We went camping last weekend: three little kids, two parents (clueless city-idiots) and four college students (camping geeks after their NOLS training).
Of course we were late: why on earth were they leaving at 8:30 am on a Sunday? Were the mountains on a schedule? So the fact that we were late, and oh- yes, we brought our dog, Lucy: "I've never gone camping with a dog" said one student, politely- all this together, meant that we knew that they were slightly regretful for inviting us and Chaos, who seemed to sit on the back of our city Volvo.
We were late, oh yes, so we were too embarrassed to mention that we weren't sure we had enough gas, as we-too late- looked at the gauge on the car. "Hmm," we said, "hmm." We kept going, because I am too shy to pull alongside a van full of skeptical students and yell through the wind while the damn dog is trying to kill herself by jumping out. As it was, she had my head pinned to the headrest in her interest in every smell carried on the wind.
Surely Jeffrey City, on our way out to the Agate Flats, would have a gas station. As we drove past it, we realized that Jeffrey City is in its death rattle. There was a Texaco sign half gone, and the only thing still open was a liquor store. I wondered if they had moonshine strong enough to count as petrol.
So it was that we ended out in the high desert, on a cattle track on the moon, with the gas gauge lit up. The students were surprisingly kind. I think they finally decided we were funny. "I want to go home," said Sophie.
"Let's try Muddy Gap", I said to one student,"it's about ten miles east."
"Can you make it there?"
"I think so."
"Okay, we're behind you." Rocking and rolling, over insistent sage brush and granite, we made it back to Hwy 789 and headed towards Muddy Gap. "Let's pray for a station kids, and hey- maybe God will make one be there for us," said brave Dad. We shot down the highway, coasting when we could and feeling like- well, you don't want to be out in the middle of Wyoming, with no cell service, no gas, at any time of the year. Only idiots from urban areas would get themselves in that situation.
"Where in the hell is Muddy Gap?" queried worried Dad. All we could see was an imposing mountain covered with snow, and the highway leading on, looping up and down over the blank land. The kids were even silent for once. If I could think of music for this moment, it would be some agitated Celtic song that you desperately want to end.
"Where the hell is Muddy Gap?" Repeated a few times.
I looked up to see a flashing light, a stop sign- and not much else. Then I saw the station I remembered, up on the hill, and with a sinking heart, thought, "Why on earth would THAT place be open on a Sunday?" We pulled up anyway, in desperation- we'd decided that we'd just flag someone down to help us get gas from Rawlins, sixty miles away, and let the students go on their way to their wilderness adventure. I'd had enough of adventure already. The only one who seemed to want more was the dog.
Our tires crunched on the uphill driveway into the station, and we passed a white van parked there, which had black letters on the side that said, "Where the *&$ is Muddy Gap?"
The pump was on.
The door said, "Open". We all trudged inside as our car filled up hungrily. We were greeted by a small Arab who said in dulcet tones, " Welcome to Muddy Gap. We having the cleanest restrooms in Carbon County, and please we're happy to have you." The store was clean, the restrooms were clean, and the white walls and ceilings of the entire store were covered in happy graffiti in red, blue, purple, pink, green and yellow: lots of other people who thought this place was something of a miracle, too.
There was a museum of sorts adjacent to the food store, filled with memorabilia of the Mormon Handcart tragedy. I looked at the story: as the Mormons fled West in the late 1800's, they were so poor and persecuted that they had to travel the thousands of miles pulling handcarts; they were too poor to afford a beast of burden. They did not make it to Independence Rock, a marker used by Pioneers on the Oregon Trail, by Independence Day. The common wisdom was that if you didn't make it to Independence Rock by July 4, you wouldn't get over the mountains before the snows came. They died by the hundreds in the frozen desert in which we now stood.
I mentioned this to one of the young people, and she replied, "Who would want to remember Mormons?"
"I would," I said, "they are people, too." I knew that she was young,and kidding, and yet I disliked the comment. I no longer cared that she was a NOLS expert, nor that we'd almost run out of gas, as I looked at the paintings of children in the snow, in that desert outside the doors of that little haven that was the Muddy Gap Station.
We shot back down the highway, the car full of gas and us a little less full of gas, sobered. We went on another crazy jaunt through the cattle tracks, thinking about Ford trucks with super-suspension. We hiked four miles through the sage brush, sand, cactus and grass, the dog bounding joyfully, all of us glad that it was unseasonably warm. We made it to our campsite, and the student experts found 'a source of running water and a sheltered campsite'. They immediately began setting up the 'kitchen', and we set up tents and the kids bounded over the rocks, the mountains reaching suddenly out of the desert in pink hues, rocks lain over rocks in rounded shapes, trees hovering around in the crevices. We looked back over the desert as the sun went down, and the mountains in the distance, down towards Muddy Gap, called back to us in beautiful tones of blue and white.
Pat, one of the students, took the kids on little climbs, and I began to see his kind and loving spirit- he was someone who saw past the intricacies of expert camping to the purpose of being out, way out and away: to just be, just be with beauty. And to go rock climbing, although he put the real stuff aside for our sake. The men slept out in the open, just to be men, I guess, and the dog slept inside with the rest of us. I experienced the whole night.
We had made it past the view from the highway, and got to know the life in the desert, walked past sage brush the size of small trees, and found the beauty of the pink-rock mountains; we weren't at some groomed campsite, but found our way into the heart of the land, and got to know it as it is, at least a little. The view from the highway doesn't look the same after that.
We hiked out of there, all regrets and suspicions ground away by camping together. The young people went on the the next site, to serious rock climbing, bumping away on the cattle track, while we made our way home across the high desert, the white peaks of the Wind River range laughing in the distance, joyful and impervious in the sun. We went down a thousand feet, ever closer to the Winds, down through red canyons and past brave ranch houses surrounded by quiet cattle, down through yellow hills and brown ones with sage brush clinging to life. We came back up slightly, into the foothills of those white mountains, so close to them that you can no longer see the peaks, and into Lander. We went to McDonald's, as if in revenge, and sipped our sodas, and felt very proud of ourselves for completing a winter camping trip on the freaking moon. "That wasn't so bad," said someone.
A few days later, we were told that we were crazy because it can snow five feet suddenly out there. We went back to feeling like idiots.
