Once Again, a Taste of Real Winter

Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that (she) thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I (don’t) think she has done so yet, it is distressing.

-- from the diary of Donner Party survivor Patrick Breen

While no one has been forced to eat their dead, a siege of winter storms here did create a temporary shortage of eggs and milk and lead to a panicky run on the Safeway. The shelves were all but depleted, and apparently there was some ugliness as snowbound cabin dwellers wrestled for the last boxes of pasta, the last Wolfgang Puck frozen pizza, and so forth. Modern rustic life does have its dark side.

That was at the worst of it, when the big storms first started roaring across the Sierra. Since then, the citizenry has shoveled out and settled down for what appears to be one of those rare California winters. It happens every 10 years or so. The storm door, as the meteorologists call it, somehow is thrown open over the Pacific, allowing front after front to surge across the state.

In the mountains, this means snow: Snow that is measured in feet not inches; snow that produces deadly avalanches and cabin cave-ins and, in the extreme case of the Donner Party, cannibalism. In the lowlands, where much of California suburbia has been built on natural flood plains, the big storms turn streets into streams, at times forcing residents to evacuate their three-bedroom ranchos in rowboats. On the urban hillsides, houses themselves will take off, scooting down rivers of mud.

These winters, however troublesome, do have merit. They can restore in weeks water supplies drained by years of drought. Also, they allow us, for once, to wear our Eddie Bauer flannels and L.L. Bean footwear without feeling slightly ridiculous. Mainly, they break monotony, challenge pretenses. All of which prompted me to come here Thursday. It had been awhile. I wanted a taste of real winter.

*

My day sort of began at 3 a.m., when I was awakened in Pasadena by rain hammering on the roof. My night thoughts turned to . . . rain gutters. We bought after the drought set in, and each winter since have postponed purchase of this essential household equipage. Maybe this will be the year.

Flying from Burbank, I got a long look at the Los Angeles River. We laugh at this concrete river, but seeing it churn--brown, deep and fast--toward downtown reminded me of something I had read by a woman who lived in L.A. a century ago, during one of the big winters: “We watched the floodwaters from the river creep up Aliso Street and into Alameda. We saw bridges go out and small houses float downstream.”

As we crossed the Sierra, the clouds broke apart for a while. Below, the mountains were so white and sparkling it almost hurt the eyes to look. From Reno, I drove up Interstate 80 and into them. Snow stood several feet deep and dusted the treetops. Plows ground along the highway shoulders. Townsfolk shoveled rooftops, taking advantage of a brief lull. The newspapers were stuffed with weather stories. “Snow Buries Tahoe!” was one headline. “They’re ALIVE!” shouted another, a reference to the missing family that turned up in a cave.

There was talk around town of ski-boarders who had fallen and suffocated in the fresh powder, of snowed-in streets and other traumas, and also of mountain newcomers who moved here since the last big winter and thus were caught unprepared. “People have an idea it’s kind of like Disneyland up here, but it’s not,” Highway Patrolman Steve Carmichael said over coffee. “When it snows, Mother Nature takes a toll.” It was, of course, precisely this misconception--a guidebook’s promise of “December as pleasant as May”--that put the Donner Party in the history books.

*

I puttered around some in the snow, and it was almost dark when I crossed Emigrant Gap. This is where Donner Party survivors, coming across on crude snowshoes, first saw the Sacramento Valley. What I saw were television news vans and klieg lights. “Welcome to Bonehead Ridge,” said one of the reporters. News crews from the cities always set up at this spot for live storm reports. “We come up here during the week and tell the skiers how great the snow is,” I was told. “And then we come back on the weekend and tell them how bad the traffic is and to stay home.” O Progress!

As I drove down through the foothills, snow turned to heavy rain. The Sacramento Airport was jammed. Flights had been running late all day because of stormy weather. The delay meant I had time for dinner--a Taco Bell beef burrito that, somehow, got me thinking again about poor Milt and the ravenous Mrs. Murphy. By 10 p.m., I was back in Pasadena. It was still raining, and out in the Pacific yet another storm was coming through the door.