My dad's name is Emil Hesse. As a boy I flew to Tunnel Meadows many times with my dad and mother. My dad owned a flight service out of Corona, CA called Corona Air Service and we used to fly to Lone Pine where my dad would visit with his old friend Bob White who flew charters in to Tunnel Meadows. We flew either our Cessna 180 or 185 when going to Tunnel.  I caught many a golden trout there as a boy.  My dad passed back in 1984.  I remember my dad telling me that he signed off Bob White's paperwork for his commercial flight rating.  My dad had been an advanced aerobatics instructor in WWII teaching Navy & Army Air Corp pilots.

September 2012

At the end of the spring semester, 1965, I was finishing up my course work for a master’s degree in fisheries and simultaneously looking at job possibilities.  One day in mid-May, I looked at the bulletin board in the fisheries building and there was an announcement seeking an individual who had completed all the course work for a master’s in fisheries, who had fire fighting experience, and who had experience handling horses.  I went home and said to Theresa, my wife, “The only way they could have narrowed the qualifications to fit me better was to require sailing experience.”  I read her the job description and she said, “Let’s do it.”

At the time we had two daughters, ages two and one.  We would be going to the 10,000-foot-elevation Kern Plateau, just south of Mt. Whitney.  The nearest town, and for that matter, the nearest road, was 30 miles away, and we would be stationed there from early June to October in a cabin with no electricity.  “Are you sure?”  I asked, even knowing that Theresa was every bit as adventurous as I was. 

“Yep,” she said, “it sounds like fun.”  She proved that summer what I already knew:  that she was a trouper.

When I reported for work in Lone Pine, California, we were told that I would ride the thirty miles to the Tunnel Guard Station on horseback and Theresa and our daughters, Julie and Mary, would fly to a landing strip that was two miles from the log cabin that would be our home for the next half year.  My paychecks would be sent to the grocer in Lone Pine who would hold them until we emerged in the fall.  He would deduct the cost of the groceries that we would order once each week to be flown to the landing strip where there was a small camp run by a cowboy who would also conduct horse pack train trips for people who were willing to pay for such things. ....

AThanks for the wonderful tour of this unique part of history in the Sierras. I had the good fortune to visit Bob White's flying camp as a youngster.

In about 1965, when I was 16, Bob flew my dad and three boys into the Tunnel Meadows Camp for some fishing, riding, hiking, and growing up. Bob's championship flying skill was the great beginning. He gently side-slipped that big Cessna Stationair down the steep, curving approach to a perfect touchdown on the short narrow high-altitude dirt airstrip. The approach was not only crowded with mountains and trees, but also sprinkled with the wrecked airplanes of those who didn't get it right one time.

In a very short time at the camp, I fell in love forever with the wind in the trees, the cold, clear running stream beside the camp, and the still silence of the nights. Leaving the camp after two weeks was the hardest goodbye I ever said.

My wise old dad must have known that, because somehow he talked Bob White into "hiring" me the next summer to actually work at the camp with wrangler Bud Loniker, cook and tough-guy Shorty, and Bud's little dog he called "Peachy" who herded the stock better than anybody. I didn't get money, but I got time off, a horse to ride out on, and all the food I could eat. It was everything I needed. My main daily job was to get the stock into the corral every morning, brush them down, feedbag them, and get them saddled up for the guests' trips. I still can see the horses - Jimmy (only Bud could ride Jimmy), Bob, Roany, old Roy, and the pack mules Blackie (who bit) and Brownie (who didn't). I also helped Bud and Shorty with garbage detail, latrine digging, camp cleanup, etc.

To this day, that summer is as clear, sweet, and wondrous as any memory I have. We mended fences, guided the guests to lakes and fishing streams, cared for the stock, caught dinner in the local creeks, fried up those little Golden Trout that Shorty called "popcorn."

It was a big change for a city boy to rise before the sun and go to sleep with nightfall each day. Those rhythms still feel like the natural and right way to me. It makes a man, even just a boy, realize the blessings that surround us constantly. And then when you get a few moments alone in the forest, you realize you are never alone at all.

Thanks for your wonderful photographs and stories which bring all this memory rushing back to me. It's an honor to be acquainted with the White family of pioneers.

Sincerely,

Bruce Gossard, Los Angeles, 6-16-2013