Early Fall of 1988, saw the Parrish punks exploring the eastern side of the Sierras in the area of the upper feather River. Portola and the surrounding Plumas national Forest had been my stomping grounds for five years (1971-1975) when I worked at Walton’s Grizzly Lodge Boys Camp. Now we were back in force, all five of us to poke around and explore some of those fabled spots. Daniel had been there earlier, in 1985, when at age five he accompanied Hugh and I on a hunting trip there.
We checked in with the Boy’s Camp and the caretakers, Conrad and Marilyn Lahr, and then headed out on the old Walker Mine Road, past Lake Davis and up to Midway House to set up camp. This open meadow in the midst of National Forest was once a gold rush stage stop. It was halfway between the railroad at Portola and the copper mining operation at Walkermine, hence the name. We set up camp and then drove on to Walkermine, climbing around the old concrete foundations of the reduction plant, marveling at the beautiful aqua stream of water that flowed from the mouth of the main shaft into Grizzly Creek (sadly the color came from the arsenic used in leaching the copper ore from the rock, the stream harbored NO fish), and Dan proved to be a great tourguide from his previous visit.
On the way back to camp, we stopped at the Lovejoy Grave, a small headstone surrounded by split rail fencing, near the road. Legend has it that the grave contains a young girl of the Lovejoy family, homesteaders in the area. She died in the Great Flu epidemic in 1917, after the First World War. T issobering to see this small wooden headstone fenced off and surrounded by thousands of acres of forest. No other trace of the Lovejoy homestead remains.
We also examined the “Witch Tree” a lightning-blasted snag that overhangs the road and whose trunk is spiraled with burn marks. In the night, its bleached outline is spooky to observe, as I have many times when driving the camp trucks to Walkermine on campouts. It is the basis of not a few ghost stories told around the campfire to gullible campers, thankfully none of them true. Wending our way home in the late afternoon, we began dinner preparations to feed the hungry troops.
Cece and Dan shot the little .22 rifle back at camp…both enjoying it greatly. We roasted marshmallows and made Smores over our campfire ring and then tucked in snug cocoons in the tent. It was COLD that night. Hooting owls kept us awake for a while but the glorious sun met us in the morning, setting the ground ablaze as it was covered with a hard frost. Man, was it COLD! Pop was coerced into going out and building a roaring fire, helped by Mountain Man Dan, before the other three explorers would venture from the warm tent to huddle around the blaze. We kept it going quite a while because even with the sun up it was frigid. Those Eastern Sierra fall days are beautiful but CRISP!
Wonderful memories now keep that trip alive for me and maybe in some future year, our grown-up children will go back there with their aged parents and re-create that wonderful time.
JP 12-18-2011
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