Watch Out! Danger Can Be Lurking in the Nicest of Places

The question is back and now appearing as: “Why do bad things happen in pretty places?”

We have heard it before. How can a clown kill people? How can the guy next door be a cannibal? Next time the unimaginable happens, we will hear it again, as if evil should wear a sandwich board that says, “Hi, I’m dangerous. I’m going to kill you. Run, if you can!”

Evil lurks behind comforting facades, a fact of life that Americans, apparently even the FBI, seem incapable of learning, judging from the recent murder of a naturalist in Yosemite National Park.

I, myself, was once bought off by scenery, the stuff of promise, repository of the national birthright. But thanks to a drifter named Tex, I lived to tell the tale.

It happened years ago in the Grand Canyon, that most holy of the outdoor sanctuaries we have set aside as national parks. While camping with a beau, I was attacked under the starlight by cowboys on horseback.

Peter and I were sitting on the bank of the Colorado River late at night, listening to the flow of things, transfixed by the epic backdrop of giant red rock brightly illumined by the full moon. The water coursed through the canyon, and I could hear the riverines of my own blood. Out of time, out of mind, I had never felt so right.

But there came the thunder of hooves. And shouts--”Where’s the dancing girls?” We were suddenly surrounded by three men (nice-looking, I might add) on three horses (also fine specimens). Peter fell back under a rider’s approach. “Here she is,” one rider called. “Here’s the dancing girl!” He was twirling a lasso, and he threw it around my shoulders. As it began to tighten, I screamed.

Help was nearby. Enter Tex, bolting out of the brush. Peter and I had met Tex while hiking down into the canyon, which was where he lived. Tex was a big fellow who wrestled Brahma bulls for a living. Some might say he looked like a criminal: He had arm-length tattoos, a scraggly beard. In fact, he was wanted by the police, he said, for nonpayment of alimony. We had been camping together for several days, and he had been telling us about the fine art of hiding from law enforcement in the national park system. In the midst of the attack, Tex leaped at a horse and rider and pulled them to the ground. The other two men were instantly on him. In this frenzied tangle of horse and human, I wriggled free of the rope. Peter grabbed my hand and we took off for the ranger station.

We raced across starlit trails until we stumbled, panting and frightened, into the little security outpost. “Three guys on horses tried to lasso me,” I said. The ranger threw Peter a look. He confirmed what I said. “The only guys on horseback down here are the ones who lead the tourists up and down the trail,” the ranger said. “It couldn’t be those guys. They wouldn’t do something like that. They’re too nice.” But we convinced him to return with us to our campsite.

It was not quite what Peter and I expected. Four guys were sitting around our fire, in a fine, American silhouette. My big, burly savior Tex and my would-be abductors were taking turns from a bottle of Wild Turkey, good and evil sharing a drink in the Garden of Eden. “Wanna hear somethin’ funny?” Tex asked, as we approached. “We’re all from the same town in Texas!”

The ranger sat down with them, but Peter and I retired to our tent. A few days later, on our way out of the canyon, I filed a crime report with park officials. They said the marauding cowboys worked for one of the park’s trail outfitters and my report would be “passed on.” That was the last I heard about it.

Tex came and visited me in Albuquerque a few weeks later, to see how I was doing. Then he left for another national park. “Who was that guy?” my landlord wanted to know. “He didn’t look very nice.”

The Grand Canyon taught me that scenery is the great trickster, that wilderness, and the critters therein, can be as volatile as the all-night mini-mart next to your local crackhouse. Whether the landscape glitters as a national park or beguiles as a smiling face, the effect is the same, and all succumb to its charms, including the toughest among us.

The mild-mannered handyman who confessed to the recent murder in Yosemite was interviewed by the FBI after three women were killed there in March. But the landscape of his eyes and skin, the sound of his words, the look in his eyes sent them elsewhere. They zeroed in on the usual suspects, a gnarly and foul group of local speed freaks whose mug shots look like trading cards for bad guys. Of course, it now reportedly was the motel handyman all along. Unfortunately, in a country based on the promise of scenery, even the FBI is unable to recognize a monster.*