Donner Pass

360°

They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty.  Even in a well thought-out action like the American Founding Fathers scribing the Declaration of Independence, creating a nation may have been monumental, but it also began the reduction of the long-standing British Empire.  The statement of freedom became a single step towards the formation of a superpower despised by upstart countries throughout the world.  And even worse the pronouncement based on liberty looked the other way as the basic liberties failed to extend to American Indians, women, African Americans, and an expansive list of religious, sexual, and, ethnic citizens.  Nonetheless, two hundred and thirty-seven years of educating ourselves and analyzing the actions of those men allow us to consider better courses of action for the future.  We’ll always be reevaluating our choices, from everyday decisions to life-altering choices.

That’s what interpreting history does: allows a three-hundred-sixty view of circumstances that may have barely had a fractional view of all the facts at the time they occurred.  I’m sure General Custer thought he had everything under control at Little Bighorn (see “Cornered on a Hilltop,” July 2013).  Attacking Russia worked so well for Napoleon.  Jailing Nelson Mandela quieted the world on the issue of Apartheid.  It’s always easier being the armchair quarterback than being the guy in the huddle, even if it ends well for the guy in the huddle, it may just as likely end poorly.  Just ask Joe Theismann – I’m sure he didn’t plan that.

Stuck in the Snow

Visiting the Sierra Nevadas in eastern California treats any visitor to a spectacular range of environments from cold winters to brutal heat.  At a height of more than 14,000 feet, the range’s highest point, Mt. Whitney, straddles Death Valley (see “Desert Dust,” October 2011) and Sequoia National Park.  The snowy range includes an abundant source of water to support the megalopolis of San Francisco and Los Angeles. And tucked high above Truckee, California far uphill from the resorts of Lake Tahoe lies the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort built in the early twentieth century to entice the citizens of San Francisco area to enjoy the snowy, winter wonderland between Mount Judah and Mount Lincoln.

In November of 1846, without the benefit of hindsight or of a full-circle view, a group of eighty-one west-coast bound settlers discovered the downside of the Sierra Nevada winter wonderland and only forty-five descended the mountain pass to the pleasures of the California coast, with some horrifically poor dietary decisions along the way.  When I drove the path myself, I enjoyed the benefit of knowing what could occur when unprepared, and yet I still had to leave my vehicle to help push a fellow driver out of the snow bank in which he had found himself trapped.  And the view from the summit reminded me that even when we learn from history, it may still be hard to see where we are going.  Thank goodness the fog finally lifted.

Setting Scouting

Planning and Plotting

When planning a vacation, planet Earth offers a myriad of options, but when selecting an ultimate destination, most people would select a penultimate travel destinations: Paris, Disneyland, the Grand Canyon.  Yet the jewel in my empty-nest crown revolved around a spectacular vacation, ninety percent of which became secondary to the ultimate destination.  As I began planning my latest expedition, one that my boss entitled my “Fuck The World” vacation, I spent a ridiculously short amount of time evaluating where I would voyage.  And then I added additional locations that most travelers would find at the top of their itinerary: Death Valley, the Great Salt Lake, Yosemite; all beautiful, of course, but none of which were my priority.

I wanted to find the ideal location for my work of fiction that had been tumbling about in my brain for the past decade. Over a plate of sushi and teriyaki, my friend recommended I succumb to my darkening world and embrace the midlife crisis hovering in my baffles. While sitting in silence later that night contemplating the vastness of locations to which I could plot my escape, the perfect place for my vacation became the future site of my protagonist’s climax. I mapped out a route through some of the most remote roads in America – northern Nevada, eastern California, northeastern Utah.  I wanted to drive The Loneliest Road in America, I wanted to see the buffalo on Antelope Island, cross Donner Pass, and get away from everything remotely related to tourism, familiarity, and people.  I made my vacation my own work of fiction.  The key elements of my story (plot, theme, characters, conflict, and setting) become the purpose for my exodus: I began with the setting.

Pull Over

Looking at my beloved atlas (see “Traveling With Boys,” November 2011), I plot the general area in which I feel my main character would travel.  From there, I began planning the peripheral expeditions which others might consider primary destinations.  I book a B&B on the western shore after circumnavigating Lake Tahoe.  I spend an artful night in Yosemite Valley, outside the majestic waterfalls (a destination at which I arrives having just missing the closing of Tioga Pass by less than forty-eight hours due to an early-season snowfall).  I reach Donner Pass, likewise covered in multiple inches of snow, dining on a more mild diet of cheese sticks and breakfast bars.  I descend thousands of feet to sea level to Stovepipe Wells in the core of Death Valley National Park.  Yet in this crib of spectacular natural vistas, I seek a location so secluded, so distant, so ignored by the world that an author finds both inspiration and desolation.  I stop along US Highway 93 in the Steptoe Valley where signs warn of lengthy durations without petrol services and I find the cubbies, the coves, and the open caverns where I can allow my character to escape unnoticed in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

I pull off the road and spend nearly thirty minutes capturing the scene on celluloid.  Dirty cliffs, sage brush cover, nooks in which an entire vehicle might steal away unnoticed create the perfect ambiance for my character.  For all the beautiful sights I witness over six full days, from the granite cliffs to the layered canyons, to the monstrous, towering creatures of the Mariposa Grove, these desolate, hidden crevices entice and enthrall me.  Few trees stand in the distance.  Even the wild mustangs avoid these hills bordering the dry, salt flats of western Utah.  More plant life than a moonscape, while slightly less fragrant than springtime jasmine, the brown, barren environment summons me and serves as the pinnacle of my escape.  Perhaps it becomes fitting that the Idiot Tree (see “The Idiot Tree” from December 2011) stands just ahead around a few mild curves in the road.  I’m in my favorite corner of the world and I am enveloped in inspiration, and here the story begins.