Beneath the weight of four long years in confinement, a story of liberation unfolds, igniting a whirlwind of love, fear, and even hope.
Ed and Stacey's departure from San Clemente at daybreak would prove to be much more than the start of a simple road trip.
The motorhome's tires kissed the asphalt of Orange County goodbye as they navigated towards the sprawling, glittery embrace of Las Vegas, and their friend Pepper.
That night, amidst the clinking of chips and shuffling of cards, Ed played at the $10 Blackjack table for hours, his thoughts swirling like the gin and tonic in his glass. His mind dances between the past and reconnecting with Pepper, a symphony of melancholy notes for the years gone by.
Their visit with Pepper the next day was supposed to be short. But his dementia had gotten much worse since being admitted, and Ed didn't have the heart to leave him behind.
So Ed, Stacey, and Pepper embark on the next leg of their road trip together, to visit more old friends at Clear Lake near Santa Rosa.
At the reunion Pepper meets Sandy Martin, and sparks fly almost instantly, putting into motion a very different life than the hospital could offer him. Because facing the unknown together is better than being alone.
But when a local psychopath hears Pepper on a radio talk show and decides he wants Pepper to be his friend, things take a very dark turn.
Konocti
In the end, twelve of them decided to make the trip. Several others begged off, leery of the trails and opting to take the day at the farm. They took three vehicles. A car and two SUVs, packed with lots of food, drinks, and gear in addition to the people. It took them about twenty minutes to get to the bottom of the mountain. The road goes through the village of Kelseyville, down some residential blocks, then the road slopes up through a series of farm fields and orchards, followed by open rocky hillsides. As they rose up on the hill, the tableau took shape - Clear Lake at the foot of the mountain with towns and suburban blocks in the distance. Going higher, the view got bigger, and the lake got both deeper in color, and silvery where the sun reflected off it. They all stopped talking and watched the view changing and developing with some awe as they drove. As they got higher, they disappeared into a cloud bank, then the road popped out of the cloud, and they were in a thick stand of Maul Oaks in a notch between two peaks rising on either side of them. The oaks were tall, 40 to 60 feet, with big heavy curving branches that looked like trees out of an old Disney cartoon. They drove a bit further through the woods until they reached a clearing with parking spaces near a trailhead. They got out, still surrounded by trees.
"That didn't take long," Stacey said, stretching her legs.
Richie was organizing their stuff. He had divided them up into small packs so people could carry them easily on their backs. By giving them to a few people, he figured nobody would have too much weight to carry.
"They call it Mt. Konocti, but it's really not much of a mountain," he said. "Just about 2,200 feet above the lake."
"Looked a lot higher coming up," Hubert said. "Beautiful views on the way up. Can't wait to see them from here."
"Yeah, it gets better from here on." Richie said. He turned to speak to the group. "Everybody ready? Everything good? Anyone need to pee or anything before we get started?" Nobody said anything. "Anybody wanting to take a nap yet?" He laughed, as did a few in the group.
"A nap?" Pepper asked Ed.
"It's a joke, Pepper."
"Ah."
Pepper was standing with Ed, Stacey, Sandy, and Franny. They had decided to stay together as a group on the hike. They looked like an aging tribe in plaids and jeans, shaggy hair and caps in the cool morning. Bits of fog lingered and drifted through the trees around them, cooling the air and filtering the sun.
"OK, well then let's get started," Richie said to them all, turning to walk. "The trail-head is over here." And they were off. They hit the trailhead and followed the path into the trees. After a few minutes, Richie started talking to them about where they were.
"This is what they call the Black Forest because it's a very dense wood of Douglas Fir and Maul Oaks. It's a bit of a mystery, since it's located on the north face of the mountain where it never gets direct sunlight. Nobody really understands how it got started here or why it grows just here."
"Kind of spooky in here actually," Sandy said to Pepper, sliding her arm around his. Pepper thought that was nice, but he wondered if she was thinking he needed propping up. He decided not to worry about it.
"Yes," he agreed with her. "Keep your eyes open for witches."
Richie kept going. "Truth is Mount Kon is really pretty exceptional. It's not so big, as I said before, but it is a special place - both the mountain and the lake. It's an old volcano. Part of what they call the Clear Lake Volcanic Field. It has been quite active in its history. They say it last erupted around 10,000 years ago, which is pretty recently."
He stopped to help Cyn and Hubert over some rocks.
"I guess it was a fairly active volcano over the millennia, and through that time it created lots of caves and natural tunnels - old volcanic vents - into the interior of the mountain. Indians used to live here - lots of them. This was a large settlement of native Americans all around the lake. Mostly the Pomo tribe. They say thousands lived in the area in the 1800s before white men came and started killing them off."
"God Bless America," Eddie said.
"But the Pomo explored the area more than anyone since. Their stories about the mountain told about a huge open cavern in the center of the mountain. Probably this would have been the central magma chamber from when the mountain was an active volcano. They said their men used to crawl through the tunnels until they came to the edge of the openings, then they would drop things into the cavern to see how far they fell. Often, they never heard them land. Geologists mostly tend to believe these stories. They say this could be the tallest cavern in North America. But the soil is very unstable and many of the vent tunnels have collapsed. So, it is dangerous to explore - nobody has ever been able to find the central cavern, if it still exists. But one thing they do know about Konocti - the mountain breathes. All the vents around the sides, and the open cavern in the center creates wind drafts and thermal currents. The changing pressures and different temperatures create its own air system. They say when the weather is changing on the outside and it gets windy, that's when you can hear it the most, kind of whistling or wheezing. Feel it too, since the air on the inside is a constant temperature it feels either warmer or cooler than the air outside. So you get little blasts of the mountain's breath walking around."
He stopped and walked with them for a bit. Walking and talking got him out of breath.
"Lots of people have reported strange breezes blowing right out of holes in the side of the mountain. Sometimes they smell like old decaying soil, sometimes people say they blow warm wet air. It breathes. In storms, especially. And lots of people report finding openings into the side. Sometimes big enough to call caves. Other times just holes. This mountain -- it seems to have its own life, kind of. It's unpredictable and kind of spiritual. One of the reasons I wanted to bring you all up here, just to see it and feel it. The Pomo felt it. This was a sacred place to them. They gave it the name Konocti which combined their two words for "mountain" and "woman."
"Wow," Sandy said. "You know, Richie - as long as I've lived in San Francisco, I never heard any of that before, and we're so close. I've heard of Clear Lake, but never heard much about it. Never seemed to be anything that special."
"I know, I don't get that either, but people don't seem to know much about it. I guess Napa steals our thunder, which I get. But this is a pretty amazing place. And really there's much more. I haven't even told you about the lake yet..."
And right on cue, as he said that they started to walk out of the trees into a more open section as they turned the corner to the eastern slope of the near peak they seemed to be heading towards, and the lake came back into view behind them. It was ringed by mountains. Now that they were near the top, they got the long view of the neighboring peaks and beyond.
"Killer view, man," Ed said.
Richie was focusing on one spot on the lake, pointing. "Look, you see that patch on the surface of the lake over there?"
"I guess so," Ed said. He didn't see much, but he thought he could see some ripples around one area out in the center of the lake.
"There's not much to see from here, I know. But it's interesting. Of course, all this - this whole landscape - was created by volcanoes. It's called the Clear Lake Volcanic Field, like I said, and it is still active. There's some kind of magma pool underneath the lake. That patch in the water sits above a volcanic vent at the bottom of the lake. Lots of people have explored it. They call it a thermal spring. They say there are a bunch of vents under the lake, but that one is the biggest. Some divers explored it, but the water got too hot to go very deep. The magma is supposed to be pretty close to the surface there, less than 10 miles.
"The bubbling water from the volcanic vents gave the lake a reputation for healthy water, like mineral springs. Back in the day, maybe the early 1900's I imagine, this area was full of expensive resorts where people used to come to bathe in the waters. They say it was quite big back then.
"Here's the other thing about Clear Lake - which by the way is not clear at all, very murky, nobody knows why they started calling it that - but Clear Lake is one of the oldest lakes in North America. It's like half a million years old. Apparently, most lakes eventually get filled in with silt from runoff, but this one sits on some kind of plateau that has the ability to get pushed down as the weight from the silt increases. So, the bottom drops down as the silt comes in, which has kept the water in place all this time. Again, this is a function of the volcanic formation of the area. How cool is that?"
Excerpt from Keeping Pepper by Scott Brody.
Copyright © 2023 by Scott Brody.
Reproduced with permission.
All rights reserved.
Keeping Pepper by Scott Brody
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