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| Sawtooth NRA, not actual size |
Sawtooth
National Recreation Area. It contains mountains, it contains forests,
it contains broad sweeping pine-blanketed plains rising curvingly up
to white blasted crags blazing in the sun and rocky overhangs with
snow on the upper ranges. And then miles after miles of sloping pine
forest, lonely forests of trees, until you come to a lake, several
miles off the highway and circled by a pavement, with clear opaline
water and reflecting yet another stark asteroid of a mountain on the
other side.
Every
50 or so miles, there is a little grocery and service station built
of rustic boards, until you get to Stanley, pop. 258, where there is
also a restaurant. In Idaho City, pop. 63, there are also genuine
frontier storefronts with long wooden sidewalks before them, and a
picturesque gold rush cemetery.
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| Kurt, Mark and Kate, in a rare stationary moment |
We
started from Boise and rode 42 miles south, to Melba, toast capital
of the west, then an additional 10 miles to a place called
Celebration Park. My three teammates put distance between themselves
and me, but we all flew along, with Idaho state flags flying above
our
machines.
The
park, a state park, contained petroglyphs and other items of
archaeological interest which you could view
from
a trail that wound among them.
The
second day we followed an ancient still-elevated rail bed out of
camp, across an old train bridge and on through the country until we
reached the barbed wire barricade.
Advance
notice of this obstacle, stretched defiantly
across
the right-of-way, had come to us before the ride in an email message
from the route planner, to whom we swore left and right it would not
hinder us a fig.
I
had occasion to wonder at this certainty, as we handed our entire
royal caravan—three recumbent trikes, a bicycle and trailer, 10
stuffed panniers, coats, helmets, cameras, water bottles, pumps,
sunglass cases, all held aloft--over the dangerous wires and to a
resting place further along the railbed as we shimmied and
jiggy-footed trying not to stumble down the slope.
What
we hadn't seen coming—what we had reason to believe would not
come—was the screaming man issuing from his trailer down the way to
command our immediate return from whence we came. He seemed to be
quite agitated. He directed us to just turn around and go back, just
turn around or we would go to jail. Clearly this was the biggest
thing that had happened to him all week. From his trailer he began to
make his way over the scrub toward us.
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| The railroad bridge, just before The Encounter | |
Now,
this was not the time to debate the ascendancy of property rights
over the needs of poor touring pilgrims like ourselves; nor did we
think it quite politic to ask how any private person could own
a
railroad right-of-way. Or how we were supposed to effect a rapid
escape with that barbed wire behind us. Or, for that matter, who he
was and how was he able to throw us out. (Private
property it may have been, I thought, but my attention is private
also and he was trespassing on it.)
The
thing to do, as Katie said later, is de-escalate. Kurt began this by
assuring the man we were leaving, yes we were leaving, yes, leaving
right now, just this minute. Meanwhile, the last of the party were
joining us from the rear. Just turn around and go back, the man said,
or you go to jail.
Yes,
thank you, we are leaving.
We
kept going. In the direction we had been going.
The
man disappeared into his trailer, probably to get his gun. We were
making steady progress down the road, which had become a driveway, a
private driveway, upon which we were making highly illicit and
probably immoral passage, toward the county highway just beyond. Four
minutes later a frantic woman in a white Lexus came screaming up. She
was slender and white and burning with the kind of rage that can only
result from the secret belief that the world intends to destroy your
flowerbeds.
Katie,
the designated de-escalator, leaned into the woman's window and began
emitting soothing tones. Her husband Mark stood by as diplomatic
backup. Kurt and I watched. A minute later a 60-ish western-looking
man went whizzing by on an ATV, trying to head us off at the pass.
More
soothing sounds. In the car, the woman's voice had come down half an
octave. She had grandchildren on those grounds she was saying, and
they couldn't have just anyone going through. Sixty feet away Kurt
rolled his eyes.
We
got past that obstacle and down the road, down the long road. Night
Two brought us, after
a day of intermittent rain,
to a state park called Bruneau Dunes which, despite this being Labor
Day, was about half occupied. The park featured giant sand mountains
that brooded over the little camp ground like a sky full of stars.
That
evening we attended a lecture and slide show by a “UFO-ologist”
in the park's observatory, and learned among much else that:
-
The
US government has for many years suppressed information about our
frequent visits from space beings; this information has included the
unbelievable sightings, witnessed by our astronauts when traveling
in space, of space vehicles and alien structures built on the moon.
The
government is itself in possession of a planet-hopping spacecraft,
built usingtechnology reverse-engineered from UFOs, along with
several secret places on earth that serve as bases for this vehicle.
-
There
have been a number of UFO crashes, all well and carefully
documented, on US soil. The
government won't tell you about them, though.
-
We
have also, it goes without saying, many bodies of aliens now
preserved, and have given medical attention to alien survivors of
UFO crashes.
-
A
UFO researcher has initiated a program allowing all this
information—including suppressed astronaut testimony--to be freely
disclosed by those who until now have been sworn to keep mum. The
researcher got the green light for this project when he wrote to
Bill Clinton saying he would do it and got no response from the
president saying he couldn't.
There
was much more UFO information on offer, but Kurt and I fell asleep in
our chairs during the last half hour. During this time it was obvious
that Kurt's brother Mark was not in attendance, as we heard no one's
head exploding, as Mark's would have.
Night
Three, after another 60 miles: an empty RV park in Gooding, ID, where
we slept amid the great empty cement pads designed to support large
recreational vehicles.
Night
Four, after yet another 60 miles, we got back to civilization again,
to Hailey, where Mark's daughter and son in law fed us, slept us, and
got us warm again. At dinner I announced complete satisfaction with
my riding so far, and therefore my intention to quit here and remain
satisfied with myself, rather than to become angry or frustrated or,
perhaps, dead. Hailey had been planned as one of the possible
quitting spots, so this was no problem. And Kate was also quitting
here to go visit a new grandchild. I would ride one more day with
Kurt and Mark and then return alone to Hailey the following day.
And
so
it
happened. Three
of us rode next morning to a campsite called Easley Hot Springs, and
there spent a pleasant evening fretting about bears and hoisting our
food into the trees; and next morning it was 27 degrees and my toes
were frozen together.
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| Idaho City |
|
This
and a swelling achilles tendon brought home the wisdom of leaving
early. Kurt and Mark continued on for another hundred miles, most of
it uphill—I met them later near Idaho City. Meantime I rode
downhill back to Hailey, stopping along the way to take pictures of
trout streams and mountains.
So
there it was: 311 miles in six days. Nothing for some folks but at
least respectable for a cripple and invalid.
found his grave as easily as one finds the neat Ketchum Cemetery, near downtown, a gravely slab bearing his name and often littered with pennies and pens—which are in fact an error in the liturgy, for Papa used only no. 2 pencils. By such commonplaces is communion with greatness achieved. 
I got to its driveway, with all the No Trespassing signs glinting nearby in the sun, yet with obviously no one near who could threaten me with jail—and decided not to go the whole way after all. Hemingway was in deep trouble when he lived here: depression, paranoia, attempted suicide, great physical pain, shock treatments at the Mayo Clinic, alcoholism of course. He took the final step with both barrels of his shotgun in the foyer. I didn't need to see the place to know the story. And I think: Which is more worthy of reverence, the life or the work? And how much may they be separated? 
