Director's Notes – 143 – Pioneer Days

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

The ride was called Lewis and Clark’s Big Adventure and it wasn’t operating that day. None of the rides were. The amusement park was in the off season but you could still walk around and look at all the colorful motionless contraptions, if that was the kind of thing you liked to do. Some of the rides were covered in giant tarps to protect them from the rain. 

Lewis and Clark’s Big Adventure was the park’s only “dark ride,” the kind where you would (if it were functional) ride in a little cart down a track through an enclosed plywood funhouse thing. On the outside was a giant cartoon mural of the famous Northwest pioneers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and a goofy looking dog. Apparently they had a dog*. Anyway, the mural had some kind of defect, a black square by Clark’s boot. But on closer inspection, it wasn’t a black square. It was a gap. A human-sized gap in the plywood wall. What would you do? You would go in there, man. You would have to. 

I’m sure when this ride is operational, it isn’t even meant to be scary. I think it’s mainly educational or something. When it’s completely pitch dark and you’re alone and you’re stumbling into moldy-carpet-covered animatronic bears and tripping over props and pieces of track and can’t find that gap in the plywood anymore, well, I guess it’s also educational. You learn something about the pioneer experience. It means thinking something looks like a good idea, plunging ahead, realizing it was a terrible idea, but having already gone too far to be able to turn back. It probably means other things, but this was my takeaway.

I’ve been back to the park in the years since then. That ride is gone now. When I look around, I can’t even figure out where it might have been. 

Granted, this is my only experience as a pioneer. It lasted about five minutes. I may not be an expert. But I liked the idea of a pioneer celebration in Night Vale particularly because of the town’s precarious relationship with history and time. I felt like in Night Vale, the dark ride wouldn’t be a plywood enclosure but the expansive hall of mirrors that is the town and desert itself. I feel like every resident of Night Vale is a pioneer, and every listener is too – always stepping into the unknown, always willing to accept new realities, always plunging ahead through the human-sized gaps regardless of the potential dangers there. 

*While searching to see if Lewis and Clark had a dog, Google auto-suggested the question: “Did Lewis and Clark eat their dog?” Don’t worry, they didn’t! Here is what I learned:  “Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery ate over 200 dogs while traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail, but Lewis's Newfoundland dog Seaman was spared.” So anyway, yes, they did have a dog. 

- Brie Williams
March 1, 2019

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