AN ODE TO BOBBY TANNER

Bobby Tanner died last week. 

He was the owner of Red’s Meadow Resort and Pack Station. The namesake of a local legend. But more important, a worthy successor on both scores.

He was smart as a whip, took you at your word, had no respect for you if your word was no good. 

As for his words, they were often ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or some variation of one syllable. 

Unless you got him talking about the management of the Red’s Meadow valley. Or the ongoing road construction project. And then he’d talk a blue streak. 

The last time I saw him, we sat at his living room. Late March. There were documents splayed all over it. Printed out email exchanges. Missives from the Inyo National Forest. Correspondence with the Town of Mammoth. He would point out where one thing was said in one conversation, and then how it was forgotten and contradicted in the next. And he would look at me plaintively, as if to say, “Well, how can someone do that? That’s … wrong. That’s unethical.” 

Bobby was a man of his word. So it was puzzling to him when people would lie to his face. Or could not be moved by logic or reason. There remained a purity there. Like he couldn’t quite believe that little people and their little agendas could prevail over the right thing for the right reasons. 

And for Tanner, the right thing was the preservation of Red’s Meadow. As a throwback. As a quaint oasis. 

So when the various planners came up with Plans A, B and C for the road reconstruction, the local bureaucrats were naturally excited by the biggest and most expensive option. Which Tanner also thought to be the most impactful and environmentally damaging. 

He also thought it missed the point. 

The accidents on Reds Meadows road, he said, occurred not in the upper one-lane sections where people were cautious, but in the lower two-lane sections where people were aggressive and would try to pass.

So what was the solution? The planners wanted to eviscerate the hillside and two-lane the upper portion of the road. 

To make it easier for the locusts to descend.

Now you’d think Tanner would welcome that – feeding and housing and entertaining the locusts was his business. 

But then, I look at the other photos of Tanner that Gayla Wolf dug out of her archives. 

There’s one in particular I love. It’s a little out of focus. It’s Bobby on his wagon with a parade of cars trailing as far as the eye can see. And as far as he’s concerned, they can all wait. It’s a gorgeous day. His eyes are fixed ahead. He’s in his element – it’s about the trip and not the destination. And maybe the idling cars behind him will recognize that, too. 

The other thing I was thinking about (I woke up Tuesday night at some ungodly hour and had this thought which was so clear I decided I didn’t need to write it down and now it’s not resonating) was this idea regarding the obsession with data and metrics. Trying to figure who’s visiting where and why and for how long and why they made that decision. As if nothing anymore can be done without consultation of a small rectangular screen. As if impulse and whim are dead. 

And then I thought about the applicability of data and metrics to individuals, and how we test kids all through childhood, and then when it finally comes time to apply for college, we’ve decided that testing is optional. That it’s more important to base admission on one’s character and academic performance versus a standardized test. 

So character and individuality matter in one context while in another (marketing/quality of life) context, we’re supposed to shut up and trust the numbers and goose the numbers and once the quantity is there, we focus on the quality of the experience almost as an afterthought. 

I feel like Bobby Tanner was one of the last “Free Safeties” we had left protecting the endzone, one of the last defenders against the [population] bomb. 

I mourn his loss.