From Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon A Place

From Blue Highways

by William Least Heat-Moon

A Place

Two Steller’s jaybirds stirred an argy-bargy in the ponderosa. They shook their big beaks, squawked and hopped and swept down the sunlight toward Ghost Dancing and swooshed back into the pines. They didn’t shut up until I left some orts from breakfast; then they dropped from the branches like ripe fruit, nabbed a gobful, and took off for the tops of the hundred-foot trees. The chipmunks got in on it too, letting loose a high peal of rodent chatter, picking up their share, spinning the bread like pinwheels, chewing fast.

It was May Day, and the warm air filled with the scent of pine and blooming manzanita. To the west I heard water over rock as Hot Creek came down from the snows of Lassen. I took towel and soap and walked through a field of volcanic ejections and broken chunks of lava to the stream bounding off boulders and slicing over bedrock; below one cascade, a pool the color of glacier ice circled the effervescence. On the bank at an upright stone with a basin-shaped concavity filled with rainwater, I bent to drink, then washed my face. Why not bathe from head to toe? I went down with rainwater and lathered up.

An Experience

Now, I am not unacquainted with mountain streams; a plunge into Hat Creek would be an experiment in deep-cold thermodynamics. I knew that, so I jumped in with bravado. It didn’t help. Light violently flashed in my head. The water was worse than I thought possible. I came out, eyes the size of biscuits, metabolism running amuck and setting fire to the icy flesh. I buffed dry. Then I began to feel good, the way the old Navajos must have felt after a traditional sweat bath and roll in the snow.… I liked Hat Creek. It was reward enough for last night.

Another Person

Back at Ghost Dancing, I saw a camper had pulled up. On the rear end, by the strapped-on aluminum chairs, was something like “The Wandering Watkins.” Time to go. I kneeled to check a tire. A smelly furry white thing darted from behind the wheel, and I flinched. Because of it, the journey would change.

“Harmless as a stuffed toy.” The voice came from the other end of the leash the dog was on. “He’s nearly blind and can’t hear much better. Down just to the nose now.” The man, with polished cowboy boots and a part measured out in the white hair, had a face so gullied even the Soil Conservation Commission couldn’t have reclaimed it. But his eyes seemed lighted from within.

“Are you Mr. Watkins?” I asked.

“What’s left of him. The pup’s what’s left of Bill. He’s a Pekingese. Chinese dog. In dog years, he’s even older than I am, and I respect him for that. We’re two old men. What’s your name?“

“Same as the dog’s.”

…

Watkins had worked in a sawmill for thirty years, then retired to Redding; now he spent time in his camper, sometimes in the company of Mrs. Watkins.

…

“What kind of work you in?” he asked.

That question again. “I’m out of work,” I said to simplify.

“A man’s never out of work if he’s worth a damn. It’s just sometimes he doesn’t get paid. I’ve gone unpaid my share and I’ve pulled my share of pay. But that’s got nothing to do with working. A man’s work is doing what he’s supposed to do, and that’s why he needs a catastrophe now and again to show him a bad turn isn’t the end, because a bad stroke never stops a good man’s work. Let me show you my philosophy of life.” From his pressed Levi’s he took a billfold and handed me a limp business card. “Easy. It’s very old.”

The card advertised a cafe in Merced when telephone numbers were four digits. In quotation marks was a motto: “Good Home Cooked Meals.”

“‘Good Home Cooked Meals’ is your philosophy?”

“Turn it over, peckerwood.”

Imprinted on the back in tiny, faded letters was this:

I’ve been bawled out, balled up, held up, held down, hung up, bulldozed, blackjacked, walked on, cheated, squeezed and mooched; stuck for war tax, excess profits tax, sales tax, dog tax, and syntax, Liberty Bonds, baby bonds, and the bonds of matrimony, Red Cross, Blue Cross, and the double cross; I’ve worked like hell, worked others like hell, have got drunk and got others drunk, lost all I had, and now because I won’t spend or lend what little I earn, beg, borrow or steal, I’ve been cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked to, talked about, lied to, lied about, worked over, pushed under, robbed, and damned near ruined. The only reason I’m sticking around now is to see WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT.

“I like it,” I said.

“Any man’s true work is to get his boots on each morning. Curiosity gets it done about as well as anything else.”

Source: From Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by William Least Heat-Moon.By permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.