Walking Tractor

For a dozen years I walked farm tractors up and down Highway 128 between Philo and Navarro. Not often, mind you. Mostly just during spring and fall, and then I'd only make four or six round trips per year. All told, I got in more than five hundred miles worth of rolling through the northern half of Anderson Valley at fifteen miles per hour.

Walking tractor was a seasonal chore I looked forward to. Ranch work paid by the hour and most hours required you to engage in a bit of aerobic exercise. Working a horse ranch in Anderson Valley meant pounding fence posts and stretching pasture wire, bucking hay and hauling feed bags, digging up busted waterlines and clearing away windfall trees from atop downed power lines. Horse ranching around here meant nailing together redwood corrals and hanging steel cattle gates, mixing concrete in wheel barrels, making firewood and chopping and burning brush. Since horses are destructive critters - one horse kicking up its heels and double-barreling the top of one split-redwood fence post could create a day's work for you - whatever time you had for maintenance came after you'd caught up on your repairs, and you caught up on your repairs only after you'd gotten ahead of your daily chores plus - if possible - whatever construction or cultivation project you happened to be in the middle of.

But walking tractor was ghost time. It was the sort of chore that, at worst, gave you a flat ass and a round potbelly. While fighting a powerful headwind blowing between Navarro and Philo, I might burn all of the calories contained in one lunchbox Twinkie. And what was a ranch hand but a lazy farm hand? I suppose if I'd have walked enough tractor on a daily basis, and if the tractor's steering was as sloppy as mine was, then all of that constant swinging of my Brody Knob between ten and two O'clock might have taken something out of me. If I put in enough hours swinging my steering wheel like that, my arm might get repetitive motion syndrome or who knows what else. Then again, had the road still been wash-boarded dirt instead of a paved, modern thruway, the whole experience would have been different. But, for me, walking tractor was nearly always a pleasure.

I used to love the feel of the wind in my face. I loved the wind rippling my clothing, the foliage in the trees and the seed heads of the spring grass. Under a slowly drifting pinto sky, with puffs of white clouds sliding across the ceiling of the valley, occasionally a dab of shadow would pass over me and slowly overtake me as if we were racing. And if I was traveling a straightaway and the direction of the wind was aligned with it, then race we would, at least for one wild moment, my imaginary companion and me side by side and going for the gold.

Canyons breathe in and out with the arc of the sun and creeks always radiate cool air. The highway bridge over Mill Creek, sunk down in its deep swale, always feels cooler than the road on either side of it. "The deeper the shade, the cooler the breeze," the loggers say, and even during the hottest summer afternoon passing through the deep shadows cast by the tall redwoods of Christine Woods was always refreshing. Even a small and gentle side canyon like the one carved by Floodgate Creek usually threw me a kiss of wind as I rolled by. A little no-name, peek-a-boo feeder creek channeling through a twenty-four inch wide highway culvert, a sunny grass knuckle, a low lying meadow, a broad-branched valley oak - every wrinkle in the terrain seemed home to its own temperature and wind, its own wind and smell.

Naturally, on the down side, I couldn't hear anything, what with the racket of my machine made by its wound up diesel engine whining in front of me and its over-sized, rumbling, wobbling tires at my elbows.

Above and mingled with the local breezes was the Pacific Ocean wind that pushed up the throat of the valley most every afternoon no matter what time of year. If I was heading toward Philo in the afternoon, the ocean wind pushed me along, at times powerfully enough to save me diesel. If I was heading toward Navarro and the wind was against me, it'd take back the diesel I'd saved during the opposite run. Yet, no matter which way the ocean wind was blowing - most building rainstorms blew down the valley instead of up it - I always felt the cool wet wind to be a great blessing. The ocean wind was not just a natural air conditioner, but also an air clearer, since it had birthed somewhere in Manchuria or Kamchatka before sailing over the wide North Pacific and making landfall at the Navarro River mouth. With the ocean wind came some of the purest air anywhere in the northern hemisphere, and I always felt privileged to be breathing it.

Not so pleasant were the manmade winds; the swooshes made by oncoming vehicles. As with the landscape, each type of oncoming rig made its own kind of wind. The slap of air thrown aside by a little four-banging Honda sports car was like the air pushed ahead by a swinging ping pong paddle. While the blast of air made by a loaded logging truck would send my baseball hat flying if I didn't watch out. I'm proud to say that during all of my years walking tractors in Anderson Valley, never once did I lose my hat. A few times I had my hat blown off my head, sure enough, but only back when I was first learning the winds of the highway. But even then each time my hat got blown off I was able to pull off the road and to hike back and fetch it.

In fact, once I became a seasoned tractor walker, I stopped worrying about my hat altogether. A loaded logging truck bearing down on me at sixty-five miles per hour wasn't enough to get me to raise my eyebrow. Before impact I'd screw down my hat, drop my chin to my breastbone, keep my hands on my steering wheel and let her rip. With the top of my head pointing like it was, the blast of the logging truck just screwed my hat down tighter.

At the same time I never did figure out a way to keep my hat on my head while facing an oncoming lumber mill chip truck. Spotting one of those towering metal boxes rushing at me made me abandon the idea at once. I'd stuff my hat under my right thigh, weigh it down with my leg and get a death grip on my steering wheel with both hands. For if a chip truck was aiming for me and I was looking off into the landscape stone deaf and daydreaming, nonchalantly working my steering wheel with the tips of a thumb and two fingers resting on my Brody Knob, half-sitting my seat with my clutch leg kicked up and I didn't notice a flying chip truck bearing down on me, then when its humongous blast of air hit me it might throw me clean off the ass end of my tractor.Or, if it didn't do that, it'd damn sure snap me back out of my daydreams.

The only kind of rig that struck terror in me was an oncoming or a passing gravel truck. Usually on the gravy train contracting by the load to Cal Trans, gravel trucks were always speeding and watching one of those massive high-tech wheelbarrows barreling down on me from either way sent me to my battle stations. I'd pin my hat under my leg, scrunch down in my seat, drop my chin, grit my teeth, narrow my shoulders, squint my eyes, tuck in my knees and hold on to my steering wheel for dear life knowing that, if a flying rock beaned me, it wouldn't be because I was offering it a large target or I hadn't been watching out.

Yet, because I usually only walked tractor during mid-morning or mid-afternoon, most of the time I had highway 128 all to myself and I could indulge in some leisurely sightseeing.

Anderson Valley looks a whole lot different moseying along atop a tractor than it does while incased in a speeding bullet. Every trip between Philo and Navarro my eye caught on something new. I might spot the remains of a leaning split rail pasture fence overtaken by forest, or an old buckled-over ranch house tucked into a shady cranny. I might catch sight of an abandoned, hand-hewn redwood water trough hiding under a patch of blackberries, somebody's vegetable garden, berry patch or flower bed. It got so I tried to lay my eyes on something new each trip and I always did. Because I couldn't sightsee when I had traffic backed up behind me, passing me or coming at me, there were stretches of roadside scenery that it took me years to fully eyeball. I must have made a dozen trips back and forth before discovering to my delight the supple young apple orchard growing up in the bowl opposite Greenwood Ridge Road. Then, not long ago, while stopped in my truck beside the highway at Reilly Heights, I noticed a broken old wooden wagon wheel laying in the barnyard that I'd never spotted from the seat of my tractor.

A walking tractor moved at the speed of a trotting horse. My tractor's speed was of another era and, letting my imagination play, it moved at the speed of a Pomo hunter on foot racing the setting sun to get back home to his wife and children before dark. A newlywed Pomo girl running for joy at daybreak might have paced me. It wasn't hard to imagine getting passed by a drunken, love-struck virgin homesteader aboard his lathered, heaving horse, whipping his hat in the wind and raising dust to high heaven. Or maybe, next to that heap of collapsed pioneer cabin, there in the sheltered opening beneath the redwoods, beside that bubbling finger of earth-filtered rainwater and with his or her worn out back to a tree, somebody had sat down to die.

Woven into the rest was the living human landscape. Friends flicked their headlights in greeting as we passed each other. Or, if they came up behind me, they'd wait patiently a respectable distance away until, when the time was right, surging forward to momentarily pause beside me, glance at me sideways and wave before again stepping on their gas pedals, accelerating and shrinking into the highway. Once or twice rowdy hillbilly friends snuck up behind me in the rolling country there by Lazy Creek and, when I was least expecting it, they'd shoot past me like bats out of hell overdue for some malicious hillbilly fun. They'd scare me about half out of my seat - which was precisely what they'd been after.

Boy I used to hate it when they did that. I'd imagine them up in the Boonville Lodge wetting their lips and bragging about the great thing they'd just done, and I'd be plotting my revenge.

Somewhere along the way I might pass a lonesome, stranded ex-con hitchhiker in rags who, for the moment at least, has given up the ghost and is napping in dappled shade atop a soft carpet of redwood duff. I might pass a weathered campesino in a clean straw village hat stepping it out along the shoulder of the highway with his chin up, his eyes forward and his legs moving with purpose. Once I saw a young road gypsy woman rising out of the morning grass. Another time, while passing a clapboard house, I watched as young lovers battled it out on their rickety front porch, she with a baby tucked under her arm and he shaking a long-necked quart of beer at her. Occasionally as I passed folks would rise from working in their gardens frowning and impatient and, seeing me, smile slightly as if they forgave me for my untimely intrusion of racket. As I passed by Gowan's apples, old compadres sometimes waved their pruning saws at me from the tops of orchard ladders. I might spot a pair of old partners building fence, stop the tractor to go and jaw with them, making sure to mention at some point during our conversation that I envied them mightily for being able to stretch out all of that nasty, ugly-assed barbed wire all over hill and dale while I was stuck walking a tractor.

Chugging along Highway 128 at fifteen miles per hour, it seemed I'd encounter people everywhere. And woven into the winds, landscape, history and people were the animals. In the thick brush in a canyon passing below the highway, out of the corner of my eye, I might catch the twitch of a cougar's tail, knowing the sight by the flash of buck-skinned brown in the interwoven greenery. Or, across a grassy opening, I might catch the glimpse of a coyote prancing/slinking into a tree line. Up ahead, hovering stationary like a helicopter directly above the painted double yellow line, I might see a snowy white kite hawk eyeballing me like I was some giant and noisy new kind of road kill. Because I was into the woodsman's habit of knowing what was hanging above me, every trip I'd spot perched in roadside trees watching buzzards and raptors, ravens, jays and crows.

Once a yearling doe, perhaps playing chicken with me, at the very last second darted in front of me and made it past my front tires by inches. Another time a jack rabbit, no doubt playing chicken, jumped out in front of me and, engaging its afterburners, raced ahead before stopping in the middle of my lane, turning and staring at me, its ears erect as if it was wondering what I could possibly do to match that. And once it realized I wasn't going to slam on my brakes, jerk on my steering wheel or make any other sort of rash move for one crazy rabbit, just before I ran it over it leaped into a roadside thicket of poison oak.

Once, while minding my own business and tooling along in the breeze, I got attacked by a furious blue jay. Thinking she might be guarding her hatchlings, I tried to tell her that I meant her and hers no harm. But it wasn't until I'd gotten out of range of her nest that she left me alone.

Another time, just like I was standing still, a shot glass-sized humming bird checked me out from all angles before streaking away like a bumble bee. Another time, shooting from the tall grass, a skunk tried to spray me.

Once a mama quail, just like I was moseying along some back country ranch road, jumped out in front of me with her half dozen, egg-sized offspring and, stealing glances over this shoulder and that, zigging and zagging and bobbing and weaving in mock panic, tried to pace me up the center of my lane.

And, knowing the rascality of quail, when I accelerated and tried to run them over to get them to show their hand, in an explosion of wings they scattered sideways out of my way in weird, wobbly trajectories, half kind of following their mother leftward, and the other half exploding the other way.

Once I brought my tractor to a complete halt to allow a lumbering porcupine to cross the road. Another time a wood rat scampered under my tires and got squished, leaving in my tracks a furry red flat spot as a meal for anyone who was interested or who got there first.

But perhaps my most memorable experience was the time a huge barn owl stirred from a tree and, in broad daylight, its creamy white wings outstretched and stone steady, soared by my face so close I felt the wind.