I’ve been away from home for a week, visiting my brother in Dunsmuir, pop. 1,600. My memories of this place are few, mostly as a stopover between Washington and California. I’ve driven by it many times, and seen it once from an Amtrak window at night, draped in snow. But Dunsmuir looks different this time, a place my brother calls home.
The upper Sacramento River cuts
through the town, having shaped the canyon whose steep sides are laced with curvy
streets and antique buildings. The main
north-south railroad tracks also cut through town, bearing mostly freight
trains. Amtrak’s Coast Starlight slips
through quietly twice a day, southbound then northbound, stopping briefly in
the wee hours of the morning.
My brother’s home is an old cabin on
the far side of the river, nestled against the steep hillside on a small strip
of flood plain. It is also on the “wrong
side of the tracks,” an expression from our mother’s era and place of birth. Fires have taken some of the older homes;
some have been replaced with expensive, upscale new construction. But most of the houses are modest, built a
few steps off the ground with steep-pitched metal roofs to shed snow, and sweet
garden-wire or picket fences around tidy gardens. It is an unadorned picture of simpler times.
Life is simpler here in many ways,
more difficult in others. Things we take
for granted in more populous parts of the state are indulgences here, like
stores open after 5 pm or all-night gas stations. Most medical services are located elsewhere
and police cars are rare. Neighbors have
to look out for each other because there’s no one else.
From my brother’s porch, the sound
of the river overrides most else. It can
be punctuated by a dog barking or the train horns blasting, followed by the
ding-ding-ding of the crossing signal, the metallic whine of steel wheels on
steel rails and gigantic diesel engines roaring. But the rushing river always takes back the
silence, more unrelenting than desert winds.
Dunsmuir instantly felt like home to
my brother when he arrived 12 years ago, and it did to me, too, when I got here
last week. Surrounded by green
vegetation and abundant water, our memories of home in western Washington were
tapped and revived. The constant sense
of urgency about desiccation, which I’ve had since I moved into the Central
Valley, evaporated. And the people here,
who my brother instantly perceived as “real,” are also like those we lived
among, making livings and homes from what’s locally available more than from
corporate offerings and long-distance commutes.
What Dunsmuir shares, unfortunately,
with many of our valley towns, is its disconnection from its founding
purpose: to serve the people in primary
production from the surrounding lands.
I’ve seen no logs on passing trains or trucks on I-5 as in the past,
only milled lumber coming south from Canada.
The trains rarely stop. Traffic
from the highway pulls off to shop for antiques and artists’ wares, but leaves
with groceries from the little IGA. The money earned from logging the forests is
long gone, and what comes from the land now is thinly spread. What is left is a degree of priceless beauty
that only the rich – and the poor – can afford.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy
Wischemann is a homesick Valley writer on assignment in Heaven. You can send her your ideas about home c/o
P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment