Yonder Journal

Yonder Journal received the following correspondence from Mike Cherney on 16 February, 2014.

From: Mike Cherney
Date: Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:39 PM
Subject: more gonzo

dudes, this is long and i know your busy. read some a save to read some later. this shit is way out there and right into a very ( i like use this word lots ) interesting space.

so i’m sit’n around do’n the r&r thing this evening and being on the safe side my consciousness goes in search of some rare moments in time. i just found a horde of business cards and notes i took over the past few years. in there was one in particular about a dude i know around here who has a common friend with me named Terrance McKenna. Terrance is an authority on psychoactive and hallucinogenic substances, like a science guru type thing and he lived in the same small village as i and his kids played with mine and we sat and talked some about his work, and he died young. so this hooks into Malcom Terrance of that commune fame and into some more individuals i have come to know over the years. one name pops in hard and i get curious, google the dude and ta da, i get my old buddy Bob Dittler who used to give me a ride down to S. F. from Camp Meeker in Sonoma Co where we both lived and partied when i attended the S. F. Art Institute. the last time i saw Bob was at a party he gave after having taken acid for over 30 days straight. he was into human behaviors and the modification there of. anyway, that’s what he called it. that was the day i found that i was to become a father. … More in this Brief

Words by Kyle von Hoetzendorff, photograph by Daniel Wakefield Pasley

We are tired, hungry, and beaten. Around us mountains rise like picket signs to mock our day’s progress. This trip, which trip specifically doesn’t matter, is familiar; you, me, we have all been here before, a day full of motivational derision packed with mind-chiding expletives like “just around the corner”, “this is the last hill,” and “I am sure it's just right up ahead.” The road we're on, our road, has petered out, it’s a dead end stub built by the type of people who knew exactly where they came from and who had no choice but to return there. We on the other hand need to carry on, turning back is an admission of failure, an admission that all those involved had seriously considered and yet none of us were smart enough to act upon.

… More in this Brief

During the extensive and year-long planning, scouting, reconnaissance and beta collection phase of the Mythical State of Jefferson Permanent, Mike Cherney and Yonder communicated weekly if not daily. Phone calls, landline only. No texting. Some handwritten letters. And hundereds of emails. Mike is a photographer, 60's survivor, jeweler, husband, father, bike rat, homesteader, builder, Toyota pick-up owner and oral historian of the fireside yarn variety. What follows is a particularly poetic excerpt from an unsolicited email about his knife.

Some question or interest was raised about my carrying a folding knife while cycling.

I don’t usually give this a lot of thought maybe ‘cause I have always had a knife on me of one kind or other.

It’s a tool, a pretty simple one, which does many tasks.

It makes toothpicks, kindling, wooden pins/pegs, temporary shelters, snares, spoons, forks and walking sticks.

It cuts food items, rim tape—used this move once to resolve a friend's serious tire seating issue in the middle of another Nowhere after his 3rd flat—cardboard, paper, duck tape, handlebar tape. Even whittled copper wire down to size and got a remote water well back up and running.

My knife opens boxes, screwed together things, letters, plastic bags, fingers with splinters, cans of food, and old tire tubes to be used as protective sleeves on my bike.

It has also been used to field dress small game animals, collect rattles off road kill snakes and harvest fruits and vegetables.

I use it and rely on it every day.

—Mike Cherney

Fed by the Provo River, Jordanelle Reservoir (along with its accompanying state park) was formed in 1995 with the construction of the Jordanelle Dam. Storing enough water for a six-year drought, the reservoir swallowed the towns of Keetley and Hailstone and necessitated the rerouting of US Routes 40 and 189 through nearby mountains. An artificial wetland was also constructed at the foot of the dam in order to help allay the protests of anti-dam conservationists.

Despite, among various other difficulties, being the largest concrete structure ever built at the time, over one hundred worker deaths, and challenging weather (the average daytime high during the summer of '31 was 119.9°F), the Hoover Dam was delivered to the federal government by Six Companies, Inc.¹ over two years ahead of schedule. Employing an arch-gravity design, the Hoover Dam's convex side extends upstream into the reservoir, where the water compresses the dam structure and pushes it into the ground. The entire flow of the Colorado flows through the Hoover turbines (via the iconic penstock towers), producing an average of 4.2TWh per year since 1940 and it sees more than a million tourists annually.

In total, deaths associated with the dam construction amounted to 112—though this figure does not include workers who died from "pneumonia."² Of the 112, only 96 are deemed "official" by the Bureau of Reclamation, as deaths like J. G. Tierney, who drowned after falling into the Colorado 20 December 1922 have been deemed to be outside the scope of the construction project. Tierney was the first of the 112 aforementioned deaths; the last died in a fall on 20 December 1935: his son Patrick W. Tierney.

1. A conglomeration of six pre-existing construction outfits, Six Companies was formed purely for the purpose of constructing the dam [↩]
2. Some allege the infection was used as a coverup for those who actually died of carbon monoxide poisoning from operating vehicles inside of tunnels. [↩]

Words by Kyle von Hoetzendorff; photograph by Daniel Wakefield Pasley

There are certain trees along the side of desolate stretches of highway that are covered in hanging shoes. Deranged Christmas trees festooned with well-trodden ornaments. There is no outstanding motive to account for why one tree would be so adorned while many others remain barren to grow old in with naked dignity. The question of why may have never been explored.

Maybe it’s the way the light hits these shoe trees when the sun lays down in the distance, or that they have the familiar canopy of the arboreal archetype—I am thinking Bob Ross cum Window OS stock background bundle. It could be that this tree springs up around the point in the road when anyone too drunk to stay put becomes sober enough to reconsider, say a lonely hustler on a surreptitious escape from the gold-ringed clutches of Reno’s rhinestone and dandruff gangsters. … More in this Brief

The Mackenzie River's watershed is over 1.8 million square kilometers in size, and comprises over 20% of Canada's land area. It's 325 cubic kilometer yearly output represents more than 10% of the Arctic Ocean's annual river inflow. It's name in Slavey (the First Nations group indigenous to the NWT) is Deh-Cho, meaning "Big River."

Archaeology inevitably is a destructive process. Working with nothing but the waste and ruin of the past, archaeologists are forced to develop multiple scientific methodologies that maximize a partial data set. The importance of scientific rigor is exasperated by the fact that excavation is a one-time act that removes the lion's share of information a site has to yield. Therefore, as a science, it is a carefully thought out process that requires precision, attention to minute detail, and complete respect for the slow process, as it can never be repeated again.

—William Gardner, Ph.D. Archaeology Student, Yale Dept. of Anthropology