We left camp at ten thirty this morning and headed north on Eighty Nine. The horses were whinnying their goodbyes.
After an hour we ended up on a smaller rural highway, Sixty Two. We were the only car on the road for miles. On either side verdant ranchland stretched for about thirty miles before ramming into the sheer red cliffs of the Colorado Plateau. At mile sixteen we stopped to let three cows and a chestnut colored calf cross the road. They looked at us furtively. They took their time crossing.
We stopped at the Mercantile in a little town to get gas. The gas pumps were old enough that the girl behind the counter told me to pump and then tell her how much I had pumped, but new enough that the readouts were all digital. I used to pump gas at a place that had rotary dials and prided myself on being able to hit round dollar amounts without slowing down. I tried it with this pump and ended up at twenty and a penny. Oh well.
I went inside to pay. The man in front of me was buying two Coleman gas canisters for a cook stove. He was fat and ruddy and fumbled to get his card out of his wallet. He had gotten out of an enormous white truck with a boy and a dog whimpering in the back of the cab. He had a pistol strapped to his hip. His shirt was pulled up so everyone could see it.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette while I waited for Quinn to get herself some soft serve ice cream. She counted out dimes and nickels from the change holder under the center console then went inside. A dirty pickup pulled up. A series of white boys in work pants with baggy t-shirts tucked into them came out of the truck. Each boy was younger than the last. The youngest looked about ten. They were all dirty but looked somehow respectable. They lined up outside the bathroom and waited. The middle boy had a big digital watch on his right wrist. They didn’t look at me at all. I had to pee but I decided to wait until the next stop.
About forty minutes later we turned onto the highway to take us to Capitol Reef. There was a big orange sign that said PRESCRIBED BURN DO NOT CALL POLICE but we didn’t see any smoke. We got to the park about twenty minutes later. The landscape lurched suddenly toward the sky in a wall of knobbly red and orange and vermillion, banded with whites and grays. We turned into the rift. We pulled over so we could take pictures of Quinn doing handstands in the middle of the road with the cliffs behind us. At the vista point there was nobody there. We walked up the hundred feet to the posted sign. It talked about how unpolluted the air was at Capitol Reef and how to keep it that way. We took some pictures. When we got back to the parking lot there were a dozen cars there.
At the visitors center for Capitol Reef I went to the counter to get a map. The woman in front of me was asking about the fruit trees. Quinn had read in the guide that you could pick fruit there too. Apparently the little town across from the visitors center had been settled by Mormons who had planted orchards there. They had been creatively named it Fruita. The park ranger told the woman that the cherries wouldn’t be in for a few weeks. Then after that the apricots he said, and he made a face and a hand motion as if to say you’ve never seen such apricots in your life. The woman seemed disappointed. The park ranger checked my park pass and gave me a guide and a sticker. She asked if I needed a hiking map and said no thanks, we had just done three strenuous days in Zion and Bryce and I was giving my blisters a day off. I gave Quinn the guide and the sticker. She said there was a movie in the theatre that the National Geographic book had said was very good. I said I might meet her in there but that it didn’t particularly appeal to me.
I went into the men’s room behind an old man dragging a little boy by the arm. The boy had his glasses held to his face by an elastic band like swimming goggles. Inside, the man took the little boy into the second stall and I grabbed the first, as the urinal was in use. I could see the man at the urinal;’s stream between his legs. I went into the second stall and shut the door. The old man said to the little boy if you don't go potty I'm gonna tell your momma to give you a spanking. I had seen his momma outside. She was a massive pink walrus of a woman with a huge colorful tattoo on the side of her right lower calf. The boy said I can't go if you don't lock the door. The old man said you better go potty now. He locked the door. I heard the boy peeing. From the other side a drop of liquid splashed onto my foot. The urinal was overflowing. The man said ok now pull your pants up. He sounded like he was angry at the boy, who couldn’t have been more than four or five. I don't know how he had dealt with his own kids but his ire clearly wasn’t effective with this one. The boy’s voice never demonstrated any understanding that the old man was getting impatient with him. He said I don't need to go any more than that. The man said ok now let’s go. I left the stall and washed my hands. The urinal was overflowing and there were a line of teenagers waiting for the stall to become vacant. They all had sports-themed shirts on, some with insignias and numbers on them, some with motivational slogans like ALL I DO IS WIN. I heard the man say now the other leg too. I washed my hands and dried them on my shirt. The old man dragged the little boy out by the hand directly. He didn’t make the boy wash his hands. The boy stopped and asked what’s that. The old man said I’'s a door. The little boy said there’s a vent. The old man said well the vent is in a door so it’s a door. The boy didn’t say anything else.
I was so engrossed in all this that I apparently set my phone down on the air dryer when I washed my hands and neglected to pick it up on my way out of the bathroom. Of course, I didn’t realize this immediately. Nor did I realize it when I sat down in the theatre to watch the actually rather well done video presentation on the history of the park, wherein the shadows of the past were represented by see-through actors, vehicles and animals against the fully opaque background images. It wasn’t until we’d driven about twenty minutes down the road and I wanted to take a picture that I realized I was phoneless. It was another few minutes before I could safely pull over in a spot large enough for the car and the camper behind it. We gave the car a quick once over. I knew it wasn’t there. We drove back to the visitor center. Quinn poked at me in a good natured way. She said that the people that go to national parks don't steal. I knew she was right.
We pulled up and I scanned the road to see if it had fallen out of my pocket. Nothing. I checked the bathroom - nothing. I went inside and checked the theatre - nothing. I went back to the gift shop. A woman with bangs and benevolent eyes noticed me from among the crowd. Can I help you with something she asked. I lost my phone I said. What kind of phone is it she said. I said a Samsung Galaxy Note Four. Kinda big she said. Yeah I said. All this happened while we walked to the other side of the ranger information desk. She was behind the desk and I was in front of it. She said hang tight. Then she disappeared into a back room.
The extremely tall ranger behind the counter was helping someone decide which hikes to take today and which to take tomorrow. She looked familiar. I told Quinn I thought we had seen her at another national park. She said that seemed possible that they would rotate through like that. The ranger finished helping the guy and asked if she could help me. I said I lost my phone. She said is someone already helping you. I said yes but I don't know where she went. From the back room I heard the sound of a CB radio. A moment later the lady with the bangs came back and said the phone would be here in about five minutes. I said ok, where is it. She said that when they find things more valuable than a hat they bring them to a more secure location. I said thanks and that I was going outside to let my girlfriend know what was going on.
I shouted across the parking lot to Quinn that they had found my phone. She said did you get it. I said no and told her about the secure location thing. I lit a cigarette. She was cleaning out her purse. She said you’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on. I said that’s why I have a wallet chain. A few years ago I tried getting a big boy wallet. I lost it for the first time two weeks later. I left it on the counter at the fudge kiosk at Multnomah Falls. I didn’t realize it until an hour later when we got to a bar at Hood River and they asked for my ID. I tore apart the car looking for it. My girlfriend at the time’s friend sat there sipping her beer flight the whole time while I was freaking out about my wallet. She kept making ff-ff-ff noises when she sipped the beer. Then she would swish it around her mouth like a rat eating cheese in an old cartoon. I said we need to go back to Multnomah Falls to see if it’s there. She was annoyed that we had to leave. I guess she had a point. The second time I lost my wallet a woman that was working at Goodwill stole it. I had set it down on the counter and walked out without putting it back in my pocket and she stole it. I knew she stole it because when I went back and asked about it she was on break, and when she came out from the back she looked me straight in the eye and told me she watched me put it in my left pocket. I've never put my wallet in my left pocket in my life. The worst thing about losing that wallet was that it had my old student ID in it. Everything else was replaceable, and there was no cash. I don't know why she took it. It wasn’t even that nice a wallet. Since then I've gone back to the chain wallet. I have yet to lose that.
When I went back inside there was a park ranger standing behind the counter waiting for me. She had big blue eyes with irises that were completely surrounded by white on all sides. She had a gun on her utility belt. The belt looked like it must have weighed thirty pounds. She asked me my name. I told her. She asked me for ID. I took it out of my chain wallet. She said she promised to forget my password but that I needed to give it to her to verify that the phone was mine. I asked her if she had the phone. She said it’s right here and took it out of the desk. I said is there a picture of a dog holding a phone on the screen. She smiled a little and said yes. She said you can put the password in while I watch you. I put the password in. She said that’s a hell of a password. It is. She said if I can offer you some advice it might be smart to put your info on the screen. I didn’t say no to that, but I'm never going to do that. She said that way if you lose it people can find you. She said the phone they found yesterday was from China and now they have to mail it back there. She said most of the time they can't access the phone and find out whose it is and then they have to pay to have it destroyed and isn't that a shame. I said I have my emergency contacts set up. She said calling nine one one is’'t that helpful. I said no, my emergency contacts and showed her how to get to them on the phone. I showed her that the two numbers that could be accessed from the lock screen were my mother and my girlfriend. The woman that had helped me initially was next to us taking things out of boxes. She said in that order? I said yes. She said good man. I laughed. The park ranger finished filling out the remittance form and gave me back my phone and ID. I said thank you and she said you’re welcome and have a nice day. I left and we got back on the road.
Capitol Reef looks like the ruins of an enormous ancient underwater city. The bright orange rock formations that run in great rows are twenty feet wide and jut straight up and down for about ten yards before giving way to massive sloping rocky hills that look like petrified sand dunes. Between each of these are gray oblongs that jut out at a seventy degree angle from the slope of the hills. It doesn’t take much to let the imagination conjure statues of lions and gryphons and other creatures standing sentinel on top of these pedestals. This goes on for miles and miles, like the walls of the city. I pictured the city sinking beneath the waves a hundred thousand years ago, like Atlantis, then the waters receding and leaving this testament to the once great civilization that built it and drowned. In reality, Capitol Reef was formed by the Pacific and North American plates grinding against each other miles below the park. Instead of breaking apart, the sandstone in the ground folded over itself, creating the enormous furrow that runs the length of the park. Erosion then unearthed that furrow, exposing the Waterpocket Fold that the park is known for. The formations on either side of the fold that looked like city walls to me apparently looked like waves rolling towards shore to the people who named the park, which is how it got its name. Or something like that. Nothing really explained it at the visitor center and the National Geographic book’s explanation was fairly unsatisfying. And besides, I like my version better.
I fell asleep for a while and Quinn drove. Eventually I woke up when she turned off Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast. I didn’t blame her. It's not even really a song. We drove through some road construction. The speed limit dropped to forty. The sign said loose gravel. She always ends up driving on the shitty roads. We kinda just accept it at this point. We turned onto Interstate Seventy. The speed limit jumped to eighty. The land opened up into a whitewashed plain and faded cliffs like the feet of massive elephants a hundred miles distant. Everything looked like it was on the other side of gauze. Massive power lines stretched between wooden pylons like petroglyph men come to life. Ahead the clouds shaded hundred mile wide sections of the mesas past the Green River. To the south we could see snow on top of the rocky peaks. In the space of a day, we had left the southwest and were headed toward the Rockies. The sides of the road were littered with dead chipmunks. A little while later we pulled into Moab.
Song of the day: Echoes by Pink Floyd