Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

In the morning I take one last swim and take one last look at the cliffs– still no mountain cat, only the eternal rimrock, its upper faces edged with a band of orange that descends to cover the deep blue evening cloak.

Today is the long, hot drive across Oregon; we keep the picture of the Gorge in our heads, its basalt headlands and pale yellow slopes, the vast ocean of the Columbia studded with whitecaps– because it means cool, a release of the heat that presses down until there is nothing else. We stop in La Grande; the next filling station is there; we are at the quarter-tank mark; and we are famished. There is a distinct lack of cafés and we settle on a modest storefront called Joe and Sugar's. We have sandwiches and drink about a gallon of iced tea and check messages on our phones. Then it's through Pendleton and the fields of Hermiston and up over a grassy shoulder of the land and down into the track of the Columbia.

Here the long descent begins, down into a different kind of plain, a river that is a prairie itself, a desert of chop and howling wind and sudden violence. The pickup feels like a wagon on a rutted road and I'm constantly correcting as the hood veers to the centerline or the fog line. My back is hurting again as we take the sweeping overpass into Hood River– after a few futile turns I find the filling station and we hold chilled Gatorade bottles to our heads.

The wind has become a thing observed again, a thing that knocks hats off and shows us the silvery undersides of the cottonwoods– and we take shelter behind the shoulder of Hood River Mountain when we turn south on Oregon 35. Then it's up the valley of the Hood River, climbing the shoulder of Mt. Hood and rounding his south side at Newton Creek. At Barlow Pass the road turns around an outcrop of Barlow Ridge and we drive straight at the glaring peak.

It's the view of the mountain that as a child I associated with the Paramount splash in a darkened theater– a region of cerulean perfection that nevertheless existed, but in parallel to the here and now of exhausted rocker seats and squicking soft drink syrup underfoot. So here in the stinking cab and behind the pitted and grimy windshield we peer into the region of snows– a region we must enter by this winding track.

Monday, August 8th, 2011

We must cross Idaho now and descend into another desert canyon lake, Owyhee, in the confused reticulation of yellow and brown sills and mesas east of the Steens.

But before we descend we must shoot I-84 through Glenns Ferry, Mountain Home, and finally Boise, where we plan to eat at Bar Gernika, a friendly tavern just a few blocks from our bed & breakfast and the old grey fortress of the assay house.

In this we are not disappointed; after an interminable series of May, Gordon and Swift semis, RVs, horse trailers, Sinclair stations, exit signs and Flying J billboards, we reach the exit for Broadway and merge into the traffic headed towards the squat brown rectangles of Boise State. We turn on Idaho, pass the old assay office and park near a town square of grey pavers and cornerstones of 100-year-old buildings. This time the café tables are on the sidewalk and covered with napkins and half-empty glasses of iced tea.

The place is half-empty; it is an off day, an off hour– there's a couple by the window and a row of three men at the bar, all friends, talking with the bartender. A lightly-built guy with a deadpan expression takes our order and I bask in the air conditioning. The walls are covered in rough plaster and false half-timbers, to give it that old inn feel. Above our table are some old photos– one of a row of sharp-eyed, dark-haired men at a bar, the other of a pretty thirty-plus woman in a cotton dress, dancing next to an old man, whose left foot is kicked high in the air and whose face is turned to the camera with a comically serious expression.

Celeste tries a new cider; it is refreshing with a tang a bit less yeasty than the more powerfully-flavored Isastegi and a hint more sweetness. We look for it in a tiny Basque market across the street but are disappointed. We lunch on hot lamb sandwiches and fries, which are good in the way that a hot meal is good when you've been driving for hours and are tired in your bones.

We easily make the last sprint into Caldwell, fueled as we are on hearty Basque fare– and turn there onto another rural route, U.S. 20/26. The sun is westering and picks out the gentle contours of the farmlands and broad swaths in the wheat. At the sight of the gold stubble I think ahead to the black columns and smooth hills of the Gorge, and, beyond them, the tall firs and parkways of home.

But there is one more rugged, dry land to cross before we can camp– the plateau and gorges of the Owyhee River.

North of Parma we finally turn west again and cross the state line at Nyssa– then drive through a series of food crops– sugar beets, onions, alfalfa– when suddenly we leave behind the man-made rivers of pipes and ditches to confront the ancient original: the Owyhee, in its deep bed of stacked rhyolite and valley floor of willows and nettles. The road balances on the very edge of the bank, and the closer we come to the lake, the more precarious does it seem.

At one point the road rounds a shoulder and threads through a rough tunnel one lane wide. For the first time in my life I'm forced to honk before I enter. It occurs to me: just exactly where would I go if my warning was returned?

Just before we see the dam the road climbs into a series of 15-mile-an-hour turns and the bottom of the gorge descends to an irretrievable distance below. Around a shoulder of yellow/orange rock the dam appears, a tremendous, streaked wall in the yet more tremendous "U" of the canyon. The road continues to climb, mountain goat-like, above the flat profile of the reservoir. We pass a weathered 1933 pumphouse and several boat trailers returning from the launch down the road.

Eventually, down a convolution of the canyon jutting into the lake, we see the first campground: a thick growth of cottonwoods screening a long, terraced loop of RV sites. Pushed to the water's edge are the tent sites, with broad, gravelled pads, small iron firepits and picnic tables. These sites are occupied, several of them, and I can't hide my disappointment at the sight of the jumble of pickups, boats and gear. The drive up had taken us deeper into a country so openly hostile, so rugged– and here we are back in the city again. I tell myself for the hundredth time: "Sure, but you're here, too, aren't you?" but it doesn't help. We drive to the twin campground down the road, but here there are no tent sites, all given over to RV hookup. It is easy to underestimate the pervasiveness of this "unfashionable" mode of travel.

Tired and ready to take any kind of site, we make our way back to the first choice and squeeze in by a big full-sized pickup and van. I pull out the firewood but I can see that now, at any rate, there will be no fire– the wind is gusting and threatening to blow our folding chairs into the next campsite. Luckily, the tent is well-staked and it flexes and crouches under the blast but there is no flapping, no dangerous straining.

We put on our swim gear and walk down to the beach. There is a mild shock but soon we're cooled and facing the vastness of the reservoir and the darkening terraces above. I look again for my big cat, but there is nothing except the endless battlements and niches of rimrock. I dunk my head in the brown water and let the last of the grime and vexation float away.

We give up on the idea of cooked food and eat sandwiches among our bins. The chairs are folded and stowed under the table. I watch a certain cottonwood, bent permanently like a dew-heavy stalk of grass. It stands over our tent and nods and bows alarmingly when the wind comes up.

When we're laying in the tent the wind picks up again, this time even more sudden and threatening– it is the culmination of a storm that began to darken when we pulled out the cider– the sky turned a deep red and the wind fell off. Later it would pick up again, but it is so violent as I lay there in the tent that I pull the cider bottle and glass out my boots and crawl out of the tent. All of our gear is just as it was, but the cottonwoods are bending and trembling like wheat in a breeze and the lake is rough and angry.

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

The next day it's an all-too-short drive in the canyonlands before we enter the swift westbound current of the river of I-80, snaking across the plains around Lyman and Fort Bridger. The line of the Uintas draws closer until we're driving through the Weber River gorge on grooved concrete. We stop at an ambitiously conceived rest stop with pavilion-shaped visitor's center and picnic shelters built of great slabs of aggregate. There's a paved path that climbs steeply to the top of a ridge. We follow it and look at the traffic running down the distant grey ribbon.

After a tiresome run through Salt Lake and the alley between that city and Snowville, we exit on another rural highway that leads us through the southern reaches of the Curlew National Grassland and across the gap between the Raft River Mountains in Utah and the Black Pine Mountains in Idaho. Then it's fields to the right and the Jim Sage Mountains to our left as we drive through the aching heat to Malta.

Here the vast fields are replaced by smaller farms and horse ranches, with an occasional clapboard schoolhouse or brick storefront– the heat is unrepentant. As we leave Malta behind and round the northern head of the Jim Sage Mountains we can see the bald granite rising from dark green scrub forest like monk's tonsures. These are the Albion Mountains, a vast gallery of bonelike monuments and emerald stream valleys. The sun glows yellow on the peaks and the promise of the blue shadows under their eastern faces is like a balm; all aches are commuted. This is where we're camping tonight, in City of Rocks National Reserve.

As we're setting up camp a group of noisy boys climb over a shoulder of the rock behind our site and blithely walk through our living room. One of them even says "How's it goin'?" as they crowd through.

As we're hiking down a draw behind the site we hear the same group coming the other way, all of them talking loudly. Of wildlife there is not a sign until they've receded far behind us. Later I relent in my internal argument with these knuckleheads and say to Celeste that if we're really serious about letting the outdoors in we should be reaching out to people like this. "Instead of giving them dirty looks?" she says. But now as I write I'm not so sure. How do you explain something that should be self-evident?

The trail descends into deep cuts in the granite, lined by aspen groves and waist-high grass. In some of these canyons flow small, clear streams over beds of speckled gravel. In the trees are hidden hairy woodpeckers, canyon wrens and creepers.

Today is Celeste's birthday and in honor of the time the rocks are washed a blue and pale violet; we eat punjab eggplant and rice and drink cider and wine. Later there's a heavy papery buzz just over my head and a big, black, fast-moving beetle scurries across the gravel in front of the fire pit. I coax him onto my hand and carry him to the table, where Celeste tries to hold her hand near my camera as he scurries over her knuckles and wrist. I manage to shoot a five-second film of him landing on the tabletop and disappearing between the boards.

The net of stars descends behind the granite tower back of us as the fire dims.

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

In the morning we carry our bags out of the bedroom and into the front room and sit around the dinner table talking to Jim and Deborah. Things are low-key; they are coming off two weeks of hosting friends and family and we are weary, not from the work we have done or the miles travelled but the effort of saying goodbye to this place again; I have grown attached to the spicy smell of the foothills and the pink gorges and amber streams– and the cabin is the binding of this picture book. Under the weight of departure there's a spring of certainty: that we will return for a longer time. Each time we leave it is like this, each time a little more difficult to leave.

But finally we do and it is time for the long drive to Flaming Gorge. Once again we shoot the alley north through Longmont and Loveland, stopping at a King Sooper's on the way for picnic food and crackling hard candy, for the miles of baking monotony–

Then it's across the prairie and into the foothills of the Medicine Bow Mountains, a topography of decayed pyramids, great hills revealing their weathered brown terraces between bands of red dust and grey/green sage. Off a minor highway we take a turn towards Red Mountain, a backdrop, we think, for a picnic lunch– and a gravel county road shepherds us through the winding uplands. The destination is elusive: after miles of weathered barbed-wire fence and ratcheting locusts we pass a sign posted by a university; this is the point of interest referenced by the brown sign on the highway. There is no placard, no sheltered sign, no pullout, just more sage, receding into a green haze under the horizon.

We pull off at the next likely place and eat our lunch in the car. A white Toyota crackles by and stops while I'm in the food bag; it's a local who wonders why the Oregon plates are pulled off to the side in this godforsaken place. We must be hopelessly lost or broken down or most likely both. When Celeste tells him we're having our lunch here he grins vaguely, says "OK" and drives off.

After another long session of 25-mile-an-hour curves it's back to I-80 and the careless hostility of the truckers, the anxiety-ridden stupidity of the commuters... The land is given over to natural gas operations and open range. Past Rock Springs it's time to turn south, onto another two-lane road in the scrub: U.S. 191. Then it's another winding 20 miles on Flaming Gorge Road to the immense crack in the ground the Bureau of Reclamation dammed and called the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

The campground is a Ballardian forest of widely-dispersed olive trees, weathered mid-century concrete shelters and camp loops that resemble, in their aerial aspect, greatly-enlarged fruiting bodies or club moss fronds. There are few campers and the sun is low enough that you aren't paralyzed by the heat when you climb out of the truck.

Big cottontails creep out of the sage by the road and watch us as we walk by in our board shorts and sandals. Below a ridge the road curves to the south and back again to reveal colossal stepped cliffs and spires of orange sandstone. The westering sun has painted the tips of the spires behind us a brilliant yellow, but the cliffs ahead are violet, the water black. I look for rattlesnakes in the cooling cobbles by the trail, but see only the volleyball-sized holes left by the rabbits. At the beach parallel sets of tire tracks lead into the shallow water and muck; to our left a gull feasts on a 15-pound fish carcass. We walk to the water's edge and look at the swirling black scum, the shimmering mud. My towel feels stale on my neck. Today it will remain dry. We walk down the beach a ways to confirm our suspicions, that this stinking mire is typical, then walk back to camp.

The spires to the east turn orange, then red as the sun dips below the canyon walls. That night a pack of coyotes howl and yip at each other in a distant wash.

Wednesday, August 3rd - Friday, August 5th, 2011

It's difficult to take that last walk down to the creek but I must– it's only right; I can't just close the gate of the canopy, get in the truck with Cel. and drive by the trail as if we were coming back again that evening– this time there's fear mixed with the sadness and a tired swinging at the ghoul of finality– yet I have not taken my last swing at the fucker–

Celeste and I trudge up a decaying logging road whose ribs are shot through with aspens, keeping the low rush of the creek to our left. Pretty soon the trees are so close you must push past them as you do the milling fans in a crowded coliseum– their branches rake your face and legs. I see a pile of bearshit and peer through the moiré of aspen trunks, looking for any interruption of their monotony. There is nothing but the creek and the trees, and the brown and black triangles of aspen logs underfoot.

The trees thin out and the leafy undergrowth and logs are replaced by needles and pink and yellow gravel. The trees are pines, some with jagged grey fingers that jab you in the ribs as you walk by. In one close stand we find the orange shell of an ancient oven, a relic of a 19th-century logging camp that once stood here. I look around for the odd cut nail or axe head, but there is nothing but needles, pink cobbles and aspen saplings.

We spend our last night in the mountains at Jim and Deborah's. At various times and in various combinations we talk about: Winterset; Ames, IA; blue crabs; column shift Falcons; the twin beds at the cabin; Don's sinus infection; Deborah's brother's friend's fear of mites; Aunt Flossie's letter; Uncle Van; JoAn's father Arvi; Bill Ramsay's Model A; Uncle Dick Rankin's Colorado Outdoors magazines; Jim's friend Bug and their one bowl, one cup system; learning to breathe by laying on your back; the length of an average person's vocal cords; the little boys that saw Deborah when she thought she was alone for her camp shower; Oscar Peterson; Deborah's terrible bruise; the Feast of St. John in Portugal and its toy squeak hammers.

JoAn hugs us both and says how glad she is that we could meet and that we could visit the cabin– Celeste has opened her birthday gifts and the table is breaking up. I thank her for hosting us and she says "Well, it's really Jim's now," and I explain that I think of them all as Ramsays and the cabin belongs to the Ramsays. "Well, you're included," she insists. Not for the last time I think of parents and grandparents and the frightening washing-away of time between meetings and all the changes that entails– and I tell myself that we will meet again here, being calm in front of that ghoul again– what else can I do?

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sprague Lake Trail

In the pine barrens that cover the trail I look for a black shape on the uphill side, maybe impatiently turning over rocks and growling testily– but there are only more trunks rising through the reddish-brown duff.

But down in the valley again, in an arm of a sea of grass and lazy elbows of clear water, we see a glistening brown question mark of an animal turn on a boulder and slip noiselessly into the channel. "That's a mink," Celeste whispers. We advance softly and scour the lanes of grass between spiked logs, the commas and parens of water written in the green. There is no retrograde swaying of stalks, no hesitant ripple to show his track, only a pair of female mallards calmly touring the waterway.

We give up after a time and find Sprague Lake a hive of human activity: parents with bored children; eager children with bored or unimaginative parents (the worst); hikers who seem to be merely animated displays for their new gear; ordinary middle-class sorts who are just happy to be there; and a number of men who sound like Jim Nabors.

Back at the Cabin

Celeste picks the 78s this time and I type furiously while the laptop's battery power lasts. We eat tuna noodle casserole by the light of the hissing propane lanterns and Celeste leafs through the old guest log. The idea of a 50-year anniversary celebration has germinated and she's looking for some definitive date of construction. But the only specific reference dates the addition of the kitchen, in 1971. We will just have to ask JoAn.

Monday, August 1st, 2011

In the morning the aspen trunks look like flesh, smooth, wrinkled where the branches strive. I eagerly trot across the road to my esteemed teacher: an icy stream, all gold and silver, in its bed of granite shoals and lined with great cow parsnips, tender firs and rough spruce. I follow the stream down to a big aspen leaning across and hang my towel on it, undress, and unbelievably, find myself sitting naked on a log, my feet and calves burning with the cold. Will I get in? Should I get in? There is none of this. I am in, I am in the water and the breath is squeezed from my body, chasing all the layered duff of doubts, fears, arrogances and wishes– there is only the stream and the black tangle of needles and the racing pebbles and the deep cold like a fire on my skin– then it's out to soap, then in again– then in and down, so my body is in its pool, and now comes the heaving, the struggle to stay in while the water seems to throb with my heart– then kneel and pass the last gate, cup my hands and soak my head and face while the cobbles dig into my knees and toes– and out, into steaming sunlight and the creek clattering safely behind– warm and sensing, receiving the wind as the trees do– without question, without design. By the time I crest the little footpath and see the cabin I miss her again and want to be burned by her icy fingers.

Then it's time to pack our things and meet Jim and JoAn at Hollowell Park, a small picnic area in Rocky Mountain National Park. There's a sense that the roads have always been here, along with the toll booths at the park entrance, made ridiculously to look like tiny log cabins– that all these things define the valleys and the meadows– and instead of interpreting what is, they contain it so that some modern pharisee may insert it into his pharisee history.

But none of this means anything to us; we sit under a lodgepole and eat our macaroni salad and sandwiches, then drive up to Bear Lake and sit watching the lookers-on walk by with their bucket hats and t-shirts. According to JoAn there was a lodge here, but apparently it was pinched out by a rising clutter of regulation or its heirs simply grew tired of running the business. She and I stare out over the water, and I try to imagine the place we're sitting as the end of a dirt road populated by a few Model As and hikers strolling around in wool and leggings– a lodge in such a setting wouldn't be such a bad thing when you compare it to the city the National Park Service has built in the wilderness.

I'm forcefully reminded of this later, while Celeste and I march down the trail from Cub Lake– clammy and tired after a rugged two miles of steady uphill. Coming the other way are soft suburbanites, softer even than me, walking casually, dry, well-scrubbed– is this really our heritage? This exercise track in the woods? The terrain of the rockies from a distance inspires glowing generalities– but look closer, look at each other, you visitors– I include myself- look at that city in the wilderness– it cannot last.

And the wilderness? Say rather the wood, the place outside the farm, outside the pasture, the place inimical to humankind; whether it is a "wilderness" or a "reserve" or a "national forest". That it stay inimical, that is the important thing, whether it conforms to a federal standard or not. We walked through this forest, trudged through it;

the trail is a steep track through stands of pine and aspen–moderating only to climb again after a gentle turn– and we are both drawing deep breaths, surging with the effort, our hands heavy and a little swollen– and still the trail heads up; eventually, in a hogback covered with pines, the trail descends and off our right shoulder we can see white and pink Vs of water through the trees. But the lake is still many more toe-jamming grades away. Celeste concedes; her knee is flaring and we turn to go back. It is as well; as Nicholson Baker says, why break into fulfillment's desolate attic? the lake will become a lovingly-tinted illustration of memory as it becomes a reason for another hike– an ending made sweeter by years of waiting.

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

The next morning Celeste brings the campers across the road some coffee and I show them the tub. Some time later they thank us again and leave. "They're well within their rights to stay there," Celeste had said the night before, after we'd brought the last of our bags in. "That's public land over there– they can camp anywhere they want."

As the white Toyota disappears we pull out the tools Jim left and start on the front wall, staining and prepping. We finish all the siding and about a third of the deck when the first drops fall. We retreat into the cabin and I take stock: when you combine the beer the Vanderhoofs left, the order from Liquor Mart and the cider we brought from Portland there's enough to stock a cooler case.

While Celeste cooks up some pasta I acquaint myself with the Victrola and seek out all the 78s that promise dividends: The Volunteer Firemen, the Original Dixieland Band, Arthur Fields, Harry Lauder. Sometimes the crank runs down during a side and the tune wheezes like a deflating windsock puppet. I wind the crank and the tune swells again, bobbing and marching crazily. I match its rhythm with my own internal wind-up and it's a relief almost to leave them behind and eat to the hiss of the creek and the aspens outside.

After a sigh of fatigue and a pleasant tingle in the feet, it is sweet to lie there with the forest closing us in, standing between us and all the uncertainty and grinding routine of the lands beyond.

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

I dawdle over my blog posts while Celete visits with JoAn downstairs and Jim curses quietly in his office. He relies on internet service that seems to have the same reliability as a regularly-shelled World War I telegraph line. Meanwhile the Vanderhoofs return with the cabin key and Deborah injures herself on a heavy piece of furniture. It's a painful bruise and Jim and Robin agree she should see the M.D. It's a somber time; Deborah's already loaded up with several obligations, including us, and I feel self-conscious about adding to the burden. But it turns out O.K., and Deborah and Jim see us out, and we drive to Boulder to pick up supplies for the cabin.

Boulder is a smaller Portland of the Rockies– an attractive little town with a strong tang of sanctimony. We eat at a stiff, dark restaurant called Mateo– purportedly French, where the waiters have to keep one hand behind their backs while they pour your water. I have an expensive burger which they serve with fries ("frites") in a sawed-off paper bag. The drinks, too, are expensive and I'm not surprised to see the prices listed as whole numbers, no decimals, no cents column– an affectation of hip restaurants that is wearing really thin.

The burger is excellent– and the waiters are almost too eager, but friendly enough– and we're fortified for our trip to the Liquor Mart, a building the size of a Safeway stocked with nothing but beer, wine and liquor. I'm strangely underwhelmed; the depth of inventory is impressive but the breadth isn't much better than many of the neighborhood liquor stores in Portland.

McGuckin Hardware, however, is a different matter. The typical customer is dazed and freshly distracted each time they pass a new aisle. The building is at least as large as a typical Walmart and completely stocked with hardware, tools and related items. We go there for a vinyl repair kit, a coffee carafe for the cabin, and my Holy Grail for this trip: a puffy cap that will make me look like James Sikking in Outland. We score on all three.

The cliffs over the South St. Vrain River are purple and a rich red as we make our way to the cabin. By the time we turn onto the Ski Road it is quite dark; so when the white Toyota shows its trunk to us it is a surprise. Celeste climbs out and I see a headlamp bobbing out of the trees to the left. It's a young guy with his hand up in a gesture of assurance. He says they'll move right away and Celeste is apologetic but negative. They are in the clearing across from the cabin. I see few huddled shapes of luggage, a fire, a guitar case. While the guy's friend waits for him to turn the car around Celeste relents. "I mean, they took their guitar out and everything," she says. I say it's okay with me and she climbs out again. The guy is surprised and very pleased; they promise to be quiet and douse their fire. Later Celeste brings out some marshmallows the Vanderhoofs left and I ask them if they'd been in the creek yet. "It's not warm," I warn them. They laugh in a way that makes it clear that they knew this.

Friday, July 29th, 2011

In the gloom of seven A.M. I savage my foot on a piece of flat, jagged sandstone that serves as a door stop. My toe burns and the pain signals overwhelm all other warnings, remembrances and questions and I lay there squinting my eyes shut and breathing hard for a while. Celeste offers a variety of over-the-counter solutions but I just lay there throbbing.

Later that morning the pain subsides while I'm uploading photos, and a tension begins across my shoulders as the tedium of cataloguing sets in. I really should be posting this travelogue but there is no time; our plans have become definite and cut across my intention like a flash flood. Soon we will be isolated in the cabin and internet connection is impossible.

Jim drives Celeste JoAn and I to the cabin and JoAn notices all the yellow ovoids that mark the cut pines off the ski road. "Did this burn?" she asks. "No, the beetle," Jim says. In a clearing on the left side of the road we can see the blotches of rusty red on the mountainsides: thousands of beetle-killed trees.

When we meet the Vanderhoofs and we're standing around the fire across the road from the cabin, the disaster seems far away, and Celeste says she's not convinced this part of the forest is in danger because of a major fire in 1906 and the subsequent reforestation by young, healthy firs and aspens. And the forest around the cabin does look green; when I take the trail to my bath hole I must slalom around tender fir and spruce saplings and giant stalks of cow parsnip. The creek is just as I left it, a beautiful confusion of silver and black logs, pink cobbles and white and gold gravel. The water looks gold deepening to brown in its bed; but when I put on my trunks– in deference to the Vanderhoofs and the rest who may be around– the water is clear– clear, clear, clear. The cold and motion surrounds me and supports me; there is no distraction or temptation, just cold and sand and quivering aspen leaves. I really want to stay and make minor improvements to the hole, maybe a bench, splash around building dams and altars of rock; but I must be visible and normal for Celeste, so I put on my dry clothes and climb the hill back to the fire pit, where Russ Vanderhoof, his daughter Danielle, Jim and Celeste are talking.

Danielle's husband Al arrives while we're there– a tall, amiable guy wearing glasses and a baseball cap with the face of Cookie Monster on the crown. The group talks of trees on your property, including our confrontation with the owner of the lot to the north over a butchered fir– old friends of Jim and Russ– Richard Brautigan.

Later, we all go in to join Russ' wife Robin, JoAn and Danielle's little girls for a profusion of picnic food– all of which Robin lays out cheerfully and efficiently. Russ, Celeste, Al and JoAn stay in the darkened kitchen and Annabelle, the youngest, half-sits, half-squirms at her place. Russ talks about canoeing in the Boundary Waters and Celeste recurs to the idea of buying a canoe and using it on the Yampa. A picture of a cliff filling our view as the green carries us along and the far-off yellow shape of a mountain lion tracking across its upper reaches occupies me for a moment.

Before we leave, Al gets us all to stand in a photo and I manage to shoot the group before I have to climb up on the deck with the rest. Jim, I think, is ready to go. We pull into his driveway when the sun is orange. Deborah is worried about Kobe, their cat. He's been making weird noises and now sits behind the couch looking morose. Jim, Celeste, Deborah and I group around him, talking to him like an infant, before Deborah can't stand it anymore and looks at the ceiling and laughs with a kind of resigned disgust.

We watch a biopic of Frida Kahlo and that night I have a heartbreakingly elusive dream about a beautiful black dancer who's enamored of me.

The next morning my toe hurts again.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The next day Celeste is up, it seems, at dawn and I fully intend to turn over and go back to sleep but instead I pick up my notebook and begin writing. Jim is up, too, and soon I hear him in his office. I hear him and Celeste talking softly. I shower and dress and find the coffee. While I lay in bed and write Celeste comes in and uploads her photos; Jim passes through occasionally to drop amiable complaints about his work and offer simple hospitalities.

Eventually Celeste walks downstairs to visit JoAn and presently I follow her. The three of us sit around the breakfast table down there and the subject of Celeste's Iran Flickr set comes up. She had scanned them from a set of slides JoAn had kept from the late 50s of a long-awaited visit of President Eisenhower to Tehran. The photos, I said, were rare objects from an era of friendship that neither government cared to admit right now. JoAn regretfully shakes her head. She remembers diplomacy and even amity when she lived in Shiraz with her husband Bill, an officer for A.I.D., and her kids Jim and Janet. There were concerts over which she presided as a then-untried voice teacher and even a cultural exchange with a pop singer whose song she can still remember; she sings a bar or two, but the rest is gone for now. Later Deborah comes downstairs with a pitcher and asks who wants to join her in a wine cooler. We all say yes and Celeste takes an inventory of the refrigerator. There's sweet white wine and a mango nectar blend and ginger ale; it's all poured into the pitcher and the result is pretty good.

Celeste says I don't like mangoes and Deborah asks me "What don't you like about them?" "It's their fibrous texture," I say. She assures me I haven't had a good one. "In Mexico we had a mango tree, a lime tree and an avocado tree. There was a man who helped us and he would go that way to get the laundry. He would pick some mangoes and they were real firm and smooth." "Like a peach," Celeste puts in. "Yeah, like a peach– just slightly more dense than a peach– and they were delicious– and not at all fibrous." I finish the pitcher after everyone else declines.

Later we get into some red wine over dinner– a pasta dish– and Jim and JoAn talk about Nigeria and Botswana. Politics comes up and Jim says that the best features of Botswana's self-government endured while Tanzania's socialist experiment remained as an uncomfortable legacy, a jacket that didn't fit. Celeste says that Nyarare's policies led to better health care and education in the long run. She complains loudly about the diffuse, shrill May Day rallies of years past and the lack of any clear source of concentrated anger. Jim agrees that there's an apathy problem but thinks that the next round of elections will reveal a new geography that may point to a way out of our gloomy swamp.

I seem to be even more tired than the night before, so much so that I can't remember any of my dreams.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

When we returned from our swim in the Yampa the next morning their gear had not shifted, but the isolated piles of sacks, crocs and water bottles had multiplied– the chatter never stopped, only varied in volume. I thought of the captain in Typhoon– wondering what the people in town could be talking about. They must say the same things over and over, he wonders to the mate. So must these people endlessly iterate while a world seethes around them.

As we flatten a trail through the stiff grass of the flood plain the arhythm of their voices is replaced by the peer, peer call of a nighthawk and the hysterical trill of a plover. A terrific splash marks the loss of another wheelbarrow-load of riverbank. The cottonwoods stand aside to reveal a brown shoulder pushing into the water, littered with polished stones and a great driftwood log grasping a tangle of cottonwood branches and a battered palette. The wind is up and the clouds of mosquitoes that have already covered my body with a blazing itch have blown away with it. We wander along the topography of mud, sand and and pebble until we find a calm spot to lay our shirts and towels and we wade into the swift water. The velcro straps of my sandals open in the water and I march stiffly along a submerged ridge, looking with my feet for that ideal depth. We find it in mid-channel and wheeze involuntarily as the cool water covers our bodies. I dunk my head and glimpse a gold swirl of mica and bark that cuts to a hollow rushing of water, then clouds and sky. I drip into the river and look at the cliffs. I still cherish a hope that one day I will see a yellow form questing just under the canyon rim, a big cat finally completing this great loop of his demesne.

On the way out we stop at the Cross-Mountain viewpoint, a partly washed-out gravel drive backed by a sheltered sign and a thicket of willows screening the water. Behind the green band of the Yampa rises the great stacked cliffs of these canyonlands, endlessly perforated, endlessly reticulated, a vertical city of sage, leathery desert trees, bats and swallows. Here a notch has been carved by the river and the sides have become immense orange and yellow pillars. I thread my way through the willows to stand at the base of one of these stanchions and look at the bleached talus rising to the galleries above. The undulations of the rimrock are sharp and hard against the morning sky. On my way back I spot a big green dragonfly hiding in a sage bush.

Maybell, the tiny hamlet near the eastern access to the monument, is just the same as we left it, a welcome anchor right down to the weathered Sinclair station, where we tank up. Then it's a flat drive through the fields of Craig and Hayden, rising into the mountains around Steamboat Springs. Here we stop for lunch, lamenting again the loss of a loved restaurant, Heidi's Little Switzerland, a defiantly themed place with frantic accordion music, yodeling and immense deli sandwiches. The analog seems to be Winona's on Lincoln Street, a local hangout that offers similarly outsized hoagies, nearly impossible to eat in their split-open girth. I put on my ten-dollar sunglasses and Stockman, to shield against the radiation of extreme wealth and satisfaction from a mighty host of young couples wandering around in their cargo shorts, flip-flops and baseball caps, and wearing three-hundred dollar versions of my own cheap lenses. I have their markings, send out their signals, but I wish merely to pass through their hive unmolested. We pick up a supergoo for our punctured air mattress from some incredibly laid-back young blonde with a tanned face and turquoise necklace and drive back up to Lincoln and past the last of the goldrush storefronts. Immediately the climb begins to the Rabbit Ears, and I don't push it. Eventually we spot the notch, which to me looks more like a pair of blunt-nosed pliers opening.

From here it's a winding drive through gorges cut by angry amber streams and pink granite that seems to push the road into the canyon below. In a meadowland between peaks I spot the anvil-shaped head of a moose in a thicket of huckleberries below the road. I pull over behind a white Honda and watch the moose amble up the gravel bank and casually inspect the car. Up the road a second moose with more grey on its haunches picks its way out of the woods and onto the gravel shoulder, unconsciously staging a travel brochure when it steps in front of the national forest sign. Celeste shoots the tableaux. After another long gorge drive we descend into the plains around Loveland and follow the U.S. highway south. It's a grooved alley that funnels the 65-mile-an-hour traffic into a sort of Russian roulette with a long series of signaled intersections with neighborhood connectors– and rows of Subways, Walgreens, Old Chicagos and Big Ks.

We come out the other side on a two-lane road again, into the knowable smallness of Lyons, and turn back into the gorgelands. The cliffs have turned purple in places and the water has changed from amber to chocolate or black. Eventually we descend into another wide valley and turn the shoulder of a gold hill to see the sign for Pinewood Springs, followed by a dirt access road climbing the hill to the right. We take it and climb the hill, passing the sign that urges you to to use a "slow speed– saves roads– saves cars– saves money", then a side road that descends the hill again and crosses a creek at the bottom, then a turn down and left, then left again, into a dark stand of pines, to the low brown walls and pink sandstone flags of Jim & Deborah's. Jim meets us at the door and we file in and greet JoAn. JoAn tells me of what she's been doing in Prescott and Jim tells us about a neighbor whose honeybees drained their hummingbird feeders. A friend has felled the problem trees at the cabin, abandoning the standard chainsaw for a double-bitted axe. Deborah comes out of her bedroom and greets us with a summary of the evening's activities: the benediction of a hot shower, a good dinner with conversation, and rest in a real bed with mattress and springs. Unloading our luggage, calling home and washing off the dirt and b.o. takes longer than I expect and I sit down at the long pine table to a dinner in progress. It's a good, hearty scramble of eggs, tomatoes and tortillas and I can feel the last of my fatigue fading into a past of flickering gas pump displays, futile squirming in the driver's seat and shifting heavy bins while I kneel on the corrugated steel of the truck bed.

We sit up late talking and drinking wine and cider and when I go to bed I have the usual mild altitude headache and fitful sleep.