Day Three: Roaming the U.P.

There is something intensely satisfying about sitting inside a tent and watching mosquitoes try unsuccessfully to get in.  They ram repeatedly into the netting in the tent’s mesh windows but never make it through.  If there are enough of them and you listen closely, you can hear their buzz of futility.  Inside the tent, all is calm and bug-free.  It’s a nice feeling.

This morning I woke up in another beautiful campsite.  I’d followed a small dirt road to its end, and wound up looking out over Lake Superior in an area just big enough to turn a car around.  After I hung a towel to dry over the “no camping” sign, it was the perfect campsite.  (The ranger who came by about 11pm was nice enough to let me stay after I promised to leave first thing in the morning.)  So I woke up with a gorgeous view of the lake, and Lou woke up to an awesome swimming hole.  The morning was cool enough that I needed a pullover.  Lou and I had a slow morning as I made bacon, eggs, and coffee.

This was my day entirely in the U.P.—no travel imperatives.  Lou and I were on the road around 9:30.  We wandered west, basically following the lakeshore.  We drove through Emerson, Paradise, Deer Park, Grand Marais.  We hiked a few miles in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and paused to stroll barefoot (both of us) on Twelvemile Beach.  Twelvemile Beach is one of those places that is just too impossibly gorgeous to take in.  You just look around, smile, and try to appreciate it.  You take a picture and you know the picture won’t do it justice, but you hope it’ll help your memory later.  Then you leave and wish you knew how to describe it to others.

Just offshore from Twelvemile Beach, at least according to the DeLorme Atlas & Gazatteer, is the “Alger Underwater Preserve.”  Inexplicably, there is a picture of car next to the words “Underwater Preserve” in my atlas.  The car hovers over the blue ink that denotes Lake Superior.  I threw a tennis ball into the water and Lou retrieved it a few times, but that was as close to Alger as we got.  Lou came back very wet, so I did not think it wise to take my Subaru out there.  Mr. DeLorme can take his car if he chooses.

After a restaurant dinner in Marquette, I drove a few miles north and stopped in what I believe to be Escanaba River State Forest.  I was not picky about the campsite—it was about to be dusk, and I’ve learned that although the U.P.’s mosquitoes aren’t bad during the long summer days, they swarm like mad just after sunset.  So the wise move is to have your tent set up and be finished getting things out of your car before the skeeter swarm arrives at sunset.  That way you have a mosquito-free tent and car.  Last night I kept the car doors open for too long, with the consequence that I shared my car with a hundred or so mosquitoes for the first part of this morning’s drive.  They were not welcome passengers, and did not want to leave.  Lou and I ended up driving 80mph for a stretch with all four windows, the sunroof, and the rear door open.  That flushed most of them out, but not all.  So this evening, I had camp set up before dusk, which isn’t until 9:45 or so anyway.  The tent is skeeter-free and I think the car is too, although I guess I won’t find out until morning.

And so it is that I have come to be sitting in my tent typing to you, dear reader.  It is a nice night, and peaceful, and I have a good book, and I like camping, but at times like this I do miss my wife and daughter.  They are in Colorado but not in a tent, so if they can see the mosquitoes outside, they cannot hear that satisfying buzz of futility.  I will have to tell them all about it.

Day Two: Following the Path

I woke up to a lovely morning.  Lou jumped out of the car where she’d slept and sprinted in circles.  The air was comfortable—a welcome relief from Atlanta in July—and the Ohio River was calm, smooth, and quiet.  So quiet that before breakfast, I grabbed my towel and biodegradable soap and waded in.

Eight travel hours to the Upper Peninsula.  After grits and coffee, I closed up the clamshell and Lou and I headed north.  Our route took us back through Cincinnati, then up through Dayton and Toledo and into Michigan.   We were loaded up and rolling by eight.

Many southerners, I would learn, had followed this route before me.  I started an audiobook that my buddy Matt Stoddard had recommended, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  In the 1940s and 50s, factory owners in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region needed workers, so they sent recruiters south to the troubled coal mining country of eastern Kentucky.  They recruited whole families, promising better wages and a better life than the coal mines could offer.  Many Kentuckians answered the call, Vance’s ancestors among them.  One county in Kentucky lost 30% of its population in the migration north.

So the Vance family from Kentucky—hillbillies or hill people, as Vance refers to them—ended up in the upper Midwest, in what people now call the Rust Belt.  J.D. Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio, to a cultural tradition rooted most recently in the Appalachians, and in the Scots-Irish tradition before that.  Fierce people, with a history of some of America’s greatest feuds (like Hatfield-McCoy).  Clannish people, to whom an insult to a family member meant dishonor and a fistfight at a minimum.

They moved in droves, principally up Route 23.  Not all Midwesterners were happy to see them.  Vance tells one story of his grandparents walking into a drugstore, breaking some merchandise, throwing other items against the wall, and threatening to kick the clerk’s ass on the grounds that, before the grandparents arrived, the clerk had said something mildly rude to their son.  The clerk was scared out of his wits.  Then the Vance family casually resumed their shopping.  (It really is a great book.)  There was, Vance explains, some tension between the cultures.  Resentful Ohioans complained that the uneducated, violent hill people hadn’t learned anything in school except “readin,’ ritin,’ and Route 23.”

Then in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the factories that had employed the hill people started to close.  This was not good.  Now the hill people had no jobs.  Poverty, drug abuse, and broken families followed.  In Vance’s case, his father left his life, his mother became addicted to opioids and then heroin, and his family descended into chaos.  The families around him fared little better.  Young people like Vance had no prospects and, crucially, no role models to show what to aim for, or how to get there.  (The story revolves around Vance’s struggle to make it out—which he eventually did, and graduated from Yale Law School).

Hillbilly Elegy doesn’t pull punches.  The hill people have contributed massively to their own problems, Vance says.  He writes:

“We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy. . . . Thrift is inimical to our being.”

Vance writes candidly about the drinking, the smoking, the drugs, and the bad food.  The hill people resented Michelle Obama’s instructions to eat healthier not because they thought she was wrong, he says, but because they knew she was right.  Stubbornness can be a strength, but the decision you’re refusing to waver from needs to be a good one.  Often, it isn’t.

The book hit home for me.  That was in part because I happened to be driving on Route 23 while I was listening to it, and I can sing along to Dwight Yoakam’s country song “Readin,’ Writin,’ Route 23.”  But also because I come from the stock that Vance calls “hill people.”  Now, I was born into a healthy and comfortable family, and nobody in my family had a childhood as challenging as Vance’s.  Still, there are parallels.  My family tells our own violent stories and, like Vance, we’re damned proud of them.  My family tree has branched into opioid addiction.  My father tells some stories that sound like Vance’s—graduating law school being socially unprepared for the white-collar world he entered.  My family has its problems, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to let any outsider tell us what to do about them.

I followed Route 23 into Flint, Michigan and stopped for lunch at the White Horse Café.  I sat at the bar and ordered a burger and water, I guess to see if I could taste the lead.  The burger was good but the atmosphere exemplified too much of Hillbilly Elegy.  The young guy who had been outside smoking a cigarette when I entered came inside and slowly drank beer alone.  Overweight people eating massive calzones.  Slot machines.  I paid my tab and returned to the road.

We reached the Upper Peninsula—the “U.P.,” as I’ll call it now that I’m familiar—about 5:30, and it was beautiful from the start.  I stopped in St. Ignace, the first town across the bridge to the UP, and bought an atlas showing forest service land.  We kept heading north to Brimley, then turned left.  It wasn’t long before we were looking out of the bright blue waters of Lake Superior.

Lou was ready for some exercise and I needed it too, so we found a trail and I laced up my running shoes.  I thought about how lucky I am to be able to do something like this.  I was raised with about every advantage it was possible to have—born in the United States to a loving family with plenty of role models and plenty of investment in me.  We ran along the shore, with the trail alternating between soft sand and hard forest floor.  Lou sprinted ahead, splashed in the lake, sniffed the fir trees, and returned to the trial.  I learned at a young age what it meant to work hard, and I had people at every step of the way help me to internalize that lesson.  If you’re going to be able to pick up and drive to from Georgia to Michigan on a lark, as I had done, a lot has to go right for you.

After the run, I put Lou in the car and walked back toward a vacant spot of lakeshore with my towel and soap.  I am proud—maybe too proud, given the advantages I’ve had—but I do work my butt off and have made generally good decisions in life.  At least I took some of the good advice I got.  Lots of rich kids I grew up with got too full of themselves, then never worked or never took followed the role models they had.  I waded into the cool water and ducked my head, then applied some soap and scrubbed the sweat off.  The wind felt good against my skin.  I toweled off on the beach and wondered how many people had bathed in the Ohio River in the morning, and the Great Lakes that same evening.  Now that’s something special..

Day One: The Open Road

The verdant green of summer in America rolled past my windows.  The green of north Georgia’s foothills, the green of the Tennessee Appalachians, now the deep green grass of Kentucky.  I’d left my office at 12:45 after a morning of focus groups, bound for Michigan’s Upper Penninsula.  With my wife and daughter visiting Anne’s family out of state, I was free to wander.  I’d never been to the Upper Penninsula.  Now it was just me, my black lab Lou, and 1000 miles of open road.

I’d stocked the car for five days of roaming.  A sleeping bag and pillow for me, and a sleeping pad for Lou.  Fishing gear.  A Coleman two-burner propane stove.  Clothes and boots.  Cooler of food and beer.  Soap, towels, toilet paper.  I’d attached a tent to the top of my Subaru that and closed up tight like a luggage carrier when we were traveling, and folded open like a clamshell when we stopped for the night.

We headed north.  Audiobooks have made long-range road travel wonderful, almost meditative.  I’ll listen awhile, then hit pause and think for awhile, trying to apply the lessons of the audiobook to my own life or law practice.  I had a good one going now—Rand Fishkin’s Lost and Founder—and I was thinking hard about how Fishkin’s observations about founding his own internet company might apply to my law firm.  Great book.  I was absent-mindedly doing 80mph up a grade when the engine quit and the car rapidly lost speed.

I pumped the gas, but that didn’t help.  I turned off the cruise control, but that didn’t help.  I shifted in and out of gear.  That didn’t help.  I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the traffic that was already starting to swarm past me as I lost speed going uphill in the fast lane.

Then I remembered that I’d meant to stop for gas.

I barely got my car off the asphalt before my car stopped completely.  When I tried to recrank the car, the engine turned over but the tank was bone dry.  An audiobook can be too compelling, apparently.  I didn’t even know where I was.  It turns out, in case you ever need to know, that neither Uber nor Lyft serves Corbin, Kentucky, and the only taxi service in town doesn’t answer the phone some days.  This was one of those non-answering days.  It was five miles to the next exit ramp, and seven miles to the one closest behind me.  So I cracked the windows for Lou and got out in the ninety-five degree heat to try out the sign I made—a legal pad with “GAS” written heavily on it in a ballpoint pen.  I squinted at traffic and smiled.  Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.  The only breeze was the wind from eighteen-wheelers thundering past.

Fortunately the good folks of Corbin take mercy on travelers who don’t watch their gas gauges and it wasn’t long before two people had stopped—an older guy in a dump truck and a guy about my age in an old Ford Ranger.  The guy in the Ranger drove Lou and me to a gas station.  He kept apologizing for the state of his truck, which he said was his work truck for his contacting business.  The clock and radio were missing from the dash, the headliner was torn, and the jump seat where Lou rode was filled with food wrappers.  I told him it was the prettiest truck I could ever remember seeing.

Dakota from Corbin was a good dude, as you’d expect from someone who stops to pick up stranded strangers on the side of the interstate.  He’d delayed his fishing trip just for me.  I was happy that the pepper spray that I’d shoved into my back pocket would be unnecessary.  Dakota had grown up in Corbin, graduated college, and come back with a business degree to start his contracting company.  Corbin was booming, he said.  After we stopped at the gas station, he pointed out the new developments in town while I put gas in his truck over his objection.  I’d seen his gas needle pointing at E, I said, and there was no use in both of us having to beg rides.  He said the needle was broken.

It seems like every time I drive through the heart of the country, there’s something like this.  Some unexpectedly caring stranger.  It’s an encouraging thing.  Given the opportunity to be kind, many people take it.

I made camp that night in what I thought was the perfect spot.  I’d never camped beside a major river before, and that night I unfolded my clamshell tent on the northern banks of the Ohio River.  We were just upstream of Cincinnati.  As I cooked a burger and sautéed spinach on my two-burner, tugboats and barges the length of a drag strip rumbled past.  I thought about Mark Twain’s adventures on the river that the Ohio feeds into.  Music from a nearby bar drifted over to Lou and me.  It died out about 10:30, but music from another source kept going—pleasure boats, cruising up and down the Ohio.  Playing all kinds of stuff, from country to R&B.  Apparently Cincinnati people cruise in boats, just like my buddies and I used to cruise in cars when we were younger.  I just starting to think about closing the clamshell and moving on when they quieted down.  I drifted off to happy thoughts about kind strangers and another day on the open roads of America.

Volunteer Vacation in India

In 2012, I went to Jaipur, India on a volunteer vacation.  You can read about it here.  There are ten posts about that trip in all.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 7, May 27, 2008

This will be the last entry in the Desert Rat Journal. I’m about to fly out of Phoenix to Atlanta.

I decided to stay the night near Phoenix so I could get up in the morning and get to the airport on time – I had been late getting to the flight leaving Atlanta, and didn’t want to make the same error again. So I picked a campsite on the eastern side of town, but decided to catch one last Mexican-style meal in Phoenix before setting up camp. I was tired and feeling a little irritable from some difficulties I’d had finding a car wash (I didn’t want to return the rental car muddy for fear of extra fees), and I wanted to eat food that someone else prepared.

I drove past a small taquerìa painted light green, and saw two taxicabs parked outside. If this is where the cabbies eat, I figured, it might be good. I parked and walked in.

The place was small. The cook was a wide-waisted man, his size all out of proportion to the building he occupied. He wore an undershirt and a thin gray moustache. He stood beside the griddle a few yards behind the counter, and turned his head when I came in. One eye was pale blue; the other was clouded like someone had spilled milk on his eyeball and never wiped it off. “What would you like?” he asked with a strong accent. He held a metal spatula in one hand and his stomach was only a few inches from the edge of the griddle.

Two middle-aged Hispanic women with short hair sat at the short counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. They looked at me as I walked in. A few feet behind tem three unoccupied stools stood facing the window. I looked back at the cook. He was bouncing his spatula expectantly. From the corner of my eye I noticed that the nearest woman’s face was still upturned toward me, but I didn’t pay any attention. The cook shifted his bulk from one leg to the other.

“Carne asada, please,” I said. I ordered two tacos, then laid my hat on the windowsill by one of the stools. I sat down with my back to the window. The woman closest to the door watched as I sat. Without acknowledging her I took out my Blackberry, which had data service for the first time in a few days, and started to look up the Braves score.

Mexican music played from a small radio. The room had fallen silent when I entered, but before long the women were speaking in Spanish again. The cook commented occasionally as he worked over the griddle, also in Spanish. The woman glanced at me again and I ignored her again. I thought maybe I should stop being a jerk but it looked like Jair Jurrjens had beaten Brandon Webb to win the final game in Atlanta’s series against the Arizona Diamondbacks and I wanted to read the story.

Before long the deejay put on a catchy salsa tune and the woman nearest the door stood up to dance, her styrofoam cup in hand. She looked at her companion, who wiggled on her stool in time with the beat. The woman who had stood moved well and I grinned. After awhile I looked up and called out oooow-ooooow, like a drunk man in a lounge chair at the beach might shout when a pretty señorita passed. She was taken aback at first but when I did it again she smiled. Her companion clapped her hands and the cook grinned. Hell, I thought, this is my last day. I sat my Blackberry down beside my hat and got up and moved toward her. She turned to me.

First we danced without touching facing one another and it went pretty well and I thought I’m pretty good for no drinks and no warmup and a bum foot then I bowed and extended my hand and she gave me hers and I twirled her a few times. She liked that. She put her cup down. I took her other hand and we did the arm slide, and the pretzel, and she liked that. I twirled her a few more times, and then I could tell by the way she watched my feet and followed my leads that she expected me to lead her in some organized, pre-choreographed dance. But I don’t know dances like that, and anyway I figured we’d danced long enough, so I bowed again and said “Gracias, señorita” even though she was twenty-five years my senior.

She laughed and said “Thank you.” She asked what I did for a living and lowered her chin disapprovingly when I told her I was unemployed. So I explained that I had been a student and I had one more test to take before I could begin my profession. She liked that better and wished me luck. She asked where I was from and I told her, Georgia, but I’ll come back for you. She crossed her arms. I said it will be a few years, though, because I am going to be working very hard. “But in forty years I’ll come back,” I said. “I’ll meet you right here,” I said, pointing to the floor, “in 2048.”

She laughed derisively and mimicked and old woman hobbling around on a cane.

“No, no,” I said. “You are only twenty-three.” She looked at me suspiciously so I pointed at her and said “veinte-tres.” She liked that too and she laughed at me and touched my arm then the cook came over and she relayed the conversation in Spanish and he put a hand on his stomach and chuckled. Then he said,

“We show you to dance in Spanish.” He took the woman’s hand and they went behind the counter and danced a salsa in what looked like perfect time and I knew that in the face of this man’s rhythm and culinary skills I had no chance. I clapped when they finished, and bowed, and took the bag of tacos the cook had laid on the counter. I started to leave, opening the door with my backside. I pointed to the floor, looked at the woman and said “two-thousand forty-eight” one more time just for fun. The woman smiled, holding the cook’s hand, and with the hands not clasped in that embrace each of them waved goodbye.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Photos for Installment 7, May 25, 2008

The ol' Desert Rat himself.
















My campsite just east of Phoenix.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 6, May 26, 2008

Trying to get by in Mexico with my Spanish is like trying to run the Kentucky Derby on a mule – it takes a lot of patience and the sacrifice of some dignity, but it can be done.

I crossed the border at a cluster of buildings along the border that the map calls “Lukeville” but that refers to itself as “Gringo Pass,” a kitschy name plastered across garish tee shirts and other merchandise available for sale there. I bought Mexican auto insurance and crossed the international divide gingerly, limping along on the diminutive spare tire that I put on when my left rear tire blew in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Then I cruised south at about 55 mph along Mexico Highway 8, driving slowly to prevent blowing out the spare, with the top down and a Mexican radio station playing.

Once across the border, the only road on which I could legally travel without getting a visitor vehicle permit, which I didn’t think I could obtain because of the details of my car rental agreement, led to Puerto Peñasco. That’s where I went. Puerto Peñasco turned out to be the Mexican equivalent of Panama City Beach. Its beaches are filled with pot-bellied Americans drinking Tecate and shooting fireworks, the beachfront roads are jammed with jacked-up trucks playing hip-hop, and within fifteen minutes of getting out of my car to wander along the waterfront, a young woman on a restaurant balcony grabbed a karaoke microphone and asked the crowd below if we wanted to see her tits. (The answer was yes.) This was at about 3:00 in the afternoon. I’m not saying that the Puerto Peñasco beachfront isn’t a wonderful place, and that I wouldn’t have loved it as a teenager, but wasn’t what I was looking for right then. Most of the city’s tourists refer to it by its English translation, “Rocky Point,” but I keep confusing the name with “Rocky Top.”

I climbed back into the Mustang and limped back inland, where Puerto Peñasco resembles a real city. I stopped and had a late lunch at a roadside café where the matron smiled when I called her “Mama” and where they let me drink a beer with my fish tacos, although I had to cross the road to buy it. Then I glanced at my map and saw what appeared to be a smaller town west-northwest of Puerto Peñasco along the Gulf of California, so I lowered the top again and struck out to find it. The roads were not marked in a fashion that was easy for me to understand, but eventually I found the main road leading west and took it.

The benefits of being limited to 55 mph are that you notice more of the surrounding terrain and your cowboy hat doesn’t blow off in the wind. The surrounding terrain in this case was desert. But here neither the saguaro, ocotillo nor organ pipe cactus grew. Instead, sagebrush and other scrubby bushes interspersed the sand. The landscape resembled the Arizona Strip in that the brush didn’t grow higher than a few feet, but the soil was looser and less rocky. The ocean was not visible from the road. The benefits of keeping my cowboy hat on didn’t pan out too well either, since I think my nose is now sunburned.

Although the Gulf of California was invisible from the road, I knew it lay to the south and I noticed several sandy tracks leading that way from the blacktop highway. I resisted trying the first few, but eventually my resolve faded and I turned down one. The path led past a small cluster of brightly painted houses toward the sea. At first the track ran over firm dirt, but eventually it led across a patch of loose sand and, realizing that my ass would be in a deep, deep crack if I got stuck, I stopped the car to walk. I took my camera and a water bottle and set off. I had walked about 300 yards when I saw a Jeep Wrangler heading toward me. I figured I was about to be asked to leave, but I decided to feign ignorance and kept going.

I was pleasantly wrong about the intentions of the vehicle’s occupants. The driver was a man who was obviously American, and the passenger a woman who was obviously Mexican. They had been out on the roof of their house, the man said, when they saw me stop and get out. They figured I was stuck, and had come to help. I thanked them and said I was just on my way to check out the beach. The driver suggested that I try to get my car through the sand to the hard dirt on the other side, and offered to pull me out if I got stuck. I agreed, and he gave me a lift back to my car. Emboldened by his advice and offer of aid, I built up some speed and made it through the sand in the car. On the other side of the sandy patch, I stopped to let the man and woman catch up so I could express my thanks.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” the man said. “If you want to go down to the ocean, the best way is to take this road” – he pointed to a dirt strip running parallel to the shore – “past our house, then turn right.”

“Great, thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that. Is yall’s house the purple one up there?”

“No, its is the yellow house just past the purple one. Turn right and it will run you right into the ocean.”

“And if you have any trouble . . .” the woman began in a Spanish accent.

The man broke in. “If you have any trouble, we’re in the house right up there.”

“My house is yellow one,” the woman said.

“By the way, where are you headed?” the man asked.

“I’m just wandering. I thought I’d go see that town west of here, Golfo de . . . Golfo de something or other, I can’t remember the name for sure . . .”

“Golfo de Santa Clara. You can’t,” he said. “You can’t go there because the road’s not finished. They’re working on it. Won’t be finished until November.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well . . .”

“But if you want to go see the ocean, just follow that road here and take a right after her house. Her house is the yellow one. Your biggest problem, by the way, is that spare tire you’re running there.”

“I know,” I said.

“Let us know if you have any trouble,” he said.

I thanked the pair and drove to the beach as they suggested. In this way I arrived at a beautiful body of azure water known to most maps as the Gulf of California but more romantically known as the Sea of Cortez, the name that John Steinbeck chose when he described his travels across its surface in The Log from the Sea of Cortez. I parked my car and, camera and water bottle in hand, walked across a long, soft tidal flat to the sea’s moving edge. My feet sank deeper into the tidal sand the longer I stood in one place, so that my feet stayed dry if I kept walking, but if a paused the soles of my Crocs sank and warm water trickled pleasantly around the bottoms of my feet. At the sea’s edge the tide rushed inland. Waves did not lap higher and higher against the shore, as with all other incoming tides I’ve seen. Instead, the foamy surf gurgled constantly inland, climbing and surmounting the tiny ridges it had left in the sand as it retreated hours ago. It moved at about the pace that a beetle walks. I played with my camera, creating my own photographic version of Footprints on the Sands of Time – i.e., pictures of the advancing surf erasing a series of human footprints. Then I pulled my pipe from my pocket, pulled my shirt over my head to block the wind, and lit it. I squatted on my heels, looked out over the approaching water, and imagined plying its surface with Steinbeck. I do not know who the kind man and woman were, and I have wondered about the nature of their relationship – the house was “hers,” but they both appeared to be staying there, and she was letting him speak for her – but I can certainly understand why they spend their time here alongside the Sea of Cortez. It is beautiful. Reluctantly I climbed back into my car and headed back to Puerto Peñasco.

I am in Puerto Peñasco now, typing in a hotel room. I am tired and will soon fall asleep – the birds of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, where I camped last night, made a noisy rush on my campsite as soon as the sun came up this morning in an effort to steal any food I’d left sitting out. The result of the avian feeding frenzy was that I awoke at about 5:30 to various high-pitched bird calls that might have sounded lyrical under other circumstances but that, this morning, made me wish I’d brought a shotgun.

By the way, I successfully rented this hotel room from a gentleman who spoke almost no English. I was even able to communicate such complex ideas as, is it possible for me to see the room? and yes, I will pay a $5 deposit for the key. Maybe my Spanish isn’t all that bad. The mule is rounding turn one . . .

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Photos for Installment 6, May 25, 2008

My photographic version of "Footprints in the Sands of Time."
















Overlooking the Sea of Cortez.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 5, May 25, 2008

I hiked back to the car today. Yesterday I left the car and hiked north to the easternmost point of a series of ridge-like rock outcroppings that ran west-east. To my knowledge, the ridge-like outcroppings have no name. The linear distance to them from my car was five miles, but of course the walking miles would total more than that. I made camp at the eastern end of the formation. Today I walked to the northern side, then headed west, intending to find a pass, break through the outcroppings and head south toward my car. I figured that would take until late afternoon or possibly the next morning. As it turned out, I hit upon a pass within a few hours of setting out, and made it back to my car by shortly after noon.

Last night, while camped at the eastern end of the formation, I made some notes on looseleaf paper. They form the basis for the journal entry below. I have edited them for coherence and style. I write now from my campsite in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I will upload this entry when I get back into data range on my Blackberry, which may take a couple of days.

I had forgotten how a campfire changes a campsite. It pushes back the cold and stakes out a small half-sphere of light in the otherwise encompassing darkness, if only for as long as the flames burn. It makes food edible; it keeps insects and coyotes at bay. A campfire transforms the tiny area in which its light flickers from a patch of wilderness into something safe, an area where man can peacefully repose. I leaned against my pack and stared into the embers of the fire, listening to the crack and pop of burning wood. The night was cool but, near the coals, I shed my sweater and sat in my hat and tee shirt. I sat with my forearms across my knees and stared into the embers of the fire. This is probably as close as we can come to understanding our ancestors, to experiencing the sentiments that they knew. After a day of hunting, or foraging, or wandering, they too sat around isolated sources of light and heat and they, too, stared into the embers of the fire. Their minds likely wandered, as does mine. On this occasion as I stared into the embers of the fire I was thinking about women. This also I share with my ancestors. I know this because I exist.

Earlier in the day, about an hour before dark, I had climbed up to a cluster of rock on a hillside with a bottle half-filled with whiskey. I sat there as the sun sank behind me and the desert darkened before me. I had brought a book that I didn’t open. Instead I sat in a rearend-sized cranny in some metamorphic rock and took gentle pulls from my bottle. The day was still warm, and I was warm, and the whiskey was warm, and it was all this warmth and coziness that got me to thinking about women. There is something about a woman’s company that no the company of men cannot provide. This is not a conjugal observation. I am well familiar with conjugal desires, as were my ancestors, and this was something else.

The shadows of the cacti below stretched across the desert floor and merged with one another. The Sonoran Desert is remarkable of its diversity of cacti. The saguaro is the primary “indicator species” of the Sonoran, meaning that if you see a saguaro, you’re likely in the Sonoran Desert. Saguaros have a pleated, accordion-like exterior, which allows them to swell after rains and contract during prolonged dry periods. Under the spines, their skin is like hard rubber, but under that skin the flesh of the saguaro is moist and tender. Sometimes after a heavy rain the cacti swell too much and burst between the pleats, creating a long, narrow slit where the moist interior is accessible. The saguaro frequently grows alongside the ocotillo cactus, which seems dissimilar to its fellow inhabitant in every respect but the spines. The many unforked stalks of an ocotillo grow from a single root. Each stalk takes aim at the sky and, having chosen the angle at which it will proceed, grows straight, such that the plant consists of myriad stalks all pointed at different directions within 45° of the vertical. While the interior of the saguaro is moist and wet, the stalks of the ocotillo are woody and hard. As I sat in the rockpile sipping whiskey, the ocotillo were blooming. To make themselves more attractive to pollinating bees, the petals were colored red, fiery bursts of fertility erupting from the tips of the stalks. There are many, many ways for species to achieve that ultimate goal of every organism, the propagation of one’s own genotype.

I have been blessed to know a good number of high-quality women in my short but happy life – some I have dated, and others have had more sense. Too many men, however, fail to appreciate high-quality women when they encounter them. Too many men are blinded by their own prejudices, or Oedipus complexes, or insecurities, and cannot appreciate strength in the opposite sex. Too many men are intimidated. Too many men perceive women only in accordance with predetermined categories and overlook individuating characteristics, but for this last sin they might be forgiven, for women frequently insist on typecasting themselves. Here, as is often the case, inadvertent word choices reveal paradigmatic predispositions. Language betrays. Women commonly refer to themselves by type – e.g., “I am / am not that type of girl.” Men rarely use such language. Someone could say to me, “Jeb, let’s get drunk and shack up,” and the answer might be yes, or it might be no, but it damn sure wouldn’t refer to the “type” of guy that I hold myself out to be. One could argue that women perceive themselves according to type because men have imposed categories upon them, or one could argue the reverse, but in either case it is clear that American society categorizes women more often than men. I’m not sure why. How fascinating are the intricate social machinations involved in discovering a mate. Even within a species, individual organisms have unique predispositions.

Dusk was falling. A bee buzzed by my ear, circled my toe, then hovered over a hole in a metamorphic rock. The rock was colored purplish-red, and the once-straight lines of sedimentation that had originally lithified had twisted and buckled into crazed patterns reminiscent of some modern art. But this was ancient art. The oldest rocks on earth are metamorphic, some billions of years old. They have plunged deep within the earth so frequently, and been subjected to such inconceivable levels of heat and pressure, that their original makeup can become indecipherable. Sometimes gas bubbles have floated through the rock while it was molten, and sometimes those pockets of gas have remained in the rock when it cooled and hardened. Later, when the rock appears on the Earth’s surface and erodes or fractures, those gaseous pockets become exposed as holes, like bubbles in sliced Swiss cheese. Such was the case with this rock. As I watched, the bee dove into a hole on the upper side of the rock to avail itself of the water pooled therein. I had noticed lots of bees while hiking, especially when passing through washes and gulches. Desert travelers have long associated bees with water, and the bees may have been more active because of the recent rain. They buzzed across the desert, often alone. I wonder if they were gathering water from scattered pools and somehow transporting it to their hives, possibly to support larvae or a queen bee. I took another sip and capped my whiskey bottle. The shadow from the hill on which I sat had advanced and merged with the shadows of the surrounding hills so that they covered the flatlands below. I had better climb down before I tumbled down.

Back at camp I crumpled two pieces of notebook paper and lay them against a rock the size of a car battery. I lit the paper and knelt beside it to add twigs, then sticks, and finally logs. Despite the rain of the day before, the wood was dry and burned easily. The twigs began to pop and tumble against the ashes of the notebook paper, so I added larger sticks. Orange light flickered against the creosote bushes and brittlebushes and cacti around my campsite. Behind me, as the last light faded, I heard a call that I had learned to associate with Gambel’s quail.

I had been sitting in earlier in the day, resting my aching feet and admiring the beauty of my just-pitched tent, when a Gambel’s quail ran across the sand nearby, his gaudy crest bobbing with each step, and fluttered up into the lower limbs of a mesquite tree. He hopped onto a higher branch, ran along it toward the trunk, then fluttered to a crotch between two limbs a few feet from the treetop. Thus situated, he surveyed his surroundings. He began to call for his companions.

The northern bobwhite quail that I grew up hunting behave in this way this after a covey has become divided. Males call until the covey reconvenes, although the bobwhites use a different call and do not always call from high perches. I wondered why this desert quail had climbed so high. Maybe it was so that his voice would carry farther, or maybe it was so he could see his companions as they convened. Possibly it was to avoid predators – surely foxes and coyotes know what a quail’s call sounds like, and if the bird were on the ground, where rasorial birds like quail stay most of the time, they might learn to interpret the come-hither call the way schoolchildren interpret the lunch bell. But if this is the case, then the calling quail is putting any birds who respond to his call at grave risk, since they are most likely to approach by foot rather than flight. As I sat resting, I had watched this quail for about ten minutes. No other birds came.

The bird calling behind me in the near-darkness fell silent, as he would remain throughout the night. I broke some dead mesquite branches across my knee and fed them to the fire, then added a gnarled, knotted piece of wood that I had found in a wash nearby. I leaned against my pack to watch the fire and feel the night. The stars emerged in brilliance and number, as they always to on clear nights in rural areas. In the distance to the south, I could see the diffuse orb of light emanating from Yuma like a blister on the night horizon. But Yuma was over fifty miles away and the stars came out undaunted. I smelled something like burning rubber. I reached down and tapped the soles of my boots, a common casualty of close campfires. They were not burning. I looked at the fire. There was no plastic or rubber near it, but the smoke coming from the gnarled log was black and inky. I thought for a minute. Probably creosote. I wondered briefly if creosote smoke had adverse health consequences or affected the brain. Then I leaned back against my pack.

The strategy of the Gambel’s quail, of calling for mates but in so doing subjecting them to mortal danger, would not work for humans. Human pairs need relationships that would by stymied by such a cavalier attitude toward the safety of one’s mate. Unlike children, most avian young, whether precocial or altricial, require parental care for only a few weeks, and the care can be effectively provided by only one parent. Then the fledglings become self-supporting. Not so with humans. Raising human offspring requires longer care traditionally given by both parents. I am an extreme example of the need for elongated parental care – at twenty-six years old, I have just completed law school and will soon take my first “real” job. Only recently have I become self-supporting. This lengthy period devoted to nurturing children is why relationships between human parents must be more than conjugal. It is the biological explanation for the strength of the human pair-bond. But from an emotional and intellectual perspective, love is more than a means to an end. It is fulfilling in its own right. To be able to give and receive that kind of happiness, for as long as the flame flickers, seems reason enough to exist.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Photos for Installment 5, May 25, 2008

Hi!














A split saguaro next to an ocotillo.
















Kneeling beside the campfire.
























The car blew a tire ten minutes away from the spot where I parked to go backpacking. This is the modern equivalent of when the sacrificial goat has a spotted liver.


I thought about shooting the Mustang when it went lame, but found a spare at the last moment.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 4, 5/24/08

I’m going backpacking today. I’ll be in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, which lies in the Sonoran Desert. I’ve read that cool things sometimes happen in the desert immediately following a rain – e.g., blooming of wildflowers whose seeds don’t germinate until wet – so I hope to see some of that. I’ll be gone one night, maybe two. The terrain is generally level, so even though my pack will be heavy with water and equipment made for car-camping, I should be okay. My ankle is much better and I will be wearing a brace.

There are no trails around here that I know of, so I’m just going to pick a direction and start walking. I have always wanted to do that.

I told Ben I’d give him the coordinates of my point of departure in case he needs to call search party to look for circling buzzards. I will head north from 33°13’56” N; 114°08’44”W. That is, if you take the King Valley Road into the Refuge from US 95, I will depart from somewhere between the intersections with the two dirt tracks that head south to MacPherson Tank. They say buzzards go for the eyes first, so cover your face with a jacket . . .

I will write again tomorrow or the next day.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Photos for Installment 4, 5/24/08

this is what one stretch of the road I drove last night looked like at 8:20 this morning















my backpacking point of departure -- I intend to hike toward that rock outcropping

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 3, 5/23/08

Winston Churchill, who fought in his share of military battles, once observed that “there is nothing more exhilarating than to be fired upon without effect.” I have never been the object of gunfire, but I can surmise that the pleasure of hearing rain drum on a tin roof while one lays dry underneath it is similar. I have pitched my tent in an interpretive shelter in the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour north of Yuma. A desert tempest pounds the roof above me.

This morning I woke up in a motel room in Kingman, Arizona. The night before, driving south from Colorado City and southern Utah, I had nearly run out of gas. I was driving along daydreaming, as is my custom, and not paying attention to my fuel gauge. We I saw the needle nearing “E,” I had to change my route away from the campsite I had planned to occupy and head directly for Kingman, the nearest municipality large enough to have gas pumps open after sundown. By the time I got there it was ten o’clock, and rather than drive out to some public land to set up camp at that hour, I took a room at the Hilltop Motel on historic Route 66. The establishment was only one story tall, so I could pull right up to my door. It had a kind and interesting proprietor who showed me my room, it been open since 1954, and it was right across the street from a pizza joint that was still open. All of these factors made the establishment appealing. It also had the virtue of being really cheap. I slept will, and with my eyes closed, it looked just like the Four Seasons.

Before I left this morning, I turned in my room key – not a card, mind you, a legitimate key – to the owner. He asked where I had been traveling, and when I mentioned Colorado City, he told me that Warren Jeffs happened to be presently incarcerated in the Kingman prison (Timothy McVeigh was also imprisoned there at one time). He was one of those rare people who can speak knowledgeably on a subject without becoming passionate, prejudicial or otherwise likely to take offense, so I asked more questions. He stood in his stocking feet with his stomach protruding against his v-neck shirt, straining the fabric at the waist and collar, and elaborated. Colorado City had been in a downward spiral recently, he said. A year or so ago the county authorities decertified the police force because the policemen were responsive to Jeffs, not to their protocol or to the law. Now, of course, Jeffs had been arrested. What law enforcement needed to do, in his opinion, was to go after the fundamentalists under RICO, because the community financed itself in large part by organized and possibly fraudulent enrollment in welfare programs. That Texas community that had recently been raided originated from the Colorado City crew. Warren Jeffs had sent “a few choice members” of his church in Colorado City to found the Texas community. The phone rang, and the proprietor of the Hilltop Motel answered. I thanked him for the room and the conversation.

I drove south toward Yuma, looking for a place where I could make camp and from which I could possibly stage a hiking trip tomorrow. I found a good spot – the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a huge expanse of land where I can hike and camp where I choose. But it was starting to drizzle, so I took my time looking for a campsite, hoping that the rain would cease before I pitched my tent. I drove into the Refuge on a well-maintained dirt road. A mile or so from the blacktop road I passed an interpretive center – really just an open-sided shelter about eight feet by ten. It presented the kind of introductory information provided in almost any public park. Signs under the shelter showed pictures of the local wildlife – this is what a mule deer looks like, here is a drawing of a gray fox, etc. I looked up at the roof. This is a place to come back to if things get bad, I thought. I got back in the car and drove on into the drizzle.

Things got bad. I had driven several miles and found a good place to camp, so I got out of the car to look for a tent site. But the rain was intensifying, and when I looked into the direction whence the wind came, I saw no break in the clouds. So I decided to turn back and head for my interpretive center. On the way back, conditions worsened. I was driving about ten or fifteen miles an hour and at some points had to put my wipers on high. These desert rains don’t come often, but when they arrive, they announce their presence with authority. The road I traveled had berms on either side from where the grading equipment had pushed the dirt it scraped away, and water began to pool on the desert floor on the other side those berms. Then in places the water broke through. In dips in the road, water flowed rapidly across the roadway like creeks. I drove carefully but quickly, wanting to get back to high ground before the road turned into a lake. At first I congratulated myself on having spent my adolescence sliding trucks around in the mud. But after awhile, things got so bad that it didn’t matter that I was familiar with the way rear-wheel-drive-only cars behave on slick surfaces. The whole road was a mess. I took some pictures, but I didn’t capture the worst of it because when I realized that the situation could actually become serious, I concentrated on getting back quickly. At one point, the entire roadway – from berm to berm – was covered with water. There was nothing to do but drive slowly and hope for the best. I held the wheel straight and pressed the pedal.

Tonight I had luck. I made it back. I set up my tent and camp stove in the interpretive shelter, and am now well-fed, warm, dry, and feeling sassy enough to reflect that, sometimes, life is like driving through a flooded roadbed - you just make your choice, then take your chances. Tonight I made a crappy choice about driving on into the desert, but the chances broke my way. I’ve never been stuck in the desert at night during a storm in a rental car, but I can surmise that my present situation is preferable.

As a wise man once said, I'd rather be lucky than good any day.

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Photos for Installment 3, 5/23/08

the road starts to get wet in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge















water from the desert floor floods across the roadway

DESERT RAT JOURNAL -- Installment 2, 5/22/08

On the Way to Colorado City

I broke camp this morning and headed west toward Colorado City, driving again under the brooding contemplation of the Vermillion Cliffs. But by morning light the cliffs, while still impressive, had lost some of their solemnity. The clouds had dissipated, the sky was brilliant, and the empty desert road lay beckoning before me like a date on prom night. I felt good. I was old enough to rent a shiny red sports car, but not old enough to drive it cautiously, I hadn’t seen a cop since Flagstaff, and maybe I had made my camp coffee a little too strong, so I decided to see if the Mustang could reach triple digits. I will not report the results of this experiment and, for liability reasons, I advise against repeating it. I will say that the Arizona Strip is a sweet place to drive a sports car.

I sped west in the chill morning air with the top down wearing a sweater and rain jacket with the heat on full blast. The road kept rising. As I climbed into the hills on the far side of the scrubland where I had made camp, the low brush gave way to stunted junipers, and as I got deeper into the folded, creased rock that marks the eastern edge of the Kaibab Plateau, the road wound through valleys and drainages where the wind couldn’t reach. Tall conifers stood beside the road, shading the needled ground below. I topped 7000 feet, and there were patches of snow on the ground. The road climbed above 7500 feet, and snow covered the blanket of pine needles. I stopped to make a breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese. I drained the water from my cooler and refilled it with snow. I climbed back in the saddle and headed west in the Mustang again. On the far side of the Kaibab Plateau, the road switchbacked down into another stretch of windswept scrubland called Antelope Valley. The grade was steep and the turns were tight. I conducted more speed-related experiments, and again survived.

Antelope Valley was another semiarid flatland of red sand, red rocks, and scrubby vegetation. It is the type of place where our government has frequently sited Indian reservations. Accordingly, I soon found myself driving through the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation. My Blackberry had just enough coverage to get a data connection, so I stopped on the side of the road to upload last night’s journal entry.

I was sitting in the sand leaning up against the tire with my computer on my lap when a gold SUV pulled up beside me. One kind gentleman had already stopped to make sure I hadn’t broken down, so I got ready to smile and say I was okay, but thanks for stopping. The lady driving the car pulled up right next to me and directed the child sitting in the passenger’s seat to open the door. She looked at me across her son’s lap. He looked straight ahead.

I smiled. “Hi,” I said.

“Hello.” Then she sat looking at me for a second. Her eyes were dark, and her face heavyset. Her features and those of her son were Native American. Her face was creased, although she was not old. Her hair was black. She wore gold earrings.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

“Can I help you?” she said in the voice of an uppity shopkeeper who wants to kick you out of his store because he doesn’t think you’ve got enough money to buy anything.

“No, I’ve just stopped here to get on the computer,” I said. I wondered at her tone. “I’m all right,” I said. “But thanks for . . .”

“Have you been digging?”

I hesitated. “Digging?”

“Do you work for the tribe?” she asked.

I looked at her child, and he met my glance then looked away. “No, ma’am, I just stopped here to get on the computer for a minute. I don’t work for the tribe, and I haven’t been doing any digging.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“One of the kids said he’d seen you digging.”

I had just scooped a hole in the sand with my shoe, pissed in it, and covered it back up, but I decided not to confess to this crime. “No . . .” I tried to think of a way to persuade this woman that I had not been excavating, mining, or tilling the soil of the Paiute Reservation. “What is there to dig for around here anyway? Minerals or artifacts or . . .”

“Sometimes people come out here to dig for things. We have to tell them to put them back. If they take a rock, we have to tell them to put it back.”

“Well, I haven’t been doing any digging, and I’m not packing any rocks,” I said. I thought the last part of the comment was funny but she didn't smile.

She stared at me for a moment, as if I might break down if she waited long enough. “Well, okay,” she said. Disappointed, she told her child to shut the door and she drove away. Everybody someone to bitch at, I guess. Her son probably appreciated the break.

Colorado City

I slowed down as I approached Colorado City, wanting to appear, at least for a time, a well-intentioned and law-abiding citizen. I had been able to see the city for miles as I drove across the open scrubland. It sits on the northern edge of Antelope Valley, pushed back against steep red walls called the Vermillion Cliffs, although they bear no topographical connection to the cliffs by the same name that overlook Marble Canyon and the Colorado River. Colorado City looked like any other small desert town. I saw white splotches of buildings and trailers against a backdrop of red, sunlight glinting off the glass of automobiles, a simmering stretch of blacktop extending from the town limits to the tires of my car. The town straddles the Arizona-Utah line. Its northern half is formally called Hildale, Utah. I felt apprehensive as I approached. I could not have said why.

Just outside the outskirts of town, if there is such a zone, I passed an old white sign with rows of plastic block letters under a big black arrow that pointed to the establishment the sign advertised. The sign was dusty, and the light bulbs in the arrow appeared to have burned out long ago. The block letters advertised “6% AZ BEER.” I remembered that fundamentalist Mormons usually don’t drink alcohol so, feeling that the proprietor of this establishment might be the last person with whom I could relate for several miles, I turned in the drive.

It had occurred to me that the alcohol concentration permitted by law in Utah beer was probably lower than that of Arizona beer, hence the advertisement. But I hoped that “6% AZ BEER” referred to some home brew available only in Arizona, in which case I would make a purchase. I imagined a earthenware jug filled with a dark, rich concoction that had at least a 6% chance of giving me the skitters for a week but would taste really good. I walked inside.

The proprietor wore an ankle-length, long-sleeved blue dress that puffed up a little at the sleeves and tennis shoes. She had graying hair and wore no makeup. I asked about 6% AZ BEER, and she explained that the alcohol concentration permitted by law in Utah beer was lower than that of Arizona beer, and that she sold the superior version to travelers passing over the state line. Oh, I said. I turned to go. Then, with my hand on the doorknob, I stopped and asked:

“What’s Colorado City like?”

She drew her breath. She’d answered this question before. “Go down the road and see for yourself,” she replied. “It’s just like any other small town. You might see women in longer dresses than in other places, but it’s just like any other small town. It’s just like the Amish. Just normal people.”

I should have put the pieces together here. I should have realized that her dress was long and old-fashioned, that she did not wear makeup or put dye in her hair, and that she did not like explaining why Colorado City was just like any other town. But I curious about what lay ahead, unsure of myself, and still convinced that no member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints would sell beer. So I continued:

“I was just wondering . . . I read the Krakauer book, and I heard the place was like, no TV, no radio, no dancing . . .” I let my voice trail off, hoping she’d open up on the FLDS church and the lifestyle of its members.

“It’s just like any other small town,” she said firmly. “Everyone is different. Some might have a TV, and some might not.” She said, “I don’t have a TV in my house, but I have one here. Just normal people.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Thank you, and have a good one.” I smiled quickly. Feeling like a jackass and wishing that I hadn’t asked the kind woman to share the peculiarities of her religious practices with me, I opened the door walked to my car. Then I drove into town.

Despite the town’s appearance from a distance, and despite the admonitions of the woman selling 6% AZ BEER, the inhabitants of Colorado City did not appear normal by any contemporary standard with which I was familiar. Despite the hot sun, almost every boy or man I saw wore dark pants, usually jeans, and a long sleeve shirt, uniformly buttoned up to the second-highest button with the sleeves rolled down. The shirts were invariably blue or plaid. I saw one exception to this dress code for males. Every woman or girl I saw wore a long dress, usually puffed up at the shoulders. None wore makeup. I saw no exceptions. Lots of the boys rode bicycles; a few rode short ponies on the town sidewalks. I have read that members of the fundamentalist church wear long underwear at all times but, having learned not to ask prying questions such as “Hi, are you wearing long underwear?,” I am unable to verify or repudiate that claim.

I cruised the town for a short while, conscious that I stood out in my bright red convertible. Adults cast surreptitious glances at me, but children stared openly. I preferred the children’s open curiosity to the adult’s furtive investigation. There were a few businesses in town – a “shoe shop,” an auto parts store, an Alltell store, etc. – but few places to eat, which concerned me because it was lunchtime and I was hungry. I asked around a little bit, and at length would up at the “Candy Shoppe,” which I believe was the only restaurant in town. Two letter-sized paper signs were taped on the glass door. The first said WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. The second sign was authored by the state of Arizona, and it stated that the Candy Shoppe did not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, etc. . . . or religion. It then listed a number that patrons who felt discriminated against could call. It was not a sign I had seen elsewhere. I went in, ordered at the counter, and sat down.

I sat waiting for my cheeseburger in a booth next to a long table full of women in long dresses. I had brought a novel into the restaurant with me. I opened the book and set it on my table, but the children who had come to lunch with their mothers were much more interesting. They ran circles around the long table like satellites whizzing through outer space as they giggled and chased one another. I kept my eyes mostly on the pages of my book, but the children weren’t as bashful as I was. Occasionally they’d stop and look at me. If their faces stayed turned me for long enough, I’d look up and smile or wink or wave at them. They never smiled, winked or waved back, but as I sat in the booth waiting on my cheeseburger doing my best impression of a non-threatening, law-abiding citizen, their glances grew bolder.

One girl of about eight was chasing a boy of about five around the mother planet, and she slowed before she passed my booth. She strolled slowly past me, eyes on my face, and she dragged her fingertips across my tabletop. I looked up. She had fair, freckled skin and sandy hair. Her gaze did not waver. She was unsmiling but unafraid, the picture of calm, confident curiosity. Her eyes were piercing, icy blue, like the eyes that Dean White uses to intimidate law students. Her hair hung down and framed her face. She withdrew her hand from my table and turned away. She wore a dark blue shin-length dress and black leggings underneath with white socks and bright yellow Crocs.

I smiled and lowered my gaze to my book. I tried to eavesdrop on the mothers, who ignored me as a patient shopkeeper might ignore a child who, wide-eyed, fingers merchandise that he cannot afford. But the mothers talked all at once, and anyway I am losing my hearing these days, so I could make out nothing. The waitress brought me my cheeseburger, and I tried to thank her but she turned away too quickly, so I ate and watched the children from the corner of my eye. The clear-eyed girl in the yellow Crocs stopped by again, this time standing so close beside me that our shoulders almost brushed. My mouth was full of cheeseburger, however, so I couldn’t smile or say hello. She left before I could chew my mouthful. That was, as it turned out, our last interaction. I wish her well.

I paid my tab and tipped my waitress, then walked out to my car. I climbed inside and sat with the top down looking at a map, trying to figure out where I would go next. The door opened to the shop in front of my car, and a big ol’ momma stood holding the door open. She glared at me. I smiled at her and thought, don’t be a bitch, lady, I’m not bothering you and haven’t done anything rude since I left the beer store, which was at least two hours ago. She went back inside. I looked back at my map and sought a road leading south toward Yuma to the west of the Grand Canyon. My options were limited; it looked like I’d have to pass through Utah and Nevada before getting back to Arizona. The shop door opened and the woman came out again. A brood of children came with her. She expressed no hostility toward me, and I thought, well maybe that’s just how she looks at everyone and I’m being oversensitive. I was tracing my finger down US 93 southbound when a young boy holding an infant walked up to my passenger door. He had come out with the woman.

“Ahm, how do you make the roof go back on?” he asked. I looked up. He was fair skinned and had bright blonde hair and the same piercing blue eyes as the girl in the Crocs. His face was serious and his expression intent. I pegged him for a future engineer.

“Well, there’s this little button right here,” I said, pointing to the switch near the top of the windshield. “You just press it, and the top comes up.” He bent to see the button, so I pressed it and raised the top about a third of the way.

“I see,” he said. He stepped closer and bent a little lower to get a better view of the switch. By this time the mothership had noticed our encounter and she moved toward us, standing at the bumper of my car looking at the boy.

“You can try it out if you want to,” I said, “if your momma will let you.” I glanced up at her, intending to appear harmless, but she did not look at me. “Get back in the car,” she said to the boy and the other children who were starting to come closer. “Get back in the car.” The boy moved away, and momma herded the children into her nearby suburban.

Figuring that I had seen enough of Colorado City, and surmising that its adult residents would not mourn too greatly if I were to depart, I cranked my car. But before I left the parking lot I turned on the radio. I figured the mothership could use a pedagogical tool to illustrate the various paths to hellfire.

* * *

I am not sure if I should have gone to Colorado City. I left with the distinct impression that the adults of the town did not want me there, which makes sense – the fundamentalist church founded the town in the Arizona Strip because they wanted to live alone. That does not mean they should be free from all intrusion, of course. The state of Arizona could clearly enter Colorado City to enforce its generally applicable criminal laws – e.g., those outlawing polygamy and underage marriage – despite the religious practices of the town’s inhabitants. But that’s not the same as saying that it’s morally permissible for private citizens to wander into town simply to satisfy their curious urges. Yet, if we say that private citizens should not wander via public roads into a community simply because that community’s adult populace does not want visitors, then the state becomes the only morally acceptable vehicle of investigation. And if only the state could enter communities in which the adult populace didn’t want visitors, then journalists would no longer be able to investigate and document breaches of the law. Such journalism often prompts legal action – Krakauer’s book, Under the Banner of Heaven, may be an example. Further, why should a citizen to whom the government is accountable not be able to investigate and weigh the claims made about a community against the claims made by the community itself, and thereby evaluate the propriety of government action regarding that community? Within the past couple of months, authorities in Texas have “raided” a polygamous community and taken custody of some 400 children. Evaluating the propriety of such government action is, therefore, very much a live issue.

Suggested reading:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-04-07-Polygamy_N.htm

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-polygamy23-2008may23,0,3665627.story