The Craigslist Chevrolet

We want to be mobile, so Erin and I research places to rent a car.  The nearest Enterprise is over two hours away.  On a daily basis we see RVs with pictures of national parks on the back and CruiseAmerica.com written above the windshield.  It costs a thousand dollars to rent one of those for a week.  Erin thinks there should be an option to rent a car for a few months.  What if you’re on vacation in a foreign country or a faraway state and you intend to stay a while but have no way of getting around? 

Then I get the idea to buy a cheap car on Craigslist and split the cost between four people.  Erin and I initially agreed to cover half, and then we met another couple, Chris and Emma, who flew here from California and who also find it frustrating to live in such a remote place with no transportation.  The other three already have cars that are in the shop, so I agree to register the car and buy the insurance.  During the summer, we will all share the car, but when the season ends I will drive it home on a circuitous road trip through the national parks of the West.

The plan is to get a piece of junk that looks like hell but runs well, and I’ll buy basic coverage.  If the car dies or becomes expensively broken, I will leave it where it stops, or I will place a brick on the gas pedal, jump out of the door, and watch it careen over a cliff.  There is no option to rent a car for three months, so I have to invent my own plan. 

I do not like owning a car because there is a gas tank to fill, insurance payments to make, and the never-ending dread that on some inconvenient day smoke will rise from the engine and the car will cease to move because of some illness I cannot diagnose.  I would much rather ride a bike or take the bus around the city, but in Wyoming one needs a set of wheels to explore the land.  The West demands to be driven because the land is too vast to be biked or walked in a reasonable amount of time.  Thus we begin our search.

We use the computer in the employee dining room to select cars under $1,000 located in southern Montana.  I compile a list of four options that will drive immediately and have no transmission problems.  Most of the cars have at least 150,000 miles on them and more than a few scratches on the paint.  My dad works on cars for a living, so I call him for his advice and eventually settle on a ’95 Chevy Lumina listed at a grand.  I have owned only one car in my life.  When I turned sixteen and got my license after failing my test four times for hitting the cones while parallel parking, my dad bought me a ’95 Chevy Lumina, which I drove around in my hometown for two years.  When I went to college in Pittsburgh, I got rid of the car because I didn’t want to pay a hundred dollars per month to insure a car that spent five days a week in a parking garage. 

Eight years later I find the same exact model, but this one is blue instead of white.  The odometer reads 127,000 miles.  The windshield is cracked but sealed mostly on the passenger side.  The driver’s seat isn’t properly secured to the floor, and the passenger side mirror is missing.  As long as the car moves when I press on the pedal and everything is legal, although barely, I don’t care what the car looks like, so I send the guy an email. 

I tell him I am interested in buying his car, and I want to set up a time to meet, but he is going out of town during my two days off.  Next week comes, and he isn’t responding to my emails.  I am worried he may have sold the car, and now we have to start our search over again.  On the Craigslist page for cars and trucks for sale in Bozeman, Montana, most of the pictures show immobile scraps of metal with capitalized warnings like:  WILL SELL FOR PARTS or PROJECT CAR.  

Everything about the Chevy Lumina is ideal for a price so low.  Out of all the options one thousand dollars and under, this car has the fewest miles.  The battery, tires, and brakes are relatively new, and the car is only a two hour drive away in a town where most of my friends hang out on the weekends. 

Finally the guy responds and asks me if I can meet him on Sunday around four in the evening.  Erin and I are both off, but Chris works breakfast and lunch, so this requires complicated finagling with the schedule.  I ask Chris to persuade his friend to let us borrow his car, which is a manual, something I cannot drive.  Chris is an integral part of the plan because only he can drive a stick shift, and he is the only one his friend trusts driving his car.  

Erin is the researcher, and the voice of reason who advises me to be cautious rather than buying the first car I see for the immediate satisfaction of driving away only to sputter out a few miles down the road because of some issue I overlooked.  I’m just the guy who haggles for the price and signs the title and takes the blame if we crash into a deer.

Chris manages to get his shifts covered, and his friend eventually relents on lending his car.  We drive north out of Yellowstone and into the valleys of Montana until we reach a small conglomeration of recognizable stores, a main street with cafes and bookstores, and a small population scattered between the downtown area and the outlying plazas. 

City is rarely an appropriate word to use when describing a place in Montana.  Some exits off the highway are bigger than others.  A few of them have movie theaters and Walmarts, but most of them don’t.  Bozeman has both, so it is considered big, but if you are from the East you will consider it a town between cities.  However, if a place is more urban than rural in the land where there are no cities, then you have little choice but to call it a city.

We park the car in a free lot near Main Street, and we walk to a café to buy coffee and use our laptops while killing time before the meeting.  I stop in a bookstore and buy a bulky text about Lewis and Clark and another one about the Oregon Trail.  Reading about the environment in which you live makes the place seem more alive.  When I look out at the land, I know the earth has no opinion of what has occurred there, and the history seems dead.  But when I learn what has transpired during the migrations to the West, I find significance in vanished moments where the land leaves no evidence, only that which is preserved in the memories of those who bore witness and remembered to write it down.

Four o’clock.  We drive to College Street and into an apartment complex, where we find the Chevy Lumina we had previously only seen in pictures.  I call the guy, and he comes out to meet the three of us.  He tells me the car has been sitting in the lot for a while, and he is trying to get rid of it because he already bought a new one.  I ask him if we can test it out, and he hands me the keys, which I hand to Chris.  Erin stays behind while Chris and I pull out of the parking lot and cruise around Montana State University keeping our ears peeled for funny noises. 

We stop and change places.  The driver’s seat jostles when I plump down into it and slings back when I accelerate quickly.  We both decide the seat will not fall off and the extra movement is an added bonus of entertainment.  The crack in the windshield does not obstruct the driver’s view.  For now, I will use the rearview mirror and briefly shake myself of the habit of checking the passenger side mirror when changing lanes.  Instead I will ask the passenger if I’m clear.  

There is a faint smell of burning oil, but the car runs smoothly.  Chris says he feels confident about making an offer. I call my dad for his opinion, and he says that everything checks out besides the obvious missing pieces which are not imperative for movement.

When we all reconvene in the parking lot, I ask the guy to give us a few minutes to discuss our offer.  I want to start with $700 in order to work my way up to $800, but the others convince me not to be so aggressive about the cutting the price.  The guy is very friendly and easygoing, and he seems more than willing to part with this car.  We could drive this back home tonight, as long as we don’t offend the guy.  We agree on an asking price.  Chris and Erin stay behind with the car, and I approach the guy and say, “Will you take eight-fifty for it?”

He says, “I’ll take nine hundred.”

I shake his hand, and he goes upstairs to his apartment to get the title.  I hand him the cash and sign on the line and thank him again.  After he unscrews his license plate, the three of us drive to Walmart, where I order a chocolate milkshake and use the WiFi in McDonalds to buy insurance for about twenty bucks a month.  

Then we are heading south through the fading light between the Absaroka Mountains with an unregistered car with no license plate.  The radio is playing hits from the nineties, and the wind is screaming through the open windows.  We no longer have to rely on favors from friends.  If there is somewhere we would like to go, now we can go.  And to think:  there used to be places on maps that were too far to reach.      

Home Improvement

I find cobwebs in every corner.  Mice droppings litter the dresser drawers.  Except for the varmints no one has lived in the cabin for three seasons.  The air is chilly and lifeless.  Dark blue curtains drape over the windows, but the sunlight pierces through the cracks in the walls.  A thick layer of dust coats the hardwood floors, and dried grasses and crumbled stones are embedded into two magenta oval rugs.

There is an undressed bed in the corner.  A lamp sits on a desk with a wobbly leg.  A tiny black woodstove with a cylindrical chimney pokes through the ceiling.  Behind the stove, a white fan blackened with ash stands abandoned and unplugged.

I plop my bags onto the bed and find a broom and dustpan and start cleaning the place.  The best part of moving is making the nest comfortable and customized.  I take the rugs outside and drape them over the front porch railing and beat them with a stick I found on the ground.  An afternoon breeze rolls through and fills my nostrils with the scent of pine needles and horse manure wafted up from the corrals.

 

I fill up my water bottle and grab a handful of abrasive paper towels from the bathroom and douse them in hand sanitizer to disinfect my drawers of the stale defecations of mice who needed the warmth of the dresser to survive the harsh Wyoming winter.  I sprinkle the water onto the floor and step on piles of paper towels and skate clean streaks through the dust until the hardwood looks polished.  I push the bed toward the fireplace and shimmy the bulky dresser beneath the window and push the desk into the corner.

 

I unpack my bag and devise a way to fit all my clothes into three small drawers.  I have to double-fold my shirts so they take up less surface area.  I stuff my shower supplies into a drawstring sack and leave it in the top drawer along with a Ziploc bag of my electronic chargers and medicine.  To save space I jammed ibuprofen, anti-diarrheal tablets and lozenges in one container like a grab-bag of candies.  I wipe off the top of the dresser and stack my books against the wall.  The cabin is coming together and gaining civility.  An hour ago it felt abandoned, but now it is a place you could almost respect.

I meet the personnel manager at the supply cabin, where she hands me my bedding, a box of Idaho energy logs, a book of matches, and firestarter discs.  She gives me a set of instructions on how to light a fire, and she tells me I only need to prop three logs up like a tripod with a quarter chunk of firestarter underneath.  I lug all this back to the cabin and put the sheets on the bed.  The blanket is soft and green, and everything is surprisingly clean.  I place the box of logs onto a gray bench with peeled paint.  I educate myself about the wood burning stove. 

I shovel out the ashes and dump them into a bucket.  I break the firestarter into little pieces and place one chunk inside and then surround with a teepee-like structure of logs that look like plump CDs.  I strike the match against the strip on the back of the book but the flame quickly dies.  I try again and again and again until I burn my thumb and think that I should eventually buy a butane lighter with a long stem.  Finally the firestarter catches and a cone of blue starts devouring the flaky edges of wood and smoke rises through the gap between the logs. 

The instructions tell me there are two adjustable handles on the pipe that open and close the damper.  If the handles are parallel to the pipe, the damper is open and the fire will burn quickly, but if you turn the handles the latch will close and better retain the heat.  I experimented with this until smoke started filling the cabin, so I walked outside to see if the chimney was puffing.  I cut off the oxygen supply, so the fire died and only gray wisps remained.  I opened the windows and resolved to figure this out later.

I built the log structure again before bed.  I put on sweatpants, thick socks, and a thermal jacket and fell asleep to the sound of licking flames that petered out in less than an hour.  The personnel manager told me I had to feed the fire throughout the night.  I woke up in complete darkness and turned on my flashlight to repeat the process again only to wake up shivering yet reluctant to emerge from under the covers.  Before that night, I didn’t think it was possible to be that cold during June in the northern hemisphere.

A week passes, and I overhear the porter talking about how cold it was last night.  The porter filled his stove with a box and a half of logs.  His cabin got so hot that he opened all the windows slept over the covers and in his underwear but still sweated throughout the night.  The fire burned so intensely the woodstove glowed orange like lava.

 

Later that night I shovel out the ashes from the woodstove and array six logs at the base and pile two firestarter discs at the intersections and light them on fire.  I maneuver around the flames and build a tent of logs around the burning firestarters.  Then I throw in the set of instructions that the personnel manager gave me on the first day.  When I close the hatch, the fire swells and roars as it feasts upon the fuel.  The heat quickly emanates from the black metal and spreads throughout the cabin.  I take my socks off and kick the covers away.  I experimented with the fire to rid myself of shivering nights, and now my situation improves.  This lifestyle is ripe with opportunities to adapt.  Even small victories make a huge difference.

To warm me up in the morning and spark my mind alert, Erin got me a coffeemaker and a bag of Seattle’s Best from a store in the nearest town.  I had been drinking the diluted brown liquid mislabeled as coffee from the employee dining room, where all our meals are served.  The drink tastes like hot water with a hint of powdered coffee substitute, the caffeinated version of artificial sugar. 

A real brew from a twenty dollar BLACK&DECKER is a major boost.  The nearest café is a forty minute drive.  The nearest Starbucks is three hours away.  Aside from my laptop, the coffeemaker quickly became my most valued possession.  If someone were to steal it, I would be very disappointed.  If someone were to rob me at home and leave with only my coffeemaker, I wouldn’t care at all.  I would just buy a new one from the Target down the street.  But I am relatively stranded at Roosevelt, and so possessions of convenience take on a new meaning when supercenters are largely inaccessible. 

The isolation and lack of manmade entertainment changes the way I view my home life.  Real coffee at home is just another part of the day that closely resembles the day that came before it.  However, when the wind blows through the cracks in the walls and silkworms dangle under the doorframe and I wake up in the middle of the night and use a flashlight to check for animals while I pee into the high grasses behind my cabin, real coffee is a gift because I do not associate it with this world——a land that seems disassociated from the eastern part of the country.  

     

Before coming to Yellowstone, I checked the weather and was surprised to see forecasts of snow in early June, so I packed coats and Underarmour gear, but I was not prepared for the blazing heat that made me forget the cold nights and released swarms of mosquitoes into the dry valley.  The temperature shot up into the nineties and sometimes peaked around one hundred degrees.  I went for a car ride with a friend, and the metal from the seatbelt scalded my hand.  My cabin is shaded by trees, but there’s a row of bunkhouses that bake in the sun.  Even under the shade of the roof, I’ve heard the temperatures inside reach triple digits.  There is nowhere to escape the heat, and undressing to the bare minimum can only offer so much relief.

I forgot about the fan hiding behind the woodstove until I needed it.  Someone must have left it here the previous season, and the disuse was visible.  I plugged it in and twisted the knob expecting nothing to happen, but when the blades cut through the air I found the way to regulate the temperature above primitive standards.  I grabbed a bottle of cleaning product, an unnerving shade of yellow, and sprayed and wiped the base until the blackness lifted and showed white plastic.  I folded the paper towel and wiped the rims clean of gunk so I wouldn’t blow unbreathable detritus into the air.

I rearranged the furniture to better situate the fan.  I was using an extra chair as a nightstand, but I set the fan on the chair so the cool air could blow above my waist.  I retrieved five boxes of logs from the resupply cabin and stacked them between the wall and the bed.  I topped that with an empty box and stuffed my phone charger and glasses inside my makeshift nightstand.

 

I bought a National Geographic map that depicts trails of the Tower and Canyon areas of Yellowstone and placed that above the desk.  Then I stole a Rand McNally roadmap of Wyoming that a guest left on the table in the restaurant, and I hung that above the free maps of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.  When Erin went to Bozeman, Montana with a few friends, she brought me Discovery Map of the town, and I hung that up, too.  I want the walls to give the impression that an explorer lives here.  The maps make me think of Lewis and Clark, treasure hunters, and fur trappers that ventured into the west like it was a foreign land not belonging to the rest of the states that already had names.

      

I bought a roll of duct tape and patched up the holes to keep out the wind and the spiders and the silkworms.  When I visited Jackson Hole, a tourist hub south of the Tetons, I bought the state flag, a red, white, and blue banner that features a giant bison with a shaggy beard and the seal of Wyoming.  In order to hang the flag roughly ten feet off the ground, I had to stack five boxes of logs onto a chair.  I ripped two loose nails from the wall.  One was bent at a ninety degree angle.  While I stabilized myself on my makeshift ladder, I pounded in the crooked nails with a heavy Hydro Flask water bottle.  I hooked the rings of the flag over the nails and duct taped the bottom corners.

To top everything off and make the place look homey, I strung white Christmas lights around the room and over the A-frame beams.  The highest beam is probably fifteen feet off the ground.  I used my makeshift ladder again and untwisted a wire clotheshanger and bent it until it curved like a quarter moon.  I poked the clotheshanger into an opening of the braided wire of lights and fed the wire up and over the beam until I could grab it from the other side.  Then I pulled the lights down and removed the clotheshanger and duct-taped the string against the walls in the corners.  I coiled the lights around the beam that stretches across the room.

The cabin has come a long way since day one.  I can hardly remember the bare walls.  Now everything is decorated and highly functional, but the additions make me wonder if this is what adapting means.  I made my living space more comfortable and suitable to my needs.  Or does adapting mean dealing with whatever you are given and growing to accept things the way they are? 

When I first moved into the cabin, I spent most of my free time reading in bed and cleaning the place.  I oddly enjoyed making my bed and sweeping the floors free of wood flakes.  As I accrued more possessions, the number of chores increased as well.  Now I have to clean out the coffeemaker and replenish the grounds and refill the gallon jug of water.  If a bulb goes out on the Christmas lights, I have to replace it.  However, the cabin is so small, and there is so much time and still so little to do.

 

On a small scale, though, my home improvement projects solidified my belief that simplicity and a low maintenance place makes a person feel richer than if he had lived in a mansion.  Sometimes, when I make a fire, I rip up the cardboard boxes that house the logs, and I toss the pieces onto the flames and watch them disintegrate.  I like watching the paper shrivel up while tiny orange embers dissolve the matter like a colony of termites gnawing into a fallen tree and creating a noticeable absence where there used to be something.  Back at home where a thermostat adjusts the temperature, I do not have this option, and even if I did I may consider it a waste of time because there are many more options I could choose to divert my attention. 

I still watch the destruction of the flames, but I also watch the TV shows that my brother sent me.  I asked him to send me Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire so I could better occupy the rainy days.  I don’t binge watch like I would at home, and my options here are severely limited since I don’t have a TV or any reception.  I only watch an episode or two at night on my laptop before going to bed as a means to wind down after a shift.  When you deprive yourself of the things that usually surround you, you recognize your desires.  You can learn to live without them, and you can simultaneously learn to accept your preference to live with them.  I might live in a cabin in a remote wilderness, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want the comforts of home.

Where the Buffalo Roam

During my first week at Roosevelt Lodge, I felt like Harry Potter when he found a troll in the bathroom.  My cabin is roughly 200 meters from the communal bathroom, a sink with only cold water and four stalls which are often clogged. To get there, I must take a dusty trail embedded with rocks that never fail to trip me.  As I walk, there are cabins on my left, and on my right there are parked cars that belong to employees, a basketball court with a hoop that is too high, and a field of tall grasses.  I've seen deer lounge silently in the grasses before scurrying away into the forest.  An occasional bison will sneak onto the premises.  I don't know why they come to Roosevelt because there's hardly any grass compared to the valley across the street where they usually live.  But they still visit, and sometimes they stay a while. 

Before I accepted this job, I was warned about the dangers of wild animals.  At each trailhead, Park Rangers post scary pictures of grizzlies bearing their teeth.  The Rangers advise hikers to carry bear spray, which is very similar to mace and is largely used as a mental pacifier and an insurance policy, one of those I'd-rather-have-it-and-not-use-it possessions. To be fair, grizzlies are not to be treated like puppies, but they are not lethal monsters.  They mostly avoid humans, and they are difficult to find unless you go looking for one.  But the bison are everywhere, and they kill more people than any other animal in Yellowstone.

Bison are the largest land animals in North America.  They look like giant versions of ugly steer wearing tattered jackets of fur over their shoulders.  Aside from the bald eagle, the buffalo is the quintessential American animal.  They once dominated the plains of the West until early white settlers nearly wiped them out.  The bison are protected in Yellowstone where there are no fences, and they can roam wherever they please.  This type of freedom in the country's third most visited national park means that bison will walk leisurely across the road and cause traffic to pile up, a phenomenon known locally as a bison jam.  For the reckless kind, the bison's freedom increases the likelihood for casualties because some people treat Yellowstone like an interactive petting zoo. 

I've seen a video clip of an ignorant tourist trying to impress his friends by getting too close to a bison.  He followed it around a tree and surprised the animal.  When you invade a bison's space, it will let you know.  It will stand its ground and snort at you.  The bison in the video burrowed its horns under the man and catapulted him into the air.  The man did an inadvertent backflip and landed hard on his spine.  The animals may look like stupid, sloth-like brutes, but they are not to be underestimated.  They can get aggressive if angered, and they can run up to forty miles per hour.

As I walked to the bathroom during one of my first mornings at Roosevelt, there was a bison in my path.  I thought of that video of the catapulted man and the mortality statistics, so I gave the bison a wide berth and let him continue eating his patch of grass.  I was annoyed that I didn't have a bathroom in my cabin.  I was accustomed to the privacy and the ease of walking five feet from my bedroom to take a shower.  Now I have to carry my soap and my Loofa to the shower facilities a three minute walk from my cabin. 

When I first arrived, I assumed there would be a time when I would have to wait in line to take a shower.  There are four individual showers with doors and curtains that close.  Roughly fifty men live and work at Roosevelt.  Despite those odds, I have always found an open shower when I needed it, except when the porter was taking his time cleaning the facilities at an inconvenient hour. I also anticipated forcing myself to take a cold shower after the hot water was gone, but this too has never happened.

This is a relief because the nights get chilly.  When I walk to the shower after sunset, I wear a jacket, shorts, and flip-flops.  The beam from my headlamp prevents me from tripping on rocks and stepping in bison dung.  This trek used to be a pain, but the extra effort makes me appreciate the showers for their refreshing warmth.  When I'm at home, showering is just another item on my daily checklist, another reminder that the human body requires time-consuming maintenance.  But in landlocked Wyoming, there is little do but read and explore the wilderness. The feebler ones spend their leisure time drinking to excess in small town saloons.  Life here is slow and rustic at the Roosevelt Lodge, where small pleasures fill my days.   

In the beginning, Erin and I wrote a list of things we should buy to make our summer more comfortable.  I wanted to buy an extension cord and a reading lamp to clip onto my bedpost. Erin wanted to buy a device that would boost her cell phone service. We don't have any reception where we live. Other locations in Yellowstone such as Old Faithful or Mammoth Hot Springs have cell service and Wi-Fi in the hotels. In our employee dining room, we have a computer with Internet that is often slower than dial-up from the early 2000s. Whoever is in charge of the Roosevelt Lodge doesn't want the visitors and workers to have these modern intrusions.  People come to these cabins to disconnect from their habits and to experience Yellowstone without diluting it with distracting technology.

To make phone calls, Erin and I walk about a mile away and up a hill to climb atop a rock that looks like a buffalo.  For some reason, Verizon phones get four bars and LTE network from this isolated perch, where we can see a herd of bison graze below us. To post my blog, I type everything into an app on my iPhone, then walk to the rock where I use my Verizon network to share the blog via Facebook.  Calls also go through, but often there's static, so I have to repeat each sentence four times.  We live in the valley, so the wind tunnels in between the mountains and gets so loud that the person on the other line can hear it. 

When I'm in my cabin, I keep my phone on airplane mode to conserve the battery, and I rarely bring my phone with me unless I use it to take pictures. I no longer feel that phantom vibrate against my thigh when I'm expecting a text.  I get a flood of messages once I gain elevation and receive a clear signal.  I plan times to make phone calls and text friends and message people on Facebook.  My phone doesn't buzz while I'm reading on the front porch.  There is no temptation to text at work because that is not an option. 

Although I lived briefly in a world largely empty of cell phones, I remember a time when it was considered rude to call during dinner or after a certain hour.  Now there is no etiquette, and people expect responses at any time of the day. I prefer the idea of communicating when I want to rather than having outsiders visit me any time they please. I focus on the conversation rather than multitasking.  I have several things to say because my life is different from the one I had at home, and I ask questions because there is progress being made where I cannot witness it.  When I make phone calls or answer text messages that is the only thing I do because I've traveled out of my way to do so.

One evening, Erin and I set out for he Buffalo Rock so that she could call her family.  The sun was starting to sink below the western ridgeline, and the sky beamed a vibrant pink. 

I ran up the sloped side of the rock, and Erin climbed up after me.  We took our seats on the divots away from the elk bones and skull that were arrayed decoratively at the rock's crest.  The animal was killed in the valley, perhaps by a cougar or by the heat.  The body was consumed by opportunistic carnivores and insects, and the meatless bones dried under the desiccating sun until some fool thought it would be funny to move the skeleton onto the rock where someone would be sure to see it.

I read a book about Wyoming characters under the fading sunlight as Erin talked to her parents.  When she finished her call, I donned my backpack and slid on my butt down the rock.  Erin's brother called her when we were walking down the slope filled with bison patties and sagebrush that scratched our ankles.  The daylight turned murky and gray as night took over, and I turned on my headlamp.

Just before we reached the flatlands, I spotted a bison ambling up a horse trail about twenty yards from us.  The bison stared at me and snorted.  I told Erin not to come any farther.  The bison's dark hide blended into the surrounding blackness, and I could only see the flash of its pupils reflecting the light from my headlamp. The bison was clearly annoyed by our presence.  It stood as still as the giant stuffed animals found in every other gift shop in Wyoming.  

I spotted another large rock nearby and walked toward it without taking my eyes off the bison.  In the unlikely event that the animal charged, we could scurry up the rock and be safe from the horned beast.  The animal snorted with impatience until we reached the rock out of his sight.  It carried on its way into the valley toward the rest of its kind.  Erin and I did the same but moved in the opposite direction.

It doesn't make sense to have service where the bison live and to not have service where the humans live, but that is how this world works. We could buy a cell service booster, an expensive gadget that can give you two bars where you normally have one. Erin and I thought this was necessary but that's only because we believed having reliable service was necessary, but it is not.  You can live without it.

Instead of buying things to fulfill our needs, we changed our needs.  I don't need a reading lamp and an extension cord.  I just move to a place where I can read by the sunlight.  We realized we don't need a service booster to receive signal from our cabin.  Instead, we walk to a place where there is service, even if that means a possible encounter with wildlife.  When we return to the dead spot where we live, we adapt to a life away from the world.