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Contemplating Wilderness

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

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The Third Depression

My father just lost his job ? yet another casualty of what some are calling The Third Depression (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1&ref=paulkrugman). This makes the whole damned economic mess hit very close to home.

Of course, intellectually, I've gotten the fact that the economy fell off the tracks a while back. And I've seen evidence of it. But I live a lifestyle - amongst others in a similar socioeconomic class - that has always demanded a certain amount of fiscal conservatism, belt-tightening and a lack of extravagance. I live in a trailer, for chrissakes. Vacation for my friends and me is a river trip (sometimes on a mattress, no less) or a week on foot in the canyons. We drink PBR. We eat grilled cheese sandwiches. Often. None of which is to say it's a bad life. We've all chosen it.

Somewhere along the line, many of us in Moab chose place and the freedom to commune with it over large bank accounts and the 9-to-5 grind. We've chosen to pursue a different kind of success based on a different measure of happiness. With the onset of The Third Depression, it's just made it a little bit harder to pull the various income puzzle pieces together - there are fewer to go around - and we notice more people in the same plight. I worked for a year at the local thrift store, and let me tell you, business there is booming.

But all of this is a much different ball of wax for my parents - with the toll it takes on both their future financial security and their sense of hope and well-being in this world. While some of my friends work seasonally and look forward to the winter months of "fun-employment," drawing checks from the state is anything but fun for my dad. He's a hard worker. The most dedicated I know. This drive is in his genes, coming from an entrepreneurial man - my grandfather - who always found a way to comfortably support a family of ten. My dad sold heavy machinery, equipment that was directly tied to housing starts. With the housing market in the tank in recent years, my dad still found a way to remain amongst the top three salespeople in the company - a company that has locations all up and down the West Coast.

He's a damned hard worker.

Sometimes I have to wonder where the fairness is in all of this?even though I'm old enough to know that the field of economics doesn't operate on principles of fairness. If it did, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. And more than sometimes I find myself wondering where my parents go from here. And how might I help them? What can I offer? Could I support them if I had taken that lucrative PR gig straight out of college? Or would I simply be in the same boat right now, peddling my own resume?

I'm hopeful that my dad will find work soon, though it likely won't be in Oregon, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. In this way, being out of work doesn't simply throw my parent's financial future in limbo. It tosses everything into the air - like someone clumsily pulling the tablecloth out from under all the place-settings, with my parents left to watch the slow-motion gravitational pull on all the breakables. Will they land back in place? Will they land safely in a new configuration? Or will everything simply shatter?

My mom is a lifelong Medford, Oregon, resident. Same with her mother. And her mother. Though she's dreamed, in recent years, of a new beginning elsewhere, I've always wanted the wrenching transition to be on my parents' terms, not foisted upon them by the vicissitudes of an uncaring financial market.

For my friends and me, eating grilled cheese in our unconventional, on-the-cheap homes is life as we know it. We smile and laugh at it often. We have to. It's an adventure, one replete with unsavory components like black water tanks (I never thought I'd become so intimate with sewage) and bug infestations. And while I am happy with my still-life-in-travel-trailer, I don't wish the same for my folks. I want them to be comfortable and at peace - commodities that are in much shorter supply during this era of The Third Depression.

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Compassion Mongering and the Immigration Debate

Here in Utah, the vitriol surrounding the issue of illegal immigration is astounding.

I make a habit of reading the Salt Lake Tribune online in the morning as I wake up over tea. As with most online newspapers, readers are allowed to comment on the articles. Every day, I come across anti-immigrant rhetoric?even with articles that have nothing to do with the subject.

One article last month was a preliminary report on a car crash. No identifying information was given on anyone involved. However, the reader comments began with someone complaining about illegal aliens' inability to drive and how they are ruining this country. Then everyone else was off to the races with their immigration comments. One lone person asked, "What does any of this have to do with the article?"

A couple days ago, the Trib reported that syphilis rates in Utah were on the rise. Numerous readers blamed it on Mexican immigrants who are rife with disease.

Today's lightning-rod article actually had to do with undocumented workers. They are losing their food aid benefits in Utah. Hundreds of comments have poured in. One woman profiled in the article was an undocumented mother of five who no longer knew how to feed her family. She used to receive $300 a month in food assistance. She works cleaning a nursing home. One reader referred to her as a "bank robber" and posited that the $300 a month in aid is the reason why so many Mexicans drive Escalades.

Last I checked, $300 a month doesn't feed a family of six. Nor do Escalades fill children's bellies.

Another person complained that his town went from majority white to majority Hispanic in recent years, and he is prepared to move. His plan? To drive with a tortilla stuck to the hood of the car until he meets a group of people who can't name what the object is.

Recently, in researching the topic of immigration, I visited the Utah Minuteman Project's website. The site listed various ways to ensure that illegals are not employed in one's hometown. One way is to speak with teachers at area schools and let them know that you won't stand for illegals working there. The group warned that teachers are especially known for their "compassion mongering," so one must be firm with them.

Compassion mongering?

Have we come to a point where compassion for another human being is undesirable? Where one's country of origin means more than our shared humanity? Where arbitrary borders are more important than feeding a child?

Yes, I understand that immigration is a problem, that our country does not have the resources necessary to serve and sustain all who seek a better life here. No, I don't have any answers to the issues at hand. However, I do believe that those who risk murder and rape and enslavement crossing the inhospitable southern border in the middle of the night deserve our compassion and our willingness to listen to their stories. I believe that is the right of every human being ? native-born or not, law-abiding or not, "illegal" or not.

Any road to an immigration solution will be a long and winding one. But hate-filled rhetoric does not lead us anywhere worth going.

One of the final comments on today's immigration article posited that these law-breaking border-crossers will "pay in judgment before God" for their illegal actions.

Apparently, this person's God does not monger compassion.

But I have to believe that any God that created humankind ? and the entire expansive universe ? would not view any of this creation as "illegal" or "alien." Rather, aren't we all native to the whole?

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The beans are leaving

Se van saliendo los frijoles.

Such was the inscription we recently found on an aspen tree in the La Sals. Translation: The beans are leaving.

God, I love arborglyphs.

If you're not familiar, traditional arborglyphs are carvings in aspen trees, often authored by Basque or Hispanic sheepherders circa the early 1900s. The subject matter ranges from the basic inscription of name and date, to drawings of the human form (often naked women, known as "aspen porn"), and pithy statements of ideology (sometimes, apparently, about beans). These messages are written all over the older aspen groves of the region. However, with every passing year ? in a region facing the threat of Sudden Aspen Death (SAD) ? such statements of belief and belonging are fading from collective memory. These mysterious conduits to another time are dying at our feet.

Thus, now is the time to wander the forests and wonder at their past inhabitants. Now is the time to consider the leaving of beans.

When we read this particular tree-based non sequitur, we initially engaged in snickering speculation at the impetus for its carving. Was he running out of beans, a sadness of such magnitude it was worth commenting on? Or did he eat a large portion of beans the night before, and now they were departing from his body? Was "los frijoles" code for something else? However, beyond the preliminary giggle-fest, I had to wonder at the life of the author. When did he carve this? How intimate was he with this forest? What was his country of origin? How did he become a sheepherder in the La Sals? What did he have to leave behind to get here? Could he have ever imagined recreational hikers reading his careful, cursive statement in the bark?

One of the things delineating arborglyphs from modern tree carvings is their artistry. Even the simplest entries into the dendritic record ? initials and dates ? are created with a caring hand. The script is flowing and impeccable. The letters are thin and elegant. Pride is taken in their authorship. I even find beauty in the sketches of naked women. Any sense of obscenity is negated by the loneliness that inspired their creation.

Thankfully, the La Sals' aspens are still relatively healthy, not as impacted by SAD as other forests in the region. Thus, on our alpine strolls, we're still able to read a record made by men who roamed these mountains 50 to 100 years ago. We're able to read a record made by a previous wave of immigrants working seasonally in this country, men who made the lonely decision to leave their families ? for the good of their families. We're able to put the present in context.

And we're able to wonder at why the leaving of beans is so noteworthy.

These small historical mysteries make the hiking that much more rewarding. They imbue the present with a sense of the past. And they remind us that, though we can leave a mark of our existence ? regarding our being, our believing, or our beans ? the impact is never forever.

(A great article about regional arborglyphs ran in Inside/Outside a few years ago. To read it, go to http://www.insideoutsidemag.com/issues/2006/November_December/Reading_The_Trees/ )

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Nighthawks

The first time I heard a nighthawk boom, I had no idea what I was hearing. The sound erupted a mere six inches from my ear. In a moment of terror, I knew it was a ghost. What else could it possibly be?

I was camping alone in the transition zone between the Abajo Mountains' aspen-clad heights and the Needles' redrock mesas and spires. I was there in an attempt to gain some perspective, to figure out my path and purpose. And, thus, I was preoccupied. As I wandered around my environs in the day's waning light, I made note of my favorite aerial familiars ? swallows and swifts ? as they twirled and dove through the ether. Soon, these birds transitioned away from my cliff-side camp and were replaced by larger but similar avian beings. I hardly noticed, so intent was I on my interior. It only registered that the swifts looked exceptionally large that evening.

On my introspective amble, I must have stepped dangerously close to one of the nighthawks' nesting sites on the desert soil. A bird dove at me in warning. Though I didn't see it approach, the sound alone was enough to awaken me from my reverie and cause me to question the existence of the paranormal.

The boom cannot be spelled out with what the Latin alphabet provides. It is simultaneously a whoosh, a roar, a screech and a rumble. It sounds distinctly like my imagining of a malevolent ghost's rushing movement through space and time. A nighthawk's boom is an otherworldly sound created by air rushing through the bird's wing-feathers as it makes a sharp vertical dive from great heights.

I convinced myself I must have imagined it. I continued wandering. Again, that whoosh of anger near my ear. Again, that spike of fear in my heart. Finally, I stepped outside of my thoughts long enough to observe the aerial display above me ? and the diving birds with a booming in their wings.Fear gave way to wonder as I beheld my new favorite bird.

Recently, Tyler and I enjoyed our first nighthawk encounter together. The males were courting, utilizing their swooping and booming talents to mesmerize the females. Meanwhile, we were transfixed, grinning wildly at one another every time the wraithlike sound reached our ears. As the evening's violet hour ? the hour that seems to be the nighthawk's sole habitat ? melted into darkness, the birds' cheeps and booms carried on even as we grew quiet and departed toward sleep.

I told Ty about nighthawks when we first met. My initial encounter occurred not long before our own introductions. I shared an audio sample of their sound. One of the sweeter elements of our own courtship was Tyler telling me, "I've got a booming nighthawk in my chest because of you." I may have then fallen in love.

Now, here we are almost a year later, and our hearts are still booming for one another. And we are still transfixed by nighthawks. We camped atop Manns Peak in the La Sal Mountains a few nights ago. Just like nighthawks, we don't create a nest for ourselves. Nighthawks lay their two eggs directly on the ground. We lay our two sleeping bags directly on the ground, and we've been drenched on more than a couple nights, wishing for some kind of shelter. Our night on Manns Peak was no different.

But it was worth it. Had a tent covered our heads, we would have missed our evening-time feathered familiars. Instead, we lay on our rocky bed at 11,000 feet and watched nighthawks sate their curiosity about us by silently swooping within inches of our faces. They circled, again and again, not booming, just bearing witness to the strange nesting beings below. The white bars on their wings glowed in the near darkness. Their utter silence was a strange contrast to their capacity for booming, but it allowed for greater intimacy with the birds. This was not a warning, nor was it a show. It was simply a sharing of space.

Even as the rain began pelting us, my heart was happy. It was quiet like the birds. Content. Peaceful. And this, amidst my heart's capacity for booming ? in both love and fear ? made it all the more noteworthy.

Mountains, nighthawks, Tyler's sleeping form beside me?here was path, here was purpose. Here was home.