The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 3. Green River, Utah

The Green River, Green River, Utah

Travel Day 2:  Saturday, September 8, 2018

Part One

I am a desert soul, a product of the Great Basin, where rivers run thin and shallow, tumbling frothy white from great snow capped peaks but all but vanishing by the time they reach the desert floor.  What we call rivers in the Great Basin--the Bear, the Humboldt, and the Reese--many places would barely classify as creeks.

This is what Mark Twain said of Nevada's great river (not counting the Colorado on its border), the Humboldt:

We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not answer.  It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either.  It left a taste in the mouth, bitter and execrable, and a burning in the stomach... We put molasses in it, but that helped very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the prominent taste, and so it was unfit for drinking.  The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet invented... Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage, felt constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little sip, making shift to praise it faintly the while,but finally threw out the remainder, and said frankly it was 'too technical for him.'" (Morgan, 7-8)

Of the same river, once called Mary's River, a poetic Iowan wrote the following in 1850:

Meanest and muddiest, filthiest stream,
      most cordially I hate you;
Meaner and muddier still you seem
     since the first day I met you.
Your namesake better was no doubt,
     a truth, the scriptures tell,
Her seven devils were cast out,
    but yours are in you still.
What mean these graves so fresh and new
    along your banks on either side?
They've all been dug and filled by you,
    thou guilty wretch, thou homicide.  (Morgan, 4)

Still, our rivers, inadequate though they be, are part of my soul.  Perhaps it is precisely because rivers are so rare in the Great Basin that I am drawn to them so.  Around 1998, I wrote a poem that is still one of my favorites:

Rivers

There is the river that smokes on a cool Sunday morning,
steam rising between islands of water lily
behind Roaring Branch Baptist Church.

There is the river that is a knife slid through
the heart of the Tavaputs Plateau:  yellow sandstone
walls reverberating in almost still water.

There is the river that is a dump:
milk cartons bobbing black rhythm water
below Loch Raven Dam Road.

There is the river that is spit bringing life
to greasewood in "Fall Out" National Wildlife Refuge,
ghosts of antelope foraging for all that doesn't glow.

The river of their eyes is deep, wide,
smooth as obsidian, the world swept off
into the thick green whisper that could swallow us all.

The poem arose from my imagination, and the places were used as images without me ever seeing them, chosen for the sound of their names, but it was important to me that I not discriminate between good and bad rivers, for even when polluted or sucked almost dry by irrigation, a river continues to feed to the best of its ability the life around it, both literally and metaphorically. 

As these posts are meant as a series of "Thank-You" cards, it's important for me to pause here a moment, to put one in a bottle and send it downstream.  After I graduated from college, I sent a draft of the above poem to a former professor of mine, Sam.  All the descriptions are mine except the most vital:  "the river of their eyes is deep, wide..."  I don't remember how it was before, but in the draft all the rivers remained literal.   Simply by moving four or five words around, he transformed an adequate poem into a good one.  Not long after his revision, I sent it out to a small magazine in Portland, Oregon, The Bear Deluxe, where it was accepted.  When I notified Sam to tell him that I wanted to give him credit, he would have nothing to do with it, reassuring me, "Writers do that for each other all the time".   However, as is clear from reading it, the movement in that last stanza from a literal to figurative river makes the poem.  I accepted the gift, and it's one of the half-dozen or so poems for which I found homes, although, admittedly, I haven't tried very hard to get published.

Sam and I wrote each other frequently for about a year.  He wrote many of his former students as well.  He is one of those people who loves life and goes the extra mile.

Then something happened to our friendship.  My youngest son was born, and I'd written Sam a letter and failed to mention my newborn baby.  Instead, I talked about writing.  In the next letter, I realized this oversight and said something to the effect of, "Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention in my previous letter that Marci and I have a new son."

He couldn't comprehend that.  I doubt many could.  He interpreted it as a lack of love for my newborn son.  I think most would do the same.

I didn't blame him, but I also knew that what he thought wasn't true.  I loved my son immensely then as I do now.  But, there is something unusual with my mind.  I guess it's a flaw.  Maybe it's not.  I don't know.  It's like a river in flood on a plain.  It goes where the water drives it, and where that is, I don't have much say, other than by being careful what sources I feed it with.  At the moment of composing that letter, my son Everest did not exist, but neither did I--not in that moment.  I don't remember what I was narrating in my correspondence with Sam, but I do know whatever "I" was narrating it, the letter was driven by the voice in my head, which was fueling the next word in a chain of thoughts plowing forward like a flash flood.  That's just how it is.  My family gets mad sometimes because I don't hear them.  This is true.  My mind does wander frequently and when it does, I disappear.

If I remember right, Sam lost a son.  That, of course, would magnify his dismay.  He, like only those who have lost a child, would know just how vital those moments with our children are.  This I understood.  I just didn't know what to say, so I just quit writing him, and he also never reached out to me again.

I still don't know what to say--to Sam or my son.  How do you put into words, "There are chunks of me missing?"  How do you say, "I can't be there the way others can?"  How do you say,  "I love you immensely, but there are times you will cease to exist because that bumble bee on that sun flower for that moment has become everything".  How do you say such things?

In my college years, I once was thrown out of a bar because I scared the waitress.  I was staring at her and she reasonably became nervous and had the bouncer toss me out.

I was hurt; I felt so vile, and yet I absolutely knew I would be the last man to harm her or any one else.  She just had these amazing little freckles, ever so faint, but clearly present, even in the dim light.  I was mesmerized by them and didn't stop looking.  They were so beautiful.

Clearly you can't go around staring at people until they're scared.  I don't blame her.  I've learned a bit since then.  I think I now manage to avoid moments like that.  I also work at putting boundaries around my absorbed time.  I put down a poem or an essay, not because I have found the right place to stop working on it, but because my family is important to me.  I get up at 5:00 a.m. most days so that I can write when everyone else is still asleep; that way I can still participate at home.  Still, sometimes I'm so astonished at life that I not only forget who I am, but I also forget those around me.

Sam, that's the best explanation I have.  I'm not sure it's adequate, but it's all I have.  My mind is a river.  It goes where it wants to go, and in the flood of the moment, I follow.  I don't live a single life with an overarching narrative as I believe most do.  I live in sparks--flicks and flakes of light darting off the river--that trigger who I am and what I see, moment by moment.

You, however, are not the only one to ever be dismayed.  Many a time Marci has said, "How could you not tell me that?"  I always have the same lame reply--the honest one--which is, "I didn't think about it."

Part Two

After it was light enough to see, I went over to the restroom and took a shower.  I was incredibly chilled and tired, and the water was oh so warm.  I wanted to stay in there for hours and did indeed stay longer than what is environmentally sensible, but I did eventually force myself to turn off the water and dress.  This was to be the longest day of the trip.  Without stopping, it would take 10 1/4 hours.  But, of course, we would stop plenty.  You don't take a great road trip and not take the time to both absorb and record it.  That would be stupid.  So, I was figuring it would be more like 12 hours, and given that we got very little sleep, I was somewhat worried.

When I was in college, my friend Philip and I took a trip from Dallas to Utah.  We only had so much time, but I wanted to go through the Rockies of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado because, well, they're the Rockies.  John Denver sings about them, and though critics and the artistic crowd ridicule him, I love John Denver.  Besides there are big, white mountains in Colorado.  I love big, white mountains.  I was raised on them.  When I was five, my older brother Lloyd had me memorize all the major peaks of the the Cascades.  I would sit on his lap as he flipped through a book titled The Cascade Range, and off I'd go naming them--Lassen, Shasta, Hood, St. Helens  (before she blew her top), Rainier, Washington, Shuksan, etc.  

Anyway, the winding roads added more time than I calculated.  We drove for 20 hours straight.  At one point, I woke up behind the steering wheel and saw the edge of the road disappearing before the hood.  I swerved, braked, and almost hit a sign.

Perhaps that's what should have worried me most on this trip, but it wasn't that.  I was worried that we'd simply be too tired to absorb the sights.  I barely remember Phil's and my drive through Colorado.  All I remember thinking is, Somebody please straighten out this highway.  Wipe out these mountains if you have to.  

I didn't want this trip to be the same.  Kansas may only be Kansas, which according to Bill Bryson, "at least has a hill," whereas Nebraska does not.  But hill or no hill, I still wanted to be present for Kansas.   What's more, I wanted to be absolutely alive for Colorado.  

When my parents bought me my first car in college, a used Plymouth Reliant with no air conditioning, I decided to head home to Texas from Utah via Rocky Mountain National Park.  I left in late August.  There were scattered thunder showers, and going over Trail Ridge Road, which tops out at 11,500 feet above sea level, that rain turned to snow.  There I was, almost 12,000 feet high, big, black clouds rolling by, and temporary squalls flinging cold sleet-like snow (not hail though, which is normal in the summer) that grayed the high tundra.  I thought, "Hot damn snow in August!" as I pulled out at each and every view area to take in the biting summer cold.

So, I didn't want to sleep through the Rockies.  I wanted to be ever present.  I knew it would most likely not be the Trail Ridge Road experience, but I wanted to get everything out of it I could and fretted about my lack of sleep being an obstacle.

. . . . .

By the time we took down camp, the sun was up, and the park ranger was making his rounds on his golf cart.  I watched, worried he might come have a talk with us.  We came in so late, and we were tired, so I decided to walk up and pay the fee in the morning.  I'd failed to do that, and while taking down camp, Marci and I talked about just not paying at all.  It was 35 bucks a night!  And if we got out of there before anyone else, it would be like we were never there at all.

He never came by, but I knew he'd seen us.  Besides, I don't think I could have just drove off.  My conscience was tugging at me terribly.  But I wanted to.  Oh I wanted to.  I don't mind paying my fair share, but 35 dollars is a lot for a tent site at a state owned campground.  Where were my tax dollars going?  Those should be covering at least some of it.

I thought there'd be an easy place to see the Green River from the state park, and I'm sure there is, but I didn't see one, and we were in a hurry to get on the road, so I just pulled off in town once we crossed the bridge.  I pulled into the parking lot by the Tamarisk Restaurant, a cool place sitting on a low bluff overlooking the river, and I ran across the street to where a sidewalk appeared to drop down near the water.  To my delight, not only did it do that, but it circled down under the bridge and came up on the side where my car was.  In the process, it briefly opened up the whole riverfront world to me.  It was stunning.  It's too bad I'm no longer much of a photographer.  My son tried to get me to bring one of his cameras, but I didn't want the responsibility, and an i-phone is so convenient.  But now I wish I'd taken photographing the journey more seriously.  The photo below simply does not capture what it was like to be under that bridge at that moment.  And it should.  These things matter.  We did not temporarily give up living alongside our creator to come to this world an not take note of it.  We are here and we should be vitally present in our journey.  That is what Sam was disgusted about.  How can you have something as amazing as a child and not be forever grounded in his being?  He was right, I am deplorable, but there is also a beautiful thing called grace.  I will accept that gift and move on.

View from a sidewalk that goes under this bridge at Green River, Utah

Works Cited

Morgan, Dale L. The Humboldt: Highroad to the West. Lincoln: Bison Book: 1985, 1970.