by Neil Peart
“Sometimes the things dreamers do seem incomprehensible to others.” The same might be said for ghost riders. This day, though, I would describe in my journal as a “perfect touring day — weather, scenery changes, ‘roadside attractions.’”
From Walla Walla, I drifted west through pretty little farming towns, and as so often in American county seats, I was impressed by the court houses. There ought to be a picture-book on the variety of settings and styles found throughout America. I wondered if any of those small towns had ever saved their taxpayers some money by sharing the same plans for their imposing neoclassical edifice with another county seat — which might be hundreds or thousands of miles away, after all. I decided civic pride would probably preclude that. “We’ve got to have an imposing neoclassical edifice of our own!”
One town name, Irrigon, Oregon, gave me a smile (its setting among irrigated farmland must have inspired that compound), and at a gas station nearby I laughed out loud to see the usual “mechanic on duty” sign changed to “Maniac on Duty — Fully Certified.” When I complimented the overalled owner on his sense of humor, he said that not too many people noticed it. Sometimes the things jokers do seem incomprehensible to others.
The Shar-pei hills continued, though on a grander scale along the banks of the Columbia, where I picked up a stretch of Interstate 84 to carry me downriver to Maryhill. Far ahead, the high white dome of Mount Adams glowed in the clear blue sky. I stopped at a rest area for a biological break and a smoke, and as I stood by the bike an old man parked his ancient Mercedes beside me, then struck up a conversation. Admiring the BMW, he told me in a heavy German accent that back in the ’30s he had ridden a BMW, then later a Zundapp with a sidecar, which he described as “much better zan zee BMW.” Casually, he told of abandoning the Zundapp in Kiev for lack of fuel, then walking 800 miles home, with nothing but a bottle of vodka and a piece of frozen bread, marching day after day, even in his sleep. Suddenly I realized he was describing Hitler’s retreat from Russia in 1943, and that he must have been a German soldier then. Another ghost story.
Near Biggs I saw a sign for Maryhill, and crossed the river on the Sam Hill Memorial Bridge. After a stop at the visitors’ center, where an elderly volunteer filled me in on the whole story, I went off to look at the sunwashed, sharp-edged Stonehenge replica, which had an undeniable presence, even in poured concrete, then high on the Washington bank of the river to the chateau of Maryhill, perched in solitary splendor above the mighty Columbia.
Then back across the river to The Dalles (the only place-name in America with “the” in it, I believe), where the river’s high banks created a wind tunnel effect and world-famous boardsailing, and where trees started to appear again. Searching out a remnant nine-mile stretch of the Scenic Highway, I would later express my response in my journal with breathless enthusiasm, “Twisting high and narrow in a most entertaining way. Wow! They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.”
At Hood River I turned south toward the looming white peak of Mount Hood, without a single cloud to veil its perfection. The winding, well-paved road was shaded by thick old-growth forest, with some stunning views of the mountain’s snowfields, and I was riding fast, leaning deep into the corners (“using all those tires today!”), the temperature exactly right for the “minimum dress code” of leathers and T-shirt. “Bliss,” I called it. The traffic was fairly heavy, but all seemed to be going the other way, back to Portland after the weekend.
In yet one more complete change of scene, the forest suddenly opened to the dry country of eastern Oregon, the Great Basin desert of sage, grasslands, and rugged canyon vistas that covers eastern Washington and Oregon, southern Idaho, most of Nevada, and part of Utah. “Unexpectedly spectacular,” I noted, as I rode south toward Bend (the home town of a minor character in Kerouac’s On the Road, I somehow recalled), where I had decided to stop for the night, after “a long day by choice; just too perfect.” It had been a healing day, all right, but balanced, as always, by spells of grieving. One step forward, one step back.
My room at the Riverhouse Motor Inn overlooked a small, fast-moving river, the air scented with tamaracks and pines. In contrast, the lounge and restaurant were bouncing to loud chatter competing with a live big-band and middle-aged female singer, who were surprisingly good, and obviously loved the music they played. I thought how my Dad would have enjoyed their renditions of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “A Foggy Day in London Town,” “Little Brown Jug,” “I’ve Heard That Song Before,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B,” and “Sentimental Journey.” For myself, I wrote down the titles as repertoire suggestions for future hikes in bear country.
Next day the all-seeing, all-knowing map sent me back east toward Idaho, traversing the high plains on long, lonely Highway 20, with the spicy fragrance of sage delicious on a cold, clear morning. Scattered pines and juniper dotted the rangelands at first, then gave way to low scrub and rocky hills. My nostrils flared at the scent of a grassfire, then the rich aroma of irrigation sprinklers near Burns, the most luxurious smell in a dry land. In the irrigated valley near Ontario the perfume of onions returned, surprisingly tantalizing.
I had decided to get to Boise as early as I could, wanting to visit the BMW dealer for an oil change and some small repairs: a new headlight bulb, and fuel gauge, which had quit back in Alberta. Although I was getting along by using the odometer, on these endless, empty desert highways I would need to keep a close eye on my fuel consumption, so I hoped the gauge could be revived.
Unfortunately, it could not be easily fixed, but a stop at Big Twin Motorcycles took care of the other needs, and I rode into the tree-lined streets of Boise (from the French boisé, meaning “wooded”), searching for a good central hotel for my other missions: drug store, liquor store, and leather repairs. Parked and unpacked, the friendly woman at the front desk sent me (with sympathetic eyes) to Nick’s Shoe Repair, who not only fixed the broken zipper, conditioned two pairs of sun-faded gloves, and cleaned up my walking shoes (doubling as hiking and dress shoes, and still mud-bleached from the Glacier hike) in a couple of hours, but they kindly delivered them to the hotel. A friendly kind of town, I decided.
After a copious meal in the hotel’s Gamekeeper Restaurant (“Yes, up there with Wickaninnish: Coquilles St. Jacques, fettuccine with perfect salmon, Cherries Jubilee, Echelon Chardonnay, and good coffee”), I took a long walk through the warm late-September evening, the night air making me think of the word “gentle,” and the floodlights glowing on the imposing neoclassical dome of the State Capitol (any of them use the same plans?). There were few pedestrians on this Monday night, but many cars murmured by, and I noticed a big record store open late. I was surprised to find myself briefly tempted to go inside, though I quickly put the notion aside, “Almost went in, but what for?” A hopeful urge, I guess, to be at all interested in looking around a record store, but not enough to actually do it. And even if I bought something, I had nothing to play it on.
Setting off early the next day (“gorgeous riding morning, sunny and pleasantly cool”), I saw signs for the Birds of Prey Center, but I had already looked it up in the AAA book and learned that it didn’t open until 9:00; I’d be 100 miles away by then. Around Boise, I noticed a lot of espresso bars, often with a line of pickup trucks parked outside, and I pictured these ranchers and cowboys gathered around their decaf lattes and soy-milk frappuccinos. For myself, I chose a classic family restaurant in the small town of Weiser (“wee-zer”), and finally succumbed to the lure of the local onions with a Farmer’s Omelette, though its wicked combination of onions and hot peppers would rumble away inside me all day.
It was another day of scenic side trips, first to the Hell’s Canyon Dam, at the bottom of the high narrow gorge of the Snake and the Seven Devils Mountains, then another 20-mile climb on a rough road of gravel, dirt, and rocks (“the dry stream-bed effect”) edging along a steep slope (“don’t look around, instant vert
igo”), to the Seven Devils Vista at Heaven’s Gate. From the road’s end I climbed the last 350 yards on foot, watching a pair of mountain bluebirds frolic together in the last of the conifers (my first sighting of the species), then stood by the small fire lookout on the summit (8,429 feet) and looked out to the Oregon side of Hell’s Canyon, and a far gray, green, and blue mountainscape that touched four states. “A serious sidetrip,” I noted, “and a hard-won view.”
My little red gas can was missing off the back of the bike, and I realized it must have bounced off during the more “entertaining” parts of the ascent. I saw a nice-looking young family, father, mother, and two teenage daughters, just preparing to leave the lookout, squeezing back into their pickup, and I asked the man at the wheel if he would keep an eye out for my gas can, and leave it by the roadside if he found it.
I don’t know why I was so taken with this family, but in the few seconds I spoke with them they radiated such openness, friendliness, and health that it melted me inside to look at them. Such a contrast to the bovine trailer-trash the other night in Lewiston (only 50 miles away, as the mountain bluebird flies), they definitely corrected the balance of my personal scales of humanity. Certainly they “weighed” less, in several senses, but counted for more, as the good ought to do. Their pickup was a few years old; their outdoor clothes were not made of the latest goretexcordura-kevlar blend, but they were nice to me, and to each other, and I felt a burning pang of envy. And as I expected, on the way down I found my gas can placed neatly at the roadside.
Riggins, Idaho, was a line of buildings along the two-lane Highway 95, and it seemed to thrive on being a rare point of access for rafters, kayakers, and jet-boat excursions to a bend of the uniquely roadless Salmon River, the “River of No Return.” I thought of the old movie with that title, starring Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe, in which they float down a perilous river on a raft, two castaways (three, counting Mitchum’s motherless son) set adrift by the vicissitudes of pioneer life, and Marilyn “plays” a guitar and “sings” a metaphorical song by that title, in which life is the “river of no return.” The movie was nothing special, but the scenery and the metaphor were good.
From my pleasant room at the Riverview Motel, I walked up the dark road to the Seven Devils Steak House and Saloon, and decided to sit at a table outside under the steep valley walls, the surrounding dry mountains, and the rising half moon.
Lately I had been seeing the name “John Day” on maps and signs: a river in Oregon, a nearby town, a dam, and even the John Day Fossil Beds, and I wondered, “Who is John Day?” Was he another visionary westerner, like Sam Hill, who left his name engraved on the landscape as a memorial to the grand scale of his half-forgotten dreams?
Well, no. It appeared John Day was not exactly an American visionary, but more like the butt of a long-running joke. He had been part of John Jacob Astor’s 1810 expedition to establish a fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia, but his party became divided, and dwindled to two men. At the mouth of what was then called the Mah-hah River, a band of Indians robbed John Day and his companion of everything they carried, including their clothes, and left them naked on the river bank. Fortunately they were rescued by another expedition, but subsequent travellers on the Columbia always pointed out the place where John Day had been robbed and stripped, and by the 1850s the Mah-hah River became known as the John Day River, which also gave us the town of John Day, the John Day Dam, and the John Day Fossil Beds.
And speaking of Americans of dubious achievement . . .
Evel Knievel connection lately, around Snake River; wonder where he tried that jump? Also Red Lion [motel] in Bend reminded me of doing the rounds of Red Lions in Northwest tours of old, and his Ferrari Daytona convertible (licence plate “Evel 1”) in front of the Red Lion in Yakima. Now he’s all fucked up. Like me.
How many times a day does the “real situation” invade my brain and threaten to knock me down? So many. Memories of then, and regrets about now. Still unacceptable.
Sept 30 Riggins — Sun Valley
77,606 (864 kms) [540 miles]
Awake too early. Too dark to leave, so read a bit more Martin Eden [a semi-autobiographical novel by Jack London], approaching what I already know to be a dark ending. (Given away in the notes to another of his books; I hate that. Stopped reading even the blurbs on back of paperbacks after I saw that it would have ruined the wonder of The Twyborn Affair [by Patrick White] for example.)
Another cold, clear morning, sun on mountain tops to west, pink and gray. Up long, long White Bird Grade to 4,000 feet.
Breakfast at The Crossroads, Grangeville.
Note how modern-day rednecks are old hippies with white necks, under long ponytails.
Yesterday I realized that whenever I wonder why a particular road exists, the formula is simple: There’s money at one end, and a bank at the other. Mine, farm, oil, timber, hydro, etc. True of every road right up to Interstate, excepting only a few scenic parkways; usually one man’s vision. Going-to-the-Sun, Columbia Gorge: Joshua Logan and Sam Hill.
In May of 1997, on the Test For Echo tour, Rush played a concert at The Gorge, an outdoor amphitheatre overlooking the treeless banks of the Columbia, which rippled westward from the backstage area in muscular bulges of yellow grass. In early evening, the air’s perfect clarity played infinite shadings of light over the simple, dramatic landscape, and we took the stage in front of about 20,000 people (one of our largest crowds ever) just as the slow sunset dimmed into the cloudless, transparent twilight — soon overpowered by the colored stage lights, follow spots, and video screens, and overlooked by a rising half moon. It was the most beautiful setting in which I had ever performed.
After the show, as usual, I ran straight to the bus, and driver Dave followed an escort of two security guards on dirt bikes who cleared our way along the lane of deep gravel that led through the parking lot, making sure we didn’t run aground on the post-show traffic. In the morning, Brutus and I unloaded the bikes and set off from a rest area in Missoula, Montana, to begin one of our best-ever riding days, south through the Bitterroot River valley between the Sapphire and Bitterroot Mountains, and over the pass to Idaho, then down its length beside the Salmon River and the Sawtooth Mountains, with a side trip to the Lemhi Pass, where Lewis and Clark had crossed the Great Divide from the headwaters of the Missouri.
We stayed overnight in the old Sun Valley Lodge, built by Averell Harriman in the late 1930s, with gracious, large rooms looking out through tall conifers to the skating rink and mountains. (Another mediocre old movie set in Idaho, Sun Valley Serenade, was made in the ’40s to publicize the resort, featuring Glenn Miller and Olympic skater Sonja Heinje performing on that skating rink.) At an elevation of almost 6,000 feet, the air was cold and bracing, and I left the window and balcony door open all night, even though the temperature sank to 30°F (“tucked deep into great blankets”).
It was another of the many places Brutus and I visited so briefly between shows that we decided were worthy of a longer stop, or at least another visit. But early the next morning, we scraped the frost off our saddles and rode away on another memorable “commute to work,” taking the long route to Boise.
In late spring the surrounding mountains and even the roadsides and meadows were still white with snow, and the snowmelt filled the surging rivers like a storm at sea, turbulent whitecaps bursting against the banks. Brutus remarked that for three days we had followed rivers, for there was nowhere else to cut roads in that violent terrain, and I recall him saying that while we were stopped near Banks by a flag lady at a point where a recent landslide covered half the road. We saw evidence of many more slides along that route, and for several miles we rode through the black scar of charred ponderosa pines and mountain sage.
On a sunny day in May, Boise had looked good to us too, with the streets lined with green trees and the domed Capitol building glowing white. Traffic was agreeably light in that small city, and after such a spectacular morning’s ride, w
e arrived at the university auditorium plenty early, and feeling good.
Unfortunately, the show that night was a very lame one, by my own standards. After playing so long together, Geddy and Alex and I never played a truly bad show, at least that anyone else would know about, but we had our own inner scale to judge by, and that judge could be stern. My playing felt clumsy and sloppy, and I remember running onto the bus at the end of the show feeling disgusted with myself. As I slouched over the table in the front lounge with a glass of The Macallan and recounted my woes to Brutus, he said, “You’re too hard on yourself.” With a shrug, I replied, “That’s the job.”
In the journal I was keeping of that tour I wrote, “No flow, no groove, mentally or physically. Egregious intro to ‘Limbo,’ and various other clumsy bits too. Sore elbow again, and legs going downhill. Ah well.”
That last comment displayed an unusual measure of philosophical detachment for “the fool I used to be,” and I brought more of that quality to Sun Valley this time, a year and a half later.
“Fings ain’t wot they used to be.” Shunted off to low-life Inn [rather than Lodge], but at least I am dining in the Dining Room. Hotel full of conventioneers, but not here; presumably tucking into their free cocktails and buffets. Dining Room is empty (nine people at 8:00; guess who’s the odd one?). Oysters Rockefeller and elk medaillons with mushrooms, beets, and the locally famous huckleberries (told the waiter to tell the chef, “a great composition,” for so it was: with potatoes au gratin and a mélange of vegetables, carrots, green beans, squash).
This place is a bleedin’ town, once you start exploring a bit. Too much damn shopping for a ski resort. Lots of live music, though, a trio in the Dining Room, another in the bar, and a pianist in the other restaurant too. Nice.
A long, but excellent ride today. Cool, sunny, challenging, untrafficked. Wild turkeys, Steller’s jays at Lolo, Bighorns at Lost Trail Pass.
