I don't know what made me do it. Some kind of grim, masochistic satisfaction, I suppose. To prove to myself, at least, that it was as bad as I'd feared. That I hadn't been a lifelong cynic for no damn reason at all. Now I know. Now I know that everything we'd feared was here. And ahead of schedule.
I moved away from the United States in 2006 and relocated on a small island chain in the South Pacific called Funafuti. I was a fool to go there, however, and had already been warned. Global warming and rising sea levels jeopardized the island atoll as far back as 1999. By 2013, much of the island system began to disappear and by 2025, Funafuti was gone. Its inhabitants were allowed to immigrate to New Zealand. I was lucky enough to find a sponsor in Australia and moved to a small town in Western Australia called Boyup Brook, bought a small farm, married a woman of aboriginal descent who was half my age, and raised sheep until I was almost 80 years old. But recently I'd begun to wonder about America and the place I'd called home for almost 25 years.
I wasn't even sure I'd be allowed to return to Moab. Transportation schedules became a lot more rigid in the last decade. International flights were exorbitantly expensive and difficult to book. And in the U.S. the highway infrastructure of the country had deteriorated badly. The government could simply not keep up with the demand that 400 million citizens placed on it. Further, the cost of oil, now passing the $100/barrel mark, ended leisure driving as we knew it back in the "good old days" of the late 20th Century. How I miss those days and my old GMC pickup.
And so the government was faced with some options: It could raise taxes to levels sure to trigger even more downturns in the economy. Or it could restrict use and hope to extend the lifetime of the rapidly crumbling Interstate System and the national oil reserve.
I spent a small fortune on my flight, applied for a U.S. domestic travel visa and hoped for the best, but without much hope. Even if I was given a visa, I was in no condition to drive. I had to give it up years ago, not because I'd lost my driving edge, but because I could never grasp the new technology. I liked using a steering wheel and pointing the vehicle where I wanted it to go. These auto-lane sensors were an annoyance to me and I kept trying to override the system. I may be pushing 90, but I don't need some damn computer system to tell me where to go.
My travel prospects looked bleak. Then, and this is how much of my life has been, coincidence and good luck changed my fortunes.
I had not heard from Mike Marooney in more than 35 years. The man who had made such an indelible impression on the Moab Community in the 1990s vanished after he sold the Mexican restaurant and never returned. Some of us stayed in touch via the old internet email system for a few years, but the correspondence dwindled and then stopped.
But a few weeks ago, out of the ether came a faintly familiar sound. The caller had put an electronic block on the video transmission, but the voice and the words shook long-forgotten memories from remote corners of my brain...
"Hey Look! I got chicken all over me!"
I stared at the static on the monitor. My hands began to tremble. "Jesus Christ," I muttered.
"Thank you for the elevated status, but it's only me. Marooney!"
"I can't believe it. I was sure you were dead."
"Are you nuts? I'll outlive all of you bastards."
Marooney had invested wisely in his middle-age (he bought a roller-ball arena) and now, at 85, was living comfortably near San Diego with his 32 year old wife/nurse. When I told him about my travel plans, he was elated. "I keep a close electronic eye on Moab but I've been thinking about a return visit myself, Stiles. I doubt if any of my creditors are still alive. You can ride along with me."
So it was arranged that he and Heather (the wife-nurse) would pick me up at the jetport and that we'd travel by Interstate 10 to Phoenix, then north on I-17 all the way to Moab, Utah.
"There's an interstate highway in Moab?"
"Been there since 2025."
With lane sensors, the drive was effortless, although the traffic was insane. Even with driving restrictions and the price of gasoline (we never did embrace hydrogen technology), cars and trucks were bumper-to-bumper and moving at 80 mph. We by-passed Phoenix and Flagstaff during the long night drive, but I considered a side-trip to the South Rim.
"Can't do it," Marooney advised. "Not unless you made a reservation four to six years ago.
"Four to six years? That's impossible."
Marooney just chuckled. "You're in for a shock, my little buckaroo...it's going to get worse."
We hurtled north through Monument Valley at sunrise and into Utah. The scenery looked the same, or what I could see of it, but the long vistas were long gone."
"What is this haze? Is there a forest fire?" I asked.
"Stiles, you've been gone too long. This is 'Blade Runner' come to life. Remember that old movie with that actor guy? What was his name?"
"Harrison Ford?"
"Yeah...the guy who became governor of Wyoming. THIS is the way it is. The shit blowing in from California, from Phoenix, Salt Lake...it's brown sky by day and orange sky by night."
Old highway 191 was gone--swallowed by the interstate. Hole "n" the Rock, was now on a freeway off ramp, but what shocked me more was the exit ramp sign: "South Moab." I learned that Moab's population had recently passed 60,000, more than double what build-out studies in the 1990s calculated the valley could handle.
And sure enough, the growth had spilled over Blue Hill and even beyond the now defunct tourist attraction (I learned that Chinese investors bought Christensen's sandstone home in 2027 and now use it as a private vacation resort for many of its high-level executives.
Finally, we descended Blue Hill and into "town," 13 miles south of the old city limit. In 2037, Grand County finally annexed a 35 square mile segment of neighboring San Juan County and a year later, after almost a century of debate the county and city governments consolidated. The vote was close and many of the "old Moabites" were furious. In the early days of the 21st century, after the passage of an "anti-junk ordinance" many of Moab's residents had moved across the county line where building codes and land ordinances were less strict. With consolidation, the city moved to condemn and remove many of the residents and their modular homes, trailers and vehicles. They had all sought refuge in San Juan County and now they faced an uncertain future. The old owners could derive some comfort from the price their land brought (A five acre ranchette lot with water and power sold for about a million dollars.), but for many the money meant nothing. There was no place else to go.
Many of the old homes in Moab were gone--torn down to make room for more high-density housing developments. I tried to find my old home on Locust Lane, but couldn't even find the street, much less the house. Incredibly, Dave's Corner Market was still standing at the corner of 4th East and Mill Creek Drive, but was now called Maynard's & Maynard's and featured optional "nude shopping."
"Poor ol' Dave," I said. "He must be rolling over in his grave."
"Don't bury me too soon, ol' buddy."
It was Dave. I couldn't believe it. First Marooney. Now this. Dave still held the lease on the old corner market and was quite wealthy now himself. We considered the "nude option" but none of us quite cut the figure that we once did. Except Marooney who had invested a small portion of his billions in a complete re-musculature and skeletal revitalization bionic procedure. The son of a bitch had the body of a forty year old.
"Pretty strange. When I was 40 I had the body of an 85 year old. And now at 85 I have the body of a 40 year old...the best that money and modern science can buy."
Downtown was unrecognizable. All the old buildings were gone; of course, there weren't all that many old buildings in 2000--Moabites never did have much use for leaving things alone. Much of the valley was covered with ten to twenty story condo developments. Something had been needed to handle the swelling throngs of emigrants from the big cities.
Dave invited us to stay at his home, but I was determined to find some of my old camping spots and spend the night under the few remaining stars that could pierce the haze. We headed north toward Arches and Marooney started to remind me...
"I told you before...no reservation, no entry to the parks!"
"I know Mike. I'm not headed for Arches. I want to take that old jeep road by Dalton Wells. I've got to get away from all this."
"Stiles...you just don't get it. You can't...can NOT get off this road. This vehicle is programmed to go where we're allowed to go. All that public land out there is closed, just like the parks. The wilderness zones. All of it. There's a waiting list three years long, just to do an overnight at the Dalton Wells Camping Area. Of course there's a Marriot at Dalton...$425 double occupancy."
"Somehow I never dreamed it would be THIS bad...what's it like in Thompson?
"Don't ask."
Hopeless. We were able to program the vehicle for a return trajectory and back to Moab. Dave welcomed us to his home--the same house that I remembered from so many years ago. I slumped in a large chair in front of the video screen and stared blankly at the screen.
"Pretty awful, Dave. Except for seeing you guys," I motioned to Marooney, "I wish I'd stayed in Boyup Brook. How in the hell have you survived with all this?"
Sakrison smiled sadly and leaned back on the sofa. "I have really good dreams, Stiles, of the way it was. Seems like that's enough to keep me going....Those people?" He pointed to the rush of traffic outside his window, "...those people have no idea."
We opened an old bottle of Wild Turkey and passed it around the room. "Besides," he added, "They still call me Friendly Dave."
