Thanks for the music and the airplanes.

What are you but a swell, a tide, a moment that comes and goes with the moon light?

Why are you but my smile, a chance to be, a reason for the stars in the sky.

There is a god in heaven, this I believe, but I held you in my arms until that moment left me.

There is air to breath, it sustains me, a breath's bread and water missing your sent.

What is life but a moment, a second, ever reducing, 

subtracting, fracturing

dividing the instant that now is, from no hope of redemption

a subtraction from the day that I selflessly left you.

Why is now--this instant, when never is so far with you always in it.

Well, thank god for memory.

History

Journal 1 Humanity.

5-2015

Sudden Nowhere

Early in July and late in the day is about the time I first realized I was alone in literally the middle of nowhere. Everyone was gone and camp was left in shambles. It was about five in the afternoon and I had just climbed up Frog Hill to get out of the river-cut canyon. But I am getting ahead of myself; let me first go back in time about an hour to help draw a better picture.

 Frog Hill was nothing special. I don’t even think it had a legitimate name. I just called it Frog Hill because I watched a frog accidently kill itself there. I scared the poor thing so it was kind of my fault. Naming it that was the least I could do. It saw me and hopped a little too far out, and the angle of Frog Hill was so great that its little black and red body just could not do anything but stick the landing. Splat! Other than that, Frog Hill was just one of a million banks at the base of one of the thousands of mountains in one of the biggest wilderness areas on this side of the Canadian border. Climbing it meant I’d reach camp faster than going downriver to the Flats by the bridge, and that was my goal.

The Flats was the easy way to get from the New River to the Jim Jam. Jim Jam is the actual name of the road I write of. Jim Jam is found on both the official BLM and NFS topographical maps. Going to the Flats still meant a couple acres more of climbing over wet, mossy boulders and swimming downstream; but It was already almost four and the sun, previously cut to fragments by the dense tree-line, was about to dive beyond Devils Backbone. Devils Backbone is the legitimate name of southern mountain that was nearest to us. It’s the same mountain that inspired the horror movie, Devils Backbone, which has nothing to do why I was in a hurry to get back.

Frog Hill was a climb that had to be made with picks in each hand. Climbing the erosion carved bedrock was easy, but then the bank became steep and loosely packed sand-dustier now that the various species of ferns and California-soaproot-Chlorogalum pomeridianum, had all dried up. All that was left was dead grass and rezones Toxicodendrom diversilobum, more widely known as Poison oak. The grass would pull lose if you grabbed at it and while the Poison oak was steadfastly rooted, I was reluctant to grab it-I’m not saying I hadn’t used it to keep from falling in the past-it’s just that the T. diversilobum had its own drawbacks. I rarely went this way to and from my gold-mine because the risk wasn’t worth the time saved. But that day I was going to do it. I was feeling strong and I was excited to get back to Safe-camp-the camp that didn’t risk flash-flooding or the occasional landslide. It was labor intensive and my feet slipped out from under me a couple of times but finally I summated on the upper trail, Jim Jam, about a hundred feet or so from Safe-camp.

I finished the rest of the walk. A relatively easy march up Jim Jam to where my truck was parked with our solar-powered six-pac-camper sitting in the back of it. When I got to camp my family was gone and our car was gone. I didn’t know where they were. The site was wrecked and my three perfect boys were gone. I looked for a note from my wife but couldn’t find one. “What was your hurry sexy face?” I casually queried of the nothing, beneath my breath as my eyes danced about the wrecked campsite trying to make sense of what I was looking at. “Where’s the note, baby?”

Still dripping wet in mud-caked knees, I started off towards Ben’s house. I thought my family might have been there. “They should be coming up the road anytime.” I kept telling myself. “My wife can handle them, they’re fine.” I’d reassure myself then shake off the image of Eros’s lifeless body floating down the river. “Why is the camp wrecked? Did our resident black bear finally tear it up while everyone was gone?” We had settled on always getting back to Safe-camp before dark. It was something we never moved on, and always agreed upon. “What was wrong?”

I knew I received this compulsive worry from my mother. It was inside me by both blood and home-nature and nurture. As a child, some days for no reason at all, she’d run down to the creek, where my brother and I would play, and was almost frantic with fear. Birthed in her mind was the thought that one of us was hurt or drowned or something worse. Fears like this just seemed to germinate in her mind out of the cosmic ether.  I knew I couldn’t let my mind wander-not then. There was real and dynamic danger afoot. It was getting dark. We’d been reading about Odysseus around the camp fire lately and I knew by that point there would be no moon tonight; or as those from the time of Odysseus would say: Phoebe would not grace these hills with her glowing face until moments before Apollo dragged us up the sun. It was that part of her cycle. However, as someone from my time and local would say: the nighttime was when we had to share the only road with the area’s large black bear population. I had to focus, sing loudly, and not step of the side of the road and subsequent cliff that gained in altitude as one traveled further south down Jim Jam.

“She’s ok, they’re all ok. She could have locked the keys in the car or something.” I fed those words to the sound of each water filled boot-fall as I moved forward into the cascading darkness. Slish-sloshing into the approaching canopy-expedited near sightlessness, I continued my inner battle of faith and worry. “She should be driving up any second.” These reassuring thoughts repeated for about five miles past the Flats, like a coin spinning to its rest on a bookless coffee table until the chance of her driving back laid flatly face-down. I forgot about the bears, I didn’t worry about night, and I forgot to reassure myself everything was alright. I started remembering how just days earlier, in the corner of my eye, Eros, my first born, perfect, and angelic little boy, came flailing down the river, submerged in both real danger and fear. He had only just fallen in less than a half second before I fished him out; but I could not shake the many could-be’s out of my head that this one event fueled. “Why didn’t my wife see him? I mean she was sitting right there staring right past him into space.” She promised me after that that she would only take them to the Flats just past the bridge, wherein altitude, the road kissed the river. “She’d have been fine there. The kids wouldn’t even hazard sunburn there.”

The Flats was a sandy shaded beach that skirted a place in the river that was slow moving and shallow-no deeper than six or seven inches. I steadied my breath the best that I could. I knew my boys, the twins, now 14 months old and nothing but giggles, wouldn’t even go near the tepid water; and Lisa, my musically brilliant wife, kept her bear mace on her person at all times, even though the bears ran from us at every sighting so far.  

The war of speculation waged on until amongst my inner thoughts one subject prevailed: “Why was the camp crashed to pieces? Why hadn’t Lisa, my wonderful wife, left me a note?” I started to run the rest way to Ben’s house.

Around ten that night I got to Ben’s house, the nearest house with a land line, and I could see a red ember floating where I knew his front porch to be. Even though the creamy yellow light escaping his kitchen window was faint, its relative brilliance stole away the remaining bleak starlit outline of the road left to travel. I stopped running and scuffed my feet against the ground to tactilely sense for the grass that made up the easement edging my path. If I stepped over the lawn-drawn boarder before the garden-bridge, I may step into the deep-walled irrigation canal that powered Ben’s home and watered his crops and was then, nothing more than a soft tricking song mantled within this darkened worry-rich obscurity.

“Hey.” I said hoping it was Ben and not his belligerent husband, Josh. Josh was a flipping saddle hole, and unless he changed from then to now, still is. At any rate, I didn’t want to talk to him right then. I felt justifiably primal and wild and Josh’s homosexuality had been the only thing saving him from me in the past. I knew if he slapped me or even came before me in movements after merely the utterance of a threat of violence, the looming baited trap of affirmative action would only goad me further into closing his insufferable whisky scented mouth once and for all.

“Hi.”  I said to the red dot and smell of smoke.

“Hey.” An audible sigh of relief escaped my mouth when I heard Ben’s welcoming voice just before the porch light flipped on. “You walked from the bridge?” He was surprised.

“Yeah. Can I…”

“Use my phone?” He interrupted. “Sure, yes. Come in, come in.” he urged me caringly along.

“Thanks Ben.” Carefully, I shrugged out from under his hand before it manually guided me into his house. His house reeked of raw rotted chicken and mildew and I instinctively associated the smell with his touch, but only worried for a second that I might have offended him before I became more concerned with my own problems again. “I’m so dirty Ben.” I briefly explained away my involuntary body language as I took his phone outside to first, make the call and secondly, breathe.

I didn’t really expect an answer when I called our cell phone. Ben’s house was still about an hour and a half by car, away from the nearest cell coverage. “Are the kids ok, what’s wrong, are you ok?” I asked in a fuming hustle; still catching my breath, still partly delusional from my inherited, mitochondrial-worry.

I learnt that: “they are all fine, she’s sorry, and she’s on her way back but can’t talk in traffic. In the moment, all I hold on to is, that they were fine-my boys are ok.” I explained this all to Ben and he offered me a ride.

Ben drove me most of the way back to Safe-camp, he never drove across the bridge and Humboldt County line. It had something to do with space-satellites and a black computerized bracelet he was court-ordered to wear on his ankle. I got out at the Flats and when my eyes adjusted to the dark after his high-beams finally evaporated with the increased distance between his car and me, I finished the short moonless walk to camp.

I lit the oil lamps and started to clean up. We had taken great precautions not to entice the bears, to keep a clean camp, and not piss anyone one off more than or presence already did. However, that night, food was scattered everywhere. I picked up papers and county records, geological data forms, the NFS mining outpost-operations permits that had been posted-as required-in conspicuous places, and the BLM maps that outlined our mine’s borders. I cleaned up the meat-type foods and gathered-up the most important papers in a perfunctory manner, and then struggled to go to bed.

“We were going to talk about leaving to night. Was she mad? She must be mad. This wasn’t an accident? She probably trashed the camp on purpose.” I kept remembering the way she looked right past Eros as he almost drowned. I remembered something else weird she recently said, something just out of the blue about another year of her life being put on hold. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “We were going to head back to civilization in only six weeks. What did she mean by “another year wasted?” Coming here was her idea. I had been wrong about the moon too, for Phoebe was in almost full splendor above me by the time I finished cleaning camp and climbed into the camper. I remember my thoughts and glimpses of our talks. I was trying to force the wrong random puzzle pieces to fit into a board of logic. I was still cutting edges off of the facts as the growling river finally lolled me to sleep. I was worried but I mostly rejoiced that none of the boys had been hurt.  

The next morning came slowly. Phoebe hung around until almost noon. I cleaned a little more of camp and my family never came back; but, I wasn’t surprised by then. I had noticed by that afternoon she had also taken my driver’s license and bank cards and I was sure by then she was who wrecked the camp-not a wild bear. I had been lucky that I, by nothing more than habit, grabbed my truck keys that last morning, or she’d have taken them too.

She has her reasons and I may never see them like she does. We have three kids and that was enough for her and her potential music career and she needed time and help to do what she felt was right for her own life. I say out loud from time to time that I understand why she did it; but inside I don’t-I don’t think I ever will understand.

I know what obvious implication arise by the nature of our situation and her actions. I know that by denying these preemptively I’d only further these implications. However, I will record this: Her music career is as important to her as my kids are to me. We thought them living free from cultural pressure and television was important for the longevity of their happiness. I supported her in her music wholeheartedly. Every house we moved from, every big decision we made was at her behest. It’s just in the last one, the decision that by law-by the Constitution as defined by the Supreme Court-was hers alone to make. But for that one, she believed I would try my hardest to talk her out of it. I confess in this one matter, she’d be right, I would have fought her. So she sagely decided not to tell me and to leave me stranded in deep wilderness to do what she thought would best aid her in accomplishing her dreams.

I look back from today with perfect vision. I know now how she was able to blankly watch my oldest boy franticly struggle down the river without noticing him. I know what the periods of silence meant and I understand what she was thinking so hard about or what was meant by the words “wasting another year of her life.” I maintain that wasting life is the problem.

But then, I was alone and that condition was sudden. I had no idea what was happening. I was immersed in an ignorance to which my sanity still thanks. At the time I knew I had three kids who needed me with them. I knew, inside and out, my wife. I knew her now and I knew her then, and though knowing these things about her, I accepted her past without judgment; but I knew what that meant for my boys and where she was taking them. I needed to be closer to my kids. I gathered up my oversized clothing and everything carbon based and piled it high in the opening where we told our ghost stories, read Homer, and had our nightly campfires. I put everything unnecessary into that pile and somehow it was doused with lamp oil and caught fire.

Brilliant flame bathed me in blistering heat as I sat there and formulated my new plan. I had deep seeded values that I had carried with me my entire life. That night I needed to toss them aside and be reborn from the fire. I had to somehow get past problems like no fuel in my truck, no money, and no way to sale my gold without my identification cards that my wife so wisely deprived me of those days before.

There are the intentions of each person, and as real, are the problems that hang between each person and the actuation of each intention. Between me and my intentions were sixteen hundred miles to cover-a hundred of which was just to get to the first fuel station, and I had no fuel. There was the sickness that came to me that first night after walking to Ben’s house; shrouded in freezing worry had caused my lungs to then be full of fluid and to cast a bleeding cough. There were my values and my wanting-the two could not mix, and I knew that one, for the moment, had to go.   

I sat there before the blazing culmination of the prior four months of hard work and all our sweat and my blood and her soul. I honored my lost friends, I prized my children above all, and I made my values know to my intent and vise versa. I prayed for a touch of the phoenix. I prayed for the ashes tool cool with haste. I stood there totally free for the last time and ignored the fire shimmering through the falling droplets of maybe my last outlet of necked honesty. And when the heat was gone, in the slowly retreating darkness of early morning I found in the ashes what I needed to do.

    I am only one part of an equation in all this. Not even the most important factor to even myself. The math was sound, but I answered wrong by changing my quantitative value. I answered wrong, against my nature by even coming back to Utah to the city where I was born. I answered wrong against my nature by seeking out help, and in this act, my life was spared with medical intervention. I answered wrong by asking for credentialed advice. Thus, recently I was instructed to describe myself in a world where everything was perceived by me as perfect. The question was approximately this: “From an arbitrary date in the future and from then on out-how would you respond, how would you appear, if everything was better/perfect?” I say that now and the future is written in stone regardless of our perception of it. Perceiving perfection in chaos is crazy. So I think I’m going to read more about Scientology and enjoy my feelings and imperfect perception. Because as it’s said: “Perfection cannot be sustained, be it by the participant or the condition or both. This is axiomatic; perfection begot complacency-complacency was imperfect.” (Smith 2012)