Eyebrows raised in dismay and disappointment, Tim and I set our teeth and stared through the twilight.
We’d driven most of that day, through increasingly torrid heat, past corn patches and beehive ovens, past O’Keefesque scenery of red rock flecked with dark cedar, past purple-gray, apparently lifeless badlands, abandoned hogans, and rusting machinery. Finally we drove 21 miles of washboard road so rugged, the fenders on Tim’s self-constructed cargo trailer literally began to break off. It took an hour to dismount and stow the pieces in the blazing afternoon sun.
We found our spot at the Gallo campground near Chaco Canyon in New Mexico just as the sun began to relent. College students from California occupied a flat rock sheltered by the nearby cliff, next to a small ruin and a lizard-like pictograph, most of the evening, their laughter amplified by wind-hollowed sandstone. Now they’d gone to make their dinner. The sun finally dipped behind the western rise. It was time to sit, faces upturned, and watch the sky deepen.
And that was when, in the campsite next to ours, the internal combustion engine of a generator sputtered into continuous, loud, unrelenting white noise that decimated the serenity of the desert night.
The rules in the park specify generators are to run a maximum of one hour at a time, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. It was 7:45. A passing park ranger spoke with our neighbor, whom we dubbed “Generator Man.” He followed the rules and flipped the switch at 7:58. Then we could hear his television. Apparently, though, he still required more power, so he turned on his Expedition’s engine, set to idle high and loud.
The volunteer ranger, making a second round, spoke to him again. Now Generator Man’s voice reflected palpable rage and profound incomprehension of the capricious rules that restricted his right to use his equipment when, and as, he wanted.
“They say we can’t even run the engine,” he yelled into the lighted interior of his trailer. He wore boxer shorts in some indeterminate print, loose enough for the waistband to hover perilously low, sandals, spiky gray hair, an irritated expression, and nothing else.
All I saw of his companion were white, loose-skinned arms, seen through the window of their rig as they hovered over tasks.
An hour later, almost all the stars shone, netted in the first edge of the Milky Way. The man emerged. He closed all the windows, tightened connections, and covered the generator. He pulled the truck around, connected the trailer, retracted the supports, checked to make sure his trailer signals worked. He revved his engine softly, turned his lights on, and pulled out.
The couple left Gallo campground at about 9:30 in the evening. Where, we couldn’t help wondering, were they going, and would they be safe, traveling down a famously bad road covered with soft, thick sand patches, in the moonless night?
And most of all, what were they seeking?
It wasn’t darkness, or quiet, or the stars.
It occurs to me, now I’ve returned from my desert trip, that there may have been sound reasons for the couple’s requirement for a continuous source of power. Generator Man’s companion never emerged from the trailer; perhaps they were making a valiant effort at adventure, given medical restrictions of heat/aridity tolerance that they couldn’t control. Since we never spoke with our neighbors, though they camped only a few feet away, I don’t know the answers to these speculations.
But I confess: after they left, Tim and I celebrated.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@msn.com) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher at the middle school level. She blogs at .
