Night Plains

All of a sudden, Idaho welcomes me with its flamboyant blue sign struggling with the fog. One often says borders are invisible lines drawn by Humans. In this specific situation, it immediately and physically stands up though. Landscapes are seamlessly and completely snowed instead of being powdered, utterly hazy instead of being sunny.

I hit the reckless A2 – Clark County Road. Bold adventure, to not call it stupid! Step by step, the road is more and more snowed… Although I swore to myself I wouldn’t be reckless, I swore I would turn back if it started to be too dangerous. But fresh tires prints fool me and it becomes my rule: as long as cars have driven this road I am good. Then, even if fog is getting thicker, even if the night is knocking at my window, I can go on. I drive through actual ghost towns: ranches stand along the road, but it must be summer pastures because everything is absolutely desert. I thus feel awkward several times. Thankfully, fog clears up and I become a philosopher. You can sometimes feel lost, you are in the fog, you don’t know where you are going, your loved ones worry and you might as well; but it clears up and shows you the way, even for a fleeting moment, and gives you hope to keep going even if you are uncertain. And then, despite this white blindness, this light gives you more than hope, it gives you faith no matter what. You know you are going the right way.
Except I am wrong in the end… Because I realize there is no more post on the side to draw the invisible road. Then, discovering where cars have slipped, I am suddenly completely aware that I don’t actually know the last time a car actually drove here. Because I am sinking more and more, because it has snowed in the meanwhile. And I don’t know where I am anymore, and it is getting dark. I therefore stupidly drive faster. It is so deep all of sudden. Out of control. I slip, I sink, I feel like I am dying. Or not really dying because it is not that dangerous, but getting stuck for sure, and I lose my breath… My wheels stop to spin though and magically run again. My hands are numb, I could throw up. Because in such snow, when you don’t know where the edge stands or how deep it goes, you can’t drive back, you can only move forward. And I am afraid to turn back and to actually get stuck this time. I feel completely trapped. I am in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows where I am and neither do I. Fog clears up a bit again, like a light in the dark, and finding a safer trail, I eventually reverse my way.

I am not prepared for the beauty rising in front of me and easing my heart. The sky is a gem, the fog withdrew as I was driving the other way and I am now able to discover the flat and white surrounding scenery. What a sudden magic! I gaze at the red and cotton sky and the moon is already comforting me, sometimes lost in the haze. I pass the hell crack that almost scared me to death, I can breathe again. Grateful. Writing, for sure, a unique adventure about this historical highway which was once the trail to gold, which was once Nez Perce’s trail to their battles. I just fought mine against snow and I can’t help thinking about Indians and their dormant souls under the snow which fed my earlier fear. And I know for sure my deadly fear in the foggy twilight was necessary to get some new understand about life…

Escaped from Lewis and Clark road, I keep wandering across the night, getting closer to tomorrow. I hope to find a rest area for the night. But nothing. But everything! The moon is shining on endless plains and I am like wild horses running in the night. The scenery is almost as clear as in day light, highlighted by glowing snow. Stars sparkle above the thin layer of fog. I then utterly feel Idaho’s magic. I understand how you can feel absolutely mesmerized by American plains, where you can see miles away, where the night is a sun drawing a new world. I would like to sleep under the stars if it was not winter… Another time maybe.
What a day full of thousands of lives! I finally take shelter in the night, the sweet moon light, cradled with the owl’s howling, silvers my sleep.

When I wake up, frost has covered everything and the clear night has been replaced by a foggy day. After a few miles though, what a glory! As far as the eye can see, yellow fields sometimes broken by hill blushed by an invisible sun through the haze. I finally understand the red horizon on the other side of the rising or setting sun: its reflection on the snow.
I followed Nez Perce’s trail yesterday, I drive the Oregon Trail today. The Gold Rush traveled through in its hoping wagons. I am in the Far West even if I am always going east; I can feel our black and white western movies’ Cow Boys’ and Indians’ souls chasing each other and following my wandering. Idaho is where the West was won in my imagination. Like always when I am traveling America, I am pierced by other History than mine. I am mesmerized.

Who said Idaho was ugly? Idaho is mesmerizing! All of a sudden, as I am thinking about Indians’ shouts, as I am changing throughout America, as I am gazing at reddish peaks in front of me, a moonly landscape appears. I can see lonely craters in the far, haloed with some haze, moved by thin sun beam. Rocky lava flows shine red or dark through the snow. Even if I can’t see their drawn details, the snow gets such a peculiar shape above this bumpy land. Bare trees look like some strange sculptures, spread, on a foggy and hilly background. It is another fairy world. And I can feel lunar imaginations growing in my heart as I drive to Carey, impatient to meet my new hosts.