Hindy, Kade’s battered RV, was last seen entering the Sierras on the eve of a historic snowstorm. Rumor has it, he’s turned up in Three Rivers, a little town on the verge of a bloody conflict – a contest to see who will be named king.
But they’ll have to go through Kade first.
Mineral King is set to release on October 1st just FOUR days from today! Kade’s adventures will continue but for now, let me share mine.
Sequoia National Park occupies some of California’s most daunting and beautiful terrain. While there are bigger peaks outside the park, the Sierras here are rugged, boulder strewn domes cold enough to harbor snow well into the spring and warm enough to spawn both nests of rattlesnakes and gorgeous displays of wildflowers.
Then, of course, there’s the true treasure – the trees.
We arrived in Three Rivers right after the pandemic first broke out. It’d been a tricky journey to get even that far. We’d started out in Lake Mead and just prior to the news breaking, my wife had flown out of Harry Reid on a business trip to guess where.
I’ll give you a hint: ground zero.
Yep, she’d been sent to China.
It was early on and the world was still formulating a response. (Many would say we still are…) We had no idea if she’d even be allowed to de-plane in LA. But she was. Her flight back to Vegas and return to our RV parked at Lake Mead happened as planned.
We were scheduled to depart from there and head for the Sierras. We debated the wisdom of leaving. At Lake Mead, we could make a solid run simply boondocking out at Government Wash (as Kade did in Death Bed).
We made the drive instead, hoping in those early days as the other side of the country and urban areas were consumed, we’d be spared. Instead, we launched into a world literally and figuratively on fire.
I didn’t write much during those days. The progress I had made, on the ill-fated Ace Grant series, stopped. I emerged from the smoke to put up a single blog post: Hello from Fury Road. A sign of life amid the devastation.
When we arrived in Three Rivers, every camping reservation we had was suddenly canceled.
Reservations are the lifeblood of a journey like ours. Sure, you can boondock. Find a place to dump your waste and top off your freshwater and propane and you’re good indefinitely.
But we bought a small apartment-sized rig because we do like a few creature comforts. This was also before the solar upgrade making the availability of diesel (and open gas stations) key to any boon-docking attempt.
We received a notice from the campground we’d landed in that they’d soon be closing their gates. Humbly, I approached and told them we had nowhere else to go.
My sister in San Francisco has a driveway big enough to fit a single SUV and steep enough to high-center anything with a mildly long axle, let alone a 39 foot RV. We could’ve made a massive cross-country drive to Oklahoma and park in my dad’s driveway, poured for a car trailer and big enough for our rig.
In those early days though, we had no idea about the virus. And travelling cross country through a plague-ridden land to show up on my aging parent’s doorstep seemed absurdly dangerous.
Hell, we were still trying to keep socially isolated because we had no idea yet if my wife had been exposed on her international trip.
This was well before the days of easy test kits and actual data. People were both under and over-reacting to the threat. We chose to make every decision out of an abundance of caution. It’s simply what you do in an emergency: try not to make the situation worse.
Fortunately, the owner of the campground immediately agreed to let us stay.
As full-time RVers we’d found a loophole in the statewide order to shut down. Not that this put us at ease. I worried about our hosts. Worried the longer the hardship dragged on, the less willing they’d be to help.
They had every right to throw us out. Lock the gates. Or even raise their rates to account for the loss of an entire camping season’s worth of income.
They never did. They were gracious our entire stay. All three months. We’d planned to stay one originally.
Those three months were strangely wonderful and frightfully sobering.
We felt like refugees in a world on the verge of apocalypse. Everyday, I checked the status of closures wondering when we could raise the leveling jacks and continue onward. I watched the nationwide county-level COVID risk maps. Had the wildfire warning maps open, the country burning from Washington state to Texas.
At the same time, we explored a suddenly stilled and verdant world. When we first arrived, the gates to Sequoia were open. Long lines of traffic persisted as the spring tourists ignored travel warnings.
Soon enough, they closed.
Many people online wanted to question the wisdom of closing outdoor spaces. But those parks need places for the hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors to stay. The small communities were absolutely not welcoming tourists then (Some are pushing back against the floods of tourists even now).
Even parks can be sources of contamination. I recently read an article about a norovirus outbreak on the Pacific Crest Trail traced to a remote hut where thousands of hikers had stopped on their multi-day journey.
Closing was the right move. For the staff. For the community, an older population that likely would’ve been devastated by a serious outbreak.
We’d managed to become an exception to the rule though. We’d been unofficially adopted by the kind folks of Three Rivers. So we were able to explore the fringes of the park, National Forests, and adjacent Bureau of Land Management wildernesses.
And, yes, we even drove Mineral King Road.
For the first time since we’d started our nomad journey, we started to look at property. A failsafe, we told ourselves, in case the state of emergency never ended. We couldn’t see becoming fulltime residents of a campground. But we could see parking on a ridge overlooking one of the most stunning views in the country and waiting things out until winter.
In spring the place was awash with color. I’d never seen so many wildflowers. The view even outside our window was surreal. Perfectly mounded hills, copses of trees placed with painterly precision. A brook whispered us to sleep and the early morning songbirds woke us.
It was no wonder Disney had once wanted to place a resort on the slopes of Mineral King.
I’ll never forget the time we spent in Three Rivers. Even so, as soon as I found an opportunity to leave, we pulled up stakes and forged north. Far north. To Montana. A place just awakening from their longer winter slumber where tourists -and- the virus had yet to find it’s way.
Of course, we were the tip of the spear. I’d found work there as a reason to travel. And over the coming weeks, Montana decided to open businesses with a cautious approach.
By mid-summer, Big Sky country was under a full-on invasion. The campground where I volunteered shattered previous years’ attendance. “Self-contained” campers became a necessity and a fad.
We’d never be alone on the road again out West. Anywhere in striking distance of a major park would be mobbed by people suddenly reminded in those dark days that we had this thing called the “great outdoors.”
To make this long story short, I could just point to the first few pages of Mineral King.
First, the disclaimer in every novel. These books are fictional. Based loosely on my travels. Really, more informed by my travels and life experience.
Second, I make sure to thank the people of Three Rivers in the dedication. A damn beautiful place I once called home. Kade finds a very different reception, and gets stuck in a very different natural disaster. But like me, he could see himself wandering off into those mountains to forge a new life.
Mineral King will be the third book in the series. Rest assured, Kade’s adventures will continue. I’ve just started work on book four.
Look for the next installment in December or January. Better yet, join my mailing list to find out exactly when the new release date will be set!
Thanks again for reading,
Russ
Categories: Author News, Blog
RUSS LINTON 
Leave a comment