Stocking Up for Winter
After passing through many dreary dusty ghost towns, I finally arrived at Reno, its big little glitter dark and dead like everything else. I wanted to take US 50 on up into Tahoe, but didn't think that my 18 wheeler would make it. At the last minute, I decided to give it a try anyway. Except for a couple of small slides that I easily drove around, and some burned trees I cut through, the road was relatively clear. When I arrived at the city and lake, the landscape had been drastically altered by all the trees burned along with most of the city and housing around the lake. The casinos were gutted. It was still beautiful to see the crystal blue lake below, but quiet. So quiet.
I found a serviceable aluminum rowboat at a lakeside concrete block boathouse. With Charlie, Rocky and the goats aboard this crowded ark, took a little excursion along the shoreline. I didn't have time to get any motors running so just hand rowed on the placid water and tried fishing a few places. The fish were hungry and in no time at all I had caught three brown trout and two rainbows. They were so big and beautiful I almost wanted to throw them back, but knew they would be great eating, so I kept them all alive in a large pail that I put in the boat before we left in case I got any fish. Joker and Jenny used it for drinking water. Charlie got excited when he saw the fish flopping on the end of the line.
The setting was as beautiful as I remembered and so peaceful I was tempted to stay there. But it wouldn't be good to stay there in the winter with all the snow. Besides, nearly all of the tall trees had burned, changing the shoreline view considerably. I didn't think I dared taking 50 over the high pass going out of town to Sacramento, so I took California 89 north back to Interstate 80 to clear Donner Pass there. Along the lake on 89 two huge sugar pine had fallen across the highway as they burned. No one had passed that way since it happened. I guess everyone who had evacuated because of the fires, never came back.
It took me hours to cut through that first huge trunk a path wide enough for my truck and trailer. The log created was amazing. I wanted to take it with me, but had no room anywhere for something huge like that. I would've needed a logging truck and trailer. Instead, I pushed it off to the side, making room for me to get past it and left it there for the future to find.
I wanted to go north where the late summer and fall bounty was, so I took California 20 at Emigrant Gap west to Yuba City and 99 north. Exploring Yuba City and Chico along the way north, I picked up Interstate 5 at Red Bluff and started retracing routes that I had taken four years earlier.
My goal was the Willamette Valley and surroundings where we spent the next two months. Rocky grew by leaps and bounds and I had to give him some substantial bones to chew on so that he wouldn't chew on everything that I had losing his baby teeth. I started feeding him scraps of meat as soon as he could chew them and very soon had him weaned of goat's milk. I never stopped training him and he was a sharp learner. Charlie was pleased with Rocky's ability to learn, too. Especially when he scolded him for bad behavior like trying to chew on him!
This country was filled with off the grid, sustainable homesteads. I expected, upon approaching some of them that were not burned, that someone had survived. But I was always disappointed. The level of destruction at these places was evident from all the bullet holes. In some cases, evidence of explosions. Many battles fought where everyone lost. Lack of medical care, destruction and depletion of supplies did the rest. With the surrounding crops and forest mostly burned, food and other supplies probably ran out during those two years of winter, driving people to raid other people. Everyone had guns, and from the evidence I saw, the carnage was complete. Just like the places. People living off the grid were still dependent upon civilization in many ways. They just didn't know it until it meant life or death. Things got very real, very quick. As I passed Mount Lassen it still was erupting, bright orange lava flowing for all these years building the mountain in the process. Even in the truck while driving by I experienced an occasional earthquake as the road seemed to shimmy from side to side and I passed areas where there were huge cracks in the road. More than once I came upon an overpass on I-5 that had collapsed onto the roadway. Fortunately, in every case, I was able to drive up the ramp leading to the overpass and then down the other side without delaying my journey at all.
Mount Shasta was about the same as I'd seen it before--half caved in from a massive explosion. Up ahead I could see smoke from two or three other Cascade Range volcanoes. I didn't feel in danger from those volcanoes, or even earthquakes in the truck. But I had to keep a watchful eye out for cracks that required either to be filled in for me to cross or circumvented altogether by detouring either by driving off the road or taking other roads around them. The failure of one bridge could have kept me from my goal. Fortunately, the bridges on I-5 were so well-built that none of them had collapsed in all the floods and earthquakes that had happened since my last visit.
Four years had changed the Willamette Valley in some ways for the better, and other ways for the worse. The fruit trees had grown and prospered, but by not being pruned or sprayed were not at their best, either by volume or quality of their fruit. Still, there was an abundance for us and always would be. I set about canning while the goats and Charlie nearly ate themselves sick on all of the bounty. But it was a constant effort on my part to keep an eye on the menagerie while doing my work.
One day I had set Joker and Jenny out in a ditch along the road to graze while Charlie and I picked boysenberries that were thick along the ditch backed by a growing forest of regenerated trees 10 to 15 feet tall. Rocky was generally underfoot and checking out everything with his nose. I was quickly filling several large buckets I had on the ATV behind me with berries that I would make into jam the next day.
Suddenly, Charlie climbed up on my shoulder and started chattering in my ear that something was terribly wrong. There was some commotion to my right and a grizzly bear's head popped out of the forest about 20 feet away. I dropped the bucket I was filling and reached for my bear spray as a mother bear and two cubs came out of the brush and into the berries. Rocky suddenly noticed the bears and began his best puppy barking as if to scare them away.
The mother grizzly responded by pawing her babies the other direction from us up the road where they ran and turned in curiosity while she turned and then stood her full 8 feet as if to scare me. She did. I was shaking so badly I wasn't sure that I could aim the spray. I expected her to drop down on all fours and charge me. I couldn't let her do that. She would reach me in two bounds.
So I let go the full spray directly in her face. Instead of charging, she shook her head in surprise and fell back. And then ran full tilt up the road with her cubs following, butts bouncing as they went with Rocky barking like he was victorious in driving them away. Charlie had hid behind my head, and then escaped by climbing into the trees. But poor little Rocky would have been killed for sure with one swipe of that bear's claws. He and I wouldn't have escaped that easily.
I will admit to being so scared and shaking. So glad that I had bear spray. The 357 Magnum was still at my side and holstered. If I would've had to use that to stop the bear, it might not have worked. But I'm glad I had it anyway as a second measure. Killing her would have killed her cubs as well. She was only defending them.
Up the road about a quarter-mile, I saw her still shaking her head and rolling in the tall grass by the road trying to get rid of the nasty spray in her eyes. After I calmed down, I picked up my spilled berries and resumed picking. Charlie even ventured back down to pick berries himself. He had his own small bucket that I had trained him to fill and then empty into my bucket. He really was quite helpful when he wasn’t eating too many berries himself and getting sick.
I kept a watchful eye up the road but didn't see anything. Finally, when we had finished picking all that I wanted to pick, we got on the ATV and I drove up that way a little bit just to see. About a quarter-mile ahead, I saw the bears in the berries picking and eating. I was glad that I hadn’t hurt her badly so that she couldn't care for her cubs. I turned the ATV around and headed back to our camp and our refuge for the night in this bear country, my sleeper cab and the trailer.
When I had gathered all the food that I thought I would need for a couple of years in Palm Springs, I found that good spot on the Rogue River at Grants Pass again and caught a good number of salmon that I smoked, keeping a very watchful eye and scaring off a couple of black bears and even a pack of wolves that came through in the night. This time I used Roman candles that effectively scared them so much that they would completely leave the territory for fear of being bombarded by those fiery hot things again.
I returned to California and stocked up on grapes, prunes and raisins. Shopping at my favorite Robert Monterey Winery in the Napa Valley, I found that the only evidence anyone had been there was of me, four years earlier. This time, I had made room for more wine and brandy. I always could make good use of the bottles afterward. Moving from there into the Central Valley, I gathered almonds, walnuts and pistachios. Citrus fruits, pomegranate, mango and wild plants that provided me with all the greens I needed to give me a variety in my diet of mostly meat and fish.
Along the way, I saw evidence of, saw smoke and smelled new fires because the droughts had not let up and everywhere in the fall the grass was tinder dry. I also saw evidence of massive flooding that was destroying the roads in some places making this trip much harder than it was four years earlier. There were more landslides and mudslides. Evidence of earthquakes. California was always in a state of flux. But California's ability to produce food continued to be legendary.
I arrived back in Palm Springs about November first, no longer keeping accurate record of the day and month, only the seasons and marking the years. There was much to do before winter set in to get my quarters back in shape. But I was glad to see the workshop and the projects that I would be getting to as soon as I had everything else in order. Rocky had to sniff out every corner of my winter hideaway. He was most happy to jump right in and swim with me in the natural hot tub the spring heated pool provided… After I cleaned up the algae, bird and animal waste, and other nuisances that my absence had created there.
