When the city gets you down, there’s nothing like a natural spectacle to remind you of what, um, really matters …
The first time I visited Las Vegas, I was cautioned by my Alaskan friends and family. I was coming to see a pretty girl named MC, who didn’t have a beard or smell like salmon. This, combined with the fact she’d never killed a bear while pissing in the Yukon River, made my people nervous. One crusty old fisherman friend voiced his concerns.
“You go to Vegas and the next thing you know you’ll be wearing gold chains, walking a Pomeranian and trying to turn a trick for a few coins to play the slots,” he said. “Are you sure this isn’t some sort of scam to harvest your kidneys for the black market?”
When I landed at McCarran I felt like a starry-eyed lamb venturing into a fold of wolves. Walking past security, I got wedged between members of a bachelorette and bachelor party amping themselves up for the weekend. I laughed with them but sounded like a horse in heat. Nothing kills a party like a sweaty, hairy man dressed like Forest Gump making horny barnyard-animal sounds. The cold truth was that I did not belong in any city, especially Vegas. Which brought me back to my friend’s question — what did a fancy metro woman want with me? Was she part of a Bacchae cult that sacrificed socially awkward men? Was she an alien who wanted to do weird experiments on my eyes? I soon learned it was much worse. Getting me to come to Vegas was MC’s ploy to harvest my soul.
I quickly became addicted to Malibu rum and Taco Bell, which led to unnatural flatulence and urban despair. After a couple of weeks, MC reached her breaking point. One morning she asked me to pack my bag and get in the car. Instead of driving to the airport, she drove northeast, past the casinos, lascivious billboards and suburban sprawl. Now that she owned my soul, she was obviously going to dispose of the rest of me. I imagined all the folks the Mob had buried in the stretch of desert.
“So this is how it ends,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “You’ve been in the city too long. I’m taking you to the Valley of Fire for a detox.” We drove beneath desiccated brown mountains, through canyons and over arroyos. Plastic bags rustled on barbed wire fences as turkey vultures swung wide circles on the never-ending circuit of winds. We turned onto the Valley of Fire Highway, rode through the Moapa Paiute Indian Reservation, and climbed undulating hills. A red-tail hawk feasted on a jackrabbit off the shoulder of the road. After we crested a rise, a Martian landscape of jagged bright red rocks appeared beneath distant brown mountains. I’d never been to the Valley of Fire before, and the static in my head quieted as I got lost in swirl of red geology, bighorn sheep, desert hawks and petrified logs. The place’s natural beauty and pristineness brought to mind one thing and one thing only: capitalistic venture.
“What if we started a cult here and then had our followers build a casino and amusement park? We could blast a bunch of tunnels through those sandstone pillars — well, we should just remove that mountain altogether. We’d have to replace the bighorn sheep — we’ll need some sort of animal that will let children pet them and ride on their backs. I’m thinking elephants, but maybe just baby elephants. We could open a uranium mine on the side.” I was still listing my plans when MC cut me off.
“This is Nevada’s oldest state park. Try to just enjoy it for what it is.”
She had a point. There was a solitary peace this place offered. Could we solely market solitude? Maybe we could buy a few acres nearby and set up a ticket booth and concession stand where people pay money to sit by themselves in the desert and afterwards, have cocktails? We could sell the experience as the “Fire Detox.” How big do they make billboards? Over time, with increased revenues, we could build a solitude- and nature-themed casino. A green casino. There’d be no talking, music or manmade noise — only a soft recording of nature sounds in the background as folks gamble at eco-friendly tables and slots, or do yoga in a recycled plastic jungle full of rescue monkeys.
We drove past the visitor’s center, up a giant red canyon to a parking lot leading to a place called Mouse’s Tank.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” MC said. “It’s named after a Paiute Indian bandit who hid out here in the 1890s.”
From the canyon’s shade, we stared up at the blue sky contrasting with red cliff walls. MC pointed at an Anasazi petroglyph containing three anthromorphs, one with two horns jutting from its head, holding hands. The Anasazi people — their name is a Navajo word meaning “ancestral enemies” — seem to have disappeared at the beginning of the 1300s. Theories abound as to what happened. Migration and assimilation into other Pueblo groups, drought, starvation, warfare and genocide are just a few. Most respected archaeologists agree they were probably extraterrestrials who simply got in their spaceships and rolled on to a quieter planet.
For the first time in days I stopped thinking about fast food, booze and conspiracy theories. I lost myself in thousand-year-old images of people holding hands, bighorn sheep, antelope, lizards, serpents, rain, sun, anthropomorphs, hand-prints and a variety of other depictions. One anthropomorph, known famously as “mystical bat woman,” was high on a cliff and looked like an alien with wings. We spent the rest of the day exploring the park until the basin began to darken. A spell of light and rock blended together; I felt like a visitor to the cathedral of another world. We were in the presence of the Ancients, where it’s best to sit quiet. The potential for economic growth was endless.
There was a sobering eeriness to the starry night as we drove toward the lights of Las Vegas. It was time to begin drawing up plans to market Fire Detox before someone else stole my idea. I’d employ aliens dressed like cocktail waitresses; all those kids who used to work for Kathie Lee Gifford could mine uranium. When I became rich I’d create a habitat and breeding program for cute baby animals. I went to sleep dreaming of the Nobel Peace Prize.