solitude at Two Wheels To There

A Mire, a Maunder, and Musings – 2011.10.09

Published on January 29, 2017 by Ry Austin 13 Comments

Escape Artist lay kill-switched in the sludge of Lambstone Valley Road while dumbfounded Surtch Pherther wondered how it had simply slipped away.

At a sudden hum down draw, he swiftly stooped to right the ride, and a small rattletrap pickup on accidental slicks squirmed around the bend. It was the balding, ragged dude that had lazy-waved from a slouch in his collapsed driver’s seat on the remoteness side of Threshold Pass.

“Hey, bud, need a hand?”

“Nawww,” Surtch’s voice strained at his bike’s heft, “but thanks, really.”

“So, d’ya know where it goes, if the slop gets worse?”

“I swapped here, went wide, the shoulder sucked my rear, and I fought the shit sideways… Or so it seemed.” He was glad for the full-face obscurity. “Yeah, up through the junipers to a saddle and then down steep ’n’ tight to Kinscore Pass—it’s bound to worsen before it gets any better.”

“Hmmm… Well,” smiling wryly, “I gotta give it a shot. Good luck, bud.”

“Hey, you too, man—you too.”

Fake-adjusting his gear, Surtch discreetly watched Escape Artist’s right mirror for ragged dude’s disappearance, unsteady and sluggish, before quickly remounting to slow-flee that scene of his latest embarrassment.

Aiming left from the right shoulder’s slant to drag him down, over-gassing ’til his ass wagged like a tease or a taunt, and with his feet as outriggers, he muck-touched off ’n’ on the miry mile back to Lambstone’s Y-junction with the gravelly Mochila Trail.

It had been a week of autumn everywhere—cold and damp in the City of Contradictions, snow atop the Westwitness Peaks, and in the remoteness, rain galore and a dusting on its heights—a carpe diem season in a life that Surtch Pherther had lately been striving to live so.

From a Lost Springs pit stop, south he shot on terra seemingly firming up, through a riverbed anciently dammed by lava and recently “haunted by desert fairies”, and then swayed a way into the Wapiti Hills on the floor from a prehistoric lake that happened thirty times in a million years and left soil so wistful for wetness that Surtch thought, I can go on slow and nowhere fast, or stick it swift in a soggy patch and get handlebar-hung or somersault-flung to a fate face-first into scrub and stone…

So, at the broad valley’s head, he pulled aside and shut off his ride, dropped the stand on some tuff and dismounted, grabbed water and snacks and a cheap cheroot, and struck off for some outcrops ’cause, when all else failed, there was always lone wandering, the best companion he’d ever had.

Many say such spaces house spirits of those gone before, and though these places had always enchanted Surtch, he felt he had no right to such thoughts. Not only was he naturally skeptical of claims of singular connection and exclusive communion, for they smacked of charlatanism and of power-lust by the cunning and of those in the know versus the damned if they never get it, but he believed that his legacy precluded his access.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin — “Hellooo down there, Escape Artist…”

He’d always been uneasy about it, that his race flooded the New World and expanded west and drove tribes from their ancestral domains—tribes that then were seen as savages but since as resourceful dwellers amid severe ‘scapes that offered little for bodies but maybe much for the famished soul.

And though he could only guess why his ancestors had crossed oceans, he knew why they’d trekked west: to flee persecution by their countrymen in this land of religious freedom, persecution for a belief that Surtch had twice or thrice tried—with a sincere heart, with real intent—but failed to embrace, a belief that failed to embrace him.

Many would allege that he hadn’t prayed hard enough or that his character was flawed, but after spending over half his life fitfully trying to cram in that puzzling piece of a confounding creed and racking his brain and wrenching his soul and lacking proof that he was being heard, whispering alone in the dark had become absurd to Surtch, and waiting for something transcendent to reach back, vain.

“My ancestors,” he said at the void, “devout great-granddad whose name I bear, what would you think of me, this non-kindred kin? Would you embrace me, or shun me? Would you be proud, or ashamed?” He ground out the spent cheroot. “No, none of us have to look very hard to feel we don’t belong where we are.”

When he came down from the mount, though the daily ground beneath his feet would remain as fluid as always and as everyone’s, that ancient lake-bed terra had meanwhile firmed up enough for a carefree, late-afternoon ride out of the remoteness—and… And the skin of his face shown.

Surtch couldn’t wear his ancestors’ beliefs—they wouldn’t have been fooled by the poor fit anyway. And he couldn’t bear burdens for his race—no one could for any. Sure, Manifest Destiny might have been rationalization for bad behavior, but in many ways the won West was a good thing.

Besides, from his experience, in his life, it boiled down to the only scripture that had ever made sense to Surtch—to love thy neighbor as thyself. After all: Go back a ways and we’re all from elsewhere. Go back all the way and we’re all from the same place.

Two-Up with the Past – 2011.10.02

Published on June 12, 2016 by Ry Austin 25 Comments

Shaky Surtch Pherther squeezed the clutch, halting Escape Artist a hundred feet above the Crosscapes River and Magic Canyon’s mouth where a clifftop younger self once spied a Native guy mid-chant just as a cloud burst.

He switched off the bike and eased its stand into the pebbly sand, dismounted softly, backed away to watch, and–spotting not a budge–bolted, dashing around all geared up and nose to the ground, kicking at rocks for a good one.

That morning, from a chair in the doorway of his room at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel, Surtch with coffee in hand had gazed at scattered cloudlets and virga while small hours rainwater wisped from Escape Artist and dryness overcame the last puddle in the lot. Looney Tunes goofed low on the TV behind him.

He recalled an eight-year-old self and his siblings parking their pajamaed butts before bowls of cereal and Trivia Adventure on the floor and those irreverent Saturday-morning cartoons on the tube in grandma-n-grandpa’s basement where they lived while dad built their house next door. It was only eighteen months, but those toon morns could have been his whole blessed childhood.

From checkout, Surtch blipped the old highway main drag east and hung the first right, passing boarded-up bars, expired eateries, and the tumbledown shacks and crumbledown ramps in Blakesville’s rusty railyard. Across the tracks he flew onto the cracked blacktop of Anticline Road, through the Salaera Wash dip that silts up at every flash flood, and past the obligatory dirt bike hills on the outskirts of town where he throttled down for the shift to gravel.

He passed surprisingly full Ash Bluff Pond at elevenish miles out and then swayed his way up to a sand-drifted washboard slog atop Salt View Mesa before slipping down a steep draw to the Anticline Creek bridge. Beyond, the road went all dirt and stone and bent to hell, and Surtch, rounding a tighty at too swift a clip, whacked the front wheel somethin’ fierce on a gouged washout, giving that rim its first of many dents.

At twenty-something out he scrambled onto a faint two-track and into a li’l badlands of red and gray shale and clay, traced a sandstone monolith’s sinuous fingers, tossed side to side down ledgy ruts and through cobble ‘n’ sand salad in a dry wash, carved off-camber up a slidey slope, and bumbled across weird warts of a rock bench to where he now lingered on the edge–alone in a breeze, with the odd crow and quiet.

Once re-serene from a spell with that scene, Surtch mounted back up, backtracked a bit, and worried his ride down the warped fringe of one bench to the next where he often camped with his kin and there fooled around for a while before, finally giving in to return to the City of Contradictions’ dubious civilization, he began to dawdle back toward Blakesville.

He dodged distant downpours and faraway wanna-rain, played that childhood game of “Where d’ya think that road goes?” with routes that vanished at worn corrals and shot-up water tanks or just into the sand as they should, and from an afternoon fuel-up at the town’s far west end, he pulled aside to consult his map of lies while the nearby slab spat and slurped cars at random.

How many beginnings can there be in a life or for one pleasure, he wondered. They say that each day can be a fresh start, another shot, and any gain therein chalked up as progress–that it all boils down to perspective.

For Surtch, this small fall adventure had been just that: a weekend of reducing pavement to mere stepping stones between the real stuff; of nudging the dirt closer to home, and his riding horizons farther out; of forging links from the sensational to the divine; and of further exploring and finally beginning to embrace dual-sporting.

Yet October was already afoot: Frigid Mr. Winter would soon be stomping his snowy boots on the stoop.

Surtch wouldn’t aim to be home by dark–he hadn’t been raised that way. Instead, he’d go west: up Lobo-Mancha Canyon in the Anticline; on the right road–eventually–for Antler Gulch, a way his brother had found through the clayscape waste’s surprisingly scenic guts; to dinner at dusk in a humdrum hash house in little Grames town; and over Friar Canyon’s sixty-odd miles that night, tailgating gas-guzzlers and big rigs as blockers against large game jaywalkers.

And all the way he’d carry on two-up, his passenger his past: a younger self mid-backseat in dad’s ’72 Ford “Blue Ox” Bronco; his brother on the wheel well at his right, staring at starlight, star bright, and moonlight in the desert night; their sister at his left, waiting with a Cat’s Cradle game in hand; mom-n-dad up front amid that magical glow of orange, cream, and green from the dash and the cryptically whispering CB radio; and that big, old V-8 just droning on and on and on.

Yeah, it was only twice or thrice a year, but those desert trips could have been his whole blessed childhood.

The Real Stuff – 2011.10.01(a)

Published on December 28, 2015 by Ry Austin 10 Comments

In the dawn-cast shadows of the Westwitness Peaks, the short-o’-forty miles of interstate through south City of Contradictions, around Transit Point, and into north Shamton were as dull to Surtch Pherther as any ever. Though he loathed slab by bike, avoiding it when possible whatever the weather or time of day or quality of light, he took it that early morn to get there quick, to the real stuff–to sooner hit the dirt of Smuggler Road.

Just in from the teeth of Shamton Canyon, he caught it sneaking off the highway and into the brush. From there, Smuggler’s first few miles were a gravel-strewn, worn blacktop up-snake with curve-pit erosions plenty hollow to wholly swallow the wheel of a jacked pickup and thus gaping enough to single-gulp a reckless rider too. With some road-know, Surtch might have slain the steep serpentine, but as he hadn’t before been there, he carved the curves with care.

At its first fork the pavement veered right into a dead end lovers’ lot overlook while the left turned to a poof-dust and loose rock meander up a broad bench past gulch-heads and valley views along the face of the south Westwitness in the chill morn that still pledged a mild day among thickets and dry glades and hardwood groves with papery leaves all shades of flame wherein the blue and white were clouds and sky and all that was left after autumn’s slow burn.

From a high point turnout where Surtch lingered over granola bars and thermos brew and views of south Shamton and Friar Canyon’s mouth, Smuggler Road, now prickly with stones and gouged from four wheel wallowing when wet, swung around a nameless peak to tease the lips of little gullies on its wander down a thirsty dell to a T-junction with the left fork of Fetter Draw–asphalt again already after a mere sixteen miles.

Within a few sweeps at street speed, Surtch shook off the dirt-feel of peg readiness and hands happily clutch- and brake- and throttle-tired from the rough stuff and re-embraced the full body bike-hug that winding pavement promotes.

At the draw’s fork he put a foot down for a gang of wild turkeys on the trot for a hidey-spot ahead of Thanksgiving dinner and then hung a left up Fetter’s right, where–after nine-ish miles, and to his delight–the blacktop vanished before another poof-dust meander over the head of the draw and beyond, into open range and a tangle of dirt roads.

For his area-ignorance and the vagueness of his map, Surtch lost nearly an hour to probing dead ends and other wrong ways, even toppling once from a frustrated quick-stop at a bad lean in a turnout’s deep gravel. He managed to right Escape Artist just as two dudes in a beat-up pickup with windows down to let the smoke out clattered over a rise and skid-stopped nearby in the shoulder’s soft dirt.

“Hey, man. We heard that somewhere around here is a way through the hills to San Cosme Reservoir. Do ya know where it is?”

“Shit. I can tell you where it ain’t–been lookin’ for it myself. I’ve a sneaking suspicion it’s back the way you came, near that last stream crossing.”

The dudes exchanged glances, said, “Thanks. Good luck,” and resumed their shake, rattle, and roll down the road.

Morning had blossomed by the time Surtch found the way in question–a weathered two-track atop a spur a throttle-twist past a wrecked gate-for-no-good. Shortly thereafter he gained the main ridge above the water.

From there his route leapt side to side deer-like for six or so miles up through nakey quakies and past hunters here and there–more here, after Fetter Draw and in the warming day, than there, in those chill, dawn-cast shadows on Smuggler Road.

Then, at its highest point on San Cosme Ridge, it as good as took flight. Here the vague map indicated a split: a fine right leg hugging the pine-covered mound ahead to a soon union with a gravel road out of sight, and a rough left leg plunging down a zigzag ravine. Yet scan the scene as Surtch did, the right leg didn’t exist, likely never had.

Well, he thought, I could return to the overlook to hit that other road to the reservoir and lose even more time, or…

Applying theory anxiously–on pegs, ass back–and the front brakes gingerly to load the fork, Surtch engaged the ravine’s drop-in. A third of the way down, though, for its steepness or looseness or his inexperience or all, he had to lean heavy on the back brake too. Escape Artist’s rear chattered, locked, and then skidded the rest of the way, swinging out to the right all the while.

Damn, thought Surtch in a lull at the base, if I wasn’t committed before, I sure as hell am now. I couldn’t buck and chuck back up that thing if I wanted to.

From the ravine’s sheer walls, thick-trunked pines stretched out and up with their limbs entwined and their prickly needles meshed, straining sunlight. Though morning was well-on, this place was dim and cool, and pungent from moss and constant damp, from soil–a place to keep all that throughout the summer, though the sun would peak and the surrounding ‘scape go dry.

Among random boulders, through patches of shifty, streambed stones, and over terra-folds and surfaced roots all greasy, Surtch worried and weaved Escape Artist, a capable machine somehow tackling an earthbound pitch and roll with an inept captain at the controls. Though a mere fragment of a mile long, the ravine was as good as endless to new-to-dirt Surtch, who was surprised to finally return–he and Escape Artist, unscathed–to the candor of the mid-morning sunlight, a gravel road in sight.

After a short stretch off the saddle to calm his jello-jiggly limbs and to consult that map of lies once more, Surtch was back astride his ride and hard-throttling steep, washboard curves toward the next fork and fairly familiar roads–those he’d fooled ‘n’ tooled around on a month and a half back over a family weekend at San Cosme Reservoir, back when the aspens still held all their li’l, green tremblers and lush was the undergrowth of tender grasses and wildflowers and small ferns.

Indeed, at higher altitudes, season shift is swift. Surtch had seen it when a younger self and his brother and his sister and their dad once backpacked their typical twenty-odd miles deep into the Cairn Mountains Wilderness and camped there eight days straight.

At the usual eleven, twelve, thirteen thousand feet and then some, they’d climbed rock pile passes and peaks, tromped through marshes and meadows and woods, weathered downpours and dodged hailstones and lightning bolts, fire-gazed after nightfall, and they’d witnessed the wildscape’s dash from summer to fall’s foreboding doorstep. It barely was late July.

As for this small fall adventure, Surtch had embarked for reasons typical and not: to catch and snap some autumn leaves before they all took the short flight to that long decay on the forest floor; to reduce pavement to mere stepping stones between the real stuff; to nudge the dirt closer to home, and his riding horizons farther out; to forge links from the sensational to the divine; and to further explore and finally begin to embrace dual-sporting.

Sadly, the seed planted by that once-upon-a-time, Vespa trip to Lake Mackenzie and the next year’s rerun with his brother at his side, to merge into a master passion his lifelong love for camping and his fresh obsession for riding, had been neglected–nay, ignored–for too long: For two years he’d had Escape Artist, and he had yet to put it through its paces. Though Surtch certainly had been put through his.

Sure, there’d been challenges inherent in lover-swapping a short, smooth Italian for a seriously tall German–he had expected a learning curve. But what a blind corner that shred of time had been, and oh, the motley hazards that had lurked around the bend: a swift smackdown by an early misadventure in the remoteness; continued abuse by folks he’d generously served for too damn long; loved ones’ deaths and, ugh, the closeted skeletons that started a-clackin’; plunging and twisting of countless other knives; and a seemingly calculated strike by a mindquake out of the blue–and all at once. None could have foreseen that.

Of course, there’s always “pick yourself up, and dust yourself off” and “every cloud has a silver lining” and “it’s always darkest before the dawn”, but cliches and simulated sympathy never aid when one’s been broadsided by circumstance and the absurd.

Surtch had instead seized upon “this too shall pass”, a balanced mantra that can humble the haughty and render hope to the hopeless.

But enough! Enough of that–that way-back-when. Now?… Now his sights were set on spring and his family’s yearly, first of the season retreat to a remote spot amid sand and rocks–a new chance to put Escape Artist through its paces after all, to shoot for a sense of accomplishment, and to stalk that master passion.

Yeah, on this small, fall adventure, Surtch had embarked for a reason and with a plan: to know, before burdening his bike and perchance encumbering others, if his new-to-dirt skills could deliver; and for some peace of mind in the face of the tough terrain he required, to ride light. Well, save for petrol aplenty.

Sure, he could have run the numbers from charts and specs, but Surtch was all thumbs with math like that. Besides, he’d always reckoned that fuel off road was like water in the desert: have for every day and then some–in case of a breakdown, in case of a delay, in case of a fellow traveler in need.

The lashed-on cans were a mere security blanket–because Surtch was still learning the ropes and shaking down his bike; because the road ahead might be more than he could chew, and he didn’t wanna bite; because he was riding by a proven map of lies; and then…

After sixty miles since the last asphalt in Fetter Draw–sixty miles of that hour lost to seeking the way and then toppling in a turnout’s deep gravel, leaping side to side deer-like up San Cosme Ridge and then plunging down that zigzag ravine, re-riding roads he’d fooled ‘n’ tooled around on a month and a half back, and being astride Escape Artist for seven-ish hours already–Surtch arrived for the second time that year at the T-junction of Ourantah Ridge Road and the rural highway between Trapper and Portcullis.

Ahead?… Well, south by ninety-odd miles of blacktop through small towns and a tiresome shot across a clayscape waste flanked by the Bucksaw Cliffs lay Blakesville, where Surtch would overnight in a cheap motel. Doubtless countless dirt roads also lay between, but they’d have to wait, to remain hearsay for now, rumor roads–routes of rides to come.

And behind?… Well, behind was a good day of nudging the dirt closer to home and reducing pavement to mere stepping stones, of catching and snapping autumn leaves and further exploring dual-sporting, of forging links from the sensational to the divine.

Indeed, behind?… Behind was a great day of the real stuff.

A few miles out from little Amalgam town, where he would stop for fuel and–in lieu of a late lunch–trail mix and a cold Coke, Surtch was approaching the junction at Portcullis when he spotted a cemetery just off the highway.

Though he’d driven this stretch once before, it was an after dark detour for a wreck in Friar Canyon. Nevertheless, he knew what this place was about.

At the turn of the century, in the town of Snowbound, near Friar Canyon’s summit, a coal mine exploded. Over 200 men were killed.

At the time, Surtch’s great grandfather and great, great grandfather were living in Portcullis and working its mine. They left shortly thereafter for somewhat safer lives as farmers, shepherds, lumberers, teamsters, you name it.

A few years later, in the Portcullis Mine, three explosions in quick succession destroyed the surface operations, hurled utility poles and a coal car almost a mile across the canyon, embedding that wreckage in the talus, and killed nearly 200 men between the ages of 15 and 73. All were immigrants from Greece, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Japan, and Slovenia.

Between the explosion at Snowbound and those at Portcullis, several hundred wives were widowed and many hundreds of children were left fatherless.

Now, except for a low hum from the coal-fired power plant at the nearby junction, and highway noise from occasional, passing vehicles, the Portcullis town site was quiet.

No structures were left: Such company towns had commonly moved those from boom to boom. Scattered masonry walls, well-built by proud, Italian immigrants, and weathered headstones bearing exotic names and cryptic characters were all that remained.

Through his mother and her father and his father and his father, Surtch was linked to those laid to rest in this melting pot cemetery, the men and boys put here by the great equalizer. With them, his ancestors had toiled and rested and sipped coffee and eaten and smoked. Perhaps they’d rejoiced and lamented together, maybe even worshiped.

To them, through them, with them, Surtch was connected, as through humanity’s beautiful, dreadful, and fascinating past we all are connected.

Oh, the mutual respect that such a fathomless, shared history should afford…

poof-dust (poof dust) n.
1 especially fine and light, dirt road or gravel road dust that becomes airborne easily and settles onto and into anything and everything

Thank you, Bill Bass, for introducing “poof-dust” to my vocabulary. Bill is a fellow dual-sporter I met in the middle of nowhere in September 2015 and with whom I lunched and shared great conversation for over an hour at an equally middle of nowhere truck stop. Though it’s been said a thousand times, it bears repeating: You meet the nicest people on motorcycles.

Worknight Runaway – 2011.08.30

Published on July 27, 2015 by Ry Austin 6 Comments

Frigid river water washed the countless casualties from Surtch Pherther’s glasses and visor, and the workday’s salt and the evening’s dust from his face. Ten feet out, given the chance, the Shamton Waterfall could have washed away so much more, but Surtch hadn’t taken this path on his O’Mahoney’s Grill trip the year before, back when food had no flavor, the jukebox no tunes, sunlight no warmth, and he no desire.

Here it was a midweek worknight a mere three days after he’d got the ’09 XR1200 “Riot Machine” with just 300 miles for a steal from a DeLusiville dealership because this bike was never given a fighting chance stateside because it seldom saw the showroom floor because Harley’s typical customer didn’t give a realtime damn because it just can’t seat a big spare tire… And though Surtch was fine with all that, he thought it a shame just the same.

He’d bombed the eastbound I at 80 to 100 mph after work because he’d craved it, because Riot Machine had roared for it, and because broad Big Canyon, with few lurk-spots for cops, had beckoned. On the back side he’d throttled down and let the naked bike’s 1200 ccs rumble-vibe through Silvervale’s ranch-lands turned rec-lands and cash cows for the one percent and then down Middlefield Draw to the midweek-empty diner for a pastrami on rye with chips and a dill spear and coffee as the sun nestled west in the virga-streaked and cloud-strewn sky. Afterward, with nowhere to be and anywhere to go, he’d set off southeast for West Cairn Road and into the mouth of the Shamton drainage at a speed to match the meandering route and its swift shifts from sunlight to shade.

Riverside, Surtch rinsed and wrung the microfiber, wiped his glasses and visor of lingering streaks, and folded the cloth and tucked it damp into his jacket’s right pocket. Pebbles on the path back crackled under his boots, and the cooling air raised aromas of evergreens and damp soil and cradled the spray from the waterfall that continued to shush as though to hush others with whom it had been babbling before the rider’s arrival. It was shift change in the woods–day was turning in, night was stirring to stalk a bite to eat, and Surtch, fresh from the riverbank, was aware.

With a turn of the key and a press of the starter, road-hot Riot Machine barked right back to life, and soon thereafter Surtch was clearing Bardom Pass. Taking the tight switchbacks slow, he sank into the other side, into the Mackenzie drainage that for 15-ish miles runs along the Cairn Mountains Wilderness, and into a night that seemed to fall as suddenly as its dangers arose. He’d seen no deer before the waterfall and the pass, but now there were only signs of their abundance: fuzzy forms in the brush, just within the headlight’s reach, and here and there large eyes glinting like early ornaments among the boughs.

A few miles beyond where the mouth of the drainage yawns wide, where lush graze-land lies out flat and far, he crossed the state line and then thundered into the first fuel stop he came upon in weeknight-quiet Booth Union. After filling up and then sipping a Gatorade and munching a granola bar at the station’s front walk, he joined the westbound I, busy with cagers and big rigs to serve as possible blockers against wildlife would-be tacklers.

Combined with the increasing mugginess and the drone of steady revs, the pastureland links between Bromley’s Draw, Silvergate Gulch, and Big Canyon might have rendered Surtch body-bored and mind-numb had it not been for a coming storm: The sky, which had been building tension and making threats all late-day long, was finally throwing a fit with light but steady rain–refreshing, really–and random, remote flashes that silhouetted the tall and toothlike Westwitness Peaks on the otherwise blackdrop backdrop.

Finally, at about ten o’clock that night, after over 200 satisfying miles, Surtch raced Riot Machine to a fork-squeezing stop at the back of his drive and shut it off. Behind him–speeding, crashing, enfolding, and companioned by the tink-plunk tune of cooling cylinders and pipes–rushed that intoxicating odor of hot V-twin exhaust, something that proper Escape Artist never could and never would produce. Of course, Surtch loved Escape Artist: It could take him remote, to where his soul was closest to the surface. But Riot Machine roared to his flesh and his blood, was a wild thing. Indeed, where Escape Artist was spirit, Riot Machine was body alone–tautly muscled, hot and lusty.

Are you occasionally able to fit in a longer ride during your work week, or is the risk too high–that you’ll just keep heading away, from home, from work, from responsibility?…

Now, don’t rub it in too much, you… you retired people. You know who you are. 🙂

A Century Cold and “All the Time in the World” – 2011.08.13(a)

Published on April 12, 2015 by Ry Austin 7 Comments

Leaning aloft through banked sweepers known just to them, cliff swallows skillfully, thrillfully swooped about the spacious kilns…

Surtch Pherther had tiptoed over the threshold, through the inner dimness, and–opposite the archway, five feet high, and below the loading window, fifteen above–settled to the cool, earth floor and against the thick, stone wall still charred from the kiln’s last firing over a century back.

Yes, they were cold, for over a hundred years and nightly since: thirty-six-thousand-five-hundred plus and counting. Necessarily stout, they easily trap the small hours chill that’s regular for their near-prairie setting and greedily hold it through even the hottest, August day.

As Surtch held still, the flighty dwellers began to return, swooshing in and then circling the dome-cone ceiling once, twice, thrice–the echoes of their wingbeats, amplified by the odd acoustics, sprinkling all around. At last alighting in their little, mud cups–removed from ground threats and sheltered from the terrain’s frequent tempests–they’d either nestle out of sight, or rest their colorful heads abrim to peep at goings-on below….

It had been 15 years since a youngish self of his had first, and last, seen the Tumen Creek kilns, while taking the long way home from a camping weekend with his kin. The curious, middle-of-nowhere monoliths were a surprise to him and his folks and remained a mystery to them for months thereafter. In the years since, the state had fenced out free-rangers, laid a footbridge over a deep ditch, placed a picnic table and info boards, and begun masonry restoration.

Surtch thought it a shame it had taken so long for them to be deemed worth preserving. Yet it was akin to the usual fate of the great, structures, societies, and souls alike: subject to history’s glacial-pace consideration–its eyes ever-focused on the fuzzy future, its mind ever-appraising the distant past.

Once-upon-a-time, when many were plagued with gold fever, the Wild West was plentiful with such kilns, used for smoldering wood into a hotter-, cleaner-, slower-burning fuel for forges and smelters. Yet for the Italian immigrants’ pride, sweat, and skills that went into their construction, the productive lives of most kilns were short–for mining busts and the advent of the transcontinental railroad, of course, but chiefly for their own appetites: Over a mere thirteen days, a 30 foot by 30 foot kiln could reduce about 30 cords (3,840 cubic feet of wood) to a quarter of its bulk as charcoal.

As folks in ranges west laid claim to prospective mother-lodes, and in the nearby Cairn Mountains to hundreds of acres of forest, Tumen Creek and most other Wild West towns laid claim to notorious outlaws and notable frontiers-people such as Butch Cassidy and Calamity Jane.

Now, on a rise overlooking the site and its wild cemetery, Surtch envisioned a host of happy ghosts and contemplated cliff swallows, grassland critters, the constant breeze, and the only enduring symbols of Tumen’s most noteworthy claim: about two-dozen gravestones, mostly of infants, children, and mothers (were and were to have been). Though it was the typical tragedy for towns of its type and time, to them it was just life–life unjust.

By slab, Tumen Creek was a patch past a hundred miles from the City of Contradictions, but by Surtch’s mid-morning route over Harbinger Pass and by South Morgan Reservoir and through quaint Smithton, up Calbon Creek and over its dirt saddle head, across West Cairn Road and past Myers Reservoir, it was… It was… It was… Who knew? It was more, or it was less–and that more or less didn’t matter.

Though the two modes of transportation are about getting there, each arrives at it differently: Automobiles embody the “there” of physical destinations and map pins and switching off the key; and motorcycles, as Surtch further welcomed with every outing, embrace the “getting” of thrills on tread-testing turns and the quest for oneself on that journey from point A to B-b-b-beyond…

Back at Escape Artist, he donned his gear, threw his leg over, and gazed east at a ridge-cresting road he’d never been on. It was already a few hours past noon, but it was a Saturday in August, sure to be long with summer light and warmth.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” thought Surtch, “all the time in the world…”