Dark Water

My tires took the road at 70 miles per hour. It did not feel fast enough. I was racing the setting sun. Pressing my lips together, mumbling, watching the scrub and the sage blur through my windows, watching the road laying out flat in front of me. 

“I don’t want to drive in the dark, I don’t want to set up camp in the dark.”

If I hadn’t stopped to see what that roadside taxidermy stand had to offer. The stench of flesh and a few preserved heads, a pelt of a badger I stroked with my hand and not without a taste of something grim, something like grief in the back of my throat. Stench and unblinking eyes and horns that was all. 

Not fast enough, no way to be fast enough. I watched the sun glowing brighter orange, the orange spreading out along the horizon line behind me as I pressed the gas pedal down. I didn’t really know where I was going. Just before leaving Burns, a final decision for the day. No, not a hotel room in town, one more camp site one more time. 

There wasn’t much near town except RV parks. Sitting in my car on a side street in Burns, 

Stretching out the digital map with my fingers, examining the little colored emblems there, I found one campsite on BLM land. I had never used facilities owned by the Bureau of Land Management before but I knew what I had heard, that they were spartan in their land management. I didn’t know what would be there. A legal place to put a tent and nothing else? 

There wasn’t time to pursue anything else so I was driving there, whatever there was. There may not be enough time to get there before the dark came and swallowed everything. I watched for the sign on the side of the road, glanced at the screen on my phone where a blue dot blinked, unsure, along the road. No service. 

I kept driving. The road kept going. Everything looked the same much as it had all day. It seemed it would always be this way, and I would always be driving. The moment grew and took on the proportions of the eternal as I obsessively analyzed the spread of sunset behind me. Was it further down? How much time did I have? 

Just as I began to worry I had somehow missed the sign and was driving headlong into nothingness, there it was. I can’t remember what it was called. I turned and bounced down a rough asphalt road. Over a small rise, a campsite was visible. Individual plots with hook ups for RVs were flat and empty in rows. Sites were obvious only by the hook ups and the clearing of the brush. An enormous lake was lying flat like a mirror to the left of the sites. It glowed pink. I slowed down. There were even toilets, wooden shacks in a small line next to a paybox. 

Luxury, shangri la. No squatting in the bushes. 

I pulled up to the box and wrinkled my nose to pay $16 dollars for these precious few luxuries. No choice, no time. Rifling through the cash in my wallet I came to $12. I looked around me for no reason, there was no way to obtain any money here. One site on a rise to the left, too far to throw a stone, was a sign that said “camp host” with a small RV. Probably he was eating dinner, wasn’t paying attention, wouldn’t be counting these until later. 

“How much will the federal government care if I take a spot in the dirt just a couple dollars short?” I said to myself, filling out the envelope hurriedly and stuffing the insufficient funds inside. 

Any consequences would come later. It would be a bill in the mail asking for the remaining dollars. Maybe with interest, that would all matter later. Now, the air was shifting and cooling. Insects were buzzing and seemed to be growing in number around me and I would have sworn to anyone it was slightly, progressively darker and more orange and purple everywhere. 

I drove around a road like a half moon and looked at sites next to the lake. Looked at that mirror of the setting sun, how beautiful to have my dinner and watch it there? But I remembered the insects hovering near the paybox. How much worse would they be next to the water? I drove up and into the campsite. I selected a spot where I could see the lake but was above it on the hill and near enough to the only two other guests - two RVs with no other human beings visible - that if somehow, someone were to come to my tent with evil intentions, someone would hear me scream. That and Pepper the Seven Shooter seemed sufficient security and it was all I had. The campsite reached out far enough that I could have easily distanced myself from earshot of anyone. 

As soon as I stepped out of the car, they swarmed. The insects, some mosquitos probably, others maybe some kind of gnat. The air was thick with them. Within seconds, pain on my waist told me one of them had bit through my clothing. I looked at the picnic table with its view of the water and realized I would not be eating my dinner there. I rifled through the car for the heavy aerosol bug spray. With a rapid violence I sprayed my skin and my clothes. My world was swallowed by the noxious smell. 

The tent was a rapid, clumsy, desperate effort. I was fighting the descending sun and the ascending swarm. I sprayed the outside of the tent. In short bursts of the zipper, I threw the sleeping bag, my backpack, and the can of food for my dinner inside the tent. I didn’t dare leave it open for one second longer than required lest the hovering hoard got in. With one final zip, I was inside with everything I needed. I left the rain fly off. Stars would likely be visible here. Once inside, I saw only two insects flitting at the battery powered light hanging from the ceiling of the tent. I pronounced this not bad and killed them both. 

Through the bug screen I watched the insects swarm over each other. I could see their dark shadows too on the bottom fabric half of the tent. I was sitting on my sleeping pad, eating chickpeas from a can with pita bread. I watched the sun set on the water. I watched everything glow brighter orange and pink than could be justified. The rim of the water came to a golden line like eyes closing in sunlight. Just as I finished eating, twilight was total and darkness was a few blinks away. My satisfaction was absolute. 

In an abundance of caution I moved the remains of my dinner, the empty oil slick can and bag containing more disks of bread, and put them in the tupperware box in the car. The car was parked downwind of the tent and for some reason I locked it. I darted back into the tent and settled into the bag for the night. Sleep came just after the stars began to appear. I was asleep until roughly midnight. 

I don’t know what woke me. I sat upright, instantly, completely awake. I must have heard something, somewhere in a primal part of my mind, that dark vital piece of self was awake. I knew that. My heart was thumping. I was listening with the ears of an animal. Everything around me was alive. 

I heard nothing close but something must have been close, I could sense that. But I heard nothing except the distance. The lake below, the dark water was alive. I could hear things entering it and leaving it. The ripples and the splashes told the story of animals of different sizes. Ducks were quaking and flapping their wings sometimes. Sometimes the sounds were only like something dropping into water and then falling away. I laid on my back, staring at the stars, listening to the dark water down the hill below. Knowing the drama of life was playing out. Probably some of these sounds of ducks were warning each other of predators, fighting for food or mates, it was all happening down there where my eyes could not see it even if I walked there. 

As I listened, something did approach my tent. It didn’t get very close before I gripped the side of the tent and shook, rattling my keys where they hung in the pocket as I had done at Three Islands. The sound stopped, it was quiet, then there was a rustling of retreat. The hair along my neck was standing. I reasoned to myself and feasted my eyes on the stars. The chill of night had driven the insects away to their secret places. My view was clear and the stars were many. A thin luminous thread of the milky way stretched across the sky. 

There’s nothing out here that can hurt you. Nothing. No bears, wrong ecology. Even if a bear somehow wandered into this scrub brush, it would be only black bears, no grizzlies. 

There could be cougars maybe, but they’re cats. A cat wouldn’t want to approach something unfamiliar in its environment, a tent, something that would be ugly to it. 

The insect spray stench alone should repel any cat.

 And who ever heard of a cougar breaking into someone’s tent and dragging them out? 

Doesn’t happen. 

You’re safe in the tent. There is nothing that lives here that can get into your tent and hurt you. 

There is nothing here that can hurt you. 

Think of the other predators that could be here. Bobcats, lynxes maybe. Coyotes possibly. Probably no wolves. Maybe some badgers or omnivorous things like possums. None of these things hunts a person. 

You smell bad to the animals and you’re too big to eat and your tent will frighten them. 

If you went outside and walked along the side of the dark water, maybe something, maybe one of these things could nip at your heels. 

There’s nothing here that can hurt you. 

I told my primal mind all of this. My modern logical mind. The mind that can find the right light rail line and navigate an airport. The mind that does my taxes. The mind that drives a car. The mind that works on a computer and makes polite small talk at the right occasions. 

But a different mind was in power here. The night and the stars and the smell of the sage and the sound of the brush rustling in the breeze and by what other unknown means and the endless sounds emanating from the dark water. It all spoke to that dark mind in a language only it could understand. It was crouched and waiting, reading, listening, performing functions I could feel at the base of my skull somewhere. My skin felt prickling with liveliness. Lying on my side, still feasting my eyes on stars, lying still as if I were calm I could feel my heart thudding into the ground beneath me. 

I pulled the gun close to my head but pointed it away from me. I had it where I could close my hand around it quickly. I was glad I had not camped near the water. I was far enough away from whatever was happening down there. 

 Look at these stars. There’s nothing here that can hurt you. 

Nothing. 

Ripples, splashes, drops, and ripples. In my mind's eye it was all dark water. I could see them down there, sliding in and out, the ripples and the moonlight over them. I watched them in my mind's eye as I listened with all my body. Sleep did not come again for a long time.