Jeff Darren Muse

Red

Featured in Dear Park Ranger: Essays on Manhood, Restlessness, and the Geography of Hope

An excerpt from “Red,” a glimpse of our years on the Arizona Strip, where my wife managed the interpretive operation at Pipe Spring National Monument while I commuted into Utah to work at Zion:

“Unloading the groceries last night beneath the luminescent spiral of the Milky Way, its horizon-wide arc fading into skyglow—suburbs, casinos, three-thousand-room hotels—I heard Red kicking his trough, begging. I’ve come to know that sound, that rhythm, a slow cadence in the high-desert darkness, every time my headlights swing through the corral and as I step from my car door to the hatchback. Boom. Boom. I’ve come to know it, to cherish it. I know now a retired Grand Canyon mule, though lanky and rickety and three decades old, thinks he’s in charge of this place. He is, actually. At least he’s in charge of my date this morning. In Carhartts and work gloves and old uniform boots, Paula and I will shovel manure and walk the boys.”

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