Spelunking 101

If you enjoy cold, damp places that might create feelings of claustrophobia in normal people, you could be into exploring caves.  You know, a spelunker.  Or if you are even more enthusiastic about underground adventures you probably call yourself a "caver."  Whichever name you use, include me out. Been there.  Done that.

The Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon define a large part of the border with California and there are caves inside some of those mountains, the most famous being the National Monument, Oregon Caves south and west of Grants Pass where I was raised.  Marble Mountain, in the foot hills of the Siskiyous, a few miles south of our home, was the site of an open pit mine that produced a mineral used in making cement.  The father of one of my school friends worked at the mine and told my friend that a recent blasting of rock had uncovered an entrance to a cave.

Imagine that.  A cave. Like in Tom Sawyer.  Time to make some plans, I told my two pals, the Wardrip brothers, Bob and Lee.  Bob and I were 12 and Lee was two years older.  The excitement of exploring a real cave grew the more we talked about it and so our plan:

We knew the owners of the mine would not welcome our visit, so we would go up the mountain on a Sunday.  We had a large ball of kite string we would feed out from the entrance so as to not get lost in the caverns.  We had my father's railroad lantern. What could go wrong?

On an early Sunday morning we rode our bikes to where the mine access road started up the mountain. The steep slog to the landing was about two miles but we reached it by mid-morning and soon spotted what had to be the entrance to the cave. The mine crew had put railroad ties against the rock wall face to seal the opening and we easily removed them. What we uncovered was not encouraging.

 The opening started about three feet up at a 45% slash that went another 10 feet and stopped. The entrance was shaped like a hinged lid being lifted off a box with no opening on the left but about 15 or 20 inches on the right. Shining the light into the hole we could see a flat shelf that went a few feet and then dropped off into a large, dark, cavern. "Well," I said, "You're the oldest, Lee, so you go first."

"No,"  Lee said, "We've got to be smart about this. Bob's the smallest so he should wiggle in and see what it looks like."

"Not me," Bob said. "This wasn't my idea."

"OK," I said, "You two chickens wait out here. I'll go in."

I started into the hole with my two arms sticking out in front of me, the lantern in my right hand. As I wiggled in, the rock above me got lower and as  I had my legs almost all the way in I thought I felt the ceiling coming down and I went into complete terror panic.  I think I was screaming as I started violently wiggling, bumping my head, frantically making my escape from the cave.

As I escaped the collapsing mountain that was actually still in stable condition, I sank to the floor of the landing with both of my elbows bruised and bumps on my head. "What the hell are you hollering about?" Lee said to me.

I didn't answer him.  Bob said, "I think this was a bad idea.  I'm going home."

It was plain that the adventure was over and without more conversation we headed back down the road.  We probably should have put the railroad ties back to cover the cave entrance but we didn't.

I

I Think That I Shall Never See...

a poem as lovely as a tree.  Author Alex Ross, who wrote a long article about bristlecone pines in the Jan. 20, 2020 New Yorker Magazine, would likely support Joyce Kilmer.

Readers of the Methuselah Report know that "Breaking News" is not our forte.  We are drawn to what has been seasoned by time (like all my neighbors here at Russellville Park).  And that's what brings us to the bristlecone pines (pinus longaeva) that grow exclusively in America's subalpine region of the Great Basin, which stretches from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Wasatch Range in Utah. You can find bristlecone pines growing on the western slope of the White Mountains in Arizona, and that growth is exceedingly slow.  It takes decades for a bristlecone to reach the height of a human.  One special characteristic of this tree is that no two are alike; each one being an individual and as the millennia go by becomes contorted and wraithlike.  But the most mind-blowing feature of the bristlecones is that they are the oldest living organisms on planet Earth.

What was considered the oldest Bristlecone ever tested (by taking a drill core and then counting the rings) was found on the western slope of the White Mountains in Arizona. It was named Methuselah. It lost that honor when a graduate student named Donald Currey created a heinous crime against nature when he cut down (with permission from the Forest Service) a huge Bristlecone named Prometheus because he couldn't get a good core sample.  A count of the rings proved Prometheus to be the oldest known living organism on earth: 4,900 years. Now murdered by a a soulless idiot and a complicit Forest Service.

It is mind-boggling to think of all the human history taking place while Prometheus was slowly growing on that mountain in Nevada.  Migrations of humans over continents.  The thoughts of Pyramids dancing in the heads of Pharaohs. Empires rising and falling.  Lawrence Welk charming the music lovers of America. The now-oldest Methuselah bristlecone is protected by anonymity.  Its identifying plaque has been removed (visitors were breaking off souvenirs) and today looks like just another nondescript bristlecone.

If you're landscaping your backyard, planting bristlecone pines might prove to be a poor choice since you would get only three or four inches of growth before you die. 

To Bake a Pie

Everyone take out your time machine viewer screens. Set the time for 9:AM, October 12th, 1942 and dial the location coordinates for the kitchen of my mother, Eunice Landers. See her gathering the ingredients for making her world-famous apple pie. But look, her tin of whole cloves is empty and the pie cannot be made without whole cloves because it is one of her secret ingredients.

Eunice calls her son, Billy, to come run an errand.  Go next door and ask Mrs. Robinson if I can borrow some whole cloves, she tells him.  When Mrs. Robinson comes to the door Billy delivers the request he heard from his mother:  "Mama wants to know if she can borrow some old clothes?"  Mrs. Robinson pauses and then says, "I'll see what I can find."  She soon returns with with a well worn sweater belonging to her son, Calvin, an undershirt that belonged to her husband, Reggie, and one of her blouses.

Billy returns with the items that will not improve the flavor of the pie. A puzzled Eunice asks Billy what he told Effie Robinson and hearing his answer, breaks into laughter.  Then she returns the old clothes to her neighbor and sharing the laugh, returns with the borrowed whole cloves and soon, another iconic apple pie is on its way to a 350 degree oven.

Where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Where have you been, charming Billy?

I've been to seek a wife, she's the joy of my life

She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Can she bake an apple pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?

Can she bake an apple pie, charming Billy?

She can bake an apple pie quick as a cat can blink an eye,

She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

What a Life

Get up early and go to bed late for 90 years and you'll meet a lot of people.  I know. I did that.  And as I reflect on that passing parade there are three or four individuals who stand out as uniquely exceptional.  One of that small group is the iconic coach of Track & Field at the University of Oregon, William Jay (Bill) Bowerman.

He had already become a legend when I joined the athletic department in 1969 and over the years we became friends.  I, like hundreds of other admirers, was drawn to his charismatic aura and a number of years after we had both moved on from the University of Oregon, I had an epiphany: a book must be written about Bill Bowerman's life.  I even presumed to think I could write it. So I called Bill and arranged a lunch date for the following week.

We chatted about some of the old times and as the soup and sandwiches cleared the table, I said to him, "You've had an incredible life, Bill.  It's got to be put into a book."

Bill's face brightened and he said with a huge grin, "That's a great idea, Landers.  We'll get Kenny Moore to write it."

Bill Bowerman did not achieve his fame by mistaking PE runners for Olympians.

He was, of course, dead on.  As a gifted writer for Sports Illustrated, Kenny had run for Bill at Oregon and evolved into an Olympic marathoner. He was living in Hawaii when I called to pitch the idea and he loved it. "I'll be back to the mainland next month and we'll get Phil Knight (Bowerman's partner in founding Nike) on board to underwrite the project."  Phil Knight gave his enthusiastic approval and agreed to finance the mission.*  With some help from me doing research (20-some hours of Bowerman interviews on tape that is now in the Nike archives) Kenny's masterful talent brought the story of William Jay Bowerman to life.

Bowerman and the Men of Oregon (2006 Rodale, inc.)

If you have any interest in track & field (or even if you don't) you will miss a fascinating page-turner if you haven't read this incredible biography of a uniquely unusual man.

*In my later interview with Knight he told me he was a shy Freshman who, after his first season of track, went to Bowerman and asked what he could do to improve his performance. Bowerman said, "Run faster."

Older Than We Thought

Somebody exploring a Greek cave recently found a human skull estimated to be around 210,000 years old (we automatically accept that "experts" know how to determine the age of skulls, don't we?) What's amazing is that the deceased cave dweller was not supposed to be there for tens of thousands more years  Ain't that a kick in the head?  Now we have to update all those anthropology text books. (sorry kids, you can't use last year's edition.  Pony up for a new one).

Not only that but a leading anthropologist now tells us Homo Sapiens started talking millions of years ago rather than 200,000 or 300,000 that most experts believed to be the case. (Isn't 100,000 years a pretty generous allowance for pin-pointing?) How do they know when the first woman told the first man he should try to remember to lower the seat ring on the squat rock?  I obviously have a good deal more research to do to flesh out these bare bones.

But before leaving the subject of how our oldest ancestors got it together to form the marvelous social order we have today, consider the way another leading anthropologist proposes our earliest forbears domesticated themselves: he posits that they cooperated in killing individuals who were determined to be incurably violent.

That's our quick audit of the last couple or three million years of Homo Sapiens's striving, and we still have considerable work remaining to achieve a truly humane society.  Way too many incurably violent tribesmen remain out there.

Train Talk

Waiting for your MAX train to arrive, you might take the time to read a posting inviting riders to observe certain courtesies to make everyone's trip more enjoyable.  Down the list is one that states:  Do not speak in a loud voice that would disturb other riders.

Going home on the Blue Line, crowded  car, late afternoon.  Two men, middle forties, in heated argument.  Loud.

Fat guy (FG): If you'd listen more and talk less it would make you smarter.

Skinny guy (SG): Oh, right.  Listening to you would make a post dumber.

FG: Whenever I'm telling you something, you talk right over the top of what I'm saying.

SG: Listen to yourself sometime and you'll hear why.

FG: That does it...I say something and you give me three paragraphs. (Turns and works his way toward rear of car.)

SG: That's it...go find two or three people who'll get up and make room for you to sit down.

Amused looks on faces of many riders, including mine.

Don't Ask For Whom the Gurney Rolls

The gurney rolls for thee.

We, the residents of Russellville Park, are familiar with the sight of that brightly painted van and its pilot-fish fire engine arriving with its discretely silenced siren.  Many of us here have had occasion to be the honored guest rider in that specially equipped limo, and so it touches a compassionate chord when we see it. Remember that clueless ditty we sang as kids:

"Did you ever think as the hearse goes by
And maybe someday you and I
Would take a ride in the same old hack
And we wouldn't be thinking of coming back."

And on and on.

Add ambulance riding to your list of aging joys.

All the people we consult with about our shared situation tell us over and over: don't fall down. But sometimes we do fall down and here comes the gurney. Or lots of other events have the same result and away we go.  Word of mouth spreads the name of the latest rider.

We are fortunate to have the highly professional caregivers who transport us to the medical facility that will take care of whatever is ailing us.  With their tubes and wires they know their business.  But my plan does not include calling on them for transportation.  I think I will just catch #15 over to Gateway Transit Center and then hop aboard #19, which has a stop right at the Providence ER. Must remember to take my wallet.