September Summers

(Note: I’ve had some rough news about my dad. He’s alive and fine. I’ll post about it (the rough news) later when things are official. I wrote this to cheer myself up.)

In the summers we used to caravan with my family and uncles and cousins and grandparents down to southern Utah, near Moab. Sometimes we did river rafting trips to Wyoming below the Flaming Gorge dam on the Green River. Each of the vehicles had CB radios. My handle was “Dill Pickle,” which stuck until my teens and the mysteries of puberty changed my body’s chemistry and I liked sweet, but couldn’t stand dill pickles. The CB radios were great for the times someone had problems, such as a flat tire or radiator leak.

My cousin and my brother and I tried talking like real truckers, saying “breaker 1-9″ and “what’s your 10-20, good buddy?” I could do zero to hick in .02 seconds, but the rest of the family were mostly stuck at that constant speed.

In Canyonlands, we loved finding arches and doing some of the easy hikes but the family’s big thrill was conquering the four-wheel drive roads, such as the Silver Stairs, Elephant Hill, and S.O.B. Canyon. The Devil’s Kitchen was an area that we frequented several times: a camp site in the lee of massive rocks. It was another world, one far away from the rest of humanity that my good little Mormon grandmother and grandfather would have a glass of wine or a bottle of Budweiser, which my dad does/always has/will always drink.

September was a great month for these trips because with school in session, the roads were much less crowded. The days were still hot and the nights weren’t cold enough to be uncomfortable. My dad wore a black broad-brimmed hat with a rattlesnake band. On these trips, he didn’t shave. By the second or third day, everyone called him “Injun Joe.” I have always/will always called him “Pa.”

Salt Creek is a wash, and depending on the time of year, there may be shallow water running. My dad emptied the back of the cab-covered truck of everything but the mattress, then padded the sides with blankets. My brother and I and our German Shepherd, Tasha, sat in the back, on the mattress. My mom and dad were up front. We’d tear through Salt Creek at 35-40 miles an hour. With the first few bumps, we’d be giggling. When we caught air, we’d laugh and laugh at the exhilaration. Several times we’d hit bumps so hard we’d almost hit the roof, and a few times I watched as Tasha and my brother flew through the air, trading places. I remember catching my dad’s eyes a few times in the rear-view mirror, his eyes crinkling with smiles and laughs.

I have a picture of him in front of the the stark slopes of Elephant Hill and he’s staring at the camera with a smile that is both knowing, rugged, but kind. When I think of my dad, that is the image in my mind. What is so strangely comforting is that even knowing he is not my biological father, he and I look so much alike in that picture that it’s uncanny.