Adventures With a Book
To help celebrate the publication of my latest book, California: Walking Through Change, whenever I travel to California, I’ll be sharing an account of my new adventures there as I secretly seed hotels and other places and people with copies of the book.
This adventure began at Indian Creek Lodge, deep in the canyon of the Trinity River. Behind my room, a vintage gold miner’s shack dug a foothold on a precipitous slope. In the October weather, the office looked warm and bright, an ideal place for the copy of California: Walking Through Change that I left there.
From one river to another I went, past a ruined mining hamlet at the mouth of the dangerous canyon of a second Indian Creek, then onward to the Klamath River and yet another Indian Creek, this one in Indigenous country.
A ponderosa pine dropped fresh cones on a carpet of brown needles, and I dropped a few into the pack for Christmas as billions of fir and pine trees stood along the rapid river below.
Unforgettable souvenirs — gemstones — lay free for the taking along the Klamath toward the Kurak Tribe’s enclave at Happy Camp situated at yet another Indian Creek ( recall the prototypical native named Kurak played by William Shatner in The Paradise Syndrome, Star Trek Original Series).
A second copy went to the Kurak People’s Center as my trade for this journey of natural gifts. Along the Pacific south of SFO, the canyon of the Trinity echoed in the roar of surf bottled in morning chaparral fragrance.
Adventures in a Book