The Old Blog in the Desert

This morning, I declared war on burnout. Not the kind with torches and pitchforks, mind you. No, this was a quieter sort of rebellion—the kind that starts with a second cup of coffee, sipped real slow while watching a lizard do push-ups on the porch railing.

See, the world wants you moving fast. Faster than your legs—or your brain—were ever built to go. I swear, if I don’t answer a text in five minutes, people start sending search parties.

But this morning, I left the phone inside and made friends with the breeze instead. That breeze knew something I didn’t. It whispered it through the wind chimes: You don’t have to outrun the day.

It’s not that I’m lazy. I’ve hauled hay, dug fence posts, and raised a kid who once tried to microwave a CD to see what would happen. It sparked, and so did my temper. I’ve done my share of hustling, but the truth is not everything meaningful comes from motion.

Some of the most important moments I’ve ever lived were the quiet ones. Like the time my son and I sat in the bed of the truck eating gas station burritos after his baseball team got walloped 18-2. He didn’t want to talk, so we just listened to the cicadas and watched the sun quit for the day.

Eventually, he said, “I’m not mad we lost. I’m just glad we’re here.”

That right there—that’s presence. You don’t get those moments if you’re racing through life with your tail on fire.

So today, I chose slowness.

I waved at my neighbor. He waved back. Neither of us looked like we were going anywhere important, which made it feel all the more sacred.

I even pulled out the old rocking chair that lives in the back room and gave it a good creak or two. That chair doesn’t care about deadlines. It just rocks. Forward and back. Like it’s praying.

And in that stillness, I started to remember that life doesn’t have to be a race. It can be a song. It can be a slow dance in bare feet on warm boards. It can be laughter in the kitchen while the toast burns.

Burnout wants you fried to a crisp, marching to the drumbeat of somebody else’s panic. But you can say no. You can choose a different pace.

I did today.

And I’m better for it.

So, if you need permission to slow down, let me give it to you. Be still. Watch the sky change colors and call that progress. Burnout won’t know what to do with you.

But your soul? Your soul will thank you with a smile that shows up around the eyes and doesn’t need a single emoji to be understood.

I went to an antique auction yesterday, and several people bid on me.

Now, before you think I’ve taken up tap-dancing in my twilight years or started a side hustle as a novelty garden gnome, let me explain. I wasn’t supposed to be for sale. I just sat down in the wrong chair, and things got out of hand.

See, I was tagging along with my neighbor Martha, who collects things like Depression glass, Civil War buttons, and husbands. She’s on her third, I think, but only the second one to have all his teeth.

Martha told me to come for the “entertainment,” which I figured meant folks waving paddles around and overpaying for butter churns. I didn’t expect to be the entertainment.

The auction was in the back of an old feed store, which still smelled faintly of alfalfa and mouse panic. They’d cleared out the sacks and set up rows of folding chairs.

I wandered around, admiring a cracked phonograph and a velvet painting of a very nervous-looking Elvis, then decided to sit down and rest my knees. That was my first mistake.

It turns out the auctioneer was auctioning off the chair I sat in—an “authentic 19th-century Victorian oak with carved claw feet,” which was a fancy way of saying it was wobbly and had probably killed a few unsuspecting sitters in its time.

I must’ve blended in well because the next thing I know, the auctioneer’s rattling off numbers like a caffeinated auction rooster, “Do I hear twenty? Twenty-five? Thirty from the lady in lavender!”

Now, Martha was wearing lavender, and she had that glint in her eye. I gave her a look meant to say, “Don’t you dare,” but it must’ve read, “Why yes, I am available and reasonably priced,” because she raised her paddle again.

The auctioneer shouted, “We’re at forty! Forty-five?” and a man in suspenders on the other side of the room nodded solemnly like he was bidding on a prized dairy cow, which I was beginning to feel like. Next thing I know, it’s up to seventy-five dollars, and I’m trying to stand up and declare that I ain’t included with the furniture, but the chair’s has me hostage—one of its claw feet had snagged my pant cuff.

“Sold!” the auctioneer bellowed. “To the lady in lavender for eighty-five dollars!”

There was a smattering of applause, and a few folks clapped me on the shoulder like I’d just won the blue ribbon at the fair. Martha leaned over and whispered, “Best deal I’ve ever made. You come with stories and don’t take up too much space.”

I eventually got untangled from the chair, though it took the help of a man who claimed to be a retired rodeo clown and carried a pocketknife big enough to field dress a moose. I offered to refund Martha her eighty-five bucks, but she waved me off and said, “Nah, I’ll just write you off as a charitable donation.”

So now I’m technically an antique, which might explain the creaking joints and my affinity for butterscotch candies. And while I’m not for sale—yet—I’ve started eyeing my furniture with a little more suspicion.

Next time, I’m bringing a folding chair and a “Not for Auction” sign to hang around my neck, just in case.

My childhood was 20 percent Kool-Aid and 80 percent unsupervised danger, and I’m not sure if I turned out all right or if I’m just too old to notice the damage.

We made Kool-Aid with the sort of scientific precision that would make a lab technician twitch. First, dump a packet—usually red, never grape—into the largest plastic pitcher we had. Then, pour in a mound of sugar that could’ve doubled as a sand dune. The instructions called for a cup, but in our kitchen, a “cup” was a loose suggestion, like “maybe don’t stick that fork in the outlet.”

Stir it with whatever was closest: a butter knife, a wooden spoon, sometimes your hand. We drank it warm if we were in a hurry, and we were always in a hurry.

The danger part? Well, that was just the rest of the day.

We rode our bikes without helmets, pedal brakes, and zero awareness. Our bikes rattled as if held together by bubble gum and a prayer.

We built ramps out of scrap plywood and whatever bricks we could liberate from someone’s yard—sorry, Mrs. Keating—and we’d launch ourselves into the air like Evel Knievel without a backup plan. Landing was optional. Stitches weren’t.

There was an old field across from our house full of high grass, and that was our kingdom. We built forts out of rotting boards and rusted nails–that we straightened with creek rocks.

One summer, we found a sun-bleached refrigerator someone had dumped in the creek bed. Naturally, we turned it into a time machine.

My brother climbed inside and shut the door, and it was only later—much later, when Mom got wind of it and nearly fainted—that we learned old refrigerators don’t open from the inside.

He was fine. Hot, sweaty, and convinced he’d traveled three weeks into the future, but fine.

Our parents, bless’em, operated under the “If I don’t hear screaming, they’re probably okay” policy of supervision.

We came home when the streetlights buzzed on, covered in dirt, scabs, and the sticky film of cherry Kool-Aid that stained our lips like clown makeup. You couldn’t wash that stuff off; you had to live through it until it faded naturally, like a bad decision.

I once tried to make fireworks. A few strike-anywhere matches, a toilet paper tube, and “some kind of powder” from the garage. It didn’t explode, but it did catch fire and burned a hole in Dad’s workbench. I blamed the neighbor kid, who wasn’t even there, and got grounded anyway.

Looking back, I realize childhood was less about safety and more about pure dumb luck. We survived on instinct and the grace of distracted angels.

We didn’t wear sunscreen, seatbelts, or sense. We drank from hoses, got chased by hornets, and played hide-and-seek in the dark like we had a death wish.

But man, Kool-Aid never tasted better than it did on a day like that. So, if you ever wonder why I flinch at the sound of fireworks or why I keep Band-Aids in every drawer of the house, it’s because I had a childhood that was sugar water and “What were you thinking?”

And honestly? I wouldn’t trade a single scab.

There was a time when 25 cents could measure the value of the world.

Now, I don’t mean to sound like a relic—you know, one of those grumbly old fossils you find on a front porch swing warning kids not to grow up too fast—but I do remember when being rich meant standing in front of the penny candy counter with a quarter clutched in your sweaty little hand. And let me tell you, that quarter felt like Fort Knox melted down and pressed into a single coin just for me.

My favorite place was the Woodland Villa, a narrow little shop that smelled like a mixture of bacon grease, mothballs, and adventure. It had a squeaky front door that slammed with the authority of a gavel, and every time it closed, you knew justice got served—someone either came in with good money or left with a brown paper sack full of jelly beans.

The candy counter was a glass case of pure joy, low enough that kids could rest their elbows on it and stare, mouths slightly open, like art critics considering a masterpiece. Behind that glass were rows of root beer barrels, licorice ropes, wax bottles filled with juice, and little dots of sugar glued to strips of paper, like someone thought a receipt ought to be delicious.

The store owner, Mrs. DeVol, had the patience of a saint and the eyebrows of a wizard. He stood behind the counter with her hands folded, watching me calculate what combination of sweetness would yield the best return on investment.

“Alright, what’ll it be today?” she’d ask as if I were placing a Wall Street trade instead of debating between sour balls and a strip of Zotz.

“I’ll take three of those, four of these, and uh…how many Swedish Fish can I get for seven cents?”

Mrs. DeVol didn’t need a calculator. That woman could do candy math in her head like a Vegas card shark. And she always gave a little nod of approval when I spent the whole quarter as if I’d graduated with honors in Sugar Economics.

There was no bag too small or pocket too shallow for that haul. You walked out of that store wealthy—a capitalist prince among the barefoot summer kids.

You might even share a lemonhead, or two, to prove you were benevolent in your newfound affluence. The walk home was always slow, partly because you didn’t want it to end and partly because you were unwrapping candies with the efficiency of a raccoon at a campsite.

Sticky fingers, sticky face, sticky heart.

These days, a quarter won’t buy you a second glance, let alone 25 pieces of joy. You feed it to a parking meter or a vending machine, and it vanishes without so much as a thank you.

A quarter may not buy much anymore, but it still feels like treasure, and that’s because once upon a time, it was.

I mowed my lawn at 3:30.

No, not 3:30 in the afternoon—though I admit that would make more sense and raise fewer eyebrows from passing joggers and local law enforcement. I mean 3:30 in the morning, under the bleary light of the porch bulb and a moon so faint it looked like it had given up halfway through the night shift.

Why, you ask? Because my neighbor, bless his patriotic little heart, decided that the Fourth of July fireworks should not end on the Fourth, nor the Fifth, but rather should echo well into the Sixth, at precisely 1:00 a.m., when every sleeping soul was beginning to doze into a respectable REM cycle.

It wasn’t your standard-issue backyard light show either. These were the kind of fireworks that make your windows tremble and your dogs seriously reconsider their loyalty.

You know the ones—those booming, searing artillery shells that sound like someone dropped a flaming piano into a dumpster full of sheet metal. Every pop and sizzle seemed to rattle a memory loose from my childhood, including the one where I accidentally lit my uncle’s pant leg on fire with a sparkler.

I lay in bed listening to the last few bottle rockets whistle their way to wherever bad decisions go to die, and I thought, Fine. If you get to celebrate your freedom, I’ll celebrate mine.

So I celebrated by firing up the lawnmower.

Now, if you’ve never mowed your lawn at 3:30 a.m., I can’t honestly recommend it. The dew makes the grass stick to everything—shoes, socks, the mower blade, the vague sense of dignity you once had. And it turns out, every moth in the county thinks your porch light is the hottest nightclub in town.

But something unexpected happened out there in the dark. Somewhere between the back fence and the flower beds, I started to feel better. It was quiet, finally, just the rhythmic whirr of the mower and the soft chirp of crickets wondering what kind of lunatic trims the grass before sunrise.

I even saw a possum lumber by, giving me a look that said, You okay, man? And maybe I wasn’t entirely.

Perhaps I was still a little tired, a little grumpy, and a little petty. But now my lawn is trimmed, my legs are mosquito-bitten, and my temper, a few degrees cooler than it had been when I first stomped out of bed and into my work boots.

Around 3:52, as I rolled the mower back into the garage, I saw the light in my neighbor’s window flip on. I waved, real friendly-like. I’m sure it looked more sinister than sweet at that hour, especially with my bedhead sticking up like I got struck by lightning.

But that was my version of fireworks. And a celebration of lawn justice.

He gets his fun, I get mine. And perhaps next year, he’ll think twice before launching a grand finale at 1:00 a.m., or maybe, I’ll plant a row of hedges and invest in some industrial-grade earplugs.

Either way, I think I won this round.

When I was a boy growing up in Klamath, I tried to give directions to a local elder and ended up getting corrected in a language that predates Columbus, Plymouth Rock, and every one of my schoolbooks. That was the day I learned to pronounce Tlamati instead of Klamath, and I realized the river had a name long before we began building bridges across it.

We didn’t learn Yurok in school, mind you. Back then, the curriculum was heavy on the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the California Gold Rush and light on anything that happened this side of the Mississippi before 1870.

But on the playground, in fishing boats, and around backyard fire pits, those old words still floated up like mist off the river. My first Yurok word was Ch’eeshah–dog.

I learned it from an actual dog, or rather, from my friend Sandy, who hollered it every time his pup went tearing off after a squirrel.

“Ch’eeshah!” Sandy would shout.

And that dog would freeze mid-sprint, ears cocked like satellite dishes, and come bounding back. I thought it was magic. Later, I learned it was discipline, tradition, and the kind of bond built over generations—something we never quite grasped, no matter how many hot dogs I sacrificed.

Then came Sa’ahal, which I took to mean “village,” but quickly learned meant something much richer. It was the name for a place along the river, not just any village, but one that belonged to the river.

The way they say it, Sa’ahal sounds like a breeze pushing through the trees. You don’t just live in Sa’ahal. You belong to it.

That made me rethink every “Welcome” sign I’d ever gone past.

And then there’s Re-kwoi, which I mispronounced for years as “Wreck-wah.” But no, it’s Re-kwoi, where the river finally meets the Pacific Ocean.

It’s a place where salmon turn from silver to red and begin their final swim. I remember standing on the bluff as a boy, wind whipping around my ears, feeling like I could see Japan if I squinted hard enough–and thinking, this is the edge of something holy.

Somewhere between Ch’eeshah and Re-kwoi, I started hearing the river speak. Not in words, exactly, but in a rhythm and pulse that begin to line up with the beat of my heart.

That’s a poetic way of saying I spent a lot of time skipping rocks and failing to catch steelhead, but I like to think the river taught me something anyway. Nowadays, I can still pronounce those few Yurok words, and I try to pass them along when the chance arises.

It’s a small thing, I know—four words, some memories, a little reverence. But in a world where everything gets renamed, paved over, or turned into a campground, hanging onto those old words feels like tying a string between the past and present.

Not to hold on too tight—just enough so we don’t forget who whispered to the river first. And if that ain’t worth remembering, well, I reckon nothing is.

When I was younger, I dressed like an older man. Slacks, starched shirts, and suspenders–not because I needed to hold anything up, but because I wanted people to think I was serious–about what I never figured out. I just knew I had a deep need to be mistaken for someone important.

Nowadays, I’m in my senior years–though I prefer “vintage model” to “elderly”–and my wardrobe aspirations have come full circle. I’m not trying to impress anyone anymore, not unless they’re selling tacos or hardware.

No, these days, I catch myself eyeing the younger generation and thinking, Now that looks comfortable. Then I try it–and that’s where the comedy begins.

Last week I bought a hoodie. Not the flannel-lined kind with zippers and dignity, but an honest-to-goodness baggy hoodie, just like the kids wear.

It had a mysterious logo on it that I think might be a band, a skateboard brand, or a Norwegian death cult, but I’m not sure. I also picked up a pair of those stretchy pants with drawstrings.

But the biggest hurdle came when I tried to sag my jeans a little, just like the neighbor boy does. Now, I wasn’t looking at completely embracing the look–just a modest dip, you know, as if my belt got distracted for a second.

So there I was, in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store, trying to feel young and free, when I reached up for a bag of tater tots and felt a breeze that wasn’t on the weather report. My jeans had migrated south like wintering geese, and I was flashing a bit of the ol’ adult-appropriate plastic-armored skivvies to a startled teenager who dropped his Monster Energy drink like I’d shown him the ghost of Christmas future.

That’s when I realized something important. Young folks dress like that because they can. Their bones don’t creak when they stoop, their undergarments don’t come with a waistband the size of Alaska, and they don’t need a mirror to remind them where everything used to be.

Me? I like feeling young, but I also like being able to stand up without holding onto my pants like the mast of a ship in a hurricane. I’ve come to terms with my jeans staying around my waist, my shirt covering my pants buttons, and that my shoes don’t betray me on a gravel driveway.

So, now I dress like an older man, trying not to look like a younger man trying to look older. It’s a subtle art, like growing tomatoes or avoiding family reunions.

But I’ll tell you this–the hoodie stays. It’s warm, it’s roomy, and if I spill something on it, nobody notices.

So, maybe I am finally dressing my age, but I’m just not sure which direction that is.

When I was a kid, fog made me uneasy. Not the high-up kind that clings to the Redwood trees like cotton batting or the sort that softens the world at sunrise. No, I’m talking about ground fog—the low-lying kind that creeps in on cat feet, like that poem says, and settles itself across the yard like it’s up to something.

I remember standing at our back window, watching it roll in like some ghostly tide. It moved around as if it were scouting the area.

And if you stared long enough, which I always did because I hadn’t learned better yet, the fog would start to show you shapes.

Faces. People, maybe, or the outlines of something that used to be people. I once swore I saw a man in a bowler hat walking through it, limping a little, head bowed as if he’d lost his glasses and was trying to remember where he left them back in 1912.

Of course, I told my younger brother about this, and he told me two things. One, I watched too much TV, and two, fog was just water vapor.

It didn’t help when, in 1984, I watched The Fog, a 1980 horror movie featuring ghost pirates and revenge, all the things that don’t help me sleep well at night. That movie hit all the notes I had been humming to myself since age six.

Do people walk out of the fog? Yep.

Fog with a purpose? Absolutely.

Creeping mist that knows where you live and doesn’t need a key to get in? Check, check, and check.

That night, I slept with a night light on, the covers pulled up to my nose, which I realize now is a poor defense against supernatural maritime revenge. But it made me feel better.

These days, I live in the high desert, where fog is rare and generally out of place. It doesn’t sneak up on you anymore—it has to drive in from out of town and hope you’re still home.

Out here, the mornings are mostly clear and sharp-edged. You can see for miles, and the horizon doesn’t hide things; it dares them to show up.

Still, now and then, just after a monsoon storm or during a freak chill in spring, I’ll catch a patch of it—low and sneaky—slipping through the sagebrush or curling at the edges of the fields like it’s trying to remember what it came here for. And wouldn’t you know, sometimes I think I see those shapes–again.

The man in the bowler hat. A woman in a long dress holding something—maybe a lantern, perhaps a rolling pin, it’s hard to say.

And I find myself backing up from the window just a little, not because I believe in ghost pirates, but because there’s a small, persistent part of me that does.

So, no offense to my brother and his science book explanations. I’m sure fog is just water vapor. But I also think it has good hearing, a lengthy memory, and a taste for the theatrical.

And if it wants to keep a few secrets? That’s its business and ain’t mine.

Some folks say you’ve got to be a little off your rocker to live way out here where the rattlesnakes outnumber the neighbors and the postman delivers on a “maybe” schedule, and I won’t disagree. You have to be either fiercely independent or mildly insane, and I’ve always prided myself on being both.

Now, I’ve never had what you’d call a dependable relationship with modern technology. I’ve threatened my printer with physical harm, and once accused my toaster of working for the enemy. So when I found my truck parked sideways in front of the cafe last Thursday morning, the engine still warm, I naturally assumed the worst.

I’d been inside sipping a cup of black coffee that could melt a spoon, talking to Earl about how calves these days are born lazier than ever, when someone hollered, “Whose truck is that, sittin’ out like a drunk mule?”

I wandered out, curious. Sure enough, there was my old pickup, blocking two spots and part of the sidewalk, looking like it had just stumbled out of a bar fight. Keys still in the ignition, radio playing some honky-tonk tune I couldn’t remember turning on.

“Well, that’s mine,” I said, scratching my head and trying to piece together if I’d parked it like that or if someone was playing a prank.

I looked around. I saw no teenagers giggling behind bushes, no cameras, no signs of a mutiny.

Now, I know what you’re thinking—maybe I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t even driven there that morning. I’d walked. I remember it clearly as yesterday because I stepped in something questionable on the sidewalk just outside the middle school, cursed like a sailor, and hobbled the rest of the way like I had a nail in my boot.

So you tell me—how does a man walk to a cafe, enjoy half a conversation and a cup of tar-like coffee, only to find his truck done followed him there and parked itself like a blind shoat?

I checked for obvious signs–muddy footprints that weren’t mine, a misplaced hat, maybe a half-eaten sandwich in the passenger seat. Nothing. Clean as a whistle, which only made it weirder.

Earl wandered over, looked at the truck, looked at me, and said, “Tom, either someone’s messing with you, or your truck’s got a crush and decided to follow you just to prove a point.”

“Or I’m losing it,” I offered.

He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Well, yeah, but we already knew that.”

I drove the truck home—carefully, I might add—and parked it with more dignity. The next morning, I chained the keys to a rusty wrench and left them on the workbench. I walked to the shopping center again, but there was no repeat performance.

Still, every so often, I catch the truck sitting there in the driveway, headlights angled just a little too smug, and I wonder. I may be crazy, but I know I didn’t drive myself.

And if I ever catch that truck joyriding again, I’m installing a breathalyzer and requiring it to pass a written test. After that, I’m checking myself into the state mental health facility for a vacation.

Have you ever noticed that the loudest guy in the room often has the least to say? I’ve met enough folks in my time to know that volume and virtue don’t always ride in the same pickup truck.

Take ol’ Buck Prentiss. He worked the counter at the hardware store back when folks still paid in cash and counted their change.

Buck had a voice that could rattle the nails off a two-by-four and a disposition like an unhousebroken porcupine. Every time I’d go in for a box of screws or some light bulbs, I’d brace myself like I was stepping into a wind tunnel of sarcasm and unsolicited opinion.

“Didn’t peg you for the DIY type,” he barked as I placed a toilet flapper on the counter.

“Just trying to keep the ol’ throne from running away on me,” I said.

He grunted and rang it up, muttering something about armchair plumbers and the decline of Western civilization.

Now, folks said Buck had seen some things—Vietnam, a divorce or three, a stint living in his cousin’s chicken coop after one of those divorces went sideways—and I always figured life had just handed him a series of lemons and instead of making lemonade, he threw’em at passersby.

One Saturday morning, I was in line behind a young man with one of those neck tattoos that look like a barbed-wire fence had gotten tangled in cursive writing. The kid was trying to buy a replacement chainsaw blade, looking sheepish and thumbing through a crumpled handful of ones and quarters.

Buck looked him up and down like he was deciding whether or not to swat a fly.

“This the right blade?” the kid asked, holding it up.

“Nope,” Buck said without even glancing. “You’re off by a size. And probably a few IQ points.”

Now, I braced myself for trouble—figured the kid would swing or at least snap back. But instead, he just grinned and said, “Thanks, man,” then swapped it for the right one and paid up–quarters and all.

After the kid left, I said to Buck, “You ever think about being polite?”

He leaned in close like he was sharing a secret. “Politeness,” he said, “is a luxury for people who don’t need to be taken seriously.”

I looked him square in the eye. “No, Buck. Rudeness is just the weak man’s imagination of strength.”

That got him quiet. It was the first time I’d seen his jaw do anything but clench.

My words had no effect, and the following week, he still told a woman she didn’t look “mechanically inclined” when she asked where the socket wrenches were. But I’d like to think something might’ve landed in that crusty old brain of his.

Maybe not an entire lesson, but a seed. A seed of decency, just waiting for rain.

The truth is, real strength doesn’t need to shout. It doesn’t humiliate, mock, or bark orders. It listens. It helps. Sometimes, it even smiles.

Which reminds me—I need to fix our leaky toilet. Oh, and I stopped going to Buck’s store, and oddly enough, I sleep better knowing there’s one less bark in my day.

And as far as I’m concerned, that’s strength–quiet, steady, and not afraid to say “please.”