Searching for the Corner, Not Vagrancy

Pointed east and just through an open gate in a fence line I met a white pickup truck. Or parts of it were white showing through a gray-brown coat of dust. It was a Pinto looking truck - not like the Ford model but like the spotted horse model. All the dents, and there were many, had half-moons of dust and rust traced the upper boundary. The drivers'-side window cranked down and two eyes under the bill of a 400-year-old ball cap looked me over.

"You lost?"

And that's how I met the vagrant of Texas Spring. I will call him Larry here, although that isn't the name he gave after we talked for some time back at his camp. Larry was living off the grid and I had to respect that effort. He wasn't totally off the grid as he worked for the county from time to time, grading the rock/dirt roads that meandered through the borderlands and plowing snow off the public routes that eventually ended at somebody's ranch. He had a '58 trailer home - 1958, not 58 foot - squatting at the other end of the ruts by a spring. There was no power or phone line "and no god damn celler phone, either" I learned. No, Larry lived unconnected, thank you. He did have a diesel generator, which he used sparingly to recharge the batteries in his shortwave radio or for other unnamed emergencies.

He drove into Wells "at regular intervals" to pick up any mail sent his way care of General Delivery. The short wave and experience told him when to report for road patrol duty at the county. Scattered ranchers, Sheriffs Deputies and BLM folks turned a blind eye to his minor poaching. "I get along pretty good," he said.

Bank account, credit cards?

"Cash."

What about paychecks?

"Anybody will cash mine out."

TV, internet, Email?

"Not interested."

Jail?

"Some."

Sex? (Now I admit I did not asked Larry directly about his sexual habits. It came up in conversation more gradually and in pieces.)

"I've got some friends. Girl friends. Otherwise, I can get by."

Larry was not the Nevada edition of the Unabomber . He wasn't, it turned out, a great reader, not a great writer. He read some Louis Lamour and liked Max Evans. Larry had even read Evans', The Mountain of Gold, and remembered it. But he also read local history and auto mechanics, stuff he said he needed to know about. He had some political opinions but he was not the radical you might expect for a loner of his quality.

"I'm not particularly obsessive about any one thing. I smoke a little, watch the sky if it's good weather. I've got chores. Things tend to fall apart rather than the other way around so I keep busy."

Larry gave me what turned out to be very good directions and I headed out of his camp still intent on finding the corner I was looking for. When I was about 200 yards away I turned around and looked back. Larry was leaning against the side of his trailer with his arms crossed. He waved.

Searching for the Corner, Diamondfield Jack

Edward Abbey loved to make word songs from map names. One chapter in Desert Solitaire comes to mind in particular partly because Abbey titled the chapter "Tukuhnikivats," which became a mantra for me during rough times, but which at this date also resonates because that area around the Sierra La Sal contains many of the gas and oil leases the Bush Administration will auction off as it gives the finger to us all in its waning days. Abbey's desert is the red rock of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks where the human habitation is the biblically referenced Moab.

Abbey gives attribution and credit to the folk poetry of the pioneers and then goes on for 17 paragraphs of assigned names, the imprimatur of the newest conquerors, the labels of ownership like those new names given to Israelites by the conquering Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. Like Nebuchadnezzar, the pioneers were renaming, not naming; claiming ownership from a soon-to-be-displaced population.

And so it is for the landforms of Nevada. Maps of Elko county hold precious few of the ancient names and of the pioneer replacements, too many are bland cliches: Fivemile Gulch, Cedar Mountain, Bald Mountain, Rocky Peak. So when your searching fingertip traces its way across Deadline Ridge your eyes swing up from the map and out onto the landscape. The ridge is a noticeable 400 foot uptick from the surrounding scrubland desert. It runs more-or-less north and south with one or two draws cleaving its flank. The California Trail swings to the south of it, probably more in deference to the water of Goose Creek than to its elevation. Why Deadline Ridge?

It could be a knot on the map string of trail progress, a point to reach by a certain time. Failure to do so might signal coming trouble in the high passes of the Sierras ahead, a backward-looking waymark to future Donner Party candidates? Something to look into.

Some part of the ridge's story is tied to the 1890's, after the railroad made wagon travel on the California Trail unneccesary. Deadline Ridge, it turns out, was the boundary between sheep herders and cattle ranchers. Sheep to the east, cattle to the west of the ridge was the gentleman's agreement between the two factions, and at least one infamous western "character" was hired to make sure the agreement was kept. Diamondfield Jack Davis unfortunately bragged about earning $150 a month shooting sheep herders around the time a double murder was being investigated involving just that. He was eventually caught, tried and convicted of those murders, but his story doesn't end there.

Diamondfield Jack was tried in 1897 in the courthouse in Albion, Idaho, a borderland town near where I went to high school. He watched his gallows being built there but the day before he was slated to be hung he was granted a reprieve on the basis of confessions from two other men who had confessed to the murders but were found innocent of the charges. Then the Idaho Legislature said all executions had to be performed in Boise at the State Penitentiary, so Jack, still under a death sentence, was transferred to Boise. That was in February 1899. By December the Idaho State Supreme Court overruled the legislature and returned Jack for execution on July 3, 1901. But Jack had friends in high places. That death sentence was delayed and the sheriff only found out three hours before the execution was scheduled.

Jack was shipped back to the state pen to serve a life sentence but received a pardon in 1902, moved back to Nevada, made a fortune there in mining and lost it. He finally was killed, in Las Vegas in 1949 - by a taxi cab. Part of Diamondfield Jack's story was featured in season 12, episode four of Death Valley Days on October 1, 1963. He was played by Frank Sutton, the actor who played the nemesis sergeant of Gomer Pyle.

Jack also was remembered by the USGS. Diamond Field Jack Wash quad is a topographic map in Nevada, located at latitude - longitude/GPS coordinates N 39.18742 and W -118.56347 to the north of the Walker River Indian Reservation and quite a ways south and west of where I'm looking at Deadline Ridge.

David Grover wrote a book about Jack subtitled, A Study in Frontier Justice, and has a little different take on Jack's innocence. He also brings in the anti-Mormon and the cattle v. sheep sentiments of the times.

Deadline Ridge. I'll leave the connections to you.

Searching for the Corner, Wild Horses

August 15, 2008

Elko County, Nevada, had 1,505 wild horses in 2003, by count of the Bureau of Land Management. Wild horses are a pain in the ass to modern ranch outfits and together with wild burros were even legislated against back in 1971 in something called the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. The picture to the right is not my own but was taken by BLM Wild Horse Specialist Shawna Richardson to illustrate the 2003 Elko Resource Management Plan for the four herd areas (HAs) recognized in the county: Little Humboldt, Rock Creek, Owyhee and Diamond Hills. These hosses don't know it but the BLM has a population control program in place.

The official HAs were all west and south of where I now was but straight ahead of me appeared a herd of about sixteen horses and no fence in sight. Their group photo is on the BorderWalking sister blog. They didn't look wild but they were skittish and wouldn't let me close enough to see whether they were shod or showed evidence of having been in the past so I can't say if they were a wild bunch or a domesticated string on holiday. What I can say is you could almost believe in God when you run across horses like these where the sky touches the horizon with no sign of intelligent life, including your own, in any direction.

This will offend the horse people among us but even they will eventually admit the truth that horses are not particularly smart (especially so when they stop defensively recounting the handful of examples that demonstrate supposed exceptions). It isn't how smart a horse is that crowds in on your emotions and puts that catch in your throat when you talk about them after they are gone away - either from you or from everybody - for good. More often, in fact, it is some example of particular knotheadedness rendered in graphic detail at length that begins a story of horse love. Some, but definitely a minority, start with a grudging admiration for skills. But here's the deal: Horses are catlike not doglike. Even the best-trained roping or cutting horse does its work aloof from a rider's supposed control. Even in the most synchronous performance between horse and rider, where they act as one unit, one vector of flow, one couple in a dance of motion, the horse keeps a superior presence apart.

Yes, we worked together well in that but only because I allowed it to be so, the horse all but says out loud. Noblesse pouvoir, rather than noblesse oblige, not a noble obligation but a noble power deigned for human use by a being that could as easily crush. I will dance with you because I allow myself to do so. Sadly, as with so many things, humankind has managed to crush, in their turn, submission from some of these animals but I met none of those this day. This day, alone under the sky, I was allowed into the presence of horse.

Searching for the Corner, Badges

Still August 15, 2008

Silence is one aspect of border walking. Or at least a reduction of human-induced noise. Another is aloneness - you don't usually run into many people or critters. But the Nevada borderlands were about to get almost crowded with both.

As I squatted on the knoll measuring the distances a decked out 4WD appeared, coming up the dirt road very slowly in an apparent nod to its accompanying dust cloud. It had a rack of spotlights on top framed by a pair of blue law enforcement flashers, currently off. I stood up and walked over to my truck which was half in and half out of the roadway. When I parked it, there didn't appear to be any traffic to worry about. The big-tired vehicle coming at me had 'Sheriffs Department, Elko County, Nevada' writ big on the side. It pulled in behind my truck and a large, handsome blond woman got out.

"Trouble?"

So we ended up chatting a bit. She was much younger than I first thought, probably late twenties. Her name was Stephanie and her assignment was to cruise the back roads and do law enforcing and Samaritan rescues. That seemed a bit risky for a young woman but remembering details - when she came around her vehicle to greet me she had her hand casually atop her holster and her thumb on the release snap, she had her knees slightly bent and legs spread a little wider than her shoulders, she moved to a position that kept the sun out of her eyes and more in mine, her smile was big and her eyes without fear - I figured she could probably handle herself. She had also undoubtedly already called in my license plate as she approached.

I told her what I was up to and she seemed genuinely interested and helpful. She thought my GPS unit was pretty cool but also cottoned on to its weaknesses. We spread my topographic map on the hood of her vehicle, which brought it pretty near eye level, and she traced some possible routes to the corner.

"But," Deputy Stephanie said, "I don't think there is a road like this shows that goes that close. You may have to walk it." She offered up a couple of more possible routes and then folded up my map and returned it to me. "Good luck, I hope you get there," she said, and climbed back up to her driver's seat perch, turned on the engine and idled around my truck and down the road to the south. I was alone again, but not for long.

Searching for the Corner, Silence

Returning to Nevada, August 15, 2008...

The dust pulled up by the truck is killer stuff. I have to keep some speed up to stay ahead of the engulfing cloud which is a little tricky on a winding dirt road with no shoulders. I am now lost in the maze and have backtracked two or three times to see if I can't find a road that continues east and south. I am stubbornly staying away from using the GPS unit, which is a hand-held model. I want to see if using the topo alone will work. Besides, every time I have to stop to read the GPS or to get away from the truck so the compass won't be affected by the metal the dust settles - on me.

I finally reached a low ridge where the dust wasn't so bad. There was a round-up corral and uninterrupted views in all directions. I got out and took a water bottle and the digital camera. This is where I got the photo of the beef skeleton in the earlier post. I found a small outcrop and sat.

Often in places like this you expect it to be quiet and are surprised by the insect hum or other background environmental noise. I wasn't surprised to learn that you carry some noise with you - that after driving or riding a horse or running or walking it takes a few minutes for your inner ear and nervous system mechanisms to turn off. When that finally happens the low-range noise around you can crescendo in a startling way. So I waited. Nothing.

In Sedona, Arizona, there are people who believe the earth itself makes a noise, a sound you can hear, a vibration that you can even feel in moments like this. In Taos, New Mexico, it has become iconized as the Taos Hum and can be googled as such. Scientists have recently pinned vibrations to the north Pacific in winter and the Atlantic off Brazil in the summer on wave action in the two oceans.

I was hearing and feeling nothing. Then a very faint whistle of far off wind and more silence. Finally, as if some unseen hand was turning the terrestrial volume knob, the insect noise became discernible, then more wind sounds.

I have to check this out. I don't know if I caught a convergence zone in the waves of sound that canceled them out, or if it was a 40-second nap time for living things and the wind. It was a wonder.

Dispensing with guilt

I just finished Andrew Sullivan's Why I Blog piece in the November Atlantic. And I watched his interview video called Your Brain on Blog that is attached to it. The guy is being driven by his blogging addiction. He says he gets a thousand emails a day. He says he can feel the collective breath of his audience waiting for his next every-20 minutes response. He said when he took some time to collect his thoughts his audience thought he was dead, fired, or muzzled.

That is nuts.

There was another Atlantic article in the July/August issue (yes, I do read other magazines and newspapers, and unlike Sarah Palin I can tell you the names). It was by Nicholas Carr and was called, Is Google Making Us Stupid? with a kicker above: What the Internet is doing to our brains. You may have seen it.

This whole project of mine is about telling stories, about combining new media with history, geography -- with trying to see what comes from walking in places not many people walk. Some of the writing needs and does try to employ journalistic standards - facts (such as they are) not opinions. Some doesn't and I've tried to label different approaches so as to not be misleading.

What happens here are pieces of a longer form. Maybe it will fall under a non-fiction heading. It may turn out to be more correctly labeled as creative non-fiction. Either of those are worth aspiring to. What it isn't is thoughts forced up from a mental stew every 20 minutes, cooked or not.

So if and when you visit here know that. You may want to actually look at some of the older posts, knowing how I'm working this. Or not. You might want to flit off somewhere with fresher roadkill.