South!

I-15, Levan, Brian’s Head, Panguitch, UT

 

Finally! Finally, they were going somewhere. South, to the desert! Lee was driving, bobbing his head with a smile while the music poured through the speakers. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this excited. Becca sat next to him, sunglasses on, smiling in a way he hadn’t seen in years. Away. They were finally away. They had visited all their family and were now going. Going. Going. Gone.

They had a day and a half to camp around Zion before they would need to clean up and shower for the wedding Saturday night, that is . . . if the volcano didn’t go off, of course.

The Yellowstone caldera had been upgraded from yellow to orange. Orange! Orange, i.e., the volcano was “exhibiting heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption, time frame uncertain, OR eruption is underway with no or minor volcanic ash emissions.”

Who knew what was going to happen after the wedding. But for now, they were here! Driving! With endless road and horizon and desert landscape. Lee felt as he always did whenever he made it this far out and began to lapse into his former travelling self. How could he go back to society? With its confines and pressures and rigidity?

As Lee drove alongside the sage and lavender, the canyons and mountains, the dry yellow grass, he thought of Utah as it existed before it had been “settled.” When members of the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, and Navajo tribes had called it home and wandered freely around the open land, everyone’s land, before it was claimed by the followers of Brigham Young and the LDS Church and then, of course, by the federal government of the United States of America. Utah itself named after the Ute Indian tribe.

The U.S. government had persecuted the Mormons, driving them from their original home in Missouri, and though the followers of Joseph Smith had gone as far as Utah (arguably the middle of nowhere in the West at the time), the government only granted statehood to Utah once the church had received a prophetic revelation that it was no longer to practice polygamy, and promised that it was done with all that. And hence, the state of Utah and the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began.

In some ways Lee almost felt bad for the Mormons. After all, the followers of Joseph Smith had gone as far away from civilization as they could at the time and merely wanted to live out their religion in peace. But the government had refused them this basic right. What if they had been able to create the State of Deseret as they had proposed to the U.S. government in 1849? The Zion, or Utopia, LDS members had envisioned stretching from the Southwestern region up through Idaho? A state where virtually no alcohol or coffee existed, and the Mormon religion was equal to that of the state? No, it would have never been allowed. Just like the U.S. had claimed the same Indian territory for itself, neither would it grant authority to the followers of Joseph Smith.

Lee took a sip of coffee and passed the exit for Spanish Fork canyon. White windmills in the distance. Almost two years ago, it seemed like decades ago now, when he and Becca had first started dating, they traversed the United States together for three weeks, hitchhiking and taking trains. Old-school. They wanted to be nomads, survivalists. Anarcho-primitivists. Those who lived off the land through their own sweat—unchained to employers, governments, and corporations. They’d both tried to live in direct opposition to whatever modern-technological-religious life seemed to demand from them. Lee decided he was done being a good Mormon. He’d skipped his mission, but he’d married Mandy as a sort of compromise. Lee knew deep-down he would have grown tired of the lifestyle—years on the road touring with bands or by himself. He could feel the desire for stability and perhaps, even a home and a family, start to take place.

Becca turned on Harry Potter on audiobook, but Lee could not concentrate. His mind drifted and throbbed with anxiety.

He popped another piece of nicotine gum in his mouth. One of several addictions he was trying to quit. Lee had a theory that soon the world would be divided into two camps—those addicted and going to the likes of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex Anonymous, Love Anonymous, TV Anonymous, Shopping Anonymous, and those who were simply in denial or crazed with power. Wasn’t this at least one end result of our wonderful, capitalist civilization? The end result of our coping mechanisms to function in society? How could it not be?

Lee himself, while no longer constantly drinking and smoking, still had a minor addiction to pornography. Not any of the weird stuff, but he liked to see some boobs every now and then and occasionally some sex gifs. He had been raised on Internet pornography, after all, his first glimpse of porn accidentally viewed through an unrelated Google Image search when he was ten. And so, before he’d even kissed a girl or held hands with her, he’d already seen blowjobs, hand jobs, graphic intercourse, and even hardcore anal sex, over a dozen times, all on a computer/phone screen. He had a hard time feeling attracted to any woman that wasn’t airbrushed or Instagram posed. Lee didn’t like what this said about society or him, but he saw no realistic alternative to such an increase and availability of technology—especially now with VR experiences on the rise. Our brains were literally being rewired by technology and social media.

Funny enough, Utah’s legislature had deemed pornography a “health hazard,” and while Lee and many others in the environmental community thought the label foolish if not downright ignorant—especially compared with the air quality health hazard of Utah, one of the worst in the nation, literally causing health problems and asthma all over the state—Lee couldn’t help but think that all the easy access to visual sex wasn’t very good for humanity either. Especially, prepubescent teenage boys and girls. But who knew. There were threats everywhere now. Environmental threats. Terrorist threats. Technological reshaping’s of ones very being.

But no matter, Lee thought, for now, they were here! Be gone, you devilish thoughts! You depressing narrator of your own inner consciousness and self-awareness! You shall not pass into my mind!

Lee covered miles of asphalt past green mile markers. Ratcheting the miles down from the green and white mileage signs:

220. 181. 142.

Becca and Lee flew past lavender farms and small towns with names they couldn’t remember. The population grew smaller and smaller, the earth grew redder. Coffee coursed through their bodies. Banana peels and muffin wrappers littered the car floor in front of them. The sun, yes the sun! shone strong and bright. They were leaving the dark haze of fire and smog behind!

Everything would be all right, Lee thought, with a change of mind and heart. It had to be; it must be!

Soon they would set up their tent, a brand-new, three-person Mountain Hardware tent that was above and beyond what they needed for the sure-to-be-mild two-night stay, but new and shiny, with that fresh, new-tent smell. The tent was a gift given to them for their wedding (marriage did have some perks, after all). The stars would be out. Lee always slept like a rock while camping, neither of them had much trouble with it. Their former travelling days had made them absolutely comfortable with even the sparsest of conditions. And here they would have sleeping bags, pillows, and a new tent. Wasn’t life fantastic!

 

They made a quick pit stop near Levan looking for a bathroom for Becca. The name “Levan” supposedly was an anagram for “Navel,” as the town was in the exact center of the state of Utah, and Lee wondered if it had any sort of meaning in a backwards, Twin Peaks-ish way. The town was small and had an eerie feeling. Lee wondered whether it actually meant something, as if entering through Levan they had also entered a sort of time portal through which their future would be reversed or altered, inexplicably. One future: a future of violence and ecological disaster and downward regression; the other, a future of peace and sustainability and progress. Was such a thing possible? Two futures. Two universes. Which one would we meet?

God, Lee thought, shaking his head, he needed another coffee.

As he pulled next to the gas pump, he looked in the rearview mirror to Analise, awake but barely, and then over to Becca.

“Do you want to go in first?” asked Lee to Becca. “I can stay with her.”

“Sure,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening the side door, slipping her mask on over her head.

Lee sat in the car waiting, listening to NPR, scrolling through the news feed on his phone. A man pulled up next to him in a grey truck with a Don’t Tread on Me sticker adorning the rear window. The driver put the car in park and looked over briefly at Lee, who was in the driver’s seat. Lee saw the face of a tall, burly man with an army-green bandana tied around his head. He had an equally black and tangled beard, mangy and wild, like the man’s eyes. The two exchanged the briefest of glances before they each looked away.

Lee felt embarrassed for some reason. Perhaps to be seen in a yuppie Subaru with a baby in the back and visible pink clothing through the tinted windows made him feel inferior paired next to this rugged mountain man.

But why and who cares, he thought. Fuck him. Fuck this toxic masculinity thinking. Why do I care for the briefest second what this random man thinks about me?

Lee went back to listening to the radio. No, there was something else that bothered Lee about him . . . but at that moment Becca walked out, bottle of Kombucha in hand, and Lee lost his train of thought and proceeded to get out of the car and walk into the gas station, forgetting his mask, then returning for it as soon as he realized his mistake.

He went to the restroom first, grabbed some strawberry milk (a guilty pleasure of his), and then looked around for some coffee. He had to have some, no matter how terrible it would inevitably be and expensive, $3 now for terrible gas station coffee (he remembered the twitchy and impassioned barista’s comment and wondered if that also trickled down to places like these). He found a gigantic vat and a sixteen-ounce paper cup, and pulled down the handle of the over-roasted, oily, and putrid smelling coffee to fill his cup. He turned around in a hurry and nearly bumped into the red and brown flannel of the tall man with the black beard and the green bandana. The two looked at each other again, longer this time, three times the first, before he nodded at Lee and also went to grab a paper cup for which to fill coffee. In his other hand was a twelve-pack of Budweiser.

Lee walked up to the counter to pay. He reached for his wallet in his back-left pocket.

“That be all?” the cashier asked.

“Yes.”

She typed into the register.

The man was now behind Lee.

“Oh! Actually, could I get some American Spirits, black?”

“Sure thing, sweetie.”

Lee pulled out his debit card, swiped it, and entered his pin.

“Need a receipt?”

“No thanks.”

Lee grabbed the pack of smokes and his coffee and walked out of the gas station, still feeling for some reason, unnerved. He opened the passenger door, for Becca was now in the driver’s seat and sat down.

“Smoking again?” asked Becca.

“Huh?”

“You just bought cigarettes; you haven’t bought cigarettes in over a year.”

“Camping,” responded Lee with a shrug. At that moment, the man with the green bandana walked out of the gas station. Lee didn’t want to stare directly at the man, but he also didn’t want to look away, and so he turned to Becca and said, “You’re so pretty.” It was shameful, Lee thought, to say such a thing under such a circumstance, to hide a compliment under cowardice, but it worked.

“Oh, thanks honey!” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” said Lee, his eyes now disoriented as to where he should look. “That guy in there gave me a strange feeling.”

Becca shrugged and put the car in reverse. Lee stared out the window.

He knew the man, Lee thought. That’s what it was. He recognized him from somewhere else. And perhaps the man had even recognized him, but Lee felt, or knew, that the man was also unsure of whether he knew Lee. How did he know this man? And why did it unnerve him so? He was middle-aged and white, and Lee was dark brown, so there was that. Growing up in Utah with a bunch of white John Smiths, Lee had always been acutely aware of this difference and slightly on edge about older, possibly deranged white men most likely carrying firearms.

Lee felt a sense of dislike toward the man. Yet it softened as he thought about many members of his family. Proud, working-class white men who were now unemployed and struggled to find work in the rural areas they refused to leave. Lee hadn’t seen many of them in over a decade. They were the type of men, Lee assumed, who blamed universal health care and minorities and the rejection of God from schools as contributing to the decline of America.

Yet Lee felt bad for this gross, blanket assumption. Most of his family were not racist or hardcore Mormon fundamentalists; many of them were just hard-working white people after all who felt their place in the country slipping away. But still, did that excuse some of their casual bigotry and callousness? Lee was conflicted about this man in the gas station, now suddenly a stand-in for an entire group of people. He felt empathy for the man. Yet this man also fit the profile of the type that was likely to be on the news the next morning, as the perpetrator of a random, mass shooting perhaps, or his own suicide. Followed by a media circus of people trying to dole out who or what to blame. Mental health? Gun control? Liberals? Conservatives? America had a convenient history of forgetting about its own U.S.A.-born-and-bred white terrorists. For some reason, always men. Always white.

Lee thought about “America” itself as they drove in the dark toward the campground. A sprawling, large mess of a country known for its rugged individualism, individual liberties, can-do attitude, and adoration of firearms. The same qualities that perhaps, paradoxically, were ill suited to fit the modern world—where isolation, alienation, technology, and the monotonous machinery of the everyday 9-to-5 life replaced one’s sense of connectivity to others—and therefore led to random, daily explosions of violence.

This violence was in the blood of America itself, its very roots. Brought to this unnamed mass of land once claimed by so-called “American” Indians or Native “Americans” by Europeans who named the land “America” and got straight to work kicking out its inhabitants with loads of paperwork and flags. Tilling this new utopian land with black slaves from Africa. And simultaneously, paradoxically, hypocritically setting up perhaps the greatest democracy that’s ever existed in the history of humanity. A democracy built on blood and class and race and inequality is never a true democracy, though, and to Lee it seemed as if this country named “America” and the incredible freedom and democracy it brought, was about to run its course.

Lee thought about such things as he slurped down the strawberry milk. Becca, with her beautiful, sunburnt-strawberry-blonde mountain-hair next to him, their headlights piercing the darkness of the wandering road ahead. A darkness creeped over him, swallowing the banter and previous connection with Becca he felt earlier in the afternoon.

He needed to tell her. Tonight. He would tell her tonight.

They travelled only an hour or so farther until they needed to stop again in Scipio to change Analise, where there just happened to be a random petting farm attached to a gas station and convenience store.

Lee got out of the passenger side door, popped the gas tank, slid his card at the pump, typed in his zip code, and began fueling. The hybrid model ensured that this was only their second stop at a gas station for the entire trip. Becca climbed into the back of the car to breastfeed Analise.

Lee washed the windows while he waited for the gas to finish and afterward joined Becca and Analise at the petting farm. Analise didn’t seem to care very much for the animals until she locked eyes with a sheep and gave a small smile.

Lee put his mask on and walked inside the gas station to use the bathroom, making his way through aisles of packaged food. Past soda bottles, shiny bags of chips, and many-colored assortments and sizes of candy bars. Past trail mix. Cheap beer. Beef jerky. Gum. Energy drinks. Donuts. Cigarettes. Sunglasses. Refrigerated sandwiches made god knows when.

Lee remembered when he had eaten a roast beef sandwich once from a Chevron just like this in the town of Price on the way to the Goblin Valley and gotten sick. He should’ve spotted the way the roast beef had a greenish-bluish tint, like fish scales, but he hadn’t, and so he spent the rest of the night puking and shitting his guts out from food poisoning. He got over it quickly because he drank a fair amount of whiskey and the whiskey mixed with the food poisoning sped the whole process up.

They kept driving.

“Fishlake National forest is over there to the left,” he said to Becca. “I’ve never been, but supposedly there is a national forest there home to the largest aspen grove in the world.”

They passed I-70, basically where I-70 dead-ended into I-15 in the most desolate stretch of interstate in the United States.

A somewhat large brush fire caused them to take a detour from I-15. Utah had stayed relatively free of the fires currently devastating California and Colorado and even parts of Nevada and Arizona, but not so much anymore. This was the third major fire in a week. Soon there would be little vegetation left in the West, it seemed. So, they turned off the interstate at Parowan, toward Brian Head. After stopping at Wendy’s for a bathroom break and a quick bite to eat, they turned onto Highway 143 and continued driving. Normally, they would have turned off I-15 in Cedar City, or even farther down toward Toquerville, where deposits of red and brown earth layered the bluff above the town. But there was the fire. And yet it worked out since Lee knew they could camp in the Dixie National Forest just outside the park.

The sun was setting and lit the area with even more colors of red, gold, and yellow, saturating everything—from the silver clouds to the green oak trees and white concrete buildings—with its angelic hue. They would camp and spend the night in Dixie National Forest before entering Zion in the morning, he decided.

They wound up the steep mountainside toward Brian Head, a ski resort town at the top of the pass. A fire had decimated thousands of acres around Brian Head in late June of a previous summer. The trees here still looked like spindly twigs made of charcoal. The entire area felt sparse and ominous. You could see for miles through the forest, the mountains now devoid of branches and any flora or fauna. The ground black and brown. New grass barely peaked through the ashy sediment. Flash floods, with no undergrowth or vegetation to slow their speed, now cascaded down the hills on a regular basis.

The fire became a particular point of contention between many Utahans—some blaming environmentalists and their anti-logging rhetoric for clogging up the forest with ready-to-burn trees, which could have been avoided with some minor logging, while the environmentalists blamed beetle kill and climate change. The pointing of fingers commenced. And like many issues, no one conceded a both/and situation, thought Lee. Like, perhaps it was climate change, beetle kill, and lack of logging. No. Everyone took a side and hunkered down in their perspective bunkers, lobbing grenades to the other side across a no man’s land of thought, reason, and decency. It was, unfortunately, the American Way.

“You doing okay?” Becca asked Lee.

“Yep. Feel good,” Lee said, smiling at her. “I think I’m getting to that trance-like lucid state that occurs once you’ve been driving for a few hours.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s a good thing. My mind empties on the road after a while. I become hypnotized by nothing but asphalt and scenery. Almost like I’m on mushrooms or LSD.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Yes, I think of nothing but the present. Allow my mind to wander some, but otherwise, it’s like my mind frees up space while I’m driving.”

“I know what you mean,” Becca said, smiling.

Night, and the blackness it brought, was coming fast, but in just enough time they pulled into the parking lot of an overlook of Cedar Breaks National Monument. They pulled over and got out of the car; Lee could tell Analise needed a break from her car seat as well, squirming, writhing, crying, laughing, her eyes showed every emotion with utter clarity.

They were able to see a small, but spectacular, vista of crumbling sandstone hoodoos low-lit by dark-green pines in the mountains beyond. Pillars and jagged edges of rock stuck out of the earth like a coral reef. Layers of white, red, and orange, stratified down the slope and interspersed with sharp ridges and smooth slopes of beige dirt and sand.

Becca held her hand out to Lee, which he took and squeezed tightly. The air was much cooler here than down below by the interstate, and as a cold gust whipped at them, Analise began to cry. Lee brought the two of them in close and kissed Becca firmly on her lips and Analise softly on her head.

They turned around, got back into the car, and continued driving.

Lee switched from music to NPR and waited to hear for any more news about the geological fissures occurring up north.

“What do you think?” Lee said to Becca while they drove. “About this volcano? Do you really think it could happen? What would we do?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Becca took a long pause before continuing. “It’d be crazy, I guess.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t there also supposed to be a fault line running through Salt Lake that’s also overdue though?”

“I think so. Just below the mountains on Foothill, I think, up by U. Basically right where my parents live.”

“I think that seems more likely, don’t you?”

“An earthquake? Yeah, I guess it would be.”

“I mean, it makes more sense if we’re already overdue, whereas this Supervolcano is one chance in a million.”

“It’s actually one in seven hundred thousand,” said Lee with a smart look on his face. And then felt bad, as if was suddenly mansplaining to her.

“Well,” said Becca, in an effort he knew was to prove to him that she was not an idiot, “did you read that New Yorker article? About the tsunami that’s essentially supposed to wipe out Portland and Seattle?”

“Oh, yes, I think I heard about it.”

“I told you about it.”

“Oh, right.”

“Now that seems even crazier and more destructive than Yellowstone and much more likely to happen.”

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Both would be horrific disasters, obviously. One would wipe out the Northwest and the other the Rocky Mountains, but I think because of the nature of the volcano, and its effect on the atmosphere, that the volcano would cause some kind of damage to at least half the Western Hemisphere, if not the entire world, and I mean, I guess this sounds callous, which I don’t mean for it to, as if I’m arguing for the bigger disaster, but I think the earthquake or tsunami wouldn’t affect as many people.”

“It would affect thousands of people, Lee!” She said this in what he knew was not an argumentative or diminishing way but with a banter-like gleam in her eye. “You can’t really think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.”

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’m just saying the Supervolcano would be a bigger deal. But okay, back to my original question . . .”

“What? What do I think about the Supervolcano?”

“Yes. Well, I think we’ll be prepared for it with everything you’ve been collecting,” she smiled coyly.

Lee smiled back with an embarrassed flair to his face.

“I mean, it sounds terrible, but I kind of like thinking about what would happen if a Supervolcano or a tsunami actually happened. And, this is really horrible, but it sounds exciting, like it would give us some excitement in our lives. You know what I mean?”

“Yes!” Lee’s could feel his heart rate increase with excitement as they talked. “I often think that one reason we’re so bored and addicted and lazy in America is because all we have to live for is the status quo, our comfort and entertainment. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, we’re all kind of empty and just existing, fooled into thinking one day we’ll all be rich and famous, constantly measuring ourselves against others. Whereas, if there really were some sort of zombie apocalypse or natural disaster, every moment would count. Your life would suddenly be full of purpose and meaning, even if that only meaning was survival. You would have a single, visceral purpose should a volcano explode. I mean, from a philosophical point of view, what good is it if you work your way from poor to rich, lacking to content, failure to success, even from unhappy to happy, only to find that it’s all empty? What good is it to be happy if there’s no meaning to your happiness? Happiness then becomes ignorance.”

“Yes, that’s true. I know what you mean. I think it’s hard to come up with a sense of purpose and meaning and motivation on your own, when it’s not forced upon you like it is with a war or a natural disaster. In a sense, those things bring out the best in us because they rid us of our complacency and laziness and infighting.”

“Exactly! It’s like the end of Watchmen. Humanity is only brought together when we have to band together to face a disaster bigger than ourselves.”

“Yes. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve read that, but I don’t know . . . in response to your question, I’d be fine with it,” said Becca.

“With what?”

“The world ending.”

Lee smiled at her.

“You know, though, it’s strange. What if that saying is true, what if the world doesn’t end in a bang, but a whimper? What if the end of the world is actually quite monotonous? Would you really want the world to end then, Lee?”

Lee didn’t answer.

It was dark now as they drove the serpentine road down the mountain pass to Duck Creek Village and their destination of Duck Creek Campground. Both Lee and Becca were not used to actual “campground” camping. They preferred setting up in BLM land and making their own dispersed campsite miles away from anyone else, but they were running out of the time required to drive the back roads of the National Forest to find such a unique destination.