“Intolerance and fear/Ignorance and lies/It’s the same old same old I heard a million times” – Dave Alvin, “Ashgrove”, 2004*, written during an earlier massively disingenuous warmongering administration. But too much news, too much, too much…we were home as it warmed, digging

the dogs digging while watching  harriers dive bombing their invisible-no-matter-how-hard-

one-looks nest somewhere in the reeds at the lower pond, bringing rodents for their unseen

offspring; scenes around the lunchpond…with the

shade structure Linda built before there was any shade at all and the

leveled platform awaiting surfacing and eventually “Valley Fog.”

An other lunch,

a color test and

another day’s end…long summer days,

the Solstice soon to come.

*”Ashgrove”, the album, was soundtrack for a memorable trip Lefty [a small speckled heelerish

dog rescued from an Owyhee coyote trap two years prior] and I took in 2004 onto, among other places, the YP Desert a year after I was out there attempting to revisit the scene of Dave Rumsey’s and my Dickshooter Walkout, frustrated by the new privatized corporate ranch culture’s dedication to keeping public lands inaccessible to the public, i.e. me, so as a result I never did get onto the ridge, where 25 years previous the rear wheel of my ’64 Willys froze up so solidly Dave and I had to walk, an experience he later claimed [at least in Andrea Gatopoulos’ “A Stranger Quest”] to have inspired the creation of one of the world’s most important historical map collections. That next year, with the Ashgrove CD [“Everett Ruess” being of particular resonance**] and a two year old Tundra, Lefty and I made our way and several discoveries. The canyon upstream from Wiley Ranch, where Dave and I blundered across the waist deep Owyhee on our way to the gasline pumping station and fortuitous rescue after a night in the open and which I’d gone down to on the 25th anniversary, river low enough to step across on the rocks, was of particular interest in yet another year of low water. One of many, these decades…but anyway, down the slope we went to the Wiley which under the protection of the corporate cowboys is a total ruin as opposed to being fully stocked and open in ’78 as was then the custom of the country and headed upstream, cutting goosenecks in the dry washes of former channels.  I’ll ever remember Lefty’s deep ecstatic sigh as he plunged into the water after a particularly long traverse on our way to discover that the track*** I’d hoped to find had the wheel not locked up on that chilly long ago morning actually still existed, coming off the plateau just below Battle Creek.

My log of the slides from the trip, reel 55;  “November 2004. Steens Mountain, cattle tank camp on the Alvord desert, McDermitt “gas’ station, Owyhee roads, Red Tank,

Drummond Basin trailer, 5 Bar, main canyon, Drummond, Sacramento “caves”,

360 from watertank, road back, Star Ranch, descent to 45, camp on YP desert,

investigation with Lefty of old crossing and upstream to where road came down [and formerly crossed]…where Lefty breathed a deep sigh coming into the water…night on the plateaus, pumping station, Nevada line camp, crossing the south fork, Devil’s Corral, another Cathcart Place, across the Alvord, Bog, Duferrena camp…Winnemucca [not shown], High Road to Sulphur [still cars there then], Black Rock Hots, Wall, down de desert with a small speckled dog.”]

Were I in Benicia I’d go back into that [as well as the previous trip, reel 52; “…trip out; BRD and hills beyond as far as Catlow Valley [roads good, bad and worse], Blitzen, Hot Springs, lakes above Plush, Duferrena, Owyhee, Star ranch, looking for Dickshooter [and running in to unfriendliness in Idaho], south of the river…bad roads, lava, found where we crossed 25 years before; back via Coyote Hole, 45 Ranch, slept on plateau, left at dawn. Star Ranch, Wild Bill’s Flat, Capitol Peak, Radar [still viable…].Wall, Ed Groenendyke and Sara on the Smoke Creek…” and reel 8, October 1978 – “BLM in ’64 Willys outside of Gerlach, October 1978; Fly Ranch HS, Hwy 34, Three Fork…uncertain on the Owyhee. The Stash [definitive picture], site of Dickshooter Ridge breakdown, walking out; pipeline pumping station where maintenance crew picked us up.  DR surveying Eagleville real estate a mere three days later, Duck Flat and…less than a week…London.  Then Nepal; bus to trail to Namche Bazar and beyond,…MKM with porter Mingma, glacial lakes, etc”], scan more pictures and expand the narrative.  Maybe later; more than enough for now.

**”God is here in the canyons/ With the rattlesnakes and the piñon pines.” [see map]

***A track depicted on the 1957 [surveyed 1947]1:250,000 USGS Jordan Valley topo we were navigating by at the time but doesn’t exist on my later aptly named 1989 Riddle 1;100,000 metric although the latter does identify Dickshooter Ridge and creek. Neither show the Wiley “ranch” however; for that one needs a Benchmark Atlas [p. 81, 2005]