Stranded

As we sat there, stock-still on the freeway near Provo, with all of the people passing by, I realized that we were completely alone. Yes, people were honking and hurling endearing epithets at us and our vehicle, which was blocking one whole lane of high-speed traffic, but we may as well have been alone and stuck in a Southern Utah canyon, from whence we were returning. No one was trying to help, and I don’t blame them. We were in a construction corridor and there were barricades on either side of the road. I had to crawl out of the passenger side window in order to run to the nearest gas station for help. Leaving my editor, Martin, behind with his 11-year-old kid, I struggled to find the strength to hurry. My recent stomach sickness had left me weak and I had only eaten a few crackers that morning. Plus it was hot. Despite the hundreds of cars coming and going on the roads, I felt like a man out in the middle of Monument Valley on his belly, reaching out with one hand hoarsely whispering, “Agua!” Except it wasn’t water I needed, it was gasoline.
It’s funny that we ran out of gas when we did. We shouldn’t have, but the last gas station we had visited was having “technical difficulties” and none of its pumps were online. So, we decided to hit the next exit. That never happened. The irony of the matter is that we had come from an area of Utah that is relatively devoid of civilization and life. We hadn’t had to worry about running out of fuel, because every chance we had to fill up, we had taken. None of the pumps in Hanksville or Goulding had been offline, and they were several miles from any sort of metropolitan area. But somehow, perhaps because the importance of providing the necessary items for survival in such far-flung places is very high, every little town and convenience store along our Southern Utah adventure route had gas. I had to laugh to myself as I walked into the air conditioned gas station off the South Provo stretch of freeway: they too were offline and nobody in the gas bays could pump gas.
Searching for the perfect gas can (I had two to choose from, both of which were 5 gallons) and waiting for the pumps to come back online (which the clerk had assured dozens of people it would do shortly), I wondered how we survive in a world of technology that seems to only work when it wants to. And when it breaks down, it requires a team of highly specialized technicians to fix. I was actually more comfortable with the notion of becoming stuck in some river bottom near Capitol Reef with a vehicle that weighs a couple of tons than feeling like I was at the mercy of a computer program. With a little ingenuity and hard work I could at least find a way to pull the vehicle out of the mud. I know nothing about a gas station’s computerized pumping system, not to mention the employees at the station probably wouldn’t let me anywhere near it anyway.
On the first night of our adventure, I found simple pleasure in watching the full moon rise above the silent hills surrounding our campsite. Technology had almost no place there. I say almost because a vehicle had transported us there. And because some Led Zeppelin was spilling out of my iPad. But other than that, we were encircled in the arms of a land that reveals its secrets to those who are willing to surrender their complex thoughts and complicated theories. Life made so much more sense there in the middle of nowhere than where I currently found myself: sick, tired, worried about Martin and his son on the freeway, and still trying to decide between two 5-gallon gas cans. TO BE CONTINUED…