Mountain Money

Young, sturdy, and ruggedly handsome, he was an artist who used a chainsaw to roughly carve out his subjects and then finish them with smaller tools. Surprisingly, he had a deft hand and an outstanding sense of proportion, details, and even movement. He was a consummate sculptor, easily able to see the creature within, waiting to be revealed through the artistry of his efforts. His carvings were notable and sublime.

Perusing them, I encountered a graceful river otter. He seemed so friendly. I knew in a moment that he wanted to come home with me. We bartered, and I traded an Early Winters Omnipotent to the young chainsaw artist for the otter. We called barter ‘mountain money’ and liked using it when we had the opportunity as the transactions were usually so much more personable and memorable. And after all, we could always sew up another tent, but there would never be another otter as distinctive as the one I saw that day.

The otter sat on my lap as torrents of snow brushed past the windows in the dark of night, in a swirling storm high above the San Francisco Bay. The little Cessna bumped up and down in the turbulence. Z-man sat up front next to Jay, our pilot, while Diane and I sat huddled close together in the tapered back seat. I held the otter tight. He was no problem really, quiet and still through all the commotion and concern caused by the weather. Just under three feet tall, carved from the trunk of a cedar tree, he did not seem disturbed. 

The weather, which had been so fair, rapidly deteriorated. As darkness descended, we four sat high above northern California in the little Cessna, buffeted by a fierce storm, ice forming on the wings and the fuel gauge alerting Jay to an impending situation. We had zero visibility and were leaking fuel over Northern California.

Diane and I looked at each other, held hands, and tried to stay calm. We found it difficult to be either optimistic or terrified, but our experience in the unknown was definitely on the dark side of the spectrum. Only the thin aluminum skin of the aircraft separated us from the turbulent elements. I thought about death in the abstract for quite a while. The wet blackness, with torrents of rain streaming across the small windows, punctuated with only the blinking wing lights, made it seem a near possibility. I did know that I was not ready for it.

Fortunately, Jay, with whom we had flown before, was a well-experienced, intelligent, and decisive pilot. He expertly analyzed the rate of fuel loss and made plans to touch down at the nearest opportunity, the Humboldt County Airport, on the redwood coast just north of Eureka. Obsessively focused on the tiny instruments on the panel before him, Jay knew that he was the primary instrument of all our fates. As we flew forward through the unrelenting wet darkness, he did not speak, and we did not ask.

This is an excerpt from ‘Mountain Money,’ an adventure story from my recently released memoir, Banquet of the Infinite, which is now available as an eBook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.