It seems to me that the rural West has
two types of people: those who believe internal combustion engines
are the answer to everything, and those who don’t. Few dirt
bikers ride mountain bikes, and seldom do you find cross-country
skiers hopping on snowmobiles. We’re usually in one camp or
the other.
Or you could think of the two groups as People
of Fumes or People of Sweat. They can often be distinguished by
their pickups. The fume folks usually drive big horses,
three-quarter-ton pickups with extended cabs. They usually burn
diesel, which is less expensive but makes these pickups louder and
more stinky. They could be driving VW bugs for all the cargo they
normally carry. But they’re prepared. You need payload when
you’re hauling a snowmobile or ATV to the hills.
By
contrast, People of Sweat are on ponies, usually Japanese-made.
Sometimes they are called “play pickups,” even if they have been
getting bigger and more gas-guzzling in recent years. Even so,
People of Sweat don’t need garages-on-wheels just to go
skiing, biking, or hiking. Also, unlike People of Fumes, who tend
to do physical work in their jobs, People of Sweat usually spend
workdays riding desks, clattering away at computers and telephones.
My affiliation, if not already obvious, is with the
People of Sweat. It’s a philosophic affiliation but also
economic. While People of Sweat are both rich and poor, the People
of Fumes draw at least middling wages. Big horses don’t come
cheap.
But better even than the pickups we drive, the
easiest way to discern our cultural affiliations is when we get
stuck in snow, mud or something else. What are our instincts then?
I noticed this dichotomy this winter while driving up a
narrow, snowpacked road to go backcountry skiing. Skis flung in the
back, we were in my rusty two-wheel-drive Toyota pickup. Coming at
us was a rusting four-wheel-drive Ford pickup, a snowmobile riding
its back.
Pulling over to let us pass, the People of
Fumes snowmobiler miscalculated. Snow had obscured a deep trough.
Soon, he was mired up to his hubs, stuck in a bad way.
Bailing out of the big, burly pickup was a big, burly snowmobiler.
After pausing with a disgusted look to light a cigarette, he locked
his front-wheel hubs into four-wheel-drive. Then, returning to the
driver’s seat, he did what every person from the Culture of
Fumes does best — exercising hard his right ankle.
The truck rocked, the tires spun, and he’d dig down to
gravel, spit it out. That would lurch him a few inches farther
along in the trough. At the rate he was going, it would be spring
before he’d be out of there.
“We need a shovel,” I
told my companion. “He’ll never get out.”
I know
something about getting stuck after 25 years of mostly
mountain-town living, never once owning a four-wheel-drive.
Four-wheel-drive used to be a rarity; all we had were chains. One
night I even chained up atop Rabbit Ears Pass, that blizzard magnet
near Steamboat Springs, Colo. Chains and a shovel: Those are the
poor person’s four-wheel drive.
The easy winters of
recent years have made me lax. Leaving the snowmobile behind in the
snow trough, we went to the trailhead to borrow a shovel. I think
the snowmobiler was actually glad to see me. “I got the sumbitch
stuck last weekend when I stopped to help somebody. You’d
think I’d get a grip on it,” he muttered.
But being
glad to see me wasn’t the same as conceding wisdom to the
Culture of Sweat. After about three minutes of digging, mostly by
me, this man from the Culture of Fumes was back in his cab, drawing
hard on another cigarette, making those big wheels spin once again.
More lurching, more gravel. “He’ll never get it
out,” I repeated confidently to my companion.
He promptly
proved me wrong, a triumph of Manifold Destiny. As all People of
Fumes know, we tamed this country not with sweat, but with the
internal combustion engine.
And so we continued our
journeys, the snowmobiler to his home, and me and my companion to
our appointment to go backcountry skiing. After a few hours of
good, clean Calvinistic sweat, I felt better about life again.
Allen Best is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He lives and
writes in the Denver area.
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