Susanville



Just after dawn I crossed the road by the campground and gingerly clambered over a barbed-wire fence. I climbed up a steep, dry slope, among ponderosa pine and jagged outcroppings of dark rock, following well-used cow paths. Periodically I came onto small openings, level benches thick with sagebrush, then, beyond, climbed again…. I kept expecting to see some cows, but I did not.

Eventually I came to a narrow dirt road that traversed the ridge just below the top, and I headed north on the cow-tracked road. The woods were quiet and desiccated, and while the morning was cool I could feel that within a couple hours the heat would come on hard…. After a while I came to a spot from where I could look down on Frenchman Lake. I left the road and started back west and down, figuring I’d come onto the road again…. But soon I could see high dark cliff walls on the other side of the canyon, and I figured they were on my side too. I cut back south, traversing an open slope of rock and brush, probing for a way down…. I descended precipitously into a ravine, and it surprised me that cows had made the same descent before me….

I was back at the campsite after a few hours. It had been good to walk, but the hike had felt a little pointless. I’m still in the thrall of a linear trail…. Not that the PCT goes anywhere, really, just north, but it does feel like you’re making some sort of progress. Of course a walk for a walk’s sake, and a bit of exploring is worthwhile too….

I only had about eighty miles to drive to Susanville, my destination for the day. High Desert State Prison, one of California’s maximum security facilities, sprawls among the sagebrush a few miles from town. That’s where Jenifer’s brother Stan lives, and I planned to visit him the next day, Saturday. But I had to occupy myself in the interim….

I drove through the town (pop. 18,000) several times, reminding myself of the possibilities (I was here last summer too). I tried the Starbuck’s first, but all the tables were filled with other slackers and their laptops. But the Safeway next door had a Starbuck’s too, and all those tables were unoccupied (because, I’m guessing, there was no wireless in the grocery store). I got a sandwich at the “Signature Café” counter, bought a San Francisco Chronicle, and settled down for the long afternoon among the grocery shoppers and the small army of black-aproned employees…. I read, broke out the laptop after a while, later transferred to the real Starbucks to check email….

Late in the afternoon I spent time at a used bookstore on Main Street, one of the most disorganized bookstores I’ve ever seen. At the foot of the shelves in each section were piles of excess books. I glanced at the top layer of this overflow, but found digging through the three feet beneath a daunting prospect…. It was the sort of bookstore with a whole lot of “almost” books but little in the way of books I really wanted. I did end up buying a novel, The City & The City by China de Mieville. 

I drove to the town park and sat in the shade by the van for a time and read my new book…. Waiting for the long day to end…. Later, I got a bean cheese burrito at Fiesta Mexicana and drove ten miles out of town to the west, and parked for the night at the Devil’s Corral Trailhead, at the halfway spot of the Bizz Johnston Trail.

At any such unofficial camping place I worry that the authorities will object. But the lot was far enough off the road, and the van was hidden among the pine trees, and no one came down to check.