RIP Sierra Phantom

Coverage from Blogging in Bishop

(Photo courtesy of Chris Morrison)
The Sierra Phantom 
BY ANDY SELTERS

KICK AROUND DOWNTOWN BISHOP and likely you’ll see a slender old man sporting a billowy white beard and pedaling a bike trimmed in faux-leopard fur. His embroidered Western regalia and his suitcase-pannier proclaim that he is: 
SIERRA PHANTOM
PRO MOUNTAINEER
FISHING GUIDE CREATOR OF WILD-TROUT GLITTER FLIES

Now Bishop collects all kinds of knockabouts, interesting and otherwise, and for years I assumed “The Phantom” was a showy curiosity. Then one day in the mountains I ran into him, miles from the trailhead. He carried his spry skeleton down the track like he was right at home, and in tow he had a palefaced young couple with fish on their stringers and smiles across their cheeks. As he acknowl-edged me with a “Howdy,” I had to wonder if this ornamented geezer might have a real Sierra legacy. Back on Main Street, John P. Glover gave me his card and invited me over to hear his story.

The Phantom lives in a small studio, the walls covered with fading photographs and mounted trout and trout flies. On a bench sits a fly-tying jig. Sitting back on his bed, he looked gaunt, and not so much at home.

He began, “I used to have a chain of camps in the High Sierra, from South Lake all the way to Mosquito Flat. I had eight of them all together.” He told how at each site he built a shelter by digging into the ground, and then laying a roof of criss-crossed pine boughs. “I had to trap, hunt, fish, gather wild greens, and utilize what was in the area. Now, I did this for 51 years.” “Fifty-one years?” I almost choked. “For most of the year?”
“All year.”
“All year, three-hundred and sixty-five days?” I pressed. “Three hundred and sixty-five days. From 1946 until 1997.”
I sat back and heard my baloney detector beeping, trying to imagine all the trials of surviving year-round in the High Sierra. But he had me hooked, I couldn’t resist hearing more. “In all that time I survived avalanches, quicksand, bogs, whiteouts, electrical storms, hypothermia...There’s nothing in the area that I don’t know about.” 
Quicksand, bogs? Those aren’t part of the High Sierra I know. But other things he said had a ring of credibility. He named off remote places accurately, like Amphitheater Lake and Blackcap Basin. And he told why he had eight camps.

“Because if I stayed in one camp too long, I’d harm the ecology of the area. I had to rotate through one camp a year, to put as little pressure on the environment as possible. And after nine years when I got back to the first camp, the area would have re-propagated, you couldn’t tell anybody’d been there. Secondly, for my own safety, if one camp got destroyed or something, then I could always go to the next.

“I quit school in the eighth grade, we got very little education back then. But if you know how nature works, you learn how to survive, you learn how to be a jack-of-all-trades. I grew up in the woods in Oregon and Washington, and I learned how to fish, hunt, trap, and make all kinds of things. I’d make my own fishing pole with a willow stick, safety pins as eyelets, and an empty thread spool.” I was having a hard time swallowing 51 years, but I also couldn’t write off my sense of a genuine essence

“I traded porcupine quills and hides with the Indians for food…You learn the tricks of nature. You learn how to pre-predict the weather. And I’ve never been wrong in 51 years.”

“Did you ski?” I interrogated. “Very little, mostly I made my own snowshoes by bending green branches over a fire… “Did you ever come into town?”
“Yes, if food was scarce I would walk all the way into Bishop with two 5-gallon buckets and get my carbohydrates. Then I’d walk all the way back up...”
“Did you ever get harassed by the Forest Service?” “Sure, they were chasing after me for 30 years. Not once did they ever catch me or find my camps. And I told them I had the right to be up there because I’m a professional mountaineer, which I can prove, and I gave up four years of my life fighting the Japanese up in Alaska.

“And the other thing is that, except for a few groups like the Sierra Club, Americans never backpacked in the High Sierra until all this technology came up, not until 1960. And by 1970 there were 20,000 ding-a-lings running up and down the John Muir Trail, trying to climb Mt. Whitney, treating the Sierra like it was Prospect Park. That’s when I had to become a search and rescue agent. I came across families, Boy Scout groups, people who were injured, people with hypo-thermia, hyperventilation, bunions, bruises, the whole bit. I never worked for the sheriff or anything, I did it all on my own. It was just driving me nuts.”

In 1979, Phantom says a fierce, late-summer storm hit, turned to snow, and over four days he had to rescue a whole canyon full of backpackers and fishermen. The ordeal gave him frostbite, and he was “hypothermiating the whole time.” “You know how to catch fish?” I prompted.
“I am the undisputed fishing master of the High Sierra. These pictures are just a scratch in the bucket...1956, a strange thing happened, I was trying to improve my fly family, and I saw this 12-inch golden trout, the sun at my back, it was shining like a spotlight, and wham! I thought, if you could take that shine and put it on a lure, you could sure amplify your catch…

And to perfect his World Famous Glitter Fly? 
“When you shoot your deer, you knock off the hooves and boil ‘em and scrape the film off the surface, and that’s the strongest epoxy anywhere. And so I had a fly that carries so much oil you can put it in the water for 20 years and it will never sink. And I tie little eyes on…This is 70 years of science that nobody in the history of fishing has ever thought of…

“In 1997, the frostbite and hypothermia from 1979 finally caught up with me. The Paiute chief, Dan Silverspoon, came up to check on me, and I couldn’t move. I told him, let me be, I’m ready to go. But he said, ‘you have knowledge that nobody else has, you have to come down and share that knowledge.’ And he carried me down.”

Glover is 83 now, and since 1997 he has lived in town, venturing into the mountains only on day trips, showing people how and where to catch fish, and helping others.

“Anybody who needs food or anything, that door is always open… I have a guy who takes me down to Pleasant Valley Reservoir, and I keep two fish for myself, and I find seniors or a family with kids… And Raymond’s Deli returns that karmic favor, giving him a table to troll for conversation and customers from, and an occasional sandwich.

I kept asking myself, could the Phantom really have lived in the Sierra for decades, a neo-Daniel Boone? Logic said, nah, no way. On the other hand, his tale stayed very consistent, and I couldn’t dismiss it outright. Maybe he wraps a few boasts, like glitter, around a very real core. I met him a second time. This time I drove us out to Pleasant Valley. With his lungs still hurting from a hit-and-run incident with a car, we strolled slowly toward the reservoir, and he was indeed frail compared to when I saw him striding the high country. But as he talked—never a problem with that—pieces began to come together. 
“I’m a loner. I want to be alone. And man, I had one nasty childhood. I was born in Hollywood but my parents were slaughtered when I was three years old. In 1929 they went back to Germany to try to retrieve their relatives, and Hitler slaughtered all of ‘em. He took their property to feed the army, who were starving. That’s how he came to power. So in the meantime the Depression hit and I was turned over as a ward of the court. I went through three families, five orphanages, and I was nothing but a damned slave to every one of‘em. Most of them were alcoholics, one father beat the #### out of me with a quarter-round, so this kind of turned me against the world and all.

“In World War II, I was a sniper up there in Alaska, at Dutch Harbor. It was declared the second Pearl Harbor. And after that I just got disgusted with people killin’ and beatin’ each other and everything. And so I decided to live in nature. Nature is a fantastic teacher.”

As he said that we reached the reservoir. His blue eyes promptly lit up, his head lifted, and his enthusiasm came back. And he declared, “This is my real home, this is the greatest country anywhere.” Phantom pulled out a paper and handed it to me. It was printed with his own poetry. I started to read,
Hiking the Sierra’s a mile a smile
I heard strange music and paused a while
It filled the air, it humbled me,
‘twas the magic of nature’s symphony…
And I realized that, one way or another, the Sierra Nevada has put the life into the Phantom’s heart, and that’s what really counts

J.P "Sierra Phantom" Glover
1926-2012
May he rest in peace

For the love of winter

We have been spending our weekends up at Mammoth Mountain skiing.
After years of flailing around on light telemark gear, I bought some old beater downhill gear and made the switch back to the kind of skiing I did when I was a kid.
Holy hell, it's fun!
Six year old Babbo is kicking my ass, but it is as it should be.

Reason enough to be relieved he's not doing well

It's weird to think that I could vote for a person based on one or two issues alone, but after having had the likes of Perry and Santorum in the Republican field of candidates.....

Rick Santorum thinks pregnancy through rape is God's gift? Seriously?

25 Jan 2012: Kate Harding: Invoking God's will as a supporting argument to his position on abortion hardly fits with the constitution he claims to uphold

• 
• • Kate Harding
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012 06.30 EST
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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum (left) signs autographs at a Tea Party campaign rally. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

As a lapsed Catholic turned atheist, a staunch feminist and someone who has a strong general aversion to sleazy, disingenuous men, I was shocked yesterday to find myself feeling something like respect for Rick Santorum, Pope Benedict XVI and Piers Morgan all in the space of three minutes.

The three minutes in question are a clip from Morgan's interview with Santorum on the former's CNN talk show. In it, Santorum declares that even if his own daughter were raped – a hypothetical scenario both men manage to discuss with remarkable calm – the Roman Catholic presidential candidate would maintain his adamantly pro-life position regarding abortion.

I sincerely feel a tiny, grudging mote of respect for that degree of consistency. As anti-choice zealots go, those who will take the "baby killer" argument to its extreme appeal to me slightly more than those who can say with a straight face that abortion is murder, except when the woman didn't want to have sex.

Of course, that's the beginning and the end of my respect for Santorum, who had the gall to tell Morgan that his opposition to legal abortion is "not a matter of religious values". He insists that it's founded on his interpretation of the US constitution, as opposed to his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ: "[L]ife begins at conception and persons are covered by the constitution, and because human life is the same as a person, to me it was a pretty simple deduction to make that that's what the constitution clearly intended to protect."

Hang on, I need a moment. Reading those words just gave me a bad flashback to tutoring hopeless freshman composition students in a university writing lab.

We're to believe that Santorum's desire to overturn Roe v Wade is "not a matter of religious values", yet, when discussing a hypothetical pregnancy by rape just moments later, he says: "I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you." ("In the sense of rape." Deep breaths, Kate.) "Gift from God," "person under the law" – why quibble about semantic differences? The point is: Life! Glorious life! Santorum will defend it!

And here's where my blip of respect for Morgan comes along. "I know that your position is – correct me if I'm wrong – that you believe in the sanctity and the innocence of life. How do you equate that with supporting the death penalty?" he asks. Boo-yah! I dearly wish more American reporters would put that question to self-styled "pro-life" candidates who evince little interest in the sanctity of human life ex utero.

That brings us to my smidgen of respect for Pope Benedict XVI – and for that matter,John Paul II before him – for making it clear that Catholic doctrine, in a moment of convergence with common sense, holds that a pro-life position contraindicates revenge-killing born people. "It cannot be overemphasised that the right to life must be recognised in all its fullness," Pope Benedict said in 2009, praising the abolition of the death penalty in Mexico. So at least in that one respect, Santorum can truthfully say that his political intentions are not based on his professed religious values.

Still, if you can't even speak for a whole minute on a political issue without invoking "God's will" as a supporting argument, you have no business running for president of a country whose constitution actually – no weasel words or tortured logic necessary to make this case – enshrines freedom of religion. That alone should be enough to make any American who truly loves liberty and the vision of the "founding fathers" lose all respect for Rick Santorum as a politician.

But if you're not persuaded by that, just try remembering that he said becoming pregnant by a rapist is a gift from God. Out loud. With a camera on him. And he wants to be president of a country that has women in it.

What does this man have to do to get drummed out of the race?

It's ugmo and it might be ours

We've been in the market for a new car. We go down to LA often enough for Children's Hospital visits that we need a reliable Schoberlew mover that won't break down on the way down and that won't break the bank in gas. Used cars are really expensive right now and I'm sort of tired dealing with all the baggage that comes with owning two 1994 Toyotas - one with over 100,000 miles and one with over 200,000 miles. 

So after having test driven the Toyota Matrix and the Honda Fit, we are pretty much sold on the Fit. This will be the first non-Toyota I've ever owned. 

The automatic gets 35 miles to the gallon and the manual gets 33. As much as I wanted a manual, it might be more practical to get the AT.

[Shakes fist in the air]

Had a great quick trip thanks to work and United Airlines to the Bay Area for two days. I made it to my first staff retreat in 12 years of employment! My office really does fight the great public health fight, and I work with so many dedicated people and friends.

It took me nearly the whole two days to get my city on. I brought a compass and discreetly whipped it out when I came out of the holes in the ground that are BART stations. Speaking of which, dude, the upholstered seats on BART have to go. There's a vaguely pooey/peeey element about those damned seats, and it's activated every time somebody gets up or sits down. Having said all this, I was grateful for the chance to catch up with my dearest friend (and boss) Diane at the un-upholstered North Berkeley station while we waited for our trains.

I stayed with Chris and Val next to Mission Dolores in "the City." They lived in Bishop until late 2004, and I've only seen them once since. A lot has happened to us all in the intervening years (we - the parenting route, they- back to the high flying, venture capitaling/consulting route), but it was beautiful to pick up where we left off - feeling loved and telling tales with blankies on our laps on their most perfect couch.

They spoiled me and ruined my life (probably in more ways than one) when they introduced me to these little bastards (which are not shipped by any retailer) http://www.4505meats.com/chicharrones/

The week started with a most perfect family ski day at Mammoth. We had a date with two lovely families and did laps on mellow Chair 7 and Chair 16. The kids decided that two hours wasn't enough and became masters of their own universe and did endless laps on the poma lift. They were free. They were happy. It was t-shirt weather. It was a good way to put me on a wee plane and send me off to the big city. 

Babbo's blood sugars were out of control the morning after I got back and we either gave him some bad luncheon meat or he had a bad stomach virus. I was glad to be home for him.

Food notes: got to eat Mission Chinese. Had Tripe Florentine (land squid) and calamari (sea tripe) at Delfina. Happy girl.

"No, Babbo, it's gratitude, not attitude."

We went on a bomber run to Reno and had a nice visit with one of my mothers-in-law. I know in the scheme of things, the chance to be with our folks is finite. There was no drama. Nobody cried. The drive home through Smith Valley, Nevada, was glorious.

We're trying to walk that fine line by not spoiling the child, but damn if he isn't blessed with an embarrassment of riches from his four sets of grandparents, school nurse, friends, etc. Still, I had to remind him, "No, Babbo, it's gratitude, not attitude."

So, with this lesson in mind, I must say that I was personally grateful for the following this year:

• our folks' relative health
• our health
• health insurance
• frequent flier miles (can't use them any time soon, but they allow us the chance to dream, non?)
• dual immersion Spanish at Bishop Elementary School
• the first graders I am with on a weekly basis
• the care I got from friends and family - it kept my head above water this year
• work and seeing all my workmates and my dear Diane at Fallen Leaf Lake in Tahoe
• getting to babysit Zartie the Black Lab a few times and not having our own dog - just yet
• the fact that my dad has taken such good care of Judydog who is white faced and arthritic, but happy 
• the mornings where Babbo and I walk a block to school - we're not late and we're just talking and holding hands and being
• the quickie trip to Europe to see the Phoenix Foundation and being with dear people
• the quickie trip to LA to goof off with Sue Brettingen, Steven Schayer, Marc Horton, Chantelle Patterson, Patria Jacobs, Martin Wong. It was the trip that made me fall in love with my hometown again.
• the High Sierra Music Festival
• the yellow I am painting the living room - it has helped with the winter blues
• skiing en famille

All hail the foundation garment

I bought myself a girdle. Middle age has meant that my bits and bobs feel like they are falling off. I am now my grandmother.

Good riddance

I for one am glad to see the backside of summer and spring 2011. A friend said that Mercury was in serious retrograde this year and that all relationships were up for reconsideration. I laughed it off, until one day, recently, the psychic goo I'd been carrying around for months lifted. Mercury went out of retrograde that day.

At any rate, Matt and Babbo and I are still a family. I will take it. My heart really goes out to folks who didn't make it through what has been a hard 2011 and who are finding their way in the world again.