Salt Lake City, 2015*

Like a tourist in my own childhood,
I wander the neighborhood of my youth.
It’s not quite a pilgrimage, as
pilgrims know what they’re looking for.

I stand at the flagstone fountain in the park
and gaze across the street
at the red brick bungalow
where my family lived until I was 13.

Am I supposed to intone something?
Summon a spirit? Or perhaps I’m the one
who’s been summoned. Ghost of myself.

On this spot, there’s the illusion of level ground,
but here at the northwest corner of this Victorian
mountain city, the ground slopes in every direction
if you walk a few yards. North up to the Wasatch,
east up to the Wasatch, south more gently but up again,
to the Wasatch, and west sharply down to the valley floor.

Set into the hillside, the house faces west.
A boarded-up plate glass window
makes it blind in one eye.
In the summer, from that window,
we could see postcard sunsets,  
fiery light sinking into the Great Salt Lake.
In winter the gray stasis of inversion.

The old brass address plate—61—still hangs
Slightly crooked on the molding below the attic dormer.
The steep cement steps to the wide front porch
look worn by nostalgia.

My grandparents bought this house in 1938,
and sold it to my parents in 1957, so dad,
the English professor, could walk to work
at the U., a half block away.  I was 1.

Double exposure.  I can’t separate this view
From old photos and recollections.

There to the right on the parking strip,
I once hid under a giant cardboard box
when I knew my sister was walking back from campus.  
As she got close, I jumped out,
causing a satisfyingly chilling scream.  
She tried her best to be furious at me,
but we were both laughing too hard.

1946:  Dad in black and white stands
to the left of the porch’s north column in his graduation gown,
his bachelor’s degree delayed seven years
by a Mormon mission to Scotland and World War II.

1955: all my siblings and all the children
of my mother’s sisters posed on the sweeping cement stairs
for an iconic black and white portrait. Only one missing:
Me.  Not born yet.  All those cousins
Sitting on my steps before I existed.  
There must be a word in some language
for the feeling that gave me. I never could name it.

I start up the alley to the north side
to take a lap around the place.
The brick’s discolored and damaged
from a half-century’s growth of ivy,
recently stripped away, like skin where a tattoo’s been removed.
A picture I took in 1985 shows ivy completely covering the dim brick.

At night, a car turning up this alley would cast crazily
dancing lights  on the ceiling
of my pitch-dark basement bedroom,
through this little porthole-size window.
My heart  would race, knowing it meant my parents were home.

The cement walk alongside the house is crumbling
and has started to melt into the wild grass.

The next window, at the landing of the basement stairs
is where a black widow lived, encased in the space between
inner and outer panes. I used to study the red hourglass
on its abdomen, and tried to draw it.
Couldn’t get it right. Was better at artillery.

In the back, against this wall, an old radiator was standing, waiting for removal  after home improvements.
It toppled over and landed on my brother’s foot.
Crutches for weeks.  Bad luck, but maybe it inoculated
him.  He’s still never had a broken bone.

Here behind the garage, the old crabapple tree still stands,
nurturing its sour but highly flingable fruit.
At its base a hamster lies buried.

The little side yard on the south looks the same,
though the old white trellis that I used to climb
when I was so tiny it would support my weight is gone.

Back to the ***** at the front of the house.
Leaving for school in the morning I would
leap this ***** in a single bound.

The old place looks creased and sleepy.
It doesn’t remember who I am,
is starting to fade into the past.
It’s only about half here.
The rest is memory and desire.

Remember
That park we went to
The first month
We had met?
I walked through it yesterday,
It still smelled like you.

I

*******, the blues
were running, the scrum
of seagulls a white cloud
of chaos above the waves.
The water churned and chopped,
teeming with small fish
devoured by bigger fish
ravished by the sharp-toothed bluefish—
all of them darting frenzied toward shore.

And my father screaming
for someone to, quick,
grab the fishing poles
for God’s sake.

My little sister
in her yellow
bathing suit
would not wait
for the poles.
She yanked fish after fish
from the boiling surf
with her small hands,
screaming in delight and victory.
She ran up and down
the beach, between
colorful umbrellas,
pausing only to toss
another writhing body
onto hot sand:
a wild child flinging
silver-scaled sacrifices
to stoic, multicolored gods.

We ate smoked bluefish for weeks.

II

Remember sitting in our first apartment
watching the snow beyond the windows,
listening to records and drinking seven-dollar
bottles of Malbec from juice glasses on the futon,
the narrow hallway strung with Christmas lights
illuminating thrift store paint-by-numbers?
Billie Holiday was singing “Lady Sings the Blues,”
her voice like a lady’s shoe, worn-in, refined.

I remember pondering the present
I would give you a few days later
in Ashtabula on Christmas Eve,
neatly wrapped and hidden under
the bungalow’s sagging eaves
(more vinyl, a Coltrane/Hartman reissue).
The snow would be falling in Ohio too;
your grandparent’s house filled with the smell
of Scottish shortbread and the sound of daytime TV.
When your grandfather died a few years later,
we listened to Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again”
at the service—your grandmother crying in black.

But what I remember most about that night
was later in bed, the snow subsiding,
the radiators clanking with warmth,
the Christmas lights casting colors on the wall,
your finger tracing songs across my back:
the stylus gliding to center, making me spin.

III

300 milligrams of Wellbutrin,
orange pills arranged in my palm
like hallucinatory ellipses, swallowed
to see where the last sentence will lead.
A bleak prescription: pain has a syntax;
grief, a simple grammar.
A land of blue shadows. An ocean of glass.

But that was years ago now, thank God.
I wrote poetry like crazy then,
on a word processor with a screen
the size of a paperback novel.

I smoked. Skipped class. Slept 17 hours at a time.
I scoured the dictionary for recondite words,
turning sesquipedalian over and over
in my mind, each syllable a sedative.
Like Rilke’s panther, I paced in cramped circles
around a paralyzed center, my winter boots
tracking mud along the brightly lit corridor
that led to the psychologist’s office.

One night I crashed
at my aunt and uncle’s
place in the foothills
and woke up alone with
a sense that the room, the house, maybe
the whole **** world was shuddering,
coming unmoored.
I retrieved my uncle’s .357 magnum
and tiptoed from room to room brandishing
an unloaded firearm in my boxer shorts.
The only sound, diffuse in the darkness,
was the gurgle of the fish tank filter.
I cocked the hammer, watching lionfish
swim in vibrant, agitated circles.
Next morning, I read the newspaper
and chuckled, having never felt
an earthquake before.

With a shock, I think back
to the Thanksgiving break
when I flew home from college
for the first time: the vertiginous
sensation of floating thousands of feet
above the Wasatch range, the mountains’
blue shadows and blinding snow
disorienting, my heart an unspun
compass incapable of pointing true.
The plane’s engines roared in ascent.

Decades later, I’ve landed:
married, with three children,
we drive across the country
in our minivan with the moonroof open,
howling out Tom Waits songs in unison.
Our moments together are conjoined
like tender marks of punctuation—
commas, semicolons, colons:
when the wind washes over us,
it whispers
and, and, and, and, and....

My whole life I have been looking West
from the apron of the Wasatch
into the countless spines and valleys
of The Great Basin.
The Big Nothing.
The living room floor of America.
And then on a whim I got in the truck
and I drove the ten hours
across the amber plains of Idaho
and the knolls of Oregon
to the east ***** of the Cascades.

From this side it looks pretty much the same.
The ponderosas suddenly end
and there is this massive, untamed
space.

And while I will grant that most everything here
is both the same
and completely different-
desert (but without cacti)
mountains (all volcanoes)
forests (but sparse and flat)
there is nothing foreign
about the carpet of sagebrush
in the lowlands of the west,
regardless of which edge you are standing on.

For the first time it does not scare me,
the immensity of it,
the emptiness of it,
the quiet of it,
and for the first time I feel I am not looking out
toward the opposite end of it.
For the first time,
it feels like home.

Like Wasatch collapsed
for the two of us to be here
Harvey parted his torrent
and tempest, and fear—
That your lips would find mine.

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 #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