At the End of the Road

There was this guy around town. Let’s call him Steve.

Steve was a retired National Park Service ranger. I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the way Steve had a massive stroke.

He had enough dexterity to pilot his electric wheelchair around town. He’d bounce from coffee shop to coffee shop. Maybe he went other places too, but I’d see him at coffee shops.

I do a similar thing. The coffee shops of our small mountain west city are where I prefer to work and write. And I bounce around too. Every few hours I feel like I need a break, so I go.

And I walk or bike or drive to the next place.

I have a circuit.

And so did Steve.

So he’d roll from place to place. Sometimes his wheelchair would run out of batteries, and the girls at the coffee shop would call his wife. Everyone knew Steve’s wife. I met her once, but I can’t remember her name. She’d get the call from the baristas and pick him up in the van.

Steve wanted to talk to anyone and everyone. But there was a problem—he couldn’t speak. They call that Broca’s aphasia. It indicates damage in the Broca’s area of the frontal lobe.

And he could barely gesture. You’d ask him a yes or no question and he couldn’t nod his head.

But the one thing he could do was raise his fist in a “right on” type gesture.

I’d see him and say something, “Hi Steve, isn’t it a beautiful day?”

He’d reply with a raised fist and nonsensical vowel sounds—and something else too. There was a twinkle of joy in his eye. He couldn’t smile but there was a twinkle.

Sometimes there was another glimmer in his eye. It wasn’t joy. It was frustration and sadness. I’d see it when he tried to communicate and couldn’t. Because although Steve couldn’t speak, he understood every word.

But he had no way of reciprocating.

No way of talking.

No way of conversing.

But he figured out a workaround.

Steve had two things around his neck. One was his disabled bus pass. The other was a black USB drive on a lanyard.

I was confused the first time he offered me the drive. I generally don’t make a habit of accepting USB drives from strangers—especially severely disabled strangers in wheelchairs.

The baristas, always ready to jump in and translate for Steve, assured me that not only was it was okay but it would be worth my time.

I inserted the drive, and what I found was a portal. It was the story of Steve’s life in photographs.

I don’t know how many photos there were. A least in the 100s. Maybe there were thousands.

It started in his childhood somewhere in the American Midwest, but at some point—I’m guessing the late 1970s—it became a chronicle of his life in the outdoors.

There were pics of Steve on top of mountain peaks, and skiing, reaching passes with heavily laden frame backpacks, and whitewater rafting trips through the Grand Canyon, and alpine fields of wildflowers, and pics of Steve the ranger giving tours at various national parks, and Steve hanging by ropes from cliff faces, and alpine rescues, and fighting forest fires, and fishing, and campfires, and friends.

I had many questions, but refrained from asking—because I knew he couldn’t answer. So instead I’d make comments.

I’d comment about things like the beauty of his mother, or how I owned the same Eureka Timberline tent. Each comment would be answered by his indistinguishable grunt and a raised fist.

I also commented on his physique. Because let me tell you—Steve was jacked.

There was one pic of Steve on top of a climbing pitch. He’s shirtless, in corduroy climbing shorts (the kind that Patagonia used to sell) with a climbing harness, a rack of carabiners and pitons across each shoulder, climbing hammer at his hip, tan skin, an unkempt beard and long sun bleached hair held back by a bandana around his forehead.

But his physique stuck out. Six pack abs, ripped muscles, popping veins. Not an ounce of body fat. Again, this dude was JACKED.

I asked a rhetorical question, “You’ve never spent a day of your life in the gym, have you?”

I got a grunt and a fist.

Because of course he’d never been to a gym. The mountains were his gym.

When you’re an injured climber, or a lost hiker, this is the dude you want to see coming to rescue you.

I told him that too. And I got another raised fist.

It’s hard to say how long we looked at his photos. Maybe an hour? Maybe longer?

But by the end he was satisfied. Satisfied he’d told his story.

And it wasn’t just his story. This was proof of his life. Proof of who he was. Proof of who he IS.

He wasn’t a man content to stay home and be cared for by his wife. He’d always explored. And he kept exploring—despite his disability.

He went as far as he could.

Only limited by his bus pass and the battery in his wheelchair.

Steve was also determined to tell his story. To shout to the world, “Here I am. I have conquered the mountains and the rivers and the cliffs and the snows and I have rescued countless hikers and recovered bodies of dead climbers and fought forrest fires and I AM STILL HERE.”

This is what men do.

We explore.

And we conquer.

And we tell the story.

Even when the story can’t be told with words.

Especially if the story can’t be told with words.

***

I was parked at the side of the highway. Rigging up to go fishing.

It’s a quiet highway. Maybe a car every 20, 30 minutes.

Fly fishing has an etiquette. It’s a bit different from place to place and river to river, but general rule is you stay as far away as possible from the next guy. You don’t want to spook his fish, but more importantly you don’t want to interrupt his solitude.

On this particular river, which flows next the highway, the rule is one truck per turnout. If there’s a car in the turnout then you drive until find an empty turnout. And then it’s yours. And nobody is going to bother you (unless they’re complete noobs).

So, I was a bit surprised when a car pulled up behind me in the pullout.

My gun was on the tailgate. I was changing out the loads from hollow points (my regular city carry) to a mag full of hard cast lead rounds. Hard cast bullets penetrates better than hollow points, and they break right thru thick bone like the skull of a bear or the breastplate of a moose. If you want to stop an animal attack you need to hit the vitals—the lungs, the heart—and hard cast lead will do it (or at least that’s what they say—thankfully I’ve never had to test it in person).

So the car rolls up.

Small SUV.

Looked like a rental.

I could tell it wasn’t another angler trying to muscle in on my spot, so left the pistol on the edge of the tailgate and walked over the say hello.

A young woman rolled down the window. The worried look on her face told me she had a question. She probably wanted to know how far to the next gas station.

Far, I would have told her.

Go back to town, I would have told her.

But I didn’t get the chance to tell her anything.

So she rolled down the window and with a thick German accent she said “Excuse me—“

But that’s as far as she got.

The boyfriend (or husband?) in the drivers seat locked eyes with the gun on my tailgate.

His face dropped and he shouted something in German (probably “GUN!”).

He put the rental car in gear, and peeled out of the turnout—spraying me and my truck and my fly rod and my pistol with rocks.

And that’s too bad.

Because they seemed like nice people. And we could have had a nice conversation,

I would have asked them where they were from and how long they were driving around the states. And I could have given them directions and told them where to go and where to eat and where to find that fun roadside Americana stuff that the Eurotrash love.

I would have told them about the gun too.

And about all my close calls with wildlife.

And about all my close calls with meth-heads.

And about how rural America has been absolutely devastated over the past 30 years, and how the once urban problems like drug related robbery has infested every part of this once great nation.

So hence the pistol on my tailgate.

I could have told them other things too. About why, despite dangers like moose and meth heads and bears and lightning and falling in the river and drowning, I still do this.

But that’s typically not a conversation you have with strangers on the side of a mountain road. That’s not the venue to discuss my compulsion to explore, and investigate, and understand this world—even if it’s hard and uncomfortable and sometimes a bit dangerous.

No, that’s not a discussion you can really have—mainly because they won’t understand. And I’d sound crazy if I tried to explain it.

These topics are best not presented directly. You have to do it through abstract things—like art. Or maybe just a photo. Or maybe a collection of photos. Nothing special—just holiday snaps.

And then maybe they’d know something about me. About who I am, and about why I’m here on the side of a road loading a pistol.

But they didn’t stick around for that.

They drove off.

They probably weren’t in the mood for a story. They just wanted to see America. And find some down-home diner with a jackalope on the wall, or a place to buy an ill-fitting overpriced cowboy hat.

So it’s probably for the best that they drove off.

And it’s probably best they did it quickly, without time for me to explain myself.

Because now they have their own story. It’s about the time they ran into a savage gun wielding American on the side of a lonesome highway in the Rockies.

They’ll be telling it for years.

And maybe they’re telling it now.

They’re telling the story of the thing that happened on the way to the end of the road.

***

A life outdoors—a life outside.

Because there’s so much to conquer in the American West. It was boundless when Steve was a young man, and it’s boundless even today.

There are still places where no man has walked. You can find this today.

You don’t need fancy gear. You don’t even need a gun. Just drive to the end of the road and start walking. Then see how far you can go—and how far you can climb.

On the way to the end of the road, everything else melts away. The politics, and the wokeness, and the girlbosses, and the economy, and the stupid wars, and the retarded tax system, and the rigged stock market, and your lying cheating business partner, and your lying cheating lawyer you’re paying to sue your lying cheating business partner.

That all starts fading once you drive out of town. And it’s dead and gone by the time you get to the end of the road and start walking.

It all disappears.

None of that bullshit matters now. And maybe it never did.

All that’s left is you and the unknown that’s begging you to explore it.

This is what Steve found. Because maybe there was nothing for him to conquer in the cities—at least nothing worth conquering.

Because again, none of that shit matters when you get to the end of the road.

I would have loved to have that conversation with him. About why he went to the mountains—to the wilderness.

But that conversation isn’t going to happen now.

***

I wish I would have kept Steve’s photos. I could have dragged the entire folder to my desktop. The photos weren’t hi res. It wouldn’t have been much data.

I’d like to show you his photos.

Steve would have liked you to see them.

But I didn’t keep them.

I hadn’t seen Steve around in quite some time. So I started asking around.

One of the baristas informed me that he’d passed. Of what, she wasn’t sure.

I imagine it was some ailment the symptoms of which he couldn’t articulate to a doctor.

Or maybe it was another stroke.

But maybe the reasons don’t matter so much.

Because all men die.

That’s just our fate.

What maters is what we do when we’re here.