August 28
With heavy eyelids I plodded up to the urinal to make water. Suddenly the steel urinal hissed like a pouncing raptor and growled like a geyser spewing sulfur. I leaped backward, eyes wide. I was almost back against the far wall when I realized the automatic-flush urinal had just flushed a little early. I finished my business quickly and scurried back to Squatter, where appliances don’t make inappropriate noises.
Squatter and I just halted for the night in a rest area along Interstate 80. It was my fourth attempt to stop. About an hour ago, I started to turn off US 95 toward the silhouette of a hill that looked like a pleasant camp. I returned to the highway when I saw the sign “Winnemucca Community Landfill.” Next I tried to make camp by a small stream, but a rusty gate and a “Private Property” sign thwarted me. I got on I-80. I put my blinker on to take the first exit northward toward the Humboldt River, where I could fall asleep to the murmuring of a running water, but turned Squatter back to the expressway at the sign “Prison Area – Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”
Today has been a strange one. This evening I find that the camper is secured to the truck by duct tape, I am in Nevada, and there is blood spattered all over the front bumper. I expected none of these things. But then, I guess that’s why one travels.
The Wallowa-Whitman Forest Service roads I went through this morning were rough on the camper. The part that overhangs the cab kept slamming down onto the roof as I splashed through mud puddles and crept over rocks. Twice I had to get out to “repair” the couplings. All I had of use was a set of wrenches, three rolls of duct tape and many, many trees. Pine sticks thrust between the bed post holes and couplings serve to tighten three of the corners, and once corner uses duct tape to hold the sticks in place. I finally made it out of the National Forest, however, by asking directions from a man riding a dirt bike with a mule deer draped over the back, blood seeping through the cloth bag he kept it in. “You have to go back out to the main road; that’s the quickest way.” The main road was a gravel track that led me to the exact point at which I’d entered the forest. So much for efficient travel.
Not that I value efficient travel. That would have been evident in western Idaho later that day where I stopped atop a hill and pulled out my hammer to take rock samples from a roadcut. I was traveling toward Steen’s Mountain in southeast Oregon, but there were red rocks, black rocks, yellow strata, white pockets in this roadcut. I had no idea what any of the colors indicated, but I merrily took samples of everything and was walking across US 95 to Squatter when a bus pulled up behind me.
It was not just any bus. It was an old Chevy schoolbus handpainted by an acquaintance of its occupants. The side sported a green figure, some sort of festive ghoul. The entire bus was graffitied in reds, blues, purples, oranges. No vestige of the original paint remained. The double-paneled door opened and its occupants spilled out. The first was a long-haired fellow, shirtless, sporting a full beard and carrying a much-drunk fifth of Jack Daniels. Immediately he began to relieve himself. The next passenger looked similar. Then came a young woman in a dress who wore no underwear. I know she wore no underwear because I happened to be looking when she hiked up her dress and squatted to pee. The driver cut the engine off, and immediately steam poured from the grille and water spilled down onto the dust. “Turn it back on, turn it back on!” one of the urinators shouted. With a massive clearing of its throat the bus shook back to life and stopped belching steam. “That was lucky,” another young man informed me. A moment later, “Hey, can we buy any weed from you?”
They were fifteen in all, and had come from Calgary, Alberta – “all the way from Canada, man.” They were going to the Burning Man festival north of Reno. It was an art and music festival. A young woman disembarked the bus and lay down on her back beside the road. Was she okay? I asked. “She just drank a fifth of Jaeger.” What was I doing with that hammer? I explained that I was into geology and had been taking rock samples, though I did not know what the rocks meant. Dane, who I had just met, pointed to another long haired Canadian shuffling across the Idaho dirt in Tevas. “He’s a geologist. Maybe he could knows more about it.”
Andrew, a graduate student to be, confirmed that he was studying geology. He, Dane and I crossed the road for a geology lesson. The white pockets were probably ash, either from a volcano somewhere upwind or from exposed coal that had caught fire (later research confirmed that it was 15 million year ash from a volcano 30 miles away). Some of the yellow strata were conglomerate, varied rocks that had been eroded from their sources in a streambed or volcanic landslide and then lithified together. And the black rocks were “volcanic bombs” – grapefruit-sized pieces of rock that either been hurled by the exploding volcano or had been airborne globs of lava that solidified on the surface. They were probably rhyolite. Andrew pointed out that the strata on the sides of the road tilted in opposite directions. “I don’t know what that means,” he said. But we concluded that this was basin and range country, and the faulting was probably concomitant to the crustal spreading of the region 12 to 25 million years ago, which, I would discover, coincided nicely with the time of regional volcanism.
“Hey, man, you should come with us,” one of them said to me. Burning Man attracted tens of thousands of people every year. “Yesterday there was Woodstock; today there is Burning Man.” “You can find us – you know what our bus looks like. It’s a great time.”
And that’s how I came to be in Nevada.
But before heading to Reno, I decided I’d swing by Steen’s Mountain. Sundown found me humming along a gravel road on its eastern side. The area was not lush, but it was downright fecund when compared to the surrounding area, which was desert. It must have attracted lots of animals – the road was hopping with animas when I passed through. Squatter almost flattened three mule deer who decided to test the braking capabilities of a heavily loaded Dodge Ram on gravel. I stopped the truck – eventually – and watched them bound away. A mule deer’s bound is a strange method of locomotion, a stiff-legged gait strongly reminiscent of Looney Toones characters or the way horses run in Disney’s Mary Poppins. Straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down, all while keeping a good forward pace. Amazing. I love to watch it, but at this point I’d just eaten my last chicken breast for dinner and was longing for a rifle. The ‘fridge was empty of meat. I drove on, and someone must have let loose the rabbits, because I must have seen forty cottontails darting across the road in front of me. Thirty-seven of them made it.
Hitting rabbits in Squatter is about like shooting quail with a .44 Magnum. You miss most of the time, but when you do connect, it’s all over. One of the rabbits was crushed pretty badly, ears to tail. The Michelins must have taken him longitudinally, because there was no edible meat left. But what do you think became of the other two?
Squatter and I just halted for the night in a rest area along Interstate 80. It was my fourth attempt to stop. About an hour ago, I started to turn off US 95 toward the silhouette of a hill that looked like a pleasant camp. I returned to the highway when I saw the sign “Winnemucca Community Landfill.” Next I tried to make camp by a small stream, but a rusty gate and a “Private Property” sign thwarted me. I got on I-80. I put my blinker on to take the first exit northward toward the Humboldt River, where I could fall asleep to the murmuring of a running water, but turned Squatter back to the expressway at the sign “Prison Area – Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”
Today has been a strange one. This evening I find that the camper is secured to the truck by duct tape, I am in Nevada, and there is blood spattered all over the front bumper. I expected none of these things. But then, I guess that’s why one travels.
The Wallowa-Whitman Forest Service roads I went through this morning were rough on the camper. The part that overhangs the cab kept slamming down onto the roof as I splashed through mud puddles and crept over rocks. Twice I had to get out to “repair” the couplings. All I had of use was a set of wrenches, three rolls of duct tape and many, many trees. Pine sticks thrust between the bed post holes and couplings serve to tighten three of the corners, and once corner uses duct tape to hold the sticks in place. I finally made it out of the National Forest, however, by asking directions from a man riding a dirt bike with a mule deer draped over the back, blood seeping through the cloth bag he kept it in. “You have to go back out to the main road; that’s the quickest way.” The main road was a gravel track that led me to the exact point at which I’d entered the forest. So much for efficient travel.
Not that I value efficient travel. That would have been evident in western Idaho later that day where I stopped atop a hill and pulled out my hammer to take rock samples from a roadcut. I was traveling toward Steen’s Mountain in southeast Oregon, but there were red rocks, black rocks, yellow strata, white pockets in this roadcut. I had no idea what any of the colors indicated, but I merrily took samples of everything and was walking across US 95 to Squatter when a bus pulled up behind me.
It was not just any bus. It was an old Chevy schoolbus handpainted by an acquaintance of its occupants. The side sported a green figure, some sort of festive ghoul. The entire bus was graffitied in reds, blues, purples, oranges. No vestige of the original paint remained. The double-paneled door opened and its occupants spilled out. The first was a long-haired fellow, shirtless, sporting a full beard and carrying a much-drunk fifth of Jack Daniels. Immediately he began to relieve himself. The next passenger looked similar. Then came a young woman in a dress who wore no underwear. I know she wore no underwear because I happened to be looking when she hiked up her dress and squatted to pee. The driver cut the engine off, and immediately steam poured from the grille and water spilled down onto the dust. “Turn it back on, turn it back on!” one of the urinators shouted. With a massive clearing of its throat the bus shook back to life and stopped belching steam. “That was lucky,” another young man informed me. A moment later, “Hey, can we buy any weed from you?”
They were fifteen in all, and had come from Calgary, Alberta – “all the way from Canada, man.” They were going to the Burning Man festival north of Reno. It was an art and music festival. A young woman disembarked the bus and lay down on her back beside the road. Was she okay? I asked. “She just drank a fifth of Jaeger.” What was I doing with that hammer? I explained that I was into geology and had been taking rock samples, though I did not know what the rocks meant. Dane, who I had just met, pointed to another long haired Canadian shuffling across the Idaho dirt in Tevas. “He’s a geologist. Maybe he could knows more about it.”
Andrew, a graduate student to be, confirmed that he was studying geology. He, Dane and I crossed the road for a geology lesson. The white pockets were probably ash, either from a volcano somewhere upwind or from exposed coal that had caught fire (later research confirmed that it was 15 million year ash from a volcano 30 miles away). Some of the yellow strata were conglomerate, varied rocks that had been eroded from their sources in a streambed or volcanic landslide and then lithified together. And the black rocks were “volcanic bombs” – grapefruit-sized pieces of rock that either been hurled by the exploding volcano or had been airborne globs of lava that solidified on the surface. They were probably rhyolite. Andrew pointed out that the strata on the sides of the road tilted in opposite directions. “I don’t know what that means,” he said. But we concluded that this was basin and range country, and the faulting was probably concomitant to the crustal spreading of the region 12 to 25 million years ago, which, I would discover, coincided nicely with the time of regional volcanism.
“Hey, man, you should come with us,” one of them said to me. Burning Man attracted tens of thousands of people every year. “Yesterday there was Woodstock; today there is Burning Man.” “You can find us – you know what our bus looks like. It’s a great time.”
And that’s how I came to be in Nevada.
But before heading to Reno, I decided I’d swing by Steen’s Mountain. Sundown found me humming along a gravel road on its eastern side. The area was not lush, but it was downright fecund when compared to the surrounding area, which was desert. It must have attracted lots of animals – the road was hopping with animas when I passed through. Squatter almost flattened three mule deer who decided to test the braking capabilities of a heavily loaded Dodge Ram on gravel. I stopped the truck – eventually – and watched them bound away. A mule deer’s bound is a strange method of locomotion, a stiff-legged gait strongly reminiscent of Looney Toones characters or the way horses run in Disney’s Mary Poppins. Straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down, all while keeping a good forward pace. Amazing. I love to watch it, but at this point I’d just eaten my last chicken breast for dinner and was longing for a rifle. The ‘fridge was empty of meat. I drove on, and someone must have let loose the rabbits, because I must have seen forty cottontails darting across the road in front of me. Thirty-seven of them made it.
Hitting rabbits in Squatter is about like shooting quail with a .44 Magnum. You miss most of the time, but when you do connect, it’s all over. One of the rabbits was crushed pretty badly, ears to tail. The Michelins must have taken him longitudinally, because there was no edible meat left. But what do you think became of the other two?
posted by Jeb Butler at 10:17 AM
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