A word to the wise: This book? USE WITH CAUTION.

We had a bit of an adventure finding the place. This is not the first time this particular guide book has led us majorly astray. There was this one “moderate” trail it suggested that ended up being endless switchbacks down into a river valley at a steeeeeeeeep grade. We spent an hour going down with absolutely no river in sight before we knew we had to turn around if we wanted to reach the car again before too late, and began a very difficult three hour trudge uphill. Not moderate by ANY means.

Considering that Fairy Falls is also labeled “moderate,” there was some consternation on my end.

This time, the book completely missed a road we were supposed to turn on, instead leading us onto an army base, which got us the Eye and a wary greeting from the soldier at the gate. Turn around we did, and on we went, this time under the guidance of my trusty GPS, until we finally found the trailhead and proceeded into the most beautiful cow country I have ever seen.

At one point, it passed a lone cattle-guard whose road had long since been devoured, leaving it to sit in brilliant rust-orange in the middle of nowhere. The cows themselves wandered freely through the trees and along the trail, mostly black, several of them notably young. We had our choice of paths to the end point; Dad and I took the less trodden one on the way in and the more established horse-riding trail on the way out.

The falls were well worth it.

At one point, it passed a lone cattle-guard whose road had long since been devoured, leaving it to sit in brilliant rust-orange in the middle of nowhere. The cows themselves wandered freely through the trees and along the trail, mostly black, several of them notably young. We had our choice of paths to the end point; Dad and I took the less trodden one on the way in and the more established horse-riding trail on the way out.

The falls were well worth it.

Ask you can see, quite stunning, and a perfect place to stop for lunch. We were joined during our trek to and from the falls by horseback riders and hikers alike, though there were not very many of either. All in all, very peaceful. One of the most gorgeous places.

We spent the ride home counting mileage and making the appropriate alterations to our guidebook by writing notes in the margins, just as more fog was creeping in over the hills.

I would go back to this trail in a second.

Yes. Yes, you read that right. Remember how I said I like trails with interesting names?

Hiking on this trail actually felt a little... How shall I put this... Inappropriate? Because the name is not just being clever. The Assassin's Trail is named so because it is the site of two separate murders, one in 1973 and one in 2003. The more recent one has been solved, but the other is a cold case. The trail is located near Colfax, California, and I shall leave the detail discovery to those who are interested in their own research. Describing the deaths here feels wrong, like I imagine visiting Dorothea Puente's house as a tourist hotspot would feel, and that, like these deaths, didn't happen very long ago. My point is, people affected by these events are still living. I am little bit disgusted with myself for hiking a trail specifically because of the grotesque nature of what happened there. 

Then again, I did do the Jack the Ripper tour of Whitechapel multiple times. I'm not entirely sure I have a leg to stand on.

As a writer, I absolutely understand the thrill of dramatizing the demise of fictional people. As a history buff, I have a profound interest in the events of our past and the ways they led to or sprang from each other. I had a distinctly morbid fascination with the Black Death for years; ask me about it, I can still go on for some time with a manic glint in my eye about what happened in the 1340s and 50s. Ten years ago, I would have been pretty comfortable with my interest in this trail, and not concerned with the justification of traveling it.

But people get older. They gain life experience. Viewpoints shift. In my case, the shift was a little shocking to me: I have developed a problem with the aggrandizement of actual traumatic events for the purpose of entertainment. This isn't to say I have no more fascination. I'm human; of course the terrifying fascinates and repulses me. But using it as entertainment also makes me distinctly uncomfortable in a way it never used to.

I'll admit it: this trail felt ominous. If I didn't know the history, I probably would not have thought so. Shows how much colors our interpretations. The trail-head is unmarked, one of five in a field that has seen a good deal of firebreaking and lumber work, and the least maintained of the group. We used a compass to verify our path, and were helped along by the sudden arrival of a doe. She trotted right up out of the mouth of the Assassin's Trail and veered off before I could get a picture, vanishing up the hill.

Other than that, the trail was deserted.

We didn't see anyone until we were on our way back, on a path that was, frankly, not fitting the written description we were working with as well as we liked. We passed a gate onto private property with several No Trespassing signs attached (and unattached, lying on the ground). I enjoy horror writing and reading, and I'm pretty sure it was because of the backstory, but the trail had a Mood. Tons of trees allowing for only one really good view of the valley below, a river valley that was the site of my New Year's Day hike. Apparently, this trail will take you down to Codfish Falls should you follow it long enough.

We didn't. It was a long way down.

I thought I'd start out with a photo because, hot damn, this trail has some of the most beautiful vistas I've ever seen. The trail we chose on Sunday was Buttermilk Bend, along the Yuba River. I'm thinking I haven't been on the Yuba River until now, because I would have remembered this place. Yowsa.

We managed to beat the crowds and had the trail pretty much to ourselves. It was as though the river were waiting for us, saving each new moment for the next bend. I must have stopped in my tracks twenty times; Dad nearly ran into me more than once. After a while, he just got used to it.

Plenty of swimming holes (you can bet I'll be coming back to this one during the summer), and once you pass the second wooden bridge, the trail becomes slender and curvy, bumping up and down until the very abrupt end, marked quite obviously by a sign. 


"TRAIL ENDS." Yeah, no kidding.

On the way back, Dad regaled me with the story of his most recent project, setting up a skyline to transport wood downhill fast. He works regularly out in the field, and on this last venture, the State Parks employed an inmate team from one of the women's prisons to assist. To get the line taut enough to slide the hunks of wood down it, two or three people had to hang on the end, full body weight. A lot of fun to be had, apparently. I wish I had gone along. 

And of course, I must leave you with this fabulous bridge. ^_^

Call this one Hike 1.5; it's more of a pleasantly brisk walk than a hike, but it's 3.5 miles, and as it turns out, a godsend.

I started the day off rather nicely: came down the stairs from my apartment, hit a turn-step-weight adjustment wrong at the bottom, and ended up flat on my back with an ankle that had bent quite a bit more outward than it should have. Luckily, because I'm anal retentive, I had my hiking boots fully laced up and thus probably saved myself from the worst case scenario.

However, no visible bruising and just a little throbbing right up front, my Achilles tendon present and accounted for. Off we went.

Did I learn this for the first time at the arboretum? No. But I thank the arboretum walk for passing this tidbit of Very Important Info along.

Icing and heating the ankle alternately now while I binge on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Gotham, in hopes that I will be able to embark upon the much longer hike I've chosen for this coming Sunday.

2015, I start you off with a hike.

They say that who you are with at the change of the year is who you will be with for the rest of that year. I’d like to ascribe that to what you are doing, too. My goal this year is to realize a dream I’ve had for some time now: to walk the length of Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England. To that end, I have begun what I am calling “12 Hikes in 12 Weeks.”

On the first of January, I went with my father to Codfish Falls in the Auburn area of California. I picked it for several reasons. One, the name is just fun. Caught my eye. Two, it’s short and flat-ish. My sister’s contribution this holiday season was a respiratory flu of some sort (to quote her shout over dinner on Christmas Eve, “YOU’RE WELCOME!!!!”) and our lungs are all still shot. Three, I’d never heard of Codfish Falls before. Yay, discovery!

It's a lovely hike.

To get down to the river (American, North Fork), I bumped and wrangled the car down a horribly rutted dirt road, over run-off runnels, collapsed culverts, and a hoard of rocks jutting up through some very red clay. My dad, who has worked for the State Parks for over 20 years, offered, “Welcome to my world.” It was good experience, driving in less than pristine conditions. The weather was crisp and cool, the sun bright, and the air hazy with ice crystals.

The bridge has reinforced parallel tracks made of wooden boards. Car wheels go there only; to bump off onto the main planking between on either side may very well be to punch a hole right through. I don’t know, I didn’t try it. We ate lunch overlooking the river and then walked at a brisk pace along a narrow dirt trail. On one side, a steep decline; on the other, a steep incline. Moderately dense wooded areas provide shade. At one point, the water coming out of the earth onto the trail itself was still ice. 


We went slightly up, slightly down, and in the end, we came to this:

Thus ends the first venture. Tomorrow, the next! 

Due to recent experience, I have decided there is nothing more insipid than a voice automated telephone answering service. 

"You have chosen to speak to a live person. This is incorrect. Surely I can help you. Please say clearly the name of the person you are trying to reach. Did you say Dwight Eisenhower? You didn't say Dwight Eisenhower? You must be incorrect. Please say clearly what you would like to do. You have selected 'playing pinochle with a hamster'. Is this correct? You have chosen to speak to a live person. Invalid entry. Are you sure you do not wish to play pinochle with a hamster?"

**

Random Writing Exercise: Write the phone call that drove you insane. Write the character that got back at the smarmy telescam artist. Write the answer you wish you could have given.

The project this month is… moving.

Moving house, uprooting, disorganizing, reorganizing, categorizing, packing, oh god, the packing. All of it is stressful in a very physical way. I just hauled my cement block of a television up a flight of narrow wooden stairs to get it to my apartment door. Two steps from the top and you’re still miles away. Believe me, that’s the stress that keeps on giving.

However. It is also, I suspect, the most difficult part of the physical furniture moving. And it’s done.

Other things, not so much. There’s my cat, 16 years old and the feline equivalent of a cockroach: he will live forever and one day conspire with the Heart of Darkness (aka Sophie, my sister’s bunny) to take over the world. That said, he is still 16, still arthritic, and recently recovering from what may have been a small stroke. It swells the brain. He’s been treated, he’s doing well. But moving him… Ouch, in so many ways. On the one hand, do I want to relocate him, make him learn another haunt, meet new younger cats? On the other, he’s my cat, we snuggle every single night, he has a thing for ample-chested women because they are squashy and comfortable; how in the world am I going to get used to not having him there? On a third hand, because everyone should have a third hand: giant raccoons living in trees by my complex + consummate outdoor geriatric cat = oh no oh no oh god no.

But either way, I’m moving.

So, packing. Unpacking. Redistributing. Ripping up the home I know and hoping like hell that it’ll still hold the power to house me once I reassemble it in, let’s face it, a totally alien place. Yes, it’s a nice apartment, but it won’t be my home for a while. Maybe never, because I’ve lived in places that never became my home. I’m whiplashing back and forth between euphoria at finally having my own space and a terrible sense of misery and loss.

I think you just have to push through it, though. Can’t go around it, can’t wait for it to dissipate because then it just looms larger and larger in the corner of your eye. Wade firmly into the upheaval, hurt for a while, but shove through because eventually, things turn, dust settles. You hang that picture on the wall and step back and go, “Oh, there you are.”

And there it is.

In my everyday life, I work in living donor kidney transplant. That means that someone donates one of their two healthy kidneys to another person who is suffering from some form of kidney disease or failure. Living Donor kidneys tend to last longer than cadaveric kidneys (those donated from a deceased individual). The surgery itself is healthier for both donor and recipient: it's planned ahead of time, and no one has to jump up and rush to the hospital on a moment's notice.

And then, of course, there's this little gem: The Kidney Chain.

Last month, my center organized a chain of its own.

Today I got to watch four donors, one of whom was an altruistic donor (i.e., he had no recipient in mind; he just wanted to donate a kidney to someone in need) and four recipients meet each other for the first time after surgery. These are four pairs of donor/recipients who did not match each other as originally planned, but instead matched other people in other pairs.

This means that four people who might not have received a transplant got a healthy kidney. This means that four other people moved closer to transplant on the kidney transplant list, because these other four recipients moved off of it. This means that four people gave the gift of life to four other people they didn't know. This means that the last recipient on the list got a transplant far sooner than he probably would have while waiting on the list. This means that today, amidst cool, breezy weather, I got to meet eight healthy individuals and their families.

I honestly love that I can pause at the end of the day and say, "Hot damn, I love what I do."

Ladies and gents, it's official: My novella is titled One Door Closes, the first book in the Secrets of Neverwood series.

It's very nice indeed to have this aspect settled! Naturally, the only thing to do now is to post the list of reject titles for the three books in the series.

Ahem.


(This first list taken from textual samples of Book One)

"Intermittent Groaning"

"Some Inroad Somewhere"

"Geese Passing Overhead"

"Rebalanced and Replaced"

"Frank Lloyd Wright It Up!"

"Nameless Male Coworker"

"Experimenting"

"Feeding the Horde"

"Plumbing Upgrades"

"An Electrician Upstairs and a Carpenter Out Back" (you know, I'd really like to offer an innuendo here. Really.)

"Baby's First Loan"

"The Bitter Mouthful" (Oh my GOD.)

"Small Town Mentality"

"All the Dirty Laundry"

"Just a Boy on a Porch"

"This Stupid Town"

"A Giant Hole" (Yes. We went there. Of course.)

"The Spurs of his Pelvis" (No, seriously. I think this one will work.)

"A Steady Knocking"

"Bags of Carrots"



(and because I am just crammed full of BS on a good day...)

"The House on Audrey Corner"

"When Calvin Met Danny"

"Getting to Know You"

"The Lost Finger" (I might have just spit my drink all over my computer)

"The Cosigners"

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Financial Institution"

"House on Haunted Hill: Mama's Revenge" (starring Jessica Chastain, obviously)

"The House That Was (Re)Possessed"

"American Horror Story: By Blood or By Right" (Season 4)

"Eric Files a Lawsuit"

"Unhappy Teenagers (and Other Tragedies)"

"How Danny Got His Yoo-Hoo Back"

...and of course...

"Calvin Honestly Doesn't Know What to Do With That"