I Get a Chance to Walk the Wendigo Road
So, I wrote a book called Wendigo Road. I loved writing this book. It was this kind of post-apocalyptic military story about a group of cybernetic soldiers wandering through Montana, escorting a legendary soldier home to his wife and son. The book is chock full of Native American monsters that are hunting the soldiers and trying to kill them. It was an Indigienous version of The Odyssey by way of Mad Max. Crafting it both challenged and moved me. I can’t say that for every book I’ve written. But getting to that story was a journey in itself.
Long time readers know I conduct outreach for the Johnson Space Center, talking about a small business program where companies and research institutions can work together researching technologies for NASA. I got the idea to talk to tribal colleges about this concept, and for the past couple years, I’ve pushed outreach to Tribal Colleges and Universities. This put me on a lot of reservations. Twelve total, I think. One year, I got the chance to conduct outreach in North Dakota and Montana. I spent ten days on the road driving from town to town talking about the program. I ate up every minute of it. If there was a way I could get my family to travel with me, I’d do it permanent and non-stop. Visiting these little map dot places in the middle of nowhere is something I adore.
At my side was my NASA counterpart. And aside from getting us pulled over by the Minot Air Force MPs or nearly detained at the International Gardens up in North Dakota, she was a good compatriot. We had adventures. Flying out of Denver, the plane filled with smoke and the gas masks deployed. This happened as soon as we took off, so the plane “immediately” turned around and landed. By “immediately,” I mean there was nothing the plane could do until it reached flying altitude, so it was probably 5 to 10 minutes from the point where the cabin filled with smoke to the point where we landed. That experience became Chapter One of Wendigo Road.
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We spent most of the week driving through North Dakota. At one point, we dropped cellphone coverage. We lost the road, too. The last direction we had said to drive down an old dirt road in this small rental car. The dirt road took us through a sunflower field (there’s about a million and a half acres of sunflowers in North Dakota, by my guesstimate). The “road” was so tight, the sunflowers were practically brushing against either side of the little rental car. If anybody else came down there, we probably would’ve crashed into the crops. The whole experience was a little spooky. It didn’t help that as the day went by, the sunflowers kept turning. They do this to face the sun, and it’s a really beautiful thing, but when you are lost without a landmark in sight, it’s a little unnerving that all the plants are turning their heads. Then boom! we were back on a busy state road. It happened that quick. Dust, flowers, and darkness, then snap your fingers and we were surrounded by cars and asphalt. It was weird. Also, we were in a different part of the state. I don’t know how that happened, but there we were. We thought we’d gone one direction, but we ended up in another.
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After our last visit in North Dakota, we flew from Bismarck to Missoula on a plane full of hot shot wilderness fire personnel. There were giant wildfires in Montana, and these heroes were flying out to help control them, protect lives, and protect homes. Toward the end of the flight, the captain announced that we were going to begin our final descent through the clouds. We never finished our descent. The wildfires were so bad, it was like descending through a charred fog. Everybody on the plane could smell the ash and fire. Wildfires appeared everywhere for the rest of the trip. Sometimes they were in the mountains beside us while the fire helicopters pulled buckets out of the Flathead lake to drop on it. For a kid from the plains of West Texas, this natural disaster left a huge impression on me. I’d never seen anything like it! So wildfires had to ravage the Wendigo Road.
[image error]Can’t see it well, but this helicopter has picked up a bucket of water. It is carrying the water to the fire, which is just up the side of the mountain.
One of our last stops was Browning, North Dakota. To get there, we drove beautiful Highway 2. By this time, I was alone in my little car. My imagination really stretched itself along that highway. The road itself was this well-paved black ribbon winding through the mountains. The experience was very cinematic. I felt like I was driving into a horror movie while somebody narrated about unexpected dangers and sudden truths. Perhaps I was staying in the Overlook Hotel that night. Perhaps I would never make it to the hotel because my car would run out of fuel and devious things would happen to me. All I can say is that in the shadows of the giant pines I was both excited and terrified. I easily imagined giant wendigo monsters looming from the low peaks and terrorizing the highway.
But it was in Browning that I had my most unnerving experience. See, at the time there were two places to stay in Browning. One was the casino, and the other was a road motel. The casino was out. Nobody would authorize us to stay at a casino. Completely understandable, right? That left the road motel.
I forget its name, but it was an old 1950s roadside motel with a bunch of bungalo cabins facing the parking lot. If you’ve ever seen Bad Times at the El Royale, you know what I’m talking about. But the bungalos had a distinct Norman Bates/Psycho vibe. My counterpart retired early for the night after the long road to Browning. While I was bringing in my luggage, a poor vagabond walked up to me, panhandling for money. I told him I didn’t have any money. He asked again if I could spare some change. I said no. He then went into the room beside me and stayed there at least until I left to pick up dinner.
My mind went into a million different directions trying to figure this out. Immediately (and because of family tragedy), I wondered if the person staying in the room next to me was a drug dealer. Why else would somebody panhandle for money, then go spend a few hours in the hotel room next door? I had no idea. My paranoia was setting in. I tried to rationalize it away. The people in Browning were friendly, and maybe my neighbor was just helping the poor guy out. But as positive as I tried to remain, that little paranoid fear kept digging into my brain.
I bought fry bread for dinner. When I drove back, the panhandler was now at the far end of the motel parking lot, talking to some other people. It set off my alarm bells. Who was this people? What was that guy doing in the hotel next to me? The room was vacant now. Whatever had been happening was done. It was enough to give me the creeps.
I closed the door behind me. The door didn’t completely close. There were huge gaps between the frame and the door. Wide enough for somebody to see through? It didn’t matter. The window curtains, fully closed, still left a three-inch gap. Anybody who wanted could look into my room, see me sleeping, and see everything I owned. Since that far from a safe set-up, I left everything in my suitcase and jammed my luggage up against the door. If I had a midnight visitor, that pathetic luggage barricade might give me the half second I need to jump up.
The room itself was very large and very simple. Bed, curtain rod, and an old box television set. I didn’t even know they made those anymore. The pictures hanging on the wall all seemed to stare at me. It was again, unnerving. I thought of Norman Bates watching people through the walls, deciding whether or not to kill them.
While neither the room nor the vagabond ever made it into the book, that fear, that sinking dread, that sense of being perhaps hunted by some unknown thing weaved into the book’s fabric.
As all these things go, of course nothing happened. I was just nervous as Sylvester the Cat staying in a haunted house with Porky Pig. The next day we met some of the best people in the world at Blackfeet Community College. I was invited to “go sweat,” which probably would have done me some good, but nah. I got turned down by my counterpart. We had miles to go before we stopped for the night.
I’ve stayed in many places over the past four years. With COVID-19 raging across the globe, I don’t know if I will ever get the chance to visit these wonderful reservations or hear so many rich stories. I was so taken by the people I met on that trip to Montana, though, I knew then and there that the main character in the book would be a Blackfeet from Browning. He would be a kind and thoughtful leader, much like the educators I met in Browning. And he would be returning home because the one thing I really wanted to do was get home to my family to see my wife and children. So while the experience gave me the horrors and the monsters, it also gave me that familial core that would center the story. If you are returning from war like Oran Old Chief and wanting to see your family, will you stop to take care of homeless children lost in the woods? Of course you would, even if it means risking your life, but that wouldn’t make your heart stop yearning for your home at the end of the Wendigo Road.
