Wilderness Ranch to Hite Campground, Utah
414.8 Miles/125 Songs
Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Lou Barlow – Emoh
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
Of Montreal – The Sunlandic Twins
Waterdeep – Live at New Earth
The Decemberists – Castaways & Cutouts
John Cale – Paris 1919
Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Leaving is hard. We were only a week at Wilderness, but a week is long enough to make missing. A week of working and eating and playing and talking and being with others. A week is long enough. So as we drive away, I can’t help the hollow feeling in my stomach. But I think maybe the hollow feeling is good. Makes me think maybe I am capable of loving. It helps that my brother is with me. It helps, too, that these mountain roads share the valleys with mountain rivers. Somehow it brings me comfort, traveling the same path as these rivers, knowing that all those drops of water have a history, that they have traveled miles and miles of earth and air, taking the form of liquid, solid, and vapor, picking up pollution, pestilence, purpose, and pride, eventually joining other drops with similar stories, now communing in a common aim, choosing the path of least resistance, like millions of sordid souls, hurrying downward to that purgatorial shore.
2:08 pm – 2 miles past Durango, CO
Spent two hours in Durango. Ate a great lunch. Bought a Crazy Creek camping chair and a Nalgene bottle. Bought a CD [John Cale’s Paris 1919]. Tried to get sold a $300 basket. Went with $30 wooden wolf for Mom instead (surprise, Mom). Bought Jordan a 118-year-old silver dollar for his birthday (today’s his birthday). Now worried about the time, we still have a ways to go today.
7:15 pm – 36 miles past Blanding, UT
Despite my concern for our being behind schedule, we can’t resist stopping at the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings. We are both suckers for antiquity. And the thought of seeing the thousand-year-old dwellings of the native Americans is enough to bring out the nerd in both of us. So we pull off highway 160, pay the $15 (FIFTEEN DOLLARS!) entry fee, and drive 25 miles to the first ruins.
While driving, I can’t help myself from pondering—pondering about America. We’ve seen a good bit of her up to this point, and there’s one thing I’ve noticed. Actually I’ve noticed it before, have pondered over it before, but have been reminded on this trip. It’s that we Americans don’t really like the old. If a building gets too old, crumbling, sagging, dilapidated eyesore, we tear it down and build a new one in its place. If an idea or philosophy or religious thought becomes too old, rigid, stale, monotonous blathering, we forget it and think up a new one in its place. If people grow too old, decrepit, feeble, absent-minded, we ignore them and defer to younger ones in their place.
In the past I’ve never been able to pinpoint why we have such disgust for the old. But I think now I’m beginning to figure it out. It’s a feeling we get when we see something old. It’s the lonesomeness in every run-down and abandoned service station or garage, hotel or house, store or barn that we pass on the road. I think we Americans equate old with loneliness, and we hate loneliness, and we hate anything that reminds us we are lonely, and so we destroy it. Some things survive, sure. We set up a historical landmark sign or build a national park around the thing and then it’s okay. Because it’s someone else’s loneliness and not ours.
One thing I find ironic at first but now makes complete sense to me is that Jordan and I, while at Mesa Verde, are surrounded by non-Americans. Germans, Vietnamese, French, Brazilians, you name it. The only other Americans we see are a group of older women who are rushing through the exhibits because they are craving Diet Cokes. Really. I overheard them. I think maybe other countries, other cultures don’t get bothered so much by the old or by feelings of loneliness. I don’t know for sure, of course, I haven’t been to those countries, so it’s likely I’m just talking out of my ass. But it would explain a good many things I think.
Standing here, leaning against the railing, looking down on the ruinous remains of those ancient Pueblo people, I wonder if they ever thought about things like loneliness. Did they have questions of existence? Did they doubt their beliefs? Did they distrust their spirit helper? Did they wonder if they had the right power animal? The information placard tells me that they didn’t destroy the old and build in its place. No, they buried it and built on top of it.
“For every invention made how much time did we save?
We're not much farther than we were in the cave.”
“The View” – Modest Mouse
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