Meeting the Ancient Ones

Art Rosch

This will be the third Art Rosch story to be posted on Tales of Relentless Pursuit.  Art is an adventurer and a gifted story teller who has the ability to place the reader so much into the story that we forget we are sitting in a comfortable chair, far away from danger and the world of the Spirits.

If you have not read his other two tales, I highly recommend that you do before continuing with this one. If you have time for only one, make it "It's All Downhill From Here,"  where you will be introduced to Fox and Yertle. 

Once you've read the above, you will be hungry for more--trust me! So go on to read "I Might Have a Little Gas."  

Art's latest story, entitled "Meeting the Ancient Ones," will have you mesmerized, to say the least.  Yes, it's unbelievable, but if you knew the Rosches, you would know that every word is the gospel truth.

"Meeting the Ancient Ones" also appears in Art's book, Avoiding the Potholes.








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Thanks for stopping here to see the latest post. I'd love to know what you think of the "Relentless Pursuit" series. If you enjoyed this week's tale, I would greatly appreciate it if you left a comment (at the end of the post) for our author. And please email me with your suggestions on what you'd like to see on this blog or anything else you'd like to share.

Also, to increase the blog's readership, click the red SU icon at the bottom of this post to recommend the blog to Stumble Upon members. It will dramatically increase the "exposure" of our authors' work. Sharing the link with your friends, family, and colleagues would also help a great deal.

If you have a story you would like to share on this theme, contact me. And be sure to take a look at my Photography site. I'd love to hear from you! Thanks again!

Michelle Alton
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Meeting the Ancient Ones ...by Art Rosch

I don’t exactly know when the Raven thing started.  Somewhere on the road towards Moab, Utah, my wife Fox began to see ravens as totem spirits, as guides. She's half Apache, so I guess that gives her a license to have unusual relationships with nature.

One day Fox saw Ravens flying parallel to the road, and she said, “The ravens are with us. They tell me we’re going to be okay.”

If a stranger said this to me on a bus, I would have changed seats.  But this is my wife.  I had first-hand experience of her integrity.  I had passed through the “I think she’s crazy” phase in our relationship and I trusted her.  Fox has an extraordinary gift: she converses with animals.  She is receptive to images that animals project. When Fox began to read the flights of the ravens, I paid attention.

Fox

This was our second trip to Arches National Park.  During the first trip, just before we left the Moab area, we found an out-of-the-way petroglyph site.  It was deep in a remote canyon.  Fox's Apache connections had evoked this "tip".  We found the petroglyphs, and we found something else as well: a ghost. 


In spite of the site's spooky nature, we wanted to re-visit the place on our second trip to Arches. I thought I had memorized its location, but I was wrong.  We drove along the side roads leading off Interstate 70, looking for the landmarks: an unused railroad crossing, a ruined town and a gravel road leading into the canyon.

The Railroad Crossing

What we found were many roads, and many derelict buildings, all of which resembled the route we had taken two years ago.  At last I came to a place that felt familiar.  I crossed a cow-catcher, bounced into a dry wash and began heading into a parched wilderness.  At that moment, two ravens on opposite sides of the road flew into the air and crossed one another’s flight paths, forming an “X” directly in front of our RV.  By the way, if you haven't read my other stories about our adventures, the RV's name was Yertle.

“Stop!” Fox commanded.  “This is the wrong road; we’ll get horribly lost. The ravens just told me.”

I stopped.  We had spent much of an hour looking for our mysterious site, and now I was frustrated and feeling a little foolish. 

Then, two more ravens in parallel flew over Yertle, from front to back, while a third raven simply hovered in front of the RV, balancing itself on drafts of air. “Wait here, “ Fox said.  “Something will happen.”

The Canyon

I killed the engine and watched as clouds of dust dissipated in the wind. In about a minute I saw a plume of dust emerging from between the walls of the canyon.  It quickly resolved itself into a pickup truck.  It curved here and there but inexorably moved towards us.  I started Yertle, backed up and got her out of the way.  Then I stepped down from the cab and waited.  Momentarily, a hefty four wheel drive pickup pulled alongside.  An elderly Native American couple was inside. They had a solid, vital look to them.  They beamed at us with patient good nature. I could think of no other people who would so perfectly belong to this landscape.

The man looked at Yertle, then at me.  “This is no place to drive something like that,” he said, amiably.  “You’d be in terrible trouble if you went down this road. The next wash would’ve hung you up and ain’t a tow big enough round here to get you out. Woulda had to come from Salt Lake.  B’lieve me, I know what I’m talking about.  Happens about once a year.”

“I’m glad we didn’t drive any further,” I said, looking at Fox with gratitude.  I searched the sky for Ravens and there they were, circling overhead. “We’re looking for a place with petroglyphs that’s around here.  There’s a ghost town…..”

Ghost Town

Ghost Town

The man laughed.  “That’s my place, I own the land up to the reservation boundary,” he said.  “Just follow us and I’ll take you to the road."

I got into Yertle and we followed the pickup truck down the road, just a few miles, and there, sure enough, was the ghost town, and the road, and a hand lettered sign that said, “Petroglyphs 15 mi.  Ute Reservation 23 mi.”

The driver of the pickup beckoned with his arm, and we knew which way to go. His wife looked back and waved sweetly, cupping her fingers into her palm, again and again, until they drove out of sight.

There are still about 20 people living in this town.

Now everything was familiar.  We chunkalunked down the road, while the canyon became deeper, higher, more amazing, more remote.  Where did we find the nerve to come here, two years ago?  I know, we’re dinky little adventurers, we don’t go to Antarctica or base jump in wing suits off Angel Falls.  I’ll never kayak down the Niger River. Everyone has their scale of things and going alone into a remote canyon that we already knew was spooky, that was pushing our limits.  Fortunately, the road was recently graveled.  And, fifteen miles is fifteen miles.  Driving slowly and carefully, we were there in just under an hour.

The sides and floor of the canyon were full of plant life: sage, yarrow, dandelion, all kinds of grasses.  Huge brown and grey jackrabbits skittered across the road every few seconds. This was an entire eco-system.  Though the creek washes were dry, we could see what might happen during the rainy season. The songs of wrens, chickadees and cowbirds bounced from the walls.  No wonder this was a sacred place, eight thousand years ago, when rain was plentiful. A sacred place, today, though perhaps no one but a few tourists worship here.

 Perhaps no one but Fox and myself.

Fox, in the tall growth

The place was exactly as I remembered. The plant life was vigorous from autumn rainfall.  The ocher figures painted on the cliff stood sentinel over the road, the canyon, the dry wash.  Here and there, horse flop testified to the Ute presence down the road.  Otherwise, there was utter solitude. 

The sage bushes were so high that as Fox and I wandered around, we lost sight of one another.  I would see her emerge where the cliff face bent outward and twisted around on the west side of the canyon, where the tallest shamanic figures, the ethereal masked ones with no eyes, stood watch over the eons.  A little finger of waterfall came off the top of the cliff, falling with a plink into a pool down in the wash. The place was magnificent, eerie and profound. 

For half an hour or so, we wandered quietly, and I heard the sound of Fox’s drum emerge from the bush, and her gentle song, “hey yey yey hey, yey yey”. I joined her singing, and we made a loving duet, paying tribute with our voices to the Ancient Ones and to the Great Spirit.

It was a moment of perfection, and it came to an abrupt halt.  A motor noise intruded, coming down the road from the direction of the white world, from the ghost town and rural Utah.  The motor was loud and rough, it conveyed a gestalt of information: no tourist had a car or truck that sounded this way. Rough and burbling, it was an engine in poor condition, old and belching oil fumes.
 
For reasons mostly subliminal, I was immediately frightened. I could feel terror in my chest, pushing at my rib cage.  I quickly located Fox, and we both circled towards Yertle.  I was holding a very expensive camera.  I stashed it away in Yertle’s innards. 

Then, before we could do anything else, a green pickup truck came across the wash and stopped on the opposite side of the road.  There were two men in the bed of the truck, two men and a teenage girl in the passenger compartment.  One of the men was in his forties.  The others were in their early twenties.  The men looked somewhat alike: short reddish hair done in buzz cuts, freckles, bad teeth.  The girl was plump, dark, heavily coated in makeup.

These were members of a family, maybe dad, brothers, a cousin.  They had a brutal unconscious look, and they were not happy to see us there. 

The opposite wall of the canyon. You can just see the interlopers' pickup.

The driver circled the truck towards the small parking area in front of the petroglyphs.  He flipped a cigarette out the window.  “How ya doin?” he asked.  The younger men jumped from the rear truck bed and walked aimlessly around.  One of them snickered for no reason, and scratched the red stubble of his head.  A tattoo of a fat woman in cowboy clothes worked its way up his arm.

“We’re okay, “ I said.  Assessing, assessing.  If they wanted to rob us, kill us, they could.  I tried to read how I looked to them.  A burly middle-aged guy with a shaved head and an earring.  Not very scary. I discerned that the business at hand was some kind of group sexual encounter with a willing and very foolish girl.  We were simply in the way.  They hadn’t expected anyone to be here.  For a few tense moments, the older man watched us, while the kids opened cans of beer and circled around us, thinking about an opportunity to rob the tourists.
 
The girl was more important.  At last, they got back in the truck, and one of them banged on the window.  “Let’s go, man,” he said.

The truck shaved a pile of gravel off the road and circled back to the other side.  While Fox and I got into Yertle, we heard the pop of beer cans and a loud giggle from the girl.  Our hearts were pounding in our chests.  I looked up at the silent petroglyphs. 

“You’ve always got a surprise for us, don’t you?” I thought.  The darkness and the light, always intermingling.  A holy place may not always be a peaceful place.  It may be a place of blood and silence, of sacrifice, death and re-awakening.  Something awe-ful lived in this canyon, something that pulled us in, and then chased us away.

There are glyphs from many eras here, from 2000 BC to the 1870s when white prospectors did their own version of graffiti.

Just as we crossed the wash, Fox cried out, “Stop!” Her voice was so powerful that I hit the brake, rocking us both towards the windshield, then back into our seats.
 
Our rear wheels were still in the wash, so I finished pulling through and braked Yertle to a halt.  Fox jumped from the passenger seat and went back into the wash.  I saw her in the rear view mirror.  She was digging in the sand and gravel, digging towards something that was revealing itself.  She grabbed a nearby stick to penetrate the packed sand.  Finally, she pulled a red egg-shaped object from the ground. Panting, she ran back to Yertle, and I got down that road as fast as I could.

When we were finally back in the old wrecked town, I pulled aside to see what she had taken from the earth.

She held it out to me.  “Look,” she said, “It called to me, I knew it would be there.  I can’t explain it any better than that.”  In her hand was an oval stone, red colored, sized to fit perfectly in a human hand. When she passed it to me, I knew that someone had used this thing centuries past, used it to pound acorns, chestnuts, to work flint or break bones to get marrow.  My fingers closed around it as if responding to its invitation.  Its surface was smooth, except for several lines that had been incised at regular intervals, as if to count years or seasons.  Tiny crystals glittered within the granite matrix.

“How did you find this?” I was incredulous.
“As we crossed the wash, it just spoke to me…”  Fox shrugged.  “I heard it…I don’t know….a Grandmother once used it.  See, it was buried lengthwise”, she showed me.  She had dug about six inches of the creek to get to it.  Only a tiny arc of the object had broken the surface, but she knew it was something that needed to be found.

“There’s got to be an irrational explanation for this,” I commented.

Fox laughed as I passed the ancient tool back.  She put it in her medicine bag, reverently, with her collection of sacred objects.

Spacemen?

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  All photographs by Art Rosch

Bonus Photos by Art

Art Rosch's Biographical Sketch

Art Rosch boomed with the other babies of his generation in St. Louis, Mo. He was drawn to music as a child and learned trumpet and drums. As he got older, he became enamored of modern jazz. At the age of sixteen he set out on a pilgrimage to New York City to study with his idol, avant garde musician Ornette Coleman. This adventure led Art to associations with many jazz musicians.

He spent two years as the house drummer at Detroit's Artist's Workshop. His interest in writing and photography also continued to grow. After winning Best Story Award from Playboy Magazine, Art signed with an agent and began working on novels. He is still working on novels, memoirs and essays.

His photography has been featured in Shutterbug Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. One image, Lone Tree In Utah, won an important award from the United Nations. Much of Art's photo work is done at night. He is a passionate amateur astronomer and likes to explore the potential of long exposure photography. He continues to work from Sonoma County, California.

Art's photography may be viewed on his website and many of his writings can be seen on his "Blogazine."

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I Might Have a Little Gas

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Art Rosch

Regular readers of this blog will recall the first story by Art Rosch, "It's All Downhill From Here."  And if you do, you'll almost certainly be hankerin' for another "hit!"  And if you haven't read "All Downhill...",  I highly recommend that you click the link above and read it to prepare yourself for the next amazing installment from Art.  [Be forewarned: Reading both stories in rapid succession might be dangerous for your heart!"]

"I Might Have a Little Gas," is the adventuresome sequel--another nail-biting story of the under-funded travels of Art, Fox (his gifted wife), and Yertle--the"Little RV that Could!"

Photos are fantastic, and you'll not want this hilarious story to end.  At least not yet!

 "I Might Have a Little Gas" also appears in Art's book, Avoiding the Potholes.

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Thanks for stopping here to see the latest post. I'd love to know what you think of the "Relentless Pursuit" series. If you enjoyed this week's tale, I would greatly appreciate it if you left a comment (at the end of the post) for our author. And please email me with your suggestions on what you'd like to see on this blog or anything else you'd like to share.

Also, to increase the blog's readership, click the green SU icon at the bottom of this post to recommend the blog to Stumble Upon members. It will dramatically increase the "exposure" of our authors' work. Sharing the link with your friends, family, and colleagues would also help a great deal.

If you have a story you would like to share on this theme, contact me. And be sure to take a look at my Photography site. I'd love to hear from you! Thanks again!

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Michelle Alton

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Yertle in the School Yard

I Might Have A Little Gas - by Art Rosch
  (Copyright 2011)

Highway 6 is a hot eerie stretch of rocky desert and bare crags that joins up with 395 at Bishop, California.  This lonely road takes a northeasterly diagonal the entire breadth of Nevada before vanishing into the parched flats of Utah’s Great Basin.  Take my word, there is NOTHIN' out there. A “Flying J” truck stop appears about a hundred miles across the state. After that, there is only the town of Ely (pronounced E-lee) just a few miles from the Utah border.  Highways  50, 6, 93 and 388 enter and leave the town in a few confusing blocks.  It's easy to take the wrong turn, drive forty miles towards Vegas, then turn around and go back to Ely. It's like a Keystone Kops version of travel; the same people in the same cars and RVs pass one another again and again as they struggle through the little town.  We wave to the same kids in the same back seats until finally we get onto the correct route.

We had survived a plunge down the eastern slope of the Sierras with a loose steering column.  When we made it to Bishop,  God only knows why, we wanted to get onto 6 and put another fifty miles on the odometer before stopping for the night.

Sierras Eastern Slope

Rule number one about driving an RV:  DON”T DRIVE AT NIGHT!  It’s hard enough to control a bulky machine without messing with highway fatigue and caffeine nerves.  I see things that aren't there.  Jackrabbits the size of elephants come boinking into my path, only to be pieces of drifting newspaper.

We pushed out of Bishop after stopping at a Super K-Mart, where Fox and I got separated and I couldn’t find her to save my life.  This was before we had cell phones. I was reduced to calling her pet name.  I stood in the middle of an aisle full of hosiery and started crying plaintively, “Boo Boo!  BoooooBoooo!”  Everyone was certain I was retarded.  I mean, come on, here's a grown man, almost weeping with frustration, calling with his considerable lung power the primal sound of "BooooBoooo!"

I was beyond embarrassment. Where the hell did she go?  One second she was right THERE, looking at skin cream, and the next, she had vaporized into the merchandise, wandered off like an un-tethered toddler. This store is so huge  I might never find her, or wander for two and a half years before fetching up at Customer Service.
At last we were re-united by my wailing “Boooboooo!” until Fox used her bat-sonar to home in on me.

In the gathering twilight we packed our cartons of milk, loaves of bread and cold cuts into the RV called Yertle . We could have stayed right there at the K-mart, perfectly legal.  There were half a dozen RVs huddled in the corner of a parking lot the size of Rhode Island.

Why did we continue driving?  We were impatient. We had some naïve hope of finding a campground within the hour.  As I turned onto Highway Six, Fox got out the Campground Guide and searched, but there were no listings before the town of Ely, all the way across Nevada.  As I navigated the final stoplights of Bishop, a nearby driver began honking and gesturing towards Yertle.  I pulled over and discovered that I had been driving with the steps still sticking out of the camper.  Keep a check list, RV rovers!

For Some Reason We Could Never Find ANYTHING in Yertle.

After fifty miles, we came to the only other town on Highway 6. It’s a one-store town called Tonopah.   Fortunately, the store was open.  A very large Native American man confirmed that there were no campgrounds before Ely.  He offered the use of the school parking lot for the night.  “Lots of people get stuck out here,” he said.  “It’s okay.  Just try to be gone before school starts in the morning.  Nobody will bother you.  I’ll tell the sheriff when he drops by, tell him you’re back there.  If he sees you before I do, tell him Bear said it was okay.”

This kindness was touching.  We began to realize that we had met kindness at every obstacle on this trip, and that kindness came in all sorts of disguises, in the most unlikely places.
 
In the morning there was snow on the tops of the mountains.  Nevada is a washboard, an undulating series of mountains and valleys, and the roads cut straight across this ancient seabed.  At the top of each peak, the view spreads down the road ahead, which goes in a straight line for miles until it disappears into the next rise of the landscape.  I had never expected Nevada to be so beautiful.  There were huge clouds casting shadows upon the vast valley floors.

Nevada Washboard

It was about eight thirty before we had cleaned up, had some oatmeal and hit the road.  It was to be an easy day’s drive: a hundred sixty miles to Ely, where we would join up with our old friend, Highway Fifty, the so-called "Loneliest  Highway In The U.S.A."  At least, that's what the souvenir T-shirts say.  I think Highway 6 has it beat.

It was October; bright, clear, and warm in the valleys, crisp on the peaks. Yertle ran well, but I continued to be apprehensive.  It’s one thing to drive a car.  It breaks down, you call a tow truck.  An RV is another matter.  We were carrying our lives in the thing.  The water tank held twenty gallons. We had food and propane. There was no shelter on Highway Six, no trees, no shops or stations.  If Yertle broke down, help would be a long time coming

Endless Highway 6

Every hour or so, we’d pass a car, going the other way.  Everyone was going the other way.

Gathering my nerve, I hit the accelerator, and the old Chevy 350 gurgled forth, up the highway, into the brightening day.  My gas tank had been filled in Bishop.  The truck seemed happy.  Yertle was whispering, “Don’t worry, young feller, I’ll get you to Arches, don’t worry.”

I can’t help but worry, Yertle, I responded mentally.  It’s my nature to worry.

This was southern Nevada, an uncompromising landscape.  Sandstone blocks tipped by ancient floods and earthquakes littered the northern side of the road. On the south was nothing but miles and miles of tumbleweed and creosote bush. The stuff gave off a goldish earthen odor.  We were skirting the northern fringe of Nellis Air Force Base, with its gunnery ranges and atomic test sites
 
At fifty miles an hour, the noise from Yertle’s engine and wheels made conversation impossible.  There was nothing to do but drive, and look at the landscape.  Occasionally a vulture would mark the sky like a comma on vast blue paper.

The highway curves gradually northward, with occasional slow winding through the Toyabe National Forest.  This isn’t a forest as one thinks of a forest.  It's a sparse collection of low bushes and stunted trees, where lizards, voles and rabbits compete for the scarce resources.  We pushed north and east, and everything seemed okay.  Then, about fifty miles out of Tonopah, I heard a high whining sound from the engine.  Yertle kept on going, so I said my prayers and continued to drive.
 
We had entered a wide valley.  It looked like thirty miles to the next ridge.

Nevada Washboard 2

I was brought to alertness by a loud bang, and a nasty smell of burning rubber.  Yertle was running, but I had to pull over.  I was afraid to turn the engine off; afraid she’d never start again.  I got out and pulled open the hood.  Pieces of fan belt were shredded all over the motor compartment.  I picked them out, saving the biggest piece for reference.  Fan belt for what, I wondered?  How I wish I understood cars!  Then, as I inspected the various parts of the motor, I saw a thumb-sized hole, right through the metal rectangle of the I-don’t-know-what.  Pieces of this metal were strewn about.  It looked like a bullet hole from a high caliber rifle.  In fact it was a case of metal fatigue.  This porous, cheap material, this aluminum casing for some part of our vehicle’s innards, had met its deadline.
 
The engine was still running fine.

"What the hell," I thought.  "Let’s go until we can’t go any more."

We kept driving, praying for Ely.  Seventy miles to go.  Come on, Ely, come on.  About half an hour later, I saw a convoy of vehicles in the distance.  Two highway patrol cars were parked at the side of the road.  The officers were waving us to stop.

I was glad to see a human being, a person of authority.  To make that statement, “I was glad to see a person of authority”, is indicative of how scared I was.  I don’t have anything against policemen.  I have a significant resentment of all authority figures, always have and always will.  I learned that there are times when one might be thrilled to see a person of authority, and this was one of those times.

We pulled out onto a wide margin.  A mile down the road, an immense truck was hauling a gargantuan pipe, long as a freight car and wider than the entire road.  I took a chance, and turned off the engine. I got out of Yertle and approached the officer.

“Sir”, I asked respectfully, “can you spare a moment to look at our truck?  Something broke a while ago, and I don’t know what’s going on.”

The policeman was half my age.  He was short and compact, and looked like he could tear three phone books in half with his bare hands.  He glanced under the hood, while the monstrous pipe rolled slowly past our place beside the road.

“That’s your air conditioner belt,” he informed us.  “And that hole, well that’s your air conditioner.  Looks like the belt shredded and then popped the AC unit right through the guts.  Good thing it wasn’t the fan belt, or you’d be stuck out here.”

Greatly relieved, I thanked our benefactor, started Yertle and proceeded down the lonely road.

Things happen to people. Events are events, but our interpretation of these events overshadows the events themselves.  For me, the most important thing is to view life as a process of gaining understanding.  It doesn’t matter whether good things or bad things happen.  The process is the same.

I didn’t fully understand this crazy trip.  All I knew was that it had churned up a barrel full of anxiety in my guts.  Whenever I reached a point of relaxation, some new threat stirred all the sediment of fear that had begun settling to the bottom of my emotional bucket.
 
I asked Fox, several times, "Do you want to turn back?”

Fox is made of stronger stuff than I.  “No,” she always said, “We’re supposed to go to Arches.”

View from Our Eventual Arches Campsite

This tree may be more than a thousand years old.

I felt like such a "wuss."  Men don’t enjoy feeling cowardly.  It’s not a good man-feeling.  It’s a feeling that lurks in some small fetid bathroom down in my soul, a bathroom with a naked bulb worked by a pull-string with a knot at the end, a bathroom with old squeaky faucets that give out brown water.  It has a frosted window that’s jammed shut, with a paint job where the streaky white paintbrush overswept right onto the window and the painter didn’t care enough to scrape it clean.  That’s what my cowardice feels like, it feels like that cheap hotel bathroom and it’s not fun at all.  I was going to have to brace up.  That’s what the wise old samurai said to the Toshiro Mifune character in “The Seven Samurai”.  It’s become an in-joke for Fox and me.  “Brace up, Kikuchiyo”, we tell one another.  “Brace up.”

And Yertle, in spite of her geriatric frailty, kept reassuring me.  “I’ll get you there, sonny,” she whispered, “Stop worrying so much. I may be old but I’ve got plenty of miles left in me.”

Never once did I wonder if I was completely nuts, talking to an RV.  I was simply being swept along by events.
 
The landscape began to rise, as we came into another range of the Humboldt-Toyabe Forest.  I looked at the gas gauge and with a shock realized that we were down to a quarter tank.  Where did the gas go?!  The tank was filled in Bishop, only a hundred twenty miles down the road.  I had badly overestimated the mileage of which Yertle was capable.  That, and a headwind, had drunk our gas, and I had been so preoccupied, I failed to fill her up at the one and only truck stop between Tonopah and Ely.  I began to wonder if we were going to run out of fuel on some tricky mountain curve without a shoulder.
 
Compulsively, I watched the gas gauge, then chastised myself and equally compulsively avoided watching the gas gauge.  I forced my eyes to bypass the little meter as it quivered ever downward toward EMPTY.  Why weren’t we carrying a gas can with five extra gallons?  Fox had vetoed the proposition:  she had some terrifying vision of gasoline spilling all over the place and roasting us to a crisp.  I always obey Fox’s intuitions, but this time I was vexed.  ALWAYS CARRY EXTRA FUEL!  Is that rule number two or three?  The fuel consumption of the most innocent looking RV is a ravening dragon, an elephant sucking up fluids faster than they can be replenished.  Motor homes LOVE fuel, the way kids love candy or the way addicts love dope.  Gimme some gas! they breathe, panting with appetite.  Gimme some gas!

Thirty miles to Ely.  Okay, steal a look at the gauge.  It’s hovering over the little line that says, EMERGENCY!  hurry up and get a fill!  I’m calculating. Let’s see, if we are getting ten miles to the gallon, and we have three gallons, we can just get to Ely.  But if we’re getting eight per gallon, we’re in big trouble. That’s assuming there are three gallons.  There might be five; or there might be two.  Does the gauge read short when we’re going uphill?  Does it look fuller when we’re tilted downward?

Naturally, the headwind grew more powerful and our route took to yet another interminable climb up into the Toyabe-Humboldt Forest.  The road was Nevada-smooth, paid for by gambling taxes, well maintained.  But here, on the undulant highway, there was no shoulder, just a line of white fence posts, protecting vehicles from plunging down a forty foot cliff.  There was no place to get off the road.  Run out of gas here, around a blind curve, and some truck can come whamming along and crunch us like an old Pepsi can.

I spent the next forty five minutes waiting for the engine to sputter and die. I watched the side of the road for potential escapes, and watched the rear view mirror for the following eighteen wheeler that spelled our doom, like the monster truck from that early Spielberg movie, “Duel”.  The forest grew thicker.  There were trees here, big trees.  We saw signs touting campgrounds and tourist sites, in the southern approach to Ely.  They were little comfort to me.  The gas gauge quivered and teased me as it sat on Empty.  My heart was beating in every pore of my skin.  Why so scared, I chided myself?  Everybody runs out of gas at least a couple of times.  Yes, I responded, BUT NOT HERE on a curvy road with no shoulder. The last vehicle we saw was a FedEx truck passing us, going uphill in a no pass zone, like we were standing still.  People drive crazy in Nevada on Highway Six.  They think the roads are empty.  Crazy.

We came to a crest of the mountain range, and I thought with relief, "It’s downhill from here!  We can coast, we won’t burn our precious bits of fuel climbing laboriously up every steep curve of the road."  Alas!  After going down for a bit, the road turned upward once again.  The gauge was a on EMPTY.  I played games with it.  If I look at it from the side, it kinda looks like there’s more gas in it.  I leaned right, leaned left, but I wasn’t fooling myself.  Yertle soldiered onward.  I was running out of gas on a road with no shoulder, I had a shredded air conditioner belt and a fist-sized hole in the engine.

Dragon's Jaws

The road sign said, “Ely—12mi”.  And there we were, at the real crest of the range.  I put Yertle in neutral, took my foot off the gas, and coasted down and around the mountain curves.  At last, the ominous white fencing beside the road vanished. A few houses appeared.  Billboards advertised motels and gift shops, gambling casinos, banks and auto body garages.  More houses.  Ely!  My eyes were pealed for a gas station.  I made a left onto Ely’s main drag and made a beeline for the first gas station I saw.  Yertle coasted over the curb, I put her in drive, lined her up to the pump, and then….and then...ptttptttptt, shooo!  Yertle ran out of gas.

I now truly believe that Yertle was inhabited by a Grandmother spirit.
My conversations weren't with the RV.  My conversations were with the Grandmother who had come along with us, who had put herself into Yertle to preside over our fates and protect us from disaster.

Driving from San Francisco to Moab, Utah is a trip of about 1500 miles.

No matter what route you take, sooner or later you're going to find yourself climbing up the Colorado Plateau.  It's a grueling ride, especially in an underpowered vehicle.  The climb goes on and on for about seventy miles.

Trucks expire along the side of the road, blown tires litter the highway like cracked black eggshells.  It's a monster of a climb.  At the top, you can go to the Vista Point and read about what you've just experienced.  From this point forward, you are in THE SOUTHWEST, and the whole nature of the landscape changes.  It's an amazing experience."

Fox Talks to the Grandmothers

-- 30 --

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  All photography by Art Rosch

Bonus Shots by Art

A Classic View of Nevada

Approaching Tahoe

The Sky from Ely

"Chief Sleeping Giant" in center of picture

First Sight of the Badlands

Truckee River

There's a Man Up There In Those Huge Rocks

Art Rosch's Biographical Sketch

Art Rosch boomed with the other babies of his generation in St. Louis, Mo. He was drawn to music as a child and learned trumpet and drums. As he got older, he became enamored of modern jazz. At the age of sixteen he set out on a pilgrimage to New York City to study with his idol, avant garde musician Ornette Coleman. This adventure led Art to associations with many jazz musicians.

He spent two years as the house drummer at Detroit's Artist's Workshop. His interest in writing and photography also continued to grow. After winning Best Story Award from Playboy Magazine, Art signed with an agent and began working on novels. He is still working on novels, memoirs and essays.

His photography has been featured in Shutterbug Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. One image, Lone Tree In Utah, won an important award from the United Nations. Much of Art's photo work is done at night. He is a passionate amateur astronomer and likes to explore the potential of long exposure photography. He continues to work from Sonoma County, California.

Art's photography may be viewed on his website and many of his writings can be seen on his "Blogazine."

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Please Note:

*** This Blog Needs Your Story! *** { I'm Serious!} If you have a story to post on this theme, or know anyone who does, contact me, please! We have zero stories on tap at the moment. Give your imagination a stretch--your story can be about any sort of Relentless Pursuit, fact, fiction, poignant, or humorous. I'd love to hear from you and work with you on your story! And we need to keep this theme going! And if you have a few moments, please stop by my web site and have a look around.
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It's All Downhill From Here

Art Rosch

Art Rosch is the second author to be suggested to me by Carolyn Fletcher, and all I can say is "She knows some fantastic writers and fascinating people!

I contacted Art and asked him if he would be interested in participating in "Relentless Pursuits" and he enthusiastically agreed to provide a story!

And WHAT A STORY!  It is truly a tale of  relentless striving for survival!  I am a hopeless acrophobic and have long suffered from a recurring nightmare that is astonishingly close to the true-life nightmare that is described in Art's story "It's all Downhill From Here."

His writing will absolutely rivet you and if you're anything like me, you may even be gasping for breath by the time you reach the end of the story. 

The side story about Art's wife, Fox, is a whole other experience, and one you will not want to miss,  It has stuck in my imagination since my first reading of the story!

By the way, "It's all Downhill From Here" also appears in Art's superb book, Avoiding the Potholes.

--

  Michelle Alton

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Thanks for stopping here to see the latest post. I'd love to know what you think of the "Relentless Pursuit" series. Please leave me a comment below or email me with your suggestions on what you'd like to see on this blog. Also, PLEASE click the green SU icon at the bottom of this post to recommend the blog to Stumble Upon members. It will dramatically increase the "exposure" of our authors' work.

If you have a story you would like to share on this theme, contact me. And be sure to take a look at my Photography site. I'd love to hear from you! Also, consider forwarding the link to "Relentless" to your friends and family. Thanks again!
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It's All Downhill From Here
     By Art Rosch - Copyright 2011

Sunset At Fremont Peak. It was just one of those moments.

Sometimes, I wonder why people consider travel to be fun.  There is so much work to be done, so much organization, so many details, so much hurry.  Then, after the hurry, comes boredom and discomfort.  Somewhere in between all this nerve-chewing stuff is the so-called "fun".

My wife Fox and I were attempting to refine the process of travel.  We thought going in an RV was the ideal method.  Regardless of the efforts, we needed to travel!  I’m a photographer, an astronomer.  My goal on this trip was to take long exposure shots of the Milky Way.  I needed dark and pristine skies to achieve my images.

Yosemite Star Trails. Taken at Glacier Point, Yosemite.

Lone Tree In Utah. This is a composite of two photos.
The United Nations Environmental Photography contest gave it
Honorable Mention and included it in its global exhibition.

Fox is an explorer of an entirely new ethnic and genetic landscape.  She found out she was half Apache when she was forty eight years old.  It was a mind-blowing, life altering revelation.

On October 12, 2005, we were ready to hit the road.  I have a prime rule of travel:  try to never take the same road twice.  This time, I wanted to drive down highway 395. 

This is a road of classic views that parallels the eastern slope of the Sierras.  It runs the length of California and beyond, to the Canadian border.  To get there, we had to make a few zigs and a few zags.  Once on 395, we planned to drive south to Bishop, and take Highway 6 across Nevada.

That was the plan.  It looked pretty straightforward.  Executing the plan was another matter.

The first day was one of practice, of getting used to driving our new RV, which we had named Yertle.  She rattled and roared.  At higher speeds she felt like all the  tires were flat.  She was thirty years old.  In car years, that’s about a hundred and five.  Yertle was spry and dignified.  She kept telling me, “Don’t worry, young feller, I’ll get you there and back.  You’ll be safe.”

The RV in this photo is almost identical to Yertle, except we didn't have a boat.

I wanted to believe her.

The day passed without trouble, and we stopped in a campground near Lake Tahoe.
On the second day, we turned onto State Route 89. It was Sunday.  Most traffic was going in the other direction. 

The road was steep and full of hairpin curves.  It was beautiful mountain country, but I was too nervous to enjoy the journey.  My concentration was fixed upon driving Yertle.  We climbed and we curved through dense pine forests and around mountain crags.

Fox Inside Yertle

I began to notice something strange about the steering column.  It felt loose in my hands.  I could pull it this way and that, just a few inches.  I had a bad feeling.  I kept my mouth shut.  I didn’t want to alarm Fox. I didn’t see much alternative but to keep driving, and hope we could get to Bishop.

Road signs indicated our altitude.  We were ascending the western slope of the Sierra, six thousand, seven thousand feet and still climbing. Yertle struggled but kept going. Twenty miles an hour seemed to be her best effort.  If a vehicle came behind me, I let it pass as soon as possible. 

Eight thousand feet.  I had pulled out to let someone pass, and when I tried to get into a lower gear as I pulled back onto the road, I discovered that the entire steering column was rotating as I shifted gears.  I had no idea what gear I was in!  This old Chevy had the gear indicator atop the steering column in a plastic window.  An arrow moved with the shift lever and it showed the usual letters: P, R, N, D, D 1, and D2.  When I pulled toward the right, the plastic window came along with the steering column. The only thing I knew was that we were going forward.  I was terrified to shift back to the left.  I might throw Yertle into Reverse and destroy the transmission in a grinding calamity.

What a mess!  We had spent so much money. It was the most significant investment in the span of our relationship.  If Yertle broke down, it would break our hearts.  We were living and traveling on the slimmest margin.  We didn't have the cash for a major overhaul.

There was of course a more immediate terror: steering! 

Eight thousand feet.  We were coming through a place called, of all things, “Dead Man’s Pass”.  Nine thousand one hundred feet. By this time, I could swirl the steering column a foot and a half in any direction.  Yertle continued to steer, praise the lord.  I steered with my right hand, and with my left, attempted to stabilize and reinforce the column. 

Our problem was no longer a secret from Fox. 

Yet she was calm.  “The Grandmothers say we will reach Arches.”

Let me explain.  Since her family revelation, Fox had done much diligent study of her traditions, and had met a number of teachers.  She attended healing circles, ceremonies, and her gifts of intuition and vision had been growing.  One of her mentors guided her towards the presence of a group of spirit guides, female ancestors and keepers of wisdom:  The Grandmothers.  Fox has developed a deep relationship with The Grandmothers.  They speak through her.  She goes into a trance and sings, plays the drum, shakes the rattles.  As far as Fox is concerned, the Grandmothers are very real. 

Don’t we all love our grandmothers?

I will admit that this sounds fruity to people without exposure to a variety of spiritual traditions.  Let it sound fruity, I don’t care.  When Fox has asked The Grandmothers for guidance, it has been provided.

Fox in Contact with the Grandmothers

 
When I first met Fox, I thought she was a little crazy.  She attracts unusual events like a lightning rod.  After a time, when I saw how truthful Fox is, how great is her integrity, I allowed myself to believe in her. 

What am I talking about!?  I’m about to cross the tops of the Sierras with a steering column that’s ready to fall through the floor of the truck!

“The Grandmothers say we will reach Arches.”  Okay, Fox, if the Grandmothers say so…..but I’m scared, I’m petrified that at any moment I will lose steering entirely and plunge off the side of a cliff.

Fox Drumming in Prayer

Why did I keep going?  I have to ask myself that question, because the sane response would have been to stop the RV and call Triple A.  Tow us back to Tahoe.  The trip is over. 

I have this unfounded faith in what is called “normal reality”.  I don’t believe that anything horrible can happen to me, no no, not me!    In spite of the fact that I was terrified, I felt I had some control over the situation.  I didn’t want a long delay, I didn’t want to wait four hours for a tow truck and then endure a hundred fifty mile tow to a garage, back in Tahoe.  I didn’t want to give up!  A costly repair would eat up our trip money.  We would slink back home in defeat.

I could steer, albeit with some labor.  If I stayed in the same gear and held onto the column, I could at least get us to the bottom of the mountains.  We could look for help once we reached Highway 395.

I am empirically aware that “normal reality” is a fragile construct, and that the slavering wolf-jaws of disaster haunt us at every moment of our lives.  It’s something we learn to live with, mostly through denial.  If we truly realized how close we are to catastrophe, we would be too terrified to function.

We began our descent.  Coming down, going round, and round, winding into the sun so that it blinded me, then changing directions so the sun was to my left, then my right.  I stayed focused and drove slowly.  Cars, trucks, campers piled up behind us, honking impatiently.  I waved my left hand out the window, and some of them found places to pass.  In the silent rushing air, we descended the mountains.  My foot was on the brake and I eased that old Chevy round the tightest curves, holding the wheel, supporting the column.  Fox was praying in a language I had never heard.  The Grandmothers must have been with us. We survived.  The junction to Highway 395 appeared.  I came to the stop sign, breathed a deep sigh, and turned south. 

Somewhere along this road there must be help.  It was Sunday.  Gas stations were closed.  Little towns like Coleville and Bridgeport were deserted.   Every shop was closed.  I saw farmhouses behind fences, and I noticed that every farm seemed to have a shed full of tools.  Surely there were people here who could fix a car. We stopped at a convenience store and asked if there was a local garage.  We searched the phone book.  Only the town of Bishop, one hundred twenty miles south, would have an open garage.  So I drove, and I kept my eyes open.  Something to my right caught my eye.  It wasn’t a gas station, there were no signs, no indications that it was a business.  It was a place with some cars and some tools.  I quickly braked and pulled over. 

We've Reached our Goal

It was a small garage, and there were people about.  I asked if a mechanic was available.  A comfortably plump woman of about forty said he’d be back soon.  I began to breathe for the first time in hours.

In five minutes, there appeared a balding, dignified man wearing grey mechanic’s coveralls. 

I showed him our difficulty.  He reached under the steering column with a socket wrench, gave two twists.

“There’s your problem, “ he said simply.  “Somebody didn’t tighten up the clamp.”

He had undone the already-loose collar that kept the steering column fixed in place.  “Look, here’s the other bolt.  Inside the clamp.”  The second of two bolts that held the steering column in place was swimming around inside the round black circlet of metal. 

Tweek tweeek tweek, he turned his ratchet a few times, and our steering column was solid as a rock.  I felt stupid.  Why couldn’t I have figured that out?  Feeling stupid was nothing compared to the fact that I was limp with relief.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Forget about it,” the mechanic said.  I told him about the work that had been done on Yertle.  He shook his head.  “Careless, sloppy work” he said, “no excuse for that.”

I insisted he take a twenty.

As we started Yertle to take to the road, he called out,  “Hope those bozos didn’t leave any more surprises for you.”

I was desperately hoping the same thing.

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  All photography by Art Rosch
A Sampling of Art's Photos

I happened upon this scene of a Vietnamese family fishing beneath The Richmond Bridge. They kindly allowed me to take many photos.

  The Thousand Year Breath. This is a sixty second exposure taken near The Marin County Civic Center.

  Waterfall. Slowing shutter speed to a quarter second or slower will blur water to create this effect.

  Through the Eye Of The Gate. I've always wanted to take a fresh look at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Healing Hands. This is my most popular image in terms of sales
and use by organizations.

 Art Rosch's Biographical Sketch

Art Rosch boomed with the other babies of his generation in St. Louis, Mo. He was drawn to music as a child and learned trumpet and drums. As he got older, he became enamored of modern jazz. At the age of sixteen he set out on a pilgrimage to New York City to study with his idol, avant garde musician Ornette Coleman. This adventure led Art to associations with many jazz musicians.

He spent two years as the house drummer at Detroit's Artist's Workshop. His interest in writing and photography also continued to grow. After winning Best Story Award from Playboy Magazine, Art signed with an agent and began working on novels. He is still working on novels, memoirs and essays.

His photography has been featured in Shutterbug Magazine, where he is a contributing writer. One image, Lone Tree In Utah, won an important award from the United Nations. Much of Art's photo work is done at night. He is a passionate amateur astronomer and likes to explore the potential of long exposure photography. He continues to work from Sonoma County, California.

Art's photography may be viewed on his website and many of his writings can be seen on his "Blogazine."

__________________________________

Please Note:

*** This Blog Needs Your Story! *** { I'm Serious!} If you have a story to post on this theme, or know anyone who does, contact me, please! We have zero stories on tap at the moment. Give your imagination a stretch--your story can be about any sort of Relentless Pursuit, fact, fiction, poignant, or humorous. I'd love to hear from you and work with you on your story! And we need to keep this theme going! And if you have a few moments, please stop by my web site and have a look around.
_________________
[Click on the green SU icon below to recommend this blog to Stumble Upon Members]
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