Lunch Over a Hotly Contested Cold Case

We all have our moments when we wonder what the hell we’re doing, why we’re doing it, why we’re doing it here … and then something like this happens and it all becomes perfectly clear.

 

Eluding Sheriff Deputies like a kid soaping neighbors’ windows on Halloween she sneaks her way closer to her home.

 

Putting Mary aside, ever since I wrote the three-chapter series, I’ve wondered what happened to the Round / Swall Meadows survivors.

Who knew I’d get closer to finding out what it was like by simply picking up a copy of The Sheet for February 10, 2018.

The Sheet was founded in May, 2003 by Jack Lunch and is independently owned and operated.

Which is about five years before the Great Recession.

And, during our original 2003 – 2009 Time Frame.

Hmmm.

If they have an online version, I can follow my own “Step” and update Mammoth profiled in The Knowledge Path series:

25) Compare what “life” was like in those communities before the Great Recession, how resilient each was during the economic downturn, and to what degree did each bounce back after with any “economic hangover.”

Yup, I found their Monthly Archives.

It made it easy for finding out the back story you almost always miss in extended weekend visits or vacations chock full of Easter Sierra outdoor adventures.

Or …

30) Review headlines and relevant news as far back as you can find online to surface each community’s unique pulse and identify information necessary to make your decision. Is there a “ticking time bomb” issue you may uncover that eliminates the resort from your bucket list? Search on topix.com.

Let’s see.

I discovered as publisher and editor Jack “writes a lot of page two’s.”

And, they’ve got a Facebook Page in addition to their website.

That’s where I noticed yet another coincidence.

Comments.Thank you for writing this. I was hoping you would write about your experience, and you didn’t disappoint. Great read. And … sorry about your house.

Today Jean told me about the fire. You know I had to see what you had written in The Sheet. You didn’t disappoint. Glad to read everyone made it out ok. Now I’ll keep you in my prayers that everything goes according to your wishes.

I am curious will you rebuild? Mother nature may take ten years to rebuild the beauty that once was Swall Meadows. Then again the beauty in Swall is more then just the trees. God Bless you all.

And that’s what I’ve been curious about, too.

Like randomly trying to solve a cold case after all these years.

Straw-Bale House Construction

Like the family who lived in their house built using an environmentally friendly straw-bale-construction methodliving in their forever house,” the editor lost his home in the Swall Meadows Round Fire.

Jack, if that’s his real name (and not “Ted Carleton – Jack of all Lunches“) devoted a “Page 2” to his ordeal.

Oh, and, what’s up with the scandals and degree of truthiness in that part of the Eastern Sierras?

Is there been something in the Rock Creek water?

Headlines and Highlights

Time Frame 2015 – 2020

Winter 2015

Page 2: The year of the goat (saver)

Jack Lunch. “Pretty quiet week …

Most of you know that mine was among the many homes burned to the ground in the Round Fire.”

How can you not learn a lot about surviving from such a horrendous ordeal?

Jack realized something was up, something way out of the ordinary when he and his two-year old ran into a road block near Tom’s place on Lower Rock Creek Road.

The Swall Meadows mandatory evacuation.

He can’t get through on his cell to his wife still in Mammoth at Snowcreek.

Lunch.So I drive back to get her.

One of us needs to rescue our animals (three dogs, a cat and two goats).

And I know my wife well enough to know she’s gonna make it happen, evacuation order be damned.

She drives down like a bat out of hell to Tom’s Place – well, as much as one can be a bat out of hell in a Honda Element.”

There’s a secret route known only to locals, the forest service access road down the hill.

Lunch.It’s bumpy and rutted and thank God she’s got all-wheel drive and pretty good clearance.

Her cellphone is dying.

It’s getting darker.

Eluding Sheriff Deputies like a kid soaping neighbors’ windows on Halloween she sneaks her way closer to her home.

Lunch.The Sheriff’s Deputy sees her and lights up his siren – bloop bloop.

He yells something to her she can’t understand.

She replies with “I know, I know.” He tells her to “come here.” She yells

“No way!” and takes off running.

He’s got to drive down and around.

In that time other units are mobilized as well.

Stealthily she ditches the authorities.

She finds her neighbors figuring out how to scoop up and save their livestock too.

Her luck changes.

Busted.

But, his wife explains how now she’ll load up the animals and evacuate.

Lunch. “My wife tells him, ‘I don’t know the law. I do know I’ve got about 15 more minutes of light.’

She tells him she’s going to load up the animals and go.

At this point, he softens a bit and asks what he can do to help.

She tells him to come back in ten minutes.

By that time, she’ll be ready and will need some muscle to lift our large-ish pregnant goat into the back.

But, things turn ugly in a flash.

It couldn’t get worse for her in the moment of crisis.

The first sheriff’s deputy she outsmarted appears with only one intention.

And that wasn’t to volunteer to help her.

Lunch. “He keeps asking for her I.D. and she keeps telling him to wait.

Finally, he tells her to turn around and put her hands behind her back.

But to arrest her.

She manages to escape once more into the sanctuary of her home and locks the deputy out.

Lunch. “Law enforcement had no choice but to leave.

The neighbors came running over right after (Brian and Janet, heroes both) and it took the three of them to get the pregnant goat inside.

My takeaway from this event is not in mourning all the relics of my past that have burned up, but in celebrating the present and future of the land and the people whom I love so much.

31) Do your due diligence so you don’t regret your decision after it is too late. If you plan to move, invest in real estate, work, start a business or retire affordably, you are making a longer-term commitment. Drill down with city-data.com.

And, in this case, nose around a little more until you find Jack’s accounting of the hidden costs for clean up not covered by fire insurance policies.

Page 2: More than $141,000

Lunch. “That was the final tabulation of what it cost to clean up my property, burned in the Round Fire in Swall Meadows.

Others have received similar bills.

What was initially estimated as a $2.2 or $2.3 million project was ultimately a more than $5 million project.

To put this in perspective, when I was debating whether or not to sign up for the state-contracted cleanup, my friendly insurance adjuster recommended I shouldn’t, citing an estimate he received from a Bishop-based contractor who said he could clean up my lot for $15,000.

That’s a pretty serious discrepancy.

Or consider this. I sold the lot two months ago for $115,000.

I just received a letter from the Mono County Assessor, who, citing the fact that the fire-ravaged lots all now have a clean bill of health, recently restored my former lot to its pre-fire valuation of $125,000 – still well below cleanup cost.

According to the terms of my insurance policy, Farmers will cover $20,000 of the cleanup, leaving $121,000-plus to be footed by my fellow citizens of the State of California.

Steps:

25) Compare what “life” was like in those communities before the Great Recession, how resilient each was during the economic downturn, and to what degree did each bounce back after with any “economic hangover.”

30) Review headlines and relevant news as far back as you can find online to surface each community’s unique pulse and identify information necessary to make your decision. Is there a “ticking time bomb” issue you may uncover that eliminates the resort from your bucket list? Search on topix.com.

31) Do your due diligence so you don’t regret your decision after it is too late. If you plan to move, invest in real estate, work, start a business or retire affordably, you are making a longer-term commitment. Drill down with city-data.com.

32) Plan extended seasonal vacations during summer and winter months. Group destination locations together in regional trips to explore what several bucket list towns have to offer in the general vicinity – with only a week or two vacation time to spend, we recommend organizing your itinerary by travel regions.

Dreamers

Your father long ago told you to grow up and quit pursuing acting as a career.”

Piecing Together Your Dreams
Pursuing their dreams: actors, writers and directors; stragglers, success stories and hard-luck cases.

An excerpt from Book One in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find more meaning and passion in your life.

It’s an old story.

Wanna be actors land in Hollywood chasing an elusive dream.

More recently, during the winter of 2012 – 2013, Kurt Streeter, writing for the Los Angeles Times, hung out at an unpretentious cafe in Atwater Village.

Coffee Shop Communities

He profiled one of the neighborhood residents who moved there three years.

Like many others chasing his dream he had been acting since the age of three, but was still waiting for his big break.  

The regulars, a group of a dozen or so, eased his loneliness and shared his Hollywood ambition:

Hollywood Land of Dreams

Amy, the animator who had worked on “South Park,” Nicholas, whose latest film was well received at the Sundance Film Festival, and a rising African American actor who worried about being typecast in criminal roles.

They stayed for hours, talking, typing, hunched hard over laptops, nursing lattes.

They were actors, writers and directors; stragglers, success stories and hard-luck cases.

Mobile Writers and Freelancers

A woman reads over her dissertation; a freelance reporter plans his next story; two producers discuss financing for an independent movie.

Observing the scene, the servers and baristas say, look this is their place so you don’t bother them.

But over time you begin to notice.

“After a while you just see them sort of losing hope. And then, just like that, we don’t see them anymore.”

Privately, after so many failed attempts, the internal dialog goes something like this —

Is it time to give up on your dream of making it in Hollywood? 

Your father long ago told you to grow up and quit pursuing acting as a career.

“It’s so easy to say that. 

Easy to criticize, doubt, say ‘give up’ and  ‘I told you so.’ … I’ve never been one for easy.”

Steps:

(4) Nurture your passions and express your uniqueness — no one else can or will, for that matter.

Off the Grid or Out of Your Mind?

The big houses, the Humvees, the SUVs, all of that is just the same here and in a way, people are really conspicuous consumers here in the country just like in the city.“

Self Reliance: escaping Laguna Beach, building a cabin in the Durango wilderness.

An excerpt from Book Three in “The Knowledge Path Series” dedicated to helping you find the place of your dreams.

Christopher Sowers made me do it.

Or more accurately our conversation triggered a connection to a chapter I hadn’t even yet scheduled for my rewrite.

From his “How to Miss Out on $100 Million of Warren Buffett Money and Still Be Happy” I linked two things together.

David Petersen’s tale of fleeing Laguna Beach, California, years ago out of his fear of what it would become.

With recent news that Mr. Buffet is selling his beach front mansion for about $11 million.

Ready or not, here’s the chapter.

It’s about how Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) can find each other in new quality-of-life neighborhoods and live authentic lives.

We zero in on the lower left-hand corner of the Colorado map.

Basecamp (Page 135)

If you read this far (in the book) you will notice only Pagosa Springs, Silverton and Telluride made the BOF bucket lists — not Durango.

So why Durango?

It is centrally located, even though it’s located in a different travel region than Pagosa Springs (South Central Colorado).

There’s that.

And, a little later you’ll discover a lifestyle surprise.

But, enough for now.

Durango, Silverton and Telluride fall within the same Southwestern Colorado travel region.

From Durango take US-550 north to Silverton for just under 50 miles or just over an hour’s drive depending upon weather and road conditions, or … take the narrow gauge train.

 

From Durango to Telluride take CO-145 north for just under 115 miles or just over a 2-hour drive — or follow 550 north from Silverton and cut back on Sherman St.

From Durango to Mesa Verde National Park take Highway 160 west 35 miles to absorb its spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo with its 600 cliff dwellings.

So, let’s pick Durango as our “Basecamp” and take day trips to explore all the remaining outposts.

But, first a seasonal precaution, similar to the one issued to travelers attempting to navigate the Tioga Pass short cut out of Yosemite valley on their way to the Eastern Sierra portion of the Sierra Nevada travel region.

The heavy snows force road closures.

You travel on Highway 160 from Pagosa Springs to Durango for about 60 miles which will take over an hour based on traffic, weather and road conditions.

Locals will tell you the trip north on 160 from Pagosa Springs to Alamosa, CO can be treacherous during all seasons as you drive through Wolf Creek Pass.

 

The road receives heavy snowfall and is often closed during the winter.

Many people die each year when driving through the steep grades and tight switchbacks.

So,be especially careful when driving during the winter.

And, if that’s not enough.

While Highway 160 west to Durango, CO is safe except through the pass, be extremely wary of wildlife at night and icy roads in winter.

There is no cellular service from Aspen Springs to Bayfield (30 mi).

And, some long-time, self-sufficient Durango residents living on the wild edge really, really like it that way.

Thomas Curwen writing in the Los Angeles Times at the end of spring in 2005, “Lives set to a wilder rhythm” profiled authors who stepped outside the gridlock of modern life and set up in the woods.

Curwen interviewed David Petersen who purchased an acre and a half of land now some thirty-three years ago 15 miles outside of Durango, Colo.

Petersen had built a cabin, and at the article’s publication date, had lived there all this time with his wife.

The cabin served as a home base for his lifestyle business.

Then 59 years old, a 55+ Baby Boomer, he worked for the conservation organization Trout Unlimited, and wrote “On the Wild Edge: In Search of a Natural Life”

In it he explored the satisfactions and dilemmas posed by wilderness and self-sufficiency in the world as it was a decade ago.

Like the Whitefish, Montana, ex-Californians — Dudley from Woodland Hills and Arthur from Chino — Petersen became eager to leave the Golden State.

Having spent the ’70s when he was in his ’20s, the age of today’s Millennials, living along the California coast in Laguna Beach.

Back then, what could have been better?

Laguna Canyon Road attracted kids like him in their 20s looking for self-expression following the human potential movement.

Struggling artists, musicians and surfers hung out on the beach next to the Hotel Laguna. But, then …

“Real estate prices tripled, it got too crowded, too noisy.”

Here, then is a snapshot first taken in the summer of 2008, three years after Curwen’s article, describing Laguna Beach’s more permanent physical profile.

Location At-A-Glance

Region: Western United States, Pacific Coast Region

State: California

Travel Region: Southern California, South Coast Region

County: Orange

Town: Laguna Beach

Real Estate Phase: Late Maturity

Population Density: Town and Country, Suburbs

Three decades earlier, Petersen feared the worst for Laguna Beach.

And, for his like-minded, long-time resident friends it did.

In 2008, roughly 30 years after he settled in Durango’s wilderness, Laguna became the home of artists, Wireless Resorters and Wealthy Influentials.

Profile At-A-Glance (Summer 2008)

Zip Code: 92651

Life Stages: Singles, Couples, Midlife, Baby Boomers

Ages: 30–44, 45+, 55+

Community Neighbors:

Wealthy Influentials

Affluently Elite — WIAE

01M1S1, Upper Crust, 45+, Couples, Affluent Empty-Nests, Elite Suburbs, WIAE Affluently Elite, Wealthy Influentials (Half Moon Bay, CA)

03Y1S1, Movers & Shakers,  30-44, Couples, Midlife Success, Elite Suburbs, WIAE Affluently Elite, Wealthy Influentials (Scottsdale, AZ)

Exurb Society — WIES

08Y1S2, Executive Suites , 30-44,  Couples, Midlife Success, Affluentials, WIES Exurb Society, Wealthy Influentials (Mission Viejo, CA)

14M2S2, New Empty Nests, 55+, Couples, Conservative Classics, Affluentials, WIES Exurb Society, Wealthy Influentials (Indian Wells, CA)

Community Neighbors:

Wireless Resorters

Maturing Resorts — WRMR

11Y1T1, God’s Country, 30-44, Couples, Midlife Success, Landed Gentry, WRMR Maturing Resorts, Wireless Resorters (Boulder, CO)

Laguna Beach had become home to the top 14 status and income generating households.

(Buffett is asking $11 million for the 6-bedroom, 7-bath home, which boasts a separated family room with a large sundeck facing the ocean- Zillow)

And like Rafael and his restaurant family in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, anticipating the inevitable — the impending development — signaled it was time for Petersen to move on.

Relocating from the Southern California coast to the mountains was more of an escape — a running away, of a trying to flee something instead of trying to go toward something

He didn’t target Durango, Colorado, though.

I didn’t have any goal in mind other than just living in a clean, wild place and trying to construct a life that would allow me as much personal freedom and control over my time as possible.

He could have chosen any of the other authentic towns on the California BOF bucket list like in:

Southern California — Idyllwild, 92549; Julian, 92036 and Lake Arrowhead, 92352 in the local mountains; or

Sierra Nevada — Oakhurst, 93644; North Fork, 93643; Bishop, 93514; Squaw Valley, 96146; Tahoe City, 96145; and Truckee, 96161; or

Central Coast — Big Sur, 93920 along Pacific Coast Highway in Monterey County near the Esalen Institute or the Camaldoli Hermitage.

But, once in Durango, he built the cabin using post-and-beam construction because it was easy.

“You sink upright posts 3 feet in the ground as the main supports, then string the wall beams horizontally along those.

One day I realized I’d cut a post a couple feet too short, but rather than pull it out and do all that work, I just went along the line and cut all the other posts off to match the short one.”

That short-cut came back to haunt him.

“I must have had sunstroke that day because losing that 2 feet of roof along the high edge reduced what was to have been a loft room to a crawl-space attic and reduced the slope of the roof sufficiently that it doesn’t slide snow well.

It is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”

While some lifestyle business people pursue the magic of living off the grid, Petersen had something else in mind.

My primary aspiration has been self-reliance more than self-sufficiency. I find self-sufficiency an impossible dream in this modern world. You can’t get away from it entirely, and frankly, there’s a lot of good stuff there that you don’t want to get away from.

He set up “Basecamp” before it became easy to open a Knowledge ATM, so he told Curwen there’s a lot of bartering that goes on here as well.

I will trade labor and meat and things like that to people who have orchards and people who do have great gardens.

The important thing, no matter where you live, is for a self-directed life, a recognition that by choosing simplicity in whatever ways you can, you reduce your reliance on materialism.

When he chose the title “On the Wild Edge,” what he wanted to get across was we’ve become slaves to our possessions.

It’s not a dropping out.

It’s positioning yourself where you can pick and choose.

He was careful not to paint a picture that this is the best way to live. Especially encouraging even more people to come booming out of the cities.

As you’re talking about your new high-end development, that’s the same thing that’s happened to this place since the mid-’90s.

And there’s just not enough room for everybody to live in the country.

It seems the majority of people that have moved here in the last few years are bringing their city attitudes with them.

The big houses, the Humvees, the SUVs, all of that is just the same here and in a way, people are really conspicuous consumers here in the country just like in the city.

Only Moab is a bigger mountain-bike capital than Durango, he said.

I pass them — the mountain bikers, that is — on the trail up in the forest, and it’s not just that you shouldn’t be here because I don’t like it, it’s because you’re going so fast, you’re not seeing anything, you’re not hearing anything, you’re not smelling anything.

Just get off that thing and relax, walk, go sit under a tree somewhere for a while.

You get so much more out of it.

Steps:

22. Selectively evaluate the best quality-of-life communities to live in and weigh the tradeoffs of risk and rewards for accruing real estate appreciation along a progression of rural and small towns that meet what your pocket books can afford.