Genesis Unfolding
There was a lot to do. In the next week or so, we completed gardens in two more lots. By that time, if the crops grew like I thought they would, we would have enough food for, perhaps, two winters, stored.
Up behind the grottoes I placed some snares and cage traps and caught some squirrels, raccoons and possum… A welcome fresh meat supplement to our diet. I also caught a capuchin monkey that was quite upset at being caught. But happy when I let him go.
We were able to scavenge some flour and rice, but it was very hard to find those staples, obviously already looted from so many grocery stores and warehouses. Finding grains like this anywhere that wasn't filled with worms or weevils was getting nearly impossible. Except for tubers like sweet potatoes and potatoes that we were able to grow, our diet was very lean on carbohydrates.
The burned land provided an abundance of wild greens like mustard, asparagus and collards. Fruit trees were hard to find but berries grew abundantly--first strawberries, and then dew berries in the rapidly regrowing forest areas. When picking berries and gathering honey from burned-out logs, we always worked together and I had my 357 Magnum holstered to my belt because there was evidence of black bears in the area and the young saplings were tall enough to hide them from view. Both of us added weight and muscle as we worked hard salvaging and hunting for food we could store. Lisa was filling out beautifully. No longer skinny and pale.
I found that the capuchins were very good at stealing the morsels I put out as bait for our traps, while not getting trapped themselves. We developed a sort of territorial control of the grotto, with the monkeys having their side and Lisa and I having the other. The little one though, was very curious and naïve. He soon found himself coming around as we lounged in the water and checked out our ears and hair. Before long, he would even jump in the water with us and sit in our laps. When we left the grotto, he wanted to follow us, but his mother would come screeching after him and pull him back while he fought with her grip on him.
The days and nights fell into a routine while we enjoyed the best the spring had to offer. By mid-May we were harvesting some of the early crops like radishes, scallions, cucumbers and lettuce and finding them to be a wonderful addition to our mostly meat, diet. I thought that we might be able to take a trip of a week or two without our gardens being overrun with weeds or dry up without irrigation. It rained often enough to prevent that.
So, on June 1, we locked the laundry for the first time in years, hooked the trailer to the Peterbilt, and drove out of town for two weeks or longer, depending how long it would take. With the sun on our back, we left that morning well provisioned heading west on US 270 through hilly, and sometimes, mountainous, terrain. The forest around us growing at a tremendous rate.
Lisa was so excited and asking me so many questions that it was hard for me to answer them all. "What is that bird there on the left side of the road? When can I drive? Before we get to Fort Smith? Where will we stay tonight?" I answered them all as best I could. When the road allowed, I would let her drive for a little while. At first, she drove too slowly for us to make any progress, but later in the day, she picked up her pace and I let her drive more, always watching for anything in the road up ahead that she might not see and avoid. At times we had to stop and move things out of the way, like pieces of guardrail that had ended up in the road… Sure to puncture the tires.
I was driving when I heard a popping sound above the road noise, and saw a red light come on the dashboard indicating that we had lost a tire. It was an inside dual drive tire that I had no idea how we could replace. But we continued on while it basically came apart and littered the road behind us. Fortunately, the outside tire held up and we continued on, turning north on US 71 that took us into ruined Fort Smith for the night.
We were both tired, so we pulled off in a convenient parking lot, fixed ourselves something for an evening meal and relaxed watching the sunset over the Arkansas River in the valley below. In the morning, I found a truck repair place and we set about finding a tire and getting it on that huge rim. Without tire changing information from my smart pad, we might not have been able to do it. It still took us all morning to get the job done using the heavy equipment in the shop. Fortunately, the generator gave us power and there was pressure in the air supply tank so I made sure that all the tires were up to proper pressure before we left.
The delay bothered Lisa. "Are we going to have to stop and repair the truck like this all the time?" She had a worried look on her face.
"Don't worry. This is quite rare. It's the first time I had to do anything with any of the tires since I got the truck. We must have run over something that cut the tire. We will have to be careful of the road so that we don't damage any more tires. We might not be as lucky finding a place to make repairs in the future."
Once we were back on the road headed west on I-40, Lisa became her happy self again. I let her drive even more. The road was quite clear of vehicles and other debris, straight and flat, so we were able to make very good headway. In two days, we were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon looking off. We watched California condors, eagles and hawks soaring over the canyon and ground squirrels and rabbits scampering over the rocks. But otherwise, the place was silent. No laughing children. No roaring tour buses. No crowds. As primal as its ancient walls.
The hotel on the rim of the canyon was in shambles but we found a cabin nearby that was passable and we spent a couple of honeymoon nights there while exploring the canyon rim trails. On the third very early morning, we took the main trail to the canyon floor. I half expected to see Hualapai when we reached the bottom. But all that we saw was the magnificent Colorado River running as it always had. Like everything else, the Indian settlement was partially destroyed and abandoned.
It was only about 9 o'clock in the morning and we were in the shade, but it became oppressively hot as we climbed back up the trail quickly. We encountered rattlesnakes sunning on the trail twice. The first time, I took my walking stick and pushed the medium-size rattler off the trail. Lisa remarked, "I wonder what they taste like?"
The second time, the rattler was a huge one. I pinned it down with my walking stick and cut its head off. When I threw it around my neck, both ends nearly touched the ground. It added weight to the pack I was already carrying in the heat. We were nearly exhausted and might have had heat exhaustion coming on by the time we reached the canyon rim again. It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon by that time, so we had lunch of roasted fresh rattler in the shade of a building and took a nap until it got even hotter and we retired to the cab of the truck to leave.
By late afternoon we were driving through Monument Valley on US 163. A hot wind was afoot, blowing sand and dust around, obscuring the monuments and buffeting the truck and trailer. But the bleak dry nature of that valley as I remembered it from movies was no longer there except for the red-rocked monuments thrusting up everywhere primally unchanged. Instead, the valley was sprouting cedars and pines of about 2 feet in height from the dust gathered. In addition to soil blown in from other locations, there apparently was water from more recent rains. The result was a kind of Garden of Eden look to the place that was surreal.
On these desert highways there was little to impede us. I allowed Lisa to drive most of the time. Ocassionly turning on the radio to see if we could pick up something. But all there was, was static. We pulled over for the night near Moab. After we cooked our dinner, its aroma obviously picked up by coyotes, we heard them calling all night long.
