The purpose of this blog is to create a space to write, think, and share the story of an incredibly special place through the context of my adventures. This place is the greater Alta-Dutch Flat area and the series of ridges from the valley to the summit that is home to I80, the railroad, and what’s left of the emigrant trail that originally brought Europeans west in the 19th century. Why am I writing this blog now? A confluence of reasons swirling together in a vortex of time.
One of these reasons is that I recently stumbled into a writing workshop with the naive intention of improving my professional skills, but instead got hit over the head by a ton of bricks as we investigated the meta-creative process. As I traveled down this path, I realized I am not a bad writer or photographer, and that perhaps I do have something to share with the world. Writing is cathartic and is the OG [that’s original gangsta] way of developing and expressing ideas; I always took this for granted as writing seems so basic these days, but part of this process has been realizing how fundamental and powerful words are. I never considered myself a writer until late, yet when I look back I have written a great deal, including the daily novel I put down via email at work. The cathartic part rang true this summer as I was processing catastrophe trauma as the River Fire took off in Colfax. I am aware enough to acknowledge that I haven’t studied writing in a scholarly manner. An important part of this journey is to improve my writing skills. In fact, if you see anything cringeworthy, email me about it! That’s the only exclamation point I will allow from here on.
This particular location in the Sierras has always been special to me, for many obvious reasons, not the least being natural beauty and familiarity. I have always had a severe adventure bug, driving whatever poor vehicle I had at the time to the furthest possible limit of the infinite complex of forest service roads. I inherited from my dad and uncles a special kind of non-four-wheeling that requires topographic maps and a chainsaw. Where the road ends, the trail begins and I spend an equal amount of time hiking. With these activities comes an onus for respect and reverence for the awesome power of nature, the requirement to only carry enough audacity to get to your destination, but not so much as to hurt oneself or cause undue destruction.
The purpose is adventure in its purist form, not to have all the REI gear, or to have the shiny Jeep with the lights, or especially to demonstrate to the world how badass I am. The purpose is to diminish your ego by comparison to the awesome scale of the mountains, not to feed it. The purpose is to show you as many of these special spots, trails, mining ruins, mountains, roads, and rivers as I can. I, the adventurer who was born here, am still staggered by the shear number of magical locations, the scale of valleys and rivers, and the depth of history and natural history. Many of these areas are often only a few miles from the interstate as the bird flies, but absolutely unknown by 99% of the people who drive by on the way to Tahoe or even who live in the local towns.
Why is this place so magical? I will go into this in the next post, but in summary, it is a convergence of factors: natural history, beauty, geology, adventure, human history, cultural significance and mystery. Perhaps it’s just me, but the environment presents itself in this dreamtime state, often literally throughout my life, but also during waking time. I dream of ditches and canals, the surreal martian landscape of the diggins’, the deep and luscious water-rich gorges, the ghosts of history, and the hydroelectric infrastructure that was born of the hydraulic mining operations. Yep, that last one is a bit weird, but I am obsessed.
There is another source of magic I must pay tribute to. I grew up on Moody Ridge, riding my bike down the ridge until I was old enough that my parents allowed me to take the car – eleven that is – and I would pass by the residence of a distinctly exceptional man. Much of who I am, how I see this place, and why I am writing this now is because of Russell Towle. Russell was nothing short of brilliant and a model for advocacy of public land. He was a model for the modern day renaissance man, if I may go so far. He was blogging before it was a thing, writing about the geology and history of the American River canyon, he was roaming microfiches of The People v. Gold Run Ditch and Mining Co. at the library assembling information for his books, he was dreaming of new hyper-dimensional shapes and rendering them on a mac in the 90s in his geometric cabin discretely perched atop the ridge, he was clearing historic trails and restoring lost trails from pages of history.
The thing I didn’t realize at the time was how special it was that he took time for me, and of course I am not the only one he took time for, but he definitely went out of his way on more than one occasion to get me outside and impart his passion. On one particular hike, just the two of us scrambled down the Canyon Creek trail to the North Fork American River, passing by the location of the sluice boxes through which the entirety of the Tertiary gold bearing river gravels – mountains worth – were washed out of the Stewarts Diggins’ and into the American River. The aforementioned legal case being one of the two decisions that halted hydraulic mining in California was over this gravel, prematurely released after 60 million of years from the base of our mutual home, Moody Ridge. He snapped a photo of me, taking a photo myself, and it’s on the wall at my parent’s house today – one of the last times I saw him. To give you a sense of his stature, and I cringe a little bit gushing about this, Stephen Wolfram included an essay about Russell in his book Idea Makers, amongst a few other persons of significance like Alan Turing, Richard Feynman, Ada Lovelace, and Steve Jobs. Seriously.
If you knew Russell, you don’t need to hear this from me. If you didn’t, please stop here and go visit his work. I paid him tribute by tattooing a pentagonal dodecahedron on my shoulder and pay him tribute by writing this blog. He probably wouldn’t be a huge tattoo enthusiast today, but this was the sort of thing a young man does; I regret nothing. This mark on my body reminds me of him and it reminds me of the significance of the ethereal, whenever I stop long enough to actually consider it.
Russell explaining the dodecahedron and the ethereal: https://youtu.be/-lqpSpje42o
His North Fork Trails Blog: https://northforktrails.blogspot.com/
His North Fork American River page [be sure to click around to the other areas of his site!]: https://www.northforktrails.com/RussellTowle/NorthFork/North_Fork_American.html
Stephen Wolfram’s essay on Russell: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2008/10/russell-towle-1949-2008/
Also, check out Ron Gould’s work, an old friend of Russ and author of the North Fork Trails guide, and the current host of Russ’ website: https://www.northforktrails.com/