Advertisement
Published: September 28th 2013
Edit Blog Post
A Hootenany remembrance of Jeff
One from the vault. Jeff Silver, a presence since before I was born, left too soon. He was a good friend to many. I got distracted by New York City. For ten months. What passes for normal here is a virulent and contagious form of attention deficit disorder. It is both debilitatingly productive and productively debilitating. It could also be diagnosed as collective madness; the emperor-wears-no-clothes variety. Whatever it is, I haven’t learned how to navigate it or how to corral it with words. So this isn’t about New York City. It’s about getting out.
In mid August, carly and I flew west. Annually, brother Frank moans, bellyaches, and bitches, before dragging a stage into his front yard and hosting a two day music and camping bender called the Hootenanny. During daylight hours, kids run about screaming, parent brag about the latest greatest accomplishments of their respective drooling prodigies, meats grill, neighbors visit, and music fills the farm. Nine hours later, the crazy train has jumped the tracks and the music has run aground in Whiskey River. By sunrise, only 3 or 4 people, usually all from Missouri, still stagger around the fire trying to sing Pink Floyd in three part harmony.
Fleeing the debaucherous wreckage of the Hootenanny, carly and I drive to the Olympic Peninsula. After ten months of a
landscape broken by only skyscraper pinnacles, the austerity of Hurricane Ridge is serene. Blue sky. Grey rock. White snow. Green flanks. No rumbling trains. No blinking lights. Nothing sirens. Nothing stirs. No hustle. No bustle. Like staring into the night before Christmas. Most park visitors reliably stop where the pavement ends, so just beyond, the solitude begins. We venture out into it. On a ridge line trail to nowhere, elk graze, and far away, snowy bighorn sheep pick their way across a cliff face. Fat marmots watch our passing disinterestedly from the hillside. Excepting the wind, it is completely silent. The frosted meringued peaks glitter in the sun before vanishing behind a cloudy veil. Though my liver is still working through the evil of the Hootenanny, the mountains cleanse the lingering stain of the city.
Olympic National Park is good to us. It doesn’t rain. It almost always rains. We spend a night on a lake of glass, wander amongst the moss bearded mammoths of the Ho rainforest, climb on sea stacks on the coast as the tide crashes in, and sleep for a night on Lake Quinault in the National Park Lodge, one of those WPA projects of
Daybreak on the Quinault
no fish, but a spectacular sunrise highly polished wood that carries the echo of Teddy Roosevelt and something majestic. I go out at dawn to whip the water with a fly. Though the fish are uninterested in an idiot’s bumbling, the sun bleeding over the mountains and trickling into the rushing waters of the river is spectacular.
A day later, we Amtrak out of Tacoma for Portlandia. Carly is headed to a place called Breitenbush Hot Springs to do some yogaing, hot spring sitting, general relaxing, and perhaps a little navel gazing. I am headed for the Oregon Flail. If you recall fifth grade American History or the awesome computer game, the better known Oregon Trail was a wagon train route that left Westport in Kansas City, Missouri and traveled 2000 thousand arduous miles across the Great Plains, over the Rocky Mountains, through hostile Indian territory before leading to the promised land that was Oregon. The Oregon Flail also involves Missouri, Oregon, trial, tribulation, and a bull whip but the comparison is only skin deep. The Oregon Flail ‘hardship’ only last three days, has provisions for a month, and never gets any further than a couple miles from a car.
Around 4pm on a
Pyramid Lake
worth the effort. The wildfire scarred side of the butte in the background. sunny Friday afternoon in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness area of Oregon, one marathon runner and four somewhat huskier, almost forty, Missouri boys go in search of Pyramid Lake. The description mentions ‘bushwhacking’. This is not a good sign. But on the topographical map, it looks easy. After turning off the splendidly marked Pacific Crest Trail, things get progressively more ridiculous. The ‘trail’ crosses a wildfire scarred hillside under a bare butte. Somewhere downhill is the lake. The question is which way downhill. Heading into the setting sun, the burn gradually gives way to new growth. This grows denser with every downward step, becoming an almost impenetrable thicket of snappy, sappy, snaggy, whippy new pines and undergrowth. I can’t see the others, but I hear crashing and cursing, like a herd of angry drunk moose. Just to make things more interesting, the ground suddenly drops away steeply into a near vertical cliff - casting seriously doubt on both the wisdom of our direction and Kerouac’s claim that you can’t fall off a mountain. At the boundary dividing twilight and night, we finally reach the valley floor. It’s a marsh. Perfect. One hefty forty-something needs a Xanax; another unleashes an obscenity laced
primal scream. Ah, good times. Luckily, there is bourbon and wine. The next morning, we find the lake and begin consuming the vast quantity of beverages that we have hauled into the woods. Then it begins to rain. Biblical style. For the entirety of the day. Not much to do in a torrential downpour other than drink wine, play dominoes, and watch the lake rise.
The suffering of the Oregon Flail was tempered by the knowledge that I was spending the next week in a condo with minty green shag carpet on the 18th hole of the golf course at some place called Black Butte Ranch. Life is curious like that. Once in a while, you find yourself in places where you have no business being. Certainly, surrounded by angry well armed Afari tribesmen in Ethiopia, or camped in a snow cave in the Andes, or teaching at Harvard, or living in New York City all make the list, but a condo on a golf course has to be near the top. I was definitely out of my element. For safety, I hid out behind the impregnable walls of the children’s lemonade and brownie stand on the 18th tee.
No one is going to kick the unshaven interloper out if he is uncle to the kids running the lemonade stand.
Now, alas, the Hootenanny is over. The Oregon Flail has been survived, and the lemonade stand is shuttered for the school year. Old white guys are still hitting golf balls on Black Butte Ranch, but I am sitting on the N/Q train into the city. As the doors open at the 34th street / Herald Square station, I rush up the stairs with the rest of the lemmings. At the top, the awesomely-horribly fascinating human parade scatters in a thousand different directions to transfer uptown, downtown, crosstown, or around town. Today, a pudgy black man with a Burger King hat is playing the soundtrack for this cacophony of humanity on an electric guitar. I wade through the river and take the escalator down to the platform for the uptown D train. At the bottom, the King has been supplanted. The ethereal timbre of violins echoes in the tunnels, twining with the rumblings of approaching and departing trains. Soon, the train train roars into the station. The doors open. People rush out. People rush in. A madman rants on
the platform. No one seems to notice. Life may be what is happening while you are commuting, but at least it’s an interesting ride.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.358s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 18; qc: 79; dbt: 0.2391s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
hayes
non-member comment
well done...
i resemble that remark... glad you made it back safe. this was great.