What would normally be an hour drive to Alpine from Jackson took about half the time, propelled as I was by contempt of the divine because for all the rancor there’s no denying the overall influence of nature.
Who hates their enemy is righteous; who lacks respect lives in defeat.
And I suppose I did lose respect for nature, at some point, though that was more a fog of war thing, I’d like to think. Didn’t matter, either way; the effrontery had been committed, and my punishment was forthcoming at a fantastic speed— my own.
Likely, the only thing that kept me from wrapping a tree or hurdling over the side was the erratic injection of memory. Debacle had gained numbers and ground, but there remained an opportunity. It was a single thing, one for all the marbles, a sort of Use-the-force-Luke situation only the target was more Tonton than Womp.
There was one more stop, and I had saved the best, the entire impetus for the trip, the stellar figure at the center of this traveling universe, for last.
I had told myself at the beginning of the day that I wouldn’t drink. No alcohol or spirit shall pass my lips, I swore, lest I incur the wrath of Stupidity, which I had encountered too many times already— we were practically buddies. There’s also the fact that I hate drinking when upset. It makes beer flat, liquor stale, and wine sour. Alcohol is meant to be fun, an accompaniment to celebration in my estimation. But, given enough time, all things can be negotiated and rationalized.
“They have food at the brewery. I can eat while enjoying the scenery I didn’t get in the mountains,” I said. “I guess it really was my fault for being so unprepared, anyway. It’s only proper to have a couple, in the spirit of reconciliation; no hard feelings, Nature. A couple is absolutely it, though, because I want to spend the real money on a case I can take to properly enjoy at home. I’ll make sure to always have something to munch on, too. And, ya know, if worse comes to worse, I’ll grab a hotel room for the night, or sleep in the car. I’ve done it once already.” With plans and contingencies coming out the woozah, how could one but bask in the content rays of a gratifying sun?
Oh, but the martyrdom, robed and bathed in holy oils, was yet to be crowned. The golden wreath had been spirited away to the most innocuous of places and in the most Who’s-your-daddy-and-don’t-you-forget-it ways.
When I was younger, my father used to take me hiking Ono some rocky slopes and beaten up trails surrounding the lake closest to our house. A patient man by nature, he would get a little irked by the nervous caution in my steps. He would sprint around me like a mountain goat with kid-like glee and say, “If you’re constantly thinking about how you’re going to fall down, then you’ll fall down.” Now, at the time, it didn’t mean much to me, child that I was. “Easy for you to say, you hooved bitch,” I would think.
The phrase made sense, with time, as all things in life. Wisdom is the mining of age, and you can’t swing an axe without a few splinters and blisters. (Not if you wear gloves; fuck off, don’t take away from the metaphor). My own came in repeated invites to Tarrant’s finest of county jails, which I obliged, all to bear witness to my alcohol based endeavors. I found some of these were me playing into a figure someone had hastily sketched out for me. I expected that behavior out of myself, and that’s the behavior I got.
Which is why I was so stoked for my trip into Alpine: I expected responsible behavior, so surely that’s what I would get.
Expectations didn’t subside as I took the winding trail just off the main road that led to the brewery by the lake. They didn’t crumble beneath the shadows cast by mountains on the other side of aforementioned lake. They falter one bit while I read signs leading up to the great white warehouse with balancing elephant painted on it announcing a music festival taking place. Roped off parking and brightly colored wristbands only made expectations dig in. I could feel the iron-like resolve of expectations bolster as the man at the gate told me it was a private event, not open to the general public today. And as I made the turn, dust being tossed up behind me in buckets, the ghastly sight of traveling music hordes with their frizzed hair carrying niche brand rucksacks into which extravagantly priced alpaca sweaters were stuffed along with goose feather sleeping sacks to say nothing of various narcotics, squinting through shot eyes from either too much sleep or not enough into the distance, expectations sang victory because you don’t apologize for wins in the league. Ever.
I witnessed the coronation of my suffering at the grimy hands of galavanting nothings. The missiles sailed wide right. The empire won. Beneath the shadow of mountains and by the chill of the lake, the Cowboy state had answered my morning birds and afternoon affronting in kind. Well played.
Fuck you, Wyoming.