‘It’s true that there is a porta-potty standing so deeply in the red sandstone of Utah that many assume it has significance beyond the traveler’s base biological needs. This specimen is two days by foot from the nearest trailhead and located in an area that is not at all popular with travelers of any kind. It floods in the rain, bakes in the sun, and is home to a particular type of stinging insect that is equally formidable in the precipitation or heat. The trails are unkempt and signage is poor but somebody, somewhere out there keeps ‘The Redstone Closet’ clean and functional. This leads people to believe:
- ‘The Redstone Closet’ is marker for, if not a portal to, some underground treasure or facility. This begs the question, of course- why mark something secret with something so conspicuous which leads to:
- ‘The Redstone Closet’ is a trap. But a trap for whom? The curious? The bladder-full? And does it spring in a way not immediately clear or is it a sort of vinegar trap? It’s difficult to understand the motivation behind such a scheme so most default to the obvious:
- ‘The Redstone Closet’ is the result of a bureaucrat moving money around and having to show some physical evidence of that expenditure.’
The fourth, undiscussed possibility for ‘The Redstone Closet’ is that it offers some small oasis from the difficult terrain and wildlife. It is, for instance, the first time I approach a porta-potty with something like excitement. Certainly the first time I think of it as the most beautiful thing in my immediate surroundings.
I slap at my leg where one of the Redstone biters has snuck in under my clothes. I wring my bandana out onto the red earth beneath me. It’s taken me three days to get here after choosing the wrong branch of a fork. I haven’t seen anyone in all of that time. I’m not even sure I saw cars on the highway as I approached, so it is difficult for me to stumble around to the entrance-side of ‘The Redstone Closet’ and to find the door locked, its little binary flag reading ‘OCCUPIED.’
A man is dying inside. Or murdering. Vulgar sounds. Wet slaps.
I turn back, then, and welcome the biters as a new unlikely oasis in a world that continues to amaze me with its strange places and with its violence.
-traveler
