a(nother) beast out from the east (coast)
- jl kyd
- Oct 23, 2019
- 62 min read
Updated: Jun 10, 2020
a(nother) beast out from the east (coast)
I
26 Oct 2017 THURS just > ceramics metrowest MA
the air stinks. the air stinks around here. who knows from where this air whirls? from whence to whither? but something about this air reeks and then settles here. an acrid, biting stench of diesel and gasoline exhaust, partially combusted hydrocarbon fumes, that sure enough does stink. a lot.
maybe this stink's from the Interstate that crisscross N-S/E-W not far west from here. mingled with output from these cars stopped at nearby traffic lights. there's an asphalt plant off in that direction that could be a culprit too. mixed with a puff of diesel off a semi-tractor-trailer-truck idling upwind somewheres... ...(illegally? but who cares...so long as the air conditioner works so the driver needn't breath outside air. fortunately the Clean Air Act [1970] has improved things -- we don't even need that law any more!)...
or, could be this air's from further west from remnant industry or a coal-fired plant in say the Rust Belt or southern shores of the Great Lakes...
in the absence of a weather forecast it's hard to know; figuring minute atmospheric variations presents a tough technical problem. possibly traffic to the east, toward Boston, is the culprit, though that deviates from the usual prevailing westerly wind...but sometimes the air drifts in from the Atlantic way....
then again, this particular bad air could have been created by my own vehicle, maybe yesterday. a patch of smog of my own creation, awaft in an atmospheric back-eddy, stuck in a local whorl until now. encompassed by a stink of my own creation; now, that might be justice.
we can be pretty sure that some of this air are fumes leftover from the car trip we took to NJ awhile ago. the stink that swirled all the way around the world and back again.
at least there were 5 of us in the car at the time. <blamesharing>.
down to Jersey for a funeral a few months back. a cousin. a poor sweet lass. <in her later years she found religion, or, religion found her.>
> O how I love a good Catholic funeral. 5 deacons and a priest up on stage in what were no doubt heartfelt tribute$. thirty-five thousand dollars for the casket. spectacular polished fiberglass with brass plates -- one at each juncture between the pall-bearers' handle and the coffin proper -- depicting the Last Supper. maybe the funeral home people should get together with the atomic energy people so that we can seal up nuclear by-products just as well as we can preserve our skeletal remains from the depredations of nature. (for that glorious day of resurrection when all the people who could afford caskets can rise up and take over heaven).<
[on that NJ trip we talked a lot about environmental degradation. [this is possibly a positive, as my dad, an engineer out of the greatest generation, was once of the mind that this world was too vast for humans to impact. it's science.
the topic first came up via me as I'd just finished Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. < why didn't we read this in high school? because she's a she? the science too straight? the chemistry too practical, real, accessible? let's keep these kids in the dark, where they're better off. once you can calculate these van der Waals equations in your sleep THEN we can discuss why anyone might care.>
our grandparents had that summer place in Toms River. ["Toms River became the unlikely setting for a decades-long drama that culminated in 2001...[ ]...For years, large chemical companies had been using Toms River as their private dumping ground, burying tens of thousands of leaky drums in open pits and discharging billions of gallons of acid-laced wastewater into the town's namesake river."
-- from the book cover to Dan Fagin's Toms River].
then -- we're staying at the spread of my cousin M_, who runs 5K grass fed beef cattle in 3 states -- he tells us that he lost tens and tens of heads of cows in an incident in VA.
a hillside above his stock watering pond was logged, cleared of timber all right, but the bark & debris that over a period of 30 years or more had been sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and then with that runoff accumulated in a pond after a torrential rain. which the cattle drank and then two days later they were dying by the tens. -- Including a prize bull -- and really at this point one had to be there because M's eyes showed he'd had some deeper connection, that nothing should be said about it because in doing so one corrupts it -- with what was one heck of an animal. And then without warning, all the sudden it got sick and 2 hours later it was dead. And M- never got one penny of compensation for it either, though clearly that was the least of his concerns. "Couldn't afford to prove it!" related M_.
__ "Justice Douglas tells of attending a meeting of Federal field men who were discussing protests by citizens against plans for the spraying of sagebrush...[...]...These men considered it hilariously funny that an old lady had opposed the plan because the wildflowers would be destroyed. "Yet, was not her right to search out a banded cup or a tiger lily as inalienable as the right of stockmen to search out grass or of a lumberman to claim a tree?" asks this humane and perceptive jurist. "The esthetic values of the wilderness are as much our inheritance as the veins of copper and gold in our hills and the forests in our mountains."
-- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
yep I'm fed up to here with life right now
me about whose charmed life there's no grounds for complaint
watch out, might fly off the handle
go off the deep end
__ "In London, Humboldt was introduced to botanists, explorers, artists and thinkers. He met Captain William Bligh (of the infamous mutiny on the Bounty), and Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on his first voyage around the world, and by now the President of the Royal Society, the most important scientific forum in Britain. Humboldt admired the beguiling paintings and sketches that William Hodges, the artist who had joined Cook's second voyage, had brought back. Wherever Humboldt turned, new worlds were conjured up. Even in the early mornings, the first things he saw when he opened his eyes were the framed engravings of the East India Company ships that decorated the bedroom walls in his lodgings. Humboldt often wept when he saw these painful reminders of his unfulfilled dreams. 'There is a drive in me', he wrote, 'that often makes me feel as if I'm losing my mind."
-- Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature "Alexander Humboldt's New World"
got to get out of this place. somehow. any how. even for just a couple of days maybe that would help.
"R-U-T".
somewhere a life: instead of one hung betwixt a roman catholic upbringing and aspirations among the hip & cool. the latter at which this person also was no good at.
tried to be cool, now instead the fool.
< come back, come back Pinocchio... >
* * *
II
* * *
this
entry
in
honor
of
NATIONAL
SHOOTING SPORTS
FOUNDATION
Newtown, CT
"If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbaric age." -- Karel Appel
like most parents I poisoned the minds of my children. or tried. this in stark relief the other day when, cleaning up stuff the far-off kids left, found a journal of my elder daughter. given: this book is her very personal property. that this lackadaisical beast-who-never-learns casts an eye into. just a glance. what harm? espy the word "dad" immediately. the pages closed with a slap, but not before seeing she's writing about somehow saving the world -- & oh no! she notes in utter dismay -- she "sounds just like dad!"
so: there is some justice out there. some people do get what they deserve.
and now?
after the descent into madness.
failed even in that. if only it was just a movie, to be followed by an ascent into redemption of some kind. upon which still we wait. a writer who does not write. an artist who makes no art. is this whole life a sham? now is the chance not to be a fraud. your move.
people chanting don't give up never give up don't give up.
[except] but didn't this person give up a long time ago?
put on a mask and stride out of sight to die. disappear. where to?
a modern Herk'a'les driven mad by gadflies the long-dead gods sent.
it makes me ill that my kids might waste their time reading this someday.
if I finish myself off, have to remember: beforehand, burn all this accumulated crap. but. I can't take my life. first, don't have the guts. then, the consequences: too dire. the havoc wreaked. suicide of a parent leaves a trail of devastation across generations. even if they don't like you! little kids hurt, a lot. sure, they may get by, but something's missing -- you, whatever you were, whatever you may represent. so I've decided to hang around.
(to think that such a worthless piece of shit could have such an impact, dead and alive). so here he is going through the paces, the motions, head barely treading above the waters, another lonely contemporary soul adrift on a sea of anonymity. under a pretense of living. uncomfortably numb. with scarred heart, calloused vision. but fooling nobody, probably.
..." Yo Yo Ma bounded into a room in a community center, ...[in Leipzig, Germany]... Stradivarius cello in hand, and moved swiftly around a seated circle of adults and children, grinning and giving one long high five."
...'The most important thing is to bring all of yourself into a moment,' he said the next day. 'If for even one second you're like, "O, I have to go do this," people are really smart. They can see if someone is there, or just not quite there."
-- Yo Yo Ma quoted in
NY Times 30 Sept 2018
if only he'd been a good boy, still going to church. if only he'd never come back from the road. so long ago now. then maybe everyone would have been better off. why had he ever tried to go home again? everybody knows, you can't. after years of running away from home, now he wants to be home again? maybe there's no going home again until you die.
"Every inch of road's got a town
Daddy, how come you're never around?
I miss you, like everything now
[...]
We turn the speakers up 'til they break
'Cause every time you smile it's a fake!"
- Arcade Fire "Everything Now"
all the preceding is some background, some context, as partial explanation of why, when I suggested to my eldest son AC, that we shared the driving on his trip back across the country to the Rockies, instead of him going solo, (his original plan), he said "Sure!"
not only because we'd share the road, it must be admitted, but also with me along then AC could work; he's in the ski travel industry and (as this trip would confirm) can pretty much 'dial in' [anachronism?] to his job from anywhere in the US.
my work (in demolition) had dried up in the fall, especially around Thanksgiving. no doubt there was more work to be found out there, if only one had the wherewithal. but obviously I didn't.
so we set a departure date of Saturday 2 December 2017.
I've been on this east-to-west roadtrip multiple times, first right out of high school in 1974 with 3 others in a Toyota Corolla, then hitchhiked across (Road Trek '77), in a Dodge Dart, in a bus, at least twice in VW bug(s in various states of disrepair), and once in a large UHaul moving van. (& by plane). but never in anything remotely resembling luxury, as in a european 4-door gran coupe. with a rooftop luggage box about half the size of the car. tons of space, but -- every inch of it, back seats, trunk, and rooftop box to be crammed full of gear -- as AC and his girlfriend (traveling separately) are moving to interior British Columbia, via Vail. (where more stuff is stored).
my assignment: pack the car.
AC stays at his girlfriend's when he's back east. on the evening prior to our departure he shows at our house with the car already full of gear. obviously more-or-less just tossed in haphazardly. (eg: a couple of contractor trash bags jam-packed with clothes). to this mishmash some order must be established, plus all the further items stored temporarily at our house (and even some gear of my own) must be introduced. some (electronics) -- in no uncertain terms -- to be handled with care. inclusion of 3 snowboards, 5 pair of skis required.
unpacking, repacking the car takes most of the daylight hours.
we don't hit the road until about 3 pm. several hours behind plan. bequeathed an overcast, chilly (mid-40's ℉) afternoon, drawing closed.
AC is set up with charger, phone hotspot, & computer login and sets to work. so yours truly is on first shift at the wheel.
<nothing will change with this trip. but at least here's a chance to get out of town for a couple of weeks. and maybe get away from who I think I am for a moment.>
the town we leave behind has a nice lake; but don't eat the fish. around the time the US was defoliating southeast Asia with dioxin, the same chemistry battled pondweeds here back home. the poison now lodged indefinitely in the sediment and circulating through the food chain. including the fish.
we skirt through Ashland, MA. don't eat the fish here too -- or anywhere's downstream either. this town's unfortunate inheritance is the Nyanza Superfund Site, where an old dye factory dumped their leftovers, including especially mercury, into the conveniently located Sudbury River. (see also, as a further ironic commentary, H.D. Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers).
the inhabitants of this suburbia valiantly upkeep their homes and yards but on closer inspection may be falling behind. bittersweet vines invade the trees and spilling stone walls crawl with poison ivy. what with the struggle these days these folks have more important things to worry about. (and thus the region's current ludicrous dominance in sports is such a hahaha).
we also pass the starting location for the Boston Marathon.
we head west on the Mass Turnpike. since we're behind plan there's no cause to divert to a possibly more scenic route (southwest to PA) as the light's failing. now we can't see the surroundings anyway.
in Becket MA there's the road sign at 1724 feet that lets you know that it's all downhill on I-90 from there (on average), until Oacoma SD (on the Missouri).
5 or so hours later we pass Oneida NY. AC & I have spent some hot summer days at cottages on the east end of Oneida Lake. the largest lake in NY, beautiful from afar, and unfortunately we've previously caught it in the heat of the summer, when excess nitrogen and phosphorus leads to algae blooms, which in the east end of the lake thickens with clinging tendrils of dead plants, that waves then lap onto the beach to rot in the stifling heat and the stench is insufferable. such that one can too easily argue that it's better to stay indoors and quaff Genesee beer.
Oneida Lake is part of the Erie Canal, which roughly parallels I-90 in this section. there's the old Erie Canal, and the new Erie Canal. the new Erie Canal ("the New York State Canal System"), redirected and expanded in the early 20th Century, still works, even though the St. Lawrence Seaway essentially superseded it after 1959.
the old Erie Canal, dug by hand with hoofed assistants, still flows -- barely, since almost by definition it's practically without current -- through these economically hard-hit townships, and at times smells pretty rank. the original Erie Canal was promoted by a grain merchant, Jesse Hawley, who had to do so from debtor's prison as he'd gone bankrupt trying to transport flour to market from Rochester.
Around 1800 the roads basically sucked: it took two-and-a-half weeks to travel from NY to Cleveland. between the transportation barrier and flour's bulk, it was economically infeasible for grain farmers from western NY to the Ohio Valley (the western frontier at the time) to reach eastern markets. (instead, they distilled the grain into much more compact whisky...see the Whisky Rebellion).
Hawley's publications caught the attention of a NY Assemblyman who tried to interest the federal government in the project. President Thomas Jefferson called the idea, "a little short of madness". the state of New York, convinced by former NYC mayor, Senator (and later Governor) DeWitt Clinton, funded the project ("Clinton's Folly") on its own.
Construction of the canal took 8 years and was completed in 1825. (Clinton christened the opening from the packet boat "Seneca Chief". As an aside, in 2007 the Seneca attempted to revoke an earlier agreement that permitted I-90 to cross their territory.)
"The effect of the Canal was both immediate and dramatic, and settlers poured west. The explosion of trade prophesied by Governor Clinton began, spurred by freight rates from Buffalo to New York of $10 per ton by Canal, compared with $100 per ton by road. In 1829, there were 3,640 bushels of wheat transported down the Canal from Buffalo. By 1837 this figure had increased to 500,000 bushels; four years later it reached one million.
"...the Erie Canal spurred the first great westward movement of American settlers, gave access to the rich land and resources west of the Appalachians and made New York the preeminent commercial city in the United States."
you might have heard some complaints earlier about the water quality in Lake Oneida, but what's up next on the map is considerably worse: Onondaga Lake, in Syracuse, historically about as polluted a body of water as can be found anywhere in the US.
Onondaga Lake started as an industrial resource and repository in 1881, as a deposit of salt there, along with local limestone, was used by the Solvay Process company (right on the Erie Canal) in the production of soda ash, important in the manufacture of glass, paper, and soap. Solvay Process eventually emerged into Allied Chemical & Dye, and the lake provided a convenient dump for mercury/methylmercury, lead, cobalt, creosotes, herbicides, insecticides, rodent poisons, toluene, xylene, benzene, ethylbenzene, chlorobenzenes, polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and roughly 6 million pounds of salty wastes. To this brew Syracuse added treated, under-treated, and untreated human waste.
fortunately, numerous tributaries flow into the lake and flush it into the rivers Seneca, Oneida, Oswego and into Lake Ontario, allowing some of the effluent to be distributed into St. Lawrence and thence into the ocean.
plus the lake was dredged and the sediments transported for safekeeping elsewhere. and by 1999 the NY State Department of Health advised that it's ok to eat some kinds of fish in Lake Onondaga, sometime. (if you do, let us know how long you last! as this information is important to a database being compiled....)
.
A lawsuit brought by the Onondaga Nation in 2005 contended that "the degraded state of Onondaga Lake was evidence that neither New York State nor federal authorities can adequately care for the land and water resources" was thrown out of federal court in 2010. (and rightly so. the gall.)
a short distance to the west we pass north of the site of the first women's rights convention -- in 1848, in Seneca Falls -- that drafted the Declaration of Sentiments and Rights. More than just a demand that women have the right to vote, the resolution parallels the language of the Declaration of Independence, but included women. shortly after the text was made public the Oneida Whig opined that "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentleman, will be our dinners and our elbows?"
None of the 68 women who signed the Declaration lived long enough to vote (women's right to vote was granted in the 19th Amendment, 1920).
at roughly that point I encouraged AC to catch some sleep -- the late departure, packing effort, and not as much sleep as hoped for the night before are taking a toll on the driver and soon enough a reprieve will be needed.
so AC stashes away his machine and phone, curls up and dozes off.
"Ever'body might be just one big soul,
Well it looks that a-way to me..."
some more hours of driving and ahead and aside there's diminishing numbers of red taillights and white headlights and the extended flatlands of western NY and the stroboscopic aircraft warning lights atop the crosstrees of the high tension lines that string from Niagara to the northeast.
these blinks in the blackness comprise a surreal scene that at this hour on this night seems about as welcoming as the surface of Mars.
also up in that direction is the model community that evolved into perhaps the most notorious US environmental debacle ever, Love Canal. where Hooker Chemical sold for $1 the site for a school to be built upon over twenty thousand tons of
miscellaneous acid chlorides other than benzoyl - includes acetyl, caprylyl, butyryl, nitro benzoyls, thionyl chloride and miscellaneous sulfur/chlorine compounds, miscellaneous chlorination - includes waxes, oils, naphthenes, aniline, dodecyl (Lauryl, Lorol) mercaptans (DDM), chlorides and miscellaneous organic sulfur compounds, trichlorophenol (TCP), benzoyl chlorides and benzo- trichlorides, metal chlorides, liquid disulfides (LDS/LDSN/BDS) and chlorotoluenes, hexachlorocyclohexane (Lindane/BHC), chlorobenzenes, benzylchlorides - includes benzyl chloride, benzyl alcohol, benzyl thiocyanate, sodium sulfide/sulfhydrates.
the three witches in Macbeth, reduced to use of remains of toad, swamp snake, newt, frog, bat, dog, adder, lizard, owlet, dragon, wolf, shark, hemlock, human, tiger, and baboon, were mere amateurs in this business. welcome to the modern world, ladies.
"Why don't you and I go bathing
in the Love Canal?
Why don't you and I go bathing
in the Love Canal?
Nobody will see us,
they've all evacuated.
Nobody will notice,
when we consummate it."
-- JL, 28 May 1980
along the outskirts of Buffalo I-90 follows a right-angle bend south and then later trends southwest beneath Lake Erie.
part of an hour later I pulled in to gas up, we switched drivers, weaving around each other in the cold darkness, each of us in alternative versions of weariness, with the background doppler woosh of vehicles punctuating the emptiness.
AC rounded up a cup of coffee.
-- we decided to head south at Toledo -- so we can take 70 across Kansas, instead of 80 across Nebraska, right?
-- right.
-- so if you can make it to about Toledo wake me and I can drive again.
the refrain to AC's playlist is Vök's "Waterfall".
by the time we made it to Fredonia I was asleep. (an aside about Fredonia is that when it's residents objected to the use of the name "Freedonia" in the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup as "they feared that the similar-sounding nation would hurt their city's reputation. The Marx Brothers took the opposite approach, telling them to change the name of their town to keep from hurting their movie.")
so, in a doze (sleep perhaps too generous a word) passed the NW lobe of Pennsylvania, into Ohio, through Cleveland and across the fabled Cuyahoga River, first popularized by Randy Newman in 1972, and then immortalized by R.E.M. in Cuyahoga in 1986, as this river has caught fire no fewer than thirteen times.
[
-- in the spirit of fairness, see also: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/travel/cleveland-cuyahoga-river-pollution.html
]
<3 December 2017 Sunday>
a few hours later, somewhere, maybe around Negro Point on the Sandusky River, we switched drivers again.
an amusing tale that took place just south of here, probably in the early 1800s, is related in the Wikipedia entry for Johnny Appleseed:
"According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine, toward the end of his career he was present when an itinerant missionary was exhorting an open-air congregation in Mansfield, Ohio. The sermon was long and severe on the topic of extravagance, because the pioneers were buying such indulgences as calico and imported tea. "Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?" the preacher repeatedly asked until Johnny Appleseed, his endurance worn out, walked up to the preacher, put his bare foot on the stump that had served as a podium, and said, "Here's your primitive Christian!" The flummoxed sermonizer dismissed the congregation."
tracing arcing highways south around Toledo to Rt. 24 that trends southwest alongside the Maumee River. this is close to the location of the "end" of the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), the Battle of Fallen Timbers. ("end" is in quotation marks because the fighting was far from finished. the Greenville Treaty ceded ownership -- but not the right to the continued peaceful enjoyment -- of much of Ohio and some of Indiana, from the "Western Confederacy" of tribes to the US, in exchange for $20,000, plus $9,500 a year for every year, "forever".
Unfortunately, the natives failed to erect a wall or similar 'impassable barrier' around that territory, and the US ignored, forgot, or were simply unable to enforce a key part of the bargain, and settlers of European descent kept filtering through the border, setting the table for the next round of hostilities.)
after about an hour behind the wheel I acknowledge that my explorations of the luminous tunnel ahead, a fuzzy zone of suspended light, is more in my mind than on the road, endangering our safety.
-- what's up?
-- I have to stop for awhile. just a nap for a half-hour or so, then I'll pick it up again. you can keep sleeping.
a part of an hour nap later, with the chill penetrating into the car, awake again, push the button to crank up the engine, and we're underway again, with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
we motor in the wee hours of morning on a mostly empty highway under a nightsky broken by clouds. the pellucid disc of a just-short-of-full moon punts across the celestial sphere.
the road traverses level farmlands lying fallow. these flats rich for agriculture as they are remnants of the Great Black Swamp. a close-to-impassable morass that stretched southwest of Lake Erie, that inhibited the ability of Ohio and Michigan to take up arms against each other during the Toledo War of the 1830s. the introduction of the Buckeye Traction Ditcher in the late 1800s drained the swamp and removed this impediment to progress.
"We are about to go on a journey into an 'underground' world, the world of meanings hidden beneath the appearances of things, the world of symbols where everything is significant, where everything speaks to those who can hear."
-- Amadou Hampậté Bậ
"Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
cannot push on any further without a break so turn off the state highway onto the deserted streets of Napoleon, pull around behind a dark Taco Bell, and quiet envelops all when the car powers off.
AC stirs some but continues asleep. outside the car without extra clothing so the cold might wake me, take a leak in shadows the streetlights throw, beside a chainlink enclosure around a dumpster where some grainy crust of snow resides, puff on a miniscule amount of c. sativa squirreled away for this special occasion.
then drive across the street where a service station is open, for gas, coffee. then head again onto Rt. 24 and forge toward Defiance, Antwerp, and Fort Wayne, Indiana.
"So the substance of every particular thing is withdrawn from it. Every thing, everything identifiable, that is, that consciousness may be aware of, is shown to be intellectually null, perceptually absent, and emotionally repellent. One's attention shifts from its ordinary objects to the processes by which one knows them. One tries to see, not a sight, but one's seeing, to hear, not a sound, but one's hearing, to desire, not a pleasure, but only one's desire. This is not the end, however. Further concentration rocks the modalities of consciousness of their differences. Instead of seeing one's seeing, hearing one's hearing, and desiring one's desiring, one is left, one thinks and hopes, with a totally undifferentiated consciousness. Everything is so much the same that nothing is left to perceive."
-- Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Mystical Experience
outside of Fort Wayne Rt. 24 conjoins I-469, south around the city until it chaotically mishmashes with I-69. the GPS has lost its head, or else it's me. something doesn't seem kosher a few miles on and sure enough it transpires that we are headed the wrong way on the not-so-super highway.
pull a U-e.
eventually it's clear that this was the right move.
an occasional car going the other way, blaring headlights miles off at first and then flaring by on the far side of the divide. still nighttime, but the world around still hours off from
gradually awakening.
"Road Construction / Next 10 miles". A seemingly infinite series of orange barrels, sometimes on both sides, constrains the roadway to a single narrow lane to protect the road construction that appears to be the figment of the highway department's imagination, requiring a masterfeat of concentration, at this hour in this near somnolent condition. orange barrel + orange barrel + orange barrel = the longest 10 mile drive ever.
an interlude in the series, then more orange barrels. a conspiracy of orange roadside hazard warning drums.
finally had enough. maybe at the exit for Marion (in August 1930 a mob of 5,000 broke into the Marion jail and lynched Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. a photograph of that lynching led Abel Meeropol [a graduate of DeWitt Clinton HS in the Bronx] to write the poem, then lyric, then song "Strange Fruit", later performed by Billie Holiday, who likely helped in the song's composition.)
AC driving. Dad's over & out.
awake again, after dawn but before the rising of the sun. the sallow not-quite-full moon droops toward a horizon while the patchwork of farmland caves in to uniform homes arranged like traces on a circuit board, box stores, industrial warehouses, tens and tens of commercial enterprises and their distracting signage, and I-69 intersects with I-465 that will take us to I-70 and 10-lanes of roadway. it's our good fortune to be driving through on a Sunday and we can only guess how much more abundant traffic would be during the working week.
through one section an unbroken sea of asphalt floors and insurmountable concrete walls, stretching on and on, impenetrable, as inhospitable and ugly a scene as one might possibly imagine. this could be our legacy. concrete spalls, rebar is revealed and rusts and blotches the grey, but remnants last, and last and last.
last probably as long as the Coliseum, but at least the Romans had style, whereas this -- this is the antithesis of beauty. a prod in the eye of beauty. the complete takeover of function over form. this is our triumph. this is our monument for tomorrow. a wasteland of cement and tar. a manufactured environment devoid of feeling, alien to life, denying humanity. here are the roots of our Armageddon. we think that we can justify this nightmare in the name of efficiency and the almighty buck, but human beings cannot survive in these places devoid of nature. they infect the psyche. broadcast the signal of an uncaring world, where no individual has a right to be, market life as meaningless. and such a terrain, outside and inside, leaves us ripe for manipulation by all the liars who proclaim that they know, that the truth is outside us, with them, who can lead us toward the meaning that this world so otherwise seems to lack. little wonder why we squabble, why we violate each others bodies and minds. and we wonder why we have an opiod crisis. why we sing hosannas for the kingdom to come is that we've reduced this one to a joyless vacuum.
"If you've got a
Spare half a million
You could knock it down
And start rebuilding"
-- Courtney Barnett "Depreston"
finally we squirt away from the center of population density and see, at a safe distance alongside the highway, big trunked oaks and other deciduous trees, with shrubbery beneath them, branches are gray and leafless in this season, but still, trees, plural.
one of AC's cousins is going to university in Terre Haute. while we're enroute in that direction we text that we're going through, but meeting up is a long shot -- we didn't know our route for sure before we set out -- so there was no warning, and what percentage of college students are "up and at them" at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday anyway? so no blame. it'll be a couple hours later before a text reply returns, which is about as expected.
the interstate crosses over the forested banks of the mighty Wabash River. one tributary to the Wabash is the Tippecanoe, to the north, where the next phase of America's confrontation with the natives of this region took place, up near Lafayette, to the west of the route we'd driven in the night, about halfway between Ft. Wayne and Indianapolis.
Tecumseh, along with his brother Tenskwatawa, had gathered together there a community from a confederacy of tribes to resist further incursions by the US. Tenskwatawa, a native seer who's message, akin to that of other native prophets such as Neolin and Wovoka, urged a return to pre-European native practices.
while Tecumseh was away, trying to recruit support from native tribes to the south, Tenskwatawa made the mistake, or possibly had little choice but, to attack the US forces led by William Henry Harrison, and the natives lost. Harrison's promoters later succeeded in turning Harrison's heroics into the catchy phrase and song (to the melody of "Little Pigs") of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" that helped propel Harrison to become the 9th President (over Martin Van Buren, who'd been a political opponent of -- DeWitt Clinton. Harrison died a month after taking office though, creating something of a Constitutional crisis).
but my favorite thing about Wabash is no doubt the Wabash Cannonball, a fast express train on the Wabash Railroad upon which legend the folk song was built. From the Wikipedia entry:
"Utah Phillips states that hobos imagined a mythical train called the "Wabash Cannonball" which was a "death coach" that appeared at the death of a hobo to carry his soul to its reward. The song was then created, with the lyrics and music telling the story of the train. Another theory [7] states that the song is based on a tall tale in which Cal S. Bunyan, Paul Bunyan's brother, constructed a railroad known as the Ireland, Jerusalem, Australian & Southern Michigan Line. After two months of service, the 700-car train was traveling so fast that it arrived at its destination an hour before its departure. Finally, the train took off so fast that it rushed into outer space, and for all is known, it is still traveling through space. When the hobos learned of this train, they called her the "Wabash Cannonball" and said that every station in America had heard her whistle."
and all of this pre-Einstein. (!) you gotta love this country.
a few miles later we're out of Indiana -- ("Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there." -- R. Dean Taylor") -- into Illinois.
we pause in Greenup (on the Embarras River). "Love's Travel Stop", "Laundry", "Slots", "Pub", "BBQ", "Jumpin Jimmy's" service station. we gas and coffee up. peel off a clothing layer, or two -- the temperature's climbing toward 60 ℉. head back out on the highway. my shift back on the wheel.
expanses of cultivated flatland where nothing is growing now (because it's winter, supposedly), alternating with copses of bare trees leafless branches congregating around watersheds, and a sprinkling of towns. Jewett. Montrose. Teutopolis. Effingham. Altamont. St. Elmo. Brownstown. Vandalia. we roll along.
AC has us listening to Joe Rogan podcasts here and there over the course of the trip. one of these is with Sebastian Junger, journalist, filmmaker, and an author -- I've read his The Perfect Storm, and Fire, an admirable writer and a keen observer -- in this podcast he characterizes himself as an anthropologist. here he renames social media as "anti-social media".
..."when I was writing Tribe I was trying to make sense of a number of different things. One was -- the soldiers I was with in Afghanistan, I was really struck some months later that a lot of them wanted to go back to this sort of flea-bitten godforsaken outpost where they got shot at every day, and didn't want to come back to the US. That needs explaining. It made me think of this uncle I had, a sort of surrogate uncle, [he was part Lakota Sioux and part Apache] I remember him telling me, 'all throughout the history of the United States all along the frontier, white people were always running off to join the Indians, and the Indians never ran off to join the white people.' Here was this fact: no one wants to go to, or go back to, the modern world."
-- Sebastian Junger, "Joe Rogan Experience #1034"
it's about 2½ hours drive from Terre Haute, across Illinois, to St. Louis, Missouri.
just on this side of the Mississippi from St. Louis is the Cahokia Mounds Historic Site. this 2,200 acre site with 80 mounds left by the indigenous Mississippian culture from about 600 - 1200 AD is the largest archaeological site in North America. given that, one might expect that a somewhat big deal would be made about it, if only to make a buck. there must be a sign there somewhere -- guess we missed it. guess not that many people are interested. what do I know?
I-70 diverts north of the center of St. Louis and the Gateway Arch, crossing the Mississippi via the graceful cable-stayed Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge into old north St. Louis.
the Mississippi is the greatest. crossing over it at any time any place should never be done lightly. O river! do any of us see you as you are?! what about would a life afloat on you?
viewed from the elevated roadway, railroad lines along the river, industrial warehouses, brick structures individualized with graffitti, then the highway dominates a metropolitan scene of billboards and scattered mostly brick buildings without a human in sight, more-or-less indistinguishable from any urban highway anywhere in the US, almost as if seen through a fisheye lens.
I-70 passes just south of Ferguson MO here. Ferguson shouldn't need much of an introduction, but in case it does, it was here, in August 2014 that the African-American Michael Brown, after stealing some cigars from a convenience store, was killed after being shot by a policeman. major protests and rioting erupted and gave impetus to the incipient Black Lives Matter movement.
St. Louis has lost 64% of its population since 1950 (#1 among US cities of over 100K population). Ferguson was 99% white in 1970; by 2010 it was 67% black and less than 30% white.
"It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you."
-- James Baldwin, 7 Mar 1965
"The American Dream and the American Negro"
across the Missouri River -- if you feel like throwing your money away there's casinos on both banks...the temperature a balmy 60+℉. through St. Charles, witness Bass Pro Shops -- a good place to go if you need to spend $4000 on gear so you can catch your $14 fish that you are advised not to eat -- car dealership lot stretching over a partial mile with vehicles in multitude, on-ramps, exits, roadsigns, Applebees, Hampton Inn, Denny's, Red Lobster, more car dealerships, Best Buy, Mid Rivers Mall, Bowlero, Mark Twain Mobile Home Court, Ultimate Defense Firing Range and Training Center, Baue Funeral Homes -- zoom out fearless explorers!
go west young persons.
the following quote from Washington Irving's A Tour of the Prairie is inserted without comment from a 1978 JrnL:
"We send our youths abroad to grow luxurious and effeminate in Europe; it appears to me that a previous tour of the prairies would be more likely to produce that manliness, and self-dependence, most in unison with our political institutions."
A bit more to Irving's credit, unless you are partial to canines, is this passage:
"October 2nd (1832) -- Tuesday. Cold but beautiful morn'g - revive the fires - dogs creeping round fire and into tent - whipped off with many a yelp - sun breaks among the pine trees - winding stream nearby. Yesterday, passed place of old Osage camp near branch of Osage River - wild plum trees - beautiful prairie - river where they fought the ---- into the stream, and killed them with knives - the plain deserted - overgrown with sumach, hazel-nut, wild plum - prairie silent and lifeless."
-- Washington Irving
Journal of The Tour Through the West
alas, in the immortal words of The Clash, "I can no longer shop happily".
Daniel Boone, he of "D. Boon CillED A. BAr on tree in the YEAR 1760." came to the end of his days not far south of here.
the low-angle sun blares over the wretched unpeopled expanse, the garish display of worship of convenience, comfort, and consumption. already I'm half-asleep at the wheel. it'll be a long push across the Show Me State.
the last time across Missouri was in the spring of 1989, east-bound, when AC was not yet a year old. (he and his mom were already in Massachusetts by then. traveled as a trio from Seattle to Denver, but they flew from there back to Boston. too cram-packed in the pickup.) took a southern route, through the Ozarks, that time though. with vague ideas of writing something; that never happened though. only possible remnant of that trip one photo of a billy goat lounging on the hood of a long expired jalopy, in a long string of jalopies -- buicks, packards, chevys, fords, chryslers, hudsons, pontiacs -- all collapsed in the weeds, tapering off toward the vanishing point. only the camera or angle couldn't capture the whole diminishing line of wrecks. the photo didn't do the scene justice to the scene. and soon after, back "home", part-timing it in a temp agency.
pull off the highway onto a rural state road in about Montgomery City. park on a semi-circle remnant of a drive where a falling down shack and its scattered bricks and cinder blocks, broken glass, plastic refuse, and decaying plywood occupies a slight overlook, a place where we can take a pee out-of-sight, although the surroundings are vacant and forlorn. AC takes over the driving and I crash for a couple of hours.
gradually re-enter consciousness as we're coming into Independence, whose favorite son is President Harry S. Truman. Truman, one of the only American presidents who never graduated from college, and only Richard Nixon at the time of his pending impeachment in 1974 has had public approval rating that matched Truman's low in 1952, of 22%, according to the Gallup Poll.
but then, as Jill Lepore recounts in These Truths "a History of the United States", Truman "liked to mock leaders who paid attention to polls. 'I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he'd taken a poll in Egypt,' he said. 'What would Jesus Christ have preached if he'd taken a poll in Israel?'" And of course, the polls (and some newspapers) famously predicted that Truman would lose to Dewey in 1948.
the primary plank of Truman's re-election platform in that year was the creation of national health insurance. but then the American Medical Association hired Campaigns, Inc. (their name the only honest thing about this first example of what's since become the political marketing firm monstrosities), $5 million dollars (~$40 million in 2016 dollars), a flood (100 million pieces) of scare-tactic brochures, and 3 years later national health insurance was dead. "Truman was furious," relates Lepore.
the next part of this story is really striking though. after that loss in 1948, any kind of reform of US health care was essentially dead-on-arrival, until the mid-1960's, when Lyndon Johnson, "convinced Congress to amend the Social Security Act to establish Medicare, health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, health coverage for the poor --'care for the sick and serenity for the fearful' -- then flew to Independence, Missouri, so that Truman could witness the signing. 'You have made me a very, very happy man,' said a deeply moved Truman."
it was Truman who integrated the federal government in Executive Order 9980 and the the armed forces, in Executive Order 9981. but rather than dwell on any policy decisions Truman made -- for it's doubtful that any of us agree with every policy decision of any president -- it's really Truman's personal bearing that recommends him and that seems in such short supply today. he was proud and stubborn, but he was direct and plainspoken. one knew where he stood. he had advisors and he would hear them out, but in the end the decision was his own. (the sign "The Buck Stops Here" had written on the reverse "I'm From Missouri"). my guess is that if Truman (who's "Do Nothing Congress" should be so familiar to us today) could survey our contemporary political scene that his first prescription would be that we boot out all the lobbyists. because these lobbies now wield a de facto greater voice (and therefore greater influence and "vote") than does any individual citizen. lobbying ought to be unconstitutional.
the interstate descends the rise from Independence down to the floodplain of the Missouri River. into: Kansas City Missouri, [you say Misseri, I say Missorah! let's call the whole thing off..♬] here we come! into the beating nerve central heartland of these sometimes-less-than united states. though KC a trite rundown around the edges, like most of the country, but then it's unlikely that you've first heard about this from here. 12th St. & Vine -- sung about in the top-500-of-all-time R&B hit "Kansas City♬" (a Beatles cover of this official-song-of-KC gets stadium airplay after MLB baseball Royals' victories) -- is gone by. And 18th & Vine -- a mythic pathway of Jazz history on which enrolled names as Count Basie, Lester Young, Big Joe Turner, Mary Lou Williams, Charlie Parker, and others, plus a whole song tradition woven around a 12-Bar Blues -- is these days missing much shine.
...except we can't see any of that anyway from the Interstate much as that's the case from the Interstate in so many of our cities. recognizing still, that if it wasn't for Eisenhower investing in superhighways we'd probably be lucky to have made it to Ohio at this point in our travelogue...
but a whole panoply of the american music and culture came overland to here, out of shacks, shanties, and porch steps, or carried upstream on the Mississippi past St. Louis♬ from the bayou, backwaters, and timbered forests, to whorl in an eddy here, where the big muddy Missouri swerves north like the crook in the left elbow of a wound-up right-handed ballthrower.
a city so central to the country that two states fight over the name.
anyway, we can't stop there. we're delivering a beast from the east that has to hurry to be somewhere else as a bearer of a new culture implanting the widespread coastal, central, north south east west american rush'n disease...(but more on this in a later post. pronounced, "Russian", ironically).
down by the water in the floodplain, where the more minor Kansas flows into the pretty mighty Missouri, the railroad lines waver alongside the watercourse and there's an outpost of petroleum industry storage tanks among a whole bunch of metal longhouses to the north -- part of the stockyards maybe.
and with that we zip over into the great state of Kansas. and it's 424 miles from one side to the other, after Topeka the speed limit's 75 mph and one can make steady progress at that rate, especially as there are rather fewer cars the further on ventures over that mainly unpeopled expanse. western Kansas becomes flatter and flatter prairie and straighter and straighter road, a trend that continues into eastern Colorado. although by that time darkness settles down, and so does the temperature, dropping something like 40 ℉ in a few hours, and then keeps on going, until it's below freezing out there where the night stretches seamlessly into the vacancy of space.
about which time, America, if you'll allow me, this proclamation: -- [one trusts that the audience appreciates that the author has thus far refrained from directly assuming the soapbox]--
but may we hereby proclaim by friendly suggestion:
dear American states, cities, and towns, do yourself a favor,
if you are looking to revitalize, look to the water (if any). then wherever any bodies of water lie. whether lakes, rivers, ocean, or other waterfronts, those should be where you focus your urban renewal campaign.
first of all, and this is simple investment finance 101, a startling amount of prime real estate in sight of water, is sadly undervalued in this country. on this point alas I could probably shoutout metropolitan names until kingdom come: "Springfield Mass! Milwaukee Wisconsin! Cairo Illinois! Kennewick Washington! Tuscaloosa Alabama!" if you fix up your waterfronts folks'll show up from miles around, happy to help boost local wellbeing.
ok, I leave off my soapbox now. except one last thing:
you're aware of this already but let us remind ourselves:
these bodies of water are known to overflow their banks. sometimes in a mucka big way. so I am sure wicked glad that as a country we've made absolutely certain -- that all these oil containers, and all these extensions of industrial warehouses storing who knows what, all congregated along the riverside, in the obvious floodplain -- can withstand the inevitable sweeping floods, so that no more of our chemistry experiments wind-up ever again in the already lamentably besmirched Gulf of Mexico. because in Boston in 1919 a storage tank of molasses burst, killing 21 people and injuring another 150, and that's was a lot sweeter stuff --.
I may have been off the highway into Kansas City, Kansas once. although conditions would have been the same on the Missouri side on that day anyway, not sure when this was. all I remember is a steaming road in a nest of brick buildings and the temperature was about 96℉ and the place seemed literally to be a brick oven. as hot as I thought anyplace could ever get, which sure shows that I don't know what I'm talking about.
speaking of heat, on this trip, this day the temperature's been steadily ramping upward and on this the 3rd of December 2017 when we coast into that first toll booth on I-70 in eastern Kansas (how civilized! this is just like home!) the kindly young toll-taker guy is in a t-shirt and plenty of comfortable; it's 80℉.
-- what a day!
-- I'll take it!
-- have a good one!
-- thanks! you too!
I'm fond of Kansas. the people there, well they sometimes miss the big picture, but who doesn't?
especially if the only way one knows about other places is second hand. no offense, but probably more of us should travel and see for ourselves the way things are, and how obvious it is that everybody needs to reach out to help each other, and to be helped.
to get where AC & I are going, the ski country west of Denver, we pretty much need to traverse either Nebraska or Kansas.
I'm fond of Nebraska too. (2 guys I knew walked across Nebraska, in around 1981 or so. a shoutout to Tony & Greg! bold companion on the Voyage of Moby Beast journey! Wherever they may be now...)
on this crossing Kansas struck me as more hilly, more rolling, with more trees and more water, than I might have given it credit. here even from the Interstate that's the view, although that better impression is almost always true of any region if one just gets off onto the state blue highways, or even better onto some nameless dirt road, then you know you're closer to seeing what things may have looked like before the dawn of motorized vehicles.
having criss-crossed both Kansas & Nebraska, eastward & westward, a couple of times each. good to mix it up. this time Kansas came out ahead.
when on the way from the east, when those sections of semi-arid shortgrass arrovos appear, where centuries of rainfall has fed rivulets that otherwise usually run dry, and maybe there's a few weatherbeaten flattop'd cottonwood trees here and there on the sculpted terrain.
then, then you know you are in the real west. and amazingly, and using our trip as an example, we're here after having driven only 24 hours from the Atlantic Ocean. that's still an amazing thing and we ought to give some thanks for wonders that we sometimes take for granted in this day & age.
someplace in there, we pulled off to another service station at some interchange someplace, to gas, snack & coffee up the new driver (me). where this was I don't remember but sometime that afternoon, plenty of daylight yet, still warm as can be, and the service station is active with motorists but is more-or-less in the same spittin' image of service station & convenience store combinations in 10,000 other US wayside locations. with scraps of green grass around and off-in-the-distance shacks and other merchandisers.
in turns we go in to relieve ourselves. first AC grabs maybe a snack, and a coffee for me while I put gas in the car. efficiency is key at such stops! then it's my turn and I notice going in -- and then going out, and did we maybe exchange a knowing glance?* -- that there was a fair number of fellows milling about in there, mostly older guys like me in varying states of decrepitude, as if they had no better place to go. and then I saw the fairly tall, slender, pretty blonde young woman working at the cash register, smiling, helpful, looking like she was raised on a corn farm with peach trees, and then I figured out what was going on.
{*wouldn't be surprised, we greatly underestimate how much a brief look can convey between two human beings in a split second}
the speed limit's 75 mph across much of Kansas and we make steady progress over the mostly unpeople expanse. AC cracks open his machine and starts click & clacking and making phone calls, for a couple of hours, until finally he folds up his work and crashes, someplace around Hays. about which time the darkness is descending, along with the temperature, which plunges more than 40℉ in those few hours.
Hays, according to Wikipedia, has a current population of about 20,000, and once the domain of the Arapaho, Kiowa, and Pawnee:
"As a frontier town, Hays City experienced the kind of violence that later fueled the American myth of the Old West, including an 1869 murder of Union Pacific watchman James Hayes and subsequent lynching of three African-American soldiers from the fort [19] and a deadly saloon shootout involving Caucasian soldiers among 30 homicides that occurred during the six years up to 1873.[20] By 1885, the year Hays City was incorporated,[21] a cemetery north of town held the bodies of some 79 outlaws and had become known as “Boot Hill.”[22]Several notable figures of the Old West lived in the Hays City of this era, including George Armstrong Custer, his wife Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Wild Bill Hickok who served a brief term as sheriff in 1869."
that bloody heyday (sorry) could only last so long, and Volga Germans and then Bukovina Germans emigrated into the area, bringing with them winter wheat suitable for cultivation in that province, converting the land to the agricultural use that remains dominant today.
Hays is situated in the upland Smoky Hills region in the Plains Border section of the Great Plains physiographic. not much further to the west the landscape grows flatter and straighter and that trend continues into eastern Colorado as the road makes its passage onto the High Plains.
somehow manage to drive us as far as Burlington, CO, a service oasis on the high prairie under the immense night sky. this is about 9 pm -- have to rouse AC so that he can take over the wheel. which he's none to happy about, although he comes around once we stir up some coffee. it's cozy in the car but when the doors open blasts of near freezing air surge in. he texts ahead to our destination in Vail to update his cousin MA on our progress, and asks where the house key will be hidden, as we won't arrive there until after midnight, and must arrange for how we can let ourselves in when we do. before too long we're off again.
< 4 December 2017 Monday >
after a nap of an hour or so I awaken. only an occasional blinking light on water towers or windmills, or natural gas flares, here and there punctuate the darkness, often seeming to float above us, as the High Plains tilt almost imperceptibly upwards from east to west, and sure and steadily we make gains in elevation. I strive to stay awake then as we're closing in on one of my favorite of all sights: that of Denver at night seen at first from way out on the plains, a magnificent outspread of lights, in colors mostly whites and yellows, but also including oranges, reds, and blues, clustered about the city center but glistening for miles and miles along the base of the Front Range, with the whole brilliant display seemingly floating above the land in the dark.
then practically before one knows how, we are in among and moving through those lights and shortly thereafter climbing steeply into the maw of the Rockies. once past Idaho Springs there's snow flurries coming down -- the abandoned late 1800's mines of Georgetown and Silver Plume, and the caved-in timber shoring at the mine shafts dug in the mountainside, that have yellow tailings skirts spilling below them, and remnants of a precarious railroad line, can't be seen. then the snow's flying as we go into the Eisenhower Tunnel. trucks have pulled over to chain up.
out the other side of the tunnel snow's bearing down hard, eases up in the basin around Dillon Reservoir, and then is a squally white-out going over Vail Pass (10,662' / 3,250 m). down, down the slippery road to the next exit, East Vail, where we get off and bend back uphill for a bit to what will be our place of rest for the next week.
* * *
III
* * *
it turns out that the promising snowfall was more of a squall and that only a little more than an inch ended up being deposited. in East Vail there's only about 6" of snow on the ground. on the 4th of December. this qualifies as about the record least ever for the area. we hear that only the gondola, that services the intermediate Lions Head runs, is open (thanks to snowmaking). the town is almost empty. it's little short of a disaster for the local economy.
but not disappointed: in fact delighted just to be in the Vail valley, no matter what.
my ski boots are along if I should have the opportunity to use them; AC can set me up with skis if the snow flies. but there's no reason to rush on that now and besides, taking a few days to acclimate makes sense, here where the altitude is about 8500'. seems like it's easier to acclimate if one's lived for some time at this attitude in the past, which I have.
AC & his cousin MA -- my closest brother TL's son -- and their womenfriends, VN & MS, respectively, shared this same practical 2-bdrm apartment last ski season, with in addition their cousin/sister NE, who claimed the loft as her space. but this season NE's moved to Jackson, Wyoming (more later on that) so I can occupy the loft.
(VN is still back east. in less than 2 weeks, AC, arriving by the car, intends to meet her in British Columbia, as they are moving to Nelson for the winter. that's the finale of his roadtrip. I'll join him on the next leg of that, up to Jackson where we'll meet with NE).
MS is Czech, works in a cowboy bar -- a darn tootin' sure shootin' honest-to-Sam cowboy bar -- a bar where not so many years ago one of the patrons would bring along a pet cougar -- down valley in Eagle, a bit of a haul away. she's found a niche there that makes the commute worthwhile. While MS is of a compact frame, she's compact like dynamite is compact.
this day mostly spent in roadtrip recovery mode. late awakening, slow start, bring in the next round of gear. hang out, catch up on each other, login, watch a movie.
read:
"What an African woman nurtures in the soil will eventually feed her family. Likewise, what she nurtures in her relations will ultimately nurture her community. It is a matter of living the circle."
"Because we have forgotten our kinship with the land," she continued, "our kinship with each other has become pale. We shy away from accountability and involvement. We choose to be occupied, which is quite different from being engaged. In America, time is money. In Kenya, time is relationship. We look at investments differently."
-- Wangari Waigwa-Stone, of the Kikuyu
quoted in Terry Tempest Williams, Tempest
"Spending time in Africa and seeing people in the pits of poverty, I still saw a very strong spirit in the people, a richness of spirit I didn't see when I came home... I saw the spoiled child of the Western world. I started thinking, 'They may have a physical desert, but we've got other kinds of deserts.' And that's what attracted me to the desert as a symbol of some sort."
-- Bono of U2, on the genesis of The Joshua Tree
quoted in DeCurtis, Anthony (7 May 1987). "U2: Truths and Consequences". Rolling Stone. No. 499. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
< 5 December 2017 Tuesday >
other than one major grocery expedition past the mountain to West Vail, and then a trip in 2 cars through the narrows downvalley past the Minturn exit to the Avon frontage road strip so AC can leave off his coupe and have snow tires swapped onto it, I never leave East Vail over the next days. didn't go into Vail proper even once. just hung at the apartment, cooking for my keep -- breakfasts of hash browns, poached eggs, crepes; stuffed trout and pasta with tomato sauce for dinners -- reading, watching, working on what might be a webpage someday.
late on Tuesday afternoon, finally don boots and garb and light pack for a hike. a good thing about the apartment is that one can just head out the door and go. the apartment's right adjacent to the Interstate but in this quarter-mile section is way overhead, up on massive parallelogramic pillars. so it's possible to just walk right under the highway, up the hillside toward the woods. almost no one does -- there's no trail right from here -- one has to detour a half-mile or so either left or right to get to a trailhead. there's no time for detours, just want to get out there. go straight at the fall-line until -- well, not that far.
this method of "return to nature" is a little ironic, because as soon as at the roadbed level the full unblocked din of highway vehicles hits. drowning out any other sounds. but there's nothing to be done about that. today's outing has a modest goal: climb out of earshot of the highway, if possible. one of the drawbacks of the Vail Valley is that the big highway runs right down the middle and not until one's at least over the first ridge does that sonic presence fade.
but in fact don't really succeed in reaching that quiet place. a knoll or ridge to duck behind to block the white noise is too high to reach before dark. on this south-facing hillside there's no or just patchwork snow for quite a ways before solid snowline. moving as much as possible on a rock-to-rock route to avoid treading on the cryptogamic soil crust to the extent feasible, or by game trails, up into usually wide-spaced leafless pearly trunked aspens, into the snow and up into stands of ruddy-barked ponderosa pines, find a fallen one to sit on, have a snack, and watch the sunset into the west. a more persistent cold starts biting fingers and toes. time to head down again, more-or-less covering the tracks made on the way up.
< 6 December 2017 Wednesday >
head out about in the middle of the next afternoon. again skipping the road and heading under the highway, but this time bearing on a diagonal west, across the mostly open pasture hillside until reaching some bedrock outcroppings, and that's where I ran into the snow snake.
this rock. this step. this moment.
this step. that rock.
this hillside. this mountain flank. sagebrush. juniper. aspens.
pale trunks notched with blackish triangular crescents. leafless at this time of year.
when an aspen dies the pale bark peels off and reveals underlying grey snags.
the trunks usually far enough apart from each other for easy walking between.
let this moment, be enough for right now. more than enough. this place, right here right now, is all there is. this moment, the only moment. now is the only moment there ever is.
"Can't worry 'bout what's behind you or what's coming for you further up the road
I try not to hold on to what is gone, I try to do right what is wrong
I try to keep on keeping on..."
-- First Aid Kit, "My Silver Lining"
eventually the route intercepts a ridgeline, and a game trail follows the ridge, the ridge carries up into encompassing evergreens, the rumble of the highway quells off, and the crunch of feet in snow resounds. the footing is exceptional in fact -- 8-to-10" of snow acts as a cushion of each step.
what I want to do from here is find a way over to the real trail, on the far side of Bighorn Creek, that's off to the left. from years prior experience I know though that first requires a decent ascent if one wants to clear all sight of scattered million dollar mansions that occupy a hook of road that tunnels over to this side of the highway, if one wants to preserve some illusion of being in the wild.
a fine plan, except the higher one climbs, the more precipitous is the slope down to the creek, and the more precipitous the slope the more fallen trees spilled down there are, and the more of an obstacle course there is. until eventually a decision point arrives, where climbing any higher leads only to a more precarious descent. so here the boots turn downwards, in big plunging steps, aiming for the white gaps between downed trees, but taking a route more circuitous than direct.
when right by the creek the sides pitch in quite steeply on both sides and it takes some scouting to find a feasible crossing. the creek about 2 meters across, here running free and clear over current glistening sunstruck rocks colored amber and umber, there disappearing under a blanket of powder rimmed with blue ice, surrounded by the banks of pristine snow from which dark trunks of spruce and fir stand, with the churning gurgle of the stream drowning out all other sound. it seems as if there's a billowing of oxygen off the creek, it's an oasis of fresh air.
a bit of a challenging maneuver over to the other side, and a scramble in the snow up alongside and with some assistance from a fir tree. a few hundred vertical feet up to the main trail. from there the pace into the backcountry picks up especially as the trail ascends at an easy grade. in fact though the hour grows late.
in years past (decades !three! decades ago) each of these drainages out of the Gore were best friends: Gore Creek, Deluge Lake, Bighorn Creek, Pitkin Creek, Booth Lake, Straddle Creek, and Red Sandstone Road back to Piney Lake. how the years have seeped away!
after a short rise the trail plateaus into a bit of an open marshy area along the creek, and a beaver pond. here the going becomes practically level, then the trail bends into a sheltered copse of drooping hemlock (?) trees overhanging the creek. here scope out some rock formations to the left (west) as the prospective destination for the morrow. and here seems like a logical place to turn around.
using the trail this time,
the alpenglow coloring the evening sky and the avalanche slides and icefalls of the East Vail straight ahead, all the way back to the road, and return to homebase, a bit weary.
< 7 December 2017 Thursday >
actually make it out of the apartment fairly early in the morning, as this is due to be our last full day in the Vail area. my brother TL -- ML's dad -- is due to join us for a farewell dinner tonight. tomorrow I pack the car while AC works, then late in the day we'll head out to Jackson WY. I'll ski 2 days there , one with AC -- probably joined by ML's sister, NL -- and then he continues on to British Columbia and I'll fly back east.
on this morning, as time is, vaguely, of the essence, take the regular road that first parallels then echoes in a tunnel beneath the highway, to the Bighorn Creek trailhead.
once out from under the Interstate, uphill on the left amid a couple of inches of crusted snow, 2 or 3 carpenters are at work on the shell of a house. 'probably that's what I ought to be doing' the mind misconstrues. only all my tools are two thousand miles away. a certain discontent with the do-this or do-that mindset stirs.
right then there's a meow from downhill. a dark gray cat with white front and little white feet steps away from the scrubby roadside and strides up the pavement. a steady purring can be heard even from some distance away. what's this? - a greeting. the cat rubs against my leg, arching its back and its purr is practically a rumble. can't help but be pleased -- not sure that this affection is deserved, and this seems a departure from typical cat behavior.
start meandering toward the trailhead, and the cat tags along. message a photo of it to my senior-in-HS daughter. - bring it home! she replies.
the trail switchbacks up the somewhat steep incline off the road, a mix of dirt, rock, compacted snow, and ice in this section. we creep at a leisurely cat pace but the we stick together for quite a while, in fact we're several hundred vertical feet from the trailhead, at the first big ponderosa pine, before we part company.
sometimes the world resists all explanation.
the incident with the cat over, the pace can pick up a bit. although no serious destination is intended -- want to be back before evening -- and all the summits of the Gore Range are out-of-reach in that timeframe. this day's objective is to reach a vantage somewhat beyond yesterday's turnaround point, then bushwhack to the left to any place on the western ridge, take that ridge down and return to the trail.
nothing will change with this trip. at least here's a chance to get out of town for a week or so. maybe get away from who I think I am for a moment. and anyway it's not about me.
"People should try to live by their own values, about climate as with everything else, but the effects of individual lifestyle choices are ultimately trivial compared with what politics can achieve."
-- David Wallace-Wells, "Time To Panic",
The New York Times, 17 February 2019
the creek purls under contoured shoals of ice beneath overhanging evergreen boughs. a sheltered refuge the like of which too few are ever likely to see, hear, smell. how lucky can you get!?
the trail trends almost level alongside the creek into the backcountry. at a spot where the pitch steepens, catch a first sighting of the Gore Range and the prominent summit of Grand Traverse, shedding the morning mist.
the high country back there is out-of-reach today though, with the trail too gradual to reach any heights. so here break off-trail, climb up to, onto, and through rock formations to the western ridge. feels good for (gloved) hands to find rock again. these rocks granitic, greys, red-orange, with light green lichens -- (not the same bedded sedimentary benchmarks that rim above the highway, and that sometimes send springtime boulders rolling into the bedrooms below) -- makes for interesting free-climbing, following a line between the simple and perilous, quickly gaining elevation.
pause for breath.
listen.
silence. but for sounds of breath.
pulse of blood in the ears.
quiet wraps the scene from nestled valley below to stark peaks beyond with an immense energy. a sensation of dormant power, waiting.
a whisper of a gust from somewhere above. amid the rocks.
the cloud and mist of morning dispersed, a blue zenith now overhead.
not like there's been many chances for rock climbing challenges lately.
work a crack up an open book with some ledge rest spots, keeping it simple, until, near the top of the formation, the crack strays into a tight passage that cannot be negotiated with the pack on. in what seems like significant exposure, for a sec.. it's do-able. could take the pack off, tie it to a rope and push it through, then follow. breathing hard. sweating. heart rate elevated. mouth clammy.
not sure the risk is worthwhile. decide to turn back. downclimb to a safe haven, breathing a little easier now, , then traverse around the side to solid ground. feels right! push to a personal limit. without serious bodily injury. (& who cares about my ego!?)
the scrunch of bootsteps in snow up to the next rock outcropping, then on to the ridge for a rest in a place with a view of the Gore, the Bighorn Creek drainage below, the East Vail chutes across, Bald Mtn., through the the Vail valley to the west. at about 11,400' -- close to the same height as Vail Mtn, across the valley.
a jet seers the sky.
pull on another layer.
munch lunch.
maybe a commemorative toke. (it's legal!)
time to head down.
a speedy descent.
the snow is deep and the pitch steep and the open spaces between the aspens wide enough, each stride a bound covering ten feet. giant steps.
until down out of the trees, where the snow dwindles, back to the trail, to the last switchbacks where the big ponderosa pine where the cat last was.
and here comes the cat again! well what d'ya know?
one semi-tractor trailer's chugs up the pass, the staccato fits of jake brake from another, going down.
to the road, under the highway, to the place we're staying.
for the last night. fry up some bacon, saute some onions, pepper, celery, mushrooms, stuff 5 breaded trout, wrap them in foil and toss them in the oven. just out of the shower when brother TL arrives, in a wreath of enthusiasm and physical grace. accept no substitutes. the real deal. yeah, the bias is obvious, but I love my brother. TL has over 35 consecutive 100+ ski day seasons behind him, but he's pretty self-effacing and has more interest in promoting the sport for others, young and old.
it's fun being in the village with TL as every hundred meters someone's hailing him and being hailed in return. the kids he coached for years are devoted to him. these days he gives private lessons in Beaver Creek -- which, he lets us know, is fairly decent skiing right now, compared to Vail proper. this season's an anomaly, but the situation is grim, and everyone's praying for snow.
TL actually lives downvalley about a half-hour drive, where housing is more affordable. normally I'd have gone down there to see he and my sister-in-law, but I didn't have transportation and he was working long days. this is it -- our 3 hours together this whole year, because on my current shoestring I can't see making it out again this season.
the 5 of us have a fine meal, some wine. we watch some videos, then a movie -- who can remember what? sharing some time with us all together is more memorable.
-- you figured out which route you're going to take to Jackson? TL asks, then continues unprompted in his inimitable fashion -- because I'd go the longer way, down as far as Rifle: there's so much game on the road between Wolcott and Steamboat, traveling after dark there's too good a chance that you'll hit something...
...[confirming this, on our first time on that stretch of road, April 1974, we counted over 120 mule deer. and when we stopped to admire one herd a golden eagle flew not much more than 10 feet overhead)]...
then he has to head home. it's not easy to say good-bye in such circumstances, but what makes it a bit easier is that when we get to Jackson we'll meet up with and bring his love to his daughter, NL.
* * *
IV
* * *
< 8 December 2017 Friday >
a few inches of fluffy white stuff fell down overnight and into the early morning!
AC has to work this day. but first, after dusting off the car, he has to go downvalley where he and VN have put some gear in storage.
my gear's mostly prepped. by the end of the day we'll be stuck in the car for at least 8 hours, so go for a short hike in the shadow of the East Vail chutes, up by an icefall.
he's back to the apartment by late morning, and it's my task to unpack and repack the car. temporarily place some of the gear bags in ML's hatchback, hoping for a clean slate start. the packing process is considerably more involved and stressful than one might guess. and lengthy -- not concluded until early evening. first the rooftop box, reserved for ski gear and snowboards, gets packed to the gills, and successfully closed and locked.
besides this, a ski-bag gets lashed to the crossbars of the roof-rack. then the trunk, duffel bags, backpacks, shoes, boots, and a whole lot of other shit... they are, after all, moving to Nelson BC for at least four months...then stuff that fits on the floor behind the front seats. then the rear seat and shelf behind. finally the delicate electronics, the bags we need sooner, and the short-term food supply.
assemble 2 racks of sub sandwiches and ready them for the oven. (half of the subs are for the next day's lunch, for both the remaining & departing parties.) shower. eat. make sure my gear's shipshape. nap. AC's has to stop briefly in town to pick up 2 pair of skis at a shop where a buddy of his works. just before the nap I wonder aloud if that plan's airtight, because town's empty after all? AC is under some stress, working on his laptop and phone at the kitchen counter, cranking away at last minute tasks and he harumphs yeah, the shop's open until 8.
awake again in an hour, all the sudden we need to move. my query about the shop staying open with the town being empty has sunk in. AC hasn't yet been able to reach his buddy by phone, and we can't leave town -- impossible -- without the skis.
if we don't leave town tonight that warps the tight weave of the current plan. sparing you the details, but the number one consequence is that he and I don't ski together in Jackson Hole.
so instead of culminating in a grand finale, our expedition will terminate in a stressed-out chore. plus, all of us are aware and in general agreement -- tonight's the night, we're leaving -- to be stuck, tail between legs, saying shit-we-can't-go-yet? that's a serious letdown.
beads of sweat creep. the best laid plans oft go astray, but still -- a lot's hanging on this. AC's kicking himself. but rare indeed is the trip that runs off without a hitch.
--You'll figure it out! MA's smiling.
chow the subs. last of the gear on-board. fire up the car. this is family. we love these people. grateful for the place to stay. hugs and farewells. not a super-satisfying good-bye, but when has that ever happened? kids these days -- they're adaptable -- this is how they live, strings of threadbare departures and last minute adjustments.
we're off! for all of 5 miles. driving the frontage road into the "village" that is Vail proper. Bridge Street, the main concourse, is open only to pedestrians, but there's a loop that's mostly restricted to service vehicle loops, that gets close. we park and shut the car down there. the tall form of my first-born stalks toward the ski shop while I remain with the car.
he stands there at the edge of my vision, for a very long time. he's standing in the cold, on the phone, his far-off shape partially silhouetted by a streetlamp. obviously, just by the length of time this is taking, things are not going well. in fact, seems like this is taking an eternity. the cold creeps in, mostly into the feet. but it's against my religion to start up the car for no good reason. better nap and prepare for what lies ahead.
there he is -- approaching the car. through the opened window he confirms the worst: the shop is closed, with his skis within. and, his buddy stopped working there last month. he can't believe he didn't find out about this earlier! the only hope is he's managed to reach that buddy, and he knows who was working in the shop. maybe he can reach them, get a key to enter the shop. having delivered this update my son goes back to where he was standing under the distant streetlamp.
the car is dark, the night is dark, the street is like a dark tunnel and there at the end is my son, with a fringe of light in an aura about his familiar posture. mostly just standing still and waiting, but at times whorling with impatience, frustration, and disappointment in himself. this is tough to watch in someone you love. there's an upwelling in the heart that converts into moisture in the eyes. the worst thing one can do in such instances is offer consoling words. downplay their pain and you'll see hidden anger erupt into rage. you can't fight their battles for your kids. the best, well maybe not the best, but -- sometimes all one can do is watch their struggle from a remote parental outpost.
he's on the phone. seems something's happening -- he strides back to the car.
-- Hey Dad, my buddy located them -- they're just down the street and will be over in a couple of minutes. think you can come down and help me grab the skis?
hallelujah. fate has cut us a break. we go down there and two totally encouraging guys show up shortly. you have to love life in a resort town: they were just a couple of doors down the street, finishing their afterwork beers. and glad to let us in under the circumstances.
-- oh man -- you're headed to Jackson and then the Selkirks? that sounds great!
couldn't be nicer; yeah there's no point in keeping the shop open the way town is right now
-- cripes, this weather better break soon!
so they open the shop door and the lights are dazzling inside the wicked exclusive ski shop. there are two places I thought I'd never be in my life: Kampala, Uganda & Gorsuch Ltd.in Vail, CO. now I've been in both. (Gorsuch apparently unaware that I'm the one-&-the-same lower class guy who cleaned out the old Vail Golf Course restaurant grease trap. for $25. good money! if you don't count the clean-up time..).
they hand us the skis and there's a few parting formalities -- no paperwork necessary though! blessed be small favors. they close up behind us, then the 2 groups split directions,
AC and I close the skis into the rooftop bag and secure them.
then we're off! a little (8 hours) behind an ideal schedule. but it's all good! who can believe it? they say that nobody loves you when your down & out, but then again it's amazing how sometimes people will reach out to help others in a jam.
so begins a long nighttime drive. my son's understandably drained after the whole ordeal and pretty soon he's asleep. all's well that ends well. hosanna.
75 mph speed limits on the interstate west are competitive as the road's not so straight. the road's still wet from last night's snowfall. it's about 8:30 pm so there's still plenty of vehicles on the road, folks are driving with a vengeance, as if their sheet metal enclosures insulate them from consideration, as if they're back home in a Masshole-of-the-year competition, and tires throw crud on the windshield, and truly it's not a footloose and fancy-free outing, until about Dotsero, where the Eagle River (that I-70 has been following) ends, in its confluence with the Colorado (from the north-northeast) that the road trends beside, narrowing into Glenwood Canyon.
where the canyon opens out there resides Glenwood Springs, at the confluence of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers. Glenwood Springs is worthy of further exploration, if you're not driving through after dark and behind the 8-ball, but let's remark here about 2 fires in the area. one of them is burning right now, as it has now for over 100 years: there's a major coal deposit between Glenwood Springs and New Castle. an underground seam caught fire in 1910 and, despite efforts to keep an eye on it, 98 years later, in 2002 the fire topped the ground, in a conflagration that torched 29 homes and over 12,000 acres of land. and still it burns
.
no lives were lost in that fire though, partially because of hard lessons learned from the other fire, the South Canyon/Storm King fire. this awful tragedy happened on 6 July 1994, 14 firefighters perished when the flames, driven by stiff gusts, jumped downhill of the fireline and burned up the steep terrain, encircling most of the crew. there's probably not a firefighter in the country who hasn't paused to reflect on that event
.
Glenwood Springs is also situated along the rough perimeter where the Southern Rocky Mountains transitions to the Uinta Basin/Piceance Basin section of the Colorado Plateau. what this means for travellers is, generally speaking, relative to the mountain routes, flatter and straighter roads that allow for swift progress, especially at night, when there are even fewer folks out there in the open, sparsely populated expanse.
which is what we find as we turn north at Rifle and turn north onto lucky Rt. 13. along the western side of this section of highway rises the Book Cliffs/Roan Plateau, arid terrain of bedded sandstones rich in natural gas and, even more controversial, oil shales.
[seems this might be a good time to link to a map of the US physiographic regions].
Rt. 13 takes us up to Meeker, named after a former Indian Agent of the White River Ute Indian Reservation who, along with 11 others, met their end in the Meeker Massacre. Nathan Meeker, a follower of the utopian socialist French philosopher Charles Fourier (who coined the word "féminisme" in 1837), essentially hoped to impose a sedentary Christian agricultural lifestyle on certain tribes of the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer Ute, and, well, the Ute may have won that battle, but they lost the war. (Frederick Walker Pitkin, the 2nd Governor of Colorado, ran on a "The Utes Must Go!" platform).
Essentially all of this territory in western Colorado and eastern Utah used to be home to the various Ute tribes, who are now relegated to a few scraps of reservation in northeast Utah (there's also a Southern Ute Indian Reservation).
from Meeker up to Craig, at around 11 p.m. I've done some time in Craig! could hardly recognize the place, in the dark, at the Kum and Go gas station near a Wendy's, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, we could have been practically anyplace in the country. (not so if we'd strayed into the semi-infamous Mather's Bar, a few blocks away. I can't remember exactly what happened in Mather's, but it was rowdy).
a short piece of Rt. 40, and then a right-angle left onto Rt. 13N again, all the way to Baggs, Wyoming, population about 440, just about midnight.
< 9 December 2017 Saturday >
to the northeast of this location, on what was previously Oglala Lakota territory, is the Powder River Basin, which produces two-fifths of the coal in the US. (see John McPhee's classic 2-part series "Coal Train" in The New Yorker).
at which point we change drivers and I sleep all the way from Baggs, onto I-80 and all the way to Rock Springs. this route carries us across the eastern Red Desert sector of the Green River Basin. formerly part of the home of Eastern Shoshone, from prior experience it's known that this is one of the best roads in the US to drive at night, or better yet, to sleep across.
in the spirit of equal time, there was a massacre in Rock Springs too. in 1885, when a mob of mostly immigrant white miners committed a mass murder of 28 immigrant Chinese miners, also burning 78 Chinese homes. the 16 men arrested were all released about a month later, to a cheering crowd of hundreds. (Chester A. Arthur had, in 1882, signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first US law to prohibit a specific national identity from immigration).
(just west of here, in an evaporated primordial lakebed, lies the world's largest deposit of trona, a mineral source that enables less expensive production of sodium carbonate (soda ash & also sodium bicarbonate/baking soda) than is achievable by the solvay process, essentially putting the old Solvay/Allied Chemical Co. at Onondaga Lake out of business in 1985).
at Rock Springs at about 2 a.m. we cut north onto Rt 191, Dad having re-attained the wheel.
U.S. Route 191 tracks over through high desert past the unincorporated Eden, Farson, and Boulder, with populations of 281, 313, and 170 respectively. in each of those microcosmopolists the speed limit plummets to 25 mph and the tired mind troubles to adapt to the change of pace after the wide open spaces, especially as these census-designated places are only slightly less wind-swept and empty than the surrounding terrain.
a 100 miles to Pinedale. a couple of miles south of town I pull over and ask AC if he can take the wheel for the last leg to Jackson, as I'm done in. nobody's real happy about the situation but if we want to keep moving it's all up to him. so we switch.
should have said something to my son about those speed limit transitions, but was too tattered to talk.
Pinedale is the gateway to the spectacular but commonly underappreciated Wind River Range, which includes Gannett Peak, and 40 other peaks over 13,000', and whose glaciers are the source of the Green River, and some 1,300 lakes. Pinedale's motto is "All The Civilization You Need". but Pinedale has a reputation -- in 2014 a judge there was censured for her failure to perform a same-sex marriages, and in 2017 another judge there refused to allow a service animal to accompany it's disabled owner into the court. Pinedale gets an honorable mention in the movie "Wind River", when the native american woman Wilma Lambert (played by Julie Jones) says: "You couldn't drag me through Pinedale with a rope. I'll never set foot in that town again."
I'm just dozing off when AC mutters -- O shit. sure enough.
the Sheriff is pulling us over. 3:45 a.m. the Sheriff's maybe in his 50's. standing tall in his uniform and poker-faced he strikes an imposing figure next to where we're hunched down in our seats. AC is properly deferential. there's not much room for argument. "I have you going 45 in a 35 mile-per-hour zone."
license and registration handed over the Sheriff intones: "Proof of insurance is required in the state of Wyoming. Do you have proof of insurance?" a quick search of the glove compartment indicates that we do not. but -- AC might be able to find that on his phone, would that work? "Ok -- see what you can do." the sheriff returns to his cruiser for what seems like an age.
now we're sweating -- the next issue becomes locating a cellular signal. eventually AC succeeds and his phone shows a single bar connection. then AC has to navigate through a labyrinth of web pages to his insurer and the insurance document for the car. he's part-way toward that goal when the sheriff finally comes back. the vehicle will have to be impounded until proof of insurance can be provided. and we'll be stranded in town until we then. but he gives my son some more time, and then he succeeds in finding the proof of insurance and downloads it to his phone. the sheriff checks back in with us again. he's going to accept the download as sufficient!
-- Ok, I'll let you go with a warning. But watch your speed and you might want to carry those insurance documents with you in the future." and he lets us go. (!) seems like a nice guy. guess it helps that AC is a polite young white guy traveling with his half-asleep old man. meanwhile, much time has elapsed. the hour approaches 5 am.
from the Upper Green River Basin in the red desert south of Pinedale up through a narrow hourglass of land at Trapper's Point and along a narrow strip of land beside the Green River and then up to the Jackson Hole, the fantastic valley east of the phenomenal Tetons, north-and-south over this 200 mile stretch pronghorn have migrated across the seasons for at least 6,000 years. the longest animal migration in the lower 48 states. frankly what's so astonishing is how we can be so indifferent to such a revelation as this.
there's a bunch of speed limit signs enforcing, in no uncertain terms, that there's no need to kill them or us.
pronghorn, (not really an antelope, but hey if not into that we'll skip it), are the fleetest creature in North America. (ever since I heard of pronghorns I've loved them, maybe more than the Mississippi River, my wife, my kids, my mother, my friends, and the rest of the human race despite all their flaws).
at any distance over about half-a-mile, in fact, pronghorns are swifter on feet than anything else on earth. and they live, like, in the United States. (!) don't know why nobody seems to give a f- about that now, (they do reside in natural gas rich regions), but in primordial times they needed to be. until the american cheetah "went" extinct, and now only a cheetah living in Africa can catch them. (but only over that half-mile or so.)
except for cars. and so cars and pronghorns clashed; animals died, people died, valuable metal conveyances were wrecked needlessly. then in 2008 the first federally designated wildlife corridor was created. six underpasses and two underpasses were built by a consortium of organizations. a corridor was re-enabled for (a segment of)an ancient thoroughfare.
on this last section of road, every mile feels closer to the wilderness. there's something indescribable that creeps into one's bones, some holy connection with the sacred land. even despite all the natural gas production, the housing developments spawned by the success of Jackson, and Jackson itself, another den of the super-wealthy. between the Wind Rivers and the Gros Ventre Ranges, and Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, essentially there's an infinite number of places where a human being can get small. and one needs to get small to get free.
sleep, at last. when we pull in past Jackson and park in Teton Village, at the base of Jackson Hole ski area, and check in to the cut-rate room AC's booked in the Snake River Lodge, and plummet into bed, it's 6:30 a.m.
we're up and out of the room 3 hours later. my son texts his cousin, my niece NE, and she lets us know she'll join us soon. AC has set me up with a free 2-day ski rental and that's our first stop. then AC gets me a 2-day ski pass. that's also free. (industry connections.) we grab a quick eat and coffee in a local cafe. NE arrives -- she's a compact blonde fireplug -- the last time I saw her was 6 months before, in Kampala. but that's another, even longer, story.
then we're on the tram headed to the top of Jackson Hole! the Jackson Hole trail map in the skiing magazines looked like a skier's nirvana to my brother and I, back when we were in our teens! and now on skis there for the first time: 45 years later.
it's not always the case but in December 2017 we're in luck because Jackson Hole has more snow than most of the Rockies.
not enough to open the whole mountain -- the infamous Corbet's Couloir won't be open until it snows another foot or so -- and the broad open space of the Hoback's, lower on the mountain, also lack sufficient coverage as yet. but there's superb snow in northside chutes off of the Sublette chair, and that's where we spend most of our time.
AC barrels down with the greatest of ease, and NE skis like she's one with the mountain, just like her dad -- as if a magnetic force pulls her effortlessly downward, with an upper body as quiet as can be.
without a whole lot of skier traffic there's between 4"-to-a-foot of loose dry snowfall lying around among the trees, snow that sloughs off and follows you down in a mini-avalanche. the skiing's tremendous actually. how could one not love this? and I milk every turn for what it's worth. explaining why I'm always last to emerge from the trees with them waiting there for me.
lower on the mountain, on the way to lunch and at the end of the day, there's one steep somewhat moguled pitch, where the snow's set up between the sun and the cold and there's even a little ice where, maybe, I have a slight advantage, as this is more like the familiar slopes of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, my more usual snow-stomping ground.
we figure out everything for the next couple of days.
life doesn't always allow for the three of us to be together, for marvelous meal at the Four Seasons at the end of the day (that's where NE works).
AC & I will overnight at the Snake River Lodge. Then he leaves the next morning at dawn and starts his solo drive to British Columbia. I'll stash my gear with the front desk before transferring it to NE's car, she & I will ski together all day, apres at the Mangy Moose, catch dinner someplace in Jackson proper, and she'll overnight me at her place. then Monday we'll wake at 4:30 a.m. and she'll drive me to the Jackson Hole airport and I'll fly back to Boston. and everything goes according to plan.
<10 December 2017 Sunday >
awake in the half-light.
AC's already up and set to leave before dawn. there's enough light with the curtain pulled back for us to make our way around without the table lamps lit. out the window it looks like a frosty morning.
yep, it's about minus 5F.
everything falls quietly into place. we go about the last minute packing. into and out of the bathroom in turns. each breath in due course. first thing in the morning,
keeping it simple.
there's no rush.
check out at the front desk, in voices subdued, as smooth an exit as there ever was.
outside the eastern sky is glowing, the air is cold, the temperature down in the single digits. he pulls the car around from the lot and brings it up to the curb nearby, so that we don't have to haul the gear and skis so far.
then it's time for him to go. hugs and loving farewells. we've said goodbye before. we'll say goodbye again. then he's in the car and off he goes. into the wild blue yonder.
just then the sun clears the Gros Ventre rise to the east in a burst across the landscape that shines through aligned ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and radiates out in a giant semi-circular bow of a sundog. that could be the most glorious thing I've ever seen
.
brilliant slanting light penetrates into the deepest recesses of the terrain and suffuses across the early morning scene, silhouetting split rail fences and outbuildings.
mists in white filaments wisp off of a creek that courses through a snow-covered pasture. minute trembling particles of frost glitter as if suspended in the subzero air. with the rainbow spectrum of the sundog arching over and encircling the panorama, as if the sky embraces the land.
even with the cold closing in there's every reason to stand there for quite a long while.
and I've still a day of skiing ahead!
Just finished beast from the East and loved it.