On the drive home from Phoenix, where we'd been visiting her aunt, my friend Laurel told me the story of her brother Jack … the man who disappeared. Jack was 10 years older than Laurel, and while she idolized him in the way children do with their big brother, she recognized that he had always been, she said, a little "different". He was very intelligent and did well in school and in his career, but even as a child she instinctively knew he wasn’t like other people. He preferred to play by himself instead of with the other kids, occupying himself for hours with games and sports that he invented. He seemed surprised when their parents or other people expressed their exasperation with him for not being more interested in the world around him. It’s as if he was clueless about their emotional connection to him. Well, of course she is well aware at this point that these are classic symptoms of high-functioning autism, but for whatever reason no one thought of that back then. Those who knew Jack brushed it off as his being somewhat eccentric, and left it at that. One of Jack’s eccentricities, as he got older, was his tendency to simply disappear for weeks or months at a time. No one knew where he went or what he did, but it started when he was still in high school. Their mother would find a hastily-scribbled note in his room … "back in a few days" … as casually as though he were running down to the corner for a newspaper. Inevitably, however, the "few days" stretched into weeks. By the time Jack had reached his 30’s, the disappearances could last for years. Someone would phone him or go by his apartment, only to discover he’d moved out without telling anyone, leaving no forwarding address, no contact information, nothing. At one point, no one heard from him for four years. When he turned up at Thanksgiving, he was surprised that the family would be distressed by his lack of communication. Their father was angry with him, Laurel said, and he was contrite for a time, but she knew it would happen again. She was right. In 1990, Jack left again, to where they never knew, but no one in the family was surprised any longer. This disappearance lasted much longer than the others, however, and as the years passed, Laurel wondered if he would ever return. Their parents both died within a week of each other in 2002, and Jack was still gone. They had had no word from him for 12 years. Was he even alive? Was he living some sort of double life somewhere? Could he be in prison? After their parents’ funeral, which of course Jack missed, Laurel decided to try and track him down. Apparently it’s not that easy to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, but nonetheless she managed to locate, in a small city in Utah, a business where he’d worked in 1994. The trail seemed to go cold there, however. She learned that he’d quit the job, sold his truck, and bought a used motorcycle that year, but hadn’t renewed the registration or insurance the following year. She was able to get a court order to look at his banking and phone records. There seemed to be nothing amiss with them, but they stopped at 1994. Fearing the worst, she checked the state death and prison records, but nothing turned up there either. Then a chance conversation with a sheriff’s deputy revealed that the motorcycle had been found in 1998, four years after Jack bought it, hidden in a dense stand of brush beside some cliffs in a remote part of the southern Utah desert, many miles from the nearest town. The cycle was neatly parked, but it was obvious that it had been purposely hidden, and from the dust and bird droppings that covered it, it had clearly been there for some time. The deputy told Laurel that they had searched the surrounding desert briefly for the cycle’s owner, but since there was no sign of foul play and no one reported him missing, they hadn’t done a full search and rescue. Still, it was rather odd, he said … who abandons their motorcycle in the middle of nowhere? And that’s where the situation stands today. Jack has never returned, and Laurel was never able to find any further information about his whereabouts or activities. She’s certain in her own mind that he’s dead. It’s now been over 15 years since there was any sign of him. Her theory is that he was hiking in and around the vast canyons in southern Utah, which he loved to do, and fell to his death from the cliffs. She believes that his bones to this day lie bleaching in the desert sun, in a quiet little unknown canyon somewhere, and quite possibly will never be found. Having seen that part of Utah and hiked there myself, I can attest to the plausibility of her theory. That’s some of the wildest country left on the continent. As she tells the story, there’s an uneasy wistfulness in her eyes. Losing a loved one is heartbreaking enough without the additional burden of uncertainty. "It would be nice to have closure," she says. "Just to know for sure." All his life, Jack was a man who liked to disappear. In the end, he got his wish. He died alone, perhaps with considerable suffering, in some of the harshest and most unforgiving land within American shores. But to me, the saddest part of the entire story, more even than Jack’s tragic death, is that it was years before anyone even noticed he was gone.
I don't know about it being some of the wildest country, but it is certainly some of the most god forsaken... Sad story, Cali' ZW
Ed Abbey did a similar thing in Utah: Went down a desert gully and into a pocket where he couldn't descend and damn near couldn't get back up. Also they didn't have 'return registration' hikes in that time and place. Last few times I went into mountain wilderness by myself on a multi-day trip (Jasper Park, Alberta), I filled out a return registration stating my route, intended time of return, vehicle make and licence, and so forth. I also didn't deviate from my stated route once I'd left the trailhead, and had bright clothing (yellow raincoat) visible from the air. Still, life isn't completely safe, unless you stay home forever watching TV... As far as leaving home without telling anyone, I did that once at about age 19. After I'd been gone about a week I phoned home. My frantic parents never forgave me.
I disappeared from friends and family for 28 years.I can relate.The friends were surprised and happy when I returned . Family--still gone. Mostly dead. Life unfolds that way for some of us.
I remember reading his account of it. He did some very foolish things along the way, as I recall. He was lucky almost beyond belief to get out. You can't do foolish things in the Utah/Arizona canyon country and get away with them very often. Makes a compelling story, though. From Everett Ruess on down. Remember the story of Aron Ralston, the guy who was supposedly trapped beneath a boulder in Blue John Canyon in Canyonlands Nat'l Park and cut off his arm in order to get free? I still find that story very difficult to believe, at least as stated. Might be a good subject for another thread. Well, it certainly points out the differing perspectives of child and parent. I guess I wouldn't go so far as "never forgiving" you, but as a parent this sort of thing is the first stage of your worst nightmare. Of course you're going to be extremely upset.
Well, when I think of somewhere wild, I think of places inaccessible. This place is mostly assessable by helicopter if nothing else. In the Bitterroot-Selway just across the border of Montana and Idaho, there is the wildest country in the lower 48. large tracts of completely inaccessible forest, deep ravines choked by jackstrawed fir and pine, not even accessible on foot. I have seen it and I have no idea how Elk and deer and such can get through it...but they do! The God forsaken part...Well, I'm not really religious, but that's the phrase that enters my head whenever I have driven through that part of southern Utah...I even rode through there on a motorcycle once... just spooky! ZW
Fortunately for conservationists, that country is good only for photographers, rattlesnakes and Mormons. (These groups overlap considerably.) Probably a good place to hide out if you're on the run. However, that's before the day of the helicopter and the satellite camera. Caliente's Keet Seel story had me thinking of writing a story about a more or less secret communal cliff dwelling functioning today. However, between satellite cameras, the DEA, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and various state law enforcement types, keeping a hiding place hidden wouldn't last for any period unless there were payoffs going to corrupt officials. I had a hard time working that into a story line in a convincing fashion.
Yep, that's wild country, for sure. We hiked overnight into the Selway-Bitterroot early one winter years ago, breaking trail through the snow, looking for a hot spring that was supposedly on that particular trail. This was on the Idaho side of Lolo Pass. There are lots of hot springs in the Bitterroots, but we never found this one. Sometime during the night the dogs jumped up and began barking like crazy. I dunno what they saw, but whatever it was decided to go on its way and leave us be. I'm still of the opinion, though, that the canyon country in southern Utah can match it on the "wildness" scale. Ever been in The Maze section of Canyonlands Nat'l Park? You won't be riding a motorcycle through there, I guarantee. It's like being on another planet in there. And yep, spooky for sure. That's the only place I've ever seen where the landscape itself frightened me. This photo is looking toward The Maze from Island in the Sky in Canyonlands. It may not look possible from here, but there are hiking routes that go thousands of feet down the cliffs and through those canyons to the river. This is near the confluence of the Green and the Colorado. After storms, when the Green is a deep olive green and the Colorado is a deep blood red, the swirling eddies of the confluence look like Christmas.
You could hide in there for a very long time, I think. There are literally millions of canyons and side canyons, and side canyons to the side canyons. Spend a little time in and around Canyonlands Nat'l Park and you'll get a good taste of it. By the way, the photo in my first post is of the Dark Canyon Wilderness, which is across the Colorado from The Maze, just south of the Needles district of Canyonlands, and one bitch of a hike.
I've been down in The Maze a time or two. I've driven down the Flint Trail before they graded it for the goddamn mountain bikes and when saying you "drove" down was a pretty fair joke. "Tumbled" would be a better word. There's a stretch in Teapot Canyon, on the way out to the Dollhouse, where you don't get it out of low first for a good five hours, and you're doing well to make 9 miles in that time. Hell, I can walk faster than that. That's some hairy country.
