Ghost Trees

Eastern Sierra Death Drive

“I’m gonna get out of here before Ross starts yammering on about his newfound respect for life.” – Chandler Bing

“He’s right. I do have... a newfound...respect... for life.” – Ross Geller

The abiding truth of my life’s journeying is that if you seek out adventure, you will find it. More often than I’d like, I’m having to defend the veracity of my stories to people who either do not know me, do not seek adventure, or seem to lack imagination – the triple whammy of doubt, in my “line of work.” I’m adding a preface to this installation because I almost slid off of a mountain today... and to quote Ross Gellar in Friends, season 5, episode 20, “The One with the Ride-Along,” I emerged with a newfound respect for life.

I’m just kidding... I’ve almost died like a dozen times so I’m significantly de-sensitized to it by now. But... it was still scary enough that I contemplated removing my parents, sister, and girlfriend from this publication, which is strange, because only through this publication would they ever know about it; furthermore, I could’ve actually removed them instead of writing about removing them. But I didn’t.

I was twenty miles into the El Dorado forest in the Sierra Mountains, headed through Kit Carson pass on my way to Carson City (redux – see my installation, “Blood and Thunder”), when I followed the hauntingly desolate county road offered to me by my paper map. Just before I entered the danger zone (any Archer fans? / Loggins fans?), I pulled off and sat on a rock in the snow, playing “Pink Skies” by Zach Bryan on the Harmonica. Now, let me take a step back for a second. Being the experienced traveler that I am, before I began my mountain drive, I did a quick Apple Maps check for road conditions. I saw an unfamiliar notation in the app, precisely where I planned to cross the Sierras – *Chains Required*. I looked at it, photographed it, and completely ignored it. As it turns out, that was a mistake. As I climbed the mountain, not having seen a car or truck for ten or so miles, ultimately, I veered off into an even more remote, serpentine, and snow-packed death spiral. Twenty more miles of deep snow, deep ice, no guardrails, and hairpin turns, without another human being, except for the abandoned car stuck in a snowy ditch. That was good luck for them though, because the other side of the road was giving cartoonish drop-off-the-mountain-to-your-inglorious-death vibes. I white-knuckled my Volvo in off-road mode, swerving in and out of ruts, steering into skids (one time less than three feet away from a cliff’s edge). I thought it was over. My adrenaline was pumping and my focus was animalistic – like a hyper drive of survival. My tunnel vision lasted for thirty or so minutes. I cannot over-state how isolated this road was and how cold it was outside. At one point my car tires were spinning as I was sliding backward toward a snowbank on the “safe side” of the road – which probably had a four foot drop off – at which time I contemplated opening my car door and rolling out the side. What does that say about my self-esteem to think I could have pulled that off?

My car stopped about a foot from the safer drop-off, which would have undoubtedly meant me walking ten or so miles in the snow before I found someone who could help. Wild shit.

After I crossed the pass, through the El Dorado and Toiyabe Forests, I entered one of my favorite places in the entire country – the Eastern Sierras in Nevada, near Carson City, and back into California. It’s a land of rolling hills and shadows, buffered by the white-capped Sierra range on one side and pastel desert flatlands on the other. As I made my way South and East down the spine of the range, on my way to Mammoth Lakes, I entered into a world of seafoam green and rich maroon shrubs, prehistoric puddles, slow grading hills, and ghost trees – thick at the bottom and fraying white branches at the top, creating a kind of halo effect. I’d never seen anything like it before. Driving through the desolate stretches of the Eastern Sierras is like walking into primordial, un-colonized world.

I was happy to be alive – happy to have gotten a video of me playing the harmonica like a psycho-path in the woods – and all things considered, happy to be back in the wild.

There is a pretext for this trip and these reflections. I am continuing my paper-maps only, no interstates (hence the icy highway of death) journey through the West; and in doing so, capturing the rest of the Western states on my drive back from San Francisco to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and then on to Dallas, Texas, for winter break. I’ll have a story for each state by the time I cycle to the Midwest and back again. The purpose and quality of these travels have taken an almost spiritual significance for me. I love my family and friends, dearly, and spending time with them is the warmest, most meaningful experience that can be had on earth. Nothing can usurp that. However, the indivisible and autonomous meflourishes on the open road, in America, with uncarved tracks and the boundless wilds by my side. I’ve recognized, in me, that this is the closest I can get to contemporary freedom, which is nearly impossible to attain, even for someone who is dedicated to the task. I’d say postmodern society is 5-10% freedom on the high side, depending on who you are. For me, when I am on the road and plunging headfirst into the wild of it all, grafted together in a compounding experience, I feel fully alive... and like my eternal present matters. The anxiety of the digital world disappears, for a moment; for long enough that you ask yourself, do those anxieties exist at all? Eckard Tolle would dig it. I dig it. Let’s see what today brings.