Wednesday, May 24, 2006

IDYLLWILD Chapter 1: A Little Idyll, A Little Wild Dear King Gyanendra of Nepal, You suck! Thanks for seizing total control of your country in 2005 and abolishing parliament. Because of all the recent anti-royalist riots, I've had to cancel my trip to Nepal and Tibet. I only spent like a year planning it and now I can't go. Enclosed find a bill for $289.74, the cancellation fee I was charged for my airline ticket. Enjoy your exile. Might I recommend Sierra Leone or Wisconsin? Sincerely, Scott Jorgensen PS - Before you leave the country, could you please send me some prayer flags? Thanks. "What are you mailing?" asked Secret Agent Honey Goodtush. "Oh, nothing." I replied. "Let's get on the plane." So ended my quest to hike to Tibet's capital city, Lhasa, high in the mighty Himalayas. And so began my voyage to the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs in California. Our final destination was a little town called Idyllwild, where Ms. Goodtush's dad and stepmother lived. After so much time training for a month amongst yaks and yetis, I feared it would be too much idyll and not enough wild. But I was promised some long hikes and the pictures I had seen were gorgeous. Besides, I had already cancelled my mail and put out a huge dish of cat food. As if to prep you for the LA freeway, the queue at the car rental place moved at a molasses-covered snail's pace. "Mmmmmmmmm, molasses-covered snail." I muttered hungrily. I never thought I'd miss an airline's bag of pretzels, but, waiting here, inching slowly through Hertz hell, I would have poked out the eye of the guy behind me for one. I'm glad I didn't, because once we got our vehicle Ms. Goodtush pulled into the nearest In-And-Out Burger. An animal-style double-double, a fistful of fries and a shake and all was right with the world. The LA freeways are always full, but at this hour of the night, at least it was a moving full. Moving at a crazy-ass breakneck speed, that is. As if it would make up for the all the time they spend sucking tailpipe. Plus, I love how they nick a couple inches off each side of the lanes, so they can cram an extra one in. You could practically reach out and touch the vehicle next to you. Did you know Paulie Shore drives a Chevette? Ninety minutes later (or about the time it took to flip through all the stations on Sirius Radio. Three channels of Howard Stern? Isn't that mentioned in Revelations?) and we left the freeway to begin our climb into the San Jacintos. "They film lots of car commercials up here because of the roads." said Ms. Goodtush, who had suddenly morphed in Michael Schumacher once we left level ground. I could see why as we zoomed through countless hairpins turns and S-curves marked only by bare rock outcroppings. They'd burst into the headlights, stony arms thrown up in surprise, until we zigged or zagged just out of their reach. I felt a vague nag of nausea as the drive-thru dinner bounced around my innards like a kindergarten class in a carnival moonwalk. I hoped my In-And-Out Burger wouldn[base ']t turn into an in and out burger. Through my daze, I saw Tibetan lettering on a sign. For a moment I wondered if this whole trip was some sort of high altitude hallucination. At any moment a sherpa would wave to me and I'd be offered some sweet black tea and a plate of steaming momos. "What California town would be complete without a Buddhist retreat?" said Ms. Goodtush. "Stupid king." I muttered under my breath as the sign zipped by, glowing red in the taillights and then disappearing behind us. We left the pavement and began winding our way along what I would have taken for goat trails if it hadn[base ']t been for the occasional cabin or wooden waysign. One appeared in front of us saying 'Skylodge'. We had arrived. Father of Goodtush and a barking lab named Sky greeted us at the door and invited us in. Their place had started as a cabin, but was updated with plumbing and a furnace so it was now their full-time home. Nestled amongst tall pines, the building continued the theme inside with polished beams and pillars. It was hard to tell how big it was because it was packed with all sorts of, well, stuff. Rows of pictures, geodes, huge racks of wonderfully eclectic collections of CDs and albums, souvenirs and global tschotkes surrounded us, giving the place a museum-like feel. Everywhere you looked, there were several things to examine that you had missed on first glance. Given the late hour, our visit was brief. HG's dad told us to follow him into 'downtown' Idyllwild to the cabin we'd be staying at. I learned that Idyllwild used to be a retreat from the heat and haze of LA for the Rat Pack. Elvis filmed Kid Galahad here. Brad and Jen had a place nearby. Now the high pines are peppered with places like the Peaceful Mountain Inn, Quiet Creek Inn and Fern Valley Inn. We, however, were booked at the Knotty Pine Cabins. Which, true to their names, were floor to ceiling (and all across the ceiling) knotty pine. At least the toilet was made out of porcelain. It only had a stove for heating, but was insulated with a heavy layer of homespun knick-knackery. No phones. No clocks. In other words, it was cozy wrapped up in a homemade afghan of quaint. It was perfect. For I was tired. And still slightly crabby about not being somewhere over the Atlantic dreaming of mountaintop monasteries. Stupid king. But I was coaxed into staying up for another hour or so, to drink a bottle of local wine and to be able to redub the resort the Naughty Pines. Under a handstiched quilt, we listened to the silent dark. The crisp air, fragrant with pine, filled our lungs as we caught our breath. "Just think," purred Secret Agent Goodtush in my ear, "you could be stuck on a crowded airplane for the next seventeen hours right now." For a little while, I forgot all about Tibet. 10:18:20 AM    Say it don't spray it... []

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