1
Didn’t even notice we had been going up the entire time. Little cowlicks of canyons arched up to take my eyes off the road. Driving for a long time takes your mind off of the worry. Mistakes can happen, why don’t we take the burden of statistics off of the next fellow who’s actually trying to get somewhere.
I suppose we’re on a schedule and we have things to get home to. I’m just saying, if I accidentally drove us off the road — and we survived — that would be an amazing story. If I drove us off the road — and we died… identical story, but we do not get to watch people reacting as we tell it. More legendary if someone else is telling that tale. So you’d have to rely on having a vantage point from Beyond to enjoy people’s remembrance.
Of course, they might not even tell the story. In which case, we’d absolutely prefer to have lived to tell it.
Do not read me as careless. This is the path my mind goes as we drive, drive, drive. I’m observing that mistakes occur. If we are that mistake, it would in a way, mean that the next guy this specific statistic was coming for would receive the gift of life! All thanks to us veering off a cliff like a tourist.
You can see why I wouldn’t have noticed that we were going up. Prune Creek, Wyoming ends up being 13,000 feet in the air. The first sign I noticed was 9,000 feet. I can measure it in thoughts.
———
Long ago I had worked with a product that required accurate measurement. Paul and Tracy were friends of mine. Mostly Tracy. Tracy became my boss at an old server gig I was fiercely neglecting at the time. Collegiate students worked along our side. Tracy and I were around the same age, faintly reconsidering if we needed this type of work. I began neglecting the work even more because I was zeroed in on Tracy. This can be considered careless.
Tracy became friendly with the fun party of the staff. We went to a neighboring bar after one shift and made out in front of coworkers. A mistake, but feels good at the time. Both Tracy and I had forgotten about Paul, her fiancee. Remembering Paul would not have stopped me. But maybe Tracy.
What I actually did for real money required accurate measurement. My accurate measurements would require that I delivered inaccurate amounts to the clientele. I, like most measurers, figure out that not everyone is looking for an accurate measurement by the time the product is in hand. They look for trust.
Perceived trustworthiness.
I was some sort of trustworthy. Tracy and I never hooked up again. But we became the closest friends. She got me a promotion. I was also able to measure for her and Paul over and over again, amassing a decent living for the first time in my young adult life. Until one night, they measured my measurements. Called me while I was in the middle of depleting measurements. I was so hurt that someone would do something like this to someone else. How could they? How could I?
I lost touch with those two. I wonder if Tracy ever let it slip about that one time. They got married a while ago, and that’s good.
———
The Tracy thing wasn’t even that big of a deal at the time. We are 1,500 miles and 8 years away, here with my own life-partner and bovine horizon. Unobstructed, high-altitude sunlight gets beneath the eyebrows of this rippling plateau. It’s littered with cows. Whose cows are these? Where do these cows belong?
These green-gold lands cannot be manicured, but appear groomed. They give fluidity to each verdant stretch that stops abruptly against well-placed rock walls. Cows look toward the road to watch humanity pass each other by. It feels desolate. But no, that’s not true. I want it to feel desolate as though it’s only us up here. If it were desolate, there wouldn’t be opposing cars coming one by over the horizon. These cars are making space so we can get a chance at seeing some Moose. Meese? You gotta get up high to see these guys.
“Oh stop, their hooves are not that big,” Gloria stopped her husband’s embellishment.
“Yes they are! They’ll stomp ya to death” Hank said stretching out his arms wide. “And they got antlers like this —” they went so wide his wrists flipped open, sprouting digits to complete the full extension.
“They do not.” Gloria, said smiling. Then turned to me: “But. If you see one. You must absolutely get the hell away from there – because they actually will stomp you to death.”
“We were out there in Montana. Or maybe it was Wyoming. We’re hiking the trails and seeing all kinds of shit. We saw Grizzly Bears and Moose in the distance. Scary,” Hank grins, enjoying our attentiveness. “And my buddy, Dave, is a ways off the trail.”
He continues: “They’re huge. But in a way, they’re so big they blend in with the fuckin’ trees. Tall strong tree legs! We realized suddenly there’s a Moose right there in the wood, splitting the difference ‘tween us and Dave!
“The moose turns toward Dave’s direction, starts moving that way. So Dave runs for the river in the opposite direction of where we were and jumps in, swimming for the other side.
“When the moose steps in the water, it’s liek the Moose is ankle deep. But Dave is completely underwater, swimming for his life. The current doesn’t do a thing to the moose. But Dave is going diagonally up and away from both us and the moose, toward the opposite shore, thank God.
“But the way that moose just stood against the current – coulda just ran in the river and fucked him up!” Hank shook his head with a syllabic chuckle. “We caught up with Dave up ahead on our trial, soaking. He was just smiling with big eyes. Said, ‘Close one!’”
We laughed.
2
I hope to see one of these dinosaur-sized deer. Mostly for wonder’s sake. Brings me full circle back to veering off the road. What a story, to get stomped. A better story to be able to tell yourself, like we agreed. But a good story in any scenario.
———
Shouldn’t I be more present? Maybe all humans wish this once they’re informed about Presence. Everything reminds me of something. Then there are the intrusive thoughts and negative memories meant for the evening that get set loose in my synapses all hours. It doesn’t ruin my day by any means, but it certainly takes me down a notch. Good to be humbled.
Prune Creek will have us at 13,000 feet in some cases. I’m all the way up here, thinking incessantly about down there. All my goings ons and preoccupations.
Finally I set eyes on a house. Is it a farmhouse if there’s no farm? Unless this is the farm. The entirety of Heaven’s Plateau, one of thousands or millions my eyes had never seen, and my media-drenched mind’s never dreamed. There are images on television and on the internet. But it turns out, some of those metaphors, exaggerations, and turns of phrase are true. The Grand Tetons are those Purple Mountains Majesty Upon The Fruited Plains. So suddenly the world becomes alien seeing some of these sights. And then alien all over again when seeing a familiar trace of humanity via this lonely house.
So there are locals up here. I guess why wouldn’t there be? There was a road to get us here. All the roads through all the deserts and wide open mind-bending emptiness of the Great Plains. We seem to have plenty of space and food for people. Why does this need to be restricted? My easy guess: Power. There is blatantly ample space. I look at Kansas and I think, put everything here.
Is it possible to be this simple? We’ve done it in quite a few other places.
I don’t know enough about geopolitics and city planning to even imagine a better world. I hide from the politics and revel in the road. People have laid all these roads. The way we place a path, aiming in unknown directions until they are tread so many times we make that path permanent…
Which leads me to believe: we are destined to make our mistakes. The frequency of same or similar missteps are predetermined. Once this road has been laid, we might have to traverse it one million times to reach this peak; only to realize our intended peace was not on top of the mountain but on the other side of it, near sea level.
“You are loud!” my best friend said.
“We’ve carried you out of this place before, you don’t remember?” my best friend recounted.
“Look at this picture, we fist-fought that night,” my best friend told me.
He never tells these tales in a malicious way. It’s more like, “here’s a fact you might not know.”
Peppers are spicy as a way to defend themselves from certain animals. However birds don’t taste or feel capsaicin, so they munch, digest, and shit out seeds whole in a place where more peppers might bloom. My best friend is showing me how I was digested and shit out.
In my second life, I promised my best friend that this new idea I have for us will give us the ultimate freedom of creativity, just as long as we sacrifice our autonomy for the known future. We were leaders and loose cannons would become loyal followers. We’d both learn such a severe level of productivity and self discipline, it might cause harm to our personal relationships; a social expense we were both more than happy to cover. In some ways, this is a permanent fixture.
He put his palms to his face, leaned back and let the hands slide backward through his hair, accidentally knocking the sunglasses off. “I guess we’ll just have no say from here on out.”
“We will eventually be able to give direction,” I told him, not really knowing if that was the truth.
“You might be able to do that,” he said., “But I’ll be the first to be left behind. Why can’t we do things the way we used to? Let’s build something up.”
“I can’t. I’ve fucked that all up. You know I fucked that up.”
“You didnt fuck anything up. I don’t get how you think anything was permanent. We never even left the ground.”
“The momentum is gone. The idea is gone — I let it die.”
“And you have no more ideas?”
“Why would I when this idea is so good?”
“Because you no longer get to choose.”
“Most times when I choose, we fist fight,” I said, trying to be wounded. I was simply afraid. Not ready to step into myself and take accountability. It was easier to become employed by an idea than to learn how to lead once again. “I got you.”
“I’m not even a part of it.”
“You will be, I promise.”
As I become a spicy offspring of the character I once was, the reminisced missteps seem to lean toward happier memories when I was making accurate measurements. Of course, those memories are easier to understand and swallow, knowing that the present is all I can really handle anymore. Evasive as it is.
We pull up to the campsite and I realize how wrong I was for convincing my best friend to do these things. Each of us is in the same position, except he is full of acceptance and I am the one writhing in resentment. I’ve got to get us out of this.
Other campers are celebrating around the fire, playing cornhole, imbibing, barbecuing. It takes me to the plateau’s lone house. The cows. Every out-of-view inhabitant on the verge of this peak.
I wonder: what rides your minds up here?