Civilian of a Collapsed World at McKenzie Pass

By Danny Mac

Sleeping in the back of a minivan is a game of inches.

A twist of the torso, your shoulder is in a cup holder. An extension of a hamstring, your toes are squashed in a seat back pocket. A shift in the neck and the crown of your skull has been bludgeoned by an arm rest.

There is a sweet spot, a button of physical comfort, that allows the body to lie at rest and the mind to drift into sleep. But tonight, despite the button being pressed, it was a time for speech, bands, and psychologically amplified paralysis that screeched between my ears.

Shing! goes the serial killer just beyond my automatic sliding doors. Woosh! goes the bull moose charging my rear bumper. Crack! Snap! Pop! Goes the roaring wildfires of the Pacific Northwest, licking at my tires. Sleeping alongside American roads can fuel the loudspeakers of the mind if you allow it.

I was suffering from a night of cup holders and psychological poltergeists at the summit of McKenzie Pass, a mountain road that slices between the Cascade Range in Central Oregon, when a fierce rising sun pierced my sheet metal cocoon.

The day before, my journey was a tight rope between the wildfires of Symbol Rock and Knoll, and the smoke cast an eerie haze over the orange dust between the trees. I had driven from Coos Bay up to Florence, across to Eugene, through the Willamette National Forest ­—or what was left of the charred remains — and onto McKenzie Bridge where I stopped for a beer at McKenzie Station.

"Station" seemed to be the perfect name for the dining vessel. It was not a saloon for the table cloths hung too low and the top shelf shone too bright, and it was not a fine dining restaurant for there were a few too many souvenirs being sold in a wooden cabinet with glass doors by the cash register. and it certainly was not a gift shop as there were far too many reservations being made for dinner. The room felt as confused and high functioning as I, so I made like my fellow Americans, and drank.

“Where you from young man?” a nameless man asked.

“La Crescenta,” I replied.

“Where?” He furled his forehead in confusion, thick eyebrows that sat above eyes that had seen more years of life than my entire body curling like caterpillars.

“Los Angeles,” I corrected.

“You aren’t a stranger to these fires then,” he didn’t ask, but stated.

“No, sir, I am not.”

“The last one burned my whole garage down. Lost my boat and my truck. I guess my neighbor decided it was better to leave than save anything of mine,” he said with a smile.

“I ain’t going to die for your truck, John!” The host/bartender/server yelled across the bar through a flurry of making drinks and taking orders. Add survivor/neighbor to her resume.

“Ah, whatever.” He turned back to me and asked, “Have you seen the sawdust?”

“The orange between the trees? Yeah, I have. It reminds me of a scene in Blade Runner,” I replied.

“What’s that?”

“A movie.”

“Ah, never seen it," He shook his head and continued. " That orange dust is sawdust."

He bent his elbow, lifted his hand and spun one finger in a circle, as if pointing to an invisible inferno that consumed the McKenzie Station walls.

"These trees that have burned. With them just standing there like that, black and stiff, they are even more likely to burn,” He shook his head. “Can you believe that? Ain’t that a sick joke?”

“I’m not laughing,” I said into my drink.

Eeeeeerrk! I stepped out of the electric sliding doors of my minivan and into the cold air of dawn. I could see my breath through my bloodshot eyes, and something sloshed in my stomach. I thought of my friend, his joke that made me sick, and cursed the drink that swept away the memory of his name. My eyes began to adjust to the morning light that crept over the horizon.

I took a ragged breath as neurochemicals and electrical impulses short circuited in my spine at the sight of my new environment.

During my night of tossing and turning, an ocean of tar, boiling and bursting, had risen to engulf the world. The tides of black gulch swelled to reach the asphalt of McKenzie pass, solidifying in the mountain air and creating an army of jagged, volcanic rock. Barbed peaks thrusting towards heaven, collapsing folds flowed downward to a primal split, and a place where nothing began nor ended had formed. The earth had lapsed, elapsed, relapsed, prolapsed, and then collapsed.

I stood, surrounded by the lava flows of the Belknap craters.

In the distance, the volcanic peaks known as Three Sisters, mocked my motionless reaction. Amid the geological warfare, McKenzie Pass was carved and paved. The road wound through the flows towards a towering structure built from the same volcanic rock that surrounded me now. The sun’s arrows glanced off its saw-tooth armor, splitting around the tower’s body and casting me in shadow the same shade of my surroundings.

Am I dreaming? Was I still flitting through a sleepless nightmare?

I gained control of motor functions and I stumbled towards the structure. A sign stood that read “Dee Wright Observatory”. Underneath, a blurb of history informed me that McKenzie Pass followed the path of an 1860s wagon route and the observatory had been constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935. The tower of sharp rock was sculpted by calloused hands of The Great Depression.

A road twisted around the base of the observatory and climbed towards its peak. I walked, craning my neck to see the top before stopping in my tracks.

“Good morning,” came a cheerful chirp from a pile of nylon and polyester fabric, sprawled in the middle of the paved walkway.

“Good morning?” I replied to the sleeping bag.

A bushel of orange, curling hair poked out, followed by a stretch of dirt encrusted legs, and accompanied by a bushy orange beard and a toothy grin. It was a young man, no older than 30, and fellow civilian of the collapsed world.

“Are you going to Sisters?” He asked.

What a strange thing to ask at a time like this.

“I was. Are you ?”

“Well, that’s why I’m asking,” he smiled and pointed to the Northwest. “The section of the Pacific Crest Trail I’ve been hiking is on fire. I am going to meet my friend in Bend, and he is going to take me to the next section. Do you think you could give me a ride to Sisters? I’ll take the bus from there.”

“You slept out here?” I asked.

“I tried, but the rocks, man. I couldn’t sleep at all. I would walk but I am exhausted.”

“What is your name?” I asked, feeling sympathetic for the man who suffered from the same sleepless night.

“Tumbleweed,” he said with a grin.

“Nice to m—. What ?”

This day was becoming very strange indeed.

“Tumbleweed. Because of my hair, when it’s not tied down, looks like, well, you know,” He flashed the same toothy smile. “It’s my trail name.”

“What is a trail name?” I asked incredulously.

“You haven’t heard of trail names?” He responded in tone.

I didn’t know whether to feel ashamed that I had not heard of trail names or to feel proud that he assumed me capable of someone worthy of a trail name.

“Trail names are used by Thru-Hikers so that they can remember who they met on trail,” Tumbleweed explained. “They are a lot easier to recognize than Derek or Sarah. You can either give yourself the name or they are bestowed upon you.”

“And yours was bestowed ?”

“Yeah. I think it’s a lot cooler when you are gifted your trail name. Like, I know a guy who gave himself the trail name Smooth,” he practically spit the name out of his mouth. “He is the least smooth person I know.”

The combination of rising sun, alpine air and existential conversation was turning my brain to mush. I had enough.

“Alright, Tumbleweed, I’ll give you a ride. Let me just catch the rest of this sunrise, okay?”

“Yeah, totally man! Thank you so much,” he returned to his Kowtow-like position in the piles of sleeping bag.

I turned and walked the rest of the way up the tower. As the sun rose, illuminating Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, the South, the North, and the Middle Sister, even Mt. Hood, I rose too, above the lava flows of McKenzie Pass.

I gazed upon Tumbleweed and the scampering shadows of dawn from my tower of extrusive lava rock. I felt as if I was spinning through space, an endless possibility of anything and everything happening all at once, atop a molten meteor made of the same organic energy that fuses muscle to bone. My time lie out before me, ready to be neatly folded, tucked in a picnic basket, and swung in the crook of my arm as I headed in any direction I chose.

Then, I remembered.

“Are you vaccinated?” I yelled down to the man named Tumbleweed.

My words echoed across the lava flows of McKenzie Pass.