Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Celeste walks down the hill from the outhouse and says "You should see the pump." I can scarcely resist such a come-on and I walk a short path back from the campsite next to the outhouse. The pump looks like a robot insect designed for some sinister purpose, with a brutal square head and long beak of a pipe pointing down to a carefully-made concrete trough. From the head project opposite crank handles with grips like those on an antique lawn mower or apple peeler. The motion is like your feet on a pair of bicycle pedals, only the circles are wider and force you into a kind of half-crouch. The work is exhausting and I find myself wondering why such designs were still even in production in the early 1970s, this machine's vintage, as the typography on the manufacturer's plate makes clear.

But in the context of our long drive and this hidden gem of a campsite at its end this obscure piece of equipment becomes charming; it is certainly improbable enough. Celeste says that the camp host is intensely familiar and she feels a creeping certainty that indeed she does know him from some other place. I look for him on our way out but only his battered camper, blocked up by some crazily elaborate, plywood-covered staging, occupies his space.

In the badlands of Wyoming I once again entertain fantasies of living in some kind of cinderblock shack with brown steel roof in view of the mysterious cylinders and pipelines of a Simplot gas operation– meditating on the vast arena of the dinosaurs, maybe wandering around the hills and collecting animal skulls, shot-up cans, esoteric agricultural machinery– thinking fondly I could do whatever I do so much better out there when actually all I want to do is get away. The hills are stacked like anciently eroded ziggurats with red steps and terraces of sage and mountain mahogany. We drive through a canyon of grey/green mounds and bulges that look like bubbles in pancake batter– the flash floods carve their dendrites through this geology.

The hills open and flatten after several rugged grades. I let the Toyota find her own pace and eventually we're coasting again, down into brown and olive hills. The hills rise into a series of mesas that follow the road. Their flanks are a pale gold streaked with red and all over them the ever-present dark green pattern of scrub and sage. At a brown sign we turn left towards one of these structures and follow a long access road around one of its developments. On the other side is a low, dark visitor's center set in a marsh. We had wanted to stop at Fossil Butte on past trips, but it was too late, or we had no time, or we just didn't want to stop, infected as we were with the psychosis of freeway travel– an unsatisfiable urge to "get there". A wide walk of yellow concrete curves in a "C" around one side of the center. The railing carries a series of long steel strips painted and labelled with plaques. It is a timeline of geology and paleontology. The closer you are to the end of the walk, the closer you are to the end of the timeline. All of human history occupies the last inch and a half of the feature. This is, in part, a modern aspect of popular science, a subtle reproof to counterbalance the old idea of Original Sin: look you humans, how puny you really are. The corollary, however, is the real crux of the matter: if this idea is an alternative to Original Sin, is it not also an equivalent?

Inside a young ranger greets us and tells us about the exhibits. Later she would give us a questionnaire and color as she explained that it rated individual performance. The exhibits are expensive; the largest is a series of heavy slabs of sandstone surrounding cast replicas and originals of plant fossils– heavy steel rods hold them out from each other and at varying heights on a matrix of heavy steel grooves.

Outside Celeste sees a Say's Phoebe perched on the railing and a ranger in a straw smokey bear joins us. She says that she's been watching them and agrees that they're Say's. They are caring for a nest under the walkway. We talk a bit about our visit and I ask Celeste if we need a pass for Rocky Mountain National Park. By now we are walking towards the parking lot. "Oh, get it here," the ranger says behind us. Her smile is half hopeful, half apologetic. She explains that the center gets the revenue for passes sold there. I imagine she has to spend a great deal of time thinking about these things when she'd rather be talking to guests about the phoebes. I also think she should have more time to talk to guests about the phoebes.

As we approach Dinosaur the horizon becomes a black and grey mass pressing down. Celeste fumes. The storm seems to be centered on the canyonlands of the National Monument, where we had planned to take that steep track to Echo Park. The drive to the park is a hypnotic up and down, a searching of the seam between sky and land, an aggravated and fascinated attempt to navigate the track of the storm, to guess the intention of this grand, horrible thing.

The visitor's center is closed, of course, but a young couple from Texas tells us that they followed the storm out of Echo Park– the man tells us this. He is casual but squared-away at the same time and oozes disposable income. We thank him and resolve to at least drive up to the overlook. As we climb into the tablelands the mass presses down further, as though we were climbing up into a closing fissure– at the viewpoint all is revealed; several low detachments have separated from the mass and sweep the canyon. The road must be a smear of red/orange mud and granite gravel. Celeste smokes and fumes some more and we drive back down the access road to the highway and through another eternity of sage-studded hills. My hopes for a lonely drive are dashed when I see a black compact disappear around the shoulder of a hill. All but a very few vehicles on the road, mostly white park service Fords, are visitors to the campsite, Deer Lodge. About two miles from the campsite we see the car stopped on the shoulder. The plates are from Connecticut. They follow us into the campsite and turn off at the ranger station. The parking lot is filled with buses and SUVs and we sag, but then remember that this is a staging area for raft shuttles and the campsite could be thinly populated or empty. We would learn that the vehicles were not so much raw evidence as a symbol of suburban ideas superimposed on a wild landscape, for this activity had already begun when we arrived and was to culminate when the last of a loud, ignorant club of rafters clanged, slammed and shouted their way into the campsite. Their core had already earned the resentment of the few low-impact campers when they clogged the drive and launch with their equipment– which could have supplied a battalion– and camped out by it with several chairs and torches, drinking, shouting, bragging and insisting far into the night– just as they broke up, still chattering loudly even as they walked to their tents, another loud, bluff idiot arrived to begin the cycle anew.

Monday, July 25, 2011

This morning we put on our suits, cheerfully ignoring our aching backs and sides. A puncture in our air mattress had forced us to climb out in the middle of the night to dig out our thin sleeping pads. The unbelievable hardness of the packed and crushed granite is made bearable, but the aches remain. My allergies attack and I do everything with a sloppy kind of urgency. As we climb the hill to the tub I see some spots of color: caps and t-shirts draped over a privacy screen. I immediately recant and make noises of protest– I'm really not in the mood to socialize– but it's too late, we're already there. So we walk around the screen and join the three men already there. Celeste says something about radium springs and a grey-haired man from Lewiston tells us they're in Canada. This seems to break the ice and he and Celeste talk of Oregon's full-service filling stations with a second man, a solid hunter with spiky hair, chiming in occasionally. The third man, another solid hunter/fisher type with his tot, had already left.

The two men leave and we stay behind a few minutes, wrinkling up. Then we walk back down the hill and have our breakfast: oatmeal and coffee. Today there's no hoisting the shower tent and hot water bag, as we've had our soak.

Pretty soon everything's in the truck and we're climbing a dirt road out of the South Fork Boise River valley. The road goes on and on. But all we have is a little less than a quarter tank. Shortly the needle is at "E" but no matter, we have ten gallons in jerry cans.

We listen to Gary Numan through the green fields of eastern Idaho.

In Wyoming we descend again into the plains, into the land of half-finished, grandiose log cabins and truck stop billboards. We skirt the western border and turn off the highway at Cottonwood Lake. A few gravel miles later we come to a tee and a sign: "Road Closed Ahead." The road has been washed out. We drive down another 20 miles or so, and turn off again; this time we drive into a stand of aspens and cottonwoods and around a corner, like a character from a tall tale or nursery rhyme, steps a stocky man with a young, open face and beard. He smiles and waves. We pass under vibrating aspens to a private site with a grassy, uneven tent pad. It's the first site we see and I stop there just to get out of the truck. But we find another twice as large, whose tent pad is wide and flat. Down below the river winds through a tall meadow screened by young pines. In a fir sapling I find a large, beautiful cicada patiently waiting for his turn to sing. The next morning Celeste reports he is still there. He did move a bit. A couple pulls in a few spaces down and runs a generator for a while, but apart from this mechanical noise the place is quiet, scored only by the sound of the stream and the high buzz of cicadas.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

We breakfast on potato pancakes, applesauce and coffee. A vast host of drone and soldier flies crowds in as the sun covers the picnic table and fire pit.

We pack up and walk down to the lake. Celeste spots a frog sitting in a clump of sedge, bobbing with the wavelets, unconcerned. At the far end of a dock a plover paces back and forth, occasionally cocking its head over the water. The lake is screened on both sides by dense stands of pine. Straight ahead of us is a tiny island covered with pines. You could wade to it. In the center is a picnic table. The site of many a merry midnight meeting, no doubt.

I make another trip to the outhouse, this one newer and less abused. While I'm in there I think for the hundredth time of Scooter's comical description of the moment of panic when you're in the stall and someone tugs on the door: at the shock and sound of the loud metallic clunk you involuntarily jerk your hands up to form a rectangle around the door– "like you're framing a shot," he said.

A toilsome drive to Boise through the plains between the Wallowas and the Sawtooths

We stop in Baker for gas but the ice machine is broken– barely enough for our drink machine, the woman behind the counter says; she is heavy-set with tinted glasses set in heavy plastic frames.

There's a strange, sharp ache just under my right knee by the time we get to Boise and the walk from our parking place by St. Luke's is welcome. But when we cross the street and see Bar Gernika's tables stacked on the sidewalk, all our aches and pains are forgotten in our disappointment. We are forced to cross the street to Bardenay, a brew and distiller pub. It's not so bad: this place is considerably more corporate, but at least the restaurant is air-conditioned. On the huge flatscreen TV is some soccer match sponsored by Herbalife.

By the time we climb into the hills north of Mountain Home we are seething with sweat. Opening the windows is like setting a fan in front of an open oven and sticking your face in the current. The road winds through yellow hills decorated with grotesque shapes of granite: great lobes and petals and agglutinations. After Featherville, a collection of newish log houses and very old places with stone fronts or weathered white paint, we climb into a terrain of wooded ridges and canyons, finally descending into a broad river valley covered by yellow-green grass and open pine stands. In the grass you can see elbows and broad aprons of amber water scouring granite cobble. The pavement is replaced by an oiled gravel road and eventually we come to Baumgartner, a busy campsite centered on a built-up hot spring fitted with a painted concrete tub and benches. The river is broad and loud here. As I bang over the speed bump by the pay station the camp "host" yells angrily at me to slow down and reiterates the posted 15-mile speed limit. My speedometer, of course, reads 15.

The campsite is capacious and we have no problem finding room for the tent. The ground is rocky, though, so we have to guy the tent to cobbles.

We walk up a short trail above the hot spring and read the plaques the Forest Service made. The trail crosses the creek that feeds the tub and we look at the green/black algae that covers the rock, a pure white and angular species of granite. We read of John Baumgartner, a gold miner and ranger who emigrated from Bavaria in the late 19th century and deeded his land to the Forest Service. He eventually took the job of first ranger in that part of the Sawtooths and worked to improve access.

Another such pioneer, if not in the historic sense, then in the sense of a pubic conviction and vision, was this caretaker and National Guardsman who worked to restore the Fremont Power Station, Command Sergeant Major Joe Batty, now deceased. This was the improbable bit of stone Romanesque architecture that served the miners and the village near Olive Lake. I imagine he studied with care the shape and intricacies of the ancient wooden water line that piped Olive Lake's potential as white, rushing power for the turbines. A section lies by the Forest Service's plaque, bristling with the circular rods that passed through a turnbuckle and seized the two-foot diameter pipe together.

Travelogue- Portland, OR to Pinewood Springs, CO

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Trying to learn calm, attaining it, recovering it after a shock.

Last two days have been busy but not exhausting– due in large part to this inner regimen. Calm no matter what happens.

Just before a trip like this, even the most routine demands are vexing and petty annoyances are grinding; but I try to keep Rudyard Kipling's advice and keep my head.

Today I walk through the gardens on Francis in the high 30s to Les Schwab to pick up the truck, then stay to listen to an army of oil change mechanics shout at each other.

I have to accept the fact that I will never be ready for these trips, not in the way that I envision, and simply act on what I know to be true. Once I leave all of this yelling, loud engines and blaring signs behind it will be better.

Saturday, July 23rd

Powell–I-84–Hilgard Jct.–Granite–Olive Lake.

Pacing around while I convert the 78s that have been sitting in their wrappers since the last trip to the cabin. Ten passes. Eleven. Finally we leave around noon. But I'm determined to take things as they come and it all works out. We stop in Hood River to have a sandwich and decide how to get to Olive Lake. There's a steady stream of cars down 2nd and turning off Cascade to cross the railroad tracks and turn onto I-84. Some of these loom behind me while I try to parallel park near the Hood River Hotel. Of course, the ranger office is closed, so we miss our opportunity to buy a Umatilla Forest map. So we walk up the hill to the Sage Café and find a seat near a window. We decide to take Google's route as the one with the least turns. In the carpeted and air-conditioned café these questions are academic. Later, aching and squinting into a rapidly disappearing sun, we resent every extra mile.

But even now there is cause for quiet admiration– the black wedges of road, the yellow-green meadows and red palisadoes of trunks rearrange themselves as we crackle along and I catch myself wanting to pull to the side and watch the sun shoot through the shoulders of the hills. About eight miles from the lake we see a gray gable and romanesque arch through a gap in the pines. The gap opens on a long, stately stone building with all kinds of mysterious arches and ports– a deserted power plant now maintained as a kind of museum of industry. A large group of solid rural types– perhaps ranchers and their families– stand by their new full-sized trucks and stare at it. I take this as a sign of things to come and prepare myself for the worst: that Olive Lake will be full of such stocky men with their full-sized pickups and over-powered North River fishing boats. We will be forced to turn around and drive 40 miles of gouged, washboard and gravel roads to the nearest campsite– one we had flagged in the salad days of a higher sun and smoother roads.

But all this turns out to be a bad dream: a few miles from the campsite we see a clearing off the road, with space enough for a tent– ours no matter what happens. After a glimpse of a red pickup and trailer through the trees and others peeping out like easter eggs in the grass, I see an isolated spot at a bend in the road. We occupy it and walk down to the lake. There are several others but they're too close to their neighbors– so we pay the fee, use the dank, buzzing vault toilet and walk back up the hill to our site. Before long the tent is standing in a clearing behind the table, Celeste is chopping sausage, peppers and onions and wrapping corn in foil, and I am foraging for firewood and tending a modest but hot fire. We eat our dinner by the fire and have Ransom whiskey and half-melted trail mix for dessert. Above us the sky is a glittering agate beach of stars.

In the early morning Celeste makes a strange, anxiety-filled noise, and I put my hand on her forehead. She stops.

I open my eyes on the leaf-shaped tent door. The shadow there looks like a ragged thief or witch crouched by the tent. A moment later the shadow has spread over the door. I turn over, shut my eyes again.