We've been off the trail now for about two days. It is Tuesday morning and Eliza and I are sitting out on the sidewalk, drinking a good strong cup of joe at the Looney Bean Coffee Roasting Co. is Bishop, CA, reading yesterday's LA Times.
We hitch-hiked the 60 miles north on rt 395 from Lone Pine yesterday morning, catching a first ride past the 1940s Manzanar Japanese internment facility and on to Independence with a guy who works up in the Whitney Portal (in recreational resource management?), then thumbing an easy second up through Big Pine, past the access route to the ancient Bristlecone Forest and on into Bishop.
Bishop reminds me a little of towns like Olympia, WA and Arcada, CA. It's small, kind of touristy, full of restaurants, book stores, outdoor gear outfitters, coffee shops. One things they seem to lack here is a good brewery, which is a shame, but there is a large city park where we were able to sleep comfortably, hidden behind some cottonwoods last night, complete with softball fields, a skateboarding park, a full flowing creek, ducks.
We've been crashing around town the past few nights now -- under cover of roadside brushes, back behind the public parks, one night we even slept out in some second-story wooden horse corral stand -- like a tree fort almost, but without the tree. Sleeping in these odd places, walking the streets with a pack all day is quite a bit more exhausting than hiking and sleeping out in the wilderness every night. There is the obvious fact that walking on roads, baking under the sun, waiting for and feeling the grating rushes of traffic, it is smply a much lss hospitale environment. In the woods, you can sit wherever you please. You can eat lunch, take a nap, poop, whatever, wherever you please. In town, there are so many dumb little things to worry about, hard to remember things, like don't walk into traffic and don't pee in the corner behind the juke-box at the pizza joint.
And everything is different at night. There's a sinister sense of uncertainty which hangs around under the streetlights at night in these little towns. I generally sleep just fine, but waking up in the middle of the night, in a place where you may not be all that welcome, it can be difficult to sink back into slumber. The most benign, peaceful padding of little rodentian foot steps in the grass is transformed in the diffused, half-lit, town-spooked greyness into the most diabolical, the most menacing, meanest man foot steps coming to finish us off, to drag us into his van and throw us down into a cellar in the woods, to shoot first and ask questions later. Even a local cop, one of these small town Dicks who've got it out for those with alternative lifestyles around the world . . .
Last night, fortunately, we both slept soundly right through the night and into morning.
The sun is coming up hot and strong already, still not even 7am. The busy main thoroughfare is crashing and loud with early commercial traffic. The coffee is good, dark roasted, strong. The music is too loud though -- crap pop hard rock. Save me! whines the heart broken, spoiled surfer boy behind the mic. You said it buddy.
***
Later today now. We hitched back to Lone Pine over the course of an hour and a half, three rides. The first was a guy in his early thirties maybe, in the car dealer business, I believe. He took us to Big Pine, just 15 miles south of Bishop. Then from there, we were picked up by a mother and daughter who loaded up the junk out of their backseat for us and didn't say but two words for the duration of the 30 mile ride to Independence. Finally a mother, son duo took us the last 15 miles to Lone Pine. The young guy in the passenger seat wore a black cowboy hat and pushed in a Grateful Dead CD as we started moving again. He climbs Whitney every year, makes kind of a tradition out of it. This year he might skip it though. His mother pointed out a section off to the west of the highway where tree Elk herd often graze and then flew off the handle when the car in front of us tapped its brakes -- one of those warning taps that means, watch it you're on my ass, buddy, which we definitely were. "Get off the goddamn road, man!" she screamed. "Drive it or park it!" Her son grumbled, embarrassed, "Calm down, Mom. What you in such a hurry for anyway?" This road, rt 395, we had already been told, is notorious for its accidents. We were glad to get out in Lone Pine and check in at the Dow Villa hotel where we are waiting now for my mother and her cousin Kathy to arrive from LA.
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