The Fall River Valley today is filled with smoke from fires burning to the northeast and the southeast. Both fires are complexes of big and small burning patches of High Desert. Last night, both fires lit up the skies above them with a sullen red glow. We are up here in Northeastern California so that Carolyn can work 4 12 hour shifts at the local hospital. We're over 150 miles from home, on the other side of the Sierras, in a motel room which we had Sunday night and to which we returned on Wednesday. I'm racking up the miles on my 09 Dodge Caliber - I passed 80,000 miles two weeks ago. We driving her 2011 Volkswagen Jetta this time, but both cars are good cruisers, long-distance drivers. This is the fourth time we've been in Fall River mills, but it's not the farthest we've gone. That would be Alturas, 90 more miles away, in the upper Northeast of California, on Hwy 395.
Alturas. Some OD readers may remember that I have written about Alturas before, in 2008 on Open Diary. I ducked into a service station/store to use the restroom, and the staff locked up and closed the building with me in the bathroom. "Oh Shit" I thought. "Whadda I do now?", I wondered. My friend was out in the car sleeping, and I had no signal on my cell phone. I looked around me at a wall filled with booze and cigarettes and saw myself passed out on the floor, the floor littered with cigarette butts and an empty bottle or two. I decided not to do that - I had places to go. I looked at that wall with a twinge of regret and then walked over to the closed and locked glass doors, and pushed on them hard enough to set off the alarm. Even though my cell phone showed no signal at all, I remembered a news story about people lost in the woods in Oregon that stressed several times that that the 911 phone system is different than a regular cell phone system, that's it's more powerful, and that even if you have "no signal" on your phone, try 911 anyway. I said, "Ya know that burglar alarm going off at the Modoc Mini-mart on 395? That's me, and I set it off because came in to use the bathroom and everyone closed up and left. I'm locked in and would like to get out!" The 911 operator suppressed a laugh and told me that she'd get a hold of the Alturas police to come and let me out, that I should just wait a bit and they'd be there to let me out.
Longer story shorter, I met half the police department that night, including a hot blond police officer who did not suppress any laughter, once they'd figured out that I was no "bad guy" and that the staff at the Mini-mart had left em locked in the store when they closed up.
We'll be in Alturas at the end of the month for 2 nights - her company pays for the motel rooms for her and her driver, me. It's a bigger town than this one, but it's still dinky to me, after 26 years of living in Portland, Oregon, in the city. I live in the woods now, off highway 70, and it's 17 miles to Chico. The paved road ends a mile and a half from the road onto the land I live on, off the grid. No water bills, no electric bills, no rent and low expenses. I'm a farm hand now, taking care of 3 gardens of plants, food and medicine, and feeding the animals. A dozen chickens, 6 geese, 2 ducks, 3 cats and 3 dogs - it's a couple of hours work to feed the animals and to water the gardens, and then I have to go out to the spring we've tapped and run a few hundred more gallons of water to the second tank, above where we all live. I've sort of taken over the responsibility of getting us water and of keeping the 2 tanks full. And the responsibility of the animals - feeding and watering birds and four legged creatures.
Life is Very Different than it has been for most of my life now, and it's a story how I got here, over 400 miles south of Portland. It has been an "adventure" for sure.
Stay tuned.
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