Just Thinking… and Getting a New Idea

 

 

(Not my front porch)

While at the cabin for a short week I did some thinking about the blog. After fifteen years of continual posting, it is hard to shut down the ideas. It is hard to think about just stopping. It is hard to have ideas that would be rude to share, since Mineral King isn’t open to the public this summer.

Many ideas were flying around my overactive mind: nope, not that; nope, not that one either; nope, better not write that. (“Nope” is the opposite of “yeppers” in my peculiar vernacular.)

Then it came to me that I could write a series about cabin life. I have a lot of experience and thoughts about cabin communities and living simply in a cabin in the mountains. Maybe you, O Gentle Reader (doesn’t that sound quaint?), would be interested in an inside look?

I wouldn’t be talking about the trails, the water, the flowers, the quiet, the beauty, although that would slip in simply due to the location. The goal would be to show you what in the world we do with our time “up the hill”, as almost all people in almost all mountain communities refer to their cabin places.

The posts won’t be five days a week, because there is no internet, electricity, cell service, or even a reliable landline available where I will be spending a great deal of time. If you comment, it might be a few days before I “approve” the comment so that it shows. But at least you’d know I haven’t quit blogging, and you might enjoy a new topic.

Sinkhole on the Mineral King Road

 

Yeah, yeah, I know I said it was rude to talk about Mineral King when it is closed to the public. HOWEVER, something happened that added to the reasons for the closure, and it is so interesting that I decided to break radio silence to show you.

The night before we headed up the hill, we got a call from a cabin neighbor about a giant sinkhole on the road. He said it was very narrow to get past, and quite deep.

We left the house around 7 a.m., and stopped by the maintenance barn to talk to the trail crew (who are all in the front country waiting for a some young peregrine falcons to vacate their nest so the crew can blow up the giant boulder above Lookout Point). The crew was available, so we headed up to the sinkhole.

First stop was at the backhoe, conveniently parked less than a mile below the sinkhole. Road Guy (formerly known as Trail Guy) changed into working clothes, and I followed him in the Botmobile to a wide spot in the road below the hole.

Holy guacamole, (Hole-y guacamole?) that is deep, and as reported, very very narrow to pass by.

The trail crew guys are very strong, and knowledgeable about moving rocks around in a non-random manner.

See the tiny pile of smaller rocks in the bottom of the photo? I schlepped any rock I could find to the guys, because it was fun to “help”. Masonry is a fabulous skill, one I might try in my next life.

It became a community event. People drove up from Silver City and walked down from West Mineral King (also known as Faculty Flat, a mile below the end of the road). One of the guys helped me gather rocks; I pointed out the ones that were too big for me and he obliged.

See that skinny little dude? Very, very strong.

This is Hengst Peak, just to give you an idea of where this road failure was located. We call the area “the Bluffs”, which is above High Bridge.

These guys were very specific about their rock placements. Biggest ones first, and they actually slammed some of them with a sledge hammer to shape them to fit. The idea is as few gaps as possible. Eventually when I brought rocks my instructions were simply to toss them here or there. Finally, the dirt that Road Guy kept bringing went in to bring the hole back up to the level of the road.

See? All fixed. The culvert is plugged, which may be the reason the hole appeared. It is the reason that water is still going over the road.

And those yellow barriers read “CLOSED FOR CLEANING”. Sometimes a crew just has to make do with whatever is available.

Road Guy returned the backhoe, I picked him up, and then he went back and forth over the site with the Botmobile to pack the dirt. 

Fantastic teamwork, incredible timing of available men with excellent skills.

Pressing Pause

 

This photo is from May of 2022.

Mineral King is closed to the public this year. The Silver City Resort will not be accessible. Cabin folks are strongly discouraged from going up the hill.

NOTHING can stop Trail Guy and I from going up the hill to our cabin.

This poses a question: is it wrong to post photos of and chit-chat about a place that people aren’t allowed to go?

I don’t know how to handle this.

In addition, I seem to have accidentally retired. Actually, I don’t want to be retired, so let’s say I am on a sabbatical. I think this means a paid break for the purposes of learning new skills or doing research. However, I don’t earn if I am not working, and I am not researching anything, so “sabbatical” might also be the wrong description. I simply don’t have work right now, an odd situation that I have never encountered in all my years of self-employment as a Central California artist.

I need time to think, and I welcome your thoughts on this odd situation. Meanwhile, I will be pressing pause on my blog for an undetermined amount of time as I examine what might and might not be the appropriate method of blogging about this current phase of life as your Central California artist (and Mineral King reporter).

 

A Trip to Oregon, Chapter 4

 

Perhaps this chapter should be titled “The end of the trip”. I HATE leaving places, whether it is home, or a place I have visited. Am I like Lot’s wife, looking back longingly, lingering in the past? Maybe. But with age and experience comes wisdom (sometimes), and that means I know looking forward is a better approach.

The perfection of the roses, the lack of deer in the yard. . . happy sigh.

We took one last walk the day I left. Each day we walked, I carried my cell phone to keep track of the distance. I think my phone lies. My sister’s step counter always showed a longer distance, and I assure you that we were going the same distance, and she was not walking circles around me.

The phone came in handy for a few photos, one last time of oohing and ahhing over all the beauty, so different from Three Rivers.

This classic is begging to be drawn.

After stopping at Trader Joe’s (because there isn’t one in Tulare County) and Winco (because otherwise I might have had to stop in Visalia on the way home) and Chevron (because I wanted to drive for 9 hours and had to begin with a full tank), I headed south. Another audio book would take me to a suburb of Sacramento, aiming for the house of a dear friend.

Before crossing back into California, I stopped for gas again. (It takes about 4 tanks to go the distance between my home and my sister’s.) I like Oregon’s luxury of not pumping my own gas and having my windshield washed for me. Alas, this law is about to change. 

What I didn’t like was the hideous bug that landed on my arm. I might have squealed a little bit. I heard a woman scream at the next row of gas pumps, and I don’t think it was due to the price of gas or any untoward behavior by the attendant. 

When I was safely inside the pick-’em-up truck, I saw the hideous bug on the windshield. Three of them, actually. It was alarming, but I managed to snap a couple of photos while staying in my lane.

Got another glimpse of Mt. Shasta on the way home.

I made my way to my friend’s house, where she provided a fine welcome. We had much to catch up, having been apart by a month, and we stayed up way too late. The following morning, I got up before she did, snuck out of the house, and was on the road before she woke up. It was only a 5 hour drive, and I was a horse heading for the barn (to quote my Very Wise Dad who had a saying for every occasion).

Thus we end our ongoing saga of a Trip to Oregon. Maybe someday I will get to live there. On the other hand, since I hate leaving places and am never moving again, it isn’t likely.

A Trip to Oregon, Chapter 3

 

 

The day before I left Oregon I had an opportunity to draw with some precious little people. Because this is the world wide web, there will be no photos of those folks. We drew together on two different occasions, but I only thought to take a very few photos on the second session.

Before we began drawing together, one of them sent me this picture, full of eagerness and excitement.

She had a mind for drawing like a great big sponge. We discussed things like outlines, leaving paper color for the brightest item in the drawing, and putting on paper exactly what you see. Then we picked a daisy outside, brought it in, and began drawing from real life. Pretty radical change, eh?

One of these precious little people has a real thing for dinosaurs. He drew one for me, then we discussed ways to make the back legs look as if they were in the back. His birthday was soon, so when his attention span was reached, I drew a dinosaur for him. I didn’t photograph the final version because it included a birthday message, and I protect my little people’s privacy from the world wide web.

This little guy drew a house for me, and then we went outside and I showed him how to draw his grandparents’ house by looking at it. He traced my version, then redrew it on his own.

Another little person learned to draw a football player with a normal sized neck instead of as a pencil-necked-geek.

It was oh so very fun that I didn’t take many photos. . . so absorbed in our tasks that I just forgot about documenting things.

There was also an experiment taking place throughout the day, involving more daisies.

Did you ever put celery in a jar of water with red food dye? Flowers are more fun.

We would check the progress periodically. These three precious little people kept experimenting by moving their daisies into different dyes throughout the day.

All good things (nay, all things, whether good or bad) come to an end. My trip was almost over. With those drawing lessons, I suppose it could have been considered a business trip, but alas, only Fernando gets his miles written off, and he was unable to participate in our adventure.  

Eight New Things Learned in June

 

  1. Mulberries are SWEET. Some friends brought a bowl to church to share, and they were so sweet that my teeth almost started humming.
  2. A gabion basket is a wire mesh cube, perhaps 4x4x4 feet. It gets filled with rocks, and then it serves as a solid piece to built up a road bed or shoulder.
  3. A Foley fork, also called granny fork or a blending fork (because “Foley” is a brand name) is an old-fashioned kitchen tool that some people just cannot be without. There is interesting info about it on this website, called The Baking Wizard. (Nope, I don’t want one—simply found it interesting.)
  4. There is an entire subculture of foragers, with a website called “Falling Fruit“, which maps where there is free stuff for the picking all over the world! The Central Valley’s flyover status is confirmed in that although we feed the world, we do not appear on that map (unless it gets greatly enlarged and you locate an orange or fig tree overlapping a sidewalk in Fresno). I love to glean walnuts and citrus from friends’ groves, have occasionally picked Miner’s Lettuce to add to salads, wished to find the wild berries along the Mineral King Road (but never stopped to look), picked elderberries for jelly, and never hesitated to ask someone with a pomegranate tree if they had extra. Foraging in public spaces in a city sounds very bold.
  5. The price of flat screen televisions has dropped significantly. However, there is catch: you have to pay someone techie to hook it up and teach you how to operate it. (If it was up to me, I would not own one.) Furthermore, there is no way to get rid of “non-smart” teevees. No one wants or needs them, even if they work. (The cable company said it was the teevee, but it turned out to be their cable box that got fried in the 2 power outages and restarts.)
  6. A friend who participates in 12-step programs told me about a list of questions for consideration that she received in one of her meetings. The question that grabbed my attention is one that we all need to ask ourselves in many situations: Why am I talking? (I once heard Rush say “Before you pick up your phone and dial this show, ask yourself the question ‘Does anyone care?'”)
  7. There is a monastery in Dubuque, Iowa, where the monks make caskets. This sounds like a weird thing to learn, but the caskets are beautiful. They provide free caskets to people who have lost a child, and they do not accept orders online, only over the phone. They are called “Trappist Caskets“. I hope none of you need this information anytime soon, but it is an undeniable truth of life that none of us will leave this planet alive (unless Jesus raptures us outta here.)
  8. Have you ever heard of terramation? This is a new alternative to cremation also called “human composting, a process whereby your body is turned into compost and then spread in your garden. It is legal in five states and you can read about it here.

Well. Alrighty then. Ahem. This had a bit too much morbidity. What does it mean? 

Why am I talking?? 

Over and out.

A Trip to Oregon, Chapter 2

 

This is Chapter 2, but perhaps it will only have 2 chapters. As usual, more will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Today’s post is just a few random photos of fun times with Sister and family.

We completed a jigsaw puzzle. Normally I consider these to be a waste of time, but in this case, it is something to do while hanging out and catching up.

I took many scraps of yarn and turned them into a scarf/wrap/hoodie article of clothing for a friend. (It is in progress here.)

We took walks through the neighborhood on curvy streets, where I had difficulty maintaining my sense of direction. This was by far and away my favorite yard. 

Yucca?? In Oregon?? Yeppers.

I don’t get out much in real life, at least in terms of spending time in cities. We had “coffee”, which means overpriced fancy sweetened caffeinated high-calorie beverages at a spacious and noisy place. Every place seemed to be noisy. As I said, I don’t spend time in cities. They are noisy and peopley, but interesting in small doses.

Look at this alleyway!! Is everything prettier in Oregon? Nope. There was a plethora of street people and closed businesses. Sigh.

But it thrills my little country heart to see beautiful architecture.

This is a place that refurbishes used furniture, makes new pieces from wood, and teaches refugees woodworking skills, along with teaching English. It was spacious and noisy, but it was also full of interesting things for sale. Excellent concept for helping folks.

Here is one of their items:

Finally, this piece of rose perfection is in my sister’s own front yard.

 

A Trip to Oregon

 

There is a little bit of important Mineral King news at the bottom of this post.

People say that Oregon is green for a reason, but most of my visits have been sunny. This trip was no exception.

It almost causes me physical pain to leave home, but somehow I was able to pull it off. This is about 15 miles from home, looking through the windshield, remembering Lot’s wife and facing forward, looking ahead to the future, trying to be brave about all I was leaving behind. (A trip is a temporary situation, Central California Artist.)

The great Central Valley of California is so beautiful when the air is clear.

This is heading to Reading. Or perhaps, hedding to Redding.

Once past Redding, Mt. Shasta is visible. Anyone out there remember Shasta soda? The logo on the cans looked just like Mt. Shasta. (Duh.)

Truck Village is always something to look forward to. It is near Weed. (Don’t get your knickers in a twist–ABNER WEED was a man’s name!)

There was a long traffic jam before Weed, and I just didn’t want to stop, so I pushed through to Yreka, stopped for gas, and still felt alert. (Ice cream for dinner helped.) I called my sister to ask how long it would take to get to her place from there. The answer was 4-1/2 hours. Remembering that it was the day with the most daylight of the entire year, and I was heading north, I decided to push on. So, a day of 13 hours of driving, almost two books on CDs, some tunes, a little talk radio, some thinking, some praying, 3 or 4 stops for gas (it is expensive everywhere), some snacking (but I refused to pay $4.49 for a “sharing” size of M&Ms—ARE YOU KIDDING ME??), and no night of poor sleep in some motel with the sounds of traffic, car doors, and strangers banging around with suitcases.

Sister and I did lots of walking. It is a thrill to see the beautiful yards (NO DEER! NO DROUGHT!) with many plants I’ve never seen in bloom.

We also went to a couple of estate sales. This one took the cake.

We visited an arboretum and had fun with a plant identification app on the phone (Picture This, free if you can see the almost invisible “CANCEL” in the upper right corner of the screen each time you open it.)

I attended a celebration of life service for a friend who used to live in Three Rivers. This photo was taken through the window of the pick-’em-up truck (Fernando stayed home) while crossing the Columbia River on the border of Oregon and Washington. That’s Mt. Hood. It looks like Shasta, because that’s just how it is with those volcanoes. 

We also took an afternoon excursion to McMinnville to a store that specializes in olive oil and balsamic vinegars. I lost control. Phenomenal stuff. (I don’t need no stinkin’ Trader Joe’s!)

To be continued tomorrow. . . 

About Mineral King: (CABIN FOLKS, PAY ATTENTION!), the gate code has been changed. CALL AN MKDA BOARD DIRECTOR FOR THE NEW COMBINATION. IT CANNOT BE GIVEN OUT VIA EMAIL, VOICEMAIL OR TEXT.

More Little Painting on Another Big Painting

 

If you have been reading my blog for the past 2 months, you have noticed that I haven’t been doing much in the way of artwork. Something just went silent, not “artist’s block” because I never run out of ideas. What was it? Two things: spring was so beautiful that all I wanted to do was work in the yard, and sales have dropped significantly so I didn’t want to keep building up inventory. (Too much stuff stresses me out, whether it is possessions, noise, items on a calendar, or people at a gathering; please forgive me for referring to people as “stuff”.)

After working on the Yokohl Oak painting, I worked a bit more on the big painting that I was hoping to someday hang in my dining area. It was just sitting quietly on the easel next to the oak tree, patiently waiting for some attention. The heat wasn’t too bad, I had an interesting podcast to listen to, and I had just killed a mosquito. (There is always one.) Why not keep painting?

It felt a little bit too hard, but my experience tells me that putting brush to canvas is the best way to overcome the feeling of inadequacy. So I dabbed a bit at those upper marks to turn them into oranges.

I couldn’t find a paintbrush that would cooperate. All the little ones did that annoying thing of gathering lots of paint but not releasing it. So, I moved into less detailed areas, just defining dark and light clumps, and actually counting the trees that appear in the front to match them with the trees in the photo. This is not because I need to be a Xerox machine; it is because in order to understand how things look, I need to actually LOOK at them. (or at a clear photo)

Getting better, but still lots of work ahead.

I am not in a hurry. This is for me, and I can take as long as I want and be as detailed as I desire. (“It’s my painting and I’ll draw if I want to, draw if I want to, draw if. . . “)

Someday this painting of the areas of Tulare County that I find so beautiful will be completed, Lord willing, and my vision don’t expire. (How many clichés can I butcher here?)

If you came here for Mineral King news and are disappointed, you can check the Mineral King website to see if anything new has been posted.