Yokohl Valley Killer

Yokohl Valley Killer

[NOTE:  Double-click the photos for a larger view]

When our group of ten riders parted Exeter that February Saturday noon, it was still foggy and gray, as is usual that time of year in the flat farmlands of Central California, but about three-quarters the way up the mile-long Rocky Hill climb, we broke into unabated, welcomed sunshine that continued as we zipped down the backside through the two 90-degree turns and into Yokohl Valley.  Forming our paceline, we turned and pedaled eastward out through this spectacular rolling valley toward Blue Ridge and Springville.  The remote area is dotted with a few working cattle ranches, lots of hills and increasing forest as we neared the steep Blue Ridge climb with its switchbacks.  Normally, this road is little traveled by automobiles other than the ranchers’ trucks and stock trailers and the occasional adventurer.  But this day we saw quite a few scattered cars (four or more — unusual) parked along the roadside, their occupants standing along the shoulders gazing at the greening hills, cattle, and birds.  Clearly, humans needed a break from the fog and gloom of the San Joaquin ag-lands in winter. 

Bird songs were plenteous in this beautiful upland retreat, and the chill air that brought them to us was stimulating.  As we passed the old dynamite shack before the sharp curves and climbs begin, some of us stopped to watch a high-soaring Bald Eagle.  It was hypnotic to watch as it soared, its white head and tail clear in the brilliant sun.

We pedaled on up the valley to the Blue Ridge crest, rested a little with our pocket snacks of Power Bars and bananas and our water bottles as we exchanged friendly cycle-banter, then turned and headed toward home via the same route.  There was still one car remaining in the valley as the sun began to drop – its apparent owner a father with a large, professional-looking camera and zoom lens, accompanied by a small son who was very enthusiastic about the outdoors.  We exchanged greetings as we rolled past, then settled into our usual routine of breaking the pace line and taking our own individual speeds home. 

A friend and I broke off the front and gained a quarter mile or so, maintaining that pace as we entered the last long straightaway to the “T” where Yokohl Drive meets Myers Road to take us up the backside of Rocky Hill, the last barrier and endurance challenge between us and home.  My buddy was about thirty feet in front of me, tracking safely down the yellow centerline, and we were cruising at about 23 mph when my peripheral vision picked up sudden movement from the right.  As a rabbit darted out to the middle of the road from the grass on the right shoulder and sat down in the paralysis of fear and watchfulness, I saw a diving raptor close in with a short, ear-piercing “keeee” as it just barely cleared the top of the barbwire fence at high speed.  I yelled to my friend, “Watch out!” because it looked like the bird was going to take him out, but it was closing on him rapidly at a diagonal from his right rear and only about four feet above the ground – almost a certain collision course – and my warning appeared to be too little, too late.  The attacker was a big bird – a Golden Eagle – with a wingspan of over six feet.  And in an amazing show of agility, its talons snatched the coney from the middle of the road just a few feet in front of my buddy’s path, then the hunter climbed and turned right in front and flew back over us.

What a stunning and exhilarating sight!  It wasn’t the natural killing that was exhilarating; it was the adrenalin rush of near collision combined with the startling aggression, precision and speed of the eagle on its hunt.  A timeless display of the basic course of nature, untrammeled by mankind and our late-breaking, politically-correct queasiness about anything killing anything.  But this was the fine art of hunting, natural-style, and performed with facility and urgency born of a core need.  All creatures have to eat, and we all kill to do so — even if it’s only a leaf stalked by an aphid.  I’ve seen raptors successfully hunt before, but not from such a close and unexpected vantage point.  I won’t soon forget the experience and regretted not having a video camera with me.  But not many cyclists I know carry them.

The Yokohl Valley is a beautiful treasure-trove of raw, rugged nature and abundant wildlife.  I’ve frequently had coyotes cross the road right in front of me (ho-hum by comparison to the hunting eagle), and I’ve often stopped to watch the work of keen-eyed, smaller raptors such as Red-Tail Hawks, Prairie Falcons, and others.  Members of my riding group have twice seen bobcats cross the road.

But even without such spectacular evidences of wildlife, Yokohl Valley — albeit a “killing field” of sorts — is one of the most peaceful places on earth.  Very often there’s nothing but the sound of the wind, abundant lark songs and chirping ground squirrels, the occasional lowing of cattle, and the gurgle of the streams as one climbs up through the golden summer hills toward Blue Ridge.  I’ve moved away now and miss the privilege of my frequent rides there. But Yokohl Valley is about far more than just a wonderful place for a relatively few bicycle and photography enthusiasts to enjoy nature, along with the differing enjoyment and perspective of the few cattle ranchers who make their living there and whose compatible presence I especially appreciate as another last bastion against the dying of the old west.  These are not feedlot operations, but open rangelands grazed by sturdy beef cattle and often dotted with beehives for harvesting the abundance of wildflower honeys produced.  Another of those retreats that’s a rapidly vanishing part of the American landscape and the west, a place where parents can take their kids to introduce them to the sights, sounds, smells, feels and life cycles of largely-undisturbed nature.  Oh sure, kids can watch the Discovery Channel and other sources of wildlife film footage, but those are paltry substitutes for the firsthand experience.  “Nature-behind-a-zoo-fence” is little better than soup in a can.

Carpe diem.  Vita brevis!

© February, 2006.  Michael Stubblefield

All Wool and a Yard Wide

I remember back when I was a pup, my dad used the phrase “all wool and a yard wide” to describe a couple of his friends.  At the time, I was totally stumped as to what that would, or could, mean.  After all, I was a literalist (still am) and could not see any connection between the person he was talking about and yard goods.  I didn’t know where the description came from – seemed totally foreign to me – and it was only years later when I began to speculate that its origins may have been in my Scottish grandmother’s lexicon.  It sounded like something she might have said.

Well, as is the case with much of what we hear as youngsters, the description grew sturdy cobwebs for years in the back corners of my subconscious mind, partly because my dad didn’t utter it often, but mostly because I probably wasn’t terribly interested in it at the time.  It was just a curiosity, low on my mental list of vital things to remember.  But the phrase stuck, and I was well into adulthood when it sprang into use for the first time in my own vernacular, like a fully-germinated seed sprouts from fertile soil.  It felt comfortable, as natural and warm as the thing it literally describes, — like my grandmother’s personality.  I like wool, even the “scratchy” kind that was the norm before I ever heard of fine, Merino wool.  And although I now have high-tech, lightweight synthetic clothing for my hikes and cold weather bike rides, I still hang on to the woolens in my closet and wear them often.  They take me back to earlier, treasured times in my life.  I like to wear wool, feel it, and even smell it – even when it’s wet. Its earthy aroma reminds me of campfires and hikes or fishing on cold mornings as the steam rises from a river or lake.  It signals me that I’m connecting with something almost as old as civilization.  And Dad’s phrase has come to take on clear meaning for me.

I also remember when I first met “Shorty” in the early 1970s.  We were at church, and I liked him instantly, even across the room.  He is, in fact, short — significantly shorter than his lovely wife Dee. But within seconds of shaking his firm, beefy hand I realized that his small but supercharged eyes were on a level with mine.  Not literally, you understand, because I’m much taller than he.  But his presence projected, in a very comfortable and friendly way, his confidence — that he was completely happy with who he is.  There isn’t a drop of Napoleon complex in him.  And when he introduced himself as “James H. – ‘for Handsome’ – Shorty Ludwig,” his ready smile made his weathered face crack with lines at the ends of those supercharged eyes.  He was warmth and friendliness at their best.  He was and is, in a phrase, “all wool and a yard wide,” as I would come to learn through the ensuing years of our friendship.

Intuitively I noted there was an earnestness, an earthiness about him that always made me relax.  He was able to zero into the relaxation to find teachable moments, and he could pour his homespun wisdom into my young heart.  He did so with alacrity.  Although Shorty was a banker, he was first and foremost a man – a man’s man.  I don’t mean the high-testosterone variety of swashbuckling masculinity that latter phrase may conjure for you.  I mean in the best sense of the term.  In my years of association with him, Shorty consistently radiated the sense that he was more comfortable in jeans and wool shirts overlaying cotton long-johns than in his business suit; that he preferred to be outdoors squirrel hunting or splitting firewood rather than at his desk; that he preferred to talk about his family, his home improvement projects, or growing up in the country more than his professional work.  Nonetheless, it was clear that he loved his work because he loved people.  He reminded me in that way of my own dad.

My memory also recalls the first time Shorty came to visit when my wife and I moved our family of small daughters to a farmhouse in the country, circa 1977.  Shorty and I had been friends by then for five years, but when Linda and I announced we were moving to the “hinterlands” of our Midwest state, Shorty was all support and enthusiasm and offered at once to come on a weekend with his teenaged son Warren to help me lay up enough firewood for winter, since the house we’d chosen had only a fireplace for heating.  I saw the visit as another great opportunity to spend time with both, to listen to Shorty’s stories and his remarkable humor and to watch the father-son relationship to which I aspired.  As I recall, the visit surpassed all my high expectations.  The weather offered those crisp, pristine days of October-blue skies that slowly grew out of the black country nights and dark shadows of the mountains, pregnant with heavy morning hoarfrost to be gradually burned off by a warming sun that simultaneously glorified the hardwoods in the surrounding forest.  Perfect weather for splitting wood.

As we pulled on our boots and set out the door after a hearty breakfast of eggs, potatoes, Linda’s biscuits and coffee, Shorty was already cracking jokes and getting us stoked up for the task at hand with his lighthearted banter.  Another way he was like my dad, this; very adept at finding the humor in almost any circumstance or creating it on his own if nothing offered to aid or no foil was at the ready.  Mind you, I planned to enjoy the day’s work, but an early, cold morning is not my best time of the day.  I need time to warm up, time to contemplate the day, time to wrap my head around what lies ahead and rise to meet it.  But Shorty’s humor had a way of easing me into the day with a half-grin on my face and in my heart.

In anticipation of this particular weekend, I had cut several pickup loads of fallen trees and a couple of green ones into firewood and had them in a pile near the house.  There was a lot of down timber on the farm, dropped and left by the construction crew who’d built the house, so firewood was abundant.  My new splitting maul, axe and wedge were nearby, and Shorty had brought his own well-used tools.  Well, the three of us weren’t fifteen minutes into the brisk day’s labor before I broke the hickory handle out of my brand new maul.  My frustration bolted to the surface.  But Shorty was “on the spot” with his humor, gently chiding me with a chuckle and that ever-present sparkle in his eyes as he softly quipped, almost as if in afterthought, “Mike, ya gotta keep your butt behind you!”  Unlike my dad (and admittedly, perhaps because he isn’t my dad), Shorty’s quick-witted admonition snipped my short fuse and triggered a “What do you mean?” – another teachable moment.  So he showed me how to split wood with the “wrong” foot forward so that the length of my maul handle didn’t “grow” on each stroke.  He even anticipated my natural discomfort with the new position by acknowledging that, since I was probably a ball player, the new stance wouldn’t feel right at first, ballplayers always being taught to lead with the leg opposite to their throwing or shooting – or in this case, chopping – hand. Right handed, lead with left foot and vice versa. Well, his instruction worked.  As a matter of fact, his humorous remark has found application in my life in other areas unrelated to splitting firewood.  Life always works better that way.  Lead with your butt, and you’re gonna have trouble.  Simple, straightforward, “Shorty style.”

Yesterday I learned that Shorty is struggling with life as his physical body seems to be wearing out.  My eyes filled with tears as I saw his face before me, the balding head, the small but vigorous eyes, and that weathered skin with the pronounced smile lines.  But my face also smiled and my heart smiled within as I recalled the bigger, better part of Shorty that lives in my memories.  I’m certain that, as he contemplates leaving this world for his eternal home with his Master, he’ll be keeping his butt behind him and putting his best foot forward with all the honesty and humor that make him what he is.  Shorty is one of those guys who made peace with life and with God early on, and who has lived in that honesty and peace throughout.  He always lived his Christianity more than he talked it.  I’d lay you two-to-one odds that when the unnecessary introduction is made in heaven, Shorty will use that same line he used on me, with as big a grin as back then:  “Hi, I’m James H. ‘for Handsome’ Shorty Ludwig.”  I don’t recall that my dad ever met Shorty, but I’m certain that Dad would have described him as “all wool and a yard wide.” And although he really is short, he’s as big a man as I’ve ever known.  He’s “all wool and a yard wide.”  The “genuine article.”  The “real deal.”  Guileless.

Carpe diem. Vita brevis.

© May, 2010, Michael E. Stubblefield.  All rights reserved.

Note: I penned this in November, 2006.  My good friend “Shorty” moved on in early 2009, leaving as marvelous a legacy for family and friends as any man ever left.

Today … Tears

Today … Tears

I didn’t mean to, but

Doggone it, I cried today.

Yep, legions of tears flowed down my cheeks

After assaulting and overrunning my eyelids.

I even broke to the point that

My shoulders shook and my chest heaved

With thoughts about him.

He’s gone now, and

What has been, what could have been, and

Even what is yet to be, in the Master Plan,

Hasn’t been revealed in any detail, at least

Not to me in my questioning.

Why has all the hurt had to … well, … hurt?

Maybe time will tell.

One thing seems sure.

In all this sobbing done, I’ve seen that

Pain is a faithful tutor who makes his point

At the exacting price of a bruise or piece of skin,

Or a wounded heart, or lingering disappointment.

But tomorrow?  Who knows what will spring up

Where the torrent has so soon fled?

Will it be a call of hope?

A symphonic quartet to lift the heart?

An epic verse to tell the story in all its shades?

What seeds have been sown in the rush of waters

That tumbled down the slopes of sadness and despair?

Where, at the bottom, were they laid to rest to

Await the warmth of sun’s rising?

Well, I’m still alive and

Left to live another day as I might — a

Little halt, … but … able to move on with faith

That in the going on, I’ll see a gentler hand

Working to make another’s way a little better,

Perhaps far less fearful and less angry,

Even if the hand is only mine.

Ah! Those tears have

Washed away the grime from my own

Dirty hands, so that I may now have the sense

To spot the tear welling in another’s eyes;

To be timely enough to stop my own selfish dash

Across another’s beautifully laid garden,

Alas, to spare that tear another day.

©  2005 by Michael E. Stubblefield

“…All ‘at dark ‘n all ‘at cold.”

from the movie “No Country for Old Men,” based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.  I love these lines — profound consideration.

Final Scene:

Ed Tom Bell, Sheriff of Carroll County, TX [played by Tommy Lee Jones] and Loretta Bell, his wife [played by Tess Harper].

Ed Tom, newly retired, is sitting at the breakfast table with his back to the window.  There is a pinched, pained, misty stare in his eyes as Loretta comes to the table, pours coffee into their cups and sits down. He’s looking past her, way off in the distance somewhere:

Ed Tom: “Maybe I’ll go ridin’, whaddya thank?

Loretta: “Well, I cain’t plan yore day.

ET: “I mean, wouldya care to join me?

L: “Lord no, I’m not retarred [retired].

ET: “Maybe I’ll help out here, then.

L: “Uh … better not.  (long pause)  How’d ya sleep?

ET: “I ‘ont know, had dreams.

L: “Well, ya got time for ‘em now.  Anythang interestin’?

ET: “They always is to the party concerned.

L: (softening her face and tone), “Ed Tom, I’ll be polite [inviting him to talk].

ET: “Awright t’en, two of ‘em, both had my father in ‘em.  It’s peculiar.  I’m older now than he ever wuz by 20 years, so in a sense, he’s a younger man.  Anyways, first one I don’t remember too well, but it uz about meetin’ him in town somewhurs and he gimme some money.  I thank I lost it.  The second one, it wuz like we wuz both back in the older times, and I was a-horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night, goin’ through this pass in the mountains.  It was cold, it was snow on the ground everwhur.  He rode past me and jus kep on goin’.  Never said nothin’, jus rode on past.  And he had his blanket wrapped around him an’ his head wuz down.  When he rode past, I seen he was carryin’ far [fire] in a horn, the way people used to do, and I could see the horn from the light inside uv it, ‘bout the color o’ the moon.  And in the dream I knew that he wuz goin’ on ahead.  And he was fixin’ to make a far somewhur out thur in all ‘at dark and all ‘at cold.  [Ed Tom’s face turns dark, tears well in his eyes.]  And I knew that whenever I got thur, that he’d be thur.  And I woke up.  [Blinking back the tears, he stares at Loretta with a fearful, ominous look on his face.]

The movie ends with them staring at each other – her with unspoken pity on her face, him with dire sadness on his.