Oct 2006

Or rather they do, they’re just thin and weathered, as if the wind from the mountains inverted them. And they’re drier than we are on the coast. Proximity to the ocean changes people. The closest of us get brined. We live a rough life in the elements, drink rum, eat fish, know it’s salt that runs in our veins. Those farther away know sky and rock and feel the hum of us all in the dry thin air. We are bleached out and tanned and polished by the wind while the others, they’re freeze-dried, their colors in tact but weightless. It’s the salt you see, the mother we never had, calling to us into the crash of the waves. Stepping into the ocean is coming home. Climb a mountain, you’re ascending to the sky. Curvaceous they may be but mothers they are not. They are cold and powerful and can eat you alive. In the mountains, exposure is real in a way it could never be in marshland. 5 below and snowing still amongst the pines and birches and laurels is cold but pretty. Out here, you can freeze to death on a sunny day. There is something vast in this wilderness that feels like swimming so far out into the ocean you know if you swim any farther you won’t make it back. You see your own death. You see real defeat. You see the world as it is; so much bigger than yourself. You see your own mortality. And you see wizened folk without any lips and you think to yourself, God, I miss New York.

You turn around and realize you’re half way up a freakin mountain!

Oh, and how the hell you can ride 15 (uh, well, they’re not exactly) blocks one way and then have to ride 52 and a half to get back to where you started?!? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Go Utah!

My friend Anna has one of the best voicemail prompts ever. In it she says the usual, you missed her, leave a message, etc. Then she asks her callers to tell her something wonderful that happened to them the day of their call because it would make the her smile and maybe the caller as well. Anna is some kind of wonderful herself and, halfway through Wyoming I did a little thinking on the nature of wonderful things.

“Hey, it’s me, I’m in Wyoming, as in ‘No, really, why- oming?’ It’s snowing like you would not believe and here I am in the middle of it all. Why, oming, did I come this way? This is, in and of itself, somewhat wonderful though. If you consider wonderful to be a word describing something which is full of wonder, inasmuch as something which is awful is full of or has the capacity to awe. And if we consider something awful as something having the capacity to awe, I then, am wonderful. As in wondering if I’ll ever get the hell out of Wyoming, which is pretty awful right now. Call me back. Bye.”

I've been having strange dreams. I think it's because there's been a lot to process and my subconscious is feeling deprived of that sweet, sweet nectar of oblivion I call PBR. For these and other various reasons though, I've been having particularly vivid dreams.

I dreampt, for instance, the other night of lying with a beautiful woman on the beach. She was wearing a bikini. We were having a lovely time. The beach, however, was made of clouds. They tasted of fog and cotton and sat roughly in one's throat but were otherwise beautiful. Above the clouds we could see a mountain top or two, somewhere in the east was a golden grecian temple, or something, my companion was suitably distracting such that I didn't much notice.

All of a sudden a polar bear began to approach us. I went over to my counterpart and put my arms around her as we stood looking at the polar bear and trying to come up with a plan. Then, behind us we saw Jesus and, as if by magic we remembered some wilderness survival techniques. We put our arms up over our heads and stood up tall to look as big as we could. We clapped our hands and yelled and, I'll tell you, it worked. We scared Jesus away.

The end.

Okay. So. Looking at a map and talking to people it seemed that the easiest way to get from colorado to utah is on Route 80. That would mean less wear and tear on ol' Seth (the mountains weren't terribly kind to him, he got a little short of breath from time to time) and some interesting things to see (hot springs, flaming gorges-I know, it sounded funny to me too, that's why I wanted to see it. So, and yes, you can call upon my legendary lack of forethought on this one, I tear outta Colorado on Tuesday under a somewhat imposing slate grey sky. The kind of sky that smells like iron. The kind of sky that spits down snow at a moment's notice. Yep. I said the S word. As I'm leaving Boulder, the flakes begin in earnest. There's a lovely smell of pine and smoke and frost in the air and I'm kinda lovin life, glad to be in a car with heat (even though I've left the window open to help Seth keep fog free without straining his heating system too much). So, there I am, driving along with my windows open and my hat on in a car with the ability to produce heat which is almost as good as driving along in a car with the heat on. Now, my plan is to take this 8 hour trip in two parts, one, seeing the Saratoga Hot Springs and finding somewhere to camp (yeah, I wanted to spend the night nestled deep inside the flaming gorge. What?) and then continue on to Utah in the morning. Except that's not what happened.

Oh Forethought. Forethought might have checked the weather report. Forethought is dead to me.

As I come out of the mountains I'm expecting the snow to stop, the weather to warm, the skies to clear. NO DICE. The snow picks up. It gets worse. It startst to stick. I pull over in Cheyenne and get the oh-so-sage advice, "Stoppin ain't gonna help ya. Whachu gotta do is git out the mountains, ouddair past Laramie'll stoppov snowin an yul bein utaw fore you knows it." Give or take. Seeing as I'd be finding no shortage conversation with this fine gentleman but eager to get on my way, I curteously cut our conversation short with an nod and something akin to "Aye-uh, s'pose yerright," and got on my way.

Holy Crap, was THAT a bad idea.

I'd been drivin with about 6 feet of visibility for a bit, thinking I was on dry roads, thinking I was fine, watching Semis all along the side of the road like some kind of dinosaur graveyard when I pass by a recent accident. I see this tractor-trailor flipped upside-down and sideways so the cargo area's on top of the cab. AND THIS GUY JUST GETS OUT! I slow down to see if anyone needs any help but there's already a trucker with a cell phone. The thing is, I get down to about 30 and I stat to fishtail a little. Now I grew up drivin in the snow so it's not such a big deal, just the same I decide to stop, my windshield wipers are frozen anyway and I've got wiper fluid frozen in big blue blocks right at my dashboard. I pull over on the shoulder, now completely covered in a few inches of snow and I get out of the car. Well, one step away from Mr. Seth and my feet start to go out from under me. The road's a two inch thick sheet of pure freakin ICE! I'd been drivin 60 miles an hour on a goddamned SKATING POND! That's when I saw what's still been sticking with me in my dreams. These two trucks come barreling down the road next to one another. One goes to pass the other when it hits a skid. Fast as they're goin, this truck ends up sideways, plowing down the highway perpendicular to the pavement for what must have been 80 feet. The driver manages to right his rig and instead of slowing down or pulling off, DOES IT AGAIN. That's when I knew I had to get off the road.

Okay, I've been here way too long, this one'll have to be continued.