Smooth Granite and Cool Water
Paradise found
In 1961 I had a summer job in Brush Creek on the Plumas National Forest in the northern Sierra Nevada, and my brother worked in Quincy, California about 40 miles away. Henry heard talk about a canyon on the middle fork of the Feather River that was supposed to be difficult to get into, and more importantly, to get out of. “Ain’t but one man come outa there alive,” he was told. That seemed like just the sweet little canyon we wanted to see. Having found the canyon on the topographic map (remember those?), we drove my old Studebaker Champion down the 4000-foot descent from Brush Creek to Millsap Bar, the only road that bridged the river for almost 100 miles, and parked the car 4 miles beyond the bridge, the river about 1000 feet below.
A trail led down to a placer mining claim on the river, and there we found Blackie Wallace in his hand-built cabin, with a box full of a couple of hundred paperbacks, all read. He panned just enough gold to get by, he said, and this was his abode from about April until the snow flew every year. A 6-volt car generator driven by a waterwheel on a little side creek provided electric light to his cabin. A notch at eye-height on the door jamb bore the inscription, "The night the water rose." Very sobering, as the river lay more than 50 feet below.
From Blackie we learned about the flying Dutchman across the river a quarter mile upstream, and the trail on the other side of the canyon, complete with ladders up low cliffs and back down, so Henry and I set off. It was a tough hike, but the canyon was breath-takingly beautiful, with stretches of quiet water between smooth granite walls, punctuated by rapids through piles of colossal, white, polished boulders, sand bars, deep green pools in which swam lazy trout and gravel bars with slender willows, scented spice bush and waving sedges.
The memory of this paradisaical place was very much alive when I returned to California for graduate school, and it was only a matter of time before I headed north in my '46 Ford V-8 convertible to revisit the canyon, the first of several dozen visits during my graduate career. The simple truth is that being in this unvisited stretch of canyon, swimming naked in its cool waters until I shivered, then hauling out like a seal to bake on the warm, smooth granite boulders brought on a profound feeling of health and well-being. It was my own solitary paradise, one I eventually shared with only a handful of closest friends who had promised to keep it secret. I packed in my camera and my hefty Jepson's California Flora, and spent quiet hours getting to know the plants--- spicebush with its maroon, slender-petaled flowers, scarlet gilias on the cliffside, live oaks and manzanita on the slopes, penstemons and saxifrages under the waterfall. I toted in legs of lamb and roasted them dangling over a fire--- I have never had better. I slept on a huge boulder 15 feet above the river, a boulder with contours that were a perfect fit for my body. I fell asleep to the warm, up-canyon breezes and awoke to the cool down-canyon breezes. Each day was filled with the sound of water as I photographed the infinite variety of smooth granite, let myself be swirled by green currents, explored up and down the canyon while getting an all-over tan.
In 2003 I returned for the first time in 30 years, accompanied by our 15 year-old daughter. Blackie was gone, he trails had grown fainter, but the rocks, the pools and the rapids were as familiar as 30 years before. No doubt, there is a special place in my brain (and in my heart) where this canyon resides in all its shining details, and on demand, I can feel the dry, hot daytime winds, the smooth rock under my bare feet, I can see the slanting sunlight behind the pines and the green water flowing over riffles, I smell the cinnamon odor of spicebush, see the galls on willows, the red trumpets of gilia, and feel the sonorous vibrations of waterfalls pouring between boulders the size of houses.
The visit gave me hope that there was at least one place that remained unchanged, that was immune to the degradations that humans heap upon the world, places that are as unvisited today as they were 30 years ago. Perhaps many people imagine such places, but the only real protection is to remain unknown. My canyon is known only to me and will forever be that one surviving place of refuge, a refuge that will remain even if I never feel its smooth granite and cool waters again.
This is lovely. I like that you return to the canyon in your imagination. Thank you.
Hallowed ground, described with such empathy. In my mind, I have been there many times. Thanks, Walter.