TRAVELS WITH MATTIE

We made it back to our stomping grounds, and could not be happier for 2-3 weeks of living with Sam, Sara, Bobby and (sometimes) Adam. Teaching starts Tuesday. Not a bad walk to work. OH HELLO UCSB.

Another great week in the Eastern Sierra. Here are things that happened. SIDNEY TURNED 6. BUCKEYE HOT SPRINGS (and rednecks galore). BIGHORN SHEEP and BIGHORN SHEEP EXPERT. BOBCAT. SARDINE LAKE HIKE.  PTARMIGAN. SOCCER GAME and GREAT DAYS with JOHN AND MARY. MOBILE STATION. MAMMOTH PASS TO RED'S MEADOW HIKE. THE DOOR HANDLE AND STEREO BREAK IN THE TRUCK. THE ASPENS ARE TURNING COLORS. Here are some pictures: 6 YEARS of the amazing Sidney. Lunch and bookstore tours with Uncle Dan in Carson City. RED TAIL on the way to Buckeye Hot Springs. Bridgeport is weird. Mattie paying her respects to Jordan locals (Mono City hills). Bighorns somewhere near Lundy Canyon. Mattie in shelter for the first big rain of fall. Mono Basin, doing what it does best. REALLY. THIS HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE. Looking down on Sardine Lake, then Walker Lake, then Mono Lake after a hike up Bloody Canyon. We've had the best time up here. Last weekend...

HI EVERYBODY! It's been a while, and things have been perfect on the Eastern slope. I left Markleeville/Hope Valley/Minden about a week and a half ago, then drove with Mattie Dog down to the Mono Basin. We stayed for two nights along Lee Vining Creek, had some beers and food at the Mobil Station, and went on short walks around the Lee Vining/Mammoth/Mono areas. And we spent some time looking for artifacts, duh-doi. Then I got a call from the wonderful Eastern Sierra foster family, John and Mary Ljung, inviting us to stay with them for a night at the Mono City Magic Castle. I don't remember if I have described the house before. It is situated on a hill about six miles north of Lee Vining on the 395, overlooking Mono Lake and the Eastern Sierras. The entire southern side of the house is windows - giant wall-sized windows that look over the valley, sagebrush, lake, and a ton of thundercloud skies. There is usually a premier league game on the television wh...

The truck is back and running like a champ with it's new (rebuilt) transmission. YAAAAA truck! Mattie and I had a great week while waiting for it. Here is a brief report: We spent two days in South Lake Tahoe. It was busy, smokey, crowded. We went on some great walks around the Taylor Creek Visitor Center, up to Fallen Leaf Lake, and had good meals and beers with a view of Tahoe. Mattie and I sat together on the shore and watched an epic stand-up paddle-board race, while a drunk married couple had an even more epic shouting match behind us. We smiled at each other and I gave Mattie a big hug. New buddies along Taylor Creek. We left Tahoe and were happy to head back towards the Carson Wilderness for some painting. "Caples Lake," 8"x10" oil on canvas board "Charity Valley Sundown," 8"x10" oil on canvas board "Hope Valley Meadow," 8"x10" oil on canvas board We did a few others - some were sacrificed ...

These nights in the mountains, I still dream about Grandma Donna. She died when I was four. Three? Five? Some age before I knew how to keep concrete and discrete memories. There are only glimpses through a quarter-century of haze and new files that scramble the important ones from Way-Back-When. I need to defrag. The impressions are there, if screened. A hurt arm. Sitting in her lap with a book in a house of dark wood and children everywhere. An uncle lifting me over a bed to give her a kiss as she lay dying of cancer in the Santa Monica home where I learned to swim. A home filled by aunts and uncles and Mom and Dad and my brothers and cousins, and someone – Aunt Val, I think? – telling me “It’s okay to be sad.” A home filled with her generations. My dreams with Grandma Donna started almost six months ago. I was neck deep in the last throes of my Ph.D. program, with the final daunting stretch ahead: a four-month dash from March to June in which I had to finish experiments, ...

TWO POSTS IN TWO DAYS. GET REAL. Mattie and I had a little breakfast in Markleeville yesterday, then headed up to Hope/Charity Valleys for some painting and stuff. We camped right on the edge of a great meadow with mountain views, did a short sketch, started reading "A River Runs Through It," and went on a little hike around the meadow then up into the hills for sunset views. Fashion is important in the mountains. We ate some cheese sandwiches and bananas for dinner (Mattie mostly had cheese), and the sunset was awesome. Late light on Raymond Peak. I think. We slept out under a million trillion stars, watched for satellites and shooting stars for a while, got scared by (probably) bears roaming around the valley a few times - which Mattie bravely scared off with some warning growls and barks, and woke up early this morning both with awesome camping hair. Mattie's won. Bed head award. What a mess. Then we headed east, stopped for breakfast at the Carso...

Our first little hiccup this summer - took the sweet truck in to see why it was slipping out of fourth gear, and yada yada yada...we're getting a new transmission. Apparently it's expensive. But Uncle Dan is letting us use the Jeep again (apparently getting a new transmission is also slow), so we're still out playing in the mountains while we wait for the truck to get better. You easily forget about car problems when you head up into the hills, find worked flakes of obsidian, read about Edmond Dantes until you fall asleep to the sound of quaking aspens, then wake up to this sunrise: Somewhere near Monitor Pass, a girl and her dog find another laughing place. Today we're headed back up to Hope Valley, or Charity Valley, or somewhere else awesome up Highway 88 to get some painting (or spacing out, and camping, and reading and hiking and artifact finding) done. Mattie is the best, she loves it out here, and she says "HI" to all h...