The Dark

I’ve started forgetting where I am sometimes.  A few times last night I woke up when the wind tilted the camper or the train came fog-horning by, and it took me a second to remember where I’d parked.  And then it happened once in the middle of the day – I had been doing some internet research, and all of a sudden I couldn’t recall where I was.  I was about to check the blog when I remembered I was by the Bear River.  I guess this tendency should bother me, but it doesn’t.  It’s like going someplace new, and then getting to go there again.  It reminds me of a joke some people tell about Alzheimer’s: welcome to senility.  Have fun hiding Easter eggs for yourself.

Really, it’s not all bad.

Tonight I drove twenty or thirty miles through the salt flats under the stars.  The dirt road rarely turned and the view didn’t change, no matter how many miles I covered.  Dark brown dirt road, lightly graveled and slightly washboarded.  Tall tan grass and sagebrush by the roadsides.  No moon.  Rabbits running across the road, barely missing the tires.  Stars spread across the sky like shotgun dimples in a road sign; stars clustered into the Milky Way like the center of the blast.  My tires kept rolling over gravel but the view remained unaltered.  It was like driving in a video game with bad graphics.  But it was a nice view.  There was no need for alteration.

At length Duke and I arrived at Locomotive Springs.  At least I think we did; it’s hard to tell because I haven’t seen a sign.  But I parked the truck not far from a pond-sized body of water surrounded by rocks and tall grass.  I shut off the truck, strapped on my headlamp, picked up my writing pad and walked down near the water.  The air smelled like salt, and I wondered if I’d found a salt spring.  That would mean I wasn't at Locomotive Springs, where many early pioneers came for drinking water.  I sat down on a rocky knoll a few yards from the water’s edge.

I turned off my headlamp.    I could feel the rocks underneath me, cold through my canvas pants.  The air was still.  Out in the pond I could her little plips – small pops in the water, like rainwater dripping into a bucket from a leaky roof.  One every few seconds.  Then a splash, but I wasn’t sure it was a fish – it sounded more like a plunk than a ker-splash, as though something had entered the water without first arising from it.  Maybe a turtle sliding into the pond.  It was hard to hear much over Duke, who was noisily exploring the water’s edge, stepping in the gravel, sniffing and snorting.  I called him to me.

He came excitedly, his tail wagging so hard that it almost touched his hips when he swung it.  He buried his face in my jacket.  I petted him softly and methodically, hoping to calm him, then rested my hands on my notepad where I had been writing.  Duke pulled his head from my jacket, collar tags jingling, and nosed my hands for more petting.  Duke has no reverence for nature.  I guess he figures he’s part of it, or doesn’t figure at all.  Either way, he could have it right.  He kept nosing my hands.  The night was too peaceful not to relent.  I petted his back.

There was a big splash out in the lake.  This time it was the ker-splash of a fish striking topwater.  Duke heard it too, and we both stared into the darkness.  Fish in the pond meant fresh water, because the Great Salt Lake is too saline to support them.  I kept my hand still on Duke’s back.  The small plippings continued after the sound of the splash faded, and this time Duke noticed them.  He sat with his neck stiff and ears perked, turning toward the plipping sounds when they were close.  Neither of us moved.  I wasn't the only one who doesn’t recognize these sounds.  In Georgia, we might have heard bullfrogs; in a swamp, we might have heard methane bubbles.  But I didn’t know what this was.  Crawfish, maybe?  Some other crustacean?  There was another ker-splash, unmistakably a fish.  Maybe the plips were minnows, feeding on the remnants of some fly hatch, and inducing larger fish to strike the surface.  I didn’t know.

And that, I realized, is why I came west.  To not know things.  And it’s why I like guessing at Walker’s route – because no one knows where he went, and no one can know for certain.  It’s why Zenas Leonard and most of the mountain men headed for the Rockies.  Exploring the unknown.  Americans think of themselves as vanguards, innovators, trailblazers.  That’s why mountain men matter to us.  They’re the historical vessel to which we entrust our trailblazing identity.