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Flailing elbows, black eyes, and the art of driving low clearance vans down crappy dirt roads

And we're back on the road! The trip's started with a bang, and has been packed full of adventures on both granite slabs and limestone roofs. I feel significantly stronger than last trip in Victoria Canyon, and was able to put down two projects that got away due to scrawny forearms last summer. I've gotten to catch up with some old friends (and inadvertently gave one a nasty shiner due to chicken-winging out of a big ol' dyno), and have already had the privilege of meeting a plethora of new people in the ever-magical Black Hills. There are countless more routes here I haven't yet touched, and I plan to hop on as many as possible in the next week before pointing Plastic Jesus west towards Lander and some unfinished mono-filled business. But till then, here's a little something something to show I can still do some writing (a little bit, at least)-

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Jesse never considered himself one for wonder. His world was one grounded in practicalities, cause and effect- the dirt under his nails, tan across his shoulders, his joy in the watery dizziness of Friday nights on the ratty couch of his friend’s basement. Beauty, he believed, could wait until a fence had been constructed across the next surly roll of hills, a fresh paycheck rolled in, or the source of that mysterious clicking noise under the hood of his rusted Ford pickup had been determined. As clouds painted in the abstract above his hunched and sweating shoulders, he glanced over them only for signs of rain and hints of thunder, then diverted his attention again to the labor at his fingertips. He knew his parents took some measure of pride in such a mindset, as he labored incessantly towards manhood in both the fields spilling forth from their sagging white front porch, and his carefully measured personality, but he also sensed them searching for something more within him, some drive towards the beauteous and arbitrary, the impossible and common. The feeling, he imagined, that drove pompous urban motherfuckers towards flowery designs in the cream of their overpriced lattes, and the putrid sweet smell of warm scented sheets. Jesse’s world had no room for glossy-eyed gazing towards vistas, nor the countless brush strokes of long dead artists. His future, as far as he considered it, involved cups of industrial coffee nursed over the ageless floral tablecloths of the local diner, while conversations hovered safely in the arenas of crop yields and the absurdity of federal farming regulations, his now proud shock of a red beard slowly gaining streaks of grey with each slice of homemade rhubarb pie. As Garth Brooks crooned of unrequited love through an ancient radio, he would till the endless fields his grandpa had left to his father had left to him, until the chain of succession could be overtaken by some freckled future progeny, born with hoe in hand and straw grasped firmly between teeth. A future he woke each day to plant, study, and dig towards, under an anonymous South Dakotan sun.
Though willfully lacking in wonder, Jesse maintained the steadfast reserve of pride expected of a boy’s late teenage years, and reinforced by constant influx of fiery hormones and excited chemical signals. After enough biting mouthfuls of lukewarm and questionably obtained alcohol had been shared amongst his friends to make the liquid begin to go down with the smoothness of bitter water on a sweltering day, Jesse would be the first to jump off the graffitied highway bridge into dark waters of a local swimming hole, or lead the convoy of growling and swerving trucks intent only on undermining the self-righteous authority of glinting white speed limit signs. Perhaps he was proud, on some subconscious level, that these experiences in the world failed to change him. He fancied his personality as a smooth and immovable stone against the waters of experience and adventure, as his friends allowed their own to be buffeted by each and every occurrence diverging from the ordinary. Perhaps nothing, then, was more annoying and ridiculous to Jesse than so-called “life-changing” experiences. If life was meant to be changed, he reasoned, then it should damn well be due to his own impetus and decision, not some cliched event or journey. In his inconvertible opinion, it was as if he fought a daily war against change within his own psyche, and was determined to, in the face of any meaningful and significant challenge, emerge unchanged and victorious.
Looking back, it may have been the case that his first true foray into the wild National Forest land beyond the reaches of his family’s rolling green fields found its causation in skepticism and challenge. After two friends returned from a weekend of camping there, and refused to quit descriptions of magical night skies dotted with stars, and wind blowing with the unmistakeable scents of sage and lavender, Jesse was overcome with a familiar urge to fight tooth and nail against the impossible and endlessly annoying magic of untamed nature. He set out, six pack of Busche Lite in hand, to prove that the swaying and whispering pines were but building blocks for future homes, and the singing of rivers only useful when they led tamely past fertile farmland. He pointed his truck down the old logging road which led to a swaying dark wall of forest, dodging ruts and mud-filled potholes while blowing roiling smoke from the hand-rolled cigarette in his left hand into the still and sweet afternoon air outside. Passing the extent of the logging which had taken place, marked by a large pile of trees lying on their sides with the aura of fallen soldiers, he parked the pickup in a softly sighing meadow before the road ahead devolved into a catastrophe of unnavigable stones and roots. Stepping from the vehicle, and leaving it unlocked in an open challenge to any vagrant intent on messing with his property, Jesse began the walk under swaying wooden giants towards a destination unknown. He figured, after all, he couldn’t help but know when he found what he wasn’t looking for.
The hike was not particularly arduous, especially for one accustomed to the labors of farm and field. The trees sifted sunlight into pleasant lukewarm shafts, stroking the forest floor and the sides of Jesse’s face with the satisfaction of cosmic travelers reaching a long-awaited destination. The smoke from a second cigarette mixed with the faint haze of pollen gracing the the air as he walked, and he scanned the view to each side carefully as he walked, simultaneously on the lookout for both the weak beauty his friends had encountered there, and any unknown dangers lurking behind silent trunks. Now and again he would slow and stoop to pick up a particularly eye-catching stone from the ground, ones of notable sheen and luster that he knew his mother would appreciate gracing her bedside table. He smiled in remembrance of her vaguely flustered warnings of rattlesnakes and wildcats, sudden cliffs and thunderstorms. To her, this hike was no less of a commitment than Odysseus had made before departing across the Mediterranean, and she had no plans in the way of playing the role of Anticlea to her own son. He had thought at one point that such fears for his safety would disappear upon reaching the age of eighteen, but had since learned to accept the role of his Mother’s second heart, beating outside and far from her body, but no less vital than the one circulating blood within. Dutifully, he watched each step with a measure of extra caution, and kept an eye peeled to the dangers which never ended up lurking around each corner.
Upon reaching the overlook, Jesse immediately knew it was the prime place for an epiphany of life-changing proportions to take place. The steep, streaked limestone yawned below him, and snaked in a narrow canyon below and to his right until the clear and rumbling stream to which its formation could be credited disappeared around a narrow bend. The vista could, by some, be described only as breathtaking, a forbidden view into one of the secret folds of the Earth. Though the idea was discredited by the presence of the very trail that brought visitors to the overlook, one could squint and imagine with surprising ease being the first to push past a copse of matted bushes and discover the wonderful chasm beyond. To Jesse’s satisfaction, however, the view did not lend itself to realizations nor jaw dropping beauty. To him, the most exciting aspect of the trail’s end came in the form of a flat rock perfect to drape his sweating form upon, and begin the vaguely ritualistic and practiced consumption of the cheap beers dangling from his tanned and scarred right hand. It wasn’t long before the view before him completely failed in its mission to hold his attention, even with the beginnings of a fiery orange sunset, and his mind wandered to other areas of greater importance. With the crushing of his second can, he began to plan a design for the cabin he would someday build on the tallest hill of his property, and by the fourth he allowed himself to imagine what incredible secrets Jane Addlewood hid under her thin sunflower blouse. With the fifth he mourned the imminent consumption of the sixth, and midway through the sixth he found his mind stuck between the worn-out and repetitive territory of cabins, crop yields, and the mysteries of the female body. So with slightly unsteady gaze, he looked towards the ground cast orange beneath a fiery sky, and began to watch the ants which scurried there. He watched them out of boredom, but also with some measure of shaky interest lent by the liquid now pressing against the interior of his abdomen. He watched them explore, the ground beyond each fallen twig new territory, and the stream just a quarter mile away all but an alien world. He reflected that, from the perspective of the creatures he now observed, he had walked across countless worlds, innumerable struggles, and infinite lifetimes in the course of that warm afternoon. The cans he had dropped across the packed dirt over which they scurried, he realized, could perhaps be the most incredible things which had ever graced their minuscule lives. How could a creature so natural ever reconcile or understand an object so foreign, so alien? In a rare moment of self-conscious embarrassment, Jesse knelt to collect the shining trash he had scattered, and began the darkening walk back to his waiting truck.
In the aftermath of the hike, he behaved much as he had expected, or perhaps planned. The experiences of his friends were playfully belittled with his patent realism, and life went on as usual. Work remained hard but rewarding, and weekends were reserved for celebrations over the conclusion of the labor which was to resume in just a couple short days. They drove, the drank, they smoked, they talked, and every once and awhile one would emerge from a parked car in an isolated clearing of the woods with ruffled hair, red cheeks, and an embarrassed smile. Jesse, in his usual fashion, refused any outward change, but couldn’t quite shake a feeling, or perhaps an idea. Every now and again, when the sky looked as if it was holding its breath to take on a shade of impossible blue, he imagined a giant, who thought of humans as he did ants, yawning in immortal exhaustion for billions of years over their planet with a tongue colored bright blue, until the conclusion of such necessary bodily function snapped up civilization into a bite size snack. And on the clearest of nights, he wondered if stars could be the lights of a distant city, silently surrounding their minuscule planet with inky highways and towers unseen by human eyes. And he wondered, in his bed on the verge of sleep, what a 500 foot tall beer can would look like if it fell one day outside his newly white-washed porch, there to stay by some impossible coincidence, or beautiful mystery.

Comments

  1. Wow! Ever think of publishing beyond your blog? I’ve always thought you a fantastic writer!

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