It was October. I had a couple of weeks of “use or lose” vacation time and we had not visited our eldest daughter, Delda, for a while. She had moved to Pocatello, ID when Wes did and stayed after he left to finish her degree at Idaho State Univ. So off we went in the ol’ MSP which seemed to be running well at the moment, maybe it had one last long trip in it.
Always looking for an alternative route we decided to veer off of I84, as to the south of the freeway was Shoshone Falls and then the City of Rocks in Idaho. Shoshone Falls was advertised as being bigger and higher than Niagara. We were really excited about seeing the falls as it was a hot day and the thought of cool mist wafting off a spectacular waterfall on the historic Snake River was really an enticement. As we drove down the steep road to the water fall’s parking lot I could hear the hissing sound of water cascading into the canyon below. Turns out the sound was radio static as I had forgotten to turn it off. It seems that during the summer and fall there is so much water taken out of the Snake for irrigation that there is nothing left for the falls. The “falls” consisted of an unpleasant looking damp streak on the rocks. Technically the damp streak was higher than Niagara, but given the choice I would recommend skipping Shoshone.
Our next side road destination was going to be the City of Rocks. This was a bit off the beaten track for us but it was shown on the official State of Idaho road map as a must see attraction. While a bit dubious after the Shoshone Falls incident, I do like rocks and I got the impression from my daughter that it was full of weirdly shaped towers of rock that would put the skyline of Manhattan to shame. Delda was a geologist so I felt she must know something about spectacular rocks and I had not done anything to piss her off lately, so it looked like a good bet. On the way we stopped in Albion. Albion has four streets cleverly named North, South, East, and West, all of which intersect at the park in the middle of town where we stopped, had a picnic lunch and let Hanah our dog out for a run. Simple street names in a simple town from a simpler time. A place where time had stood still. For this is Mormon country.
Now I am not disparaging Mormons. Some of my best friends and a great boss had been Mormons, that is until they tried to convert me from my chosen faith in the church of Oregon State University Football and anyone who does not recognize the near biblical greatness of Earthquake Enyart and Dee Andros, aka the great pumpkin, is suspect in my eyes. Although they do not recognize my faith, I do not doubt that Mormons are sincere in their beliefs. What they had to do to survive in this corner of the West is truly amazing and awe inspiring. The road from Albion that goes though the little “towns” of Elba and Almo is a tribute to their ingenuity, love of family and stubbornness in the face of adversity. The area is almost a desert which they made into green pastures and orchards by hard toil. The cows in their pastures were fenced in with barbed wire using gnarled juniper fence posts. The original log cabin was still on the family property, often attached to the newer wood frame or large stone house. Yards and farm yards were neat and tidy, without the sprawl of rusted out pickups and tractors which you commonly see in other rural areas where eking out a living is much easier than in this unforgiving land. Judy and I were inspired by the apparent love of family and faith that they had and still must have to make a home and live here. We were eager to learn more.
We followed the signs to the City of Rocks and turned off the pavement and on to a teeth-gnashing wash-boarded gravel road that soon had every canned good and galley utensil falling out of the cupboards and onto the floor. I almost turned back when my fillings began coming loose, but we persevered like the Mormon pioneers who apparently had made this road using nothing but their fingernails.
Turns out that City of Rocks, like Shoshone Falls is a bit of a disappointment. It was named City of Rocks because during the California gold rush it was on the trail to the gold fields and thousands of pioneers seeking their fortune passed though making it into a seeming city. I guess the granite pillars might have looked like the skyline of a city to a forty-niner, especially if the tall buildings were all about three stories high. Today City of Rocks has a lot of pull among rock climbing enthusiasts who come to try their courage and pitons. Personally I feel that if God had wanted me to get to the top of one of those granite pillars he surely would have installed an elevator. We camped the night there under the spectacular stars after putting back all the shit that had fallen out of the cupboards. Reluctantly, we headed back to the pavement the next morning, knowing full well that we would have to pick it all back up again as the only way out was by the same road we had taken in. Seems like when the gold was all panned out the trail south fell into disrepair.
While in Pocatello, Delda had a field trip with her college paleontology class to a 250 million year old Permian coral reef and I got to go. The fossil reef which is now located on a hilltop a few miles from Idaho State University was made up of rugose corals which sort of look like three inch long horn-of-plentys. Over geologic time there have been numerous episodes of reef building by different types of corals and sometimes even by clams. This niche seems to be always filled by sea critters which somehow get together and then try to stay in the photic zone of the ocean: gluing themselves together on the limestone remains of their ancestors. Then whoosh, something really bad happens, like a comet hitting the earth or out of control global warming due to SUVs and the critters filling the niche go extinct to be eventually replaced millions of years later by something completely different which serves the same function. And it will always be such till the earth gets swallowed by the sun billions of years in the future.
The question in my mind is whether the niche now filled by man is a one time only thing. In the billion years of complex life on earth, the know-it-all niche has only been filled once and so far only for a very short time. Up till about a half million years or so ago you could not really distinguish man from the other creatures which were food for something else. It was only about 10,000 years ago that we began to write down stuff on flat rocks so that the mass of accumulated knowledge could be passed from one generation to the next. In the last hundred years this accumulated knowledge has been growing exponentially along with our population. Eventually if it has not already happened, we will exceed the carrying capacity of our planet for our species and our niche will implode. How fast and severe this implosion will be is anyone’s guess, but I think it will be more of a whimper than a bang. Life will go on after our fall, it just might not include us. Funny how looking at a fossil coral reef a thousand miles from the nearest ocean can get you thinking about the frailty of the mightiest species ever to live on earth and the resilience of life in its simpler forms. Regardless or when or how the species of man comes crashing down, it has been a great ride, with the possible exception of the Ford Pinto.
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