Not ready to be separated

July 24, 2002

Not ready to be separated from the herd. Keeping the family primed for evolution. Everyday punctuated by the intermittent revelation that I will have to wind this down soon. Ominous. Out here burning the postcards of North America into the memory banks of my bloodline. This month has featured pictures of tourists. Tiny flower fires of cigarette butts hitting the highway from the car in front on a cool night. It arcs smoothly and accelerates downward around the tent trailer. Roadside motels turn my childhood into theirs. Nothing is different there. Still neon. Still that fake wood paneling and boomerang patterned arbourite. The old style little soaps and the two libby’s glasses. The stresses all surround finding food, shelter and something new. Enjoying the crap and the pure beauty and the struggle to find one inside the other. Today was Yellowstone. Packed with people moving slowly around a place packed with wildlife moving slowly. There is so much entertainment on both levels. The repeated warning signs stating what should be obvious. Bison are wild animals! Do not approach! Stay 100 yards away from any bear! A dozen people have died of scaldings wandering too near to the geysers and mudpots! Hundreds severely injured! Our family was dazzeled watching hundreds of people ignore all these seemingly obvious suggestions. The potential energy was incredible. Like the circus you wait for the accident. These, however, would not be accidents. They would be appropriate adjustments made to the natural alignment of the world ecosystem. These people have been bred to survive an urban environment and have wandered too far from their herd. They are able to avoid muggings, confidence men, and the bullies of puberty but unable to understand the power of the natural world. I think the strong of the herd should probably be able to function at basic survival level in the natural arena. I would propose that the boiling, goring, mauling and poisoning of these people may serve Darwin’s theory. Thinning the herd. Too stupid to live. At one point a huge bull Bison wandered out onto the road and we put the simple guidelines into action. Pull over. Yield the right of way. Cut the engine. Give the animal room and escape routes. This thing was taller than our van and as big as a small elephant. We watched a family in a mini van pull up beside him and open the sliding side door and windows in order to get great photos. The bull turned, stopped and turned its massive head toward them. His horns were about two feet from the open door with a clear shot. He took pity on them and cut behind their van and began to graze in a new meadow. I wish I could play you a tape of the footage in my head that played out their scenario in quite a different fashion. I think everyone’s brain does the same thing. They see the consequences in vivid detail overlaid simultaneously with the unfolding action. I can see what didn’t happen just as clearly as what did happen. The Buffalo’s massive head smashes down at full throttle onto the removable middle bench seat of the Dodge Caravan. Its rag doll occupants fold themselves around the musky brown haired battering ram as it grinds down and rocks the van onto two of its wheels. The shrieks of the occupants echo through the pines. I watched a middle aged man and his young son climb to the edge of a geyser beyond the signs that said, “stay on the path, extreme danger, unstable ground etc”. In my head I already saw them being blown back from the hole like a Full Metal Jacket out take. A column of stinking sulfuric 700 degree water can be a deft skin bracer if you’re needing a start to your day. The buffalo has emotions and instincts. The geyser does not. It can be the hot blade of natural law. Enjoy your vacation but remember your place. I’m not ready to be thinned from the herd.