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On the night of Monday, February
18, I set out with my attorney and Mr.
Gale
to Mojave to spend the night in a motel and begin our backcountry offroad
adventure
through Jawbone Canyon and Kelso Valley into the Sequoia National
Forest.
The route we chose was well over 20 miles across desert and mountains
and would eventually spit us out by some other highway near Lake Isabella.
Things didn't go quite as planned, however.
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When we arrived at the motel Monday night, we wasted no time settling in and
beginning the madness - after all, this was the Best Motel in Mojave and we are
nothing short of a team of seasoned professionals. We wrote our creed on the
wall with electrical tape, took full advantage of our smoking room and myself
and Dr. Gale began feverishly guitaring ourselves into oblivion. The music we
made that night was intense and electrifying and, unbeknownst to us, would serve
as the soundtrack for the following night and subsequent day after.
We awoke the next morning and set out for Jawbone Canyon - a road we've explored
before, but not quite this deep. We had all the necessary tools for creation
(and destruction) with us - an acoustic 12-string, a steel resonator, a Fender
Telecaster, my Nikon SLR, a typewriter, laptop and microphone for recording in
the field, electric bass and proper portable amplification (and a .22 Beretta,
.40 Glock and .357 Magnum revolver). Truly ready to do whatever the wilderness
wanted to flow through us and accomplish, and fire off a good few rounds along
the way. A while past Butterbredt Springs, we found an abandoned car filled with
bullet holes and figured this was a remote enough location to have some good ol'
fashioned fun with firearms and put some holes in my old broken guitar.
After we had fired off a suitable volley of bullets into my guitar and the
surrounding wilderness, we took back to the road and crossed through Kelso
Valley (one of the most beautiful places I've ever been) and up into the
mountains, approaching the border of Sequoia National Forest.
The road we were taking was determined to be an offroading difficulty rating of
2 by the backcountry trails book put out by AAA that my attorney had with us. By
comparison, we've traversed far worse roads with very little difficulty in the
past. And well into the mountains, this drive was no exception, save for a
couple slightly muddy, slightly snowy spots that we managed to get through. This
made us a bit cocky about the next little rough spot we came upon...
It was a snowy, muddy turn that looked considerably less threatening than the
previous two spots we managed to make it through. Overconfident, we attempted a
couple times to make it through this spot, and in the process of realizing we
couldn't get through and had to back out and turn around, my truck slid
backwards into a muddy rut. Now, it's not like we've never been stuck in the mud
before - we began throwing everything we knew into getting the truck out.
Cutting branches off of trees to get traction under the wheels, pushing and
rocking from behind as we tried to get loose - but this time, none of that
worked. None of our efforts over the course of about two hours could get the
truck out from where it was. Being that it was about four in the afternoon, we
knew nightfall would come soon and make everything that much more difficult. We
determined it would be best if we cut our losses, spent the night in the truck
and tried again the morning when the sun would shine and the ground would be
drier. We had plenty of food and water in the car, and the collective warmth of
three people in the Tacoma's cab would certainly keep us from freezing. At one
point in the night, Dr. Gale and I walked up the trail a little ways and
discovered that even if we had made it through the spot where we got stuck, just
around the bend the road was completely snowed over. We hiked up through the
snow a little ways to get a bearing of where exactly we were in relation to our
map and found that we were about a mile and a half down the mountain road from
the border of the Sequoia National Forest. We returned to the truck with said
information and began trying to get some sleep.
But in the morning, there was no such sun and no such dryness. In fact, we awoke
to a fresh layer of snow all over the truck and all over the road. If it wasn't
possible to get the truck out the evening before, it was definitely hopeless
now. We needed to find help. Even if we got the truck out, there was now massive
danger of sliding clear off the mountain in the worse weather and road
conditions. We remembered passing by a cabin property of sorts on the way up,
not terribly far from where the vehicle was stuck.
We approached this property, laden with broken tree swings and old cars (half of
which probably don't work anymore), piles of firewood, the sound of dogs barking
and smoke billowing out the chimney. "Hello?" I yelled toward the
house, "We're stranded and we need help!"
An older man came down from the door, and we explained our situation. He was
incredibly puzzled that anyone would have attempted to make that drive during
the winter season, and I explained that road was far more hospitable the day
prior. He invited us inside out of the cold, and gave us coffee.
His name is Richards, and his cabin is the kind of rustic, phoneless woodburning
existence you only see in creepy suspense movies about people who get stranded
in the wilderness. He explained to us just how remote we were - his square mile
property was the only sign of human life within miles and miles on either side
of the mountain. We pleaded for him to help us in any way he could, and
eventually he agreed to try driving his old Chevy Blazer up to try to pull the
truck out. At this point, we were actually willing to very slowly and carefully
make the risk of driving down the snowy, muddy mountain. We got in his Chevy and
started up the road, and not a half a mile up, the muddy lack of traction in the
road rendered his 4x4 sliding sideways. "Not gonna happen..." he
muttered, and we knew it to be true. He drove us all back to his cabin, and it
was at that point we knew we had a long walk ahead of us to find help.
We headed back up to the truck, and loaded ourselves up with as many of our most
valuable possessions as we could - my three guitars and David's bass, my camera,
David's laptop and two backpacks full of miscellaneous smaller belongings and as
much of our remaining food and water that would fit. We locked the rest of what
we had to leave behind in the cab, and began heading down the mountain. By this
point, it had started snowing pretty hard and it was becoming more and more
important by the minute for us to get out of there and to a place we could find
help as soon as humanly possible. Our lives were now potentially up for ante
against the mountain and the weather. Such is the case when you're stranded 28
total miles from the highway.
The bad weather continued to get worse, and continued blowing in the wind and
chasing at our heels. By the time we got clear of the mountain it was actually
snowing rather hard, and we could look back and see the entire area where we
left my truck encapsulated within an enormous apocalyptic blizzard cloud. This
cloud was the enemy, and it wasn't wanting to let us go very easily. Every time
we would stop and rest, the wind and the rain and more clouds would catch up
with us.
The closer we got to Kelso Valley, the better the weather was looking - ahead of
us, at least. We finally got into a sunny patch of the road, passing by some of
the most surreal landscapes I've ever seen. Several times along this part of the
walk, the trees, hills and rocks off the side of the road reminded me of
photographs I've seen of the countrysides in England. The weather continued to
chase us, and there was absolutely no turning back. At this point, it was
absolutely essential that we cross Kelso Valley and reach Jawbone Canyon again
as much before nightfall as we could possibly muster. For as bad as the morning
hike down the snowy mountain was, things would get a whole lot more dangerous
once night fell on the desert.
Upon reaching the end of the descent down the mountain and the beginning of
flat, sprawling and desolate Kelso Valley and just beginning to feel that we've
made it out of the worst weather of the day, thunder filled the sky and the wind
picked up, continuing to blow the storm front directly toward us. Normally, it
is an absolute pleasure to have Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A Gonna
Fall" stuck in my head, but this was not the time. Knowing how long we had
to walk through this valley, and knowing what exactly was blowing at our backs
put a bad chill in our spines and an ever-increasing urgency to get the hell out
of there. We did eventually make it far enough away by the time the winds
started blowing the storm in the opposite direction - right about the time we
happened upon another backwoods property near the intersection of Kelso Valley
Road and Jawbone Canyon.
Now I've been plenty of places in the desert where I've half expected to get
shot at - hell, I've even been treatened by a vagrant weilding a pair of rusty
machetes in a junkyard off of Sierra Highway. But walking up to this property,
hands in the air and screaming for help and attempting to look as harmless as
possible despite my appearance as a stranded madman in the middle of nowhere
wearing a black wool trenchcoat, I was honestly mentally prepared to feel a
bullet go through my head. This place looked as much like a possible beacon of
hope as it did some backcountry meth-head's lab and place of residence. We
crawled under barbed wire fences and stepped around numerous cow pies (and there
wasn't even a damn cow in sight, either) and went around the property's
perimeter, shouting and screaming and hoping not to have an unwanted encounter
with flying lead projectiles. It turned out that the place was completely
abandoned - and we later found out that it's a rentable cabin for anybody who's
taking a prolonged hunting / offroading / hiking trip out in the area. At the
time, though it just seemed like one more place we oughta get the hell away from
lest the owner return and be none too pleased with us lunatics taking shelter on
their property.
We continued on down the road a little ways when we came upon a crossroads.
(Kelso Valley Rd. and Jawbone Canyon Rd) This wasn't the place Robert Johnson
made his deal with the devil, but I'm sure someone else has. As we were about
forty to fifty yards away from the actual intersection, we saw a car speed by on
Kelso Valley Rd., heading toward Weldon. We were too far away to get its
attention, and felt yet another sting of defeat. We decided to hunker down at
the crossroads, satisfied that we had eluded the storm, and took a prolonged
rest to eat and see if another car might possibly come around.
No other car came around, and the sun was sinking. Having recharged a decent
amount, we continued on over several more hills into Jawbone Canyon. As we
reached the exit out of Kelso, we took one last look back at the snowy resting
place of my truck before heading back through the desert as night fell.
As if it wasn't enough to be on the most epic and lunatic adventure of our
lives, underscored by bad weather and the sound of our recordings from the motel
room Monday night and facing all sorts of uncomfortable possibilities, two other
factors added to the sheer overwhelming feeling of destiny of it all - one was
that the full moon that night would eclipse around 7 o'clock, the other was that
we were making this journey on the three-year anniversary of the death of Hunter
S. Thompson.
When night fell, we had made it well past Kelso Valley and returned to the
desert terrains. The night winds and chilling cold would now begin to become a
serious threat to our existences. The necessity to stop and lighten our burdens
and hydrate ourselves become more and more frequent as the fatigue really
started setting in, and several times we attempted to build a small fire, but
the desert brush just wouldn't take to a flame and it was far too windy. We were
lucky to have good moonlight for a while at least, before the moon was
completely eclipsed for about a half hour or so - and eventually we were close
enough to the main road that would lead back to the rangers station that we
could see a couple cars driving on the road toward a construction site we had
seen on our way in. This construction site was our destination and just about
our only hope. Otherwise, it was another ten whole miles out to the highway.
It only got colder and the wind only blew stronger - we had run out of water
about a mile ago, and every time we stopped we had to fight extra hard against
getting too comfortable and falling asleep, because at this point if we lost
consciousness, the possibility of not waking up was a real possibility.
Down on the main road, and about a football field's ways away from the
construction site, my attorney and I found ourselves simply unable to continue
walking, especially with all we were carrying. We stopped to rest while Dr. Gale
approached the foreman's bungalow and tried to get us some help.
While waiting, the thought of dying out there if nobody there could help us
became very, very real. If nobody at the construction site could do anything to
call for help or to let us inside anywhere, we would have had to walk another 10
miles or about an hour and a half to the entrance to Jawbone Canyon where the
ranger station is. At that point, I seriously doubted my ability to make that
walk, as we had run out of water, were incredibly fatigued, and it felt like
someone had taken a tire iron to my left knee. Not to mention the socks I was
wearing were completely soaked from the snow and the lack of waterproofing in my
boots and I was positive that some pretty unspeakable things were happening to
my foot-flesh. I have never been in a more desperate and fearful mental state -
despite having the faith gripped tighter than anything I've ever held onto that
we would get down from the mountain alive and sleep in our own beds that night.
There was a war within my mind between my physical fatigue and my passion for
living. We had time, nature and fatigue working against us, but we needed to get
OUT. We needed to tell this story. We needed to share the adventure. We needed
people to hear the recordings on Dr. Gale's laptop from the motel on Monday
night. We needed to see the people we loved again. But most of all, we needed to
continue living having had this experience that breaks body and mind alike and
leaves anyone a changed human being.
The only thing that died out there was fear. I consider it utterly ridiculous to
be afraid of anything again that does not immediately threaten my life. I had
considered myself pretty fearless in many regards before this ordeal, but like
anyone, I still held onto certain fears and anxieties that come along with being
a strange person in a world of cheap sanity. After feeling a brush with my own
mortality in the wilderness, it would be a crime against life itself to hold
back anything. Through every one of these mad adventures I've taken in order to
find new inspirations and epiphanies, spiritual enlightenment and tranquility
and the ultimate death of fear, this one finally did it. I have never been more
grateful to be alive and to be fully aware of what my body and mind are capable
of against the harshest of circumstances.
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It actually took Dr. Gale a while to persuade the watchman on guard at the
construction bungalow to help us. He was new at his job, and didn't seem to know
how to handle the radios they use for lack of landlines or cell phone reception
out there, much less how to handle a grizzled madman come down from the
mountains and looking like he hasn't had proper sustenance in a week. Initially,
he just wanted to give Dr. Gale a bottle of water to bring back to us - he told
the man that he simply could not come back to us with anything less than
salvation.
At about that time, my attorney and I reached the bungalow, having left all our
gear in a pile and assumed that since so much time had passed, that Dr. Gale was
having some sort of luck over there. As if we were the missing proof or the
clarification that was needed, he tried again to figure out how to radio his
boss, who we eventually reached and sent for an ambulance and couple sheriffs'
SUVs to come out and save us. In the meantime, he gave us coffee and some
microwave food and let us wait in the warm bungalow. By this point, it was 1:00
AM. We had been walking almost constantly since about 11:00 AM that morning.
When help arrived, they gave us and our gear a ride out to the ranger station
just off the highway, where we finally had reception again and were able to call
home and let our folks know what happened and that we were alive. The sheriffs
gave us a ride back to the motel, where my dad picked us all up at about 4 AM,
and just as I had insisted all day, we got out of there and slept in our own
beds that night.
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What's important here is not the story. It is not important that we hiked for 18
miles down a mountain and through valley and desert on a fight for our own
lives.
What is important is the death of fear and the total revolution of the human
spirit. It is within absolutely every one of us to live nothing but the perfect
life we want for ourselves. It is within everyone to acknowledge that there is a
grand perspective out there that simply does not allow for one to bow to any
fear, any circumstance, any obstacle. You know this if you have heroes. You know
this if you have ever had to fight to properly exist by your own standards.
But you don't need a brush with death in the desert. The human mind is capable
of infinity beyond its own understanding. Strange and brilliant correlations
between contexts and thoughts. Visionary art and the power to inspire. An
absolute love for the potential you carry with you just by waking up in the
morning and breathing. The idea that no matter who you are, there is something
in the world for you to become terminally passionate about to the point that it
becomes you and you wear it on all of your clothing, on all of your skin.
For the love of whatever you hold dear, grab it.
If you don't know what it is yet, find it.
I'm telling you it's already out there somewhere.
You don't need to go looking for it in other people. You don't need to go
looking for it in desolate wilderness that's just waiting to freeze you to the
bone.
This experience may have served as a catalyst for me - but if you can bring
yourself to believe me even if you haven't found the indisputable evidence
yourself, FEAR DOES NOT EXIST. It is a fabrication and an excuse and the more it
exists, the more it holds back humanity as a whole.
Write your poems. Sing your songs. Paint your visions and talk to interesting
strangers. Embrace how much of an impact you can have as an advocate for passion
and tell people who the hell you are. The world is not going to change when the
names of elected officials change. The world is not going to change from the top
down. The world is not going to change without you.
Tell the people you love that you love them. You might not have done it in a
while.
Take some time out if today ain't goin' so well for ya. Get yourself back.
And by all means, disagree with me or call me preachy.
But I didn't come down that mountain to leave things the way they are, not in my
life, and not in anyone else's who sees the slightest trace of themselves in
anything I've said here.
Our own spiritual revolution happens every time we wake, and if it's not ours,
it's not anyone's.
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