Literal Versus Conjured Threats
Coffee in the Great American Southwest.
Life is like that.
It can be…
It all too often is a series of observations marching along with one’s age! Go too far one way and you’ll be weird, go too far the other way and it’s laughable.
Where to go from here then? Who or what gives the right? The go ahead. In other words, what possible inspiration may show itself as a potential for following through with a viable plot line? Does one wish to write that which emanates and is embedded in surroundings like, say, a deep wooded pine forest or even an airport?
The impeccable and harried drudgery found in airports.
Some will quickly recoil to such a sentiment. What might make an airport story more interesting? He takes a fancy to the girl, sipping her coffee, pretending to read a novel. Using the word ‘fancy’ on behalf of our observer, (probably me),is being way too magnanimous.
The phase of his life where feeling a ‘fancy’, even remotely for the lone female traveler, slips across that line into just plain weirdness.
So over the top unlikely as she’s sitting on the very edge of a maddening flow of humans going and coming. Each passing individual has his or her own story circling about one’s head. How can it not be so?
But nothing could be further from a furtive imagination. The simple truth if told is that I’m just at the farthest end of my loop of my Wednesday morning hike. As of a year ago, I carry only a small water canteen, no weapons as none are needed.
Three years ago, when Al started taking these world adventures, I jumped at the opportunity to baby-sit his desert home near Tucson.
Believe me, I am under no imagined endeavor to hone whatever MacGyver like skill set on these hikes. None. Oh, sure, two years ago I finally gave in to a thick pair of high cut, ‘guaranteed’ leather hikers that time I spooked a small rattler.
The young and attractive attendant assured me at REIs that it was the smaller rattlers, which are the deadliest. I foolishly lost myself in her green eyes halfway through her technical explanation of the smaller rattler. I still don’t have viable proof either way. Results of ageing, overpowering beauty, my lack of Southwest hiking skills; not necessarily in that order.
The probability of some sort of unexpected desert disaster is so low. Why tote along the added weight of stuff for my weekly, almost three-hour trek? In the front pocket of my blue jeans are my brothers’ old Fords’ keys. It’s a little complicated and can become even more so if one watches more than one’s fair share of movies based on hiking disasters in the New Mexico ‘outback’…
Remember from several years ago the non-fiction account of the high desert hiker who somehow gets his leg, or was it an arm trapped under a massive boulder? He had to use his Swiss army pocketknife to cut away, literally, let’s just say it was his arm, to cut to get free from certain death from thirst or hungry creatures.
Oh, but then there’s the guy sitting alone in the middle of a tropical jungle. Central or South America. Maybe Panama. Monkeys, the big, black howlers, off in the distance providing the needed distraction so that our solitary traveler isn’t really alone. Does fear creep into the heart? Fear of what? Fellow humans, that would be mine, well earned, of course. What could possibly be scarier than other humans snooping about in the same Panamanian jungle or the thorny, chaparral packed, eight-thousand-foot elevation desert near Tucson that I’m sitting in?
A close by creek, gurgling ever so subtly. Hardly enough to draw away my attention. In fact, the water’s movement causes me unsettled distractions because I can’t really observe my surroundings clearly. How will I know if another human is carefully approaching my position? What is this other guy’s motivation, anyway? One can never fully trust.
Would it make even more sense, saying it’d be safer in the jungle than alone in a back alley in New York City? You, see? Not so simple or so easily clung to. After all, the person five trees deep from where I sit near the creek’s edge might be like me. Lost and on the lookout. Then again, the loner you come across in the smelly back alley just very well may be the person you need to be with at that given moment.
Bad people generally will not attack if the opposition is questionable or threatening.
— -&&&
Dragsville here, man! My god this is like being chain wrapped to the back end of the old pickup. Like the old Ford. Then getting dragged over a rocky road somewhere in the middle of Mexico. Or that road on the way to Puerto Angel. Jesus, how could I forget? See what I’m aiming at here? Where to go with the flow?
Yesterday’s muse was all about writing on the venerable water wheel, its power, its wonder, and beauty. But don’t I get the feeling that with each mini yarn, the essence lessens? In other words, each new grouping of words seems to present with it its own moribund producing set of energies.
It’s like those failed gardens just beyond those black soiled fertile bands ideal for growing veggies in Illinois where the once rich ground has long since been chemically burnt out. How can I but help wonder where in the world this might be headed?
Hell no. I haven’t a clue. It just goes from worse to worse if such a thing can even be possible!
Maybe what’s being hinted at here is the need to push without letup. Push until the granite wall has gone through and all that remains is a painful memory. Jesus, I can’t believe that just happened, that sort of thing.
The question has to be without a doubt: what and who am I trying to serve here? How to fall into a mini detailed painting of the northern desert near Tucson. Describe its inhabitants, its ancient past, its present, its likely future. To what end, too?
My brother, with surprising frequency, brings home highly illegal ancient native pottery things. ‘Hell, it’s me or some asshole who’ll use the old pots as target practice.’ Definitely some solid logic there.
Then suddenly, the damn rattler bites! He takes a hold of my ankle. Fangs go right through thick cotton socks, as sharp as any surgical set of needles as there ever was. The immediate injection and hot pain as it enters my system. My breathing comes hard. There’s absolutely no way of getting the poison out. I have to walk fifteen miles back to my pickup, no phone, no one within eyesight.
In other words, I’m suddenly in the worst place possible. High desert, getting chilly, snake bit by a big diamond back. Fear enters the system too. No doubt the poison has something in its chemical buildup assuring debilitating fear. This, though purely my theory, makes perfect sense. There’s little doubt in my mind that the bites of these poisonous creatures deliver come replete with its carefully calculated dose mix designed to immobilize the victim, me.
You’re screwed. No two ways around this one.
Back in the New York back alley. What is my preference? Being met by three thugs intent on causing me harm? These assholes aren’t going to bite me. I know this. I’m already figuring out, based on what I see, three men, three knives. The measure of pain they want to share with me.
It will all come down to getting help before I bleed out.
If these guys are intent on making as big a mess as possible, then my odds for survival go way down. There’s world’s difference from getting a blade across my upper thigh muscle than a cut across my carotid. They did the carotid cut just so in such a manner that the plan is I will bleed out.
The snake bit me and has now moved on, its huge rattle disappearing under a hedge of splintery cactus. The simple sound of bone-dry leaves as he makes his getaway. He’s gone, and I know he won’t be returning for a second bite. This I know.
Same goes for the cutters in the alley. They must decide what distance they want to take this. The snake did so as well, but without malice, and probably with utter indifference.
&&&
Nice knowing neither of the two scenarios will likely take place. For one, I’m a thousand miles away from New York City as I’m an endless distance away from the desert from the Western US. So what’s the point? What’s to be gained? Skills sharpened somehow.
Which skills?
It’s the fun of exploration then. Meandering down these varying possibilities. Which offers greater misfortune?
How critical then does danger become? The element of danger… Assures me of nothing I can see except for perhaps help in setting up a growing appetite for a soft, whole wheat bread, creamy peanut butter sandwich. That along with a cold Coke. Or a hot coffee. Can’t beat that pal.
There is something to be said for desert writers. Those top-drawer writers who’ve taken descriptions of desert life to a higher level.
&&&
So now, having said all that, what is left for the rest of the exercise? At which point do I throw in the towel and go to my brother’s porch to do my laughable workout also due for today?
My brother warned me just before he left on his trip to Germany, this time an overdue meet up with his daughter. ‘The snakes are there. It’s more a thing of seeking them out rather than them unexplainably finding you. Why would they? You have to ask yourself…’
Slipping through the door from the living room with a fresh mug, movement captures my eye. Going or coming will never be able to tell. The large Adirondack chair draped under a thickly folded colorful local native weave. Just behind, stands a tall and dimmable torch lamp for reading or writing.
In the middle of the small half porch, the big chair is a monument unto itself because of its size. Under my brother’s favorite reading chair is a hand woven reed box or nest with a blanket piled into it.
Al has the blanketed box there for Thistles, his enormous tabby cat. Eight-year-old Thistles has an uncanny penchant for survival. I recall that time he held off two coyotes that had cornered him in the yard.
The great Ali would’ve extended his fighting years had he copied Thistles precision lightning jabs to delicate noses and eyes… Mostly when he’s reading Al takes great joy from hanging his hand over and into the blanket. Doing so, he quickly finds his reward as Thistles’ warm, furry form. At day’s end, it’s something to look forward to.
I went to the kitchen for a coffee and upon my return discovered what was easily six feet of diamondback rattler slowly removing itself from Thistles’ sleep place under the big chair. The snake was looking for a cooler hiding place, or was it the other way around?
Can’t remember now, Al explained the reptile’s cold bloodedness to me.
My first thought, after the shock of course, is: ‘When the hell did Al say he’d be back from Germany?’
My second thought went to Als’ machete over the fire place…
