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Show A-10 The Park Record Saturday, January 24, 1998 And so it goes... iM Mr By Tom Clyde s-9 I and 2 hour tours Lunch and Dinner tours. Only I mile from Main Street. Come as you are-clothlng available Free shuttle within Park City limits 3 $5.00 off with this adl I coupon per snowmobile offer expires 126-98 Reservations (435)6457533 1 8 8 8 4 0 4 7 6 6 9 The President's problems UPPER LIMIT FITNESS WAREHOUSE Backdraft Steppers - - ... ..(Kositww i mmm ' m .mm. h ta h mm m mm m X. SCUUU1NN Airdyne Windrigger UPPER UlillT ineuVLyHowerMaae!! Recumbent Bikes Steppers - Bikes - Treadmills - Aerobics - Free Weights -Accessories - Multi-Units Orem 224-8306 Salt Lake 973-7303 1354 So. State (Next to Ultimate Electronics) 815 West 2400 South (Just Off 9th West) Well, until next Halloween, it's time to bid a fond farewell to our friends from Sundance. I made a real effort at getting involved this year, but just couldnt find it in me to care whether the movie about rocker Kurt Cobain was ever shown or not, or who was stealing whose copyrighted material to make the movie. If that was the hottest issue they could generate at Sundance, they've got bigger problems than I can solve. He's had his 15 minutes of fame, and it's hardly my fault if 14 of them were because he committed suicide. Sundance was pretty harmless this year. There was the usual Halloween parade on Main Street, with everybody in their black costumes. This seemed to be the year of the big hat and huge scarves. People were wandering around with afghans wrapped around their necks. I suspect they had their cell phones hidden inside, duct taped to their heads, chrome parkas seemed popular this year, too. I saw one woman turned away from the door of the Egyptian because she was wearing red. It was a dark, muddy, subdued red, but it was still red. After she put on some really ugly "bruise" colored col-ored lipstick, they agreed to let her in, but cautioned her to wear black next time. But the parking and traffic problems were much less than normal. The shuttles seemed to work. One more good storm to clean the smoke out of the air and wash the cigar butts off the street, and we should be back to our own slightly skewed concept of normal. Word from the Chamber of Commerce types is that Sundance spends about 10 gazillion dollars in town. I have to confess that the element of Sundance that used to sleep in their cars seems to have faded away, probably because they couldn't come up with the cash to feed the parking meters. The stories about holding down a restaurant table for hours and buying only a cup of coffee were few and far between this year. In other words, it was a lot like a Shriners' Convention, only everybody wore black. Usually, I hear about a movie that everybody things was the hottest ticket around, and that is a "must see." I didn't hear that this year. There may be a big success from the festival, but so far, I don't know what it is. The skiing was way too good this last week to bother going to a movie. Powder up to the butt for a couple of days. I ate enough of it to know that it was all light and fluffy stuff. The ski hill was more or less vacant all week, allowing me to get more than my share of the good stuff. I had one day when everything every-thing just worked perfectly, and I skied about five runs down West Face making perfect telemark turns "almost effortlessly. I was about to declare myself the King of Norway, when on the next run, I fell and slid the entire face, rolling in big puffs of light snow, laughing all the way. It was time to call it a day. The best entertainment of the week wasnt either Sundance or skiing. The President was caught with his pants down, and it's become national news. The guy just cant keep his pants on. I guess it's not all that unusual a problem, but it seems like something that the President might be a little better able to manage. Certainly others were . able to keep things quiet. I'd like to think that the affairs of state were weighing so heavily that he was Busy enough that there really wasn't time in the day for dalliance with the interns in the office supply closet. But I guess I'm wrong. As the story broke, I was driving home listening to National Public Radio. Jim Lehrer and the President were on the radio talking about whether or not there had been an affair with the intern, and if so, whether the President had tried to buy her silence to affect testimony in the Paula Jones case. Who did the president know (in the Biblical sense) and when did he know her? Shades of Richard Nixon! By the time I was eating dinner, one of the cable news channels had devoted the whole evening to the story. The Presidential Indiscretion had its own theme music. By week's end, there was a special Bimbogate logo. Reporters had been into it so thoroughly thor-oughly within just hours of the story breaking that they had telephone logs showing when the intern had visited or called the White House. They had her high school yearbook pictures, her job history, and every other detail in her life. Her hairdresser had been interviewed. Somehow the Whitewater Investigation was involved. After six years and $30 million of unproductive unpro-ductive and boring investigation into (yawn) fraudulent fraud-ulent loan underwriting in Arkansas in the 1980s, the investigator has moved into sex in the White House supply closet. That transition alone is worthy of its own investigation. But here we are with undercover under-cover wires on the intern's co-workers, sitting around the lunch room talking about sex with the President. What amazed me is the army of fact gathering gath-ering reporters and sleuths on this. The Presidential affair and the attempted coverup managed to fill most of a regular one-hour news broadcast, then they switched over to a full hour special on it. And there was material enough to fill it. The Pope arriving arriv-ing in Cuba was a mere footnote. The Pope can't hold a candle to a good sex scandal. The Gulf War was not covered so completely in such a short time. The pundits were talking about impeachment for obstructing justice and suborning perjury which is lawyer-speak for telling the intern to keep her mouth shut and deny the whole thing at the Paula Jones trial. The familiar faces of the Watergate era were being located in rest homes across the nation and forced to speak on late-night television about how similar the two situations are. Nixon and his two-bit burglary, Clinton and his tacky affair, and both of them risking their office over the coverup. It went on and on and on. I watched more of it than was reasonable, but not because I cared about the story itself. I was, and still am, astounded that the nation's news organizations would commit resources to this in about the same magnitude that they would cover a war. Millions of dollars were spent in a couple of hours, all across the country, trying to find out what they could about the President, the intern with big hair (whose name I cant even remember and don't care enough about to look up), how often, in which rooms, and when they did it. People must really hate him. Of course, nobody was surprised by any of this. It's perfectly in Clinton's character, and was fully disclosed to people before the election. He still won. Twice. How Bimbogate plays out over the next few months will be interesting. Reporters used to talking about tense foreign policy issues will be there on the news discussing distinguishing features of the ' Presidential ahatomy in the same seriousToh'es used for the situation in Iraq. It's just amazing. By the time I had the dishwasher loaded, the TV coverage of Bimbogate had Clinton all but resigned from office. Maybe next year, there will be a film about it at Sundance The Bimbo Wore Black. imm mrnmrnmi Writers on the Range Overlook at Old Town 4T i 1 '1 1 Panoramic views of the ski mountains and the lights of Old Town. 1 Sunny southern exposures, with homesites nestled in the hillside and protected from the wind. Beautiful residential property located in the heart of Park City. 10 acres of open space with running, mountain biking, hiking and snowshoe trails A short walk to Main Street, yet mountainous and private. Only 7 remaining homesites in this private enclave. Homesite range from 12 acre to over 2.5 acres. Exceptionally priced from $150,000 - $245,000 Ski-inSki-out at The Canyons! Timberwolf Estates - Lot 10 Large .50 acre corner homesite feels like 3 acres! Bordered on two sides by huge ranch properties. The landscape is naturally beautiful with huge aspens and pine trees. Wonderful mountain views with lots of sunshine. Offers a great opportunity to purchase a ski-inski-out property at an affordable price. Attractively priced at $359,500 Marketed byi Gail Nakamura At Bill EU, KoowUjt, Eiperian inJ rYofMioulim miU tl Jiffn Gail Nakamura 655-0695 Office 655-1616 Mobile 800-645-4212 Toll Free By David Peterson A place where spirits dwell IW hear: Canyon country, southeast Utah. I sag into camp not long before dusk, drop my pack and slouch down to the living heart of this dusty desert place a drip-spring sequestered like a shrine in an amphitheater grotto at the head of a hidden canyon. Uncapping my two canteens, dry as Noah's socks, I balance both on the sand beneath a line of diamond droplets bulging from a seam in the sandstone wall. Better than any burning bush, desert drip-springs are miracles in the wilderness miracles you can drink. (There is no sweeter music, said writer Edward Abbey, than the tink, tink, tink of desert water dripping drip-ping into a tin cup. And there is no sweeter taste, I would add, than that same water, sweetened with a splash of Irish whiskey and drunk in the perfumed smoke of a pinon-juniper campfire.) As the day dims to dusk and the drip-spring drips, in no big hurry to satisfy my impatient thirst, I stand staring 'round in wonder at this restful oasis. At my feet, the damp poolside sand is a journal of recent activity: rabbit, wood rat, fox, mule deer the usual lot of thirsty desert mammals. And there, off to the side, something else. My flashlight cuts through the gloaming to reveal a track as big as a big man's palm larger than any coyote, though not so large as a bear round, no claw marks mountain lion, and a whopper at that. A chill sprints down my spine as I flash the flashlight flash-light all around, searching for something I hope not to find. But the tired yellow beam doesn't reach far. In another minute or so, both flashlight and twilight will be history, and I'll be here in the dark, alone. Or maybe not. Statistically, you are several hundred times less likely to be attacked by a cougar than to be struck by lightning. Maybe. But you aren't here I am and there ain't a storm cloud in sight and the biggest kitty print I've ever seen is fresh at my feet and my heart is pounding in my throat. . I snatch up the two half-filled canteens what they hold between them will just have to doscurry back to camp and build a roaring fire. Hours later, the fire burned to embers, I strip and slide into the womb-like warmth of my bag, ten thousand stars for a tent, the lion all but forgotten. When the dream comes, there are no clear images, only amorphous shadows and whispery sounds like the shuffling footfalls of a prowler; like rapid, rhythmic breathing. Startled awake by the dream, I rise to my elbows and strain my senses into the liquid dark... But all is quiet in the anthracite desert night. Sleep is slow to return. In the amber glow of dawn, I wake all bleary-eyed to discover that my eerie dream was no dream at all. There in the sand just a body's length out, imprinted hot-fresh over one of my own prints, is a big round track. I stand and look around me. Spoor is everywhere. every-where. Over there, the prowler approached from the canyon below. And there, it sat back on long lean haunches, tubular tail sweeping a fan-shaped arc behind. In my mind's eye I see the big cat squatting there, staring, listening, panting, pondering in inscrutable feline fashion the scene, the scents, the sounds of my breathing. Perhaps the beast is nearby still, biding its time, biding mine. On a whim, buck-naked buck-naked other than boots, I attempt to take up the trail, but the prints soon strike slickrock and evaporate. evapo-rate. Gone like a ghost. Back at camp, under a warm morning sun, I sip coffee and reflect. Had the carnivore been looking to make a meal of me, it likely could have. Pumas are predation perfected, capable of bringing down not only deer, but beasts as big and powerful as elk and on rare occasion, people. A tentless sleeping man would be cake. Obviously, predation was not the prowler's purpose. Most likely, I spooked it off the spring last night and it's been lurking about ever since, curious as a cat. Was I in danger? Who knows. And at this point, who cares? I'm no spiritual person in any orthodox or, for that matter, unorthodox sense. Simpering supernatu-ralism supernatu-ralism sends me sprinting for the nearest exit door. What I can see, hear, smell, taste and touch is all I need, and more than I deserve. And yet out here in the ancient dust, out here in the haunted canyons, out here in the beating heart of the great American West, I feel that my life has been touched by magic. David Petersen lives outside Durango, Colorado and is the author oThe Nearby Faraway: A Personal Journey Through the Heart of the West. He is a regular reg-ular contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. Don't miss Jack Fuell's Tales of Old Park City' every Wednesday In The Park Record. i |