Hippie Notes: Confessions of an Aging Forest Hippie

By Fredric L. Rice

Working and playing in the Angeles National Forest for over 30 years has meant that I have seen a seemingly endless parade of outrageous things that people do in the forest, and over the years I have had my fair share of wild animal and wild human encounters that have been mildly disturbing, to say the least.

This collection of short stories and anecdotes recount just some of the incidents I have been a part of, from arsonists setting fires to people with guns shooting within campgrounds, from clothing-optional people urinating on the highway to people hunting snakes with handguns, over the years that I have been hiking and bicycing riding up and down the mountains I have seen and experienced a lot, many things of which few people ever experience.

I have collected these incidents in part so that I may never forget the things I have done, but in part to share these stories with others who might not get the opportunity to walk up a mountain pushing a bicycle at night.

The San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California has a little under 23 million people living pressed up against them, and many of those people come up in to the mountains bringing their turmoil and their lawlessness with them.

Mountain lions call these forests their homes, as do numerous bears, even more numerous deer, and over the years I've managed to avoid serious injury as both the flora and the fauna of the Angeles National Forest has crossed my path even as I sought to avoid them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fredric L. Rice
• Release date: Aug 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370267132

Fredric L. Rice

Aging hippie, avid backpacker, hiker, bicycle rider, surfer, I have lived on and off the fringes of society for decades, at times dropping out of civilized society for years at a time. Now that I'm older with responsibilities I no longer live among the displaced, the homeless, and among those hiding from others however in my writings I hope to describe something of what life has been like for me up until now.Currently I am a software engineer getting paid very good wages working on maintaining and repairing transportation infrastructure within the United States, putting my self-taught skills to work doing something positive for society in an effort to give back something of what I took when I was living on the streets, stealing food, being a public hazard. In this respects I am highly respected and well thought of among the nation's elite software engineering professionals, and have the approval and admiration of the outdoors community where I also volunteer my time and effort for the benefit of future generations -- assuming there are any.

Book preview

Hippie Notes

Confessions of an Aging Forest Hippie

Fredric L. Rice

Copyright 2017 by Fredric L. Rice

Smashwords Edition

***

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or be given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please acquire an additional copy for each recipient from the author's Smashword web page. If you're reading this book and did not acquire a copy of it yourself, then please visit the author's Smashword account and acquire your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

And in her most unmitigable rage,

Into a cloven pine, within which rift

Imprisoned thou didst painfully remain

A dozen years; within which space she died

And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans

-- Shakespeare, The Tempest

***

Hippie Notes – Confessions of an Aging Forest Hippie

After spending so much time playing and working in the Angeles National Forest for so many years I have managed to accumulate a collection of stories about my forest adventures which, in recounting on social media web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, helps me to remember some of the things that I have done and some of the people that I have encountered along the way. In doing so I at times look back and honestly wonder at how humanity itself (not to mention my own self, at times) has managed to survive as a species.

I've had forest adventures ranging from the only mildly interesting to the abject fascinating; adventures ranging from the moderately frightening to the potentially deadly horrifying; adventures ranging from laughingly humorous to the screamingly outrageous.

Some of the things that I would like to include yet can't in this collection of memories simply can not be included for a number of reasons, either because of the fact that some of the people involved in events I would like to include are still alive, yet also because some incidents that I have observed from a distance are better off left un-reported, either due to the legal consequences of their activities (such as drunk drivers who have been arrested, people with guns who have been arrested, child endangerment people who have been arrested,) or because lots of unhappy stuff that one can some times see from a distance if one hikes and bikes virtually every weekend in mountains surrounded by 23 million Americans (some of whom are not very nice people) are too embarrassing to write about.

Hiking, camping, bicycle riding, playing, working, and occasionally spending weeks in the forest over the past 30 years or so has resulted in a great many adventures, most of which I have only vague memories of, many of which I remember fully and have touched briefly upon in this short collection of things I have encountered in the Angeles National Forest.

Not so amusingly, it is the people I have encountered in the forest which stand out the most in my memories and which feature mostly in my stories. The thing is, I go to the forest to escape from humans, the filth, noise, and stink that we all (those of us who are not wealthy) wallow in while living in the cities below: The police, the concrete, the gunfire, the helicopters, cars, all the turmoil and mind-numbing stupidity of seething, festering humanity of which only retreat in to the mountains or desert offers any hope of quiet solace.

At least that's what one would normally expect when taking to the forest: Escape from all that is humanity, if only for a short time. Yet the sad fact is that there is no escape, not really, not when one lives near the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California where an astonishing 23 million people live pressed up against the mountains, many of whom also seek solace and escape in the mountains, all of whom – myself included! – bring their city with them, by various degrees.

Nature Herself has often been relegated to a footnote in many of my stories here which, in retrospect, is rather sad. The environment has been friendly to me at times, and in other times the environment has been actively hostile, or so it has seemed, even though Nature Herself is utterly indifferent to human suffering within Her environs.

I have been hot and Sun-baked to the point of experiencing hallucinations, and I have been so cold and wet at times that I've lost awareness of my surroundings. Some times I have been so exhausted from walking up mountains that I have sunk to the ground when my legs gave out and slept on the ground where I stopped until morning.

Yet in all environmental and physical extremes, Mother Nature has been utterly indifferent, and anyone who hikes and exercises in the outdoors can easily understand why so many people need rescue or die in the outdoors every year.

I find so many people on Social Media who venture out of the malls and in to the forests, beaches, and deserts who injured themselves, post comments about their dismay that Mother Nature tried to kill them, yet the truth is that Nature is indifferent, and if She notices humans at all, She notices the trash, toxic dung, spray paint, and endless fires that they inflict upon Her.

She certainly doesn't lift a finger to either hurt or harm people out of malice, she does what She does and any humans – or squirrels, rabbits, deer, bears, cats, ants, bats, you-name-it – who suffer along the way or benefit along the way is purely happenstance, it's nothing personal.

Living in Southern California, the only true escape possible is for the people who have money; specifically the only escape is to drive, fly, or walk long distances to where humans are infrequent, perhaps out in to the Mojave Desert where the only shade one has is the shade you bring with you, perhaps to Northern California where there are still stands of trees and deep forest where one may abandon one's car, shoulder a backpack, and walk walk walk in to the embrace of The Green.

Yet for penniless aging hippies like me, we must make do with what we can find, and in the Angeles National Forest there is plenty to do, to see, and to experience, enjoyable despite the odd humans one can not avoid (indeed despite the very odd humans one can not avoid, this being Los Angeles County and the Craziest State in the Union that we all affectionately call California.)

Over the past three decades, I have seen the U. S. Forest Service people that I have talked with and have seen working with the recreating public have always been polite and professional, doing an extremely difficult job with a budget that continues to shrink. Fire, Resources, and Recreation must contend with the growing human population, an ever-worsening drought, an oppressive (if not downright hostile) political environment, a warming climate that scientists have been warning us about for 70 years now, and more frequent and more severe wildfires, all while budgets continue to be cut or eliminated.

They are dedicated people working to salvage, save, retain, and at times restore some of what's left of our public lands and the watersheds that we rely upon for our lives, and work to salvage what's left of our wilderness areas and the flora and fauna which live in what we call our public lands yet which are in reality their homes.

May the gods smile upon the men and women of the Forest Service. The work they do on behalf of all Americans needs the support of the Angels. Their tasks are difficult and only getting harder.

I'm constantly reminded of Shakespeare's Tempest. To be imprisoned in a cloven pine on some mountain far from other humans, unable to escape because one is unwilling to escape, that would seem to me to be something of a blessing rather than a punishment. Point being that solace is where one finds it, and in the Angeles over the years I have found some.

I have vented groans, yes, but overwhelmingly I have also vented contented sighs of relief when escaping to my beloved mountains.

Annoying the Mountain Lion

In a cold September or October something like six or seven years before I wrote this I had walked my ancient single-speed bicycle up the mountain along Highway 39 in the dead of night, beginning my 14 mile hike from the base of the mountain up to the West Fork of the San Gabriel River starting out around nine that evening and expecting to get to where I wanted to spend the night some time around midnight.

It was a cold and rainy night but I had my ancient Army rucksack on my back, a tent roped to my handlebars, and a plastic-wrapped sleeping bag bungee corded to the rack bolted to the back of my bike.

On my head was an old dead cow-skin hat keeping the light rain out of my eyes as I slowly worked my way up the highway, dodging the occasional drunk driver by picking up my bike and dragging myself up hillsides or over safety railing to avoid getting run down as the drunks tottered from one side of the road to the other seeking the center line.

At the base of the mountain along Highway 39 there is a mile marker, number 18.00 which is planted on the west side of the roadway in concrete just past a bridge which has been in numerous famous movies.

Bruce Willis killed a lot of bad guys in the old Canyon Inn Encanto that used to stand near the bridge in one such movie (called "Hostage,") after which the helicopter camera panned up and back, showing the Inn, the concrete bridge, the famous palm trees which still stand there, and showing the mouth of the San Gabriel Canyon heading Northward.

The destination I was aiming for was around mile marker 26 so I only had about eight or nine miles to walk my bicycle before I would turn left on to West Fork Road, an eight mile long water company paved road which leads to Glenn Campground and then eventually to Cogswell Dam.

When I walk at night I always like to go slowly, taking my time, stopping to rest when gaining altitude, and riding my bicycle on the rare occasion when there is a down grade.

On this particular night, I walked even more slowly than I normally do because it was very dark, no stars, no Moon because of the heavy overcast and rain, and far from all city lights, with only the occasional car driven by drunks illuminating the road.

Because even in September and October rattle snakes rest on the warm road at night, I had learned to treat every shadow on the asphalt as a potential sharply-fanged threat (more on that in my next story) so I walked around long shadows on the road despite the cold and rain: Rattlesnakes do come out at night when it's cold, they don't just come out during the Summer months.

After just passing mile marker 24.24, I let go of my bicycle and dove to the ground in the turn-out I was walking in because someone parked in a turn-out on the West side of the road some 30 feet ahead of me started shooting a gun, presumably shooting across the highway and in to the Morris reservoir.

This was in the dark, mind you, in the absolute darkness where seeing one's hand in front of one's face was difficult, yet here was