Back in Bishop

Last night when the fleas started to ride the wind into the van I had shut the side door and rolled up the windows. I still got some air from the two screened windows, but it was pretty warm inside. Nonetheless, I was tired enough, and I slept, hot and sweaty. It cooled in the night but only a little, and by dawn I still didn’t need a shirt….

I drove a few miles down to Hawthorne (pop. 3500) at the lower end of the Walker Lake, an ugly town with numerous buildings boarded up and for sale.  At a gas station, I found the squeegee reservoirs by the pump bone dry, and all the paper towel dispensers were empty.

I only had about a hundred miles to go to Bishop, south through brown, bare mountains and a few nearly dead mining towns…. I climbed to Montgomery Pass, in view of Boundary Peak, the highest in Nevada (13,141’), and dropped down into California and the Owens Valley…. It was only ten in the morning, but the heat out under the sun was already impressive, nineties and heading for triple digits….

A few miles east of town I stopped at Laws Railroad Museum and Historical Site. The town of Laws was established in 1880, the terminus of the first railway built into the Owens Valley; the line that ran south from Carson City, and followed much of my morning’s drive. The train that plied the route was known as the Slim Princess, no one seems to know why; in 1960 the line was shut down, and that was that, time for a museum.

I dutifully visited the general store, the print shop, the doctor’s and dentist’s offices, the school house, the wagon barn and the blacksmith shop…. In the Pioneer Building, I paused to examine a two-headed lamb in a glass case; a small plaque read, “Siamese Lambs: These twin lambs were born dead on the Ed Matlock Ranch north of Bishop in February 1938”…. 

Outside, I clambered up on the train engine, but I didn’t ring the bell, there had been enough of that by other visitors throughout my time on the grounds…. The “Bottle House” was devoted solely to collections of brown and green and blue bottles, the exhibits the lifetime work of three local couples whose hobby was culling the middens of abandoned mining towns…. The Ranch House was best, furnished as Richie and Tweed Conway had had it in the 1950s, the kitchen table set and ready; under a framed photograph of their son, who looked rakish in his fresh uniform, I learned that he had died in World War II, at the age of twenty....

After a coffee shop afternoon down in Bishop, I called Heleen and she told me to come up to the house. She and Tom greeted me warmly, as if it was only natural that I was back and would be staying in their guest bedroom again so soon.

We ate dinner out on the back patio after the sun had gone down—a great salad, fancy pasta, wine. Another couple had been invited, Bill and Georgeann. Georgeann was quiet through most of the meal, working on making a bracelet when she wasn’t eating. Bill dominated, loud and jokey and entertaining, a raconteur who everyone else seemed happy to defer to. He was in his 60s, white-haired with a white moustache, and he and Heleen seemed particularly close; he teased her about various events in the past, and she laughed hard and tried to give back what she got. He talked about his recent motorcycle trip in the Northwest, about trekking in the Dolomites, and about the local hiking and cycling. He’s retired, and apparently keeps busy. This week he’s been getting up in the small hours to watch Wimbledon matches live (he and Heleen used to play tennis regularly)…. He grew up in the Bay area, went off to Vietnam in the late 60s, came back and came up to the eastern Sierras to climb…. He considered how he could stay and make a living, then trained to become an x-ray technician, and then worked at the Bishop hospital for thirty-five years.

He and Georgeann had been together only four or five years. She’s the head of personnel at the hospital. Later, Heleen said Bill has had a number of relationships over the decades…. “It’s a small community,” she said, “so it can be kind’ve tough after a break-up. But I think he gets along with his exes.”

When prompted, I talked a little of my coming hike. But I was tired, maybe a little distracted by my plans, and mostly I sat and listened to Bill tell stories. Also, their long history of friendship easily trumped my very brief one, and I saw no reason to compete.... By eleven the wine was finished and Bill had run down, and he and Georgeann said good night, and I went off to bed soon after….

Tomorrow I set off again, a lighter pack on my back.