inhospitable, part 13, then we went to san francisco

Gregg M. Pasterick

February 2

Soda Springs was a small town just off I-80, about a mile west of Donner Summit. Homes were scattered here and there along Donner Pass Road between the interchange and Donner Ski Ranch, as well along a few small roads someone had, at one time or another, managed to bulldoze through the conifers and the rocks. There was a gas station and a lodge at the highway, while "downtown" was about a half mile further along the road.

"Downtown" was a post office, a small rustic restaurant, and a store, all in the same building. At the time, a new restaurant was being built across the street, but progress seemed non-existent. A little further along, at the intersection of Donner Pass and Soda Springs Roads, hung the lone traffic signal, a flashing yellow caution light for Donner Pass, a flashing red stop light for Soda Springs. There were winter sports stores on two corners (Soda Springs Road dead-ended at Donner Pass Road), as well as a small coffee shop and next to that, condos which had once been a lodge. The Come On Inn West was just down Soda Springs Road, across the railroad tracks.

Soda Springs Road continued into a more recent enclave of homes, which became newer, larger and obviously more expensive as you continued driving. The road eventually turned into gravel and then dirt, as so many roads do in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; it eventually wound its way down out of the mountains, to Auburn, California.

This was ski country, with our little town sitting at an elevation just shy of 7,000'. During the summer, when the nights were clear and cool and dusty with stars, and the days sunny, hot, and dry, there were very few people around at any given time. The air smelled of conifers … a variety of conifers … and sagebrush; it was a sweet, primeval, aroma, wafting over the rugged landscape since time immemorial.

Though we were living in the mountains, we were by no means at the top. The mountains rose and fell all around us, some nearby, some off in the distance. Osprey fished Van Norden Lake, which was across the road from the inn; Audubon's warblers flitted about the pine trees just outside the windows; Calliope hummingbirds, the smallest hummingbird to call North America home, came to our feeders regularly, getting in our faces and chatting loudly when we dared sit on the porch while they fed; Western Tanagers played hide and seek with us, and Lazuli Buntings foraged in the tall grass along the banks of the mostly dry, what I was told was the South Yuba River.

At night, the sky was a carnival.

California tortoiseshells, butterflies reminiscent of their eastern cousins, Milbert's tortoiseshells, were going through one of their occasional irruptions. Their population waxes and wanes according to the amount of available larval food; some years there are no tortoiseshells at all, other years their numbers fall under what I like to call "Biblical Proportions." This happened to be just such a year.

The day we arrived, driving up the mountain out of Truckee, toward Donner Summit, California Tortoiseshells were pouring across the highway, a wind-borne stampede on wings. Even though the truck was barely doing twenty-five MPH by this time, I knew I was killing them by the dozens, committing "lepidopteracide" with the front of the pickup truck. The carnage was nauseating. But the butterflies kept coming … for the next two weeks.

Every day, beginning each morning at about 10:00, and continuing until about noon, California tortoiseshells poured over and around the inn, heading in a westerly direction. Sheri and I often stood outside in the driveway, among the butterflies as they tumbled lazily by us, like autumn leaves on a breeze. And we applauded.

It was another one of those little things in life which would be so easy to interpret as having meaning, as being a sign. That aside, it was a wonderful baptismal in Soda Springs, a pinnacle along the path of our journey. We had found paradise.

* * *

"Do you know how much snow yer gonna get over the winter?" We nodded dismissively; we had heard. Many, many times, and always through that grin. We were sick of hearing it. We were sick of that grin. That shit-eating grin. We'll deal with that when the time comes.

In the meantime, we were outside a lot, simply standing, admiring the view, admiring the weather, admiring the sweet conifer and sagebrush aroma, admiring our adventure.

The hot, sunny days gave way, evening after evening, to chilly, clear nights. We could see the Milky Way from our porch, trickling across the sky, no doubt gathering in a puddle of starlight somewhere on the other side of the ski slope across the dry riverbed behind the inn.

We drove down to Tahoe City one day to see Lake Tahoe. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant across the street from the lake. Sitting there, in the open-air patio, a plate of enchiladas in front of me, I looked out over the water with disbelief. "We're eating lunch across the street from Lake Tahoe," I said to Sheri. She knew what I meant.

Sometime in the middle of all the California newness, our daughter passed through. She was moving to San Francisco to attend law school. It was a surprising proximity of family for all of us.

The first guests turned up during the middle of August, a young couple with a baby, not your typical bed and breakfast clientele. A week later another young couple checked in, they with two youngsters, again not the sort of folks you expect to stay at a bed and breakfast. It wasn't a trend, but families laden with kids would not be strangers to us at the Come On Inn West. Evidently families like to ski.

And then there was Kurt and Annie. They were one of those wonderful flukes of innkeeping, which didn't occur enough.

They were from England, on holiday in the U.S.; it was their first visit to our country. They had flown into San Francisco, rented a car, and had been driving around northern California for a few days, eventually turning up in nearby Truckee. They had spent a night at the Richardson House; for reasons they never mentioned, they had not enjoyed it at all. Maybe they would have enjoyed it more had we been the innkeepers. They found us, in any case, in the phone book, and they gave us a call. "Sure, we have a room available … Great … Fine … We'll see ya in about an hour." It all had the reek of one of those things, which, had it been a decade ago, before all this grown-up life stuff had turned me into a pragmatic callus, I might have found cosmically serendipitous. Now it was all just a large coincidence.

Kurt and Annie were apprehensive when they arrived, like many of the guests when they got their first gander at the Come On Inn West. We were apprehensive when we first pulled in, and that was at night, in the dark.

From the back, the Come On Inn West was nothing to look at, just the back of a house, a few windows, and the bottom of a profoundly sloping roof. There was nothing inviting or come hither about it at all.

Off to one side there was a not altogether inviting "tunnel," which was an enclosed walkway in which visitors went up the steps to the front porch. It was enclosed to keep out the winter snowfall. (That seemed a little overindulgent of the weather, we thought.)

The front of the inn was much nicer; it had a porch running the entire length of the front of the house, it had a view of the small stream, which might be nothing but big rocks and damp mud, and an inviting ski slope on the other side of that. The trouble is, when guests pulled into our parking lot, they were pulling in behind the inn, where the view was, frankly, disheartening. All the good stuff was on the other side, but you don't know this unless you suffered the back of the inn and braved the "tunnel." It wasn't unusual, the apprehension, the barefaced disappointment even.

Kurt and Annie didn't seem disappointed, but they did look as if they were wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into. Not only was the inn, at first, a disappointing sight, but there was no one around. It was eerily quiet and still, and they were our only guests.

We welcomed them warmly, showed them around and gave them their choice of room. They nodded politely, said very little, and picked the room with a view of the rocky riverbed. That was that. We went about our business; they went about theirs.

They had planned to stay only a couple of nights, but when they got in that second evening, after a day of adventuring in California, they asked if they could stay another night. "Sure," we said, "we'd love to have ya."

When they got in on that third evening, they again asked, "Can we stay another night?" "Sure." And on the fourth evening, they asked for a fifth.

By this time, we were getting on famously. They were enjoying the Sierra Nevadas, and they were enjoying our hospitality. We spent mornings on the porch, peering through binoculars at birds, and again, at night, gazing up at the stars, waxing poetically about how beautiful infinity was. And we joined them at breakfast each day, having a jolly time.

They ended up staying with us for a week; they even joined me outside for the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. "Look!" Annie would yell, "there goes another streaker!"

On their last evening with us, they insisted upon driving us down to Squaw Valley

to ride the gondola up the side of the mountain where we would enjoy the view and watch the sun set. It was a lovely and memorable evening.

By the time they pulled out the next morning, we all felt like old friends, and Sheri and I couldn't help but feel a little bit good about ourselves. Charmed by their quiet reticence in the beginning, we had not only been good hosts, but we also made ourselves available to them as friends, we had given them room to feel comfortable, and we had drawn them out. A potential lasting friendship resulted.

It was a lovely week with them. It made us feel good about innkeeping again. It made us feel good about people again.

We were getting pretty good at this innkeeping stuff.

Then we went to San Francisco.