by Chris Duffin
Living in the mountains was dangerous. Not far from the blackberry bushes was an old car junkyard, filled with piles of wrecked cars. We climbed inside, under, and around the cars, looking for spots where we could create forts and play. Sometimes we huddled under old car seats. Looking back, it was a dangerous activity. The stacks of cars were unstable and could easily have shifted, trapping us or worse.
Playing in the junkyard wasn’t the only time we diced with danger. On one of our logging and foraging expeditions, Janis was lucky to escape with her life. There were no mushrooms in the area, so instead of foraging, my siblings and I were playing in the mountains. After each tree was felled, we kids had the job of scouring the area and hiding any evidence that we had chopped down a live tree—the piles of sticks, twigs, and leaves when a tree falls. Our responsibility was removing them.
Although we were some distance from the trees Pat was felling, the slope was large. Folks were only supposed to chop down dry wood and dead trees. Live trees, however, were worth much more money. The way they dried and hardened post-cutting offered a much better burn, which buyers were willing to pay a premium for. For this reason, Pat sometimes chopped down live Madrones in an effort to earn more money for the family.
Madrone is a hardwood. The rounds that Pat sliced the trunks into weighed upwards of one hundred pounds, sometimes as much as two hundred pounds. My brothers, sisters, and I were busily playing down the slope from the trees when, without warning, one of the Madrone rounds came loose and began rolling down the hill like a gigantic wheel, picking up speed as it went.
The round hurtled past us at a rapid lick, missing Janis by inches. She was about two years old at the time. If the round had hit her rolling at such speed, she would have died.
On another occasion, Pat was felling trees close to the truck and one didn’t fall as planned, crashing down onto the truck’s flatbed. Fortunately, it was a relatively small tree and the damage wasn’t bad enough to render the truck unusable.
Summer in Hyampom was fun, but winter was brutal. Cutting firewood in the snow was a slow, taxing activity, and we ran low on both food and money. For most of the winter, we lived off a fifty-pound bag of rice and a fifty-pound bag of beans. The store owner was willing to offer us credit, so occasionally we got a few extras. Both Pat and my mother hated receiving charity, so they limited themselves to only using that option when it was essential. They preferred to work for what they had. For us kids, there was always a little meat on the table. Pat and my mom went without. I recall watching them diminish over the course of the winter. By its end, Pat was smaller than I had ever seen him.
A factor that contributed to their hunger was the loss of almost an entire bag of rice. One day, I was eating a bowl of rice when I noticed that some of the grains had black specks at the end. I told my mother, who at first thought it was nothing to worry about. “The rice is discolored,” she told me. When we looked in the bag, however, we found that our sack of rice was infested with maggots. What I thought was a grain of rice was actually a boiled maggot. The black speck was the head. I’m not sure how long they’d been there. Maybe I noticed the maggots soon after they got into the bag. Maybe we’d been eating maggots for weeks. We threw the rest of the rice away and rations became even tighter.
Mill flats in Hyampom. We didn’t have much furniture. Pat is working on hand building a table from logs he split down the center with his chain saw.
A Series of Strange Incidents
Hyampom was the scene of some strange and alarming episodes in my life. When we lived in the mill housing complex, I had a dog, whose name I’ve long since forgotten. He was a hyperactive mongrel dog, short haired and very clever. In the short time I had him, he figured out how to open the doors in our house. Several times on returning home, we found that he had opened the doors to our house and invited all the other dogs in the neighborhood to come and have a party.
Sadly, he kept escaping from our yard and killing chickens at a neighbor’s house. We couldn’t afford to replace the chickens or cover the cost of fence repairs, so after this happened a couple of times, Pat took me to one side and told me we had to kill the dog. “I’m sorry you’re going to lose your dog,” he told me, “but we can’t control him, and we can’t bear the cost.” Pat took the dog out, shot him in the temple, and tossed him off a bridge into the river.
A couple of days later I opened the door to the house to find the dog standing there, whimpering, with a bullet hole in his head and a flap of skin sticking up over the wound. Although he was scared of us after Pat had shot him, he clearly didn’t know where else to go. Pat had no option but to shoot him again—this time making sure he was dead—and dump him back into the river.
On another occasion, Mark and I were stalked by what we believe was a bear. We were camping next to a small creek that flowed across the road. The road was old and disused, so the creek had reclaimed the land for nature. My brother and I loved to explore the countryside and see the other creeks that had washed out part of the road along the way. From time to time, we set out on an adventure and walked into the wilderness. One time, we decided to follow the path of the road and see how far we could hike. We liked the idea of living so deep in the forest, even though we knew that it was inaccessible by vehicle. When we saw a waterfall pouring over a rock, we thought of it as a natural shower. We looked for clusters of rocks that would be good living spaces or kitchens.
One day we were out in the woods, miles from our camp, when we heard a noise. We made some noise back and waited a while, only to hear the noise again. We decided it was our cue to leave. At a fast pace, we started hiking back to camp. About a quarter of a mile down the trail, we slowed our pace and listened intently. Whatever had made the original noise was still following us. We quickened our steps and kept moving.
The creature, whatever it was, followed us until we were roughly half a mile from camp. Then it pulled away and left us alone. Discussing it later, my brother and I decided it was probably a black bear. There aren’t a lot of large animals in the Trinity Wilderness, and we figured the most likely scenario was that the bear had cubs and wanted to protect them.
We decided not to tell my mom and Pat about the incident. They allowed us to go out into the woods and explore. We figured that if they knew we had been stalked, they might cut down on those freedoms.
Hyampom was also where my mother became pregnant with my third sister, Amy. She continued to drink alcohol and smoke weed throughout her pregnancy. While mom was very against hard drugs, one of her friends—the same man for whom Pat chopped down an old-growth fir and rescued his chain saw—gave her and Pat some weed during her pregnancy. Later, he disclosed that the weed was dusted with cocaine. Looking back, I wonder whether my mom’s choices during pregnancy had an impact on my siblings. Each one is smaller than the last, with Amy coming in at a petite four feet, nine inches.
Although Pat had little respect for laws, he did have his own moral code. That code was tested when a Japanese hunter was visiting the area in search of a black bear. In comparison with the brown bear, or grizzly, the black bear is small. However, it was still considered a prize by the hunter. A friend of Pat’s took the Japanese hunter out into the mountains and they cornered a black bear in a big, old-growth fir. They shot the bear in the hope that it would tumble dead onto the ground. Instead, it got stuck on a branch and they didn’t know how to get it down. Pat had a reputation as a good tree feller, so they called him and asked him to cut down the tree and retrieve the bear’s body.
Cutting down old-growth trees is highly illegal, so Pat declined. He didn’t want to risk trouble and he didn’t feel it was right. Although neither he nor my mom cared at all about society’s rules, both of them lived by their own moral code. The hunter tried to shoot down the branch of the tree to no avail. His friend, the guide, responded by attempting to fell the tree himself. He fetched his chain saw and started cutting. Before long, the tree w
as dead and his chain saw was stuck in the trunk, completely immovable.
At this, Pat relented. For people living in the mountains, a chain saw is a huge asset and an essential way to earn a living. The tree was already dead, so Pat saw no reason not to intervene and save his friend’s chain saw. He struck a bargain with him and the hunter: Pat would cut down the tree in exchange for the teeth and claws of the bear.
Pat brought the head and hands of the bear home and used the teeth and claws to make art. The head boiled in a pot in the backyard for days, while we occasionally pulled it out and checked whether we could remove the teeth. I still have a necklace with one of the teeth attached to it, and a raw ruby set into the tooth.
My mom smoked a lot of weed. It almost backfired on her one day, when she opened the door of our mill housing complex house to see two police officers standing outside. They spotted her marijuana on the table and were preparing to arrest her. My mother was worried about being arrested, but she was even more concerned about the reputation of the police officers. There were rumors that women had been known to disappear in their custody.
Pat was at a house down the block, drinking beer with some friends. My mom turned to me and told me to run over and get him, and to ask him to bring as many people as possible so they could observe the actions of the police officers as they arrested her.
The officers were faced with a pretty large crowd. Perhaps irritated by the reception they received, they took her to the next county over instead of booking her in the town jail that was only an hour away from Hyampom. Pat looked after me and the rest of the children for a few days, until he could secure some transportation to bail my mom out of jail and bring her home.
Little did we know that we hadn’t seen the last of one of the officers. When he came back into our lives later on, it was under even more sinister circumstances.
A Friendship and a Tragedy
While we lived in the mill house, I developed a number of friendships. It was common for me to go on playdates and stay over with friends. I was in first grade and I felt like a normal kid. One particular friend, whose name I’ve sadly forgotten, invited me over to his house a lot. He lived in a big house a few miles from Hyampom and their household was a warm, loving place. Naturally, I loved going there. Not only did I get to experience the kindness of his family, I had the chance to watch satellite TV. Coming from the home environment I was accustomed to, it was incredible.
I loved it so much that I started staying there for several days at a time. I would get out of school, go straight to my friend’s house, and stay there until school the next day. It happened so much that my mother decided to draw a line. One day after staying with my friend for about a week, I got out of school and told my mom I was going to his house again. She was adamant that I would come home that night and that I would stay at home for several nights before I was allowed to stay with my friend again. She was concerned that when I stayed at my friend’s so often, his parents were taking on a lot of responsibility for feeding me and looking after me. She wasn’t comfortable with them doing that, so she made me stay home.
I was furious. I was a well-behaved kid, and this is one of the few times in my life I can remember throwing a fit. Despite my anger, my mom insisted that I get in the car and go home with her. Eventually, I did as she asked and spent the night at home, seething with rage. When I arrived at school the next morning, one of my teachers called my parents and me into the school, sat us down, and told us that a gas line had broken in my friend’s house the previous night. The house caught on fire. The entire family was trapped inside and died in the fire.
I blamed myself. In my young mind, my incendiary anger had somehow played a role in causing the fire. According to my mother, I was so shocked that I barely spoke for a year following the tragedy. My mom tells me that, in my sadness and quietness that year, she saw the early signs of the depression that had plagued my father’s side of the family for generations.
Moving to the Alien House
During our second summer in Hyampom, we left the house in the mill housing complex and moved into an old, derelict place on the other side of the river. I assumed we could no longer afford the rent on the mill house. Also, by then we were spending most of our time up in the mountains and the new place was closer to the wilderness.
The house consisted of nothing more than a frame, with no doors or windows. It felt so spooky that my brother and I called it the Alien House. The Alien House became our base when we were in Hyampom. While the house by the mill had electricity and running water, the Alien House had no utilities at all. Every few days, my mom and I hiked down the road to a natural spring, filled our water jugs, and hauled them back home. The Alien House was also home to a number of bats. The first few nights we slept there, we heard flapping noises in the dark and felt air rushing by our faces. We fired up the lamps to find out what was happening and discovered the bats nesting in the roof.
Outside in front of the house was a big pile of trash, presumably left by previous occupants. Everything organic had long since decomposed, but pieces of bikes and old appliances remained, rusting in the sun. My brother and I used the garbage pile like a toy box. We sifted through it for objects that interested us, took them apart, and built new things out of them. That was how we entertained ourselves.
Living out in the Alien House, we were highly isolated. Our only connection to the outside world was a tiny, battery-powered television with a screen smaller than my child-sized hand. At a guess, I think the screen was about six inches wide. I vividly remember watching Star Wars on that minuscule screen and being captivated by the story.
A Shadow Crosses Our Lives
Although we lived in the Alien House, we spent most of our time in the mountains. Pat would chop wood and drive between the different weed-growing sites we had established. He and my mother came up with a simple strategy: they found sites where one of the many creeks that flowed through the mountains could easily be diverted to feed water through hoses and into irrigation channels. They kept individual sites small and planned their locations carefully to minimize the risk of detection.
With neighboring Humboldt County known as a weed-growing hot spot, the authorities did a lot of air surveillance in search of clandestine growth operations. Pat countered this by growing his plants extremely large, because if they were close to the size of trees it would be difficult to distinguish between weed and other foliage from above. The plan must have worked because we were never busted during this period.
In some ways we lived an idyllic life, at least in summer. Danger was never far away, however. Large commercial weed growers were very territorial, and anyone who stumbled unwittingly onto one of their plantations was at risk of being immediately shot. In addition to bears and huge rounds of wood, we lived with the knowledge that if we ventured too far off one of the hiking trails, we might bump into someone with a gun.
Our camp was positioned to offer us maximum visibility. There was only one gravel road leading into the area, and it rolled around the mountains for miles. Factoring in the twists and turns of this mountain road, which made progress slow, we could see anyone who approached long before they reached us.
One day, we were sitting together in camp when Pat alerted us to the presence of danger. We looked out across the mountain and saw a trail of several police cars, advancing slowly toward us. Instantly, Pat ran off to hide while my mother destroyed the small number of plants we were growing at a nearby site for personal use. I was left to watch my younger siblings.
When the police arrived, Pat and my mom were nowhere to be seen. The officers took me, my brother, and my sisters and put us in the back of their police cruiser with the intention of putting us in protective custody. My sisters and my brother sat in the back, while I was up front in the passenger seat.
The officer who had busted my mom a couple of years earlier was now a sheriff. He sat in the driver’s seat, c
hatting amiably with me while I asked about the police technology in the vehicle. The only vehicles I knew were old, so a police car with a fancy new stereo and various other police technology was fascinating to see.
I look back on my response and it seems surreal. We were being taken forcibly from the only family we knew. My brother and sisters were wailing in anguish. Yet I was chatting civilly with one of the people who was taking us away. Even at the time, I remember questioning myself internally. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t exhibiting a lot of emotion. On the outside, I was cool, calm, and collected. On the inside, I was trying to figure out what, if anything, I was really feeling.
The only charge they were able to book my mother on was poaching. Approximately once per week, we killed a white-tailed deer for food. They were our primary source of protein. That sounds like a lot, but the deer in those mountains were tiny. They didn’t make many meals.
Pat melted into the forest and avoided arrest completely. My mother returned to camp and was taken into custody. Although the police never located any of our grow operations, they took me and my siblings on account of our living conditions and placed us in foster homes.
Forced into Foster Care
At first, Mark and I were placed in the same foster home, separate from all three of our sisters. Before long, however, Mark’s father took him in. I was moved to live with a new family in Weaverville, one of the towns we had passed on the way to Hyampom. I spent approximately a year in foster care while I was in third grade. I didn’t know how long I would be there, I only knew that the state wouldn’t allow me to live with Pat and my mom.
Weaverville was a scenic little town. Entering the town felt like being transported back to a different time and place. Much of the architecture has a historical feel and, in the decades since I lived there, the town’s economy has shifted to revolve primarily around tourism. According to the most recent census, it’s home to 3,600 people, a number I imagine was even lower in the 1980s. Despite being a small community, to me it felt like a big place.