Squatters in Paradise: A Yellowstone Memoir

by James Perry

  Ms. Prophet, or Guru Ma as she is also known, took over the leadership of the Church when her husband, Mark Prophet, died (or rather, ascended). He has taken his place among the pantheon of Ascended Masters now, but Guru Ma is still in touch with him, and many others, through her ability to channel their spirits. Her Rolodex of contacts in the other world is impressive, illustrated by the number of books she has produced: the “lost teachings” of Jesus, Buddha, Saint Germaine, Lanello (né Mark Prophet), and many others, encompassing virtually every spiritual influence since Ur rose from the reeds of Sumer. Which could, I suppose, explain why they have believers from all parts of the world. Theirs is a spiritual stew for every palate, reminiscent of the Fosterite religion in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land:

  The New Revelation and all doctrines and practices under it are all old stuff, very old. All you can say about it is that neither Foster nor Digby ever had an original thought in his life. But they knew what would sell, in this day and age. So they pieced together a hundred time-worn tricks, gave them a new paint job, and they were in business. A booming business, too.

  We looked into the book tent next and found several sheaves of decrees - their chants. We leafed through the pages with interest, curious to know what it is they get excited about. Some of the titles proved instructive:

  The End of World Communism and the International

  Communist/Capitalist Conspiracy

  God-Control of Nuclear Energy

  The Patriot’s Decree

  The Judgement of Abortion and the Abortionist

  And my personal favorite:

  Blue Cross - Blue Flame Protection

  Used, no doubt, only in emergencies, as when the fires of 1988 in Yellowstone were raging towards their Ranch. Instead of evacuating their property as the Park Service had strongly suggested, they lined up to face the flames and chanted at them. Standing in orderly fashion before the wall of smoke with ashes falling like snow around them, they raised their voices in unison against the onrushing conflagration. The fires that consumed a third of the Park and caused enormous embarrassment for the rangers were no match for the Lotus Flame of Guru Ma and her disciples. It began to rain and the wind changed direction, sending the flames howling in despair back into the Park.

  All of which made us more curious to see the Messenger herself. We put away the books and hurried to the main tent, where she was scheduled to make her appearance.

  The tent was packed. People sat in folding chairs placed in a semi-circle around a stage that overflowed with flowers and was dominated by huge, staring portraits. Everyone sat straight-backed with upturned palms resting on their knees or held at the waist. They were all mumbling or humming, filling the air with a vibrating drone. Every now and then someone would let out a yelp as though they’d been administered a small electric shock. If I closed my eyes I could imagine that I was sitting inside a great whirring engine that kept sputtering and hiccupping. We took our seats as three women took center stage. They positioned themselves around a large globe and held their hands over the North Pole, then led the congregation in a high-speed chant that had the exact rhythm of Blake’s “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night,” which I began to chant. This went on for about an hour and the three of us were stealing glances at our watches when the chant suddenly ceased and there were cries of “Mother!” coming from all sides. And then she stood before us, Guru Ma, radiant in a white bathrobe. Beaming at the audience with her round cherubic face, she began pumping her fist and brought the gathering to its feet with a rousing rendition of “God is my Victory! Victory! Victory!” We were sitting off to the side and near the back, but a battery of TV sets kept us apprised of the action on stage. As she sang, camera crews ensconced in cranes swooped over the crowd, filming enraptured faces and small groups who had begun to dance with joy. All the while the aisles were being patrolled by clapping women in uniform who regarded the faithful with unsmiling scrutiny. We’d positioned ourselves near an exit and I glanced back at the opening for reassurance, but saw instead a row of guards, arms folded, blocking the way. I turned my eyes forward and continued to sing the victory song, suddenly realizing that I was looking at an empty stage. The cameras still showed a gleeful audience, but Mother had slipped away. Then I spied her wandering near the wings. She was sipping from a glass and watching the proceedings with a bored smile. Now and then she would resume center stage, joining in the chant, but only until she seemed to forget the words or lose interest and wander off again.

  “Is she drunk?” I asked Carolyn.

  “Shh!”

  When the chant was finished the Messenger sat down at a desk that had been placed at the front of the stage and began her sermon. The audience was rapt as she adjusted her robe and fixed her eyes on the notes before her. She spoke for only a few minutes and most of what she said was lost in a mumbled delivery. I strained to hear but only caught a few words: “the Illuminati… the Great White Brotherhood…,” and something about lepers. When she finished speaking the tent emptied in a mad rush for the cafeteria hut. Guru Ma had melted quickly into the wings as soon as her sermon was over and the three of us exchanged disappointed looks at this rather anticlimactic appearance. Still, we’d seen enough and decided to call it a day.

  There were buses waiting on the hill and we climbed on board. No one sang on the return trip and the checkpoints were passed without fuss. I began to feel sleepy. I’d been guarded and tense all afternoon and now I could feel my body begin to relax.

  “Well, I don’t think they’re going to be another Waco,” Carla said as we got back in the car. “They don’t strike me as fanatical.”

  Carolyn fired up the engine and jammed it in gear. “They give me the fuckin’ creeps. I’m glad we’re leaving.”

  “What do you think?” Carla asked, turning to the back seat where I’d begun to stretch out.

  “Dunno,” I answered through half-closed eyes. “They could be harmless…or they could turn out to be the Mother of all cults.”

  We had our first laugh since arriving, then started for home.

  Part Two

  Damaged Goods

  "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

  "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

  "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

  "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

  Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  YELLOWSTONE is a haven for damaged goods. It can seem like we’re all living on the Island of Misfit Toys (you’ve all seen Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, right?). We end up here because no one else will take us. We’re kids who haven’t worked anywhere else and need job experience; we’re recovering alcoholics who’ve blown all our other chances; we’re hiding from the law; we’re dreamers who can’t find our niche in capitalist America; we’re good ole boys who like the simple life of fishin’ and drinkin’. What we have in common is the shared sense that we lack an important component that makes for a Solid Citizen. You can hear it in our laments at the employee pub:

  “Who wants an accountant…with dyslexia?”

  "Who wants a waiter...with a prosthetic leg?"

  “Who wants a manager…with a record of sexual harassment?”

  Here comes Yellowstone, here comes Yellowstone, right down Yellowstone Lane…

  * * *

  I’ve often heard comments from people that I don’t look my age, which I answer with, “It’s living in the mountains that does it.” But working in Yellowstone doesn’t keep you young so much as it keeps you immature. I remember getting red-faced with anger once because another waiter criticized me for not putting raisins in the bowl of oatmeal that I was bringing to a table. “Yeah? Well only assholes put raisins in their oatmeal!” I shot back. After this exchange I went to the bathroom and put my head in my hands and thought, “Oh my God. I just lost my temper over a bowl of oats.”

  As the summ
er progresses and staffing becomes thinner, the pressures of overwork and life in a small community begin to take their toll. It must be a part of the brain's defense mechanism to revert to childishness under stress. The warning signs are easy to spot: tempers flare easily, humor becomes silly or cruel, objects are thrown in the kitchen and guests are in real danger of eating things that were never meant to be ingested.

  It’s comical to see a manager trying to apply June standards in September. Torn between his knowledge of how the restaurant is supposed to be run and what he can reasonably expect of his shell-shocked squad, he sometimes makes a poor decision. “Pat, you’re not wearing black socks!” The waiter turns to him, fingers twitching around his corkscrew, smiles and says, “Yeah. I shouldn’t be allowed to wait tables today.” He rises to go and the manager, glancing at his section chart with several names already crossed out, waves him off. “No, no. That’s all right. You can wear your bunny socks.”

  Another manager - let's call her Pollyanna - tried to re-instill a passable work ethic in us late one season by plastering the walls of the kitchen with dozens of motivational placards with sayings like, There's No "I" In Team; If You've Got Time To Lean, You've Got Time To Clean; and, SMILE!. They remained on the wall in front of the waiter's pre-check area for weeks until no one even saw them anymore. They became like wallpaper, a part of the background, until the day my friend Audrey and I decided to give them a makeover. We cut out some placards and added our own sayings, surreptitiously replacing about a third of the old signs with these forgeries. No one even noticed until a couple of weeks later when a waiter happened to read one of the counterfeit placards out of boredom and was startled out of his stupor.

  "'Kill Your Mother'!!?"

  The managers figured it out about a week after that and down came all the signs exhorting the staff to use drugs, steal, and masturbate. Adolescent perhaps, but we were never again subjected to Maoist-style sloganeering, and the new manager, having used up her meager bag of motivational tricks, became an office shut-in.

  The managers, who try to remain composed, usually lose it in September and start sobbing openly in front of the remnants of their staff, who sit impassively with circles under their eyes watching the funny man go wah-wah.

  Once, during a particularly cruel summer, I remember staggering up to a manager during a brutal lunch. She was at the host stand trying to control the chaos. “I need eight separate checks,” I said slowly. She looked at me and the color drained from her face. We were the walking dead at that point, and looked it. She handed me the checks and something like compassion came over her face. “Why are you still here?” she whispered.

  It's the same every summer. Come August, the employees start dropping like British soldiers in Flanders fields. But I not only finished the season, I returned the following summer and the summer after that & on & on. My loyalty was strange considering the amount of abuse I put up with (and if one were to put any faith in my many end-of-season vows never to return). I wasn't always sure of the wisdom of my choice when I showed up in Gardiner each spring, either. At times I compared myself to the main character in the allegorical Japanese film Woman in the Dunes who, duped into working in a pit where he must shovel sand all day, he spends his time contemplating and arranging his escape. After several unsuccessful attempts he finally pulls it off and finds himself standing above the pit where so much toil has been unfairly wrung from him. However, instead of fleeing, he returns to the pit, telling himself that he can escape another day. You see, he was not alone down there. There was a woman in the dunes.

  Or maybe the woman was the dunes. It was an allegorical film, after all. The point being that I seemed to be listening to a siren song that drew me off my path and put me in the weeds. I usually only felt this way during particularly bad lunches, though.

  Service Industry

  WHAT is it about the service industry that makes it such a soul-destroying enterprise? It doesn’t have to be, but it has that (deserved) reputation in the Park. Part of the problem is being forced to live a non-assertive life at work. We must treat the tourists with deference, even when they act like children, and as any parent of a two-year old can tell you, appeasing the monster only makes it worse. So the guests throw tantrums and get free desserts in the dining room while their waiters try to remain agreeable, suppressing the urge to spank the snotty 60-year old.

  Once I actually had a woman leap out of her chair and scream in my face, “What do you mean you ran out of polenta? I came to Yellowstone specifically for the polenta!” An image came to mind of the glossy cover of a Martha Stewart magazine showing lovely custard-colored squares of polenta peeking over a tastefully decorated hand-thrown ceramic dish. Below, in quotes, would be the words of the lady herself, “If you’re like me, when you think of Yellowstone, you think of polenta!” I’d like to think that this woman went to bed in tears that night because she realized she’d blurted out something shamefully stupid in anger and regretted every word - but I doubt it. As a friend of mine once told me, “Food is an emotional subject.” And so it is. How else to explain someone who allows their entire vacation to be “ruined” because they had to wait twenty minutes for their appetizer?

  “So, Bob, how was your vacation in Yellowstone?”

  “It sucked. My steak was overcooked.”

  There is a wonderful passage in the book Praise by Australian author Andrew McGahan which nicely sums up the service industry for what it is:

  Working in pubs ... was at best a dreary and mindless existence. To be merely competent at it - to refrain, say, from abusing forty or fifty per cent of your customers - often took a soul-destroying effort. To have enthusiasm demanded of you, that was more than the job was worth.

  Or this passage from Gregory David Roberts, another Aussie, who wrote in Shantaram:

  If you want to curdle the milk of your human kindness, or turn your compassion into contempt, get a job as a waitress or a cleaner. The two fastest ways to develop a healthy loathing for the human race and its destiny is to serve it food, or clean up after it, on the minimum wage.

  And speaking of wages, there are invariably the people who can think of no worse execration than "There goes your tip." They are the ones who measure the success or un-success of their vacations by how much free shit they can finagle. They're the same folks who randomly come up to you and say things like, "You guys could make so much money if you'd only [fill in the blank with chintzy money-making scheme]." Never mind the fact that that's not the reason Yellowstone was created as a national park and preserve in the first place, these people are appalled by the fact that they're not being screwed enough by corporate America.

  Another part of the problem is having to shoulder the burdens of the special needs people who land in your lap. I’ve had customers hand me cards that read, “I have a food allergy. If you serve me anything prepared with peanut products I will die a horrible death.” I don’t need this. I want to hand them back a card that reads, “I make $3 an hour. Why are you putting your life in my hands?”

  When things get too bad in your section, you can always retreat to the kitchen for a little commiseration. The noisy, crowded, safe zone in the back-of-the-house becomes the scene for impromptu group therapy sessions. They’re models of efficiency, too, because no one has the time to listen:

  “Asshole at table twenty-three!”

  “Table thirty-one stiffed me!”

  “I just got triple-seated!”

  “I’m in the weeeeeds!!”

  But all this drama is short-lived. Most people, I’m sure, forget their dining experience the moment they leave the restaurant. What was of life-threatening importance a few minutes earlier (getting that third refill of iced-tea, for example) fades into the inconsequentiality it deserved in the first place. Leaving the dining room is like emerging from a dream. People’s bellies are full and perhaps they feel a twinge of regret for having called their 18-year old waitress “incompetent,” but then they jettison the entire ex
perience, leaving only the emotional scars on the kids who are simply trying to enjoy a summer in America’s first national park.

  The Exotic Yellowstone

  Employee

  ARE we really exotic? The tourists seem to think so. I’ve heard on many occasions from vacationing Americans that working in Yellowstone is something they’d often dreamed about and how lucky we are to be working here. Maybe they’re right. So many people go straight from high school or college into a career that they experience very little else in the way of alternative lifestyles. It’s only after their routines have become fixed and comfortable that they wonder, Well, did I ever really consider my options? And in a driven society like ours where taking the time to smell the roses is the equivalent of taking a five-minute break during a 100-yard dash, it’s an apposite question, especially for someone who thinks that working in a national park is just about the oddest thing that a person could do.

  “What do you do when you’re not here?” people ask, as if this job is something I’m doing on a lark when I’m not being a respected teacher of Law at Stanford. That this could be my main job and source of income strikes most people as quaint, if a bit suspect. Since it differs from their own experience they want to know more about it. Like Bill McKibben says in The Age of Missing Information, "We're starved for impressions, curious about how people live their lives who don't inhabit the great suburban sameness." While most of the visitors who quiz me on the ins and outs of park life are genuinely interested and polite, there are the inevitable snoops who insist on giving me the third degree - something you simply tolerate as a waiter in order to preserve your tip.