow pages.

He found a couple dealers, and set off by bus and foot that afternoon to see what he might get for his most valuable cards. He stopped at the mall to check a bookstore for a pricing guide, and scribbled some prices onto a loose sheet of paper.

Within several days, Armen had sold off his cards, bought some supplies, and caught a bus to the park.

Armen got off the bus at Wawona, and backpacked up the falls trail. Night fell as he ascended past the falls. He unrolled his bag against a stone trail cut, and fought against the steady wind and rocky ground to get some sleep. The next day, he backpacked north to the rim of Yosemite Valley, where he spent his second night in the mountains above the Valley lights. He unrolled his bag and basked beneath the cool spring stars. He did not light a fire. It had been a long time since he’d lit a fire in the Igneous Range.

The next morning, he descended into the Valley. He rode the shuttle buses, and ambled along the river, visited the falls, and watched the women. In the evening, he caught a bus down to an employee housing complex just outside the park in El Portal, where he found his cabin.

His found his lab job at the sewer plant rewarding. It felt liberating to have a 9-to-5 job with no family, religious, or professional entanglements. It felt invigorating to walk out on the steel deck in the morning and take a sample from the aeration tank. “Independence at last,” he’d think to himself as the atomized sewage dampened his face.

© 2008 Dan J. 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

R.E.M., Country Feedback

It was another hot August day in Merced Canyon. Armen had taken a day off his job at the wastewater treatment plant, and took a walk up Foresta Road. He leaned against the bridge railing under the falls and knocked out a cigarette. He lit up, took a couple drags, and continued at a casual pace up the road.

Upon reaching Foresta, he continued eastward to the summit that overlooks Arch Rock and El Portal. Armen liked to call it the Sergeant because of its dull green color and masculinity. He found something up there that he didn’t expect.

Sam stood alone on the summit, feeling the updraft and the sharpening gradient of the electric field, his long, sandy blonde hair whipped by the the solar wind and charged by the voltage of the air. His deep Iranian eyes dilated in wrapt anticipation. The wind whipped through his baggy pant legs, striving to lift him as the Simorgh took up young Zal, that blonde son of King Sam of Iran. So this Zal stood, waiting—it seemed—to be taken up by the fire.

The solar fire rode hot and high on that August day, giving life to the sea of air below. “Heating,” we say, but truer to say “vivifying,” as the energy of the fire flowed into atmosphere from above. “Hot air rises,” we say, citing the law that requires bodies of low density to rise, but they only rise because their increased energy counteracts gravitation.

As the air awoke in that solar firelight, a gentle breeze could be felt here and there, for air was sliding in to fill the places where native air had taken flight, the Range itself acting as a great air magnet, pulling air in from surrounding lands, and pushing air away, upward, as it brought the air to life. The currents seemed cool upon the ground, though they were currents of fire.

The gentle breezes quietly slipped up the mountainsides, and upon reaching the ridgetops, took flight. And so more and more of the air was sucked inward and upward by the fire, upward into the frigid heights, where gravitation permits little air to remain, and even less of the heavier gasses such as water vapor. So it often happens that the water falls out like condensation from an exhaust pipe, even as the lighter gasses soar heavenward. But the water does not always fall to earth. The heat, or rather energy of this awakening may be too much to permit what water there is in it to ever return to the earth; not, in any case, anywhere near the updraft. What is more essential is that the updraft forms a kind of crucible wherein ions are separated from ions by the convection, quite against their inclination. Opposite charges are torn apart by the great cell until their mutual attraction overcomes the great power of convection, and the energy of their attraction is at last released in a fiery explosion.