Setting Scouting

Planning and Plotting

When planning a vacation, planet Earth offers a myriad of options, but when selecting an ultimate destination, most people would select a penultimate travel destinations: Paris, Disneyland, the Grand Canyon.  Yet the jewel in my empty-nest crown revolved around a spectacular vacation, ninety percent of which became secondary to the ultimate destination.  As I began planning my latest expedition, one that my boss entitled my “Fuck The World” vacation, I spent a ridiculously short amount of time evaluating where I would voyage.  And then I added additional locations that most travelers would find at the top of their itinerary: Death Valley, the Great Salt Lake, Yosemite; all beautiful, of course, but none of which were my priority.

I wanted to find the ideal location for my work of fiction that had been tumbling about in my brain for the past decade. Over a plate of sushi and teriyaki, my friend recommended I succumb to my darkening world and embrace the midlife crisis hovering in my baffles. While sitting in silence later that night contemplating the vastness of locations to which I could plot my escape, the perfect place for my vacation became the future site of my protagonist’s climax. I mapped out a route through some of the most remote roads in America – northern Nevada, eastern California, northeastern Utah.  I wanted to drive The Loneliest Road in America, I wanted to see the buffalo on Antelope Island, cross Donner Pass, and get away from everything remotely related to tourism, familiarity, and people.  I made my vacation my own work of fiction.  The key elements of my story (plot, theme, characters, conflict, and setting) become the purpose for my exodus: I began with the setting.

Pull Over

Looking at my beloved atlas (see “Traveling With Boys,” November 2011), I plot the general area in which I feel my main character would travel.  From there, I began planning the peripheral expeditions which others might consider primary destinations.  I book a B&B on the western shore after circumnavigating Lake Tahoe.  I spend an artful night in Yosemite Valley, outside the majestic waterfalls (a destination at which I arrives having just missing the closing of Tioga Pass by less than forty-eight hours due to an early-season snowfall).  I reach Donner Pass, likewise covered in multiple inches of snow, dining on a more mild diet of cheese sticks and breakfast bars.  I descend thousands of feet to sea level to Stovepipe Wells in the core of Death Valley National Park.  Yet in this crib of spectacular natural vistas, I seek a location so secluded, so distant, so ignored by the world that an author finds both inspiration and desolation.  I stop along US Highway 93 in the Steptoe Valley where signs warn of lengthy durations without petrol services and I find the cubbies, the coves, and the open caverns where I can allow my character to escape unnoticed in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

I pull off the road and spend nearly thirty minutes capturing the scene on celluloid.  Dirty cliffs, sage brush cover, nooks in which an entire vehicle might steal away unnoticed create the perfect ambiance for my character.  For all the beautiful sights I witness over six full days, from the granite cliffs to the layered canyons, to the monstrous, towering creatures of the Mariposa Grove, these desolate, hidden crevices entice and enthrall me.  Few trees stand in the distance.  Even the wild mustangs avoid these hills bordering the dry, salt flats of western Utah.  More plant life than a moonscape, while slightly less fragrant than springtime jasmine, the brown, barren environment summons me and serves as the pinnacle of my escape.  Perhaps it becomes fitting that the Idiot Tree (see “The Idiot Tree” from December 2011) stands just ahead around a few mild curves in the road.  I’m in my favorite corner of the world and I am enveloped in inspiration, and here the story begins.

The Idiot Tree

On A Bright Desert Highway

Cool wind in my hair adds to my sense of freedom on the open road and rolling down the windows provides an alternative to a sunroof or a convertible.  Regardless of the outside temperature, I cherish this blowing brush of freedom, which tussles my hair and relaxes my spirit.  In the Florida summers, I confess to abusing the environment and driving with the windows down and the air conditioning fighting against the onslaught of humidity.  I do the same in cooler weather calling on the heater to balance out the two extremes.  Along alternate US Highway 93, the interior man-made warmth and the natural exterior briskness balance the temperature and still allow me to enjoy the blustery sensation.

The distant threat of soft rain along the Great Basin Highway bothers me little, as driving with the windows down both refreshes me and defies the raindrops. The brilliant sun disperses its light from behind the clouds and the basin brush shows little color beyond its shades of tan, brown, and sage, but the light, sandy desert still illuminates the day vibrantly.  My primary vision in this mix of monochromatic autumn scenery stems from the writing I scribed seasons before and thousands of miles southeast of this drive.  Here I am searching for a specific site along a distant desert highway yet to be determined, that will fit the needs of my plot.  The story in progress requires a setting similar to the myriad of low lands hiding in the rolling slopes of eastern Elko County, which changes the partially penned work to a more northerly setting, with higher hills, more curves, and fewer trees than the original idea I conceived.  In fact, in this setting, trees are scarce.

A Burst of Color

When I start on this drive from Ely, the sign at the edge of town promises no gas services for more than one hundred twenty miles and it must be said that Nevada is a state of its word.  Even without the sign, my map confirms the posting, so fueling up before heading out seems obvious.  To attempt to traverse the Steptoe Valley and to continue over the White Horse Pass without a full tank of gas would be the act of an idiot.  This most desolate highway allows me the luxury of self-imposed isolation and I escape for a time from the typical worldly binding in which I usually pass each day, until a lone tree ahead of me, drenched in color, distracts me and reminds me of the everyday world.

I drive onto the shoulder, regardless of the dearth of other vehicles on the road, and cut the engine, the vehicle-generated heat, and the noise of the car.  I stand facing the Idiot Tree, or so the stake in the ground reads, and I circle its base admiring the baseball hats, cowboy boots, compact discs, and personal accoutrements hanging from its branches along a completely deserted stretch of the Lincoln Highway.  Written on one hat, the names of a couple, and on another, a date – could these be the names and dates that commemorate an idiotic, romantic error regretted and crucified on this bark?  The leaves vibrate against the cool breeze but make little sound.  Dozens of other individuals made the pilgrimage to this place, stood in its silence, and pounded nails into the living wood as a testament to foolishness, which seems unidentifiable.  Perhaps the Idiot Tree stands as a landmark of lunacy, or a confessional for casual sins, or a mark of idle drivers.  Perhaps this lone tree is just a place where people run out of gas.