Hi'iaka's Healing Herb Garden

Life After College

(with an emphasis on the early, formative years)

by Jeff

At the end of the spring term in 1968, I was short a few credits needed to graduate, so that summer I went with Bob to take classes at Black Hills State College, in Spearfish, South Dakota.

That was a great summer. Rents were so affordable that we had a place in Spearfish during the week, and a place in Rapid City for the weekends. In Spearfish we studied, and sometimes drank red beer (tomato juice added) in a friendly bar. The thunderstorms at night just amazed me, a California boy unused to dramatic weather. One high point was the Black Hills Passion Play, the biggest event of the year in town, which depicted the events of Jesus' last days. The outdoor stage was the largest, in the United States, and the cast, mostly people from Spearfish, numbered in the hundreds. I was in a caravan leading a real camel that kept trying to step on my foot.

Another highlight was touring the saloons in nearby Deadwood during the "Days of '76." It wasn't as exciting as being in a redneck riot during "Frontier Days" in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with John, but it felt more authentically "western," with lots of folks dressed as cowboys, some wearing guns.

Youth gone wild

When I returned to California in the fall, I moved into an apartment in an old house on De La Vina Street in downtown Santa Barbara. I got a job at Raytheon, in Goleta. My old friend Chuck, just back from Vietnam, was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base just up the coast. He visited often, and when he was discharged, he moved into my apartment. Chuck had a high-end stereo that he purchased cheaply in the military. I acquired some bellbottoms, and we spent that year, until the summer of '69, being as countercultural as we could--except when we drove around in Chuck's new yellow XKE Jag.

Chuck introduced me to the loadie toys he and his buddies made in the barracks, including the "flaming groovy," the "glass carboy blue-burner," the "coat hanger celestial harp," etc. Everybody we knew was reading The Lord of the Rings, so we transformed a closet into a magic cave, into which we occasionally packed eight or ten people.

That next summer the big world was calling, so I left for Colorado with a new friend, Kathleen, and a wild guy, Mike, from work. After a slow scenic trip, we spent the summer months camping and visiting with people we knew in Colorado, including John, Bob, my sister Candy, and another old friend, Wayne, also just back from 'Nam. It was a fun time, with lots of experimentation and adventure. Once, at a Johnny Winter concert in Denver, we got tear-gassed, even though we were paying customers.

Just previous to going to Colorado, I went hiking with Kathleen in Big Sur. We didn't have backpacks, so we rolled some canned food in our cotton sleeping bags, which we tied onto our shoulders with twine. Twelve miles in, we found a beautiful spot by the river, where we spent a few days. This was my first time camping in the wild, far away from a road, and I resolved to do more of it.

Get serious

In the fall of 1970, I enrolled at UC Riverside, and signed up for elementary education classes. Working as a teacher would give me summers off! (I had worked every summer from age fifteen all through college). I applied myself, but the real learning experience at UCR was working as a teacher's aide in a real school. I decided teaching wasn't a good fit for me. Or maybe I wasn't ready.

On the road

That summer I traveled back to Colorado with Mike. We lived with his family in a campground near the town of Creede, while we built a log cabin on their property in the forest. Later that summer I went to live with John in the mountains up the road from Boulder, working by day as a handyman on a horse-vetinarian's ranch. I also made a long drive in my VW bug to meet all my relatives in Missouri and Georgia.

Back in California, looking for other adventures, I got a job with the Mackinaw Island Fudge Company, which traveled all over doing county and state fairs. I joined the boss and two other young guys on the road.

For awhile it was one of the more appealing jobs I'd had. We were real showmen, pouring hot liquid fudge from a big copper kettle onto marble slabs, then working it with chrome-plated paddles just before it ran off onto the floor, while the folks looked on and marveled. We worked among the carnies, a colorful lot. Also interesting was the nightlife in the different towns, especially Phoenix.

When the fudge company went back to Southern California after the fair season, the job became less interesting: we worked in a big room all day making fudge, which got frozen for the following season. I wasn't much enjoying suburban SoCal either, so on an impulse I took the bus up to Arcata on the coast of Northern California.

Arcata

The year I lived there was seminal for me. Humboldt County in 1971 was in a ferment, and I expanded my mental horizons in several new directions. The ripples of the cultural changes that started in the 60's were mixing with rural traditions of self-sufficiency and closeness to nature, to produce a new ethic that I felt really at home with.

Influenced by all the "alternative" folks living there, I learned about growing food and eating naturally, and started to develop an ecological perspective. I bought a lightweight bicycle, which became my only form of transportation. I lived in the "Lavender House," a sort of commune near the university, where we ate vegies from our garden, made our own beer, and ate poached venison, supplied by some young Hoopa Indians who hung out at our house. I was reading about over-population, the energy crisis, and the whole alternative critique of the status quo.

I also learned that equipment was available that would allow a person to comfortably hike deep into the back-country, carrying everything necessary for a multi-day trip. I acquired the gear and began to explore the nearby Trinity Alps.

Ag dreams

Spurred by my new idealism, I decided to go back to school and learn how to help save the world. I took the bus down to San Luis Obispo, got a job in a natural foods store, and enrolled at Cal Poly in Crop Science. The Ag department was geared toward large-scale farming with big inputs of pesticides and artificial fertilizers. The one organic gardening class was taught by a man who thought DDT was OK, and was known to occasionally sprinkle it on his lunch for effect. There was a small nucleus of students like me, who hoped for a new form of agriculture that worked more in harmony with nature.

One night in August of 1972, I was awakened by a phone call from my mother. My father had died of a heart attack in his sleep at age 59. He was too young to die, and we were unprepared to suddenly lose him. I went south to spend time with Mom, and got a job building ski boats. In my spare time I built a small sailboat in the garage, influenced by my father, who had been an avid sailor for many years.

Mountain time

The next summer I hit the road in a '51 Chevy pick-up pulling a boat trailer, and lived in the camper that my father and I had built onto the truck shortly before he died. I backpacked throughout the east side of the High Sierra, and sailed on the mountain lakes near the town of Mammoth.

That fall I asked my sister, who was an expert skier, where best to live while learning how to ski. On her advice I moved to Crested Butte in Colorado, which at the time was transitioning from a quaint old mining town into a ski resort, so there was a big need for construction workers. When the snow came, I bought some gear designed for back-country skiing, which was just starting to catch on in the U.S.

Even though I was having a great time, and met some great folks, the work conditions became too tough. As the winter progressed, being outdoors all day made me long for California warmth. Unfortunately, the day I left Colorado, a storm set in that dumped snow over the entire Southwest. What followed was a desperate epic that's worth a few words.

It snow fun

After surviving the blizzard conditions in the mountain passes in my primitive old truck, I was relieved to be getting out of Colorado, but I soon discovered
that the highways all across New Mexico and Arizona were covered with unplowed snow. The traffic had cut two very bumpy grooves in the deep layer of crusty frozen crud, so my tires were "stuck in a rut." I couldn't pull off to the side, so I had to keep moving as best I could, with other cars in slow single-file in front and back. I drove for days wrapped in my sleeping bag, teeth clenched, one white-knuckled hand gripping the wheel, the other wiping a hole in the frost that coated the inside of the windshield.

One night I stayed in a scary hotel on an Indian reservation near Shiprock, New Mexico, unable to sleep, despite my exhaustion, because of the many people roaming the halls all night. Near Williams, Arizona, all traffic halted as the storm returned. I spent two days in a motel room next door to a highway patrolman, who was also stranded. Crossing the snow-covered California desert, I saw in the rear view mirror that water was pouring into my camper shell: the heavy layer of melting snow on top had broken through, drenching my stuff. On Cajon Pass, near San Bernardino, I was amazed to see abandoned vehicles in the freeway lanes, covered in little mounds of snow.

Berkeley and beyond

Back in California, I moved to Berkeley, which in 1975 was the location of several small companies catering to the increasingly popular pastimes of hiking, backpacking, and climbing. I started working for North Face, which was then a fairly small manufacturer of high quality gear, owned by a young mountain enthusiast named Hap Klopp. North Face was growing, Hap liked me, and in time I was made manager of a store in Campbell, near San Jose.

Living in the Bay Area had the great advantage of being reasonably close to Yosemite and the west side of the High Sierra. By myself and with friends, I made many trips. In winter, we'd go to the Lake Tahoe area for cross-country skiing. Also, I started running for fun and fitness--often remembering how resistant I was in Isla Vista when Bob would invite me to join him for his regular beach runs.

In 1979 I moved to Santa Cruz, where I met Irene, who liked playing in the outdoors as much as I. In the summer we went on an exploratory trip, and ended up moving to the town of Bishop, which lies in a valley just below the steep eastern scarp of the Sierra. I lived there for the for next twenty years.

Bishop

The big advantage of living in Bishop is being able to drive quickly into high mountain terrain. The trailheads jump off into some of the most beautiful alpine scenery in the country, and mountain-lovers have been coming there to live for decades.

It's a walker's paradise, indeed that's the only way--except on a horse--to explore the High Sierra: from Yosemite Park south for 130 miles, there's no road that crosses the range. Bishop is also close to the great desert valleys to the east, including Death Valley, so I learned to love the desert, too.

That was a great time in my life, and the place where I've lived the longest. I worked in a mountain shop, did energy conservation outreach for Edison, even marketed passive solar greenhouses for a while. I moved there for the natural scenery and the recreation, but learned to value the satisfactions of living in a small community just as much.

Later

About eight years ago I left Bishop and moved to Upland, near where I grew up and still have friends. I lived with my mom until she died in 2004. In Southern California, I mountain-biked the trails in the foothills, and spent as much time as I could walking and camping in the Mohave and Sonoran deserts.

I worked for Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company with a big commitment to environmental action. The best part of my job there was running our store's grants program, which gave money to groups working for wild-lands protection.

Unfortunately, an old back injury flared up severely, and eventually I had to leave the company. I've been "retired' since then.

In 2006, my friends Pete and Bojana in Eugene, Oregon invited me to rent the cottage behind their house. I'd been visiting there for years, usually during the annual Oregon Country Fair in July. Known for its liberal-minded populace, Eugene is also a beautiful place, with miles of bike trails along the Willamette River. There's a ubiquitous friendliness and courtesy that's hard to find in rushed and crowded California. Add to that the easy availability of great music and excellent local micro-brews. After living there for two years, I don't think I'd feel at home anywhere else. But I expect to spend lots of time traveling, especially during the long rainy season, which can be a rough go for someone who's been following the sun for so long.