We Were the Rabbit, and the Rabbit Was Us
Time Away From the Lotus Position
The headlights behind us were getting closer. Our rattling blue bus, with psychedelic swirls and faded peace signs, sucked oil like a greedy leech limping along the lifeless highway. We were incapable of going faster than 20 miles an hour. The vast, barren plains of Wyoming stretched before us, a hallucinatory expanse melting under the weight of a star-laden sky.
"We're being followed," groaned one of the girls from the back of the bus.
"Might be cowboys with a grudge, might be nothing," I called out.
We were a mobile counterculture tribe in a sea of cowboy conservatism, a Psychedelic Circus of renegade hippies on the run.
The rearview mirror bore grim witness to the previous night's madness in Cody. What started as a communal campout quickly became a violent American spectacle. High school cowboys, high on testosterone and local brew, turned a post-football celebration into an inferno, chanting victory songs as they torched a car in their euphoric frenzy. The fire's glow cast monstrous shadows, warping their youthful faces into something primal and dark.
With dawn about to break, we were going so slow jackrabbits trotted in front of us. The sputter and cough of the engine was a stark reminder that we were sitting ducks, limping along a concrete river. The headlights closing fast felt like the eyes of predators zeroing in on prey. Those damned pick-up trucks had full gunracks, and the rifles were most certainly loaded. The cowboys were out there waiting, watching, looking for the next thing to burn.
Suddenly, a macabre tableau cut through the terror —road kill rabbits were everywhere. We wove through a cemetery of flat rabbits, an eerie sculpture in our headlights. The sight was grotesque and surreal; highway gravestones greeted the new dawn.
In perverse defiance, rabbit ears were flapping in the frigid gusts like battered peace signs. We were the rabbit, and the rabbit was us — victims of the absurd, the insane, the fear, yet unwilling to surrender our spirit.
A roaring pickup was suddenly on our tail. The bus was flooded with mean high-beam light. Horns blared as the Cowboys passed us, screaming "YeHa" and waving pistols. Shots split the sky like a neon whip. The lifted Ford pickup shattered the road-kill rabbit skulls as they swerved ahead, accelerated, and disappeared into the night.
Our ragged 8-track mixtape, our only link to sanity, started warping. Grace Slick's voice undulated, matching the anxiety that pulsated through our veins. "This is ghost-dance country!" I muttered. Under fading strains of "White Rabbit," we felt a shared purpose.
We might've been running, but we weren't lost. In our flight, in our fear, there was defiance. We were the dreamers, the misfits, the rebels. And no cowboy, no matter how drunk on power, could extinguish our fire.
In the face of a world bent on torching its sanity, we chose to be the rabbit ears, flapping against the unforgiving winds, proclaiming our existence, and undying spirit.
Fear and Loathing on the Wyoming highway, yes, but also courage, resilience, and a mad, unyielding lust for life. The road stretched, and so did we, seeking haven in the wild lonesome west.