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.

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.

Audio Ghosts on the Island

The story of discovery on the rock island seemed to take a turn last week when an observer reported human voices and music emanating from the well, dubbed by observers lately the "Boston Well" from the preponderance of Boston album jackets discovered around its mouth. The words, he said, "sounded like Québécois" and in fact sounded like a broadcast of a Montreal Canadiens game; he stated positively that he heard the word "but" repeated several times. He also claimed a liberal sprinkling of mellotron figures in snippets of studio-recorded music, but this claim could not be substantiated.

In fact, none of the observer's testimony could be confirmed by other observers or a team of experts recently stationed there on a research vessel. The experts, headed by a university professor who is researching the connection between independently confirmed "provisions", or oddly relevant objects discovered at extreme need by the observers, and their experience before their time on the island, were the first to hear the observer's report, in a dramatic sequence of events that began with a flare signal from the island.

Professor Wygant of the University of Washington recorded the observer's report, a man referred to in reports as the "climber" or "well climber" for his discovery of the Boston Well.

WYGANT: You awake? You okay? Can I get you something?

THE CLIMBER: Huh? What am– What's this?

WYGANT: You're on the Architeuthis, our research vessel. We saw your flare.

THE CLIMBER: We've gotta– there's someone down there.

WYGANT: Down where?

THE CLIMBER: Down there, you know, the well. We've gotta get him. Her. Whoever. They're down there.

WYGANT: Some of my students are there now. They're radioing me with reports. They haven't heard anything.

THE CLIMBER: Well, that– They could be in trouble. We've gotta go down there. (THE CLIMBER GETS UP, FALLS DOWN AGAIN) Ohhhh fuck, FUCK. My head. My head.

WYGANT: How about some aspirin?

THE CLIMBER: No, no, makes me sick. Look, you've gotta find a climber, someone to– (THE CLIMBER MOVES HIS LIPS SILENTLY. HE CRIES SILENTLY, CLOSES EYES) Noone'll ever find him– her– who– (THE CLIMBER FALLS ALSEEP).

WYGANT: (SIGHS, SHUTS OFF TAPE MACHINE)

WYGANT: How's it going?

THE CLIMBER: Okay.

WYGANT: You seem better.

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks for picking me up.

WYGANT: It's okay.

THE CLIMBER: So, you're the research boat? I saw you guys off the coast. We've been watching each other.

WYGANT: Yes, we have. We try not to be too obvious about it.

THE CLIMBER: Well, you are in the–

WYGANT: –The boat?

THE CLIMBER: –Boat. Pretty hard to miss.

WYGANT: Yeah. Yeah. Hard to miss. (LONG PAUSE) So, uh– you remember anything around the time we picked you up?

THE CLIMBER: No. I was getting ready for another climb, and, uh, must've hit my head or something. Next thing I know I'm in here.

WYGANT: Hm. You know you were awake a while ago, said there was someone in the well?

THE CLIMBER: No, really? I mean, really? No, I was looking for more jackets... Don't remember hearing any voices. I mean, I heard a radio...

WYGANT: A radio?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, a radio. A little one, mono, like one of those old transistors or a weather radio or something. It was a Montreal game.

WYGANT: A Montreal game.

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, the Canadiens. And the broadcast was in Québécois.

WYGANT: You could hear that?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, yeah, it sounded like it was right next to me. Some kind of audio effect caused by a reticulation in the rock. I've heard those before, said something into the well and heard it whispered in my ear. And not always what I said.

WYGANT: You mean you say one thing and hear another?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah. One time I heard my girlfriend from college, telling me not to get all salty.

WYGANT: Salty?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, that was her way of saying 'don't cry'. I was on one of my jags.

WYGANT: A provision?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, a bottle of Dewar's. The only time I've ever found alcohol in the cabin. Normally it's an object, you know? Not a consumable. But this time it was a bottle of Dewar's. Right there above the sink. And the other thing that was weird– alcohol was the last thing on my mind. It was almost like the cabin was foisting it on me. I almost thought it would be– well–

WYGANT: Impolite?

THE CLIMBER: Impolitic. Impolitic to refuse the cabin. I mean, if I'm ungrateful this time, what happens when I really need it? So I took a swig. And, you know, one thing led to another–

WYGANT: So that was the only time? The cabin provided alcohol, I mean.

THE CLIMBER: Yeah, the only time. And after I heard my girlfriend I passed out and woke up with a terrible headache. I did some rock fishing and it went away. That was a couple weeks ago.

WYGANT: And today you heard a radio?

THE CLIMBER: Yeah. I mean, I think it was a radio... What else could it be? I mean, I heard a mellotron. And the word "but, but"... (Québécois for "goal")... Then a boom of surf and nothing.

WYGANT: Well, you told us a couple hours ago that there was someone in the well that needed rescue. You tried to get out of the bed. My students have been in constant radio contact since then and I've heard no reports of any more sounds.

THE CLIMBER: Is that right? Well... I guess there could be someone... But I mean how? After all this time? And I saw the last observer, the fisher, at his shop, so it couldn'ta been him... Someone down there? I said that?

WYGANT: Yeah, and you were adamant. I mean, you tried to jump out of that bed.

THE CLIMBER: Jump out. Well I'll be damned.

Professor Wygant escorted the Climber on a jollyboat back to the island and interviewed him again, but the Climber seemed to have forgotten most of the particulars about the individual or group he claimed was trapped in the well. His spirits were good and he didn't seem confused about his whereabouts or identity. He was cordial and invited the professor back any time he felt like it. "Maybe the cabin'll provide another bottle of Dewar's," he said. He didn't say anything else about the audio apparition of his girlfriend. The professor watched him from the jollyboat, with his binoculars. He insists he saw the climber pull a bottle out of his parka and swig on it while staring at the site of the well. He said the climber didn't change his position the whole time the jollyboat was in the water.

Portland May Day Demonstration 2011

Celeste says she intends to make a sign for the May Day demonstration, one that reads "Scott Walker: Nineteenth-Century Man." I agree that this is a clever joke for fans of the singer and a good slogan for everyone else, but I'm afraid the effort will be wasted. She intends to go and I resign myself to another trip downtown, more to see the architecture and treescapes than for any other reason.

Sunday morning the sun glows bright green through the leaves of the quince outside the bedroom window. The warm breeze coming through the front windows soothes the tension I feel at the thought of the crowds and loudness at the demonstration. I drink my coffee. My own paper life is a shambles, my political life a story that some time ago entered an uncomfortably empty Middle Period, and so these things don't seem the same to me that they did fifteen years ago. But the bus comes on time and it's not too crowded.

The first people we see are bored-looking bicycle cops, standing over their machines in a long line. Beyond the cops are a crowd of anarchists– or so they call themselves– carrying red flags and selling t-shirts under the statue of Lincoln. They're smiling and larking. The great bronze president gazes impassively down on the children of his republic. Beyond these and to the north is a red and white crowd, clumping finally around a sandstone fountain at that end of the South Park Blocks.

A woman down there is shouting through a bullhorn, about anti-abortion legislation. It's so loud that by the time I'm a hundred yards away my ears are hurting. The anger that is missing from the crowd is all reserved for the bullhorn, and it is the type that is turned on and off judiciously, like water in a drought. What the crowd takes to be the vehemence of conviction is more the desperation of a speaker who's losing her audience, sustained and distilled into a sort of public-speaking chant. Because the crowd does not need to be convinced. The mood is one of fervent, almost anxious agreement. And the speaker knows all this. She begins chanting for real, waiting for a response from the crowd that eventually comes, but muted and scattered.

Dotting the crowd are red balloons, brought by the ever-present Wobblies. Many of their intended audience stroll along as pairs and individuals, with beatific smiles on their faces. Those who are unconvinced remain so and walk through the crowd a bit offbeat, to make it obvious they have somewhere else to go. I do this too. Canvassers and socialist workers hurry through the crowd with their clipboards and pamphlets like waiters at a cocktail party. The few trade and industrial union workers we could find– and we looked for them, up and down the crowd– seem to be waiting for something: their turn at the mike? Someone to ask them about their union? Someone to start an argument? It is hard to say. We found only two banners: one for the AFL-CIO, and one for the Painters. The only other two signs we found were a SEIU t-shirt and a sign that said "Fred Meyer Settle The Dalles". It looked like a sign from the big Fred Meyer strike back in the '90s, so I assume the UFCW printed it. The sign, of course, is stuck into the ground.

Eventually the shrieking bullhorn drives everything out of my head and I decide to walk towards the Federal Building. A pair of Tea Party workers walk by with chunky, expensive cameras around their necks. Even this glimmer of confrontation has a dreary regularity: after all, everyone must be represented.

At the site of the Federal Building we find another disappointment: the Federal Building has been gutted, a project of the GSA that will ultimately "modernize" the building. It is all far beyond me; the building was an immense tower of white stone and black glass and seemed in no urgent need of "modernization". Now it is an ugly skeleton of rusting girders covered with what appears to be dirty shaving cream. The listing I found for the U.S. Government Book Store, the real object of my search, is a deserted-looking office with a Providence Health Care sign in the window.

We make our way to the Plaza blocks. The Spanish-American War infantryman still advances with a grim look on his face. A slight breeze dances through the ferns on a great limb of elm. Celeste is disappointed and surprised; I am just disappointed. I did not really expect to see the big-bellied trade union guys, a bit dazed but finding their rhythm in front of the mike, warming to tales of the United Auto Workers in Michigan in the '30s... Radicalized in spite of themselves by this shrill anti-labor reaction that endlessly strives to out-shout its bullhorn counterpart... Suddenly formidable again, aware of their own strength again.... I did not really expect all this... Did I?

No, no.