Mark Twain visited this area. He absorbed its nature and people and for a while became what the early white settlers, Irish, Scottish, Chinese, American, German, came here to become...hungry for gold. There is a cabin on a hill near New Melones Lake that claims to be the cabin, or a cabin that Brett Harte and Mark Twain shared as the whiled away the hours and days contemplating hard placer work in the gold-dusted hills in Calaveras County, California. Of course, this is where Twain heard the story of the Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County and retold it, embellished as only he could. The characters of his writing are still here, some in spirit and some in the flesh. Some things change and some things never do. The spirit of all these past lives lives on from my observation.
This highway 49 of California courses through all the historic gold mining towns of yesteryear. These are the western foothills of the Sierras. San Fransisco is to the west, Carson City to the east. Here in these hills as the various streams and rivers tumble down from the Sierra snow melt various government agencies have created reservoirs, altering the landscape, burying old ghost towns beneath their placid waves, and quenching the unquenchable thirst of the state’s agribusiness and its servants. Too, outdoor enthusiasts are entertained by the reservoirs’ fisheries and access to cool, refreshing water during the frying pan summers here. So, too, did we also take up the cause while we slowly made our way across the Golden state northern bound on our vision quest.
Pleasant enough are these respites. The days now are hot and the evenings still cool. The days are mostly sunny. The fishing is fairly good. We caught dinner, mostly largemouth bass, several times. During one particular evening, after hooking several bass on a trusty Zara Spook lure, I set out Diane’s fishing pole before going to bed. Worm-laden I shot it into the deep 30 yards out where the edge of the underwater cliff dropped off into the dense darkness where big fish go to have their way. Just in case, I fastened the pole into the legs of a lawn chair, heavy enough to fight off the advances of any good size fish that just happened to set the hook in its jaw. I figured there was no way a fish was going to get loose once setting the hook. The pole was secure and the line was tight.
Upon waking the next morning I went down the short hill to the water’s edge to check the pole. No Pole! The chair, still there, just slightly askew. Where in God’s green earth did the pole go? I stumbled around in the shallows trying find the pole with my feet, or better yet, see it floating somewhere since it had a cork handle. No dice. No luck, No pole...anywhere. Since there was no one else at the campground that evening and through the night that I knew of. I can only say that somehow a big ass fish yanked that pole out of the chair and out into the middle of the lake. I can’t figure out how he did it, but he did do it. I think about that fish a lot. Diane thinks about her lost pole.
One of the treats of our stay at New Melones was a pair of nesting ospreys with three babies in the nest close to our camp. The adults spared no effort at fetching the yapping babies food all day long. Another was the super-abundance of wild flowers now in bloom covering the sides of the roads and hillsides along the lake. It seems as if wherever we go in California we are immersed in wildflowers. This is probably because we continue to alter our altitude to suit our comfort and as we travel throughout the various biomes of the state we continue to hit areas in the spring or their year. It’s an unexpected bonus to our vision quest. God graces our travels for sure.
It’s Memorial Day now and every campground will be full to capacity wherever we go. We decided to stay at a local area reservoir near Modesto that is rather nondescript. A patch of water damned up from several streams in the midst of an otherwise barren crop of low hills. This is a Corp of Engineers campground, a bargain with electricity and water at perhaps $15.00 a day. The camp was filled with laughing, crying, lovely children and their extended families, packed up with near everything they could possibly squeeze into an F-150 pickup. It was as if everyone was homesteading for the long weekend. We were biding our time, simply finding a home for the Memorial Day weekend until the throngs of Californians went back to their jobs and their fields and groves where they spent the balance of their time. It was pleasant, uneventful, and inexpensive. No fish were caught, but no ill wind blew, either. In times past we would have looked upon this weekend as everyone else here looked upon it. A joyful time for family in the great outdoors, planned for weeks in advance and gone all to quickly. For us it was a place to camp until the next “Big Adventure”. Perhaps we’re getting spoiled...but I think not. Every day we thank the Creator for His blessings, and every day He brings us blessings anew. They say, “Life is what you make it.” For true, for true it is.