First Chapter of Sprawlism, the book

is now up at www.sprawlism.com

Jackson Hole

JACKSON, WY, April 6th, 2005. Being a simple man -- I’m happy with a fair bar, high-speed internet, a moderate hiking or skiing trail, a dependable woman, and a quiet spot for a kip – I don’t need much else. It’s a bit disconcerting that I’m constantly late for the bar here. In Topanga if I were to get to Abuelitas at five I’d probably be one of the first people propping up the thing, the patrons dribbling in between five and six, or even seven. Not here, consistently when I get to the bar for research at my customary hour of five-thirty the joints are hiving, and not only packed by five-thirty, but everyone is shit-faced already. I’m intrigued to find out what time they all start, but I’m concerned this investigation will screw up my delicate balance of work in the morning followed by a few hours of skiing or hiking in the afternoon – maybe I need to get up earlier?

I’m having great difficulty spending more than twenty bucks every night. A hamburger is about six bucks and a beer is two dollars for two beers. A whisky is three-fifty. Most nights I’m spending ten bucks, plus tip. This is the complete antithesis of New York or London, where it is hard to spend less than a hundred. Topanga comes in at about twenty-five to thirty, that’s if you have a few before leaving home and a few when you get back.

I’ve come to the conclusion Montana and Wyoming are serious drinking states. In Southern Californian bars or London pubs mostly you’d see the men drinking beer -- not here. Everyone drinks mixed drinks. I feel a bit of a sissy drinking a beer, and I think I’m going to have to move over to some serious whiskey guzzling to fit in.

It was two hundred years ago this month that Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery crossed into Montana on their expedition to find an east-west trade route. I’ve downloaded Landon Jones’ The Essential Lewis & Clark audio book of their journals. Mixed success listening to it due to compatibility issues with my MP3 player. I draw parallels to Lewis & Clark’s failed rudders and frozen oars – that’s technology for you.

I’ve finally got the book working on the laptop and have been listening to it in the truck while driving through the same rugged and bleak territory Lewis & Clark probed. My journey though is interspersed by Wal-Marts and Espresso stands. I stopped at one location where the expedition had allegedly camped, it’s currently a fine and splendid mini-mart complete with many variations of junk food, ammo and a small casino.

The theme remains the same two hundred years later though. The real principal activity around here, other than drinking, is hunting. I almost got myself a pistol and a bear hunting permit for my hikes, but balked at the cost and decided it wouldn’t be very zen of me to go around shooting at the native wildlife, unlike Lewis & Clark, so settled on bear repellent pepper spray instead. Those grizzlies are waking up right around now, dozy, possibly furious at two hundred years of being shot at, and might well be thinking I’m in their food chain – have you seen the length of those claws? The spray was expensive at fifty bucks, but I think a good investment. I suppose if you choose to vacation in Cozumel you’d have to buy a beach towel and sun glasses, or in Rome or Paris, vividly fluorescent green and pink shorts and t-shirts, well here you invest in bear repellant.

Slept pretty badly Sunday night in a motel at the base of the Tetons. The snow ploughs were scraping the road all night. The steel on pavement and blazing strobes made it like sleeping at a cross between building site and a disco. It was a good thing I stopped there though. The truck was caked in slushy, wet snow in the morning. The Teton Pass was treacherous and icy when I crossed it later, and there was an abandoned spin-out at the top. The vehicle was embedded in a drift, its rear poking out like the ass of a dog with its head down a rodent hole. I wouldn’t have wanted to cross that pass in the dark.

Jackson Hole is pretty much shut. It’s the start of mud season here. Ski season, which ended on Sunday, is followed by the off or mud season, which is followed by mountain bike season. There’s something honest about a ski-town in mud season. The snow veneer is stripped off, melted and now muck. The tourists are gone; party’s over; the restaurants and stores are cleaning up and counting their bounty; kitsch is marked down to seventy-five percent off.

The town bigwigs here tried to introduce an ElkFest followed rapidly by a FishFest, then a Spring Earth Festival and an Old West Days. All have failed to attract the desired tourists, and the season remains muddy and off. The Jackson Hole Preservation Association, who warn of, and lament a possible vanishing off-season due to over-zealous municipal marketing, reports April 1st an attempt to introduce an Old Muck Days.

My motel, empty Monday night, filled with construction workers yesterday, truck license plates from all over the inter-mountain West. The local paper is full of jobs. This morning there’s brand new demolition going on across the street. They started sometime around dawn, before I was awake, anyway they’re feverishly working. It’s like a set change on a studio lot. A race to build the latest log facade before the next wave of credit cards and cash descend on the Hole. The influx overnight is like you’d imagine a mountain gold town, only this gold is white gold, Yellowstone tourism and second-home, fifteen thousand square foot plus log mansions.

I was reading locally that Teton is the wealthiest county in the United States. I don’t know about that, sounds a bit over-optimistic to me – Wyoming maybe. There sure are a lot of log Taj Mahals and late model, tricked out trucks and SUVs around here though – muddy ones.

Driggs

DRIGGS, ID, April 3rd, 2005.
It’s bloody snowing again.

Bozeman

BOZEMAN, MT, March 30th, 2005. Well, since I’ve been getting multiple requests as to where the hell I am, and what the hell I’m doing, here’s an update:

I’m holed up in Bozeman, Montana for now. I’ve got myself a room in a downtown motel, plenty of space for papers and assorted travel junk like cooler, coffee machine, computer, wet ski boots and other crap. The room’s over the office, so I’ve got a wireless internet connection, and a good view of the trucks rolling down the main street. The bed’s a bit itchy though, so I may have to review my domicile.

There seems to be two kinds of town here in Montana – university towns, which have female patrons in the bars, and shit-kicker, fur-trapping, mining towns which don’t. Mining town Butte, where I got snowed in, is notable for its many bars. Sixty, according to my bartender. That’s about one for every ten residents. The mine shut in 1982, coincidentally the same year the whore-house closed, most people left, the bars however remained.

I crossed Monida Pass last Tuesday, about a week ago. The pass separates Idaho and the rest of the world from Montana, and was icy, snow-packed and desolate -- my first taste of just how remote it is up here. I had to double back for a bit, as a well-advertised, promised gas station was bloody closed – disconcerting, because I knew that a storm was only a few hours behind me. Transpired it was indeed a good idea to get down I-80 fast, even if it meant I didn’t get time to stop at the Crazy Horse and get myself some 'rest & relaxation' and a beer. In fact, all the interstate passes through Nevada, which I had just barreled through got hit hard by that storm. You quickly get used to maintaining at least a quarter, or half-full tank around here. Unlike L.A., where we all run around on fumes.

Slithering down the other side of the pass into Montana I realized what everyone was talking about -- this state is staggeringly beautiful with huge, rolling orange and burnt-umber valleys with glacial mountain backdrops; and the founding fathers weren’t kidding when they called the towns names like Big Sky and Big Mountain. It’s all very ‘river runs through it.’ Not touristy though -- it’s pretty much all geared towards skiing, killing animals, drinking hard liquor, building Wal-Marts, the exploitation of Indians and the plundering of mineral wealth.

Easter night was fun. I was sheltered-up in the fur-trapping, glacial outpost of Whitefish, in yet another storm. At least there are plenty of bars in Montana, unlike the bible belt, not a bad state to get snowed-in. I missed the furniture races at the ski resort Easter afternoon. The locals strap old sofas and recliners to skis and charge down the black runs to celebrate end of season. I missed it due to the fact that I was in town yakking to a bewitching bartender called Wendy, who unfortunately had a fiancé in Myrtle Beach, where she was going to move to. The prime benefit to moving to Myrtle Beach, other than that her fiancé lived there, was that there are malls -- unlike in Whitefish, where you can just about buy some fishing tackle and a tent, maybe a bowie knife to skin a beaver (if there were any left,) or a few gallons of bear-hide tanning oil, let alone all the stuff Wendy was dreaming about. Anyway, she was great, and it was my first female contact in a week, so sofa races came second.

I successfully managed to chip a back tooth last night on some fine, but rock-hard French bread here in town. It doesn’t hurt and I think I’m going to skip the dentist for a bit. I’ve got a feeling this is the kind of place where dentistry involves a set of rusty pliers and a bottle of whiskey. I’ll wait until I’m back in the south. Anyway, it adds to the authenticity of the expedition. Lewis & Clark’s men were bothered by all sorts of boils and matters medical, I’m sure teeth was one of them.

In fact, I’m having a bit of a problem with the diet. It’s basically meat, or more meat – elk, bison, cow, but meat nonetheless, and I’m getting sick of meat. What with all the rivers around here, you’d think they could cook up a trout once in a while. Maybe the trout hibernate along with the grizzly bears? as any sensible animal should probably do. I will investigate further.