October 24

I was enchanted from the start.

I came in late. I hadn’t seen the cathedral the first time I passed, and on the way back I found it only by the abundance of cars. There were no signs visible from the main road – the church faced the other direction. I circled around and opened the old oak door. I stood on the threshold as my eyes adjusted to the dim light. The church smelled earthy, like an old quilt. The first thing I saw when my pupils dilated was a middle-aged Hispanic woman smiling at me and waving me in. I stepped forward onto the plank floor. The service had not yet begun.

The Cathedral was big, about the size of a football field. Its walls were made of plaster and were about four feet thick, whitewashed on the inside. You could run your hand over them and feel the irregularities of loving construction. On the walls hung colorful Biblical paintings and tarnished mirrors in shape of Latin crosses. The ceiling was high, about 30 feet up, and giant rafters ran from one wall to the other. The oak pews were crowded. Twice I scooted over to admit new worshippers.

The service began with a hymn. The pastor welcomed us in English, then we sang in Spanish. I looked around. I was one of a dozen non-Hispanics. I found a hymnal and sang, understanding about half of the words I spoke. Throughout the service we sang, knelt, prayed and spoke in unison, in a pattern everyone seemed to know. They seemed even to know the hymns by heart. I wondered how long the sequence of a Mass had remained unchanged. “May the Lord be with you,” the pastor said several times. “And with you also,” we replied.

In the middle of the service the pastor left the pulpit and held two pamphlets up for view. Someone, he said, had been placing them on cars during the worship hour. They told worshippers how to vote. The pamphlets were not related to the church. The Catholic church, he told us, had no official position on the upcoming election, though it did have printed guidelines he would be happy to distribute to anyone who requested them. “Whoever is putting these on cars,” he said, holding the outlaw pamphlets aloft, “please stop. You do not have permission.” He urged us to go vote, but said we should make our own decisions. He walked pack to the pulpit. “If you’re wondering, yes, I am upset,” he said to the congregation. His voice had never risen. He was not a man of anger. “Now on to the announcements,” he said. The congregation laughed.

On my windshield after the service I found the two pamphlets the pastor had showed us. Both denigrated abortion as an affront to good Catholics. One called it a “non-negotiable issue.” The other told me explicitly to vote for George W. Bush. I leafed through the pamphlet the pastor had given me, authored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It gave guidelines for Catholic voters, and mentioned the church’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia, but it advised its readers to think for themselves.

From the pamphlet itself: “As bishops, we do not wish to instruct persons on how they should vote by endorsing or opposing candidates. We hope that voters will examine candidates on the full range of issues and on their personal integrity, philosophy, and performance.”

Amen.

October 23

“Will that be all?” the cashier asked when I set a candy bar on the counter. She was tall and her heritage was Mexican. Her frame was solid and she did not resemble the birdlike señoritas that flit across movie screens. Her mouth was a straight line and you knew looking at her that it usually remained that way.

“Eighty-four cents,” she said.

“I’d also like two pieces of advice, if you don’t mind.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I’d like the name of a bar to visit tonight and a church to go to tomorrow morning.” She studied me for a moment.

A woman sitting behind her called, “The Alley is a pretty good bar. It’s in the plaza.”

I had already driven through the plaza of Taos, New Mexico and did not intend to return. The streets were choked with expensive art galleries set in buildings of pressure washed stucco designed to mimic adobe. Stained wooden posts jutted from the tops as though earthen roofs rested upon the logs. I turned to the woman to ask for another recommendation but I decided I didn’t really want to go to a bar anyway.

“Thank you,” I said.

The cashier kept her eyes on me. “What religion are you?” she asked.

“I’m not particular.”

In accordance with her recommendation tomorrow I will attend my first Mass. I had forgotten the Mexicans were Catholic. I wonder if I will be the only gringo there. Will the service differ greatly from Bible-belt Protestantism? How will the congregation stand politically? Will religiosity promote social conservatism, as with Southern Baptists, or will overwhelming minority status swing the congregation to the left? Will I encounter unspoken customs? Will I unwittingly transgress them? How long will the service last? How should I dress?

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a good one.” But she was already taking the next customer’s gas money.

October 22

Tonight, from the swing state of Colorado, I have taken my first step as a political activist. I wrote a “letter to the editor” and sent it to newspapers in Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Grand Junction, Ft. Collins and Pueblo. Hopefully they’ll be negligent in checking my status as a local.

The letter I sent:
________________________

Enough about jobs and jihads. The 2004 election has jolted a lackadaisical electorate to life but the political discourse it has generated has gotten repetitive. Bush calls Kerry a flaming liberal. Kerry alleges that the nation is a mess. But there remain crucial issues that neither candidate will mention and the media won’t probe.

What happened to the environment? Have we forgotten that this is our only planet? Conservationists among us cannot afford to let our attentions slip. Degradation of our world is often irreversible. If our government allows drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, for instance, we can’t go back.

What about policy’s relationship to science? Will next year’s policy directives be based on scientific findings or will our next president squelch the science that challenges his beliefs? As our trading partners become increasingly tech-savvy, this is an important question. Our next president must govern with his eyes open.

Our next president must be a skilled negotiator. He will face a diplomatically explosive relationship with the Muslim world and strained relationships with nearly everyone else. Blustering diplomacy could mean another war and more American soldiers bleeding into the sand. Our next president must be articulate and smart.
________________________


We’ll see if I can hoodwink anyone into publishing it.

October 21

Wyoming streams are mad. In several places they run across mountain ranges instead of down their sides. It happened like this. Forty million years ago (mya) in the Eocene epoch, major mountain building occurred in the region. The Laramide Orogeny, geologists call it. The Laramide Orogeny is strange in that it has no obvious relationship to plate tectonic theory. The Uinta mountain range, for instance, runs east-west, which makes little since to a tectonic geologist. And for 25 million years after the Laramide Orogeny, nothing much happened. The existing mountains just eroded, downwasted, buried themselves. Wind and water filed away their peaks and depositied layer upon layer of sediment in the valleys. The valleys filled up to the height of the peaks, which became mere bumps. Then erosion flattened them more. On the basis of this dull topography rivers and streams formed, meandering across the post-Eocene plain. The slow, lazy rivers carved their channels in a slow, lazy fashion. But in the Miocene, when Basin and Range faulting began across the expanses of North America that lay to the southwest, massive uplifting of the entire region occurred. Again, no one is sure why. This is a strange place. Maybe the Yellowstone hotspot had something to do with it. Because of the uplifting the gradient of regional watercourses steepened dramatically, the amount of precipitation increased and the streams that had flowed lazily to their destinations flowed faster. But they stayed in their old channels, incising ever deeper into the rock below. The region eroded, but it did not erode evenly. The sediments that had accumulated since the Eocene washed away first, leaving the recently buried mountains intact. Erosion exhumed the Rockies. And today, with the post-Eocene sediment scraped away to the seas, we have a topographic landscape reminiscent of that which existed before evolution even dreamed of producing Homo sapiens. Miocene rivers lay juxtaposed on Eocene landforms.

But tonight I have left the boisterous geography of Wyoming behind for the placidity of Nebraska, the stable state, the dependable craton, the offensive guard of United States geography. It does its job, day after day, with no fireworks or fumaroles. Tonight I’m camped on a dirt road in the prairie under the sweeping light of the Kimball, NE air tower. Chap and I are settling in for a glass of wine and a cigar. The stars are out tonight and we’re going to enjoy watching them from the stable, lovable craton.

October 20

Chap and I loaded up into the truck after a dry hunt. The sun was setting. I looked at the gas gauge. The tank was dangerously low, but two out of the three gas cans lashed behind the camper still held fuel. I didn’t know how much fuel because I didn’t fill them up entirely and both had leaked a little. I looked at the map. The next town was Bill, WY, about 25 miles south. No problem. I put the truck in gear.

Bill, Wyoming was a small town. It had sprung up at a railroad junction. There was one building in Bill. The faded sign above advertised the store’s wares: beer, groceries, gas, post office. A neon sign in the window notified passers-by that Bill was open. I pulled into the unpaved lot and killed the engine. I saw no pumps. I walked inside.

“Oh, no,” the young woman behind the counter told me. “This place hasn’t sold gas since the 80’s.”

“Oh.” We looked at each other for a moment. “Where is the nearest place I can get gas?”

“You can go north to Wright. That’s about 40 miles,” she said. “Or you can go south to Douglas. It’s about the same distance.”

“Durn,” I said. She smiled. It was a pretty smile. “I rationed my gas to get here. I guess I’ll settle for a root beer.”

I asked her how she liked working in Bill. “It’s alright,” she said. “This place is really growing.” That meant, I learned, that the proprietor was building a bar in the back. She took me to see it. The proprietor was a good carpenter. The seams in the floor were tight and the pine planks that would be the bar fit snugly together. The barroom smelled of sawdust and well-oiled saws. “Yeah, he can do anything,” she said.

“All things being equal,” I said as we walked back to the counter, “I always support the building of a bar. But who is your prospective clientele?”

“Anyone,” she said. “You’d be surprised. You can’t tell when it’s going to happen – could be a Monday night, a Wednesday night – but sometimes this place gets packed. About a week ago the coal miners all came in and we partied till 5 in the morning.”

Outside, I poured what remained of my gasoline into the tank and screwed on the gas cap. Then I walked back inside.

“The next time you have one of those parties, I want you to let me know,” I said. “Just send up smoke signals or something. Something big I can see from Georgia. I’ll come a-running.”

“Okay,” she said. She smiled. I grinned as I walked back to the truck. Duration, I sometimes think, is less important than we think.

October 19

Am sitting in a Starbucks in Cheyenne drinking coffee. But whose coffee? Not theirs, the capitalist pigs! I brewed my own in Squatter and poured it into my Steinbeck mug from Salinas. Now my mug sits beside me leaving little brown rings on their table. In the words of Afro Man, “F--- the corporate world, biotch!”

I am so rebellious. And so deep.

On Sunday I went to church. I parked Squatter in the church lot the night before, then drank beer and listened to the radio before I fell asleep. In the morning a couple Sunday school teachers came out to speak with me.

I saw them coming and opened the door of the camper to come out and greet them. They declined my invitations to coffee and breakfast couscous but extended an invitation to the church service. This was a Southern Baptist church, they said, way out here in Casper, Wyoming.

The fatter one had seen my license plate. “Yeah, we’re pretty conservative out here, kind of like in Georgia,” he said. “This is Dick Cheney’s hometown, you know.”

I swear it wasn’t 120 seconds later that the wind kicked up and blew the camper door shut, revealing the Kerry-Edwards sticker on the back of Squatter. The fat one left shortly thereafter. The other man – Lyle – stayed until he had to go teach. He invited me to his class, but I respectfully declined and told him I’d see him at the eleven o’clock.

Aside from the sermon church was great. Everyone was friendly and laid back. Some wore tee shirts. In my oxford shirt and khakis I was one of the dressiest worshippers. The hymns were fun, and I found myself tapping my foot along to “Standing on the Promises of God.” I wondered why such a large hall of worship drew so few people.

I discovered the reason when the preacher – a young fellow called “Brother Rob” – took the pulpit. I say outright that I did not like Brother Rob. Whereas other speakers said to the congregation, “Let’s stand,” Brother Rob spoke in the imperative. I pass this quotation along because I found it representative of Brother Rob’s attitude. “You may sit down,” he informed us. Then, drawing on his twenty-something years of worldly knowledge, he instructed the congregation on the rights and wrongs of marriage.

First he told us that according to God marriage could exist only between a man and a woman. This was because marriage “evens out male and female tendencies.” Here I think Brother Rob blended the word of God with his own conclusions. A man’s testosterone was like the magma inside a volcano, he told us. He was not smiling. A woman exerted a civilizing influence on the man – he recalled some of the wild times he’d had in an all-male seminary dormitory as evidence – and “harnessed” the man’s desires.

I was trying not to grin because in a congregation of thirty Brother Rob could have spotted me. A laughing liberal in Casper, WY might be subject to exile. But what Brother Rob was about to say would make me nauseous.

“Marriage is a model of the relationship of Christ to the church,” he said. The man was like Christ, the woman like the church – Jesus loved the church, and the church bowed to his authority. Never mind that the church did not exist until Paul created it after Jesus’ final disappearance. What will happen, Brother Rob asked rhetorically to the women of the church, “if you constantly rebel against the authority of your husband?”

Brother Rob presented other arguments against same-sex marriages. What if a gay couple chose to adopt? They could potentially stand in line ahead of you, a heterosexual couple, he pointed out. Nevermind that the number of adoptable children far exceeds the number of willing and able couples. And Brother Rob added, “No society with rampant homosexuality has flourished.”

“What about Greece?” I thought. “And Rome?” Ancient Greece produced Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and tragedy that many modern dramatists say has never been equaled. Rome produced Pax Romana, peace like the world has never seen, and a system of governance that lasted well over 1000 years.

As if in answer to my thoughts, Brother Rob spoke. “Greece?” he said. “Gone. Rome? Gone.”

One day, I thought, you will be gone too.

After the service Lyle took me by the arm and led me up to meet his preacher. Jeb,” he said, “I want you to meet Brother Rob.” I wanted to grab the back of Brother Rob’s head and dunk it in a toilet. Flush! I imagined his carefully combed hair rearranged like twirled ice cream. I shook his hand and walked out of the church.

October 16

I stood on top of the camper north of Thunder Basin National Grassland and watched them pass in their disorderly herd. There were about 400 bison. They moved up WY 59 on the other side of an eight foot fence, plodding en masse across the short tawny grass that covered the range as far as I could see. Not a tree disrupted it. The stubbled carpet ran up truncated 60-foot buttes that interspersed the plain. The carpet wore thin at the tops and the red Triassic soil of the buttes showed through. The sky was colossal, a cloud-streaked lid set atop the diminutive earth. Taken as individuals the bison lumbered, but seen as a whole the herd moved with the deliberate inexorability of an outsized amoeba, sliming its way across the plains.

In the old days they say bison filled the plains to overflowing, their brown bodies rumbling and rippling across the earth so that the arid expanse became a living sea of bison, red-eyed from dust, each beast moving with the bellowing bedlam around them like Los Angeles traffic times one thousand minus the law. They say the earth shook. Frenzied by their numbers the bison did not walk as they do now but stampeded. They stampeded over anything they encountered. Bleached bones, fallen comrades, fallen cowboys, all churned to dust and blood. I try to imagine it. Millions of bison, teeming like ants, pouring out of one horizon and sweeping toward the other. I see them coming, snorting, steaming, pounding the earth with their footfalls. The leaders swerve to avoid Squatter but the followers cannot turn and some ram against the grille, thumping the truck as flesh pounds against steel. I am knocked to all fours. I can smell the acrid dust, the sweat and the saliva of the animals. Bison swarm by Squatter’s sides, tearing off the rearview mirrors and jolting the truck as they pass. The quarterpanels crumple in the incessant collisions. Inside the cab Chap barks as bodies thunder by. The dust rises until I can scarcely see. My eyes burn. I cover my face and lay flat. The thunder rumbles. Squatter shakes. Chap ceases barking and I imagine him crouched in the floorboard under the glovebox, scared and hoarse. I cower until it is over. When the rumbling has passed I look up to see a plain churned to red, strewn with scat, dotted by a few limping animals and some lumps of flesh that lie still. Desolation at life’s hands. The scene reeks of overturned earth, sweat and blood.

It is a sight I will never see. For when multiplied to historic proportions, the bison is incompatible with the barbed wire fence. Today man is the dominant species in the plains, and man has made his choice. Having taken the land mankind cannot relinquish it. Maybe after man has fallen from prosperity the bison will return to rule the plains and thunder across the regions we once termed Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska. I wish I could see it.

I wonder what will happen after mankind struggles, gasps and fades from existence. Will bison recover? Or will the earth be altered drastically enough that mammals no longer flourish and other classes rise to fill the vacuum? How will the earth look? How will it feel? Smell? Man must perish, and will. Our time on earth has been fleeting beyond comprehension and yet we have altered the globe tremendously. In geologic time our trajectory is not sustainable, no matter how many Kyoto Protocols we may sign, or refuse to sign. No organism lasts forever. The Permian extinction claimed 98% of all life forms, the K-T extinction took 94%. Mass extinctions are not only possible but inevitable, a simple fact of life on Earth. One day the sun will rise and Homo sapiens will not be around to rise with it. That is simply true.

It is such an arresting thought that I miss a foothold climbing down from the camper and tumble onto the asphalt below. I land on my side and roll over. I sit up and spit, which is what a man does if he is disgusted with himself but not hurt. Chap jumps from the truck, where I had told him to stay – a command he usually obeys – and climbs into my lap. I tell him I am okay and scratch his head. Chap winds the bison. He cocks his ears and wrinkles his nose. This is only the second herd of bison Chap has encountered. I clip on his leash and we cross the road and approach the fence.

Most of the herd has ambled by, but one bison lags behind. He walks near the fence. As Chap and I reach the fence he shies away. Despite his bulk the bison’s eyes are on the sides of his head. Chap and I have eyes in the front. Unambiguous sign of a predator. As he quarters away the bison turns his shaggy head to have one last look at us. He does not change course. Destruction comes only with numbers.

October 15

Plush leather loveseat. Complimentary Starbucks coffee. Free Wi-Fi access. Soft classical music. Wooden table to prop boots on. Yes, I do love Sheridan’s Holiday Inn. The reception desk and the coffee stand are manned – or womanned – by smiling women my age, and I’ve a warm place to write without paying a thing.

Chap and I just hunted in the Bighorn Mountains. At 7500 feet, I pulled Squatter off US 14 and into the snow, engaged four wheel drive and lurched down two muddy ruts until I came to a meadow. The temperature was below freezing. I parked the truck, drew my shotgun from the back seat and clipped a bell to Chap’s collar. He awakened from his nap like I’d shocked him with a taiser. “Stay,” I told him, and he churned the cloth of the passenger’s seat with his paws as I stepped back into the snow. He eyed my shotgun and orange cap, smelled my bird hunting vest. His bell jingled as he jittered in the seat. The snow had fallen in the morning, and now the uppermost layer crunched underfoot. I slipped shells into my shotgun. “Stay,” I said.

When poodles were respectable and Abercrombie and Fitch sold truck parts, Steinbeck undertook a trip like mine. It produced the book Travels with Charley, published in 1963. Charley was a French poodle who sat almost as tall as his master. He and Steinbeck traveled The States in a truck called Rocinante, which, as Steinbeck gently reminds his reader, was the name of Don Quixote’s horse. Steinbeck mused about traveling alone. When you’re by yourself, he wrote, time runs together. Past, present and future fuse into one. Only social interaction fixes us in time and space.

“You ready to find birds?” I ask Chap. The question is rhetorical, and Chap declines to answer. I snap my shotgun shut. “Okay!” I say as I slap my thigh. Chap leaps from the truck and lands four feet away in the snow. It is four inches thick in places, which is to say it comes about a third of the way up Chap’s legs. In a flurry of white he pivots and faces me. I point to the east, along the edge of the meadow where the dark firs encroach upon the white meadow. Chap sprints for the trees and I walk briskly along the forest’s edge. The air is cold and fresh, stinging my cheeks like a pinch from a loved one.

Steinbeck considered himself alone when he and Charley drove between towns. I consider myself in company when I’m with Chap. I guess that’s because for Steinbeck, Charley filled the companionship space previously occupied by his wife, whereas I was Squatter’s lone inhabitant before Chap. Exchanging his wife’s company for that of his dog thinned Steinbeck’s social landscape. For me Chap fills a void. But Steinbeck knew what it was like to be utterly alone. As a young man he lived alone for eight months at a stretch, tending to a summer home in the mountains that became snowed in during the winter. He wrote that, after a time, the complex emotional reactions normally felt by humans in interactive contexts ceased because there was no one around. A “reversion to pleasure-pain,” he called it. I wonder why he felt that way.

Chap is as excited as a puppy. I haven’t seen him like this since Dad left. He leaps high over logs with his front legs folded like a deer. He charges through the woods at full speed, a brown and white streak weaving through the tree trunks of a white-floored forest. He plants a forefoot and cuts like a halfback with four legs. He sprints for the meadow. Reaching it, he turns again for the trees. Chap is working the edge of the field, showing the wisdom of his age. Though he has never hunted blue grouse he knows from six years of experience that upland birds thrive on the edges. Upland birds are Chap’s business.

I think the complex emotions Steinbeck wrote about are not simple gradations on a continuum of emotion, as in happy vs. elated vs. ecstatic, etc. I think the complexities of the human subconscious grow from tensions between concurrent codes of behavior. In a social situation one must simultaneously consider the personal, perceived and moral repercussions of any action. At a dinner party, for instance, a self-deprecating comment may make you feel better personally but cause others to think you diffident. It may simultaneously make a listener feel better about a mistake he regrets, thereby affecting a moral good. Often our codes of behavior conflict in this way, and our complex emotions arise from the resultant discordances. Complex emotions grow from edges, if you will. But when you’re alone you don’t need these multiple codes, so they melt away. Evaluating an action is simpler. The solo traveler needs only a single, cruder standard of behavior: pleasure-pain.

Chap and I hunt the edge all the way around the meadow. On the western side the edge climbs a hill, and I push myself up it to keep pace with Chap. He has barely slowed. The intoxicatingly fresh air hampers me now, and I breathe plumes of water vapor as I gasp and exhale. I stop at the top of the hill and look for Chap. On the northern edge of the field he flits between trees, working back toward the truck. Dusk is falling. In the sky isolated clouds, remnants of the morning’s front, darken to purple as orange rays radiate from the west. The cold air feels good and I loosen a button on my shirtfront.

I do not find my emotional life steadier when I’m on the road. It becomes more complex, more forceful. The rearview mirror hangs in my face and there is nothing to distract me from me. Emotions sweep through the cab of my truck like ocean waves sweep through a clam’s world, each wave eradicating the traces of the wave that came before. In this environment Chap is the coral to which I hold. He situates me in time and space. Chap must be fed, exercised, hunted and disciplined. He gives me footing from which to fight back memories and repulse anxieties.

Back at Squatter I call Chap to me. I remove his bell. We haven’t found birds, but both of us are glad we hunted. I rub his back and he pants visibly in the cooling air. It is still light enough to see, so I retrieve Chap’s ball from the truck. Chap wags his stubby tail and bounces on his front feet. I throw the ball and he bounds after it, ecstatic that the fun hasn’t ended. From ten feet he smells the ball, then he digs it out of the snow. I shout encouragement. When he brings it back I pet him and throw the ball again.

October 14

What a wonderful night. Despite the advancing season, I can sit and type outside. The sky is black, the stars locked out by thick clouds. Word on the weather radio has it that the Canadians sent another front swooping down for us. Its leading edge is coming through tonight, with rain to herald its arrival. But just north of Shell, WY, the rain hasn’t arrived yet. The barometer is dropping but the night is still calm enough for me to hear Shell Creek rushing, an owl hooting, and Chap whining because I leashed him to the bumper.

A minute ago I had Chap tied to the camper with about 30 feet of parachute cord so he could move around. For awhile he stood and whined because I was typing and not petting him. But then he left me alone. I typed in peace. Toward the end of the last paragraph I heard a jingling that sounded like his collar in the distance. The sound was moving. I set my computer aside and walked back to where I’d tied the cord. I felt for it in the dark. I found the knot, then slid my hand along the cord until I found a severed end. Chap had chewed through my parachute cord. The distant jingling continued. I’ve got Chap on a short, thick leash now. It should take him at least an hour to chew through it.

Evolution shafted Chap when it didn’t give him opposable thumbs. The dog could have used them. As we drove through Graybull tonight he sighed and lay down in the passenger’s seat, and I knew he was bored. We played fetch this morning – I tried to keep the game on land, but Chap looked wistfully out over the Wind River until I capitulated and threw the ball in the water – but since then we’d done little. As we passed out of the city limits I handed Chap his tennis ball to play with. Instead of taking it from my hand he pushed it with his nose. I told him to take the ball, but he refused. Chap is a stubborn dog. He nudged it again. I let go and the ball fell to the floor. Chap jumped onto the floorboard and batted the ball, then seized it between his jaws and carried it like a trophy to the back seat where he could lay on my jacket, his stumpy tail pumping side to side. But fifteen minutes a rustling in the back seat caught my attention. Chap was digging through my clothes and sticking his nose under the seat. He snorted. Then he crawled over the console into the front seat and smelled under the seat again. He lay down and pawed at the cloth. I had to pull over to retrieve the ball for him. A few miles down the road we stopped for gas and when I returned to the truck Chap was sitting upright in his seat. No ball. When I opened the door Chap promptly marched to the crevice between seats where the ball was wedged and pointed to it.

Though Chap may covet the dexterity my thumbs afford, the temperature is dropping and my Raynaud-afflicted hands are slowing. Typing is getting more difficult. Opposable thumbs are great, but they’re no panacea for the ills of existence. Chap’s jealousy is not unrequited. I wish I found spiritual contentment in a fuzzy yellow ball. It is a real skill.

October 13

Just watched the prez debate and subsequent commentary from a hotel room in Lander, WY. CNN victory poll: Kerry 52%, Bush 39%. I will spare the reader any conclusions of mine except that Ann Coulter is a venomous bitch as rational as a pit viper.

I sat in a café in Stanford, MT a few days ago with Dad and his old law partner, Fred Overby. We had just finished the morning hunt. The dogs – Fred’s nine French brittanies and Chap, an American brittany – were napping in their dogboxes outside. We leaned back in our chairs and waited for our food. I brought up my potential employment in Tucson – an environmental education outfit had expressed interest in hiring me to lead 12-person crews for the next two months.

“Do you want my opinion?” Dad asked.

“Yes.”

He advised that I keep wandering. Wandering would be more fun, he said, and as an employer, travel is impressive in its own right. Granted, leading environmental crews would be more impressive on a résumé, but the difference was slight. And with interests as wide as mine – outdoor education, writing, geology, politics – I ought to keep roaming, reading, observing. Living as broadly as I could while I had the chance.

“Sounds good to me,” Fred said. He sipped his coffee. Fred is a deferential man. He wouldn’t to proffer such advice to someone else’s son directly.

Dad nodded. “But you do what you want to do.”

I’m still on the road because I took his advice. Dad has a rare ability to take myriad considerations, rank them by their relevance, draw logical lines through them and formulate a rational conclusion on the basis of all available evidence. This is the universal basis of good judgment. Dad is not an ideologue. He is wise enough to acknowledge complexity. He does not seize upon a single prejudicial consideration and then banish all others from his mind. We leave that to Ann Coulter.

October 12

Chap is curled up beside me as I type. We are listening to “Jambo Bwana,” an upbeat Swahili melody recorded in the 1980’s. Despite the swinging tune Chap’s eyes are closed. I don’t know how he’s tired – he slept nearly all day in the passenger’s seat after we dropped Dad off at the airport this morning. I guess he’s still fatigued from the three days of hard hunting he put in. The first two days he combed the gentle swells and grain fields of central Montana for pheasants, sharptails and huns. On the third day Dad and I hunted ruffled grouse in the Madison Range. We hunted up mountainsides, over logs and through creeks. At the end Dad and I were tired enough for a Budweiser break, and Chap so tired he could barely hike his leg to pee. As good bird dogs do, he had run five to ten miles for each of the six miles Dad and I walked. (see photo)

A few miles north of Yellowstone NP Chap and I got out of the truck to hunt for a half hour or so. We needed to stretch after a few hours in the truck. It was strange to hunt birds without Dad. First time I’d done it. Chap and I found no birds – it really wasn’t a very good area since there was no grain or water – but I think we’ll do alright together. Chap responded well to my commands. I never needed my whistle. He didn’t even pursue the herd of antelope that trotted past. But he didn’t hunt hard, which is anomalous for Chap. He was disoriented by the bell I hung around his neck, I think, and by his master’s absence. But we’ll get the hang of working together. At the end of the hunt I held Chap down and pulled a cactus spine from his foot, and as sappy as it sounds I think it was a bonding moment for us.

Chap has started to twitch in his sleep – his back legs are pumping as if he were running. Let’s hope there are no cacti in the world of doggie dreams.

October 5

At 4PM today I’ll pick Dad and Chap up from the Bozeman airport. The three of us will go bird hunting together for a few days. Dad and I will shoot, and Chap will point birds, because he is a dog and that’s what every instinct tells him to do (unless a nearby female is in heat, in which case the fool’s mind wanders). Then we’ll go fly fishing someplace – Chap will probably swim – and then take a day just to wander, maybe down into Yellowstone again. Chap can ride on the console, where he prefers to sit. I look forward to spending some time with the Old Man and his best bird dog. We’ll watch the Vice Presidential debates tonight, and hope John Edwards whips that crotchety curmudgeon. He probably will. Edwards was a hell of a trial lawyer. Chap will watch with us.

It’s a little past midnight now, so it is only technically the 5th of October. Yesterday seems to have taken a long time, but I enjoyed it. Spent it running around Billings. Internet, ammo, clearing space in the truck for dad and dog, cooking, laundry, beer and Monday Night Football. I watched the second quarter of the Ravens-Chiefs game and then grew bored. It was 17-17 when I left the bar. Football is something I enjoy in a more intimate setting. Either that or in a stadium with thousands of whooping fans.

So it’s on to bed, and maybe a little reading. The USA Today – I still can’t find the Times – and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I’ll see Gannet Publishing lead informed Americans all over the current events map by the eyes and see Lady Brett lead Jake Barnes all over Paris by the – well, you know.

October 4

No one in Montana, it appears, reads the NY Times. I came out of Yellowstone NP into Gardiner, MT last night, and couldn’t find a copy. I have become a newspaper snob since taking some journalism classes at Vanderbilt, and I hadn’t read a good paper in days. I drove 50 miles north into Livingston, a small city on the interstate. No paper. The search for the Times had taken on the proportions of a quest, so I drove 114 miles east to Billings. I got in at 11:30, and I cased the town. I checked gas stations, street corners, Wal-Mart. I tried a grocery store, a Holiday Inn and a tawdry all-night casino. Nothing. I asked everyone I met. “I know this is a strange question at this time of night, but do you know where I can find a copy of the New York Times?” Many of them laughed at me. At 1:30 AM I abandoned the search until morning. When I woke up today, I went to Borders. I cooked breakfast in the parking lot, waiting for the bookstore to open at 10. At 10:05 I entered. They had the WSJ, The Onion, Barron’s and a couple newspapers in German sitting on the racks. But no New York Times! I was pissed, although it was kind of funny.

Yesterday was a good day. I not only undertook a silly search for the nonexistent, but I hiked about 9 miles in Yellowstone. It was a good hike. I sat by a creek and ate my lunch of summer sausage, crackers and cheese, then on the way back out I walked through the hail and listed to the screaming whistles of bugling elk. After awhile I sat on a log and watched a lone buffalo. The hail was drumming on my hat. This was an old bull. When bulls get too old to fight, the young bulls drive them away from the herds they’ve sheparded for most of their lives, just as the old bulls once chased their elders away. The aged bulls graze and wander in solitude until they die. I asked this bull what he thought about the process. He didn’t respond. Didn’t seem too much perturbed by notions of justice. I guess he just considers it all natural. Smart bull.

October 2

I went to Open Mic Night in a small Montana town called West Yellowstone this evening. Why is it that the people with least to say speak longest? Maybe to compensate. I suspect, too, it relates to Plato’s old story about Socrates being the wisest man in the world. (The story goes that the Oracle of Delphi tells Socrates he’s the wisest in the world, Socrates doesn’t believe it, Socrates traipses about the ancient world asking questions of purportedly wise men and, in the end, concludes that he is the world’s wisest man because he knows he is not wise.)

But some of the speakers/singers were good, and the beer was, as expected, excellent. God bless Anhauser-Busch; at least that was consistent. These western bargoers are different than those I knew in Tennessee. Beards, sandals, tee shirts. Easygoing, who-cares attitude – people actually frown on barfights instead of encouraging them. Dancing is a free-for-all with many of the dancers dancing alone. My old half-bow and “may I have this dance?” routine draws more puzzled looks than anything else. I know cultural differences are only superficial – just minor variations on the themes of the playground – but there are times when I miss southern rules and southern women. My tucked-in shirt and combed hair are strange here, and I’m too stubborn to change. Maybe I just miss the sensation of familiarity. Or maybe the truth is that I get lonely. That’s what drives most people to the bar. As James Talley sang,

And I’m reaching for the stars in these honky-tonks and bars
With a lot of lonely people just like me
Trying to forget all the things that I regret
And trying like the devil to be free.

It’s midnight and the blues in the distance
Whiskey in a glass and nights alone
And I’ve lost so many dreams that I know what it means
Trying like the devil to be free.

But then loneliness isn’t such a terrible thing. The cowboys of western novels were always lonesome, and the sentiment has featured in more than one Willie Nelson song. Cowboys “never stay home and they’re always alone / Even with someone they love,” according to Willie and Waylon. Country music has long romanticized loneliness. It comes with wandering. As Merle Haggard sang, “he who travels fastest rides alone.” But the praises of loneliness don't stop with Willie, Waylon and Merle. Existentialists claimed loneliness catalyzes personal maturity, and maybe that’s true. In that case, maybe a heft dose of loneliness is just what I need. We’ll see. I think I’m growing up. I’m trying.

October 1

Like a sideways baseball cap, an irreverent patch of sandstone sits atop Mount Moran. Thousands of feet below, Jackson Lake reflects the young mountain so clearly that one can discern the cap and the wide black streak that scars its side. Mount Moran is growing. It is of the Teton Range in northwestern Wyoming, one of the youngest ranges in the Rockies, and it rises as a result of the Teton Fault. The Teton Fault is a colossal rip in the earth’s crust that appeared five million years ago. The rent runs north-south, and its appearance disrupted the equilibrium of the crustal blocks on each side of the damage. The western block tipped westward, and it hasn’t stopped tipping yet – the west side of the block is sinking and the east side is rising. On the other side of the Teton Fault, the crust sagged as the magma underneath it was diverted to Yellowstone Park, a few miles to the north, and it sags farther each day. The earth west of the Teton Fault towered above the earth on the other side, creating the Teton Mountains. But as the Tetons rose erosion weathered them down. Layer after layer was stripped from the peaks and washed into the basin below so that today, the topmost layer on Mount Moran is the sandstone cap that was deposited 500 million years ago – before animals learned to live on land. The corresponding layer on the other side of Teton Fault lies 25,000 feet – almost five miles – below. And the two sides continue to offset. Jenny Lake, which lies east of the fault, sank so fast in recent years that it took trees down with it, so that in 1986 divers in the 260-foot deep lake found tree stumps on the bottom. The peaks of the Tetons continue their thrust into the atmosphere even as wind, water and ice tear them down. Before long Mount Moran’s sandstone cap will disappear and the granite below will crest the mountain – the granite that bears Mount Moran’s defiant black scar, an intrusion of magma so ancient that it predates the first multicellular organism. The history of the earth is rising before our eyes.