• Chased

    When I finally woke from unconsciousness, there was confusion in what I saw. Before me was an endless bed of yellow-brown sand, punctuated with particulates of white and larger bits of black.

    As I lay there, I slowly came to my sense, realizing I was face-down in the half-light of a deep crevasse of Utah earth. It slowly came back to me about how I ended up in this position.

    It had begun about a mile north and east, further up the mountain, where I happened to come across two dune-buggies, each carrying two men. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble as they began to race in circles around me and eventually started chasing me from one out-cropping to another.

    Slowly, I wiggled my toes, flexed my ankles, knees and hips as I pushed myself onto my knees. Still severely dizzy I decided I should roll onto my butt and not attempt to stand jus’ yet.

    Something was wrong with my right-eye; I could not see from it. Furthermore, it felt as if glued shut.

    They were practically on top of me when I found myself teetering on the edge of a slot-canyon, whose bottom I couldn’t see. I tried desperately to stop, then to leap the distance, but instead, I fell downward into the blackness of the abyss.

    God had smiled on me. I recalled nothing of the fall and as far as I could tell I had only some abrasions and a bunch of bruises – save for the inability to open my eye.

    Touching the cheekbone beneath the shuttered eye, I felt the roughness of sand and other debris sticking to my skin. There was also a sticky substance around the area which led me to feel the top right part of my head – a deep gash had bled down over my eye and with the drying aid of the fine desert silt, had pasted my eyelid closed.

    It took me a few minutes to work the sandy loam from my eyelid and to begin blinking again. That’s when I felt the pain from the cut on my head and decided it needed further investigation.

    Fearful of what I might find, I gently pushed down around the wound. I was happy to learn that the bone below the wound was not spongy or sharp – therefore my skull wasn’t fractured.

    Slowly, using the nearby cavernous wall, I dragged myself to my feet. I tried to look up towards the opening, from where I dropped, but a sharp pain in my left shoulder prevented me from raising my head.

    Running my right hand over my shoulder, I couldn’t detect an injury. I had dislocated my shoulder some years before, so I knew what I should be feeling – but nothing.

    As I tried to raise my left arm, a shooting pain nearly drove me to the ground. And as I fought off the desire to pass out, I saw my little finger on my left hand twisted and sticking out at an odd angle.

    Regaining my composure, I looked for a place where the light from above shined on the sandy bottom and moved to that spot. Once there, I pulled my rucksack from my shoulders and removed my first aid kit.

    It took me all of two minutes to shift my broken pinky back into a somewhat normal position, and to tape it in place using my ring finger. It also took all of my strength not to scream out in pain; I didn’t know if the buggies were still nearby and I didn’t want to alert them to my survival.

  • Two things I’ve come to really value as I’ve aged: Two-ply toilet paper and comfortable shoes.

  • The clerk at the DMV called out, ‘8-7-6.’ I jumped up and shouted, ‘5-3-oh-9.’ No one got it, including the security guard who reminded me, ‘Use your inner-voice next time.’

  • ‘The Gospel According to Luke’ is the story of Jesus Christ. It consists of 24 chapters; one for each day of December up to Christmas eve.

  • Barbara of the Slabs

    It wasn’t like I meant to pass through my estranged wife’s home town at the time, but it was the only way I knew of getting to Julian and to the eastern side of the Salton Sea. The beginning of July is nice in the higher elevations, but dropping down through Anza-Borrego, it became ungodly hot and nearly unbearable.

    Traveling along the roadway through the forested areas could be pleasant. But once the trees fell away behind me, shade and ice-cold water running from a high mountain stream were about the only things I could think of — save for the sudden punctuation of the large rattlesnakes that enjoyed themselves by stretching out on the asphalt in the sun along my path.

    “Keep your mind on what you’re doing, ya dumb-fuck,” I kept telling myself as I’d realize I’d slipped into a state of heat-induce insensibility.

    Finally, I came to one of the lowest point in the valley near Niland, and following Beale Road I came to Salvation Mountain. I’ve never seen anything like it, with all of it’s colors and all the Bible verses pronouncing Jesus as the only way.

    I was certain, after seeing this, I was on the right path as I’d been praying for direction for some time.

    A place that seemed more myth than real, the Slabs is a harsh reality for the untrained leather-tramp. I was so surprised that it even existed, even after I got there and set up my camp site overlooking ‘O-My-God Springs,’ a nudist colony that seems separated from the rest of the area.

    Having only heard it spoke of in passing, I had no history on the place. But soon I learned from a couple of old-timers that it used to be a U.S. Marine Camp Duncan, in used from 1942 to 1949.

    The first night was the easiest evening I had when it came to sleep. The next six nights were harder than it was hot during the daytime.

    After a couple of nights I realized that nighttime’s were purposely arranged to be filled with partying and noises beyond all compare. Not even a busy night in Los Angeles or San Francisco can compare to loudness committed by the dwellers of that fabled desert hide-a-way.

    It’s also amazing how easily a person can adjust to the non-quiet, and at least in my case, it was far easier than the first time experiencing the complete silence of a high desert camp. Once adjusted, I visited ‘The Range,’ a makeshift bar and musical venue.

    Its aged and weathered desert colors were home to a stage, a single microphone and a variety of broken and worn down chairs and couches and an old set of high school football spectators benches surrounding it. The best place to sit is on a blanket in the sand or in the sand, itself.

    Barbara was a self-described, “old hippy-chick,” 14-years my senior. We bonded immediately after I learned she’d been raised in northern Humboldt County and was a member of the Hupa Tribe.

    “I’m a member of one tribe, trying to belong to another tribe,” she informed me, “And I can see you’re in the same situation. Why?”

    I had no answer for her — or me for that matter.

    We ventured away with a couple of beers and a small bottle of tequila to find ourselves laying in the dunes facing west. At night, shortly before the sun sets, a breeze blows in from the southwest over the Salton Sea, bringing the wretch-worthy decaying odor of a body of water that’s dying.

    She knew it; I didn’t. I gagged; she laughed. We drank; we fucked.

    The next morning I found myself alone, laying in the sand looking up at the most beautiful blue skies I had ever experienced. But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find Barbara.

    Eventually, I came to the conclusion she was either a figment of my imagination or a spirit that seeks out souls, ones that need a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on and that perhaps I was that person needing her befriending. As I hiked north towards Indio, I came to imagine that perhaps I was the friend and she were the spirit needing somebody.

    Later on, having found a book on names at a thrift store, I came to learn that her name, ‘Barbara,’ is from the Greek word ‘barbaros’ meaning ‘foreign or strange, traveler from a foreign land.’ I still get the chills thinking about this certain piece of trivia.

    In any case, I heard her message: stop searching and return to ‘my tribe.’ I figured that after a couple more weeks, following Highway 10 to U.S. 95, I’d be back home where I could begin to rebuild my broken life and heal my wounded heart.

    I was right.

  • The video header reads: “Pianist plays Chopin in the Himalayas at 16, 000 feet.” My first reaction, “At that elevation, it must’ve been breathtaking.”

  • The ‘bullet bra’ fell out of popularity when politicians began confusing ‘second base’ with the ‘second amendment.’

  • Let’s form a caravan, head for Disney World and remember to put the kids up front when we get there.

  • Irony is knowing that some of the same people who eat only non genetically modified foods are also the same people who smoke genetically modified marijuana.

  • Combine

    My hobo-camp had been set-up in a cluster of trees and brush between the Interstate and the frontage road. I intended to stay put for couple of days to give my tired ‘dogs’ a chance to recuperate.

    Comfortable and secluded, save for the sound of vehicles racing by, I spread out on my sleeping bag and fell asleep for the night. As a rule, I had become an early riser, going to bed before the sun had even set.

    The following morning I awoke half-an-hour before my usual time, hearing a rumbling of at least two machines making sounds I was not familiar with. I slipped to the edge of the grove and peaked out towards the sounds direction and watched as two very large John Deere 9600 Combines drove in tandem from one end of the field across from me to a point that nearly placed them out of sight.

    As the sun came up and I finished my bowl of rice and beans, I continued to watch the precision at which the two operators displayed as they chewed up what had been a golden field of wheat. I was as if I were watching a pair of male sage-grouse dance, performing for some yet-unseen female of the species.

    Forgetting myself and entranced, I moved out of my position of concealment and crossed the frontage road to continue walking. Soon a truck came driving up, and I figured that by its speed of less than five miles an hour, I’d over stayed my ‘welcome.’

    Instead, the man hollered, “You looking for work or simply gawking?”

    “I’ll take some work,” I answered.

    “Then come on.”

    I jumped in the bed of the truck as he turned sharp off the frontage and down a gravel roadway towards two large grain silos and various other buildings including a farm-house. He pulled up in front of the largest building and got out, with me trailing behind.

    “Dennis,” he directed to a guy standing by a desk, “Get this fella a respirator and some coveralls. I’m putting him to work.”

    “Dennis will take care of you,” the man said. “I’ll be back in a few minute and then I’ll show you what needs doing.”

    When the man, I later came to know as Mr. Riley, said work, I had no idea he meant hard-work. He had me in a large contraption which ‘strains’ the wheat grains and moves them to the silo, where the grain’s stored.

    As I worked, I learned that the grain came with dust, lots of it. The dust is so fine that it permeated my clothing, thus the coveralls, which didn’t stop it from happening, but rather helped to cut down on amount that filled my pockets and every hook-and-cranny of my jeans, shirt, boots and under clothing and was a danger to a person’s lungs, therefore the need of a respirator.

    Every grain is important, so Mr. Riley also had me inside the bed’s emptied columbines ‘vacuuming’ up any and all loose or errant grain. Later, I spent a couple of hours raking and packing down grain the silos

    After two days, my body hurt all over. But he and Mrs. Riley fed me and gave place in the barn with a bed to sleep in while I was there. I stayed for the week, which is roughly how long it took to get the crop in from the field.

    Near the end of the fourth work day, Mr. Riley offered me the chance to climb in the cab of one of the combines and learn how to drive the beast. In a nutshell — it’s how I’d imagine driving a Mars-rover across that most alien of sandscapes and for a few minutes, I forgot I was but an Earthling.

    Having long retrieved my gear from the cluster of trees, I had everything packed up and ready to hit the road that Sunday morning as soon as the sun rose. Having said my goodbye’s the night before and finding a one-hundred dollar bill in my boot, I slurped down a warm cup off coffee, before setting-off across the now-bare fields towards my next destination – whatever and where ever that might be.

    As I passed one of the combines, I noticed the sky to the east beginning to pink-up. Dropping my pack, I quickly climbed up the back of the vehicle and plopped my butt atop the cab, dangling my legs over the massive windshield.

    From there I watched as the sun went from a sliver over the distant landscape to a full ball in the sky. As I watched, I couldn’t help but marvel at the idea that it was Sunday – a day I didn’t usually travel on – and that I’d jus’ watched a Kansas sunrise while sitting on top of a John Deere 9600 Combine.

    “How may people can honestly say they’ve done this before?” I asked myself as felt the sun warming my tanned face.