My years in exile afforded me the
opportunity to meet a wide variety of interesting and unusual
characters. I became a junkie to the parade of personality rolling
through the paradise of “My front yard”. One of the strangest
cats I came across showed up on the eighteenth of July.
I awoke that day to the sound of my
most recent crop of neighbors packing up and heading out. By ten
o'clock they were all gone. It was the first time I had Bear Canyon
to myself and I was looking forward to the solitude.
I walked around the general camping
area above the lake, pulling lengths of rope out of the trees and
bagging up other people's garbage to leave for the Toilet Rangers.
Among the debris, I found a Leathernan tool on a rock by a fire pit
and a canvas chair that was in need of repair. One of the plastic
fittings had broken and the owners just abandoned it. In the next few
years I would be surprised at the amount of gear and garbage that
folks abandon or discard when they leave.
I once chased a caravan of church
people a quarter mile and made them return and clean up their
campsite. It was one of those hip congregations that targets young
people. The leader of this particular cult played stupid with me,
claiming he thought it was okay to leave their paper plates, coke
cans, and chicken bones everywhere. He said he thought people worked
on site picking up after campers.
The chair was a boon though, and I was
happy to finally justify the heavy roll of bailing wire in my pack by
wiring the chair together. Back at camp, and proud of my ingenuity, I
sat in comfort for the first time in months. With the Maya dog at my
feet, I reclined upon my new throne. I surveyed my kingdom.
Surveying one's kingdom gives pause
for much introspection, so I retrieved my clipboard from my bag and
documented the recent events leading up to my current position. As I
was writing these few paragraphs, I heard the rumble of an
approaching truck. It turned out to be two vehicles, a new Nissan
Xterra and an old Dodge van. The Xterra pulled in about twenty five
feet to the north of me. The van parked about a hundred yards to the
south. Surrounded. So much for solitude.
The Xterra guy was a GenX-er. He was maybe 21 and wore
shoulder length blond hair and surf shorts. He wasn't there long
before he walked over to my camp and introduced himself as Jason. He
was on a day trip, sightseeing on the Rim and he had forgotten to
bring a can opener. I offered him the use of my new Leatherman and he
returned to his truck and prepared his lunch on a propane stove.
After eating, he invited me to join him for a couple of beers.
Jason was curious about me, as most
people were. I was certainly an oddity, up here without a vehicle
with just a tarp, dog, duffel, and now a chair. I told him about my
original plan to hike Tonto Creek and the fires that had me cornered
in this part of the forest. He looked at me appraisingly, with a
glint in his eye, and produced a blue padded cloth bag from his back
seat. Much to my delight, he drew a heavy glass bong from the bag.
As we smoked he questioned me about my
journey. I told him the worst thing was that I didn't have a stove
and there was a fire ban in effect that I was too paranoid to
violate. Tired of eating raw trout, I offered to trade the Leatherman
for whatever spare food he may be carrying. It took some negotiating
on m y part, but I managed to end up with a few pounds of dog food,
two beers, a hunk of colby cheese, and a can of beanie weenies. It
was like Thanksgiving dinner to me. Before he left, we had a laugh at
the guy in the Dodge. He'd parked right behind the shitter.
It was a full sized conversion van and
it had come to a stop and that was it. Nobody stirred. I kept an eye
on the thing late into the night, but there was no activity at all. I
found this strange, but easily explained it by convincing myself that
the driver had been on the road a long time and had sacked out upon
arrival. The next day there was still no movement from the Dodge. By
nightfall I concluded the occupants must have assembled their gear
while I slept and hiked further into the forest.
After two weeks there was still no
sign of life from the vehicle. I remembered the news stories I had
heard about Robert Fisher, who had murdered his family and
disappeared near the Rim. Having opened the door to thoughts of
morbidity, I began to concoct scenarios of violence and serial
cannibalism.
My sense of civic duty called for me
to investigate or alert the rangers to a possible missing person or
mouldering corpse. I wrestled with this dilemma for days. Then again,
I thought, maybe this dude wasn't a bad guy. Maybe, like myself, he
just needed to get out of town and lay low for a while. Rather than
draw attention to myself, I chose a course of immediate inaction.
Meanwhile, on the weekends, campers
came and went. Most of the time I was alone with the mystery van. By
the eighteenth of August, I was beside myself with curiosity and
fear. I caught myself testing the air for the odor of death.
I was writing how the van had been
there for a month to the day when Jason rolled back into camp. I
barely gave him a chance to get out of the SUV before I sprung the
story of how the damned thing had been there all this time and nobody
came or went. He said, “They must get out to go to the shitter, you
must just be missing them”. I told him that wasn't likely, during
the fire ban I would often forgo the unpleasant raw trout, instead subsisting on salads
I scavenged within sight of the area. I spent entire days without
ever leaving camp: foraging for greens, writing in my journals, and
tending to housekeeping chores.
Jason removed a couple of chairs and a
cooler from his Nissan. As he loaded that magnificent bong, he said
we should just walk up and bang on the door and demand that anybody
inside the van come out and explain themselves. I thought him naïve
and that line of action a bit dangerous. I recounted the news stories
about Fisher and elucidated with the scenarios of violence and serial
cannibalism I had cooked up. Jason asked the obvious question: “What
kind of person would come to such a beautiful spot and not get out
of their vehicle for a whole month?”
“Somebody
who goes to extremes not to be bothered, that's who”.
“There
could be a dead guy” Jason exhorted, 'We have to check it out”.
After
several drinks and bong rips to muster up our courage, we devised a
plan. We would act like we were going to the shitter and swing wide
in a broad arc that would carry us close to the van for a better
look. As we neared the driver's door, it suddenly sprang open and the
mysterious occupant leaped out like a demented Jack-in-the-Box.
At
first glance, I thought he was just a kid, maybe kidnapped and his
attacker was lurking nearby. He was small and thin, maybe five foot
five. He couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. He
wore a polyester leisure suit and had his name tattooed on the
knuckles of his right hand. With his slight stature, baby face, and
sparse mustache, only his thinning hair betrayed his adulthood. “Do
you guys know anybody who could give me a ride to Payson and back? I
have a hole in my radiator”.
I was
incredulous. “You're telling me,” I said, “That you've been
here and haven't gotten out of your van for a month because you have
a hole in your radiator?”
“I
just ran out of food and pot” he said. By now I was nearly raving.
“What?” I ranted, “You've been here for a month and had food
and pot? Why didn't you say anything?”
Apparently
I wasn't the only one keeping an eye out for Robert Fisher. The kid
told me he thought I might be him, or I might be a Ranger. I wore all
green, slept on a green canvas tarp, and began and ended everyday
writing on a clipboard. He'd seen a uniformed ranger in camp one day
and noticed him writing on a clipboard like mine. Even though I
laughed with him at our mutual paranoia, things didn't quite add up
to my satisfaction. I asked to see his radiator and it was indeed
damaged. I figured maybe he was too. I didn't recognize the degree of
his pathology, but soon would.
We
found several people willing to give him a ride to Payson, but none
willing to haul him back. In spite of my assurances that a fellow
walking in the mountains with a radiator will get a ride, he refused
to try. He was fearful he wouldn't be able to get back. Fear was a
big thing in this little dude's life. He was afraid to leave and
afraid to stay. He had no business in the forest. I worried he would
bring heat if not handled right.
He
was traveling under the ironic moniker of Jefferson Shattsworth.
I asked for ID which he provided. Having already contemplated the
scatological humor of his name, I lost it when he walked into my camp
the next morning and informed me he was an avid collector of animal
excrement. What's more, he claimed to find a prize specimen of bear
dung right outside his van. I was skeptical. I had seen no sign of
bear nearer than three or four miles. Jeff proudly produced a
sandwich baggie with his trophy inside. It was from Maya. The
erstwhile Marlin Perkins had mistaken it for bear droppings because
of the squirrel fur and fish bones. I nearly fell out of my chair
laughing. He could not be persuaded that what he had was a sack of
dog shit.
Shattsworth
spent the morning hanging around my camp and whining about his food
supply and radiator. He kept mumbling “I'm going to die”. I
couldn't make up my mind if he was serious or begging or looking for
sympathy. Some people wig out when they get too far from their
comfort system. I asked him what kind of gear he was carrying. They
guy had fishing gear and a camp stove. All he was lacking was know
how and confidence.
I
took him to my favorite spot and taught him everything I had learned
about trout fishing at Bear Canyon Lake. I was stymied that even
though he appeared to be doing everything exactly as I did, in two
hours he hadn't got a nibble, while I had caught my limit of six nice
trout. I'd seen this kind of thing before, and I swear, some people
just can't catch a fish. While I was hauling one after another in to
shore, he just sat there looking dejected. I suppose when it comes to
angling, like everything else in life, attitude is important. You
gotta believe.
I
tried to explain this as I cleaned the fish. On the hike back to camp
I told him my favorite story to illustrate my point.
In 1992, I was
on an extended camping trip in the Colorado Rockies for the Rainbow
Gathering with my ex wife. We had hiked the five miles from our camp
to our car at Electric Mountain Reservoir to retrieve supplies. It
was a tough hike. Being at about 9,000 feet elevation, the air was
thin. About halfway to our camp, was a fallen tree where we liked to
rest in the sun and have a smoke.
We hadn't been
there long enough for me to finish rolling a joint when we were
interrupted by a fellow in his twenties who asked if he could join us
for a rest. He told us he'd read in the local paper that the hippies
were out there eating al the groundhogs and crapping behind every
tree. He introduced himself as Bill, a Evangelical seminary student. He
had come to save the heathens. I suppressed a smile and concealed the
reefer.
He said “How
long have you been here?” I told him about 45 days and his eyes got
real big. “What?” he responded, “How much longer do you plan to
stay?” Tory told him we might stay another month. Again his eyes
grew wide and he said “What!? Don't you work?”
I told him
“Certainly I work, but its important for us to be here. If my boss
didn't let me off, I'd just find another job”. This really blew his
programming and he asked “How do you live? How do you eat?” He
began to breathe hard and stood up, clutching his Bible to his chest.
I think this
was the moment where he realized that despite our clean cut
appearance and collared shirts, we were probably some of the heathens
he was there to save. I saw an excellent opportunity to speak to the
guy in his own language, put him at ease, and maybe even make a
friend AND a point.
I asked him if
I could see his bible a minute. He handed it over and I stood up and
turned to Luke and read: “Therefore I say unto you. Take no
thought for your life, what ye shall eat...Consider the ravens: for
they neither sow nor reap and God feedeth them. The least of God's
creatures are taken care of: how much more are ye better than them?”
Then, at 9,000
feet in the Rocky Mountains, high atop the continental divide, we
were distracted by a rustling sound on the hill above us on the
opposite side of the trail. We all turned and saw the weeds and
grasses moving as something made it's way down the hill toward us. It
broke through the brush on the edge of the path, crossed the trail,
and stopped right between my feet. It was a grapefruit.
We just stared
for a long silent minute. Bill the evangelist was pale. Finally, Tory
picked it up and held it out to him. “You see that?” she said.
“That's Magic”.
Well, you
don't say “Magic” to an evangelist. He stumbled backward a few steps,
promised to pray for us, declined our invitation to dinner, turned, and we
never saw him again.
I like to
think that someday, eventually, it dawned on him and he got the
message. I'm not saying God manifested a piece of fruit and rolled it at me or anything. Obviously, some hippie on a higher trail had lost
his grapefruit and it followed the designs of gravity. But when I
think of everything that had to be in line for that particular event
at that particular time, I have to believe the Universe was in
agreement with my message.
W As Jeff and I rounded the hill to my camp, we noticed two grocery sacks
sitting beside my chair. I was beaming with the satisfaction of a
point well delivered. A grapefruit wouldn't have been better. Jeff
turned to me and for the first of many times asked “What's your
scam?”
Evangelists aren't the only ones afraid of Magic.
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