One summer, my best high school buddy Gary and I went backpacking on Mt. San Jacinto, nearly 11,000 feet above Palm Springs.
For anyone not familiar with that mountain, the way to get there is by taking an aerial tram that climbs most of the way to the top — a 15 minute ride. The dangling compartment, when it passes a support tower, swings forward and backward in a way that makes everyone say weeee and cling tightly to the handrails.
We had a great hike, scrambling over the pine covered shoulder of the mountain, down to the village of Idyllwild to buy an overnight camping pass (which we’d forgotten to get in advance), and then back up some steep switchbacks for a good night’s rest under the stars.
We were so exhausted, and we would’ve slept like the dead, except for the scary noises that lurk in every direction in a dark forest on a moonless night. A quick turn of the flashlight revealed several sets of eyes reflected in the beam, with no easy way to know how far away they were, or what sort of creatures they belonged to.
I doubt we slept for more than an hour, and the next morning, when it was time to return to the upper station for the return trip back down the mountain, we were just a little bit punchy and full of leftover adrenalin.
We got onto the tram with a bunch of freshly scrubbed tourists that smelled of Brut aftershave and Jungle Gardenia. Of course, we were covered in mud and dirt, and probably smelled like campfire and sweat. The car was filled nearly to the brim, and we were now up close and personal with a bunch of wholesome folks from the midwest.
A tape-recorded message began to warble, “Welcome to Tramwayland. You are now 6,500 feet above the parking lot…” Gary and I thought the muffled and distorted voice, like everything else at that age, was pretty funny, and we began to laugh. But when we scanned the faces of our fellow passengers, they were either enchanted with the scenery or had no sense of humor. We both looked at the ceiling, and tried to be more like them. I thought the ride would never end.
Then Gary had a really great idea to liven things up: He unsheathed a large hunting knife (hey, we could have used that last night for self defense), pointed it right under my nose, and in his best deranged voice muttered, “Don’t EVER pull a deer knife on someone in a closed compartment.”
There were several audible gasps from our fellow passengers, and we began to “heh-heh-heh” to demonstrate that we were only kidding, but I don’t think they bought it. In fact, they all began to shuffle to the other side of the dangling car, which made it lean at a sickening angle.
There we were, hanging above the rocky canyon with no place to run, trapped for ten more minutes in an eternity of intense claustrophobia, swinging from tower to tower. We tried to make smalltalk with each other, but the rest of the car was silence. I was sure the police would be waiting for us in the parking lot at the bottom, but this was before cell phones.
When we finally got to the lower station, we practically pried the door open, ran to my car with our clunky backpacks and clanging canteens, and careened into the blazing desert — at the precise speed limit so as not to attract any attention.
Sleep well Gary — 1955–2019. Love you man.
SMUDGED POSTCARDS 