Gunslinger

I sat quietly in the dark between the fire and the darkness, my hands pressed firmly against my brow as I tried my best to remain collected while I listened to shots ring out in the deep woods of Rifle Canyon. As the staunch adrenaline started to wear off I was caught with my jaw dropped and the only thought going through my head was "how the hell did I wind up here with these people"? I am more or less a pacifist and don't really get people so full of aggression that they need to physically need to lash out at another. I don't mean to proclaim my own sainthood; as much as I would love to think if I were punched I would calmly get up and talk some reason into my aggressor, I know that I would in fact swing back like The Babe. However, the situation that I found myself in was a sobering reminder of how empowering a gun can be, and how little I support their use in a confrontation.

In late June I found myself at a joint bachelor party for two grooms preparing for their respective weddings. I had never met either of the grooms before, and they were accompanied by a group of guys as tight as brothers. I was the odd man out and it was obvious. The bachelor party was a camping trip to rock climb in Rifle Canyon and I was invited by a friend that I had been staying with, this was a sort of the last hoo-raw of my visit. He was living in Grand Junction, Colorado in the desert just next to Utah. Scott was the first friend that I stayed with on my 10 week trip across the US, and he had all sorts of adventures planned out for us. We embarked on a windless sailing trip, a moonlight climb up a 450 foot spire, a trip to the family cabin, birthday parties, beer, and it all ended with the bachelor party. As tight as all the guys were I was pleasantly surprised with how openly they accepted me.

My friend Scott had talked up my climbing skills, which are mediocre at best, to the guys before we arrived and there were some big expectations. To my surprise I was one of the more experienced climbers there and this is how I found my spot in the group. The guys were not of my breed. Simply, I am sort of an outdoorsy hippy, and these guys were, for lack of a better term, rednecks. We climbed for a few hours in the afternoon and when it started to get dark we packed up and went to camp.

When we got there there were already a few guys who got a head start on the drinking and had constructed an inferno out of Coors boxes and fresh-cut wood. Throughout the night fireworks were continually thrown in and we were causing quite a ruckus. Not one to ever pass up a good time, I cracked a cold one and joined the party. A young man, the younger brother of one of the grooms-to-be, was completely obsessed with flaming Dr. Peppers, which actually contain no Dr. Pepper. Flaming Dr. Peppers are just a concoction or amaretto, 151 proof rum, and

budlight. You fill a shot-glass half with amaretto and carefully pouring the 151 on top as not to have the two mix. With the 151 resting atop of the amaretto it ignites like Michael Jacksons hair, and you drop the flaming shot into a glass of bud-light and subsequently chug... chug... chug. Use caution, YouTube can show you plenty of examples of how this can go wrong, you can

see any number of fratboys setting their goatees aflame. He was yelling at everyone "hey, you wanna flamin' durka durka"? His excitement at the drink of course enticed my curiosity and when the combination is set aflame and combined in proper order, it surprisingly does taste like a Dr. Pepper.

The night was going quite well until we all heard a four by four drive on up to camp. When it parked I was on the welcoming committee along with a couple other guys,

including the drunk younger brother. I was excited and eager to meet our guests "Hey! What brings you all down to this end of the canyon"? knowing damn well the noise of our party could be heard from Siberia. One of the three guys responded "We came to PARTY"! These were my people, he shook my hand with a Pabst in the other and his jeans rolled up. His beard and beaded bracelet were a dead give away, he was a dirtbag hippy like myself.

One of our three new freinds was considerably younger than the rest of us, and seeing as he was different I naturally gravitated towards him. As it turned out he had just graduated from the same high school that I graduated from, and it was a striking circumstance that the two of us from suburbia Oregon met in a Colorado forest in the middle of the night. Needless to say we had a ton to talk about. He had just graduated and taken a train out of town to see the country. He was on his own trekking the states with the purpose to live. He was an avid climber and read a fair amount of literature. The more I learned the more I was enthralled, even obsessed. I had such a reverence for this kid, taking steps at age 18 that I didn't take until I was 22, and he had even fewer luxuries. As we talked and I tried to travel vicariously through him, to teach him to keep pushing the boundaries, an argument broke out at the flaming Dr. Pepper table. As it turns out one of the new guests had said "goddamn" in some kind of casual manner and the drunken little brother flipped his lid. "you can curse your mom, you can curse your friends, but fuck you if you try and curse my god you son of a bitch"! His response didn't really make much sense, but things escalated and a crowd gathered. The argument turned into a shouting match and people began making threats and saying who could kick whose ass. Seeing as there were about twenty of us and only three of them they began to see themselves out.

Finally our new made friends had become enemies, and I gave the other Oregon boy a type of 'keep it up' farewell. As they got on their four by four we were all back around the campfire and I was disappointed to loose our new friends, but more I was disturbed by the ignorance that I had just witnessed. It is these types of people that make me have a strong disdain for christians. As they were driving off one yelled "have a great goddamn wedding". I laughed, but one guy didn't. Instead he stood up pulled out a pistol and ran after them. He loaded one in the chamber and fired off a few into the air, as a type of dominating sign that he was willing to wield a pistol in defense of a family friendly environment; no god-damning was to be seen around here.

It was at this time that I decided that I like neither rednecks nor guns. It was equally disturbing how I was the only one that seemed in the slightest bit distraught, everyone else laughed and congratulated the gunslinger. The peacemaker who pulled his gun out sat there the rest of the night sort of holding it and stroking it, not saying much and staring deep into the fire. He was a veteran sporting an Army shirt, and I would be lying if i said he didn't scare the shit out of me. He was out of his damn mind and willing to act on it. Needless to say my night was ruined, so I got drunk and fell asleep in the bed of my truck.

I still think of those midnight guests and wonder what was going through their minds as they drove their four by four back to their campsite. To be honest, I wished I had gone with them. I wonder what that 18 year old kid did or is doing today. In my mind he remains perfect, a young kid not giving into the societal pull and pushing the boundaries of adventure. He remains built on youth and courage, acting on conviction and not convenience. I choose not to believe that he was living on mom and dads dime, or on a quick 2 week trip; instead I choose to believe that he left without looking back or without a plan, that he was acting on moral belief and expressing something pure, but the reality is that the conversation never got that far. Instead he is just a phantom in my memories that will be preserved as a kid becoming his own man and following what he believes to be true instead of just doing what he is told. I know that my view is romanticized, but since it is all I know of his life I will choose to believe in the perfection of his story.