Walking it off

 
I haven't done this in so long I'm embarrassed to admit it.  Hunting last fall was different.  I had a truck,  a cot, a tent bigger than my first apartment. In an hour, I could be out, and eating a cheese and beef enchilada combo.
 
This time it's just what I can carry.  It's been a long time and it feels right.
 
The trail follows the river for the first couple of miles, and its easy to keep that loping, ground eating pace going.  Camelbaks are new to me, and I don't know why I  haven't owned one before.  My body adjusts quicker than I thought it would.  I hit the sweet spot in the pack adjustments and I don't feel the weight anymore.
 
The mind though, has another agenda.  Lately, it's full of “if onlys,” “should haves,” bad memories and worries about the future.  The Inner Critic has been busy lately.  Plus, many of the bad scenes, the stuff I see sometimes when I close my eyes, the stuff I'd like to forget, all seems to have happened in the summer, when the weather was hot.  It's a trigger that I've been dealing with for years, and have just lately come to realize.
 
With each step makes a little more fall away, until finally, blessedly, I'm in the moment, in my body, not in the “other place,” the place with the bad scenes, or the place where things should have happened differently.
 
Four miles in, I enter the official wilderness area and let that idea just roll around in my head for awhile.  Wilderness.  I like the word.
 
The trail seems to go straight up from here and half way up, I have a gut check.  It's pleasant.  Cubicle life brings with it no opportunities to hit a wall and keep on going, to think about turning around but charge forward anyway.  I miss that. This time, I don't have a fight or an accident waiting for me on the other side, just a really nice view.
 
Here is a truth: as toxic as it was for me, although I was ill suited, I miss the Other Life.  Sometimes I hear a helicopter, or a siren, or smell gunpowder, and today's life seems a little beige.  Wilderness may be the way I keep the good parts of the Other Life, without many of the toxic pieces.  If nothing else, the scenery is a hell of a lot prettier.
 
I like it up here.  It's real, physically, atavisticly real, in a way the world of paper and electrons just isn't. 
 
I'd planned the beginning of this trip throughly, but not the end.  The last measure of my capability was in my late teens, and I have no idea what the man in his mid-thirties can do.  I'm pleasantly surprised at how far I've come, but I also recognize that it's getting late, I don't have a firm plan for ending my evening, and I'm starting to display some of the fuzzy thinking that comes with fatigue, a little dehydration and a lack of carb loading.
 
Camp is spartan, and I like it that way.  It's less to keep track of, less to fool with, and most importantly, less to carry.  I've indulged in an extravagance: I carried two books, Gary Snyder and Ueshiba. I was unable at the last minute to choose one and leave the other.  I wind up reading neither, instead I just lay there, in my bag before it is even full dark, listening and breathing. 
 
I didn't used to eat Motrin for breakfast, but that's the way it is now.  I pack and head back, but I don't want to.  The urge just to keep going is strong, to just keep putting away the miles, always living in the moment and always ready for whatever comes over the next rise.  I wonder if that's what happens to some lost hikers, if they are overcome by some wilderness version of the rapture of the deep, and just keep walking until they are no more.
 
But I go back, regretting on the down hill not buying new boots.  I suspect I'll have bruised toenails and it turns out I'm right.  Today, it's easier to quiet the monkey mind with a kind word and a smile, and I wonder if two day trips are just too short, if I'll always spend the first day or two just getting my mind right.
It's hard, stepping back into the “real world.” For a little while, I want to gnaw on that, to explore that dichotomy, but then I decide to just enjoy the air conditioning and get a sandwich.

Myth #7 You can understand violence vicariously.

Yeah, it's been awhile. I'm moving on to big and better things, so hopefully I'll have some more musing to do. But first, let's clean up loose ends:

You really, really, can't understand violence vicariously. Everybody thinks they can. I blame television. But, you can't. You can think about it all you want, read all the books you want, watch all the movies you want, talk to all the veterans you want, but you can't understand violence vicariously. One of the smartest things you can do is know that you don't know.

Somehow, I've become a “self defense instructor.” Now the task of explaining violence to people with no experience is no longer theoretical. The clumsy analogy that I use is that it's like “trying to explain sex to a virgin.”

Let us take this a step further,

Friend Rory says, “violence is bigger than me.” Those of us with experience, and how have perhaps allowed ourselves to be impressed by it, need to make sure we remember that. If you're a big, professional thug with a gun, badge, and tazer, your experience may not be real useful to the 5” tall woman who's walking across the parking lot with her two year old while she's being woofed by two guys in a Camaro.

Right now, I'm learning as much from my students as they are from me. One of the things that I'm learning is that the fight they may face in the future isn't going to look much like the ones I've had in the past.

Myth #6 Violence has to be an inherently shattering and guilt producing experience.

I don’t argue at all, that experiencing violence, either as a the person who delivers the violence, the victim, or even as a witness, can be shattering.

As a society, we are completely comfortable with the “wounded warrior,” the guy or gal who has seen the elephant and returned shattered and guilt ridden. I think for some folks, this is the only way they can find empathy for, or relate to a veteran or a cop.

But some folks see horrible things, or do horrible things, and they’re fine. Sometime’s they’re more than fine, they’re proud, as well they should be. Sometimes it isn’t the experience itself, it’s how others react to it that cause the problem.

I know of at least one police officer, who was involved in an extremely clear cut shooting. He performed an extremely competent feat of arms under incredible pressure. He was proud, and he should be. But he was told that his lack of horror, guilt and remorse was just “denial.”

So the folks who are shattered are, normal, and the folks who aren’t fine are pathological. If they aren’t shattered they are either in denial, or worse, sociopathic.

This is a change, at least, from the old John Wayne mentality, where you were supposed to be able to kill a bunch of guys in the morning, eat a rare steak in the afternoon, have a shot of bourbon and a blowjob in the evening, and fall into a blissful sleep. But, 180 degrees from sick is still sick. Telling people they have to be shattered, is just as toxic as telling them they should be fine.


The experience of violence doesn’t “have” to be anything. Just because it was one thing for you, doesn’t mean it is the same for somebody else. Just because you can only imagine one outcome, doesn’t mean there aren’t other possibilities.

Myths of Violence #5

Myth #5 The only people who train for, prepare for, or engage in violence are morally bereft, uneducated, or mentally defective. This one pisses me off. One of the great conceits of some of my “lefty” friends is that gun owners, martial artists, disaster prep people, “aren’t educated enough.” Can we have the idea that it’s possible for someone to be equally moral, thoughtful and educated as you, and just have a different opinion?

I take a perverse pleasure in letting people get to know me as a compassionate, moral, family guy who likes puppies, small children and NPR, who believes in equality, tolerance, health care reform, saving the environment and drug law reform; then revealing that I have a CHL, own an Evil Black Rifle, and love practicing my uppercut/hook/elbow combination on Thai pads at lunch.

If your head isn’t big enough to hold that view of me, which one of us is the narrow minded one?

Myths of Violence #4

Then there’s the flip side:

Myth #4 Violence is Never Necessary. In the strictest sense, this is true. If you are willing to let anything happen, and only stand there and “bear witness,” violence is never necessary. But I’m no pacifist (although I encourage it in other people) and there are things I will “not stand within my sight.”

This is the “180 degrees from sick is still sick,” method of dealing with a problem. We all, in some fashion, make an accommodation with the violence in ourselves and in other people.

This is basically magical thinking, that if I’m a good enough person, if I’m socially adroit enough, believe the right things, support the right causes, put the right bumper stickers on my Volvo, violence will never happen to ME. This ignores the fact that many of us aren’t exposed to violence on a daily basis is an accident of birth and socio-economic class. Oh, that and those guys you look down upon deal with it so you don’t have to.

There is a duty to equip yourself with skills OTHER than violence, being emotionally intelligent, being calm, being compassionate. This is wisdom, but there is also wisdom in knowing when you’re there, when your only option is to put blood and hair on the walls.

A brief interlude....

... for a quick paragraph from novel #2. (Yes Virginia, I'm writing again):

"I pulled the car into an alley and searched it. In the trunk I found a bag of crack, a bag of money, and a pistol gripped shotgun. I dumped the crack down the storm drain and counted the money. Now I had nearly eight grand in small bills, three hand guns, a shotgun, and a stolen car. Things were looking up."

Nothing big, but it tickled my fancy.

Myths of Violence #3

Myth #3: Violence makes us men. A hold over, perhaps, from when you had to kill an animal, or fight The Other, to be a man. The concept of an “initiated male,” is an interesting one, in that it posits that some outside event or ritual flips the switch, and you go from the binary state of “boy,” to the binary state of “man.” I don’t buy it, as I’ve run into to many 40 year old boys who have all the holes punched in their man card, but still can’t manage to behave in a way that deserves my respect.

I’ve got a lot to say about manhood. Most of it is for other posts. I would argue that the ability to deal with conflict in a healthy way, with situationally appropriate skills, is part of being an adult. Sometimes those situationally appropriate skills include violence, but most of the time, for most of us, they don’t.