The Sublime Roundabout

I stood up as he entered the cell. "Michael, before you say anything, please allow me to apologize for my absence and the lack of information about what's going on. I assure you, my men were only following my orders. I asked them to treat you well - and I hope they have - but not to tell you anything about what's going on. I wanted to reserve that privilege for myself. I have come here at this time to answer any questions you may have. I will be honest to the extent of my ability and provided it does not endanger my men or our work." I was stunned. After what I supposed was about a week, here he was, promising to answer all my questions. I didn't know where to begin... It wasn't until much later that I realized that he knew my name. I'd never told him. "Where are we?" I began. "You are in southern Utah. We are in a fairly remote location on a lease procured from the BLM. They don't do this typically, but we were able to pull some strings...

I stared at the glass-smooth walls of this prison cell. What else could you call this place? I'd never actually been to prison, but I knew enough to realize that this is exactly where I was. This was no Club Med... That thought brought a smile to my face. Amazing, the resiliency of the spirit. Who would have thought that one could smile in a place such as this? I thought back to the experiences of the past few days. Nothing much had changed and we'd settled into a kind of routine. Breakfast was served early. The food here was quite good, and there was plenty. If we ever needed anything we just had to ask. The diet was varied and healthy. There was nothing to complain about that way. In fact, other than the fact that we were being held against our wills, there was very little about which to complain. After breakfast we were taken to the bathroom, where we had showers and cleaning/hygiene supplies. Again, everything we needed was provided easily and without question or hesitation...

Sam Donaldson hated his name. It was not until he got to college that he understood that his name was a source of distraction. Sam grew up north and east of Deer Park, Washington. Deer Park is, in turn, north of Spokane. His parents, kind of a naturalist outgrowth of the 60s hippie movement moved them to this area from where he was born in the San Francisco Bay area. He was raised in the deep woods - the driveway accessing his house was a mile long - and their home didn't have electricity until he was fifteen, and no TV ever. He was home schooled and finished his requirements for high school graduation when he was seventeen. His parents enrolled him in Gonzaga University because it was closest, but once he was eighteen, he transferred to the University of Miami. He wanted to get as far away from his parents as possible. It was when he was at Gonzaga that he got his nickname - Anchorman - and that moniker stuck. At first he didn't know what they meant by it - he'd never seen...

The road out of Vegas was packed. Even at this time of night, the traffic was horrible. Fortunately, the traffic broke up soon - no one else seemed to be headed east - and the miles began to fall behind them as John piloted the SUV down the freeway. The glow on the horizon that seemed to turn the night to day would be visible for almost 100 miles. It was beautiful, but eerily so. The darkness in the desert outside of Vegas was complete. Looking east, the sky was filled with more stars than seemed reasonably possible, filling the immensity of space with their tiny pinpricks of light. They created silhouettes of the craggy shapes of mountains, the only indication on this moonless night that they were even there. As the crowded landscape of Las Vegas passed behind them, the last vestiges being the race track and the Air Force Base, Janice began to open up. She and John began by exchanging some pleasantries, but the tension in the car mounted as the east-bound SUV chewed up the miles. Jani...

Janice approached John, recognizing immediately who he was. Her father was right, she thought. I do recognize him. He's changed so much since I last saw him. He looks so much like me. Like our father. Like our mother. He's become tall and handsome. "Hello, Janice," said John, as he reached out for her bag. "Oh, John!" sighed Janice, removing the bag from her shoulder and embracing her brother. She was overcome with emotion. Never had she expected her brother. Nor could she have expected that when they did meet again, it would be like this. She held him tight as tears welled up inside. For his part, John was surprised by the strength of the emotion he felt from her. They had never been close - she'd left when he was only ten, and the communication between them had been non-existent since then. Seeing her like this, feeling her this close and the emotions that carried her melted the corners of his ice-hard facade and he genuinely returned the embrace. When...

Las Vegas is a mistake. When Spanish missionaries originally stopped at this lonely watering hole three hundred years ago, they had no idea what a mess they were starting. For most of its existence, Las Vegas was little more than a wide space in the road, a place for people to refresh themselves while travelling from Los Angeles to points north or east. It was - and still is - in the middle of a very forbidding desert and there is very little naturally available water. In the 1930s, the construction of Hoover Dam and the creation of Lake Mead behind it created a source for water that was close at hand. Unfortunately, the demands of farmers in California ensured that most of the water was not accessible to the nearby Las Vegans. Tantalizingly close, yet impossible to obtain. Drought conditions only exacerbated the pressures on this already-taxed water source. Every last drop was spoken for, and no one was particularly interested in giving up their water. Because in the desert, water is ...

80,000 years ago, the earth around the southeast corner of what later became known as the Great Basin was a very different place. As a part of the incredibly powerful forces rending the earth apart and putting it back together again, this part of the world was subject to powerful earthquakes and volcanic activity. One of the mountains created in this upheaval is now known as Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain is a shield volcano. This means that it was built up slowly and relatively low in profile, composed of many layers of lava flows, tuff (which is ash and other material ejected in violent volcanic explosions, and may be either welded - due to high heat of subsequent lava flows - or non-welded). The eons of eruptions created a mountain that is about 7,000 feet above sea level, blending in with surrounding mountains, but standing out from the desert floor due to its color and the surrounding pock-mark like small cinder cones on its flanks. For some inexplicable reason, the eruptions stop...

Janice hated flying. She hated everything about the process, from the drive to the airport - which was unusual because she loved driving everywhere for any reason - to the false-sense-of-security screening to the ridiculously high-priced food and magazines to the flight itself. She had flown frequently many years ago, but since being married had only rarely flown. Of course, in her much earlier flights, there hadn't been any security. She had flown primarily from the secluded airstrip in the Texas panhandle. Why did they call it the "panhandle"? she'd always wondered. Oklahoma has a panhandle. Idaho has a panhandle. Shucks, even Florida has a panhandle. Texas has more like a tree stump... Strange thoughts occur to you when you're flying alone at night. It wasn't her choice to fly at night. Her father had been insistent that she join them immediately. He was not a man to be trifled with, and she knew better than to resist. To do anything other than his wishes c...

I slowly opened my eyes. This morning was like the others that I had experienced since I had been here. I wasn't even sure if it was morning. There was no way to know in the room I was in - there were no windows or any source of natural light. For someone like me, who loves the outdoors, this was a special kind of torture. I remembered sitting in Mr. Clark's fourth grade class at Westmore Elementary in Orem, Utah. I don't remember much about the lessons he taught, but I do remember staring constantly out the windows at the majestic Wasatch Range. Cascade Mountain was immediately out the window, but just to the north was Timpanogos, perhaps the most impressive mountain I'd ever seen. The elevation changed some seven thousand feet in the course of 10 miles, creating an enclosed space that some found oppressive but I found comforting. I learned later that these valleys - the Davis, Salt Lake, and Utah valleys - were known as the smoky valleys by the native populations beca...

Janice stretched languidly and luxuriously in her bed. The southeast Texas sunshine streamed in the filmy curtains at the window, filling her room with mid-morning luminance. Brightly painted walls matched the ivory bedding, while the dark cherry wood four poster bed offered an interesting contrast of dark accent in this room filled with light. As did Janice's hair, spread out in an auburn fan across her pillow. There were not many mornings like this. She had stayed up late last night, watching an old favorite movie that her husband would not have enjoyed with a pint of Blue Bell. She hardly ever had this kind of opportunity, so she was enjoying it to the fullest. She thought of her husband, Michael. He had been so excited after Christmas when he approached her about the trip to Utah. She knew that he loved Utah and missed it terribly. Being in southeast Texas meant beauty of a very different kind than he was used to - the beauty of green growing things, of brown water and Spanish ...

Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently. - Edward Abbey I thought he was drunk. The huge green land yacht careened around hair pin turns above steep cliffs at breakneck speeds. As I followed - slowly and cautiously - I couldn't believe how fast the person driving the car in front of me was going. Such complete reckless abandon could only be due to some kind of mental impairment. I knew it was a man because he had passed me several miles back. He didn't even turn his head to acknowledge my presence, just in time to gun it once past me in my SUV. He and his wife both looked to be about 50 and stylishly dressed - a little incongruous for the terrain. His powerful Buick responded to the gas as he punched it down the loose, sandy desert road. That was in a relatively straight and flat portion of the road. Nothing like the stretch of road we are on now... I had brought my family to this southern Utah desert paradise. Ha...