3
I’ve only been to Lee Vines once before. I was about six and my mother and I flew from North Carolina to Vegas and took the long drive through Death Valley. I don’t remember much about that trip, so this time it’s like seeing it all over again. When we get out of the desert I’m just happy to see green again. And buildings. And people.
The desert is hauntingly beautiful while also being oppressively scary. It’s weird.
We take the same route as the last time over the last two days but there’s no doubt it feels different, probably because it’s not a quick visit at my grandmother’s lodge, but I’m headed to my new home.
“I’ve set everything up with the online summer school program,” my mother tells me for the one-millionth time. “You’ll just have to log in daily and do the work. Everything is organized.”
“Mom, I’ve been in online school for the past five years. I know how to do it.”
“I know, it’s just a little different out here. It’s a new system and the program they use isn’t the same. But I’ve emailed you the coordinator’s information and if you have any questions…”
“I know, Mom. I do.”
She sighs and drives, her hands gripping the steering wheel. I hold my breath and watch the little towns slip by. A large lake appears to the east, flat and wide, going for mile after mile. The water looks like smooth glass, reflecting the mountains around it.
“I bet that was an amazing sight for people crossing the desert.”
“You’d think,” Mom says, “but it’s salt water.”
“The whole thing?”
“Yep. Can’t drink it or water anything with it. If I remember correctly, it was mostly used by the mines for transportation.”
I think about it, traveling mile after grueling mile across the barren rocky desert. Getting over the Sierra Nevada mountains and seeing an amazing, beautiful, refreshing lake in the distance…and then nope. Nothing. You’re screwed.
I laugh darkly to myself and my mom glances over, but we’ve just passed the sign that says “Lee Vines” one mile ahead and I find myself eager to get out of the car. The temperature dropped as we got further from the desert and the window felt cool to the touch. We’re up in the hills, just east of Yosemite, with an unusable lake on one side and craggy rock on the other. There’s literally nothing out here, but I’m excited anyway. Nervous, too.
“I remember this,” I say as my mother slows down. It’s a two-lane highway and the small town is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it situation. No stop lights. Just a little strip of buildings on each side of the road. One side overlooks the lake. The other backs right up to the mountains.
The town is small but has character. Big trees stretch to the sky, providing shade for the small lodge on the mountain side. The Vines is a mixture of cabins, painted a deep barn red, and smaller individual rooms with plastic chairs on the front porch. The latter is spread out behind a grassy lawn and beds of wild flowers.
It’s hard not to find it charming and I can’t help but think about the salt lake below—the allure of something beautiful and different, yet it’s uninhabitable.
A mint green bungalow sits on a small hill with an ‘Open’ sign in the window. A surprisingly large crowd fills the outdoor seating. It’s a restaurant with a neon sign out front that says, ‘Epic Café.’
“Mother says that place is quite good. We should try it before I leave.”
“Sure.”
I’m absorbing it all when my mother finally stops, pulling into a narrow driveway.
“We’re here,” she said, sighing in relief. It’s been a long two days and our internal clocks are confused about when to eat and sleep. “Let’s go find Leelee.”
The original Starlee Nye left the bright lights and glamor of Hollywood for adventure. She loved the outdoors but hated the politics of the film industry, so she started hiking and traveling the mountains of California. The story says, she met a man that matched her spirit and married him. He was a miner, a wealthy one, but she refused to live out in the outpost mining town of Bodee with the rest of the families. She wanted a view and access to the Sierra Nevadas, so he bought the strips of land overlooking Mono Lake and named a town after her.
Over the years, the little town grew into a stopping point for tourists and hikers, known as a last point of civilization before heading north or west through Yosemite. They built the lodge and when my grandmother and her husband took over, they added the cabins. My mother spent her life wanting out of the isolated strip, and when a group of hippies rolled in one hot summer afternoon, she caught a ride in their van and found herself across the country in North Carolina. There she went to college, met my dad, h
ad me and built a life.
They split when I was two. My mother says he wasn’t ready to be a dad, but other times she’s let it slip that he had some other issues. Issues that she’ll bring up with the doctor when they’re monitoring my medication. Issues that sound vaguely familiar. Whatever his issues were, he took off and we haven’t seen or heard from him much since.
I get the feeling from looking at photos that life didn’t turn out the way my mother wanted. I searched the pictures and then her face for that person who escaped the tiny town and craved adventure. The carefree smile. The bright, patterned clothes. I don’t know that person. And I certainly can’t quite figure out why she feels like the answer to my problems is back in the place she ran away from, other than the fact there is absolutely nothing to do here.
“I cleaned up your mother’s room,” Leelee says. She’s seventy-four but looks fifty. Her hair is gray but cut stylishly. “Got you a new mattress and bedding. The closet is mostly empty. Anything I left is for your mother to pick through.”
The house is a green bungalow nestled against the mountainside—not far from the lodge. Three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, dining room, and one bath for us to share. It’s clean. Decoratively outdated, but in a funky, retro sort of way. The chrome and Formica kitchen table looked like the kind of thing you’d see in an antique store.