Bob Bell Hitching Across America circa 1980 - Yellowstone and Beyond
June - The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and beyond …
I awoke in the shuddering dawn, on a bench in a little park, a tad hungover and thirsty, and made my way towards yesterday’s little cafe, which was of course closed. The curse of Sunday… Wandered a little further and found a convenience store at a gas station, where I bought water and used their bathroom. One of the great peculiarities of America for an Englishman is the extreme lack of public toilets, or as the Americans so quaintly call them, restrooms. I suppose it is all a part of the capitalistic ethic - purchase to pee. Even then, most stores have signs saying 'No Public Restrooms’. By the time I had cleaned up, the little cafe had opened, and I splurged over ten bucks on breakfast and coffee - more than half my daily allowance.
The day was beginning to sparkle, Yellowstone was up the road and my thumb was beginning to twitch, so ‘get thee to the highway, Bell, and quick about it.’
Maybe it was because it was Sunday, maybe it was because folks were in a charitable mood, or maybe it was just because, but I got two rides in quick succession, and in a little more than two hours I was at the southern entrance to Yellowstone, and half an hour later I was waiting for Old Faithful to erupt. Yellowstone is geothermal heaven, dozens of geysers, hot springs, mud pots, travertine terraces … a national park established in the nineteenth century, one of the first in the world as I and a dozen others were told by a park ranger doing duty as a docent. It’s huge, spreading across Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, sitting on top of what was a massive volcano, which last blew around 640,000 years ago.
Now the volcanic activity is currently evolved into countless pools of hot and boiling water, deep greens, mad blues, and rusty browns, columns of water shooting up in the air, crazy eruptions witness to geologic machinations miles below the surface, creation in a state of simmer and boil, awful forces constantly at work, humbling in their immensity and incalculable power, roaring rumbling and steaming and all the while insects drone, birds sing and squirrels and chipmunks peer and scurry this way and that, unconcerned and seemingly oblivious to all this drama, formidable potency and overbearing majesty.
So this was Yellowstone. After days of travelling I was here, and now what?
Like so much of western America, the landscape, the mountains, the rivers, forests and wildlife are magical, one walks through the land as if in a fairy tale, seeing but scarcely comprehending. The scale is enormous, so much to see, so much to take in, and yet, where to start? And how much time to spend?
Although I was vagabonding around the country, I didn’t have the equipment to go exploring for days in the purities, joys and ecstasies of the real backcountry, no backpack, no blackened cooking pots, just one half-empty bottle of water and a bag of trail mix … by necessity, my environs had to be a little on the urban side, not too far from the sins of civilisation…
I had to stick with humanity, not run from it. And so spent an hour or two hiking a trail or two, before I realised the futility of it all. I’d never get to see it all, not even a wee bit. It was all amazingly beautiful, the mountains shimmering in the early afternoon sun, the buzz of the insects, the sightings of moose, but it was all cut with Hawaiian shirted tourists, pipe-smoking bullet-headed men and spreading wives, their hips undulating with each step, the meat shaking on their bones as those old blues songs had it and I felt the urge to cut out, to split and go further, to keep moving and gaze upon new horizons. A strange but familiar hunger was upon me and I walked along the road, not knowing where I was going. A car drove by and I heard The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ through the open window, and that was what I felt like, a pinball bouncing from pillar to post.
I remembered old friends back in London in the early sixties, who for a week had tossed a dice every moment to decide their next move - the decision being one of six predetermined choices. No going back, no denying the dice. If it was a two - and two meant going to the store - so be it. If it was a six, and six meant going to the pub, so be it. And at the pub, after the first drink, the dice was tossed again. One for another one, two to go to the Tate Gallery. Three to take a walk on Clapham Common. I didn’t have any dice, but I had my thumb, and these cars were all going somewhere, and so I could just kinda float, take a ride to somewhere unknown, a true pinball wizard, or perhaps more sanguinely just a bagatelle bloke.
Chipmunk Song cover
A big old Buick pulled over. “I’m going up to Ennis - any good?’ He was a twinkly-eyed westerner, tan, hat and bolo tie, and good company. Another farmer and we talked farms, weather and all. He loved my English accent and wanted to take me home and show me off to his wife and family and I was sorely tempted, but it sounded all too comfortable, and I just didn’t have the energy to be a guest, and be well mannered and polite and sleep in a clean strange bedroom and eat at a well-laid table and not swear or fart… I just wanted to roll on rubber for countless miles and feel the vastness of America rush by, the forests lakes and rivers, plains mountains and secret valleys, past small towns and worked out mines, and those strange industrial complexes miles in the distance out on the prairie, places of mysterious lights and gas flares, what were those places, so distant, so remote, so lit up in the dark night?
They radiated an evil, their dynamos humming through the night, twenty fours hours a day, cranking out just what?
So my would-be host dropped me in Ennis, and a short while later I was in another car, another ride, and headed for Butte, Montana, and Interstate 90, that long highway that connects the east coast to the west, skirting the Canadian border at times. This guy was in his thirties and worked as a logger, and lived up way north of Coeur d’Alene. Garrison, Drummond, Clinton, Missoula, Wye, Frenchtown… The towns came and went, and the forest went on forever, either side of the road. Logging trucks ground up the inclines, gears howling, black puffs of dirty diesel smoke signalling gear changes, Then Riverbend - oh how many little towns are called Riverbend? Just as many as there are Springfields probably, ‘cos I saw a Springfield in just about every state as I studied my tattered map of the USA. And on to Superior, St. Regis, Wallace, Kellogg, Pinehurst and finally Coeur d’Alene, pretty little town sitting beside a large and panoramic lake.
Midnight was creeping on and he dropped me off the highway, telling me that if I kept walking a mile or so, there was a little peninsula to the south that was a great place to camp - he’d had parties there himself when he was younger, and never got bothered, so try it out, I think that you’ll be fine.
And so I did, feeling my way along a woodland path close to the lakeshore, the water glinting and flashing under the light of a full moon, big dark trees overhead boughs soughing in the breeze, their roots gnarly grabbing at my feet as I tentatively inched along, eyes keening for direction, arms out in front feeling for obstructions, impeding branches, feet feeling for rocks and roots. Found a clearing, and unrolled my old ‘bag, sleeping, mountain’ as the label named it, downy and warm, and was serenaded to slumber by hooting owls, creaking bullfrogs and chirruping crickets. Indeed, indeed, I reflected as I fell asleep, the world was good, and I was fine.
