Dead End Road

Down at the end of Dead End Road stands a solitary snowman complete with coal eyes, carrot nose and a sandy smile. Whoever travels there might be bewildered to find such a statue out in the middle of the desert.

Due south of Robbers Roost Canyon above the canyon rim there is knoll on which stands our snowman. He is there at the end of the road, the end of the line, contemplating the silliness od his existence. He doesn’t know better and neither did the two people that built him. He is facing northeasterly into the wilderness that Butch Cassidy and his band of robbers only knew, only a few years ago. Now it is known by outdoor enthusiasts.

Arriving at the end of Dead End Road is like arriving at one of the most ethereal places I’ve found in the desert. It was a combination of little side roads that took us there and by no guessing and no direction at all we came up and found ourselves starring down into the beautiful rocky canyons of Robbers Roost. In all my desert travels I have never ended up where I wanted to be by accident. But there’s a snowman there now. Just a snowman.

Our snowman represents the simpler things in life. In total we drove 500 miles to build a snowman on the edge of nowhere. There wasn’t anything else we could do there but build a snowman. We couldn’t even stay very long because of the continual snow. There are these moments in life: all tied up in the world of technology and progress and the peaceful moments when nothing really matters, only living.

Down at the end of Dead End Road, we lived like people and not gears in the machine. Is there anything more important than living as a person whose thoughts are his own, or her own, and not purchased by the hour by some “entrepreneur” as it were?

I’ve had a continual argument festering in my mind that has something to do with what Karl Marx talked about: Men become part of the machine of society, partly to survive, and then, slowly, the man is stripped from him. By the time this happens he is only concerned with surviving with what can be purchased with payment received from his labor. He survives to work among the cogs and gearing. He is a slave to the machine.

And Thoreau, what about that man is important? I mean, living on the edge of a pond wasting away in a the pages of his own work? Well, have you ever enjoyed a cup of tea on the crisp morning air at the edge of a pond knowing that you fully own your life and that you report to no one for livelihood? Think about that. Think about building a snowman in the middle of the desert and all the while you have no one to report to. Just think about climbing a mountain and knowing that once the summit is reached you don’t have to hurry down to join the rest of the world.

Traveling down the trail without a name is part of that ideal. Find yourself and break loose from the perpetual habit of submission. Be full of life and live something better. You don’t have to quit your job but save the most important part of yourself for you and those moments.