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And the slide off Sonora has cut my head. And the curve in the highway. The tree line leans like a drunkard in bold piss. In all faze the beauty is at bloom. The Ballad of Pickel Meadow.. Down from Levitt Ridge, hardy whole is a fisherman gateway. Right off the bend. One can sense cars crashing head on in a turn of eternity. It being medicine. Bang, medieval. Pickel Meadow runs. When I first encountered the dirt spot I was unimpressed?! Cow shit, horse tracks and low water. But every few weeks I'd check back to her. Like all streams they grow on you. Melding their story. The mountain light changing every hour of invitation. The evergreens bold against the crest. The glow of the Sierra. Eventually the stream present. Glowered among skeletons. Salvaged in any way plausible. The fishing tempting. Terribly tough. BENT! The spin off 108 at curve's end. That's where we find perfect. 
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Along U.S. Route 395 just North of Highway 14 lies Pearsonville, California. Against all odds, a gaunt oddity of the Eastern Sierra. Although never a thriving town it was an enclave of automotive sanctity. A gas stop. A trading post. A garage. A salvage yard. It was also infamously known as The Hubcap Capital of the World!!? Andy Pearson came to the spot in the early 60's with his wife Lucy to build a homestead life. Inyo Mountains to the East, Sierra Nevada to the West, they looked at the land as having potential for settlement. Automobiles were the family business and among other things, Pearsonville Speedway was a stock car event with its annual Turkey Classic. But nothing much ever came of old Pearsonville?! The folks never showed and the place slowly became a modern day Ghost Town. In the early 2000's travelers would cruise the broken down yards and sometimes encounter an old woman polishing hubcaps in a bonnet with sun bleached skin and distant eyes. It was Lucy Pearson!? Strange belied the definition of Pearsonville in those times and Mrs. Pearson soon became a memory as well. Her rust stained buildings and tattered leftover hubcaps strewn across the weed fields. The astroturf playground with pastel rotting horse rides leaving a peculiar unease in their deformity. Today all is quiet. The Uniroyal gal stands guard and she too is on dead legs. Patiently enticing the desert worms to eat her dearth. The old cars are mostly gone from the pit. The dirt track and grandstand have ghostly occupants cheering in the wind. Pearsonville, California. A road show of shadows. The dust waiting on devouring its heart…RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! 100 degree sun streaks hit blacktop, lake, volcanic spit and sky. Welcome to Little Lake, California. Upon a time us weary road folk would stop at the twist, get a cool one, regain our wits and continue our journey to Bishop, Mammoth or Tahoe. Little Lake was the scene when our heavy hearts lightened. The Sierra beckoned and we were close! I actually remember the settlement vaguely!? My recollections enhanced by the weird stories of friends. The teenage kid with a hair lip working the malt machine. The Hamm's beer sign. Illuminated with red and blue neon, uttering their slogan, From the Land of Sky Blue Waters. The lake you couldn't FISH!!?? I recall that memory with both anger and now as an adult, amusement?! We went to the SIERRA NEVADA to throw a line. We were flatlanders and the second we spotted mountain fresh we fished! Little Lake has never been open to outsiders as far as I've gathered? Hell I don't even know if it has trout??? What I've learned is she's the old runoff from Owens Lake. We all know how L.A. bastards stripped those waters!? But blackbacks? The great mystery! We had to wait until Lone Pine to wet our line. Today all that remains is a dilapidated green shack. A turnoff to nothing. The gas is gone, as is the bar, the malts, the strange kid and the stories. To call it a Ghost Town is a stretch. No structures endured times holy lapse. Fire claimed those hours in the early 90's. Little Lake, a ghost exit on the byway. We DAMN the living element for her demise…RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! Ask a soul, a wandering spirit, a homeless trapper in the tree line, a speed freak big rig driver! Who has the BEST jerky on the road? GUS does!! Without question or scandal. His Buffalo loins are so perfect an Injun would blessed them to Valhalla. His Elk selection are Mountain Man approved. His Teriyaki Beef is WELL, better than the apple in Eden! When you hit Olancha, California on the 395 that sensitivity nerve in your mouth burns like nitro in drag pipes! GUS will call you from just outside Mojave. He'll YELL, 70 miles to GOOD JERKY from the China Lake exit. He speaks to you like a hawk on lenticular clouds in the distance. JERKY, JERKY, JERKY! Just ahead. It really is that good!? But I found GUS(s) Fresh Jerky to be much more than a novel roadside stop. It's a JUKE JOINT!!? Walk in the door Buck Owens "Act Naturally" will rattle your ears. Hag's "Kern River" will have you dreaming of clear cold, FISH/BEER! Roy Orbison will be doing his West Texas "rip" on the Sierra Highway. Always incredible music playing when I'm in there; CHOMPIN' JERKY!!?? And then it's GONE! Like a flash in the mirror of a passing Southland ass on his way to the slopes! Wait, that flash was my middle finger…RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!  The river road has many names. Highway 6. Benton's Crossing. GREEN CHURCH Road. Anglers know them all, true to the bone. The marrow of SIERRA STRANGE flows through channels of Owens River to the Presbyterian haunt. That hot pinky cross like a flappers tassel in some dirty burlesque. Puts the "KICK" in your hind. Get that ass to Mammoth Lakes! Go to Silver Lake, sit your rear down, get a frosty beverage and CAST. Or turn my way, the spring creek ahead will knock you on your tail! The Green Church has had a healthy existence. At least from my humble beginnings. Remember as a sprout having celestial visions of Wovoka, the Paiute Medicine Man of Wounded Knee fame, hovering the church, Ghost Dancing between heaven and earth. It was a long drive from L.A., I was 22 and shitfaced passed out! But the dream was real!? Mostly flatlanders and hillfolk alike recognize the Green Church as a landmark on the 395 of religious symmetry. Was it for J.C. and his Rock n' Roll Disciples? Virgin Mary and her Six White Horses? Angel of Death??? Did people ever actually pray at this house of GOD? Why does the cross glow into a fragmented nights cape? In one direction the Glass Mountains another the Sierra Nevada and in another The Whites. Do Angels and Devils fight for rights to the light switch? Because when its on, nobody's ever home??!! All good questions for another day. Guess we're just lucky having you GREEN CHURCH. Doing not much of anything…RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!  It was Memorial Day when I stepped out of the car. Behind me Tioga Lake glistened, tourists scrambled about the waters edge, snow and ice captured the diminishing light. Ghost towns are marked by absence. The definition lingers within the very name we have given them, this idea that the living inhabitants are gone. Yet, it is also something tangible that draws us back to them. A presence which some how engages our imagination, whispering the silent words, and vivid impressions. The Sierra is filled with these wooden skeletons. Gaping holes that look like eyes, old train tracks running off into infinity. It is both the charm and the haunting allure of a history we rare tell. Bennettsville is part of that forgotten past, a living graveyard of unrealized hope. One that demands a resurrection from our senses, telling us stories we must sit still to hear. Tales of mules and sweat, struggles up mythical mountainsides, and yes, a strange beckoning to dig beneath the surface. Back on the roadway, just out of earshot, cars roar by. Each summer the Yosemite wonders entice another type of miner, those longing for the pristine waters and granite walls, a chance to truly dwell. These wandering souls drive by Bennettsville, not realizing its silent pull. There over ridge and across iridescent ponds, just a walk and scramble away, are the remnants of the primal impulse. An odd collection of shacks, barely still breathing, they point back towards the original community itself. Those that had mounted the eastern escarpment, carving the original pass, and following a compass made of gold. But when they arrived, they were met by another type of gold, one that could not be labeled with English words, No they had to borrow a word from the Iroquois. A term, which was both spiritual and geographic, one that captured more an experience, than it did a description. Tioga, it meant peaceful valley, it meant they had finally found what they were looking for. And with that, another car pulls up, young German couple dismounts and with photo op secure, they race into the unknown but radiant future. KO www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!   In horror film we garner suggestion from Governors that the content is among half axiom. A stroll along the razor wire of truth. Hearts boil at the power! Well OUT ON THE ROAD, near madness, volcanic mystery and perhaps fiction lies Coso Junction, California. A surreal tinder of natural landscape. The earth there is blood bleached in death tones. The gravel strangle your ankles with a cuff from Purgatory. You feel as if you've entered a realm undead. It is here we crossed paths with the fabled DEMON DONKEY!? Mexican folklore has tales of DIABLO BURRO encompassing the vast wilderness of souls. Taking season! His sand timer on Lucifers watch. And you escape his grab by only endorsing the light. And prayer!? We came upon the mule during a trip SOUTH around midnight on a Harvest Moon. He was there ranging Highway 395. Perhaps shepherding wayward travelers to his dominion??! That's what we thought? Truly the strangest encounter we've had on the road! Later we heard the stories. The narrative of Spanish pagans writhing in an unconscious battle with the Demonio Burro! So next journey onward through the mountain keep of COSO JUNCTION, lament your eyes wide for the mule. His devil tracks leading to a station of Hell…RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!   Highway 6. The scene has great illusion. Other than beautiful White Mountains and dust patch dreams. Creepy brothel stains have grace the land. GLORIOUS! I must admit I like this stretch. Wild ponies run its rank. Speaking to travelers and ghost alike. Often the weather get in the the way but only for a moments breath. And resumes in character toward the eastern horizon. Leaving bad dirt in the blacktop. Here just south of Montgomery Pass you'll find the spoils of Janie's Ranch. She was a "Closed, BEAT IT" type of cathouse. Fun time women, large and lovely. The madame Betty had a way of talking Johns along the ride. Diddle my gals wrong and I'll shotgun 'ya over! The intercom was GOD. Heard tales of peeps up L.A. running the whores. They spoke of a good time, cheap beer and vast mountain views after fucking. Western Nevada can be special in it's Americana...RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!   Middle of March at Virginia Creek these ears happen upon a conversation relating to the mysteries of our old ghost camp up 270. A nice German couple had grand thoughts of hiking 13 miles and figured with no weather in Bridgeport all was dandy. Jaws hit the floor including mine when the proprietors of the settlement informed all that the arctic plain was still under 10 feet of snow! We hadn't had a storm come through town in nearly 6 weeks. How could it be??!! The allure of Bodie to miners, bar keeps, prostitutes and pokes was immense in the late 1870's. 10,000 roamed the boardwalks in search of fortune. 65 saloons lined the roads. There was a fire brigade, a baseball club and no perceptible law. But Bodie's time was running thin. Area township Bridgeport was due to become the new Mono County seat, state lines were drawn and the silver was abundant but not limitless. Another problem was where Bodie sat, 8,379 feet. With winds that ramped at 100 mph and bitter cold, sometimes -20 below for weeks on end the lifeblood of a camp could only take so much. Eventually it became what it is today. But the frozen season is intact and rages! A frightful code cracked by none. The spirits tell yarns on drifting snow bends late in the Moon of Popping Trees. Only the Crow and Brush Wolf eye the buildings. Bodie in Winter is a mean bitch...RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!  To believe is to undermine the belief that we live grotesque in harmony with water, spirit and fellow man. It really isn't so spectacular at disposal spirit to sense that harmony erode. The lake has always been double devil. One grand in opulence and devoured in blood. Lake Tahoe once ground to empires of wealth across a century. Railroad barons to New York's Five Families. The aggregate the sum of historical record lost on Autumns breast. The Cousteau's may or may not have seen this beastly world. A cold front with stone victorian sort dancing purgatorial steps 40 feet down. Or in further decline, with ball and chain the rat and his one ear frozen in time. The song goes that Oriental hearts, glowered in celestial rhythm sunk 100 feet deep at the bastard hand of our Central Pacific. Truth or fallacy? Only Tahoe ghost men hold the rites. The land above shore and sky. The beast in man. The blood of the land...RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!  |
STAY STRANGE!Throughout the Eastern Sierra Nevada oddities loom among the highway landscape, lost mountain towns and unusual religious iconography. |
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