That May 17 Lone Pine camping trip I mentioned in my previous post (written, uh, nearly half a year ago) wound up changing my life. Sometimes, dreams really do come true. Turns out I'm living mine in the Eastern Sierra at long last!
See, the photos above aren't from the Lone Pine camping trip. The first is on a hike to Crystal Lake, high above Lake George, in the Mammoth Lakes basin. And the second is at Gem Lakes above Rock Creek during a late August hiking excursion near where I'm now living in Long Valley.
After the Lone Pine camping trip, I stopped in at Elevation to chat with the owner, Kastle Lund, a vivacious, sharp outdoorswoman with a great sense of humor and encouraging spunk.
"The Mammoth Times is advertising for a writer," she announced when I walked through the door. "You should apply."
She knew I'd been dreaming of living in the Eastern Sierra. But I thought they might want someone with more reporting experience. So much of my New York Times career was administrative, and then the freelancing was heavy on culture vulture stuff, not hard news reporting.
"They won't want me," I said, careful not to get my hopes up while simultaneously feeling my heart leap with a prospect I'd not considered along the Highway 395 corridor: MAMMOTH.
"They're desperate," she asserted. "So they'll LOVE you. Do you have a university degree?"
"Yes."
"Do you have newspaper experience of any kind?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Well there you go."
Turns out she was right. I emailed Diane Eagle, the editor, that very evening. Unlike some of the other applications I'd sent into an apparent void, Eagle's response was immediate.
"Thank you SO MUCH for your resume. When can you come for an interview?"
Her SO MUCH told me so much.
I drove to Mammoth at my first opportunity, which was in late May, after a Sierra Club camping trip over the Memorial Day weekend on Santa Rosa Island for three heavenly days and nights.
Diane practically offered me the job on the spot. "The five hour drive home should be enough time to make a decision," she asserted in what I later regarded as wishful thinking.
But I had some concerns, principal among them was that the town of Mammoth Lakes is a hodgepodge turn-off despite its glorious location in a spectacular mountain basin. Largely built in the late 1970's and early 1980's in strip mall fashion with huge parking lots dominating far-flung shopping centers and storefronts, it really did feel as if there was no there there (to borrow from Gertrude Stein).
It was also clear to me that the infrastructure of the Mammoth Times itself needed a lot of work. Worse, their reputation apparently wasn't so great. "It's a joke," one person told me, "but you should go for it anyway!"
Kastle, of course, agreed. "You have to change your life," she said when I stopped at her store on my way back from the job interview. "If it doesn't work out, at least you've had a great summer."
So yeah, when Diane formally offered me the job, I accepted. I had stalled for awhile, but just before yet another Sierra Club trip in mid-June, this time to the Black Hills of South Dakota, I had made up my mind. I could always leave at the end of summer.
Well, why would I ever want to leave when I have day hikes such as Crystal Lake, shown below, within a 10 minute drive of where I work? This past summer, I hiked up there a few times before work (about an 800 foot climb from the Lake George parking lot) - great way to start the day!
So here we are into the autumn and I'm loving Mammoth more than ever - probably because I don't exactly live in Mammoth. I found a place ten miles south of town, a loft studio apartment above the garage of a ranch house in Long Valley with glorious views out over rangeland to the White Mountains in the east (I can see the sunrise from my bed in the morning, not to mention the star-splattered sky at night), and the Sierra Nevada immediately to the west - hundreds of hiking trailheads literally at my back door! Living outside the town limits gives me a greater sense of privacy than if I lived right in the heart of town politics. Also there will be less snow, I'm told, even if it's colder.
And though covering the Town Council is torture, I mostly look forward to my job each day, which has included perks like going to Yosemite Valley to cover the YARTs bus at the beginning of the summer. Turns out the Mammoth Times is NOT a joke but does some really good work. Diane is an amazing colleagues, one of the best editors I've ever worked with certainly in terms of creating a sense of teamwork and appreciation.
And, in a perk that has nothing to do with my new job but maybe with the location, my new long-distance honey, Grant, visited me from Idaho for two weeks in late August and we enjoyed numerous good times. Here's a shot of us up at Mono Pass, 12,000 feet, above Rock Creek.
All things considered, this has been one of the most joyous seasons of my life.
