The Dog Went Over the Mountain

by Peter Zheutlin

  West Yellowstone was encased in a thick fog the morning we drove into the park. Not that it mattered to Albie, but it seemed like a dispiriting replay of our visit to Grand Canyon where we waited for hours for breaks in the fog. We paid the entrance fee and within a few minutes we were in the Wyoming part of the park (the vast majority of Yellowstone in is Wyoming; small slivers are in Montana). And just like that, the fog burned off, the sun glistened on the rivers and the grasses, pure white mists drifted through the valleys, and bison lumbered along the roadway. We pulled into a turnout to take it all in.

  Why is the preservation of our natural treasures even remotely controversial? They are so rare and so magnificent, and if you aren’t emotionally moved as you gaze at all the majesty of a Yellowstone, a Yosemite, or a Grand Canyon—if you are not awed—check to see if you have a pulse.

  Though Albie had proven immune to the manifest beauty of many of the places we had visited, that seemed to change, miraculously, at Yellowstone, though I don’t know why. At our first stop, along a river with snow gilded hills across the river valley and eddies of fog dancing along the mountain peaks, for the first time Albie seemed enchanted by the view. He stood staring for a good long time. Was it a fluke? Can a dog “see” and appreciate natural beauty after all? Can they take pleasure in it? Had I been mistaken about Albie’s inability to enjoy the sights? There’s no way to know, but Albie, for the first time, really seemed to be taking in the view on that crystalline morning.

  A short while later we shared the most exquisite, if fleeting, moment of our entire journey together. We parked the car at Gibbon Falls and started down the walkway that runs along the edge of the canyon through which the falls cascade. To keep visitors safe, a stone retaining wall, about three feet high, runs along the walkway. You can hear the falls before you see them, and a refreshing mist thrown off by the tumbling waters permeates the air. Albie couldn’t see over the wall, but he seemed excited and seemed to know something lay just beyond the barrier. To my surprise he stopped, put his front paws on the stone wall and stared down at the falls. His nose twitched, his tail wagged, and he seemed to be smiling. I squatted down and put my left arm around his ruff; I had his leash firmly in hand but wanted to be sure he didn’t get carried away. As I did, my head was against his and for several minutes we remained like that watching the water tumble over the rocks and letting the fine mist settle over us. And I spoke to him as I might have to my sons when they were little.

  “Isn’t that beautiful, Albie? What do you think? Do you hear the water crashing on the rocks? Do you feel the mist?”

  We were, at last, sharing the pleasure of this exquisite sight. At least that’s what I want to believe, and in that moment, I felt intensely close to him as you would a child experiencing wonder and awe for the first time. Whether it was the sound of the rushing water, the refreshing smell of the mist, or the physical beauty of the scene that prompted Albie to lift himself up on the wall to see what lay on the other side I don’t know, but I felt we had achieved a kind of perfection together. We had driven thousands of miles for this and it was worth every one. I love him so—it seemed we were joined together in some transcendental way that would outlast our physical presence together.

  We exited Yellowstone at Gardiner, Montana, and headed north toward Livingston. The scenery around us was still breathtaking. But the first inklings that the trip was running out on us, that the best lay behind us, began to surface. From here on out we were going to be driving through less dramatic country; the northern prairie and industrial Midwest lay ahead, and the tug of home started to insinuate itself more strongly with each passing mile.

  As I said, if you travel long distance on the interstate you quickly learn that most places of accommodation and restaurants are clustered near the exits which are often a couple of miles from whatever town justified the placement of the exit in the first place. Whenever we stayed in such places we made it a point, even if time was short, to drive into town just to see what we could see and it often paid dividends. It’s how we met Joan, the homeless woman in Redding, and discovered the lovely parks and pleasant streets of Tehachapi and the retro charm of Kingman. If you don’t venture the few minutes into these towns you might think they comprise only chain motels, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants. Some turn out to be duds, but many are minor revelations.

  The evening we arrived in Miles City in eastern Montana we drove the mile and a half from our highway motel to downtown and found a classic American main street with a Western flair. There were saddleries, clothiers specializing in Western wear, and several bars with vintage neon signs: The Bison Bar with a bison outlined in red light, the Montana Bar with a map of Montana also in red light, and the Trails Inn Bar which featured a neon cowboy atop a bucking bronco. This wasn’t reproduction nostalgia, it was the real thing.

  As luck would have it we had, yet again, stumbled into a town on the eve, or in the throes of, a major event. “Bucking Horse,” an annual festival held in Miles City the third weekend in May for the past sixty-eight years, features music, food, and a rodeo. Folks were out and about setting up tables, a few vendors were up and running, and Main Street was cordoned off, so we were able to walk right down the middle of the street and admire the classic all-Americanness of it all.

  On Main Street, a young boy of about seven or eight wearing a Little League cap and uniform was standing behind a card table with his sister and mother. He appeared to have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting and was all smiles. In his hands was a sign announcing the sale of raffle tickets to help his mom pay her way for a choral performance her local choir was giving in Europe. He looked at me eagerly, hoping I’d buy a raffle ticket, and I offered him some advice.

  “Turn the sign this way,” I said as I gently took the sign in my hands and turned it right side up, much to his amusement. He laughed and rolled his eyes, not at me but at himself. He appeared positively tickled. Tickets were twenty dollars and the prize, which I wouldn’t be around to collect if I won, was a freezer full of steaks. Very Montana, I thought.

  “We’re from Massachusetts,” I told him, “and we won’t be here for the drawing.” Whereupon he reached out and earnestly tried to hand me the pouch with all the money they’d collected so far. He was adorable and the gesture kind; maybe he thought Massachusetts was a poverty-stricken place, I don’t know. But I thanked him, told him the money was for his mom, and made a contribution without buying a ticket. I appreciated his generous spirit, though. We could use more of that in America.

  * From the Woody Guthrie song, “Pastures of Plenty.” The lyric goes as follows: California, Arizona, I harvest your crops/Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops/Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine/To set on your table your light sparkling wine.

  † This was my assumption anyway, that she was the mother of the two children.

  ‡ Parts of Beartooth Highway are in Yellowstone.

  FIFTEEN

  Running on Empty

  It had been a while since I’d had a proper American breakfast and the next morning I was determined to find one that would include an omelet, home fries, bacon, toast, and pancakes. Steinbeck had noted in passing that he and Charley had driven through the improbably named town of Beach, North Dakota, a small hamlet of about a thousand souls, and the first town in North Dakota heading eastbound from Montana along Interstate 94. Needless to say, there is no beach in Beach; it was named for Warren Beach who supervised a group of railroad surveyors who worked in the area in the 1880s. We’d stop in Beach and find that traditional breakfast I was craving.

  A few miles before we crossed the North Dakota line Judy called to report that there were animal noises, scratching, in the ceiling above the kitchen sink. These were the kinds of problems I so enjoyed being away from on the road. There’s no end to what needs to be attended to in a house and the simplicity of being on the road with only Albie and the car to worry about had its benefits. Normally, attendin
g to this kind of household problem falls to me, and Judy didn’t want to call a pest control person without a consult. But it hardly seemed like this was happening in my house anymore. Gone just five weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. Why is this my problem? But it was indeed our problem.

  It was a cold, rainy, gray morning and little Beach felt desolate. This is a farming and ranching town; grain elevators sat along the railroad tracks that took the fruits of Beach’s labors to markets far away. We parked in the center of the tiny town, in front of the Buzzy Cafe. Albie waited in the car while I went in for breakfast. In a room off the main dining room about a dozen gray-haired people had gathered for what seemed like a community meeting of some kind. In dress and appearance, they looked exactly like what you’d expect a group of older Americans in a North Dakota ranching town to look like. It was portrait of aging, white Middle America.

  Earlier that morning, in Houston, there’d been yet another mass school shooting and the TV above the cash register was tuned to Fox News. Watching the television, I turned my ears to those paying their bills and catching a glimpse of the unfolding horror. These mass shootings have become so common they’ve practically become background noise, like the weather or sports report. I was eager to hear the reaction.

  “Yeah,” said an older man sarcastically, talking to the TV. “Let’s make sure we don’t arm the teachers,” as if that were the obvious and logical answer to the mayhem. “Maybe we should homeschool all of them.” He walked out in disgust.

  For the first time I noticed the framed poster on the wall next to my table was a studio photo of John Wayne in full Western dress, a pistol drawn into shooting position.

  A stout woman looked up at the TV and laughed inappropriately. “Yup, there goes another one!” she said, smiling. “Mental problems!” And then she, too, walked out. Beach may not have been the farthest we’d been from home, but it sure felt that way. At least the breakfast was everything I’d hoped for.

  For a long stretch outside of Beach there were some beautiful canyons, buttes, and mesas, but the rugged “West” soon petered out and became the less dramatic Midwestern plains. Though it’s just across the river from Bismarck, where we planned to stop for a long walk, we made a brief visit to Mandan for two reasons. First, the Mandan Indians, for whom the town is named, played a significant role in Lewis and Clark’s great expedition. A short distance north of Mandan, Lewis and Clark wintered over in 1804–1805 in an encampment they named Fort Mandan. Stopping here seemed like a bookend to our visit, just a few days into our trip, to Lewis’s burial place along the Natchez Trace. Second, though he said nary a word about it other than to note they’d stopped there, Steinbeck and Charley had been here, too. It was one of many “what the heck” stops we made along the way. We found a grassy field adjacent to a racetrack (still closed for the season) where Albie could tend to some business. It was past the middle of May, but a chill, damp wind was blowing under slate-gray skies. The buds on nearby trees looked to be struggling with the decision of whether to close back up until June or to try to spring forth. Poor trees, I thought, sentenced to a lifetime in central North Dakota.

  In the past week or so we’d seen some impressive state Capitol buildings in Sacramento and Boise and since I wasn’t sure if there were any other points of interest in Bismarck that’s where we headed when we left Mandan. No matter how inglorious a state capital may be—Trenton and Harrisburg come to mind—it’s usually worth a visit to the Capitol building because they are a point of pride and typically either majestic, as California’s was, or lovely, as Idaho’s was.

  The Capitol grounds in Bismarck were marked by a large granite slab that announced, “North Dakota Capitol.” We turned off the main road onto an access drive and we crept along slowly trying to find the Capitol building which, I was sure, would be readily identifiable, as almost all of them are, by a dome. I thought we’d found it, a small sand-colored building with a small domed roof but it turned out to be the state library. To our left was a massive lawn, probably two football fields in length, but unadorned with any gardens, plantings, or indeed anything of visual interest save for a few trees and a monument to some pioneers who had, for some unfathomable reason, decided to stop when they reached this place. If there was a landscape architect involved in the design here I hope they sued him or her for malpractice.

  The vast, sterile lawn sloped gently upward toward a building I was certain could not be the Capitol but which, of course, was. It looked like two buildings stitched together, an architectural Frankenstein. Part of it was about four stories high, light brown in color, that resembled the department of motor vehicles building in Lodi, New Jersey, where I got my driver’s license in 1970. Positioned in front and right of center and attached to this low-slung building was a rectangular structure, slightly tapered at the top, about twenty stories high. It was so bland and uninteresting it could have been an apartment building in the Bronx. Together, the whole thing looked like something Stalin might have built in a far-flung provincial capital in Uzbekistan to serve as the Soviet sub-ministry of ingot production. Was it supposed to be reminiscent of the grain elevators that are such a staple of the North Dakota landscape? Whatever it was, it was, hands down, the most unimpressive, nay ugly, Capitol building I’d ever seen, and I’ve actually been to the capital of Uzbekistan. Maybe it would have looked better on a warm sunny day. Most things do, but since it was still cold and gray we left knowing we would probably never get the chance to find out.

  It was drizzling when we pulled into a Starbucks just before the entrance to the interstate. I was just going to grab something for the car and then we’d be on our way.

  Parked in front of Starbucks was a medium-sized hybrid bicycle (a cross between a road bike and a mountain bike) hitched up to one of those child trailers, which was stuffed to the gills with personal belongings. A blue tarp was strapped over the trailer with bungee cords which also secured a water jug, a gym bag, a hand broom, and other assorted odds and ends. Mounted to the trailer were two flagpoles around which, tightly wrapped, were an American flag and another flag I couldn’t identify. On one flagpole a little stuffed purple unicorn (or maybe a squirrel, it was hard to tell) and a plastic toy that looked like Donald Duck had been affixed. On the back of the trailer was written, “Traveling Vet: Anything Will Help.” I had a feeling I might be lingering a little longer than planned. This looked like an interesting story. It was plenty cool enough for Albie to wait in the car, so I went in alone thinking it would be pretty obvious whose bike it was.

  I ordered my usual, took a seat, and scanned the other customers, but not a single one looked as if they’d be remotely connected to the contraption sitting by the parking lot. About five minutes passed and just as I was about to leave, a large, broad-shouldered man emerged from the restroom and took a seat at the table next to me on which he had left his laptop. He was about six feet tall and was wearing a U.S. Marine Corps cap, camo shorts over black leggings, hiking boots, and a heavy grayish-green hooded sweatshirt. He had a couple of days of gray stubble on his squarish, strong-featured face and steel gray eyes. He appeared to have been out in the weather for quite some time. I knew the answer but asked anyway.

  “That your bike outside?”

  And that’s how my hour-long conversation with Louis F., a marine combat vet a couple of years my senior, began.

  He hit the road two and half years ago in Florida, where he was living, and had been riding ever since, on a mission, he said, “to find out if Americans are still patriotic.”

  Louis had been waiting in line at a coffee shop one day behind an Afghan war vet in uniform. As he described it, the young woman taking orders got into an argument with the vet and accused him of killing women and children in Afghanistan.

  “I wanted to reach across the counter and throttle her,” Louis told me in a deep, resonant voice that reminded me of actor Sam Elliott’s, but with more than a hint of his native Tennessee. I tried not to betray my discomfort at the image
of this large, powerful man with his hands around a young woman’s neck. He didn’t throttle her, of course, but that encounter was the catalyst for his remarkable odyssey.

  “So, what are you finding?” I asked.

  To show me how encouraged he was, Louis told me a story, which he found inspiring and reassuring. He was riding across Texas when he spied an elderly man struggling to wield a chain saw and stopped to help. As they spoke, the man asked Louis if he had any interest in joining an armed militia he was part of.

  “I told him I had other things to attend to,” Louis told me, “but I said maybe if I come back. How many of you are there?”

  “Thirty-two thousand,” answered the man, taking Louis by surprise.

  “In Texas?” asked Louis.

  “No,” said the man. “Just in these three counties.”

  What Louis found inspiring and encouraging I found appalling and dismaying. These were people like the Bundys who had occupied the wildlife refuge back in Harney County, Oregon—armed right-wing extremists. Though I was horrified, I found myself liking Louis in spite of myself. He was friendly and easy to talk to and rarely have I had the chance to talk with anyone like him.

  “You know, the reason no one has ever invaded the United States is because people have guns and know how to use them,” he said. Somehow that didn’t seem quite right to me; we do have a massive navy, army, and air force, after all.

  “Did you hear about the school shooting in Texas this morning?” I asked.

  “I did. It’s not the guns; it’s bad parenting,” he said. There are lousy parents all over the world, of course, but in no other country are there mass shootings on anywhere near the scale as in this country, a thought I kept to myself. There was no point in debating Louis; I was more interested in hearing what he had to say.