1st Time to Convict Lake, Part I of the Convict Lake Trilogy

Boris came to my work one Tuesday morning in summer, 1990 and said, "Let's go to the Sierra's."
"I have to work Thursday," I said.
"Call in sick.  You can use the phone up at the lake."
And that is how I went to the Sierras for the first time.


I knew the Sierra's were mountains, and I knew they were up north somewhere, but I had no real concept of what they were.  To me, mountains were Palomar Mountain and Julian.  Idyllwild in the San Jacinto mountains was the furthest I had traveled to be in a mountain.  I had camped there maybe twice, and Palomar a few times too.

I didn't know how much space the Sierras occupied.  I didn't know there was a chain of mountains here in California that stretched for hundreds miles, starting in the southern third of the state, over one hundred miles wide in some places, all the way to Washington and beyond.  It took three hours of driving just to hit the southern end of the Sierra range.  We had to drive three more hours just to get to our destination: Convict Lake.  I was completely awestruck by the mountain range as we drove its southern length.  It was the most forbidding and intimidating landscape I had ever seen.  A gigantic sheer wall of broken granite, the range rose out of the desert like a barrier to the West.

If you have not seen it, a lot of the South Eastern Sierra is an arid and prohibitive climate.  There is very little rainfall in that area, just west of Death Valley.  If you removed all the vegetation, it would look like Mars.  Many of the rocks are black, remnants of not-so-long-ago volcanic activity.  If you look around at the piles of black and maroon lava rock, you can certainly imagine the multiple volcanic explosions depositing all of those sharp mounds and rough undulations.  You can actually see cooled rivers and lakes of lava as they had flowed down the eastern slopes of the range. 

If I ever want to landscape with lava rock, I am going to drive up to the Little Lake area along Highway 395 and load up a truck there.  You could back right up to a mountain and have all the lava rock you want.

Since it was my first time, and I didn't really understand the size of the Sierra Nevada range, I asked Boris, "when do we get to the mountains?"
"These are the mountains." He pointed left, west, out the window of his Volkswagen Scirocco with his thumb.
"I mean, in the mountains."

He struggled with his reply.  He didn't know how to tell me that you don't really go in to these mountains, you just get as close as you can.  There are only seven open passes in a 400 mile stretch through the Sierra Nevada during summer.  During winter, they are impenetrable, as the Donner Party found out.  There is one length, from Inyokern to Lee Vining that is almost 200 miles long with no paved road through the mountains.

And we were headed to the heart of that stretch, a little place called Convict Lake.  It is 45 minutes past Bishop, and 6 miles south of Mammoth Lakes.

It changed my life...

Kids Before I Had Kids II. b.

Heidi and Marc came to me one day in early 1996 and said, "You're going to be an uncle again." 
Evan was just over a year old so I didn't think of Heidi being pregnant again. 

I said, "Uh oh, what did Kelly do?"

"No, Heidi is pregnant," said Marc, and both he and Heidi were smiling.  Heidi had been rubbing her belly, I had not noticed.

"Ooooooh!" I said.  "Evan will have a sibling!"

I was pretty excited, since I thoroughly enjoyed Evan the Baby.  I also knew this would herald the end of my extremely convenient living arrangements with Marc and Heidi.  They would soon be needing an extra room to house their babies.

Heidi had always displayed a very high degree of tolerance when it came to my living with her family.  Who else would put up with a brother-in-law living in her house for so long?  Who else would put up with a man who worked nights and needed absolute quiet from 3pm to 9pm, the noisiest time of day?  Who else would never complain about all the messes he made in the kitchen, the bathroom, the garage, the yard, the world?

Anyway, Heidi was pregnant and we soon found out that a girl would be the new addition to their family.  That was it, a boy and a girl.  It was too perfect.  So was her birth.  The way I remember it, Heidi went into labor in the morning, Marc drove her to the hospital and Elise was born less than two hours later.  The family hardly had time to arrive in the waiting room!  Once, when a nurse was entering the room, I peeked in and saw Heidi's face as she was looking upon her new daughter.  It was an expression that is hard to describe in words, that pure joy, excitement, love.  

Elise was a joy from the very beginning.  A pure ray of sunshine cast down from heaven.   Sure, it might have taken her a couple of years to grow any hair, but that didn't matter.  She had a smile to light even the most gloomy day.  She would sit alone in her baby bouncy and smile at the ceiling if no one were around to look at her.  

When she was learning to talk she said something that I still say at least once a day.  She said, "I happy you, me!"  I don't remember what the situation was but it was precious.  It still is, and so is she.

Kids Before I Had Kids II. a.

Evan and Elise. Hard to put into words what I feel about Evan and Elise. It's like with Marcus, how close we were. I believe Jason and Kelly understand I don't love them any less than I did Marcus, but because Marcus and I were close, in age and distance, it was different and special between us.

Therefore, Evan and Elise were always going to be the closest thing to my own children, since I was not going to have any. Everyone says that having children will change you more than anything else. I'm not saying Mary Frances didn't change me, or how I see the world, but Evan and Elise had already done a lot of that for me when they were born. They were the hardest part about moving away from Escondido in 1999. Evan would have been 5 and Elise 3, and I was quite attached.  After I moved out, when I would visit, Elise would ask me, "Are you coming back to stay Uncle Chris?  Are you going to stay this time?"


Evan was born five days after my 26th birthday.  I have no idea what I did for my 26th, but I know what I did for Evan's first.  Spent it with Marc.  Marc was worried because Evan had a lot of fluid in his lungs when he was born.  They kept him in the hospital overnight where he quickly developed pneumonia.  Sometimes I wonder about the logic of keeping the immunocompromised  people where all the germs are.  Evan had to stay in the hospital for a week.  Heidi never left his side.  He was such a sweet little baby.  He could hold his head up from day one.  


When he got out of the hospital and came home, I couldn't take my eyes off of him for about a year.  He was the cutest baby I had ever seen.  I loved playing with him when he was an infant, and he loved crawling on my guitars before he could walk.  When he did learn to walk, he never really walked.  He ran.  He was gifted with physical abilities far beyond others in his family.  The froggy run he could do was a feat you had to see to understand, but it's something special to see a human run full speed on all fours.  He might be part monkey.


I don't want to say that I loved Evan as if he were my own son.  I want to say that I hoped I would care for my own kids as much as I cared for Evan, if I ever had any.  Now that I have my own child, everyone will say something like, "Isn't it different when they are your own?"  


I have to say no, it's not all that different.  The difference is I have to change Mary's diapers a lot more than I had to change Evan's. 

Kids Before I Had Kids

My nieces and nephews were my kids before I had kids. At least the closest thing, anyway. When Schuyler was born I was so excited I left work early. I was working night crew at Vons, a job I valued but never loved. My boss did not want me to go. He let me go only when he found out it was the first Grandchild in our family.

Schuyler had a conehead after the long labor. I never asked Kelly about birth labor; what did she think of having, what, 18 hours labor? And they went for a c-section anyway? Why not 3 or even 6 hours before they make that decision? Why was 18 the Magic Number? Was it 20 hours? I forget. Anyway, it seemed like a long time to try and still do the c-section. Maybe she tried until it was dangerous.

I think I remember Dad and Bob almost getting into a fight at the hospital. I could be wrong there, too. I also remember thinking what a little "man" Schuyler was. He was very boyish even as a newborn. He still is. Boyish, moving to masculine I suppose. A young man now at 17. I like him a lot, but I changed his diapers.

"I changed your diapers" always trumps anything your niece or nephew can say to you. They can say, "You're so full of it Uncle Chris," and I can say, "I changed your diapers!" and there can be no significant or profound response to that. I am sure this makes them quite giddy inside, running over with affection for Uncle Chris.

Schuyler likes to fish and hunt. Man things. He has enjoyed these things since he could first walk, talk and read. The first books he liked were books about fish. I think his dad took him fishing before he could walk. I am quite sure he first fired a rifle when it was taller than he. And it seems he is quite good at these Man things, too. If I ever want to go fishing somewhere I've never been, Schuyler would be the first person I would call.

He has a dream of becoming a Fishing Boat Captain and I am confident he will make it.

Out Through the "In" Door

Wow, forgot I had this blog started, what, two years ago? Ended up on Facebook instead, blogging in short sentences that often have no meaning. Great for sharing pictures, though.

Now, my baby is 15 months old. My wife is no longer nursing. My brother has passed away from cancer. My sister-in-law and niece and nephew have moved to Idaho. My sister has moved to Nebraska. My parents have moved to Indiana. And I'm still "officially" unemployed, though I have found work as a handyman this year.

Each line above could easily be a blog. Perhaps they all will be, one day. For now, I will talk about today. It's July 18, 2010. I am up early, drinking coffee while Amy and Mary Frances are asleep.

They had a rough night, as Mary Frances was sick all night. We were at a party having a perfectly good time, while Mary Frances had already fallen asleep in her pack-n-play. I went to check on her at the request of my wife, and found that Mary Frances was sleeping in vomit. She had vomited all over her crib and sheets and clothes, poor baby. So we had to pack everything up at midnight and get her home where maybe we could make her more comfortable.

Now, she had been ill on Thursday from what we thought was some bad chicken. She was up all night throwing up until Friday morning. She was fine all day Friday and most of Saturday but apparently began throwing up after she went to bed. I thought maybe it was the volume of food because there was a LARGE amount of vomit. It could have been the different food piled upon an already weakened immune system. It could have been the heat (it has been very hot and humid for three days.) It could have been teething, as some mother's say that kids will throw up when teething.

So I got up early to get to Henry's and get her some pro-biotics that will maybe help her digestive system. I'm not a doctor so perhaps I am full of doodie. I just want Mary Frances to have a day without vomiting. Turns out, Henry's doesn't open until 7am and I was there at 630. So I drove down to McDonalds and bought coffee. And McDonalds is right next to Vons, and they sell yogurt too, and Amy just sent a text asking for Kleenex, so why not go to Vons?

Walking up to Vons I had to separate two carts with a crow bar to get the one I wanted: a cart with a coffee cup cozie :P Arriving at the automatic door I recognize Erin, our favorite checker, coming to work. I went through her line Thursday night when I bought a bottle of Pedialite. Erin is our favorite checker because she is so friendly to us. She was very concerned on Thursday night and even more concerned this morning. I thought she was going to cry. I had to walk away, actually, from the deep look of caring on her face this morning. I don't think it was staged, but I had not had enough coffee to deal with an acquaintance fussing over my child in such a manner.

I pushed the cart to the bread section looking for bread "that she will eat," another text request from Amy. Will she eat french bread? Is the french bread ready? I smelled bread. I saw bagels. I didn't see french bread, and they were not speaking in English behind the counter, so I bought English Muffin Bread off the table and English Muffins that were stocked in the egg cooler.

I went down to the yogurt aisle, looking for Yakult cultures, a sweet and sour tasting 2oz milky looking product that has good bacteria in it. The yogurt aisle is also the potato chip aisle and at 630am the potato chip vendors are hard at work. So I was perfectly in the way of the Frito-Lay vendor while she tried to replenish the Cheetos.

I found the Yakult, and bought some impossibly flavored yogurt packed in flimsy plastic tubes to add to my arsenal of good bacteria. I went through the checkout where Erin showed more concern. I drove the van past the Henry's on the way home but did not go in. When I got home, Amy and the baby were sleeping. In my deep wisdom I shook Amy awake and told her to go ahead and sleep, I would listen for the baby.

Everything would be fine.