Who are you Basin?
This town perplexes me. Yesterday evening I went for another walk, this time heading North, and I realized Basin is slightly more substantial than I originally thought-- a couple of businesses I missed on the ride in, and a road that intersects the main street. But the thing about Basin that really confounds me is the people.
Mo, my ride on Thursday and a resident of Basin, was quite friendly even though she kept her distance. I think she has lived here long enough to be considered a local (16 years is long in my book), but kept speaking of "the people of Basin" as being other. I think the phrase she kept saying was "well, you'll just have to see."
The truth is I haven't encountered a whole lot of Basinites (is that correct?) yet. A man in town said "Hi, how are you?" and actually seemed interested in my response. That was nice.
I headed through town out towards I-15 and saw what looked like a logging or mining trail that wound its way up a hillside. Mo had told me that these were good places to hike so I climbed up the hillside like a mountain goat and started exploring. About ten minutes later I saw in my peripheral a guy get out of a pick-up truck. It seemed like he appeared from nowhere. He waved and hollered "Hi. How are you." I walked down to meet him, realizing that although I hadn't seen any No Trespassing signs he was probably going to kick me off. I was all bundled up in my winter coat, hood up, trying to stay warm from the wind. He looked at me curiously, wearing a sweatshirt.
"Hi. How are you doing?"
"Alright how are you?"
"Not bad. This is private property, you know?"
"I'm sorry I didn't know, I was just out for a walk."
"Well, this is private property and we don't really want anyone climbing around up here, you know?"
He seemed almost apologetic to have to tell me this.
"Ok, I gottcha. Thanks for letting me know."
"Ok."
I felt pretty discouraged climbing back down that hill, the view was incredible, but at least he was nice about it and didn't have a shotgun with him.
I thought maybe I should just stick to the pavement and check out the residential part of town so as to not risk any more incidents. I could always ask Mo exactly where I can hike later.
So I headed back to town and went down one of the offshoot streets toward where there's an overpass for I-15. As soon I passed underneath I was greeted by a chocolate lab. How pleasant, right? Wrong. This lab wanted to eat my face off. He came up to the edge of his yard and barked and growled at me for a while. I just stopped on the road, expecting the owner to come out and apologize to me and take him in so I could continue my walk. But the owner never came. In fact the dog got closer. I got a nice view of his teeth and hair on end. I stayed calm, turned, and slowly walked back the way I came. The dog followed me, growling and barking. I was mindful of where he was at and planned my course of action should he attack. At first it involved protecting my hands and kicking. Then as I got further and he kept following, it involved picking up one of the sizable rocks along the road and bashing his skull in. Fortunately, he didn't get any closer.
When the dog finally stopped following me and was content barking out of his mind from under the highway, I turned and caught a glimpse of the owner going back in his house. He was watching the entire time, just watching.
I was feeling pretty sullen for the rest of my walk. At least 4 other angry dogs came barreling out of their hiding places and barked as I passed. At least they were fenced in, a slight comfort that led me to a realization about Basin that depressed me even more than mean dogs-- everybody here has a fence around their house. Literally everybody. Any type of fence imaginable is here: from chain link to rough pine palisade. I haven't seen any white picket fences though.
Why Basin? Who are you keeping out? Or perhaps the better question: what are you keeping in?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment