From Deadwood to the (un)hallowed ground of my birth

As I left the museum there in Deadwood – cardboard cut-outs of Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen staring life-size from the coffee shop across the street – I considered the pros and cons of heading south down to see those rolling hills of Custer’s last stand – and his well-deserved ass-kicking at the arrow-tips of Crazy Horse. I read some about the Battle at Little Bighorn – turns out the Native Americans know it as the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Whatever anyone chooses to call it, the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho teamed up June 25-26 in 1876 and gave that blond-locked narcissist and the 700 men of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry the licking of his life. Including his two brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law.

I checked out the park on the phone – once again, you had to pay. Furious after the sham of Mt. Rushmore, the gravestone of Wild Bill Hicok, I forewent the wonders of the grassland to the south, and the opportunity to stand where that beautiful fool breathed his last in favor of dropping down out of the Black Hills into the hills of northeast Wyoming.

What a fine decision! As those mountains, that spur of the Rockies ground down into hills, worn dirt roads, grown in with grass the color of verdigris, began to lessen, weathered settlements built into the side of a hills – beaten down but obstinate – multipled in the setting light.  I pulled over and considered following one of those tracks leading into the hills, with the idea of setting up camp at the back of the valley, and sleeping with the loaded Winchester 70 as my teddy bear.

Then I remembered my Contemporary Civilization Class at Columbia, and our study of John Locke and his words on private property and possessions  how this was founded on the concept, so jealously guarded. And I decided I really did not want to be woken in the middle of the night by some rancher and his son slicing through my tent with bowie knives, the words of Locke engraved in their hearts. It’s true this a form of fear holding me back from doing something I wanted – but I genuinely desired at this point of being on the road a goodnight’s sleep. Plus there was the Thermarest I had yet to fix.

So onward we pushed, the land evening out to straight ranchland. I envisioned this world from above – huge squares, or jagged property lines determined by rock formations, blending into state lease and BLM land. Pulled into Newcastle Wyoming, with the idea of finding a place to rest my head. A storm was brewing to the east, it was near-on six, and time for some R&R. Dog agreed.

There was a BLM and Forest Service building – no firearms allowed. Locked. I found the visitor’s center – closed, but with one of those panels advertising different places to stay, with a dust-matted phone attached. I dialed #17 to reach the Pine Inn or something like that – advertised as “just like grandma’s!” They said they had one spot left. I repaired to the truck and checked it out on Yelp. Everyone loved the place – calm, inexpensive, a respite. So on I went up the side streets, admiring the preserved half-tons and custom F250s – how well Wyoming folks love their old trucks! – and pulling up into the pea-graveled yard.

A slew of old tanned fit-looking men crowded around as I parked in a B&B that indeed had the feeling of an oasis. Low-slung buildings guarded by piñon bush and flowers, painted yellow. The men admired the bike.

“You ride man?”

I said I did but with no great skill or endurance – not seriously.

“You should ride with us!”

Turns out they were a bunch of dudes who had forsook the cliché Harley in place of road bikes – preparing to do a tour through the west, heading down into South Dakota, looping up through the Black Hills, and dropping back down.”

“I’m not sure I could keep up.”

They all jumped into a hay trailer pulled by a pickup – twelve or so of them, to get dinner.

“You’ve got a dog, you’re on the road – you married?” one asked.

“I’m not.”

In unison all the seated men awwweed.

“He’s got it all!”

In a better mood now with the uniform blessing of my elders and the storm moving off to the east, and the prospect of this warm place to stay, I went to the welcome desk. No one appeared. I rang the intercom, and a terse female voice said they had no space. I mentioned that I had called – it must have been some place different she said.

I sat in the truck wondering what to do, a bit blitzed. I called another spot – they charged ten dollars more for a dog over 50 pounds. Cal could pass off his 70 as 60, but fifty – I thought not.  Finally, passing a refinery of sorts, I decided Newcastle and I weren’t made for each other. I opened the map I had gotten from the tourist center, and headed South.

So south we went. About a hundred feet to the east, paralleling the highway, was a gentle, almost invisible indentation in the ground, and a telephone line not far-off. I looked on my Wyoming map – turns out it was the old stagecoach trail connecting Cheyenne to Deadwood, indicated by bubbles by 85. As I began to grow delirious with the amount of driving – going on 15 hours – I imagined outlaws crouched behind mesas, lying in wait for the stagecoach, perhaps mounted with a gattling gun, and the scene, with its various outcomes, ensuing.

I should mention that I had been exchanging emails and texts with my parents – divorced when I was seven – concerning their respective memories of our home in Denver. It was curious to hear their individual recollections of the house – details they picked out, stories that came along with recollections. Neither remembered the address – and so were forced to think of landmarks, routes back from the Rocky Mountain News – they had both been reporters there when they first met. I won’t go into the differences –   it seems inappropriate – but will say it was an insight into my early life, and their relationship, which I had not previously been afforded.

Driving south through that unending ranchland time became elastic. I found a campsite in Lusk, and also called ahead to the Covered Wagon Inn. It was 77 bucks a night, with Triple A. A big bed, shower, hot tub and cold sauna – god that sounded good. But there was also a campsite for twenty bucks – we got disconnected when the service evaporated, and the women at the site called back and left a kind message.

I pulled into the wide-streeted town of Lusk and passed the Covered Wagon Inn, then the campsite. Gravel spots with RVs, a couple patches of grass for a tent. The road ended in grass – one of my favorite sights in the world, a road ending – I love that Sitka’s roads dead-end on both sides. And I spent a good amount of time staring at that spot where asphalt turned to grass, the shifting sky, through the bug-spattered windshield, considering my options, and other things I cannot recall.

Fuck it, I thought. I want a warm bed – and off I went to the Covered Inn.

I had dinner across the wide street – almost getting run over by a couple jabbering Germans on beach bikes, ecstatic no doubt at their distance from all civilized society – and settled in for dinner. I ordered a mule burger – excited at the prospect that it was actually mule they were serving – but was told by the shifty mustached waiter that it was just bigger than the other burgers. Somehow that burger though, with its freezer-line pre-patty edges, hit the spot, with green tabasco and vinegar fries. I took the dog for a walk, who got confused with the occasional tumbeweed making its soft way across the street. He jumped back into the truck – no dogs in the motel – and I took a soak in the hot tub, watched Andy Weiner make his tearful admission of wrongdoing to the press, and fell asleep.

The next morning I spoke at length with my mother over her recollections of our house. Was there a median or no? Was it on the east or west side? Then I spoke with my father – did it have an L-shape from above? A garage or no garage?

With their collective memory now part of mine, Dog and I got an early start, taking a photo of the Covered Wagon Inn on the way out, and hit the road. It was evidently a day for the Wolf Shirt, and I put it on. How blue that blue! How big that space! Cal wasn’t enjoying the sun so much – so he got burriotoed by the furniture blanket, and did some ESP exercises with the contents of the glove box.

He also hadn’t had a walk and I hadn’t had breakfast so we stopped by some ranchland and I fed him, let him sniff all the new smells, experimented with the IPhone taking a picture of myself, and drove off without his dog bowl. About par for the course – it’s actually stunning I haven’t lost more stuff on this trip.

We cruised on through the blue and space, the Medicine Bow mountains rising to the west, Cheyenne coming and going, Margaret Atwood’s “Blind Assasin” playing on tape – the storyline increasingly strange and convincing and somehow not incongruous with the land I was witnessing – although I couldn’t put my finger on how.

Like a corkscrew we went south into Colorado – stopping in the old town of Fort Collins for a cheap Indian lunch buffet. How happy the inhabitants of university towns! Perpetually sunny, children playing in the fountains, bookstores, intelligent-looking people in sandals. What’s not to like, aside from the committees and back-stabbing?

Fortifiied with Daal and saag paneer and a mango lassi we headed further south into that (relative) babylon. My mother called – she suddenly had remembered an address – 7401 Richtofen Place. I plugged it into the IPhone, which obligingly laid out a purple carpet on its screen leading to the steps of the single-family ranch, in the Denver neighborhood of Montclair, the house where I first breathed air.