Short Folk #28: Bluff, Utah

Note: I'm running out of steam. I'm running completely out of steam. The best thing about this project is that it has created a ton of new ideas. Problem is now I really want to work on some longer length ideas I have. I'm currently doing a lot of revising older stuff for possible publication and that is making extra writing time for these very scarce. Two more days after today though. So we're on the home stretch. Here is the beginning of one of those longer pieces. Again, not a short, but a taste.

Short Folk #28: Bluff, Utah

I started because I read somewhere about lost Mormon gold. And because I have driven through the deserts out there a bunch and frankly the thought of so much wide open space really gets to me. I imagine there are ridges and bluffs out there that haven't even seen a human footprint. Or maybe just one or two. An Indian on a quest or a lost conquistador searching for El Dorado or something. I swear when you go over a piece of ground that hasn't even seen a footprint you feel a little chill through you, even out there in the desert. That's happened to me a couple times.

I keep at it because I like the heat and the way the headphones when they're on and pinging kind of mute the whole world out. It's like putting a seashell to your ear except the sound is always there. I like to feel the wind whip across my back but not be able to hear it in my ears. And I like how untethered I am out there, a rattlesnake or a twisted ankle and i could disappear forever. That's really happened to people. In 1934 a guy named Everett Ruess went out in the bluffs and desert and no one ever saw him again. They found his mules and stuff but he was gone. Its still a mystery and frankly I like the mystery. You could be swallowed up in a place with no water. Seems like a better way to go than in a hospital room smelling like old blood. At least if you go in the desert people come out and look for you. If Everett Ruess had made it where he was going no one would remember him now. But he's been gone 80 years and people still go out looking for him.