sagebrush salvation—

From British Columbia to Baja while veering eastward to the Front Range of Colorado is where the lions share of my last five decades have been spent outbound for dream catching and inbound to set my burdens of the road down for a spell. 

A yearlong stint with the legendary Royal Lichtenstein Circus in 1974 sent me outbound by suitcase, backpack and sleeping bag on my first national tour. For the first time in my impressionable life I was able to measure three thousand miles one way coast to coast by pain and impatience. 

Life in California since has grown packed tight, growing from 20 to near 40 million people. My home-ground is a place of many people where such destinations as Elko, Nevada are home to few. There is a slimmer high desert community found six hours east of Reno. Here is a brothel bustling mining town. If you can’t find a free consensual pattycakes player you might reach into your wallet and for a fee swap a near innocent professional “tug” provided by a licensed sexual healer. Need more than a tug, they have a menu, a man can buy most anything if he can afford the extravagance. An off-duty miner often finds a shot of whiskey and beer not always quenching his every thirst.

Sunday you can scrub your soul with Elko’s congregates at one of the many fine churches hoping to help with your moral compass, not that I’m judging how you might need a gardener, handyman or professional down at the local brothel to help keep your life pointed toward what a working man think’s best to do with his paycheck. I don’t believe Nevadan’s put much stock in judging how a neighbor maintains regular order somewhat south of their rodeo belt buckle. The polygamists east in Utah ain’t got nothing on folk in Nevada. The Great Basin Desert is a place where sexuality’s smorgasbord stand cheek to jowl full of famished souls. Marriage and divorce here are as thick as pinion and juniper.

More notes on wandering. You’ll want to fill your water jugs, fill your cupboards with food, and refrigerate your perishables prior to untethering into the Great Basin Desert for that overdue spell of loneliness. By now I’ve poked in and about most of the Ruby Mountains. I have swilled beer with local ranchers in the one building town, post office and saloon found off the side of the road in Jiggs, biked the paths along the Ruby Lake Marshes, and curled up on my bunk along the hundreds of dirt tracks in the region where serenaded by coyote and their best friend and running partners the Jack Rabbit. 

There is something an urban Californian requires from being in such proximity to the frenzy of our nation’s most populous state. And much of those matters we deem a must are all waiting east in the desolate valleys of Nevada.

Pushing off to sail from San Francisco to the Santa Catalina Islands for a summer offers an experience equal in meditative loneliness and medicinal emptiness. A small sailboat on a boundless Pacific Ocean speaks the same lonesome language. While sardines were still caught in Monterey so too were fishermen all too ready come Friday to get ashore and spend freely at the nearby saloons and brothels of the era. While not officially sanctioned the city fathers understood the value of these services and maintain the peace of the place looked the other way. This seemed to work until the sardines were fished out, then came change and with a new economy away went the ladies that had helped maintain the libidinous light of hope. Even Steinbeck had witnessed enough and felt it had come time to leave.

All expeditions, large or least, still tax purse and calendar. You’ll need to know where to invest your time. To know where your best returns will be found it is asked that you know something of what in this moment you need to know about how you understand your stubborn self. I’m sure the saloon patrons at Gino and Carlos in San Francisco’s North Beach District are sure they ought to do something about the fix their rutted habit patterns have made of their lives. It all begins with doodles on a cocktail napkin, a phone call south to long lost friends that never returned from their visit to San Felipe in Baja Sur. Sometimes you just pick up and go and never come back. The key isn’t the going, it is being sure you leave nothing you will regret. Be sure to have squared your tab with the bartender and leave him a bit more. San Francisco’s barkeeps need every extra bit of help your threadbare pockets can afford to give. Knowing you are square with those that have helped hold you up against the trials of your near sober life will be a benefit while daydreaming and driving.

The key to success begins and ends with having a properly prepared expeditionary vehicle. It need not be expensive. The key is that it is reliable. You don’t want or need to be worried about getting there or back. I have come close to loading only what I use and closer still to having a book, tool, hat or jacket that only has gotten in my way. Perfection and packing are not common to those burdened by want to wander.

One June traveling as a spartan will only get you so far. Some decades back I’d entered British Columbia and found myself frozen to the bone one. Fingering through my mileage logbook it appears to be a trip I took back in the late 80’s. My heavy coat, gloves and knit cap I had left behind. Never let a hot day dissuade you from believing that there will not come another cold day. No mam, you do not want to take off on anything resembling an adventure without considering the full force of weather.

This thing called wanderlust requires consideration, even when it doesn’t work too well if when outfitted you are too encumbered. Figure a whistle, bell and can of bear spray repellent will do a lot of odd jobs, then again maybe another round at Gino and Carlo’s might fix the whole stinking mess. You don’t have to go. You may not find there is neither the will or the funds necessary, there is plenty of loneliness found in a crowd of patrons that are not interested in your particular flavor of longing. You just need another Rainer ale, as Charles McCabe described the low priced quality beverage, the one-time New York Giant’s sports writer named the ale the Green-Death and as soon as his work for the day was complete he immediately washed the grime and grit off and away from his wit and wisdom.  Another round of Green Death McCabe believed won’t shorten a man’s life by much, and how much more life does one man really need? If that can of Green Death didn’t quite fix what you think might be broken lean into the project buy a round for the man or woman seated next to you and see if you can pry open the stranger. A rot gut low priced rock bottom top quality elixir just might work.

I generally have found by the time I’ve spotted sagebrush along a two-lane on the Eastern Sierra slopes that I’ve made my way to the start of where I can begin to quinch my want for nothing. The real trick is not to get too picky or to be fooled into pressing further on than is necessary. A dirt track suited for your rig can often get you tucked into nowhere in less time or trouble than is imagined. It might be there is a rise or dip that provides the needed screening from almost anything bothersome. 

With any kind of luck, rotten or not, you’ll maybe find a pullout waiting, an old pile of rocks that resemble a fire ring and a pile of worn half burned logs ready for lighting come sundown. Dusk while I am fond of most of what this edge of the day has to offer is when you may need to make peace with the unwanted arrival of biting bugs. They are only out until you go in, most will want to join you. It is there that their fate is decided. Only one of the two of the living creatures in this fix will survive. So far that has turned out in my favor. I take no pity on pestilence dedicated to biting and stinging. They have made their choice and will live and die according to Darwin’s survival of the swiftest.

Once you’ve run through your food, sunscreen and allotted rations of whiskey you may consider where you may reprovision. From there depending on your ambitions you could drive a mile or a day to where next feels best. The whole enterprise is to do with being sure to finish what you have gone out there to hoping to fix. You will want to feel the urge to turn around and chase the sunset west, to set yourself back on your home-ground, to wake in the peaceful repose of your own bed with the sun and view out on your horizon until it begins once more to call out and asks of you what cannot be answered from where you have been potted and planted for far too long. After years as a showman living a fixed life will eat on a man. Eventually you’ll need to get up and go. 

This will go on for some decades. If you are paying attention the details will add up and come to matter, it will mean you’ve spent your time allotment here when not putting your shoulder into your work adding to the slothful benefits that come from setting down all that doing and fixing to apply the best hours of the day to do nothing. Emptiness is near and dear to my heart. It is a requirement and prevents the demon of congestion from pressing in and choking out of me what my soul runs from. 

Sometimes I’ve been advised that my wife and I might best go get a room, better still how about a whole chunk of valley, something empty and far off, some place you can make all your own. That’s how we go about doing things out here. Getting away from it all is a requirement. I mean there it sits all worn by time, weather and wonder. You’ll want to go on a bit further and investigate its mystery. You’ll want all that horizon and landscape to help frame your scrawny little denim covered bum into perspective. You’ll want to put down any unnecessary inflated sense of self and let your sorry petty-minded worries melt away like an ice cube you’ve used for purely medicinal purposes to cool the fires of the rye, bitters and red vermouth. These achievements can be yours or not, a glass of good water can keep you upright if you don’t much care to be tilted. Take your own sweet time, there is no reason to hurry or worry. All that nothing has to offer is all too willing to wait until your soul is ready.