Saturday, January 21st, 2012
Today has been a good day. I didn't have to use my A-K, so I'm not wasting money on ammo. For the whole lot of nothing between Sparks and Salt Lake City, there was plenty to see, and a lot to be experienced. For a moment, I caught myself being bored, much to my dismay. More appropriately, due to lack of imagination and wonder. We are so full of both when we are young, and as we age it often becomes easy to lose that vital faculty. Just like any other muscle, it needs to be exercised, lest it atrophy, leading us to rely on external devices to tell us stories, like TV, the internet or radio.
At one point this morning, just before I left, it started to snow. It was one of those wet heavy snows you get when the temperature is just above freezing, but not by that much. I got a bit discouraged for a moment, thinking that I could have left yesterday and beat the storm. Then reality struck. You don't ever beat storms, you just get ahead of them for a little while, then they sneak up on you when you are sleeping. So I felt better about starting the day, despite the weather. It cleared up quickly and became rather windy, but that passed as well. Enough of this weather business. I'm not a meteorologist. (I love lamp.)
I've decided that when you live way out in the middle of nowhere, like northern Nevada, you have to make your own fun. Evidence of this has been presented to me on a few occasions today. For lunch break, I stopped at Battle Mountain. Not a big place, but it is “the base camp for Nevada's Outback,” so they'd have you think. The Flying J was small and a bit dumpy, but they had fuel and hot water, so who's to complain? I asked one of the clerks what Battle took place for the town to be named battle mountain. She looked at me a bit dumbstruck and admitted ignorance, which is all fine and good. Driving along, I noticed that they had put their town's initials on a hill in white rock, like so many other small town in the West with identity issues. “BM.” I giggled. Then I laughed some more when I realized where I was. I could say that I ate a big lunch at BM, NV. Maybe I should have had more fiber.
Further down the road, there is a tunnel. For starters, that alone is cool. Tunnels always make the drive more fun. On the East side of the tunnel, a series of hoodoos and goblins decorated the north side of the road for a few miles. I spent probably more time than I should have looking at the wind carved caves high up in the rocks.
Still further down the road, I got another laugh. Not that the ride is all laughs. Most of it was just enjoying the wide open beauty mixed with snow and wetness. Coupled with some speculation that when we stop using the roads (and salting them in winter) that roadsides are going to be nice little pockets of extra moisture for salt-hardy plants to develop and become a green strip along Nevada's shrub steppe. Then at exit 333 I saw the sign. “Deeth Starr Valley.” I turned off my targeting computer and just gave it a miss entirely. The next exit down? “Welcome Starr Valley.” So I suppose it is better to go east than west. Sounds like a trap going west.. welcome then deeth? no thanks.
Cresting the hill just before the Utah border, one happens upon a picturesque scene. Large flats splay across your field of vision, flanked by rolling rocky hills. Since it has been raining, these flats are now graced by thin pools of shimmering water, which somehow shimmer in the overcast light. Heading into Utah proper, one sees more black volcanic stones arranged into shapes or words on the white mud/sand. As far as shaped go, there were plenty of hearts with initials, a few peace signs, a couple of Mercedes logos, some names, and not too surprisingly, a couple of penises (stylized of course). Aside from the rocks though, the real beauty was in the water. Most of it is brackish or even hyper-saline to be sure, but I did see some Canada geese swimming and feeding in a couple pools by the border.
The land is flat for 40 miles. I find this awe-inspiring, driving on the bottom of a formerly massive lake, now shrunk to a pittance of its original size. Other people seem to take another view. It is a big fun toy. I'm guessing this because there are all sorts of tire tracks coming off the road and into the flats. Some are shallow impressions, made when the land was a lot drier. A few look like some people went in with mud tires and powered their way out. One was a massive rut, a few feet deep, in which the driver was very obviously towed out, and recently for there was fresh mud still on the road. I pray that the driver was just being dumb and did not fall asleep.
In some spots, the land has been dredged to make short canals. I have no idea why, nor any real substantial guess. That said, the water inside is a very light and clear blue. The best analog I can think of is the color associated with the Bahamas. That light azure, clear blue. I understand that bodies of water that are clear have little nitrogen content. That got me wondering, if I went up to the shore and peed in it, would it get murky in some spots? Did I mention that the road doesn't bend or change elevation for 40 miles?
After all this peace and tranquility, I get to the Salt Lake terminal. The place is packed. Everyone is staring at the 37” flatscreen TV or their laptops. I scurry across the room to scan my documents. Gunshots and screams on the TV. I go up to the window to see if I've been dispatched on my next load. I really need to leave this place. I shake my head and say, “violence,” to one of the drivers in line. She replies, “I love this movie, I am Legend.” Shooting and screaming, people dying (or something dying, I didn't care to look). It makes me sad to see what kind of culture I'm in sometimes, but also compassionate for these people, who have lost their sense of wonder at the world they experience everyday (or maybe they haven't, but they all seemed completely zombified by the movie). This is just more incentive to change my line of work.
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