Mementos of the West: Fish, Marmot and Ninja Turtles

My first night at the Owens River Ranch in the Sierra on a fishing trip with my son Curt and my grandsons was suitably rigorous. We had no matches to light a fire. I woke up cold.

In the morning my son walked over to the ranch lodge and borrowed some matches from the owner, Alice Alpers, a character whom I was to meet later. He made decaf coffee for me and he and I had wheat flakes and bagels for breakfast. The boys (Casey, 12, and Trevor, 8) ate something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal. It looked like candy. I looked at the list of ingredients on the box. It contained pizza shaped marshmallows, sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, gelatin, brown sugar, honey and malt syrup.

“It’s all sugar,” I said.

My son explained that when they were at home they had to eat healthful cereal, but on holiday they could eat what they liked. I took that to mean that I could have bacon and eggs.

I tried to shave, but the power was off. Alice explained later that the generator was turned by the stream just below the headwaters of the Owens River and that sometimes it was blocked by debris. Oh, well, I was on holiday. I didn’t have to shave.

I missed my morning paper. I didn’t know whether the Dodgers had won or lost. I didn’t know what was happening in the French Open. I think the paper is the thing I miss most in going primitive.

Just below its headwaters, the river is diverted into a creek that meanders through a meadow. This was where we fished. My son and I had obtained licenses in Mammoth the evening before.

Curt had brought two folding stools. We set them up on a bridge, baited our hooks and sat there fishing. The boys wandered farther down the stream. “I got one!” Casey shouted. He had hooked an 18 1/2-inch rainbow.

Casey’s fish was the only one caught that morning. I only sat there. But it was peaceful and pretty in the meadow. The Sierra’s snowy slopes rimmed us to the west. Hawks circled. Some kind of furry brown animal observed us from a boulder. It was bigger than a squirrel but not as big as a beaver. We didn’t know what it was. Redwing blackbirds, starlings and crows flew in and out of the willows. The nearby hills were covered with Jeffrey pine.

We had ham and cheese sandwiches and soft drinks for lunch. Then we called on Alice. The lodge stood behind a line of tall, bare quaking aspen. Its roof sagged. Inside it was a museum, crammed with mementos of the West: four deer heads, Texas longhorns over the door, a stuffed beaver, porcupine, skunk and raccoon, mounted fish and rifles on the wall. Women’s toilet articles were set out on an oak dresser. An adjoining room was a bar, complete with bottles, stools and a painting of a reclining nude on the back bar.

Alice is 78 years old. Her husband’s father had bought the ranch in 1905 for $2,500. She runs it with her son, Tim. She is gradually losing her sight; she misses her daily newspaper but she listens to radio all day long. She not only knew where the Dodgers were in the standings, she knew the score of their last game and who pitched.

In the fall, she said, when snow forces them to close the ranch, she packs all her articles in a truck and drives them down to Bishop. “I take everything,” she said. “We have thieves up here.”

She said the animal we saw was a marmot. Curt asked if she had some paper he could use to build a fire. She gave him an armful of newspapers. When we got back to our cabin I found a Times sports section among them. Hungrily, I read that the Padres had beaten the Dodgers, 4-2, the Giants had beaten the Astros, 7-0, and Steffi Graf had erased Bettina Bunge, 6-1, 6-2, in 62 minutes. I checked the date. It was Aug. 6, 1989.

In the afternoon Casey caught a 19-inch fish. He cleaned the catch himself, and Curt cooked them for dinner with capers and onions. As a backup, he cooked hamburgers.

That evening we went to a movie in Mammoth Lakes. The movie was forgettable, but 11 deer crossed in front of us on the road to town.

When we got home, Casey and Trevor and I played Scrabble. Trevor won, 170 to Casey’s 157 and my 147. Casey protested, however, that his father had helped Trevor. I didn’t think his father’s participation would make that much difference. One of Trevor’s words was orbed , which I challenged, but we had no dictionary.

I woke up early in the morning with frozen limbs. Curt’s fire had gone out in the night. Half asleep I kept saying my mantra, over and over. It didn’t warm my feet any. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast.