Rohe and Young motored out of Ohio 7 months ago looking for anything that wasn't Ohio. Nine days later out of money, and possessing piss-poor map reading skills, their flight from Ohio ended in the mountains of Colorado in a town called Grand Junction.
This is a true story told in a letter back to Ohio of two guys known each other 15 years, now in their 30's, their luck slowly running out, and neither willing to give up The Life.
Rohe And Young Deep Into The Desert
Last February Young and me decided to camp in the desert. They call it desert, but it's not sand and dunes, it's scrub, small bushes, and dust, dust, dust over hill after hill. This particular bit of desert is nestled right up against a part of the surrounding mountains called the Bookcliffs, presumably because the mountains all erect and vertical there look like books in a case or something. I've never been able to see the resemblance and no librarian has so far come forth to instruct me in the lore of geophysical abstractions.
Looks more to me like it rained real hard one day, washed most of the dirt away, some fool woke up, saw the mess and said: "Shit Clem, durn mountain's fucked up, all washed down into widder' Thompson's trailer park it is." "Yup, Bobby Bill, a powerful sight a' mud pie the widders got there. Think she's still holdin her breath with the mud up over her chimney like that?" And, of course, since a book was a fuzzy, faraway concept that only vaguely looked like an owners manual to a '63 Chevy pick-up, neither Clem nor Bobby Bill were the men to name this interesting landmark in northern Grand Junction.
Young and me planned for 2 weeks to go out to the desert and get incredibly slobber-fucked inebriated, indulge in a bit of alcohol therapy, and then get plain vomit-on-boots drunk. Everything was off to a good start, Young and me were both home on time, we had most of everything ready since the night before, and Krista, our official guide, pulled up to the house just as we began to wonder where she was. Young and Krista began loading their pick-ups and I was dispatched off to the liquor store for ice and 12 packs of continuing self-destruction. I wasn't gone long and one alcohol transfusion, my van to waiting pick-up later, it was TALLY HO! DESERT BOUND!
I wasn't sure where we were going, I'd never seen a desert before, and making a left across one a them cattle grate barriers was the last damn place I'd expect to find one, so when Young did that, then pulled down a tree-lined off-road party-lane place, I figgered: Fuck. Had again. But then I looked ahead of us. About 200 yards ahead the land was bone naked bare going up at an incredible angle 150-200 feet, tracked and tracked again from motorcycles. First thought: NASA tests moon buggies here. Second thought: Oh yeah, that's right, Krista rides with her motocross buddies out this way. So with Krista the trail finder in the lead, Young and me brought up a crazy panicked rear. Actually, Young was quite calm and capable, me, on the other hand, or rather on the passenger seat, sandwiched in with pots, pans, and mechanically separated turkey dogs-hoping for a titanium roll cage with instant disaster foam and medical attention-wasn't doing so well.
Now this land that went up isn't the mountains that ring the crater that's Grand Junction, but it is the precursor to them, the mountains go up another 3 and 4 thousand feet after being on this elevation, approx 5000 feet. There's a snow line in the winter months, and I can see it white, white, white in the sun when it's 65 degrees down here, the valley, in February. Didn't think we'd be camping in snow storm shitty blighted gray blizzard February Ohio weather did ya?
To me it felt like early fall 15 years ago in Ohio, the warm in the day slowing and cooling, work done, phone calls made, duded up, waiting on a party to pull into the driveway. Been a few places, but it's hard to shake the memory of Lancaster outta me .
And there Lancaster was-Young-driving on behind Krista, windows down, warm wind and dust in his hair and eyes, 104FM playing the new Alanis; and me, never seen a desert or a mountain, going higher and deeper into something I'd never known before.
After 40 minutes of up, down, and PLEASE! GOD! NO! NOT SIDEWAYS DUDE! we arrived in all our ragged glory at the base of the Bookcliffs; a place called Slick Rock. Once again I can't figger out why it's called what it is. No water apparent, no oil men divining rods quivering, no marbles nor simians flinging banana peels evident, in fact it looks like Godzilla's cereal bowl laying on its side carved in 4-5 story hunk a rock sitting just a bit in front of the cliffs themselves.
Oh, forgot to mention both pick-ups were straddling this rise of land that if we continued forth into the bowl we would have been the teeny-weeny 2 ton Detroit thread that couldn't pass through the 60 million year old needle. Fortunately, our guide, Krista the fearless, just wanted to show us some hard, cold nature up close and personal terror-like, and either prudently read the panic in my eyes without calling attention to it, or this kinda everyday-type risk presented to a newbie like me just made her sad cause, next thing I knew, and think I blanked part of this out, Krista, foom! over the side, onward and down. And Young? I think I might have screamed until he backed up and went down the way we came.
At the bottom of that hill was a track leading back, quite sedate like, back past a dry pond rung with dead brush and stunted trees. It was a good 100 yards around, and in the dusk I thought would become full dark any second, it was an incredible sight. NO water brother, no water, but oh what the water left behind. White from bank to bank, 10,000 square feet of lying oasis; cracked, fissured, webbed; the preserved hide of the last great white elephant-and all I could do was agree-Yesyes! Stop here! Fuckin beer…where is THE FUCKIN BOOZE, MAN?
Now it may seem this was all I was concerned with, that pond and my driest of places, but the pond was just a bonus. We parked about 60 feet from it on the far side of the make shift road that bordered it. That made the pond on our left as we faced out, back towards the world, and on the right were dunes, hills, whatever; in fact, two, maybe 60 feet, with a dip in the center about 40. At our backs were cliffs that went up up up. And the view behind us: a fading sky unreeling from the Bookcliffs, all the sky wandering past; blank, beautiful, indifferent; and I thought how much of the world I'd never see as I popped my first Colt sitting on the tailgate of Young's truck, watching a silent parade, kicking my boots in the dust as Young got a fire started.
Both Young and Krista had brought pallets with them, and as the fire soon caught, I set about hooking up the tunes for the evening. It wasn't dark yet, quite far from it I learned in the next hour or so, but there was this feeling of any second now…any second now…I took this feeling to heart and decided to welcome night fall in traditional fashion-full-blown inebriation.
It had been awhile since Young or I had really tied one on, really since about the second week I got here, seems we were up a bit late slamming shit around, talking loud, and being general nuisances. So-oohh we can't be trusted to get drunk and quietly pass out before 3am-and here we found ourselves-the sun about to set, a warm serious wind kicking up, and for miles around absolutely nothing we could break or fuck up in any meaningful way.
I think there comes a time in every drunks life when he must confront the multiple fact he started to drink one night with a net worth of, oh, lets say $500; went ahead, imbibed, woke the next afternoon in a pile of rubble and broken crap that used to be his possessions (net worth now a $1.79) and for the life of him can't figger out why the telephone is heaped on the kitchen counter looking more like some kids disassembled Legos than a phone. And later, when the hangover is manageable, leaves the house for smokes to discover his CD collection on the roof, planted in the flower beds, and just plain baking on the front lawn, a mosaic titled: DAH-HAMMM, Is My Dumbass Stupidity Winking In The Sun. Sometimes, ya know, behavior accountability-I just can't.
Some of the guys where I work told me stories about the desert here. They made it out pretty much like I'd heard from Todd and Krista; an unpatrolled barren playground waiting for madness and toys. Looking around I still couldn't feel the no-cop factor, but in that same look, looking at nothing but dirt and rocks, valleys and cliffs, one damn dry life suckin' huge puddle a' does it look blueish?…wait…phosphorescent corpse blue-white…That's fuckin it!…EUREKA! CALL CRAYOLA!
Can't name the color, brother, but soon Krista left, and Young and I were alone looking at the fire. A damn big fire curling round and round in a damn big wind in a big damn land, and suddenly it hit me that maybe a cop or two to avoid wouldn't be such a bad thing. Meanin' there I was looking at Young, Young looking at me, Krista turning on her headlights looking in her rear view mirror; both of us looking at her waving, the one or other of us watching the other wave; Krista waving that she's done waving, then the waving done, Krista passed the corpse pond, her headlights tracking upward 30 degrees and rising.
I looked at Young, he looked at the fire, and I think he felt it too. Alone in the middle a' nowhere, your only companion a confirmed raging drunk of dubious moral values prone to fits of violence and slobbering nonsense…yup…think he felt it too…gonna be a goood night.
Next month the conclusion: Deep Into The Desert: Drugged and Left For Dead.