Month: February 2003

THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN evolution, introspection, and the general pursuit of life’s great mysteries to the activity of motorcycling may not be especially evident to every rider. But as we have found time and again, motorcycling is a way of bringing one closer to these things. Bill Huth, owner of Willow Springs Motorsports Park in Southern California, knows this as well as anyone… Huth, who has crammed enough adventure for a dozen lifetimes into his 70-plus years, started working at the age of six as a door to door salesman hawking Christmas trees and baked goods. By the ripe old age of eleven, he was trapping animals for the movie industry, and as a teenager, made a living as a welder and mechanic. After a brief acquaintance with the U.S. Air Force, Huth started a legitimate career as a whiskey bootlegger and nightclub operator. His expertise soon got him into the business of professional gambling and the confidence game. He later acquired Willow Springs International Raceway, and in the last ten years has transformed it from a single, narrow strip of rough asphalt into a world-class motorsports park comprised of five separate racetracks.

Huth certainly looks like a man who could convince Eskimos to buy ice cubes. He’s warm, engaging, and sincere, qualities no doubt acquired from living a life that, by all accounts, has been overflowing with rich experience. He’s tall, rugged, and wears a continual smile. If one could trace the lines on his weathered face, each and every one would likely lead to some sort of amazing adventure, the likes of which most of us will never see.

In “The Evolutionist” Huth embarks on a series of personal reflections not dissimilar to those penned by Mark Twain in “Letters from the Earth,” or by the father of modern psychology, Carl Jung in his own autobiography. But while Jung’s ruminations are laden with a good deal of highly technical jargon, and Twain’s maunderings are sadly weighted with the dark cynicism of his twilight years, Huth’s observations are optimistic, full of wonder, and refreshingly founded in the largely intuitive process of lay reasoning. They sometimes seem almost childlike in their simplicity, until you come across a sentence or phrase that holds so much fundamental truth it captivates your attention and starts the reasoning process anew.

Huth’s book is a beautiful little volume, a pocket-sized handful of inspiration that provides a little light for those dark moments that are inevitable as we trace our way from here to eternity. But it’s more than that. It’s something he’s given us to contemplate for generations to come. The wisdom of experience is difficult to capture, and few of Huth’s generation have taken the time to write theirs down. Bill Huth has, and the world is a bit brighter place for it.

“The Evolutionist” is available from:

High Sierra Books
Box 607
Kernville, CA 93238
(760) 376-1079