I'm lying on a $67 king size bed in Billings Montana right now. It's almost 11pm local time, August 10th, 2005. I woke up at six thirty AM. Always the mad dash about town before leaving, a final trip to the post office to convert cash to money order for rent, the harried packing, don't forget anything. Like a special dispensation, it was sprinkling in Seattle when I left, even though it has barely rained all summer. I picked up a few unexplainable wounds, a deep gash in my pinky finger, a bruise on my arm, and another on the back of my hand. All the left arm. I wonder what I was swinging it against.

Sung Tongs and Horses in the Sky. Breaking up out of the clouds and traffic into open bright sunshine and miles of straight road ahead. I was just getting warmed up to it all, my long hair plastered to one side of my face from the window open across hundreds of miles of whipping wind, and I stopped for lunch in Spokane. The girl who made my sandwich at Quiznos tried to start conversation with me, but already my mind was mush from the road, noone but my own brain to talk to, loud music and wind noise.

Idaho and Montana bring winding roads over mountain passes, and I realize just how amazing it is to drive, feeling centrifugal force pushing me against the door through the perfect S curves. I'm the fastest guy on the road and I'm still doing the speed limit, or not even, when the arrows come out, caution, 45mph, down around that bend down the steep grade down the side of the mountain with trees and rock jutting everywhere and me and the jersey barrier are slaloming against the slope of the hill. I 90 is BEAUTIFUL through here, even if the gradiose majesty of the Montana rockies grows dull and repetitive while riding. All through the state I'm listening to this fucking album, and this plaintive call they're sending out. And up ahead it's getting misty out, like it's humid as fuck and the hills across the valley are obscured by haze.

Only it's dry as a fucking desert out, my lips are beginning to chap, my skin is drying out, it's dry dry dry.

The thing of it is, it's not haze. It's smoke. You can start to smell it, campfire breath in the air. Up ahead the sign on the side of the road says Warning! Fire Activity Ahead. Speed Limit 55. No stopping for any reason. Off on the horizon there's a cloud rising up out of the mountain there, and it dawns on me that it's wildfire eating up the far side. I look around and look around, and see this smoke coming up off the hillside ahead. I get closer, and I'm filming this now, I've got the camera out and I'm driving with one hand and filming with the other, weaving a little but I'm doing 65 in what's usually a 75 and there's no traffic, just me and this fire, the police cruiser blasting up the westbound lane with lights going.

I see the forest burning. And on my car stereo, it's blasting anger/pain and it all seems to fit, the wall of noise and that sheet of white smoke, so much worse just out of sight. Oh yeah, they're singing about the horror of war, "imagine the view from a helicopter gunship, a man comes into view, and you flip a switch and cut the man in two, imagine the view", and it all seems to fit just perfect, this little vignette of scorched earth and angst. Because scorched earth is what you see now, black memories of grass, trees burnt orange needles, lining the road, covering the hillside. There's a rest area, and it's burned out, black black black, and I didn't catch it on film, it's just a little memory now.

And it gets later on into the afternoon, and the sun hits that false cloudbank, that thunderhead of haze and smoke still overhead, a hundred miles from the fire I watched burn, and it casts this mournful red glow on the world, the sharp hills and flat valleys with the meandering river that casts this green stripe of water and life through the middle of stark pine needles and grass and stone. It all seems to fit, the whole picture, like everything makes sense.

And once, just before sunset, I stop on the side of the road and catch a shot of this red glow, smokey clouds lit up by an evening sun.

Shortly I'd have car trouble. There's this buzzing, like I didn't notice it with the windows down and the music cranked, when I heard it driving through the work zone I heard it and figured it was that Honda up ahead, you know the sound the sport bikes make, the 5000 rpm vibrato. Only it wasn't the motorcycle, it was my car.

Getting on to nighttime and I call Mike up, him 500 miles ahead of me in Sturgis, South Dakota, the biggest biker run of the year, Black Hills Rally, STURGIS. He tells me it's my wheel bearing, and that by the time I reach Vermont, it'll be practically singing. A couple hundred dollars to fix, something to do right off when I roll into town. He sounds tired or drunk, campground life, the constant Harleys blasting their peculiar music at all hours of the night keeping him awake, the constant party; they've camped right in the middle of it all.

I wonder what it's gonna be like when I roll in tomorrow, lunchtime, Friday, the biggest biker rally in the world.

© 2005 U. Maynard