The_Fortuneteller_Drove_a

The Fortuneteller Drove a Snowplow

Ray Purcell

We've all heard about the world"s oldest profession but to tell the truth I never really gave a rip about the hierarchy of humanities base needs let alone cared to contemplate the esoterica of their market economy. Though I was amused when I noticed a t-shirt with the caption " engineering- the worlds second oldest profession. But now I've been convinced that there is an another profession that may be a strong contender for second and could beat the engineers into third- fortunetellers. Yeah, I mean seers, clairvoyants, sensitives, market analysts, clergy, weather forecasters, horseracing touts, fortune cookies, etc.

Think about it, very little of what we do on a day to day basis has to do with concern for the moment, cultivates joy de verve, or encourage us to carpe diem. In case you have been fortunate enough for reasons of wealth or madness to not notice life isn't simple; it's just not about slaying dinner, breeding, and getting buried in you best bear skin any more. Now it's about positioning. That's right positioning, positioning to get a job, keep a job, advance in the job while still keeping the job, and that all boils down to securing your position for the future, which is where the fortune tellers come in because we're anxious to have an edge, a leg up so to speak.

Even our spear chucking club swinging forefathers had to ceremoniously gather around the fire, smoke a little hash, and usually with the help of a mystic, seek a vision to divine where the herd might be so the clan could be positioned for that cold lean winter. This was serious stuff. The only difference is that today we think we need more of the right stuff to convince ourselves that we might be well positioned, though what ever we're positioning ourselves for is really less certain, if not downright vague; now we're talking high anxiety, and societal neurosis of epidemic proportions.

Now, here's the vision, a potter painstakingly selects the clay, carefully mixes it with just the right amount of water, and then wedges and wedges to the perfect texture, places the clay on the wheel and begins to spin, but the clay isn't centered and spins off of the wheel all over the floor. I don't know what you'd do but I'd head for the door, not to run but to find, seek a little grace, quest a little wisdom, get re-centered. At times like these I don't want to have someone look at my watch and tell me what time it is for me. Like the X-files "the truth is out there", you just have to be in the right head space to recognize it. For me that's the point of physical exhaustion, which is different from the mental and spiritual exhaustion that you go home with after many days at work.

On one particular New Years Eve morning I woke up hot on the heels of a week, albeit short, that left me feeling like I was running from the very devil and the back of my neck was hot from the auld son gaining on me. The quarter of German Chocolate pie that I washed down with a pot of coffee was probably the wrong choice of breakfast given my frame of mind. My brain felt like it had slapped the horse on the butt with one foot in the stirrup. I gathered up some warm cloths, some cheese, a pear, and Ry Krisp, then threw my cross-country skis in the truck and headed for the hills.

A rare early season snow fall had come to the Southern Sierra because of an El Nino weather pattern, and the siren song of a ski a mere hour and a half from home, and with no crowds, was practically pulling me out of my shoes. There was a palpable calm as I drove out of Bakersfield, which I attributed to the greater portion of society saving up it's collective strength for football games and New Years Eve parties. The air was uncharacteristically clean given the typical filth that typically settles into what I lovingly refer to as the Great Central Sump of California.

With virtually no traffic on the road I felt as though I was soaring up the Kern Canyon Road. The Kern River was diminished to a trickle; some few golden leaves still clung to various trees, while the recent rains were coaxing out some early grasses. As I neared Wofford Heights the Kern Plateau came into view and was generously dusted with snow. I was delighted and felt virtually lifted up the North Fork of the Kern River toward Johnsondale. I don't even recall Kernville but was fascinated that the campgrounds along the river that are typically packed cheek by jowl with campers, who during the summer turn the river into squalid shanty towns of tents, tarps, and trailers, were blessedly...empty.

As I approached Mc Nalley's Steakhouse and Lodge I started to see signs of the previous summers forest fire. Where Mc Nalley's had been spared, and enigmatically became the namesake of the Mc Nalley Fire, Roads End Resort had been burned to the ground, savaged. The soot caked cobbles that formed the foundations of the cabins and the charred twisted remnants of framing were a powerful testament to the persistence of uncertainty and the nonchalance of impermanence.

In contrast the surrounding hills were freed of the dense choke of Broom, Sage, Manzanita, and Chemise that over the many years without natural fire had surely and ironically ensured the loss of Roads End. The hottest fire seldom fully consumes all of its fuel. Impatient to rise up hill with the raising heat and driven by self-perpetuating winds drawn into the flames, fires leave other worldly skeletons, blackened and cracked limbs lifted imploringly. Not content to tarry the flames may thoroughly char only the down hillside of a tree leaving the bark on the up hill sides intact and unmolested. Once freed of the thicket of brush the earth revealed ochre granite boulders previously hidden and that were now highlighted by the low Winter Sun.

I caught a glimpse of a sign, not really seen but recalled from the memory of a different awareness; M50 CLOSED FOR THE WINTER and SNOW NOT PLOWED ABOVE JOHNSONDALE. Well BOOYAH! I only slowed out of reverence for the black ice that commonly forms on the road above the diversion dam where the road angles into long winter shade. But once past Brush Creek I forced the physics of forward velocity against the tendency of my truck to fly off the outside of a turn, only slowing again when I encountered snow on the road. Just passed the former logging camp of Johnsondale, now a recreational vehicle hovel who's members harbor illusions of elegant exclusivity, the road was blocked by a wonderful berm of snow atop which were sawhorse style barricades and a sign admonishing CLOSED FOR THE WINTER. Best of all there was no one else there.

I stood on the freshly fallen and unmarked snow, by myself. Holding my ski poles for balance I weighted one foot and awkwardly tried to squirm the opposite square toed boot into the binding so that the three pins would mate to the three holes in the toe of the boot. As I started to push the tip of the pole onto the bale of the binding that would lock the boot in place I heard a sound. The sound gradually began to crescendo; it was 2 parts lowered primer gray Oldsmobile with it's subwoofer rumbling and with a hint of buzz the way it does when the resonance makes my windows buzz at 3 AM; 4 parts nails on chalk board; and 4 parts flat bladed shove dragged across concrete when the blade is perpendicular to the ground.

I found myself staring over my right shoulder stupidly. The sound was coming from the direction of the lower Peppermint Road. Suddenly a snowplow rounded the curve pushing the enormous curved blade in advance. The plow continued it's tight arch until all I could see was the concavity of the blade, the steel burnished from scraping road ice and I'm sure no small amount of pavement. The operator was a burly man, and I could only see him from the shoulders up over the blade of the plow; he looked like a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte only he had a heavy Fidel Castro beard, circa the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a sun hat that looked like it was woven from sea grass and resembled a Stickley Lamp Shade.

The plow was headed toward the berm of snow like a juggernaut. At the last moment the plow lifted it's blade in a mock salute, and just before the berm the plow came to an abrupt stop the blade dipping slightly. The man with the Castro beard and the lampshade hat appeared to be cranking the driver's side window down and was looking at me very intentionally. With the window fully down the bearded bust thrust out his head slightly canting the large hat as it was blocked by the window frame. Our eyes meet in a scrutinizing kind of way. I cocked my head to the side the way my dog does when she's heard a new sound. Then from between mustache and beard the lips parted, and in a matter of fact way the driver of the snowplow said "I'm sure you're going to be okay today."

As though I had just absentmindedly watched a street corner interaction between two other people as a curiosity, I turned and strode off up the road toward the Sierra Divide Highway. I was preoccupied with the notion that I might make it to the Trail of 100 Giants, a Giant Sequoia grove, though I had no idea how far it was. I had driven this way many times but my sense of distance was distorted by the snow and that I was on skis and not behind the wheel. I shuffled off still under the influence of the pot of coffee, wedge of German Chocolate pie, and what ever demon possessed me to drive so hard toward an uncertain goal.

I began to warm, sweat, and then become hot as I pumped my legs with each kick. In my present state of frenzy I hardly noticed that there was no corresponding glide, though the grade of the road and breaking trail through the new wet snow was surely exerting a drag. It was an unappreciated force, like the hand of God, and it had me between its thumb and forefinger teasingly allowing me to pull forward; but I was oblivious and pulled on. My mind began to clear as I struggled up the road and I caught my self thinking about the end of the day, the New Years Eve evening, and a million other things that were all ahead of me and had noting to do with what was going on right now. I caught myself lost from the moment.

I sensed something deeply suppressed was struggling to find it's way back to the moment but I denied it and continued to bore on, driving up the road toward my arbitrary goal; where I was and what I had just passed by were light years behind me, I skied on. My legs and arms obediently slaved away in response to the will of their idiot master. Approaching a sign which faced up hill I turned to see the revelation intended for the downhill traveler; JOHNSONDALE 4 MILES, and I pressed harder still. Three or four miles further on, it may have been only one, my quadriceps began to burn and I became aware of the knawing void in the pit of my stomach that meant hunger.

The fatigue in my body began to reel-in my mind as if it were a wild trout flipping, twisting, and jumping to escape the hook of a dry fly. But soon my mind too was where I stood, in silence, surrounded by the fir trees, which were laboring, drooping under their burden of heavy wet snow. The road was as smooth as the top of a box of French Vanilla ice cream before the first scoop is carved out. The proceeding Sun cleaved the low clouds and burned a path toward the Kern Plateau to the east. I stood, a bit wobbly, as I ate chocolate caramels as fast as I could peel away the wrappers standing next to a meadow ringed by forest and covered by sky. I was okay...and I knew that I would be, but still the sooth of the snowplow had seen well.

January, 2003

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