Dodge Macknight: Blue Sky (19th-20th century)

"I had TheBlues so bad one time it turned my face into a permanent frown …"

Taj Mahal: "Cake Walk Into Town" from Recycling the Blues & Other Related Stuff
℗ 1972 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment
Released on: 1972-01-01

I live in such close proximity to ambiguity that it's a genuine wonder I can usually figure out what's happening around me. I can see out of The Villa's back second-story windows TheBlues rising to the east and south, the Blue Mountain foothills, that is. They represent a world of considerable wonder. In the summer, The Muse and I trundle up there to gather a sharp-scented local Black Current variation prized by The Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) tribe, TheBlues, comprising a significant portion of their homeland. In the spring, we enter seeking morels, a magical, almost mythical mushroom revered around here by both chefs and hillbillies. In winter, the snow crazy wend there way up into that country to ski, an activity that never made much sense to me, but God bless them, anyway. Last Fall, we stumbled upon a significant crop of wild huckleberries up there. Wildfires overran our favorite space during the teens; in our lifetime, it will never again be anything like it was. We still visit to reminisce and walk around in the remaining reassuring silence.

My ancestors crossed on The Oregon Trail, which passed a point I've not been able to locate, which they called The Top Of TheBlues. It was an especially treacherous spot, perhaps the most dangerous point on the entire route from St Joe. Emigrants were encouraged to walk their teams and wagons through that spot, close against a verticle cliff with a steep dropoff. Perhaps the first white woman to cross, Narcissa Whitman, was said to have refused to leave her wagon lest she have to walk alongside their native guides. She brought her Eighteenth-Century New England Presbyterian values to Oregon, where they did not serve her well. Later, my last forebears to cross on that trail came by stagecoach from Boise, an unforgettable twenty-four-hour passage that could have put the staunchest traveler off traveling forever after; amen.

TheBlues always seemed like a junior mountain range to me growing up. They were not nearly as impressive as the Cascades, Sierras, or Rockies. They appeared to lack snow-covered peaks, though a few were tucked away in surprising corners. I thought of TheBlues as nice mountains, gentler and more refined, though they maintain wildcat, bear, and even wolf populations. Much of their area now features second- or third-growth forest, having been harvested early and often by timber-starved pioneers, for TheBlues border more barren country. My donation land claim-inhabiting forebears would take wagons up into TheBlues to gather firewood and raw timber to saw into boards for homes and outbuildings. Those claims on the most barren land included a few acres of timberland up in those mountains. The families would hunt for wild cauliflower mushrooms and berries while their elders labored cutting timber. The Natives, too, migrated up and into those mountains to gather their sacred huckleberries before winter would settle in.

I bring up this Eden by which my little Center Of The Universe sits because in these times when both Hoping and Coping sometimes seem in such short supply, it's damned handy to have a paradise nearby. Yesterday, instead of participating in the massive protests that happened all around this nation (God Bless those protestors, too), A friend and I drove up into TheBlues to fetch a new piece of equipment he'd bought to help him manage his spread, a little slice of TheBlues Heaven overlooking a place called Kooskooskie, which sits alongside the eponymous Mill Creek, which later passes just down the block from where The Villa sits, on its way down to The Columbia. I never suspected that I lived so close to The Center Of The Universe when I was growing up here. It took me some time living elsewhere before I finally came to appreciate my prior proximity. I learned when living out there that the center of the universe seemed nowhere near there. Only here.

Drive a couple hundred miles while chatting with an old and treasured friend, and even the current self-inflicted calamity befalling this world can seem irrelevant for a spell. I've seen enough Hell to readily recognize even thin slices of Heaven when I encounter some, and passing up and into TheBlues never once leaves the boundaries of our little local hunk of Heaven. We stopped in a vintage greasy spoon for lunch, and they fed us a concoction called Creamy Kielbasa soup, which resembled a very thin corn chowder with small wedges of smoky sausage crowding the cup. It tasted like it had a shot of pickle juice in it. It was surprisingly delicious. It seemed like a reasonable appetizer if we really were facing another great depression. It seemed almost pre-emptively depressing to spoon that strange concoction down my gullet while sitting in a genuine greasy spoon situated somewhere within the comforting confines of a conveniently located Heaven. This morning, I woke up with an old Taj Mahal song in my head. "I had TheBlues so bad one time it turned my face into a permanent frown, but now I'm feelin' so much better I can Cake Walk Into Town."

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz