by Stephen Fry
* * *
NEVADA
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
NE
Nicknames:
The Silver State, The Sagebrush State, The Battle Born State
Capital:
Carson City
Flower:
Sagebrush
Trees:
Single-leafed piñon pine, bristlecone pine
Bird:
Mountain bluebird
Fossil:
Ichthyosaur
Motto:
All For Our Country
Well-known residents and natives: Pat Nixon, Edna Purviance, Steve Wynn, Michael Chang, Andre Agassi.
* * *
CALIFORNIA
‘The pioneers who had struggled through the sparse deserts of the west screamed with delight when they fell upon this lush, fertile land.’
As you can see from the Key Facts box, I gave up on the list of well-known natives once I had reached the end of the Gs. There are simply too many. Ahead lie Nixon, Patton, Reagan, Steinbeck, Schwarzenegger and as many film stars and musicians as you can think of, from Marilyn Monroe to Shirley Temple, from Carlos Santana to Tupac Shakur. I will leave you to fill in the gaps. Imagine if I included the well-known residents as well as natives…Statistically California has a habit of boggling the mind. At thirty-six and a half million people, only thirty-four countries in the world can claim to have larger populations. Come to that, only eight countries in the world can claim to have a greater gross domestic product or more powerful economy. As the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, California probably exerts a greater cultural and technological influence over the world than any nation. With its size, diversity, power and reach California is a state like no other.
The miles of Pacific coastline and the great wildernesses of Sequoia and Yosemite, Death Valley (the hottest place on earth) and the Sierra Nevada Mountains (which contain Mount Whitney, the highest peak in all the forty-eight contiguous states), the giant redwoods, the beaches, the lakes, islands, palms and pastures–you can imagine why the pioneers who had struggled through the sparse deserts of the west screamed with delight when they fell upon this lush, fertile land. That it should have so much gold too…no wonder they call it the Eureka State.
The B in ‘God Bless America’ has been erased to make a point…the citizens of San Francisco’s Chinatown don’t appear to have noticed.
Waiting to board the trolley car in San Francisco.
You might be surprised to know that I did not stop off at Los Angeles. It is a place I have visited many, many times, but while you may think that this is no reason not to look at it afresh, I felt that British television has seen too many presenters sitting in the backs of convertibles, too many palm trees flashing by at jazzy angles, too many whip-pans of Rodeo Drive and the Beverly Hills sign–every year at Oscar time we are treated to this, and in between there are plenty of documentaries about Tinsel Town and its faults and foibles. Enough already, I felt and still do feel. So you will have to forgive me for skipping America’s second-biggest city and starting my Californian tour in only its fourteenth-biggest, San Francisco.
But what a city. I do not share the fashionable disdain for Los Angeles expressed by so many Britons, but love LA as I do, San Francisco is, to my mind, about as perfect a town as there can be. If you can overlook, that is, its habit of being destroyed by earthquakes every two hundred years.
North Beach, the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, the cable cars–I am happy to wander about like the most rubber-necked, wide-eyed tourist, gaping and grinning at the bumps and hills that Steve McQueen made so famous in that car chase in Bullitt.
Jony Ive
The first time I met this hero of the western world I was tongue-tied, so it is as well that I have got to know him better in the intervening years. At forty-one years old Jonathan Paul Ive CBE is probably the most influential designer alive. He was only thirty when he unleashed upon the world, under the aegis of the newly returned CEO, Steve Jobs, the Apple iMac, that transparent blue, all-in-one TV-shaped desktop computer that most informed people reckon revived Apple’s fortunes, saved it indeed, from going under. There followed in bewilderingly quick succession the iPod in all its generations of Mini, Nano and Touch, new generations too of iMac, the massively influential titanium PowerBook and most recently the all-conquering iPhone.
iPod talk, with its creator, Apple designer Jony Ive.
We drive around San Francisco, his adopted home (Apple’s HQ is the fabled 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino–forty-five miles to the south) and he points out his favourite landmarks. We drive to the Russian Hill District and chat on the roof of the San Francisco Art Institute.
There can be few people on earth who have not seen that iconic, round-cornered white slab of a device, the classic iPod, I say to him. What was it like when he first sat on a bus or cable car and saw someone with the unmistakable white earphones plugged in? Did he instantly know it was a hit?
Ive is so modest that such a question is impossible for him to answer, for it assumes propositions like success, iconic and hit. I allow him to writhe a little, before embarrassing him further. It is wonderful to me to think that a talented young Briton can make such a name for himself in America. Is there a difference in the way Britons and Americans work?
Oh well, you know. Gosh. Actually most of the Apple design team is non-American. Europeans and Asians predominate.
Why?
Golly. Um…
I empty my bag on the ledge of the Art Institute roof. Out come iPods and iPhones of various kinds. His face lights up, not at the compliment being paid him, but as he handles an iPod Nano and recalls the issues facing the anodising of the metal and the number of trips he had to make to China to get the process working just right. Jony’s perfectionism, mastery of detail and capacity for hard work are as much the secret of his success as his creative flair and his imagination. It was ever thus of course, but it is one of those universal truths, like the swiftness of our passage through life, that cannot be taught often enough.
With Art and Judd Finkelstein at Judd’s Hill.
Napa Valley
Art and Judd Finkelstein are a father and son team who make wines at Judd’s Hill Winery just off the Silverado Trail in the very heart of the Napa Valley, one of California’s premier wine regions, which lies about an hour north of San Francisco. They make their own Judd’s Hill single varietal and blended wines, the latter of which are so highly regarded that many other vineyards now send their grapes to be blended for them by these two passionate and creative wine-makers. The Finkelsteins are one of those families that seem to be able to do everything, paint, make pots, make music, dance, cook and write poetry. But wine comes first.
I sit at a table in their tasting room and together we judiciously sample the 2006 red varietals. The aim is to make a good cabernet sauvignon. Despite its single variety name, the Californian version is almost always a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc grapes. In other words, they make traditional Bordeaux-style wines here–clarets as we call them in Britain.
After much sipping (and, in the case of Art and Judd at least, spitting) we decide that the best glass we can produce is one composed of 75% cabernet sauvignon, 15% merlot and 10% cabernet franc. Many varying proportions are tried before we hit that magic formula, so I am a little dizzy when I rise to join the family for dinner. It is most important that I go to bed sober, for it would not do at all to have a hangover tomorrow. Trembling hands would be a disaster.
Being as this is a .44 Magnum…
Early in the morning I drive to the ‘Helldorado Shooting Range’ in Ukiah, CA to meet Officer Greg Stefani and his boss, Tom Allman, the Sheriff of Mendocino County. I am going to fire off some handguns. I have never done this before in all my life. I have had to handle prop guns on film sets, but never the real thing. I am feeling as nervous as a kitten but trying not to show it.
Ukiah is ranked California’s best small town
to live in, and the sixth-best in all America. I can’t help noticing that its name is ‘haiku’ backwards. The Sheriff tells me that on account of this arbitrary fact, the town holds an annual haiku festival.
‘Just as well you aren’t called Traf,’ I say, donning the obligatory goggles and ear defenders.
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, what a terrible festival that would be…never mind.’
Greg takes me patiently through the principles, protocols and operating procedures of shooting and then hands me a Glock semi-automatic pistol. Or is it a revolver? I am not quite sure of the difference.
I raise my arms (my right arm, though much better, is still not the limb it was before the fracture) and–as instructed–squeeze the trigger.
I hit the target! I actually hit the target!
Suddenly and inevitably I am transformed from Stephen Tut-Tut, the wise and sensible anti-firearms abolitionist into Stephen Blam-Blam, a narrow-eyed, gun-toting militiaman. Pathetic, I know, but that’s what guns do.
* * *
CALIFORNIA
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
CA
Nickname:
The Golden State
Capital:
Sacramento
Flower:
California poppy
Tree:
Sequoia (California redwood)
Bird:
California quail
Reptile:
Desert tortoise
Motto:
Eureka
Well-known natives: Ansel Adams, Paula Abdul, Gracie Allen, Jennifer Aniston, Tracy Austin, Drew Barrymore, Captain Beefheart, Mel Blanc, Jack Black, Lloyd, Beau and Jeff Bridges, Albert Brooks, Jerry Brown, Nicholas Cage, David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Julia Child, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ted Danson, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joe DiMaggio, Dr Dre, Micky Dolenz, Snoop Dogg, Isadora Duncan, Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Mia Farrow, Will Ferrell, Carrie Fisher, Dian Fossey, Jodie Foster, Robert Frost, Edward Furlong, Jerry Garcia, Danny Glover, Gloria Grahame, Merv Griffin, Jake Gyllenhaal…
* * *
And all this is before Greg passes to me a Smith & Wesson Magnum44. Dirty Harry is one of my favourite films and like many of my generation I know much of it off by heart, especially of course Clint’s lines:
With officer Greg Stefani and Sheriff Tom Allman. ‘Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya…punk?’
Weed: all female, all cloned from one mother.
I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
It was naturally impossible for me to fire this terrifyingly heavy hand-cannon without first delivering myself of that speech.
I did not hit the target. Nor the second time. Nor the third or fourth. My fifth attempt did get through, knocking the target over. I returned the Magnum to Greg. My arm ached like billy-oh but I did not care to admit it.
‘Now that you can handle firearms, how d’you like to take part in a drugs bust?’ asked Sheriff Allman, who had been watching my small-arms artillery work with gentle amusement.
Weed
It seems that Mendocino County is just about the national centre of cannabis growing. It is not illegal to grow a small amount for personal, medical use, but the law that legitimises this is complicated and Sheriff Allman explains it to me as we drive to the small town of Willets. The police are not interested in citizens growing for personal use a little more than they are allowed; they are after the gangs that hothouse millions of dollars’ worth of the drug for sale all around America. Often young Asians with no record, the growers are hired by the bosses to rent a house with land and to cultivate and harvest the plants. If they are raided it is bad luck, but the kids have clean records so it is unlikely that a custodial sentence will be imposed. With so much money to be made for so little risk, it really does seem like a good business to be in. Only ten per cent of these operations, according to the Sheriff, are busted and closed down. Pay young men good money, assure them of top lawyers and no more than probation if they are caught…how can the police fight that? All they get are infrequent tip-offs and the frustration of seeing the offenders walk free.
I am kitted out in a Kevlar bulletproof vest, ‘just in case’, and join a convoy of police vehicles driving up the hill to the suspects’ farm.
This tip-off was good and I watch as the suspects (Vietnamese apparently) are led away with bound wrists and cheerful expressions on their faces. Hundreds and hundreds of plants (all female, all cloned from one Mother) are torn up and thrown onto the back of a truck for burial. Burning is a bad way to destroy them for obvious reasons, but burial causes them to heat up underground and lose their THC, the psychoactive cannabis ingredient that is the source of all the trouble.
Arcata Stoners
I drive up to Arcata, where some of those drug-growers’ best customers live. Arcata is an old-fashioned (by which I mean refreshingly free of franchise burger bars and strip malls) college town with a reputation for being something of a centre for slackers and stoners and for being about as politically progressive as an American town can be. It was here that the first ever Green Party council members were elected and here that the USA Patriot Act has been ‘nullified’ by the City Fathers. Arcata is also the first town to have declared itself a GM Free zone.
I meet Carmen, a bright and twinkly ginger lesbo Jew (as she styles herself) of enormous charm. She shows me the town. It reminds me of the Back to the Future films, a big central square, no Starbucks, no recognisable national chains anywhere that I can see. Plenty of weed-smoking dead-beats though. The smart college students from Humboldt University seem to be outnumbered by the hobos.
I am taken to the Muddy Waters café to watch Carmen’s stage act–a mixture of stand-up comedy and self-penned songs, one of which is so harsh a revenge on a female student lover who did her wrong that I am forced to feel pity for the poor girl. Student life is so intense and cannabis seems to make it more so.
I tiptoe away, leaving the fumes and feuds behind me. The drive north through the Giant Redwood Park and towards the Oregon state line is as astoundingly beautiful as any I’ve taken on this whole trip.
A lifetime’s ambition is realised when I find a sequoia I can drive through. Thank you, California.
OREGON
‘I have to spend hours camping out, listening to completely unconvincing stories of Bigfoot sightings.’
There is something in the Oregon air. On a bright clear day, when the sky is as deep a blue as can be and the fragrant scent of pine invades your nostrils you can tell for sure that this place is different even from neighbouring northern California. We are in the Great Pacific Northwest. The edging of Douglas firs on the hillside gives a hint. Then there is the atmosphere: it is as if you are looking at a world with 500 megapixel resolution. Not a hint of graininess in the air, but the kind of clarity that says larches, lumber and leaping salmon. Why, this could almost be Canada.
Up I go, innumerable lorries loaded with logs pass me driving south; the Pacific is to my left, forests of fir and spruce to my right. The shacks and settlements I pass are noticeably less prosperous in their appearance than those of California. I am a little shocked to think that a mere state line could reveal so drastic a change. Oregon, after all, is a wine-producing region, its pinot noir especially being world class, it has its ‘Silicon Forest’ and Intel microchip plants. Yet more than half the states of the Union are more economically powerful than Oregon.
What is prosperity compared to beauty? The streams and rivers are as clear as the air, the mountains in their shawls of ragged spruce and fir reveal lower slopes abundant with both broadleaf and conifer. Oregon, as it happens, produces ninety-five per cent of all America’s hazelnuts.
I am
headed for the Rogue River, a few miles west of the town of Grants Pass, which makes up for its lack of an apostrophe with an exclamation mark in its motto: ‘It’s the climate!’ Grants Pass is something of a centre for the caving and rafting that attract thousands of people throughout the year, one of whom, it seems, is going to be me.
I make it perfectly clear to anyone who will listen that black water rafting is all I am interested in. The merest hint of froth, foam and bubbling whiteness in the river and I will be screaming to be paddled ashore. The name of the river is worrying enough. Rogue? Why Rogue?
At the riverbank I meet up with Nate and his girlfriend Laura who Velcro up my lifejacket and assure me they will ashore me if things get rough. To be fair, the stretch of water they have chosen does not look especially roguish.
Nate and Laura started life as environmental activists on the fringes of the law who would think nothing of illegally occupying the branches of any valuable trees threatened by loggers. Nate is now a respected member of the environmental community, his history of tree-hugging and arrests being battle scars that earn him respect amongst the younger generation of eco-warriors. I lie back in the raft as he points out the astounding variety around us. There are more species of trees in this part of Oregon than anywhere else, he tells me. Nate loves trees. Laura thinks that if she were a tree he would love her better.
I wonder if they miss the action and excitement of the old days.
‘Oh there’s plenty of excitement still,’ Nate tells me.
‘Such as?’
He tells me the story of the red tree vole, a personable little rodent that lives up in the highest branches of the tallest spruces and firs. Nate’s life quest, it seems, is to search for its excrement.