I stayed at the Roadway Inn in Big Water, Utah for the night. I knew this was the place to be when spotting these male and female cowboy silhouettes framing a red rock outside Room 605, 200 meters (or yards) effectively reduced to zero. Zeroing in, I took it.
The next day I set out for Bryce Canyon not far north of here. I intended to become one of those flying squirrels and survey the whole place by air. I succeeded, though not in the main task.
Eventually I found the actual Red Rock but it took a while. Bret helped. Said it’d been at least several years since he was up there with his ailments and all but we eventually stumbled upon the approx. 20 foot long stone at the top of a canyon cascade. Red Rock Rest, he joked about the name and suddenly became sad. I in contrast was overjoyed as hell.
Strangest thing. We saw a rabbit when walking around it for the first time which then hopped away, leaving what appeared to be its own shadow for a second. Then the “shadow” itself became animated and scurried away, being revealed as what seemed to be a large rat by its shape and motion. We saw no other wildlife while there besides birds. And these two seen were superimposed as one when first encountered. We took it as a sign. Only later did we find out the meaning.
Bret (and Sooki) soon gave me the nickname The Fly because of my prowess in the sky and it stuck like paper. Later when the newspaper articles stopped being published it changed to Airey for reasons unknown to me. In honor of someone I gathered but no one ever gave any details. A “nobody” is all they said about the person. Unlike me.
(to be continued)
