The Journey Part 10

LIZARDS AND RATTLESNAKES

Okay, that “at peace” thing I just spoke about, that may go out the window the first time I come across a rattlesnake. Seriously! It’s been on my mind since we first started talking about this trip. The desert equates to rattlesnakes in my mind, and rattlesnakes can kill.

Talking to a local today, that topic arose, he was telling me to look for the lizards.  He said as the temperature starts to rise, a few lizards will start to appear. He said when a lot of lizards start to appear, it is time to start watching where you step, because it is then warm enough for rattlesnakes to make an appearance.

Oh joy!

Truthfully, it’s not me I’m worried about. I’m so focused on rattlesnakes, and so focused on where I put my steps, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. But the dogs? Rattlesnakes are not in their DNA, and that concerns me. We keep them on leashes but still, one mistake on our part, and I can see either one of them running into the brush and getting bitten.

And that would break my heart.

I’ll keep you posted as the weather warms.

HAS ANYTHING CAUGHT ME BY SURPRISE?

That question was posted in a comment, by Ann, on this website, and I promised to answer it here, and so it shall be.

I wanted to spend some quality time thinking about that question because, well, it deserved a quality answer. I hope this doesn’t disappoint.

Two things stand out when I think of Ann’s question.

The first caught me completely by surprise. I am amazed with how beautiful this area is.  Never in a million years did I think I would fall in love with the desert, but this particular section of the Southern California desert has won my heart.  There is an understated beauty about this area around Campo, and for an evergreen boy to admit that, well, I think that qualifies as a surprise.

Bev and I were just out walking the dogs, the local time being 7:30 p.m., darker than Blackbeard’s heart outside, the campground completely silent, and we were surrounded by the sounds of the desert living out the evening.  Packs of coyotes conversed with each other, what they were saying a matter of conjecture at best. Two owls nearby, making their wise owl sounds. Some bird, possibly on the ground, my impression with my untrained ear, followed us for a distance, a chirping I have never heard before. What I did not hear, for a solid fifteen minutes, was the sound of man, and I found that oddly comforting. No traffic sounds, no television sounds, no honking, no engines revving, no shouts . . . simply the sounds of nature in an area which, upon cursory glance, has no nature at all.

The dogs seemed unfazed by it all, as though their DNA, passed down by long-deceased relatives, prepared them for the sounds of the desert, and to this day that stuff amazes me, me being adopted and wondering about the DNA. What is indented on my psyche? What responses are tattooed on my mind? Do I ponder the unexplainable because my great, great grandfather was prone to do that? Was my mother an empath before drink destroyed her dreams?

I digress a bit.  The first response, then, to Ann’s question, is my love affair with that which I did not think was loveable.  Silly me!

My second response is something I suspected long ago, had forgotten, and ultimately hoped for but doubted, namely how helpful people are, and how caring people are, and how genuinely interested they are in their fellow humans.

Since the day we left Olympia, till now, Bev and I have been strangers in a strange land. Every single time we stopped for the night, stopped for food, stopped for a break, took a walk, strolled through towns never before seen, we have been interlopers, and the locals truly had no reason to trust us one iota.  And yet we have met nothing but kindness, nothing but helpfulness, and nothing but smiles the entire trip.  We have been among the rich in Laguna Beach and the dirt-poor in Temecula, the city-dwellers and the country-bumpkins, people who had absolutely no reason to be kind to us, and yet their kindness has been the common denominator throughout this trip, culminating in our prolonged stay in Campo, California, population 3,536, give or take, and day after day this area has felt like a human embrace/

I have been sullied and corrupted, over the years, by social media and the news outlets, packing as many sensational and disgusting thirty second bites of drama and pain, misery and shock, as they can into their allotted time, so that when I left on this trip, I just naturally assumed that I would feel unsafe, unwanted, and doused in rudeness from beginning to end.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I am thrilled that I was.

And there, Ann, is my answer to your question.

An honorable mention: I am surprised and grateful that I have adjusted so quickly, and so effortlessly, to this nomad way of life. I thought I was taking a huge risk; it turns out, I may have done exactly what I needed to do to save my sanity.

SITTING OUTSIDE A DOLLAR GENERAL TODAY

Campo has a Dollar General store.  In our neck of the woods, they are called Dollar Stores, or Dollar Tree, stores where you can buy items at ridiculously low prices,  many for a dollar, hence their name. But the Dollar General is a bit different in that it is more grocery store than any Dollar Store I’ve seen in the Northwest, with a meat section and produce section . . . anyway, I digress, the purpose of this chapter really having nothing at all to do with that particular store.

I was sitting in the parking lot, in Puddle Walker, waiting for Bev to do some shopping, and a gentleman approached me.  He smiled a toothless smile from thirty feet away, straightened his threadbare sweatshirt, stains adorning it from neckline to cuffs, and walked around to the driver’s side window.

I waved, rolled down the window, expecting the man to ask for some change, obvious as it was that he was down and out, he having the universal look about him of someone who has seen better days, perhaps not since childhood.  Once again I was proven wrong.  He asked how I was doing, said he liked our bus, told me about his puppy which had been hit by a car, and killed, the previous week, wished me a happy day, and limped away.

When will I ever learn?

I continued with my people-watching, something I have honed to an art form since my childhood, always on the periphery of life, noticing as much as possible, the quiet chronicler of life, and what I noticed on that afternoon was how many people entered that store limping.  Now, this may seem like a strange thing for me to fixate on, but after seeing so many in such a short period of time, I made some rather astute, in my opinion, observations and deductions.

This is a hard section of America. You won’t find many tech wizards living here, not many corporate CEOs, not many rollin’ in the dough kind of folks at all. What you will find are people who are getting by in a struggle which has lasted for decades, people who have nothing given to them, people who are staying one paycheck ahead of the creditors and homelessness. They have worked hard jobs, many without medical or dental coverage, and when something goes wrong, with their car or with their bodies, well, they just mend it best they can with duct tape and a prayer.

They are every bit as hard as the countryside they call home, bent, swaying in the strong winds, but not broken. Their handshakes are strong, they look you in the eye, they respond when help is needed, and they somehow scrape out a living in the unlivable.

This is a flyover section of America, a place you see from 20,000 feet on the way to somewhere else. The climate pretty much guarantees there will be no Disneyland built here. The land pretty much guarantees there will be very few sightseers with Nikons. Don’t bet on many corporations relocating to Campo anytime soon.  What you see now is what you’ll get twenty, thirty, forty years from now, people who have chiseled out a living from hard rock, proud people who expect nothing and are not in the least bit surprised when they get nothing in return.