Bishop Creek, 2005

May 2006

My wife, Deidre, and I have lived around Bishop in the Eastern Sierra nearly 17 years. Dede’s an RN, runs Mammoth Hospital’s family medicine clinic. I work for the Bishop Paiute Tribe managing fire protection & wildland vegetation, transportation & roads, a logging enterprise, and writing grants, among other things. Also been Exec. Director of the Eastern Sierra Fire Council, and served a 5-year term on the school board.

We have two kids—Gina, an RN too, and Cody, a 15 year-old freshman at Bishop High. Gina also runs our 40 acre horse ranch in Caliente Canyon NE of Tehachapi, breeding and training thoroughbreds, racing in CA and AZ. Cody’s a serious climber and buckaroo, raising cattle and sheep. In summer he packs visitors horse- and mule-back into the Sierra wilderness for Rainbow Outfitters up the South Fork of Bishop Creek. Winters, Cody and I do as much backcountry skiing as we can. Summers, in addition to kayaking and rowing, Dede and I spend as much time as possible on the trail from our back gate into the Eastern Sierra, with horse and mule.

Disappointed that childhood aspiration of becoming an MD wasn’t feasible due to congenital inattention and addiction to blue skies, I graduated UCLA‘69 in English, figuring to be a well-read bum. All I desired from those times of tumult was quiet, sunny escape with books some distance from roads, but our trails fork funny ways—mine morphed into accidental adventure: served in Fire Management for the United States Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the State of California for 20 years, more than half of those lived in the heaven of the Klamath Mountains wilderness, the Karuk tribal homeland, without electricity, phone or neighbors for miles, among bears, eagles, salmon, otters and other miraculous wild critters. Restored orchards, rowed a dory in the Klamath River fishing steelhead, was the River salvage diver, raised appaloosas, bees, and malamutes, owned a salvage logging outfit, ran the sled team winters in the Marble Mountains, Siskiyous and Trinity Alps for a dozen years, and gave annual poetry readings in Mt. Shasta.

This’s a good spot to thank dear classmate Chuck Levin and his mom, Sylvia, for maintaining contact and caring these several decades, even tracking me down once on the wild River. And I was touched and grateful to classmates at our 40th for asking after Dad, remembering weekend sailing in sloop and schooner those years ago.

If you find yourself in Bishop during Mule Days, or passing through enroute to Mammoth, we’re in the book.