The Klamath River—an artist’s and sportsman’s dream

The Klamath River—enmeshed in controversy—should bring people together. Its beauty and accessibility makes it perfect for a Sunday Drive.

Not the Information Superhighway.
Indian Creek Viewpoint overlooking the Siskiyou Mountains and the Klamath River Canyon
Taken May 23rd, 2007

The Klamath River, flowing out of Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, crosses the northwestern corner of California before flowing into the Pacific near its namesake town, Klamath, California. California Highway 96 follows the river through much of its cross-state journey, allowing sportsmen, travelers, and artists access to this beautiful and bountiful area. On May 23^rd, 2007, I drove a good bit of Highway 96, and was smitten by the smoothness of the road, the colorfully named towns, and the accessible beauty of the Klamath River Canyon.

The View from Indian Creek Viewpoint
Since the information signs (above) were somewhat less than informative,
you're welcome to make your own conclusions as to what you're seeing here.
Taken May 23rd, 2007

Klamath River town names have long intrigued me. Of course there are the “normal” town names one often sees associated with any river, Klamath Falls, Oregon, Klamath River, California, and the Yurok Tribal Headquarters town of Klamath, near the river’s mouth. All of these are legitimate towns, having their own zip codes, and none of them feature in my journey down California Highway 96, which I call the Klamath River Highway.

I’ve long been intrigued by one town’s name in particular. Happy Camp, California, sits about midway between the Klamath River’s source and its mouth. Driving US Highway 199 between Crescent City, California and Grants Pass, Oregon, you see a sign pointing east toward “Waldo, Takilma, Happy Camp.” I’ve longed to drive this road finding my way to Happy Camp, so Wednesday morning, I set out to do just that. Filling the cooler at my local supermarket, the store manager asked where I was headed and I replied, “Happy Camp.” He was sure the road was still closed, having had to make a four and a half hour detour just last week. There was no longer snow on the highway, but there were trees down and he didn’t feel up to carrying his motorcycle across these natural barriers. With that happy thought in mind, I headed north on 199, stopping for a few geocaches in the Smith River Canyon, and filling the Saab’s gas tank in O’Brien, Oregon.

The station attendant informed me that traffic had been coming through from the Klamath River, so she didn’t foresee any problems with me driving in the opposite direction. Once past the back-to-the-land hippy community of Takilma, I found myself downshifting as the road climbed quickly and steadily from O’Brien’s elevation of 1412 to the state line at over 4700 feet. There is no “Welcome to California” sign as you cross the 42^nd parallel, and only my GPS unit informed me that I was no longer in Oregon. Heading down toward the Klamath River and Happy Camp, I passed a sign warning of a nine percent downgrade for the next nine miles. I didn’t spend much more time in fifth gear going down the southern edge of Page Mountain than I had going up.

Driving along a tributary of the Klamath, Indian Creek, I stopped for a great photo op, catching a bridge, several sets of wires, lots of rock and rushing water. I also lost my footing and fell, dropping my Nikon D80 on the rocks. Fortunately, the sun shield protected the lens, and aside from some scrapes on both my body and the camera’s, we survived the experience.

Indian Creek, near Happy Camp, California
Terrified I would fall and drop my camera, I did!
Taken May 23rd, 2007

Happy Camp turned out to be a much larger community than I had imagined. The town limit signs indicated a population of eleven hundred living at an elevation of fourteen hundred feet. The Karuk tribe has an office complex here, but for the most part, the town seems to cater to the sportsmen who come to fish and raft the Klamath. That would be the case as I headed on through the River towns of Orleans, Weitchpec and Hoopa.

The Klamath River Canyon is steep and narrow, and in many places the highway glides hundreds of feet above the river itself. Unlike most canyon highways of my experience, the State of California has provided numerous places to pull off the highway and enjoy the view. Whether you are a photographer, a painter, or a poet, you have no excuse for ignoring your muse. And if you are a sportsman, you can pretty much pick your spot as there are river access points every few miles. The road itself is exactly the kind of road I love: smooth, curvaceous, and long. This is, in short, the ideal road for a Sunday Drive. The only problem is getting there in the first place.

It’s obvious to me that California did not build this highway to benefit the native inhabitants. I’ve never seen such a nice highway on tribal land. And make no mistake, this is tribal land. The Karuk have office complexes in Happy Camp, Orleans and Weitchpec. The Hoopa have their reservation on the Trinity River, south of where the Klamath turns west to the sea, and the Yurok, whose reservation straddles the Klamath from Weitchpec to the River’s mouth, patrol the highway in their Ford Explorers. To my mind, what proves my point is that the stretch of 96 south of Weitchpec, that is to say through the Hoopa lands, is narrow, twisty (as opposed to curvaceous) and has neither vista points nor river access. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For a Sunday Drive, the drawback to California Highway 96 is its remote location. Just to get to Happy Camp from Smith River involved driving ninety-two miles of mostly two-lane mountain road. The thirty-eight miles from Takilma to Happy Camp took two hours (and I didn’t stop that many times for photo ops). Once at Happy Camp, I had a choice to make: turn around and return home the way I came; turn east and drive to Interstate 5, then north to Grants Pass and back south on 199; or head south on 96 and follow the Klamath River. Easy choice. I was out to see new country, and so what if it was 6 pm by the time I made it to Happy Camp. The mileage sign indicated that Willow Creek was approximately 100 miles south, an easy two hour drive, right? Then I’d head west on 299 to Arcata and catch 101 north and home. I didn’t remember quite how far Willow Creek was from Arcata, but in any event, it’s getting dark later and later, and no one is keeping tabs on me, so let’s go for it.

I should mention that I pulled out of my Smith River driveway a little after ten in the morning, and did stop at Ray’s Supermarket to stock up in case I found no restaurants or grocery stores along the way. By the time I hit 199 it was going on eleven, but I had stopped in an unsuccessful attempt to find a geocache at Ruby VanDeventer Park on the Smith. A couple (well six) geocache searches later, and it was four o’clock as I filled up the tank in O’Brien. I did find four of the six caches that I sought along 199. The Saab, I fear, is beginning to believe I think it’s a Jeep as we drove up some pretty poorly maintained forest roads. Thirteen hours after leaving home, I pulled back in the driveway, having given the car a proper run on great roads.

For over sixty miles, driving south of Happy Camp we followed the river, running at the posted speed limit, almost completely alone on the road. Somes Bar, the first “town” south of Happy Camp was barely a wide spot on the road, and it wasn’t until we crossed the lovely concrete suspension bridge into Orleans that we had to slow for civilization. Almost as much as Happy Camp, Orleans has fascinated me for years because it is the southern terminus of the Gasquet-Orleans Road. Oh you can’t drive from Gasquet to Orleans, at least not on the GO Road, as it’s called locally. There’s a great two lane road heading south from the Smith River. I assume the road heading north from Orleans is just as nice. Had it not been evening with many miles before me, I would have turned north on Eyesee Road just to see for myself. My understanding is that the road builders set out from the northern and southern ends simultaneously, building toward each other, but lawsuits stopped the project with just a seven mile gap to complete. There’s a geocache hidden at the southern end of the northern section with the title “The Road to Nowhere.”

Note that there's nothing "New" about Orleans
More people than feet, that's a start
Please note that the Saab is still getting around--that's it along the road
Taken May 23rd, 2007

As it was getting late, I took no pictures after leaving Orleans. That means I’ll have to go back, doesn’t it. Continuing on to Weitchpec, I considered turning west and taking the Bald Hills Road that I wrote about a few posts back. It’s the road that crosses the southern section of Redwood National Park, and where we found the fields of lupine. As I said, I thought about heading west, but continued south because I was so close to Hoopa, another town I’d long had on my wish list. Weitchpec itself has only recently come onto my radar, and there’s not a great deal there. The Karuk have a tribal complex, and there are a few churches, a general store, and a few other buildings, but all in all, you wouldn’t miss much if you missed Weitchpec. What is notable, especially in a Sunday Drive article, is that the Klamath River turns west here and California Highway 96 stops being such a nice road. The Trinity River, flowing north at this point, joins the Klamath for its final push to the sea.

Heading south from Weitchpec, I couldn’t help note that while I was still in a river canyon, I couldn’t see the river. Furthermore, the road was narrow and much more dangerous than what I’d been driving for the past hour or so. Apparently there’s nothing to attract the tourist/sportsman here—at least not in the opinion of CalTrans.

Hoopa was a surprise. I’ve heard of the town, the tribe, the reservation for most of my adult life. Since it is located off any of the roads I normally drive, I’d managed to avoid it for my first fifty-seven years. Since I didn’t turn west at Weitchpec, and the question here is how many times can I write Weitchpec in one blog, I came to Hoopa naturally. The town itself is comparatively speaking large, clean, and industrious. The high school alone rivals in size that of many communities several times the size of this reservation town. I need to go back earlier in the day so I can capture the scene in digital pixels. I must say, however, as a linguist, that whoever assigned the Roman alphabet to native American languages must have been practicing the linguistic equivalent of giving smallpox infected blankets to the Indians. Trying to pronounce the combinations of X,W, ?, etc that so many native languages seem to use is a sure way to put off any student wanting to study the language. That’s just my opinion, mind you.

Sign at Orleans, California
Not an example of what I'm talking about.

I'm sure it should be IX?Wi PIX?Wi instead.
And one of these days I need to drive the Ishi Pishi Road
Taken May 23rd, 2007

From Hoopa it’s a short, if twisty, drive on to Willow Creek and the end of the Klamath River Highway, California 96. Turning west at Willow Creek, I drove the 40 miles of California 299 to Arcata, taking roughly one hour to cover that distance. Dinner at Arcata consisted of Chicken Fried Steak, with a green salad, mashed potatoes, corn, and dessert of Coconut Cream Pie. The final hundred miles home on US 101 made me remember that my body doesn’t appreciate having so much carbohydrate at one time. Still, thirteen hours after leaving home, I pulled the Saab back into the garage, unloaded my books (if not the cooler), and went to bed.

The Klamath River highway is a great Sunday Drive, and I look forward to getting back over there, earlier in the day, or maybe even to spend a couple of days enjoying the scenic wonders of the Klamath and her canyon.

Γνῶθι σεαύτόν

One of many treehouses at Burlesque
Kerby, Oregon
Taken May 16th, 2007

To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him
Just to see him smile, makes my life worthwhile
To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him
And I do

--Phil Spector
--Sung by The Teddy Bears

There are many things I wish I knew. For one thing, I wish I knew how to read Plato in the original Greek. I wish I knew if the title of this post is spelled correctly--most on-line sources leave out the epsilon so that it reads "Γνῶθι σαύτόν," but I distinctly remember it the way I’ve written it in the title, and I found at least one on-line reference that has it with the simple e. I studied ancient Greek in Grad School. I remember a conversation with my advisor, Walter E. (Ted) Rex, where we argued amicably about why I, as a student of twentieth-century French literature, should take the time for the study of something so clearly outside my area of expertise. (Note that I’m the one who wanted to study Greek. Professor Rex was trying to talk me out of it.) Mr. Rex asked me if studying Greek would really help me understand the work of Jean Genêt. My reply was that no, probably not, but that I had found something that did help me understand the author’s work—Xaviera Hollander’s auto-biography, The Happy Hooker. Professor Rex was not amused, but he did let me sign up for Greek.

The ancient Greek language is the hardest thing I have ever tried to learn. It was harder than Physics, or Organic Chemistry—although a lot more fun than the latter. For one thing, Greek has three numbers. In linguistic terms, number refers to what we in English think of as “singular” and “plural.” I’ve been told that there are cultures which count, “one, two, many.” Our culture is dualistic. We like things to be either/or, one thing or the other, black or white, singular or plural. The ancient Greeks were much more in tune with reality than we. They recognized that not everything can be condensed down to us or them. With regard to number, they not only saw things as singular or plural, but they recognized some things as “dual.” We were not taught the dual form, however. Our professors in Greek 1 and Greek 2 told us that we’d never run into it in our studies. Then came Greek 101, and Xenophon’s Anabasis. The first sentence of that book reads, in translation, “Darius and Parysatis had two sons.” And “two sons” was in a form we’d never before seen—the dual.

I dropped out of my Plato class because trying to read The Republic in its original language took too much time away from getting ready for my doctoral exams. I could not keep up with the assignments. I could keep up with the class, but the assignment was to read five pages each day. I wish I had known that the professor lied to us. He told us that we would be responsible for the assigned reading when it came time for midterms. Of the assigned five pages, I was able to do two, which was all the rest of my classmates were doing. I dropped the class before the midterm because I didn’t dare do poorly in a class I had fought to take. The midterm covered only those pages actually discussed in class. I would have been fine had I stayed in the class, and today I would know if I’d written the title of this post correctly.

As I said, there are many things I wish I knew. What got me started on this track was waking up at 3:30 this morning. I wish I knew why I’m not sleeping more than five hours a night. It makes for long days. My friend Carl has offered to give me some sleeping pills, but I don’t take drugs on principal, eschewing even aspirin on the rare occasion when I have a headache. Mind you, I have no problem falling asleep. I lie down, maybe read for a bit, then turn the light off and my own lights go out as well. But five hours later I’m wide awake. This morning I woke at 3:22, having gone to bed at 10:45 last night. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could fall asleep again, but no. Two things started going through my head—this blog post and an idea for an article on a wood shop in Kerby, Oregon, Burlesque.

Kerby is one of those towns that you drive through wondering why you have to slow down for this wide spot in the road. Admittedly there are more buildings facing the highway than in most places Oregon’s Department of Transportation (ODOT) warns you about with a sign that just calls out for Dristan—“Congestion.” Oregon has so many signs warning of “Congestion” that I feel they should just give the whole state a prescription. Driving US 199 between the coast and the Rogue Valley, I’ve passed through Kerby more times than I can count, and I’ve always wondered about a funky set of buildings that front the highway on the north end of town.

Anywhere you drive in Redwood Country, you pass roadside shops selling chainsaw art. You want a bear carved out of redwood? I know a dozen places within fifty miles of my Smith River home where you can buy one. Orick, California, which I mentioned in my last post, is little more these days than a two mile long strip of chainsaw art dealers. Burlesque is different. For one thing, there are no chainsaw bears lined up along the highway. I’ll write more about Burlesque later, and I will take another trip over to interview the men working there. I’m going to write that article—maybe several.

Not your typical chainsaw bear
Taken at Burlesque, Kerby, Oregon
May 16th, 2007

In the meantime, I wish I knew more about photography. I’ve been taking pictures for almost as long as I can remember. Before I started using cameras, I remember my dad’s slide shows. I took a beginning photography class through UC Extension while in Grad School. (I seem to have done a lot of things that had nothing to do with twentieth-century French lit while I was in Grad School.) I am compiling a sizable library of photo-related books and periodicals. Everything from Digital Photography for Dummies to Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life.” Because I use Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 4.0 to edit my work, I’m getting books on how to make Elements do things it’s not supposed to do. I’m reading magazines I’d never heard of, studying the images in them. In short, I’m teaching myself about photography and photo-editing. This is an area I can do something about.

I wish I knew more about weaving. I’ve been weaving semi-professionally for over thirty years. But when I came to Smith River last year, I brought along a rigid heddle loom from my collection of looms. The rigid-heddle is a good one, a Beka, and it’s a beautiful piece of wood. But I never used it in Montana, and here I am, fifteen months later, and I still have not warped it. Frankly, I’m afraid of it—or rather I’m afraid of wasting good yarn by trying to set the loom up and doing it wrong.

I wish I knew why the roses in the back yard are not flowering. All my neighbors have beautiful roses blooming, and I have rose bushes that are completely bereft of even a bud. My father loved growing roses, and planted them everywhere we ever lived. I never knew how to take care of them, and now I’ve inherited six rose bushes that are just standing there in the garden glaring at me. I went up to Early E Books in Brookings and got a book on roses, so maybe I can figure this one out.

Irises growing wild in the woods
Taken on a geocaching hunt
Knopki Creek Road, Del Norte County, California
May 16th, 2007

On the same topic, I wish I knew why the azaleas in the back yard aren’t as full and glorious as the one in the front. The flowers are beautiful, but there are no leaves on the bushes. Again, I got a book at Early E and will read up on these too—when I find the time. I did buy azalea food and rose food and a thingy you attach to your hose to feed the plants. Maybe they just need some TLC.

I wish I knew why people still have “W” stickers on their pickups. With everything that has happened in the past six years, I cannot believe that there is anyone so dense that they still support the man. Or rather, I don’t want to believe that.

I wish I knew why people think that my relationship with my partner is going to ruin their marriage. I used to get so angry every time I saw one of those bumper stickers that the 700 Club hands out—the one that says “Marriage = ‘stick figure man’ + ‘stick figure woman’.” When I would see a vehicle sporting this message, I wanted to run it off the road, pull out the driver, and demand that he or she tell me how my “marriage” would ruin their own. But I was always afraid that the driver really would be a stick figure, and not a real person. Finally I found a sticker of my own at Missoula’s Rockin’ Rudy’s and now I too can be political in my car. My sticker says “Just Say ‘I Do” to Marriage Equality.” I’m much calmer now.

I wish I knew what to do with all the stuff that Mother accumulated over the thirty years she lived in this house. I took twelve bags of clothing to the second-hand shop in Crescent City. That didn’t begin to empty the closets, the drawers, the garage. I wish I could just get a giant dumpster and toss everything in, but I do know myself well enough to know that will never happen.

Siskiyou Mountains Viewed from the Waldo Lookout Road
Josephine County, Oregon
Taken May 16th, 2007

I wish I had some sense of where I’m supposed to be right now. I do like the house and yard in Smith River, and I feel quite at home here. I enjoy standing at the kitchen sink and watching the birds fight over the feeder I’ve placed in the back yard. I love seeing the azaleas, the rhododendron, the lilacs, the lilies, the bleeding hearts all in bloom. I love picking apples and blackberries fresh in my own back yard. But my friends are, for the most part, in Montana. It can be very lonely when your main companions are extremely skittish goldfinches. I need to make a trip back to Missoula and get Gypsy back. I left her there because I was going to be heading out on the Six Thousand Mile Sunday Drive, but now that the trip has been postponed until Fall, I really would like her companionship.

I wish I knew more about money. My family never talked about that subject. It was the biggest taboo in our home. You could talk about sex before you talked about money. To this day I have no idea what kind of an income my father had. I once asked Mother when she stopped worrying about financial matters and she replied “When your father retired.” As she declined mentally the past few years, she began worrying about money again. Not because she didn’t have any, but because with direct deposit, she never saw it which in her mind meant that it wasn’t there. I now find myself in the position where I will need to be seeing money come in myself, and it’s not flowing yet. It will. I have few doubts there, but for now it’s nagging at me. I read the classifieds daily, but while I’ve seen a few “Help Wanted” ads that looked interesting and even met my own skill levels, I haven’t applied for any jobs. The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to go back into the job market/work force, and I fear that as an openly gay, fifty-seven year old man, there are few employers who would want to give me a chance.

I’ve long wondered what I would be when I grew up, and I think I have found the answer to that question. Those of you who have been following these musings over the past six months know that I want to be a travel writer and photographer. That’s the whole purpose behind this blog. Now it’s just a question of getting serious and putting my work out where it can pay for itself. On Tuesday, I mailed off an entry in a writing contest sponsored by the Willamette Writers, an Oregon writers’ group. I’m going to continue seeking out writing contests, and photography contests, and I’m going to start putting together articles for submission. I guess it’s time to start putting together my questions so I can write up Burlesque.

Oh, in case you don’t read Greek, the title above comes from the words supposedly written in the temple of the oracle at Delphi (and they have been attributed to at least five Greek writers, including Socrates and Pythagorus). Translated into Latin as Temet Noces, they appear in the movie The Matrix. Ralph Waldo Emerson, using the Roman alphabetic transliteration, wrote a poem with the title “Gnothi seauton,” and note that he put in the “e.” It means, in plain English, “Know Thyself.”

Redwood National Park

Lazy Day, Lazy Day, Lazy Day for you and me.
Carl relaxing on a piece of old logging equipment
Davison Road, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
Redwood National and State Parks
Taken 5/14/07

Blue Sky, sunshine, what a day to take a walk in the park.

Ice cream, daydream till the sky becomes a blanket of stars.

What a day for pick-in' daisies and lots of red balloons.

And what a day for hold in' hands and being with you.

Music by George Fischoff-Lyrics by Tony Powers, copyright 1967
Recorded by Spanky and Our Gang

Redwood National Park, in the northwestern corner of California, has a lot more than just redwood trees. Awe-inspiring, scenic, and extremely photogenic, it’s no wonder that George Lucas chose to film the Planet of the Ewoks in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, one of the components of Redwood National and State Parks. Steven Spielberg also choose the area for forest scenes in E.T.

Redwood National Park was first established in October, 1968 and is the only jointly administered National and State Park System in the United States. Three California State Parks, Prairie Creek Redwoods, Del Norte Coast Redwoods, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods make up the “state” component of the Redwood National and State Parks. The park has certainly been the setting for a great deal of my photographic work, and Montana friends will remember how I used to say that my mother lived on the planet of the Ewoks.

Monday morning, May 14^th, I picked up my friend Carl and we set out for a day of photography and geocache hunting, with most of the day spent in Redwood National Park. Within minutes of leaving Carl’s home, we were driving between the tall trees of Jedediah Smith, and once south of Crescent City, we cut across the western edge of Del Norte Coast Redwoods. After a quick geocache find on the banks of the Klamath River, we continued on through Prairie Creek Redwoods, stopping to photograph one of the herds of Roosevelt Elk that roam freely through the park. It’s always such fun to be walking on the beach at Gold Bluffs and come face to face with an elk.

After adding another geocache to our found list, we hiked up the Trillium Falls Trail, through towering trees and vibrant green foliage, to find it almost impossible to photograph the waterfall. The canopy is so heavy that little light gets through, even when you set your camera at a high ISO. (The things you can do with digital cameras. With a film camera, the ISO is a component of the film you are using. With a digital camera these days, you can set the ISO at 100 for this shot, then immediately change to ISO 400 for the next. My Nikon D80 allows me to choose a variety of ISO settings from 100 to 1600. There are even ways to get the rating up to 3200. But even at 1600, I wasn’t able to get a clear shot of the falls. Looking downstream, however, I was able to grab this shot.

Just downstream from Trillium Falls, about ½ mile from the trailhead
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Redwood National and State Parks
Taken May 14^th, 2007

Another shot from the Trillium Falls trail appears in my Eyefetch portfolio at http://www.eyefetch.com/image.aspx?ID=339499.

Just down the road a piece is the town of Orick, California. Orick used to be a logging and fishing community, but neither industry survives today. Instead, as you drive through town on US 101 you are tempted by shop after shop selling bears carved out of redwood logs. Should you pass through town, as we did, at lunch time, you have your choice of several eateries. I’ve lunched happily at The Palm Café which is a typical small-town American restaurant—the kind where you don’t even need a menu because if you grew up in the United States, you know exactly what’s going to be there—burgers, cheese burgers, patty melts, tuna melts, etc. It’s also one of those places where everybody in the place knows everybody else, except for you, of course. That’s why they all watch you, listen to what you order, and make sure you eat it all up. The pies at the Palm are worth stopping for. I understand that they’re being baked by the same woman who has baked them for the past thirty, fifty, hell, maybe the last hundred years. However long she’s been baking, she knows her stuff. It's worth stopping for pie even if it’s not lunchtime.

Across the street from the Palm is La Hacienda. Now you might wonder about stopping in at a Mexican place in a town that quite frankly looks like it has seen better days—and those better days were a long time ago. If you pass up La Hacienda, however, you’d be missing a treat. Owner and chef Erik Torres comes from near Guadalajara and is an accomplished cook. He takes great pride in his establishment, and if he’s not in the kitchen cooking, he’s out cleaning tables, or chatting with the customers. As Carl and I walked in, we choose a booth at the back and found ourselves walking toward two men who were obviously “family.” Well, my gaydar was saying so, and quite emphatically. I’m sure I have met one of the two men, but I have no idea where. One of the men had a dish in front of him that I hadn’t seen in my previous visits to the restaurant, so of course I had to ask him what he was eating. He smiled and told me that he had ordered a “molcajete” and indeed, the dish he was eating from was the typical Mexican mortar. Gourmetsleuth.com will sell you one if you want, or you can just see what the instrument looks like by going to their website: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/pDetail.asp?p=90

When our waitress approached, I tried the old “I’ll have what he’s having,” but alas, she didn’t pick up his dish and plop it down in front of me. Actually, as Carl had told me he wanted the same dish just before he left for the immaculate men’s room, I ordered two, which surprised the waitress. She thought we’d share, I guess. Explaining that we were headed up into the Bald Hills Section of Redwood National Park, and would be doing some hiking, she understood that we’d need stamina, and nothing like good food to help there. By the way, should you stop in at La Hacienda, don’t expect to find “molcajete” on the menu. It was a special, but Erik assures us that it will become a regular item. If you order it, just tell them that the crazy guy from Crescent City told you about it.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what food was in the molcajete. It was a nicely seasoned stew of grilled meat strips like you’d get with fajitas, shrimp and avocado slices. Carl and I added salsa cruda and fresh lime to the stew, getting these condiments from the self-serve build-your-own salsa bar. All the salsas are made fresh in the restaurant, and you can mix them to get just the right amount of heat for your own palate. The basic salsa cruda is wonderful as is, but I tend to add a bit of the spicier stuff to mine. I don’t know what came over me—the sight of two other gay men in the restaurant, or just abject hunger after hiking to the falls—but I neglected to capture the molcajete with my Nikon. Sorry ‘bout that.

Refreshed in mind and body, Carl and I grabbed another geocache right there in beautiful downtown Orick, then headed up toward the Bald Hills. This section of Redwood National Park is a more recent addition to the park, and is made up of federal land and lands the National Park Service has purchased that were not originally part of a California State Park. Lady Bird Johnson Grove is probably the most popular area in this section, being closest to US 101 at about five miles off the highway. Inn-California has some great pics of the grove on their website. Just click on the link above.

Beyond Lady Bird Johnson Grove, you come to the trailhead for the Tall Trees Trail. Again, click on the link to get to some wonderful pictures of these magnificent trees. Unfortunately, none of these pictures are mine. I do apologize. Carl and I, much as we love the redwoods, were not in search of tall trees. No, I had been told that there were truly awesome displays of lupine in full bloom up on the Bald Hills. Mind you, I’d been eye to eye with lupine growing down by the Smith River, but I’d never been in the Bald Hills, so it seemed like a perfect excuse for an outing. I’d also been promised that the road was paved all the way from Orick to Hoopa, but as we passed the sign indicating that we still had twenty-six miles to go before we reached Weitchpec, the pavement ended. At that point we were twelve miles from Orick, but no turning back. We were on a quest to find the awesome lupine display.

The tall trees kept us shaded, and also kept us from spotting any lupine, and we were about to question whether the lupine were as much a lie as the pavement when we broke free of the trees. No lupine, but wonderful meadows and great vistas looking over the Coastal Mountains. Parking the Saab as far from the center of the road as possible, Carl and I got out and started shooting. The great thing about camera shots is that they don’t make nearly the noise that a rifle, or even a pistol shot makes. The recoil is significantly less as well. I speak from personal experience. Looking ahead we caught sight of our road playing hide and seek as it ran up the hillside buffeted by fields of purple. Another shot of this same scene, taken further along the road, is on Eyefetch under the title “Where’s Roger Moore?” If you misspent your youth the way I did mine, you may recall the Monty Python routine comparing Roger Moore to Robin Hood, only Mr. Moore (Sir Roger these days, I guess), was stealing lupine from the rich.

Soon every lupine in the land will be in his mighty hand!
Taken in the Bald Hills Section, Redwood National Park
5/14/07

On and on we drove, finding patch after wonderful patch of lupine. Stopping near the Historic Lyons Ranch section of the park, we looked back and saw, for the first time, just how extensive the lupine growth was. The perfume from the blossoms was intoxicating, and we drove with the top down, inhaling deeply and trying to stay relatively sober.

Paying little attention to the time, we continued on, past the park’s eastern boundary, and back into forest land. Not redwoods, though. They require certain conditions that are only found close to the northern California coast. We were now driving through vegetation that reminded us of the central California Sierra foothills. The road kept climbing, with no end in sight, and we eventually decided that as much fun as Weitchpec promised, we had best turn back.

Returning through the lupine-scented Bald Hills, we descended some twenty miles or more until we reached US 101 again, turning north at that point toward home. Logging in two more geocaches in Klamath, including one for Captain Courageous*, we ended up back at Steve and Carl’s home where Carl made Pisco Sours while I fell asleep on the couch and Steve continued spreading mulch around the new azaleas and rhododendrons the guys had purchased at Flora Pacifica. (I had meant to write about our day at Brookings' Azalea Park and Flora Pacifica. I did put up a shot of a Montana Planter on Eyefetch. They guys went back with a truck this time.) It was a great day on the road. We added five out of five geocaches to our list of caches found, and we had yet another wonderful day in Redwood National (and State) Parks.

Yes, all that purple stuff is lupine, and not a redwood in sight.
Taken in the Historic Lyons Ranch Section, Redwood National Park
5/14/07

There are two other photos from this trip on Eyefetch, here and here.

*Captain Courageous was a steer caught in the 1964 Klamath River flood. He floated all the way out to sea, and then continued floating up the coast, ending up in Crescent City's harbor. Apparently not-at-all phased by his sea-going adventure, he lived for another nineteen years, finally expiring in 1983. There is a plaque explaining all this along side the old highway in the town of Klamath.

Don't Ask!

I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

-- Sir William S. Gilbert

These two stations face each other across 6th Street in San Francisco
Guess which one I chose to fill the Saab?
Taken 4/30/07

Mumps is commonly thought of as a childhood disease, but I was diagnosed with the illness at seventeen. To be precise, I was sick with the mumps at the time I was supposed to be registering for my first full quarter of classes at the University of California. As youth and adults are expected to be immobile while the body fights off this disease, standing in registration lines was out of the question. My father took up the task of seeing that I got into my classes, and when I received my class schedule, I found that Father had added one class that was not on my personal list. He had enrolled me in ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps). As Wikipedia explains, “Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program is a college-based, officer commissioning program, predominantly in the United States. It is designed as a college elective that focuses on leadership development, problem solving, strategic planning, and professional ethics.” That is all very well and good, but in 1967, ROTC was also the training ground for officers headed to Viet Nam.

Military service is not a tradition in my family. My father was a member of the West Virginia National Guard when World War II broke out, but as he was in college training to be a minister, he was told to continue his studies while the rest of his unit was sent to North Africa where they died in battle. The only other family “military” stories I heard of growing up involved my paternal great-grandmother sitting on her cabin porch, rifle in hand, picking off rebel soldiers who came over the hill in the War Between the States. I have no doubt that Father’s action in signing me up for ROTC was motivated purely by the idea that the training would be good for me, and may even provide some financial support for my studies. There was no thought on his part that I would be expected to serve my country in this fashion. Conservative as I was at the time, I had already addressed my chapter of the United Republicans of California (UROC) on the topic of “Selective Slavery,” which is what those of us with a Libertarian bent called the Selective Service Act.

Please do not misunderstand, with all her faults I love my country, and in a “more perfect” world, there is nowhere on earth I would rather live. I have traveled a bit, and visited many other countries enjoyably, but the place I call home is the United States. When returning from foreign adventures, I find myself reciting Sir Walter Scott’s lines from “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”:

Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said
This is my own, my native land!

That said, I have never felt obliged to protect my country by joining her military. Perhaps that is because the wars we have fought during my lifetime have never involved protecting the homeland, but rather protecting the sources of her wealth. The first war to happen during my life, the conflict in Korea, is still going on today, over fifty years later. Approximately 30,000 US military personnel are stationed in South Korea. Personally, I do not know how many “minor” conflicts we have been involved in over the past fifty-seven years, wars in places like Grenada, Somalia, Nicaragua. The biggies, Viet Nam and Iraq are quite enough, thank you. And while at first I supported our attempts to stop Communism in Viet Nam, I came to realize that our leaders had no clear idea of what we were doing there, or how to stop a local uprising. They say that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. If the militia of the thirteen colonies were able to hold off and defeat the greatest power on earth, England, how could we ever expect to stop the Viet Cong? And since we apparently did not learn our lesson in Southeast Asia, we are repeating the class in the Middle East. And why?

I do recognize that other folk feel differently. Military service is a proud and honorable tradition for many American families. Other individuals feel the call to serve and protect, or to be an army of one. (And isn’t that slogan an oxymoron?) I respect their choices, and frankly, I’m glad that others do feel the urge to enlist. There are legitimate needs for an armed force, I’m just not convinced that enriching the coffers of Halliburton is one of those needs.

The dome of City Hall. Surely one of the most beautiful municipal structures in the US.
Taken 4/30/07 in San Francisco, California

What brings about this particular train of thought is a concert I attended Monday evening, April 30^th, 2007, in the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall across from San Francisco’s City Hall. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus presented Divas’ Revenge II, Opera, Broadway & More. I had received an e-mail about the upcoming concert through the GALA Choruses discussion group. Immediately, I e-mailed my friend Bear, and asked if he’d be at all interested in attending the concert. As it turned out, we drove south to San Francisco following our two-day training in the Positively Speaking program, and got to the City by the Bay on Sunday evening. Monday we took things easy as we’d had a very draining experience at our training session at Humboldt State University, and after a wonderful dinner at Mochica, we drove to the Symphony Hall for the 7 pm concert.

I’ll admit to getting a bit emotional (read teary-eyed) as the 150 men of the chorus filed in. All those beautiful men in tuxes! It made me miss my own Missoula Gay Men’s Chorus all the more. The Chorus was joined by the Community Women’s Orchestra, and by Connie Champagne, a local entertainer who has been named one of the 100 best things about San Francisco. Ms. Champagne performed as Judy Garland.

The first half of the program featured music from Broadway, including numbers from Stephen Sondheim’s Passion, Rent, Dreamgirls (sung as Dreamboys of course), and The Producers. Surely we’ve all thought that Bloom’s touching “Till Him” was homoerotic. The orchestra played a medley from The Wizard of Oz, and Ms. Champagne, with the Chorus as her backup group, sang such Judy Garland hits as “Get Happy,” “The Trolley Song,” and “The Man That Got Away.”

Flower growing in garden terrace of Castro Street's Luna Restaurant
Taken 4/30/07 in San Francisco

The second half of the program turned political—albeit in a fun and entertaining way. Shedding their tuxedos, the chorus returned to the stage in sailor whites and performed their very first musical, “The USS Metaphor (or The Lad Who Loved A Sailor),” a modern retelling of “HMS Pinafore.” Captain Corcoran became Captain Closeted, who is “hardly ever gay at sea.” Sir Joseph, whose lines are quoted at the opening of today’s blog, became The Honorable Secretary Josephine Porter, Secretary of the Navy and US Presidential Candidate, etc. etc. I’ll have to go see Pinafore sometime soon, but I believe the Chorus did a pretty good job of telling the whole story in a little over an hour. (Not quite as good as Anna Russell getting through Wagner’s Ring in twenty minutes.)

The point, of course, was that all the sailors on the USS Metaphor, from the Captain on down, were secretly gay, and that the Captain’s son, Stephen Closeted, was in love with Ensign Ralph Rackstraw, but engaged to Secretary Porter. Secretary Porter (who it turned out is a closeted lesbian) and the Rev. Dick Deadheart were set on cleansing the Navy of the abomination of homosexuality. In true Gilbert and Sullivan style, all was satisfactorily resolved in the end, and since the ship was docked at Boston Harbor, the two lovebirds were able to be married. And of course, TV newscaster Anderson Scooper was there to report on all the dirt.

The concert closed with a honor guard from Alexander Hamilton Post #448, the only predominately GLBT American Legion Post in the nation. As these veterans took the stage, I was on my feet with tears, once again, in my eyes. Gay people serve honorably in the US military, and have from the beginning. Baron Von Steuben who has been credited with being the father of the US Army, was himself a closeted gay man.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a national disgrace. It must be overturned! The forces that keep pandering to the ignorant must be turned out of office and gay people must be granted full citizenship in this country. I, for one, am tired of being a second-class citizen in my native land.

To mitigate this screed, I must tell you of Tuesday's breakfast. Bear and I headed north out of San Francisco, with the thought that there must be a good place to eat in Marin County--and one with parking. We left US 101 at the downtown Novato exit, and after a few wrong turns, we found that Novato does, indeed, have a downtown. Right in the center of town sits Mary's Crepes, featuring Breakfast, Lunch, Espresso and Cocktails. I can't speak for the Lunch or Cocktails, but breakfast and my latte were so beautiful that I grabbed my camera and recorded them for posterity (and for Eyefetch, ID 321254 and 321247). As I started shooting the latte, even moving it to a different table for less distraction, Mary offered to make another one saying, "I can make a prettier one." After Bear and I had finished our breakfasts, Mary asked if we had ever had a sweet crepe, and offered to make us one as her gift. She actually made us two, one each, and they were as beautiful as the breakfast plate. As delicious too. This is far and away the best breakfast I have ever had, and I urge you all to run, don't walk, directly to Novato and try Mary's cuisine.

Dessert after breakfast, Mary's Crepes, Novato California
If you're ever in or near Novato, by all means eat at Mary's!
Taken 5/1/07

Silence, Monks Crossing

Sign along the driveway into Mount Tabor (Holy Transfiguration) Monastery
This sign bears the mark of my old friend's sense of humor
Taken May 1st, 2007 near Ukiah, California

The voice of God is calling its summons unto men;
As once he spake in Zion so now he speaks again.
“Whom shall I send to succor my people in their need?
Whom shall I send to loosen the bonds of shame and greed?”

---John Haynes Holmes, 1879-1964

What a week this has been. In the past eight days, I’ve driven almost two thousand miles, slept (or tried to sleep) three nights in motel rooms and three nights at the home of friends, eaten thirteen meals in restaurants, attended a wonderful concert in a beautiful big city concert hall, spent eighteen hours in emotion-packed speaker training sessions, and spoken face to face with a dear friend from my youth. I’m tired.

And the Six Thousand Mile Sunday Drive hasn’t even started yet. This has been good training for the drive, however, and has made me rethink some of the aspects of that next adventure in my life. But for now, I want to talk about service and vocation.

Growing up, I spent most of my at-home learning time with my mother. She gave me a love of reading, a love of foreign languages, a love of music. Most of my religious training came from Mother as well—which may seem unusual for a Preacher’s Kid until we remember that the cobbler’s children often go barefoot. My parents together instilled a love of the outdoors in me, but from Father came my love of being on or near water, my love of photography, and perhaps most important my firm belief in vocation.

Vocation is a word that is misunderstood and misused in today’s culture. It would seem that most people equate the word with job, but at root, a vocation is a calling. Etymologically speaking, vocation comes from the Latin word vocare which means “to call.” I believe that everyone has a vocation, whether it be to ministry, to medicine, to education, or to being a Chevrolet mechanic. A vocation is a sacred position where we find ourselves doing the work we were born to do. There are menial jobs, to be sure, but there are no menial vocations—and I believe that you can be called to serve hamburgers at McDonald’s or greet people at WalMart just as you can be called to enter a monastery on a hilltop outside of Ukiah, California.

My best friend (indeed, my only close friend) in Junior High and High School was a young man named Roy Kaitner. Roy and I spent most of our free time together. With the exception of music classes, we were in different tracks at school, but out of school we would ride our bikes to Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. We would walk up to Tilden Regional Park and spend time in the closest thing to wilderness the Bay Area offered. We would take the bus across the Bay and spend a day walking around San Francisco. I must say that if I had a teen-aged son today, I would be terrified of him doing the things that Roy and I did with absolutely no fear for our personal safety.

We remained close friends after graduation, and even after I left California to return to Montana. On trips back to the Bay Area, I would stay with Roy. We were both active in the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, and Roy was a drummer with the Berkeley Scottish Players. We met up once in Victoria, British Columbia where I was dancing and he was playing.

We heed, O Lord, Your summons, and answer: Here are we!
Send us upon Your errand, let us Your servants be.
Our strength is dust and ashes, our years a passing hour;
But You can use our weakness to magnify Your power.

In the early 1980s, Roy called to tell me that he had met a young woman he was planning to marry. He wanted us to meet and he wanted me to be his best man. I had scheduled a trip to San Francisco, and arranged to meet Roy and Lola while there. Before their wedding, however, something profound happened. Lola was the one to tell me that there would be no wedding. Roy had joined a community of monks and was living a celibate life on a mountain top near Ukiah, California. I may never know just what moved Roy to forego the life most of our contemporaries choose, but I have an idea. Roy’s family were at least nominal Catholics. I never knew them to talk about religion, and it certainly wasn’t something that Roy and I discussed. I have no idea if they ever went to mass. My Sundays were filled with Sunday School, Church, and MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship). I assume that in the mid 1960s everyone’s Sunday was church centered. It was so much a part of life that it didn’t need to be a topic of conversation.

I will never forget an event that happened in the early 1970s, though. A young woman, a stranger to both of us, fell (or jumped) from one of the tall buildings on the UC campus. Roy and I spent many hours in prayer for her survival. Roy was the only person I knew who would have joined me in that vigil. I cannot say that I was surprised, ten years later, to hear he had entered a monastery.

Roy and I never talked after he moved from Berkeley to Mendocino County. Remember, it was his former fiancée who told me he had joined the monks. He has often been in my thoughts, however, and whenever I have had the occasion to drive through Ukiah, I have wondered just where that monastery might be. A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a man who had lived, for a while, in a monastery outside Ukiah. It is a small world, after all. As we talked, it became clear that we were on the same page, as it were. He did not know anyone named Roy Kaitner, but when I discussed Roy, my interlocutor recognized the man he knew as Brother Seraphim. My new friend Jan assured me that I would be welcome to visit the Mount Tabor Monastery, and told me roughly where it was located.

Driving south to San Francisco on Sunday, I saw the exit for Redwood Valley, but decided that I had misunderstood. This was north and east of Ukiah and I had always thought that Roy’s monastery was somewhere south and west of the town, on the road to Booneville, perhaps. Once in the City, I considered e-mailing Jan to ask for specific directions, but when time and circumstance ruled out that option, I turned to Google. Entering “‘monastery’ + ‘Ukiah’” I learned that there were at least two such places in the area, a Buddhist monastery and a Ukrainian Catholic one. Google even gave me a map showing exactly how to find the Mount Tabor Monastery.

Returning north on Tuesday, I decided to visit Mt. Tabor. I argued with myself silently, wondering if this was truly a wise decision, and what kind of reception would I have. As a layman, Roy had concerns about my homosexuality. What response would he have now as clergy? Would he even be willing to see me, or would his vows and duties prevent us from speaking to each other. Not least of my concerns was whether my traveling companion, Bear, would be willing to take this side trip.

The Chapel at Mount Tabor (Holy Transfiguration) Monastery
Taken May 1st, 2007

The drive up the mountain was longer than the Google map would have indicated, and the road got narrower and narrower the further we drove. Turning into the driveway, we passed a gate indicating that the cloisters were off-limits, but the driveway curved around and up and we continued until we pulled into a parking lot by an ornate gate house complete with onion dome. (Eyefetch image ID: 319799) A young man, looking much like the Roy I knew forty years ago, approached me before I could get to the gate, and asked if he could help. I asked if it would be possible to speak with Brother Seraphim, and he assured me that there would not be a problem, but I would have to wait in the dining hall while he went to speak with the brother.

Brother Seraphim and I spoke for a few minutes about family, current situations, and old times. We laughed over boyhood exploits, and commiserated over losing our parents. My old friend looked to be truly at peace, and I mentioned that I was glad he had found a home. He replied, pointing toward the ceiling, “a way home.” We did not discuss his vocation, or how he came to respond to that calling. I had heard enough about the monastery both from Lola and from Jan to know that it was a poor place, with food costs being a particular problem. I thought of the fourth verse of the hymn, and was reminded that “plenty” was not a problem facing the monks of Mount Tabor. My friend the monk told me that strictly speaking he was supposed to be observing a period of silence and he did have work to do. I had many miles to go before I could call it a day, so we hugged, and I gave the monk my blessing.

From ease and plenty save us; from pride of place absolve;
Purge us of low desire; lift us to high resolve;
Take us, and make us holy; teach us Your will and way.
Speak, and behold! We answer; command, and we obey!

I did ask if I might take some outdoor pictures without disturbing the order and peace of the place. For some reason, my pictures did not turn out as well as I had hoped, but there are other images on display at Eyefetch. (Eyefetch image ID: 319792, 319814, 319827) There was a palpable feeling of peace on the mountain, and I could easily return there for a meditative retreat. Indeed, I was in quite a contemplative mood as we drove back down the mountain and resumed our drive north on US 101.

Onion Domes and Three-Barred Crosses on the Chapel Roof
Taken May 1st, 2007

Over the past forty years I have often questioned my own vocation, feeling that I was called either to the ministry or to education, but being barred from those two professions by my open homosexuality. On the other hand, I have been very vocal in terms of gay politics and HIV/AIDS education issues, and am coming to the feeling that I am in exactly the right place. Gay people are everywhere, and most of them, through the ignorance of the society around them, and their own fears and shame born from societal opprobrium, are living in their own version of hell. I have long said that if my visibility would keep one young gay man from attempting suicide, I needed to speak out. Perhaps this is my vocation. It is both education and ministry combined. People, both gay and straight, ask me continuously why I have to be so vocal, wouldn’t it be easier to just keep still. But that is the one thing I cannot be. I have fetters to shatter, and the second verse of the hymn is the voice to which I respond.

“I hear My people crying in slum and mine and mill;
No field or mart is silent, no city street is still.
I see My people falling in darkness and despair.
Whom shall I send to shatter the fetters which they bear?”

Blessings on you all.

The Mendocino County Countryside, between Ukiah and Willits
Taken May 1st, 2007