Faced with a drive for several hours through the rain and mist, past Strawberry Reservoir, and over the mountain pass, I will try something new today; dictation. (Note: this was an enormous pain to decipher, so I don’t know how often I’ll do this). I have been listening to the book The Passage by Justin Cronin, and in the bit I just listened to, the characters are getting settled into an abandoned summer camp. It made me think of when I was maybe eleven or twelve and went to a Lutheran summer camp in the Sawtooth Mountains for a week. Detailed memories are hazy, but I remember how green it was, the big lodge with rows of tables, and boys and girls both homesick and excited to be away from home. When the boys in my cabin found out I was a Mormon boy, I remember them poking fun that Joseph Smith believed there was life on the sun and how could I possibly be part of such a stupid religion. I don’t remember how I handled it, probably said nothing and walked away. Engaging with such people is always futile. Two counselors took a particular interest in me and looking back, they probably saw the situation and wanted to protect me from the others. I don’t remember their names, but they were boyfriend and girlfriend, probably not over 25 years old, which at the time was ancient, but now seems young. I remember how protective they were, trying to make me feel comforted.
This was the camp where one activity was the Jungle Thrash, where we ran through the forest smashing sticks against trees and fallen logs, pretending to be chased or chasing something. I wrote about it in the next year’s Writing Festival for the Granite School District. I came across the book a few months ago and reread the piece. How proud I was of the time, even then, trying to capture the essence of adventure and share it with others.
As the rain spatters on the windshield in this canyon I’ve driven so many times, first in the snow and ice of winter, now in the heat and welcome rain, I find myself in a space between two worlds. During the day, working to keep the industrial world going. The machinery that fuels our way of life is constant and drives our hunger for electricity, plastic, glass, electronics, toilets, flowing water, and all the rest. Feeding that machine daily is good in challenging and interesting ways, but doing that strains the world around us. Holes are drilled in the ground and the Earth’s blood is sucked into pipelines and turned into the fuel of civilization. Great bulldozers plow through the earth, throwing their contents onto great conveyor belts where precious metals are pulled out, melted down, and turned into circuit boards, jewelry, and junk. The detritus is dumped over an entire mountain range, the waste so toxic that great troughs funnel runoff into a giant chemical bath visible from space.
I have a good idea. Let’s move that lake somewhere else and sell the lakebed to land developers to build thousands of houses, apartment complexes, and stores. It will be great place to live, so beautiful, like a quaint lake community. Built on toxic waste. Where does it stop? Do we want it to stop? Is it even possible? I think we are blind, willfully so, by the hunger of our nature. By our need for comfort, shelter, food, happiness, and to fuel our addictions, whatever they are.
Now I’m driving through a stretch where I am told not to let my truck break down. Lots of squatters and meth heads in this area. Who knows what would happen to you if you broke down in the night? You might just disappear. There might be some truth to that, but primarily urban legend based on a kernel of truth and overblown into something just fun to tell. I remember driving through here years ago when we had several winters in a row and very little snow. The entire landscape was brown and dry—a far cry from how it looks now.
Going out here to the Uintah Basin where the entire economy is built on the up and down cycles of oil and gas. It’s the first area to crash when the price of oil goes down and the last to start back up when it rises. A hard life in this area. Years ago, the Rolling Stones did an article called What’s Killing the Babies of Vernal, Utah? Oil, fracking, chemicals, all of it. But without this, there is no shopping at TJ Maxx. No buying Doritos at the gas station. There is no family vacation. No beach towels under the sun with a cold drink watching the children play in the water. All of it is a giant house of cards. If you shake loose one at the bottom, it all could come crashing down. Of course, that’s the constant fearmongering we hear on the news. Don’t let this person be elected, or they will put your children into camps with microchips for brains. This person in office is the devil! They don’t have our values and must be purged no matter the cost. All of it is ridiculous. Just focus on living a good life. Take care of your family. Be a responsible steward, no matter how small of a piece of our planet you have.
Geez, calm down Bryan.
Now I passed a rest stop I’ve never stopped at. It reminds me of our summer trips to the northwest when we would escape the heat for two weeks, retreating to the cascade mountains. We called it The Watermill rest stop. Just passed the Utah-Idaho border. There was a working watermill and an open grass area where we loved to stop and play. It’s been years since I’ve been there. I don’t even know if it still exists. I loved those road trips. To have days upon days in the car where I could just read. One year, I read an entire bag full of John Sanford novels. It was great. I feel bad for people that can’t read in the car. Soon I will come to the bridge I took pictures of last week, where I had my telescope set up and got eaten alive by mosquitoes.
I am on my way home now and just stopped at that rest stop. I’m very glad that I did. It’s called the Pinyon Ridge Rest Stop, because of all the pinion trees surrounding the area. A pathway goes around the back, giving a scenic view of the countryside. It smells like Christmas trees and sage. Along the path, there was a little hole with hundreds of ants crawling around. I tried taking a time-lapse video but couldn’t hold it steady for long enough without the ants crawling all over me. Maybe on a future trip, I will bring a tripod and try it again. How many times have I driven past but never stopped, just wanting to get home or get to my appointment, never taking a moment just to breathe and step out into Nature? I will be stopping there again. Maybe not on every trip, but maybe so. It is a nice counterpoint to the reason I am out here.
While walking along the path, Skye called, wondering if I’d ever seen that old cartoon with the coyote and the roadrunner and if I had seen the penguin one yet. I told her I used to love watching that cartoon, but I don’t remember the penguin one. She said she would wait for me on the porch when I get home, maybe watching her iPad if I take too long. That is why I do this.
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