Buffalo Bills 4

My new watch was solar-powered, benign in comparison to the other energy endemic to this part of Idaho. Robyn and were heading through a lava field to an active wildfire zone, missing the light, feeling the heat.
Two surrogate napkins came off the paper towel dispenser on our table, as we said goodbye to Kaylyn. We steered southwest along US 20. The repeated taste of the pickles from the four inches of local favourite #20 all meat combo on a white bun remained resistant to an entire roll of mints. The windshield began to resemble a war zone.
“The bugs bleed a lot here.” Robyn said. Several barren miles of flat Snake River plain desert, sprinkled with sage and yellow Antelope Bitterbrush, and dense yellow-white eruptions of Rubber Rabbitbrush, transformed into the broken black basalt and cracked cake-crusts of asphalted lava fields. Volcanic silhouettes floated on the hazy horizon. We had entered a region of utter desolation. The most recent eruptions occurred over two thousand years ago. The Shoshone who lived through them, created a legend that spoke of a serpent on a mountain which, angered by lightning, coiled around and squeezed the mountain until liquid rock flowed, fire shot from cracks, and the summit exploded.
The white settler migration that lived through the Shoshone attacks on their wagon trains, had altered their Oregon Trail route through the northern part of this black wasteland, in a diversion known as Goodale’s Cutoff.
In 1924, Robert Limbert, a sometimes taxidermist, tanner and furrier from Boise, named the cobalt Blue Dragon lava flows Craters of the Moon. It is the play of light at sunset across this lava that charms the spectator. It becomes a twisted, wavy sea. In the moonlight its glazed surface has a silvery sheen. With changing conditions of light and air, it varies also, even while one stands and watches. It is a place of color and silence. Limbert expressed regret at having taken his dog on his expedition ‘for after three days travel his feet were worn and bleeding.’ Our own feet were not far behind, as Robyn and I were wearing only sandals to explore the caves and lava tubes and cinder crags. The sides of our feet would heal slowly from their lacerated encounters with the tiny purple-blue pieces of obsidian volcanic glass, but we would heal.
Three weeks after Robyn and I lost ourselves for a while in the Craters of the Moon, two other hikers would lose themselves forever. Boise physician Dr. Jodean ‘Jo’ Elliott-Blakeslee, age 63, and her 69 year-old hiking partner, Amy Linkert. Any possibility of timely rescue was frustrated by the same Nobel prize-winning Barack Obama government shutdown that blocked the Australian and Japanese tourists from taking photos and ‘recreating’ at Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser. All but three of the Craters of the Moon National Monument's nineteen employees were furloughed, and the family of the missing physician was forced to issue a plea for volunteer searchers. The buffalo bills were bigger now than when Apollo astronauts trained here forty years ago. Children can earn a Lunar Ranger embroidered patch in just a few hours. They should get it while it's going. Geologists predict the area will experience its next eruption within the next hundred years. Think of the money they’ll save.
Robyn and I filled up in Carey, where they seemed mighty proud of their ethanol-free premium gas. We knew we would likely hit traffic after our shortcut on Picabo Lane onto Highway 75, going north through Hailey, Ezra Pound’s hometown, towards Sun Valley. We didn’t count on bumper to bumper. But it was coming south, the other way. It was leaving.

There was another complication on the horizon. One of the planned stops, back through the States on the way home, was a hajj to the last home of one of my minor deities, the place where he blew his brains out. Hemingway had lived in Ketchum, and Ketchum was in the news. The Beaver Creek Fire had become a state-wide inferno visible from space, the smoke filled and obscured the sun in Sun Valley, homes were evacuated, wolves were chasing sheep trying to escape, and Salmon, Idaho was becoming Smoked Salmon, Idaho. If the rains came, there would be floods…  We all got pieces of crazy in us, some bigger pieces than others.

Being crazy doesn’t make you wrong. The Great White Shark Hunter S. Thompson had it right. 'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble.
Robyn and I were arriving in the Wood River Valley on the second last day of the Beaver Creek fire, twenty two days after a lighting strike northwest of Hailey ignited over a hundred thousand acres of the Sawtooth National Forest. Beaver Creek was the largest fire the region had ever seen. The weather had been hot, dry, and windy but the arsonists had been alien life forms and topography. Epidemic infestations of Mountain Pine Beetle had devastated vast tracts of forest, and created large woody fuel falls on the ground. Cheat grass, which grew in sheets, had displaced the patchy growing native grasses, and became a continuous rapid burn conduit for any fire. The wind created an inferno that created its own wind, which created an inferno which created its own wind. It blew the fires faster up the slopes, and gravity compressed and focused the flames to burn faster down them. In a world of perfect storms, the Beaver Creek Fire was converging on immaculate.
Mass evacuations of homes and businesses had occurred, and firefighting teams were flown in from all over the continent. They brought helitankers and helicopters, and specialized firefighters called 'hot shots.' Two weeks before Robyn and I headed up the valley, Butch Otter, the Governor of Idaho, declared a state disaster.
The air was still smoke and haze, the ground a layer of soot and ash, and the smell was of smolder and sap. The setting sun looked like the moon, and the moon had become Mars red.
We drove up Main Street in Ketchum, across River Street, to Kentwood Lodge. Best Western. We got a warm welcome at the front desk, and a rough-hewn open poster bed with an Indian blanket upstairs. I asked if the fire had affected bookings. She looked at me like I should have known better than to have asked.
Robyn and I unloaded our packs, had a swim in the empty pool, and headed down Main Street, under the haze and the Wagon Days banner, to the first of Hemingway's old haunts.
The Casino was the perfect dive, jukebox, pool tables and pinball machines where the slots stood in Hemingway’s day (when gambling was legal), big drinks for cash only, curses, and odours of cigarette butts and tragedy. It was different now, than when he came for his first drink in the evening. We continued to the Sawtooth Club, the swankier place he patronized for dinner, and got the last table upstairs, in the shadow of Bald Mountain.
I hadn't had any alcohol for two weeks now. This evening was a kind of homecoming, literary and liquid.
“Are you sure you're ready?” Robyn asked.
“One way to find out.” I said. And we ordered, a glass of Turley chardonnay to start, and one of pinot noir to go with her duck, and another of cabernet sauvignon for my lamb. For tomorrow would be the last day of the Beaver Creek Fire, and the first of our Wagon Days.  Through the windows of the Sawtooth Club, the underside of all the grey clouds in the Ketchum evening sky blazed crimson. Robyn asked me what I thought.
“We’re smack dab in the middle of something good.” I said. "Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise."