There’s Wool in the Desert?

“Excuse me,” I say. She looks up from the gasoline pump nozzle jutting from the side of her big American pickup truck. “Do you know where Sheep Creek is?”

“Ship Creek?” she returns.

“No. Sheep Creek.”

“Ship?”

“No. Sheep. You know, woolly little critters.”

“Oh, no. I’m not from around here. I just came in from Oregon to buy a horse.”

Another big American pickup rumbles into a parking stall near the store. It has mule deer antlers bolted to the bumper above the red, white and blue of an Idaho license plate. I approach, and a Mexican man wearing Wranglers and a flannel shirt climbs down from his beat-up mount.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you know where Sheep Creek is?”

“Ship Creek?” he returns. I roll my eyes.

“Yea. Ship Creek.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You mean down there?” He waves an arm south toward an expanse of big sky.

“Yea. It’s a tributary of either the Owyhee or the Bruneau, but I don’t know which.”

“I don’t know,” he says again. “There are lots of canyons out there. Big country.”

“I know,” I say.

I return to my truck, which has got a backpack, ropes, ample layers of clothing and a sleeping bag in the back. Getting gear together took longer than expected, and that’s part of the reason I’m in this predicament. I’ll need to stop somewhere for food and water, but right now I simply need to figure out where I’m going.

I turn south and accelerate across the plain, take a deep breath and try to calm my fraying nerves. I can’t change the circumstances that landed me here, but I can try to deal with a calm mind. The first hint of the snow-capped Jarbidge Mountains protrude from the horizon, and then the highway drops through a notch in the plain’s basalt crust, descending toward the big meanders of the Snake River. At Highway 51 I turn left, crest a ridge and then descend once again into the Bruneau River valley, which is big and rusty—a worn-out place on the fringe of southwest Idaho’s desert wilderness. A sign at the edge of town announces: “You Have Entered the Impact Area of the Bruneau Hot Springs Snail.” I pull into the Bruneau One Stop, where a massive man with a red beard is rearranging things in the back of a truck.

“You know where Sheep Creek is?” I ask.

“Sheep Creek? Is that in Idaho?”

“Supposed to be.”

“I don’t know. I’m from Boise,” he says as if it were a world away. “There’s a lady inside.”

I enter the One Stop, a place captured by time. There are empty tables and chairs scattered around, and it smells like baking bread. A woman sits in a chair behind a cash register.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m not from around here, but I’m trying to figure out how to get to Sheep Creek.”

“Where’s that?” she says.

“Exactly.”

“You need to talk with Mike down at The Fishing Hole,” she says. “Mike knows this country real well. Just down the road, around the next bend.”

“You should rename it the Bruneau Two Stop.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

I return to the truck and coast around a bend to discover a one-story shanty with a sign that says The Fishing Hole. I take another deep breath, work to compose myself and go in.

A heavy-set lady is scratching at a Lottery ticket from behind a counter to my left. “Howdy,” she says without looking.

“Hi,” I say. “How you doing?”

She looks up. “Well, with any luck I’ll win a million bucks so I can get the hell out of here. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Sheep Creek,” I say, “but I don’t even know if it’s a tributary of the Bruneau of the Owyhee.”

“Bruneau,” she says. “It’s a tributary of the Bruneau. What you want to go out there for?”

“Long story,” I say. “Think you can help me with some directions?”

She pivots in her chair and references a stack of Bureau of Land Management maps, pulling one out labeled Sheep Creek.

“Sheep Creek,” she says, “has its own quadrangle.”

“What you looking for Sheep Creek for?” comes a voice from the other side of one of The Fishing Hole’s isles, and then an old man in Carhart coveralls and a Smith & Wesson ball cap appears.

“Long story,” I say again. “I’m looking for a friend.”

“Your friend all right?”

“Long story,” I say.

“Well, Mike’d be able to help you out, but he’s up Battle Creek today.”

“Is he fishing?”

“No. Running cattle.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Anyway,” says the lady who is beginning to spread the Sheep Creek quadrangle on the countertop. “You want to head out Highway 51 toward Elko and then hang a left after the airstrip in Grasmere.”

“Is this Highway 51?” I ask, pointing to the road outside the shop.

“Yep. It splits just a ways up there, but there’s a sign that makes it pretty clear. Where you going in Sheep Creek?”

“I don’t know,” I say, “but there are probably a few places for me to look first.”

I examine the map and discover three locations where red lines, which I assume are dirt roads, work close to the bunched-together contours that represent Sheep Creek’s steep canyon walls. I pull a pen from my pocket and circle the three spots.

“Is the canyon very big in these three places?” I ask.

“Oh, it’s a big canyon,” she says, “a thousand feet deep in spots. You can’t get in there except in a few places. Mary’s Creek’s one of ‘em. It’s about a three mile hike one way and, son, it’s tough country.”

“I’ll be all right,” I say.

“This friend of yours,” says the man in the Carhart coveralls. “He’s up there already?”

“Probably,” I say, “but I don’t know for sure. He doesn’t carry a cell phone, so I haven’t talked with him since yesterday.”

“Do you have water?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you have food?”

“Not yet.”

“You realize you’re headed to the middle of nowhere, right?”

“I understand,” I say. “I aim to buy provisions before I leave.” I scan the shelves on the far wall where a limited selection of canned goods are stacked. “How much daylight do you figure is left?”

“Oh, the sun is setting by about 6:30, so there’s about five more hours,” the lady says.

“I’d better get moving,” I say and go to the shelves. I pull down cans of pears halves, pineapple chunks and Chef Boyardee ravioli; a bottle of hot sauce; a loaf of bread; jar of peanut butter; carton of raisins; and gallon of water. It’s a bizarre mix, but it includes enough sustenance for two or three days.

I return to the counter where the man and woman are talking about what they would do with the million dollars the lady isn’t going to win from her scratch ticket.

“The government takes half of it, you know that?” says the man. “They take thirty percent off the top, and then you have to file it on your taxes, too.”

“And don’t forget to subtract the hundred thousand you’ll blow on some ridiculous party,” I say.

“A glass of iced tea and a sunset,” the man says. “That’s my kind of party.”

The lady rings me up and asks for thirty-nine dollars and change. I consider questioning how she arrived at such a number but then dismiss the thought. She’d been helpful enough, and this isn’t the time or place to squabble over ten or twenty bucks. Plus, the sun will set in about five hours. I’ve got to keep moving.

“Be careful out there,” she says.

“Will do,” I say. “And thanks.”

© Greg Stahl