November 18

Chap would love to swim, I thought, but the lake looks awfully cold. I felt the fuzzy tennis ball in my pocket. Chap is passionate about water retrieves. The lake shimmered, barely rippling in the light breeze. I zipped my vest higher. Chap ran through the dry leaves behind me. We were in northern New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest on a cool, overcast day. If I threw his tennis ball into the lake Chap would shiver as soon as he got out. Then I would have to dry him off, heat up the camper, let him inside, hang up his towel and wait until he warmed up. No, I thought, we’d better just play fetch on land.

As I turned away from the lake I heard a splash. Prudence is not in Chap’s limited vocabulary. As Steinbeck wrote of his dog, Charley, Chap “never thinks of the future.”

Since he was already wet I threw the ball in for Chap. He brought it back. I lathered him in dog shampoo then threw the ball back in. He retrieved it. We played fetch until Chap was shivering so violently that I worried about hypothermia. I took him back to the truck and dried him. At least he was clean.

Chap and I left Boston this morning where we’d stayed with Chrissy, a friend of mine from the Semester in East Africa I did in 2002. We had a helluva time. Chap got to sleep inside since Chrissy’s roommates were gone and I got to smoke a cigar a great cigar bar, a basement hideout replete with pipes in the ceiling and all the Johnny Walker a man could drink. It was in the Italian section of town near Chrissy’s apartment. The lights were dim and the smoke was thick. The candle on our table flickered. I faced the bar’s only entrance and explained somewhat melodramatically to Chrissy that James Butler Hickok had died because he failed to take similar precautions. The place felt like a Speakeasy for Capone’s best gangsters.

Chrissy puffed on her cigar as we talked. She works with brain injured adults in Boston and has risen in only a year from a simple caregiver – a “wiper of asses,” in her words – to managing two separate wards. Now she wears a suit to work. But she has dreams as wide as the world and wants to do lots of things before she settles down. Social work in South America, or maybe Africa. I sipped my scotch and nodded. In this bar we knew life would last forever. Maybe Chrissy could find work in an orphanage. Anything. Social work is her passion, but not her identity. Many people, she says, perceive the injustices of the world and take them personally. They start seeing themselves as victims and become indignant. Then they become self-styled activists. Their advocacy can be outlandish, self-promoting. Sometimes it is downright silly. She sipped her wine. “I am not going to chain myself to a fence for gun control,” Chrissy says. “I do what I can, but you’ve got to leave it at the office at five.”

Chap is snoring in the corner of the camper now. He is warm, dry and smells like shampoo. No vestige of the dripping, shivering Chap I saw forty-five minutes ago remains. He lived his passions but left them at the lake.

* * *

Spent the afternoon driving through the countryside of New Hampshire and Vermont. Beautiful. Now I understand why everyone who sees it uses the word “quaint.” But “quaint” only describes the way the country would look if you took a photograph and stuck it in a magazine. “Quaint” is too simple because it implies simplicity. Beneath the whitewashed wooden churches and clean-swept fields pulses a vitality as robust as anywhere else – it just gets hidden by an exterior visitors find so pleasing that they never get past it.

I did not find the reticence for which Yankees are so famed and about which Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley. Several times strangers initiated conversation with me. I found the urge to befriend passers-by – an urge I have come to believe is nearly ubiquitous – stronger here than in most places. The impulse is always strongest in rural areas, but today was exceptional. The old man at the gas station came out to chat as I pumped; the mechanic at the auto parts store gave me excellent directions to another store where I could find the parts he didn’t stock. I like it here. I’ve stopped Squatter for the night beside the Housitania River in Connecticut, and the policeman who came by to investigate didn’t even run me off. Talk about a pleasant place.

November 16

Calling athletes “Neanderthals” may no longer be insulting enough to comfort embittered nerds. Recent paleontology indicates that Neanderthal Man did not walk slumped over with his head hanging and hands drooping near the earth as was once supposed. Arthritic degradation of an early specimen had deceived scientists, according to exhibits at Washington DC’s Natural History Museum. Now it appears that Neanderthal Man walked upright. His cranial capacity of over 1400 cm3 tells us that his brain was bigger than ours. And archeology has revealed that he probably cared for the sick and held ceremonies for the dead. We now consider Neanderthal Man closer to that unique specimen we call “modern man” – Homo sapiens sapiens, to the scientific community – and so scientists have reclassified him to Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. His taxonomical name differs from yours and mine only at the subspecies level. Neanderthal Man is now officially closer to modern man than upright man, Homo erectus, or tool-using man, Homo habilis.

Of course, the taxonomical structure and complex theories that surround each existing ancestral skeleton must continually adapt themselves to what scientists dig up. When oddities in the formation of Neanderthal Man’s bones were found to be arthritic rather than genetic, anthropologists’ theories about his lifestyle changed to accommodate a generally upright posture. The bones, scientists say, represent the facts. The theories are only interpretations. As Biblical literalists might tell you, the truth about man’s origins comes from the dust.

It was not so long ago that Biblical literalists controlled the descriptions western people propound to explain the world around them. Man arose spontaneously from dirt. Species differed because God had assembled them differently. The world was created on October 26, 4004 BC at 9am.

The anchoring points for these theories came from various passages in the Bible. From solid points of scripture, touted as indisputable truth, thinkers connected dots to form theories. By counting generations, for instance, an 18th century bishop uncovered the date of the world’s beginning. Today, the anchoring points for scientific thought are objective observations, like the discovery of prehistoric hominid footprints at Olduvi Gorge. These observations are considered factual and interpretation of them constitutes theory. Scientists interpret certain archaeological findings, for instance, to indicate that between 5 and 2 million years ago a certain line of apes began to walk upright.

In every age man has believed he knew the means of discovering the truth. Once man’s means was theological. Today it is empirical. But man only creates models for the world around him, only crafts mental frameworks to describe his world. Perhaps man has never encountered truth – he has only created more or less facile models to represent it. Even the purportedly fixed anchoring points for his models are subject to reevaluation as archaeological finds get discredited or scriptural declarations get declared metaphorical. Just as some Christians have claimed a mortal man could never look directly into the face of the Living God, a scientist must admit that we may never glimpse pure truth. We must make do with models, because they’re all we have.

November 14

Looks like Squatter’s Log will be more sporadic than usual for this leg of the trip. I usually only write when I’m alone and I’m stopping to stay with folks most of these nights. I spent the evening of the 12th with Kimi, a friend of mine from Vanderbilt who transferred to UVA, and didn’t write that night. Last night I slept in Washington DC in the house Lily (another friend from Vandy) shares with nine roommates and did not have time to write. I will sleep here again tonight. I’m starting to worry that Squatter will feel neglected.

_________________________________

Chap and I stood on the low embankment of an unfinished railroad line from the mid-nineteenth century. I tossed his tennis ball into the underbrush and he went to find it. We were at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, the gentle green farmland that fed Virginia. We looked east where the Yankees had come from. During the Battle of the Second Manassas, Ulysses S. Grant’s troops charged across the field against the left flank of the Confederate line. Wave after wave of blue-coated Yankees attacked the ill-provisioned Confederates until the Rebels ran out of ammunition. Standing on this embankment, General Thomas’s Georgians threw rocks. Stones clattered against Yankee armament. The Union troops reached the railroad. The fighting was hand-to-hand. Thomas’s Georgians, my ancestors among them, repulsed the attack and then Longsteet’s Confederates, charging from the right, swept the Yankees from the field.

The Confederates won the Battle of the Second Manassas but in the end Grant got the Shenandoah Valley, its rolling grainfields and quiet cows. When he finished, the alcoholic Grant proclaimed, “a crow will have to pack his lunch when he flies over the Shenandoah Valley.” It was so. Grant destroyed the valley, burned its barns, slaughtered its cows. The outnumbered, outprovisioned Rebels could do nothing. They were fighting for their homes but losing. The war was all but over. They fought on. As Rhett Butler observed, “Southerners can never resist a losing cause.”

Ulysses S. Grant, his army and his bottle swept past Virginia. Grant sent General Sherman through Georgia where Sherman razed all he encountered. He turned widows out of homes, requisitioned their houses and appropriated their foodstuffs. He left them hungry. Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground. Grant continued to drink. As Doc Holliday, who hailed from Macon, Georgia said of gunslinger Johnny Ringo in the movie Tombstone, “a man like Ringo has a hole right down to the middle of him, and he can never kill enough or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” Grant could never fill his hole. Even after he had heard the South’s dying gasp at Appomattox, even after he was acclaimed as a hero, even after the exaltation of the North catapulted him to the presidency, Grant continued to drink. He died a penniless, broken man.

Holes are not filled with blood or conquest but by an unassuming faith in the worthiness of one’s own goals. It is better to lose a fight you believe in than to wrest victory fighting for the sake of something you doubt. Chap was still looking for his ball, and I walked down the embankment to join him.

November 11

On Novemberr 4th I picked up my old friend Vivian in Little Rock. We cruised into Nashville for Vanderbilt’s Homecoming Weekend and to see my father’s trial against DiamlerChrysler. Both were good. It was wonderful to see the old college crowd again, and we got rowdy just like we used to. Beer, bars, cops and pepper spray. We had fun. Dad was ripping DiamlerChrysler’s yankee lawyer to shreds. The yankee was hemorrhaging dignity as DiamlerChrysler will soon hemorrhage cash. I had fun on both counts. But during the latter part of my stay the fun came from external events. It was not the innate joy that wells up from a psyche in harmony. I left Nashville this morning.

A sequestered mind turns on itself. This is especially true of mine, but traditionally I have had no difficulty being alone. Today was an exception. As I drove east out of Nashville I found myself grim, mulling over things gone wrong and the missteps of mine that I associated with them. In truth many problems are inevitable, but a gloomy man faults himself. Then you have an autocatalytic cycle. A mind weighted with guilt cannot make reliable moral decisions and, even when it can, the psyche, lethargic with depression, cannot execute them. The body then commits crimes it would have avoided in a sounder state, the mind blames itself and the cycle begins anew.

I have long been prone to these melancholy periods. They usually come in winter. I didn’t get one last year so I thought I had grown out of them. Guess not. I call these periods Sad Spells. I understand the stages well enough to diagnose them, so I can avoid extended and deep Sad Spells, but I can’t dodge them altogether. I suspect no one can. I’ve got a couple remedies to try, so hopefully I’ll be back above the clouds soon. I just feel bad for Chap. For reasons neither of us can explain his traveling buddy self-destructed all of a sudden. But I am not Humpty Dumpty, and soon I’ll be back together again.

November 2

9:00 PM
Despite rainy skies citizens are marching on the polls as they have not since 1968. Tomorrow their voice will resound across the world. It is a flag-waving day for the United States. No matter who wins this is a bright day for our democracy.

But I predict that tomorrow morning Senator John Kerry will add “president-elect” to his calling card. Polls have been tight and in many cases favorable to President Bush, but voter turnout is smashing records all over the United States. The voting proportion of the public will exceed the proportion pollsters deemed “likely voters” and newly energized voters will catapult a democrat into office.

11:30 PM
I guess neither Chap nor I are any good at predictions. I couldn’t predict the presidential election and he couldn’t predict that if he rolled in the spoiled meat in the parking lot he would get a bath. Neither of us is satisfied with the results of our miscalculations but I’m betting a midnight swim in the Gulf will lift our spirits.

November 1

These men in Wrangler jeans and black-and-white striped shirts were not cowboys. They were gritty, grinning inmates with nothing to lose and a long chance to win.

Before the first event at Angola Prison Rodeo the crowd was restive. It was a hot and muggy Halloween in the stifling humidity of the Louisiana bayou country. The sun’s rays pounded the rodeo grounds. The show horses with their ornate saddles stirred up the dust and manure of the arena while we in the crowd shifted in our seats and waited for the real rodeo. We had come to see sweat and blood, not starch and glitter. A fly buzzed loudly in my ear and I brushed him away. The man beside me dropped peanut hulls between his boots.

After interminable time the pomp ended and the combat began. Angola Prison Rodeo began as eight chutes loosed eight 2000-lb. bulls with eight inmates on top of them into the hot, still arena. The arena exploded. The bulls whirled, the inmates whooped, the crowd roared. The bulls heaved and snorted. They slammed inmates into the dust, kicked them and trampled them. They ran into each other and rammed each other’s riders. The last inmate on a bull’s back would win. When every prisoner but one had fallen a buzzer sounded but the winner wouldn’t bail. He stayed on his bovine tornado until a final twist dumped him into the dirt. He leapt to his feet pumped his arms into the air. The crowd cheered. Nearby another inmate wasn’t moving. Five men in gray hustled him out in a stretcher, the winner strode out of the arena and the next event began.

The prisoners rode broncos in the next event. After that three-man teams given a wild horse with a halter and a lead rope had to vault a man onto the horse’s back. In another event inmates caught 500-lb. steers barreling out of a chute and wrestled them to the ground. In another an inmate riding bareback had to “rescue” a partner standing atop a 50-gallon drum. The inmates rode more bulls. Three man teams pursued wild cows and tried to draw milk from their udders. In the final event hundreds of inmates spread out across the arena as a wide-horned and pissed-off bull trotted into the dirt oval with a poker chip on his forehead. The inmate who retrieved the chip won.

But the most outrageous event was rodeo poker. Four inmates sat in metal chairs around a flimsy poker table. According to the rules the last inmate sitting won $500. The wardens let out an angry bull.

Not an inmate moved. The monstrous, red-eyed bull approached the table and sniffed the closest inmate. With a sideways swipe of his head he knocked the inmate to the ground. The inmate’s chair lay bent and contorted beside him as the cloud of dust that had risen dissipated. The inmate crawled away. The other three sat motionless. The bull moved to his left and sniffed the next inmate. The man didn’t move. The crowd was silent. The bull breathed on the man. He didn’t move. With a violent toss of his head the bull hooked his horns under the chair and hurled man and metal into the air. The crowd gasped. For a palpable moment the inmate hung fifteen feet above the ground. He fell with a thud and the bull was on him. Horns rooting after the prisoner, hooves pounding the earth around his body. Dust obscured the scene as the prisoner writhed but could not escape.

Eventually the prisoner was borne out of the arena on a stretcher and the splinters of the table were carried away. The wardens brought out another table. Four more prisoners sat down. As a bull prowled the table, not a prisoner flinched. One by one, the bull removed three of them.

* * *

That night I went out in New Orleans’s French Quarter. But what to do for a Halloween costume? Chap and I went as “bird hunters.” With everything but the shotgun – hat, bird vest, whistle, shells – we went barhopping. Chap loved it. People gave him beads and tried to give him beer. I could scarcely move twenty yards on Bourbon St. without having to stop to let somebody pet my dog. Women especially loved him. Quite a few of them were damn good looking. He just looked right up their skirts then went and peed on a lightpost. Some species have all the luck.

October 31

As I got out of Squatter the woman collapsed on the sidewalk. Her son and daughter caught her. We were at an I-20 rest stop just east of Longview, TX and the elderly woman had been crossing the pavement to the restroom. The son and daughter, both of middle age, carried her back to their car and propped her up in the back seat. They looked alarmed and flustered. An oxygen tube ran to the old woman’s nose. Her skin was pale and her chin drooped near her chest. I ran to the car.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the daughter.

“She has emphysema,” she said. “She just passed out.”

I called 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher where we were. I said we needed an ambulance as soon as possible, and to make sure the ambulance carried oxygen. I turned back to the son and daughter.

“I’ve got some medical training,” I told them. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

The woman was 80 years old and needed constant supplementary oxygen. She was traveling with a portable tank and had turned the rate of oxygen feed down because the tank was low. The son had turned it back up and she was recovering. She could talk now. But the tank was very low. The son was considering driving on to his sister’s house in Louisiana where they had another tank. The ambulance is on its way, I told him, and it will have oxygen.

I went through the mental checklists Sue had taught me in Colorado. Circulatory system – no major bleeding, had pulse. Nervous system – awake and aware, no mechanism for spinal injury. Respiratory system – the woman had an airway and was breathing. That she could talk told me she was in mild respiratory distress at worst. Not bad as long as the oxygen held out.

From the son and daughter I took the woman’s sample history because I knew the EMTs would want the information when the ambulance arrived. Symptoms, Allergies, Medications, Past history, Last food and fluids, Events leading up to incident. I wrote it all in my notebook. A couple noteworthy findings – this was among the worst emphysema incidents the son and daughter had seen. Their mother was on several medications, some for her lung condition and some for blood pressure. And she had drunk no fluids since “coffee or tea” at nine in the morning. It was now two in the afternoon. Potential for volume shock, I thought. I took her radial pulse and wrote “pulse: 98” in my notebook. That’s I bit high, I thought, consistent with inadequate oxygenation of tissue. But maybe she’s just anxious about all the commotion. “Potential ASR,” I wrote – Acute Stress Reaction.

When the ambulance arrived I tore the sheet out of my notebook and gave it to an EMT. She smiled. “Look,” she called to her colleague, “this gentleman has taken a sample history and written it down for us.” She beamed. “Thank you,” she said. “I just feel good that we’ve got people out on the road who know what they’re doing,” she said. “Are you an EMT back in Georgia?” They put the elderly woman on a stretcher and gave her oxygen. “No, I’m a WFR,” I said. The son and daughter thanked me profusely. I had not showered in a couple days and was unshaven so I felt a little uncomfortable with all the attention, but the pair didn’t seem concerned. “I think we’ll just take him back to Texas with us,” the daughter said. I felt glowy inside as I drove on to Louisiana.

I think the sample history was helpful, but I think what comforted the son and daughter most was just having someone on scene with a practical agenda, someone who could ask questions and draw conclusions. Someone who draws calmness from a bank of pertinent knowledge. I am proud to have been that person. The desire to help other people is nearly ubiquitous, but often people have no formula by which to assist. The presence of someone with a clear agenda, I think, assures everyone. I’m lucky I could take a course. I’m sure everyone on the road would like to have access to such knowledge. The world is certainly not fair – the opportunities I’ve had for learning are nearly unmatched.

In an hour or so Chap and I will leave this Baton Rouge motel and drive north on US 61. We’ll take a left onto Louisiana 66 and follow it through cypress swamps and oaks draped with Spanish moss until the road deadends at the gates of the Louisiana State Penetentiary – Angola Prison.

Today is Halloween, and at my buddy Ben’s recommendation (see August photos from Alaska) I will go to Angola Prison Rodeo. In this rodeo wardens put criminals, most of whom are sentenced to life, on untamed animals and invite sellout crowds to witness the spectacle. According to Ben’s report many of the prisoners can’t even ride. According to Ben there are as many as six prisoners on bucking horses at one time. According to Ben these prisoners just don’t give a damn. To me this sounds reminiscent of Roman gladiatorial exhibitions. Who cares if the government of Louisiana is filthily corrupt? As long as they strap prisoners to 3,000-pound bulls for fun I don’t care.

I am very excited.

October 29

I stopped Squatter tonight beside a dirt farming road northwest of Celeste, Texas. It’s a beautiful name for a town; you have to give the Texans that much. It even flows well with the name of the state. The smooth, unaffected assonance of the “e” calms the pronouncer. I imagine a privately contented populace, a town composed of people who go about their daily lives in seemingly unremarkable fashion. They farm, sweep, drink, relax, fight and make love like people anywhere but on closer inspection you find a wisps of smiles lurking at the corners of their mouths, for in Celeste lives a different breed of Texans, a breed that does not need the compulsive boasting by which the rest of the state is stereotyped. A quiet people who view showmanship with genial amusement. I have never known a woman named Celeste, but if I did she would have light blue eyes that sparkled with a merriment I scarcely understood. She would laugh without demeaning her object and her feet would barely touch the ground. She would smile at my confusion as I stumbled for words upon meeting her. Maybe tomorrow when I drive into Celeste, Texas tomorrow I will find a jubilant parade led down Main Street by this happy young woman, her head garlanded by a wreath of oak leaves as she reaches into a Folgers can and throws rose petals to laughing little girls.

At any rate, I am enjoying Texas so far. It’s easy to find country music on the radio. The skies are big and there are few parking meters. The nights are enchantingly temperate after the chill of the Bighorns. I write now with the door open and wind blowing through the camper. The farmland in this northeastern part of the state is a bit more crowded than I would like, but then, one can’t stay in Kansas forever. At least I have found no bentonite in Texas, the “Hell Shale” that made navigation of muddy roads in Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas too dicey for Squatter’s street-tire supported bulk.

I am making lots of friends on the Texas roadways with my slow but aggressive driving and my Kerry-Edwards sticker. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find Crawford on the map and head that way. I also want to purchase a sticker demeaning the University of Texas Longhorns, preferably one that refers to the team as “The Masticators,” a name The Old Man invented. Then I can be sure someone will key my truck.

Citizens of Texas have long boasted of having joined the US by contract, unlike any other state, and for this reason John Steinbeck once formed an organization entitled “Friends for Texan Secession.” Although the club did little but socialize, and although all of the members of which I am aware – meaning Steinbeck – are dead, I have declared myself an honorary member. But my membership is mostly symbolic. I confess here that I think I’m coming around to this state.

Texas, I’m sure, is relieved to know it has my support.

* * *

I just had to discipline Chap for disobeying the “stay” command, a command he has executed to perfection for several weeks now. He damn sure knows what it means, but he kept jumping out of the camper after orders to the contrary. Each time he disobeyed I picked him up and threw him back inside with a harsh verbal reprimand – “what the f___ do you think you’re doing?!?” – which would be light punishment for most dogs. Then I’d walk away to test him, and four times he stepped back out. I don’t know what happened to the dog. He and I have been in sinc recently. Maybe it was the full moon or the impending thunderstorm, but I feel like hell for punishing him. I know I was right, but somehow it’s a poor consolation.

The storm is here now and is raising hell. Chap is cowering under the table, whether from the storm or my perceived wrath I’m not sure. Tonight Mother Nature is flexing her biceps. The rain lashes the camper like a thousand angry teamsters with a sound so furious that Chap would have to shout for me to hear him. The bass of thunderclaps carries through the machine-gun like pelting. The wind rocks the truck on its chassis, side to side, front to back with such ease that I worry we might be in for a tornado. There wouldn’t be much I could do about it. In the last tornado story I heard a funnel cloud carried Dorothy and Todo from Kansas to a strange land. Maybe this tornado is the return ticket she never used – maybe it will take Chap and back to Kansas. Who knows? But I’m being melodramatic. There is no tornado. This is a pretty impressive thunderstorm, though. It is turning out to be, as Willie Nelson says in his appearance in Larry McMurtry’s Texasville, “a real turd floater.” As long as it’s not a camper floater I guess we’ll be alright.

October 26

I had forgotten how much I loved Kansas.

It’s as though the people feel obligated to compensate for the state’s lack of tourist attractions. Kansas is flat. It has no mountains, no coastlines, no exotic wildlife, no large lakes, no cities of international import and no real history save that of Conestoga wagons trying to get someplace else. Even Wyatt Earp, after whom Dodge City’s “Wyatt Earp Boulevard” is named, earned his real fame from the OK Corral gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona. When one considers the United States, nothing catapults Kansas to prominence. Kansas produces some oil, but not as much as Texas. Kansas produces lots of corn, but not as much as Nebraska. Kansas has power-generating windmills, but not as many as North Dakota. Kansas’s only claim to national prominence was The Wizard of Oz, and, frankly, nobody likes Dorothy anymore.

But I love Kansas. I enjoy being here. The state produces character like the ocean’s surface produces waves.

It was in Kansas that I met Melford Rinkin, the retired pipeworker who came out in soiled overalls to meet me when I stopped to pitch a beer can into his pile of aluminum cans. He told me about the prices scrap aluminum was fetching in Amarillo since China was buying the metal “because the ‘Lympics are going to be there in four years.” He gave me kind but incomprehensible directions to where I might find prairie chickens, and he complimented me on Chap, saying “I didn’t know Brittanies had them squared-off noses. ‘Merican Brittany, you say?”

It was in Kansas that two girls, aged seventeen and eight, rode out on horses to greet me as I cooked my breakfast couscous (see photo). I had spent the night beside the dirt lane that passed their house. For an hour and a half they sat on their horses and told me all about their lives as I stood with a skillet in my hand, charmed, and asked them questions. Christy, the seventeen year old, was supposed to look after Chelsea while they were out riding. Chelsea had been riding since she could remember and seemed to regard her horse as a generally reliable tool that required occasional discipline. The horse was twice as tall as she was, but she rode bareback. “Mom told us to be back by nine thirty,” Christy said. “But we might be able to stay a little longer.” Chelsea slapped a horsefly on her horse’s neck and the insect tumbled to the dirt.

It was in Kansas that the waitress of El Leon Mexican Restaurant – “Best Mexican food in town and some American” – stopped and helped me translate my order for three enchiladas into Spanish. It was in Kansas that I found the downtown streets of Dodge City, Sublette and Ness City paved with brick. It was in Kansas that I watched two pickup trucks going in opposite directions on a dirt road stop, back up so that the drivers could chat, part so that a third pickup could pass, then come together again with such practiced precision that they might have been synchronized swimmers. It was in Kansas that, at five p.m. on a Monday, an AM radio deejay announced gleefully, “I hope you had a nice weekend. If you didn’t, it’s time to start drinking!” It was in Kansas that I found the yellow painted centerline replaced with rubber tabs glued to the asphalt that, when run over, sounded like cards being shuffled or a goat breaking wind, depending on your mindset.

Today Chap and I stopped at Cedar Bluff Reservoir for a bath (see photo). We drove up to the lake’s sandy shore, then I stripped down until the only article of clothing he and I had between us was his collar. We sprinted into the lake. Chap chased ducks while I bathed. After a game of aquatic fetch we raced up and down the beach to dry off. When we got back in the truck I drove barefoot so the sand could fall off my feet before I put shoes on again. The rubber of the pedals felt good under my toes. To the west the sun was setting. It produced that wide swath of western orange that you can see when the land is flat enough to make it visible.

October 25

Chap was a real pain in the ass tonight. I parked the truck by a sorghum field in southwestern Kansas and, though it was dark, let him out to run around. He promptly ran off. I called for him, but he did not return. No big deal, I thought. This has happened before. He always comes back in twenty minutes or so.

I was about to light my pipe and do a little reading on this surprisingly mild high plains evening when I heard the familiar jingle of Chap’s collar. He was limping and I ran to him. Just sandspurs in his paws, I discovered. As I removed them I noticed that Chap reeked. My hands stunk from handling him. He had found a carcass in the sorghum and had perfumed himself, in the manner that dogs will, with the enthusiasm of a legendary French whore. He had rolled in the mess.

I considered making Chap sleep outside. But the temperature could drop, and the forecast called for rain. Maybe he could spend the night in the cab. But the passenger’s seat would stink for weeks. There was no lake or stream nearby in which to bathe him, and anyway I didn’t want him to soak the inside of the camper. Reluctantly I opened the door and loaded Chap into the rear of Squatter.

He stank. I mean it was unbearable. I filled a pitcher with water and grabbed my dog shampoo, then carried Stinky Chap to the dirt road to bathe him.

Chap loves water. He will gladly retrieve anything you toss into a lake. Chap loves to be petted. Every morning he whines until I scratch his head. He loves new smells. He often rides with his nose out the window. But when you combine the three, Chap rebels. He detests baths. He shrank from the water I poured over him and tried to creep away as I sought to replace the perfume he had taken such pains to acquire with the scent I preferred. Chap was offended. In his view, he’s the one with the sensitive nose. I was an olfactory buffoon. I affected an air of stern indifference. “Chap,” I told him, “I outrank you on the food chain and don’t give a damn if you’re pissed off. So you might as well just stand there and quit complaining.” He glared at me and stood still.

After the bath I toweled him off and loaded him into the camper again. He gave himself an extra shake then turned around to face me. His was wagging his tail. I had forgotten that only humans bore grudges.

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.