I realize, of course, that "He died for Tacos Cortez" is a stupid thing to have on a tombstone. "He died 'cause he was fucking stupid" also is somehow in inappropriate. No, I think that "It seemed like a good idea at the time" would be the verbiage of choice. Because--you know--it did seem like a reasonable thing at the time.
It was the annual family trip up to Lake Almanor just east of Chico. My father had called to warn me that the area surrounding my typical route was closed in spots on the way up due to forest fire. That was not hard to believe since due to some odd weather phenomenon, we were sharing in the smoke some ninety miles away. But he'd called a day or so before my planned departure, and I'm sure he'd gotten his information secondhand, so who knew how old the information was? I emailed a girl I knew who worked for a newspaper up in Paradise, near the fire zone. Surely she'd know. And in fact she did--the road was indeed closed.
Shit. I used to go to Chico at least once a month for several years to see friends of mine (well, okay, to get tossed) but we used to stop by this place around the corner from their house called Tacos Cortez. This place had like the best Mexican food for less than $5: a huge plate of beans and rice and main dish. Too much for one to eat unless you'd starved yourself first.
People graduated and moved out of the area and now the only time that I get into town is when I'm driving up to Almanor. Every time I do, though, I make sure to make at least one stop at Tacos Cortez. And now that opportunity was literally up in smoke.
But then I remembered that the mountains are liberally dotted with small towns and all sorts of roadways and highways leading up to them. Hell, there was at least half a dozen ways to get up to the camp that I used to work at, and there must be just as many to get to Almanor I reconed. So I busted out the old AAA map of California and started looking for routes. And there it was--and not even a stretch! Back down a little bit just out of Chico and up into Paradise. From there it was good roads all the way up and around the fire zone, or so I hoped. But here was my chance. Even if I had to turn around I could get up through Red Bluff if I had to.
The entire Sacramento valley was shrouded in a pall of smoke that burned the eyes and throat as I drove up I-5 to Chico, passing CDF fire equipment as I went. School was just about to start in Chico, but the town was eerily quiet. At Tacos Cortez everyone went silent as the news started with the top story covering the nearby fires.
As they showed the area afflicted I realized that my route was in the clear. If I could get to Paradise I could go all the way and so I headed off boyantly for a road adventure. I hadn't been to Paradise since I was a little kid and I was amazed to find a quaint little mountain-esque town just a few miles outside of the very valley Chico. As I passed through Paradise, the road dropped from four lanes to two, and then from two lanes to one. This didn't disturb me too much. After all, this is exactly how Highway 4 is just past camp and that's a good little drive. Besides, its a nice clear route according to the map.
What did disturb me was the end of the road. Well, not exactly the end of the road, the end of the paved road. To be honest, the town at the end of the road disturbed me most: a few houses, a fire station, a bar, all deserted. It felt too much like a scene out of a Stephen King film. But hell, how far could the unpaved road go before it became paved again? It couldn't have been too long--the AAA map didn't even switch into it's "dirt road" pattern.
It was a good dirt road too, as far as such things go. I've had a pretty wide experience with unpaved surfaces and this one was aces: wide and smooth with high berms on either side. I didn't even think about switching into four-by. Well, not until the road narrowed some and I started hitting washes. But still, I figured that pavement was not far beyond.
I'm not sure at what point I decided that I had been living a lie. Maybe it was when the road got so bad I had to put it into four-by. So bad I considered turning around more than once. But then things smoothed out and I ran into a junction with signs. This wasn't the wilderness, it was just the backcountry and an Eagle Scout like myself armed with good maps and a tankful of gas shouldn't fear the backcountry none.
Still, no one was coming the other way. Until I ran into the junction the only signs of life I'd seen were a few winterized cabins. Maybe they were houses and the occupants weren't ever coming back--hard to tell. What shook my resolve some, before the signs, was the monument. Way out in the middle of nowhere, past the Stephen King town was this pile of stones with flowers and flags and such placed on top at one of the tighter turns. It made me almost wonder if the guy was actually in there.
But then there was the sign. It was only twenty-five miles to the town I needed to go through. And hell, I'd already two-thirds that far already. Besides, "adventure is the essence of the human spirit" and all that. Actually, I didn't see the sign until I came across it the second time. I'd seen pavement at the junction, you see, and figured that salvation lay at the end of that pavement. Obviously something important lay on the other side--why else would they pave it? Apparently to fuck with the tourists, because a mile later it became a dirt road again.
Things were good, though, despite the smoke. There were campgrounds here and there: Forest Service signage denoted them as such but you'd be hard pressed to differentiate them from any other side of the road. My only really edgy moment was when the Forest Service truck came blazing by the other way with a pickup right on his tail. I was almost certain that he'd jump out of his truck and tell me to high-tail it before we all got baked to a crisp.
He did no such thing, of course. At subsequent junctions I decided to hold my course. At least that way I'd be able to backtrack easily if I needed to. But when it came time to head into the town that was my destination I saw that it would be only a bit over twenty miles to get to Almanor. At this point I'd been over fourty miles offroad. What was another twenty?
At this point the sun was setting and with the smoke the twilight was thin, especially in the thicker trees. I passed a solitary camper, a rugged-looking outdoors type with beard and comfortable clothes. Not frightening or wild, just somewhat untamed. He raised an arm in greeting as he headed down the hilside to his camp and I blazed on by with my own beard, knuckles white as I wrestled the wheel to keep the truck aligned with the road--probably both frightening and wild.
A few miles past the camper I ran into the single most scary moment of the trip. Not the flames licking the hillsides of Paradise or the Stephen King town or the pile of rocks or the tear-assing Forest Service truck. Nope, it was a little valley. I looked it up later--it's called "Snag Lake", a common name up around those parts. Nothing grew in the valley: twisted remains of stumps dotted a field of dead brown grass. A heavy pall of smoke obscured the tiny valley so that one couldn't see from one side to the other. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. This was where the monster was going to get me.
Driving alone down desolate roads with no radio and a road too bumpy for CDs gives one's mind a bit too much time to think.
On the other side of the valley lay Humbug Summit, so the signs said, and I wound my way up the side of the great Humbug and back down again. That's where things turned to shit. There was a "Y" intersection, one that didn't show up on my map. Neither of the signs pointed towards Almanor or even anywhere near there but both pointed towards Humbug Summit--in opposing directions. I wished for all the world to have a camera to record this moment. Not just the Summit, but Humbug lake lie in one of two different ways. It was like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz: "Well, you can get to the Emerald City thatway...or you can get to the Emerald City thataway."
The map didn't help--I couldn't figure out which of the t-shaped junctions this y-shaped one was supposed to be or even where I was. I picked the leftward trail (to be consistent) and headed upwards to a ridgeline with the most spectacular view of smoke I've ever seen. As far as the eye could see were identical ridges to mine poking out of the smoke like snow monkeys at the hot springs--just the tops poking out.
It was at this point that better judgement took hold and I packed it in, blazing back through the intersection (laughing maniacally), zipping through the valley (lest any monsters get me), back past the camper and down the safer trail. Which, as it turned out, became a paved road after just three of the twelve miles and ended up heading into the most welcome looking backwoods town I had ever seen.
It wasn't until I told somebody later about my trip and their eyes grew wide when I told them where I'd been driving that I fully realized the situation I'd placed myself in: nobody knew where I was, nobody would come looking for me if something happened, and I could have been driving into the middle of an inferno for all I knew. Mother nature has it out for me, but she was kind that trip. I took the road less traveled, and this time it didn't make the difference.
Later, in camp, I was plotting some further offroad adventures using USGS topo maps that offered more detail than the gazeteer that I'd been using and I tracked this trail down to the bottom of the map. Down maybe five miles from a major road juncion.
Right down to Humbug Summit.
