Susanne Collapses on Marriage Bed as soon as she finishes screwing down the platform.

Busy Bees Before a Spring Wedding, and the Incredible Growing Duckie

It seems like it's only been a day or two since my last post here, but it has been ten days. I gotta watch that. Susanne Herfurth and I will be married in just ten more days. Nine days and a wake up till the wedding. if you can believe that.

I certainly didn't think it was likely that we'd end up married when I met her back in the fall of '06 in one of my graduate English classes. We were both involved with other people back then, but we did become friends. Now I can't imagine ever wanting to be married to anyone else. This is the one I have been looking for all along. Just goes to show ya that God works in mysterious ways. Hell, it wouldn't have done anybody any good If I'd met her sooner. When I was 20, she was only 10. But I'm 44 now, and she's 34, and that's a good fit.

Anyways, what with getting ready for the wedding, raising a duck who eats about 20% of his weight a day, and grows nearly that much, doing a small research project for capitol, and dealing with my new computer with Windows 8 installed crashing repeatedly, I've been a bit preoccupied.

 

The top two pictures were taken 10 days ago, the bottom two a few minutes ago. The scale is not as clear as I'd like, but the duck has doubled in size over that period. It is the same pan in all three shots. Duckie is not only eating and growing, but he's shitting up a storm as well. I hope we can move into a house before too long, so we can turn him loose in the yard as a fertilizer machine. In addition to the progress of his growth and the fluidity of his bowels, Duckie is learning to play soccer with us, though he cheats and pushes the ball around with his beak. Hmmm...I guess that's not cheating, you can use your face in soccer. The little booger also dramatically increases the number of passerby we chat with every time we take him for a walk. You'd think they'd never seen anybody walking a duck before.

I got caught up to date on that research project yesterday, and got terminally fed up with Windows crashing at about the same time. So today I installed Ubuntu in parallel with the Win 8, and I have been tuning it and downloading applications all day. Hopefully that will take care of most of the computer hassle. I'll work out of Ubuntu and only use the Windows when necessary. I hate Microsoft  in principal, and have never much liked Windows in particular. Corporate anything sucks.

For the next week, I will just cruise into the wedding, taking care of stuff as it comes up, but remembering to pray and meditate in order to keep sane. It's been more than fifteen years since I said I'd never get married again. Susanne changed my mind about that, but this is the last time. Ever. For real, so we'd better just make it work. The cool thing is, I'm pretty sure that we will be able to have fun doing it.

Susanne Self Centered?

I made a comment tonight like, "Wow, you're really going all out on that stuff." re: some stuff Susanne is preparing for the children who will attend our wedding.

She replies, "I'm making up for lost time. I used to be self centered."

I laugh. "Compared to whom? Mother Theresa? Jesus? Ghandi?"

What's in it for God?

Wake up People: God Wants Your Company.

It is as simple as that. He doesn't really need gifts, or slaves (in the way we understand those words), the whole sacrifice and tithing thing are about supporting a priesthood—call them what you will, priests, pastors, ministers, reverends, basically all the professionals supposedly representing God on this Earth. Intercessors, teachers, confessors and so on. Whether God actually cares about that or not is another topic, and I would argue that he doesn't. He wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us. He wants to share joy and sorrow with us. He wants to have friends, lovers, and companions.

My mother in Law to be, Linda Herfurth, gave a sermon yesterday at The Carpenter's House here in Modesto. It is not the Church I usually attend (Susanne and I go to New Hope Christian Fellowship), but Susanne (my blushing bride) and I went yesterday to support her mother, and to hear her preach. Her sermon topic was on prayer, and the fact that most people (herself included) find excuses not to pray. Too busy, too tired, too distracted to give it your full attention, and so on.

She also said that there are three levels of prayer life that people can evolve through. The first is monologue: where the person talks to God, asking for help, or giving thanks, or telling God about their day, without expecting a response. That is beginners prayer I guess. Next is a dialogue: When a person talks to God, expects answers, and gets them. God talks in all sorts of ways, sometimes he actually speaks to a person, sometimes answers come from another person, or in the guise of coincidence, and in various other ways. The third way is continual prayer: this is when a person has developed such a close connection with Jesus that he is always there with them. The dialogue is ongoing and is reflected in the persons every moment and action.

Of course, the third level is where we would ideally all live. That reminded me of an Orthodox mystical book my brother Nick introduced me to, The Way of The Pilgrim, which told the story of one mans quest for and discovery of that state of continual prayer. I'm not going to go any farther with that right now, but I would recommend the book to anyone who is earnestly seeking God. It's quite interesting. Anyway, Linda's sermon ended with the idea that God wants our company more than anything else. And that is an idea I developed separately a couple of years ago as I went through my own trials and tribulations before coming to understand that Jesus is the way. I still don't much like the category “christian” because of the behavior of far too many people who claim that moniker, but I have become a follower and friend of Jesus.

Here I'm going to discuss my reasoning for the claim that God wants your company.

In Genesis 1:26-27, God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

So, what does this tell us about God? The “us” is the trinity of God, I'm sure, and we can assume that the image he was speaking of wasn't his physical image, or not only his physical image. What are some of the most prominent traits of humans? Particularly the best and the brightest of us? The “good” qualities, but also the troublesome ones, the parts of our personality that make us volatile and vulnerable?

Intellect, curiosity, and creativity are some obvious ones to start with. Without these God would never have come to create the universe in the first place. From the Bible itself we know that he feels Love, also anger, jealousy (ouch, that's an ugly one), essentially all of our emotions except for maybe hate, yet it is said that he hates sin.

One thing that people don't often mention, but that is an intrinsic part of being human, is the loneliness of God. Can you imagine how lonely he must have been before he started creating companions for himself? I AM, the only thinking, feeling entity in all the void before the universe existed?

I believe that he created the Angels, and then Humanity, for the company. For some reason, the Angels weren't enough. Even though they have to have free will, or they would have never been able to rebel. Perhaps because being immortal and living with God, they never sufficiently differentiated themselves from their creator. Were never able to surprise him, or bring something new into the conversation. So, he created humanity, and set us loose in the world to develop in our own way without too much direct interference. Of course, I could be wrong about all that, but I think I'm at least in the ballpark, and I'll find out one way or another in the end.

Why are we different from angels, aside from our mortality that is? I don't know exactly, but I suspect that our being mortal, and our having families so we have to worry about the welfare of our dependents, give us a lot more motivation to learn, grow, and change things than the angels would have developed. Maybe that is exactly what God wants.

The Church is spoken of as “The Bride of Christ.” That means that humanity, or at least everyone who makes the final cut, will be wife to the Lord God almighty. Something tells me that it is not the sexual union of marriage that is meant here. Rather the companion, partner, sweetheart, confidant that a good spouse is. One person in all of creation you can relax and be your true self with, the one you can be vulnerable with, the one you can let see your weaknesses.

That part of all this kinda scares me because it implies that all of us will be one at that point. Parts of the “body” that make up the bride. That implies a loss of individuality, and that is something that scares me. Nonetheless, I expect that it will work out ok, its just that we don't have the language to describe what is coming.

In any case, we are here now, and if we would be closer to God, talking to him like a friend, or even a beloved father might be better for both us and him than treating him like some high king and groveling at his feet. He made us in his image, so perhaps he is a lot like us, and wants to have real give and take relationships with us. What can we each give him that no one else can? What does he need from us?

It's obviously not our labor (he made the universe on his own hook, what could I do that could top that?), he doesn't need us to pick up his socks, or clean his house. Angels would be much more efficient at that sort of thing than any person one would assume. He doesn't need any Thing from us. It has to be something that he doesn't have already, or at least didn't have when he decided to create us.

I could go digging through the book and find a bunch of references to support this thesis, but then others would drag out other references as to why not (and the arguments are both in there), so why bother.

If God indeed exists, and has gone to all the trouble of creating us, and raising us, and finally decided to even forgive us all our excesses, for nothing more than the cost of belief and repentance of sin. Then why? Why are we worth the trouble? I am pretty well versed in the history of the species, and I am human, and I am just about ready to write us off as a bad job and wipe the slate clean, so why hasn't God? What does he want from us?

The only thing that I can think of that any human (or every human) could give him that he couldn't get easier somewhere else is simply our company. Someone to talk to, someone to walk with, someone with a different perspective on the problems of life, the universe and everything. Maybe I'm crazy, or blinded by hubris, or just an idiot. But maybe I'm not.

It would explain so much, and I know that if I were alone in the void, I would do everything within my power to get some company. Being alone sucks. Loneliness is worse than any physical ailment, it hurts deep down and flavors everything with ashes. So that is my considered answer to the question of what God wants out of us. What's in it for God?

Your company, so be a good host, invite him in, and have a chat. You might learn something.

What Susanne has done for me.

I am reading a collection of Charles de Lint stories right now, just started this collection today, and in the very first story I came upon a bit of dialogue that really hit me where it counts. Here it is.

"Hell Staley, Some days I'm afraid of everything. Why do you think I spent half my life looking for oblivion in a bottle?"

"What Made you Change?"

I don't even have to think about that.

"Malicorn," I tell her, "Nothing she said or did--just that she was. I guess her going away made me realize that I had a choice: I could either keep living in the bottom of a bottle, and that's not living at all. Or I could try to experience ordinary life as something filled with beauty and wonder--you know, the way she did. Make everyday something special."

Staley nods. That's not so easy."

"Hell no. But it's surely worth aiming for."

Yes, it is. And that is what I learned from Susanne, Nothing she said or did--just that she is. Just by being, she's taught me more about living than anyone else, and it's cool, because she seems to think that she's learned a bit from me as well. We're a fair match.

Ordinary life is filled with beauty and wonder--if you take the time to look.

The Duckie Chronicles: Volume 1

 People are wondering, Where did this mysterious duckling come from? Or, as Aaron Alford asked, "What the heck is with this duck? How in the heck did you guys end up with a duck??"

It isn't all that complicated, just one of those Grace things. Either coincidence (for those who actually believe that random chance guides the workings of the universe), or God decided that we needed a duck. It happened like this.



The guy downstairs in Apartment 1 is named Ace, he's a very small old man (I think he's 88, but he could pass for 68) of mediterranean extraction, and a nice guy who has always got different sons, daughters, grandkids, cousins and the like visiting him. So, about a week ago one of his granddaughters came up from Visalia with her new baby to show her off to granddad. She came up to say hello the first day she was here because she saw all of the art on the walls from the parking lot downstairs, wanted a closer look, and wanted to meet whoever was responsable for all that painting.

So, she introduced herself and got to talking with Susanne. Susanne is great like that, she'll make friends with anyone who stands still long enough. I get to meet more interesting people that way than for any other reason. Anyway, this woman is named Lisa, I think, and Susanne told her that if she brought her baby upstairs, she (Susanne) would be happy to draw or paint the little tyke. She also discovered that this lady had brought a duck with her, and it was funny to see this duck following her around the parking area over the course of the next several days.

Lisa's baby was not feeling well, so she didn't get around to bringing her up until the day before she left town, and Susanne wasn't here at the time, so I took a couple of pictures of the baby for Susanne to work from if she ever gets around to painting the baby. Here's one of them.

 

After that, we didn't see her again, but the day after she left, Ace came up (again while Susanne was out) and told me that Lisa had left the duck behind because she was afraid some kid woiuld kill it and asked me if Susanne would want to adopt it. I told him I didn't know, and that I'd tell her he asked. I wasn't going to commit to any duck, but I knew damn well she was going to want it. Sure enough, when I told her Ace asked if we wanted to adopt the duck, she went downstairs and came back with the duck in short order.

Here you see me meeting the duck for the first time.

So that is where the duck came from. Where it is going I have no idea. Susanne has already decided she loves it, and the little bugger is growing on me like moss, so we are now proud parents of a duck a month before our wedding. Odd, but no one seems scandalized.

Duckie Bed.

We have determined that the duck does not like being alone. If one of us is not within about five feet it will come closer, and if it cannot see either of us it will start cheeping at max volume, and continue until one of us comes back in sight. Duckie follows on one or the other of our heels wherever we go if given the chance. Duckie followed us to the park and back the first night we had him. Duckie imprinted on both of us quickly, but favors Susanne because she dotes on the little booger.

We have also discovered that Duckie is no Beethoven (i.e. the pianist = peeingist), as it doesn't seem to urinate, but it sure is the poopinest thing you ever did see. BTW, I keep calling Duckie "It" because it is impossible to tell its gender until it grows up, and difficult with Peking Ducks anyway, because they are all white. Most of the time we are keeping him walled up in the kitchen where there is hardwood floor, so it is easy to clean. Thankfully it doesn't shit on people, so far. We are hoping to be able to potty-train Duckie, but aren't holding our breaths over it. Might be impossible.

 Today Duckie got to come to dry creek with us. We borrowed our other downstairs neighbor's car, another cool old guy who we've gotten to know, name of Jerry, and took his dog Salt, and the duck with us to hang out in the sun. First time duck ever met a dog, but Salt is a mellow old fellow, so it worked out well.

That is all about the duck for now, but stay tuned for more episodes of the Duckie Chronicles, random Batty Time, same Batty Station. Peace out to y'all.

Talking about Concetta is not food porn; Concetta is Food Erotica

A friend from church (New Hope Christian Fellowship) gave Susanne Herfurth (my lovely fiance) and I a gift certificate "Dinner for two" at Concetta in downtown Modesto (1205 J st).

When she called and said she had won this certificate and a bottle of wine in a raffle the night before and wanted us to have it as a Valentine's gift, I replied that it seemed a bit excessive. She then informed me that she felt that God wanted us to have it and that she had won it for us. What could I say to that? I said thank you., and thanked God as well because Susanne and I haven't been able to afford going out to nice restaurants much.

Well, tonight we went downtown to have dinner at Concetta, and I am here thanking both God and Sarah Stone Keath publicly for gifting us that opportunity. The atmosphere is bistro casual, the service was very good, and the food is fan-fucking-tastically fabulous. 

Concetta is locally known for using fresh local ingredients, and having an ever-changing menu (tonight's is pictured here). Also, I have heard good things about their food and service whenever the place has come up in conversation which it does from time to time. I am always interested in restaurants because I am a foodie, and because I worked in restaurants for better than twelve years when I was younger.

I gotta say, Concetta is as good as any of them, and that IS saying something. I have worked in several very good fine-dining establishments in Monterrey, CA, and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, among other places. 

This evening, our table was set and waiting when we arrived for our 6:30pm reservation, including ice-water that the ice hadn't had a chance to melt in. We ordered iced-tea to drink, and it arrived momentarily. The waitress answered our questions easily, and consulted with the owner about our gift certificate since there was no dollar amount on the paper and we wanted to know where we stood before ordering. The answer was perfect. "Dinner for two, not including alcohol" is what the certificate said, and what it meant was that we could order whatever we wanted off the menu with no price cap. Awesome.

We started by ordering two Appetizers: Lamb Meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce, and Marinated Olives. There was a wide variety of olives in the dish, oil cured, brine cured, green, black, brown, and in all sizes from pinky-nail sized up to thumb sized, and everything in between. Yummy, but the meatballs stole the show. I do have to appologise in advance for the pictures, the food was so good that I forgot to take a picture before digging in each time something new arrived on the table.

I had been told they were good, and that was an understatement. The sauce was delicate and mildly spicy, the meatballs tender and juicy. While we ate those, we perused the menu further, and decided to order the rest all at once which suits the style of the place just fine as they are pretty much a "tappas house."

We ordered two salads: Wild Greens and Goodies, and Pear and Gorgonzola Salad with berries, marconas, and honey.

And two Entrees: Pork Scallopini with polenta and mustard cream, and the Pan Seared Flat Iron with wild rices and arbequina oil. 

We began eating them as they arrived, so we tried the Scallopini first, followed by the Pear and Gorgonzola salad, then the Steak, and finally the Wild Greens, but don't get me wrong, they all arrived within a very few minutes, and we were sharing each item as it showed up, so everything was groovy in our book. After thouroughly enjoying it all, even bringing home the few bites of the Wild Greens we couldn't finish to share with our Duck (pictured here helping Susanne wash dishes) who agreed that it was indeed a fine salad. 

Susanne and I discussed the finer points of the meal at length and came to the following conclusions.

1. Everything was Great!
2. You can't hardly compare meatballs to olives, so they were individually excellent, and complimented each other well.
3. The Pear and Gorgonzola salad was unbelievable. The only way it could have been any better would be if there was a bit more Gorgonzola in proportion to the other ingredients. The marconas are toasted almond bits, and the berries are big juicy blackberries...Awesome.
4. The Wild Greens with Goodies were good, a solid example of that kind of salad, with the Goodies being slivers of red pepper and little green beans, romano cheese and so forth in a very light dressing, probably just misted with oil and balsalmic, and topped with a couple of crustini with a yummy hummus like spread on them.
5. The Pork Scallopini was lovely, but the polenta and the mustard cream sauce stole the show on that plate.
6. The Pan Seared Flat Iron steak was awesome, cooked perfectly without having to tell them anything. If you like to cremate your steaks you should probably make a point of letting them know, but you'll be missing out. The wild rices were nice, but the polenta stole that show also.

We didn't have room for dessert, but plan to go back after our wedding and Honeymoon next month, so we'll just have to save room then. Tonight was just right for tonight. Thank you again Sarah.

The Global Economic Problem in a Nutshell.

"What made you finally change?"

Fossen stopped for a moment and then laughed. "When I started educating myself on why farming no longer made sense. We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It's a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto the taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We're basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live."

FreedomTM, by Daniel Suarte (243).

This is a great sequel, to another great book, Daemon. That tell the story of the collapse of our current global economic system, and the computer virus that may or may not save humanity. The books are scarily plausible, and the author knows what he's talking about since he's written software for the defense industry, banking, and others. I've been looking in to the agribusiness issue for a while now, and can say that his research there is good as well.

These books are a great story, and I will probably write a proper review once I finish this one, but they also show us clearly how agribusiness, food companies, defense contractors, cyber-security firms, private military contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and so on are linked to governments and vice versa, how little the general population knows about who is really in charge of what, and how little can be done about it. The story also gives us at least one model of how we can turn things around. The Daemon might be a bit extreme, which is why the guy who wrote it didn't trigger it's release until his death (he didn't want to spend his twilight years in Guantánamo Bay), but something has to give the grassroots movements a lever if we're ever going to move the world.

What scares me isn't so much that the public has been hornswoggled into paying the freight for the multinational corporations takeover of the world, it is that so few people seem to realize just how bad it is getting.

We are living on borrowed time in a dozen different ways, and if we don't start getting pro-active about these situations, we're screwed. Our children are screwed. the sins of the fathers will verily be punished through the generations to come.

Doing overnight night security at New Hope Christian Fellowship's Fireworks boothfor the rest of the wek

Be camping out at 960 Oakdale Road to make sure that the fireworks do not go walking off hand in hand with local miscreants. Me 'n' Nick will be there from 10pm-10am enjoying the view of KFC, McDonald's, and passing traffic when not sleeping.

WTF?

"Good bye Jack.” I looked back at Earl as he turned away, and kept turning, and was gone.

Mean Birds

"Ha. Yeah, multi-talented. Well, tell him I said thank you.”

"I will, and I'll leave out the creepy part.”

"Good. I wouldn't want him mad at me.”

"Probably not.”

"Well, If you get done and are headed home before we close, stop by for coffee and tell me what happened.”

"Ok, I'll do that. And Alice?”

"Yeah?”

"What did the door mouse say?”

"Feed your head. Of course. Weren't you listening?”

"Bye Alice.”

"See ya later Jack.” and she was gone. Hmmm... Trouble. But nice.

"Quark!”

"Caw! Caw!” I looked up and saw half a dozen crows quarreling in the branches above me, and a drop of something warm hit me on the cheek, on the scar the Dead Guy's cane had left there. I batted at it, cursing, thinking one of the damned birds had shit on my face. Remembering a seagull in seventh grade PE class who'd done the same I screamed, “Shit!” and leapt back, scrubbing at my cheek, then looking at my hand. It was streaked crimson. That wasn't shit. It was blood.

I heard a meaty thump and looked up. Right where I'd been standing there was a dirty white blob. At first glance I thought it was a plastic grocery bag knotted around some sort of trash. Then I blinked and it was a bundle of blood spattered white feathers. I looked closer and finally realized it was the body of a good sized white pigeon with gray and black feathers along its wings and breast, and a large bloody red spot where it's head belonged. Seriously, it's head was gone, torn off at the birdy equivalent of a collarbone. No head. No neck. Not even a stump, just a bloody pink nub of spine and a bloody black hole of throat at the top of the body cavity.

I took a step back and said, “Fuck.” quietly and with feeling.

Looking up in the tree I saw the crows, six of them, perched in the high branches staring at me. The biggest one, perched highest, said “Quark!”

"Caw! Caw!” the others replied. Then they all dove and spread their wings, gliding over my head and deeper into the park.

I looked around for awhile, but I couldn't find the pigeon's head anywhere.

Standing there and shaking my head I mumbled, “Now that's kinda creepy.” I paused and lit a cigarette, dragging deep. “And kinda scary.” I headed out of the park and along Colfax towards Broadway, wondering what the hell the crows were up to, and trying to convince myself that I was nobody's pigeon. I stopped at the Jeep on the way and put the Glock in its shoulder holster on under my leather and picked up my computer bag containing the laptop and .45. Better safe than sorry.

The dead don't rest.

After rehashing my encounter with the Dead Guy and finishing my beer, I went back inside, killed the yard lights, and went back up to bed. I slept better, no more scary dreams, but I remember one in which I was talking to the Catepillar with the hookah sitting on the mushroom umbrella at Wonderland. He kept asking me “Whooo are Youuuu?”

Thinking of how to make this blog exciting and popular.

Thinking...

I have been doing most of my writing in another forum, entirely contained within my computer for now. I am working on my novel again. Started it over actually, and weaving what I wrote before into the text as back story. I am up over forty thousand words. Some of those words are even pretty good. Today I have been doing research for a friend of mine. I need to start actually flogging this blog, doing  doing daily posts that are interesting. Hmmm...maybe I will start putting in teasers from the novel or something....must think.

Angel Lake, Part Three: The Crash.

Borrowed this picture from http://www.elkorose.com/angel_lake.html since all of mine seem to have disappeared for now.

We were standing there, telling the tale of our days adventures, listening to Kent tell of his twenty-five mile trek to the lake around the other side of the ridge while being menaced by bears and cougars, and watching the last of the fire-Rescue guys on top of the cliff with binoculars while he coiled and packed away the ropes and harnesses into gear bags.

Susanne described her feelings as she sat on the rock and drew the landscape and talked to God. I mostly complained about being tired and drank a bunch of water, Kent talked of hiking through the wilderness with a mischievous gleam in his eye, Annie fussed over Susanne and snorted at her husbands liberal use of hyperbole, while the fireman finished packing the gearbags and went to sit right at the edge of the cliff near where he had been dropped off earlier.

After a short while we heard the helicopter's engine turn over and begin winding up. Then it took to the sky and went back across the lake and touched down in the same place it had dropped the rescuers off earlier. The last rescuer picked up the gear bags, tossed them into the chopper, then climbed in himself. Susanne and Annie had the binoculars at this point, Kent and I were using the old eyeball mark 1 viewers, and our conversation was on hold.

The 'copter picked itself up, rotated in place to once again face down canyon, moved forward slowly a couple of feet, and then turned nose down and dove at the lake. Someone gasped, I said “Oh Shit.” For a second I thought that the pilot was making a flamboyant exit as pilots are wont to do. Then the 'copter disappeared below the curve of the hill and the Aspen trees and there was an enormous tearing sound as though Gods own weed-whacker was mowing the Aspens on the other side of the lake. Time stretched out, telescoping as I listened for the crash, but the grinding noises just continued, and then the 'copter came lurching back up over the slope of the hill heading straight at us as it spun widdershins about the axis of its rotor-shaft. The tail-rotor and a big piece of the tail was gone, the broken end was smoking as the machine screamed through the air about twenty feet up I was looking at the left side of the copter, and noticed that the landing struts were also missing, then the tail swung my way as one of the left doors opened and a man, accompanied by several red bags went flying out the side. I was running for the lee of Kent and Annie's motorhome, visions of rotor-blades slicing through all opposition dancing in my head. Looking now at the right side of the approaching behemoth as it suddenly appeared to be flying backwards, then turned on it's left side and slammed down into the ground with a crashing roar. The turbine was still running, the rotors broken off, as I came around the rear of the motorhome and found myself sprinting towards the crash praying, “Oh God, please don't burn, don't explode, don't burn.” I could almost see the pale wash of blue and yellow flame engulfing the downed bird, but it did not happen.

I was either the first or second person to reach the 'copter, not sure, everything was quite confused. At first the pilot looked dead, the right side window had exploded inward on impact and he hung loose in his harness, head bloodied. In the back the fire-Rescue guys were moving about, apparently unhurt but dazed. Struggling to get out. The turbine was still running, whining in the afternoon sun sounding like the worlds biggest pissed off bee and reminding me of fire. The pilot started moving and then the turbine died. “Thank God.”

More people arrived at the crash-site, the fire-Rescue guys and the pilot all climbed out under their own power, and the man who had been thrown came stumbling out of the aspens also unhurt except for scrapes and bruises. The helicopter had hit on its left side, just off the road, not five feet from the bathroom, ten feet from a tent where a woman had been napping with her baby. Luckily she was down in the tent because it soon became apparent that a piece of blade had gone through her campsite at about head height and headed for the lake. The other police and Sheriffs got there quickly and moved all us helpful souls back away from the crash-site. Susanne and I had a front row seat for a bit because our camp was directly across from the bathroom, the nose of her car maybe thirty feet from the belly of the chopper. It was inconceivable that no-one died that day, but no one was even seriously injured. The worst was the pilot, and he simply needed some stitches in his scalp. Other than that, the rescue guys had some bruises and abrasions, no campers were hurt though a few missed being pureed by inches...Angel Lake is aptly named it seems, for surely something was keeping an eye on all of us that day.

Shortly thereafter, we were asked to leave our site as it was being roped off as part of the crash site, and dozens more law enforcement people showed up. We went back over to Kent and Annie's site and Annie made dinner for all of us. We ate a healthy, vegetarian, taco salad and it was wonderful though the salsa could have been hotter. Then they told us we would have to move our camp to another site, and before that the Sheriff's lieutenant wanted to talk to us and get a full account of the day and how we came to be stuck and what we had seen of the crash. We talked to a dozen or so other people about what we had seen and done and what they had seen and done. The camp-hosts helped us move to a higher campsite out of the way, and we eventually found our way to our sleeping bags and crashed hard around midnight.

The next morning we filled out witness statements for the Forest Service and the State patrol, drank coffee, ate breakfast, exchanged contact information with various other campers who promised to send us pictures and video of the previous days events. We swam in the lake, or rather I got in and splashed around in the freezing water for a minute before retreating to the sunwarmed shore and Susanne swam around the entire bloody lake...mi loca.

Then we headed on down the road, We took showers at a truck-stop in Eastern Nevada and crossed into Utah that afternoon. After traversing the Salt Flats, we reached the Great Salt Lake just at sunset. Susanne once again had to get in the water and once again I waded, just wetting my feet and tried to avoid squishing the millions of dead brine-shrimp that rimmed the salt muck and contributed their unmistakable aroma to the fetid air. That night we slept in the car on top of a pass just East of Salt-Lake City and were serenaded by thunderstorms. We had gotten in too late to get a campsite, and needed to stay in the area to take care of tire problem the next day. We were exhausted and ready for a rest...we got one over the next few days...but that night was long and uncomfortable. Our days rest had turned into a day of terror and exultation, not restful at all, but definitely a sign that God was watching over us both. He does not want us dead, but neither does he want us to get bored or to take our lives for granted.

Angel Lake is Aptly Named it Seems--Susanne Survives

By the time I reached the campsite I was parched and shaking from exaustion and reaction. I used restroom to pee, got a glass of ice water from out watercooler and chugged it, risking brainfreeze. God, it tasted good. Then I headed farther down to the Campground hosts trailer. On the way I ran into Annie, the lady we had talked to the night before. I told her that Susanne was stuck on the rock and I was looking for help to get her down.

“Where is she?” She asked. I pointed her out, and annie went to find binoculars. I kept going down the hill, promising to keep her informed. When I arrived at the camp host's trailer, both the husband and wife were sitting out front with citronella candles burning in the heat of the day to ward off mosquitoes.

“Y'all got a couple hundred feet a' climbing rope?” I asked. “Susanne is stuck on the rock,” I point, “right there.”

“Huh? What? Where?”

“Ok, my friend Susanne and I were hiking up the hill this morning, trying to get to the peak—there. When we got to the base of that big rock outcropping we decided it looked like a pretty safe climb, but that it would be chhallenging, so we decided to try it. We worked our way up there, then traversed over that way, then got stuck there. You can see her head if you look close. She's sitting down right now, just to the right of that shadow, near the small pine tree growing out of the face in the white section there, above the red stripe. I managed to get across that crack and come for help, and I almost fell, but somehow I made it down, and now I need help to go get her. If I had a rope, I could do it myself, but I don't.”

“Ok, slow down. Where is she again?” the wife said.

I stood next to her and pointed over her shoulder, “there, to the right of that Pac-Man looking shadow. The lower jaw points right at her. Just above the narrow point on the red stripe there. In between those two big channels.”

The husband came out with an enormous set of binoculars, They looked like some air-raid spotting glasses from WWII I have seen, meant to be mounted on a pintle, and set them on the picnic table. “Where?” he asked.

I went through it again. “OK, I got her.” he said, “Damn. How the hell did you get up there.?”

“Carefully. It seemed a lot easier doing it than it looks from here.”

The Campground Host lady spoke up, “I hiked up to the top of that thing a while back, but I wen't up the side. Damn, you guys are crazy.”

“Yeah, well, probably, but I still need to get her down.”

“Ok, we got a State Trooper camping with his family up the way. Let's go see if we can find him. Maybe he has some climbing gear with him...come on then.” She walked to her big blue truck, lighting a cigarette, and climbed in. I jumped in the passenger side, and rolled a smoke while she drove up the way to a camp above ours that was occupied by a nice trailer. She talked with the teenaged girls by the trailer, who told us their dad was fishing, so we went off around the lake to the day use parking area and looked along the shore for him. No luck.

“We'll keep looking, but I'm going to call the Sheriff's office and get them headed out to help.”

“Ok, I just want to get her down, however we have to do that. She is safe where she is, but it is hot up there and she doesn't have all that much water.”

“Oh. How much does she have?”

“Most of a quart and a Mountain Dew when I left.”

“Mountain Dew's not so good.”

“I know, It was in my pack, so I left it with her, better than nothing.”

“People dehydrate fast up here, particularly in the direct sun like that.”

“I know that too. We were stupid, ok. But, We weren't planning on getting stuck on the frigging rock when we left.”

She called the Elko County Sheriff's office and got patched through to a deputy who was down the Mountain at the Angel Creek Campground. He said he was on his way up, and that he would coordinate with the rescue guys.

We headed back over to the State Troopers campsite, and met up with him about the time the Deputy showed up. He was a K-9 officer, with a beautiful and irritable sheppard in the back seat of his Bronco.

The State troopers wife offered me a bottle of water, and I accepted it gratefully. More calling back and forth about what to do, and they determined that a climbing crew would be coming up either by car or helicopter, depending on whether or not they had the available people in Wells, or if they had to come from Elko.

After a bit of standing around and drinking water, listening, and feeling like a fifth wheel, I went back to our camp, re-filled water bottle with iced-water from the cooler, had a couple bites of meat and cheese, took a pee, then went back to the Troopers trailer and told them I was going back up to talk to Susanne.

“Don't go back on the rock.” said the Trooper.

“Don't worry, I'm done climbing for the day. I kinda shot out my arms and shoulders getting down, and we don't need me stuck up there too. I'm just going up to the base of the outcropping to holler at her and let her know what's going on. Then I'll come back down.” I replied.

“Ok then, tell her help is on the way.”

“That's the plan.”

So I trekked back up the path, then climbed up through the scrub at the base of the rock in the hot sun. I could feel my muscles trembling, and the heat boiling in my head, and the altitude getting to me for the first time, making me nauseous; I realized that I should have eaten breakfast as I swayed, dizzy for a minute. Reminding myself that Susanne was alone up there in the heat, I ignored it. Keep moving pussy. You can stop when she's down safe.

Getting to a position directly below her I shouted, “Susanne!”

No reply.

“Susanne!” Louder! “Susanne!” Damn, hearing aids. Hope they are on. “Sussaaannnneee!”

“James?” I hear her, “James? Are you there? Do you have a rope.”

“It's me Smiley. No one had a rope, so we had to call out for help. They are on the way.”

“How long, do you know?”

“Not sure. They might be driving up, or they might come in a helicopter. I just came back to make sure you are all right, and let you know what is going on.”

“I'm ok. I've been sketching and talking to God.”

“Cool.”

“It's hot, and I'm thirsty, I've been saving the water. If they are on way, I can drink it.”

“You might want to conserve some, I don't know how long they'll be. You'll be down today, but I don't know how soon.”

“Ahh...ok...damn.”

“Yeah. Sorry I couldn't find a rope.”

“It's ok. I found a place I can get my head in the shade if I stand up, but I can't stand there for too long at a time.”

“Be careful with the moving around up there beautiful. If you fall I'll follow you to hell just so I can drag you back and kill you again. I'm not done with you yet, and neither is the world.”

She laughed. “I bet you would.”

“Yeah, not likely you would end up in hell though, and they might not let me in upstairs, so be careful.”

“I will.”

“OK, I'm going to go back down now so I can keep track of what's going on, I'll come back up if they are going to be too long.”

“Hey, I'm all right here. There is plenty to do, I have my sketchbook and a beautiful view of the lake and the mountains. Go do something fun for you while you wait. Sit on the beach and read for a while. Go swimming or something.”

“Ha! Leave it to Susanne. Not likely, don't think I could concentrate on a book right now.”

“Really, take it easy, I'll be fine.”

“I'll see what I can do Smiley. See you soon.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.” and I trekked back down the hill. Back at camp I got more water, then went looking for information. I found a young blonde girl who was related to the State trooper, and who was a police explorer, who told me that they had moved down to the lower parking lot to wait for the helicopter bringing a rescue team in from Elko. The rescuers were apparently either on the way, or soon would be. The camp host and law enforcement on scene were clearing the lot so the chopper could land.

I checked the time, it was about three. We had left to go hiking just before ten. I had made it down to the camp host's spot at a little after twelve...time flys—having fun or not.

When I got down to the lower lot I met the Host lady again and realized I still didn't know her name. No time to ask, she started talking as I approached. “They are sending a helicopter in from Elko with a couple of Fire-Rescue guys to rappel her down. The 'copter just took off, so they should be here soon.”

“Cool. Susanne's doing good, but says she is hot and is running low on water. She can get some shade, but can't stand where the shade is for very long at a time. Crazy girl told me to sit on the beach and read for a while, enjoy the day. She's been drawing.”

“Well they'll be here soon, it is about a half hour from Elko by helicopter.”

“Ok, I'll go back up and tell her.”

I headed back up the hill and ran into a woman who asked if I knew about the girl stuck on the rock. “Yeah, I'm going to tell her the rescue guys are on the way.”

“Were you with her? How'd she get stuck.”

“Very carefully. We just went a little too far and she couldn't get down. I barely did, and Susanne is just not quite tall enough to reach the next place.”

“Wait,” I hear a yell from below and look back. “The pilot says not to go back up close to the rock. They'll be coming in in a few minutes.” The camp host lady is chugging up the road towards me.

“Ok. I don't want to be in the way, I'll just wait at the trailhead up here.” she catches up, and we walk up to the bathrooms and onto the trail. There is another woman there with a nice digital camera with a huge telephoto lens. She talks to the Camp host lady, then to me...I go through it again.

She says, “My husband noticed her up there and wondered if she was in trouble. So I put the lens on her and it just looked like she was sketching. I figured she was ok, just enjoying the day.”

I replied, “She is. She just can't get down, and she's getting thirsty. Susanne's a trooper.”

“Well, I'm getting a bunch of pictures, I'll be sure y'all get copies.”

“Thanks. I've been taking a few, but I don't have much zoom, and I've been kinda distracted.”

A few minutes later the helicopter arrived. First the distinctive thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap of the rotor noise echoing off the surrounding mountains, then a pale dot growing in the northern entrance to the bowl of the lake like some huge dragonfly, then we could see it clearly, a pale beige and yellow four doored bubble with a long tale and the blades blurring above it. He came in pretty high and circled the valley, near the walls, but far enough out for caution. After the first pass, he came around again and hovered over the rock outcropping she was trapped on. Then he settled down neatly on the top and three men carrying gear bags climbed out. The 'copter lifted off again, rotated in place, and moved on down to land in the lower lot.

We watched the rescuers move around on the top of the cliff, yelling down to Susanne, figuring routes, finding things to tie their ropes to.The pilot came hiking up the hill, a lean guy with a gret beard, sunglasses and tan boonie hat. The Camp host lady greeted him as Dale. After a few minutes the pilot headed up closer to the rock and I went with him.

The rescue guys communicated with Susanne by shouting back and forth, she had a hard time hearing because of distance, deafness, and the vagaries of hearing aids, so lots of stuff was repeated. They tied their ropes off well, belaying to three different chunks of granite to be extra safe, and then one of them headed down on a line payed out by the other two. He got to Susanne and harnessed her up, then had her lay down and ease herself over the edge while he held her to get her used to the harness. Fifteen minutes later, they were down at the bottom of the rock.

Turned out the guy who roped her down was named James too—there sure are a lot of us.She thanked him and gave him a hug. I thanked him, she gave him her name and date of birth for the record and we were free to go. We hugged each other and headed down the hill. Both of us a bit unsteady on the trail.

We got cold water, then went to the next site to talk to Annie and Kent (Kent was back from his hike) about the day's adventure. We didn't know it, but it wasn't over yet—not by a long shot.

Angel Lake is Aptly Named it Seems--Part 1

Stardate: 7.23.2010.

Well, we learned some lessons and cranked up the adventure level to new heights on Monday. Sunday the eighteenth, after leaving Mill Creek, we headed into Battle Mountain, got coffee then rolled on to Elko where we stopped at WalMart hoping to get two front tires, but their compressor was out of commission, so we were out of luck. We picked up ice and some greens instead, and headed on down the road looking for another camp. At Wells we saw a sign for Angel Lake, so we headed on up the Mountain and discovered a beautiful bowl valley at 8400 feet. Lush and green with stunted Aspens surrounding a lake fed by springs and snowmelt still running out of patches of ice high up on the surrounding mountains. We found a campsite and hiked around the lake to the falls, meeting an older couple (Kent and Annie) from Bishop, Ca, on the way. We continued on with them, chatting about nature and life, and listening to Kent wander off into tall tales, luxuriating in the cool evening and the flowering herbs growing along the path.

At the waterfall, I dissuaded Susanne from trying to climb up through the tumbling wet on the rocks knee deep in the falls. She is a water sprite, like the mermaid who traded in her tail and gills for feet—for love of a sailor—always trying to get back in the water. Everywhere I go with her, if there is water, she gets in it even if it is freezing. Smiley is a lot of fun to travel with, though she often talks me into getting into water that makes me want to levitate out of it it is so bloody cold.

The mountains around the bowl are over ten thousand feet, and Susanne and I decide we want to hike up to the rightmost peak in the morning. We trace a possible route that looks reasonably safe up the side of the mountain, how to switch-back to get above that big rock formation, then follow the talus slope around to the right to catch the ridge below the peak from where it will be a relatively simple scramble to the top.

Kent is a retired heavy equipment operator, and Annie a retired middle-school teacher, they were married in 1960, eight years before I was born. They have been married for fifty years. There is hope. I pull out my bag of tobacco to roll a cigarette.

Kent asks, “Are you smoking marijuana?”

“Ha, nope, just tobacco. Cigarettes have gotten too expensive for me to buy tailor-made.”

“Well, I wouldn't care. I figure a guy should be able to smoke what he wants. I've never tried it, but I hear it is not as bad for you as alcohol, and that's legal.”

“That's a fact. I'm not gonna say I never smoke marijuana, but I don't smoke it often anymore.”

We talk with Annie about teaching, and tell them we are moving to Colorado to look for work. They are also going to Colorado, enjoying the country, and planning to visit old friends. We talk about stupid politicians, beautiful country, and D-9 Caterpillars. They are nice folk, and I enjoy their company. So does Susanne, but then she loves everybody.

After a while, we all head back to our individual camps, saying goodnight and we'll see ya in the morning. We make dinner, talk, read, and go to sleep.

The next morning we get up around eight, Susanne eats some yogurt and fruit while I drink coffee and smoke. We wash our faces, clean up campsite, use bathrooms, and pack water, Mountain Dew, sketchbooks, pencils and pens, pastels and cameras into our daypacks, and set off around the side of the lake that we had missed the night before on the trail from which we had decided to start our climb.

The crushed granite path takes us up out of the aspen groves and into low scrub brush and grass dotted with wild flowers as the lake shimmers and ripples below and the mountain rears its broken granite crown above us. We come to the base of the huge rock outcropping we had discussed getting around the night before and notice a steeper but probably easier path up the near side along the base, and we note that the granite is fissured and stepped in a way that makes it look eminently climbable. There are shelves running most of the length of the face at intervals, and what look to be fairly short, and thus reasonably safe channels between them. I ask Susanne if she wants to go up the side or to try to climb. She says that she was planning to climb it by herself before I said I wanted to go. She had been planning on switchbacking up the face towards the lake, but agreed that this side (which we couldn't see clearly from the falls) looked easier.

I came up behind Susanne once she was secure, and we stopped to rest. This shelf was not as good as it appeared from below, but there was a good place to sit, and we had been on the rock for over an hour, so we sat and rested and drank. We were tired, but (we thought) getting close to the top. The problem was that the crack that went further up was not safe. Nope. The shelf we were on sloped more than it looked like from below and was slick with glacial polish. The crack that led up was overhung a bit, and the glacial polish continued above it. Furthermore, to continue forward required crossing a channel of polished granite too wide to reach across and nearly vertical with only a few slick bumps of stone for purchase, like a devils slide into the rocks at the base of the cliff. After a while, we began to be seriously scared that we were trapped. Going back would be very dangerous because the ledge at the bottom of that last short climb was quite narrow and covered with little bits of gravel. Not a good place to catch yourself if you slipped. Whoops.

It was hot. I was terrified, and so was Susanne. She had climbed up to look at the way forward, I said, “Come back, you can't cross that high.” She froze.

After a few seconds she said, “Hold on, I feel nauseas.” A minute later she slid back down.

I said, “Ok James, get a grip, fear is the death of reason.” and took control of my breathing.

Susanne said, “Please God be with us on this mountain.”

“Amen to that! Ok, breathe.” I drank another Mountain Dew Whiteout, thinking again how much better tasting they were than the regular. Crisper, lighter, not too sweet. “Ahhh...” relishing the irony of drinking Mountain Dew stuck on a frigging mountain, and thinking that I am some kind of fool. A few minutes after that I stood up and said, “Through fear and out the other side. I think I'm ok.”

She said “what?”

“Let me look at this again.” I glued myself to the edge of the rock and crept forward. Carefully studying the protrusions, the slop[e, noting where on the other side of the trough the rock changed from the polished white granite, to a rougher and more broken reddish version. Noting a good sized step about six feet down with handholds above it. Too far for me to reach, no handholds on this side close enough. Wait, there is a good one, and this slopes away from the trough...Hmmm...

I backed down. “Susanne, come over here.”

“Ok, what'd you find.”

“I think I can get across if you brace me from here. If you lay down and hug the rock and hold tight to this ridge here you should be able to reach out far enough that I can reach across if I get my right foot on that bump and swing my left out to that one.”

“Ok, you want me to hold on here and stick my legs over?”

“No, if we tried that and I slipped my weight would pull us both down. I want you to lay on your front, with your shoulder here and your left hand holding this tight, your legs down this slope for friction see...”

“Ok, are you sure.”

“I'm sure that if I fall you'll be able to hold on to the rock, and you'll probably be able to slow my fall enough that I can stop myself on that ledge which is where I'm going anyway. Then once I'm across, I might be able to bridge you over, and if not, I can get down over there somewhere and go for help.”

“All right, lets try it.”

It wasn't really that simple or that clean, but the dialogue is pretty close. We often find ourselves talking in old sayings during times of crisis. It steadies the nerves I think. It worked, and I got across. I couldn't reach very far back towards Susanne and there were no good handholds that would support both our weight against a fall down the shaft. Susanne said, “I can hear God telling me not to try it.”

I replied, “OK, I'll go for help.” I had her send over both walking sticks, and her's fell. I ended up sending mine after it, deciding that it would be more hindrance than help. I took the camera and phone out of my pack and tossed it back to her with the last Mountain Dew.

She said, “Be careful.”

I replied, “I will Smiley, I'll be back with help as soon as I can.” and off I went. I ended up running into another dead end in a channel at about forty feet up with a very slick dangerous section between handholds. No good spot to wait here, I would fall from exhaustion before anyone could come get me, so it was my turn to pray, “Please God, don't let me fall off this fucking rock.” and I went for it. Hand on either side each pushing into the rock, legs dangle towards that one inch lip down there, back to the rock, face towards oblivion for the second time in an hour. Except this time I didn't have Susanne's hand to hold onto. But I had to make it, to get her down. Dip, stretch pray some more, drop. Caught, twist, grab, safe. Panting, catch breath, then move down, slowly, but it's easy from there. Move down the hillside till I'm under her, “I'm down. I'm going for help.”

“Good, I was soo worried.”

“I'll be back soon as I can, but it might be a while, depending on if anyone has rope or if we have to call out for help.”

“Ok, I'll conserve the water. I think I'll just sketch.”

“Bye Smiley...”

I jogged on down the trail.