Day 1 - June 22, 2013: Good Morning America, How Are Ya?
The miles went by smooth and easily, although there were but 268.1 until I pulled off on Frontage Road, just past the Joshua Tree exit, and, feeling adventurous, drove my car about a quarter mile up a wash before finding a pile of rock and stone that looked somehow more friendly than the others I had passed. There are mesquites, acacias creosote and little else - certainly no people. The hum of insects is absent. Perhaps it is too hot and dry for all but the toughest and quietest of them. I am writing while sitting on a bed of rocks, lumpy and far from perfectly comfortable, but appropriate for the moment . In fact, there is no real soil here, just stones of different sizes and colors. It looks to be rhyolite, but my rockhounding is in a state of disrepair (those Geology classes were in the late 90s and the memories are slipping away). Maybe it's granite. Probably it is something I can’t put a name to. I will make this my bed tonight, sleeping in the old Susan Komen pink tent, which always draws laughter...when there are people to see it.
Just over the rise, I can see the snake of cars and hear the low din of their motors. It is soothing music to which I will fall asleep and awake early in the morning, tired and weary. But also happy.
My favorite part of this leg of the trip is the 40 or so miles that starts with Aguila and ends in Brenda before coming out on Interstate 10. The lonely oases of humanity on Highway 60 - Aquila, Salome, Harcuvar, Hope, Wenden and Brenda - equally look like they’re about ten families from becoming ghost towns. They come equipped with the usual: a general store and a bar - sometimes two of these - and a host of mobile homes in differing states of neglect. And little else. There is so little to see in those interminable miles that the dilapidated homes, the rusting vehicles, the sparkles of broken glass everywhere - even the fallen fences - look like a 40-mile mirage. The sense of abject loneliness is gratis. I feel like I have fallen into a movie set every time I take this stretch, and that alone makes it worth the 40 or so minutes drive.
I know a teacher from Mile High who retired this year and now makes his home on the cattle ranch he owns near Wenden. I glimpsed the Cattleman’s Restaurant and the Highway 60 General as Wenden passed by my side windows and thought, “Mike is a better man than me to find a home in this inhospitable wilderness of nothingness.” People are so different that one could find his home in a place that is just big enough to make the Rand-McNally Atlas and so stark that each tree has its own name.
But then I consider where I am camping - the sheer emptiness of it, the complete isolation and feeling of being a hundred miles from anyone, anything.
Scottsbluff, NE, is desert, although few people realize that any part of Nebraska consists of anything but great rows of corn and a wheat field or two dotted between the miles of stalks and ears. And maybe this is where I have drawn my affinity to the immense dry heat, the miles of nothingness, the starkness of mountains of stone and stubbly cacti.
Tomorrow, I will see my uncle for only the second time since my beautiful aunt - his lovely wife - passed away. For about ten years I had visited them during my Fall and Spring Breaks, becoming like a son and they like my parents, but there is a void now. It will be hard to fill. My “Parents of the West Coast” I used to call them. Transitions like this take time and hurt like hell.
The stars are now dotting the night sky as I think of my own father, whose life is a story nearly as perfect as a fairy tale. It appears that it will not have a storybook ending, though. I wonder over this lovely man and know that he blessed me with nothing greater than his own being.
Good night, dad. I love you.
Day 2 - June 23, 2013: Hello My Old Friend
Somewhere in the middle of the night, maybe two or so, I finally slipped under a blanket, although parts of me hung out and remained exposed to the open air. Maybe my body was adjusting to the heat, more likely the night air had cooled to somewhere south of 80 degrees. It turned out to be a good sleep.
And the next time I really awoke, the stifling heat had made its return to the desert floor, warming my tent to a point somewhere between punishing and blast furnace. I staggered out of the opening and into the open air. It felt like air conditioning. Packing the tent quickly, I got back on the road.
And on my way to see Denis Hickey.
I met Dennis way back in 1990 at a family reunion, and it is this meeting he always relates when he introduces me. Dawn and I flew out from Ohio, rented a red Mazda Miata straight out of Denver Stapleton, dropped the top, kept it down even in a rain storm and ate up Colorado like a juicy peach. We arrived late to the reunion, our equally long long hair arriving a moment later. Denis was the newest member of the burgeoning Dermer/Shick clan; he had just married my aunt, Marlene. In a deep, thoughtful voice that betrayed his Irish upbringing, he introduced himself. Standing at 6'1" or so, he was sleight of body but a powerhouse of prose and philosophy, easily slipping from Shakespearean vignettes into theology, and weaving it into a seamless story of how he had met my aunt and fallen head over heals. I immediately took a liking to Denis, so too did Dawn. We spent a lot of time sharing ideas and philosophies. And building a friendship.
But I was still young and immortal. I enjoyed my new uncle, and Marlene was as wonderful as I remembered from my youth when my family frequently made sojourns to California (and, oh, how wonderful those trips, those discoveries of the world, were) to visit her and the Shick clan. And because I was still nothing more than an overage teenager, I forgot about my aunt and uncle for a decade. Then fate intervened to reunite us.
My parents were thirty years younger thirteen years ago. They used to fly or drive out at least once a year to pay me a visit, not forgetting to visit five different friends along the way when they chose to drive. On one trip, I picked them up at the airport and, after spending some time in Prescott, I drove them to Mission Viejo, to visit Marlene and Denis, my father's sister and her husband. Mission Viejo is easy enough to love without having a dock to moor your body and a piece of your heart. During those three days I found that Denis, Marlene and myself shared so much in common that I felt like a son separated at birth. We shared our fear of the possibility that a bumbling hick from Texas - someone who had failed his way upwards, someone whose ability to form a coherent thought and formulate it into a sentence was tenuous at best - might become our next president. We laughed at the loveably inane television "news" station that touted him as the second coming of God Him/Herself (The same news/entertainment station has now decreed that God is a White male. Who knew? Fox apparently.). We talked for hours, my dad frequently sprinkling in stories of his own children for comic relief. There were moments of greatness (very few) sprinkled with tales of our less-than-stellar follies.
In the evenings, my dad, Denis and I would go for walks around Mission Viejo Lake and to the park only three blocks away from the house on The Bahamas Street. We even found time to visit Florence Griffith Joyner Park. My most cherished memory, though, is the eighty six steps (or I think it is eighty six - I came close to making the drive back today just so I could recount those steps and some treasured memories) from the park up to the street. We would walk up and down them each evening, the air a mixture of bougainvilleas, car exhaust and a scent I like to think of as "California."
But the walks were not about parks or lakes, rather they were about getting to know each other and enjoying each others' conversation. I got to know and love my father as much as Denis during that stretch.
And in the process, I had found that dock on which to occasionally drop anchor.
And for the next decade I would visit during Fall and Spring Break, like clockwork.
Eleven years later, I am visiting Denis, recounting stories, but walking softly around the edges of the garden that is Marlene's memories. It is an acrobatic act, but I am feeling more comfortable with it each time I step. The home on The Bahamas is now a memory as my uncle now lives in a home for seniors, that is eighty-six steps more human than the typical rest home, but my friendship with my "Father of the West Coast" is as alive as a newborn. Later that evening, I meet the most charming of ladies: Betty Shipley. At 89, this little firecracker has a zest for life that burns like the sun, her smile nearly as bright.
And as evening transitions to night, I make my way to Diamond Bar, CA, to couchsurf with Vladi. It turns out we have something very important in common that is cause for good conversation. I ask him to relate stories of summiting Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States. He is a treasure trove of information, insight and phenomenal photography of the place that I will climb with friends tomorrow. I have the nerves about this hike, and his photos and recounting of his experiences (but mostly the photos of the sharp, barren granite peaks) only add to it. Unfortunately, this is a short visit. Vladi has to work in the morning, so I go to bed early.
Day 3 - June 24, 2013: The iPhone Incident
I wake up in Vladi's home long after he has left for work. This is the nature and the wonder of couchsurfing: we are a community of trust and friendship. It is not rare that I have hosted couchsurfers and told them through the wonders of cell phones and satellites "I won't be home until six or so. I left the door unlocked; make yourself at home." We have a good thing going - always paying forward.
I take a quick shower at Vladi's and make my way north.
And got lost.
Some of the great mysteries in life can never be explained. That's what happened in Victorville.
I miss the turnoff to Lone Pine, but only by ten or fifteen minutes. No problem, I think, I'll just stop at this Ford dealership, take a look at the new Fiestas and slip across the shortcut, just as it appears in the Rand-McNally atlas. My karma is amped up to "full" when, while looking at the Fiesta's interior, I find an iPhone with all the trimmings laying on the side of the seat like it belonged there. I walk inside the dealership, look in the phone's contacts list and FaceTime a man named Gerald. He is really cool and really surprised and really appreciative.
And I am on my way...using the shortcut.
The thing about shortcuts is they can be a misnomer. And after losing 75 minutes to the gods of driving, I decide that this a shortcut that I should have left to the next guy. Maybe Gerald. Hey, I helped him get his friend's iPhone returned safe and sound.
My plan to get to Lone Pine by 3:00 is delayed, like being put on hold on that same darn phone. And somewhere at the exact same time Gerald was probably getting a big hug from his friend, the iPhone owner. I have seen the crass bumper sticker, "karma's a bitch" and I'd like to think that this is just bitter people doing what they do best: being bitter. We'll see if I win the lottery...or find a dollar bill on the ground. I not being picky here.
I arrive at the Whitney Family Campground #36 in time to get two hour's worth of talking (with my AHOTE friends) in before we make our way to bed at 6:50. Being that I have to wake up at 2:00am in order to prepare for the big hike, I am cool with going to bed before prime time ABC is revving up. I don't watch TV.
Day 4 - June 25, 2013: a.k.a. The Long Walk
2:00am - Mark awakens us so that we can eat, pack and be to the portal by 3:30. I am still anxious from looking at the rock goliath the night before and in my dreams, but there's also an edge of exhilaration.
2:45 - "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Mark stammers while Ryan, Kim and I run from our tents to see what's going on. I arrive just in time to see 350 pounds of black fur, paws and empty stomach walking away from Mark and to his Toyota FJ Cruiser. The big black bear rears up on its hind paws and takes a gander inside the vehicle. I am frozen, not by fear, but by wonder. All my life I had hoped to see a bear at a close but safe distance, but this, this, was better. I could have taken ten steps and petted the behemoth. Ryan's clapping awakens me from my reverie and finally sets Yogi in motion. But what really gets him (I am saying "him," but did not check for gender) is when Ryan emulates a dog's bark pretty darn good. The big guy decides that this is not what he was hoping to find for his late night foray and lopes slowly away, apparently not liking dogs.
3:00 - We have both vehicles loaded, although mine has no immense paw prints adorning it, and take off for the trailhead.
3:30 - We have twenty three miles before I can claim to have sacked this beast, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. We hit the semi-enclosed entrance - replete with a "don't be this guy" sign and accompanying tragic figure, suffering and in a stretcher, and I think, "Here we go." I take my first step. I figure there will be thousands, maybe tens of thousands, before I reach the same point going a different direction.
3:35 - It is a bright summer night, the moon lighting our way as well our headlamps. We are already going upwards at a good clip and around us we can see other lights floating in the dark like fireflies on a Western Nebraska night. We are not the first ones on the trail and the tiny fireflies tell us the way that we will follow as we rise higher and higher on the granite face.
4:00 - Mark carries a camera that is impressive in its size and what it can do to night. Still dark, he is taking magnificent photos that, via high ISO, expose the what none of us can even see. I try the same thing with my one-touch and get pathetic shots of blackness, a small snake of color where the sun is beginning to work its way over the horizon.
4:30 - We are to the timber line and from here to the top will be surrounded by naked stone giants, rising starkly and sharply into the thin air. It is picturesque; it is completely daunting. But we are in a good rhythm so there is little to think about but the next step.
6:00 - Right after Trail Camp, at 12,040', Ninety Nine Switchbacks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMjci8YqEkI looms in the distance. It is the point at which the hikers of Whitney learn if they are adequately prepared (the link shows hikers: look closely at the gnat-like creatures, they're humans - navigating this rough real estate at 20x normal speed). The rock face is steep and the switchbacks reduce the grade but not so much that it is not like a stair stepper set at "Everest." So the hike increases in difficulty just as the air gets thin. Mark stays behind at this point to do what photographers do best while Ryan, Kim and I do what AHOTE does best, which is conquer great heights at great speeds. The trail wends and winds through a labyrinth of rock and talus, taking us near the top of the serrated behemoths that make Whitney unique.
At this height, words come out in short bursts, like a Kalashnikov unloading a clip of ammunition, then jamming.
Long conversation consumes too much air.
I am breathing hard.
Not so hard as I thought I would, though.
My heart is galloping like a spooked horse.
And this more than anything slows me down.
And scares me.
The thunder in my chest is a combination of exertion and acclimation to heights now well over 13,000'. My calves feel like twin charlie horses.
My breathing is like a dog who has been chasing balls for a half hour straight.
But I am better off than most.
They are having even more difficulty taking in enough precious oxygen.
Breathing in big, graceless gulps.
Nobody passes; no one comes even close.
Though we have passed many.
I can make it.
I think.
Onward, upward we go.
7:30 - We are at Trail Crest, 13,600', and exhale a sigh of relief http://www.summitpost.org/mt-whitney-trail-crest/845675. Now on the back side of the mountain, I can breathe again, although my heart still feels like an engine revving past the redline. From this vantage point, the views are not of the sunrise to the east, but to the rocky fortresses west. Past the lakes below us, including the aptly named Guitar Lake, there is nothing but more mountains, more sheer edges and hard, unforgiving surfaces. It is a world of mountains. It is Mars if Mars were not bathed in red. It is an altogether different world.
The the long walk continues. As I walk, I notice the orange shit bags the forest service provides. These are so you can spend time with Mother Nature while not despoiling her.
8:00 - Mt. Whitney's summit is in view, but I feel like a horse chasing after a carrot that is attached to a stick in front of its nose; I get no closer. Kim and Ryan are beginning to put a little distance between themselves and me, Mark probably somewhere in the middle of the switchbacks. I hate being beat, even by other AHOTE hikers, but take consolation in the fact that my training consisted of nothing except going to the YMCA and sitting on a recumbent bike, riding hard, but not hiking-Whitney hard. On the backside of the mountain the trail is a thin ribbon and there are places where a wrong step would make for a very messy cleanup job - picking up the pieces and putting them in a container to be sent to the family. I wonder if that has happened. It must have, especially for the snow hikers who can't really follow a trail that is buried beneath feet of snow.
8:30 - Ryan and Kim are about five minutes in front of me, which feels like five miles. I know that they will beat me to the summit, but I am still passing all others. The hike is not so punishing now, just a gradual incline, being careful to stay on the pieces of talus that litter and make up the trail.
We cross two tiny snow fields before final ascent.
9:00 - Kim lent me an extra pair of gloves, soon after Trail Crest, when the backside of the mountain proved to be a tempest and the sun was hidden behind the rock beast. They are a godsend. It's 45 fahrenheit at the top and the wind is kicking around between twenty and thirty miles per hour. My thumbs feel like thick pieces of wood, unable to work except rudimentarily. Kim and Ryan have just summited and I am shivering my way to the top. How delightful it looks to be able to stop. And then turn around and go back.
9:10 - Atop at last. Thank God Almighty, atop at last. At 14,505' this is the highest place outside of an airplane I have been in my life. And I feel pretty good.
The views are spectacular; so too the cold. I crouch behind a giant boulder and try to draw heat from the sun and the lower wind speeds. Neither offer me hope. Cold as I may be, I make time to take pictures of Ryan and Kim. They return the favor (this hike being a once-in-my-lifetime-occurrence).
Then they head down.
I give the giant boulder another try, desperately attempting to warm my hands, fingers so cold I battle with my cell to compose a text, the numb digits working to hit the right keys. I cannot. Without the use of my thumbs and my fingers going numb, there is too little will. So I call instead. The phone responds with silence. Good, I think, the text wouldn't have worked anyway. So I hunker down a third time and prepare for descent. I know that I will want to get to east-facing side of the mountain as quickly as possible. There is the comfort of sun and, more importantly, calm there. The wind on this side of the mountain is brutish.
9:45 - So I begin a slow run, carefully placing each step.
Before I get a hundred yards, I reassess the little brick hut http://timberlinetrails.net/WhitneySummit.html that rests just below the 14,505' summit. Research now tells me that it's over a century old - built by the Smithsonian Institution, those brave souls working for maybe a dollar a day - but at the time my main interest is warmth. There is a group of hikers, most with unruly beards and youthful faces, huddled inside. I talk to them and hope that my body heat will amp up like my mouth. The conversation is good, though everyone is too fagged out to put forth much of an effort, but my body heat remains at Empty. It's time to go.
I move like a mountain goat, trying to get to the warmer east side.
10:30 - I'm shuttling through the switchbacks as fast as my beginning-to-be-sore feet will allow. It seems like the twists and turns have doubled, nay trebled, in number. I walk with a guy who is going down and we discuss the tortuous path. He says, "I think that this is what Hell must be like: walking down these switchbacks for eternity (which is what it feels like)." I say, "I think you're probably right about that."
1:00-2:10 - I see the horrible limp on the long, lean body about a block's length ahead. God, he must be hurting. It takes no time to catch up to him. Maybe a hair over 6', short-cropped black hair crowning a lean, hungry face, I see that this hombre is hurtin' for certain.
"I got some Tylenol," I say.
"No thanks, I don't need anything that thins my blood. I think it's pretty thin from the hike and the elevation."
I don’t know what he means by that, but carry on.
"You're talking about aspirin. This won't do anything to your blood, but it'll do a lot for the pain."
"No, I'm ok."
"Man, I'm telling you this stuff does wonders for these special moments. We've been hiking for what...a year now?"
"More like two," he replies. " Ok, I'll eat 'em up when I make it to that lake." "That shouldn't take longer than an hour."
We both chuckle because, although the lake is close, this tall drink of water is working so hard, hurting so bad, limping so painfully, it could take him an hour to get to that lake.
I hit it after another twenty minutes, feeling my own brand of soreness. In the distance, I see the road that leads to the end of the long walk. It's encouraging, but oh-so-far-away.
The last hour is a struggle mentally. I think, "Did I really hike upwards this far?" because the way down seems to go on and on and on and on.
3:20 - I make it to the portal entrance and think that I walked as far as I have ever walked in a day. Thank God I am done, I think.
3:35 - Amazingly, the tall man with the black beard and lean face arrives at the portal, walking far less painfully. He says, "Wow, those Tylenols really worked a number on me. I actually feel pretty good. Thanks.”
Then we talk about the hike, and our conquest of the aloof stone giant, with Ryan and Kim, while relaxing to a well-deserved beer. For them, it is many beers.
And that is the end.
Mount Whitney: The Truth Tale- The long walk of 11.5 miles up is anxiety-filled, but not so difficult as I had anticipated, although falling behind Ryan and Kim is a blow to my ego (in AHOTE http://www.meetup.com/AHOTE-Hiking/, ego and complete destruction of the opponent (everyone else who is hiking the same trail) is our all-encompassing goal). I could have moved much faster, but the 190 bpm rhythm - booming in my ears and chest like a war drum, although I am not breathing too hard - is what slows me down. I have no intentions of having a heart attack. Perhaps the hardest part is dealing with the cold at the top. I am miserable from it. It cuts through me like a dagger. It renders me less elated when I reach the barren, barely visited summit. The elevation doesn't seem to affect me in any discernible way. Eleven and one half miles knocked out and I still feel reasonably good. Especially since we are going for time, which means that we rarely stop to smell the roses and even less to let our bodies catch up to our pace. This is the essence of competitive hiking: go as fast as you can and make sure that no one, no one no matter their age, passes you. If this means working the body beyond its limits and all sanity, so be it. It is a mind game. If your mind is strong, then the pain can be attenuated such that you become a machine of flesh - a cyborg - but a cyborg that feels pain like all other living things. How we deal with pain is what separates us. Going ever up, breathing sometimes to the point of rasping, completely annihilating the "competition." I have made a living of this and am pretty good, especially considering my half century on this earth.
The long walk down is what strikes fear into me.
The switchbacks on the east side go from 99 to 399. What the guy said was true: "If there is a hell, this must be what it is like: walking down switchbacks in the beating sun for eternity." I ponder this kind of hell and hope that there is no such thing. We move left, then right, then left, then right, ad infinitum, until it seems that there is no end, only more switchbacks. I think to myself, "Is this really worth it?" The answer at the time is an unequivocal NO. This is hateful. And my feet have only begun to hurt. I still have a good five miles that will feel like fifteen. How can it be that mountain trails are always longer on the way down than the way up? I know by logic and math that it has to be the same distance, but the descent is so much longer, so many more steps. Can the same trail be longer one way than the other? It sounds like one of those logic puzzles I give to my students on Fridays. I think the answer must be yes. I surely did not go this long on the way up - I can't have - nor do I remember so many parts of the trail that are now being exposed. Was there a shortcut that I missed? A wormhole? Yes, there had to be. Because I did not go this way. Period. My students would have had a more astute answer.
I walk on, heedless of everything but the path, wanting only to get to the place where I began so many hours (days? months? years?) ago. The end is in sight, but like a cancer patient the end being in sight does not mean it will be quick or easy. It will be neither. I walk on legs weary and feet raw and sore, saying "hi," howdy," hello," and innumerable variations of that theme to everyone I see (though everything is a haze of tired memories). My bowels are rumbling like a magma chamber ready to blow and I consider sidling behind a rock and releasing the torrent. We have been given orange "carry-out bags" specifically for these situations, but I really don't want to shit into the prescribed bag, and shitting in nature is a $5,000 fine. There have been too many before who have soiled up the trail, but I think about it to the point of actually looking for a hidden site to relieve the pressure. Alas, nothing seems safe enough. So I soldier on, my dogs barking, my bowels screaming.
And that is how I finish the last forty five minutes of the hike. When I limp back through the Portal entrance/exit, I spot the bathroom and celebrate my twenty three miles of toil with fifteen minutes of Vesuvius-like eruptions. I have punished myself for 10.5 hours and my body is in complete revolt. My bowels perform a coup d'etat, taking complete control of me. Shitting myself out is miserable ecstasy, but I am at the mercy of my plumbing system.
All that night, attempting to get some rest in my tent at base camp, I lie awake battling with my bowels for control. It's no contest; my sleep is a constant of waking up and running to the bathroom, then spending fifteen minutes in it before returning to the tent for another go-round.
This will go on for another thirty hours or so before my intestines relent.
Welcome to Mt. Whitney. Enjoy your hike. But enjoy the scenery, too.
Day 5 - June 26, 2013: Through the Wormhole
On the road, rumbling up US 395 N I got to thinking about how fast the days are moving and that June will soon become July and July August, and I thought about how when I was a kid things were different - so unalike that it seems I somehow stepped into a different time/space continuum.
I know that summers were closer to three months (and maybe a little longer) when I was still learning to write a legible version of my name (I still can't do it in cursive, but alas cursive is disappearing just like shorthand did about a quarter century ago and like regular print will - sooner probably than you and I can guess), but the nine weeks that I get as a teacher are no small wonder. Yet they are as different in feeling as fire and water.
Years ago, in Scottsbluff, NE, Casey Connally, David Heitman, and I would bike around town, then to the Badlands, where we hid food in kid-versions of luxuriousness - caves in the sandstone carved by wind and water and luck. We would always come back to eat those beans-and-weenies lunches with our dusty spoons, forks and knives. It made us true pioneers, roughing it as we crossed four miles of the Great Plains on our metal horses.
The public pool was another fixture of those interminable days: great for cooling down and for throwing assorted items in while no one was looking (rocks were a favorite). I was far too shy to talk to the pretty girls, furtively looking when their backs were turned.
We stayed at Casey's one night, although he lived a hardscrabble life and his dirty white house with broken windows was a reflection of it - Dave's the next and then mine. The next weekend, we'd do it again. We had it all figured out. Three very cool kids.
However ineluctable the coming of the next school years was, it was always light years away. The days became a countdown and deep inside I thought, pleaded , "Please let the summer end, God. I'm ready to go back to school. Don't tell anyone I said that."
But the wait went on and on and on until the day I was awoken by my mom, saying, "Get up. It's time to get ready for school!" Somewhere in that time span we did the ritual clothes and school supplies shopping in preparation for the next grade and a chance for me to see Suzy Harrach. I still remember walking home with her at times, so in love with those golden-blonde locks, but always keeping a safe distance from her radiant beauty.
That was thirty seven years ago, long before I discovered the wormhole that took me to an alternate universe where everything was the same except for time.
I think I made that step into the new world at about age twenty-two, when things began to speed up. I could watch a clock and not notice the minute hand moving any faster than when I was a kid. But somehow the hours moved by more rapidly, the days even faster and the years like months.
The wormhole I stepped through in my early twenties had another dimension to it that I could not have foreseen. Time was not only accelerated, it was also accelerating at an accelerating pace. By my mid-thirties, the wormhole had sped time to a point that a year was equivalent to six months in my old life. Approaching fifty, time was a runaway train, an avalanche of white coming down a steep alpine crest. I try my best to stop it, but it is loath to listen; it has a mind of its own, or perhaps it has no mind but to go faster and faster until its constructs shatter into quadrillions of tiny moments.
Now that I am in the wormhole and can't find my way home, what will happen if I live to old age? Will time move so fast that I will not be able to remember what happened a few days ago, because, really those forty some hours are closer to six months, perhaps a year? Will I be able to remember what I did that morning? Will I be able to remember the memories of my youth? Or maybe it never happened. Maybe that was another person whose memories were co-opted to me for safekeeping.
It is all very confusing that I should have slipped into a different dimension without consent, unable to return to a time when time was fair and linear.
So I drive on through the day, pondering the wormhole.
I have never seen Suzy Harrach since I left Nebraska. A pity.
I have a teacher friend at Mile High, Lisa H, who used to live and teach in Mammoth Lakes with her family. I have heard just enough about the area from her to be intrigued. Plus, I need to remove the camp and hike stink from my body. I stop at the local Tourist Information building and get directions to "the most remote lake in the Mammoth chain." It takes roughly fifteen minutes - which would have been about four hours in my youth - to arrive at Horseshoe Lake, elevation 9,000'. At 45 degrees, the water is a blessing on my skin. The camping and the long walk to the top of Mt. Whitney have worn me out and this feels like a reawakening. God, it feels good. I wash my hair and frolic in the rush of cold. It is feels great to be clean and refreshed. The seven or so people dotting the perimeter of Horseshoe take no notice of me. Most are busy throwing balls into the cold waters and watching their dogs happily return them. I stay in the water until my body begins to seize up from the cold. After warming up in the high mountain sun, admiring the spartan beauty of a lake that is so high that the trees around it are sparse, some taken by a recent fire, I am almost back on the road. But before I leave Mammoth, I stop at a coffee shop where a guy in jeans, a t-shirt, a sprinkling of tattoos and a friendly smile is watering the surrounding grounds. I ask where a good place to pull over to the side of the road and sleep under the stars might be. He suggests going north another 20 or so miles and finding "the cinder cone where no one visits."
"Sounds like a good choice," I respond. He smiles inwardly and continues watering flowers.
When I see the cinder cone I keep going; it's too early and I want to get some miles out of the way. Another twenty minutes down the highway and Mono Lake looms on the horizon, eerily. Mono is a lake very unique in the USA. Landlocked and with no outlet accept for evaporation, the salt concentration continues to increases to a degree that it's now twice that of the oceans and has an alkalinity of 10. An inhospitable environment. it’s our Dead Sea.
But life is very adaptable. Billions of brine shrimp have made this desert oasis their home and thrive in the salty environs. Which brings a menagerie of hungry birds who feed on the brine shrimp. And so goes the circle of life. I swam the lake about four years ago with my partner at the time. The buoyancy was astonishing. It would be tough to drown: kind of like jumping off a tall building if there was one on our moon.
As the sun drops low in the sky, I make it to Bridgeport, CA, where I plan to camp. But in a moment of clarity, I decide I am too tired to camp another night and, instead, plunk down $84 for a night at the Silver Maple Inn http://www.silvermapleinn.com/index.php, which turns out to be the right choice despite my tight budget. The courtyard is homey and beautiful, the room comfortable and inviting. It feels like a place that I should share with someone, but that is not part of the plan.
After enjoying a Bridgeport evening, I lay my head on the pillow in room #19 and fall into fitful dreams.
Days 6-7 - June 27-28: The Beauty of the Road
I wake up after another fitful sleep, one filled with strange dreams and dreadful nightmares (I wish I could remember them; they would probably be entertaining now). All the same, I am glad to have taken the motel. I did a couch search for Ashland, OR, on couchsurfing.com at my little abode the night before and awake to a text from a Margaret M. She would be happy to host me. Ironically, Margaret's profile seemed the coolest of the group of couch surfers that I wrote (although a 70-year-old gentlemen going by the handle "Boz" seemed interesting in his own right), so I smile at my good fortune. It will not be an early start as I am still catching up on news and other Web events and simply enjoying the luxury of a bed, electrical outlets and a roof that does not allow the sun to beat on me. My eyes are bloodshot and I am slow to move around, but eager to see the country and, moreover, visit Ashland, OR, a place that has been on my mind for somewhere near ten years now. I get the little coffee maker rocking, and eventually so am I.
Ashland here I come!
I first heard about Ashland when I was asking people who travel a lot to describe a super-cool town in the good old US of A with a population between 20,000 and 100k , has four seasons but not too much of any, pays teachers a living wage (ha ha ha ha, Arizona - you lovers of low taxes and even lower educational outcomes for your children), is more progressive than Prescott and has lakes and rivers/streams. The consensus was a town just north of the California-Oregon border. And that's how I developed a love for a town I had never visited, never even seen.
I finally turn the ignition switch at about 10:30, the car sparks to life and I start north.
It's almost noon when I slip into Nevada. In Carson City, right in front of the State Senate Building, I clock 1,000 miles. I am in a rush to get to Oregon, so I sadly forgo my planned visit to Lake Tahoe and continue on the 395 N, remembering time moves faster now. And just as quick as I enter Nevada, I exit. Oh well, I get to see its sparse beauty when I cross west to east, on the way to Salt Lake City in only a few days and nights.
The drive is uneventful but abundant in natural wonders. It is, in its own way, sublime, and the fatigue has slipped from my body, replaced by the joy of driving on roads with trees hugging tightly, giving shade and a respite from the heat. As I get closer to Oregon, I begin to take second and third looks at the towns and villages, perchance finding that just right burg that I could call home.
Soon after seeing white-capped, slowly rising Mount Shasta for the first time and passing the Weed, CA, exit - I had a student from Weed when I taught at Embry-Riddle and we used to laugh about how appropriate the name was (sadly, his name has slipped into the dark recesses of my memories) - I enter Oregon, which sends a chill through me. I have waited for this moment for a long, long while. And as quickly, I see the Ashland exit and take a right.
Ashland, coming off of the 5 will not overwhelm you, at least it doesn't me. It seems a little pinched, small and, for those first few miles, a bit too much like Prescott . I can't say why certain towns attract me, just like Prescott did when I was still in my teens, but there is a feeling that is not unlike the feeling you get when you give that first kiss to the girl and butterflies fill your stomach and endorphin rushes through your body like a river. It's chemistry.
You need to have chemistry with a town. I was scared that that first kiss might be all I wanted. Still, I drove on, not losing all hope.
Prescott, AZ, by the way, is a folksy, southwestern desert weigh station replete with innumerable souvenir shops, antiques stores by the bushel-basket and salt of the earth folk whose priorities are 1) The Second Amendment 2) Upholding their quaint version of the Second Amendment 3) Firearms, and lots of them - preferably an arsenal 4) Making sure not to be taxed by the evil government while also making sure that they have theirs. It's the perfect perch for grouchy snow birds who don't want to fund education, roads, etc., but want to complain vociferously and endlessly about the decrepitude of the aforementioned. It is an anachronism in an anachronistic state.
I drive into town central and a young blonde with tattoos adorning her arms looks my way out of the window of her old, fading Hyundai. I ask her how to get to 3rd Street and her directions are impeccable, so too her glowing smile. In about three minutes, I am in front of Margaret and Mark's house. The door is open so I don't knock so much as walk in while introducing myself. What a great house, I think, old but with enough remodeling to make it open, airy and warm - a quality that can be felt more than seen. The kids, K and S (I'll keep the kids name private), are equally welcoming - this is not their first time. Margaret gives me a quick tour and then says, "You'll be staying in The Cottage, though." My mind whirls when I hear the word "cottage." It conjures up numerous things in my mind’s eye, all of them good. I wonder where this cottage is.
Out the back door there is a blue and white second home that fits snugly on top of the little hill. Margaret shows me the place and all I can say is "Wow," "Unbelievable," "Oh my gosh," and multitude assorted superlatives. This place is a vacation rental that probably goes for $200/night and looks to be worth every cent of it. It's got everything a just-married couple could want - no less a couch surfer - including a full kitchen, incredible views, a fantastic deck, a bed that could hold about six people comfortably and a big screen that measures the size of an average bed, wifi and laying chickens that assure that you can have a truly fresh omelet along with the great views every morning. It is astonishingly beautiful and reminds me in general design so much of my house in Prescott that it's like a home away from home, albeit a more perfect version. And I don't have chickens.
For the balance of Thursday, all of Friday and into Saturday I am immersed in great conversation with Margaret - Mark being at a martial arts training - and her immense group of friends. On Friday, there's a party for budding violinists of all ages, but mostly kids, and a fiddle-off to end the evening's musical festivities. The kids are really into it and K takes time from her precious reading (the kid is a book lover nonpareil) to launch into a solo. It's all very sweet and the innocence of it brings me to my own youth, in the '60s. I never picked up a violin at that age, but did have that complete innocence that is the hallmark of the kids jamming on their little instruments, each tucked tightly between shoulder and chin/cheek.
To have a perfect place to lay my head (although this should be shared with a partner, which is the first thing I thought upon seeing it), an outstanding host and a town that I have longed all those many years to visit is proof that sometimes things are paid forward.
As for Ashland: It exceeds all expectations. It is the girl that you kiss and get chills running down your spine like electric spikes. You can't but ask for another and another and another.
And Lithia Park is a diamond among a thousand rubies in this hamlet. Wow!
I want to move here and shun Prescottonians who hate taxes and kids (in no particular order), as they vote down anything that might remotely help any but themselves. The selfishness, which they like to think of as modern-day Ayn Randism, is so onerous and ugly that it makes me blush. For God’s sake, this world is not just about YOU! Most of the elderly, and many of the younger adults, are so averse to giving to anything but their families. It is a a gross distortion of conservative values.
Sometime that night, I hear that nineteen hotshots were incinerated, fighting a fire forty mile from my home. The Granite Mountain Hotshots were a volunteer group whose penultimate act, working like men possessed to put out a conflagration in the Yarnell Hills, were chased down by the flames they were fighting when monsoonal winds changed course and stoked the flames toward them. These guys ran as fast as a human can to escape the rushing heat and death, but it moved more quickly than a human can ever hope. It is a sobering reminder of the capriciousness of nature and mortality. Perhaps their final thoughts were of their families and of the good they were doing. I want to think that, at least.
Day 8 - June 29: Miles of No One
Margaret and family are kind enough (there's enough kindness in the family to start an orphanage) to prepare a meal of fresh fruits, vegetables and grilled chicken before I depart. The preparation takes a bit more time than anticipated, so I bid adieu to Margaret, Mark, K and S at about 2pm. It is not an early start, but I am eager to explore southernmost Oregon, motoring east on the 140E.
There is a 1.5 hour jaunt between Ashland and Klamath Falls that ascends and later falls, creating a negative parabolic curve, lakes and streams gracing the squeezed-tight thruway. If I was 20 again, this would be a highway I would take 25 mph too fast, screaming around the curves and feeling the butterflies in my stomach as the road dropped from under my feet, pulling serious negative gs.
At Klamath Falls I fuel up and have an even more infrequent occurrence, cell service. Virgin Mobile Sprint is a great little company that charges an incredibly low rate (curse you for your innumerable broken promises, Verizon!) and gives great coverage.*
Then, like so many times on this trip, five miles out of Klamath, the cell reads "SEARCHING." I" should have made those calls while I had a chance," I think as the world streaks by my windows at 72mph.
Oregon shows herself in streaks of lush, green grass, streams, villages and forgotten barns that seem to be held up by willpower. As the sun begins to drop low in the western sky, I cross into Nevada, a place that is renown for its nothingness.
It is more dazzling than I had been led to expect, but I think there are many among us not pleased unless trees are as abundant as Wall Drug billboards on South Dakota's I-90 (there's a Corn Palace just down the road a patch - it should be in Nebraska, no doubt).
When the suns sinks below the horizon I begin to realize that I have not seen another vehicle for about forty minutes.
Fifty minutes.
One hour.
Seventy minutes.
And somewhere near an hour and twenty minutes, just as I pull my car to the side of the road to admire a conference of clouds scudding across the evening sky in strafes of orange and blue - and how beautiful the are - I opt to use this sublime moment to relieve my urging. in truest male form, I use the centerline as a target (ah, to be a guy). This is when the headlights of a vehicle appear in the faraway east and the streak of aloneness is broken, although the lights are still so very far away. Then the last shreds of light are ripped from the sky. Before they bid farewell to the day, they paint the clouds gorgeous new flavors of oranges and purples. I stop to take some photos of this masterpiece on the sky's immense canvas.
I hit Winnemucca, a town that looks like it got in a fight and lost badly, in full dark and, before entering the I-80 corridor hear the Eagles singing Peaceful, Easy Feelin' from a roadside watering station that looks like it got taken to the woodshed like the rest of this town. I giggle, half from being giddy with fatigue, at this threadbare scrapper of a town, then shoot east on I-80. on the way out, my phone lights up like a pinball machine. The little vibration device is getting a workout as the texts and phone calls emerge from the maelstrom of nothingness. I smile a little at the phone’s dogged determination to do all it can in the grips of Virgin Mobile coverage. I still love you, Virgin, if only for not being the insidious monolith that is Verizon.
Soon after Winnemucca, I hit 2k on the odometer. Wow, I've put on 2,000 miles.
I dated a woman named Yvonne once, and she turned me on to Coldplay despite my resistance to embrace any song or artist that was not composing and performing from about the time John F Kennedy took his last breath through the moment when Robert's life was viciously stolen. Robert would have been a great president, by the way. It started with the album "Rush of Blood to the Head," and, more precisely, "Clocks" and my love for their music grew like cumulous cloud over a hot plains' day. Coldplay covers a song, "2,000 Miles" that was originally a Pretenders mini-hit. I think of Coldplay and Yvonne and a million other things as I watch the trip odometer reset to zero for a second time.
At mile marker 276, The Palisades turnoff, I follow my advice and decide to find a level field where I can try to REM at least a few hours before awaking to a hostile morning sun. I am to the point where driving isn't a safe proposition, so I take a right, another right, then another, and, being far from anything but sharp, mean-spirited weeds, I lay down the sleeping bag on hard pack that is nowhere near to level, but the only area I can find that is close to being "sleepable" and close my eyes.
Day 9 - June 30, 2013: The Land of Zion
I awaken to the early morning light far more tired than when I last looked up to the sea of black four and a half hours earlier. I want to close my eyes and feel the darkness again, but the darkness is skulking away, shooed by the fierce streaks of light and a glow in the East. My eyes feel as dry and gritty as the beige landscape that I have awoken to. I rub them fiercely. I get nothing in return but an even hazier version of the morning. The Palisades exit is redolent of ugly weeds and faded green hills. It is something that can best be appreciated by a rancher.
Today the drive will be much shorter. I can put myself into mental cruise control and let the Utah desert run underneath me for enough time to make the Utah capital. It won't be the easiest drive, but it's only four or so hours until I come to the place where a band of angry, paranoid Mormons slaughtered a long line of surprised pioneers trying to make their way to the West in the mid-1800s. The pioneers never saw California - and probably spent their own time shooting at surprised “Indians,” perhaps killing a few, on the way.
The Mormons, tortured and harassed from the East Coast all the way across the continent, found a nice home for the deceased (read killed) pioneers' horses and goods, though. You could say they were reapproriated by Brigham Young.
Life is a circle, I suppose; the pioneers were the ugliest kind of guests while crossing Indian country, killing with rifle, but more often disease. Smallpox was a particularly virulent killer, so the Europeans embraced it, even saying that this was God’s revenge on the red-skinned man. Afterward, they went on a separate killing spree and brought herds of bison, numbering in the millions, to perhaps a thousand. If you can’t kill the savages, kill their food source. It was a seige mentality - and it worked. By 1890, all but a few pockets of weak resistance remained, and they in inhospitable territory, such as Arizona.
Reservations don't have anything to do with hotels to the Lakota, Pawnee, Hopi, Apache, Nez Perce and hundreds of other once autonomous nations. The worst lands that could be found on the lower 48 are where the White men relocated the “savages.”
And the Mormons? They're still busy segregating, especially since their special Angel, Moroni, told them that dark-skinned people were evil incarnate (they changed that little part of their dogma in the early 1970s in order to attenuate the backlash, but old dogma dies hard). Try to get a job in a Mormon-run business in Salt Lake and you, too, my middle-aged white friend, can find what it is like to be Black, Native American, or any of a hundred groups of minorities who have faced odious prejudice.
It would be funny if it happened that truth wasn’t stranger than fiction.
I think I can pull off Salt Lake. Hey, it's five in the morning - I can almost walk to Salt Lake by nightfall. After Mt. Whitney, I'll take a pass on long walks - at least for awhile.
The miles wile by and soon I am in the Salt Lake basin, where the ground looks like it just received a fresh dusting of snow. It is not pretty country, perhaps the ugliest I have seen on the trip. However, this is the first time I am privy to salt layers that coat the ground like the mats of short grass in Western Nebraska. I pull off and walk to the salt crust. It is a bit like ice; it even gives when you step on it, but underneath is a thick mud. Crunch, crunch, crunch, as I step, then alight on this otherworldly surface and breath in the hot air that is only beginning to feel like the breath of a dragon. I take a seat on the alien landscape and lay my camera so that it will take a picture of me in this white inhospitabilty. The air rises in shimmers and the mountains behind look like they might be the mirage of man dying of thirst...and loneliness.
I have a close friend, Peggy, whom I used to date, and I am going to her parent’s house to rendezvous with her and her wonderful nine-year-old singing/performing machine of a daughter, A. A. thinks I am deep in the heart of the Midwest with my family, but that part of my trip is still to come, and this is a surprise that I have planned for awhile. I have received a couple of voicemails from A, her pulling off a hilarious hick farmer’s accent as she wishes me well. “Yo Ran, I hope you are ok. Tell the cows that I said hi...” I recount these in my mind and each time I giggle. That kid is a hoot. And fun to be around. She breaks into dance and song often when I stop over, and, unlike me, she has rhythm and tone. God endowed me with neither.
Entering Salt Lake will not fill you with awe, rolling west on the 80. It looks like one of a hundred cities that could use some tender loving care, and a bath. It looks like a fixer-upper. But Peggy’s parent’s home is just a few miles from that last rusty pole.
Upon arriving, I gingerly get out of the car and loosen my knotted joints. I can feel last night in those knots, the lack of sleep aiding in my tightness. A pop in my left knee and a creak in my right tell me that it’s a good thing this day was not scheduled - what little schedule I have - for driving. Instead, I get to meet the family that was critical in helping Peggy to be who she is.
I rap on the door and I see A., looking puzzled at the image she stares at through the sliver of glass that separates the heat from blessed air conditioning. A. comes to the door and says, "But I thought you were in Nebraska…" I want to be clever, but merely say "Surprise."
I am escorted to the kitchen by Peggy and a surprised A., where a lot of the family is sitting down to food and talk. Introductions are made and I sputter out some small talk while gobbling down some eggs, but my mind feels like a cotton ball, barely held together. Thankfully, Peggy shows me to a room where, after a quick shower, I fall into a dreamless sleep.
It is still light when I awake, but some of Peggy's family have left and the house is more peaceful. I think of the old days (which were really only ten years ago, although, in this case, time has stretched out like putty), when a family get-together at my parent's house could mean more than thirty people, most of them kids. Most of them yelling. Many of them crying. Always a crazy quilt of humanity, mostly under 12. Everything is relative.
Peggy's mother, Tita, is sweeter than I like my coffee, and her father, a small, well-built man, is determination combined with acute intelligence. They make a nice couple: yin and yang. My parents are the same but different. Mom is the rock and dad is the sweet, funny guy, loved by all. They've been doing this act for sixty three years now, so it's working.
We wrap up the night with Peggy and I visiting the city of Salt Lake. It's beautiful.
Driving towards it as day resolves to dusk, there is no way not to be impressed with the architecture and the manner in which the mountains frame the city in relief. The cityscape is one of the more impressive in the US, especially when late afternoon gives way to dusk. The incandescent charm is amplified by the mountainous backdrop, like the twinkle of stars on a moonless night.
But we visit the twin towers of power: The Cathedral of Madeleine and the Salt Lake Temple.
These stone collosals lay nearly within a stone's throw of one another. And I'm sure that the Catholics and the Mormons therein wouldn't mind heaving a few well-aimed igneous projectiles at each other's monument to their respective Gods. Peggy even tells me that the golden angel, Moroni, delicately sitting atop the Mormon temple is frequently shot by angry non-believers who like to vent rage with their firearms. Moroni gets cleaned and the bullet holes filled probably more than we like to think. Oh, the things we do in the name of religion.
Peggy is kind enough to give me a tour of both places of worship, and I find that I am partial to the Gothic style that adorns the Catholic church over the modern architectural trappings of the Mormon Temple. They are both huge, although the Salt Lake Temple is a neo-Vatican City of the Mormon religion and dwarfs all other buildings.
We end the night with a visit to the University of Utah, home of the Utes. Peggy went to school here and we visit, or at least drive by, some of her favorite haunts. It's an attractive campus, not unlike the city it resides in. It would have been a blast to attend school there.
I'm sure Peggy had a good time.
Day 10 - July 1, 2013: On the Way to Yellowstone
After a big breakfast (thanks to Peggy's parents), Peggy, A. and I begin the route that will take us to Yellowstone. A. had really wanted to go, and I can't get enough of the sights and especially the smells of one of nature's most curious creations. If you didn't know if was real, you would be convinced it was not. Mud volcanoes that wreak of sulfur are starters. Jetting plumes of steaming water rising tens of meters into the thin air are yet another taste of this geologic anomaly.
But first we have to get there.
I've often heard how boring it is to drive across Kansas or Nebraska, but HWY 15N, through Ogden, Brigham City, Pocatello and Idaho Springs is surely no prettier. I think it pales in comparison to Nebraska, but I may be a wee bit biased.
We stop for lunch at a Taco Time and find that the food at this particular roadside establishment is as unappetizing as the road itself. We eat listlessly, me watching to see if A. might do something that will provoke gusts of laughter. Apparently she's as unimpressed as I am. The salsa tastes like tomato paste and the tacos are no great shakes. This Taco Town should be unincorporated.
Highway 20, heading to Yellowstone, West Entrance adds a little more flavor. It's not shockingly beautiful, but it is a big upgrade. And just like in AZ, there are dead trees everywhere. I wonder if the bark beetle has made it this far north or if these are the effects of a prolonged drought.
It wasn't so long ago that we would have called this global warming, but that's been downgraded to climate change. Apparently the words "climate change" are not as politically charged as global warming (gesundheit!), and there is not 100% certitude that the aforementioned phenomenon is actually occurring. Climate deniers don't need to believe in global warming or climate change when a full 3% of "scientists," shills hired by BP and Exxon, tell them it's a liberal hoax. Fox News parrots these talking points, even as Antarctica, or at least its icy shell, melts into the deep blue. Those fires in AZ and CA are all part of a liberal elite plot to get you to believe. It's all a scam; Glenn Beck could use his chalk board to explain just how hoaxed you've been.
For some people, science is only good when it fits into a neatly orchestrated narrative. The rest can be conveniently discarded. I wonder sometimes if these are the same people who still believe the Earth to be as flat as northern Ohio, and who would have happily tied a noose for Galileo Galilee when he apologetically proclaimed that the Earth orbits about the Sun, not the other way around. Galileo was imprisoned for his heresy.
But he was right. I think climate deniers need to take a page from Pascal and make his famous wager. This would surely slot nicely into one of the five stages of grief:
The five stages are:
- denial
- anger
- bargaining
- depression
- acceptance
Thank you, Wikipedia!
The Yellowstone West Entrance rangers greet us at about five in the afternoon. We have some time to explore and, if we're lucky, find a tent site for the night. This is just enough for me to be charged by an irritated bison - thank you dumpster for being in the way - listen to a wee Scottish lad reply, "But Mr. Ranger that's not true." to a camp host after said host had given cute kid perhaps ambiguous directions to the bathroom. Funny, but that six-word plea, rendered in thick Scottish brogue sticks with us the rest of the trip, everyone trying to replicate it better than the two other people in the car. Our last discovery is that Yellowstone is very busy at this time of year and finding a tenting site is out of the question. With night threatening, we turn the car around and leave the park, hoping to find someplace, any place, where we can stake a claim and not be evicted. Outside the park, the ebb and flow of tourists diminishes exponentially and we quickly find a great little sight, replete with a river and a lake. Before the sun does its disappearing act, we are able to enjoy both. How beautiful the sun sinks below the horizon in Montana. It is big sky country.
With the sun still hours from rising, and me assuming the position and the temperature of a human popsicle, I ask Peggy if I can slide into her substantial sleeping bag, mine being mostly threadbare. Kindly, she acquiesces and for the first time of the night I am warm. How nice it is to feel warm and comfortable. I remember going to church on bitter Sundays (this in a different time and place) and leaving just short of miserable, praying not for forgiveness, but for life-giving warmth.
Nothing beats a restful sleep - nothing.
Day 11- July 2, 2013: A Boy's Dream
Biting cold air greets our collective awakening. It's the stuff that makes the breaking down of a campsite move along quickly. Plus, for at least one in our party, this day will be the first when herds of bison will greet her young eyes. I remember going to Yellowstone when I was a kid, and the bison herds were something that stuck with me - even at age five. My own young eyes gazing at the huge, shaggy creatures and I thought that perhaps they were the coolest animals I had ever seen - the coolest things I had ever witnessed. I loved the geysers, the mud pots and the all the rest of what makes Yellowstone one of the most unique places on Earth, but my first love was the fauna, and despite the majesty of the Grizzly Bear, my favorite among the biological giants was the bison. And that hasn't changed.
Yellowstone is named for the river that creases through it. The origin of the name is lost to history, but clearly it was named for certain regions, including the great falls, where rock and sand adorn the banks of the river in a peculiar shade of yellow. Some claim it was named by the Minnetaree, others say the Crow or possibly another tribe. None of the lore matters now; it is Yellowstone and that it will remain. Until the next mega-catastrophe. This is where Yellowstone gets interesting.
There are geologic hotspots which dot the Earth from North to South and East to West. However, on the North American continent lies one which is greater and far more deadly than any other in our world. It is the proverbial big boy on the Earth’s block. Were it to blow its top, the question of climate change would come to a resounding close. The bigger question would be whether humanity could survive long enough for the ash to be washed from the atmosphere. My guess is that our species would find a way to survive; we are nothing if not tenacious and resilient. We are a larger version of the cockroach. Although not able to withstand the microwave oven and manifold other forms of “sustainability testing” which we have done to these dirty little survivors, humanity is wise and cunning, notwithstanding our desire for endless warfare, especially in the Middle East. Somehow we would make it; I really believe this. Ironically, it might be the survivalists - the very same group whose bunker mentality often derives from surviving the End of Days (I’m not sure what they’re thinking in that respect) and who can never stock their underground cement- veneered hidey-holes with enough cans of peaches and bags of dry goods - who would live to repopulate the Earth. Darwinianism would take a big hit.
But on this July 2nd day, Yellowstone rests peacefully, bathed in the summer sun. Humans circulate around the park in their motorized, glass-encased zoos as the wildlife, especially the bison, peer into the tiny windows to watch the mostly-hairless animals in their funny moving cages. We are the exhibit, although some of us have not realized this quite yet.
Unlike me, A is not particularly impressed by any of the megafauna, which were wonders to my young eyes, nor is she overwhelmed by the geysers, mud pots, and other unique geological oddities. As much as I love this little kid, and spend time comparing my young life to hers (both including giant imaginations), we are two different animals. I think, perhaps it’s only a boy who can truly appreciate Yellowstone’s wonders to their fullness. Here is one of the closest places on Earth to the age of dinosaurs - and what boy doesn’t have a soft spot in his heart for the t-rex, diplodocus, and the stegosaurus?
All is wild, including the very landscape; man is the intruder. Here, large animals abound in numbers uncountable. Here is a boy’s field of dreams.
I try hard not to feel disappointment that A cannot share my long-ago experience and fall head-first into another time, another place. I was walking into the prehistoric some forty years ago, my mind whirring in the imagery, smells and preternatural feeling of the place. It was, for a younger me, the ultimate safari, the ultimate escape. I was at once in prehistoric times and at a national park.
But time marches on.
This is our last full day at Yellowstone. Peggy and A have probably seen enough, geysers, mud pots, waterfalls and animal-caused traffic jams to last until A graduates college, but we soldier on, visiting as many sites as can be fit into a day. The heat is almost stifling for a place that is often visited by snow in midsummer. But for me it still holds all the wonder that my mind's eye captured so many years ago. I like to think of the the northwest corner of Wyoming as my field of dreams. I loved dinosaurs as a child and this is the closest I will probably ever come to visiting the Mesozoic Era - except in my dreams. It's the most beautiful anachronism I may ever visit, have ever visited. And I am so glad to be lost in the past while moving in the present. Dinosaurs no longer roam the earth, but they roam the vaults of my mind. I am happy that they have never left.
The three of us get caught in a huge traffic jam as we head back to our cabin. Timing is everything in Yellowstone, and beware the uninitiated. Sunset is a time when wildlife is at its peak activity. The tourists know it. And they line the roads, hoping catch a glimpse of a grizzly, a moose, even a wolf, some of the more elusive park residents. On this night, we don't hit the trifecta because the moose and wolf remain absent, but a faraway grizzly is still a sight. Everyone agrees. The traffic moves like a sluggish organism, a caterpillar perhaps. Fifteen minutes to the cabin become seventy-five.
That evening, we get a little cabin by Yellowstone Lake. We walked around in the cool night air before saying our good nights.
Sleep comes quickly.
Day 11 - July 3, 2013:
I think about visiting Yellowstone as a child. Five of the eight kids went on the trip, the youngest of the children sharing the back of the old, sputtering Ford station wagon, decked out in a horrible shade of yesteryear. Gas was always pumped by an attendant, the windows washed and wiped and the oil checked, half-quart usually added. These were times when cars were infinitely more rare, so too people. Yet there was always a surfeit of steaming radiators, blown tires, dropped exhaust systems and other car malfunctions littering the side of the road. If the hood was up, the driver was signaling that the vehicle was not operating. And without cell phones, people more often pulled over to lend a helping hand. Fear was not all-consuming, but then Walter Cronkite was not peddling it like a conman, like the CNN/MSNBC/Fox dread purveyors. Most people worked together for the cause of others (whose car and engine were not working together), casting aside the sad and omnipresent pall of fear that threatens to unravel our society today, a fear for which there is so little substantiation. There was a time, not so long ago, when fear was a kid in his dark room, staring at the barely-open closet door. What would come forth from that dread door? Werewolves, vampires, ogres and assorted monsters were the fear du jour. And falling asleep was a danger because then the monster in the closet would sneak out of his lair and towards your sleeping body. Sleep always won, and the monster was never the one in the closet, but occasionally something far more terrifying - one that always came in human form. There was a time not so long ago when fear was mostly confined to pre-pubescence. Of course, race relations were horrible and the Cold War always loomed liked an endless winter. But fear was not a dominant, prevailing emotion.
The back seats of our wagon were put down for the trip, something inconceivable in today's safety-neurotic world. That modified back seat was an imagination factory. We would wile the hours away thinking of the next game to play. We sat in the back "Indian style," in careless little circles, caution thrown to the wind. Seat belts were never a consideration; we simply lived our lives in an early-1970s carefree style. Forget about seatbelt laws, those were decades away and the last thing on our collective mind. We were dreaming our kid dreams. We counted down license plates until we had every state in the union (Hawaii was never an easy get), played every imaginable variation of slug bug, put paper signs to the windows with sayings like, "Are we there yet?," "Nebraska or bust?" and manifold other phrases which entertained drivers by. And, of course, we argued. The drive was long. Yellowstone seemed like a mission to Mars. It was hundreds of thousands of miles away and a six-month drive. Yet, we always landed in our destination. And usually we had the time of our lives.
Fast forward to today.
It is dark when we find home.
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June 13, 2020: The End
Some seven years ago, I began an endeavor to write of my experiences on the road. However, often along that road are detours that take you off your intended route. And that's what happened to me.
But I want to end this story all the same. So here we go.
I made it to Glenwood, Iowa, my parents' home, a little hamlet tucked away in the loess hills of southwestern part of the state. I did not know that this would be my final visit to Glenwood to see my folks. It never really occurred to me except in the deepest, darkest recesses of my thoughts, a place I don't care to visit.
Dad had been slowly been going downhill, since he had quadruple bypass and a resulting small stroke from loose plaque floating in his bloodstream. I recall my mom calling me around that time and stating that "Your dad is starting to show signs of memory loss." She wasn't brave enough to use the "A" word diagnosis, but who among us is?
I arrived in Glenwood at about 1am. After a light knock at the door, I decided to let my parents sleep through the night and awake to my arrival. Officer Rose Ives of the Glenwood Police Department would have none of that. A neighbor had called the police department because someone - probably a vagrant - was sleeping in my parents' front yard. Officer Ives greeted my inert form with the police officer special: a brilliant flashlight in my eyes and a scowl on her face. Or maybe she was smiling, the flashlight rendered my blinded. Then, she interrogated me like I was carrying a gun and a TV. I tried to explain the situation, but Ives was not satisfied, even after producing ID. I asked her to "Get your flashlight out of my face so that I can see," to which she went from normal cop-angry to DEFCON 1. After ten minutes of asserting dominance by virtue of her position - driver's license proffered with an explanation of why I was in sleeping - Ives called my parents. I was even able to hear the phone ring in the house, which increased my level of anger. And sadness. I wanted to surprise my parents. It would have been so fun.
But power corrupts, and in Officer Rose Ives' case, power corrupts absolutely. We have learned a lot about the police mentality in the last few months following the tortured death of George Floyd. In frequent cases, it is clear that people get into policing because they have an ax to grind with society, especially Black society. I thank God I do not have that "strike" against me. I could well have ended up in the back of her car, or worse...
But I'm as white as a lily.
My parents were spectacular. They treated me like royalty. And all I had done to earn that status was be born into a family that would make the Brady Bunch blush in shame for their lack of love. Our long talks at the kitchen table, my mother usually cooking or cleaning, us three laughing and regaling in memories of yesteryear were lovely. Dad was always a social butterfly extraordinaire and the coffeehouse was his milieu. Nearly every morning of that eight days in Glenwood, Iowa, dad and I would make a sojourn to go for coffee, be it McDonalds or a local hangout. I didn't have to know anyone because my father knew everyone. And although his gait had slowed to a pained shuffle, he soldiered on on, fighting through the pain of age and long-used joints that were no longer getting the required oil. In my minds eye, I see that lovely smile, so mirthful. But I also saw the beginnings of confusion. Dad had entered a tunnel from which there was no escape, and the further he walked the darker it became. I could see that.
And when I left for Arizona after bidding a long goodbye, I cried like I had not since my wife and I became two.
I did not know that I would never again see my parents in their lovely home in Iowa again. How could I have guessed that by December they would be in an assisted living facility? How can anyone know the future?
When I visited over Christmas break, dad had stop walking and was wheelchair bound. A summer later, my mom was taking care of him as a mom does a young child.
And each subsequent visit was a reminder that life is not only short, but also brutal.
Mom helped dad to see some light as he walked deeper into the tunnel with the aid of some incredible Ghanians who had made their way across the Atlantic to find a better life - and seemingly to help my father.. Carol, she of the incredibly dark skin and incredibly brilliant smile was a balm to me, my mother and mostly my father. "Chuck, how are you doing this evening?," she would inquire with a joy that turned grey skies to blue. Dad would reply quietly, but his eyes sparkled.
I will remember that sparkle, so rare, so brilliant.
It is a sunny August morning as I teach my first hour class of fifth graders how to add decimal numerals, when I hear my phone. I go to the back of the room, see that it is my brother, and dread arises in me. "Dad died," my brother flatly states. There is more, but that's enough to knock the wind out of me. I slowly hang up and teach that hour and the next two. On my prep I call Doug back and asked if I heard him right. He responds affirmatively.
In loving Memory
Charles D. Dermer
Charles Denison Dermer was born on January 8, 1927 in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, the son of Alexander and Bertha (Ehrlich) Dermer. He graduated from high school in Scottsbluff and served in the Merchant Marines in 1945 during World War II. Charles was emplyed at Swift Packing Plant and later worked at the Glenwood State School until his retirement.
Charles was united in marriage to Deloras Elaine Sindelar on January 8, 1951 in Scottsbluff. They were blessed with eight children, Mark, Janet, Charles, Jr., Douglas, Gwen, Susan, Randy, and Karen.
Charles passed away on August 20, 2018 in Omaha, at the age of 91 years, 7 months, and 12 days...
Dad has made it through the tunnel and out the other side. I am happy for him. My mom, though, has taken his place. Her world gets darker with the passing of time.
But the love of her family will help through to the end.
