This tree is remarkable in many ways. For starters, it is the only single-needled pine on the planet (note to the 99 percent of us who routinely use the word “unique” incorrectly: perfectly fine to employ it here). It is also the most xeric pine in North America, enduring conditions of aridity and temperature extremes almost beyond imagination. And it is an old-time Westerner. Fossil pollen records and fossil needles in ancient packrat middens show that the pinyon pine, having moseyed north to the Great Basin after the last ice age, has been native here for thousands of years. Individual trees can reach ages of more than nine hundred years and usually don’t become very productive of cones until they’ve been standing around for a half century or so.
The seeds hidden within those cones are the pinyon’s most extraordinary feature. While all pines produce edible seeds, the pinyon’s seed is so unusually large as to be a major food source for both humans and many species of rodents and birds—including the pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), whose harvesting and caching of the tree’s seeds is an important mechanism of its dispersal. Pinyon nuts not only are large and delicious but also have exceptional nutritional value. They are high in iron, manganese, and other essential minerals, are loaded with vitamins A and E, riboflavin, niacin, and antioxidants, and contain all twenty of the amino acids. They are even gluten-free. And, at 3,000 calories per pound, pine nuts boast a fat content exceeding that of chocolate—thus providing a nutritional density that has made them a highly valued wild food. Although the pinyon was not scientifically described until the mid-nineteenth century, the wonders of its delicious, nutritious nut have been known to Europeans since the tree’s use by Indian peoples was first reported by Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in 1535.
Pinyon nuts have played a vital role in Native American cultures, and evidence suggests that this food source was important to the prehistoric peoples of the Great Basin, just as it is still culturally important to our Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone neighbors. Long before the appearance of the Christ who is celebrated with the Christmas tree, the native peoples of these high, cold deserts made posts from the bole of the pinyon tree, and enjoyed the special aroma of this pine as its branches crackled in an open fire that provided welcome warmth. Pinyon pitch forms an adhesive so powerful that it was used to mend cracked water jars, and, in its boiled form, was employed as a waterproofing that was applied to basketry and to the cradle boards in which infants were carried from one pinyon grove to another. Medicinally, pinyon resin was placed on a rabbit fur patch that was applied to wounds as an antiseptic, while the needles were boiled into teas and ground into powders that were used to remedy a range of maladies. Pine nuts were gathered, processed, stored, and consumed in an impressive variety of ingenious ways, while their harvest each fall was a major ceremonial and community event—just as it still is today. It has been said that the pine nut was as important to the native inhabitants of the Great Basin as the bison was to the plains peoples.
In Walden (1854), which was published at exactly the historical moment when Christmas trees first became commercially available in America, Henry Thoreau wrote that “it is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.” “A huckleberry never reaches Boston,” he concluded, because “the ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender.” Thoreau here makes two points that are repeated throughout his work: the first is that the sweetness of nature’s fruit is produced as much by our experience of nature as by the taste of the fruit itself; the second is that commodification of nature tends to compromise its meaning and significance.
Like Thoreau’s wild huckleberry, our pinyon pine Christmas tree is something we harvested ourselves from the wilderness, and that is one of the many reasons we find it so beautiful. And with it we have harvested a memorable shared experience. When we gather by the woodstove to admire this pinyon shining in our home here on Ranting Hill, we see not just a Christmas tree but also windswept high-elevation ridges and canyons, the rippling texture of bleached vermillion cliffs, the crests of range after snowy range flowing out to the distant horizon. We hear the sweep of downcanyon wind and the croak of jet-black ravens and the crackle of a little bonfire, smell pinyon pitch and hot cocoa, whiskey and sage. We remember tromping through the snow, as a family, deciding together that this is the wild tree we will bring home and decorate, and beneath whose boughs we will place our gifts.
Our Christmas tree is neither as green nor as shapely as a farm-raised tree. It grew more than 100 miles away from our home hill and so will never be as handy by as would an artificial tree. It is almost too heavy to carry, too brushy to decorate, and too pitchy to handle. Its short, stiff, sharp, single needles jab us as we coast by it with warm milk or chilled eggnog in hand. As a Christmas tree, our pinyon pine could not possibly be more inconvenient. And that is yet one more way of saying that, to us, it is perfect.
EVERY NEW YEAR’S EVE, drunk people from around the world sing some approximation of “Auld Lang Syne,” a song whose words they rarely know—though one of the song’s many virtues is that, when arm-in-arm revelers slur out “For hold and sign” or “Four old aunts shine” or “Fart old Ann Zyne,” it still sounds damned good. But even when we do know the words, we do not know what they mean. This confusion is forgivable, since in the Scots language “Auld Lang Syne” literally means “old long since” (huh?), and even idiomatic translations like “days gone by” or “long long ago” do not entirely clarify the term. As Billy Crystal’s character puts it in the 1989 chick flick When Harry Met Sally, “ ‘should old acquaintance be forgot?’ Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances? Or does it mean that if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible, because we already forgot them?”
“Auld Lang Syne” emerged from the great Lowland Scots ballad tradition but is most closely associated with Robert Burns, who recrafted the song as a beautiful poem that was published in 1788. As Scots, including my own kin, emigrated to every corner of the globe, they took this traditional ballad with them. It thus became Scotland’s greatest cultural export—though, in fairness, the competition was haggis, bagpipes, and plaid skirts for men—and is now beloved by inebriated folks the world over. The version of Burns’s poem we sing today is radically simplified and omits a number of lovely verses that, if sung in the original Scots, would make a challenging field sobriety test. My favorite of these is Bobby’s original closing verse:
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine.
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
For auld lang syne.
On the off chance you’re as confused as the characters in When Harry Met Sally, “willie waught” is the world’s most lyrical euphemism for drink. Here, then, is Burns’s poetic celebration of hand clasping and cup raising in memory of times gone by. It is among the oldest, most meaningful gestures known to human culture.
Thinking about this song caused me to wonder if anything in Nevada might be named for it, which eventually led me to Auld Lang Syne Peak, an obscure, 7,400-foot mountain out in the north-central part of the state. I say “obscure” because this mountain abides in a nearly uninhabited stretch of the Great Basin, where it stands amid innumerable other mountains, including much higher ones like Star Peak and Thunder Mountain, nearly 10,000-footers in the nearby Humboldt Range, where Mark Twain went broke chasing silver during the early 1860s. But it was the name of the peak that drew me, not its lofty elevation, and so I called my hiking buddies Cheryll and Steve to invite them to join me in exploring Auld Lang Syne Peak the following day, December 31. I hoped that this dry winter might make the peak accessible, though in many years it would not be a feasible climb at this time of year.
My friends did not hesitate when I called, and so the next morning found us on the road, speeding east into the open heart of the Great Basin. A two-hour drive
from our homes took us from Northern Paiute country out into Western Shoshone country, and eventually we pulled off to recaffeinate at Puckerbrush, Nevada, where a dilapidated sign informed us that we were at 4,288 feet in a town whose population stands at twenty-eight. But no town was in evidence, just a truck stop with road food, strong coffee, pints of liquor, and those kitschy, rear-view mirror dream catchers, which comprise four of the five things a long-haul trucker needs (the fifth is available at the PussyCat, down the highway a stretch toward Winnemucca). From Puckerbrush we rattled overland on washboarded BLM roads through open-range ranching country, then past a small, placer gold-mining operation. I glimpsed the feed hopper and rotating grizzly as we wound through the site, past the settling pond, and then upcanyon into the historic Dun Glen mining area, where we parked the truck off in the sage and clambered out to gear up for our hike.
Founded in 1862, Dun Glen boomed for thirty years before simply vanishing in the early 1890s. All that remains of the miners who sought their wild fortune here are a few broken-down remains of cabins that were hand-dug into a hillside above Dun Glen Creek. We explore these remnant structures, admiring the construction of their hand-laid stone foundations, wondering what it might have been like to eke out a life in this remote place one hundred fifty years ago. I notice the fractured, bone-colored loop of a teacup’s handle, set carefully on a foundation rock—a reminder that families lived here. Perhaps some, like my own, were brightened by two beautiful little girls, growing up too quickly.
A mile or so into the hike we ascend a low ridge from which the peak comes into view. It is an anticlimactic moment, as the mountain appears to be an unimpressive dome, barely worthy of a stroll, let alone a 300-mile round-trip. I apologize to Cheryll and Steve for dragging them all the way out here for what looks like a mild constitutional.
“Let’s find something else to climb while we’re here, y’all, ’cause in short order Auld Lang Syne will be in our past,” I say.
“We’ll see,” Steve replies. “There’s more vertical out here than you’d think.”
Our route is up the low ridge, then across the canyon mouth via what looks like an earthen dam but is actually a giant pile of mine tailings. We scramble up a steep, rocky slope, where the detritus of old mining operations is everywhere visible. Here are the collapsed remnants of a tin shed, there a prospect hole transformed into a mirror by snowmelt. We guess at the vintage of what we find by observing the nature of the junk. Cheryll finds a piece of threaded pipe, which became widely available in the 1880s. Steve notices a few nails with round rather than square heads, an innovation that dates to the invention of wire nails in the early 1890s. We also find shards of old bottles, many of which are sun purpled, an effect produced when the magnesium dioxide–infused clear glass produced during the second half of the nineteenth century is transformed into a lovely hue of lavender by long exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Here, on this remote desert mountain, we are surrounded by the scattered fragments of auld lang syne.
Even on the steepest pitches we find vertical shafts whose bottoms remain invisible, though the echoes that return when we drop a chunk of rose quartz into one suggest impressive depth. Soon, we stumble upon an actual mine shaft, which we peek into but know better than to enter. It is difficult to picture people up here so long ago, ghosts digging into the earth with their hands. I wonder if they found what they were looking for inside this dark hole, on the flank of this mountain, in the middle of this isolated, illimitable expanse of desert. It is the kind of place where it is possible to imagine great dreams being fulfilled, but much easier to imagine them perishing forever.
Climbing above the long-abandoned mine, we begin what turns out to be a surprisingly difficult ascent through the scree, as we separate and traverse obliquely across the north face of a high ridge and toward a narrow saddle that is slung below the peak. Keeping my head down as I cross the steep slope, I see plenty of scat. Probably elk, since it appears large, roundish-oval, and less dimpled than mule deer scat tends to be, though this rough terrain and high elevation also make desert bighorn sheep a possibility. As I pick my way across the steep face, I occasionally go to a three-point scramble, using my uphill hand to stabilize my footing and work my way toward the still-distant peak. It is on this slippery traverse that my faulty estimation of the wee climb becomes palpable, and I suck wind working to achieve the saddle, which appears to recede before me. Pausing to catch my breath, I lift my head to discover that a second mountain has come into view. Behind what I assumed was Auld Lang Syne is a sister peak that is more distant and also higher. It is, in fact, this more distant of the twin summits that we are bound for, and while we are already several hours into this climb, it is apparent there are more hours ahead.
Having tackled the long traverse by our independent routes, Steve and Cheryll and I meet up at a rock outcropping on the saddle below the sister summits. I am the last to arrive. We break here for water and trail food and to absorb the expansive view. While leaning back against a boulder, I notice a golden eagle describing perfect circles directly over the crown of What Used to Be Auld Lang Syne Peak, as if signaling that this unnamed summit may yet hold some special significance.
“That’s so beautiful,” Cheryll remarks, admiring the eagle’s effortless gyre. “Perfect! You should write about that.”
“A lone eagle, ignited by shattered sunlight, describing perfect circles over the crown of a domed peak, as if signaling that this unnamed summit may yet hold some special significance?” I reply. “I can’t write about that. Way too nature-writery. Sounds staged. We know this is actually happening, but readers will think it’s horseshit.” Smiling, Steve points silently to a nearby pile of wild mustang dung.
“Well played,” I reply in response to his wordless punch line. The eagle circles a few more times, counterclockwise, winding the hands of time backward, and then is gone.
Now, for the final pitch of the climb. We scramble around the shoulder of What Used to Be Auld Lang Syne Peak onto a rocky bridge between the twin summits and then start straight up the exposed crown of the mountain. This is the most difficult part of the climb but also the shortest, and we soon find ourselves standing together atop the peak. Once again, I am the last to arrive, and Cheryll greets me with a serenade that she has secretly arranged in order to celebrate the occasion. She has loaded a melancholy pop version of “Auld Lang Syne” onto her phone, from which she now plays a crooning, heartbreaking take on Bobby Burns’s timeless gem.
The moment is intended to be ironic: we three outdoor enthusiasts self-consciously reveling in the summit climax of a wilderness experience by cranking sappy tunes on a smartphone. But the genius of this song is that it will brook no irony. While I acknowledge the wisdom of the maxim that “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” the Burns ballad belies any hip dismissal of the imaginative power the past wields over our experience of the present. This song is the world’s greatest anthem to ephemerality, a poignant expression of the impossible desire to check the rush of time, to turn back on the trail, if only for a moment, toward the always already-lost country of our past. Soon, we will begin our descent, put the mountain behind us, perhaps even reach home before the old year turns to the new. For the moment, though, there is only the stopped time of this summit, and the bittersweet notes of a song that refuses to let us forget the past.
As I listen to the song’s verse about friends separated by oceans, and by oceans of time, I think of the families who lived here one hundred fifty years ago. When the Dun Glen miners scoured these hills, they had to assay what they dug out of the earth. Assay, which in its mining context refers to the testing of ore to determine its quality, is actually a much older word and one with broader connotations. Since the fourteenth century, an assay has been a “trial, test of quality, test of character.” To assay is to “try, endeavor, strive.” The sister word to assay is essay, whose etymological origins also point to the idea of trying, and of trial. An essay is a weighing, an ex
amination, an endeavor. An essay, ever and always, is an attempt.
As the would-be irony of the song is overwhelmed by the genuine emotion it inspires, I assay in all directions from the summit of Auld Lang Syne. It is wide-open country as far as I am able to see, with alkali and sage playas rolled out gracefully between endless folds of white-capped mountains, ranges receding one behind the other into this boundless ocean of high desert. In one direction a lowering storm settles on a darkening range with veiled fingers of virga, the vanishing rain that evaporates before it reaches the earth; in the other direction is a basin dramatically illuminated by the late-afternoon sun as it descends through azure notches in an unbroken mat of silver, flat-bottomed clouds. Which is the view of the past, I wonder, and which the future? Time will tell. Until it does, we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
A STUDY PUBLISHED in a respectable journal of psychiatry was resurrected in the tabloids after it suggested that successful comedians often show characteristics typically found in folks suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A scientifically demonstrable link between humor and insanity had momentarily captured the feeble imagination of a public that likes to think of comedy as a form of divine madness and so had rushed to embrace the dubious proposition that the wise fools who produce it are necessarily both gifted and troubled. Apparently, this is not the same public that attends Hollywood film comedies, which consist primarily of fart jokes aimed at a core demographic of fourteen-year-old boys. So poor is the comic fare at the Cineplex (which itself sounds like the name of a sexually transmitted disease) that even I, an aficionado of flatulence humor, have thrown in the towel. We have simply come too far from the quality fart jokes of Shakespeare. (In Othello, the musician asks the clown, “Whereby hangs a tail, sir?” To which the clown replies, “By many a wind instrument that I know.”)
Rants from the Hill Page 18