The Wrong Miracle, Part 1

“Today has another heat warning,” I said absently over my morning coffee. “It will top 113 degrees again.”

My wife grunted, but did not take her eyes from her magazine.

“There’s a funny article here about a guy in Sweden…” I began, but I trailed off. I did not notice when I stopped reading aloud. My wife, of course, had not heard me even begin. She had long ago, and wisely at that, learned to tune out whenever I was speaking, which was constant. My eyes burned through the printed words again and again obsessively.

Benumbed fingers dropped my coffee mug with a clank. My hands shook with agitation and the newspaper they held shivered. I noticed none of this, nor the raised, inquiring eyebrow of my wife. Quickly, almost greedily, I reread the article yet again that had my heart fluttering with excitement, and made my brain sweat with wonder and possibility.

“Something interesting?” my wife asked blandly, returning to her own breakfast musings.

“What?” I blurted a bit too sharply. “Uh, no, honey. Nothing new to report.”

My mind raced. How could I get a piece of this article I had just read? There was no chance, none at all. What happened in Sweden to that man, why, it could never happen in the Las Vegas valley in July. Whether I liked it or not, I was not in a gambling town, and had to think of a way to improve my odds.

“Honey, I need to go on a hike today.”

“Sure,” she answered as she drizzled honey across her scone. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, not we,” I corrected anxiously. “Me. I am going to, uh, to Mt. Charleston. Yes. I am going to climb Mt. Charleston today.”

Finally my wife set aside her scone to regard me fully. “Didn’t you say it is over sixteen miles round trip to the peak?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s twelve thousand feet.”

“Yes.”

“And you plan on getting started this late? With no preparation at all?”

I swallowed and answered with a careful, “Yes.”

“And it’s going to be 45 degrees C today?”

“That about sums it up!” I concluded cheerily. “I’ll see you when I get back!”

Her raised eyebrow never lowered to match its partner. “Are you crazy or just stupid? Or are you suffering from the heat already? You are sweating and… are you shaking?”

“No no no,” I dismissed. “I’m fine. Just excited, see. It will be cooler up in the mountains. You said you had some shopping to do, so take my credit card. Take all of them! I’ll be back tonight with pictures as proof.”

So I hit the road. My preparations took mere minutes because I always have a hiking backpack ready to go. In it I store numerous safety and survival gear in case of emergencies, and require only a quick filling of the water bottles. Usually I throw in a couple of granola bars and I’m good. For this trip, however, I brought along condoms.

Yes, condoms. Yet this was not some extra-marital tryst. This was a hope, a prayer, for history to repeat itself. I was desperate for a miracle on Mt. Charleston, a miracle that had just occurred in Sweden. I had studied the newspaper article so closely that I could see it in my head even as I drove.

"Police in central Sweden are on the hunt for a gang of tattooed women who sexually molested a 50-year-old man as he was riding by on his bicycle. The incident took place on July 8th as the man was cycling down Vintergatan in central Örebro.

"The girls ran up to him and pulled the bicycle down so he fell,” Örebro police spokesperson Annika Haaster told the newspaper. As the man was lying on the ground, the women proceeded to pull off his trousers and underwear and molest him sexually before fleeing the scene. According to police, the 50-year-old was not otherwise beaten or physically assaulted by the gang of five tattooed girls."

Now really, who wants to live life thinking, ‘I should have…’? I was going to do everything possible to ensure that I was sexually molested by a Swedish girl gang. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. This was why I brought my camera, of course. None of my guy friends would believe me otherwise.

Mt. Charleston is just northwest of Las Vegas and, amazingly, gets enough snow in the winter to have a ski run. The base of the mountain is surrounded by dramatic, pretty ridges with ample hiking at moderate temperatures. Just getting there is rather unique, actually. The highway is a straight shot from the bowels of the Mojave Desert right up to the ridges, so that within a fifteen minute drive you ascend, almost escalator-like, some 4,000 feet. From limitless brown dirt and desolation to occasional cholla cactus and horse skeletons to scattered scrub to stunted piñon pines to actual evergreen forest. This change in vegetation coincides with the raising of the elevation, and the heat eases at the same pace. Most people would not notice this because they are in an air-conditioned car. But with my open Jeep, named Lola, I could feel the overlapping layers of heat easing their grip over the blasted land.

I parked Lola and stared up at the ridge before me. Cathedral Rock, Echo Canyon, and Mummy Mountain were the names of the geographic features here. A blanket of greenery covered the cliffs and slopes, providing plenty of shelter for wild animals and, hopefully, wild women. I slung my backpack on and reviewed the maps and trail guides. The South Loop ascent of Mt. Charleston was accessible from the much more popular Cathedral Rock trail. I thought this was a good start: much more potential victims for a gang of feral females, yet still plenty of places to hide. There was a network of trails crisscrossing down in the meadows near the parking lot.

The trails are extremely well groomed and highly trafficked. They pass cleanly through a fan-shaped meadow that is, in fact, an avalanche chute. This angled fan of land is a stark contrast to the evergreen-clad ridges. It was filled with the skinny, ramrod-straight trunks of aspen. Their tiny leaves of brilliant yellow shivered in the breeze and reflected on the white of the trunks. These were Quaking Aspen, called such because they always look like they are shaking in an earthquake.

A beautiful area, to be sure, but frustratingly unlabeled and girl gang free. It was too hot here for a realistically comfortable molestation. I wandered, passing half a dozen crossroads leading to several destinations, yet not one was marked with a sign. So before I knew it, I was halfway up Cathedral Rock where I happened to know there were no more intersecting trails. I passed dozens of hikers, including parents with small children, and realized how futile my goals were here. I had to descend back to the parking lot, unmolested and annoyed. That wasted forty-five minutes!

So I needed a plan. How to maximize my chances of abduction? I needed to be alone and in the woods. Well, these hills were crawling with families, so I had to go higher. Going higher meant discarding the easier Cathedral Rock and Echo Canyon trails. I had to ascend the South Loop, which ultimately leads to Mt. Charleston.

And so I climbed. And climbed. The South Loop Trailhead begins steeply and launches an assault on a huge ridge overshadowing the impressive Echo Canyon. The switchbacks began immediately, wherein a southerly incline sharply turns over on itself into a northerly incline. The trail zigzagged up a thousand grueling feet before I realized the futility of my hopes. It was far too steep for any kind of attack. So onward I plodded, knowing that at the top of the ridge was a huge meadow that provided my one, last hope for fantastic, aroused abduction.

The heat was tolerable, though my back dripped sweat from beneath my backpack. I slogged from one switchback to another, and slowly rose higher and higher. I was panting from the lack of oxygen by 9,000 feet, and about to write off the whole adventure when I finally, finally topped the ridge. Here a flower-filled meadow spread out along the saddle that connected the two mountain peaks of the ridge: little Mt. Griffith and big Mt. Charleston. The saddle was, in essence, a four-mile bridge between the two. It sloped to my left in a decline that swept all the way down to the dead brown dirt of the Mojave. I could see Death Valley clearly down there in the distance. On my right was a jagged series of cliffs, the tops decorated with the gnarled, gripping roots of Bristlecone Pine.

I paused a moment to admire the stands of Bristlecone Pine. Amazingly, these were the oldest living things in the world, many having been alive before the Pharaohs ruled Egypt. They lived only at the extreme top of the tree line, where few things could survive, between 10,000 and 11,000 feet. Harsh winds swept over them constantly, twisting their trunks into bizarre caricatures of trees. Unbeknownst to most people, the oldest living thing on the planet earth lived near Las Vegas. One particular Bristlecone Pine, named Prometheus, was 5,000 years old when someone cut him down in 1964. The current record holder, Methuselah, is some 4,800 years old and living on the border between California and Nevada. The actual location is a secret to prevent trophy-seekers from slaughtering him, too.

Hundreds of fat dragonflies buzzed in swarms over the little alpine wildflowers. Small yellow flowers carpeted the land in some areas, whereas in others there were huge patches of green scrub. The breeze was refreshing and the temperatures were most pleasant. If ever there was a spot to be sexually overwhelmed by Swedish babes, this was it.