I step out of the car. Two cowboys, one old, one young, ride at the back of the herd. The young cowboy sits a big buckskin. “Good-looking horse,” I tell him. “Thanks,” he nods and rides on. The other cowboy, who won’t see seventy again, rides over and smiles. “Beauty is as beauty c’n do,” he says. “I got horses back in my barn prettyr’n that horse and they don’t look half as good.” This while a cow pisses next to me, a great yellow gusher that splashes me up both legs.
Makes an old green activist wonder about the future of the cowboy, about the interactions between the old west and the new. Makes me wonder how we can learn to talk together long enough to solve our differences.
21 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
An early morning canyon wind. This routine draining of cold air to our lower valley creates a small delta of unusually clean air at the canyon mouth where Sam and I both live. It’s a steady wind this morning, a constant presence that flavors every aspect of our ride. Standing, for instance, just above the quartzite that has knocked us off our bikes again this morning, we watch eight gulls (Larus californicus) fly up canyon. Headway is possible for them only in furious spurts, followed, always, by a sudden veering away, a sliding downstream.
The wind is at our backs as we swoop up the knife-edged ridge. We talk about the return of the buntings from Mexico, look across the canyon at the greening scrub oak, feel the systematic breathing of the canyon. Above us, a dark-feathered hawk toils against the wind, lumbering upcanyon. It draws our attention into the sun hanging just above the canyon’s highest eastern notch. The hawk disappears into the sun and Sam marvels at the sundogs crouching to either side. We remember the winter morning when we stood on our skis high in Hobble Creek Canyon and looked into the sun to the south to witness two full rings, the larger of which shimmered colorfully down into the gully at our feet. Sam swore it was a visitation of the Virgin Mary.
22 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
From time to time, for the past several years, a bird has puzzled us here. It’s a bit smaller than a robin, but with that same sort of substantial presence. We’ve never seen it close enough to identify it. Today, one perches in a trailside tree. “Turn around, you sonofabitch,” Scott says. “Show off your plumage! Don’t you know we’re trying to commune with nature here?” It’s in no hurry, but finally complies. It has a velvety black head, short conical beak, dark wings with white dashes, orange sides, a white breast, and a sharp reddish eye. A rufous-sided or spotted towhee (Pipilo maculatus). Chirpchirpchirp—trilllllllllll!
24 May
New flowers everywhere: purple Wasatch penstemon (Penstemon cyananthus), yellow Dalmatian toadflax (Linaria dalmatica), delicate white woodland star (Lithophragma parviflora), spiky yellow goatsbeard (Tragopogon dubius), mellow orange globemallow (Sphaeralcea coccinea), and purple northern sweetvetch (Hedysarum boreale).
Enough said.
25 May, Provo
Nancy, Scott, and I have lunch at a Provo café. I mention that I’m thinking of cutting off what remains of my hair and being done with it. “I don’t want to be one of those guys who combs three strands of hair left to right and pretends he has hair.” Scott says he has just seen a “Propecia” ad in the newspaper’s sports section (where else!) that asks: “Tired of those bald jokes?” He wonders, however, about a treatment for baldness that has impotency as a possible side effect: “So who would risk potential impotence in order to look more potent?”
Nancy chimes up: “Speaking of impotence…”
Scott looks at me and cracks up. My reply is just a beat late: “Nancy, I saw you reading the Viagra ads yesterday. But I have to say I’m doing my best.”
Nancy laughs out loud, “No, no, you’ve got me wrong. I just wanted to mention I think you should get one of those bike saddles that protects against squashing the pudendal artery. They’re made to prevent impotence. Statistics show a four percent impotency rate among frequent bike riders.”
What’s a guy to do? I head to Mad Dog Cycles and buy a Specialized Body Geometry Comp Saddle. I suggest to Randy and Josh that Specialized ought to sponsor Scott and me, a couple of old guys using their prostate-protector saddles. We could wear jerseys that say “Fifty and Perineally Fit” or “The Prostate Saver, Don’t Leave Home Without It,” or even “Don’t Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, Ride Specialized Body Geometry Comp.” No luck interesting them in a sponsorship, so I shell out the money. These babies are not cheap, ninety dollars even with a discount. But if they work, I don’t suppose there is a guy on the planet who would complain about the money. “Designed to reduce genital numbness that may be linked to male impotency,” the label on the saddle says. “Designed by Dr. Minkow with firmer, more supportive foam and a flatter top, to help elevate the rider off the perineal area and onto the ischial tuberosities.” God bless Dr. Minkow.
Later that afternoon I head to Scott’s for a ride. “You show up without a helmet but with your new prostate saver. How bright is that?” he asks.
“Gotta have your priorities straight,” I reply.
26 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Newspapers report this morning that cosmologists have a new fix on Hubble’s constant and now estimate the age of the universe as twelve billion years. “That figure shocked me,” I tell Sam as we ride into the canyon. “I had a sense of the universe as infinite, and suddenly it turns out to be only a few years old. That’s unsettling.”
“My colleagues are talking about this cycle of the universe,” Sam replies. “The ongoing expansion since the Big Bang. But the twelve billion years may be just the beginning of the cycle. If there is enough matter in the universe, everything will contract and we will start over. You’re still okay with your comforting sense of infinity. On another note, Dr. Minkow’s prostate saver is killing me. I’m black and blue after yesterday’s ride. If today’s ride beats me up as bad, I’ll have to move from body geometry to body calculus.”
The first tiny blossoms of yellow sweet clover, Melilotus officinalis, are evident today. As the clover matures, so do the grasshoppers—each step into the grass disturbs a hundred of the fast-growing insects, maturing rapidly to take full advantage of the coming clover. And, as we noted from their scat last year, the foxes will take full advantage of this bumper crop of insects.
27 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
I hate gravel pits. I hate rock crushers. I hate the fact that zoning laws in Utah County allow anyone with a few bucks to dig out entire mountainsides and leave the place scarred for centuries. But this morning I hate the gravel pit and rock crusher at the mouth of Provo Canyon for another reason. When Sam hears the machine across the canyon, he grits his teeth and doubles his speed. I’m feeling puny today and muster what may be my last breath to ask Sam why I have to pay for the sins of the gravel pit owner. He rides on at a furious pace. By the time I reach the meadow at the top of Frank, I have fallen three times and Sam, who has had a splendid ride, has been waiting so long that his sweat has dried.
