I leave Colorado City a bit haunted. I drive towards the magical Glen Canyon region, across the southern half of the state, through a patchwork of national parks and public land. This route – through Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Highway 12, through Capitol Reef National Park, and then, Highway 95, tells so much about this country’s natural history. The increasing patchwork of public land itself, tells another story, however. It tells the story of what may become the world’s biggest story of the twenty-first century. It is the story that led me to ask a question, What Creatures will roam Glen Canyon?
I notice a couple has just parked their car, and walked off the road into the ditch. I find this behavior enticing, and so I park the Jeep behind them. They have matching grayish hair, and matching field vests. “What are you looking for?” I ask. I know they’re friendly before they even say it. “Lizards!” as if to say – duh, what else?
The pair are what you call herpers – amateur herpetologists. “It was always Eddie chasing after them,” says the lady, removing her sunglasses. “But I caught on after a while.”
Eddie explains they are looking for some sort of a horned lizard. I point to a small shape, camouflaged in the red sand. “Side-blotched lizard,” Eddie remarks. “It’s late in the season, most everything has packed it up for the season. But these fellas are so small, they can warm themselves fast enough on a sunny day to stay out through October.”
I tell them about my experience yesterday in Colorado City, to which Eddie says, “They’re all leaving. That’s why you didn’t see anybody out in the streets. They say they are starting up again somewhere in Texas.” His wife adds, “Yeah, now that they have a tv show about them too.”
Eddie looked around on the ground for a lizard, then said, “Used to be you could pass by and see them with their hats on.”
It’s sort of strange saying goodbye to two people in a ditch, them looking up at you and squinting in the sun like children about to get dirty. I was awash with the strangest sort of giddiness, just driving through Southern Utah. I stopped along the side of the road whenever I could.
In Hanksville, I order up a hotel room for a few days. Twice, the lady at the register says, “You sure you still want to book that many nights?”
At the nearby diner, folks are equally skeptical of my deciding to stick around for a few days. But I find Hanksville inviting and its people cheerful. After a short chat with the waitress, I ask,“What kind of beer?”
“Bud…,” she pauses for a while, “Bud Light…”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“We have lots of beers.”
I notice a sign on the wall for a ‘Polygamy Porter.’ The sign says, ‘Why just have one?’
Finally, she says, “There is the green bottle with a funny name.”
“Heineken?”
She says as if she’s been through this before, ‘I’ll get you one of those.”
What she mustn’t realize is that her conversations in the kitchen with the cook, and with the girl who is siphoning the soft-serve machine with her mouth, is that I can hear everything they are saying loud and clear.
“Sorta strange. All he wants is a salad and one of those green beers.”
“That’s all he wants?”
“He’ll be in town for a few days.”
“That right?”
“He’s on vacation.”
The cook swears, “Damn, we’re out of ranch dressing. Ask him if he wants something else.”
The waitress, “Okay, tell me what we do have so I don’t have to go through this again.”
She mumbles a list, and the waitress comes out, and I tell her that any dressing will do just fine. As I do this, I hear the cook curse at the girl in the kitchen. . “Get your mouth off that!”
After my salad comes out, the waitress sits at the table next to mine, and we talk about the Mars Desert Research Station, which is a collection of 3 buildings six miles north of here. The idea is to duplicate an environment similar to Mars – red rocks – and prepare for the eventual habitation of the red planet.
The Goblin Heads of Utah's Goblin Valley
