It was beautiful. The pinkness vanished and then it was all purple dusk and the roar of the silence was a wash of diamond waves going through the liquid porches of our ears, enough to soothe a man a thousand years. -Kerouac
The sounds of Ray Smith, Japhy Ryder, Henry Morley. Bridgeport was a prop in the song tale of Beatniks callous to Western grind. The lazy gent walk so elegant to sullen Buddha. The holders of medicine stabbed in rainbows and Eastern foothills. The dirt that elongates the life. The fretting of worry we hold. The journey among decent strangers. Twin Lakes Road, the Bridgeport Inn (unnamed in The Dharma Bums) but recognizable in scene and language. A bar was adjoining the hotel and restaurant but nobody cared about alcohol this morning. Ray, Japhy and Henry were ready to ascend Matterhorn. Morley needed a pair of warm blankets, borrowed from fine folk at the lodge. The spell of aching roots, tinkering. Sips of canvas shoes and wool socks. The drive from Berkeley. Frost on the heels. Hunters disgust. Christian Brothers Port. Bad sleep. Illumination of dawn. The trees were Gods. Anglers of definition. The Earth. The child crests in wild weed and gusts. And so the mountain they adjourned...RW www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE!
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Rock Creek. The canyon. The beastly road. The beautiful bar. I'll take the drinking hole! The one time in lust filled mountain poetry I succumb to booze is at TOMS PLACE! Here I find the gallant walk between heaven and hell. Where the people are heroes of the highway. They carry long stories from the Mexican coast to shitty L.A. to Lone Pine to Toms. We all carry the Eastern Sierra heavy in deeds of bellowed hymns longing strong to northern wind. To a lesser lay, to the spent seas, to a weaker land. That's why we come to Toms Place. The owner has an uneasy piss about her love. The bartender have prose from 40 years of hardened winters. The waitress is our favorite person of the mountain. You can't go wrong with a joint seeped and soured among fishing souls in the woodwork. Angry old residents still pissed about the one that got away. And strong cocktails poured by antiques. This is truly my favorite haunt of the Sierra...RW
www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! A buddy invited me to this place. Long time pard. Benton, California. Spent across a beautiful sliver of the golden state nobody cares about. Land and space and the unforgiven. It's NEVADA for all intent and purpose. It's another woman's heart. But those who have crossed Benton have her beat scent. They know better than to take her for granted. She is a feathered path along Highway 120. Back side. Beautified of coyote pack, fox hearts and the wandering. Nothing less grand in love and willful hath walk to hell. She is a yesterday place. A horror hound with no roar. Zero distinction. Hot springs bathed us of our likes, our unpopular soul, our history. The Badger Women of Benton spurn telltales on a left plain. Uncle to White Mountain Ridge. It has perhaps my heart wrapped in forever blood. Old Benton Station...RW
www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! The strangeness in familiar fonts garner stretched matter. The Sawtooth Mountain Range of Eastern California has time. The space has a level conscious. Both are physical and occupy rent in my veins. Robinson Creek after the camp season is a place of elevated distinction. The wind roams angry. The water is cool to the touch. Cold in the heart. Few men or women journey this stream late in Fall. I carry a Japanese fly rod, a triggered yodel and cigarette on constant burn. Catching and releasing trout means little during these quiet days. Often I just stare at the ponderosa swaying against an angels shoulder. Angling is unessential. As can often relay the Gods, fly fishing is usually at its finest when you are best in spirit. Counter weighting the poetic symmetry that strikes success on a river. I never feel alone but always am. Intrigued at the spin of every pool. This season they rarely change shape. On cadence the words of giants revel in water and light. Robinson Creek honors your Autumn footsteps. As if sheltered from a better age...RW
www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! 1857. Remnants shatter in stillborn haste. GOLD in them hills young men. An American fever born eight years earlier peaked in the Eastern Sierra. Before Bodie, Aurora, Masonic or Virginia City, Dog Town ruled! Wasn't much?! Just Dog Town Creek, a spit of desert, dirt and everlasting stone. Rattlesnakes knew better than stake a claim. Indians moved to the West, North and South. The hustle had the blood in children lost to the seas. Dead on arrival. Not much could become of Dog Town, California. The verse I heard on starry night scape, told of miners long in tooth, drunk and dumb enough to call the blank mountain east of Sawtooth Ridge home. They lost hope on the small stream. Most came West with pick hammer, dynmite money, crossed fingers and a trusty pup. When all busted they steamed toward Sacramento. Leaving man's best friend behind. By the end of the decade dogs outnumbered people in the camp. Hence the name. Anabelle, the wolf dog ranging hill holes did not approve! Warding intruders do not come Bodie way. The gents never got much more than a hand job of Hell. The shallow water lusting piss. The realm of celestial fireweed. The crest a hallow cactus. Today we find it a Spiritville north of Highway 270. A pond of decent trout to the left. Nothing to the right. Just how DOG TOWN liked it...RW
www.sierrastrange.com STAY STRANGE! Lately I've walked the road not old or right. It has confused the coward sense. It is neither me from 1990 versus 2019. It has defined nerve endings. They have blood, purple smiles and angled toward the devil. We are friends in nowhere. And I hate the company.
DEVIL'S GATE, CALIFORNIA A year after our ascent to Sawtooth Ridge we made some journey North and always it was the summit that grind gears south of sanctity to a place I needled. A place froth of women in lace. Men I fought on the Western Front. And family lost along the line. Worry eclipse and rebound on pine trees at this altitude. And I always rescind. The valley is simple in example. Special yet supple. Canyon wall, ridge line, hollow pine, snow. We can expect nothing significant if we have blind eyes to it's definition. This stretch of the 395 is particularly hopeful to an almost lonesome soul. We wander. We hang on nothing. And the road has every answer. -RW STAY STRANGE! www.sierrastrange.com |
STAY STRANGE!Throughout the Eastern Sierra Nevada oddities loom among the highway landscape, lost mountain towns and unusual religious iconography. |