Trevor was up at the crack of dawn inspecting the brook again. He had gone for a long hike alone up it's winding banks.
"Did you hear that last night?" he asks hoping I know what That is. I hope it was Jim Dove climbing a tree away from a Bear.
"That wind? Up around the mountain? It was like roaring – like roar-ing. It woke me up. Scared me." I didn't hear it. Slept through. "I have never heard wind like that" Trevor says reverantly. "It was a God Wind." He turns toward the whitecap just overhead. It glances back at him. A neat little trail seems to lead right up to it.
"Well," I say "you guys want to stay another day and hike or just get on with it."
Mutual get on with its.
So we fold down the tent and break campsite and pack down the car again. Slow crawl down the miles of dirt road and mountain and we are in no time back on Route 70 headed West.
Sometime in the early afternoon we leave Colorado. The green speckled slopes and white icing peel away and the mountains melt to old brown and broken hills. Highway bends down not up and the air thick enough to drink. Welcome to Utah.
In my memory Utah is made of stone. Why the Mormons came to stay here is beyond me. Brown landscape of pink and white shadows. Some benign watcher sent a small army of cloudlets to keep us from burning to death. Kept us in soft shade all day though the summer weather had returned. This was the West you see in movies. Box canyons winding off in the distance. Flat clouds a hundred miles away. Dark mountains far off and brooding alone. At one point we saw a set of stones that looked like dishes fanned out standing on end. Or like round plate shaped spines of a dragons back. Oval shaped and leaning and in a long line. Each one had to be five hundred feet high as we approached. Like a landscape where giants once played. What were we doing here? "Wow!" Jim jumped. "ninety two octane. I can't believe it!" He motioned to a little green sign but I couldn't find it in the rear view against all the stones. I considered that he was pulling my leg. I'll never know. This really happened.
This was my kind of driving. Low level of traffic. Mostly Trucks. The ocean Sky all blue but for the angel cloudlets. Landscape on all sides right out of the imagination. No houses. No small business or strip malls. Ravens not crows. A world too rugged for human roots. The government probably owns most of it. G.I. Joe hiding in the bushes. Trevor and Jimmy taking turns with the front seat and napping alternately. Grey skies ahead hint at a summer Rain. Play a tape of Western music that pulls on our heart strings all afternoon. We are over halfway to The Golden State. Trevor takes a big old sandwich bag and fills it with freshly picked Sage. We burn little bundles of it every so often. Fills the car instantly with The West. Up ahead we will finally leave Route 70 which has protected us well since the Bypass in Columbus.
The light Rain keeps its promise to the dry Earth. Three thousand miles of dust begin to wash off the roof and caked edgeds of windsheild. Our Route 70 ends and a little sandwich shop marks our turn. North from here to Salt Lake City. In the shop two blond headed angel mormon girls are giggling. Not ten years old they are alien and out of place in the otherwise martian landscape. No scales or fur or claws. How could they survive here? Struck me as odd. My vegetable sandwich is pleasantly softer than the human mix and fills me up fine. The Rain asks if it can spend the afternoon. Why not? Jimmy is out cold as Trevor and I look North toward Salt Lake City.
The next hundred miles seems like a pleasant five minutes and before we know it we've come up to the Capital city of Utah. Clever Mormons, nobody will contest them for their capital. Folks in pick up trucks and toting jet skis and other gas powered oil spewing fun heading for the Great Salt Lake. Lots of blondes. Blonde America. Two kinds of radio here: country and gospel. Not so bad. I once listened to a radio preacher in Wyoming all day. "Hope," he spoke in dry whispered tones to myself and the bleak range, "is defined in the Bible as joyfull and confident expectation." Shed a sweet tear. Cowboys all over the West putting their hats over their hearts. Hair on their arms a'risin.
Bleak white Sky and soft Rain and the City to our right. Black spires wrought of human stone. Not too close, though. Perpetual frown on commuters and folks leaving work. This is a feature of all American Cities. The Work Force. Angry and in motion at daybreak and dusk. Inclimate weather like a sign from God to speed.
Our Northward journey is short lived. We will soon reconvene with Route 80 above the City. Legendary Route 80. One which cuts straight through America. And one I would have taken except I have no desire to spend a thousand miles or so in the dreary underland of Chicago.
Smoothly and with no effort we find 80 and make the turn. Have enough gas? Yes. Good thing. Jimmy is still sleeping. Ahead the land becomes flat. Off to the right there seems to be some hidden structure. Not a structure. Water. The Great Salt Lake.
Emerald green and otherworldly the Lake goes on forever. One island can be seen from here. Not really an island but the tip of a mountain submerged. Smooth grey triangle. I have never seen such a color in my life. Like glass cleaner or rocket fuel. And somehow the water line is above us. Or so it seemed. Like a dam or dyke were holding it back. Smart humans. We know better than Nature. We'll teach her where a lake should and shouldn't end. Perhaps somewhere in the Heart of the City a Mormon named Noah is preparing for the future. A salt water proof ark for when the dam or wall finally goes. Blondes and the elephants two by two. Jim sleeps on. Misses the lake. Up ahead the flats.
I would say it is over one hundred miles from the Great Salt Lake to the mountains at the Nevada border. And as straight as an arrow.
The road ahead comes to a pinpoint the way railroad tracks do on paper. They meet. The road points to a close ahead. A crisp white crust extends away from the highway as far as you can see on either side. Salt. Ahead like a panel of judges purple slumbering mountains await a hundred miles away. They have forever. A council of thunderheads floats above them keeping us in their soft shadow. Golden beams of repressed Sunlight burst from behind. The future is all shades of purple. Gusts of wild salt wind slam and batter the ship. I mean car. It is an odd wonderland and Trevor and I are struck silent. We are driving into an oil painting. Burn a little Sage. Play that tape. Jim Dove wakes.
Paralell to the road a set of unsightly tracks run. Off roaders crunching tracks in the salt on their four wheelers. Quads they call them. Tracks and then donuts. The remnants of small fires. Assorted auto parts. Here a muffler there a muffler. More quad tracks. Nightmare of a breakdown place. I later regreted not gathering some salt. My memory of those tracks squelches that regret. So we are all entranced these hundred miles by the purple mountains ahead and the gold beams from behind the clouds as the one stretch nears a smoky close. Ahead the mountains represent the Nevada state line.
Suddenly the clouds open up and a single beam of Sunset rises across the salt. It covers our car completely and we are momentarily blinded in gold fire. Wow. Just for us this long wait. Then just as suddenly it is gone. And behind us that singular stretch is a pencil drawn line on white paper. The Sun seems to have gone home. Twilight. The mountains lift the road for us. Hidden within them is Nevada.
Always amazes me the stamina that your body can produce when necessary. Though this entire trip was a journey of discovery (in essense) what actual drove me this day was to hurry up and get the hell to California. I could tell that my companions were eager if not to get there then to at least get Somewhere. So I put this magical strength to use that night in Nevada.
A great big state, I think the government owns all of Nevada. It would behoove our National Debt to own some of Vegas. Last year Vegas paid out seven hundred million dollars in complimentaries or comps. It is reported that Vegas spends approximately eleven percent of what they make annually on these complimentaries. Do the math. See National Debt in your ninth grade History boOk.
The first thing I recall is getting gas in the dark. I had gone in for a drink or something and there at the counter was something to astonish. The Official Nevada State Guide To Legal Whorehouses. I shit you not. If'n I never heard that before, I was a learnin' it now from scratch. Prostitution is legal here. And so close to Utah no less. What think the Mormons of their neighbors?
Somewhere a little tragedy here.
"Pass me the Sage" says I.
Trevor ruffles around endlessly. Big white sandwich bag as big as a Pug dog nowhere to be found. "Ah," chimes Jim "I might have thrown it out at the last stop." And sure enough. Good intentions though, it is hard to keep a car large on the inside with three mad travelers plus gear. Wheat seeds and crushed flowers are underfoot from Kansas.
No more Sage. Damn. Wait a minute loOk. Plenty around in the desert. I pull the car off the dark highway immediately. Run to the Sage. It is a different product however. Tall and stringy and with no smell whatsoever. I discover this only upon burning a smoky bundle. Crap.
At a dark gas station Jim takes the wheel. I lay in the back to nap. Tired from riding he almost drives off the on ramp and into the desert. Quick jerk of the wheel back on the road. I am glistening with fear. No nap for me. Just lie there and hold still a while. They thought I was sleeping. I don't think they spoke a word to one another during the seventy to one hundred miles of my rest.
So after a while I sat up and played guitar. Giddy with exhaustion I felt invincible. I took the wheel with nearly two hundred more miles to Reno, Nevada.
"How ya doin?" I ask Jim with no seriousness.
"Tired. How bout you?" he nods blearily.
"Fine!" I bark like a radio commercial. "I could drive all night!" and I meant it just then. In that moment of exhaustion I felt I could drive clear to Asia. Trevor shook his head solemnly no. We've now almost a thousand miles between us and our white capped host of last night.
Nevada in the dark is all sneaky hills and mountains and highway. Nary a rest stop or town every fifty miles. Another nightmare breakdown place. But the stars were so bright against the black velvet. My aching back and California so close.
We finally make it to Reno.
A miniature and in my mind copy of Vegas, it twinkles against the blackness like a crash landed space vehicle. It's unharmed inhabitants zipping about in smaller space vehicles. From casino to casino. Any motel will do.
Two long haired girls playing cards behind the glass. I buzz the button. They glare at me. One resolves to come to the window. Zombie motel they check me in mindlessly. Sorry to interupt your game. Trudge into the motel drop dead tired. No proper rest since the windy yellow motel on the tundra. It is almost three in the morning. I think Trevor was going to take a shower. I lay down for a second.
About three minutes later it is sunlight. Trevor is clean, packed and ready to go. Looks well rested. How does he do it? Jimmy is sawing wood. I am the living dead. Between four and six hours down. What a day this will be.