Ice Age Trail

Run Time: 63:41 + 2-minute kick

I had some difficulty finding a hotel room for the first night of this trip. Most hotels were not available, and those that were had room rates of $800+. What the hell could be going on in Milwaukee in early July? It’s kind of a cool town, but really?

So, yeah, Republican National Convention. Just days after The N-Ear Miss. I stayed in Johnson Creek, about 30 miles west of the city, right off I-94. On my way I found this nice trail that followed along the highway, far enough away that the exhaust fumes were likely below toxic levels.

Hot and muggy, some inclines, light breeze — felt pretty good after half a day in Chicagoland traffic. The trail took me into the boutique downtown area, then followed a creek. I think it is part of a longer regional trail. I saw signs further north for the Ice Age Trail later in the week.

I do not have much to say about political conventions at this point. I just feel a mixture of confusion, futility, and disappointment. Who the hell knows what the next four months will bring, to say nothing of the next four years? I kind of want the system to blow up also, but I have children and grandchildren that I want to be safe.

So am I just focusing on what is important to me, or am I hiding from reality? Do I have to be involved and in-the-know to avoid disapproval? Can I not just spend the last quarter of my life thinking and doing what interests me?

I recently watched “Turn Every Page,” a documentary about Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb working together to publish Caro’s biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. First of all, Caro writes about the true nature of power, so that we can better understand it. He is a treasure. Second of all, it made me nostalgic for the pre-internet era, when we didn’t know what all corruption and graft was going on.

It gave me some ideas about a book I am trying to write, some alternate history threads to follow. What if Nixon had not resigned? What if he had refused to leave office, even after his term ended?

I am not pro-Nixon. I am just interested to understand why these types of scenarios never occurred to us. Almost anything can happen, and given enough time, likely will. Isn’t there an Everything Everywhere All At Once universe where Nixon reigned until his death?

I had to rewrite the last few paragraphs from memory when this damn blog site froze and would not let me save or publish. I hope they are as illuminating and intelligent as the first version. Maybe it was saved and published in Alternate Nick’s universe. If you’re there, let me know.

Creek Ridge County Park

Run Time: 63:33 + 2-minute kick

AllTrails for the win again. I drove our youngest to Chicago for a flight back to Oregon, listening to his music all the way — some fantastic jazz that made the drive very enjoyable. I then visited two of our big customers there. My hotel was east of Michigan City, in a beautiful little town called La Porte, and I found this trail on the way.

It was a short loop trail, with little elevation change, but it was all shaded, which was a plus on this day. More than half of it was non-paved, which is a big plus. Some families were using the playground in the center, some dog owners were using the dog run, and at least one “foursome” was using the disc golf course. There were a few bugs, but they only bothered when I was walking. More incentive to run.

At the turn of the year, my wife invited everyone in the family to subscribe to a random album generator at 1000albumsgenerator.com. I have been faithfully listening to any daily pick of which I was unfamiliar, and a few of which I was familiar, and rating them. I have also been adding some songs to my playlist.

The best days are the days when it recommends a musical artist of which I have no knowledge. This day it recommended Sigur Ros’ album Agaetis Byrjun. Unfortunately, I am unable to get the accent marks on the appropriate letters, and to combine the a and e into one combo, as one should when mentioning Sigur Ros and Agaetis Byrjun. Sigur Ros is an Icelandic band, and this album is phenomenal. I normally eschew expanded tracks versions of albums, but I listened to all 34 songs of the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, including 12 live songs and several demos: 4 hours and 23 minutes total. Some songs I listened to twice. I saved 16 songs to my running playlist.

This music is not going to be for everyone. It is very slow, with long songs, and repeated sequences. The singing is in the high-note range, something I also do not normally find pleasing with male singers, and on one album (not this one) they apparently sing in a made-up language, not that it would matter, because I do not understand the language on Agaetis Byrjun. It has some creative instrumentation, which I really appreciate. A great find.

Another great family recommendation: my daughter invited all of us to subscribe to the Important, Not Important newsletter last year, and it has become my primarily news source. The June 28 edition included a guest essay by Dekila Chungyalpa, the Founder and Director of the Loka Initiative. She wrote about deep resilience in the time of crisis, specifically with respect to environment, climate, and as an antidote to the Anthropocene mindset.

The essay included a link to an online course: “Psychology of Deep Resilience: Addressing Ecoanxiety and Climate Distress for Individual, Social and Ecological Well-Being.” In our family Signal chat, my daughter indicated her interest in the course. I took a look as well, and I have been thinking about it ever since. The tab is still open on my Chromebook, and unlike some of you, I do not keep many tabs open.

I have worked in the tow truck industry for 45 years. I contribute to the fossil fuel industry every workday. It is time for that to change. I do not know how I will pivot, but I think I can, and maybe this course will help. I have long thought about issues related to indigenous cultures, even embarking on a couple of literary false starts with the theme of reversing our collective departure from “First Nation” ways.

I often wish I were back in school, though I like the freedom of reading what I want and writing what I want, without assignment. This course just strikes me as something different, something interesting, something I have not seen before. Or maybe something that is sitting in my ancient subconscious, asking to be released. Who knows where or how it might alter my course?

Plus, if I do the course, that will give my daughter even more incentive to do it as well.

Red Deer South Bank Trail

Run Time: 63:29 + 2-minute kick

All Trails finally comes through. My last stop of the sales day was in Red Deer, and I was driving down to a hotel just north of Calgary, and I took a quick glance at the All Trails app and found a few options not far off the freeway. I chose the South Bank Trail, which, though paved, turned out to have some nice views and little vehicular adjacency.

Great weather for running as well. It was my last night in Alberta, having flown into Calgary, then circled south to Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, then up to Edmonton and back down through Red Deer. I flew in late Monday, so no time to run that day. I was burnt out when I got to Lethbridge. One of my favorite runs of the past was in Lethbridge, but this time my hotel was on the other side of town. No place to run near my hotel in Edmonton either, but at least I went out for a 45-minute walk when I got to the hotel. Salvaged the week with this run.

Before the trail broke away from the roads, I passed several mansionesque houses with wrought iron fences and gates and landscaped lawns and wildlife statues, overlooking the Red Deer River. Beautiful places, but how beautiful would it have to be to endure such brutal winters? I saw a few houses with indoor pools. I suppose comfort would be even more valuable in the Great White North.

Of course, the Edmonton Oilers were in the midst of a potential historic comeback in the Stanley Cup Finals when I was in Edmonton. I saw a lot of Oilers flags. A few of my customers talked about how we were “witnessing history.” One told me about how common it is for Oilers fans to reminisce about “the good old days,” when Gretzky and Messier and Coffey and Kurri and Fuhr were winning Stanley Cups. “These are the good old days!” he told me.

I am an unfanatic Rangers fan. When they make the playoffs and I watch, my lovely wife roots for them as well. This week, during one of our evening chats, she said that, even if the Oilers don’t come back from a 3-0 deficit to win the Stanley Cup, their fans would have the consolation that they didn’t get swept. “The Rangers didn’t get swept,” I said. “Fuck the Rangers,” she said. She might be more fanatical than me.

My interest in professional sports has waned. I especially do not enjoy the pervasiveness of sports gambling. I don’t like gambling, and our culture’s propensity to gamble is more than a little indicative of our disconnect from logic, reason, and clear thinking. If I follow a team or an athlete, and they are playing in an important game or match, I almost would rather not watch. I find it stressful to watch, maybe because it is out of my control. I have learned throughout the years that it does not matter what shirt I am wearing, or what chair I am sitting in, or what is served for a pre-game meal — it is out of my control. Luck does happen, but randomly. That’s what makes it luck. Kind of like winning — or not winning — at gambling.

It does not really matter if the general masses want to pour their money into gambling. It does not really affect me. Except that, if they have a propensity to engage in irrational behavior, and that propensity is reinforced by the “culture” we all live in, they might be engaging in irrational behavior that does (or might) affect me, like voting for Trump, or carrying a gun, or driving like an asshole. So, really, doesn’t anything that condones irrational behavior have a potentially negative affect on us all? Kind of like, if someone doesn’t want to look after their own health, and that irrational behavior eventually results in health care that costs money, don’t we all pay for that in some way?

I suspect these are all examples of the Tragedy of the Commons, or something like that. Random tragedy is bad enough. Why are we commonly courting tragedy?

Chinook Middle School

Run Time: 63:23 + 2-minute kick

End of a long drive. Hot. Tired. Cannot find anyone who wants to make money by selling our line in Tri-Cities. Put the hotel location into my map app rather than the AllTrails trail I wanted to drive to. Almost didn’t run at all. Then I checked in, sat for a few minutes in the hotel room that had been precooled to 63 degrees, did some digestive clearing, and decided to run a full run.

Good decision. I felt great afterward. Not so great during, but knowing that I don’t feel so great and that I will no doubt be able to complete the run, and in fact could double it or triple it if I had to, is a tonic for the brain. Endurance is more important than truth, said Chinaski.

A very nice, new, big middle school on the Southern edge of Kennewick, with an even bigger high school a few blocks away. I could have run at either track, likely. Chose the middle school because it was less likely to have an athletic event going on. There was some kind of event at the school — looked like perhaps an orientation for next year. Kids and parents moving together at regular intervals out one door and in the next. I would have thought that, of the three cities in Tri-Cities, that Richland would be the high-income district. But maybe not. Maybe all the sales tax dollars from Seattle are funding new schools in the Eastern prairie lands.

The next day I passed a sign on I-82 that said no homegrown fruit past this point. A lot of wine and apple orchards in Central Washington. You do not want to mess with Big Fruit.

Drove through some gorgeous back-country on this trip. Enjoyed some Dutch Bros coffee, and Escape from New York Pizza (with my youngest, in Portland, at the end of the trip). It made up for all the flight nonsense on Monday. Every hotel was quiet and clean. Every day was sunny.

The trail probably would have been paved anyhow. The track was empty and easy on the lower extremities. No shade, but if you can’t handle 87 degrees with a light wind, you got no business being a runner. I have been feeling some resistance in my body lately. This felt like a rededication run.

You never know what is going to flip the switch.

Perry Canyon Trail

Run Time: 63:22 + 2-minute kick

A return to Utah, to elevation, to desert sunshine. Felt great to be in the arid heights. I miss seeing the Wasatch Mountains from the back yard, although we enjoy stunning sunsets regularly on our Michigan deck. Utah is probably a better place to visit than to live. They have a shitload of great trails, though.

I had an uncharacteristically messed-up travel day the day before this run. I have been very lucky with all of my work travel. Only one flight cancelled, and very rare delays. This one made up for it. A 6-hour delay for my first flight, from Grand Rapids to Chicago. That made me reschedule my second flight, so I spent 7 hours at O’Hare waiting for my flight to SLC. I got a lot of work done. I got ahead on work. I caught up on non-work projects, and got a little ahead on those.

So I had planned to arrive in SLC around 11:30 am. Instead, I landed there around 11:15 pm. I had to cut out a leg of travel. I had planned to drive all the way down to St. George and back, and I just cut out everything south of Sandy. Actually made the rest of the week more manageable, but 12+ hours in airports is no bueno.

I never made it to the top of Perry Trail. Threemile Creek was too high to cross comfortably about 2/3 of the way up, where the trail probably had a footbridge that needs to be replaced every spring. It really was not a runnable trail in many spots, narrow and inconsistent, crossing slides and sloping sideways. I did my best, and that incline at that elevation was great for clearing gunk out of the lungs. The scenery was the best part, of course. That, and the isolation. I saw one other person on the trail the whole time.

It was a mild weather day for Utah. Warm and sunny, light wind, but not hot. It rained that night, which is always a welcome rinse cycle in the dusty desert. Of the 3 places we have lived since I started running, Utah is my favorite for running. It likely will remain so, until I get bit by a rattlesnake or stung by a scorpion on some remote trail and never get to post about it.

The barefoot shoes held up really well on this tough terrain. It was all rocky, and very uneven. On the way back down, I diverted across a footbridge and found the best section of trail, nearly flat. It took me onto Geneva Rock property, where I was likely trespassing, but there were plenty of other tracks, including ATV and motorcycle tracks. I was glad to not encounter anything motorized. People in Utah love their petroleum-based recreation.

The Phoenix Coyotes just moved to Salt Lake City, and they are changing mascot names, although I do not know why. The Coyote has got to be as indigenous to Utah as it is to Arizona. And Coyotes are bad-ass. The coyote is low-key, low-impact, high-performing, and long-enduring. That’s a hell of a combination. Coyotes are lovable outlaws, kind of like Butch and Sundance.

The best thing about looking up at the Wasatch Mountains is you’re not looking down at the valley below, where all the cement has been poured. It’s a lot of cement. There is insufficient reason for a city that large to be where it is. The rivers aren’t really navigable. The Salt Lake isn’t great for commerce or recreation. The land is not the best for agriculture or livestock. It was where the Mormons went to get to safety, and few who cared enough to harm them cared to go there. And from that grew a city.

How beautiful would this place be if our ancestors never came here? How unspoiled would it be if the First Nation had been the only Nation? How pristine would it be if no bovine had ever crapped on it? How quiet would these side canyons be with no ATVs?

We will never know. We will also never know how many loads the Geneva Rock company will take down to the cement plant, or to the crusher, before climate change makes leaving your air-conditioned house virtually impossible from May to October in this region. It will sneak up on us, like a coyote, and pick off the weakest of the herd.

We all wonder how something like the Trump presidency could happen. Just look around. The evidence is everywhere.

West Fargo High School

Run Time: 38:18 + 1-lap kick

These photos refer to places I tried to run between Minot and Fargo that did not work out. No need for photos of West Fargo High School’s track — I shared those 2 weeks ago.

I left Minot around noon with no more sales stops to make for the day, so this was the ideal time and place to find something on All Trails outside of the cities. First try was the Historic Fort Totten Trail, in the Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge, a 20-mile out-and-back trail with some mild inclines. It was about forty miles north of Jamestown, 8 miles of gravel road from the highway.

What is historic about the Fort Totten Trail is the community of insects that reside there. I parked in a small parking lot, changed into my commando running shorts, looked at the trail map, and all was well. The trail went north about a mile to a lake, and south about 19 miles along a creek, and I chose the longer section, but rather than run down the road to the south section, I drove down to where the trail left the road and entered through a fence into a field. There wasn’t really a place to park there, but I made one and got out to run.

As I entered the field, I heard a loud hum that I actually thought might be the hum of an electric fence. We had electric fences in the rural area where I lived as a kid. It was a little loud for that, but I could not have imagined it was the hum of the hordes of bugs which quickly found me and welcomed me to their home. I quickly fled back to the Edge, which is not just where the bugs were pursuing me to but also was the kind of rental car I had.

Onto Plan Y — the Jamestown Overlook Trail, which was much closer to town but also not in an urban setting. There were families down by the water in bathing suits, splashing in the water. The trail was kind of a flat loop trail snaking through some nice trees and shrubberies.

Started out okay, a few bugs, but nothing alarming. Then I rounded the first bush, and a cloud of insects emerged. I sped up. Next bush, same thing. Then there was a grove of bushes, and I thought I might not make it through. Decided to give it up a quarter-mile in — cut up to the upper section to get away from vegetation. Made it back to the parking lot with minor emotional trauma.

Okay, so how does anyone enjoy the outdoors in North Dakota? How were those people down by the water’s edge surviving with open skin? Do the bugs just pester but not bite? Were the locals doused in insecticide? I have been reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and feeling kind of bad for the bugs, but Jesus.

So, since I was already in my running attire, I just drove to Fargo and stopped at the high school before I went to the hotel and got in a partial run. It was hot, and I was tired, and my left calf kept threatening to tighten up on me, but it was great to run without fear of something buzzing loud enough by my headphones to drown out The Who.

It might be the time of the year. Maybe if you head out to Fort T in late November, right before the first late fall blizzard, you can lope across the prairie unmolested. But right now, in May, with grasses and shrubberies and bushes and trees in full bloom, this part of the country is the insects’ domain. Beautiful and unrunnable.

Esterhazy High School

Run Time: 63:18 + 2-minute kick

Esterhazy is a small Canadian town where one of our distributors has a two-person outpost. It is near the western border of Manitoba, where I had spent most of the day in Winnipeg and Brandon, on my way over to Saskatoon and Regina. My stopover in Esterhazy was pleasant. There are potash mines near Esterhazy, and our distributor sells various fittings and tools to the contractors working at the mines. I stayed at the Canalta Hotel, which was delightful — clean, quiet, friendly staff (the hotel clean and quiet, the staff friendly). The high school was just a half-mile away or so, with sort of a cinder mud track that was soft but kept me mostly above ground as I lumbered through a full run.

It is a little known geological fact that much of the interior of North America is about 1 centimeter from being underwater. You might be driving through Illinois or Wisconsin or North Dakota, through dry grasslands or farmlands, and if you step off the pavement you will sink into the hidden bog. Manitoba is like that. It’s one big bog. So when I hopped onto the cinder track to harken back to the days of Chariots of Fire and jog triumphantly in the cool, fresh Canadian air, my barefoot shoes sank two inches toward potash deposits. I found the less moist path and persevered.

Winnipeg continues to unimpress. My second time there. Winnipeg is a good place for the antifragile, which I would imagine you have to be to “thrive” there. They have a drainage problem which is likely related to the groundwater effect. A medium rainstorm hit while I was there, and giant lakes appeared in the right lanes and shoulders of all roads almost immediately. The heat in my hotel did not work. I thought about requesting another room, but then I thought, what would a Winnipegian do, and I endured without it. The people I drove by as I navigated around potholes seemed to have the same look, a combination of determination and apathy, with a tinge of unawareness that conditions might be better elsewhere.

One sometimes wonders how humanity managed to collect in some of the places where cities now stand. Usually it is bodies of water — rivers, lake, oceans — that allowed us to move goods into and out of a strategic location. I suppose we are stuck with those locations now. The Assinboine and Red Rivers meet in Winnipeg, and it might have been the hub of progress at some point. It might be now, and I am just missing the vital facts. Esterhazy would likely not exist now without the need for potash to make fertilizer, and it was founded only because some Hungarian dude who falsely claimed to belong to the wealthy Esterhazy family moved there with 35 other Hungarian families and picked that spot to pitch a tent. Maybe it was just because no one else wanted that spot, and even the First Nation didn’t object to the squatters. Who knows?

I will choose Esterhazy over Winnipeg any day. The heat in the hotel worked flawlessly, and the Papa Burger from the A & W that closed at 8 pm was divine.

City Streets and Sidewalks

Run Time: 48:13 + 2-minute kick

Doesn’t Willow Lake look like a perfect body of water around which to run? On Street view you could see a path going all the way around the lake, even cutting across one section on some sort of bridge, which you can see in the photo. Mere blocks from my hotel — what luck!

Not so fast, Cochise. To get to the path, you have to cross private property — a parking lot belonging to HB Fuller Company, an adhesives manufacturer which has likely been dumping chemicals into Willow Lake for a century or more. I’m reading Silent Spring right now — I know how this works. You make it look like a pristine wildlife refuge from aerial view, but then you pump byproduct underground into the water rather than pay millions to have it disposed of properly and legally. Despite the signs indicating surveillance cameras, I trotted across the parking lot to the path, which was accessible through a gate being guarded by two humongous Tom turkeys, who gobbled warningly and pointed to the No Trespassing signs.

It actually was some kind of wildlife sanctuary or aviary or protected wetlands, though I am still suspicious of the Fuller family. Fuller rhymes with Sackler. The lake was fenced in, or I was fenced out. I ran along the fence till I got to a sidewalk dead end and finally gave up and ran on residential streets. It was fine — nice little homes between industrial and office properties. The dark skies never turned to rain, and no wildlife was disturbed, and no laws were broken. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, some of which cannot be run around, even if there is a nicely manicured path encircling it.

I had driven from Fargo to Duluth to St. Paul that day, so I got to see quite a few lakes along the way. I crossed the great North Country Trail, or near to it, where I stopped to take a leak in the trees. The North Country Trail is 4800 miles long and doesn’t get near the attention that the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide Trail get. CDT is 3100 miles, PCT is 2650, and App is 2190. And the NCT skirts Cleveland, so it ain’t for sissies. Maybe I’ll run it when I retire.

West Fargo High School

Run Time: 63:12 + 2-minute kick

Got to the hotel early enough, and felt good enough, and got weather nice enough to do a full run. What a godsend! Not that gods had anything to do with it. It’s all random, but random works out sometimes. I had a feeling that I have run at this school before, but this time I got there on foot. The hotel was 2 miles away, so this was similar to my home routine: 1/3 to the track, 1/3 on the track, 1/3 back to home. The track was surprisingly empty, given that it was right after school, and it is spring school sports season. The gate on 7th Avenue was unlocked.

The day before I had tried to find a place to run between my last sales stop in Oakes, ND, and my hotel in Jamestown, ND. You would think there would be a runnable trail somewhere in that 80-mile span. I checked All Trails, and it gave me one trail in the Fort Ransom State Park, but it was just a mown snowmobile trail in a field by the river, and it was raining hard and winding harder, so I bagged the idea. Nice area, though. The Dakotas are beautiful, IMHO. Even in a foggy rain.

This was the middle leg of my 3-trip run up the center of the centralest mid-center North America. Last trip was Nebraska/South Dakota, this one North Dakota/Minnesota, and next one will be ND/Manitoba/Saskatchewan. North Dakota has signs on I-94 indicating the “Continental Divide” at elevations in the 1300s. That seems like a stretch. The Continental Divide is the high point, the point on the Continent at which water on either side can’t ever meet. Water on the west side of the NDCD could easily make it into the Missouri River, which runs into the Mississippi River, where it would meet water from the east side of the NDCD. Let’s call that high point in ND the State Divide, okay? You could see nearby hills higher than the signs when you passed them. In multiple directions.

I have started saving Rest Area locations as favorites in the Apple map on my work phone. I am building a database. They kind of are my favorites — I stop at most of them, even when I am not saving favorites in Apple Maps, either to take a leak or check emails or fill up my water bottle or take a quick catnap or to stretch. Yes, Fragilistas, I drink rest area water. Some even have the fancy water bottle faucets now. If I can’t stomach the water that comes out of a rest area drinking fountain, I’m not going to survive long in places like Fort Ransom State Park or Death Rattle, Wyoming.

The route from the hotel to the school was not the most picturesque neighborhood. A lot of angry dogs behind fences. How far does one have to go to find a pile of curbside trash in Fargo? Not far.

But the school track and grandstands were nice. Solid aluminum stands that did not shake or rattle as I ran the steps. No trash on the school grounds. Polite school kids who smiled at me as I passed them on the sidewalk. It can’t be easy to grow up in Fargo.

I will be back in Fargo in 2 weeks. It’s my launch point for the Manitoba/Saskatchewan swing. I will be staying at the same hotel at the end of the week — maybe I can get back on this track. God willing.

Unnamed Trail

Run Time: 38:05 + 2-minute kick

If Wall Drug thinks I am going to cave to the thousand-billboard marketing ploy, they are wrong. I have no desire to find out if they really still have 5-cent coffee. I do not want to check out the giant Jackelope sculpture. I took a photo of the dinosaur by the off-ramp only because my run took me right past it. I can get 86-cent coffee in Midland, thank you very much, without feeling like a tourist. I can see hundreds of antelope right by the highway all through Wyoming and western SD. Jackelopes aren’t real, and they aren’t interesting.

But the city of Wall is strategically situated just before the turn-off to Pierre, which was my next sales stop, and there are few hotels between Rapid City and Pierre other than in Wall, and the Best Western Plains Hotel in Wall is a delightful throwback with modern conveniences appropriately entwined. A towel folded into the shape of a heart on the bed with a religious recommendation was nice. Quiet and clean, with pleasant staff. I slept well in Wall.

I found a paved trail on the eastern edge of town that was not very long, but I extended my run along the canyon rim, past the trailer park, and down a gravel road that ran by the wastewater treatment pond. This run was a good test of the barefoot shoes, because there were a lot of small pebbles that I could not avoid entirely that would cripple you if you stepped on one in actual bare feet. The shoes held up. I could feel the pebbles, but it did not hurt. Well done, barefoot shoes.

Wind was the weather of the week. This day started with snow flurries north of Cheyenne and ended with bright sunshine in SD, but wind all the way through. A steady 25-30 mph while I ran, with occasional gusts of 40-50. The next day was even worse, but that was all driving, so my only exposures were at rest stops. This run at decent elevation with a constant wind was challenging but refreshing. I felt exfoliated afterward.

Something sad to report from this day of work travel. At a rest area on WY-59, between Douglas and Gillette, a long-hair black cat approached me as soon as I got out of my car. She was clearly abandoned. She meowed to me. She did the same with the next car who stopped. I broke up a meat stick for her. There was a farmhouse about a mile away, so I told myself a story that she had wandered away for whatever reason and would wander back, but cats don’t approach strangers like that if they are not desperate. Later that night, I emailed the Casper Humane Society. They punted to the Laramie Peak Humane Society in Douglas. They punted to the sheriff and suggested I go back and get the cat and bring it to them. I explained that I could not do that and suggested they reach out to the sheriff, or maybe to a local citizen who gives a shit about an abandoned cat. My faith in their follow-through is low, but maybe someone else will save the cat. The rest area coordinates are 43.32120 N 105.35203 W.

I do not believe in hell, but I believe it is possible that someone who abandons a cat at a rest area in Eastern Wyoming might very well manifest one for their self. They might also need to make room for someone who volunteers for a “humane” society and will not make a 30-mile drive out to retrieve a homeless cat that they might take in “if they have room.” Then again, I guess I could have put the cat in my rental car and looked for a shelter in Gillette, if I would have thought harder about it in the moment. So they might have to let me pop in for a guilt session as well. Pets, like children, teach us what it truly means to care, if we care to pay attention.

Sorry, Kitty Cat. I fell short.