"We'll meet back at the compound", "I need to get to the compound", "See you around the compound". No, these are not lines from a bad movie, these are everyday utterances here. David Koresh eat your heart out.
The compound is about 15 meters square, the walls rise about 6 feet, the buildings approach 12 feet, roofed with corrugated iron. The north and east walls are both topped by rings of razor wire. The gate is made of heavy steel, with a series of unappealing spikes surmounting it. The gate shuts with a clang of great finality.
The south wall houses the kitchen, a few staff lodgings, and in the corner, the pair of bathing stalls and lavatories. On the north wall once finds the dining room, the three volunteer dorms, and a few more staff living quarters. In the courtyard on the east side are a pair of clotheslines and a large, black polytank, containing all the water for clothes washing and bathing.
My room is a basic affair, just a bunk bed on a vinyl floor, small mirror to the right of the rear door, two power outlets, and a bare fluorescent bulb hanging from a wire. I've set up my mosquito netting on the bottom bunk with parachute cord; the top bunk I'm using to stage my gear. I keep a fan close to the bed, without any airflow it can become rather stifling.
On account of the heat of the rooms, most idle time at the compound is spent on the trip of concrete stoeps in front of the dorms. Each porch is separated from the others by a waist-high whitewashed concrete abutment. Tom, the German volunteer who lives in the room behind mine, had rigged an old speaker up to a headphone jack and placed it in the corner of our stoep. I added a cheap shortwave radio and my ipod, now our eclectic mix of Dr. Dre, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Tom Waits, Snoop Dogg, Alabama 3, and the BBC World Service have become welcome diversions.
A fine red dust constantly drifts over the compound, it's a constant fight to keep it outside. Withing an hour, a book left out on the porch can pick up a cinnamon-like coating. The roads in Teshie are unpaved, and as such any motor traffic kicks up a plume of that same red dust. It's disheartening to feel that you're getting a nice, even tan, then it all wash off in the evening.
I've been keeping track of time by two calendar systems. The first, more accurate one, is a hand drawn calendar I keep taped to the wall. The other, which is less accurate but shows a great deal of class, is an ever lengthening row of 1.5 liter water bottles I've drank during my time here. I have plans to reenact great battles of the civil war, utilizing the Voltic bottles as the Union, while the Aqua Fills will serve as the Confederacy. Maybe a whiskey bottle can fill in for Grant?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Does Kalashnikov Make A Stethoscope?
The name "Police Hospital" sounds like something out of a bad joke. "Hey, did you hear the one about the police hospital?". I'm sure there'd be a punchline involving taser-defibrillators and colonoscopy-cavity searches. Well, I work at said hospital. The Police Hospital.
The hospital is a quick tro-tro trip into town, an area of Accra called Osu. Osu is one of Accra's more "cosmopolitan" regions. A few higher-end stoes rub elbows with westernized eating establishments and embassies.
The Police Hospital was only opened to the public relatively recently. Prior to that, it had been the territory of policemen, their families, injured suspects and prisoners. These days though, all are welcome.
Seattlites are loathe to jaywalk. Why this is is beyond me. Maybe we're so starved for sunlight that we're willing to stare at a glowing red hand as a low budget S.A.D. treatment. I am no exception to this stereotype. It can be raining, windy and the entire homeless population of Pioneer Square is shuffling towards me; but by god I'll hold my ground until the sign says "walk". In Ghana, this approach does not work. In Accra you can occasionally find a crosswalk. About 1 in 8 of these has some form of signal. 95% of these controlled crosswalks do not function. The other 5% function, but in a malevolent fashion, designed to trick you into the oncoming truck, proudly emblazoned with "God Never Fails". To cross the street and live goes against many years of conditioning and common sense; just walk out when you're reasonably sure the oncoming car will stop in time for you, then stand in the middle of the road until the other lane obliges.
I love the fact that I'm jaywalking in front of the Police Hospital.
Most of my work in the hospital is in the Public Health Unit. The PHU functions as a rotating clinic, changing type of patient from day to day. Pre-natal, newborns, infants, the PHU does it all. The PHU runs very well, the presence of some newcomer oroni just initally caused confusion. Eventually it was made clear that I knew the basics and wanted to work. Some days I take blood pressures, others I administer vitamin supplements or weigh infants, whatever is needed of me.
At first I found it strange that many of the men in the hospital carried Kalashnikovs, but it's a police hospital, and as such has some patients who need to be guarded. After seeing a guard scratch his nose with the muzzle of his assault rifle I felt very secure. I hope that in the event of a prisoner escape or scuffle no one is stupid enough to open up with his nose scratcher. The 7.62mm round of Mr. Kalashnikov's baby has enough force to punch through the walls of the hospital and do bad things to whoever is getting the worst physical of their life, "I turned my head to cough and got a pneumothorax!". The AK is also far too easy to set to rock and roll and spray and pray at your target. This is all well and good if you're a child soldier who has been snorting a combination of cocaine and gunpowder, but 15 or so bullets rattling around a hospital ward is no one's idea of a good time.
The staff of the hospital is well trained and does an excellent job, all things considered. It's just some of the little differences, especially in terms of cleanliness. They dispose of needles in cardboard sharps containers, but don't wear gloves. I once requested a pair and found out that there were no gloves in the PHU to be found. Hand washing and sanitization are two things we in the West take for granted. I'm given strange looks when I wash my hands after administering a vitamin supplement to an infant. I simply don't want to serve as a disease vector in a room full of infants, and I sure as hell can't just pull on a new pair of gloves. There are few things more disconcerting than opening up an old-school sphygmomanometer and having a trio of cockroaches make their great escape from its innards. The hospital functions, and does a good job, I'm just glad I have evac insurance.
The hospital is a quick tro-tro trip into town, an area of Accra called Osu. Osu is one of Accra's more "cosmopolitan" regions. A few higher-end stoes rub elbows with westernized eating establishments and embassies.
The Police Hospital was only opened to the public relatively recently. Prior to that, it had been the territory of policemen, their families, injured suspects and prisoners. These days though, all are welcome.
Seattlites are loathe to jaywalk. Why this is is beyond me. Maybe we're so starved for sunlight that we're willing to stare at a glowing red hand as a low budget S.A.D. treatment. I am no exception to this stereotype. It can be raining, windy and the entire homeless population of Pioneer Square is shuffling towards me; but by god I'll hold my ground until the sign says "walk". In Ghana, this approach does not work. In Accra you can occasionally find a crosswalk. About 1 in 8 of these has some form of signal. 95% of these controlled crosswalks do not function. The other 5% function, but in a malevolent fashion, designed to trick you into the oncoming truck, proudly emblazoned with "God Never Fails". To cross the street and live goes against many years of conditioning and common sense; just walk out when you're reasonably sure the oncoming car will stop in time for you, then stand in the middle of the road until the other lane obliges.
I love the fact that I'm jaywalking in front of the Police Hospital.
Most of my work in the hospital is in the Public Health Unit. The PHU functions as a rotating clinic, changing type of patient from day to day. Pre-natal, newborns, infants, the PHU does it all. The PHU runs very well, the presence of some newcomer oroni just initally caused confusion. Eventually it was made clear that I knew the basics and wanted to work. Some days I take blood pressures, others I administer vitamin supplements or weigh infants, whatever is needed of me.
At first I found it strange that many of the men in the hospital carried Kalashnikovs, but it's a police hospital, and as such has some patients who need to be guarded. After seeing a guard scratch his nose with the muzzle of his assault rifle I felt very secure. I hope that in the event of a prisoner escape or scuffle no one is stupid enough to open up with his nose scratcher. The 7.62mm round of Mr. Kalashnikov's baby has enough force to punch through the walls of the hospital and do bad things to whoever is getting the worst physical of their life, "I turned my head to cough and got a pneumothorax!". The AK is also far too easy to set to rock and roll and spray and pray at your target. This is all well and good if you're a child soldier who has been snorting a combination of cocaine and gunpowder, but 15 or so bullets rattling around a hospital ward is no one's idea of a good time.
The staff of the hospital is well trained and does an excellent job, all things considered. It's just some of the little differences, especially in terms of cleanliness. They dispose of needles in cardboard sharps containers, but don't wear gloves. I once requested a pair and found out that there were no gloves in the PHU to be found. Hand washing and sanitization are two things we in the West take for granted. I'm given strange looks when I wash my hands after administering a vitamin supplement to an infant. I simply don't want to serve as a disease vector in a room full of infants, and I sure as hell can't just pull on a new pair of gloves. There are few things more disconcerting than opening up an old-school sphygmomanometer and having a trio of cockroaches make their great escape from its innards. The hospital functions, and does a good job, I'm just glad I have evac insurance.
Monday, February 4, 2008
This Is Africa
"This is Africa". This simple phrase has become a mantra. Things seem strange? Illogical? Did three cockroaches just bust out of the sphygmomanometer? Well, this is Africa. That's all there is to it. Just relax, go with the flow and chances are you'll make it out all right.
Ghana, where do I start? It's the country as close to the "middle" of the world you can possibly get. about 6 degrees north and straddling the Prime Meridian. Ran by the British until 1957, when Ghana declared independence, the first colony in Africa to do so. The severence with Britain was relatively painless (The Brits have a talent for knowing when to get the hell out of dodge). As such, you can find traces of Britain around, the occasional bust of Queen Victoria, large Indian minority, very good chips, so on and so forth.
Ghanaians are a friendly people, as the Ministry of Tourism loves to state. This is a mixed blessing, as on one hand it's nice to be treated with courtesy by strangers, you rapidly realize that everyone has an agenda. Ghanaians are a mercantile people as well, and a cracker like myseld appears as a giant sack of money with a healthy dose of liberal guilt. Everyone wants something from you, and due to the "culture of friendliness" if you rebuff them, apparently that makes you the bad guy. The worst are the Rastas, who approach speaking a contrived patois, an accent apparently acquired from listening to too much Bob Marley. They immediately try to get you to give them some kind of personal information, phone number, address, email etc... And if you politely state no, then suddenly you change from being their brotha and you become a "damned Babylonian". The fact that Haile Selassie owned slaves has become a great source of amusement for me.
This double faced nature is really only prevalent in Accra and some of the more touristy areas. I'm staying in a town in the Greater Accra area called Teshi; and in Teshi there is a feeling of people being honestly happy to see you. Teshi is a case of the population of a city outstripping it's ability to provide for them. The roads are unpaved, pothole riddled affairs, there's electricity, but no water system, sewer system, or trash disposal. Water is trucked in by private companies to be kept in communally owned cisterns. Goats, chickens, and sheep browse throught the streets looking for food. Yet everyone seems happy. They are living their lives and enjoying them.
Ghana, where do I start? It's the country as close to the "middle" of the world you can possibly get. about 6 degrees north and straddling the Prime Meridian. Ran by the British until 1957, when Ghana declared independence, the first colony in Africa to do so. The severence with Britain was relatively painless (The Brits have a talent for knowing when to get the hell out of dodge). As such, you can find traces of Britain around, the occasional bust of Queen Victoria, large Indian minority, very good chips, so on and so forth.
Ghanaians are a friendly people, as the Ministry of Tourism loves to state. This is a mixed blessing, as on one hand it's nice to be treated with courtesy by strangers, you rapidly realize that everyone has an agenda. Ghanaians are a mercantile people as well, and a cracker like myseld appears as a giant sack of money with a healthy dose of liberal guilt. Everyone wants something from you, and due to the "culture of friendliness" if you rebuff them, apparently that makes you the bad guy. The worst are the Rastas, who approach speaking a contrived patois, an accent apparently acquired from listening to too much Bob Marley. They immediately try to get you to give them some kind of personal information, phone number, address, email etc... And if you politely state no, then suddenly you change from being their brotha and you become a "damned Babylonian". The fact that Haile Selassie owned slaves has become a great source of amusement for me.
This double faced nature is really only prevalent in Accra and some of the more touristy areas. I'm staying in a town in the Greater Accra area called Teshi; and in Teshi there is a feeling of people being honestly happy to see you. Teshi is a case of the population of a city outstripping it's ability to provide for them. The roads are unpaved, pothole riddled affairs, there's electricity, but no water system, sewer system, or trash disposal. Water is trucked in by private companies to be kept in communally owned cisterns. Goats, chickens, and sheep browse throught the streets looking for food. Yet everyone seems happy. They are living their lives and enjoying them.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
A View To Drive For
Wyoming is like a whole 'nother world, light years away from Washington. It's the least populous state in the Union, yet if you were to ask a foreigner to describe their image of the United States, chances are they would describe, at least in part, Wyoming. Wyoming seems to exist in a kind of temporal limbo, where the Old West won't lie quietly in it's shallow grave. Here, cyber cafes sit next to old bars, Thai food across from an outfitter's, sushi and sled rides.
The town of Jackson embodies all of this, it's primary industry is tourism, leading it to embrace this cultural schizophrenia. During the summer months, tourists can watch western-style shootouts and walk on pseudo-authentic wooden sidewalks eating Haagen-Dazs. Somehow, it's just not my thing. During the winter, except for a few skiers and hunters, the tourism trade shuts down. It can give you the feeling of being in a ghost town, especially on Sundays, when the stores close early, and no one is to be found.
It's a half hour drive from Jackson to the Teton Science School. Starting along a road that winds alongside the mountains. On your left are steep, forbidding hills out of a spaghetti western, no doubt full of bloodthirsty Indians (in fact played by out-of-work Italians). To the right is the National Elk Refuge, a broad, flat plain continuing for miles until it terminates in hills. Herds of elk range across it, grazing. You enter Grand Tetons National Park and turn onto Gros Venture Road, a two lane asphalt strip through the plain. Signs make it abundantly clear that you are not alone on this road: "Caution: Animal Migration Area", signs for bison crossing, and one in the Burma Shave tradition extolling you to drive carefully, lest you make a widow of some cow moose.
Thoroughly warned you barrel down the road, your head on a swivel, scanning the horizon for the brown, shaggy lumps of doom that are bison. Along the side of the road are small turnouts, ever so often you can see a large pick-up idling; inside is a hunter, sipping his coffee and glassing the horizon with binoculars. The man is looking for an elk to wander into range, at which point he will leap from his warm Ford cocoon, walk a few paces off the road, and blast away with his rifle. Call me a purist, but somehow that just doesn't seem sporting. Several miles down, the town of Kelly flares briefly and dies down just as quickly. Kelly's claim to fame is a post office, a store (open only during the summer) and a cluster of yurts. Kelly's population, by it's very nature transient and non-conformist, found the Mongolian mobile home well-suited to the plains, swept by the cold, secular winds.
After Kelly the yellow line disappears from the road, a few dirt tracks branch off like sulking children into the hills. A right on Ditch Creek Road takes you into the hills, and rounding a corner, brings you to the Teton Science School. My home for the next month.
The buildings here look very much in place, belonging to the landscape. A dining hall with large picture windows facing the Tetons dominates the front of the campus. You can sit, warm and sipping tea, looking at a panorama actually worthy of the term "epic". The Tetons rear out of the horizon, rough hewn by a giant. Jagged, craggy, and breathtaking. The Tetons are young mountains, formed by great geologic upheaval. Watching the sun slowly put it's fingers on the mountain in the morning, tickling the peaks, then slowly highlighting it's way down the slope, is one of the most pleasant sights to ever wake up to. It feels as though there is no distance between you and the mountains, at the same time fearful and benevolent; the lonesome plains in between erase time and distance. The schizophrenia of Jackson slips away under the stare of the Tetons.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
-Trey
The town of Jackson embodies all of this, it's primary industry is tourism, leading it to embrace this cultural schizophrenia. During the summer months, tourists can watch western-style shootouts and walk on pseudo-authentic wooden sidewalks eating Haagen-Dazs. Somehow, it's just not my thing. During the winter, except for a few skiers and hunters, the tourism trade shuts down. It can give you the feeling of being in a ghost town, especially on Sundays, when the stores close early, and no one is to be found.
It's a half hour drive from Jackson to the Teton Science School. Starting along a road that winds alongside the mountains. On your left are steep, forbidding hills out of a spaghetti western, no doubt full of bloodthirsty Indians (in fact played by out-of-work Italians). To the right is the National Elk Refuge, a broad, flat plain continuing for miles until it terminates in hills. Herds of elk range across it, grazing. You enter Grand Tetons National Park and turn onto Gros Venture Road, a two lane asphalt strip through the plain. Signs make it abundantly clear that you are not alone on this road: "Caution: Animal Migration Area", signs for bison crossing, and one in the Burma Shave tradition extolling you to drive carefully, lest you make a widow of some cow moose.
Thoroughly warned you barrel down the road, your head on a swivel, scanning the horizon for the brown, shaggy lumps of doom that are bison. Along the side of the road are small turnouts, ever so often you can see a large pick-up idling; inside is a hunter, sipping his coffee and glassing the horizon with binoculars. The man is looking for an elk to wander into range, at which point he will leap from his warm Ford cocoon, walk a few paces off the road, and blast away with his rifle. Call me a purist, but somehow that just doesn't seem sporting. Several miles down, the town of Kelly flares briefly and dies down just as quickly. Kelly's claim to fame is a post office, a store (open only during the summer) and a cluster of yurts. Kelly's population, by it's very nature transient and non-conformist, found the Mongolian mobile home well-suited to the plains, swept by the cold, secular winds.
After Kelly the yellow line disappears from the road, a few dirt tracks branch off like sulking children into the hills. A right on Ditch Creek Road takes you into the hills, and rounding a corner, brings you to the Teton Science School. My home for the next month.
The buildings here look very much in place, belonging to the landscape. A dining hall with large picture windows facing the Tetons dominates the front of the campus. You can sit, warm and sipping tea, looking at a panorama actually worthy of the term "epic". The Tetons rear out of the horizon, rough hewn by a giant. Jagged, craggy, and breathtaking. The Tetons are young mountains, formed by great geologic upheaval. Watching the sun slowly put it's fingers on the mountain in the morning, tickling the peaks, then slowly highlighting it's way down the slope, is one of the most pleasant sights to ever wake up to. It feels as though there is no distance between you and the mountains, at the same time fearful and benevolent; the lonesome plains in between erase time and distance. The schizophrenia of Jackson slips away under the stare of the Tetons.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
-Trey
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Road Trippin'
Two days of driving finally over, an excellent 800 miles across the West. I've gone from sea level to the Tetons. Leaving behind what I know for somewhere that is, quite frankly, alien to me, And I've got to say, I love it.
I started off on Thursday morning, fighting through rush hour traffic all the way to I-90 East, where it abruptly died off as it moved up into the Cascades, the sun was shining, glinting off the road as I crested the pass and moved towards Ellensburg. The road winds through outcroppings of naked red rock before it levels off into the broad plains of Eastern Washington. I stopped briefly in Sunnyside for a bite to eat.
As I was driving I listened to an audiobook called Ultramarathon Man, the autobiography of Dean Karnazes. It's his story as an ultramarathoner, a man who runs races in excess of 100 miles. I found myself in a degree of awe as I though about the endurance and willpower necessary to do such a thing. Here I was, going 75 miles an hour down a nice, wide highway, listening about a man running 200 miles across Southern California. It's a bit humbling.
I cut across Northeastern Oregon and into Idaho, climbing up through more mountains, the highway winding it's way past places with highly uplifting names, all seemingly involving death or dismemberment. As I reached the midpoint the land became desolate. Treeless, cold, rocky, barren. Cormac McCarthy would have been at home here. Old mining and agricultural equipment littered the side of the road , adding to the feeling that things just weren't all right. The only sign of working industry was a cement plant that loomed over the highway, arc lighting burning in the twilight as smoke and steam belched from it. It seemed unreal, squatting on the aptly named Cement Plant Road; as if it were some eternal archetype of soulless, inhuman machinery, the bones of the other factories it had devoured strewn across the landscape. I half expected to see Jawas scurrying about the ruins.
I came out of the mountains and started on my straight shot to Boise. Things flattened out considerably and I began to see more and more signs of human habitation on the road, passing through ever larger towns. Traffic picked up as soon as I crossed the city limits and I got off the Interstate to stay the night.
The Super 8 motel in Boise seemed like something out of William S. Burroughs. My room was at the far end of the top floor, next to a stairwell with an inoperative handle. I believe that's what they called a fire exit. I made a mental note to, in the event of a fire, to jump out of my window onto the soft-looking Datsun below. The halls had a few people milling about, smoking apathetically in front of the no smoking signs. Somewhere, an alarm clock was going off, it was 7:00 pm.
The continental breakfast down in the lobby wasn't half bad. I ate a bowl of granola and a few muffins as I chatted with an elderly couple from New Mexico, they were traveling around the country looking for a place to live, but everywhere prices were too high. They were headed to Canada to try their luck up there. It was one of those conversations where all you can do is just nod along to a laundry list of unfortunate events, which generally occur in a series.
I left Boise and drove east, into the rising sun. It was two lanes running across some of the flattest, most featureless land I'd ever seen. We Northwesterners are very used to trees and relatively short lines of sight, this expanse, with it's near featureless horizon and towering blue dome was overwhelming. I understood momentarily how Lewis and Clark's men had felt when they entered the Great Plains; as forest dwelling backwoodsmen and trappers, many of the men found themselves physically sickened by the vast openness. I managed about 80 miles per hour across that taiga, stopping only briefly for low-octane fuel and high-octane energy drinks.
I'm not one to be enticed by roadside attractions, but when I saw a bevy of tanks next to a sign advertising "Idaho's Largest Military Surplus Warehouse", I had to investigate. I pulled into the parking lot and immediately noticed that my Subaru was, without a doubt, the smallest vehicle there. Feeling mildly emasculated, I resolved to wander the warehouse until my testosterone levels recovered. The inside was like David Koresh's wet dream, aisle upon aisle of vaguely used smelling surplus awaited. I started at random and began to browse. The obligatory surplus standards were there: bins of thermal underwear, ancient boots looking like the castoffs of a Liberian militia, a smattering of impressive WWII-era vehicles, T-shirts with slogans running from the mild"Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" to the hyper-patriotic "Nuke Paris" to the ever popular batshit-insane "Sniper: Running Won't Help". It's worth noting that all of these T-shirts seemed to be in a size XL and up.
I bought a pair of snow gloves and saddled up, I wasn't stopping until Jackson. The broad stretch of highway turned into a two-lane strip running through farmland, ever nearing the mountains. As soon as I started up the winding mountain pass my ipod began to play Modest Mouse's "Blame It On The Tetons". I've always felt that Modest Mouse's music sums up the experience of Western American culture. The cowboys have died, the settlers have settled, and no one knows where they are going. They are evocative of the increasing sense of personal isolation in an increasingly connected world, the dichotomy of our cities and the sparsely populated no-man's land between; they even have an album aptly titled The Lonesome Crowded West. The nihilistic lyrics were a brilliant counterpoint to the natural beauty of the mountains.
I can say with all honestly that the Teton Pass was the most nerve-racking stretch of road I'd ever encountered. The road abuts steep cliffs as it winds it's way through the mountains. The feeling you get as you round a corner only to find yourself facing a fully loaded suicide-jockey barreling towards you... Suffice to say I could make a mint bottling it with the word Xtreme on the front, three bucks a pop.
Surviving the pants-wrecking terror I made it to Jackson and holed up in another Super 8, this one a step above Boise's aspiring leper colony. I've firmly ensconced myself in my room while I get ready to search for a meal. Jackson seems to pretty much close down this time of year, with only the locals and a few oddballs, such as myself. I could make the expected reference to The Shining, but what's the point?
-Trey
I started off on Thursday morning, fighting through rush hour traffic all the way to I-90 East, where it abruptly died off as it moved up into the Cascades, the sun was shining, glinting off the road as I crested the pass and moved towards Ellensburg. The road winds through outcroppings of naked red rock before it levels off into the broad plains of Eastern Washington. I stopped briefly in Sunnyside for a bite to eat.
As I was driving I listened to an audiobook called Ultramarathon Man, the autobiography of Dean Karnazes. It's his story as an ultramarathoner, a man who runs races in excess of 100 miles. I found myself in a degree of awe as I though about the endurance and willpower necessary to do such a thing. Here I was, going 75 miles an hour down a nice, wide highway, listening about a man running 200 miles across Southern California. It's a bit humbling.
I cut across Northeastern Oregon and into Idaho, climbing up through more mountains, the highway winding it's way past places with highly uplifting names, all seemingly involving death or dismemberment. As I reached the midpoint the land became desolate. Treeless, cold, rocky, barren. Cormac McCarthy would have been at home here. Old mining and agricultural equipment littered the side of the road , adding to the feeling that things just weren't all right. The only sign of working industry was a cement plant that loomed over the highway, arc lighting burning in the twilight as smoke and steam belched from it. It seemed unreal, squatting on the aptly named Cement Plant Road; as if it were some eternal archetype of soulless, inhuman machinery, the bones of the other factories it had devoured strewn across the landscape. I half expected to see Jawas scurrying about the ruins.
I came out of the mountains and started on my straight shot to Boise. Things flattened out considerably and I began to see more and more signs of human habitation on the road, passing through ever larger towns. Traffic picked up as soon as I crossed the city limits and I got off the Interstate to stay the night.
The Super 8 motel in Boise seemed like something out of William S. Burroughs. My room was at the far end of the top floor, next to a stairwell with an inoperative handle. I believe that's what they called a fire exit. I made a mental note to, in the event of a fire, to jump out of my window onto the soft-looking Datsun below. The halls had a few people milling about, smoking apathetically in front of the no smoking signs. Somewhere, an alarm clock was going off, it was 7:00 pm.
The continental breakfast down in the lobby wasn't half bad. I ate a bowl of granola and a few muffins as I chatted with an elderly couple from New Mexico, they were traveling around the country looking for a place to live, but everywhere prices were too high. They were headed to Canada to try their luck up there. It was one of those conversations where all you can do is just nod along to a laundry list of unfortunate events, which generally occur in a series.
I left Boise and drove east, into the rising sun. It was two lanes running across some of the flattest, most featureless land I'd ever seen. We Northwesterners are very used to trees and relatively short lines of sight, this expanse, with it's near featureless horizon and towering blue dome was overwhelming. I understood momentarily how Lewis and Clark's men had felt when they entered the Great Plains; as forest dwelling backwoodsmen and trappers, many of the men found themselves physically sickened by the vast openness. I managed about 80 miles per hour across that taiga, stopping only briefly for low-octane fuel and high-octane energy drinks.
I'm not one to be enticed by roadside attractions, but when I saw a bevy of tanks next to a sign advertising "Idaho's Largest Military Surplus Warehouse", I had to investigate. I pulled into the parking lot and immediately noticed that my Subaru was, without a doubt, the smallest vehicle there. Feeling mildly emasculated, I resolved to wander the warehouse until my testosterone levels recovered. The inside was like David Koresh's wet dream, aisle upon aisle of vaguely used smelling surplus awaited. I started at random and began to browse. The obligatory surplus standards were there: bins of thermal underwear, ancient boots looking like the castoffs of a Liberian militia, a smattering of impressive WWII-era vehicles, T-shirts with slogans running from the mild"Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" to the hyper-patriotic "Nuke Paris" to the ever popular batshit-insane "Sniper: Running Won't Help". It's worth noting that all of these T-shirts seemed to be in a size XL and up.
I bought a pair of snow gloves and saddled up, I wasn't stopping until Jackson. The broad stretch of highway turned into a two-lane strip running through farmland, ever nearing the mountains. As soon as I started up the winding mountain pass my ipod began to play Modest Mouse's "Blame It On The Tetons". I've always felt that Modest Mouse's music sums up the experience of Western American culture. The cowboys have died, the settlers have settled, and no one knows where they are going. They are evocative of the increasing sense of personal isolation in an increasingly connected world, the dichotomy of our cities and the sparsely populated no-man's land between; they even have an album aptly titled The Lonesome Crowded West. The nihilistic lyrics were a brilliant counterpoint to the natural beauty of the mountains.
I can say with all honestly that the Teton Pass was the most nerve-racking stretch of road I'd ever encountered. The road abuts steep cliffs as it winds it's way through the mountains. The feeling you get as you round a corner only to find yourself facing a fully loaded suicide-jockey barreling towards you... Suffice to say I could make a mint bottling it with the word Xtreme on the front, three bucks a pop.
Surviving the pants-wrecking terror I made it to Jackson and holed up in another Super 8, this one a step above Boise's aspiring leper colony. I've firmly ensconced myself in my room while I get ready to search for a meal. Jackson seems to pretty much close down this time of year, with only the locals and a few oddballs, such as myself. I could make the expected reference to The Shining, but what's the point?
-Trey
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