Smalltown, Wyoming

In most towns in Wyoming, the elevation is greater than the population.  When I drive out of Yellowstone I see small towns with names like Tensleep or Wapiti that house less than three hundred people.  Wyoming is one of the largest states but it is the least populated.  In order to have fun here you have to get creative and you change your definition of an eventful night.

Erin and I start driving the three-hour journey to Cody to get a Wyoming license plate.  We both work early on Friday and have to rush out of Yellowstone so we can reach the DMV before it closes at five.  We only have the weekends off, so we only have one shot at securing a plate before our temporary tags expire.  We take the east entrance beyond the lake and speed down two lane roads out of the mountains and between the redrock canyons and into the prairies baking under the summer heat that has largely eluded us in Yellowstone. 

The mile marker signs start off high but you know when you are about to enter a city.  Usually there are no exits to Wyoming towns; the highway cuts right through the main street.  Erin turns on the GPS when we reach Cody so we can find the DMV, but the iPhone tells us nothing useful.  We see a sign that says Driver’s License and an arrow pointing right, so we follow those directions and enter the building and ask a lady behind a desk if we can get a license plate here, but she tells us to go to the courthouse and tells us which streets to take.  It is almost four o’clock so we run to the car and drive too quickly down narrow lanes until we reach the courthouse.

We stand in line and another lady tells us we need to get a VIN inspection at the police station.  She says they’re quick about those but we better hurry, so we do.  I get out of the car and run toward the station. 

“Do you think you should be running toward a police station?” Erin asks me.

“It’s better than running away from it,” I say and open the door.

Two black signs with white lettering give me instructions.  If I need to meet with an inmate, I pick up the phone on the right.  If I need a VIN inspection, I pick up the phone on the left.  I pick up the phone on the left and a man asks me for my information.  I am still breathing hard from the sprint.  He says he needs a certain number on my registration and I unfold the piece of paper and the voice says, “That’s it right there,” and I jump because I don’t realize he can see me from behind the tinted glass behind me. 

I hand him my registration through a small gap in the glass that has opened up, and an older man emerges from a side door and walks with me quickly out to the car.  He checks some number near the dash and signs a paper and says, “There ya go,” and we drive slowly out of the police station parking lot and then step on the gas until we reach the courthouse for the second time.  The rest is just a matter of waiting in line and paying a tax that is more expensive than I originally thought it would be.  I get the license plate with five minutes to spare.  Now the car is legal. 

Then we walk through the shops on the main street.  We browse through stores filled with Native American pottery, shiny rocks, Yellowstone souvenirs, and Old West knickknacks.  Erin is searching for something to buy her parents and she has more patience inside stores than I do because I realize that nearly every small town in the west has the same set of shops.

 

In Custer, South Dakota there are shops filled with arrowheads, turquoise jewelry, and cowboy boots.  In Jackson, Wyoming, you can buy the same junk.  Cody is no different.  Every small town capitalizes off the wild days of the past when outlaws shot through saloon doors and hunters slayed buffalo.  But now what are we creating that is worth commemorating?  Will there be gift shops honoring the great gift shops of the past?  Statues immortalizing shoppers?

There are three things to do in Cody, Wyoming:  shop, visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and go to a rodeo.  There’s one every night in the summer, and the town claims to be the rodeo capital of the world.  We take our seats at the topmost bleacher so we can rest our backs against the chain-link fence.  The light in the air is getting grayer as the sun descends behind the nearby peaks.  Cowboys start off by roping calves, hogtying their legs together and then watching them squirm for a few seconds like a tired fish gasping in the waterless air. 

I buy a medium Pepsi that is worth less than two dollars and served by a boy that looks to be twelve years old.  Up in the stands, Erin takes pictures of the crimson sunset as the female riders begin the barrel races.  You can tell right out of the gates who is skilled by the efficiency of their movement.  The horses gallop with long strides toward the first corner where they stop and turn agilely and race to the next barrel.  After the last turn, the horses turn on their jets, and the swift riders barely jostle in the saddle. 

The barrel races are graceful and impressive, but the bronco and bullriding is gritty and over too quickly to be considered entertaining.  The animals kick their back legs because there is a belt wrapped tightly around their gonads.  Broncos and bulls are not trying to buck the rider; they are trying to rid themselves of the pain.  Some men hang on for a few seconds and only a few last until the bell rings after eight.  For those who hold on, the judges give them a score in the seventies, but I don’t understand the categories under consideration.  How does one stylishly hold onto a rampaging bull?  You either fall off or you don’t.  I don’t see how anyone could do it better than anyone by a matter of degrees, but then again I don’t understand the sport; I am more so perplexed by this custom that has risen from restlessness on ranches.

There is a comedian dressed like a clown who is carrying a broom and making jokes about Democrats and his wife.  He says that when he was looking at his marriage license he mentioned to his wife there wasn’t an expiration date.  The announcer in the booth keeps saying things like, “Let’s not let him leave empty handed,” after a rider is disqualified from falling off a bull or failing to rope a calf’s leg.  Cowboys travel from rodeo to rodeo on their own dime, and they get busted up each night only to sit in a truck and drive through the darkness until they reach the next corral where they attempt to stay on the bull while another small town watches from the stands. 

The rodeo ends as the moon rises, and we shuffle out to the car.  All the hotels in Cody are booked because of the 75^th Anniversary of the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.  Bikes are parked everywhere along the main street, and all the neon motel signs glow with NO VACANCY.  When I search for hotels on GoogleMaps, I find a room for sixty bucks in a dingy motel in a nearby town called Meeteetse.  To round out this road trip, I want the all-American motel experience:  a room complete with tacky art hanging on faux wooden walls, dirty shower curtains, mattresses with cigarette burns, and a box TV with seven channels and a broken remote.  So we set out for the thirty minute drive through the barren, rolling hills until we reach a town that consists of a motel, a gas station, two restaurants, and three hundred people.

We check into the motel with a nice lady who runs the place with her husband who has a ranch nearby.  The room has everything that I want except the mattress merely has stains instead of cigarette burns, and the remote actually works.  After settling in, we decide to drive around.  I spot an elementary school and wonder if there are enough people to fill it.  Then I drive up a gravelly hill to a cemetery which makes me wonder how many people used to live here.  On the way back to the motel, we stop at one of the restaurants which are located side by side.  When I step out of the car, I detect a hissing noise and see Erin inspecting the rear tire on the driver’s side.  There is a nail poking out of it.  She jimmies the nail so the air no longer hisses, and we step inside the restaurant and order a pizza from a bartender smoking a cigarette in one hand and pouring foamy beers with the other.

We tell her about our recent automobile troubles and ask her if there is a mechanic in town.  She says his shop is just up the road, but it’s closed now and, this being a Mormon town, is most likely closed tomorrow, which is Sunday.  A burly man who is friendly with the bartender asks us if we’re driving a motorcycle, and we say no, and he offers to take a look at the tire.  He steps outside and notices there’s a nail embedded into the rubber and diagnoses what we’ve already deduced:  the tire is punctured.  

A skinny woman who looks like she could be the bartender’s sister exits the bar and laughs at herself for forgetting where she parked.  Erin and I reenter the bar and another man offers to call the mechanic but the mechanic doesn’t answer.  Then the bartender realizes the mechanic plays in a band, and there is a wedding tonight in the oil fields, so he’s either out late or sleeping by now.

A chubby man with holes in his shirt and black oil grease on his hands walks into the bar, and I think this could be our man until he orders a bottle of fireball whiskey and 24 pack of Rolling Rock.  The bartender says, “You’re not going to get shitfaced and puke on the sidewalk again, are you?” And the man says he’s going to party in the woods, where nobody will be inconvenienced by his drunkenness.  He leaves and an old man with a white mustache finishes his soda and follows him.  When he opens the door, he asks himself out loud where he parked his car.  

  

I wonder what kind of condition a person must be in to forget where you’ve parked your car in a town that consists of one street with a commercial district spanning a mere 500 yards.                 

I think of the flat tire leaking air outside and wonder if this is how people get stuck in small towns like Meeteetse.  Like Lightning McQueen in Cars, the road won’t let me escape.  I ask the bartender what else there is to do in Wyoming.  She says she doesn’t know Casper, but there isn’t shit to do in Cheyenne.  There are no clubs worthy of her time, and I realize our definitions of fun differ greatly.  How do you occupy yourself in a small town without obliterating yourself with alcohol or work?

 

Everyone here knows each other by name, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  There are no secrets here, and I suspect our flat tire will be the biggest piece of local news all week.  The bartender delivers our pizza, and we thank her for all her efforts in trying to contact the mechanic.  She gives us her phone number and says to call us tomorrow if we need any help.  We drive to the mechanic’s garage and I place a piece of duct tape over the nail, so we can easily find the hole tomorrow.  We walk back to the motel in the dark. 

After a night’s rest, we tell the owner of our troubles and our inability to leave by checkout time, and she offers to drive us up to the mechanic and help us change our tire.  We tell her it’s no trouble; we can walk.  But she says she has errands to run anyways. I’m thankful for her help and meanwhile I wonder what errands you could possibly run here that couldn’t be completed on foot. 

We borrow a jack from the mechanic, and Erin props the car up while I unscrew the lugnuts and switch the flat for the spare.  We thank the motel lady and she drives away to attend to her errands.  If we had gotten stuck like this in a big town and stayed at the Marriott, the concierge would’ve given us a fake smile and called Triple AAA and then charged us for an extra night and then we’d have to pay for the car to be towed.  Although the motel mattress had stains and the bartender was unprofessional, Meeteetse possessed an undeniable charm that comes only in unpolished places not quite large enough to be mentioned on a map.

White Cliffs and Red Men

Distances between civilizations are so vast in the West a driver needs to be mindful of how much gas is in the tank.  Erin and I are driving on the highway through the scrubland of southern Montana.  Yellow fields of dried grasses undulate up and over the bumpy moraines.  Aside from an advertisement for fireworks and oil rigs dipping their beaks into the dirt, there is nothing around for at least a hundred miles until we reach the battlefield of Little Big Horn where Custer made his last stand against the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. 

There are certain names and events from history that we can name but don’t remember why they should be so well-known.  I had heard of General Custer and his famous last stand, but I didn’t know why anybody was fighting, especially over such a hot, desolate patch of land that seems habitable, but unbearable.  Rows of tombstones are embedded into the hillside where Custer and many others died.  It is a shame that he is the one who is remembered, especially considering he lost the battle. 

The Native Americans were being forced to settle into a reservation like penned animals.  The tribes were a nomadic people who believed the land was tame and bountiful, so they broke the white man’s rules and fought one final war for their freedom to roam the land as they have done for so long. 

We may be forced to memorize Custer’s name in our history classes, but the Crow Indians living on the nearby reservation are forced to remember how close they were to retaining their lifestyle.  The battlefield is only a few miles away from a reservation that consists largely of ramshackle trailers and pick-up trucks.  I reasoned that people who used to live in teepees wouldn’t mind living in such small houses, but nevertheless the neighborhood didn’t seem a place I wanted to move to.

The dominance of white history over Native American history is probably never as prevalent as it is in South Dakota.  In the small town of Keystone, a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum carved the faces of four presidents onto a cliffside.  Most people learn about Mount Rushmore before they realize it’s in South Dakota.  Before Borglum started carving, I doubt there was much reason to visit the state as a tourist, and I still don’t know why he chose to carve the memorial in such a remote place.

Mount Rushmore is one of those places Americans feel impelled to visit to merely say they’ve visited.  We have all seen pictures and know what to expect before paying our entry fee.  Many people remark that the sculpture is smaller than they thought it would be, but that is only because the cliffs are far away from the central viewing area.  The memorial is undoubtedly a fine piece of art well worth a visit.  I was mostly surprised by the casual atmosphere within the National Monument.  I did not have to go through security, and nobody stopped me when I stepped off the paved trail to climb an adjacent cliff to get closer to the presidents’ faces.

 

After browsing through the gift shop in which every piece of memorabilia looked the same but made with different material (a cotton T-shirt or plastic magnet), we drove to the Crazy Horse statue outside of Custer, South Dakota.  I had read about the statue and was curious to visit such a large monument that not many people know about.  The fee to get inside is twenty dollars per person, but the money helps the family continue sculpting, as they refuse any state or national support. 

The sculptor, Korczak, was an assistant on Mount Rushmore.  Once that project was completed, he was approached by a chief who asked him to build him a memorial for his people.  The chief wanted the white man to know that the red man has heroes, too.  In the 1940s, Korczak started the project, which he would soon spend his entire life building.  At the start, he lived in a small tent and carried his equipment up rickety stairs.  His generator would often quit on him, and he would have to walk all the way down the massive staircase and back up again only to have the machine quit again. 

Korczak and his wife had ten children, and when they grew up they too devoted their lives to the completion of their father’s dream.

The family planned to create the world’s largest sculpture along with a museum and a university all designed for the commemoration and benefit of Native Americans.  Since so much had been taken from the tribes, Korczak felt assured he was devoting his life to a worthy cause that could help heal wounds and design better futures for the Native Americans.

The majority of the cliff was carved by dynamite.  The workers could blast a piece of rock so accurately that they could aim the explosive range within a few inches.  It took nearly forty years just to remove enough rock to even glimpse the overall shape of the memorial.  A miniature sculpture reveals Crazy Horse sitting atop his horse with his arm pointing toward the distance.  This monument’s location, unlike Mount Rushmore, makes sense because Crazy Horse is pointing toward the Black Hills, where his people have lived and died.  Unfortunately, Korczak died in the 1980s well before the face of Crazy Horse was completed, but he finished the designs, which are still being used today. 

The face is now finished, and the arm that stretches toward his people’s land is nearly complete.  Crazy Horse’s head is as large as Mount Rushmore, but it is difficult to conceive the colossal size of this monument because you can’t get very close to it unless you take a bus tour to the bottom of the cliff.  You cannot walk up to it because there are construction vehicles lying around.  The memorial is still in progress and will be for quite some time.  The site, although unfinished, is a more humbling experience than Mount Rushmore, only a few miles up the road. 

A single family has been working on this for over seventy years by their own means for a people whose monuments are often overshadowed by the white man’s.  It is inspiring to know that there are people out there who won’t give up for what they believe in, even if it means carving a rock they won’t see finished in their lifetime.  And the monument may not even be complete within my life either, and I’m not very old yet.  This is the first time I have ever considered my non-existent grandchildren.  Crazy Horse may be finished by then.

After the sun sets and the sky turns black, there is a laser show projected on the unfinished monument.  I assume this will tell the tale of Crazy Horse and at least mention the Battle of Little Bighorn, but there is no such thing.  Wiry pictures of Native Americans glow against the rock while a voice from a speaker talks in generalities about what gifts the Native Americans introduced to the whites.  I saw pictures of corn, moccasins, and roaming bison running in place.

Someone gets into their truck, turns on the engine and beams their lights into my eyes.  I mutter an expletive at him and make a remark about being disrespectful, but after a few more minutes of this haphazardly thrown-together, glorified PowerPoint presentation, I don’t blame the man for leaving early.  The laser show is bizarre, an obvious gimmick to keep people around long enough to justify the expensive entry fee. 

I want to learn more about Crazy Horse and this behemoth of a project.  I am inspired by the sculptor’s story and the legacy his family is carrying, but this laser show seems contrary to the family’s dream of ensuring that the white man know the red man’s heroes.  I drive away, disappointed in the childish light show, thinking that this place could have so much more potential, but like many of the reservations it is trying to represent, is in need of funds but doesn’t want any handouts.  At the least, they need a storyteller so that people can recall a name and know why it’s worth remembering.

Mormon Country

Once Erin and I reached Salt Lake City, I park in a garage next to a Nordstrom’s and we check into a room at the Marriott.  Across the street from the hotel is Temple Square, the mecca for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons.  

In 1847 Brigham Young led his fellow people to an isolated spot in the desert and decided to build a Kingdom of God on Earth.  He flocked to the West to avoid the violence that was being afflicted against the followers of this new faith.  Joseph Smith, the founder, was killed by a mob.  Religious intolerance was one of the reasons many Europeans flocked to America in the first place.  The flight of the Mormons is further proof that people seem to get angry when beliefs about deities don’t align.

Within days of arriving in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young started building the temple, which is now a giant edifice resembling Cinderella’s castle.  Today there are several buildings next to the temple which makes the grounds seem like a campus.  There is a church, a skyscraper where the business is conducted, restaurants, a visitor center which contains a miniature model of the temple, and a genealogy research center.  I walk toward the Family Search Center and recognize the icon.  I pull out my wallet and there is a business card with the exact same company on it. 

When I was walking in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, I noticed a giant building with a golden statue on top of a hill.  I assumed it was a church of some type, so I decided to have a look at the interior.  I tugged on the door but it was locked.  A few men wearing suits and a woman wearing a business-like dress opened the door and asked if they could help me.  I told them I was just curious about this building and wanted to take a look at the inside.  They told me in order to go inside the temple I had to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I had to be in good standing for at least a year before I could step foot inside the temple.  I thought this was very bizarre to cut off public access when so many religious buildings encouraged tourists to appreciate the artwork and even attend services. 

I thanked them for explaining and proceeded down the hill toward the cruise ship.  On my way I ran into an older couple who asked me if I was a member of the church.  I said I wasn’t.  I wanted to see inside that building, but apparently access is very exclusive.  The couple explained they were Mormons from Utah and came to the islands to see the temple.  When they asked me what I was doing in Hawaii, I explained my job on the cruise ship, and they said they were staying there this week.  I invited them to sit in my section at the restaurant where I worked.  During dinner that night, they spoke of their lives in Utah, the dry summers and snowy winters, and the man gave me his business card.  He told me he researches ancestries to see where individual families have originated.

In Salt Lake City I am holding the Family Search business card.  I open the doors and a white haired old man greets me from the front desk and asks me if I have any questions.  I ask him about the type of work they do here, and he tells me they have connected relatives from the present day to people living a thousand years ago. 

I want to press him more about this religion, which, to me, seems like the biggest hoax since Santa Claus.  I want to know how so many people have been so rapturously persuaded to live this way.  The old man tells me the significance of Pioneer Day, which is celebrated on July 24^th and is much like the American Independence Day.  The holiday commemorates the day Brigham Young reached Utah and began to complete his vision of establishing a channel between earth and heaven. 

The Mormons believe that families are eternally linked, and they will not hesitate to tell you this.  They so strongly believe in the impermanence of familial bonds in the same way people are relieved to know they have secured reservations in a busy restaurant.  Sometimes I wish I had the imagination or faith o whatever it takes to believe in such a warm, fuzzy thought, but I am too rational.  I am amazed at how many people so fervently cling to these principles; there seems to be no casual Mormon in Salt Lake City.  Everyone is selling Mormonism, and I want to play the role of seemingly interested customer who is merely browsing with no intent to buy.

The building is closing in a few minutes, so I take advantage of their luxurious restrooms and then take the elevator up to the top floor to see the temple from above.  On the top floor there is a restaurant packed with guests and bustling waitresses.  While I look out the window at the magnificent castle-like structure, I wonder if you have to be Mormon to work in the restaurant, and then I wonder if Mormons are good tippers. 

I am beginning to get the impression that every Mormon in Salt Lake City is a fanatic, and I want to know if there is anyone out there half-assing this thing.  I see so many young women wearing name tags saying things like, “My mission trip changed my life.”  I volunteered to teach English in Ghana, a small country in West Africa, and while I was there I saw two young men wearing white shirts and black ties riding bicycles through the village of Kasoa.  They were Mormons.

I don’t believe it’s right to impose a foreign religion onto people who barely comprehend English.  I’ve seen cases of missionaries persuading with fear of damnation.  If you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your only savior then you are going to burn in hell for eternity.  African communities have had their own religious beliefs long before the white man introduced European languages and the Bible.  Now those traditions are fading so that blacks can worship a white god.    

I have more questions about this religion, and in the lobby I find a woman who is more than eager to share her story and provide me with answers.  She shakes my hand and introduces herself.  I ask her if you have to go on a mission to become a Mormon, and who pays for these trips?  She tells me that a mission is not required to be a member, but if one wishes to embark on a mission he or she must pay for the trip.  She went to Dallas after her husband passed away.  She says she was nervous and out of her comfort zone, especially considering that she was living with stranger, who was also on his mission trip.

What about this exclusionary business with the temples?  The woman says that temples are designated as sacred sites where Mormons can find connection with god.  There is a buffer period after the temple is constructed when the public can visit, but once some sort of ritual is performed it is members only from that point forward.  She then tells me that many major players of the church live and work in the large business center, where most of the accounting is done. 

I have seen the miniature replica of the temple, and the interior is extremely luxurious.  There are expensive chandeliers and an ornate bath used for baptisms of the dead.  Inside the lobby in which I am standing hangs a gaudy chandelier surrounded by marble columns.  

The Mormons preach frugality and humility, yet their temples resemble a king’s palace filled with gold.  She leads me to a simple worshipping area, and there I ask her if the restaurants are owned by the church.

“I have never seen a restaurant inside a church before,” I say. “Do you have to be Mormon to work there?”

She says she doesn’t know, and I try to keep my tone neutral rather than mocking, which is difficult.  I have been to the Vatican and seen the Sistine Chapel, which was full of tourists gawking at Michelangelo’s work.  But in Temple Square in Salt Lake City, I get more of a Disney World vibe.  Yes, the Mormons are spreading the word about their religion, but they are also dressing it up with gaudy decorations and teasing the public by closing their temple doors. 

The woman keeps reminding me that Mormons still accept Jesus Christ as their only savior.  I don’t know why she keeps insisting on this because I never express any doubt regarding her messiah, but I accept this as an odd habit of hers. 

“Many people think we worship Mormon, or the angel Moroni, who spoke to Joseph Smith,” she says and then goes on to explain the origins of the Book of Mormon.  She says that this angel visited earth and transcribed the word of God onto golden plates and then hid those plates in the mountains.  She is very confident that the angel visited several places in North America, and she expresses great excitement when mentioning the golden plates.

“Where are the plates now?” I ask.  “Do you have them stored in the temple?”

“We don’t know where they are,” she says, defeated.

 

She gives me a look that says, I know this is hard to believe, but you’ll just have to trust me on this.  But I don’t budge.  This is beginning to seem more and more like a fairy tale.  I am reminded of Christmas mornings as a child when I found an empty glass of milk and a plate of cookie crumbs.  The evidence is gone. 

“But we believe that families are eternal.  My husband passed away, and that’s a nice thing to believe in,” she says.

I agree that it is very comforting, and I genuinely feel sympathetic toward the woman.  I admire the Mormons for explaining their religion rather than pushing it onto people (with the exception of their mission trips).  Never once did she ask me if I was interested in joining the church.  She never handed me any pamphlets, and she was responsive to all of my questions.  Although I don’t believe what the Mormons believe, I am interested in their role in developing the American West.  Some trekked toward the Rocky Mountains to dig for gold.  Ranchers fenced in the prairies so their cattle could graze while others fled the East for an open land so they could feel closer to their god.  

Idaho

Once you get out of the gaudy tourist town of West Yellowstone and beyond the Targhee National Forest, you can drive 80 miles per hour in Idaho and still be legal.  Across the gas station in Island Park, flyfishermen flick their rods back and forth like novice wizards unable to cast spells from their wands.  The sun is dipping below the mountains, and the sky turns a different color every time I photograph it.  At first I can still see the light blue of the sky while the clouds turn from bright yellow to orange and finally to pink.  The horizon looks painted in flick-of-the-wrist stripes, and the golden hour seems to last longer than sixty minutes.  Prior to this night, my only association with Idaho is potatoes, but that’s only because I didn’t know I could see a beautiful sunset in Idaho.

Erin and I reach Idaho Falls after the sun finally sets.  I don’t have the GPS on because I don’t have a destination until we pass a glowing neon sign that says Scotty’s Hamburgers.  There is a large awning rimmed with pink light with a few cars parked underneath.  I stop the car and investigate.  At a picnic table under the awning a family of four is eating thin cheeseburgers and desperate-looking tater tots.  I consult Erin, and she says we should risk it.  This late at night, it is either this or Wendy’s.  I reason that this little joint is very appropriate for such far-away places like Idaho Falls.  

We open the glass door and walk up to the counter and order two burgers with fries and milkshakes.  American flags hang below the menu.  Pictures of classic cars cover the walls.  I’m glad we didn’t choose Wendy’s because we could have that experience anywhere.

Erin walks around outside to take pictures of the building while I wait for our food.  Two young men enter the restaurant.  They are wearing shorts, and one of the men is wearing a Colorado Rockies hat.  I think about asking them if they are from around here, and if they are what it is like to grow up in Idaho, but I decide to wait quietly instead.  At first I think to myself that people are born here on accident, and then they move somewhere else.  I grew up in a place like this.  Your hometown is out of your control, and if you don’t like it you complain until you have enough money to move somewhere you don’t complain about as much. 

Erin comes back inside and tells me she heard three gunshots nearby.  I tell her there is nothing to worry about.  It was probably somebody practicing on a target in his backyard.  I hear no sirens and nobody else seems to be panicking, so we sit outside despite the mild chill in the air.  The fries are salty, and I enjoy them even more because I know they are grown locally.  The burger is delicious, and for some reason I don’t mind the combination of jalapenos from my burger and huckleberries and chocolate from my milkshake.  I feel like a character from American Graffiti, with no plans but to drive around the town in search of a reason to stay.  I remember thinking that my hometown was lame because it never seemed to move beyond the height of the railroad years, but now being stuck in the past doesn’t seem like such a bad place to be.

 

The workers are taking out the trash and turning off the music and the lights, so we get back in the car and drive to the Walmart where I park far away from the store and next to an island with a tree.  We decide to sleep in the car for the night rather than waste money on a hotel.  We line the backseat with blankets and stuffed duffel bags and extra pillows on the floor to fill in the gap.  I use the side mirror to take out my contacts, and I brush my teeth and spit into the bushes. I crack open a window so we won’t suffocate from our own breath.

 

When I wake up seven hours later, my knees are stiff from remaining bent all night, but I walk off the pain inside the store.  I buy two raspberry yogurts and a breakfast sandwich from the Subway inside.  I wonder how long someone could live inside Walmart and the parking lot before being noticed.  Nobody bothered me during the night.  I saw an RV with its shades closed, and a van nearby that had curtains.  They are still there in the morning. 

After breakfast, I brush my teeth and spit into the bushes again.  My hair is ruffled from having slept in a car.  Two homeless people pass me and give me an understanding nod before finding a spot to hoist their cardboard sign that describes their situation in five words or less.

“They think I’m one of them,” I say to Erin, and we drive to downtown Idaho Falls before we can dwell on this too much.

 

Main Street is full of empty buildings and a movie theater playing films that were released a month ago in major cities.  We stop in an antique store with a brown carpet that reminds me of my grandma’s house, and then Erin browses through a few jewelry stores.  An older woman greets us and tells us everything is locally made.  The pieces she designed herself are offered at a discount.  Erin walks to the back of the store and the old woman follows her around and asks questions like where are we from and she says things like most people from Idaho Falls go to Yellowstone but not many come this way to Idaho Falls. 

“A Japanese lady came in the store last week and offered me twenty five dollars for a seventy five dollar piece,” the old woman says.  “I said that’s not how this works.  I’m willing to negotiate, but not like that.  But if you’re local, I’ll make you a deal.”

Erin peruses the store and fights against the guilt to buy something just to please the old woman.  I think the jewels are nice, but her pieces are too gaudy, the earrings too dangly and big.  Erin resists even the urge to buy something cheap from a bargain bin, and we thank the old woman and she tells us to enjoy our stay.

Idaho is the Gem State which accounts for all the stores selling prettified rocks that people somehow got into the habit of wearing on their fingers and faces.  And the reason they call the city Idaho Falls is because there’s a manmade dam on the Snake River that diverts the river laterally.  Inside the riverside park people are stretching in yoga poses as volunteers clean the place.  Erin buys a bag of kettle corn at the farmer’s market, and we walk across the lily pads of the Japanese garden until we’ve seen enough to decide we like this little town more than we expected to. 

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.