Norman Clyde. Robert C. Pavlik

where it hit until we drove around. Somebody said, ‘well, it hit the car.’ So we drove up to the sheriff’s office and showed the sheriff where it hit. It had hit right under the rear seat and it went completely through that car….I remember [Sheriff] Tom Hutchinson came out and said, ‘well, I’ll be darned. That’s a hell of a thing to do.’ That’s all he said, old Tom, he just looked at it for a while and we drove off. We probably went and got some more wine or something….We didn’t go up and down the street showing it to people, either. We just drove over there and I guess we were a little frightened. I was. After I saw where the bullet hit, I was a little frightened.”⁵

      Were the students egging on the hotheaded principal? Perhaps. Was his response extreme? Absolutely. He was an excellent shot, and it has been suggested that he was aiming for a tire, but the fact remains that Clyde’s temper got the best of him. He later claimed to have warned the cars away from the building earlier in the evening, something that Mairs did not remember. For years Clyde would staunchly proclaim his innocence, maintaining that he did not shoot at the car, only into the air over their heads.⁶

      At the Monday night meeting of the school district trustees, five days later, Clyde presented his resignation for acceptance “at their pleasure.” According to the account published in the Inyo Register, the trustees’ “pleasure happened to be for immediate acceptance, and a warrant was drawn paying Clyde in full to that time.”⁷

      While some difficulties were brought to an end, others lingered. Clyde was finally free to hike, climb, read, and write without the daily obligations of a full-time career. He had been teaching for fifteen years, and his heart was in the mountains and not in a classroom or an office in the valley. He was now able to embark on a life lived in the open, without all of the attendant responsibilities that a job and family entailed. While there would be many times that Clyde lived hand to mouth, his remarkable constitution enabled him to endure hard physical labor, punishing weather, and months of solitude. One difficulty that grew over time was his animosity and resentment toward the people of Owens Valley, and especially of the town of Independence. Although Omie Mairs claimed that there were no hard feelings toward Clyde, the reverse was not true. For years Clyde harbored ill will toward and a sense of alienation from the people of the valley.⁸ That he may have been “framed” remains a distinct possibility, however, the facts have faded with time, and the full truth may never be known.

      The challenge remained for Clyde to reconcile his love of mountains and nature with his tempestuous relationships with people. His quick temper seemed at odds with his cool, calculating, and methodical movements on mountainsides. He was able to have a much greater degree of control over his environment when he was in the high country, either alone or with a few close friends and climbing partners, but when he felt pressured or otherwise imposed upon, he would lose patience and sometimes resort to violence. Clyde was smart enough to understand and respect his limits while in the backcountry; he must have realized that in order to maintain his personal freedom and keep from making a serious mistake that could land him in prison he needed to go into a self-imposed exile, become a refugee from society. His sanctuary became the Sierra Nevada.