The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--26. Toes of the Sierra Nevada, No. 2

 

Marci and her Pinecone, Steve Brown 2022

One of the problems with writing a travelogue is that it takes time.   By the time you've finished writing the book you are very far removed in time from the actual trip.  Most of what I've seen is never lost to me.  I was reading from Steinbeck's The Red Pony this morning, and I was transported to a specific moment from my childhood.  It was a warm spring day, perhaps third grade.  The snow had melted off the basketball courts east of the old yellow brick school, and steam was rising off of the wet, black pavement in lemon whisps.   I could hear the sound of basketballs hitting the shallow puddles, hear the sound of the girls playing jump rope games, and my eyes were focused on the wonder of all that steam.  I pretended I was flying over clouds as I walked around in wonder.  

It was like no time had passed at all.  But here's the thing.  I did not sit down determined to get back to that moment.  Something about these words by Steinbeck tapped a memory:

He went on to the sagebrush line where the cold spring ran out of its pipe and fell into a round wooden tub.  He leaned over and drank close to the green mossy wood where the water tasted best.  Then he turned and looked back on the ranch, on the low, whitewashed house girded with red geraniums, and on the long bunkhouse by the cypress tree...

I lived on a ranch when I was in first grade.  It would have been logical for that paragraph above to tap into memories of days on the ranch.  But that's not how the mind works.  It's not organized by claims, supporting claims, and evidence.  It operates through connections we don't necessarily understand.  Perhaps my mind saw a light in that passage that was reminiscent of the light on the playground that spring day.   Maybe I saw a gold light on the water that flowed from the pipe that reminded me of the light reflected of that slick obsidian playground.  Or maybe I sensed a similar warmth in the air.  Who knows?  

So, the problem in writing about a trip now two years in the past isn't that I've forgotten the details.  I know from experience that they are still there somewhere in great precision.  It's more about figuring out how to trick the mind into experiencing it as if it were now.  What makes a daydream magical is not what you are remembering, but rather, that you are experiencing that moment as if it were now.   How to do that though on command is the question.  I've been training my mind to get into the current moment with some success.  The next trick is to learn to get the mind back to a specific now from the past on command.  That is a useful skill for a writer, and it is not the same as just remembering the narrative.  Telling your reader what happened is completely different than placing them in the event.

I am learning a lot about the philosophies that moved Steinbeck to write.  I enjoy that.  I think we are living a repeat of his times in many ways, and that his massages were never more important than they are today.   But what makes Steinbeck profoundly memorable is his ability to put a reader in a moment.  All I can do here is to try to do the same.

I remember being tired.  I remember the light moving towards afternoon.  I remember the sky being a warm mixture of white and blue, of grasses along the road long and gold, of the warm smell of pine, of the Kern River far down below pooled in bowls carved into granite.  I remember wanting to stop often, and doing so, but not nearly as much as I wanted to, because pullouts seem to be gone as soon as you see them, as the road twists this way, and then that way, monotonously for eternity--all this adding to the sleepiness and the desire to slip into eternal slumber--forcing the eyes wide open and saying to myself, It's way too early to be feeling that way now.

I remember thinking this is way too good to miss, remembering just enough of the Kern River from our honeymoon, that trip so long ago, to know I would regret it if I just went on through in some sort of dazed dream and did not stop again as much as I liked the slow methodical rhythm of the repeated sway from side to side as the car hugged the curves in the road, the light pouring through the pines and hitting the eyes with flashes of wonder and bewilderment, the eyes adjusting always to see between the dark and the light.  

So, I pull over.  We get out.  The river is quite far below, but the pools are magical, dark and deep in shadow.  The sound is loud for the distance.  Water pouring over stone.  I decide to climb down.

It reminds me of rivers from my childhood, the rivers north of here.  I am child again playing in the magic of water in the late afternoon, light dancing everywhere, blue dragonflies dazzling and darting.  Long, thick green grasses along the river's edge glistening, always the hard drops of shadow thrown by great pine interrupting that glorious light, and in the process, seeming to increase its intensity.

I don't know how long I am lost in the past down there.   But when I come up, I find Marci in warm light in a tomato red shirt and blue jeans holding a giant pinecone and smiling grandly.  She is amazed. 

  

I tell her, "Oh, that is nothing," and launch into tales of the enormous pinecones that can be found around the edges of a meadow by Eagle Lake.  I'm about to slip away back in time again, but she grabs me.  She knows she has found something magical, and she's not going to let me steal that away from her.  She insists you could not possibly find a grander pinecone than this.  She shoves it towards me to prove her point.

I agree.  Even if that may not be totally factually true--a grand find in this moment is always grander than the great finds of the past, if we will but slow down enough to see them.  For no moment can be as intense as the one here and now if we will but stop and let it be so.

I tell her to stand in the light and pose with her pinecone so that we can honor the glorious find that it is.

That pinecone now sits on the mantle of our fireplace.  It is grand--but not near as grand as the memory of seeing Marci consumed by joy at finding a grand pinecone during one stop as we crawled across the toes of the Sierra on what seemed like an endless journey one afternoon in April of 2022.  So, perhaps this now is not always as glorious as the nows of the past after all.