Legacy Park, Mojave Air and Space Port

Legacy Park at the Mojave Airport is memento mori. Benches are available for pausing and sitting in life's brief journey to remember those who tried way up in the high atmosphere to touch "the face of God." They fell, like Icarus, because "from dust ... to dust." But grass grows in dust.
Major Premise: "All flesh is as grass."
Minor Premise: Grass has enduring-rock envy.
Conclusion: Rock in grass = skull in hand.

Voyager Restaurant

Mojave Air and Space Port is stark. So is the Voyager Restaurant that sits below the Control Tower. Walls white in the sun, gray in the shade. Windows small and black, mid-sized and black. People walking by on their way in look ordinary, in a surreal landscape. Voyager milkshakes-to-go are better than ordinary.

Mojave

Whoever of this generation seeks a sign, let them go to Mojave at the junction of Highways 58 and 14.

Red Rock State Park

Red Rock State Park is on Highway 14 north of Mojave. Drab rock is mixed with the red. The campground rests among the drab. Campsites are spread out and spacious, although boomboxes can be heard a long way in the dry air. Cars descending the evening highway on their way to LA make a long, hypnotic "headlight falls." Darkening rocks creep up on the camper.

Cross at Walker Pass

Up the hill from Walker Pass is an new rugged cross, the emblem of somebody's suffering. Sister and brother scampered up the granite among the rabbit brush, big sagebrush, and one-seeded pinyon pines. Mother tried to follow them, but stopped, panting. "Come back!" she yelled. "You're killing me!"

Walker Pass

Walker Pass on Highway 178 between Lake Isabella and Highway 14 is the lowest pass in the Sierra Nevada. It's nice, but you can't see all that much in either direction. A pyramid of a hill stands off to the north. A little way up the south slope is a new wooden cross. A really, truly brightly green colored can (for water? for oil? for antifreeze?) lies on the ground. It makes you take your eyes off the mediocre vistas and stare down at your feet.

Woody

Woody is on Highway 155 on the way from Delano to Lake Isabella. Woody consists mostly of the woody remains of the Buzzard's Roost, a restaurant and bar with wooden collapsed bandstand in the rear. The town goes back a long ways, in California terms, to Mr. Woody the Pioneer in the 1860s and Mr. Weringer, mine owner and entrepreneur, who laid out the town in the late 1880s. Signs and remains of signs are all about, signifying impermanence.

Terra Bella Railroad Parkway

Terra Bella Railroad Parkway, in the town of Terra Bella, makes sort of a circular course between the tracks and Porterville Road, around some erratic boulders and newly planted trees that offer scant shade. At one end was a gathering of men under a roof, talking with each other. At the other end an older man kept a lone watch.

Blue Pig

On the eastern outskirts of Three Rivers is the headquarters of Blue Pig for President. The pig is blue all right. It looks ferocious enough for the job. On one side is a ladder for climbing to the top. Inside is a mess of wires all tangled up and torn red lining.

Boyden Cave

Boyden Cave is on the way out of Kings Canyon. You could say it's a canyon with the roof on. An asphalt path, draped with the sharp needles of the California nutmeg, leads a few hundred feet up from the river to the entrance. Gold cup oaks, big-leaf maples, and California bays also line the path. Rock-cracking saxifrage is all about. The cave looks like it means business, with its dark throat and stubby teeth. Entrance to the underworld is by guide only, tickets at the Visitors Center. Gratuities are appreciated.

Rock Stand

On Highway 180 between Fresno and Kings Canyon is a magical stand made of smooth, fist-size rocks, with cement mortar. Maybe it was once used to sell fruit, although it has no over-the-counter for transfer of goods. Now it is just there, like existence, taking up spacetime along with dried grasses and a few trees. A good place for a Zen picnic.

Art Stand

The Art Stand is a converted Fruit Stand on the corner of Highway 180 and Frankwood Road. It is a cooperative of fifteen Fresno-area artists, whose work ranges from the scenic to the close-up, from representational to abstract. The Art Stand is a fine illustration of the famous Zen adage, the calories that count come from painted plums.

Shaver Lake Hardware

In Shaver Lake Hardware is a Birds-Away-Attack-Spider.

Shaver Lake Chamber of Commerce and Art Gallery

Major Premise: Shaver Lake Chamber of Commerce is in one building.
Minor Premise: Shaver Lake Art Gallery is in the same building.
Proposition: Art and Commerce are building-fellows.

Bob's

Bob's in Shaver Lake is an A-Frame wooden structure, owner-connected to the attached market. Tables are inside and out. Rock music plays on the speakers, newspapers are available, as is a Take-One-Leave-One library. "For food and ambiance, this would be hard to beat." They serve sandwiches, coffee, and espresso, AND white raisin scones and cherry scones with a light frosting on top. A woman in Big Creek makes them. "Big Creek's an Edison town," the woman who furnished the lattes said. "When they were building the dam, Big Creek was big. We were all big around here. That's the reason you see all the fat-cat housing."

Cross at Smalley Cove

By the edge of Kerckhoff Reservoir, on the slope of Smalley Cove, is as plain a Christian altar as can be. Just two metal brackets, crossed for the life and death of Jerry H. Collier.

Smalley Cove

The Sierra National Forest's Smalley Cove Campground is off Powerhouse Road, on the San Joaquin River at Kerckhoff Reservoir, just below the A.G. Wishon Powerhouse, which hums a sweet white noise by day and by night. The sites are roomy and widely spaced. Even so, it would be only ordinarily good were it not for the ghost pines that haunt the place in the evening twilight. Three teenage couples moved in after midnight. It took them two hours to set up a big tent, which they probably did not use for a revival meeting. The next morning they used the same loud mouth as the night before. They said the Powerhouse was haunted, but they didn't know the half of it.

Ghost Pine

Pinus sabiniana, that it's Linnaean name. It's real name is ghost pine, and even that is disputed. Some unimaginative botanists want to call it gray pine, or foothill pine. The first tells its color. The second locates it. But ghost pine tells it like it is, never straight, thin-needles waving like an apparition in the wind, a strange character.

Cal Center

It is not easy to find the right road to the Geographic Center of California. Six-tenths of a mile before arrival is a sign informing you you are close. Once you find the spot, well, you know exactly where you are: right in the middle, east-west and north-south of pleasant confusion. Stairs circle the center, making it as easy a circumambulation as you are likely to find anywhere. Buddhists call it "pradakshina," or, going around an important object clockwise to make "white magic." Doing it Buddhist style is, however, just a suggestion. Just remember that re-charging the state's magic wand is never a bad idea.

Park in Bass Lake

Across the street from the Pines Resort in Bass Lake, south of Yosemite, is a small park ideal for picnics. (Try coke with lemon pepper Tuna Creations, Lays baked originals, Tree Top apple sauce and LaPanzanella sesame croccantini.) The lawn is dirt peppered with grass, and tables are spread throughout. Liquid amber, birch, an ornamental plum or two, and roses provide accents of color, while a church on the hill protects the park from above.

Art in a Box

Inside 41 Trading Post, in the back, under a shelter, is a box. Inside the box are 10 pieces of puzzling art.

Oakhurst Cemetery

On a hill, where the Little Church was moved in 1957, is the Oakhurst Cemetery. The church's freshly painted boards stand out against the green around and the blue above. American and California flags fly unfurled in front. Down the hill row-trees (oaks? cottonwoods?) have been cut off about head high. The stumps remain, looking strangely cross-like, while the upper trunks and limbs are piled up next to a fence, which partially hides them from view. In stoves around the county all this wood will turn to ashes, as have humans stored in urns nearby.