Going to Church in the Strawberry Patch

Trying to Grow Up In Spite of Myself

A Memoir by Tom Bessette

Copyright 2009 BessetteBooks

Chapter 14
Travel and Copping Out

It was dark; I was sad.
I could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing.
No sensory perception, no connection with anything, just existence, simple, unadorned.
Eyes open, I grope, testing with my feet, reaching out with my hands, finding nothing.
Hours I search, finally crawling, patting the ground,
Feeling only dampness and texture of stone.
Hours and hours, and nothing…

I bought one of those Greyhound Bus ‘Ameri-Pass’ tickets that gave one unlimited ridership anywhere in the continental USA for 30 days.  I had romantic notions of  getting off the bus and walking down some lonesome country road, stopping at a farmhouse for a drink and meeting the woman of my dreams, and staying on to help her run her farm, living a simple life and never going back home.  Or, I would settle in some small town where no one knew all my faults, find a simple job, live in a rustic cabin in the woods and chop wood for my fire, cooking simple meals alone.  One that I knew I could really never do was to go up to Alaska or Northern British Columbia and strike out into the wilderness, build a log cabin miles from nowhere, and live as a hermit off the land.  Instead, I became a tourist.

The bus pass timer wouldn’t start until I used it the first time, so I held off, instead buying a separate ticket to start my trip. I began by heading off to Charleston South Carolina to visit Dave Ballargeon who had been working down there for a paper company for a few years.  He had done something that I admired: got a degree, left home, and was living alone in a new place, making something of himself. We went crabbing, deep sea fishing, hung out in his bachelor pad, and wandered back roads.  The Spoleto Jazz festival was going on and he had volunteered to work at it so we went there and I heard great jazz and met this special lady that he liked named Helen James. 

Her family was from Columbia and they had a summer place on Wateree Lake to which we were invited.  Her kid brother had a Hobie-Cat sailboat and we took it out and screamed all over the lake, tacking and running with the wind for a few hours.  At one point I had the tiller, a fresh breeze and a lot of attitude and really got up leaning up there, racing along at high speed, the brother yelling at me to let the wind out and I would pull it in a little more. 

Suddenly, a gust changed direction and we flipped over and ended up completely upside down, sail reaching straight down into the depths, us realizing that we had forgotten life jackets.  There we were bobbing around, the brother hysterical about his boat, me trying to climb back up on the slippery floats to get a handle on things.  Soon, the family saw from shore what was going on and in a flash we had six helpers and a powerboat.  It took us two hours but we finally managed to get the boat on its side, and then back upright, the sail sodden, the boat unable to move with the wind.  We brought down the sail and were towed in, and I realized that probably neither Dave nor I would ever be invited up here again, though they were all gracious enough about it. No permanent damage, anyway.

After I left Dave, I headed off to Florida and ended up at Panama City up on the panhandle on the gulf coast.  I hitch hiked out to the St. Francis recreation area out on the offshore key and got a spot for my tent and settled into the heat and sunshine.

At the site next door was an older couple, empty nesters, who were on their first trip together without kids in over twenty years.  They had a nice trailer, and he had a really nice power boat.  What they didn’t have was a companion, a niche that I immediately filled.  He was a fishing nut and she hated it,  so he and I spent long days cruising the flats, fishing and shelling and broiling our skin medium well, dark on the outside and light pinkish gray on the inside. I think she enjoyed her solitude while we were out on the water.

Nights, we drank together and played three handed rummy, told lies, and stared at the stars.  It was a simply idyllic week, but I soon realized I was wasting days of my adventure summer lazing around beaches.  How was I to find my destiny while sunning myself?  I packed up, we said a teary goodbye and they dropped me off at the bus station.  I later sent a letter to the address they gave me and got a reply from her telling me how shortly after they got back home she was diagnosed with serious cancer with a bad prognosis.  I wrote back a few weeks later and never heard back.  I wrote back a few months after that, and my letter was returned undeliverable. Crap!

I headed back home to attend my cousin Dale’s wedding and then straight away left again, this time heading out west along Interstate 90 on my bus pass.  There was a whole scad of us on that bus, all yelling at each other, making really lame jokes and inventing instant nicknames.  I was ‘Albany,’ the girl from Brooklyn was ‘Brooklyn,’ the guy from West Shithole was called, well you get it.  We rode hour after hour, raucously gabbing, gambling, flirting, and babbling incoherently, especially after the bottles started getting passed around.  I pitied the poor bus driver.  We even started up that old high school bus driver song, you know, ‘Three cheers for the bus driver, the bus driver, the bus driver, three cheers for the bus driver the best of them all.  He’s happy, he’s jolly, he sucks cock by golly. Three cheers for the bus driver, the best of them all.’ Amazing how many people know that old song.

For those who have never traveled long distance on a bus, there’s something you don’t know.  Busses are, or at least were then, cleaned every day in the early morning, like 2AM.  For those traveling cross country, the bus would pull into a station and they would wake us and herd us off, take out all of our luggage, in my case my Kelty Pack, and we would sit or sprawl wherever we could in the dingy bus station with the winos and creeps.  Then these sad sack people would trudge slowly into the bus with mops, buckets and Windex and take their good Goddamn time cleaning up all our mess.  After, sometimes, hours of this, we’d be allowed back on the bus and note that it looked, and smelled, exactly the same as it did before the sterilization, I mean cleaning. 

Of course it would never do to clean the bus later in the morning when shops were open and people could get breakfast or something.  Nor would it do to time the cleaning so that the bus was at a location that offered anything other than the dingiest, most run down, unpopulated waiting rooms with absolutely nothing to do except dream of sleep and fend off beggars.  I actually did walk outside one night during an extended cleaning and found myself in the worst ghetto in Gary, Indiana. I was stared at by unsavory characters of every sex, race and creed.  A few drifted after me, mumbling to each other, and I hastily ran back to the bus station, wishing, for the first time in my life, to see a police officer.

Stupidly, I felt that the Midwest had nothing to see and so I ‘bee lined’ it straight to Arizona, where I hooked up with Dale and her new husband Bill, in Phoenix.  We stayed at a house in Scottsdale a few days; I never really knew whose place it was, just that there were strange people around, not actually strange, but strangers to me, and we talked without ever exchanging names.  I learned what is meant by a ‘Dry Heat.’

We then headed on up the Grand Canyon in Bill’s venerable Beamer and got a campsite, it vaguely occurring to me that I was on my cousin’s honeymoon, but so was her son Jason and Bill’s brother, Worm, so I didn’t let it bother me too much.  Worm and I hiked all the way down the Bright Angel trail to the river and then realized that we had to hike back up, in the dry heat.  Dry, wet, whatever, it was hot and we sucked up our water like sponges and trudged and trudged up the dusty trail, dehydrated half way up.  But, we were young and stupid, and pressed on.  Actually, Worm was young; I was just stupid, almost killing Bill’s kid brother like that.

I had heard all kinds of stories about the Grand Canyon, ranging from it being described as the most astonishing thing the speaker had ever seen all the way down to it being just a boring, stupid hole in the ground.  I stood on the precipice at sunset and watched the colors play on the outcroppings and cliffs and felt the deepest sense of awe that I had ever experienced.  This was no stupid hole, this was the terrible beauty of the natural world at its finest. Unbefuckingleivable.

Bill and Dale dropped me off at the bus station in Flagstaff and I boarded again, this time heading into California.  I got to see Needles and Riverside, planned to steer clear of LA and instead headed up the Central Valley to Modesto and Merced.  In Bakersfield I had to change busses and stopped at a small café to get a meal, first in a few days.  Two cops wandered over and sat down and asked the questions that I had been told by friends to anticipate.  Who are you? Where are you from? Got money? Where are you going? All that type of stuff.  My answers were OK I guess because they said have a good time and moved on.

I got on the bus to Sequoia National Park and got there a bit before dark, time enough to get a campsite and get set up before dark.  After supper I wanted to hang my food to keep it away from bears but the only tree with a branch at all usable was right next to where I had had to set my tent and the branch was only about ten feet off the ground, usually not high enough to be out of a bear’s reach. It was what I had, however, so I tossed up my rope and secured my food in its stuff sack as best I could.  I settled down to bed and dosed off. 

Some hours later I was awakened by a strange sound:  Oomph, Plumph, Oomph, and Plumph.  Wondering what the hell and almost scared to look out, I did, and there was a fairly young, but still big, Black Bear jumping right outside my tent door, trying to reach my bag of food.  It saw me, I yelled, and it made one more Herculean leap and knocked the bag out of the tree.  Thinking only of being without food way up here in the mountains, I scrambled out of the tent as the bear scrabbled away with my food, and gave chase.  I wanted to scare the bear off without getting too close.  I would yell, and chase, and the bear would run.  I would stop and it would stop, and then start extricating food from the bag, and I would start the chase again.  This went on in a circuitous route all through the campground, people coming out of their tents to see the commotion, and then hurriedly skedaddling back inside when they saw what the problem was.  I picked up rocks and pinecones, and pelted the bear as hard as I could.  Finally, stymied, he dropped my bag, pissed all over it and trundled his bulk off.  I recovered my food, felt the stench of bear piss seep into my pores, thought what the hell, and put the food into the outhouse and locked the door, figuring it couldn’t get any worse.

Next morning I woke up and wondered where my food bag had gone to, then remembered the bear.  I snuck off to the outhouse and found a family of four staring at my torn, wet bag, discussing what was in it and was it now poisonous.  I told them about the bear and they said that they had heard me, and didn’t I know it was dangerous to fight bears over food?  And then the littlest one asked, “Daddy, what’s that smell?”

My bag was pretty well torn.  I had packed all the food in Ziploc bags inside, thinking of rain, not of bear piss.  Most of it was OK to eat, if unappetizing, and I threw out the worst of it and estimated my stay shortened by two days, assuming that I didn’t get any more nocturnal visits.  I hunted all over and found a better tree a ways away and marked it for use the remaining nights.

I met up with two guys, not traveling together, and between them I was able to satisfy my urge to explore and my tendency to be very lazy.  Graham Wentworth was from London, the first person I had ever met with a legitimate British accent.  We hiked up mountain trails and explored out of the way Sequoia stands.  We found fallen trees which, laying on their sides, were twice as tall as we were.  We wandered underneath and between tree behemoths, stunned and astounded at their massive size.

Charlie Wright, from Chicago, was the epitome of my lazy side.  He wanted to sit around the campsite and drink and play cards; that was his idea of comfort on a vacation.  Graham would suggest a hike, but if we were the least bit tired, or sore, or worried that the weather might change, we’d say go on without us and we’d dig into Charlie’s cooler and break out the cards. So, I basically hiked every other day and rested on alternate days, a reasonable compromise to my way of thinking at the time. In all, I spent six days in the campground, hiking, drinking, chasing bears and eating pissy food, and then we all went our separate ways, a process that would repeat itself all through my trip.

I hiked out to the bus stop at the park entrance and got back down to the valley where I caught another bus, this time up to Yosemite, the be all end all of photography among Ansel Adams’ fans.  As the bus pulled into the park I was struck by the sheer beauty of the valley, cliffs surrounding it, and the spectacular waterfalls that were everything I expected them to be.  Then, the bus pulled up to Yosemite village and the whole vision was crushed in an instant.  There were simply herds of brilliantly dressed people everywhere I looked, crowds of lemming-like walkers, the throng surging one way and then another as they weaved from restaurant to hotel to gift shop and back again, all but entirely oblivious to the fantastic scenery at every turn.   They wore Yosemite T shirts with stupid sayings on them, hats with Yosemite sewn onto the brim, and varying degrees of Yosemite sunburn etched into their skin.  They licked dripping Yosemite ice cream cones, drank Yosemite cokes, choked on special recipe Yosemite hot dogs and dropped napkins oozing Yosemite mustard into the Merced River.

I was able to get the last campsite in the least popular area, which turned out to be perfect because it was farthest away from the madding horde and close to trails that led up into the wilds of the park.  I walked to the base of El Capitan, way too afraid to even attempt to go near the top.  I hiked up the trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls and found numerous sites where my hero Ansel had set up his tripod and 8X10 field camera; I used my 35mm Minolta and slide film, copying his compositions dutifully.  The trail curved around at the top of Nevada Falls and circled the valley, ending at Glacier Point.  There were certified lunatics there, attached to hang gliders, running and jumping off the edge of the precipice, soaring and gliding on updrafts and downdrafts, and miraculously landing way down there on the valley floor, small as ants.  I watched until I realized that I was perched on the edge of a three thousand foot drop, trying to get a dramatic shot, teetering on the brink of going over; my heart leapt, dizziness set in and a handy ranger had to grab hold of me and yank me back.

I wandered the valley floor, trying to get images that didn’t show tons of fat, brightly dressed, hot dog eating tourists staring blankly into space; it was a job for sure.  I had forgotten that it was the Fourth of July, and I was staring in disbelief as a father blew off two fingers on his little daughter’s left hand with a lit cherry bomb that she forgot to let go.  Another loving father was trying to place his toddler on the shoulders of a black bear that was that very minute eating their picnic lunch, exhorting his wife to hurry up and take the picture before he finished. Sparklers lit nylon tents afire and they vaporized in the flame, leaving blackened aluminum frames shuddering in the ashes, fused to melted fabric.  Bears gorged on candy and chips and black squirrels ate holes in cereal boxes.  Mice licked dabs of melted milkshake, and unattended babies stuffed ants and burned out cigarette butts into their mouths.  It was an orgy of the ugly American, a tribute to consumerism, a prayer to a generous and munificent God in our most cherished national park.  Four days and I’d had it with Yosemite, enchanting as it was.

I grabbed the bus back to the valley and met a young girl, probably around 16 or so, traveling like me, and fresh out of cash.  I told her I was getting a motel room to clean up and she could share it with me and use the other bed.  She hesitated a minute or two, asked me if I was a rapist, and when I said no, she came on board. I never asked her name, she never told, I bought her a simple dinner and we went to sleep, separate beds as was proper, and parted ways in the morning, me feeling virtuous as all get out.

I hit the station and hopped a bus to San Francisco.  At the bus station that first afternoon there, I was met by two of the most likable, clean cut, and affable young people I had ever had the pleasure to know.  They escorted me around the city, showing me Fisherman’s Wharf and Nob Hill, bought me a great supper from a better than average restaurant, and discussed politics and environmentalism with equal enthusiasm and knowledge.  We rode trolley cars and walked through Chinatown, and they started telling me about this great place they had, peopled with doctors and lawyers and philanthropists, doing nothing all day long but discussing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and why didn’t I come back and join the group.

Shame on me, I had had my suspicions all afternoon and asked them if they were members of the Unification Church that I had heard about.  I asked it guilelessly, interestedly and non-judgmentally, so they admitted it, and started to wax poetic about the great teachings of Reverend Moon, and how much I would learn, and it wasn’t really a cult like everybody said, and it was such a relief to find a believer amongst the infidels.  I told them that unfortunately I was an infidel through and through, and intended on staying that way, and politely declined their invitation, leaving them open mouthed and surprised to silence.  It was a GREAT supper!

I wanted to see the northern coast of California and no busses went that way so I hitched it, up through Marin County and up into Redwood Country.  This was 1980 and it was still easy to hitchhike, especially out west.  A guy in a good old Ford pickup took me about 50 miles north to a small town called Mendocino. It was picturesque in a rich, granola kind of way, and I found a small campsite and claimed a tent spot.  Wandering back from the bathroom after dark, I saw a campfire with two women watching the fire and stopped to talk.  They were a mother and daughter who had been estranged for a few years, and mom, after a divorce, had come out here to get reacquainted with her long, lost daughter.  Shelly and Susannah, the daughter, were out roughing it and happy for the kind of company that could fetch and cut firewood and keep the fire blazing. So, I was in.

Susannah was just about my age and very liberal in her behavior, and mom was trying her best to keep up.  We climbed down off a headland into a private sheltered cove the next day, and Susannah undressed and laid out supine on a towel, sweet and unconcerned.  Mom had a two piece swimsuit on and after a while unhooked the top and read her book.  Susannah had unshaved legs and thick hair under her arms, one more new thing for me to marvel at, and I have to say that I thought that she was absolutely beautiful, the total package. 

I had never been naked in public before; even in locker rooms at school I was shy, and managed to hide my privacy from prying eyes.  I was very concerned about relative size and the fact that I was circumcised, small and unmanly.  I kept my trunks on and sat and chatted the morning away.

After a while, Susannah said, “let’s go swimming,” and she got up and raced off into the surf, leaving me with a dilemma.  I started to follow her in my trunks and then she looked back, grinned evilly and yelled, “Chicken,” and at that I had to drop my shorts and scamper embarrassedly to the water, immersing myself as quickly as I could squat.  We swam around, she floated on her back, luscious breasts parting the waters, and I followed, content to be with her.  It was obvious that she wasn’t teasing in the least, the first time I’d ever been with any woman where I was really sure of that.

The water was cold as hell, even colder than Cold River back home and we had to get out to lie back down in the sun and get the goosebumps flattened out.  I followed her out, swinging in the breeze, and mom looked up and smiled at me, and I knew she wasn’t mocking me about my pitiful size, but just enjoying the freeness of the moment.  She had also taken off her bottom and I had to concentrate to keep the erection down or else betray my thoughts.

We spent three lovely, sunny days together, sharing meals, talking and basking in the warmth.  Susannah and I had no affair, and I had nothing to run from, and it was a sweet time.  By the third day, I started to understand how a man could be in a situation like this and not feel the need to try to fornicate. I no longer saw her as naked and sexy, though she was, but instead just as my friend ‘au naturale.’ When it was time to part, they both hugged me, and Susannah said, “You’re all doll,” and I never saw them again.

My bus pass had expired so I was hitchhiking now by necessity, although I still had plenty of money if I needed it.  I walked and got rides up Route 101, stopping at Redwood National Forest and staring in awe at majestic Redwood trees hundreds of feet high. I bummed rides up into Oregon and up the coast to Portland.  Mt. St. Helens had erupted in May, it was now mid July, and there was still volcanic ash in the street gutters, in cracks in the sidewalks and choking lawns.  Portland was a beautiful city but I didn’t want to stay in cities, so grabbed a local bus and headed east.  The volcano area was closed off and I couldn’t get anywhere near it, so gave up and hitched past The Dalles and into the Oregon Desert along the Columbia.

I got a ride in an eighteen wheeler to Boise and caught another one to Salt Lake City, both nice guys who bought me lunch at stops along the way and let me cork off in the bunks behind their seats.  I got to see what was left of the Great Salt Lake and stood in front of the Tabernacle.  Salt Lake City is a very clean town and I felt like I couldn’t sit anywhere.  I like a little dirt so that I can blend in better.  I had a soda in a diner and met a kid who was heading east and he took me as far as Rock Springs, Wyoming, in his old VW Beetle.

Talk about a rough mining town.  I found a downtown saloon that also had rooms for rent. They grinned at me when I asked for a room, asking me what I wanted it for (wasn’t it obvious I wanted to sleep?) but in the end, gave me a key attached to a foot long piece of 2x4, and said they usually didn’t rent all night.  The guy looked rough and I didn’t want to ask stupid questions so I just grinned back and went up to my room.  It was seedy and the bed didn’t look like it had been made since the last customer, or two, but the room was cheap and the only choice around, so I bit my tongue and dropped my gear.  The hallway was filled with haggard looking old guys and women with extra makeup on, and I finally figured out the type of people who rented these rooms when one of the painted ladies started screaming about money and a knife slammed into the wall outside my locked and bolted door.

After the ruckus quieted down, I stole out and snuck downstairs to the saloon.  The bartender got me a couple of hamburgers and two six packs to go and I went back to my room, re-locked the door and pulled the dresser over in front of it, no longer surprised that the room had no TV or phone.  All night long people yelled and swore in the hallway, women giggled, arguments erupted and I’m positive I heard a murder done, the three gunshots sounding authorative, but I didn’t venture outside, even once.  I kept to my beer and my book and got good and drunk. Pretty soon the noise didn’t bother me any more and I felt better. Next morning I skirted the blood that was in the hall and on the stairs and went on my innocent way, the desk clerk laughing behind me.

I took a bus up to Jackson Hole, getting in well after dark, slept on a bench in a park, and at first light walked the few miles into Grand Teton National Park.  The sunrise glowed pink and orange on the Tetons, mist rising up from the rangeland in the foreground.  A herd of elk grazed off in the distance, the jagged peaks a stunning backdrop.  I passed a few farmish-looking ranch houses on the way and thought again of my fantasy of settling down with the right woman, but it was too early to knock on anyone’s door; I’d try it on the way out, maybe.  I walked up to Jenny Lake and set up camp, tired already from three hours of road walking. 

The weather was glorious.  White puffy clouds drifting along an indigo sky, yellow flowers, deep green and golden grasses, smatterings of pines and cottonwoods on the slopes and bottomlands.  I walked around the lake, clear, crisp water, ground squirrels popping out of holes to see who I was, hawks scree-ing above the tree tops.  I was at peace, at one with nature, and at home.  I took a nap in celebration.

The next day, Jeannie showed up and set up camp a few spots away. She was from Colorado Springs and was interested in doing some hiking so we teamed up and decided to hike up the Cascade Trail to Lake Solitude.  We took the south shore around Jenny Lake, found the junction for the Cascade Trail quickly, and set off up it.  The walk was easy and as we climbed, the pass we were following became narrower and narrower, a stream sluicing down the center of it.  There were times we were at a level with the stream and other times we were fifty feet above it on the hillside; the trail laid out to avoid steep pitches I guess.  Canyon wall rock, dusty path, grasses and sparse pines led the way.

After about two miles, we were on a shallow hillside overlooking a spot where the stream flowed through a marshy section, and there were two moose, a bull with two prong horns in velvet and a cow wandering along with him, grazing on bushes at the edge of a wide part of the stream.  I had heard that bull moose were even more unpredictable than grizzlies but these looked harmless enough; they had seen us and didn’t seem disturbed.  Jeannie stayed on the trail, ready to run, and I sauntered down to the edge of the marsh, taking pictures all the way, and got within about twenty feet of the bull.  He eyeballed me, but the cow was further away so he didn’t seem ready to attack or anything.  I got a little closer and he stopped eating, raised his head towards me and bleated something that I took to mean, “That’s close enough, buddy.”  I backed off, Jeannie begging me to come back and be safe.  I am sure she pictured herself having to run for help and come back to my tattered body.  And, we had only just met.

We continued our hike, the moose sighing with relief I‘m sure, and in another hour or so came up to Lake Solitude.  It was a deep Blue-Gray jewel nestled in a bowl of the mountains, surrounded by jagged peaks on all sides, including the imposing Grand Teton, at just under 14,000 feet, the tallest of this range.  The high mountains still had dirty, worn snowdrifts in protected crevasses and on northern slopes. The contrast of deep blue sky, white clouds, gray mountains, white snow and the deep lake was almost too much to look at.  It hurt, it was so spectacular.

We toyed with the idea of doing an extended loop up and out of the canyon but realized that it would be an additional fifteen or more miles of hard hiking and we opted out of that plan.  We headed back down the trail, content with what we’d seen, each quiet with our own thoughts.  We rounded a bend in the trail at a particularly narrow defile and came face to face, not five feet away, with our friend the bull moose.  He stood his ground and bleated lowly, and we came to a screeching stop and all just looked at each other.  We stared, and stared and stared, none of us moving, hardly breathing, stock still, prickling sensations down my back and legs, my breath shallow.

We all stood there like that for well over an hour, afraid to even speak for fear of instigating a blood-fest, trying to breathe as quietly as we could manage, trying to appear sufficiently big and tough without challenging his superiority.  I was so close I could hear his breathing and smell his scent, not unlike the bear I had rescued my food from back in Sequoia, but without the piss smell.  My head didn’t quite come up to the level of his back and his head towered at least two feet higher than mine, probably more, and he was looking down at me with evident, malevolent distrust.

Jeannie cowered behind me, almost spooned to my back, breathing shallowly, perspiring profusely, and shaking like a leaf.  Time passed in slow motion, we counted the minutes and then the seconds. At length, the moose grunted and walked toward us and squeezed by us, so close that his side brushed my elbow, at which he skittered and reared but continued on.  After he was around the bend we dropped to the dust right there in the trail, gasping, our legs nervous and twittering, almost too weak to get up again.  Jeannie then said, “What if he comes back,” and almost without conscious thought we were skipping down the trail, tripping over each other in our zeal to build some distance.

Next morning I asked Jeannie to do some trailless hiking up towards Mt. Teewinot to see how far we could get and she said no, she had had enough adventure for this year, and see you later.  I spent a lovely day in the mountain meadows around the base of the mountain, well off any trails, away from everyone, smelling flowers, taking pictures, alone and easy.

I should have gone up into Yellowstone, but I didn’t feel like walking, and after trying for a while to get a ride that way, Winnebago’s passing me without stopping, kids tossing their ketchup-y napkins out their windows at me, I decided that it would probably be like Yosemite and I turned around and hiked out to Jackson again, forgetting to stop at promising farmhouses for a drink and nirvana.

I caught a ride from Jackson up to Butte, Montana, and then walked a good part of the way to Kalispell before I got a ride.  Kalispell looked a lot like Rock Springs and, though there was a downtown saloon and hotel, I decided that that adventure was enough and I slept in a park again. I was awakened by police, prodding me, at dawn, asking the usual questions, and then letting me go.  I headed up towards Glacier National Park, got a few short rides and then walked the final ten miles into the park itself, ending up at the Headquarters not too far from the southern entrance at Lake MacDonald. 

I asked the ranger where I could go that was remote and offered an opportunity for wildlife viewing.  She suggested that I hike up to Sperry Glacier, though it had been a heavy snow winter and there might be snow up near the camping area.  She warned me strongly about keeping watch for grizzly bears and gave me a cowbell type of contraption that I was to wear on my pack.  The trail started about three miles up the road, and itself stretched eight more miles up to the designated camping area below Sperry Glacier.  I wore the stupid cowbell thing for about five miles total before I tired of its incessant clanking, took it off, stuffed it with a sock and buried it in my pack.  Besides, how could I see a grizzly bear if I was persistently announcing my presence?

My pack was eighty pounds and I lugged the thing up to the campsite at eight thousand feet; it was a long hike.  There was a chalet there but the year had been so tough, weather-wise, that it was still closed up, and I had the entire area to myself.  The campground was situated a few yards away from a twenty-five hundred foot high precipice.  I crept over towards the edge, my vertigo screaming at me every inch of the way, and lay on my belly, looking down at hawks and eagles circling hundreds of feet below.  The ground way below seemed to be rising and falling like an exhausted lung deep breathing.  I stared until I was mesmerized and then tried slowly to back away and stand up on wobbly knees, my palms all sweaty.

I was noticing a lot of animal scat of a type I wasn’t familiar with scattered around the area but didn’t think much more of it.  I sat that evening out at the edge of the cliff, relaxing and enjoying the evening and silence when I heard scuffing in back of me.  Thinking I might be about to see my first grizzly, up close and personal, with no more place to run than I had at the brink of the Cohoes Falls that time with my dad, I spun around and saw three mountain goats looking at me, two adults and a pretty small kid.  They had expressive, soft brown eyes, white hair and short, slightly curved brown horns and just stood there, stolidly and patiently.

I had been reading about these animals in the brochures I picked up about the park and saw that it was pointless to try to seal your tent as, if they wanted something, they would simply chew a hole in it and help themselves.  They were non-aggressive, even with young around, and would peacefully coexist with you if you were non-threatening.

I was on the extreme western edge of the Mountain Time Zone and so sunset was right around 11PM at night.  I would sit every night with a mug of tea, and this one young female would wander over to me after a bit and plop down at the edge where I was, just out of arms reach and lay there and chew dreamily.  We did this every night for a week and a half; she never missed and neither did I.  She had a slight imperfection to her left horn, and so was distinctive enough that I was able to pick her out of the crowd.  In the mornings, she would nose at the open flap of my tent, gently tapping her hoof on the ground until I woke up and said good morning.  I would crawl out of the tent and she would follow me around, always just out of reach and I respected her space and we became good friends.  Soon, I was living in the midst of a family of thirty or more goats of all ages, the kids gamboling around, chasing each other, the adults grazing on sedges or just laying around in the sun.  I gave them their space and they repaid me by ignoring me and going on with their lives, a state of affairs that couldn’t have worked out better for any of us.

I spent my days there hiking the highlands, as high in elevation as I had ever been.  It was tough, the first few days, getting used to the slightly thinner air when climbing, but I did fine.  I hiked up to Sperry Glacier itself, at about nine thousand, five hundred feet and over a ridge.  The trail leading up to the ridge was on a north slope and so was still covered in a drift of snow, clasped to the mountainside diagonally.  I had to stamp steps with my boots, balancing myself with a long stick, a long slanted drop of a few hundred feet to sharp rocks below.  Somehow, I wasn’t afraid and went about it in a workmanlike fashion, going slow and steady and not panicking.  Very proud!

Up over the ridge, the glacier was beautiful, although I could see how it had receded over the years, leaving undulating beds of moraine at its base.  Though it was dangerous, I was invincible, and I walked out on the glacier, using my stick to check for splits that I might fall into.  The ice was blue white with shades of green, and unlike any surface I had even been on.  Back to the trail and checking my topo map I saw that this mountain next to me was an 11,000 footer and looked climbable.  It was covered with shaly, scaly rock and the footing was bad but after an hour I was perched up on a narrow 11,000 foot mountain, absolutely as high in elevation as I had even been in my life.

I scrambled back down without breaking any bones and got back up to the trail ridge and there she was, come to see me home, and home we went, my goat and I, she secure in her footing, me following the expert.  She kept looking back to make sure I was OK, watching out for me.

The next day I hiked up over a ridge on the other side of my small valley to see Gunsight Pass.  I found two glacial lakes, green water fading to a deep cobalt, the trail traversing the western shorelines, and I hiked precipitously up to the summit of the pass, narrow and rocky and looked beyond to a never-ending view of craggy peaks and glittering lakes and forest of evergreen.  I sat in grassy swales and felt the icy water, numbing my fingers in seconds.  I hiked back to the campsite towards the end of the day and found my girl napping on my sleeping bag inside the tent, a kid nestled next to her, and I backed away silently, lest I disturb their slumber. Other goats came up to sniff and see what I might be, and no one in any way hurt any of my gear.  I wish I had ever met a human so respectful.

On a hike to another adjacent valley, I saw a grizzly way off, over two miles away; just as well, I guess.  I had always wanted to see one up close, just like I would like some day to see a tornado, but these visions come with serious risks.  It was a quixotic notion but not a very secure one.

Every day for a week I hiked around and absorbed the area, and my goat would either come to see me home or guard my camp while I was away, and every evening, she and I would sit towards sunset, me with my tea and she with her cud, friends, companions, and spiritual confidants.  We were soul mates for that short time. I have had close friendships with dogs and a few cats, and even one or two with humans, but there was something about this relationship that transcended all others and made me feel whole and part of the world.

One the eleventh day, I hiked back out, saddened and wistful, still not wearing my cowbell, and dug it up out of my pack before I got to the ranger, handed it to her and told her it worked great, what a great idea, thank you. No guilt, no problem.

It had somehow turned into late August and I was at that juncture where I could turn up towards British Columbia and Alaska and work my way up to Fairbanks, but it would already be just about winter up there and I mentally weaseled out of the plan, deciding that I would maybe do that next year. It was just too late this year and I would stay in the lower forty-eight. So I told myself.

I got back to Kalispell, sat down in a likely truck stop diner and got a ride south to Butte and another one east to Missoula, taking a motel room for a night to freshen up and do laundry for the first time in over a month.  I was pretty crusty and my tent and sleeping bag smelled like goat; heavenly. 

I rode aimlessly for another week, batting around Montana and Wyoming, going wherever the truckers would take me: Helena, Great Falls, Billings, Casper and Cheyenne.  They all looked the same, the same wide dusty streets, the same near empty downtowns, the same stupid fast food joints, and the same pickups with shotguns on racks.  I was listless and depressed and, finally, in Cheyenne, I bought a bus ticket for Albany and headed on home, disappointed in a way that I couldn’t articulate or even really understand.

I didn’t go up to Alaska, didn’t explore British Columbia, and didn’t stop at a farmhouse to help my prospective mate with her chores.  I didn’t put in the effort required to make a life-changing decision.  I copped out, wussed out, dumbed down. I was twenty-five years old, going on thirteen.

I went home.