Wold A Frame

 I loved the people and the high country of Lassen and Plumas counties in northern California

I worked two winter seasons at the Lassen Ski Lift and spent most of the summertime riding my bicycle, walking in the woods, helping Les Bodine in Mineral, fooling around with the old piano at Mineral school or doing odd jobs at Mill Creek Lodge.

When I left Mill Creek and Mount Lassen (barely starting my imagined pebble-marked ley line) I headed back to mom and dad Wold's little  A-frame house at the end of the road (Sky High Drive) and near a hilltop between Ventura and Ohai in the Ventura River Valley in southern California.

Some parents are heartily glad to get rid of their children, but mom and dad always liked their adult kids like me to show up and we got along just fine. I lived pretty much in my own Ford camper parked in front of their house on the steep slopng hillside surrounded by oak trees and chaparral brush--a lovely climate and away from the usual hubbub of Southern California.

I liked working in their garden--building a goldfish pond and developing a little outdoor chapel area up a winding path to the Laughing Mountain's (mom's name) crest and cooking tasty vegetarian meals which they liked. Of course I joined them going to the Lutheran church every Sunday in Ventura where I also sang in the choir--and I accompanied mom at her weekly painting classes with teacher Carlyle Cooper at Ventura Community College--all these activities such a change from my "mountain man" life in the Lassen woods.

I built myself a temporary ramada of branches and canvas under the oak trees near the hilltop where I spent most of the dry summer nights. It was very quiet up there with only the sounds of nature and very occasionally the far-off sound of an ambulance siren from Highway 33 across the Ventura river valley way down  below.

I could enjoy my private deep, low, sort of rumbling sound I mentioned earlier very well on these silent mountaintop nights.

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