Day 19: Seneca–a big little town
The next day we got rolling for Seneca. On the way we stopped in at Bodfish’s sportshop in Chester. Tim mentioned him somehow and I startled. You know him? He’s a godfather of mt-biking, one of the early tour operators in the boonies. I didn’t know these were his stomping grounds. I’d never met him. So I finally did on the drive to Seneca. Bodfish is a sweet, quiet NoCal fellow who runs a multi-sport shop that offers quality things for every season: ski, boat, bike. He’s been writing about biking and describing his favorite trails for decades now. Bodfish liked my stickers and bought a copy of OYB. The arrogance of VVA put him off of taking any “Dirt Road Epics,” however. But he was open to considering it via the excerpts in the zeen. To me, arrogance in the case of VVA seems Whitmanesque, celebratory. But I didn’t get to meet VVA yet and Bodfish has, so who knows!
That was one big bummer so far. I’d planned to go on a ride with my hero author VVA who lives a few hours north of SF on the way to Tim’s, but one of his many ladyfriends had an urgent need for help in moving and he was gone when we were available.
But I did get to meet Bodfish, another godfather of the scene, and I am happy to have done so.
Seneca is a steep, scary, one-lane two-track drive an hour in from the nearest paved road. It’s in the Feather River Gorge, where the train that the hoboes rated one of America’s Ten Best Rides used to go along its notch cut out of stone and across a trestle so high and rickety over the river that it scared me even to look at it. Those tracks are gone now, but small-claim gold mining still goes on in those parts.
Seneca is a rare flat spot down low in the canyon. It’s a bridge, a couple houses, a few shacks and a few more trashed cabinsand a run-down old shed of a bar with a porch next to the tiny rushing river.
The bar has been around a long time and was run for 50 years by Marie, until she died. I used to drive up there with Tim back in the day, as customers of his own establishment. We’d hang out with the miners and crazy people until the wee hours then fishtale on home in his Citroen, on that scary little road leaving the gorge, then at crazy high speeds all the way home. I don’t think he’s ever had a wreck. Or a ticket. Afterhours at the bar once a miner hung around and showed us a mason jar full of gold. It was hard to pick up. It’s twice as heavy as lead! There’s been gunplay and knife action up there, too. For a nowhere place, a lot happens. There was a music fest recently with hundreds and several name acts. It’s very weird.
So now Tim tends the bar. The place is more trashed than ever. No electricity (never had it). He stays in a trashed, windowless little trailer on the weekends. There’s a bear bothering them presently.
All day long people trickle in. They like the bar. And they like Tim. He sits, reading the paper and visiting. There are business cards over all the inside walls and ceiling. And the outside walls. And driver’s licenses. Thousands.
One rich guy has brought a friend along. He tells me that people are afraid of Seneca but he brings people out. When he leaves he tells Tim that he’ll be bringing a bunch of others next week maybe.
It’s a gorgeous area that used to be a thriving gold town. It’s in a temperate zone down in a high-range canyon. It used to be a kind of enchanted resort area, you can tell. There are vestiges of quirky, interesting people who attempt nifty things. A homemade iron bridge across the river to a cabin foundation. A dammed area with stairs leading down into it for a swimming pool. Huge homemade dredging apparatus. But it’s the tail-end of the era now. One of the faded old Airstreams down the green, shady valley still has charm, but the next one down has death-warnings posted all over it and the road. Good thing Old Goose wasn’t in.
We have to roll. It was good seeing Tim, too, but his health isn’t what it was. He commented on the old gang being nearly gone now. But we had good times listening to standard songs on his boombox til the wee hours. Martha shockingly woke up in the middle of the night and heard us visiting at the bar and came in just when Tim was fixing some tasty 2 a.m. burgers on his little makeshift rig.
M is starting to lose faith in the ability of men to live without women. The last 3 single guys we’ve visited have shook her. Well, they were a bit startling.
