Words cannot describe...

It’s hard to describe the beauty of the Sierras. Saying something like ,”There is a big beautiful waterfall high up on a mountain above Lake June” doesn’t tell you much. Sadly, neither does a photograph of said waterfall. Or a bunch of photographs. Somehow it only seems to look as impressive in person, and when you are a writer, and cannot communicate that beauty, you have failed at your craft.
Suffice it to say, these mountains are something special, the secret California that Easterners like myself have only heard rumours of. They are the equal of the Rockies, tamed but still plenty wild. They are the Adirondacks times ten and the Catskills times twenty. They are half of the Andes and a third of the Himalayas, and much more approachable, somehow, and more welcoming. Still a tough climb but doable if you have not spent half your life at Mcdonalds.
So, today, as I had thoughts of Harry Chapin in my head, it being the 30th anniversary of his passing, I went for a walk up a mountain, to try to get near to this beautiful veil of water that was cascading down the rocks from a height of several hundred feet above the ground. Though it was far away the sound of the crashing splashing torrent was easy to hear and made it seem all so close.
I knew that a trail led the way. I found it, and began my upward trek. It was not a trail for humans, but more designed for donkeys and horses, which were in abundance as pack trains of them carried both tourists and gourmet food to the top of the mountain, far above even the waterfall, which seemed to come out of the side of the mountain. Several times I had to stop as the animals were frozen in front of me. Their loads often shifted, huge sacks full of the supplies that sometimes had to be re-strapped to their sides by the cowboy guides who escorted them all up the hill. It felt like stopping for a crossing guard or a red light.
The rocks and steep upward angle of the trail were painful to my feet, feet that have been pounded into almost raw tissue over the almost 2000 miles I have walked thus far. Add to that the seeming tons of horse and donkey dung that filled the trail in spots, and there were plenty of obstacles to get past if I was going to make it to the water fall.
Finally, I crested a hill and as the trail turned right, to the left, across a ravine, I saw it. It was powerful and fast, a spray of cold snowmelt water that splayed out at almost 45 degree angles to the drop, and then curved hard to the left as it went down a hidden course inside the rocks and crevices. I snapped a few pictures, and a fellow walking man took a shot or two of me with the falls behind me.
It looks so small in the picture. But it wasn’t small. it was big. And beautiful. My words cannot convey that in adequate terms, so it is up to you to use your imaginations. Close your eyes. Hear the distant crashing of water…and see what I saw.

Rainbow Falls, and the Devil's Postpile

Two places with two names that couldnt be more diametrically opposed: Rainbow Falls, and the Devil’s Postpile.
I confess that I had never heard of either, but thanks to my friends Tessa Roker and Rolf Knutson, I have now been to both. And I am in awe of nature once again. In fact, my respect for the ways of the earth and the way that beauty can be found in rocks and trees is growing with each passing moment.
Rainbow Falls lies high up in the Sierra Mountains, nestled inside a stone crevasse but accessible by foot and eye if one is careful. The angle of the falls and the coincidental(?) positioning of the sun at a certain time of the day result in a beautiful and vivid rainbow that crosses the small gorge in front of it. The National Parks Service gone one better though and created trails that lead down to the bottom of the falls, at river level, and while the rainbow effect is not visible there, the cool mist and cooler breeze from the tumbling waters make it a very…damp and exhilarating experience.
The Devil’s Postpile is another beast altogether. As a sign states, there are shapes in nature that are more than just nice to look at. Some of them are functional. Such as it is with this amazing display of the ways of the natural world. The hexagonal shape that is seen in the Devil’s Postpile is a result of various forces that caused the rock to split into perfectly formed hexagonal shapes as a way to relieve stress and make space for movement. I might not be explain it well, but there are other places in nature where this is seen: beehives, salt flats, soap bubbles and turtle shells.
So, the Devils Postpile looks like a massive wall of stony posts emerging from the ground. As time goes by they break off and fall in pieces down the hill, leaving an exposed wall of, well, posts. When you take the trail to the top, you are on a rounded dome, looking like a mosaic. And it is not a good idea to go too much toward the edge because one slip and……
It was beautiful. As was Rainbow Falls, in different ways, and both highlights of this walk.
On the bus ride down from the mountain (shuttle buses only for most of the day is the rule) I got a little surprise. Tess knew the driver, a woman named Chyna, (not the wrestler) a cool young lady with a good sense of timing. Over her PA system, she began telling us all that there was someone on the bus was walking across the US. Well, heck. It was a nice surprise, and then she gave me the opportunity to tell the full busload of folks about WhyHunger and Harry Chapin and I gave out the website address, not once but twice, and she repeated it later as well. It brought forth a lot of questions and good wishes and hopefully a few donations.
One of the better days I have had on this trip, and with Mono Lake and Yosemite still ahead of me, as well as the entire width of the state of California and San Francisco, I am renewed again.

Go Greyhound? Well, if I HAVE to.....

It is a blessing and a curse. Greyhound, that is. It is a bus service that will allow you to travel from San Francisco to Tampa for 208 bucks. It also allows you to feel like the scum of the earth when it comes to customer service, especially at the corporate level. Is it a fair trade? I guess it depends on your point of view.
While I can understand the logic of placing the bus stations in depressed neighborhoods, because wealthier ones wouldn’t allow it, the fact is that some of the neighborhoods are so scary and so full of the dregs of society that you don’t want to step outside with your luggage for fear of a mugging. Take the Greyhound station in Atlanta. When you pull up to drop off a passenger, there are often groups of hustlers and crack dealers , or more likely crack users, waiting to bum rush you and get a few dollars for the wonderful job of guarding your car for that they will do for you. Atlanta is as bad ias it gets, and I would rather spend more dough and fly out of the airport than ever set foot in that hellhole again.
Reno, Nevada, isn’t as bad as that. While there are a few distractions as you step outside, mostly hookers heading past on their way to the busier areas, and a few homeless,
I didn’t feel quite as threatened as I did in Atlanta, despite the fact the Reno police don’t seem to do much in the way of policing the area around the place. I slept on a park last night a block and a half from the buses and had to step over sleeping homeless men.
Salt Lake City, on the other hand, was crowded, full of shady looking people of both genders, and is in a locale that makes Flint, Michigan look like a thriving Metropolis. Several blocks away though the prosperity kicks in.
I spoke to a fellow passenger yesterday about this situation. He agreed with me, concluding that he hoped to high Heaven that someone, some day, starts a bus company to compete with Greyhound, and that they keep their stations clean and safe. He just prays to God for that to happen.
Amen, brother. Amen.

Reno, where dreamers dream. And dream. And dream

Daytime in Reno, and a look at the place in the light. It looks much cleaner, is teeming with a different blend of characters, although a few faces looked familiar, and was generally less intimidating.
Still, the place seems to be a place for dreamers and those with nothing left to lose. As Dylan said, “When you aint got nothing you got nothing to lose. You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.“
Case in point: Nancy. Nancy was loitering around the entrance to the McDonald’s that I went into last night, on 2nd Street. She was looking like she might have been a bit intoxicated last night, and when I walked past the McDonalds this morning, she was there, but dressed differently. I decided to speak to her. I stopped, leaned against the wall and just casually asked her if I had seen her there last night. She avowed that I had, but that she had gone to get her hair fixed. While telling me this, she spun around to show me where her hair had been damaged in the back by over-processing. The turning around caused her to list to one side and I reached out to catch her if she fell. She said that she was NOT drunk, but was on medication. She didn’t smell drunk, so I took her at her word. She looked at my cart and advised me that the bike police would probably stop me and ask me what I was doing. I asked her why, and she told me that they would say that I could possibly grab my air mattress off the cart, where it is strapped down, and hit someone over the head with it. I laughed, but she said that she saw a guy get hit over the head with a bottle and get knocked unconscious. I had no reason whatsoever to think she was lying.
I asked her if she was a “working girl” (colloquialism for hooker), and she told me that she used to be “legal” (Nevada allows prostitution under strict conditions, including frequent medical exams) but that she now had stopped, and was on disability. She related how she used to tell her clients to look out for the illegal girls, because “They carry weapons, want your wallet, and once they get your information, won’t leave you alone.”
Out of nowhere she volunteered that she was raised as a Catholic. However, she said, she didn’t remember being baptized. I told her that she would have been an infant and wouldn’t remember that far back anyway. She said that she remembered her father walking into her bedroom while she was in the bassinet (I must say that I thought she was going to tell me that he molested her) and asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said that she probably replied “Goo goo gaga or something. “
Nancy worked at a bowling alley for a few years and is now disabled. She’s been claen and sober for three years now and was broke when I spoke to her. I had no cash to give her but she said it was okay, that I seemed interesting and that she wished me well on my trip. I took a photo of her and we parted. She walked away, looking for a few dollars to get breakfast, having spent the last of her money on her hair.
I walked up the street, clicking away, until I came to the Arch Wedding Chapel, a clean looking well lit hole in the wall where more dreams are fulfilled, in the cheesiest possible setting. I was going to ask the proprietor about his business, but when I walked in the only people in sight were a coupke who had just gotten married. The groom was a rotund older man in a wheelchair, wearing a white suit and a big hat. The bride a middle aged, very plain looking woman in a wedding dress and hat. They had just gotten hitched in the back of the “chapel”. I congratulated them, and asked if I might get them to pose for a picture. That was when the man spoke, in English filtered through a very thick French accent. “Speak more slowly please,” he said. I repeated myself, but he still did not understand. His new bride leaned over and told him, in perfect English (she was Amercian) what I wanted. He leaned back in his wheelchair, waved me off and said, “Oh, no no no.”
The proprietor came out and handed the couple some papers to sign, making it all official. While they signed, he and I talked about the marriage business for a moment. As we were talking I must admit I snapped a few surreptitious shots of the couple. I will not be deterred! The proprietor had little to say, so I left, and waited outside, where a limo was parked to take the new couple to their honeymoon destination, although the groom was so large and unhealthy that the honeymoon night might have to be spent in intensive care. I got the sense that the entire charade was for a green card for him and a few grand for her, but who knows? As the proprietor helped load the large groom into the limo while the bride stood by holding her new hubby’s cane, he looked over at me and gave me a smile and a wink, as if to say, “Oh boy, another pair of losers just made me richer.”
Or, maybe his smile was just another façade like so many others I had seen here, where dreams are just that. The pawnshops are plentiful, and stocked full of the things people once held dear, but not dear enough to stop them from trading them in for a few bucks and another chance to throw their hard earned cash at these sleazy bastards who make this city what it is: a Boulevard of broken dreams.
I want to be able to say something nice about Reno. So I will. The park that is built on both sides of the Truckee River is beautiful, clean and has a lot to offer the young people who use it. Other than that, I saw nothing much to make me want to come back here.

Mormonland

It isn’t hard to tell that there is something wholesome and clean cut about Salt Lake City, Utah. After all, it is the epicenter of the Mormon religion, the mecca, if you will, for neatly dressed men and women with permanent smiles and helpful attitudes.
Founded on a dubious premise, by a man named Joseph Smith, the Mormon religion has been around for almost 200 years. After Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered in 1844 by a mob who was accusing them of treason, the church was taken over by Brigham Young, and eventually, after locating in Illinois and Nebraska, they settled down in Salt Lake City, Utah, where they have basically taken over the joint.
Now, as a non religious person, I have noted many times that I still feel that churches, and their members, do wonderful works, and have a tremendously positive influence on young, and older people. And it certainly seems to be the case in Salt Lake City. As I ventured inside Temple Square, in the shadow of the great and masterful piece of architecture that is the Mormon temple, I was amazed at how clean, well-manicured and welcoming it was. And that was just the landscaping. The people were even more so. I spoke to several of them, including guys doing the lawnmowing and sidewalk sweeping, and they all seemed to be as knowledgeable about the history the church and were more than happy to share their knowledge. I listened with an open mind.
They told me that the church is based on the idea of family, and that marriage between a man and a woman is not just for “til death do them part”, but for all eternity. Im not going to get into all the technical aspects of the church here—plenty has been written about it already---but to the casual observer, it seems like a nice enough premise and a good way to live your life. That said, there coincidently happened to be a column in a local paper by a gay man who grew up a Mormon and was basically run out of town for his lifestyle, which, by the way, he did not choose, and fought for years, until he couldn’t help but accept the fact that he was indeed gay. The church considers homosexuality to be anathema, evidence of the devil’s work on earth, and an affront to God. Yet, as the man wrote in his piece, he learned growing up that there were certain codes that gays used, and he soon learned that many many of the churches members, the strict, diehard members, were closeted, and would often cruise the local mall and parks looking for the quick contact with other men. He got to know them and realized that there was a lot of hypocrisy there, just as in every other religion.
But Im not here to slam the Mormon church, or churches in general. I am here to say that I was treated very well, even allowed/encouraged to bring my cart up to the observation deck of the church’s office building, where I was given a first class view, and tour, of the city below, an oasis in the desert. People were quick to answer any questions I had and even more quick to tell me exactly which sites I should visit if time permitted. I got to see the 21000 seat conference center, the Tabernacle, where the famous Choir performs, and much more, in just a couple of hours, before I had to get back on the bus fo r a trip to that exact opposite of the Mormon Church, that den if skin and iniquity, Reno , Nevada.

Reno...Hell no.

Reno, Nevada. The self proclaimed Biggest Little City in the World.
Its not small enough for me, and from what I can see of it as a city, it appears to be a case of “just let people do what they will” and it doesnt matter what they do as along as they don’t hold up a liquor store.
Arriving yesterday, after the sun went down but in that state of twilight and dusk that makes everything look clean, I had no idea where to go. I had ridden the bus for almost 18 hours to get here, forgoing Utah, and Nevada for the simple reason that I want to stay alive. I was tired and hungry and more than a little sore from sitting.
I left the bus depot, looking for a safe place to sleep. After quite a search, and after watching about a hundred different teenagers walking and running around through a nice park with ivy covered tennis courts, I decided to make a go of a few hours sleep in the park. I saw a mens restroom that was open. I went in and there was a body, alive but sleeping, on the floor. I left. I walked around to one of the tennis courts, and almost tripped over another body, alive but sleeping. I left and found another tennis court section that was empty. I set up my sleeping bag and managed to get a decent nights sleep, despite a number of people walking past me in the night. You learn to sleep lightly when out on the road, and any little sound will rouse you but you learn to go back to sleep fairly quickly.
Prior to the park, I had ventured out onto “the strip”, as it is known. Exactly what I expected to find: teenaged hookers, drugged out dudes doing kung fu moves to their own reflections in windows, groups of young people, all amid the bright lights of faded casinos and old sleazy motels and flashing lights from police cars and ambulances, with their attendant noises. Not a pretty picture in general but for a tired guy pushing a converted baby stroller loaded with his “stuff” and looking for a safe place to park it for the night, this sure was a far cry from Kansas, baby. A far cry.
One lighter note though: I walked a black gentleman, skinny from years on the streets. He commented something to me as I passed. I didn’t hear any threat in his tone and so asked him to repeat what he said.
He nodded at my cart, and said, “I said, ‘Unless you invented that rig yourself, it must be military grade.’” I laughed, and replied, “No, its actually well constructed baby stroller grade.” We both laughed and I kept walking. I passed the shopping cart, grocery store grade, that he was using.
Seriously, Reno has no appeal to me at all. After months and months of walking through small town America and meeting small town and very real Americans, places like this hold about as much appeal to me as a sore tooth. Maybe a sore tooth is a better option, now that I think about it.

Just another sad story.

The old man sat across from me on the bus. He was about 70 years old, to my eyes, but might have well been younger. The white and very full beard that covered his thin face hid a lot of the truth, while speaking volumes of its own truth. The man slumped forward, leaned against the window and seemed to fall asleep in minutes. Forty minutes later we pulled into Grand Junction, Colorado, the sprawling city near the northwest corner of Colorado. A short layover while a late bus brought more passengers. The old man got off. I did not see where the walker came from but I did see the tube full of yellow urine snaking out from his pants and the half full bag loosely and tenuously strapped to his leg. He wore decent jeans and a button down long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap.
He seemed to be a little confused once he got off the bus. I asked him if he needed any assistance and he politely declined.
Across the street from the depot is a bronze statue of a boy hanging onto a rope, as if at a swimming hole. There is a pedestal under the statue with room enough for someone to sit. The old man walked his walker over to it and sat in the shadows. I watched him from a distance and then decided to go over and make a little attempt at conversation.
“Do you live here, if I may ask?’
“No, I don’t live anywhere. I was living in Albuquerque, but I had to get the hell out of there.”
“Ive never been there.”
“You don’t want to go there---it’s a hellhole of a place.”
He started to put on a jacket. I asked him if someone was coming for him. He said that he would have to make a call but that someone would probably get him in the morning. It was now midnight, and it was not a very good section of town.
His old arms couldn’t reach to get into the sleeves of his coat. I helped him put each arm in and straightened his collar after he said that he preferred it down.
“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” I asked, not knowing what I would do if he said that he wasn’t.
“Ill be fine”
“Okay then, take care of yourself.” I watched as he lit a cigarette. I briefly thought of making a joke about him quitting smoking. But then I realized, as I looked at the walker, and the tube with the urine bag attached, and the snot that had appeared in his mustache, and the way that he sat slumped over, that the cigarette was probably the only thing that gave him a moment’s pleasure, and I said nothing, except good night and take care.
I got back on the bus, found my seat and sat down. I looked out the window at where the old man was sitting. He was gone.