19-09-12 - Tassajara Creek flows into Willow Creek right before they meet Arroyo
Seco River near the Horse Bridge. Hiking out of Tassajara going downstream or on
the Horse Pasture trail, one crosses the Horse Bridge to get to the first road.
There used to be a camp there to the right where the Horse Bridge is but not
now. And only the Forest Service can drive in there now. The last time I was
there with wife Katrinka and son Clay, around 2005, we had to hike a couple of
miles from a campground to get to the bridge. Outside
of some hikes from Tassajara as mentioned below, I've also been there with son
Kelly and past wife experience, Elin.
I've written about that area a few times in the book I'm working on, Tassajara
Stories.
On the way into Tassajara for the first time in February of 1967 with Silas
Hoadley, we met fire lookout Fred Tuttle who showed us where the line was and
how to find the break in it. To do that, we didn't go into Tassajara but to the
Arroyo Seco River.
***We drove to a river flowing in a gorge through rocky pools, the Arroyo
Seco. The line crossed the river there over a bridge too small for a car but
wide enough for its namesake, the Horse Bridge. The phone line was an
uninsulated regular old metal wire – looked like galvanized fence wire but
thinner. It ran five miles in each direction through wilderness. There was a box
at the bridge where the line was attached to insulators so that the short bit of
line between them could be disconnected. Using a crank phone he called each
direction and determined that the line was broken or maybe just grounded between
there and the Pac Bell connection at Fred’s Camp.
***I went with my son Kelly, then about eight, to the
Arroyo Seco River and walked and swam upstream through the pools and narrow
canyons, sometimes a couple of yards in between the walls – National Geographic
quality. Got to the waterfall with the rope coming down on the side. Not a high
falls – maybe fifteen feet but I never got further. As we rested in the circular
concave confines of the pool below the falls, I told Kelly I’d discovered that
place on an all-day walk with his mother [Dianne Goldschag now Daya] back in
‘67.
***Returned there later on a day off with Niels, Tim
Buckley, Alan Marlowe, Tim Aston, and Jerry Fuller. We brought bag lunches, left
at sunrise before breakfast in the zendo after a quick munch of gruel and
soybeans on the deck outside the kitchen. We walked downstream all the way to
the Arroyo Seco – what a trip – it takes longer that way - swimming through
pools, jumping rocks. Walked and swam all the way up to that waterfall, stopping
to leap off cliff-sides into deep pools. It was getting too late to try to go
further. Niels showed us how easy it was by climbing to the top of the falls and
jumping in. [I'm the only one in that group still on planet earth.]
When our group got back to the creek the sky was already getting dark. We
went up creek fast as we could. There was a moon waxing near full but most its
light was shielded by the trees and the steep rise on each side. Got so dark we
could hardly see anything. Tim Buckley told about being at a get-together at
Gary Snyder’s place in Nevada City where Snyder got everyone running in the
woods in the dark, not colliding with trees by grace of subtle sensing. So we
did the same – ran onward on the smooth creek stones sometimes leaping, zagging
and zigging, arriving back to Tassajara too late for evening zazen. Soaked in
the hot plunge till the fire watch with her clackers came in to turn off the
kerosene lamps and kick us out. The next day none of us could understand how
we’d done that with no one falling.
***John Stace was another guest who'd been coming there for
years. Except he didn't use the road. He'd ride a horse followed by a whole
party on horseback. They came in from Greenfield via the Arroyo Seco River.
Would come in toward the end of the day. Maybe ten of them male and female,
cowboy hats, boots. They'd tie their horses out at Grasshopper flats, walk back
in.
***I can remember once over by the Arroyo Seco walking up to a man with an
automatic weapon like you see in movies. He'd been unloading it randomly into
the hillside across the river. "Pardon me sir," I said. "But I'd appreciate it
if you didn't fire that thing like that. I have friends over there coming in on
a trail."
Wikipedia page on the Arroyo Seco River
Sept. 14, 2019 -
A message in a bottle got
to hikers downstream. - The family was seriously stuck upstream. Tassajara
Creek flows into Willow Creek right before they meet Arroyo Seco River near the
Horse Bridge. This story which I first saw on BBC, prompted me to make this
page. - dc
Below is what was posted on Cuke What's New about it.
Read it there with a photo of the family.
A message in a bottle got
to hikers downstream. - The family was stuck upstream. Tassajara Creek
flows into Willow Creek right before they meet Arroyo Seco River near
the Horse Bridge. This sounds exactly like the area where we used to go
upstream to from the Horse Bridge. But that much water? Maybe another
spot. But we'd go to a waterfall that wasn't so high - maybe ten feet, This
NY Post article says the waterfall was forty feet so it's
somewhere else if that's true. The one we went to came down into a deep
pool. There was a rope on the right side. I never climbed it because
there was too much water and I'm not a climber, but Niels Holm did. To
get there you walk and swim upcreek half a mile or so and go through a
place right before the waterfall that is maybe two yards wide with high
walls on both sides. Have to swim there. I've
written about that area a few times in the book I'm working on,
Tassajara Stories. Here's
a page for some of that and more on the Arroyo Seco. [That's
this page]
Sept. 15, 2019 posted this on What's New - Communicated with Keith and Leslie at
Jamesburg about this and they say that yes it's the same spot where I and others
have walked and swam up to. That makes me wonder about the NY Post article
saying the waterfall is 40 feet high. Not the one we see from below. That's ten
to fifteen feet as I remember it. So either that's an exaggeration or there's
more falls above what we could see from below. As one approaches the falls, they
can't be seen. One enters a roughly oval pool maybe 25 feet wide and fifteen
feet across and the falls are not straight ahead but over to the left. The pool
is surrounded by walls but maybe there's enough rock to sit on over to the
right. It's deeper where the falls come in. It's so unusual for there to be a
lot of water this time of year. I always called it a National Geographic quality
walk/swim. Some neat pools on the way where the creek/river narrows. Recall
jumping from boulders into the pools on the way there. There are even larger
boulders and pools further downstream from the Horse Bridge that tend to have
more people frolicking. Would love to go back there.
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