Having grown up in San Francisco, I was aware many people had varying sexual preferences, and one day asked Jesse about his.  He frequently told tales of shacking-up for the winter with some old woman, but I did not get the idea he was clearly heterosexual.  He told me he was trysexual, and as I tried to imagine what that might include, he told me he “was willing to try anything once, and if it wasn’t too bad he’d try it again.”  He went on to claim he’d had sex with both of the sexes and most of the species.  Whatever his true sexuality, he never hit on me.  

Jesse moved his trailer around frequently, from one free campsite to another whenever some “Piss-Fir Willy” (Forest Service employee) warned him he had overstayed the two week limit.  We would run into him occasionally, and it always led to some new meeting or adventure.  Jesse always presented the element of the unknown by being mysterious about his personal doings.  Though outgoing, gregarious, and fun loving, he was secretive and private about his personal life and past history.  I believe I learned more than most who knew him, but details were always sketchy.

I stayed on Knownothing Creek the rest of that summer with Kelly.  We enjoyed an easy pace, frequently visiting Mike and Joe or staying with Joe’s family in Etna.  We went to the City for Thanksgiving, and Kelly decided to stay in San Francisco to court a girl and get a job, returning to the mundane.  I knew my place was in the mountains and had known it since my first dip in a mountain stream at my grandparents’ property in the Sierra foothills at age six.  Some how I knew at that young age that I was not meant for the city.

After the holidays, I returned to Knownothing Creek and have a long story to tell of the years that followed, but this is a remembrance of an individual who helped me find my way in life. 

I only saw Jesse occasionally over the next several years, drunk at the Callahan Jubilee or hanging out at the Fort Club, in Fort Jones.  He seemed to be drinking more and enjoying it less, growing bitter as alcoholics often do. 

It was time for another change in my life, having bonded with the woman I felt would be my life partner, and after five years on the Salmon River, we moved on.  Of course we came back to the Salmon to live another five years and give the gift of the River to our daughters.  I only saw Jesse once during that time.  I had heard he was living in Orleans as a migrant, vagrant, wino by this point. 

I had been to Young’s Ranch one day as that was the closest laundry facility at the time.  On the way back, just before reaching the Somes Bar Store, a crazy looking figure jumped into the highway waving his arms.  I almost did not recognize him, and almost kept driving rather than deal with some old maniac.  I finally realized it was Jesse.  I stopped and gave him a ride to his new abode, a hobo style camp made from a couple of pieces of canvas tarp, on the river bar below the Orleans bridge.  After spending a couple of hours with him, and giving him a little money that he promised he would pay me back, I headed back upriver, shaking my head at the sad state this once bright and funny man had slipped into.

I did not see him after that, but occasionally heard of him pulling the same routine on others; jumping into the highway to stop someone for a ride.  I think it was 1990 when I heard he had been run over by a log truck in Orleans, crushing a six pack into his chest and killing him.  I don’t know if he was trying the same stunt of jumping in front of the truck for a ride or it was just unfortunate drunken timing.   It seemed an appropriately tragic ending.

Many remember him only as that derelict figure, a caricature of the able man he had once been.  Some remember him as a gigolo, a cheat, a dishonest mine promoter, or an outright thief.  I saw all of those sides of Jesse, but I also saw sides that were generous and noble, smart and funny, sides he was unwilling to share with very many, preferring to cultivate the outlaw image.

When we see a person who is distasteful to us, it is likely the knowledge that we have those same traits within us that makes the other person repulsive.  We do not like to recognize those things about ourselves that are unpleasant, though we all have them.  Science now shows us through DNA coding how close we are to the Buddhist model of oneness, each being born of each other, all from the same source.  For the people of the Salmon, the Klamath, and the Scott Rivers, Jesse James is a part of us, like him or not.  For me, he was a guidepost and an usher, showing me the way that would become my life.
      

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