Pullout

There are a zillion pullouts on a jillion logging roads in the Coast Range, and this one has little to recommend it. It’s just another crunchy gravel space the width of a pickup for staying out of the way of traffic that never comes. Often there is an empty potato chip bag or beer can left by some slob who thinks the highest use for a wide spot along a forest road is to function as their personal garbage can. Years back we picked early summer blackberries here until the third-growth Douglas-fir on the tree plantation finally grew tall enough to shade the sun-loving fruit. Now there is only one distinguishing feature for this pullout—it is my last outpost for phone service on the winding backway to the Johnny Gunter place, just before the road tips precipitously downward into the Smith River drainage.

This morning the pullout approached while night fog still hung heavy on the ridge. I had managed to leave town early to pick up some furniture from the Johnny Gunter place for Mom’s new digs in assisted living. A Ruffed Grouse foraging grit on the shoulder rocketed on russet wingbeats into vaporous conifers. A few Varied Thrushes flushed from the pavement into a grove of Ancient Ones, feathered backs drab as hemlock bark. The pickup stereo was cranked up. Nathanial Talbot’s soulful lyrics from his album “Animal.” I was hoping the words and guitar work would press some stress from my chest after a month of caring for Mom’s new needs.

https://blog.nature.org/science/2014/01/16/the-grouse-in-winter/

I eased off the pavement onto the gravel. Left the engine running. Picked up the phone. Two bars of signal. No texts. No missed calls. What about email? A forwarded message from Charlie and Cathy from their driving route to Baja. Subject line: “Very sad news.” I had to scan through the accumulated pile of email addresses to get to the message. It was about Steve, our Colorado River buddy. Stroke. Emergency surgeries. No saving him. He died this morning.

I wrote a couple of perfunctory lines in response. Put the phone back in the seat. Then my personal dam broke. I started crying. I cried as if I had never cried before, rested my head on the steering wheel, abandoned myself to sobbing with no intention of stopping. Ever. I cried for everything: for Steve and his tribe, for Mom, for all of us, for all of the sadness wrapping her foggy arms around these mountains. The music was still rolling. I found the OFF button and kept on crying. When the tears finally stopped, I wiped my face on the torn and dirty sleeve of my canvas jacket, put the truck in gear, and rolled down the hill out of phone service.

After leaving the pullout, I don’t remember driving the four miles to the Johnny Gunter place. The driveway slanting uphill into the forest snuck up on me, even though I’ve turned into it a thousand times. I unlocked the gate, rolled into the parking area, turned the truck around, found the keys, opened the door, all on autopilot.

Pullouts are for boats, too. Steve and I met last winter on Zoom calls in preparation for a one-month self-guided float down the entire length of what still remains wild of the Colorado River. Something happens when people are bound together in the Grand Canyon. A glue oozes from the pores of those who find themselves sharing the almost overwhelming experiences of adrenaline-laced whitewater, sandstone buttresses, and enchanted side canyons. You become incomprehensibly stuck to one another.

Steve was a big guy with a big heart. He also struck me as a little anxious. Turns out he had lost his two-year-old daughter in a hit-and-run accident. The tragedy happened a long time ago, but a wound like that never fully heals. Yet the experience had positive outcomes. Steve had developed a level of compassion most of us never achieve. He also had an egoless sense of his own limitations. On our trip down the Colorado, we stopped above the body-slamming split personality of Bedrock Rapids. Rather than trusting himself to negotiate that gnarl of high-octane white water, Steve gracefully handed his oars over to a more experienced boatman.

Steve worked in construction for much of his early career. Last fall he graciously came over to the Johnny Gunter house to advise me on the rehab project. I know little to nothing about building houses and badly needed his counsel. We spent a sunny late-October day wandering around the place. He shared what he knew. I listened. Took notes. It was Steve who had me attach the wall to the concrete footer to keep it from walking off in the event of an earthquake, a job I finished only last week. Good project he kept repeating. This was his balm to soothe the frustration he knew was waiting for me.

All I wanted this morning was a hot fire in the woodstove and a blanket to hide beneath on the couch. But Steve had been here. He was still here. Parked in a chair in the front room talking about life. Wandering around the outside dispensing soothing advice. Ignoring what I had already screwed up because he knew all of that was in the uncorrectable past. I felt as though I owed him some action. So I pulled myself together and painted wood preservative onto boards that would cover the last section of the end joist, uncoiled the extension cord, and got out the air compressor and pneumatic nail gun. Had I hidden under that blanket, Steve would have understood. But he also would have loved that before I left in the afternoon, the boards had been nailed into place.

I’m never sure what grief looks or tastes or sounds like. I suppose it varies with the landscape. Sometimes it’s that heart-broke moment sitting in a pickup on a foggy ridge with the music turned up while the entire world becomes window-broke inside your chest because the big guy you once saw launched by a wayward oar into the churn of the Colorado River has been cast forever from your life. Sometimes it’s layers of sadness pressing down on your chest like pink sandstone until you feel as though you might suffocate were it not for tears that pour like salty springs along the canyon bottom. And sometimes it’s just doing what needs to be done—pushing a “good project” on toward the finish line, even if the finish line might be etched into your own chest, and not a demarcation signaling the end to external work.

On the way home I passed the pullout. I did not check my email.