Stuff, lots and lots of stuff

Peggy and I got rid of some stuff this week. I parted with the last two boxes of my rock collection, and we both got rid of some dishes and cassette tapes. Maybe we’ll find more to get rid of when we clean house today. I like getting rid of stuff. I like it a lot. Sometimes, I wish that I could get something back, but all of life is a risk and to some extent a burden, and owning stuff is one of its biggest burdens.

I don’t mean to say that I’m anti-stuff because I think of my stuff as my friends, and I feel like a traitor when I let any of it go. But at the same time, it tortures me to keep it. For example, I would be lying in bed at night thinking about my rock collection, and it would feel like a heavy weight on my stomach. Still, like I said, it also hurts to let stuff go. In the case of the rocks, I had built my collection over years of exploration. This is why it works better for me to never own a lot of stuff to begin with.

My father couldn’t get enough stuff. He erected large buildings just to keep his stuff in. It was mostly junk—literally, as in broken toys from dumpsters. After mother died, he got really serious about his stuff collection, and it grew so much that he could only move through his house by way of passageways between piles of mildewed rags, magazines, and forty-year old electric bills.

I figured his stuff must have made him feel secure, as in, “the cold cruel world is howling out there, and me and my stuff are nestled snugly in here.” I’m the opposite. If there was a flood, I would want less stuff to sort through as I prepared to move to high ground. Or if there was an earthquake, I figure I would have less of a mess to clean up if I didn’t own so much. Such thoughts also dictate the kinds of stuff I want. Food, water, guns: good. Knick-knacks, furniture, rock collections: bad. Then too, just as I can’t love a lot of friends well, I can’t love a lot of stuff well. It’s the difference between the six trees in my yard and the thousands of trees in the forest; or the difference between the kid who gets five presents for Christmas and the kid who gets fifty presents for Christmas.

I observed the latter kind of kid opening presents. She could only enthuse so much, and she could only love so much, and she passed her limit with half her presents still unopened, and collapsed in tears. I wondered how this would affect her attitude toward stuff as she grew up. Would she buy more and more of it without ever feeling that she had enough; or would she turn away from stuff and toward drugs, overwork, or religion?

Peggy does stuff well. She owns a lot of it by my standards, but not so much that she can’t dust it all within an hour or two. When I complain about how much we own, she says that her friends comment on how empty our house seems (“Hey, Peggy, when are you going to start decorating, ha, ha, ha”). But if you took all the households in America and determined their average stuff content, this would not prove that the average household had chosen well. The common way is not necessarily the best way, and, even when it is the best way for most, it isn’t the best way for all.

Then there is the environment to consider. All our stuff was a part of nature until we reshaped it. Few people seem to have an ethical problem with the amount of stuff that gets reshaped, or to wonder if our desire for the created doesn’t imply a rejection of the natural—as if we live against the earth rather than with it. We even take the earth’s bounty and remake it into Disney-like copies of nature—things like cuddly grizzly bears and fluffy cobras.

I think about how the U.S. population has doubled in just 38 years, and how our stuff has probably quadrupled in that amount of time, and I think to myself: “My god, how much is enough? Will we keep going until there is nothing left that we can remake into something that, in most cases, we don’t actually need?” I have known couples who bought new houses because they needed more room for their furniture. Such houses are farther out of town and require a longer commute and a later retirement. I detect both superficiality and immorality in this, but if I said as much, they might reasonably retort, “Who are you to tell us how to live?” Well, who is anyone to tell anyone how to live (or any number of people to tell any one person how to live)? The absence of an acceptable answer causes many problems.

Peggy and I can’t even settle the issue in our two-person household. I feel lost in our 1,451 square foot house with its two baths, three bedrooms, and double garage, while Peggy considers it smallish. I reflect upon how little most of the people in the world own (most of them being in the Third World and lacking the means to own much), and I am embarrassed by how lavishly we live. Peggy regrets their poverty but doesn’t consider it related to us.

For me, it’s not just the size of our house, but the amount of energy it takes to sustain our lifestyle. My countrymen wouldn’t be dying in the Middle East right now if not for our overuse of energy, and this makes every ounce of petroleum burned into an ethical decision. For example, food that is flown-in requires more petroleum than food that is trucked-in, and therefore increases the number of people who must die. I think it would be possible to come up with a life-to-gallon ratio, something like 1/60th of a life for every 500,000 barrels of oil.

I am reading a book by a man who became obsessed with reducing the number of his belongings and the size of his dwellings.

“I started hanging out with rock climbers, dirt bags, and train hopping hobos of all kinds who dwelt in ragged tents for most of the year. Then for a short, albeit uncomfortable time, I went so far as to have only a bivy bag for shelter, which consists of nothing but more than a tough nylon sack that protects your sleeping bag from the elements.

“Then one humid night as I lay sweating under the stars on Catalina Island off the coast of southern California, I asked myself, ‘When will this all stop? When I’m wandering completely naked and alone with absolutely nothing to call my own?’” from Radical Simplicity by Dan Price

Dan’s wife left him when he moved into a teepee, but Peggy and I have stuck it out by agreeing thatneither of us can have what we want. This has also prevented us from exploring enough options to know what we want. I can but wonder where I would be if left to my own devices. Am I more like a flower that was prevented from opening, or more like an animal that was saved from falling into a hole and starving to death? Thoreau said this about the matter:

“No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles.”

But then Thoreau had neither wife, dogs, nor even a parlor fern, although he did have a rock collection.

“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust.”

He didn’t say whether the window was open.

I’ve never had such clarity. Whether for good or evil, I have never even approached it. My every bite, my every thought, and my every step are weighed down with ambivalence. If I were of a superstitious bent, I might speculate that this is why Thoreau completed his life’s journey at age forty-four while I burden onward upon failing knees at fifty-seven. I would not be the first to suggest that they are best who die soonest.

Baxter has a bad morning. Peggy does too.

Baxter awakened this morning with a limp. I thought his foot might have gone to sleep, but Peggy said she had never heard of this happening to a dog. I touched him all over without finding any swollen or painful spots. Then I did range of motion tests, still without result. Peggy sat at a distance looking pale. She said she must have rolled over on him in her sleep and dislocated his hip.

My next guess was that he might have strained a muscle. Peggy’s next guess was that he had distemper. She asked me to describe distemper. I said I didn’t know anything about it, but I thought it might resemble the flu. She said she couldn’t bear it if Baxter died. I pointed out that he was alert and hungry. She countered that he was trembling, moaning, and stiff. I reminded her that just watching a cat cross the street from a block away causes Baxter to tremble and moan. I suggested that we take him outdoors to see if he felt better after he limbered up. Peggy said he was cold, like he was dying. I said he felt fine to me. I took him outside, and he was soon normal.

Peggy has worked in ERs, ICUs, CCUs, ante-partum, and labor and delivery. For years, she was the only night shift RN in a 105-bed hospital. I have seen her be the calmest, most caring, and most competent nurse in the world at the scene of bloody accidents, and I have read the accolades of her peers. If she freaked out at work the way she does every time one of her dogs sneezes, she would be like the nurses in old movies who screamed and threw trays of food into the air every time they walked in on a dead man.

What is practical?

I have been unhappy this week. Peggy and I argued before her departure, and it left a cloud over my head. Then there is the ever-present arthritis…. I bought a book about chronic pain, but have not opened it because I am too infatuated with Isaac Singer. I wouldn’t believe that anyone could write so well if I had not read it with my own eyes.

I had never given Judaism much thought, having been taught as a child that it was the Old Testament minus the New and therefore but half a religion. If Singer’s Judaism is representative, it has a great deal more depth than that. In fact, it has a great deal more depth than Christianity as I have known Christianity through four churches and three years of college courses. I subjected myself to all this because I was looking for something other than superficial answers to deep questions. I was finally forced to conclude that Christianity is a religion without depth, a religion that admonishes one to believe as a child believes, and whatever good one can say about children, they are not creatures of discernment but credulity.

Jews, as Singer presents them, don’t put stock in unthinking faith. For them, religion doesn’t mean acceptance but struggle, and their behavior toward God (as compared to Christian behavior toward God) reminds me of the way the way the British treat their prime minister versus the way we Americans treat our president. The White House Press Corps approaches the president briefly and deferentially—as if they don’t want to lose the credentials that enabled them to get close enough to approach him.

By contrast, I have seen Tony Blair being questioned by Parliament, and was astounded both by the length of the proceedings and by the bluntness of the queries. The British don’t soft-pedal around their leaders as if to avoid awakening them, and neither do the Jews soft-pedal around God. If anything, they don’t seem to think he’s doing that great a job and, although he remains silent before their inquiries, at least they don’t mistake gullibility for piety.

Last night, I read “The Boy Knows the Truth.” It is about a rabbi who remained physically robust even as he grew on in years. He was prone to depression, and so overcome with sexual lust that he couldn’t find peace even in the midst of his prayers. He saw himself as unworthy to even be a rabbi, but his son was too unstable to replace him, so he did the best he could—which was great by the standards of all who knew him.

His wife was a frail hypochondriac who was repulsed by sex and interpreted her husband’s lust as proof of his impiety. She heaped contempt upon him for decades, and he responded with patience and humility, his enforced chastity causing him to be all the more careful to avoid being alone with other women. Finally, his wife became truly ill (unbeknownst to him) and, on her deathbed, asked that he swear to not remarry. Enraged, he ran to his room and prayed that she would die so that he might at last find someone with whom he could share love and pleasure. She died that very night and in the morning, “The sun emerged like a bloody head from a womb,” and he was too remorseful to carry on. He pronounced himself wicked in body and soul and stayed alone in his room for weeks, his lamp never going out. I quote with one italicized appendum by myself:

“If this was the aim of creation, cursed be creation,” Rabbi Gabriel declared. Actually, the Almighty never answered Job’s questions. All he did was boast about His wisdom and His might.

He fell asleep, and, in a dream, his departed wife appeared to him in beauty and splendor. Even her veil and gown seemed to glow with their own radiance, and her saw her as both perfect matter and perfect spirit.

Rabbi Gabriel began to cry, and he woke up trembling. His bed trembled with him. The sun had risen and a fiery chariot sailed in the sky from the west to the east…

Rabbi Gabriel got up, washed his hands, dressed, and went out into the courtyard on the way to the study house. “Where else can I go?” he said to himself. “To a tavern, to a house of ill repute?” He had awakened with a new vigor and with a hunger for learning. A cheder boy was walking toward him, his face white, his sidelocks disheveled. He carried a Pentateuch, and a paper bag of food. Rabbi Gabriel stopped him. “Do you want to earn two groschen?” he asked.

“Yes, Rabbi.”

“What should a Jew do who has lost the world to come?”

The boy seemed to ponder, “Be a Jew.”

“Even though he has lost the world to come?”

“Yes.”

“And study Torah?”

“Yes.”

“Since he is lost, why Torah?”

“It’s good.”

“It’s good, eh? As good as candy?”

The boy hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”

“Well, you earned the two groschen.” Rabbi Gabriel put his hand into his right pocket where he kept money for charity, and gave two groschen to the boy. He bent down to him, pinched his cheek, and kissed his forehead. “You are cleverer than all of them. Go and buy yourself some sweets.”

“The boy grabbed the coin and began to run, his sidelocks flying, his fringed garment blowing in the wind. Rabbi Gabriel went straight to the yeshiva. He was afraid that all the students had left, but fourteen or fifteen still remained. They had come to study at sunrise, which was the custom in Klintow. When they saw the rabbi, they arose in awe. The rabbi shouted, “The boy knows the truth!”

And he began to lecture on the section where he had left off weeks ago.


There are those who seek God as obsequiously as a poor man curries the favor of his benefactor, and there are those who seek God because nothing else is conceivable. The former cannot ask hard questions—cannot even entertain hard questions—because they dare not cause offense. Even Jesus, “the meek and lowly,” was angered by persistent questioners and downright infuriated by doubters. How can piety exist in a mind that is dulled by dogma, yet if one dares not question, of what can a religion consist but dogma?

It is a very odd thing—given how deeply and touched I have often been by it—that I almost never read fiction because fiction is impractical. Instead, I read about how to do things like wire a house or run a drain line, although sometimes I will indulge in a wilderness survival story (the knowledge I gain could prove practical) or, at most, a work about health or philosophy. Yet, there is that which comes from the human mind that is greater than practicality because practicality is, after all, a matter of matter rather than of spirit.

There is a depth that is excruciating not because it is sad, but because it is beautiful. All things must possess this depth to those who are awake. Because such people experience the entire universe as a temporary manifestation of an eternal and unified reality, they would make little distinction between the National Enquirer and the writings of Isaac Singer.

However, I would be most surprised if such people really exist because I well know how grievously limited we are by our senses, by our physical needs, by our brief lifespans, and by our brains themselves. A few moments without air, a few days without water, a few splinters under our fingernails, or even a little too much or too little of some hormone, and our every virtue vanishes. Our frailty is so extreme that I know little of good to say about us. Not that I speak with certainty. Quite the reverse.

I must submit that I have strong opinions about any number of things, yet in my saner moments I am utterly unable to determine whether I am right about even one of them. I literally suspect that there is no propaganda machine that is half so efficient and ruthless as my brain. If I could but rip it out and throw it away, I might then be able to think as one who had just awakened from a dream in which he was insane. If there is any certain truth for me—and, I believe, for any of us—it can only lie in death, although I do not expect death to consist of other than extinction.

I love Isaac Singer because Isaac Singer writes about me. This raises the question of whether I want to read about me. Perhaps, I will turn to Camus…a writer who comes close but not too close, a sideswipe rather than a direct hit.

Register, Deregister, Register, Deregister, Register

Peggy is visiting relatives in North Carolina, and I am relishing my freedom. Two nights ago, I sorrowfully reached the end of Babbitt, and am now reading the short stories of Isaac Singer. Today, I did various carpentry projects, and sharp shooting pains up and down the outside of my left leg are my punishment. Nothing I do agrees with my knee, although some things disagree a great deal more than others.

I also registered to vote today, two hours before the deadline. It was an ugly choice. I registered the first time because I was twenty-one, and it was a rite of passage. I deregistered twenty-five years later because I had given up on the system. Democrat or Republican, it made no difference to me. More than that, their platforms contain contradictions. Take the phenomenal increase and the even more phenomenal birth rates of illegal aliens, for example. The Democrats favor the creation and enlargement of social programs that attract illegals, yet the Democrats also claim to be the party of the environment. How do they harmonize unchecked population growth and environmental protection? They ignore it.

The Republicans make much of supporting law and order, yet the Republicans also support cheap labor. This prevents them from actually stopping the flow of people who are breaking the law by crossing our borders. Both parties are thus limited to token and self-canceling measures in the face of problems that require substantive action.

For reasons unremembered, I registered again a few years after I deregistered. Maybe there was some ballot measure that I was worked up about—probably a tax hike—since I never get excited about any of the candidates. Then I deregistered a second time because I got tired of being called to jury duty. I served on civil juries, criminal juries, a regular grand jury, a grand jury that heard nothing but child abuse cases for six months, state juries, city juries, and juries in three states. Every two years another jury summons would arrive, and every time I served, I went away feeling that my time had been wasted by a system that has little to do with justice and a lot to do with pandering to scum and enriching lawyers. I knew that if I deregistered, the courts could still find me on the DMV role, but I would have reduced my exposure.

Anyway, after tossing the matter around in my head, I biked over to the voter registration office today and filled out their form. The woman clerk looked at me nervously. After I got home and chanced to pass a mirror, I noticed that I was wearing old and dirty clothes, and remembered that I hadn’t bathed, shaved, or combed my hair for three days. I suspected that my appearance had frightened her, although, in all honesty, I looked no worse than most of the people on downtown sidewalks. Maybe it was my mirrored sunglasses—or maybe it was just her. I wasn’t asked for I.D. I could have snuck in from Mexico yesterday for all anyone cared.

Why did I register? Mostly to vote against a county income tax. Since voters have voted against tax hikes for years, somebody down at the court house got the bright idea that maybe what we need is a whole new kind of tax. Right. I will also vote on some of the voter-sponsored initiatives, although those in power are usually able to ignore the will of the people. For example, a proposal for the West Eugene Parkway passed three times, yet environmentalists on the city council stalled the project until federal money was no longer available.

Then there are the ballot initiatives that are backed by the government. Voters passed a seatbelt law that contained absolutely no penalty. I didn’t quite believe the government’s promise that it only wanted to encourage seatbelt use, rather than coerce it. Sure enough, billboards all over the state soon proclaimed, “Click-it or Ticket.” Trust government? Ever? About anything? Well, if they threaten me, they are more likely to be telling the truth than if they say something I want to hear. For example, I believe them when they say they will confiscate my property at gunpoint if I don’t pay their taxes; but I don’t for a moment believe that they’re going to operate efficiently, reduce corruption, or make the streets safer.

I feel dirty just by registering because my name on the voters’ list implies that I have faith in the good will of government. Sure, government does a lot of good but, at a profound level, government is based upon coercion and, at a practical level, upon greed, lying, and manipulation. Its ratio of evil to good is considerable and ever causes me to question the extent to which I wish to ally myself with it.

Besides, I am embarrassed by my government. I don’t know much about other governments, and I wouldn’t be surprised but what some of them are even worse. The difference is that, for the most part nowadays, they keep their evil at home, whereas we somehow have the idea that it is our place to force ourselves upon the affairs of the world. How much grief could we avoid, and how much money could we save if we would only leave the rest of the planet alone!

What to do about Bob

Mary Pat and Bob drove over from the coast today, she to attend a club meeting with Peggy, and him to spend time with me. I took him to the natural history museum and to a bookstore. After four hours, we returned home to reunite with Peggy and Mary Pat, but they weren’t back yet, so Bob and I visited. I’m not much on sitting and talking, but he didn’t want to do anything, and the conversation did pass enjoyably enough except for two problems. One was that I hadn’t slept well the night before, and had drunk six cups of triple strength coffee in order to maintain my scintillating social presence. The other was that Bob weighs over 400 pounds, and I was afraid he would break the furniture. He always sits in my most expensive chair, only he’s too wide to fit so he perches on the edge while I wring my hands—metaphorically speaking. Then, when he goes to the bathroom, I worry that he will break the toilet, so I examine both toilet and chair as soon as he leaves.

I feel bad about being so fearful and petty, but feeling bad about how I feel does not change how I feel. Along with my mundane concerns, I also worry about Bob’s health. “How much longer can he last?” I ask myself. “Poor guy can hardly walk…” I know of nothing other than his weight that I might criticize Bob for, yet that alone keeps me from being as close to him as I would like. I see no point in talking to him about it because what could I say? “Bob, you need to lose weight”? “Bob, would you mind sitting on a packing crate when you visit, and going to a service station to take a dump?”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad to wish that someone I care about would go home because I’m worried about a chair and a toilet. “Stop being so fussy, fussy, fussy,” I tell myself. “He doesn’t break his own toilet, so he must know how to go easy on them.” But then I respond, “Well, I guess he doesn’t break his own toilet; for all I know he might break it all the time …It’s not like he is going to say, ‘Damn, Lowell, broke my frigging toilet again—fourth time this month.’”

Like a lot of men, Bob’s not the most intuitive guy in the world. I also think he’s reasonably thick-skinned, but Mary Pat knows that something’s not right with me when they’re here. God knows, I try to hide it, but she’s sharp enough to notice, and I’m sharp enough to know that she notices. This means that I feel the need to do something reassuring to make her doubt her perception. For example, Bob told me today that he likes Stellar Jays, so I found some Stellar Jay pictures on the net after he left and mailed them to him. I might have done this anyway because I like Bob, and I also liked the idea of commemorating what was mostly a good day…I probably even like Bob more because I feel so guilty about my fears that I have to like him in order to feel better about myself.

The day after I last saw her (two months ago), Mary Pat came down with viral meningitis and almost died. Everyone worries about Bob dying because he’s so fat, and then what happens but Mary Pat drops flatter than a pancake and lingers at the doorway of death for days. You just never can know, and that’s the only thing you can know.

Hell-on-wheels

I bought a bike light today. Of my seven wrecks in the past fifteen years, two were caused by hitting obstacles in the dark. Of the others, excessive speed caused one; inadequate speed caused two; and dogs caused two.

Ninety percent of bike fatalities are male, and a wreck every two years is more than I can walk away from indefinitely, especially now that I get hurt more easily and don’t heal worth a damn. My problem is that I like to go fast. If I can cross an intersection a hair’s breadth ahead of a speeding car, I’ll do it. If I can take a minute off my cross-town time by tearing through unlit parking lots and alleys, I’ll go for it. I wouldn’t say I’m exactly compelled to speed, but I would feel like a namby-pamby if I slowed down.

Eugene is a great city for maniac bikers because cops mostly ignore you unless you actually collide with them. I hear of people getting $250 tickets for running stop signs, and I know someone who got a ticket for failing to yield the right of way to the car that hit her; yet I rarely see a bike stop for a red-light if nothing is coming; and I regularly see them tearing down pedestrian filled sidewalks, speeding the wrong way on one way streets, passing cars between lanes of traffic; and behaving in other ways that are as reckless as they are obnoxious.

Eugene is also one of the country’s most bike friendly cities in that is has numerous bike lanes, bike racks, bike cages, bike thoroughfares, and bike awareness. When I moved here, I was freaked out by all the bikes because they were smaller than anything I was used to looking for. They seldom had lights; came out of nowhere; never gave signals; and behaved erratically. Now, I am very careful to watch for bicyclists because I know that a large percentage of them are idiots. Consequently, a large percentage of motorists regard them with contempt.

It doesn’t help our image when large numbers of bikers get together and ride abreast down busy streets, purposely creating traffic jams. (Their goal is discourage the use of cars.) Last year, they delayed an ambulance, and this led to public outrage and the issuance of massive numbers of tickets at subsequent events. This in turn led to biker accusations of police unfairness, partiality, and even brutality; so the cops have again backed off.

Eugene is also one of the world’s capitols for bike theft. My last bike light was stolen without its mounting bracket. I had left it on my bike with the assumption that no one was likely to steal an easily detachable light from a practically non-detachable bracket. Since then, I’ve learned that it happens all the time. On another occasion, I had my front wheel stolen, and it’s not unusual to see securely locked bike frames from which every removable part has been taken.

If a business allows patrons to take their bikes indoors, I take my bike indoors; and if I were to buy a new bike, I would deface it to discourage thieves. As it is, I take comfort in the fact that my ten-year-old UniVega is not high on the crooks’ shopping list. It would still be stolen if I didn’t take pains to protect it, but at least I don’t have to take extreme measures. People with new and expensive bikes often use them for recreation only, and keep an old clunker for commuting around town.

Peggy got rid of her bike a decade ago after a wet grate caused it to slide out from under her. She wasn’t hurt much, but she was so shaken that she was still sobbing when she got home twenty minutes later. She felt even worse because, of the many witnesses to the accident, no one offered to help. She only bought a new bike this year because we can no longer hike together.

Peggy is not as good at judging the speed and distance of oncoming cars as I, and I’ve worried for years about her walking to work much less biking (the hospital is twenty blocks and several busy intersections distant). I’ve been pleased to observe that she shows good sense without excessive caution. My theory is that the years she has walked have greatly improved her ability to judge speed and distance.

Compassion is a crust of bread

Peggy, our neighbor Ellie, and I went to the Cascades yesterday where they hiked a loop trail over two little mountains (Aubrey and Heckletooth) while I finished reading Main Street. They returned exhausted, although Peggy had previously considered the hike easy, and Ellie is a martial artist who is eight years younger than Peggy. Peggy is simply in the worst shape she has ever been; as for Ellie, fitness in one sport seldom translates into fitness in another.

I hate sitting on the sidelines while Peggy does things that we used to do together. No matter that I always wanted to read more and hike less; I wanted to do it by choice. And I find it almost as hard to watch Peggy’s decline as to watch my own. I’ve seen her train vigorously for months for a single climb up a Hood or a Shasta, this despite her inability to adjust to altitude. Many times, she vomited her way to the tops of mountains that defeated people of greater ability. Now, I see her exhausted by an eight-mile hike below 4,000 feet, and I am astounded that age has come upon her so quickly.

Aging appeared so desirable when I was young. Thirteen, eighteen, and twenty-one, were occasions for pride. But then came thirty and the end of young adulthood. Forty was halfway to death. Fifty was halfway to antiquity. At 57, I can scarcely believe the things I could do five years ago that are now impossible. No diet, supplement, exercise, or attitude can erase the accumulated months and years. Yet, they passed so quickly. Age is like a runaway boxcar that is scarcely noticed when it leaves the yard, but how dizzying its speed and how sure its destruction when it drops into the darkness of the valley below.

I would be at yoga now, but I strained both shoulders two weeks ago, and they have deteriorated to the point that my hands and forearms tingle continuously. I tried to find ways to do yoga anyway, but I finally had to give it up. I thought to do a few simple stretching exercises at home, but even those made my shoulders worst. Now, sharp pains in my knee are keeping me awake at night.

My deterioration inspires me to look back at my life and wonder what it was all about; and to look ahead at my life, and wonder what it is all about. Self-pity is not admirable; yet it seems to me that the pretty pictures we paint in order to get through our lives are less than rational. Some believe in heaven, or at least in some Higher Power that put us on earth for a reason. Others believe that, just as the flap of a butterfly’s wing is said to have the power to create a typhoon, everything we do has the potential for inestimable importance. Finally, for those who lack such comforting beliefs—who can find no reason to think that life has any meaning other than the meaning we give it—there is the possibility of focusing upon more humble goals. We accumulate things, or live for our families, or donate to charity, but we know that our choices are made on the basis of an existence that is as paltry in wisdom as it is in length.

I have spent years working on a house that will someday be torn down, yet I work for what it means to me now. I exercise a body that will soon rot, yet I exercise it for the good I can get from it now. This is how I live, and sometimes it seems reasonably satisfying, and sometimes it seems empty. Sometimes, I must struggle to find a reason to get out of bed. I think that, well, when I deteriorate beyond the point that I am willing to tolerate, there is always suicide (I dwell on this daily). Then I remember Peggy, and I know I couldn’t voluntarily leave her. I also think of my dogs and, in their absence, of the dogs at the pound, and I think that, well, even if my life becomes of no value to myself, it could still be of value to them. So what if my time is short and my efforts paltry; surely a brief and paltry effort is better than no effort at all. I believe suicide can be a noble way to die, but not until the drain of my life on others exceeds the good that I can create.

Do I know that I am right about this? How could I in my brief life and with my limited knowledge? Yet, I can distinguish between consolation and despair, and if I can bring more of the former than of the latter, I will have my reward. The problem is that it is awfully hard sometimes to care about consolation. If I console an unwanted dog that is about to be euthanized (I have consoled—and destroyed—many such dogs), I will have done something, yet the dog will be no less dead, and will have no more memory of whether it lived in a castle or died in a pound. By such thoughts, good is enfeebled; and the only thing I can say in its defense is that, poor though it be, it is all I have. If a starving man is thrown a small crust of bread, will he not eat it? Even if it serves only to prolong his misery, he would be a rare man who could refuse it; and I would be less than admirable if I could withhold it.

Peggy joins S.C.U.M.

Today, I went for part (which was all I could survive) of an all day workshop at the Sikh kundalini yoga center. I knew almost nothing about kundalini, so I looked it beforehand in Wikipedia. I quote:

“Summary of Known Problems [resulting from kundalini]: Death, pseudo death, psychosis, pseudo psychosis, confusion, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, sadness, suicidal thoughts, urges to self-mutilate, homicidal urges, arrhythmia, exacerbation of prior or current mental illness, insomnia, inability to hold a job, inability to talk, inability to drive, sexual pains, temporary blindness, and headaches.”

I naturally wondered if I would survive the afternoon, but, “what the heck,” I said to myself, “it's free. Besides, what are the odds that I’ll have all these problems at once?”

I was the only male in a roomful of middle-aged women (the other men having presumably died or gone insane), all of whom sat comfortably on the floor with their legs in a lotus position while I propped myself torturously against the wall. We practiced exercises that seemed so fiendishly designed to destroy knees that, had I been paranoid, I would have thought the teachers knew I was coming and were out to get me. We—rather the rest of the class—sat with their knees bent so their feet were beneath their butts; they squatted with their heels touching one another; and then they returned to a lotus position. I had to stifle my laughter as I considered the absurdity of my utter ineptness at doing any of the things that everyone else could do so easily.

Not that the teachers were content with knee twisting exercises. We also stared at our noses, tightened our anal sphincters, drew energy through our navels, chanted the same four syllables interminably, touched our fingers to our thumbs in time with our chanting, and panted—all at the same time. I could soon see that kundalini yoga would indeed drive me stark raving mad, and that it wouldn’t take long either.

After three sessions, each of which was wilder than its predecessor, I left. I couldn’t believe that people actually do this stuff, yet my curiosity would have kept me there for the final hour if only I could have sat in a chair.

As I biked home, I reflected upon my inability to do a single exercise correctly as well as the absence of other men in the class, and I recalled the S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting-Up Men) Manifesto which was written in 1967 by Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who shot Andy Warhol. The following will give but a mild taste of her sentiments:

“The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion…. the male is unfit even for stud service…[he] is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there’ll be a friendly pussy awaiting him.”

Since the part about snot and vomit was true enough, I asked Peggy--my resident nurse--whether the male Y gene really is simply an X gene with some parts missing. She said, “Picture a Y. What you’ve got is an X with only one leg right? This being undeniable, it necessarily follows that every Y that ever existed was a totally screwed-up, irredeemable mess. This is why the women in your yoga class could stand on one foot with their other limbs extended while you crashed to the floor. They were mighty towers of beauty and light; you were a three-legged dog in a hurricane.”

“Uh,” I interrupted. “I knew there were X genes and Y genes, but it never occurred to me that the genes really looked like Xs and Ys or that they had to spend their lives on their feet, as it were.”

“Well, sad to say, but now you know,” Peggy concluded. “This is knowledge that female nurses have always had, but that male doctors—even geneticists—have been protected from. Mine is, after all, a compassionate gender. That’s why we don’t start wars or beat people up like you stupid men.”

So it is that I will leave kundalini yoga to the gender that is better suited for it, and welcome to it they are. I had rather be strapped to a chair and forced to watch sitcoms from the 70s.

Extreme fighting letdown

Jay and his wife, Danette, took me to breakfast yesterday. Danette mentioned that they were going to watch a fight Sunday, caught herself, and apologized to Jay for telling me something that maybe she shouldn’t have. He told her that I already knew he was "not your usual yoga teacher,” and explained that Danette was referring to extreme fighting, and that they watch it on pay-per-view. All I know of extreme fighting is that it consists of putting two men in a cage in a combination boxing match, wrestling event, martial arts contest, and barroom brawl. The fight ends when one man is too injured to continue.

I have a problem with my yoga teacher taking pleasure in such an event, and I have a bigger problem with him watching it regularly and paying to support it. But then is it reasonable for me to care about the ethics of my yoga instructor (president, mail carrier, etc.)? So what if he enjoys violence—or kiddie porn for that matter—as long as he is a good teacher? My every relationship implies that I have weighed the good against the bad, and found in favor of the good.

I don’t know if I will find Jay’s behavior sufficiently offensive to change studios, but I suspect I will, as I have noted that I progress through six steps in regard to behavior that troubles me. First, I feel shocked. Second, I try to understand why the person might do such a thing. Third, I wonder if I am blowing the situation out of proportion. Fourth, I remind myself that no one is perfect, people interpret events differently, and what looks to me like a pattern of ethical failure might turn out to be a fleeting phase. Fifth, the problem continues to bother me. Sixth, I give up on the relationship.

Something that greatly bothers me today seldom bothers me less tomorrow. This only leaves the alternative of changing the way the other person looks at his behavior, and I rarely attempt that. In this case, I doubt that I could offer any objection to extreme fighting that Jay is unaware of, and I would anticipate alienating him by discussing it. It therefore seems preferable to break ties gracefully. If I decide to leave his studio, there are many reasons I might offer that would be less truthful, yet also less damaging. I do not believe in being truthful in the absence of any good that I imagine coming from it.

Jay-yoga

My yoga studio is four months old and is run by Jay, a former track coach from Colorado. He is forty, and his big muscles, shaved head, and in-your-face stare make him look more like a belligerent cop than a yoga instructor. Indeed, he took up yoga to deal with his aggression. Still, I trust him. I park my bike in his office, borrow his books, take his coffee grounds home for compost, have offered to help enlarge his studio, and play outrageous pranks on him.

For example, when I fell on my neck during a handstand that he encouraged me to try, I walked stiffly into class the next day with an ace bandage around my throat with (used) paint paddles poking out. While Jay freaked, I told him morosely that I had been unable to turn my head since class and had suffered a continuous nosebleed. He insisted that I see a doctor immediately. “Doctor?” I asked distractedly. “I don’t think I need one of those. I’m feeling a lot better with just vodka and codeine.” He never did get it, so I finally had to tell him that I was pulling his leg.

Jay pays other teachers to work in his studio, but he conducts most of the classes. The average class consists of one to four. This is good for me because I receive a lot of personalized attention, but no so good for him. He is hoping things will pick up now that summer is over, and I am hoping he can afford to wait.

I pay $60 a month for unlimited sessions, and go nine hours a week. I drop any and everything when it’s time for class because I see yoga as my best shot at strengthening my knee. Otherwise, I will have to forego my remodeling projects, and even housework is difficult when my arthritis is at its worst. After two months of yoga, I can do things that I would not have thought possible.
Before my knee problems, I never considered yoga. It doesn’t involve pumping iron, breathing hard, or sweating profusely: any of the things that I associate with getting in shape. Yet, I had the thought in class today that yoga is so demanding that it could be used as torture. All that would be necessary would be to put the victim into one of scores of postures, and make him stay there for ten minutes. My muscles often tremble before a count of ten, and a count of 100 would be impossible.

Yoga appeals to me for many reasons. It is artistic in a way that jogging, swimming, or lifting weights is not. It is also ancient (The Yoga Sutras are 4,000 years old but contain knowledge that was old even then). It can be done almost anywhere with no equipment. Finally, it develops strength, balance, flexibility, and spirituality, all at the same time. I am made to do hard things, but, paradoxically, the only way I can do them is to relax.

Jay gave me a t-shirt today on which is a triangle, the points of which represent mind, body, and spirit. A month ago, I was the only one in my Wicca class who took the position that straight lines are no less magical than curves. I argued that snowflakes, honeycombs, and basalt columns are objects of unparalleled beauty and mystery, yet all are angular. I also mentioned my love of triangles. To be presented with a representation of a triangle today touched me. I cannot say that it proves anything about the track I am on, yet I could not reasonably hope for a track that would serve me better—not that this keeps me from looking.

I am especially curious about Qigong and Tai Chi. The former is nearly as old as Yoga and is a part of Chinese medicine. The latter is less than 200 years old, and is both a soft martial art (the muscles remain relaxed) and a form of meditation and exercise. I am drawn to Qigong because of Tai Chi’s relative newness and its use as a martial art. I am drawn to Tai Chi because, unlike Yoga and Qigong, its movements flow from one into another, and this gives it a greater aesthetic appeal.

Your guide to becoming a conservative talk radio host

Conservative talk radio is like professional wrestling: it is about sensationalism not substance. To this end:

Aim to reach the segment of the population that has never heard the term "logical fallacy" and would think it was a liberal plot if they had.

Never made a point that is too complicated to put on a bumper sticker.

Accuse anyone who disagrees with you of attempting to deny your Constitutional right to free speech.

Play and replay sound bites of the most radical statements ever made by any member of a group that you oppose on any subject. Play the braying of a donkey or the crying of a baby in the background.

Describe yourself as world famous or internationally recognized.

Proclaim yourself as the only credible source of information about what’s really going on.

Accuse the media elite of trying to silence you.

Say you can’t accede to pleas that you run for president because you have more power in your present job.

Take personal credit for changes in government policy that agree with your political position.

Regularly repeat such assurances as I’m looking out for you, or I’m your source for fair and balanced information.

Constantly assure your listeners that they constitute an unusually diverse and intelligent audience.

Never debate a rational caller/guest. Talk over him; call him a Kool-Aid drinker, a Looney-Tune, or a nobody; ask him why, if he’s so smart, he doesn’t have his own talk show; say that he is just the kind of America-hater that you are trying to warn people against before it’s too late.

Demand that members of groups you oppose disprove widespread allegations of nudism, atheism, socialism, drug abuse, secular humanism, Communist influence, etc. within their ranks. Ask callers/interviewees if they are personally involved in such activities. Ask why they hate American or Christianity, or if it is true that they are close friends with Jane Fonda.

Refer to the caller/guest as a member of the liberal elite or the leftist fringe. Ask why they won’t come down out of their Ivory Tower and talk to real people about real issues.

Ask atheists why they hate God. Offer to buy vegetarians a steak dinner. Ask animal rights advocates why they love snakes more than children. Ask environmentalists which trees make the best huggers, and why they prefer the starvation of rural families to the harvesting of a renewable resource.

Put the caller/guest on hold, change the subject, go to a break, or replay an irrelevant sound bite when you feel cornered.

Say that anyone who won’t come on your show is obviously a coward.

Remember that a lie will gain credibility if it’s repeated often enough, for example, “Fair and Balanced.”

How we camp

We sleep in the van at the end of abandoned logging roads. We find these roads on topo maps, our ideal spot being one from which the earth drops away steeply on three sides. Because the roads we choose are abandoned but passable, the forest will have been cut recently enough that we have a view. We also like to camp in remote quarries because they consist of large open areas cut from steep hillsides, and because I enjoy studying the rocks. The problem with quarries is that other people use them for camping and target practice. This means there is a chance of the dogs finding something to roll in.

We carry water in one-gallon juice jugs. We like Langer’s jugs because they are rectangularish and take up less space than the same number of round jugs. Four gallons a day is adequate, and we can conveniently pack twelve.

We take food from the freezer for our suppers. This reduces the amount of ice we need. I drink water, coffee, and Tang. Peggy drinks water and milk. If I forgot to pack the coffee, I would have to go looking for some. Peggy is the same way about milk. Among our other staples are homemade crackers and biscuits (made by me) and cookies (made by Peggy).

Peggy is the camp cook, and I am the cleaner, straightener, and organizer. We work together to make the bed and wash the dishes. For years, we heated soapy water on a Coleman stove for the dishes. I never saw much reason for this, so we finally went to pouring cold soapless water over them and using our fingers as a dishcloth.

I wouldn’t bother to heat our meals if Peggy weren’t adamant. I don’t even heat mine at home where it is a lot more convenient. If I’m really cold, hot food is nice, but then if I’m really cold, it’s an more annoying to stand outside and heat it.

Our bed is a four-inch foam mattress that lays atop a homemade plywood box that we use for storage (we took two rows of seats out of the van to make room for it). The box has a large lid at either end, which means that the mattress lifts up when one of the lids is raised. For this reason, we try to keep things that we are likely to want while we’re in bed where we can get to them. Otherwise, we have to either both get out of bed, or one of us has to move to the head of the bed while the other gets out and raises the lid.

For lighting, we use two hanging lanterns that run off D-cell batteries. We like to read in bed. I take along natural history books and whatever else I’m reading at the time, and Peggy takes a mystery novel or an adventure story.

We carry a .38 special and a can of bear-strength pepper spray. The .38 is the one thing that we don’t leave in the van even for a five-minute walk. Bonnie is so afraid of fireworks that if I ever had to fire the .38, I doubt that we would ever see her again. This worries me, but it would worry me more to visit isolated places without something that will shoot farther and hit harder than pepper spray.

I used to take a .357 magnum, but it was too big and heavy to carry in my pocket. The .38 is a little heavy too, but, on those rare instances when someone approaches our camp, I can slip it discreetly into my jacket pocket with my finger on the trigger.

A couple and their dog were murdered in the woods sixty miles from Eugene last summer for no apparent reason. Their killer has not been found. The murder scared Peggy but had little impact on me. I believe that random murders happen all the time, but that we only hear of them when they’re close to home. I am also consoled by the thought that we camp in such remote areas that no one is likely to find us. We’ve even been known to block our road with limbs.

I read that a person’s states of alertness to danger can be compared to the colors of a redlight. If you live under condition red too much, you get sick from the strain; but if you stay under condition green, you make yourself an easy target. I try to practice condition yellow, which is a state of relaxed watchfulness, but I never get really good at it.

Dogs are better in this regard. I envy their ability to go from limp mellowness to bare-toothed aggression in the space of a heartbeat. Human beings are more emotionally complicated, and this works against us. It’s as if we have thirty speeds, and we have to go through each of them to move up or down; whereas dogs only have three speeds, and those speeds correspond to our numbers one, fifteen, and thirty. Having a dog is like having a guardian angel. If I had to choose between losing my dogs and losing my human friends, I would keep the dogs. This is a not a statement about how little I value my friends, but how much I value my dogs.

Bonnie and Baxter are good about staying near us. We can put them out and take a nap, and not worry about them wandering off, although, after having saved Baxter from predators twice, I worry about what might wander off with him. Bonnie is only eight pounds heavier but a lot more formidable.

I’ve been surprised by how close to people predators will come to kill a dog. I used to only worry about mountain lions; now I can’t even relax around hawks and bobcats. If they are willing to approach a dog that is fifty feet from its master; I would expect a mountain lion to be much bolder. Other than people, mountain lions are the only thing in the woods that scare me. Attacks are rare, but they have brought down adult male cyclists, and their population has been on the increase since hunting them with dogs was outlawed.

The dogs sleep on the front seats at night. When we’re driving, Baxter generally sits on the bed and observes the scenery while Bonnie rests on the floor between our seats. Unless she rolls in something, Bonnie stays clean and has a pleasant musky smell. After a day in the woods, Baxter’s curly fur is so full of dirt, twigs, and plant seeds, that he looks and smells like he has been in the woods for months.

I bathe daily with alcohol. As I tell Peggy, “I’m not just clean, I’m sterilized.” She doesn’t find alcohol baths as satisfying, so she uses water sometimes and alcohol sometimes. After three days, she shampoos her hair while I pour cold water over her head. Since I use alcohol on my hair too, I don’t have this problem.

Peggy and I go to places that other people take little interest in. This puts us at less risk of having our van burglarized while we are on a trail, and it reduces problems with the dogs going ballistic when they encounter another person or dog, but the main reason is that we enjoy the wilderness more when we have it to ourselves. Since most people prefer to be around water or near timberline, finding solitude is easy. Ironically, we can get away from people better by staying closer to home. The Cascade crest is seventy road miles from Eugene, while the deep woods of the Middle Fork Ranger District begin at forty. I suspect that most people who drive to the Cascade crest haven’t even heard of the Middle Fork District.

We are also better able to find solitude than most people because we use better maps. The forest service will sell you a topographic district map that shows every last road, but for some reason they won’t display such maps so that you know they exist. The map that they do display is for an entire national forest and is inadequate for our purposes because it only shows a third of the roads and has no elevation lines.

We sometimes use geographic survey maps that depict an area of about 42 square miles, but they are more appropriate for backpackers. We would need to know an awful lot about a small area to require something that detailed, but they are fun to look at in bed on wintry nights. I had never seen a topographic map before moving here from Mississippi, and have since wondered what one for the Mississippi Delta would look like.

We carry short-legged lawn chairs for relaxing around camp. We also carry a toilet seat on legs. We squatted for years, but my knee will no longer bend properly, and Peggy never took to squatting anyway. I initially thought that using a potty was sissified, but I would no longer be without one.

We use a roll-up table for cooking. This was Peggy’s idea, but she is so delighted with her table that I am happy we have it. Yet, when the hour is late, and I’m tired, I sometimes wonder why, if we must cook, we can’t just set the stove on the floor of the van. I have to remind myself that luxuries are essential; it’s just that we require different luxuries, and that she requires a few more than I. Not that I’m counting—heavens no.

Now that I can no longer hike, we might have to take different kinds of trips. This is why our recent vacation put us in contact with so many people. If we had made it purely a backcountry adventure, I would have spent most of my time near the van while Peggy was out hiking with the dogs. By adding a historic/social element, we were able do more together. My love of hiking makes my knee problem more traumatic. We’ve only gone out about four times this season, whereas we usually go at least twice a month.

Desert Wonders

I forgot to address the Indian history of the Fort Rock area. Seventy 9,000-year-old sagebrush sandals were found in a cave there in 1938. More recently, human excrement (see photo) was carbon dated to 14,300 years. I don’t know what was done with the, uh, poop, after it was dated. I would like to see and smell it sometime so I will have something to talk about if I’m ever invited to a dinner party.

Big Hole (a three mile wide volcanic pit), Hole in the Ground (a one mile wide volcanic pit), Paulina Peak (the biggest volcano in Oregon at its base), Mt. Mazama (now Crater Lake), and Fort Rock itself (a tuff ring), all blew (by one estimate) during human habitation of the area. This leads me to speculate that the…uh, feces could have been an outcome of one of those explosions.
The earliest known Indians in the area were co-inhabitors with camels, flamingos, wooly mammoths, large bison, and small horses. The climate was warm and wet, and what is now the Great Basin Desert was mostly covered by enormous lakes. Today, rivers flow into the Great Basin only to disappear.

I have seen all three of this country’s deserts, and I like the Great Basin best. It’s as pretty but not as hot. Also, there are few thorny plants, and no testy scorpions or murderous lizards. There are rattlers, but I’ve never seen one. Actually, I haven’t seen a poisonous snake in the eighteen years I’ve been in Oregon.

The truth about Fort Rock

Only one of the Fort Rock homesteaders is alive for the annual reunion this year. Her name is Vivian Stratton, and she was nine when her family moved to the valley in 1913. Almost overnight, sixteen towns appeared, and the number of homesteaders exceeded 2,500. Many were from back East, some from Europe. All were drawn by the promise of free land in an area with rich soil, plenty of water, and a soon to be built railroad. They read of rich black loam that would grow sixty bushels of wheat per acre along with,

“…all varieties of fruit such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, and all other kinds of berries,” of, “…good fields of grain waving to and fro…good level land…many miles of lanes with well-tilled fields on either side, good houses and barns…”

The truth was that the Fort Rock Valley averages eight inches of rain and 345 days of frost annually—and it still doesn’t have a railroad. It doesn’t even have rivers for irrigation. Realtors made money showing the land to homesteaders, lawyers made money filing their claims, railroads made money moving them, teamsters made money transporting their belongings from the railhead, and merchants made money selling them supplies; all while local ranchers watched and laughed.

Many of the homesteaders suspected the worst, but by then they were thousands of miles from home and lacked the money to return. Louise Godon, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a French father and an Irish mother wrote of her mother Bridget’s reaction.

“At the sight of it all, Mother burst into tears. My how the tears flowed! Mom remembered back to her lovely home in Philadelphia—the maple-lined streets, the neat lawns, front and back, of the solidly built house. She remembered her collection of fine china, glassware, and silverware, which we had sold—in fact, nearly given away—just for this God-forsaken land. And she cried some more.”

Crop after crop was blown away, and what the winds missed, the rabbits took. If a family moved before five years passed, or if they failed to make certain improvements, their land was forfeited, so fathers looked for work in other places—often in other states—while wives and children hung on, hoping that next year would be better. As it turned out, the weather had been milder than average early on, and took a turn for the worse in the 1920s. As quickly as they had come, the homesteaders moved away, leaving the laughing ranchers to pay their taxes and swallow up their acreage. Of the many towns, only Fort Rock remains, and it with a population of 25.

Ironically, Bridget Godon was one of the handful who stuck it out. When her husband died of a stroke at age 54, she and her five daughters stayed on to raise cattle, work the land, and earn money in every other honest way they could. When they lost their savings in the bank failure of 1927, they started saving again. They grew wealthier, and when other homesteaders left, they took title to still more land. From 320 acres, their holdings grew to over 5,000. One of the daughters, Alice, was mechanically gifted, so she repaired the machinery and learned to drive. The matriarch, Bridget, died at age 93.

No landscape touches me so deeply as the desert. I look upon it with unrelenting wonder that anyplace can be so beautiful. Like Bridget Godon, I cry and cry but for a different reason.

I suggested to Peggy that we buy a cabin in the desert for vacationing, but she wouldn’t consider it. She admits that the desert is pretty, but she objects to the wind and the dust, to the winters that are too cold and the summers that are too hot. She complains that there is no shade, and she laments the skin-cracking aridity and the extreme isolation. In all of this, she is right, yet for me the desert’s beauty outweighs them all. The stark nakedness of the air, the sky that never ends, the clarity of mountains a hundred miles distant, the smell of dust mixed with juniper and sage after a storm…other landscapes are trivialized by comparison.

I know that the forest and seashore are equally a part of nature, and that they are equally beautiful in their own way, yet they do not cause me to kneel in awe. When I come home from the desert, I feel as if I have come home from a dreamscape. I know it exists, and that I saw it, yet it seems unreal. But then I loved deserts long before I ever saw one. When I finally did visit the Southwest, it was one of the few times when my expectation was inferior to reality.

It might seem ironic then that I feel happier now that I am home. I can best compare the two environments to being tickled. When I was a boy, my cousins would tickle me until I couldn’t breathe. The desert is that way. I try to cope, but the feelings keep growing even while I keep diminishing.

When I first took LSD, the woman who gave it to me warned that it would take over my mind, and that if I tried to resist, it would turn my energy against me. Likewise, it is in the desert that I touch the infinite, and the infinite takes possession. I see my nothingness, and I struggle to find that person who I call myself, that person who normally looms larger in my awareness than the rest of the world together; but all that I have to throw against the power of the desert is exactly equal to nothing. I am less than an ant before a twenty-ton truck. I am not only run over by the desert; the desert is oblivious to what it has done. It holds the truth of my insignificance hard against my face, and in doing this it comforts me. It says to me that I am worth so little that there is really no reason for me to fret about anything.

Less than two days before she died, Bridget Godon’s daughters took her to a hospital in Bend. It was the first time she had ever been to a doctor much less to a hospital. She begged to be taken back to the desert—not to her ranch or to Fort Rock, but to the desert. The nurse winked at her daughters, and her daughters told Bridget that they would be back the next day. I don’t know that the desert would have saved her, yet where better to die than in the arms of God, even if God is a being that takes not the least observance of our existence, especially if God is a being that takes not the least observance of our existence? The whole of the human race could devote itself entirely to the worship of the desert’s tiniest pebble, and neither pebble nor desert would care. In this I find my religion.

High Desert vacation

Wednesday, September 7, 2006,
the start of our vacation

We camped in the High Desert on the rim of a mile wide crater called Hole in the Ground on this, the first night of our vacation. Earlier today, a man who was old enough to know better tried to drive a one ton, extended cab Dodge into the crater on a narrow ATV road that looked like a washboard with the ridges four foot higher than the valleys. He got 500 feet before the downhill side of the road collapsed, leaving his truck stuck and in danger of rolling over. He walked to a ranch house, and the retired rancher and his wife used a tractor, an ATV, and three come-alongs to keep the Ram from flipping down the hill while they pulled it out. The job was dangerous, and the wife rolled her ATV, injuring her ribs. The rancher is losing his vision and had to be verbally guided. They refused payment.

Thursday

We drove to nearby Fort Rock, a 325-foot high volcanic ring that resembles a fort from a Tolkien novel. The town of the same name (population 25) has a museum that consists mostly of homestead era buildings from the surrounding area. It was closed until the next day, so we returned to the rancher’s house and camped in his yard. This gave us the benefit of a picnic table and a hired man’s cabin if we wanted to sleep indoors but, most of all, it allowed us the pleasure of the couple’s company.

They told us to enjoy their ranch while we could because they were selling out and moving to Prineville. The man had recently returned from the blind school at Portland, where three different black men had tried to mug him on the city’s streets. Prior to Portland, he had rarely seen a black person.He used a knife to discourage the first mugger, but carried a pistol for the others. As we visited, a herd of antelope grazed nearby. I asked how long he had lived there, and how he liked it. He said 27 years, and that he had liked it very well because he had never had an argument with a neighbor (there being none) or seen a government inspector.

I told him about my knee problems, and he said he has one knee that is “bone against bone,” but it didn’t seem to concern him much. Maybe it’s easier to put other things in perspective when you’re going blind.

I mentioned that it had been awfully cold the night before on the 5,000 foot high rim, to which the wife responded that the temperature at the ranch house (300 feet lower) had dropped to 18°.

Friday

Last night was little warmer, but Peggy would have taken the dogs to bed with us to keep Baxter warm had I not objected on account of the dirt.

When I awakened, the rancher was loading a homemade mortar and howitzer into his truck. His hobby is shooting artillery in accuracy contests (hell of a hobby for a blind man). I helped, and was amazed by how strong he was compared to me. I consoled myself with the thought that I had just woke up. It proved to be a meaningful consolation as I was later able to drag one of the guns by myself.

We spent hours touring the Fort Rock museum and visiting with the locals. A woman invited Peggy to her home to see needlework while I chatted with the men. I joined the museum foundation, and we bought two books about the history of the area. The most famous resident was Rueb Long, an author I have adored for The Oregon Desert, a book he co-authored with another rancher. Reub spent his summers at the hired man’s cabin next to which we had camped the night before—I felt as if I had slept on holy ground.

The temperature moved into the nineties as we drove south over Picture Rock Pass—where we stopped to admire a few of the dozens of pictographs that are spread through the sagebrush—and into Summer Lake Valley. Peggy wanted a motel for the night, so we paid $70 at the Summer Lake Inn. That evening, we set out for a walk, but the mosquitoes prevented it. We didn’t see or hear a one of them until we had gone a quarter mile, at which time they descended upon us by the hundreds and pursued us all the way back to our room. We smashed scores of them against the ceiling and walls, creating additional bloody spots to go with the ones that were already there.

Saturday

We had planned to go deeper into the Great Basin Desert, but the weather was getting hot, so we headed into the mountains and didn’t stop until we were at 7,200-feet. Even there, it was warm. We camped on a ridge overlooking our previous night’s lodging. Charles Fremont and Kit Carson had looked off the same ridge on December 18, 1843. For days, they had labored in fierce winds and deep snows, and were facing the possibility of starvation. The lake and valley below looked like paradise to them. Hence the names Summer Lake and Winter Ridge.

It was bow season, and we spoke with a few hunters. I detest the cruelty of hunting (and ranching for that matter), yet hunters have often been among the most generous and kindly people I’ve known. This is one of those ironies of humanity that I have never understood. My response has been to try and focus upon the good in people, and the good is easier to find in many hunters than it is in regular people.

Our ranch hosts were hunters (as evidenced by their guns, bows, and animal heads), and if they had invited us to supper and set a plate of beef or elk in front of me, I would have eaten it. This would not be easy after 23 years as a vegetarian, but I have thought about such a scenario many times over the years, and have concluded that I had rather eat meat than cause offense if I were the guest of a man who made his living raising cattle.

Sunday

Peggy and I climbed Dead Indian Mountain (7,066’) this morning. In the afternoon, she climbed Foster Butte (6,778’) with the dogs. There was no trail and, the rocks all looking pretty much the same, she marked part of her route with survey ribbons. She was as proud of summiting Foster as she was of many more formidable mountains simply because she did it alone on unmarked terrain.

I can’t say that I was entirely sanguine about her efforts, so when she had not returned by 6:00, I packed two quarts of water and two flashlights, and set out after her. I worried about my knee, but I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Fortunately, she appeared from the other side of the mountain before I had gone a quarter of a mile. She explained that there had been false summits, and that she had spent a lot of time route finding.

Monday (Labor Day)

Peggy climbed Hager Mountain (7,195’), a prominent landmark that overlooks a hundred miles of desert, today. There was both a trail and a road to a fire lookout, but we had no good maps for the area, and I worried that the trail would give out or fork, so I asked her to take the road. It was a steep five-miles on a hot day, and she returned with blisters on both feet and dogs that were limping on burned pads. I felt bad that I had encouraged her to take the road, but at least I had not been worried. Instead, I had identified the few plants that I didn't recognize and read more about the Fort Rock homesteaders. Peggy and I had read one book aloud, and now I had finished most of another.

We hated to come down out of the mountains into the heat, but we needed water and a laundromat. Worse yet, Peggy was out of milk to go with her cookies. We drove to Silver Lake (the lake is now dry). It was the site of a Christmas Day fire in 1894 that killed a third of the 143 inhabitants. We paid $3 each for a shower at the town’s trailer park, which averaged out to be a bargain since Peggy took her usual thirty minute shower, while I was out in eight. As in most of the desert towns, there was a lot of property for sale.

We camped in a quarry from which we could see all three of the mountains Peggy had climbed. The moon was brilliant, and the scene lacked nothing to make it more beautiful.

Tuesday

We awoke to the distant smoke of forest fires, and could no longer see the mountains. As I made my coffee, I watched a large hawk circle lower and lower over Baxter who stood half asleep in the sun, probably wondering what the hell kind of a vacation it is when a dog is nearly frozen at night only to have his feet burned to stubs in the daytime. I knew I should yell at the hawk, but curiosity got the better of me.

Clearly, a 23-pound dog was too big for even a large hawk to carry, but I wondered if the hawk might plan to eat part of him on site and carry the rest off for later. The hawk finally landed fifteen feet to the rear of a still oblivious Baxter. It tilted its head this way and that, obviously in deep concentration about the advisability of attacking something that was so large yet so seemingly vulnerable. When it started hopping toward Baxter, I scared it away. As with the bobcat two years ago, Baxter never knew how close to death he had come.

We returned to the Fort Rock Cemetery (it and the rock of the same name being a mile north of the town of Fort Rock). Peggy continued on to the rock—blowing kisses as she walked—while I looked at grave markers and read about the deceased from my history books. She said she would only be gone a few minutes. She later yelled and waved at me from high on the rock, and I wondered if she was actually going to the top despite the fact that her feet were so blistered that she could only wear sandals. I remembered what she had said about “a few minutes” and returned to my history books comforted.

An hour later, an old man on a bicycle came by. I told him of my worry about Peggy, who was still on the rock, and he consoled me with stories of people who had been killed by falling. I wondered how much longer I should wait before going for help as the area was too big and too rough for me to necessarily find her if I searched all day. There was also the thought that, the sooner she got help, the better her chances of survival—assuming she was not already dead. I was contemplating selling our house and moving to a one room shack where I could pass the rest of my days within sight of Fort Rock when she returned, very pleased with herself for having summited.

That afternoon, we drove to Bend and visited Pilot Butte Cemetery to see the graves of still more of the people we had been reading about. Afterwards, we gassed up and headed back across the Cascades.

Peggy had her heart set on camping near McKenzie Pass, but the actual flames of a forest fire were visible, and the air was wretched with smoke. To my relief, she agreed to continue on a few miles down the west side. I was even a little concerned about this since a change in the wind could point the fire in our direction.

For the first time in decades, we stayed at an official campsite. No one else was there, and no fee signs were posted, so it seemed like a good idea until 2:30 a.m. when we were awakened by chewing sounds under the van. I beat on the floor, and the noise stopped, but only for a few minutes. When it started back, I got out and looked in vain for the source. As soon as I lay back down the noise resumed. We had already met one woman on the trip whose new truck had suffered $13,000 in damages from gnawing rodents, so we left. Ten miles later we pulled over and passed the rest of the night peacefully.

Wednesday

We hiked along the McKenzie River for a couple of miles and then drove home. We couldn’t have traveled more than 600 miles on our trip and probably less than that.

I turned on the radio and heard the news for the first time in a week (the only newspaper I had read was a 1915 edition of the Fort Rock Times, which reported one case of gangrene, two cases of smallpox, and the clubbing of 3,540 rabbits). The announcer said, “President Bush claimed during a speech today that progress is being made in Iraq, even while House and Senate Democrats called for the replacement of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld due to his mishandling of the war.” “I haven’t missed a thing,” I thought, but then learned of the death of Steve Irwin.

Thursday

Two neighbors died while we were away. One was in his fifties, and succumbed to prostate cancer, the other in his eighties and a victim of diabetes. The younger man was a lawyer, and I hardly knew him, so I minded his death less than that of the older man whom I regarded highly.

Our cell phone—which we bought in case Peggy’s family or the neighbor who was watching our house needed to get in touch—died the first day out, so I returned it today. I was glad for the excuse. I don’t really want to know what’s happening when I’m away. I mentioned this to Peggy, but she kept her thoughts to herself as she often does.

Avoiding hurt by anticipating it

I just called a repair shop to make an appointment for the van. When I got off the phone, I checked with another shop, and learned that I could get the van in there sooner. When I called the lady back to cancel, her demeanor changed from caring to hostile.

This was no big deal, but it came on the heels of an email to Gwen (my mentor in my Wicca group) being returned because she blocked my address. Gwen had said she wanted to correspond regardless of my status with the group. I don’t know whether to interpret her action as coming from fear or contempt, or why she would feel either. Maat, the teacher, said she would refund the $20 I paid for supplies, and that I could expect a check the first part of last week. It is now the first part of this week, and it still hasn’t come. I had thought that—despite everything—these were people of integrity.

I have yet to learn enough about people that I can divine which ones are flaky or two-faced. I have often longed for some formula. For example, it would help a great deal if Democrats were invariably lying bastards and Republicans upright and consistent. Or if religious people were ethical and atheists untrustworthy. But alas, treachery and dishonesty extend equally across boundaries of gender, intelligence, education, wealth, geography, politics, and religion. That said, I have made a few useful observations.

People who are certain that Truth is on their side are unreachable when they err, as are people who blame others for their own bad behavior.

People in cohesive groups reinforce each other’s evil.

People who are lecherous, greedy, or addicted to drugs, alcohol, romance, or gambling, can be expected to put their addiction above everything else.

People who are under a physical or emotional strain are more likely to compromise their ethics.

People usually behave in the present as they have in the past, so I cannot expect them to treat me honorably if I know them to have shafted others.

People who give ethics a lot of thought are no more trustworthy than those who do not. A great deal of thought can pave the way for a great deal of rationalization.

The legal profession attracts people who enjoy finding clever ways to sidestep the consequences of evil acts, their own or others.

There is seldom a connection between legality and morality.

People who seek power over others (as through politics) are usually more interested in dominance than in service.

Those who are not invested in a person, group, neighborhood, etc. cannot be expected to act as though they are.

People who see themselves as victims can be expected to show treachery toward those whom they regard as oppressors, and few are content with getting even.

I can never trust anyone whose sacred cow I have slaughtered through evidence or rational argument. Not only will they pretend that the cow is alive, they will never forgive me for attacking it.

Unfortunately, many of the traits I mentioned are not readily identifiable, and people are capable of surprises no matter how reasonable the criteria I use to define them. I think that, when all else fails and I am treated shabbily by someone I thought I could trust, it is better to not take it personally. Maat did not say she would refund my money and then not do so because of who I am, but because of who she is. The same is true of Gwen who promised to write, but then blocked my e-mail. Seldom (if ever) does a person’s behavior toward me stand in isolation from the way they live the rest of their lives.

Footnote: Maat refunded my money after I wrote to her again asking for it.

Dog stew

Last week was a week of mishaps. One night, my bike bounced away from the edge of a steel plate in a construction zone. I hadn’t even seen the plate when the bike veered to the right. Not knowing what had happened, I turned to the left only to bounce off the plate a second time. By now, I was wobbling badly, and putting all my energy into staying upright. The next thing I saw was a rapidly approaching curb. The bike had clearly decided to end our corroboration, and it stopped abruptly at the curb’s edge, throwing me over the handlebars. I hit the ground, bounced into the air, rolled three times, and found myself dizzy but unhurt in a grove of oak trees. While I was rolling, I sensed that my lower body was turning at a different speed than my upper, and I had the thought that, if I had not been taking yoga, I would have to be carried away on a backboard. It’s funny how much time a person has to think when he’s bouncing.

Friday, we camped in the coast range. I awakened before Peggy, and thought I would hike the short distance to the top of Saddle Mountain by way of an abandoned trail. When the trail gave out, I bushwhacked, but the undergrowth was so thick that I gave up my summit attempt for fear of hurting my knee. I missed hitting the trail on the way back, so—the area qualifying as a rain forest—I spent the next ninety minutes struggling through five foot high salal and briers. The brush was so thick that the dogs couldn’t walk below it or upon it, and they cried in frustration as they writhed through it. I knew they could guide me back to the trail if they only knew what I wanted, but they did not, so it was one of those situations in which dogs could be helpful in theory but are in reality worse than useless (like when you lock yourself out of your car on a hot day, and your dog stares at you curiously as you tell him to lift the little knob with his teeth).

Baxter had trouble keeping up even at my tediously slow pace, and I knew that if I lost him, an inconvenience would become a tragedy. I protected my knee as best I could, but my feet were seldom on the ground, the brush being so thick that I was walking about a foot high except for those blessed occasions when I came upon a log that I could use as a bridge.

With the ridge to my right and the sun to my back, I anticipated hitting the road eventually, but the distance was surprisingly long and the going tediously slow. I knew that Peggy would be awake by now. I wondered how long she would wait before seeking help. I thought of the disappointment of our friends who we were supposed to meet for a picnic at Heceta Head, and of the news crews that would seek an interview when I was finally rescued. I couldn’t decide whether to grant a humorous interview, a grateful to my rescuers interview, or no interview. I decided that nothing I could say—or not say—would make me look like anything but a fool, so I hoped fervently that Peggy wouldn’t go for help no matter how long it took me to return to the van. I hoped she would look at the map (for a change) and see that there was a powerline to the north and roads to the east, south, and west; and would remember that the weather was warm enough for me to survive without provisions. I took frequent short breaks, focused on my breathing to remain calm, and ate salal berries and huckleberries. I regretted that I had no water for the dogs because they were struggling mightily, and I could not carry them.

When I finally hit the road, I felt as if the gates of heaven had opened, but when I reached our campsite, Peggy was gone. I began walking out the way we had come (we camped at the end of the road), and met her driving back. She had been looking for me. My legs were blood-streaked from scores of scratches, some six inches long. When our friends asked me what the hell had happened, I said that Peggy was a phenomenally passionate woman with phenomenally long toe-nails. “She can climb trees like a squirrel,” I offered. Their expressions indicated that they considered her story more plausible. All this happened two days ago, and my knee is a swollen, stiff, aching mess. Eight hours of yoga a week for a solid month, and I am as bad off as when I started.

On our drive into the woods, we listened to CDs I bought at a garage sale last week. I got Bob Marley, The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix; stuff I had always wanted, but had never been able to find for 25¢ each. While I was listening to protest songs and acid rock as a young man, Peggy was tuning into Neil Diamond and Linda Ronstadt (How do people like us come together?).

“Was Jimi Hendrix black?” she asked. And then, “Was Jim Morrison in a band?” I told her about the joys of taking acid or smoking pot while listening to these guys, about how their music had been written by people on drugs for people on drugs, and how Hendrix and Morrison died from drugs. I said that their songs’ erratic lengths and variations made it even harder to keep track of time than the chemicals alone would have caused, so I wouldn’t know if the same song had been playing for three minutes or three hours. I would tell myself that it had to be three minutes because no song could last for three hours, yet my life prior to the song would seem unreal, like something out of a history book. And I wouldn’t just hear the music, I would taste it and see it. As I talked, she drove, and the sun flashed through the trees like a strobe light. The day was perfection. Foxy Lady, Hendrix sang, and I looked over to see Peggy ducking tree limbs that touched the windshield. “My old ladies high,” I thought, “and I am too.”

I cried during The Doors Spanish Caravan. “Are you crying because you’re sad that Morrison died young?” Peggy asked. “No, it’s not that. It’s the genius that it took to create such beauty that gets to me.” I considered it inevitable that these guys didn’t live to see thirty because they were cranked without crank. Some people are like tortoises, others like moths; and who is to say which can cram the most living into a lifetime?

When we got to our isolated and unofficial camping spot, we turned the music up, and opened the van’s doors. It seemed like a good time to party, and we had three beers and a bottle of wine to do it with. Half a beer later, we were asleep. The passage of two score and seventeen years has cost me my talent for dissipation, a talent that Peggy never had to begin with.

The young man who sold me the music was leaving for South Korea the next day to teach English. I wouldn’t have had the guts when I was his age. He said I should try it, that it would be easy for me to get a job in any part of the world because all I needed was to be a white man with a bachelor’s degree. “What’s your degree in?” I asked. “Romance languages and literature,” he answered. “Kinda funny isn’t it, learning all that Italian and Spanish, and then going off to live in South Korea?” He explained that South Korea was only his first stop, that his resume had received 125 hits from all around the world. At one extreme, Dubai offered $38,000 a year plus room, board, and airfare. At the other, Colombia offered spending money and a roof over his head.

“Well, you know, I’ve got a wife and dogs,” I said. “Your wife can work too,” he enthused, “but the dogs might pose a problem. They like dog soup in South Korea,” he mused, and I pictured being served a mysterious stew that turned out be marinated chunks of Baxter floating alongside shallots and potatoes.