Nothing brings a conservative and liberal
together…
   —like staring down the barrel of a gun

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

Do you think you’re Heaven worthy
  for myself—I never have

The weight I carry pulls me down
  and keeps me off the path

I avoid most every mirror
  my reflection haunts me still

With eyes that stare like piercing lasers
  to maim, and then to ****

My spirit left in ashes
  my kindled soul to burn

Salvation buried in the coals
  —from lessons never learned

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2018)

The differences in life
—live within the questions you’ve asked

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2013)

The delivery,
  incidental to the message

The format,
  duly chosen for the sound

The listener,
  singled out with times forgiveness

The truth
  —but spoken once to then abound

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2018)

On summer days, we played in fields,
and hid from him in the cover of big trees

In winter, distance forced him into
silence

Spring brought us the promise of fresh captivity,
and the protection of a wish

But in the fall, when our sheets could feel the mocking of
his laughter

We listened, to something only you could
hear

You smiled at me, as I tried to guard the bed against
my fear and hold you tightly against my chest

—but by morning you were gone

And as I lay beside your still and quiet body, feeling the coldness
of your disappearing shadow

I thank the trees, the distance, and the spring’s promise,
—for once loving you and I

(West Philadelphia: November, 1972)

Are your wishes scribed in combat,
  are your hopes relined with pain

Is your motion found still wanting,
  as you climb the stairs again

Are your words now of this moment,
  is your verse free and sincere

Are your feelings calling inward
  —from a heart that’s yearning dear

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Are your wishes scribed in combat,
  are your hopes relined with pain

Is your motion found still wanting
  as you climb the stairs again

Are your words now of this moment,
  is your verse free and sincere

Are your feelings calling inward
  —from a heart that’s yearning dear

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

The magic of the instrument
travels down my fingers
and onto the page

Liberating my spirit,
as the laughter of a child
fills a room

Like a corkscrew,
first to pierce the miracle
inside the bottle

It releases my every mood
with its new introduction,
—calling me by name

(Washington D.C.: November, 2002)

Day #10: Williams To Las Vegas

I knew the next morning the ride back to Las Vegas was going to be flat and uninteresting. The short detour (spur) I took at Seligman, onto old Rt.#66, provided little in the way of anything new.  After a week at life’s summit, a higher power was letting me down gently — to return to a world of greater relativity where all answers would appear obvious — and where the important questions would hide in my memory.  The old stretch of Rt. #66 was a desperate attempt to hang onto what the 1950’s romanticized, and then lost.  It stood as a carnival sideshow to what was happening in the big tent out on Rt.#40, which ran parallel to Rt. #66, just twenty miles to the south.

As I got back on #I40 at Kingman, the cutoff to Rt.#93 approached on my right.  This was the road to Las Vegas, and it signaled that in less than 100 miles my current adventure would end.  In an oxymoronic defiance of logic, the higher in elevation I got, the hotter it became.  Las Vegas drew heat to itself in a big-bang tribute to all that was divergent in the human spirit.  It tried to confuse with its ‘Light-Show’ what its true emptiness contained.  Were it not for its great location, I would bypass it forever.  The temperature was now 104,’ as I spotted the Joshua Tree Forest in the distant Northeast.

I passed through Boulder City in the severe mid-day heat and began looking for a gas stop with a do-it-yourself wash bay.  I spotted one on the other side of the highway just past Hoover Dam and got off the interstate and made a left at the bottom of the ramp. In thirty more seconds, I was parked at the ‘Ultra-Wash’ in the second bay from the left.  I needed to get the ‘road-dirt’ off the bike before turning it in, hoping, that as I did, no precious memories would wash away. I loaded the automated machine with quarters and watched ten days of well-earned highway patina flow into the drain.

The Dirt Was Gone, The Bill Was Paid, But The Memories Remain

It took only fifteen minutes to wash the bike and fill it up with gas. In twenty more, I had circled the beltway around Las Vegas on Rt.#I15 North and was back at the bike rental agency.  It was after four in the afternoon as Stefan opened the big overhead door, and I pulled the Goldwing inside.  They closed for the day at six, which had given me plenty of time to get back. It took less than a half hour to unpack the bike, change out of my riding gear in the agency washroom, and call a cab to take me to McCarran Airport.  

The Goldwing looked sad, among the other bikes, where it would wait for another out of town rider to again set it free.  I understood the feeling but could not share in its mourning — I had a flight to catch. My separation anxiety was growing intense, and I had to leave, and leave quickly, before it got any worse.

As I walked out to my arriving cab, Stefan said to me in his best Austrian accent: “Wow, you averaged almost 500 miles a day.  Most people only do half of that.”  I smiled back, acknowledging what he said, while I reminded myself again that it was never about the mileage … only the miles!

The cab driver who picked me up at the bike rental agency was a pleasant surprise.  His name was Ari. He was an Israeli, a romantic traveler, and he had been living in Las Vegas for over twenty-two years.  He was divorced with one son and had lived through all the changes that Las Vegas had been through during that time.  He, like myself, was nostalgic for what once was here — and would never be again.  

When I told him where I was from, he became very animated and said: “I just returned from a road-trip back East.”  He said it was his first trip to the eastern part of the U.S., and it totally changed him.  He made it as far as Easton Pennsylvania, which was only ninety minutes north of where I lived in suburban Philadelphia.  He told me that some of his boyhood friends lived in Easton, and that their homes were right along the banks of the great Delaware River.  They had rafted and tubed the river the whole week he was there, and he told me that he still couldn’t get over the rolling hills and dense forests that lined both sides of its banks.

Majestic in its own right — the Delaware River paled in comparison to the things I had seen. That being said, Ari felt about the East the way I had always thought of the West.  Amazing that a realization of contrasts, and a coming together of two spirits, could have happened in the span of a twenty-minute cab ride.  Time really was a slave to importance when all respect for it was gone.      

Ari told me he saw things along the Delaware that were beyond his belief. With the passion of his words, he reconnected the spiritual bond between what I had left 10 days ago and what I was taking home with me today.  As I thanked him, and got out of the cab, I reminded him that within three hours of Las Vegas there were things to see that would change his life again and not conflict at all with what he had seen in the East.  He thanked me, as I paid him, and said that he did have a trip planned to the Grand Canyon for late September and then on to 4-Corners and Durango Colorado.  The return trip to Vegas would be through Monument Valley and Northern Arizona, passing through both Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, before heading back south on Interstate #15.  

I told him to stop in at the San Juan Café, when in Monument Valley, and say hi to Sam.  Tell him I continued to keep him in my daily Rosary and thought of him often. The smell of his frybread, and the wisdom of his eyes, occupied a permanent place inside me. Ari helped me get my bags to the curb, as he wished me a safe trip on returning home.  

His words “returning home,” weighed heavy on me, as I exited the cab and gave my bags to the skycap.  They stayed heavy inside me, as I went through security and proceeded to my gate.  When I dropped my helmet and carryon, and sat down inside gate #15, I started to wonder … what did “returning home,” after all these years of travel, really mean?  

‘Returning home’ no longer seemed related to any one place. It was more about the spaces inside of me that had increased in size. ‘Returning home’ allowed me to clearly go back inside myself and see what had always been covered in fog.  Upon reflection, the trip out and the trip back were interdependent realizations of the same thing. Neither existed without the other — they were two halves of the same whole.

  ‘The Road Back’ Always Delivered Best What ‘The Road Out’
                                     Searched For Longest  

Whenever I tried to live my life in either one direction or the other, I was reminded by their connected wisdom that to see clearly, I had to be the product of both.

                               Going Out, Coming Back
                        Becoming What Was Meant To Be
                       Traveling Far — Returning home
                       Together In The Lessons Learned

The places I left, and the ones I was headed toward, took me far beyond the contradiction’s that had kept me prisoner.  As they opened a new awareness inside of me, I saw things that had happened in the past, and things still to come — all in the perpetual present. Where I had been blind to parts of myself distant and unconnected, there was a new image that I had been unable to believe in before.  

They opened inside of me unlimited possibility and the realization that I would never be alone. As I rode along their great mystery, I no longer felt separated from all that I had been before or from that which I would forever become.  

I was transformed in their eternal presence, while they appeared to others who traveled only on their surface, as just — A Road.



                                            Epilogue


At night, I would lie in bed and think about the path that led through the woods behind my house.  Little did I know, the dirt trail through the oaks and pines, and then to the creek beyond, would become much more than it first appeared.  

It opened up much more than a young boy’s access to the creeks and ponds.  It created an awareness that is still being shaped today.  In its many forms and variations, it became the guiding light of my delivery, and through all the years, and all the miles, remained steadfast in its calling.  In the messages hidden within its direction, it gave me back to myself, and on days when I wasn’t sure of which way to go … I just went.

‘The Road’ was that one last place that never abandoned me. At the worst of times, I packed up the bike and headed out in search of answers. Finally, at the end of a long and lonely road, where two directions turned into one, I found what I had lost.

‘The Road’ has always been there for me … waiting. Waiting to take me one more place and one more place again. It’s allowed me to see the very thing that made all the rest of it possible, as it reopened a new and special place inside of me —never visible before.  

‘The Road’ never threatened with either timetable or denied access. It is, as it has always been, as it was in the beginning, and will forever be.

                 Pray God, Let Me Go Down One More ‘Road’



Kurt Philip Behm
August 28th, 2011

Day #6: Salmon Idaho to Vernal Utah

I was the first motorcyclist to leave the next morning from an overly full parking lot.  It was 6:45 a.m., and you couldn’t fit even one more bike anywhere on the normally empty lot. Some late arrivals were now parked on the apron just across the road.  

After two cups of coffee and a biscuit in the hotel’s complimentary breakfast area, I said goodbye to Gene at the front desk and was on my way.  I had plenty of gas to make Mud Lake and decided I would stop at the ranger station there and see if Marie was still working the desk.  Marie had been a wealth of information over the last twenty years and had saved me countless hours of waiting in road construction delays by suggesting alternative routes.  

The ride on Rt#28 along the Western edge of the Beaverhead Mountains was both beautiful and isolated, and I had been riding it alone.  I counted only five cars during the entire length of its 121 miles.  I was once again amazed at what life had granted me to see, as I looked out toward Scott Peak (11,393 ft.) far off to the East.

I was not quite running on fumes but in need of gas as I pulled into Mud Lake.  I had my second mid-morning breakfast, an egg-salad sandwich and coffee, as I filled the bikes tank. Another meal that I pulled straight out of the cold chest at the gas station before turning left on highway Rt.#33 toward Rexburg and Driggs.  If I had to, I knew I could live forever on what these cold chests had inside. Some of my fondest memories had been while sharing a sandwich and a story with a fellow traveler who was also stopped for gas and some food.  Those accidental meetings were no accident and when the wind was at your back and your heart was open, your spirit could refill with all that was new.

After going through the beautiful Swan Valley and over Teton Pass to Jackson, I parked the bike and stopped for a real lunch.  The Eastern side of the Tetons has always been their most beautiful profile to me, and today did nothing to change that perception.  The view of Grand Teton as I passed through Victor and Driggs was as majestic as any time in my memory. The Swan Valley held proudly, in its rolling hills and Eastern perspective, what in many ways Jackson, because of overdevelopment, had lost looking West.

The ride over Teton Pass was more crowded than I expected. At almost 8500 feet, it was deceptive in the impression it gave as you climbed to the top. Although not high by Rocky Mountain standards, the view from its summit rivaled all but the mighty Glacier and Galena for majesty of landscape. It was late on a Monday morning, and there was a constant stream of cars and trucks headed both East and West.  It was another reminder of why I often bypassed Jackson even with its immense beauty.  It had become yet another example of what money tried to buy, and then control, when it reached beyond its borders. After another stop for gas, and a quick lunch at the Pearl Street Deli, I planned to be on my way.

Town was crowded as always with another day’s allotment of the two million people who would enter Yellowstone through the South entrance this year. The boardwalk surrounding the square in the center of town was full, as the patrons pushed and shoved to get their mountain souvenirs. They searched in desperation for something that they could take home, while at the same time leaving nothing of themselves behind.  So much of store-bought travel was like that with only the stain of trespassing footsteps to mark the places where they thought they had been.

                                           A Pity, Really

The tuna at The Pearl Street Deli was as good as I had remembered, and it was not quite 3:00 pm when I remounted the bike and headed south on Rt. #89 toward Hoback Junction.  Thank God my travels today would take me East at the split where Rt.#89 went West and Rt.#191 headed to the southeast. There had been road construction all the way from Jackson, and it would continue on Rt.#89 for at least another twenty miles.  I enthusiastically headed the other way on Rt.#191.

Once I veered left on Rt. #191, the road opened up, and I was again traveling alone.  My thoughts reached out to the Flaming Gorge basin and the road along its Western edge.  This was a new road for me, as before I had always stayed on Rt.#191 along its Eastern shore.  Today, I took a short ride West on interstate #80 before getting on Rt.#530, which connected Green River with Manila. Many times, I had heard of the beauty of this road, but once there, nothing could have prepared me for the things that I saw.

Where the eastern route was straight, and cut right through the canyon, the western side was a continuous series of turns dropping over two thousand feet, as it wound through one of the most beautiful gorges I had ever seen.  If you can only do it once, take the western route.  Just say a quick prayer of thanks for safe travel as you look across its depths.  It will remain in the memory of that day and what in your mind it will always be.

Where two state routes converged, #43 & #44, Manila was the seat of Daggett County Utah and the gateway to Kings Peak, the highest mountain in the state at 13,528 ft.  As much as people raved and boasted about the canyons further South, I had always believed that northeastern Utah’s canyons were special and unique.  The Uinta Mountains never left me unchanged as they disappeared into the Wasatch.

Through their power, my mind and soul came together in the union of all they taught me. For that I have been thankful knowing that these mountains bestowed blessings only when all homage had been paid. I looked to the West, as I reconnected with Rt.#191 and headed toward the old Utah town of Vernal where I would stop for the night.

It was a sportsman’s paradise and one of the only towns of its size in the country without a railroad.  Not founded by Mormons, like most of the state, it had regional air service to Denver but not Salt Lake.  The implied meaning here was that Salt Lake was not the center of the universe, and intention would always trump direction and bend it to its will. The Mormons were not going to control this remote Utah town, as it looked toward Denver and the east for what it could not find looking west.

Vernal was another of those hidden jewels attached to my charm bracelet of the West.  It was a place that I could live happily in and would be proud to do so. Maybe in this life —but most probably not. Either way, I had vicariously left big parts of myself there over the years, and it now sheltered and claimed those things as its own.

Vicarious, Being The Lasting Attribute Of All Important Travel

The sun was drifting behind the Ouray Indian Reservation to my West, as I pulled into town for the night.  Peaceful and quiet on a Monday evening, Vernal was not in a hurry to do what you expected but brought out more of what was expected in you.  The town had within it a great symmetry of purpose and a grace in its quiet undertaking of the things that made life worthwhile — and your place in it secure.  

I remembered a friend of mine, Walt Mullen, who told me years ago that he could get lost in the northern hills of Vernal and stay forever. Walt was a bear hunter, but he was just as happy when he had nothing to show after a week in the high-country. He truly understood the magic that existed along these trails and ancient beachheads where the dinosaurs once roamed.  

He told me he still felt their presence when he was alone with himself in the mountains while at the same time maintaining his connection to everything else. Inside its landscape, with the power to change all that you were before, thoughts weighed heavier in the Uinta Mountains. With every message you cried out into the canyons and rivers, the echo’s they sent back were ominous and large.

I thought about Walt, as I sat outside my motel room in Vernal reading Mari Sandoz’s, seminal work, ‘Crazy Horse — Strange Man of The Oglala.’  I wondered if Crazy Horse had ever been this far west.  I like to think that maybe he and the great Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce, had ‘counseled’ here, trying to preserve a way of life, that in our attempted destruction, we never understood.

After dinner, I fell asleep thinking about what it would take to get my wife Kathryn to relocate here.  I knew she would fall in love with this town once she got a chance to know it. As I woke up, I realized again that to get a true city girl to leave her friends and family, just to live out a lifelong wish of her husband, would again be realized only in my dreams.  She understood my dreams, and she loved me for them — but she had dreams of her own.

It’s funny how two people, so much in love, could have entirely different dreams.  After 37 years of marriage, our understanding of who we were as a couple only increased with the respect and independence that we allowed each other.  Kathy truly understood my feelings for the West.  

Understood yes, but her feelings for the things that were important in her life were hers and hers alone.  I tried to respect that, as we lived in a shared appreciation of what we had accomplished together.   I thought about her constantly and wished that she were here with me tonight like she had been so many times before.

       Kathryn Loved The West — But Only To Visit

Day #7: Vernal to Cortez

The next morning, I was on Rt #40 and headed from Vernal Utah to Dinosaur Colorado. I wished that I had had the time to go into the dinosaur museum again.  When I was last there, over fifteen years ago, they had a fossilized dinosaur, and it was almost half uncovered from the side of the cliff where it was buried.  They had built the museum around this discovery, and its walls connected right to the cliff on both sides of the dig.  I made a bet with myself as I passed by that they had entirely uncovered it by now.  It was hard to believe in this dry arid climate that the greatest creatures to ever walk the earth once roamed here.

This Week Was Not About Museums Or Sideshows, It Was About The ‘Ride’

At Dinosaur, I took Rt. #64 East toward Rangely where I gassed up and connected with Rt. #139. I then entered the great flat regions of Western Colorado where the only towns were Loma and Fruita with Grand Junction sitting just off the interstate twelve miles farther to the East.  

Just before Fruita, I passed the old farming community of Loma Colorado. Loma sat just off interstate Rt.#70 and looked like another one of those towns that time had forgotten.  I stopped to photograph the old two-story Loma School that sat in the weeds 100 yards off the road.  As I approached the front entrance, I could feel the excitement of the students who had attended there reverberate around me. I thought I heard their laughter, as I pushed on the double latch of the large front entry door.  Sadly, it was locked. As I looked in through its glass panels, I thought I saw a figure carrying books and making a left turn into one of the deserted classrooms — or were they deserted.  

I have learned to no longer question what I see but to be thankful for the gift of being able to see at all.  While closed, I was gratified that the county had not torn the old building down and had allowed it to stand. It was a living testament to all that had happened there and to what, in a passing visitors imagination, just might happen again.  I smiled realizing that I would soon be like that old building, a memory, whose retelling would overshadow any new thing that I might become.

There were two deserted schools, that sat dormant, yet vibrant, along the pathway of my discovery this week.  I had put my hands firmly on the front doors of both hoping that they would empty into me all the mystery hidden within their corridors and halls that they had been previously unwilling to share. Forever, they would remain unsettled in my thoughts because of what they once were and even more for the stories they might tell.

At Fruita, I got on the Interstate (Rt #70 East) and missed my exit for Rt.#141 South which would have taken me across the Uncompahgre Plateau.  I went twenty miles too far to the East before turning around and on the reverse trip made the same mistake again.  The exit for Rt.#141 was not marked, so I got off and followed the signs for Rt.#50 and stopped at the first gas station for better directions.  The clerk behind the desk smiled at me as I asked for her help.  She said, “Not so easy to find Rt #141, is it?” Many things in the West were not easy to find, but the ones worth keeping had been worth looking for.

After a series of three right turns, I arrived in the tiny town of Whitewater Colorado and saw the sign for Rt.#141.  I didn’t refuel back at the gas station — I had simply forgotten. The next town on Rt.#141 (Gateway Colorado), was still 43 miles further West.  I knew I could make it with what I had left in my tank but would Gateway have fuel?  If not, I would become the remote victim of an unknown fate caused by an unfortunate memory lapse.  

If the first twenty miles of this trip hadn’t been mired in road construction, the remote beauty of the canyons, and the road they stood as bookends against, were worth any chance that I might run out of gas. The manual said that the Goldwing could go over two hundred miles before running out of gas. Today would test both the veracity of that statement and my belief that the road was always there to save you when you needed it most.  

Road construction in this part of the West meant that two lanes had been reduced to one totally stopping the traffic in one of the lanes. A long line of idling vehicles waited for the pilot car to come from the other direction, turn around, and then take them through the construction zone to where the second lane opened again. Once there, the pilot car positioned itself at the head of the opposing line of stopped vehicles wanting to go the other way. It slowly began the whole process all over again going back in the direction from where it had started.

There’s an old Western joke about the West having four-seasons —Fall, Winter, Spring, and Road Construction. If you’ve traveled west of the Mississippi between Memorial Day and September, you undoubtedly have your own stories to tell about waiting in line.

If you’ve been lucky, you didn’t have to wait more than twenty or thirty minutes for the pilot car to return.  If not lucky, you could’ve waited forty-five minutes or more.  On this day, the thermometer on the bike read 103,’ so I turned off the motor, dropped the kickstand down and got off. I removed my jacket and, within sight of the bike, went for a short walk.

  The Heat Was Coming Off The ‘Road’ In Waves And Made    Standing On Its Surface Both Uncomfortable And Severe

As I anticipated, in exactly twenty minutes the pilot car emerged from around the mountain in front of me. Within three minutes more, it had turned around, positioned itself in front of the line where I was number five and, with the flagman waving back and forth in our direction, had us on our way.  It looked like it was going to be a slow dusty ride through the Grand Mesa National Forest toward Gateway for another ten miles.  

Slow and dusty yes, but it was also gorgeous in a way that only a San Juan Mountain Road knew how to be.  With all the temporary unpleasantness from the heat and the dust, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.  This was what real travel was all about. I had learned its true meaning on the many Wyoming and Montana back roads of my youth — and on a much smaller motorcycle — over thirty years ago.

It’s What You Can’t Control That Allows For The Possibility Of Greatest Change

Casting my fate again to the spirits of the road, I passed the four slower cars in front of me and was again by myself.  The awe-inspiring mountain’s drifted lower into canyons of incredible beauty.  The descent was more than just a change in elevation.  I was being passed off from one of nature’s power sources to the other. As the mountains delivered their tenant son to the canyons in waiting, the road, once again, proved to be smarter than the plans I had made to deal with it.

               The ‘Road’ Had Once Again Proved Smarter …

Typical of many small western towns, the only gas station in Gateway had a sign on the front door that read … ‘Back In 30 Minutes.’ The two pumps did not accept credit cards, so the decision was to either wait for the station manager to return or to continue south toward Nucla, and if I had no luck there then Naturita. “One of them surely had gas” I said to myself, and with still an eighth of a tank left, I decided I would rather take the risk than wait, as daylight was burning.  Betting on the uncertainty of the future was different than dealing with the uncertainty of the here and now.  One was filled with the promise of good intention, while the other only underscored what you had learned to fear.

                                I Decided To Move On

Just outside of Gateway, and like a mirage in the desert, I saw a large resort a half-mile ahead on my right. As I got closer, I realized it was no mirage at all as the sign read ‘Welcome To The Gateway Canyons Resort.’ Nothing could have stood in greater contrast to the things I had seen in the last fifty miles.  This resort looked like it should have been in Palm Springs or Sedona.  It was built totally out of red desert stucco with three upscale restaurants, a health club, and an in-house museum.  

What I cared about most was did they have gas?  Sitting right in front of their General Store were two large concrete islands with pumps on both sides.  It was a welcome sight regardless of price, $4.99 for regular, which was more than a dollar a gallon higher than I had paid anywhere else.

                                  Any Port In A Storm

After filling the Goldwing’s tank, I walked inside the General Store to get something to drink.  The manager was standing by the cash register and talking to a clerk.  She looked at me and smiled as she said: “So where are you headed?”  When I told her the Grand Canyon, and then eventually back to Las Vegas she replied: “Hey, tell all your Motorcycle friends about us, we love to service the Bike trade.”  

I told her I was a writer and would in fact be doing a story about my ride. But based on her overly inflated prices I would have to recommend filling up in either Whitewater or Naturita.  She grimaced slightly and said something about business in this remote region dictating the price.  I returned her smile as I wished her a good day. Joni’s immortal words about “repaving paradise and putting up a parking lot” rang in my ears, as I walked back outside and restarted the bike.

Sometimes We Had To Cross The line To Know What The Line Meant

This place had been recently built by John Hendricks the founder of The Discovery Channel.  He and his family discovered this valley on a vacation trip in 1995.  Instead of becoming part of the surroundings, he decided to turn his vision of the valley into an extension of what he already knew.  It was a shame really because a museum with classic Duesenberg Cars was as out of place in this remote canyon as any notion that you could then merchandise and control it to suit your own ends.

I couldn’t leave fast enough! Without even one look back through my rearview mirrors, I rounded the bend to the right that took me away from this place.  Once out of sight of the resort, I was deep in ****** canyonland again where only the hawk and the coyote affirmed my existence. I wondered … why do we do many of the things that we do? At the same time, I was grateful, as I looked up and offered a silent thank you for the gas.

Asking ‘Why’ Throws My Spirit Into Reverse Gear, And I Know Better …  

Just past Naturita, I made a right turn on Rt.#141 and headed south toward Dove Creek.  It was farther than it appeared on the map, and it was past 7:30 in the evening when I arrived where Rt.#141 dead-ended into Rt.#491.  I took the left turn toward ****** where I continued south toward the 4-Corners town of Cortez Colorado.  This time life balanced. The trip to Cortez from Dove Creek which looked at least as long, or longer, than the one I had just traveled, was only 36 more miles — and I could stop for the night.

I raced toward the 4-Corners as the sun disappeared behind the Canyons Of The Ancients. I averaged over 85 MPH again alone on the road.  My only fear was that a deer or coyote might come out of the shadows, but I traveled secure inside my vision that on two-wheels my life would never end. I knew my life would never end that way, but a serious injury was something to be avoided.  

The trip to Cortez was over in a flash, and in less than twenty minutes I saw billboards and signs that pointed to a life outside of myself lining both sides of the road.  As I pulled into the Budget Inn, the sign that directed you toward Rt. #160 west and the Grand Canyon was right in front of the motel. There were only two other cars sitting in the parking lot with a lone Harley-Davidson Road King parked in front of a room at the extreme far end.

The desk clerk told me that he was originally from Iran but had been raised in the Los Angeles area.  He had a small Chihuahua named Buddy who would perform tricks if offered a reward.  I took a small milk bone out of the box on the counter and asked Buddy if he’d like to go for a ride.  He barked loudly, as he spun and pirouetted in the middle of the lobby. I thought about my own dog Colby, who I missed terribly, waiting faithfully for me on our favorite chair back home. As I walked across the parking lot to my room, Buddy had been a proper and fitting end to a ride that left nothing more to be desired.

I splashed water on my face, left my helmet in the room, and rode back into Cortez. All I wanted now was some good food and a beer.  Lit up in all its glory, the Main Street Brewery sat in the middle of town, and its magnetic charm did everything but physically pull me inside.  It was an easy choice and one of those things that you just know, as I parked the bike against the sidewalk and walked inside.

The ribs and cole-slaw were as delicious as the waitress was delightful. It disturbed me though when I asked her about road conditions on the way to The Canyon, and she gave me that familiar blank stare.  “You know, I’ve lived up and down these San Juan’s all my life, and I’ve still never been down there.”  My heart filled with sadness as I said: “It’s only three hours away and the single greatest sight on earth that you will ever see.”

She looked at me vacuously, as she cleared my table, and promised she’d have to get down there one of these days if time and money ever permitted.  Amazing, I thought to myself! Here I was, a guy from Pennsylvania, who had visited the Canyon over thirty times, and this local person, living less than three hours away had not seen it — not even once. I cried inside myself for what she would probably never know as I got up to leave.

             Crying For What She Would Never Know …

As I turned around to take one last look at the historic bar, I was reminded that some things in life served as stepping-stones, or stairways, to all that was greater. I was in one of those places again tonight. The people who served in roadside towns like this saw the comings and goings, but never the reasons why. They were spared from feeling that outside their immediate preoccupation there could ever be anything more.  I needed to be thankful to them for having provided sustenance and shelter along my travels, but my sadness for the things that they would never see, which were many times just over the next hill, overrode any gratefulness I would feel in my heart.

         The Blessed Among Us Are The Blessed Indeed!

Day #8: Cortez Colorado To ‘The Grand Canyon’

Thoughts of Monument Valley, Mexican Hat, and the Grand Canyon consumed my morning, as I quickly repacked the bike to get back to my ride.  It had rained during the night, and the windshield of the bike was dotted with the dried residue of raindrops. Not enough to be bothersome, but just visible enough so I knew they were there. The pattern they made across the large plexiglass shield told a story of what had happened during the night while I was asleep.  

It was cool this morning, and the temperature on the bike’s dashboard registered only 53 degrees as I pulled out of the motel parking lot onto Rt.#160W. I purposely avoided any breakfast and thought only about the delicious frybread at the 4-Corners National Monument. 4-Corners was where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico all met in perfect symmetry, and at its southern end was a rickety old trailer run by a Navajo family that served some of the best frybread between Phoenix and Durango.

To my great disappointment, the frybread trailer was still closed when I arrived at 4-Corners.  The jewelry stands were all open and staffed, and the stone parking lot was full, but the old trailer that advertised Navajo Frybread, located in the extreme southwest corner of the memorial, was still dark and empty inside. I asked the friendly Navajo lady in the jewelry stand, to the right of the trailer, what time she thought they would reopen.  She said: “It was always hard to tell, because they never showed up on time.  They should have opened over a half hour ago, but they couldn’t be counted on to keep to a set schedule.” With that, she shook her head in disgust and said something in Navajo that I didn’t understand.  Trust me — it wasn’t good.  

It was now past 9:30 in the morning, and my stomach had started to growl.  I thanked her for the information and asked her what spot on the radio dial the Navajo Station was coming in on this far from Kayenta.  Her name was Rosita, and she told me it was coming in clearly at 6:60 on the a.m. dial.

What was it with multiple sixes in this part of the west?  The infamous highway now called Rt. #491 used to be labeled Rt.#666.  The locals referred to it as the ‘Devils Highway.’  It got so much bad press that the route number was eventually changed. There was even a Hollywood movie (Natural Born Killers) filmed along its route.  At least this radio station had only two sixes, but still the connection was strange, and it made me wonder again about the choice of location. Maybe there was no choice, and 6:60 was the only spot available on the dial for the Navajo Station, or maybe it was something more …  

I wanted to believe it was just co-incidence as I headed back to the bike. On my way to the parking lot, I noticed that the monument had changed, and so had my opinion of it.  The Memorial itself was fine, but the four rows of shops that surrounded it — forming a perfect square with the flagpole in the center — were much different than before.  

Instead of the old rustic wooden stands that used to form the rows, the shops were now a modern masonry (sandstone and adobe) and all connected with one no different from the other.  They looked like rejects from an out of work architect’s bad dream. My connection to the Navajo Nation used to be strong here, but today I felt nothing more than a nagging anxiety to get going, and for the first time ever I had no desire to return.  

I headed west on Rt.#160 and turned right onto Rt.#191 north until it connected with Rt.# 163 in Bluff Utah. This would take me through Monument Valley and then back in a southerly direction to the Navajo town of Kayenta Arizona. In many ways, the Navajo Nation was frozen in its own time warp. It observed daylight savings time, while the rest of Arizona did not, which always caused me to smile when coming through here in the summer and looking at my watch. This truly was a nation, with its own sense of time and place, and being a visitor was all I would ever be.

Being A Welcomed Visitor Would Always Be Good Enough For Me

The loop north, through Utah, was a longer way to go, but the road went right through the great Valley Of The Gods, and Mexican Hat, and was more than worth any amount of extra time.  As I made the right turn onto Rt.#191, I was visually assaulted with the vastness, and awestruck wonder, contained within the sand and rock of the American Southwest. It was unlike anyplace else, and I was reborn in its spirit every time I passed beneath the shadows of its ancient monuments.

I looked off to the west and remembered the first time I came through here back in the spring of 1971. I had had to stop repeatedly, as my spirit breathed in what my eyes wouldn’t accept.   It was on that day that I first realized that one of your senses could lie to you about what another one held dear as the truth.

Alone on the road, the miles were again my only companion, as the sand and the rock measured me for who and what I was.  Beneath their great shadows, I was but a transitory annoyance in the mega-millenia history of all that they knew.  Like the occasional fly or gnat that landed on my face shield, I was something only to be swatted away or ignored, with no real significance, and deserving of no serious thought.

As I passed unnoticed beneath their immortal grandeur, the changes they inspired, and the walls they tore down, would live forever inside my new insignificance. There was nothing symbiotic, or co-authored, about my place in this desert.  Monument Valley existed as it always had … welcoming, but with an unsettled message you had to measure yourself against.  In the beginning, I thought the message was coming from somewhere deep inside the towering Mesas and Buttes only to discover that it was coming from deep inside myself.

In what seemed like an instant, and without warning, Mexican Hat appeared off to my left.  Today it seemed bigger than before, and for that I am grateful.  Most things appeared smaller, when revisited, than they were in my memory, but this morning Mexican Hat was larger than ever before.  It was nestled against the horizon on the mesa’s edge, far enough away to ensure its own safety, but close enough to remind us of how small we really were.

I stopped the bike on the apron and took pictures while burying in the sand something of myself I never wanted back.  I brought small tokens of homage on these trips hoping to trade them for a deeper spirituality. What I left behind was only a tiny symbol of thanks for what they had already given me.  It felt good again to say thank you after having worshipped for so many years in their shadow. As I re-crossed the road, with my limitations offloaded, in the timelessness of the Valley’s eternal presence — I headed West.

In what others saw as only desert and rock, I saw as the exposed truth of a landscape beyond reform.  It welcomed me back while happily letting me go. It knew I was on the way to see my Spiritual Mother, and it also knew that the great hope chest of her arrival was created here.  

I got on the bike as the radio came back on.  I heard the Navajo commentator say the word Walmart, as the rhythm of her native words danced through the air.  Thank God there was still no native word for that modern symbol of consumerism that so much of our society had become slave to.

‘Lowest Prices Every Day, Lowest Expectations Inside Of Yourself’

The veneer of Native America masked the same problems shared by the rest of our country but with one major difference.  In trying to hang onto, and preserve, their own culture, they served to dignify their struggle.  Wasn’t a dignified struggle a definition of life itself? Without it, how could a life be truly lived? Without it, one is just being observed or marking time?  Marking time had become the catalyst, and the driving force, behind all cultural suicide and the one gift from the Industrial Revolution that we needed to give back.  It was where the spirits of the unfulfilled died from reasons unexplained, and all that was left behind was just excuse. The great illusion was that the machines had saved us from everything —everything but ourselves!

       Idle Time Was Its Undoing — A ‘Bad Day To Die’

I said goodbye to Mexican Hat as it disappeared over my left shoulder. I was again the only one on the road.  It was more evident to me than ever how fond I had become of this motorcycle during the past eight days. It did everything I asked of it, while doing it quietly, and was a reminder that I should be doing the same.  

Alone with my thoughts, the spirits of my ancestors — and their ancestors before them —crowded into my subconscious mind.  The word subconscious was an anglicized term for those places inside of us that never should have been divided. I bled for all the things in my life still left undone but hoped that by the end of this trip they would not remain unsaid.

The history of the Navajo people lay buried in the sand and would forever hold the spirit of the things they had taught me. As I waved to two Harley riders headed in the opposite direction, I wondered if they ever thought about how we got to this place.  Was it an accident or accidental fortune or something words would never know?  Ahead, I saw a sign warning of a sharp left turn in less than a quarter mile.  When I got closer, the image of the San Juan Trading Post rose like the Phoenix from the desert floor.  Sitting low and deep in a knoll by the river’s edge, it beckoned you to stop without telling you why.  

Why — was a question I had refused to deal with since leaving the motel. As I parked the bike in front of the Trading Post’s Café, the smell of something wonderful drifted through a window in the back.  In the back, and to the left, was where the kitchen was located. The smell was so overpowering that I was frozen in place, and I stood there in the bright sunlight taking in as much as I could.

          Why, Being The Question I Tried Most To Avoid

There was usually a reason for why most things happened even when not apparent. The closed Frybread stand at the 4-Corners Monument made more sense to me now.  Had I eaten there, I would have probably bypassed the Trading Post altogether.  All who have had the good fortune to stop there know that their Frybread is the very best. It’s served in the round, comes with powdered sugar, and is the size of a small pizza. I have always tweaked mine with maple syrup on top.

I asked Sam, the Café’s manager, and an old friend, if they still had the maple syrup that they kept hidden in the back.  He said, “Yes Kurt, you’ve been one of the few, if not the only one, that’s ever asked for it.  It may not have been out front since the last time you were here.”  I liked the thought of being the only one that enjoyed Frybread that way.  I thanked Sam again, but I also noticed something about him that seemed disturbing and strange.

Sam was limping with his left leg, dragging it is more apt, as he headed down the forty-foot-long corridor to the kitchen pantry for my syrup.  As he started back my way, I could tell from the look on his face that he was in a great deal of pain. Already knowing the answer, I asked Sam what was wrong.  He said: “I have an arthritic hip.”  At this I smiled, lightened up, and said: “Sam, I had my own left hip replaced just a few years ago.  It now feels like the real thing and allows me to do everything I like to do.”  This motorcycle trip of almost 5000 miles is no problem,” I told him, as he grimly smiled and looked away.

“How much did it cost?” he asked, as he cleared my table and walked back to the register.  With that, I grew sad because I did remember — and it was over $32,000. I did not tell him the cost hoping there was a health plan on the reservation that would allow him to get it done.  He looked at me again and said: “I’ve seen three doctors, and they’ve all said the same thing.”

They all told him that there was nothing more to be done, at that point, other than having it replaced. “I could have had it done in Phoenix or Tucson and been back on the reservation in three days, but the cost is what’s stopping me.” “I know Sam, I was in and out of the hospital myself in less time than that”… still not commenting on the price.

I left cash on the table as I paid my bill. Sam and I hugged one last time and he walked me outside to the bike. Before putting my helmet back on, we looked at each other once more in the eye.  He knew and appreciated that I understood what he was going through and that his pain would continue until his hip was replaced. It was more likely than not, and something I hated to admit to myself — that his pain would continue.

I asked him, as I was leaving, about any V.A. (Veterans Administration) options. He looked at me through very sad eyes and said: “They told me it was not degenerative enough for the V.A to transfer me to a private hospital, and they don’t perform that kind of operation here on the Rez.”

He had told me inside that he remembered the many years I had limped, and how badly he always felt when watching me leave.  The desk clerk at the adjoining motel actually mentioned me to him. She told him that a guy just left the Cafe on a motorcycle and was riding with his left leg completely down (straight) and not on the foot-peg.  He told her it was because I could not bend my left leg, and my only choice was to ride with it extended and straight down.  He also told her it was not a good option but better than the other alternative of not riding at all.

     So Many Times In Life We Have To Live Inside ‘Plan-B’

Sam looked seventy-five, but he was actually ten years younger than I was.  At fifty-two, he had far too many years of pain left to endure.  With all the money and resources wasted, and given away to countries that hated us, here was a crippled veteran of the United States Marine Corps who was in desperate need of real help. In my mind, no one could have deserved it more.  I watched Sam slowly limp back into the Café as I climbed the steep parking lot road back onto Rt. #163S.  

As I headed into the great Monument Valley, I thought about all the Native Americans who had served their country and were in dire need of health care. Within a 100-mile radius, I knew there were forgotten thousands suffering in pain.  Because of a broken health care system, and the apathy of an ungrateful nation, the only choice available to most of them was to quietly soldier on.

Their Pain And Suffering Continues Long After The Battles Have                                   Been Fought

As I headed east toward the Canyon, I thought about everything that had been so savagely torn away from them. Life on the reservation was challenging enough and the simple elements of life, that most of us take for granted, should not be denied to them.  I gave Sam my current cell number before I left and asked him to contact me in two weeks.  I was hoping that the great doctors who did my hip might be persuaded to take a pro-bono case like Sam’s. I told him that I would be more than willing to provide the airfare to Philadelphia and back — and he could stay with me. I wish I had had the resources to pay for the operation itself. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend money that, unfortunately, I didn’t have.

Sam promised he’d be in touch but in my heart, I didn’t believe him.  Native American dignity has always both inspired and confused me.  They bear life’s darker side with an acceptance that few of us could ever understand and even less endure.

                I Knew I Would Have To Call Him

The final thirty miles to Kayenta was a tribute to the great film director, John Ford, and his mastery in this valley. I felt his strong imagery call out to me with every bend in the road. His camera was magical, and he truly understood both the mystery, and the majesty, of these sacred lands. The time he spent here, and the stories he told, both changed and shaped our image of the American West forever. It was a romanticized image, yes, but one where the intrinsic beauty of the canyons and desert jumped right off the screen and into our imaginations. He lives inside of me now, as he lived inside me then.

A Five-Year-Old Boy Was Changed Forever By The Images Coming From The Small, Eleven Inch, Black And White T.V.

As the mesas and buttes became larger, my thoughts and feelings did the same. It was a shared epiphany of expansion as I crossed back over the Arizona line, but the sadness that I felt for Sam lingered inside. Even the towering imagery of the distant monuments had not chased it away. I remembered my own hip pain and could feel what he was suffering.  Before leaving them, I prayed to the God’s of this valley to enter my thoughts and force these dark clouds to leave — and to bless Sam with good fortune.  

It was mid-afternoon, as I entered Kayenta through its northern end. I was both thirsty and in need of gas.  As filling as the Frybread had been back at the San Juan Cafe, I was hungry again. After an egg salad sandwich and grape juice out of the cold chest at the Mobil Station, I felt much better. This quick stop would be enough to hold me over until I arrived at the Canyon later in the afternoon.

Kayenta put me back on Rt.#160S toward Tuba City where I would bear left onto Rt.#89 for the short trip down to Cameron. Rt.#89 was one of my two main roads of discovery, and it was always good to see it again — we knew each other so well. Cameron, the low-sitting town on the high desert’s floor, had served as a major trading post for Navajo artists and rug makers for over 100 years.  It was also the East Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park.

Day #9: Grand Canyon to Williams Arizona (p.m.)

The East Entrance to the Canyon had always been my least favorite way to enter the Park. I usually arrived by the elevated and back canyon road from Flagstaff known as Arizona Rt.# 64.  Alpine and rural, it was more than a mile up in the clouds. Today though, I had no other choice and would enter the park from the lowest depths of a barren landscape.  It was dusty and hot (106’) when I passed the old Cameron Trading Post just before the Park’s entrance.  I turned onto the park road and looked high up into the distance before me. The greatest sight visible anywhere on earth, and the standard bearer of all God’s creation, was just beyond my reach — but it wouldn’t be for long!

I climbed the twenty-six miles toward the rim, and as the temperature dropped, my spirit soared.  The memory of Sam was now a spiritual bead on my Rosary to be remembered in my thoughts and prayed for every day. I saw two great hawks soaring overhead.  They were not moving their wings and remained motionless as they went higher.  I knew they were caught in the great updraft of something whose true height could not be measured and whose depths would never be fully explored.

The Comfort Zone Of Relative Size And Dimension Was About To                                           Disappear

At the top, I saw at least 100 cars parked along the canyon’s edge.  This marked the first series of rims and lookout points for what no first visitor was ever ready to see.  As I searched for a place to park the bike, the returning vision of something I had never been able to explain rushed out and overtook me again.  

I knew, after so many visits, you never looked into the Grand Canyon without permission. The only way to truly see what your eyes were about to embrace was to accept the changes happening inside of you as you stood in her presence. The Canyon took hold of all searchers and played with their sight while making it her own.  Finally, she gave back to the lucky few a new vision of themselves, affirming those things that they had up until now denied.

It was a mid-August day, and I had never been here during the height of tourist season.  As I walked to the Canyon’s edge, I had to weave through the packed in crowd of European and Asian tourists lining the rail. Looking off into her distance, a blessed transformance emptied my soul. It created space for what I was hoping to take with me, and with each visit I knew the cost increased. Each time I left, there would be an even greater part of myself left behind — a part that would call out when my confusion returned.  The Great Canyon cared not about reasons or circumstance, she stood only as she is, a GIANT, isolated from all ordinary things, a connective force that allowed us to dream beyond ourselves … and to eventually see.  

It led you beyond what you thought yourself capable of before.  And without guidepost or roadmap, it brought you only and exactly to where you most needed to go.  The Great Canyon began where your imagination ended and, by looking into her depths, you were at once changed and transformed.  Transformation being measured by what you left behind.

The Great Canyon neither pretended to know what you know nor portended your future. Timeless and unchallenged, she stood guard over all that is. Your questions here were but echoes from a distant memory.  It was, the one spot on earth, where you stood and heard the answers returned to you for what they were — disturbing reminders that much of your life had been spent in denial.  

She neither blessed nor forgave, and her message spoke only of today. Whether you looked one time or stared into her unending depths forever, she treated you the same.  All meaning was derived from what she taught and the immediacy of how that made you feel.

Like two things that must be shaken together to be truly mixed, the Grand Canyon joined your mind and spirit in a cocktail that intoxicated your soul. She inebriated your entire being.  Yes, she was that big and more.  To say otherwise only reinforced what you still needed to know.  She continually poured all that she was, and is, into everything that you were not. Like the arid canyons and valleys that were overflowing with her waters, our spirits hoped to become a small tributary into what she had become.  

Becoming was all that mattered in the Canyon, yesterday and tomorrow were for those already dead inside.  I looked up again and saw the Great Hawk. Its wings were tucked back in dive position, and it was headed toward its destiny in the Colorado River below.  All of life’s summation was contained within its dive, and all that would ever matter in my own life was contained in the connection I felt.

I stopped at ten different rims that afternoon, but one would have been enough. What stared back at me never changed until everything inside of me was again new. My first look into the eyes of my Spiritual Mother 30 years ago, and the one again today, released me from ever having to be in only one place. She called to me in the most distant reaches of my isolation and reminded me that whenever lonely or confused, with her — I would always have a home.

There was never a way to come ‘to terms’ or to ‘make peace’ with what the Canyon taught. The very best you could hope for was to live unguarded and within the message of her timeless beauty. Within your spiritual awakening there would be found an eternal connection, and in the release that it brought you … you could make peace with yourself.  

There were no rooms, either inside or outside the park, as I passed by Canyon Village. I gladly bypassed the tourist frenzy that happened at both sunset and sunrise and pointed the bike further South.  I did not resent or begrudge the tourists for what they did or for what they thought they wanted.  I just needed to be alone with my mother, but for today that might have to wait.  As I left the Park, I spotted the long gravel road that was used only by the park service. It was open and still had not been paved.  I turned left and traveled its half-mile length to a ****** rim which faced off to the East. I had worried, when coming up from Cameron, that it might no longer be accessible.  It was here that I had always been able to talk to my mother alone, and the place where her voice had always been loudest and strong.

  As She Sensed My Approach, The Ancient Memories Returned

It was a private access road, and by design was restricted to all trespassers like me. My mother had called loudest to me from here, and I liked thinking of this place as hers and mine alone. After less than five minutes in her presence, two hikers came out of the bushes saying: “WOW, the view is really spectacular from here.”  I realized at that moment that the concept of ownership was still one of my many faults and one that I had to work on if I was ever to become totally free.  I shared my mother with the two German hikers, as we celebrated in communal reverence an unspoken reflection.

An hour later, and having made two new friends, I was again on my way. I eased the bike down the old service road and made the left turn onto Rt.#64 toward Flagstaff.  From this spot on the Canyon’s Far South Rim, I had only eighty more miles to go.  In her neither giving nor taking away, my mother had put me at rest about Sam. As she said goodbye she left me with the words: “Your sympathy will never change what only your empathy can set free.”  

I exited the Park in a southerly direction and saw no other people.  The only sound I heard was my mother’s heartbeat. It was from the current she carried deeply inside of her so far below.  I thanked her again for having kept me close and reminded her of how much my father loved her. By returning me to her this week, he reaffirmed his deepest feelings.  And from the High Northern Regions that fed her each spring, he stood forever vigilant and on-guard. She smiled back at me from her great distance and expressed with her silence the things that only he could hear and the things that a son, no matter how dutiful, could never truly understand.  

The high pines that lined this back road out of the Canyon made it one of my favorite rides.  It was getting to be late afternoon, as I rolled past the cattle herds and cut timber that filled this high mountain plateau. Most would never associate this landscape with Arizona, as it more resembled Idaho or Northwestern Colorado. This part of the Great Canyon State was atypical of what you expected and special unto itself.  In thirty miles, I came to a major fork in the road.  To the left was Flagstaff, but to the right was Williams.  Both towns sat on Interstate Rt.#40, but Williams was closer, and since I had never spent the night there before, I took the fork to the right.

        Newness Was Always Birth Mother To My Anticipation

In a long hour I was in Williams. It was one of the old original stops along the Mother Road. At one time, Rt#66 was the main artery East and West across America.  It was along its corridor, and before the interstate highway system was built, that the great motorized migrations of Detroit iron began. Williams was still trying to eke out a living based on the myth of the old road, and a resurgence and hunger for 1950’s glory kept the tourists coming … especially those fifty and older. It was quaint and touristy, but then it always had been. It was also mostly authentic and looked just as it had when the autos were carbureted, the air-conditioner was a hand crank on the inside of the car’s door, and families were large.

After I circled the town twice on its two parallel (and 1-way) main roads, hunger overtook me, and I was in search of good food.  I was lucky enough to get the last room at the Red Garter Inn where I parked the motorcycle for the night.  After a quick fresh up in the bathroom, I left my helmet on the bedside table and hung my Kevlar riding jacket on the back of the closet door.  I was still in the lower half of my riding suit, with my boots on, as I headed into town.  It was something that I had learned years ago and was now a rule that I carefully observed. Staying in my riding suit prompted conversations with strangers and other motorcyclists that would never have happened otherwise.  Tonight turned out to be no exception.

It Also Allowed Me To Travel Out From Pennsylvania With Only                                          One Small Bag

As I walked up a side street from my hotel into town, I heard one of the two things I was looking for, ‘Live Music.’ The guitar player was halfway through ‘Gentle On My Mind,’ by the great Mississippi River banjo player, John Hartford.  Most people thought Glenn Campbell had written the song on his famous Ovation 12-string guitar. He did have a big hit with it back in the 60’s, but it was actually written by John Hartford and a song that I had always loved.  As I followed my ears, the guitar player morphed right into the great instrumental, ‘Classical Gas,’ by Mason Williams.  By now I could see the café/restaurant at the next corner, and from all outward appearances, it was everything I had hoped for.

It Was Called Pancho McGillicuddys, And The Food Smelled As                             Good As The Music Sounded

The waitress seated me at an outside table with a view of the street.  I was less than thirty feet from where the guitar player sat, as he started to play the great Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg song — ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow.’  This is the greatest American song ever written, and he performed it well.  Upon finishing, he took a break, and the waitress came back for my order.  The quesadilla combo, refried beans, and local micro-brew, sounded perfect, as the sun disappeared behind me and off to my left. The last table was being seated, as the gas lights came on that lined the streets, and darkness became a backdrop to a magical sky.    

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this hungry.  The waitress brought my food as the guitar player returned.  The first song of his new set was ‘Fire And Rain,’ by James Taylor, which is my favorite song of all time. I knew at that moment, that on this night, and in this town, I was exactly where I was supposed to be.  I decided to give my mind the night off and just go with the music.  If you’re ever in Williams, and in need of a travel break, I can’t recommend McGillicuddys highly enough.

Sometimes, Like Tonight, The ‘Road’ Presents You With A Special                                                    Gift

A big smile was permanently implanted on my face, as a family of four came in and was seated at the table to my left.  It was a father and mother in their late forties, and two teenaged boys. The father was wearing a lacrosse t-shirt from a school I didn’t recognize, so when he looked over and smiled, I said, “Nice to see a Lacrosse shirt so far from home.” He answered: “We’re from Portsmouth Virginia and out here on vacation, I played at Woodberry-Forest, and both boys now play at their respective schools.”

He then said, “So what are you riding?” The boots and the riding pants were a dead giveaway, as the guitar player started ‘Cheeseburger In Paradise’ by Jimmy Buffett.  He was sure it was a Harley, as I explained I was riding a Honda Goldwing. I told him that after 40 years of riding, the Goldwing was the best touring bike that God, or any engineer, had ever made.  As I explained to him the benefits of shaft drive over a belt or chain, his eyes widened, as he finally grasped where my travels had taken me during the past ten days.

“You went from Vegas to the Canadian border and then south to Arizona, all in a long week?”  Yes, I answered him, and every mile was a joy to ride. I wish there had been more time because then I could have gone further north, maybe even to Alaska.  At this point his wife’s eyes glassed over, as women’s often do, when mentally picturing their own husbands riding a motorcycle. They often saw only the danger and not the thrill and joy of riding to new places.  It was a shame, but it was a reality and a major hurdle that most men had to get over at home when they made the decision to ride later in life.

We continued to talk while they ate, and I came to find out that their oldest son’s high school coach had been a teammate of my sons when he was in high school. They were both on a team that had won the Pennsylvania State Lacrosse Championship back in 2000.  Sometimes, the very best things in life also had the smallest following.  Small, in terms of the numbers they produced, but large in the effects that their participation created.  Both long-distance motorcycle touring and lacrosse had been two of those special things in my life.  They created a spiritual and permanent bond between all those who had either played or ridden together and resulted in lifelong friendships that are cherished to this day.

On 9/11, Almost 100 Of Our Beloved Lacrosse Alumni Lost Their                                              Lives

His wife then asked me where my son had gone to high school.  “Haverford School,” I told her.  She brightened up immediately and said, “I went to Haverford College which is right next door.”  “Amazing,” I said, “how small the world really is.”  She then wanted to know what the college lacrosse recruiting process was like during the third year of high school. I was glad to share with both her and her husband what my son and I had gone through only ten years ago.  That small world we rediscovered through our common experience continued to get smaller throughout the evening. We continued to share more of where our lives had taken us and, in being together in this remote spot along old Highway Rt. #66, we grew bigger inside.

As the waitress passed my table again, I realized that I had already had one beer too many and was enjoying myself entirely too much.  I said goodbye to my new friends and started the walk back to my hotel glad that I didn’t have to get back on the motorcycle again tonight. After four beers, I knew that I would never try to ride, but the removal of temptation went a long way.

Sleep came easy on that night, and I did not dream —the effects of having lived beyond what on most days I only hoped for.  I thought to myself while still awake in the darkened room, with only the light from the train-yard filtering through my window, how truly lucky I was … even if everything ended tonight.  

Just then, the high-pitched whistle of a distant train approaching Williams, came through my wall.  It was a fitting exclamation point to another day beyond all planning and another example of why without a fixed itinerary, I continued to ride.  Just before sleep, the immortal words of Crazy Horse and the Oglala people flashed before my eyes. “HOKA HEY’, it is a good day to die.”  The Lakota knew that a good day to die was an even better one to live, and on this incredible day that ended in Williams Arizona, so did I.

My Prayer That Night Was To Avoid All Future Mediocrity, As The Back-Half Of My Life Continued To Unfold



Authors Note:
These chapters became longer as the sweetness of the days they told of increased.  Each one built upon the other until blockages were unstopped — with all knowledge running back to its source.

Day #1: Las Vegas to Price Utah

Something had been calling out to me for months. Without words, it had been speaking to me from places where I had not yet been. Its calling was strongest during moments of greatest distraction with its pull becoming so unbearable that my only choice was to finally release myself and let go.

This morning, I would start my trip. I would revisit again roads that I hadn’t been down in over eight years. Now part of my wandering DNA, they had been calling out to me from their distance to return because it had been entirely too long. Too long since I had returned to the part of myself that only they kept safe and too long since my path had been sanctified by what only they could teach. I now needed to go in a direction that only they knew.

I left the city of stolen dreams by way of Interstate #15 north. Southern Utah, from St George to Price, was over 105 degrees as I climbed toward the higher elevations in search of myself. The great heights along the Rocky Mountain’s spine have always been the launch pad where my spirit has been set free and my story then told. Through the heat and the dust of a mid-summer desert afternoon, I felt a new chapter inside of myself being born.

Rt# 89, through Panguitch and Salina was ridden mostly in a dry rain. I know it sounds contradictory but at over one hundred degrees, the rain hardly made it to the road surface. On contact, it instantly evaporated and then like everything else that I needed to cast off, it was gone. No trace of ever having been there. Nothing left to either remind or deceive. It fulfilled its duty without intrusion leaving only its story and memory behind.

There Are Worse Things Than Being Like A Dry Rain

The rain mirrored my spirit today, as I tried to get comfortable inside the meaning of this trip. This tour would have nothing to do with what was happening along the sides of the road or in the towns I would stay in at night. This trip would be about the road itself and only the road. If I couldn’t see what I searched for from within the white lane-lines of its border, then it held no interest for me now. I cared only for what the road would reveal, as it took me to places only it knew I must go.

I Stopped At No Shops Or Museums Along Its Edges, Only To Stare Out In Wonder From Inside Its Magic

As I merged onto Interstate #70 the sign read Freemont Junction and State Road #10 only sixty-three miles ahead. It was just 1:30 in the afternoon. I still had more than two hundred miles in front of me until I would reach Price Utah my destination for the night. It was a new town for me and one that I’d always detoured around before. It sat on the edge of the Book Cliffs and just to the South of the Ashley National Forest. Those details were only incidental now — incidental to the fact that this town lived at the edge of where the great dinosaurs roamed. Their bones were all buried here, and to all true believers their spirits still roamed these hills.

For the entire ride north on State Road #10, I felt their presence. Almost greater in their extinction than when they had roamed free, the sounds that came from the distant canyon walls reminded me that they lived on in our imagination … or was it more than that. Native America knew who they were long before what they were was ever discovered. Paleontology was painted on the outside of Tee-*** walls long before the Smithsonian or the British Museum were ever built.

The Canyon before me was shaped eerily like a T-Rex. as I passed through the small Utah town of Huntington. The rain had now stopped, but the sky was still flodded with clouds. Feeling prehistoric in my heart, but joyous beyond words, I entered the old mining town of Price Utah. As I passed by the Welcome to Price sign, its non-Mormon culture felt warm and inviting. And as I pulled into my first motel for the night, I realized that I was no longer alone.


Day #2: Price Utah to Tetonia Idaho

In Price, I unloaded the bike and took the small wooden chair from the room and placed it outside on the walkway in front of where the bike was parked. I still wasn’t that hungry, so I decided to read for a while. My mind would not surrender to my spirit, so concentration was hard. After trying for fifteen minutes, I gave up and let my imagination wander, because even though stopped and parked for the night, the road still refused to give up its control. The sun was just starting to set behind the Wasatch Mountains as the first perfect day was now coming to an end. The El Salto Café on Main Street killed my hunger until morning, and in less than ninety minutes I was asleep with the recent memory of escape still driving my thoughts.

I awoke to bright sunshine like only the Rockies can deliver. I decided to forego breakfast and answer their call while taking my chances for food somewhere further down the road Rt #191 through the Ashley National Forest was lined with canyons on both sides, and I saw within their reference a new picture of myself. It was one of renewed purpose, where the restlessness I had brought with me now faded away. I was thankful to the Canyon Gods for their acknowledgement and their blessing, and I made it all the way to Vernal before I even thought about food.

In Vernal, I felt the gentle reminder of having been down this road before. I had old friends on both sides of its direction and a past and paid-up membership into what it tried most to hide. Like a cracked mirror, the broken road surface reflected back in distorted truth what only it knew and what over the many years and aging miles it had taught me so well. Rt #89 merged into Rt #10 and then finally into Rt #191. They were a trinity of past and future revelations and promised that what I would now learn would be more than just a confirmation of what I had seen and been taught before. What I now understood became completely new within the context of the moment, and within the reoccurrence of that moment — I became new again.

The road promised but often concealed; its perimeter was just an illusion that distracted from all directions ahead. I wound the motorcycle through its gears as I crossed the Utah line into Wyoming with the great Flaming Gorge Reservoir filling all that I saw and even more of what I felt. As I circled the eastern banks that were created by the gorges enormous dam, I heard its voices call out to me again. They reminded me of what happened here when my one eye was still closed, and my vision was trapped within its spiritual ecosystem and scattered across its wide expanse. I knew better now. I was reminded again that beauty often masks what the truth tries hardest to conceal.

Here, Flaming Gorge sits as another striking example of how the power to enlighten has also been the power to corrupt. The animals in the Green River were stolen from to create economy and convenience for those hundreds of miles away, and they have not been paid back. The Dams standing water pool has lowered water temperatures and affected the entire valley. It has severely hurt native species of fish, and it has emptied all sediment from the lower Green River. Masked by its beauty, there has always been a hidden sadness behind its awesome power. Every time I pass through here I have felt its remorse, and it has forced me to re-question again what has been built in the name of progress and change.

Today was different for me though, as all I could do was smile. I was lost in the understanding of what this Green River Valley said to me in the quiet of a Thursday afternoon — and in thoughts that would allow no interloping or negative intrusion.

This road carried within it the meaning of both directions … the one I had just left behind and the one that called out for only me to hear. From these great heights, I looked out far to the east and across the panoramic horizon. I realized for the first time that what lay in front of me now stretched beyond any physical ability I might have to see or any one man’s ability to ever know.

I bypassed Jackson and took the old trapper’s route from Granger to Sage. Rt #30 through southwestern Wyoming still hid within its landscape the voices of matters still unsettled. And in both Lakota and English I heard again of the broken promises that were made. The chanting increased as I felt Grand Teton in the distance ahead. The voices of the ancient ones reminded me that only with their permission would I travel safely and alone.

Rt #89 went deep into the Swan Valley where I picked up Rt #20 north. The voice of the great Chief Joseph called out to me promising that beyond Rexburg my burden would once again be light, and my friends would all know that I had returned. I detoured and spent the night in Tetonia with the great Teton Mountain Trinity guarding my sleep — while protecting my dreams.

Over chicken fried steak at the only restaurant in town, I assessed my progress realizing that direction alone, and not destination, would determine my success. I slept soundly inside the vibration of another day’s travel, knowing that who I was when I left Las Vegas would never be known to me again.

I dreamt that night of the historic Indian migrations and the paths of the great buffalo herds as they provided both direction and all life. I heard the chants of the hunters, crying out from among the dancers at the fire, to the great Wakan-Tanka. Their spirits coming together for what the hunt tomorrow would retell again. In that retelling, the spirit and the substance of all Indian life would be brought together. It was an eternal story about what was happening then and in the dreams of the ever faithful what could happen again.

When riding it again, the mystery within the road is set free. It again becomes alive — living inside a dream that each moment unfolds.

The Mystery Beyond The Asphalt Once Again Comes Alive



Day #3: Tetonia to Cody

With every mile that I travelled north, my load got lighter and unburdened. With each horizon and turn, my vision amplified the possibility of what the road had always known. It gave back to me again what was always mine for the taking having kept safe and protected what distance and poor reasoning had oftentimes denied. The fog north of Tetonia blurred the road-sign to Rt. #32 and Astoria beyond. Rt. # 32 is an Idaho back-road of some renown. Used mainly by the locals, it should not be missed as gentle passage through the Targhee National Forest — a woodlands that is both dense and encroaching.

Yellowstone lay ahead, and even through the tackiness of its West entrance, its magic called out strong and clear. Like the Great Canyon to its south, the world’s greatest thermal basin demanded something of all who passed through piercing even the thickest of human veneer with a magic of sight and sound that only it could provide. Most who entered were left only with awe and inspiration as reminders of what they saw. Those who could feel with their eyes and see through the sounds and smells of an earlier time were the very few allowed to leave in real peace. Their parting gift was in knowing that no invitation would ever be needed to return, and that no new beginning would ever leave Yellowstone far behind.

The Northeast Entrance at Tower Junction had the mighty Buffalo Herd waiting for me as I turned left on Rt. #212. In the knowing glances they gave as I passed by, I could feel their permission granting me a one-way pass to Cooke City and the Beartooth Highway through the clouds. A large male wandered out in the middle of the road to block my forward progress making sure I took the left turn in front of him and the one that led out of the park.

Something once again had been sent as guardian of my direction.’ I’ve learned not to hesitate or question why when this happens just to breathe in deeply while offering thanks for what still lies ahead.

I saw my bikes reflection in the eye of the Great Bull. I wondered what he must make of me as I slowed to within five feet of where he stood vigilant and defiant in the middle of the road. His statuesque presence was a reminder of the things that only he knew about this Park and those questions that still remained unasked within myself about why I loved it so.

Yellowstone taught me over thirty years ago that I would understand the questions only long after the answers had appeared to deceive. Lost in the southern end of the Park in1980, I asked the spirits of the mountain to let me make it through the night. The motorcycle’s electrical system had shut down and the weather had become severe. I had no choice but to walk out for help having no camping or survival gear to weather against the coming storm. It was late September in Grand Teton, and it looked like December or January to an easterner like me.

It was then that I first heard the voice, the one that would take years of listening to hear clearly and understand. In the blowing wind, I barely saw the geese through the flying snow landing on Jenny Lake. I thought I heard ripples coming from the Gros Ventre River as they cut around the newly forming ice. I couldn’t help but think that, just like me, the geese had also stayed too long at this dance.

The sun was now completely gone behind Grand Teton, as the new voice inside of me said: “Keep going, it is not much farther.” It was just after that when I saw the lights from the distant Crandall Studio shining out through the aspen trees. They filled me with coffee, called for a trailer, and provided a lost traveler shelter for the night. What they never knew, and couldn’t know at the time, was that I wasn’t lost —not from that afternoon on ...

And Not Now

The next morning, there was more than eight inches of fresh snow on the ground. Without knowing where my bike was, it would never would have been found covered in a thick blanket of September snow. Two animals had visited my motorcycle earlier that morning. The Ranger said he couldn’t be sure, but the tracks that led from the high ravine “looked VERY GRIZZLY.” But then again, he said: “It could have been a large black bear”. Uncertainty had now taken on that term in my life, as I realized that what we wished for was in most cases more important than what we had.

Very Grizzly Is A Term I Carry With Me Every Time The Park Calls

Yellowstone had disrespect for any calendar other than its own. In the past, it had snowed on all 365 days of the year …

And Like The Gift Of True Prophecy, Will Again

Cooke City was in bright sunshine, as I entered from the West side of town in mid-morning. The road I would take today would not be just any road. Rt. #212 was the Beartooth Highway, and it crossed the greatest heights that a man and machine could travel together. I stopped for gas and listened to what the other travelers who had recently come down were saying. Had they been able to release from the pull of the mountain as it faded in their rear-view mirrors, or like me, were they forever initiates into a natural world that would never fully be explained? If they were lucky, the lost explanations would serve as portals to a deeper understanding not only of what the mountain taught but of themselves.

The most insincere revealed themselves in the preponderance of their words. The quiet ones were the only ones who interested me now, and I had too much respect for the reverence they were showing the mountain to question or to ask what their newfound knowledge could not explain. I looked up again and saw what could not be seen from down below. Her true image was harbored in the deepest parts of my soul from a time when I traveled over her at night on my way from Red Lodge — headed West. It was a time when I had no business being on the mountain at night at all. No business, except for one inescapable truth … the Mountain called!

With A Full Tank Of Gas And A Heart Just Above Empty, I Started My Climb

Beartooth Pass, more than any other mountain crossing, embodies the meaning of the road. Rt #212 not only holds within itself two states, but it connects the real to the unreal, and separates the weak from the strong, while combining the past and tomorrow within the reality of today. Its crossing redefines life itself in the majesty of its eternal moment, never letting reference or comparison mask what it is trying now and forever to say to you. To those who it changes — it changes them completely and forever.

To the rest, who only leave breathless but as before, they must carry their shame with them. It is them and not the mountain that has failed. The very top of Beartooth Pass plateaus for over a mile. It is big enough in its unveiling to hold all lost spirits and re-infuse them with the promise they had once made to themselves. I took my hands off the grips and reached upward toward the low hanging clouds. I wished to be connected, as they were, to all that was ephemeral while at the same time being attached to something this real. As the lights of Red Lodge Montana appeared in the distance, the voice of an ancient Beartooth Spirit was alive inside me. The admission fee that was paid so many years ago, with that snowy night crossing, was now a lifetime pass to what only its greatness taught and to what our many years together have now blessed me to know.

‘The Darkness On That Snowy June Night At Her Summit Taught Me Once And Forever             About The Power To Choose’

There was not a single motel room available in Red Lodge, so I headed south through Belfry to Cody Wyoming. I reminded myself that this also was a beautiful ride and one that called out to me tonight with its own secrets to tell. It was not quite dusk, as the beauty of the Elk Basin washed over me in twilight, and the rocks along the canyon walls took life, as they sent out messages that I would carry for another time.

Rt#72 had true mystery within it but being overshadowed by the Chief Joseph Highway, it never got the praise it deserved … But on this night, we would join as one, as we traveled the descent into Park County together. The Goldwing and I were caught within the safety and the blessing of a new direction, and we counted only three other cars during the sixty-mile ride across the state line.

In darkness I pulled up to the Irma Hotel — the centerpiece of a town still unsure of itself. Like the man who founded her, Cody Wyoming stood proud but confused. It was a paradox of what the West was and what it was supposed to have become. The image of itself dimmed in the flickering streetlights, as the ghost of William F. Cody patrolled the catwalk of the hotel named for his beloved daughter.

The desk clerk said: “Welcome back Mr. Behm, it’s always so good to see you; how was the road?” To that question, I lied as usual and said: “Fine, it was clear all the way,”wishing for just once that I could have explained to the non-traveler my true feelings about the road.

Knowing better of that, I walked up the 150-year-old stairs to my room on the second floor. The one they always gave me, and the one that Bill Cody stayed in when he was in town. As I eased down into his large 4-poster bed, I stared up and into the fourteen-foot-high tiled ceiling above me. I thought to myself one last time about how lucky I was.

I then saw in the light shining from under my door once forgotten parts of myself dancing from every corner of where I had just been …

As The Footsteps Of A Restless Colonel Walked The Board Slats In The Moonlight Outside My Room

Day #4: Cody To Saint Mary’s

After breakfast in the Irma’s great dining hall, I left Cody in the quiet stillness of a Saturday morning. The dream I had last night about Indian summer camps now pointed the way toward things that I could once again understand. If there was another road to rival, or better, the Beartooth Highway, it would be the one that I would ride this morning.

It was 8:45 a.m., and I was headed northwest out of Cody to The Chief Joseph Highway. It is almost impossible to describe this road without having ridden or driven over it at least once. I was the first motorcyclist to ever ride its elevated curves and valleys on its inauguration over ten years ago. It opened that day, also a Saturday, at eight, and I got there two hours early to make sure the flagman would position me at the front of the line. I wanted to be the first to go through while paying homage to the great Nez Perce Chief. I will forever remember the honor of being the first motorist of any kind to have gone up and over this incredible road.

The ascent, over Dead Indian Pass at the summit, reminded me once again that the past is never truly dead if the present is to be alive. The illusion of what was, is, and will be, is captured only in the moment of their present affirmation. The magic is in living within the confirmation of what is.

The Chief Joseph Highway was, and is, the greatest road that I have ever ridden. I have always considered it a great personal gift to me — being the first one to have experienced what cannot fully be described. Ending in either Cooke City or Cody, the choice of direction was yours. The towns were not as different from each other as you would be from your previous self when you arrived at either location at the end of your ride.

It turned severely in both directions, as it rose or descended in elevation, letting you see both ends from almost anywhere you began. It was a road for sure but of all the roads in my history, both present and before, this one was a metaphor to neither the life I had led, nor the life I seek. This road was a metaphor to the life I lead.

A metaphor to the life I lead

It teased you with its false endings, always hiding just one more hairpin as you corrected and violently pulled the bike back to center while leaning as hard as you could to the other side. While footpegs were dragging on both sides of the bike your spirit and vision of yourself had never been so clear. You now realized you were going more than seventy in a turn designed for maximum speeds of forty and below.

To die on this road would make a mockery of life almost anywhere else. To live on this roadcreated a new standard where risk would be essential, and, if you dared, you gambled away all security and previous limits for what it taught.

It was noon as I entered Cooke City again wondering if that same buffalo would be standing at Tower Junction to make sure that I turned right this time, as I headed north toward Glacier National Park. Turning right at Tower Junction would take me past Druid Peak and through the north entrance of Yellowstone at Mammoth Hot Springs and the town of Gardiner Montana. Wyoming and Montana kept trading places as the road would wind and unfold. Neither state wanted to give up to the other the soul of the returning prodigal which in the end neither could win … and neither could ever lose!

From Gardiner, Rt #89 curved and wound its way through the Paradise Valley to Livingston and the great open expanse of Montana beyond. The road, through the lush farmlands of the valley, quieted and settled my spirit, as it allowed me the time to reorient and revalue all the things I had just seen.

I thought about the number of times it almost ended along this road when a deer or elk had crossed my path in either the early morning or evening hours. I continued on both thankful and secure knowing in my heart that when the end finally came, it would not be while riding on two-wheels. It was something that was made known to me in a vision that I had years ago, and an assurance that I took not for granted, as I rode grateful and alone through these magnificent hills.

The ride to Livingston along Montana Rt.# 89 was dotted with rich working farms on both sides of the road. The sun was at its highest as I entered town, and I stopped quickly for gas and some food at the first station I found. There were seven good hours of daylight left, and I still had at least three hundred miles to go.

I was now more than an hour north of Livingston, and the sign that announced White Sulphur Springs brought back memories and a old warning. It flashed my memory back to the doe elk that came up from the creek-bed almost twenty years ago, brushing the rear of the bike and almost causing us to crash. I can still hear my daughter screaming “DAAAD,”as she saw the elk before I did.

I dropped the bike down a gear as I took a long circular look around. As I passed the spot of our near impact on the south side of town, I said a prayer for forgiveness. I asked to be judged kindly by the animals that I loved and to become even more visible to the things I couldn’t see.

The ride through the Lewis and Clark National Forest was beautiful and serene, as two hawks and a lone coyote bade me farewell, and I exited the park through Monarch at its northern end. There were now less than five hours of daylight left, and the East entrance to Glacier National Park at St. Mary’s was still two hundred miles away. An easy ride under most circumstances, but the Northern Rockies were never normal, and their unpredictability was another of the many reasons as to why I loved them so. Cody, and my conflicted feelings while there, seemed only a distant memory. Distant, but connected, like the friends and loved ones I had forgotten to call.

At Dupoyer Montana, I was compelled to stop. Not enticed or persuaded, not called out to or invited — but compelled! A Bar that had existed on the east side of this road, heading north, for as long as anyone could remember, Ranger Jacks, was now closed. I sat for the longest time staring at the weathered and dilapidated board siding and the real estate sign on the old front swinging door that said Commercial Opportunity. My mind harkened back to the first time I stopped into ‘Jacks,’ while heading south from Calgary and Lake Louise. My best friend, Dave Hill, had been with me, and we both sidled up to the bar, which ran down the entire left side of the interior and ordered a beer. Jack just looked at the two of us for the longest time.

It Wasn’t A Look It Was A Stare

Bearded and toothless, he had a stare that encompassed all the hate and vile within it that he held for his customers. His patrons were the locals and also those traveling to and from places unknown to him but never safe from his disgust. He neither liked the place that he was in nor any of those his customers had told him about.

Jack Was An Equal-Opportunity Hater!

He reminded both Dave and I of why we traveled to locations that took us outside and beyond what we already knew. We promised each other, as we walked back to the bike, that no matter how bad life ever got we would never turn out to be like him. Jack was both a repudiation of the past and a denial of the future with the way he constantly refused to live in the moment. He was physically and spiritually everything we were trying to escape. He did however continue to die in the moment, and it was a death he performed in front of his customers … over, and over, and over again.

As I sat on the bike, staring at the closed bar, a woman and her daughter got out of a car with Texas license plates. The mother smiled as she watched me taking one last look and said: “Are you going to buy it, it’s for sale you know?” I said “no, but I had been in it many times when it was still open.” She said: “That must have been a real experience” as she walked back to her car. It was a real experience back then for sure, and one that she, or any other accidental tourist headed north or south on Rt. #89, will never know. I will probably never regret going in there again, but I feel fortunate that I had the chance to do it those many times before.

Who Am I Kidding, I’d Do It Again In A Heartbeat

I would never pass through Dupoyer Montana, the town where Lewis and Clark had their only hostile encounter (Two Medicine Fight) with Indians, without stopping at Ranger Jacksfor a beer. It was one of those windows into the beyond that are found in the most unlikely of places, and I was profoundly changed every time that I walked in, and then out of, his crumbling front door. Jack never said hello or bid you goodbye. He just stared at you as something that offended him, and when you looked back at his dead and bloodshot eyes, and for reasons still unexplained, you felt instantly free.

In The Strangest And Clearest Of Ways … I’ll Miss Him

It was a short ride from Dupoyer to East Glacier, as the sun settled behind the Lewis Rangeshowing everything in its half-light as only twilight can. I once again thought of the Blackfeet and how defiant they remained until the very end. Being this far North, they had the least contact with white men, and were dominant against the other tribes because of their access to Canadian guns. When they learned that the U.S. Government proposed to arm their mortal enemies, the Shoshones and the Nez Perce, their animosity for all white invaders only heightened and strengthened their resolve to fight. I felt the distant heat of their blood as I crossed over Rt. #2 in Browning and said a quick prayer to all that they had seen and to a fury deep within their culture that time could not ****.

It was almost dark, as I rode the extreme curves of Glacier Park Road toward the east entrance from Browning. As I arrived in St Mary’s, I turned left into the Park and found that the gatehouse was still manned. Although being almost 9:00 p.m., the guard was still willing to let me through. She said that the road would remain open all night for its entire fifty-three-mile length, but that there was construction and mud at the very top near Logan Pass.

Construction, no guardrails, the mud and the dark, and over 6600 feet of altitude evoked the Sour Spirit Deity of the Blackfeet to come out of the lake and whisper to me in a voice that the Park guard could not hear “Not tonight Wana Hin Gle. Tonight you must remain with the lesser among us across the lake with the spirit killers — and then tomorrow you may cross.”

Dutifully I listened, because again from inside, I could feel its truth. Wana Hin Gle was the name the Oglala Sioux had given me years before, It means — He Who Happens Now.

In my many years of mountain travel I have crossed both Galena and Beartooth Passes in the dark. Both times, I was lucky to make it through unharmed. I thanked this great and lonesome Spirit who had chosen to protect me tonight and then circled back through the gatehouse and along the east side of the lake to the lodge.

The Desk Clerk Said, NO ROOMS!

As I pulled up in front of the St Mary’s Lodge & Resort, I noticed the parking lot was full. It was not a good sign for one with no reservation and for one who had not planned on staying on this side of the park for the night. The Chinese- American girl behind the desk confirmed what I was fearing most with her words … “Sorry Sir, We’re Full.”

When I asked if she expected any cancellations she emphatically said: “No chance,” and that there were three campers in the parking lot who had inquired before me, all hoping for the same thing. I was now 4th on the priority list for a potential room that might become available. Not likely on this warm summer weekend, and not surprising either, as all around me the tourists scurried in their pursuit of leisure, as tourists normally did.

I looked at the huge lobby with its two TV monitors and oversized leather sofas and chairs. I asked the clerk at the desk if I could spend the night sitting there, reading, and waiting for the sun to come back up. I reminded her that I was on a motorcycle and that it was too dangerous for me to cross Logan Pass in the dark. She said “sure,” and the restaurant stayed open until ten if I had not yet had dinner. “Try the grilled lake trout,” she said, “it’s my favorite for sure. They get them right out of St. Mary’s Lake daily, and you can watch the fishermen pull in their catch from most of our rooms that face the lake.”

I felt obligated to give the hotel some business for allowing me to freeload in their lobby, so off to the restaurant I went. There was a direct access door to the restaurant from the far corner of the main lobby where my gear was, and my waiter (from Detroit) was both terrific and fast. He told me about his depressed flooring business back in Michigan and how, with the economy so weak, he had decided a steady job for the summer was the way to go.

We talked at length about his first impressions of the Northern Rockies and about how much his life had changed since he arrived last month. He had been over the mountain at least seven times and had crossed it in both directions as recently as last night. I asked him, with the road construction, what a night-crossing was currently like? and he responded: “Pretty scary, even in a Jeep.” He then said, “I can’t even imagine crossing over on a motorcycle, in the dark, with no guardrails, and having to navigate through the construction zone for those eight miles just before the top.” I sat for another hour drinking coffee and wondered about what life on top of the Going To The Sun Road must be like at this late hour.

The Lake Trout Had Been More Than Good

After I finished dinner, I walked back into the lobby and found a large comfortable leather chair with a long rustic coffee table in front. Knowing now that I had made the right decision to stay, I pulled the coffee table up close to the chair and stretched my legs out in front. It was now almost midnight, and the only noise that could be heard in the entire hotel was the kitchen staff going home for the night. Within fifteen minutes, I was off to sleep. It had been a long ride from Cody, and I think I was more tired than I wanted to admit. I started these rides in my early twenties. And now forty years later, my memory still tried to accomplish what my body long ago abandoned.

At 2:00 a.m., a security guard came over and nudged my left shoulder. “Mr Behm, we’ve just had a room open up and we could check you in if you’re still interested.” The thought of unpacking the bike in the dark, and for just four hours of sleep in a bed, was of no interest to me at this late hour. I thanked him for his consideration but told him I was fine just where I was. He then said: “Whatever’s best for you sir,” and went on with his rounds.

My dreams that night, were strange, with that almost real quality that happens when the lines between where you have come from and where you are going become blurred. I had visions of Blackfeet women fishing in the lake out back and of their warrior husbands returning with fresh ponies from a raid upon the Nez Perce. The sounds of the conquering braves were so real that they woke me, or was it the early morning kitchen staff beginning their breakfast shift? It was 5:15 a.m., and I knew I would never know for sure — but the difference didn’t matter when the imagery remained the same.

Differences never mattered when the images were the same



Day #5 (A.M.): Glacier To Columbia Falls

As I opened my eyes and looked out from the dark corner of the lobby, I saw CNN on the monitor across the room. The sound had been muted all night, but in the copy running across the bottom of the screen it said: “Less than twenty-four hours until the U.S. defaults.”  For weeks, Congress had been debating on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling and even as remote as it was here in northwestern Montana, I still could not escape the reality of what it meant. I had a quick breakfast of eggs, biscuits, and gravy, before I headed back to the mountain. The guard station at the entrance was unattended, so I vowed to make a twenty-dollar donation to the first charity I came across — I hoped it would be Native American.

I headed west on The Going To The Sun Road and crossed Glacier at dawn. It created a memory on that Sunday morning that will live inside me forever. It was a road that embodied the qualities of all lesser roads, while it stood proudly alone because of where it could take you and the way going there would make you feel. Its standards, in addition to its altitude, were higher than most comfort zones allowed. It wasn’t so much the road itself but where it was. Human belief and ingenuity had built a road over something that before was almost impossible to even walk across. Many times, as you rounded a blind turn on Logan Pass, you experienced the sensation of flying, and you had to look beneath you to make sure that your wheels were still on the ground.

The road climbed into the clouds as I rounded the West side of the lake. It felt more like flying, or being in a jet liner, when combined with the tactile adventure of knowing I was on two-wheels. Being on two-wheels was always my first choice and had been my consummate and life affirming mode of travel since the age of sixteen.

Today would be another one of those ‘it wasn’t possible to happen’ days. But it did, and it happened in a way that even after so many blessed trips like this, I was not ready for. I felt in my soul I would never see a morning like this again, but then I also knew beyond the borders of self-limitation, and from what past experience had taught me, that I absolutely would.

So Many ‘Once In A Lifetime’ Moments Have Been Joyous Repetition

My life has been blessed because I have been given so many of these moments. Unlike anything else that has happened, these life-altering events have spoken to me directly cutting through all learned experience that has tried in vain to keep them out. The beauty of what they have shown is beyond my ability to describe, and the tears running down my face were from knowing that at least during these moments, my vision had been clear.

I knew that times like these were in a very real way a preparation to die. Life’s highest moments often exposed a new awareness for how short life was. Only by looking through these windows, into a world beyond, would we no longer fear death’s approach.

I leaned forward to pat the motorcycle’s tank as we began our ascent. In a strange but no less real way, it was only the bike that truly understood what was about to happen. It had been developed for just this purpose and now would get to perform at its highest level. The fuel Injection, and linked disk brakes, were a real comfort this close to the edge, and I couldn’t have been riding anything better for what I was about to do.

I also couldn’t have been in a better place at this stage of my life in the summer of 2011. Things had been changing very fast during this past year, and I decided to bend to that will rather than to fight what came unwanted and in many ways unknown. I knew that today would provide more answers, highlighting the new questions that I searched for, and the ones on this mountaintop seemed only a promise away.

Glaciers promise!

I thought about the many bear encounters, and attacks, that had happened in both Glacier and Yellowstone during this past summer. As I passed the entry point to Granite Park Chalet, I couldn’t help but think about the tragic deaths of Julie Helgeson and Michelle Koons on that hot August night back in 1967. They both fell prey to the fatality that nature could bring. The vagaries of chance, and a bad camping choice, led to their both being mauled and then killed by the same rogue Grizzly in different sections of the park.

They were warned against camping where they did, but bear attacks had been almost unheard of — so they went ahead. How many times had I decided to risk something, like crossing Beartooth or Galena Pass at night, when I had been warned against it, but still went ahead? How many times had coming so close to the edge brought everything else in my life into clear focus?

1967 Was The Year I Started My Exploration Of The West

The ride down the western side of The Going To the Sun Road was a mystery wrapped inside the eternal magic of this mountain highway in the sky. Even the long line of construction traffic couldn’t dampen my excitement, as I looked off to the South into the great expanse that only the Grand Canyon could rival for sheer majesty. Snow was on the upper half of Mount’s Stimson (10,142 ft.), James (9,575 ft.) and Jackson (10,052), and all progress was slow (20 mph). Out of nowhere, a bicyclist passed me on the extreme outside and exposed edge of the road. I prayed for his safety, as he skirted to within three feet of where the roadended and that other world, that the Blackfeet sing about, began. Its exposed border held no promises and separated all that we knew from what we oftentimes feared the most.

I am sure he understood what crossing Logan Pass meant, no matter the vehicle, and from the look in his eyes I could tell he was in a place that no story of mine would ever tell. He waved quickly as he passed on my left side. I waved back with the universal thumbs-upsign, and in a way that is only understood by those who cross mountains … we were brothers on that day.



Day # 5: (P.M.) Columbia Falls to Salmon Idaho

The turnaround point of the road was always hard. What was all forward and in front of me yesterday was consumed by the thought of returning today. The ride back could take you down the same path, or down a different road, but when your destination was the same place that you started from, your arrival was greeted in some ways with the anti-****** of having been there, and done that, before.

I tried everything I knew to fool my psyche into a renewed phase of discovery. All the while though, there was this knowing that surrounded my thoughts. It contained a reality that was totally hidden within the fantasy of the trip out. It was more honest I reminded myself, and once I made peace with it, the return trip would become even more intriguing than the ride up until now. When you knew you were down to just a few days and counting, each day took on a special reverence that the trip out always seemed to lack.

In truth, the route you planned for your return had more significance than the one before. Where before it was direct and one-dimensional, the return had to cover two destinations — the trip out only had to cover one. The route back also had to match the geography with the timing of what you asked for inside of yourself. The trip out only had to inspire and amuse.

The trip south on Rt.#35 along the east side of Flathead Lake was short but couldn’t be measured by its distance. It was an exquisitely gorgeous stretch of road that took less than an hour to travel but would take more than a lifetime to remember. The ripples that blew eastward across the lake in my direction created the very smallest of whitecaps, as the two cranes that sat in the middle of the lake took off for a destination unknown. I had never seen Flathead Lake from this side before and had always chosen Rt.#93 on the western side for all previous trips South. That trip took you through Elmo and was a ride I thought to be unmatched until I entered Rt.#35 this morning. This truly was the more beautiful ride, and I was thankful for its visual newness. It triggered inside of me my oldest feelings of being so connected, while at the same time, being so alone.

As I connected again with my old friend Rt.# 93, the National Bison Range sat off to my west. The most noble of wild creatures, they were now forced to live in contained wander where before they had covered, by the millions, both our country and our imagination. I thought again about their intrinsic connection to Native America and the perfection that existed within that union.

The path of the Great Bison was also the Indian’s path. The direction they chose was one and the same. It had purpose and reason — as well as the majesty of its promise. It was often unspoken except in the songs before the night of the hunt and in the stories that were told around the fire on the night after. It needed no further explanation. The beauty within its harmony was something that just worked, and words were a poor substitute for a story that only their true connection would tell.

This ‘Road’ Still Contained That Eternal Connection In Now Paved Over Hoofprints Of Dignity Lost

The Bitteroot Range called out to me in my right ear, but there would be no answer today. Today, I would head South through the college town of Missoula toward the Beaverhead Mountains and then Rt.#28 through the Targhee National Forest. I arrived in Missoula in the brightest of sunshine. The temperature was over ninety-degrees as I parked the bike in front of the Missoula Club. A fixture in this college town for many years, the Missoula Club was both a college bar and city landmark. It needed no historic certification to underline its importance. Ask any resident or traveler, past or present, have you been to the Missoula Club? and you’ll viscerally feel their answer. It’s not beloved by everyone … just by those who have always understood that places like this have fallen into the back drawer of America’s history. Often, their memory being all that’s left.

The hamburger was just like I expected, and as I ate at the bar, I limited myself to just one mug of local brew. One beer is all that I allowed myself when riding. I knew that I still had 150 more miles to go, and I was approaching that time of day when the animals came out and crossed the road to drink. In most cases, the roads had been built to follow the rivers, streams, and later railroads, and they acted as an unnatural barrier between the safety of the forest and the water that the animals living there so desperately needed. Their crossing was a nightly ritual and was as certain as the rising of the sun and then the moon. I respected its importance, and I tried to schedule my rides around the danger it often presented — but not today.

After paying the bartender, I took a slow and circuitous ride around town. Missoula was one of those western towns that I could happily live in, and I secretly hoped that before my time ran out that I would. The University of Montana was entrenched solidly and peacefully against the mountain this afternoon as I extended my greeting. It would be on my very short list of schools to teach at if I were ever lucky enough to make choices like that again.

Dying In The Classroom, After Having Lived So Strongly, Had An Appeal Of Transference That I Find Hard To Explain

The historic Wilma Theatre, by the bridge, said adieu as I re-pointed the bike South toward the Idaho border. I thought about the great traveling shows, like Hope and Crosby, that had played here before the Second World War. Embedded in the burgundy fabric of its giant curtain were stories that today few other places could tell. It sat proudly along the banks of the Clark Fork River, its past a time capsule that only the river could tell. Historic theatres have always been a favorite of mine, and like the Missoula Club, the Wilma was another example of past glory that was being replaced by banks, nail salons, and fast-food restaurants almost wherever you looked.

Thankfully, Not In Missoula

Both my spirit and stomach were now full, as I passed through the towns of Hamilton and Darby on my way to Sula at the state line. I was forced to stop at the train crossing in Sulajust past the old and closed Sula High School on the North edge of town. The train was still half a mile away to my East, as I put the kickstand down on the bike and got off for a closer look. The bones of the old school contained stories that had never been told. Over the clanging of the oncoming train, I thought I heard the laughter of teenagers as they rushed through the locked and now darkened halls. Shadowy figures passed by the window over the front door on the second floor, and in the glare of the mid-afternoon sun it appeared that they were waving at me. Was I again the victim of too much anticipation and fresh air or was I just dreaming to myself in broad daylight again?

As I Dreamed In Broad Daylight, I Spat Into The Wind Of Another Time

I waited for twenty-minutes, counting the cars of the mighty Santa Fe Line, as it headed West into the Pacific time zone and the lands where the great Chief Joseph and Nez Perce roamed. The brakeman waved as his car slowly crossed in front of my stopped motorcycle — each of us envying the other for something neither of us truly understood.

The train now gone … a bell signaled it was safe to cross the tracks. I looked to my right one more time and saw the caboose only two hundred yards down the line. Wondering if it was occupied, and if they were looking back at me, I waved one more time. I then flipped my visor down and headed on my way happy for what the train had brought me but sad in what its short presence had taken away.

As I entered the Salmon & Challis National Forest, I was already thinking about Italian food and the great little restaurant within walking distance of my motel. I always spent my nights in Salmon at the Stagecoach Inn. It was on the left side of Rt. #93, just before the bridge, where you made a hard left turn before you entered town. The motel’s main attraction was that it was built right against the Western bank of the Salmon River. I got a room in the back on the ground floor and could see the ducks and ducklings as they walked along the bank. It was only a short walk into town from the front of the motel and less than a half a block going in the other direction for great Italian food.

The motel parking lot was full, with motorcycles, as I arrived, because this was Sturgis Week in South Dakota. As I watched the many groups of clustered riders congregate outside as they cleaned their bikes, I was reminded again of why I rode. I rode to be alone with myself and with the West that had dominated my thoughts and dreams for so many years. I wondered what they saw in their group pilgrimage toward acceptance? I wondered if they ever experienced the feeling of leaving in the morning and truly not knowing where they would end up that night. The Sturgis Rally would attract more than a million riders many of whom hauled their motorcycles thousands of miles behind pickups or in trailers. Most would never experience, because of sheer masquerade and fantasy, what they had originally set out on two-wheels to find.

I Feel Bad For Them As They Wave At Me Through Their Shared Reluctance

They seemed to feel, but not understand, what this one rider alone, and in no hurry to clean his ***** motorcycle, represented. I had always liked the way a touring bike looked when covered with road-dirt. It wore the recognition of its miles like a badge of honor. As it sat faithfully alone in some distant motel parking lot, night after night, it waited in proud silence for its rider to return. I cleaned only the windshield, lights, and turn signals, as I bedded the Goldwing down before I started out for dinner. As I left, I promised her that tomorrow would be even better than today. It was something that I always said to her at night. As she sat there in her glorified patina and watched me walk away, she already knew what tomorrow would bring.

The Veal Marsala was excellent at the tiny restaurant by the motel. It was still not quite seven o’clock, and I decided to take a slow walk through the town. It was summer and the river was quiet, its power deceptive in its passing. I watched three kayakers pass below me as I crossed the bridge and headed East into Salmon. Most everything was closed for the evening except for the few bars and restaurants that lit up the main street of this old river town. It took less than fifteen minutes to complete my visitation, and I found myself re-crossing the bridge and headed back to the motel.

There were now even more motorcycles in the parking lot than before, and I told myself that it had been a stroke of good fortune that I had arrived early. If I had been shut out for a room in Salmon, the chances of getting one in Challis, sixty miles further south, would have been much worse. As small as Salmon was, Challis was much smaller, and in all the years of trying, I had never had much luck there in securing a room.

I knew I would sleep soundly that night, as I listened to the gentle sounds of a now peaceful river running past my open sliding doors. Less than twenty-yards away, I was not at all misled by its tranquility. It cut through the darkness of a Western Idaho Sunday night like Teddy Roosevelt patrolled the great Halls of Congress.

Running Softly, But Carrying Within It A Sleeping Defiance

I had seen its fury in late Spring, as it carried the great waters from on high to the oceans below. I have rafted its white currents in late May and watched a doctor from Kalispell lose his life in its turbulence. In remembrance, I said a short prayer to his departed spirit before drifting off to sleep.

When I want to visit God,
  I go to the Grand Canyon

Where she talks to me plainly
  and talks to me clear

Staring at eternity
  I look into her depths

As she calls to me familiar
  —and calls to me dear

(Grand Canyon South Rim: February, 2019)