Such Is the Life on the Edge of a Ghost Lake in the Middle of Nowhere: A Great Basin Journal Entry

Everest and I measured cold on our way back from his doctors appointment:  -4 out in the valley, and that was at 5:30 in the afternoon.  When it reached -1, I joked how it was warm enough to go to the beach.  And then, to his dismay, I realized we were on the beach--the 15,500-year-old beach of Ancient Lake Bonneville, which just happened to lap at the edges of where our little town now sits.  The boys get sick of it, but isn't it great, that while sitting on the edge of a cold, vast desert valley, our town is really a beach town? If the town had any imagination, we'd have a light house and oyster shops along a board walk.  But I seem to be the only one still living along the shores of a ghost lake, watching woolly mammoths graze. Everyone else is interested in growing alfalfa while weighing the pros and cons of occupying the BLM office or the national forest station.

By the time we got to town, it was zero.  As we approached Dry Creek, we stopped to say hello to Harold, Everest's "pet" eagle and his mate.  It was too dark to take pictures, but there they sat, regally looking out on the last of the sunset.

Harold - Photograph by Rio Brown

By the time we got to Dry Creek, it was 3 above.  I parked the van and went inside to get some warm water to thaw out the chickens' water dish.  Unfortunately, I found out their heat lamp was out.  I hoped the bulb had been knocked loose or that they'd somehow unhooked the lamp from the extension chord.  No luck.

I had to plow my way through 18 inches of snow to the trailer, where it's plugged in.  I found where the two extension chords meet, buried beneath the snow.  I unplugged it so that I could plug it into some Christmas light to check where the power failure was.  Again, no luck.  So I plowed through more snow to the outside of the trailer, where the plug had been knocked out.  "Easy enough," I thought, and plugged it back in. Wrong. No lights came on.  So, I decided to go inside the trailer and check the breaker.

Let's just say that it isn't easy to open a storm door out into 18 inches of snow.  The shovel, unfortunately was back at the house.

I returned with the shovel and did my best not to curse while shoveling the stairs and porch, and I did pretty dang good until I realized the trailer door was locked and that the keys were back at the house.

This time, I returned with the keys.  Luckily, the electricity was still on in the trailer, so nothing froze inside.  I checked the breakers, flicked a couple on and off, and checked outside.  Nothing.  Then I remembered that the test switch on the plug in the bathroom also controls the outside plug.  It had been tripped, and when I reset it, the Christmas light outside came back on.

I unplugged the Christmas lights and realized the connecting chord was buried in the snow.  More digging. The entire process took more than an hour.  All that work to get heat to chickens who no longer lay eggs because Rio's dog--let's just call him Satan--won't stop barking at them, and so they're in a frantic mess all of the time.

Such is the life on the edge of a ghost lake in the middle of nowhere.