Skipping a Lot of Life
Road Trip, Redwoods, CCL, &tc.
Dear Friends,
Road trips are the best. In many ways, not economical. (I once wrote all about it.) If I really stop to think about it, I just spent five very long days in the car for the purpose of attending a single six-hour event. That’s a lot of time investment and I suppose one might find it too costly. But when I think of all the things I would have missed out on had I just flown to San Francisco over the weekend, the tradeoffs start to look a lot different. Life isn’t all about minimizing costs.
It’s now an annual tradition for Bailey and me. Sometimes the trip is treacherous. There are a lot of mountain passes and high elevations along the route, and December blizzards are always possible. This year? Dry roads all the way from my house to San Francisco Bay and back. We saw a thousand different landscapes, some of them transitioning in the blink of an eye. West of Bozeman, Montana, there is a particular curve in the road that drops you down into the valley where Whitehall sits, with Butte a bit further on. If you are paying attention, you will see that the terrain instantly changes from soft, rolling hills to rocky, craggy outcroppings. The same thing happens just west of Reno, Nevada. You take a single curve into the Sierras and the scene changes like a hard-cut in a film reel. One moment you are in high desert, the next you are in a valley with tall, fresh pines dusted with snow.
And the temperatures. 17 degrees as we leave Elko, Nevada at 7:00 in the morning, heated seats blazing and the defroster blasting (YoYo Ma playing Bach on the stereo). By four o’clock in the afternoon we are in our shirtsleeves, windows rolled down and the A/C on as we cruise over the bay bridge on a balmy 65-degree sunny afternoon (Regina Spektor having long since taken over the radio).
Sure, I could’ve gotten up at 5 AM and headed to the airport, sat in a series of perfectly antiseptic, climate-controlled environments, and in a matter of hours been transported from Billings, Montana to my hotel in San Francisco. But to me that is skipping an awful lot of life.
You don’t get to chat with the delightful member of the Bhakti family, proud immigrant owners of the Esquire Inn in Elko—we caught them going both ways. Or the incredible service and food at La Fiesta in Elko, or Pacifico in Calistoga, California. In Jackpot, Nevada (Pop. 1,215) Bailey pops into a convenience store for a beverage, and comes out and tells me that the lovely black lady working in there is “the happiest, most friendly, most cheerful worker I have ever seen in my life.” So David Bahnsen would be proud, you’re telling me? Oh yeah, she replies.
We took an extra day. We went to the Armstrong Redwoods State National Reserve to take a walk in “twilight at noon” (to quote one of our song lyrics) and stand beside an old soul 1,300 years old. This guy was like 150 years old when Alfred the Great sat on the throne. Mind-boggling.
It is quiet, peaceful, and hushed. And I wonder to myself whether J.R.R. Tolkien ever had the opportunity to walk through a Redwood grove. For him it would be like entering the company of angels, I’m certain.
How do they stay up without falling over?
“They reach side to side and wrap their roots all together
Holding their hands, tall and so grand, that's how they stand and not fall"
—The Bailey Band, "Roots"
From there through the vineyards of Napa, down to the Sierra foothills south of Sacramento to stay up late talking books and theology with P. Andrew Sandlin.
The route home takes a new twist—literally. Instead of backtracking to pick up I-80 over the Donner Pass, we take Route 88, a windy rollercoaster of a mountain pass, high up over the Sierras and into Reno from the south. A truly spectacular, highly recommended drive. And again, we are blessed that the weather cooperated.
“Touch grass,” they say, in our online digital device dominated day and age. Even better? Gas up the automobile, unplug, and hit the road. You never know what you might find around the bend.
CCL’s Annual Symposium was, yet again, the event of the year. It is a very unique gathering. Instead of a multi-day “conference” with a stage and plenary speakers and breakouts and that sort of thing, it is a six-hour roundtable gathering. Four of us take turns presenting our perspective on a topic for 20 or 30 minutes, prompting a free-ranging discussion where everybody can participate. The day simply flies by. Six compact hours and nobody leaves feeling gypped. It’s a full intellectual meal. I may publish my own remarks in this space soon.
2025 will mark CCL’s 25th Anniversary, and there are plans in the works to actually break the streak and host an actual “conference” next year. Stay tuned.
I am still catching up on the news. The assassination of United Healthcare’s CEO on the streets of Manhattan has revealed an ugly strain of class warfare and resentment percolating in American society. Newsflash: I don’t care what your politics or economic views are; cold-blooded murder is not “understandable.” There are corners of American society that need some moral fumigation. And New York probably needs to rethink their stance on the death penalty.
Thanks for reading The Quarter Inch! Have a great rest of your week and I will now get back into the groove of things!
The West is just the best.
Roots is probably my favorite Bailey Band song. It is certainly the most sublimely beautiful!