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.
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