Weather Jinx

It was dark outside when the Wagon pulled over. 

“Are we here?” I searched the window for signs of adventure, but only the ghost of a handsome dog stared through me from inside the glass. 

“No, this is just the Park boundary.” Mom stepped into the night, leaving the door open for me to follow.

“Hooray! I knew you could find it. Are we going to sneak to the walking rocks by the cover of night?”

“No. I was trying to avoid it, but the most direct route to Utah from here is through Park land. I was hoping to get to the far side tonight, but the damned Park is bigger than Rhode Island and I’m too tired to drive that far.” She walked toward a screen glowing in the darkness. Even here in the middle of the wilder-ness Mom could find a screen. “We probably need a permit to stay overnight.”

Like in the City, people and wagons need permits and passes to excuse them for taking up Park space. Parks can sneak up on you like this one did, so part of Mom’s wilder-ness preparedness plan was always to keep her National Parks pass up-to-date, even though we weren’t allowed out of the Wagon in most of them. 

The screen sat majestically within a post the size of a totem pole, as if a parking meter could rule the entire world if it were big enough. Mom poked at it, whining half in her thought bubble and half out loud about, “. . . have one already… where do I… oh come on… that’s not fair… how much?”

The machine chirped, its belly whirred, and it laid a top-secret message. Mom pulled it out of the secret compartment below the screen and waved it defiantly. “Stupid thing didn’t even ask for my annual pass. Cost me 30 bucks for a mucking slip of paper.”

“Don’t they know who you are?” I said in the offended voice that Mom expected. 

She placed the paper ceremonially on the front windowsill and tapped it a couple of times to prove it was there on purpose. “Think of it as double-paying in protest.” 

“That’ll show ’em.” 

“At least a parking pass is cheaper than a campground.” Campgrounds came with all kinds of nastiness, like noises, long walks to the potty, and rules about leashes. We came to the wilder-ness to get away from all that. “If anyone asks why we’re not in a campground, we can just tell them that we weren’t planning to spend the night. Which I suppose is true, when you think about it.”

“Who’s asking?” I squinted nervously into the darkness.

“The rangers. Or just busybodies.” 

 “Say no more,” I said sagely. 

Dogs know all about silly rules for where you can and can’t exist. Some people just can’t enjoy a place unless someone else isn’t welcome there, so they pen in nature with gates, railings, and fences and think it means they’ve tamed nature. They mark their territory with signs that dogs can’t read that shout orders without saying please: 

“KEEP OUT: SENSITIVE WILDLIFE AREA”

“USE BEAR BOXES TO KEEP BEARS OUT OF CAMPGROUNDS”

“LOWER LID TO KEEP OUT FLIES”

“STAY AWAY FROM CLIFF”

“STAY ON TRAIL”

“TRAIL CLOSED”

“DON’T TOUCH”

“CAMP ONLY IN DESIGNATED AREAS”

“CAMPGROUND FULL”

“NO CAMPING”

“NO PARKING”

“NO VEHICLES”

“NO DOGS”

Whether you’re standing, sitting, walking, snacking, going potty, finding a place to hitch your Wagon, or sleeping quietly inside of it, they’ll find a way to tell you you’re doing it wrong.

With our Get Out of Jail Free Card on the front windowsill, the Wagon plunged into the deathly blackness of the valley in search of a place to hide for the night. The wilder-ness summoned every car in the valley into a train behind the Wagon. They shone their extra-bright eyebeams into the mirror, making the darkness even darker. If that weren’t enough to keep me up all night, the curses Mom growled into the mirror while missed sleeping spots flashed in the darkness were enough to give me nightmares.

It’s harder than you think to find a place to sleep in the wilder-ness. Car-trails make excellent sleeping spots, but the same darkness that makes them so good for sleeping also makes them very hard to see from the road. The moment you start looking for one, the zillions of cozy spots that were there during the day disappear.

“Well at least the NO CAMPING signs make it easy to spot the pull-offs,” Mom muttered as the Wagon swooped into a roadside cubby to let an extra-bright pair of lights pass. 

The moment the Wagon pulled back onto the road, another pair of dots appeared in the blackness behind us. The mirror caught their light, spotlighting Mom’s squint as she searched the front window for escape. The Wagon slowed its roll and began to click. Harsh light filled the cockpit as the beams bore down on us. We made a hard turn into the safety of a car kennel and darkness washed over me. 

“Phew! That was a close one,” I said. “Nice find, Mom. Look, there’s a people-potty and everything.” 

But Mom didn’t look because her eyes were stuck on a sign in the Wagon’s eyebeams. “Phooey! NO CAMPING. I think we’re going to have to sleep in a campground tonight.”

“Don’t give up so easily,” I encouraged. “The ground beside the road looks like the same stuff they make car-trails from. I bet it’s great for sleeping.” 

“There was another sign that said OFF-ROAD DRIVING PROHIBITED. National Parks are the worst!” She pulled out the Witch and demanded, “Take me to the nearest campground.” 

“There’s a campground twenty minutes away,” the Witch taunted. 

“We came from that way! Driving 20 minutes in the wrong direction adds 40 minutes to our trip,” Mom whined. “We’ve been in the car all day. What else you got?”

“This place is forty minutes away and also in the wrong direction,” the Witch said. 

“Fine. We’ll go back,” Mom humphed. 

We drove half a Rhode Island back to the campground and found the biggest sign yet waiting for us when we got there. “Thank goodness!” I wagged. “What does it say? Does it say WELCOME OSCAR? Or CONGRATULATIONS FOR SURVIVING A WHOLE DAY IN THE WAGON?”

“It says CAMPGROUND FULL,” Mom read. “It’s a Sunday night, for heaven’s sake. If they want you to follow the rules, they’ve at least got to give you a chance to do the right thing.” 

“What do we do now?” 

“If you can’t make good, you’ve gotta break bad.” Mom checked over both shoulders to make sure there were no witnesses. “I saw an unpaved service road back there. Let’s just drive far enough that we won’t be visible from the road and spend the night there.” 

The Wagon returned to the darkness beyond the reach of the campground's lights and crept off the pavement. The road ended under one of those man-made pole-trees and we finally stepped into the fresh air. The night crackled with an eerie feeling that made my fur stand on end.

I sniffed one of the tower’s metal paws. “I don’t think this thing is going to give us much cover,” I whispered. “You can see right through it. Look, I can see the road from here.”

“Why did it have to be a full moon? This white van sticks out like a beacon for miles around,” Mom groaned. “No matter how hard I try to stay out of people’s way, there’s always something to draw someone’s attention. I can’t wait till we’re out of California where the rules don’t follow you off the road.”

Mom stayed on guard all night, waiting for the Law to knock on the window to ask if we were okay. For me, the race ended in Oregon, but Mom lived every day like a race, rushing from one thing to the next and planning what she would do if something tried to slow her down. A full night’s sleep is no way to get ahead. Instead, Mom used the nighttime to think about everything that could possibly go wrong so she could have a plan and a backup plan for each expected disaster. Of course, when one thing goes wrong, other wrong-things soon follow, so each plan and backup plan had to fit with the others. Sometimes it took the whole night to put it all together.

Mom passed the time strategizing with the Witch, rolling over every time she needed to rearrange the thoughts in her head. It was hard to sleep through her restlessness. Mom and I had to sleep like puzzle pieces to fit in the snug space inside the Wagon. Any time either of us moved, the other had to adjust to find that perfect fit again before we could rest. 

It was still nighttime when she patted me awake. “Rise and shine, Spud. We’ve gotta get an early start if we want to get to the Valley of Fire before it gets too hot.”

“But it’s still dark.” I burrowed deeper into the blankies. 

Mom took her post behind the driving wheel. “Fine, you get your beauty sleep. You’re gonna need it with all the pictures I’m going to take. This time, it’s gonna be epic.”

Everyone has at least one superpower. For example, I’m supernaturally handsome with bottomless puppy eyes that a girl can lose herself in. Once the ladies have fallen under my spell, they’re helpless to resist my charm. They beg for kisses as they drop bits of their lunch under the table until I oblige. Not every superpower is as useful as being Dog Juan, but even people who are nothing special like Mom have a superpower if you look for it.

Mom’s superpower is that she brings unseasonably severe weather wherever she goes. Mom’s vacations bring the first rainy day in a ten-year drought. The race she trained for all year brings headwinds that blow your hat off and rain that soaks through your pelt. Mom can turn an Arizona summer day to Oregon in February, and bring a blizzard to Albuquerque in June. That’s why Mom’s superhero name is the Weather Jinx. 

I’d been to Las Vegas many times before, but I’d never visited Las Vegas when it was dry because I always travel with the Weather Jinx. The last time we visited the Valley of Fire, Mom brought so much rain that it put the fire out. The rain stopped by the time we got there, but the valley was still so filled with steam that there was nothing for me to pose in front of but fog.

The Wagon pointed its nose toward the part of the sky where the stars were disappearing. As the sun climbed out from inside the earth, so did we. It lit the heavy clouds with the neon greys of the Las Vegas strip, and gathered them around like a cozy blanket as it climbed higher in the sky. Soon enough, the only thing left of it was a pale, groggy light. 

“Welcome to Nevada!” the Witch announced. Maybe Las Vegas wouldn’t have noticed that the Weather Jinx was in town if the Witch hadn’t opened her big, fat mouth.

As soon as our cover was blown, the clouds over Nevada went from cozy to nasty. It only took a few more minutes for them to gather a storm. Paw-sized raindrops rushed to turn the road into a river. 

“Dog doo! This storm wasn’t supposed to come through until this afternoon,” Mom accused the sky, like the storm was the liar and not the Witch. 

“Oregon, Las Vegas, you keep taking us to places where it rains all the time,” I said “Maybe we should aim for somewhere that isn’t as wet rather than wishing a place were different.”

“You think Las Vegas is a rainy city?” Mom asked, like I was the crazy one.

“It’s been rainy every time I’ve been here.” 

“That’s not true. There was the time…” Mom tilted her head and thought for a moment. “Hunh. You’re right.” 

I let her think for a few thumps of the wipers before asking, “Where to now?”

“I guess Las Vegas isn’t going anywhere.” Mom sighed and set her eyes back to the line in the middle of the road. “We’ll be back again someday. Let’s just push on to Utah. At least this will give us more time in Canyon Country.”

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