Mountain Dude

Kat’s Canyon

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

This is the eleventh installment of a series about the Mountain Dude, a wandering guy with an ESP-like “gift”.  The Mountain Dude, some readers may recall, made a few enigmatic appearances in JJ in the 21st Century.

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I met her for the first time on the outskirts of a small crowd listening to a bluegrass band. Old hippies and younger artisan types with their kids twirling in gypsy skirts and bare feet were all gathered around the group, playing with their back to a river in a Rocky Mountain canyon. I was in my infant days of wandering and still craved company after a few days in the wild, just to be around other people and be reassured that they lived and did things like listen to music or eat meals or dance with their kids. Once I had my fill or I drew (or was drawn) too close, I fled back to the wild again. My loner callouses had yet to harden.

I saw her standing there, leaning on a boulder under an aspen, watching. There was a golden glow about her from the fall aspen leaves and I thought of some Tolkien wood elf with a holy beauty beyond sex or desire. I was awestruck and, as I stood staring, music receding into the background, she looked at me and noticed and was aware of me. I felt like I had perverted something, being caught like that and I looked away. When I looked back she was already approaching. The only option at that point would be to turn and run. I was caught.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“What?”

“You were staring. Gaping. Yes, gaping at me. Groping me with your eyes. What the fuck is the matter with you?”

So maybe she was no Tolkien elf maiden.

“I…uh…I’ve been alone for awhile.”

“So you thought you could just stare and have me like some object or lawn ornament.”

“I…uh…mean that…I’ve been walking in the mountains. My social… are…uh…that’s to say. I’m feeling really awkward around people.”

“So you weren’t admiring me?”

“Well..uh..yeah but not like that.”

“Not like what?”

“Well…not like sexually.”

“You don’t think I’m sexy?”

“Well…yeah, but..”

“So you do want to have sex with me.”

“No. I don’t even know you!”

Now she smiled and I knew she was playing with me. I wasn’t amused. I tried a smile that I’m sure looked like a grimace.

“My name’s Kat,” she said. “And I live in this canyon.”

“I wander,” I said. “I live wherever.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No. Not anymore. I left it behind.”

She rolled her eyes. “So how should I address you?”

“Just call me, Dude.”

She shook her head. “Dude, let’s go smoke a joint down by the river.”

Later, I asked, “You live in this canyon?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you from this canyon?”

“No. I’m from Pennsylvania.”

“So, why…”

She looked at the water, the slanting sun flashing off the rolling current, bluegrass music just audible from up and beyond.

“I’m in exile,” she said. “I hate the world and the people running it. Women haters, racists, shitty rich people. My whole family are shitty rich people. I chose to leave all that. There’s good people here and no one cares who or what your were. I’m home here.”

“Hmmm.”

“Why are you wandering?”

“I can’t be around people. It hurts too much.”

“It hurts them or you?”

“Both.”

So we sat there by that river and I felt small and silly in my selfish wandering next to her stand against a shitty world. But it passed as we watched it get dark in the canyon.

We didn’t have sex that night. That would have to wait.

And I got no ESP into her thoughts or emotions. Nothing. She was beautiful, principled, and closed to me.

I fell in love that day by the river.

Brush with Evil I

/ David Ferland / 3 Comments

This is the tenth installment of a series about the Mountain Dude, a wandering guy with an ESP-like “gift”.  The Mountain Dude, some readers may recall, made a few enigmatic appearances in JJ in the 21st Century.

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Earlier, I mentioned Johnny Smith and The Dead Zone. I too have encountered evil with my “gift” of perceiving the character and notions of others. You know evil when you feel it. There is the normal stew of human ways of being- sad, optimistic, arrogant, angry, happy, gloomy. Usually, underlying all, is the sludge of fear. In my experience, the most happy-seeming people are also the most terrified. After all, have you looked and listened these days? Have you read the signs? If you’re happy all the time then you’re either willfully ignorant or stupid or dead.

But real evil lacks fear. Or maybe it’s pure fear, untainted by the desire for something warm and noble, only concerned with its own preservation. Real evil sees the world simply, as prey and predator. It has no choice in the matter. Real evil is ice cold, like reptilian eyes regarding you with primordial intelligence. Am I giving you the idea that these Rocky Mountains are a paradise full of well-meaning hippified outdoorsy types and beleaguered park rangers? There is evil out here too, just like everywhere else.

Salida, Colorado may the most Colorado place on the planet. The Arkansas River runs right through the center of town, the headwaters in the nearby mountains. White water rafting, mountain biking, mountain climbing, hang gliding, moose wrestling. If you can think of an outdoor rush then, “Right on!”, it’s here or nearby. There’s a US highway that skirts the quaint center of town with it’s upscale eateries and galleries. On the outskirts are the motor inns, pawn shops, liquor stores, gun stores and churches. You know- The Great American Cultural District. I walked on the shoulder of the road through this fringe wasteland. Cars whizzed by or turned into parking lots in front or behind. All except for a black Lexus with tinted windows that slowed and followed me, matching my pace, half on the shoulder. At first I thought he was turning or rolling to a stop from car trouble. But then I could feel the driver and knew he was fucking with me.

I could feel that he was grinning.

This was not some dumb-ass teenager throwing a beer can out the window and yelling something crude. There was a cold-ass motherfucker behind that windshield and I wanted to get off that road quick as I could and be around some other people.

I was in front of a church. A tough choice loomed. The church? Or tangle with the evil motherfucker following me with ill intent?

I turned up the walkway to the church door leaving the highway behind. The car stopped and I could feel him watching me. Then it accelerated away on the roadside gravel, crunching a memo that time would be bided, that I couldn’t hide forever, that there was nothing for him to do but watch and wait.

I lingered in the church doorway until the chill passed then started back down to the road. I wanted to get resupplied and back to the wilderness ASAP. I felt out-in-the-open and exposed like the slow gazelle in a nature show about lions.

A voice from the church doorway behind. “Changed you mind?”

Shit. Church person.

“No. Yes. Gotta move on.”

“I felt him, too.”

“Him?”

“The guy in the car. Did you see him?”

“No,” I said. “Tinted windshield.”

“You don’t want to see his face. That means you’re too close.”

“What’s it like?”

“Clean shaven. Rosy and boyish. Smiling. Always smiling. Successful.”

“You survived it. Evidently.”

“Barely,” he said. “And then, only because of Jesus.”

“He showed up?”

A wry smile. “My faith in Jesus. My faith always shows up.”

“Hmmm. Sometimes I wish it were that simple for me.”

“There’s nothing simple about it,” he said. “It’s a relationship that needs cultivating. Like any relationship.”

I was feeling nothing specific off this earnest and frank churchman, just a general feeling of security. No, that’s not quite it. Serenity maybe?

“Do you pray?”

“I walk,” I said. “I wander the land.”

“That’s faith, too,” he said. “Wandering is a kind of prayer.”

“What about that evil motherfucker?”

“Avoid him,” the churchman said as he turned to go back in. “Don’t get caught out alone in the open. He feeds on the isolated.”

That’s when I knew I was headed back north to see my Mountain Girl.

Great Sand Dunes

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments

This is the seventh installment of a series about the Mountain Dude.  The Mountain Dude, some readers may recall, made a few enigmatic appearances in JJ in the 21st Century.

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They baffle and challenge the mind. You know they’re real but your mind can’t integrate them with all you thought you knew before.

I’m not talking about the Trumps.

The Great Sand Dunes in the San Luis Valley in Colorado are a true wonder of the world, explained easily by geology and wind, yet unfathomable as a physical expression of beauty and whimsy. They shouldn’t be there, nestled at the feet of the majestic Sangre de Cristo Mountains, like some embellished juxtaposition from a scifi novel cover picturing another planet.

But there they are.

Are you tired of me trying to wax poetic? How’s this: The sand dunes are fuckin awesome. Not ironic awesome like a burrito truck serving an awesome brunch (watch those hipsters line up!). But awesome as in inspiring awe- the jaw dropping wonder tinged with fear and realization that, after all, we humans are pretty small and powerless despite our games with money and prestige. I didn’t realize I was in a long grim mood until I saw the dunes and my mood was lifted and shaken like a dusty bedspread. I could see clearer and things smelled better as I soaked it all in.

My hitched ride (yes, people still pick up hitch hikers out here) dropped me at a combo gas station/motor inn where they sold me a shower in a wooden outdoor stall incongruously stocked with Paul Mitchell shampoo and conditioner and tiny bars of floral scented soap. It took some time to rinse the conditioner from my long scraggly hair and beard. After, the guy who owned the place said, “You’re positively glistening!”

Thanks bro. I think he may have liked me because he offered me a discount on a room and said I could have dinner with him.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve lost the ability to sleep indoors.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Suit yourself,” he said.

I intend to.

He did get his Mexican worker to drive me to the ranger station where you need to get a permit to camp in the backcountry of Great Sand Dunes National Park. The permit is free in money but costs in the sense that the word permit implies permission and is contingent on the permittee following certain rules. The cost is the knowledge that permission can be denied, perhaps without reason. This is the federal government after all. They want to count you and know where you are.

These park rangers. Someone ought to write a book. Always affable, never warm. Always official, never mean. Slightly ridiculous in those Smoky the Bear uniforms, less than cops, more like serious mall cops of the wilderness. Those hats weigh heavy on the ranger head. I try sometimes to get them to come out from under the brim.

“How many nights?”

“Not sure,” I said.

“We need to put a time frame on the permit.”

“Can we leave it open ended?”

“No sir.”

“So I put down a certain date and if I want to extend it then I need to come back here and renew?”

“Yes, sir. But you can’t spend more than 10 nights a year in the backcountry.”

“I’ll stay for four nights.”

“Okay.” His keyboard clatters.

“I think it’s kind of remote out here,” I said. “Do you miss anyone back East?”

“Back East, sir?”

“Yeah. Do you miss someone special?” I knew he did. His loneliness came into my mind like an IV drip from his brain bag. Also the gauzy image of a woman in a leafy place reminiscent of a Virginia or maybe New England forest.

He swallowed and looked at a point over my shoulder. “Well sir, I wanted to be out west and put a bid in…”

“It’s okay,” I said and would have put a hand on his shoulder if it didn’t require leaning over the wide government counter. “The story’s still being written.”

“Sir?”

“This isn’t the end,” I said. “This won’t be forever.”

Tears were in his eyes. “Thank you,” he managed. The screen door bumped open behind me and he cleared his throat. “Now let’s go over the rules and regulations. No open fires. Do you have a stove? Dispose of all human waste at least 200 feet from any water source. To dispose of waste, dig a hole 6-8 inches deep…”

The Baggage

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

This is the sixth installment of a series about the Mountain Dude.  The Mountain Dude, some readers may recall, made a few enigmatic appearances in JJ in the 21st Century.

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I hate the term ESP. It evokes images of second rate documentaries, complete with gauzy slide shows projected into the mind of a paranormal freak from his spooky muse. I may be a freak, but I don’t feel like that kind of freak. Abnormal, maybe. Unsettled, yes. But, look around. Who the hell wants to be normal these days?

Plus it doesn’t come to me in visions. It’s more like a knowing, like when a word or memory goes missing then comes back, emerging from the blank place fully formed and plain as day. You know the blank place? It’s not a there/their/they’re sort of thing. It’s like when you forget how to spell a common word like “restaurant” and you spell it “resturant” and it looks wrong on the page, feels wrong, but you can’t pull the correct spelling from you brain. It’s in the blank space. Then you remember and it’s there again, unblemished, plain as day.

That’s how the sense about people emerges. The knowledge breaks the surface like a sea creature, a roiling of the water then a sudden appearance.

An example from college. A class in 20th Century European literature. The professor, a younger man with strong opinions passing for passion. He tries to compensate for his lack of gravitas with the affects of the academic. Long hair cut to shoulder length. The glasses. The sweater. The vague smell of pot and cats.

The secret undergrad girlfriend.

How do I know? Because I was in love with her, too.

We were in a class discussion about Thomas Mann, “Death in Venice”, and listing the portents of a descent into fluid unreasonable fetid passion when something was triggered and I just knew that he was sleeping with my friend and secret love Alex. I knew because I felt his worry that she was not in class that day, but his worry had nothing to do with her health or well-being. His worry had everything to do with a recent spat and what she might be doing that very moment that might lead to discovery, humiliation, and termination of his employment.

That son of a bitch.

Standing up there holding forth on these old world authors. Sleeping with my Alex. (Granted, she was no one’s Alex, would never be anyone’s Alex, and that’s one of the reasons I loved her.)

Clearly something had to be done.

Looking back, it’s easy to see that a proportionate response to a common human foible might include sidling up to Professor Pompous Ass after class and just letting him know that I know thus increasing his worry, making him squirm, but not destroying him or his career.

But, I didn’t know about proportionate response. Or about careers. I was just all thwarted love and impulse.

So I followed him after class.

It was midmorning and, sure enough, he headed over toward Alex’s apartment just off campus. There weren’t too many people around, too early for the lunch rush, and I ducked behind a thick tree when he comically turned to scan behind him before entering the building. I waited a few minutes before following him in. At Alex’s door, after pressing my ear to the door, but before barging into the apartment, there was a vague sense that I should just walk away. But…

ESP plus poor impulse control. Not a good combo.

They weren’t having sex. They weren’t embracing. Professor Pomp sat on the couch, leaning forward with his head in his hands. Alex (my Alex!) stood in a bathrobe near the window, smoking a cigarette and looking down at the Professor. It looked like a photo with streaming sunlight from the window, cigarette smoke in the sun rays, her in profile, him straight on in misery. A photo entitled, “The Breakup”.

Of course they were surprised to see me. My righteous anger dissipated almost immediately upon entering and I just stood there and we all looked at each other before I backed out and closed the door and fled.

He kept his job. Alex never spoke to me again. I tried to apologize, once. She said, “Fuck off, creep”. I dropped 20th Century European Literature and then transferred to another school in another state at semester’s end. I moved on.

I’m always moving on.

Simple, but Not Easy

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

This is the fifth installment of a new series about the Mountain Dude.  The Mountain Dude, some readers may recall, made a few enigmatic appearances in JJ in the 21st Century.

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I walk into Grandview, a tourist town that’s seen better days. There are abandoned mini-golf courses and abandoned shooting galleries, perfect for a Scooby-Doo mystery. There are still tourists, but they are not looking for quaint pastimes. Why play mini-golf when you can play games on a phone in an air conditioned car? Sad. How will kids ever learn to reduce their siblings to tears without trash talking and gloating at miniature golf?

The abandoned golf courses move me, maybe because they represent the death of the past, a childhood gone forever. Or maybe because they’re just sad and represent a bygone era for us all. Or maybe I just backpacked for a week through some serious mountain terrain and I’m a little bit lonely, a whole lot weary, and a little bit teary.

I should write a country song.

Oh yeah, I’m hungry as hell, too. First things first.

Burger. I crave burger. And beer. But mostly burger.

There’s a place with a patio. Good news for me and the people who may be inside. I haven’t bathed for ten days or so and no one wants to be in close quarters with me. No one. I prop my pack against a fence post and sit down at one of the tables. I’m half expecting to be kept waiting and then for a manager, not a waitress, to be deployed to suggest I move along. This happens sometimes, mostly in the East and Midwest, those bastions of supposed tradition, values, and worry. But this is Colorado where they see a lot a wandering folk in the mountain towns and they don’t much care if you’re dirty or deranged or damaged. Plus they’re generally friendly and curious. At least curious enough to see if you have the money to pay for lunch. So out comes a waitress.

“Hi there, can I get you a menu?”

“Burger,” I say. “And fries.” Did I mention I haven’t spoken to anyone since the lady near the lake and after a week I’ve slipped into mono-syllabic caveman mode? Delightfully, she plays along.

“Man want burger? Man want cheese?”

“Beer too?”

“Many kinds. Man want list?”

“Girl choose.”

And off she goes.

I count that among the best interactions I’ve ever had with a person. She brings a pint and smiles. “Did you just hike through the park?”

“Yeah. It was fantastic.”

“I’ve always wanted to do that. I’ve done a lot of loops but never all the way over.”

And then I get the flash of feeling, the ESP, or whatever you call it. (I call it the sense. The book, of course, will be called “The Sense”.  Or maybe “The Sensing”.  Has that been done before?) Anyway, this golden blonde long legged beauty of a twenty-something Colorado girl, serving burgers and beers at a pub in a mountain town, is simply a very happy person. Unlike most people, there is no hidden sucking pit of despair and fear inside of her.

“What’s your secret?”

“For what? Hiking the park?”

“No. For being comfortable in your skin. For being content.”

“Wow that’s a little deep. Maybe I’m sad on the inside,” she says and smiles. A couple walks over from across the street and sits down so she moves away with a raise of the eyebrows, promising a return with food and maybe an answer.

When she returns with my burger (large, with cheese and bacon(!) and a heap of fries) she says, “It’s not a secret. I just decide every day to be free and grateful. It’s simple, but not easy.”

“I try to do that. But the baggage…”

She looks over at my pack leaning against the hitching post. “Looks like you put it down over there.” She looks back at me. “Enjoy your food,” she says.

And indeed I do. Gratefully.