The moon is nearly full, sailing alongside our car like a golden retriever giving chase down a driveway. The air is so dry and clear, it shines like a flashlight, illuminating the desert. A dark, gently shifting silhouette at the horizon suggests the presence of mountains west of Highway 15, north of Las Vegas.
For many miles, exhausting what's left of Nevada and a short cut through extreme northwestern Arizona, those mountains keep their distance. Then without warning, as if we are in an airplane that has stalled out and is dropping fast through the clouds and the only thing missing is the ominous pounding of really low piano keys, the hood of our car dips forward and we find ourselves descending, not out of the sky but into the Earth. The moon disappears, and the black monoliths that heretofore bided their time at the horizon swell up on either side, poking at the sky like giant thumbs.
We are on our way home. We are in Utah.
When it comes to scenic beauty, I have never heard anything bad, or indifferent even, about Utah, and I'd give anything not to be driving through it in darkness. I suspect out there in the western night is the scabrous but stunning landscape I've heard tell of, nothing less than deep painted canyons, their age expressed in unfathomable eons, the serrated edges of their faces telling of Earth's angry birth. We aren't even in the Rocky Mountains yet, and I can only hope that after driving all night we still are. I hate the thought of being back in the fruited plain when the world reappears, nothing to look at but the spot where sky meets horizon.
I would never have thought it possible, but there is actually a very small part of me that's relieved to be heading home. A much bigger part wishes I could ditch my companions and disappear into that western night forever, but the small part - sensible, trustworthy, consistent, cautious - is still the predominant force in my life. It is this small portion of my psyche that owns, operates and maintains the boundaries, and it's gotten me thinking of everything I left at home that will need attending when I return, and this has fomented a desire to get back and get to it as soon as possible.
Besides, romantic as it may sound, I'm thinking this might not be the best place to 'disappear'. I took the first shift driving, and over the course of the night, have come to understand what the word desolation really means.
I thought I knew. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, a geographic region off the beaten path, removed from the rest of the world, at least I thought so when I was a kid. But nothing I grew up with, no long, lonesome thoughts broadcasting from what I heartily believed to be the very ends of the Earth, contends with what I see - or don't see - driving through Utah in the dead of night.
I was raised in a bustling metropolis at the center of the galaxy, compared to this.
We get onto Interstate 70 at its western terminus near Cove Fort, established in 1867 as a Mormon Corridor way station by Brigham Young himself (this fact establishing in no uncertain terms that we are in Utah). I-70 is a major highway, the first of the Interstate projects back in 1956, and reportedly one of the last of the originals to be completed, as recently as 1992, running clear through to Baltimore, Maryland. But unlike Interstate 35, running north-south from Minnesota to Mexico, Interstate 40 (which we drove out here on), or the old grande dames 80 and 90, which swagger their way through regions with a certain command presence, along this stretch at least, I-70 hardly seems like an Interstate, to the point of being not a little unnerving. There's hardly any of the usual nighttime truck traffic. The occasional big rig roars past in the opposite direction, but there are no convoys, no need to fear being run off the road by a formation of semi trailers passing on the left, no rest stop communities of Peterbilts or Kenworths. Precious little traffic of any kind, as a matter of fact; no RVs or pickups, no fuel efficient Mazdas with funny stickers on the bumpers and locals behind the wheel, swishing on and off via exits to nearby towns.
There are no nearby towns.
No locals.
This is definitely not the place you want to get lost, or have someone chasing you. The roller coaster geography, up and down and in and out of canyons, prevents a visual contact with the horizon, which is almost as disorienting not to have while driving as it is for airplane pilots (if not as critical). There's nothing to gain your bearings here at night, no distant city lights, no airport towers winking at you, no visual punctuation to the land whatsoever. Only those big black thumbs poking into the sky on either side, seeming to grow blacker and more swollen with every mile. There aren't even any radio stations available (normally a reliable method of quelling alienation in a new area), just a dusting of white static where stations would otherwise be, but whose signals cannot muscle their way in-between the mountains.
I-70 goes on and on like this through central Utah, dark and forlorn. The only place I've seen any comparable desolation is driving through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan late at night. But at least there are frequent towns in the U.P., they just tend to be sewn up tight after 9 p.m. Nothing's open.
Here's, there's just nothing.
It shouldn't be too surprising. Most of Utah's population is centered around Salt Lake City, leaving the rest of the state among the most sparsely populated in the lower 48. Vast areas remain entirely uninhabited, and like a lot of western states, it possesses its share of ghost towns - communities cobbled together in an hour to facilitate some opportunity or boom that lasted maybe two.
"No Services"
Contributing mightily to the already trippy sense of desolation here is the not infrequent exit sign for some phantasmal community with a name like Cisco, or Yellow Cat (suggesting a dismally by-gone era of wagons, mules, miners and Indians). For a moment you're led to believe you've found that cherished place to shake off the road, grab some coffee or a slushy, reaffirm the world has not disappeared. But beneath the huge sign is a smaller one, often the same highway green but sometimes blue in color, as if put in place as an afterthought (or postmortem), that in either case declares ominously: "No Services."
It's like something from a Stephen King novel: a community that in name only deserves mention on a gigantic highway sign, warrants its own exit off a major Interstate, but possesses 'no services', no actual reason to stop, and the suggestion, in my mind anyway, that it might not be such a good idea to.
It is so desolate here, there is actually a sign along the way that reads, "No Services On I-70, Next 100 Miles."
Clipped and Fearful
We spot a convenience center/truck stop that proves to be - literally - a last chance for services of any kind. We breeze past at first, but then we see the 'No services next hundred miles...' sign, and facing the gaping maw of the Rocky Mountains, wisely turn back to fortify ourselves, and the car, just in case.
Inside, we find a woman sitting on a stool behind the counter, watching an 11 p.m. episode of Family Guy on an old television with rabbit ear antenna.
This young lady acts just as she might on a television sitcom, some Must-See-TV juggernaut where a van load of droll urbanites find themselves stuck in a tiny town, a place where the back-assward locals speak with a 'Southern' accent intended to reveal some universal truth. Surrounded by nothing but buffoonery, the snarky comments start to fly and 'fish out of water' hilarity ensues...or is meant to.
I've always bristled a little at this catch-all representation of rural America. I grew up in a small town, and have never thought it was fair or (entirely) accurate to paint all small-towners, even in jest, as either bumbling Barney Fife rubes, or wary of outsiders to the point of being destructively close-minded. Nor has seeing urban dwellers portrayed as the always reliable antidote to such character flaws ever done anything but annoy me.
But this girl is perpetuating the stereotype, setting small towners back a hundred years. She stares distrustfully - and at the same time contemptuously - at us when we walk in, stands up from her stool not to greet us, but as though she thinks some shit's about to go down. Her leery gaze is a fortress, and I get the feeling that somewhere unseen behind the counter she has a finger or a foot poised over a panic button.
I'm not sure exactly where we are, and ask if we're still in Utah. Her eyes widen with terror, as though I've brandished a knife.
No verbal response, just a clipped and fearful (defiant) nod of her head.
"Do you know how far it is to the Colorado border from here?"
Now she shrugs, an elaborate (and indignant) upheaval of her shoulders, as if, with that knife clutched menacingly over my head, I've asked her to empty the cash register. On the TV, Peter Griffin says something about his wife's flatulence and breaks into song...er, something or other...as the compressor of a little stand-alone freezer full of ice cream bars near the counter clicks to life.
I don't think there's any one thing she finds intimidating about us. That's not really possible. We are three of the least threatening MF's to ever walk into a convenience store late at night, and too tired and road weary to even act silly, as we might under better circumstances. My flat-footed shuffle to the bathroom, then the coffee machine, then down the dilapidated chip aisle for a bag of Funyuns (since they're out of cheese and cracker Combos), plays out without words, and with eyes like Jughead Jones.
It must simply be a natural distrust of people on her part, distrust and/or dislike of strangers, of 'outsiders', not unlike what gets depicted on TV (much as I hate to admit it). I would not otherwise think to mention it, except it's palpable, and begs the question: why in the world is this individual working an overnight shift at a truck stop on a major east-west thoroughfare?
Not that I'm indicting her, exactly. I understand her behavior. If I lived in the middle of nowhere, this deep up the bowel of the Beehive (or any other) State, with only a snowy-screened Peter Griffin to distract me from the painfully slow passing of overnight hours, perhaps I'd be distrustful too. And I suspect there aren't a lot of jobs to go around in these parts. To that end, it can be said that I not only understand her behavior, but can relate to it: I have worked my share of overnights at convenience stores in the past, simply because I couldn't find anything else, and it can be pretty brutal.
I coped by sleeping a lot.
Maybe she's annoyed because we woke her up.
Rocky Mountain High
The terrain has been mountainous the whole way, but there is a moment after we cross the border into Colorado some hour and a half later, when it's clear beyond a shadow of a doubt where we are, and what we're getting ourselves into. We reach the apex of some long rising slope. The car tips forward and begins its descent down the other side as it has numerous times already tonight, but this time, hits a patch of snow and ice and begins to slide sideways.
I keep calm, turn into the skid, pump the brake a little. The tires manages to grab some dry pavement and with a lurch the car rights itself, thank God. It's either that, or go skidding through the all-too-flimsy guardrail and plunge into the featureless (and bottomless, I imagine) black abyss that has surrounded us. We carry on, but from that point forward everything is overwhelmingly daunting in terms of distance, elevation, grade, size and weather. The roads are snow covered and slippery, and remain so until we reach Denver.
The Rockies have become The Rockies. The maw has closed behind us.
The sign a while back said 'Welcome to Colorful Colorado'...I have no doubt this is true, but most of it passes in darkness. During this overnight stretch, my companions fall asleep. I am left driving alone, guzzling my coffee, managing my vertigo, watching for black ice, navigating the odd snow squall by dimming my headlights, and combing through the years of my life.
I think again about the bratty shit fit I threw a couple of days ago in a convenience store in California, a tantrum better suited to a three year old, and over something ridiculous to boot, something so not worth my - or anyone's - time. I've said it many times, in moments when I felt I needed to ground myself, and it has remained true (knock on wood): I have no reason, or right, to be throwing a fit about anything, must less something petty.
I have lived, all things considered, a charmed life.
Not a life of privilege or luxury, surely, but of ability and opportunity, or at least spotting and availing myself of opportunity. Sometimes that 'opportunity' has bore sweet fruit, sometimes nothing but twigs breaking my teeth and scraping the inside of my throat as I swallow. And I have known my fair share of hardship. I have loved and not been loved back. I've been cheated, cheated on, laughed at and laughed about. I've been flat broke without resource, recourse or sympathy. My actions have been scorned, my methods and motives - however altruistic I believed them to be - brought into question. The things I've chosen to consider my 'talents' have been scrutinized, and summarily dismissed, many times. And still, still, that there should be anything that angers me beyond petty annoyance in this life that I've led is laughable.
What was it that angered me in Cali? To get right down to the psychological bone, what was it precisely that set me off? Nobody was doing anything, or saying anything, that should have bothered me! There was that sign hanging on the wall, yes...that attempt by store owners to rationalize their price gouging. Annoying, but hardly worth the expenditure of energy my outburst required.
The highway whines hypnotically, thunks rhythmically as my tires pass over breaks in the pavement. There are more towns now, sliding by in the 20 and 30 mile increments that I am used to, but the weather is starting to get dicey as our elevation increases. There are stretches of white-out conditions here and there, and moments when patches of snow require me to slow down, when I feel myself losing control of the vehicle for one white-knuckle second.
I re-establish my grip on the wheel, hands at 10 and 2, eyes open and focused straight ahead. I turn into the skid, pray for dry pavement, and with a profoundly forlorn sense of disbelief, realize (acknowledge):
I am at mid-life.
In less than two years, I turn forty.
Though I don't feel middle-aged (meaning, don't feel like I should be), it nevertheless feels like I have been here forever, living my 'charmed life' in very important times, though that is a laughable notion. Our individual lives, and even the times in which we live them, warrant barely a mention (if that) in the annals of history. The Rockies were here long before I came into the world and they will be here, mostly unchanged, long, long after I've returned to the wind. And as hard as it is for me to believe I was seven years old once, it will one day be hard for me to believe I was thirty, or about to turn forty.
And yet, sequestering oneself in that kind of thinking, hiding behind a sense of smallness and irrelevance in that 'great cosmic all', can lead to people acting the way I did in that California truck stop. If I'm to believe that in the end I'm not all that relevant to the unfolding of the universe, then who gives a shit, really, if - occasionally (or all the time) - I act like an asshole to strangers.
Right?
I don't buy that. Those folks at that convenience store probably remember the incident - if not the details of my face, or what the weather looked like outside, or exactly what the date or year was, or exactly what I was pissed off about, then surely my sauntering outside and kicking dirt on their garbage can. And at odd, random moments in the future, over a dinner, or with drinks with friends, they will likely recall the incident. "Oh, I remember that guy," they'll say with a chuckle. "Man, he was an asshole, huh?"
That gnaws at me. Strangers are the ones we should be on our best behavior around. Friends and family members we can apologize to, or make amends with, at any time in the future. But strangers, with whom it is not so easy to go back and fix our mistakes, carry with them the writable hard drive of the universe, which they allow every other person they meet to download.
I come out of a snow squall and spot a town in the distance; a wide pool of lights sliding gently past us on the right. I've driven so far through emptiness, and so much of that alone, my heart leaps at the sight of each new civilization. I feel obligated to stop, as though each town itself is a new opportunity I dare not miss. But there is no need to. We are fed, I've got plenty of coffee, and three-quarters of a tank of gas still. Gotta keep going, gotta make time, gotta face another stretch through the night with my thoughts, and memories.
Up and down through the Rockies we go. My companions sleep on. The midnight hour becomes 1 a.m., then 2 a.m.
It's the petty things that set me off. I have a remarkable tolerance for tragedy (such as I've known it): in the face of lost jobs, lost love, lost innocence and big life changes, I generally find it easy to be philosophical, to maintain my composure so as to ensure both an appropriate response and smooth transition.
Tra-la, la...
Lost car keys, lost cell phones, lost wallet, lost directions (i.e., my way) on the other hand, quite a different story.
Games, board games in particular, forget it...I am sickly competitive. Sorry!, Frustration, any of those kiddie games where players find themselves at the mercy of dumb fricking luck I can't play, unless it's agreed upon that everyone at the table will let me win. That's why I don't like to gamble; I'm too poor of a sport to endure the overwhelmingly futile odds of any casino game. I'm a bad sport when someone else wins a gigantic lottery jackpot, too. It's childish, it's selfish, asinine...but I can't control it. I can't lose petty things. I'm okay losing the big stuff...in other words, I'm okay failing.
I am not okay losing.
Maybe control, more specifically, is the issue...
Whoops...a short slip-side on the ice. I let up on the accelerator, hands steady on the wheel. My MP3 player blows through one of the road trip mixes I carefully (and eclectically) cobbled together in anticipation of this drive. Ventura Highway by America becomes New Year's Day by U2, then Lodi Dodi by Snoop Dogg...
In the end, the reasons don't matter. I do not want it to be part of me, don't want anybody rolling their eyes and saying that's 'just me being an asshole', and being comfortable with that because everyone's an asshole once in a while...er, right? I'm too old for that. It's not only embarrassing, but could prove detrimental to my health to allow myself to get wound up.
I'm at mid-life now. Taking stock of one's existence at this age should engender wanting to get through the third act a better person.
Or at least, at the very least, a better actor.
Sunrise Snow Flies
As it turns out, by the time the sun starts to rise the next morning, we are still west of Denver, creeping our way through what has become the snow-blown Rockies. I suspect there's always some kind of squall going on up here this time of year, but about 4 a.m. the snow started really falling and sticking, and it has impeded our progress tremendously. At the same time, it's given us a glimpse of the Rockies as we imagine them, as they might appear on the cover of an old John Denver album - snow-dusted pine trees growing proud and pristine out of thousand-foot mountain faces. I understand Denver's love of this place, actually, his feeling that it deserved to be lauded in song. We don't ever get off the Interstate, and yet even from this relatively inadequate vantage point, there's something primordial about this place, something humbling - to say the least - about the way the mountains dwarf everything.
It is equally amazing that humanity has put a foot down here at all, really. In the gray light, I-70 in Colorado, specifically Glenwood Canyon, reveals itself to be a marvel of engineering, a sometimes mind-boggling assemblage of tunnels, viaducts and multi-level lanes running parallel to train tracks that themselves run - in some places literally - along the side of mountains.
LARGER THAN LIFE - It is astonishing and humbling how the Rocky Mountains dwarf everything.
We are still ascending in altitude when I wearily (but gratefully) give up driving and slouch into the shotgun seat, and will cap off at about 8,500 feet before all is said and done. I've driven for 10 hours straight, and though I'm exhausted, I'm in that strange psychological netherworld that comes from being too exhausted to sleep, and the Rockies are not a terrible place for this to happen, to be awake and lucid, yet floating in a dream-like state. Everything about this larger than life landscape becomes enhanced - and not unpleasantly - when you're half-delirious with exhaustion.
There's plenty of big truck traffic on I-70 now, and it's clear the weather is hampering their progress as well. Bright, blinking road signs caution motorists about the unstable conditions, and remind big rig drivers to pull over and put chains on their tires. This is apparently enforced, as well. We slink slowly past a line of big rigs that have been stopped along the side of the road and are being inspected by the Colorado State Patrol. Looks like a major pain in the ass for the truckers; none of them look too happy to be wasting time doing it, but man, I would not want to jack-knife in one of those things going down through a pass. Or be the one driving a little tin can in the midst of such a mishap, for that matter.
SLOW GOING - High mountain snow squalls throughout the night make for treacherous morning driving along Interstate 70 in central Colorado.We have breakfast in Eagle, Colorado, without realizing that Vail is just a few miles further east. Had we known, we'd have eaten there, merely for the novelty. As it turns out, we don't stop in Vail. We're fed (again) and have miles to go as usual. But I do catch a quick glimpse of skiers making their way down the slopes in a synchronized back and forth slalom in the very momen we happen to be passing by.
IN FORMATION - Zipping past a Vail ski lodge as skiers zip their way down the slopes. Vail Mountain rises to 11,000 feet and is reportedly the second largest ski slope in North America.To be in that place at that time, whizzing past at 60 miles per hour just as those three skiers happened to be going down that slope in that formation, remains one of the highlights of this road trip.
Rocky Mountain Bye
Before we know it, the Rockies are in our rear-view mirror. The snow stops. The clouds break up. The temperature rises into the 20s. Denver passes without incident. I sleep through a lot of it, or stare glassy-eyed out at the flurry of traffic, exits and strip malls visible from the Interstate.
SMOOTH SAILING - Before we know it, the elevation drops, the snow stops, the sun comes out.East of Denver, we enter the magnificent Colorado high plains, where one's spirit cannot help but soar. It's the very definition of 'big sky country', and it is out here, where the land sweeps the eye (as opposed to the eye sweeping the land), having been on the road for nearly 24 hours straight, that the big trip I want to one day take comes into consideration, and under regrettable, but unavoidable, scrutiny.
HOW CAN ONE NOT SMILE - The fabulous open spaces of the Colorado high plains rejuvenate the spirit, but put the logistics of a solo cross-country drive in perspective.
I intend to hit all of the lower 48 states over the course of six months; at least, that's the plan. But the overwhelming nature of this initiative, appealing though it may seem in my mind, becomes apparent coming off the front range of the Rockies. It's a simple matter of logistics, really. I'm not entirely sure it's possible to hit all 48 states in six months driving solo. We have been on the road non-stop for 24 hours straight, and we have only gotten (barely) through the Rockies, and that's ONLY because there are other drivers along with me.
If I go alone, I will have to keep a much more regular schedule. I won't be able to sleep while someone else carries on driving; I'll have to pull in somewhere, get a hotel room, stop, which brings up another issue: the logistics of hotel stays. I understand now Steinbeck's need for Rocinante in Travels With Charley, the need to be, at least most of the time, a self-sustaining entity. Six months worth of hotel stays would run into obscene amounts of money, and would not always be the most savory option, even if it were something I could afford.
Steinbeck cobbled together a customized camper truck for his journey. For me, an RV is the logical answer, but do I want to go there...?
Not to mention I will be older than I am now when I go, and that will make a difference. I'm still in decent shape physically, but I do understand more than I ever thought I would the little aches and pains grown-ups were always grunting and griping about when I was a kid, the groans that serenaded something as seemingly simple as getting up, and the descending sigh of relief that accompanied sitting down.
But hell, Steinbeck was almost 60 when he did it. If he hacked it, I certainly can!
I just think I better make it 50.
I know I'd rather make it 50.
By the time Colorado becomes Nebraska, I am fast asleep, and already taking that road trip in my dreams.
Of course, in the dream, as in all dreams, I'm 25 forever.
