A Desert Home

I grew up in the desert. The Coachella Valley occupies a corner of the Colorado Desert, south of the Mojave Desert and west of the Colorado River. It provided me a playground for a beautiful childhood. When I was nine, my friend, Bruce, and I played in a large undeveloped lot of desert terrain behind his house. We would form cannonballs from mud and leave them in the sun to dry, then we would hide behind our respective dunes and lob the soil-based armaments at each other. We took pride in forming perfectly shaped mud balls. Is that the sign of an impoverished childhood? Toys made out of mud? I didn't think so at the time.

Mixed in with the sand all around us were tiny little seashells, remnants of the day when the whole valley was covered in water from the Gulf of California. By the time I came along, the water had receded to the Salton Sea, but it left a ring around the Valley and millions of tiny shells in the sand. Bruce and I spent hours playing in that sand. Every now and then a black tailed jackrabbit would run by and scurry away through the creosote scrub brush. After a spring rain, even this barren plot would bloom with occasional color. Yellow and purple flowers would appear briefly before the hot sun baked them away.

One afternoon when Bruce and I were finished with our mud creations, we returned to the house and found an unusual greeting. From a corner of the patio came an angry sound unfamiliar to us both. It stopped us in our tracks. We quickly located its origin in a cool shady corner; a big coiled rattlesnake was enjoying some afternoon shade. We were both old enough to know that we shouldn't tangle with him ourselves. So Bruce got his dad. He chopped the snake’s head off with a shovel. My heart pounded in my ears and the sweat on my back was not the result of the sunny day.

Now when I visit the desert I think back to that solitary rattlesnake. I’m aware that there is even less wild space for the likes of him today. The Wal-Mart parking lots, the acres of new housing tracts, the tony restaurants and fashionable golf courses have replaced his habitat. I guess he had more reason to fear us than we had to fear him.

Flash Takes Flight

When I got an invitation to speak to some colleagues in New York City, we jumped at the opportunity to combine that trip with a visit to Tom’s cousins, who had invited us to visit them in New Jersey. We of course had to include our dog, Flash, who loves a family vacation as much as the next guy. After a month of preparation, we headed to the airport, looking a little like a traveling circus. Tom pushes me in a wheelchair, while Flash, in his crate, sits on my lap. Our luggage is checked with the curbside porter or the check-in desk as soon as possible. The TSA loves to see us coming. They start right away disassembling our circus. They wheeled me into a small corral, where I suppose, they feel confident I won't buck and run. They removed my shoes (those dreaded shoe bombers, you know) and began patting me down. Fortunately my inspector was a twenty-something guy who I didn't mind getting intimate with. He had to check my shirt, my pants, my underwear (those dreaded underwear bombers, you know) my stocking feet and my chair.

Simultaneously, Tom and Flash were getting an inspection of their own. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them taking Flash out of his crate while requiring that Tom take off his shoes. I got the giggles then as I imagined Flash running wildly around the airport with Tom chasing him in his stocking feet. Soon enough we were reassembled and waiting at the gate. One of the reasons I travel with a titanium chair with removable wheels is so that the chair can be placed in a closet on board the plane just behind the first-class section. But on this particular flight, the on-board staff wanted to put my chair in the luggage compartment under the plane. I can think of no quicker way to lose a wheel, and if you’ve ever seen a wheelchair with just one wheel, you know why I didn’t like the idea. So Tom stood up to the attendant and said “no” this is how you fold and stow the chair. What a guy! My hero.

When we arrived in New Jersey we discovered Tom’s cousin had constructed a ramp with a very gradual incline (ADA compliant). The ramp went all the way up to the front door, and it stretched from Paramus nearly to Hoboken. It was festooned with crepe paper and helium filled balloons- I felt a little like FDR arriving for his third inauguration. Flash loved the ramp too and traveled with me in and out of the house, thinking to himself I’m sure, “I like ramps, who needs stairs”.

Our next stop on this trip was New York City. Thanks to our hosts, we had a room at the Peninsula Hotel, at the corner of 55th Street and Fifth Ave. Flash thought that perhaps he died and this was heaven. To quote their brochure: "a double glazed cocoon of peace and quiet in probably the most comfortable bed you'll ever experience." We could almost hear Flash thinking as he lay on the 600 thread count sheets under the goose down duvet: "now this is a bed, when can I get one of these at home." Flash seemed to enjoy his walks down Fifth Avenue and in the tiny grassy area in front of the Plaza hotel. There are a heckuva lot of interesting smells in Manhattan and Flash got good at avoiding hordes of feet while seeking out the odors that interested him most.

Finally we made a detour to Princeton University, where Tom got his masters’ degree. We thought Flash might be more interested in a college degree if we showed him a venerable old campus, and frankly, we could picture him looking fabulous in Princeton Orange. He liked the huge bronze of the Tiger, and the students lying on the lawn, reading. Beyond that, the place had difficulty capturing his attention.

Dominoes

I am a lucky man. Besides being blessed by a loving husband, I have some very generous friends. One of my friends, Ginny, used to play poker with me in a friendly neighborhood poker group. As my MS progressed, holding the cards in my hands became more difficult. Shuffling them and dealing them became comical. Our poker host found a battery-operated shuffling machine, a great innovation, that lengthened my poker career another year or so. Finally I had to bid them au revoir because I just wore out too quickly.

But Ginny was determined to find a game that I could manage. So we settled on dominoes. (My voice recognition software sometimes prints a word that sounds a little like the one I actually said, but implies something very different. I laughed out loud just a second ago because when I said ‘dominoes’ my system printed ‘dominance’. That's a whole different game, for a different conversation.)

Now, Ginny and I play dominoes about twice a month. We go out to lunch first and then come back to my place. If I get tired of sitting up, we take a 10-minute break and I stretch my chair out so I can fully relax. I win about as many games as I lose and that's very good for my spirits. We play at a leisurely pace, giving ourselves time to gossip and laugh a lot.

Ginny is a busy self-employed professional who spends three or four hours with me just because. When I’m with her I feel like my old self, you know, funny and catty and significant. Hers is a thoughtful gift of time and attention. I don’t think I ever did things in my life to deserve such a friend. I am a lucky man.

Hiking Mt. Whitney

In the 1970s, when I was a young minister with lots of ambition, I agreed to lead a junior high summer camp. This particular camp took only about a dozen campers and guided them along the Sierra Trail, a total of 36 miles over six days and culminating in a climb to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States at a height of 14,495 feet. I don’t know what I was thinking.

The only reason the hike was even possible was because we were co-led by Frank Goodycoontz, an experienced mountaineer. Our hikers were mostly seventh graders, and the youngest, 12 ½ years old, would turn out to be the anchor dragging from our tail. In the interest of confidentiality for hikers everywhere, we’ll call him ‘Slug’. At the front of our band, was our 8^th grader, Charlotte. She was mature, already full figured, and blond. She knew what effect she had on boys, and I would have been in trouble if we’d any boys on the hike who knew what to do with her. Charlotte’s closest friend, Lucy, was also present- a 90 pound tomboy who loved the natural world.

Everyone carried their own pack, with their own food and water and cooking utensils. We hiked most of every day, and then prepared our hot meal as well as our lunch for the next day. There were no crafts or games like you might expect at some camps. Our daily challenge was to get all 12 youth the five or 6 miles of our allotted journey safely. We didn’t have the same kind of challenges that some youth camps have. The boys were too exhausted at the end of the day to develop any pranks. The girls were too depleted to flirt themselves into any trouble.

My most memorable day of the hike, turned out to be the last. It was a cool day for late August but we were plenty warm since the trail was mostly uphill all day. We were all in shirt sleeves and shorts as we approached the saddle where one could turn left and climb to the peak, or right, and start down the steep eastern slope called Whitney Portal. As we hiked through the day the sky clouded over, and began a gentle rain. At 13,000 feet, the rain became more like snow. As ‘Slug’ and I brought up the rear of our band to the saddle, we found every one huddled against a cliff face. Lucy was sitting on the trail with her arms around her knees, shivering. Frank was crouched beside her and the rest of the kids in a circle around them. Frank whispered in my ear that Lucy was quickly becoming hypothermic and we needed to act. I instructed the rest of the hikers to put on warm clothes while Frank broke out his pack and began heating soup over a sterno flame in the middle of the trail. He put Lucy into a sleeping bag with Charlotte right on the side of the trail and quickly fed her a cup of hot soup. In less than 20 minutes, her blue lips turned pink again. We packed back up and headed down toward the base of the mountain.

In retrospect, our whole group agreed it was better to bypass the peak and return to the desert floor than to risk the life of one of our group. I was so glad that sometimes God appears at just the right moment, and looks just like Frank Goodycoontz.

“The Internet Is For Porn!

On a recent trip to the theatre, I laughed and clapped and cried at the current Broadway Tony Award winning show, Avenue Q. One of the songs from the show, sung by a big fuzzy animal puppet is “The Internet is for Porn!” The character’s joy and enthusiasm is fully life affirming, and he seems unaffected by his fellow characters urgent attempts to quiet him.

The unmitigated enthusiasm the audience unleashed on the performance of this number reminded me that almost all contemporary stories about sex are focused on sexual exploitation. Consequentially, the public’s experience of sex gets split between the tragic results of sexual exploitation or the individual (should I say secretive) experience of sex on the internet.

I hear there are some people who still enjoy sex with other people.

This line of thinking got me to look back at Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, a collection of sometimes-ribald stories from the 15^th century. Those were the days.

I guess sex and sexual innuendo have always been popular. The sad reality today is that sex gets heavily burdened by the threat of disease and deception. One of the great sex moments in my life came as I helped facilitate sex education workshops for youth and their parents in the context of religious communities. We always began carefully, because everyone brings baggage to the topic. But before long, we could see young and older faces relax and even laugh as the topic of ourselves as sexual beings came out of the closet and enjoyed the effects of sunlight. In reality, we are a species incarnate.

I hope you get a good laugh, or at least a warm smile, from some aspect of your sexuality this week.