A Look See
I’m currently sitting in a Best Western parking lot in Douglass, Wyoming, borrowing their wireless internet connection while two antelope meander about the parking lot. A quick respite along our mini-American road trip. Yesterday, Melissa and I spent the day kicking up the dust on the dirt roads of Northeast Colorado, chasing windmill farms on the ever-distant mesas perched above the heat vapors on the horizon. We crossed the Wyoming border amid ranch fences lined with cow skulls and buffalo herds, arriving in Glendoe State Park just as the sun was making its lazy summer’s way toward the crumbling sandstone hills that rose above the sparkling reservoir lake on which we set up our evening camp.
Anyone who has been to Wyoming can attest to the feeling that one is sitting atop the well-worn roof of an ancient continent; few trees and windswept swells of barren dirt along which perpetual winds blow around the scattered rocks and sagebrush that carpet the land as far as the eye can see. The perfect place to pitch a tent, pour a dash of Maker’s Mark into a cup, plop into a camp chair, and let one’s thoughts mellow with the setting rays of the sun.
Then came the first blast, miles away yet with force enough to rumble in chest and ears. Strip mine? Five minutes of peace, then, BOOM! Repeat. With a weekend of rabble-rousing in Colorado under our belts, however, we would not let a few tons of dynamite in the next valley deter us from a good night’s sleep. We crawled into the tent on the soft sandy shore of the reservoir and were fast asleep.
I’m not sure what time it was, just that the moon was down and the night was black, when the headlights pulled up to our camp. The idle of a large truck picked up as it was put into park, and a flashlight swung along our car. “Can I help you?” I called in an inquisitive voice, still shaking off sleep as I sat upright in my bag trying to decipher the form of the visitor to our camp. “You’re fine,” was the response, as the authority of a ranger’s voice accompanied the flashlight in a circle around our car, coming to rest on the permit atop the dashboard.
A permit check in the dead of night? How annoying. Granted, in the past I have tried to skate on a park fee, but that was as a poor college kid trying to take in the world for the price of a box of ramen noodles and cheap gas split among marauding buddies. I was now with my fiancée, the woman I expect to marry in the next three weeks, and we had dutifully placed our check in the little metal box by the unattended front gate. I wanted to give this guy a piece of my mind, but then I remembered our bottle of spirits on the front seat of the car. Could we get in trouble for that, even in our pseudo-adulthood within a Wyoming State Park? I held my lip.
Perhaps it was the booms from the next valley that now registered in my alert mind. Perhaps it was the fact that I was being probed by park enforcement after a fifteen-year respite from my being an annoyance to them. I know, well-earned payback. And Karma has a long half-life. But regardless, after little more sleep ended with the rising sun raising the 40-degree desert air into the 80s, I decided to politely share my reflections on our midnight visitor with the attendant at the front gate. In a matter-of-fact, Southern drawl, she gave me a response I did not expect:
“Let me tell you what’s going on. Yesterday, a couple of Arab men of questionable background were scouting out the park. Being so close to 9/11 and all, we can’t take any chances.” It took a minute for the situation and my location to settle in with one another inside my head. Being a former Chicago public school teacher who had many an Arab student in his classroom whose sentiments were focused not on terrorism but girls and music, my unsympathetic side percolated its way into my expression. After all, the date was 6/20/07. The woman sensed my thoughts and continued:
“Look, in these parts we seldom even see Black folks, let alone Arabs. And these guys pulled their car up to my window last night and started asking all kinds of questions about the reservoir: ‘How much water’s in it? How long is it? How old is it?’ We followed them and found ‘em on top of the reservoir taking pictures. The rangers ran their California plate and it came up questionable. The ranger who visited you last night was probably just making sure that everything was alright.”
Two scenarios then flashed through my mind. Scenario 1: There really are terrorists meandering their way through America’s least populated states, scouting out even the smallest of reservoirs for future detonation. Scenario 2: A couple of engineering students from Cal Tech who happen to have Muhammad in their names have inadvertently ended up on a watch list and are partaking in one of the more followed vacations into the hinterland in recent history. Either way, our attempt at finding a serene spot for a short respite from our wacky modern-day world sat blinking its eyes in my sleepy head. The woman sensed this too.
She injected some humor into the situation by engaging in small talk about the area, and wistfully reflecting on the fact that, unlike her native Alabama, she couldn’t find self-rising corn bread in Wyoming. “The Mexicans like flatbread too much. The stores don’t carry it.” I cracked a smile “How about barbeque? They’ve gotta have that kinda down out here, right?” She responded with an indignant draw back in her chair. “Are you kidding? No! They can’t do barbeque to save their lives! Wrong cuts of meat.” She then cocked her head and brought our conversation back to the situation at hand. “Heck, you think last night was wild? You should see when the Russians come up here from Denver on the weekends to party. We gotta get a whole van to haul them folks to jail.”
Who knew we’d be spending a getaway holiday trailing the modern world into the American outback?
6/16/07
Devil's Tower
Phantom of North Dakota
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