Backroads, v2

I turned, saw a full moon rising through pine-crested hills. We were caught by the light, so we watched the moon rise as the little boat turned back for the hotel, and we stood in silent awe of the beauty that was unfolding all around us. The mountaintops that rimmed the lake glowed silver now; the trees below a darker gray that shimmered in moon-shadow. The moon's cold light rippled across the landscape, and I found it hard to imagine a more perfect beauty. The lake remained perfectly still, lost in this perfect calm, and two moons hovered between vaguely shifting horizons.

+++++

Our table was lost in the glow of amber candles, windows beside us held reflections of quiet talk; Jennie sat across from me in the glass, and I could see her eyes dancing even there. Shadows shifted as if caught between wayward currents of light; now in their indecision they waved to no avail against the contradictory impulses of this night. We picked at our food; thoughts ordained by random chance floated between us unsaid, unsayable. We seemed to have gathered on the edge of a great resolve, and there we waited, waiting.

I find it hard to think about that night now, about all the things we might have said to one another, and the things we tried to say just inside soft edges of our reflections.

She wanted too talk about the choices she had made, choices that had come for her in the dead of night. Choices that had laid claim to her soul. About a man, a brutal man who had seduced her years ago, given her great joy for a time, then an undiminished sadness. She had been running ever since, and said she understood now there were no coincidences in life.

I think I knew even then what she meant to say, but could not quite. Our meeting, she implied, had not been a chance encounter; we had, she thought, been drawn to that time, to that place, for a purpose.

"Are you sure it's alright if I ride with you tomorrow?" she asked while we sat next to the fireplace in the lobby after dinner.

"Sure. That would be nice. It's late though, and I need to head back to town, find someplace to bunk down for the night."

"Why don't you come upstairs with me?"

There it was. So simple, so straightforward. I looked at her, and she did not look away; rather, she stood, held out her hand.

"Come," she said.

And I did. Several times, as a matter of fact.

+++++

I woke in the middle of the night thinking about Mary and Betsy, about the two of them together and how the experience of that night had been like a life-preserver thrown to a drowning man. As 'out of the blue' as the two of them had been, and as furiously out of character as my response to them had been, there was something of that night that lingered in the air above my head. I couldn't quite get them out of my mind. Then I realized I didn't want to, not yet, anyway.

Jennie lay next to me, her hair still damp from a quick dash to the shower; she was breathing quietly, peacefully, yet somehow I knew this peace was something fundamentally out of character for her. She had engaged life on so many levels, so many I'd never know, and they'd all left their mark on her. But the man she alluded to, the man who'd somehow torn her up and tossed her aside, had left deep scars. Her lovemaking with me had been tentative, she had been unsure of her every move, and after a while I sensed she had been hurt, and badly, and there had been no one around to help her put the pieces back together. Other times I felt like everything was a game to her, that life was somehow almost a joke.

It was, I soon saw, like she wanted to be told what to do, told how to act in bed. Not that she didn't know how, or hadn't done so before; no, it was like she had been broken by a man as a horse might be broken. She'd been told how to behave, she'd been tamed, controlled, and discovered she liked the feeling, and just once that night I'd felt her respond to our union in a way that had truly frightened me.

I had been on top of her, her legs pulled up close to my chest, and with her eyes wide open, locked on mine, she'd put my hands around her neck. "Hurt me," she'd said, "hurt me. I deserve to be hurt." I had been stunned, shocked, couldn't go there with her, and I guess she figured out fast I simply wasn't wired that way; she came back from the edge and reverted instantly to the tenderness I seemed most comfortable with.

Was it all an act?

And if so, why did she feel she needed to act with me?

There was something fundamentally unfair about this too, and not to me, but rather to her. I couldn't know what needs this earlier relationship had awakened in her, or what this other man had developed in her to meet this need; all I knew was in that moment I felt as though I was standing at the edge of the known world, and I'd been afraid for the first time in a long, long time. Of what, or even why, I had no idea. What we had experienced was satisfying, to me at least, but I knew I'd been unable to go where she wanted me to go. We'd soon grown tired, however, and with muscles sore we retreated to the shower.

I held her while hot water ran down our bodies, I kissed her, then I felt the welts on her back. She'd watched me, watched to see how I'd react to this insight but I hid my face in her hair, moved my hands to her shoulders, ran into the comfortable arms of denial. She'd not said a word; I think she understood.

I hoped she had, anyway.

I woke before she did, went down to the Wing and got some things, came back up and she was in the shower. She came out lightly, danced around the room while she dressed, then she went over to the windows and opened them, looked out on this vast alpine landscape and breathed in deeply.

"What a fantastic place!" she said. "The air is so... pure!"

We went to breakfast, took a walk down by the water's edge then got her backpack and carried it to the Wing. I half expected her to bail out and take the little red Park Wagon over the highway, but she strapped on her helmet like she'd been doing it for years and hopped on her seat. After the bike warmed up we were off, the brisk mountain air hitting our faces, making our eyes water. Traffic was light, low clouds nestled in deep valleys across the lake, the road elegant.

Brake lights ahead, cars stopping suddenly, pulling sharply from the road. I eased off the throttle and coasted to a stop; a hundred yards ahead a Grizzly bear, her back all silver-matted tufts, and three cubs walked out onto the road. The mother eased out onto the road and stood up, looked my way, and suddenly I felt like I was on the menu again. After what felt like several hours the bear slumped back to the pavement and resumed her walk toward the lake, which was about fifty feet off to the left side of the road; her little cubs bounded aimlessly and wrestled with each other all the while. I shut down the motor and listened to them; they sounded like puppies playing, setting out the rules of their game.

We got on our way after the bears disappeared in the wood, wound our way through deep forests and across roaring waterfalls and turquoise pools. The road began the long climb up Logan Pass; the air grew cool and thin, even my gloved hands began to feel the cold. There was no one ahead of us and though the speed limit was a little on the slow side I managed to make more than respectable progress up the narrow road. Occasionally a motor home would come lumbering down the steep grade towards us, taking up -- it seemed -- more than its fair share of the road, and a couple of them passed within -- I felt -- inches of us.

After a couple of hairpin switchbacks the road took off at a gentle incline for the long run to the summit, and this was, to me, anyway, the most interesting part of the ride. There was, you see, a little stone wall on the right side of the road. No shoulder, no safety lane to pull off onto, just a little stone wall, perhaps a foot and a half tall, certainly no more than that. I found this a little uncomfortable at first; off to the right were tree-covered mountains across a broad valley, but soon this valley narrowed, and the road climbed sharply away from the trees and the safety of the valley floor.

Now our view off to the right was of the little stone wall, and then: air. Air -- as in a delightful thousand foot drop on the other side of that insignificant stone wall, and I could see up the valley ahead, see where this road was taking us. It looked like the road for the next ten miles was going to be just like this, only the amount of drop-off was going to increase exponentially as we gained altitude. This of course led to a mild case of the butterflies, but even they figured out it would safer somewhere -- anywhere -- else; soon all I felt was my puckered-up asshole trying to glue itself down to the brown vinyl seat.

After a few minutes of this Jennie tapped on my shoulder and asked me to pull over; there was a little pull-out ahead and I gleefully pulled off the road, slapped the kickstand down and hopped off the bike. I wanted to run across the road and hug a tree.

Jennie fished around in her pack and pulled a smart little Leica M out and took a couple of pictures, asked me take one of her standing atop the little stone wall (and I nearly passed out when she hopped up there), then another with her sitting on the back of the Wing. That accomplished, I reluctantly got back on the Wing and pulled back onto the asphalt; now the road began to climb with a vengeance, the drop went from passably precipitous to viscerally vertiginous, and my asshole began to spasm like two monkeys with pipe wrenches were down there having fun seeing who could screw it down tightest.

A sign ahead indicated another pull-out; just ahead I could see dozens of cars and campers pulled off beside a rambling waterfall off the left side of the road, and Jennie tapped my shoulder again. I was only too happy to comply, again, and pulled off the road into the narrow lot. I was just stopping, unclipping my chin strap when I heard it: a blood-curdling scream, then children screaming, all from over by the waterfall. I turned, could see wild-eyed kids and panicked parents blasting from the low brush, running for the safety of cars, then a woman's body sailing through the air -- followed by the unmistakable roar of a large, pissed off carnivore. I slipped the clutch, dropped into first gear just as the Grizzly came ripping through the brush ahead of us; I hit the throttle and blew past the stunned bear and didn't slow down for a mile, all thought of the chasm beside up completely forgotten.

Jennie was screaming and at first I thought the bear had taken a swipe at her, then I heard her screams turn to a kind of laughter; maybe just the sheer joy of being alive had overtaken her but I felt laughter was probably the least appropriate thing imaginable under the circumstances. And at just that moment, with the looming precipice still just off the right side of the road, a motor home rounded the bend just ahead, fully taking up about half my lane. I blasted the horn, flashed my high-beams, all to no avail. I could see a pale white Q-tip peeking through the steering wheel, the driver of this moving mountain had to be at least a hundred and twenty years old and probably had the visual acuity of a three-toed sloth. No matter; I had about twenty inches of useable roadway ahead, a two thousand foot drop-off pulling at me with some kind of perverted gravity, and my nuts chose that moment to go into a full and righteous spasm.

Some days life ain't fair.

It's all instinct at a time like that. Brake, keep your eyes on the road, cross your fingers and hope for the best. I was aware for a moment that the Wing was riding the line, that the tires were right on the line between asphalt and gravel, the little stone wall about a foot to the right of my boot, then in a whoosh the Winnebago was by and Jennie was laughing harder than ever -- whooping it up, in fact.

There is a huge visitor center atop the pass and I pulled in, parked next to some low, stunted pines, and got off the bike, my knees wobbly, my mouth dry. I half expected to turn around at any moment and see a cavalry charge of Grizzly bears munching through the crowd headed to and from their cars, but in truth my mind was full of images of the front end of that last Winnebago, and of a yellow motorcycle tumbling over the edge of the roadway and falling and falling to a fiery doom in the valley below. Just for grins, the sight of the woman vaulting above the trees came back, and the bear standing inches from us as we roared past on the Wing. What a fun morning this had been!

Already there were rangers responding to the waterfall incident, and the parking lot was abuzz with the news. I walked around a moment, got my wits -- and my breath -- about me, then took off my helmet...

"There's bears all over this fucking mountain!" I heard a passerby, an old man, saying.

"Where? What did you say?" said a woman standing next to us, just getting out of her car.

The man turned to her: "There's at least two Grizz up there on the nature trail. Ranger just shut it down. Bunch of folks stranded out at the overlook. They'll have to wait 'til the bears move on before they can hike back here."

"Is this normal?" I asked. "I mean, they seem pretty aggressive."

The old-timer laughed. "Normal? For a Grizz? They do pretty much whatever they like around here. Lot of rain lately, lots of berries to eat, and they're protected, so no one messes with 'em."

"They're magnificent!" Jennie said. "Jim, that was the most exhilarating ten minutes of my life!"

"Yeah. Exhilarating. The very word I was searching for."

"Pardon me, sir," she continued, "but did you say there are more up there? On that hillside?"

"Yep. Head over to the trail on the right side of the building, walk up there a ways. You'll see all the Grizz you'll ever want to see."

"Come on, Jim, let's go!"

Well, I was back on the menu again.

I think we were both daunted and saved that morning by the sheer elevation of the visitor center. There were stairs leading from the parking lot up to the main building and on to the trails beyond, steep concrete stairs as a matter of fact, but we were both huffing and puffing by the time we reached the top. We set off down the trail, itself modestly inclined, and after about five minutes of this we both sounded like old steam locomotives. We walked up to a large gathering of people, saw a ranger talking and pointing up the moraine and I could immediately see two huge animals up there walking across the flanks of a mountain not two hundred yards away.

Jennie was enthralled. I think she wanted to have one wrapped up so she could take it home with her on the airplane.

We watched the bears amble across the shale face and disappear into low scrubby pines -- trees not unlike those we'd just walked through ourselves -- then we opted to amble our own little butts down to the visitor center in search of something to eat or drink. This facility, being run by the National Park Service, of course had nothing of the kind available.

Granola bars! I still had some granola bars in one of the saddlebags!

We ate the last of them up there, and I assure you nothing ever tasted so good as half-melted chocolate chip granola bars. Really. Take my word for it.

I was also beginning to think that maybe Jennie had more than a few loose screws upstairs.

+++++

So of course we pulled into the Many Glacier Lodge not five minutes after they stopped serving lunch. Did I mention something about life sometimes not being fair?

Anyway. The drive down from the summit of the pass had been just as spectacular, if not more so, than that highly entertaining ride up. Huge alpine lakes lined the way down the valley, each new vista evolved cataclysmically from the landscape, each seemed to lie in wait, ready to pounce on us unawares, exploding from around the next bend in the road in overwhelming, rapturous beauty. I'd never seen anything like this anywhere else in America; I'm sure only the high Swiss Alps, perhaps the Italian Dolomites and the Andes could compare with what we saw that morning. And bighorn sheep, too, all over the hills above us. Piles of cars clustered roadside, hundreds of people gathered with binoculars in hand, staring up at the tawny beasts. They were quite a sight. The sheep, not the gawkers.

Filled up with gas in St Mary, turned north and ran up toward the Canadian border but stopped short and turned west towards the Many Glacier Lodge. And it was just like the movie, too. Grinnell Peak, the lake, all of it. The lodge there was bigger than the McDonald lodge, more fantastic in that the huge building looked so totally out of place. Here was this huge brown monstrosity, another early 20th-century masterpiece, plopped down smack dab in the middle of a a high alpine wilderness. Not another thing around aside from some dormitories for employees, and a campground across the lake.

And of course there were signs all over the place warning people not to feed the bears. Like what, I asked no one in particular, would you feed a Grizzly? Your firstborn son? Your pet Labrador? One of those people who come to your door trying to get you to see the light? I was intensely curious. Who but a future Darwin Award recipient would try to feed a Grizzly bear? I could heartily understand not wanting to be killed and eaten by a bear, but feed one? Surely this was some sign-maker's idea of a sick joke. No one could be that stupid.

Not so, the man at the reception desk told us. Lots of folks tried to, he said, every couple of weeks in fact. Bears came down from the mountains and looked over the cars in the parking lots just as the sun starts to come up -- hoping to find a window down, perhaps, or an argumentative mother-in-law. Some folks, wanting to get an early start on the road after a long vacation ventured out into the parking lots at the crack of dawn. Those that didn't get eaten, I assumed, made it back to the dining room for a hasty breakfast enjoyed for perhaps three or four hours.

"Do they ever mess around with motorcycles parked up there?" I asked, pointing at the parking lot.

The man rolled his eyes. "Do they ever! Make sure you wipe down the seats this afternoon, and don't use anything scented! And don't leave any trace of food."

"Swell."

I had visions of the Wing lying on its side in the parking lot tomorrow morning; in my mind's eye I saw it shredded, looking like a pile of grated cheddar cheese atop a spreading pool of oil and antifreeze. Then a Park Ranger would come up and cite me for littering, followed by an official from the EPA who would fine me for indiscriminately spilling oil in a National Park.

"Let's go get an ice cream cone," Jennie said.

"What?"

"There's a snack bar downstairs. Ice cream?" She was looking at me like I had grown a third head. "You alright?"

"Fine. Peachy. Never been better."

"What is it with you and bears, anyway?"

"Excuse me?"

"You seem terrified of them. I wonder why?"

"Really? The woman lifting off through the trees this morning like a space shuttle didn't alarm you? Just a wee bit? I mean, this place is crawling with bears! We came about six inches from becoming a first course on their menu. I think I'm quite justified being a little annoyed."

"It's their home, Jim. Of course there are bears here. And it's glorious!"

I saw a man coming out of the gift shop with a huge bottle of "Bear Spray"; he was as white as a Klansman's bed-sheet and looked as though he'd narrowly avoided being skewered and eaten recently.

I veered and walked over to the gift shop; Jennie followed, laughed when I picked up two canisters and holsters.

"Boy Scouts," I said. "You know. Be prepared; all that crap."

"Uh-huh. You know, they have some Astroglide over there. Can we pick some up?"