The Raven, more than anyone else, saw the humor in it all. Seven hundred feet above the scorched entrada towers and desicated junipers, his view was unlimited and eternal. He saw everything. The slightest movement captured his attention, from the rusty whiptail lizard that did blacklight pushups on the broken shelf of baked sandstone near the Upper Fiery Furnace to the fanatical black ants that swarmed over a disabled beetle in the datura at Sand Dune Arch. The Raven was omnipotent.

Still he never took himself too seriously; he may have pretended to be soaring at times in the rarified high desert skies but he knew better than that. He was floating on hot air, riding the thermals, enjoying the art of doing nothing and letting that simple gesture be all that mattered. His legs dangled carelessly beneath him—reducing areodynamic drag failed to worry the black bird. He was content.

The glints of light that speckled the desertscape, the metallic rumble that accompanied them, the harsh shrill sounds of entities he knew could not be a true part of the Natural World failed to stir in the Raven any fear or dread either. He had grown accustomed to them. The shimmering ribbons that stretched in all directions and which seemed to convey these distractions produced a certain symmetry that the Raven almost admired. From his vantage point, they looked like distant flash floods. He had even been fooled once by the sight, when he was very young and looking for something to drink, but only once.

Today, riding the heat near the Devils Garden, above the cluster of metal and noise that was now a permanent part of the view, the Raven tipped his wing and rotated his tail to descend for a closer look. A flash of otherworldly color caught his attention near the old Magical Mystery Trail. A brightly hued living entity seemed to be hugging the hot sandstone and making hideous noises, more grotesque than one might expect, even from these odd creatures. Beneath the bright flailing one, a cluster of his ilk stood idly at the base of the cliff. One of them, dressed drably, in battleship grey and loden green, appeared to be attempting some kind of communication.

Strange, thought the Raven. The noises emanating from this creature spoke a universal language. Fear sounds the same in all dialects and the meaning of his cries and pleas was clear. But the Raven could not grasp his dilemma. Why just stay there pathetically and bellow if you are so unhappy and so afraid? Why draw so much attention to yourself?

Really, thought the Raven...why doesn’t he just fly away?

"Why don’t you just jump?"

Seasonal ranger Jack Bannion had a problem. He was less than an hour from quitting time and the end of his work week and had every intention of being out of the park and on his way to the Blues and the high country and 4000 vertical feet above this oppressive heat by six, when this moron, the most recent in a long line, interrupted his best laid plans.

The object of his disgust was just twelve feet away, straight up, pinned to the edge of a sandstone fin. The young man, Chad Harrington, a 23 year old native of some Los Angeles suburb and a "professional climber" according to his luscious sparsely clothed girlfriend, had taken one step too many. While trying to impress his date he had, as it always happened, suddenly discovered he could move neither up nor down nor sideways on the steeply pitched rock. The friction had made him over-confident. Now the angle of the rock and the edge of forever stopped him. He was, to use the vernacular, "rimrocked."

"Did you hear what I just said?" Jack called out. "Why don’t you just jump?"

Chad was paralyzed with fear. "Are you nuts? Are you crazy? Get me down from here!"

Ranger Bannion tried to reason with the man. "Look you’re no more than twelve feet up...fifteen tops. If you aim for this juniper tree, the branches...are you listening?..These branches will break your fall. I’d be amazed if you didn’t walk away from this with just a few scrapes and abrasions." Bannion paused, then added with detached enthusiasm, "And what a great story to tell the grandkids someday."

Chad stared wildly at the ranger. Sweat poured so profusely from his body that as he shook, Bannion stepped back to avoid the spray.

"GODDAMNIT, Ranger! It’s your job to save me! Please fuckin’ help me!"

The kid had a point. It was Bannion’s responsibility on occasions like this, to offer assistance to park visitors when they found themselves in situations that compromised their own health and safety. As a 25 year veteran of the National Park Service, Jack knew that he faced a dual and often conflicting mandate. He had never erred in his devotion to "preserve and protect" his beloved Arches National Park and, in fact, there were those who thought his zeal might have gone beyond the bounds of reason and even the law at times.

It was the other component of the mandate that annoyed him—"to provide for the enjoyment" of the people who came to see these magnificent natural treasures. Just what kind of "enjoyment" did the NPS have in mind, Jack often wondered. And while no one could suggest that young Chad was "enjoying" himself at this moment, wasn’t it his own foolishness, his lust for an extreme adrenalin fix, that put him here to begin with?

"Would you at least consider a jump? Do you have any idea what kind of set-up is required if I have to rig a rescue line for you? I’m off duty in half an.."

"My GOD!" the kid interrupted. "Please shut up and save me! I’m not gonna make it, man!"

Bannion shifted uneasily. "Just try to calm down," Jack pleaded. "We’ll figure something out."

Chad’s partner now took it upon herself to hasten the rescue. "Ranger Bannion?" she asked softly and Jack turned away from the cliff face.

"Please? Please help him?" She leaned toward the ranger, her perfectly structured young face was just inches from his own. A tear rolled down the curve of her cheek. A lock of her surf blonde hair fell carelessly across one brilliantly clear azure blue eye (She had another eye, just as blue, on the other side). She buried her face in Bannion’s uniform shirt and sobbed quietly. "I don’t know what I’d do without him...please save him."

This is why I live alone, thought Bannion. Why do they still get to me?

"Okay...Okay!" He looked at the girl, shook his head in defeat.

"Chad, can you hear me?"

Chad whimpered, almost panting, "Yeah...please dude, like help me."

"If you can hang on just a bit longer, I’m going back to the rescue cache. I’ll get a rope and gear and then I’ll climb above you, set an anchor, and get you off the slickrock. Okay?"

"Okay, man" he mumbled.

Jack moved away from the shade of the juniper, turned toward the patrol cruiser and the girl called out, "It’ll be fine now Chad. The nice ranger is going to take care of everything. And remember your blonde honey is waiting for you down here."

Bannion looked up, just in time to see the kid smirk. "Right on!" grinned Chad.

Right on?

Ranger Bannion stopped dead in the hot sand and turned. "What did you say? Did you just say ‘right on’?"

"Huh?" Chad shrugged.

"Did you just say, ‘right on.’? Three minutes ago you were screaming for your life. You were sobbing like a three year old, Chad. Now I’m off to gather fifty pounds of rescue gear---ropes, harnesses, anchor bolts, goddamn carabiners---so I can come back and rescue your sorry ass and now that the moment of crisis has passed, you’ve already moved ahead in your own vacant little mind to this evening’s romp with your gorgeous groupie here?...What’s your name again, sweet cheeks?"

"Er...Heather," she stammered.

"You want me to work overtime, probably for free, delay my days off, and risk my life so you and Heather here can have a Big Grope this evening?"

"Hey ranger," flashed the girl, "You can’t talk to us like that."

"Really?" said Jack, "Maybe you’d like to find a ranger of your own choosing? The visitor center is only eighteen miles away. I’m sure your idiot boyfriend can hang on another couple hours in this heat while you try to find an employee of the National Park Service who is more...accommodating?"

Heather glared fiercely.

"I’ll go get the gear. Try to keep Chad calm til I get back."

She watched Bannion hurry back to the cruiser. "You’re a real asshole. You know that Ranger?"

"Madam," he replied with unflinching sincerity, "You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot your bohunk off the cliff face with my service revolver. That would have got him down in no time at all." Bannion patted the holster of his sidearm, smiled grimly as he pulled himself behind the wheel, slammed the door, turned the ignition and raced back to the Devils Garden rescue cache.

Heather, visualizing the "nice ranger" snapping off a few rounds at her rimrocked boyfriend, shook with anger. What kind of monster is this man? She wondered. I thought rangers liked to help people. It was clear to her, Ranger Jack Bannion was quite insane.

It took another two hours to extricate young Chad Harrington from his precarious perch. As Bannion had feared, there wasn’t a natural anchor point to be found, once he’d climbed to a location above the stranded hiker. Not a large rock outcropping or an overhang. Not a solidly rooted juniper. Not even a big boulder. He was forced to drill three holes in the sandstone with his hand drill, a tedious task, even in this soft rock, then place expansion bolts in each hole, and rig an equalizing harness to the three bolts—if one bolt gave, the other two would "equalize" the strain and hopefully hold their combined weight.

Jack really needed a backup and was even in violation of park climbing regs; a second rope and a belayer were mandatory, but he’d already spent precious minutes pointing out the absurdity of this "rescue" to Chad. They would now both be twelve goddamn feet above the ground. If Jack expected this idiot to endure a fall, he must be willing to risk it himself. Fair was fair.

By sunset, the ordeal was over. Chad touched the ground, pumped the air with a clenched fist and yelled, "What a rush! What a fuckin’ rush!" Heather raced to embrace him and she almost looked tearful again for a moment. But she turned away from her man and caught sight of the rescuer, now coiling the ropes and loading the gear into the cruiser.

"Ranger Bannion? she shouted.

Jack looked up, caught sight of the beautiful "honey blonde" walking his way. She really was a sight to behold. What the hell, he thought. No point in staying mad. And she’s nice to look at. If she wants to thank me for saving that fathead, I’ll just let it go. Hell, maybe she’ll see the foolishness of her ways and abandon that kid for a guy with a bit more...experience.

What was it Jack’s hero and favorite author always said? Hope springs eternal in the male gonads.

"Yes, Heather," Jack said as he snapped carabiners together. "Looks like your boy is no worse for wear."

"Ranger Bannion," she snarled. "I just want to let you know I will be filing a grievance against you for the reprehensible and disgusting, and may I even say threatening, way you treated Chad and me. You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a public servant and I’d like your badge number."

Bannion looked surprised, but only for a moment. "I don’t have a badge number," he said. "Why does everybody always want a badge number?"

"Well then, how do I report you?"

Bannion sighed, "Just tell them it was that ‘asshole ranger’ at the Devils Garden. They know me down there. I don’t need a badge number, ma’m." Jack thought of B. Traven. "I DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ BADGE NUMBER!"

She looked at him vacantly.

"Don’t you get it? ‘Stinkin’ badge number? ‘The Treasure of Sierra Madre?’ Goddamn, I crack myself up sometimes."

The girl said, "You really are insane. And we’re going to report you."

Jack paused. "It’s what keeps me from going crazy, Heather...Have a nice night." He tipped his battered un-official, non-regulation straw Stetson, Gary Cooper-style, and headed home.

By the time he’d put away the ropes and hardware, it was past nine and he was too tired to drive a hundred miles into the tall pines, but Bannion was determined to get away from the trailer and the tourists.

Bannion dressed quickly, turned off the park’s Motorola base set and locked the trailer behind him. He kept his truck equipped at all times with camp gear, a grub box and other necessities, including a 1918 Winchester 30/30 rifle, a treasure he kept locked in a wooden box that was bolted to the truck’s steel bed. He loved to "be prepared," as his Boy Scout motto admonished him to do, so many years ago. All he needed, at the end of the week was to climb in and go.

He traveled slowly at night, never faster than forty, because the wildlife in the park was too precious to run over. He’d spent more nights than he could ever hope to recall, patrolling the park roads. He knew the nightscape intimately. He chased faded midget rattlers off the asphalt, braked for the mule deer, and carefully watched the kamikaze antics of his favorite jack rabbits. He’d once encountered an entire family of long-eared owls, sitting atop the old wooden Upper Fiery Furnace sign. He knew these critters on a personal level; they were the reason he stayed.

Jack turned off the main highway at Balanced Rock and followed the dirt track a few hundred yards, where he paused briefly and then shut off the motor. Just over the rise, out of sight from here, was Ed Abbey’s trailer site. Few park visitors knew it was here; few cared. When Bannion first occupied the trailer at the Devils Garden, he had been hounded by Abbeyphiles, who, like him, had been transformed by Desert Solitaire. He’d finally scribbled a sign that he attached to his front door that read:

THIS WAS NOT

EDWARD ABBEY’S TRAILER.

GO AWAY.

But they’d kept coming and Bannion couldn’t say he minded that much. It was how he found kindred spirits. Now, all these years later, the sign was unnecessary. A few old farts like himself stopped by to reminisce about Ed, but rarely did anyone under 30 bother to ask or even know who he was. They came to climb rocks and party.

Bannion pulled his ThermaRest pad and his light down bag from behind the seat and depended on the starlight to find his sleeping spot, the same hollowed out slab of Entrada sandstone he’d used as a firm mattress for decades. It was as familiar to him as...well, nothing was as familiar as this isolated hideout.

A few puffs filled the sleeping pad---one of this culture’s rare great inventions, Bannion conceded---and he crawled into the bag. It was still warm and the rock beneath him continued to generate heat, so he left it unzipped and kept his right leg out of the bag altogether. But later, in the dry high desert, he knew the coolness would come, especially up here where the air could move.

He peered at the stars that filled the black dome above him. It was April and Orion was about to disappear from the night sky until early Autumn. When it returned, on the pre-dawn east horizon, it would portend the coming of winter and cold nights and short days and all the melancholy and ennui and bad memories that came with them. Still, the starlight on this night was stunning. So many stars. So far away.

But he remembered his own words, spoken just days before everything changed. He could remember the shattered look. "Even on the brightest and starriest of nights," he’d declared, "it’s still mostly black out there. As black and hard as the godless void...Get used to it."

He buried the memory as he was prone to do. Enough. He turned on his side and assumed a modified pre-natal position. All he remembered of this afternoon’s rescue and confrontation was the weariness he now felt in his shoulders and arms from the rappel. Ultimately, he rationalized, he’d been a good ranger who had done his job. Maybe he had been a tad cranky but crankiness was part of his charm. He’d convinced himself of that.

Now as he drifted toward sleep, it occurred to Bannion once again, that he was, himself, in violation of park rules and regulations. All campers must stay in designated campsites or possess a valid backcountry permit. Violators will be prosecuted. Bannion muttered drowsily to himself, "I don’t need no stinkin’ permit."

Moments later the sounds of the night, the chirping crickets, the hoots of a Great Horned Owl, the rustle of Mule Deer browsing the scrub oak, were embraced and amplified by the heavy erratic snores of an illegal camper. Above him, deep in the crevices of the Dewey Bridge sandstone, the Raven tucked his head beneath his wing and tried to muffle the roar. He dreamed of things to come, and, for once, the Raven slept poorly.