My Breif Career as a Vigilante Mormon Cop

Bear Canyon Lake, August. '04 or '05

There was a Mormon family that I met my first year out at Bear Canyon, and when all is said and done I will have referenced them many times in other stories The paterfamilias was head of security at a utility installation to the west of Phoenix; a pretty intense assignment in light of the terrorist fears of the time. I saw him several times a year, mostly with a large group including extended family and friends.

Mormons aren't supposed to have caffeine, so whenever he was in camp I would hike to his kitchen with my coffee pot and I would have coffee and he would have green tea and we would chat. Mostly we talked about the forest, but often strayed to politics. Mormons, for all their rules and strange underwear, are really Libertarian at heart. It wasn't hard for us to find common ground and become friends. The irony of his police background wasn't lost on me.

This particular year, his brothers had come with their families and before they arrived he warned me that they were Phoenix police officers, in the event I wanted to make myself scarce. He didn't know my legal status, but I think cops are just used to people who don't want to hang. I had no such compunction, He was a good guy and fine friend and I assumed his brothers would be as well. They were.

It was late August and getting cold. I had turned in with the lantern and a book. I was camped about a hundred yards south of the road to the lake, shortly after turning off of Forest Road 89. That area is off limits to camping now.

The Mormons were camped directly across the road (north) and again about a hundred yards back. There was a ditch about four feet deep that ran along my side of the road for about a hundred and fifty yards to the east, ending at the shitter.

Corona Brian had loaned me a copy of “Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon” by Ghiglieri and Myers. It tells the story of all known deaths at the Canyon. It's a fascinating read and I recommend it to anybody who is going out to camp in the wild. It is at times tragic, and at others a monument to stupidity.

I was about three chapters in, when I heard heavy footfalls near my tent. I turned out my lantern and listened. Soon, I heard a moaning, followed by giggling.Then a growl. I didn't take it seriously, I assumed it was some asshole kids; maybe drunk. Then two voices said they were going to kill me and cackled. I heard them walking away and I reached for my revolver.

I climbed out of my tent and moved a little ways off into the brush where I might not be seen and I watched for movement. I sat there a pretty long time. Just as I moved to return to my tent, there was a sharp report and a flash of light from the shitters and somebody yelled that they had been hit. I flattened myself on the ground. My camp was uphill and southwest of the toilets. It was quite visible in the moonlight.

I figured it would be better for me to watch those people, than for them to watch me, and the threats I had fairly dismissed earlier seemed more pressing now. I crawled like GI Joe the hundred yards north to the ditch and threw myself into it. I hunkered there, listening for any indication of what was going on. My Heritage Rough Rider clutched in my right hand. I waited. I heard footsteps, and three forms vaulted into the ditch behind me. The Mormons had arrived.

My friend, the security man, asked if I had been firing my revolver. It wasn't until I answered him that I noticed the 357 Glock each man was holding. As we reconnoitered, they told a familiar tale. Somebody had crept up om their camp as they were sleeping and made scary noises and threats and scared the women and children. “I don't need to tell you”, he said, “They picked the wrong kids to scare”.

I told them I had chosen the ditch as a way to sneak up on the shitter unseen to investigate. “Lead on”, he said, “Let's get the drop on them”. I was scared and thrilled and honestly almost giggled on the spot at the idea of three armed cops allowing me, a fugitive with sidearm drawn, to lead them on what was certainly an illegal out-of-jurisdiction raid. This is the west.

We got to the end of the ditch and peered over. There were three young Hispanic men standing around a Dodge Pickup. “Follow us” the security man said, “and keep your gun on them”. We hopped out of the ditch and I tried to emulate their movements, walking fast and kind of squatted down with my revolver extended. In all honesty I probably looked more like Janet Jackson than Samuel L.

The cops started yelling like a pack of dogs and the next thing you know we had them all lined up and reaching for the sky. Security took the lead and identified us as police officers. I remember thinking "well, there's a serious felony". I think he was the older brother. He questioned them and they denied having a weapon. He walked behind them and kicked their legs apart and searched them. All the while we were holding them in our sights. He didn't find anything and I suggested they might have ditched a weapon in the shitter. He instructed me to take a look.

First I checked the men's side. I looked in the trash and overhead in the rafters, I even looked down the poop hole. I was turning corners and leading with the Rough Rider like Kate Jackson. When I looked behind the door in the Ladies' room, I found a fourth young man, and tried not to look as startled as he did. He put his hands up of his own accord, and I marched him into line with the rest.

Security was searching the truck. The fattest of the four was visibly shaking and asked if he could put his hands down. “Only if you want to get shot” one of the brothers replied. He found nothing in the truck.

With their hands still in the air, the brothers took turns berating them for their juvenile behavior and for scaring their women and children. They must have told them three times how they could have shot them for making threats toward our camps. The perps were scared shitless. I'd never been on this side of things before, and the juxtaposition was fascinating to me.

In the end, there was a lot of “Yes Sir” and “We didn't realize” and the kids were told to get in their truck and never return to the forest. My police buddies went back to their families, and I sat outside my tent for a while and had a smoke. To this day I'm not sure if I was a Deputy, a Vigilante, or an Indian Scout, but that was the extent of my career in law enforcement.

The Anasazi Bellows Part I, Leaving Phoenix (again)

I thought I had already written this story, or parts of it, but I can't find it in the index. I need to be more organized. If it's already posted, well, here it is again. Probably a little different. I wanted to work in The Apache Bellows. I just can't help but think it was already written. I get confused sometimes, because I often work through the telling of these stories orally, to a lot of different people, before I write them. This is certainly a story I tell a lot, and cannot imagine I haven't written it.

I'll lay a little back story out on this version.

After Maya passed and I broke all those bones, I spent a few weeks back in Phoenix, in a tin shed. When I was just healed enough to ride a bicycle, I headed back out to The Forest.

It was March, and brutally cold yet up at my home at Bear Canyon, but a heatwave in the Valley of the Sun.  I was going to have to find a place to lay up until about May. I consulted the fourth floor at Burto-Barr library. I searched the trail maps and topographs for a location the easiest distance I could find from the Mogollon Rim that would provide me with the climate and resources I would need.

Fossil Creek, below Strawberry, seemed my best bet. I could get there via trails I had found that traverse the Matazal Mountains I could always be within three miles of water. Then, when the weather broke to the north, I would leave the Fossil environs and follow The General Crook Trail up to familiar haunts in the high country.

I'm glad now, that the plan didn't work out that way or else I might still be waiting for somebody to find my bleached bones out there in that vast underexplored Matazal Wilderness. We'll get to that.

I acquired a mountain bike and outfitted it with solid tubes. I built a trailer for the bike, and loaded it with water and food and all my gear in two duffel bags and a big rubbermaid container that resembles the tool box of a contractor's truck.  I also carried a few personal Items that I wished not to take. I intended to leave my home at 75^th avenue and ride to Chandler Arizona and leave these few mementos and family photos with my friend Sunshine.

I rode down 74^th avenue to Broadway and then took 67^th avenue across the Salt River and past a farm stand. As I turned onto Southern, my bike trailer collapsed with no hope of repair. I found a piece of cardboard in the ditch and made a sign. “Bike for Sale. Need Help. A truck full of Mexican Landscapers stopped and sold me a four wheeled cart from Home Depot for $50.00 and took the remains of my trailer with them. From here, I had to steer with one hand while with the other I dragged the heavy cart with my gear.

Progressing eastward on Southern, I began to see how rough this would be. It would take me days at this rate to reach Sunshine's place in Chandler. It was more than a hundred degrees. I was sweltering. I turned south on 59^th avenue. It being mostly desert I thought I would have to worry little about traffic. I'd gone about a half mile, my arm failing me as a trailer hitch, when I was overtaken and accosted by a stereotype.

I should say here, that I was taking up about a third of the road with my unlikely caravan. I had chosen 59^th for it's lack of housing and hopefully traffic. No such luck.

The huge white Cadillac crept up on me silently and laid on his horn. Then he sped up and with a screech of tires, pulled around me and cut me off. A fat white man in his early sixties emerged from the behemoth with the admonition that I knew not who he was. He wore Bermuda shorts, penny loafers with corroded nickle in them, and a Hawaiian shirt. He was right. I didn't know him. My mind wound back through news footage of local authorities and came up blank. His attitude bespoke Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but his face was unfamiliar.

He wore mirrored shades and a Greg Norman Shark hat. The hat failed to hide the fact that he was balding, sweaty, and angry.I could see belly hair between the gap at the bottom of his too-short shirt.

He told me it was illegal for me to be taking up the road like I was and that with a single phone call he would call down upon me a fury of law enforcement the likes of which I'd never dreamed. Then he continued to tell me the numerous indignities and inconveniences I would be subjected to as well as repeating his assertion that I did not know who I was dealing with. He finished his rant by asking me what I thought of it.

I told him I wasn't any happier with the situation than he was. I unfolded the tale of the collapsed trailer and the journey so far. I assured him that at the nearest pay phone, I would make arrangements to ditch the trailer and that I chose this road for it's lack of traffic, pointing out that he had blocked the road completely now for several minutes and no traffic had approached. He returned to his caddy, shouted that he'd see me in jail, and sped off. 

I wondered why an upstanding citizen like him, Greg Norman fan and all, would be in jail. It was probably about then that I realized my newly shaved head was blistering from the sun.

I made Cesar Chavez Park at sundown, and made myself a bed. I woke several times throughout the night with police spotlights in my face, but none ever hassled me further. In the morning, I set up my camp stove and proceeded to make oatmeal when a squad car approached and two officers emerged. Apparently, it was okay to sleep at the park, just not to cook there. They recommended I adjourn to a nearby Circle K to prepare my morning meal and I obliged, thankfully. 

The Circle K at 35^th avenue and Baseline is frequented, in the early morning hours, by workmen in search of coffee, water, ice, and gasoline. After breakfast, I sold the Home Depot cart and Rubbermaid container to visiting contractors for the fifty I had in the cart and twenty more. They left me with some milk crates into which I sifted the contents of the container. I called Sunshine to appraise her of my fortunes, and she came and picked up those artifacts I relocated to the crates that she would store for me; saving a trip to Chandler. She wept when she left, professing a certainty that I would never return and it would be our last meeting.

There happened to be a bus stop on the corner, and I loaded up the bike and mounted for the Greyhound station. I had a new plan. I would bus to Camp Verde and then hike to Fossil Springs where I could pick up the trail north. I got off the bus a few blocks from the station, at a spot I knew would have the most traffic. I worked the sidewalk there, until I sold the bicycle.

At the bus station, knowing I had more than the seventy five pounds allotted at the time for luggage, I hooked my toe under each bag in turn on the scale and lifted. My ruse proved successful, as they charged me no extra. While I waited for my bus, I was entertained by INS agents chasing a fella out and around and through the terminal. It was like an episode of Scooby Doo when they run in one door and out the other being chased by ghouls.

Eventually, I got my bus and was able to relax a few. I had no idea how profoundly the next twenty four hours would affect my life.

How the Mogollon Rim Was Formed

The Mogollon Rim was formed during the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Those periods mark the end of what they call the Paleozoic Era and lasted from about 358 million years ago to 252 million years ago.

At that time, there was just one big continent on the Earth called Pangea. Much of the world was covered by water. There was a climate change event, and the land dried out quite a bit. This was when Reptiles evolved from the amphibians and dominated the planet.

They think that in addition to the natural change in climate, there was a cataclysmic event. The result was the largest mass extinction in the history of the planet. 90% of aquatic creatures and 70% of land animals died out. It was the only mass extinction of insects that we know of.

Things got crazy. There were volcanoes and earthquakes and giant space rocks slamming into the planet. There were huge fires. Rainforests became deserts. Seas dried up. It took ten million years for life to adapt and recover.

It was one of the dried up seas that left behind the sandstone deposits of the Mogollon rim. Fossilized limestone and crystalline bivalves and corals can be easily found. Some of these corals are the size, shape, and color of a chicken leg.

That's not all the Earth had in store for building the Mogollon Rim. Beginning about six million years ago, a chain of volcanoes sprung up in a line across what is now northern Arizona called the San Francisco Volcano Field. Basaltic lava flowed down over and around parts of the sandstone plateau. Ash covered it's entirety. The area became fertile.

Waterways changed again. The last volcano to blow was Sunset Crater about 950 years years ago. The San Francisco Volcano Field is no longer active. Unlike the volcanoes of the Pacific Rim, which are products of fault lines, They were the result of the continental plates moving over a hot spot in the Earth's magma.The Earth moved on. 

The Mogollon Rim Lakes were built in the fifties and sixties for flood management and recreation.

Journal Days 8-9. Eating Grasshoppers and Trading for Supplies. A Trout Technique.

Journal Day 8

Maya and I did a lot of hiking today. Her paws are all better and my lungs have grown accustomed to the thin air. I no longer wake at night gasping. We went down the bear track trail and explored a few old fire roads with trees growing in the middle of them. We found a whole elk skull, and met a family in an RV camped to the east of the bear trail in a secluded meadow. Their names are Mike and Ann and they have three teenage sons. I gave them the skull because I certainly can't hike with it. I'm not sure how I'll manage what I have.

Mike works for a power company in Hawaii that is a test market for something he calls geothermal energy. It sounds very interesting. They're letting him work from his computer while he travels with the family for the summer. Every morning he drives out to Strawberry to transmit his work. He says he used to be a Forest Service fireman in Utah. They call them Hot Shots.

Back at camp, I went around collecting grasshoppers for dinner. It took me about two hours to find and catch fifty of them. Fifty looks like a lot of grasshoppers when they're jumping around in a bucket, but once you remove the head, legs, and wings, there isn't much left.

I roasted them in taco powder. They made a tasty snack, but it would take a powerful lot of them to actually feed me. Maya liked them too. They were crispy, but didn't have much meat to them. I sure hope I don't have to rely on eating them. I probably expended more calories catching them than they provided. We'll have to get to where there is fish soon.

Just before dusk, we trekked up to the lake and saw about twenty elk in a meadow. Man, are they incredible animals! You can't hardly look anywhere around darkening time without seeing one. We saw several more on the way back to Onion camp.

We're out of coffee.

Journal Day 9

We're down to dog food, hot cereal, mushroom gravy mix, bread crumbs, a couple of cans of green beans, spices, and of course the popcorn. I took some sinew from my roll down to Mike. He's making bows for the boys and was going to use boot laces for the string.I gave him one of my six foot rolls of leather too. They can make slings or whatnot.

We did some trading, and I dumped a lot of the crap I am unable to carry for a few supplies. I gave him the guitar, acrylic paints, and all my books except the Book of Outdoor Lore. In return, he gave me a box of cigars, a big can of coffee, and more dog food. I realized after returning to camp, that I gave him all my paint brushes and have nothing for the water colors I kept. Oh well, Maya and I have plenty of hair.

Saw a turkey this morning by a small watering hole we found. Thought we'd been hearing them.

Tomorrow, I'm going to spend the day paring down my gear some more and packing up for the trek to the Washington Trailhead. It's going to be much warmer below the Rim. I had hoped to spend more of the summer up here, but with a fishless lake, that's just not wise. I'll do better in the creeks and rivers below. My maps show three sources of water between here and the trailhead, which is maybe ten miles away. We'll take our time and only cover about 3 miles or so per day.

While I'm loafin' with a cigar over a cup of Maxwell House, I'll tell you a fish story.

Growing up in Ohio, I fished for bass and catfish mostly. One night some friends of mine and I snuck into a trout hatchery, but that's all the trout fishing experience I have. They would hit on a shiny hook there, or corn, or even bubblegum, so I still really know nothing about trout fishing. I expect to learn. I kind of have too.

Before I left town, I asked a friend how to trout fish and he related this technique: “You take some bread and wade out into the water until you are about waist deep. Sprinkle bits of bread on the water and stand very still with a big stick raised over your head. When the fish come up to eat, Wham!”

I'm skeptical, but haven't had the chance to try it yet.

Idiots with Guns

I had my first disappointment on my seventh day in the forest when an armed paranoiac came into my camp with an unleashed pit-bull making threats on my life. He was the second person I had contact with since I arrived. I hoped that I had left people like that behind in the city, but I've learned that in any group, you will find the same elements that comprise the greater populace. As unfortunate as it is, you'll have that.

The day started out according to my plans. I was growing used to the altitude and pace of the trees and awoke with the rising sun. We rolled out of the tarps, dismantled the camp, and moved to a spot I had previously scouted that was even more off the beaten path. Friday was here and I didn't want to be seen. Last weekend my spot was beyond all other campers, but I knew I couldn't count on that being the case again. Considering travel time and work schedules, we probably had several hours before the weekend warriors converged on our paradise.

Just south of onion camp was a quad trail that ran up a hill to the west and then turned north. It looked like it might be rarely used. Leaving the path at the bend and instead traveling southwest a few hundred feet, was a small copse of trees. The towering pines obscured all but the forest itself. It seemed as if we were miles from any sign that people had ever been there. Scratching Maya behind the ears, I surveyed our new home and said “Look at our front yard!”

I was able to set up there and be virtually invisible to anybody unless they blundered upon us. The curvature of the trail and proximity of the hill would naturally draw the eye of any quad riders away from our direction. There was a huge old Ponderosa at the turn that worked to our advantage. Our slightly elevated position afforded me a 360 degree view of any encroaching parties while seated. Instead of hanging the rope, we would sleep on one tarp and cover ourselves with the other, maintaining a low profile.

Our second objective of the day was to hit the lake. I'd been washing myself out of two liter bottles for a week and could stand a good dunking, no matter how cold. I also wanted to try some fishing while we still had groceries so we didn't have any surprises later that would adversely affect our diet. Maya did excellently on the hike, frequently running ahead and doing wide circles around me as I walked, which had been her method since she was a pup. The Maya dog had always been an excellent scout.

The trees at Potato lake sit back quite a ways from the water. If you have a pole in your hand there is no hiding the fact. Fish cops can see you long before you see them. Its not a good position to be in if you are a fugitive and lack the proper permits. Understanding this, I carried fishing line and hooks in my day pack and left the poles back at camp.

I dug around a bit with my machete, looking for earthworms, but found none. Turning over rocks only produced Roly-polys, so I caught a grasshopper and put him on the hook. I tied a small piece of stick about eighteen inches up for float-able weight and heaved it about thirty feet out into the water. Maya and I played fetch for a bit while I kept an eye on the 'hopper. Nothing.

I secured the line with a rock, and we explored the circumference of the lake, turning over the occasional stone and keeping my eyes opened for crawdads. No luck there as well. There was no sign of anybody ever fishing this lake. No tangled line, empty worm buckets, errant bobbers, or any of the evidence that is usually present wherever people fish. Come to think of it, there was nothing in the many signs posted at the entrance about fish at all. Surely the government would leave some kind of prohibitive messages if this were a place folks fished.

Some days later, I asked a ranger and he told me there are no fish in Potato Lake. The minnows are there to keep down the algae. Its primarily maintained as a watering hole for the numerous elk and other wildlife in the area. In fact, there wasn't a three foot area around the banks that didn't show elk track. There were no bear prints, but there were signs of assorted small mammals and birds. No rabbit. I had yet to see a rabbit on the rim.

On the side of the lake opposite my line, I stripped down, waded in to my waist and submerged myself. When I came up, I was unable to suppress the need to yell from the icy water. Maya, who had been wading around the edge, immediately swam out to join the fun. It wasn't that much fun for me. Shivering, I climbed out and soaped myself down with bio-compatables and returned for a hasty rinse. I noticed people at the trail-head a hundred yards or so away, coming my direction, so I scrambled out and began dressing. They turned around and went back the way they came. I felt bad that my nudity, even from a distance, had such a deleterious effect on the local populace.

So far, I wasn't doing a very good job of being inconspicuous.

Exhilarated by my chilling dip, and seeing how well Maya was faring, we packed up the fishing line and did a bit of exploring on our way back to our new camp. There was a meadow we passed with a small dry stream bed running through it and we followed it for a mile or so until it disappeared entirely. There were one or two brackish puddles in low spots. The only wildlife we saw were squirrels and ravens. We were cutting back overland to avoid the rough cinders and stumbled upon a granite memorial marker, out of sight of any trail or road, saying somebody died there. There were three loose keys and twenty nine cents in change on the marker in addition to a 410 gauge shotgun shell. I added a piece of turquoise.

That marker could be just about anywhere. I went looking for it a few years back on a quad and couldn't find it. I've always wondered what that mystery guy died of. I guessed it was a heart attack, hunting mishap, or quad accident.

It was probably about three in the afternoon when we turned up off of FR147 toward home. There was a green Chevy parked at the corner of FR147 towing a travel trailer. There was one older gentleman in a lawn chair by the door of the trailer. He waved and yelled a friendly hello which I returned. He waved us over and introduced himself as Pete. He said he was retired from the telephone company and came up there every weekend “until September, when it gets too cold”. He pulled out another chair and offered me a delicious cold beer. He was alone, but had friends coming to meet him later. I learned later that people in the forest alone almost always say that, whether it's true or not. We chatted for a while and he told stories about the rim and the wildlife he'd seen there. “There's a few black bears” he told me, “but they're hard to see, they don't go anywhere near people usually.” That's kind of a bummer.

I thanked him and we continued on our way. We crested the rise just before the quad track back to camp and noticed a powder blue Ford station wagon parked at the bottom of our quad track. There was a tent pitched across our trail and a pit-bull chained to the bumper of the car. Between the car and the tent was a playpen and a woman bending over a toddler. A little wiry fella with a shaved head and no shirt was staring at us hard over the playpen.

I waved and hollered a friendly hello and turned to approach his camp. He was, after all, camped on a trail-head. It was our trail-head, and I didn't think he had the right to block it. He came quickly from around the playpen, along the way calling to his dog Sweet to do something in German. He yelled for us to keep moving and then asked our business there. I thought this was an odd, if not contradictory bit of business. He seemed to be looking for trouble, so I called out that we were just hiking through and then we continued past until we were out of sight at our original camp. We stopped there to see if he was following. He wasn't.

We continued up and over the hill to the place where I saw the bear tracks and turned left there. We continued on for a couple of hundred yards and turned left again, eventually approaching our new camp from the opposite side of the hill. He was there waiting for us, facing away. We got pretty close before he saw us and turned. He had an automatic pistol in his waistband. The dog was unleashed at his side, so I took the leash from my shoulders and hooked Maya up so she wouldn't charge. “For a guy who doesn't want anybody near his camp, you sure are making yourself at home in mine”, I said.

“What are you doing here? Where's your vehicle? I've never seen anybody camped so far back in these hills. Are you hiding from the law?” Ok, now I was getting a bit jumpy myself. “I'm BACKPACKING”, I told him. “A friend dropped me off yesterday. What business is it of yours?” 

 

“If your dog comes near me I'll shoot it” he replied, noticing her low growl and raised hackles. “Were you in my camp earlier? I followed your bootprints. They're everywhere. You couldn't have made all those prints in one day”. (Stupid rookie mistake! Jeez, I'm an idiot!). I told him my tennis shoe tracks are probably every where too, and invited him to go over and check out the tread pattern on them.

 He ignored my offer and went on to tell me he had a wife and kid and came to tell me he didn't want any trouble. Then he threatened to shoot me if I came near his wife or baby. I told him he sure didn't act like somebody who didn't want any trouble, he acted as if he were looking for trouble or he had something to hide. I asked if he had made similar threats to the guy in the green Chevy with the RV trailer camped below him.

“I have a gun!”, he said again, turned, and walked away. “Who doesn't?” I called after him. He looked back once, possibly to make sure I wasn't taking aim, and then he was out of sight. I calmed Maya, took her leash off, and sat down on the tarp. I was shook. I'd only been here a week and already somebody called me a fugitive and threatened to shoot me. I really hoped this wasn't what my trip was going to be like. I could get that kind of action in the city, and recently had. I was getting real sick of idiots with guns. I smoked a bowl to calm down.

Some people just don't do well outside their environment; their comfort zone. I reckon that was this guys problem. That or maybe he was cooking meth. I'm sure glad his dog was friendlier and better trained than he was. I was still a little scared, loose cannon and all. Since our cover was blown, I moved back to onion camp so we were in a more accessible location to the road and maybe safer that way. It would also allow me to see the top of the quad trail in case that guy sent the law up to check me out.

I fed Maya and had a can of sardines and crackers for dinner, followed by a can of peaches for dessert. Canned peaches kick ass in the woods. I got to thinking, maybe I ought to let Pete know about this guy and his threats, just in case anything happened to me. I put Maya on her lead and started in that direction, but when I got to the asshole's camp he was gone. Packed up and left. Weird. We went back home to onion camp. No need to bother Pete.

Back at camp I smoked some resin mixed with shake and ate another can of peaches. Well satisfied, I smoked a cigarette of Mullein and considered the events of the day. More than jerks with guns and chips on their shoulders, I was worried for the lack of fish. This meant I'd have to move on when the supplies got light, probably within the week.

Knowing that guy was gone, I could afford to be more angry than frightened. The whole thing reminded me of the night before I left Phoenix.

It was about midnight, and I had everything packed and ready to go in the living room. I was about to try and get some sleep. Jim and his wife were house sitting at his parents place, so I had the place to myself. I realized I was out of coffee, so I dressed and started out to walk to Walmart. I was barely out of the driveway when I noticed a stereotype walking down the street toward me.

He was a Mexican kid, with one of those pantyhose looking hairnets and a white dress shirt only buttoned at the collar. He was wearing dress slacks and cowboy boots with silver at the toe. He stared at me and I pretended not to see him. He walked right up to me with a menacing look that I pretended not to notice and I gave him a great big smiling “Hello!”

At this point he was close enough in my face to smell his breath. Looking me square in the eye, he asked me if I wanted to get smoked and pulled back his shirt to show me a pistol in his waistband. I'd never been asked a question like that out of the blue before, and was at an immediate loss for what to say. With a personality like his, simply saying “No” was probably playing right into his hand. Watching Woody Harrelson in “White Men Can't Jump” taught me that exaggerating my natural talent as a goofy rube from Indiana was a handy way to get out of sticky situations sometimes. I replied with the most transparent stall tactic ever. “What?”

Then it came to me. “Do I want to get some smoke? Hell yeah I want to get some smoke. Hang on, let me go in the house and get some money.” I thought that if he thought I was stupid enough to go in the house and get some money, I could get inside without getting shot, as he might think he could rob me instead of just shooting me. It actually worked and I made it into the house.

I was alone and didn't have a phone. I thought he might come through the door any minute and this time the gun might be out of his pants. Still needing a sack of coffee (and maybe a rhubarb pie), I loaded my .32 and went back out with the revolver in my hand. He seemed to be gone. I walked maybe three blocks before I felt comfortable enough to pocket the piece.

As luck would have it, there was a cop in the parking lot of the Taco Bell in front of the Walmart. I walked up to his window and he didn't seem to notice me. All his attention was on his bean burrito. I knocked on the window, startling him, and he rolled it down.

“Hey man, I'm glad you're here!” I blurted at him. “Some Mexican kid with the pantyhose on his head and a white dress shirt just showed me a pistol and asked if I wanted to get smoked. He went north on seventy third about five minutes ago!”

“What are you doing out this time of night?” he asked. I told him I was going to Walmart and he suggested I go do my shopping and when he was through with his lunch he'd meet me out front to take a report. “What?”

“Go do your shopping, and after I eat, I'll come talk to you.”

I couldn't believe it. I told him never mind. I thought he'd want to catch some kid walking around the neighborhood offering to smoke people. I walked away more pissed at the cop than at the kid. I memorized the patrol car number and called 911 from the Walmart. I told them the whole story and they offered to send a car out in an hour or two to take a report about the kid with the gun. “Screw the kid with the gun", I said. "He's going to be long gone. I want to report the cop.” “Okay, the dispatcher said. Give me your name and address”. Screw that.

Remembering I had the .32, I hung up the phone, bought my sack of beans and a rhubarb pie and went home, avoiding the Taco Bell. I was going to be so glad to get to the forest and leave the stinking city and people like that behind.

The Man in the Tower

    After 60 days on the Mogollon, I had reason to celebrate. My previous record for consecutive   camping days was 45. That trip was in the Rockies near Paonia, Colorado in 1992. I was feeling optimistic about my journey.  I'd been cleaning up campsites after folks left and occasionally found loose change that dropped from  their pockets around the fire. I thought it was funny that people would have money in their pockets up here. It's not like you can run down to the Circle K. I was also tremendously amused when I saw fishermen on the lake with cell phones on their hip. There's no signal. At least there wasn't back then and its doubtful there is now, so deep in the valley.
   
I heard form a few people that there was a camp store at Woods Canyon Lake, about a dozen miles east once you hit the Rim Road. I had amassed a tidy little nest egg of a dollar and seventy cents and like I mentioned, I had a milestone to celebrate. I deserved a soda pop and a candy bar. A newspaper would be nice.

      I set out along the lake, working my way south with the idea of cutting through the forest to bisect the Rim Road and eliminate the three or four extra miles I would have to walk if I took Forest Road 89. I like to deviate from the beaten path at times. There are more interesting sights. You don't often find shed antlers, artifacts, or Bigfoot when walking the beaten path.

       To my surprise, a quarter mile south of the lake was a small primitive camping area. I followed the road that led into it, and ended up at the Rim Road. A quarter of a mile east brought me to a fire tower and small cabin. Outside of the cabin was a fifth wheel camper and a Chevy truck. The base of the tower was surrounded by a high chain link fence and gate.

       Forest service offices are usually pretty cool places with pamphlets, maps, and information on the area they maintain. Hoping that's what the cabin held, I knocked. There was no answer, so I crossed the gravel drive to the tower and read the signs there. The most obvious was posted on the gate and over the words “Keep Out” was a sheet of notebook paper, duct taped, that said “Come on up”. I left Maya inside the gate and began the climb.

       The tower at Promontory Lookout is 110 feet high. That doesn't sound that high, but when you climb up it, you can feel it sway in the wind. At the top of the last flight of stairs is a hatchway. I lifted the hatch and announced my presence as I was unsure if I should be there or not. A voice from above replied “Come on in”. That voice belonged to Mike, the fire watcher.

       Mike was full of information and he was happy to share. The original tower there had been built in 1913 from logs harvested and milled on the spot. It was erected without the aid of machinery other than simple block and tackle. Mike said that ironically, that first tower burnt down. It was replaced in 1924 with the structure that stands today. In 1988 they added the cabin, but Mike said he would have had to pay to stay there. He also said his position was voluntary and he received no pay.

       The cab at the top of the tower is a seven foot square with shelving that runs around the perimeter at the base of the windows. In the center of the cab is a large table with a brass instrument mounted on a swivel that looks like a sextant. Mike pointed out a location a good ways off and asked me to guess the distance, then checked with his device. I was off by two miles. He said not to sweat it, he was frequently wrong when he first started the season and the firemen would yell at him for sending them to the wrong coordinates.

       We chatted for about an hour and when I left he followed me down. I said I was hiking to Woods Canyon and back and he was incredulous. “Do you know how far that is?” he asked. “Yeah, about twelve miles” “It's twelve miles back too!” When I told him I was backpacking, and camped at Bear Canyon, he said if I didn't have a tent I would probably be killed. He worried that a snake would curl up with me and warned me of the Arizona Black Rattler, which has neuro-toxins in the venom and is deadly. He showed me a stick with a loop of leather on the bottom that he used to catch the snakes that he claimed were abundant in the area. The botto of the stick was covered with a shiny varnish that he claimed was venom. Mike was obviously very afraid of rattlesnakes. When I left I cut across the woods, rather than use the driveway and he shouted a warning after me that I would surely be bitten and die if I didn't stick to the roads.
  
 I visited with him several times that summer, and each time he was more paranoid than previously. The last time I saw him, he claimed people had been shooting at him, and suspected the firemen. I learned later that he didn't finish the season but packed up and disappeared, leaving an extensive list of grievances and attacks against him. I hear that Promontory Lookout is only used in emergencies nowadays. I can still hear him calling his catch phrase after me: “You're gonna to die!” I wondered if Shattsworth had met him.

    I made it to the store, and a dollar seventy didn't go as far as I hoped. I managed to buy a can of Diet Coke and a stick of Banana Taffy. I found a newspaper on a bench and rationed it out to myself over the course of a week. It was hard not to sit and read it all at once. I saved the crossword for last. The simplest things delighted me. I savored the soda, fighting the urge to guzzle it. It was cold and bubbly. It felt like Christmas. That trip to Woods Lake complex was the first real civilization I had seen in months. I'd have liked to hang around a bit, but I had a long walk back to camp

           On my way back, a couple of old timers stopped and offered me a lift. They asked if I had broken down. I told them I had walked to the store for a soda and some candy. The fella driving said he'd have at least bought beer if he hiked all that way. I told him people frequently invited me to their camp for beers. Everybody brings beer to the forest. It's not so easy to find Diet Coke and Banana Laffy Taffy. Sweets are hard to come by.

Journal Day 6 (Getting Less Lost, Vaseline Popcorn, and Maya)

My hike to the lake today left me feeling like an idiot. As usual I put Maya on the lead so she wouldn't wander after me and headed up the hill for my shortcut. Again, there were no new bear track. I descended the hill and followed the fire road to FR147, and FR147 to the lake.

On the way back, I wound around the forest road until I got to the culvert with the Mountain Dew and Bud Light litter. On this occasion, the area looked more familiar than it ought to.

Curious, and no longer worried bears were going to molest Miss Maya, I decide to explore a little bit. I turned and headed up the primitive road. It led to my camp. I have been doing a big circle around the forest on FR147 before following it to the lake. On the way home, I've been blowing right past the turn to my camp to travel around and come up the back way. I'll need to look on a map to figure out exactly how this works.

I've always prided myself on my sense of direction in the wild, this is humbling and a bit embarrassing.

I should be able to knock nearly an hour off the trip from now on.

5:00pm

Maya and I agree, Zataran's Dirty Rice Mix is excellent camp food, even without the meat. Shoulda known Louis Armstrong wouldn't steer us wrong. Saw a lot of Grasshoppers today. Maybe tomorrow we'll roast some up.

7:00pm

Elk due east fifty yards.

Speaking of food and all, lets say you find yourself in the woods with five pounds of popcorn and no oil. A little dab of Vaseline from the first aid kit will do just fine. You don't even taste it. I assume it's safe enough, I saw my sister give a spoonful of the slippery stuff to my niece once for constipation.

9:00pm

Maya has been more active tonight. Her pads are looking much better. We went for several walks tonight through the thick pine needles and she seemed unfazed when we hit gravel. Tonight, with the last rays of sun, she headed toward the warmth of the tarps as she usually does. Halfway there she stopped and gave me a look to see if I was following, like I was crazy to be out in the cold. It occurred to me that she might not understand fire means warmth. I called her back and fixed her blanket by the hearth. She dug it, and later, wasn't so eager to go to the tarps.

I worry so much about her. I know our time together is growing short. About five weeks ago, I returned home to find a growth the size of a tomato protruding from her girlie parts. She didn't seem bothered by it as much as I was. Not knowing what else to do, I wrapped my hand in Saran Wrap and gently pushed it back in. The next day we saw a vet. It's cancer. I wish I had known, but if female dogs aren't fixed, the vet told me, they almost always end up with reproductive cancer. They said it's not a good idea to try and operate because of her age. 

So far, the tomato has not made another appearance. I'm hoping for the best.

Maya came to me in the desert when she was only 5 weeks old. A nearby rancher had lost her. He said her mother was a Labrador and her father was a Coyote who had an ongoing, seasonal relationship with the lab. He said this wasn't the first litter they produced. Maya was the runt, and the others kept tossing her out of the box. He said I should keep her, otherwise he feared she would be harmed by her litter mates. 

I didn't want a dog. Being a fugitive isn't a stable profession, but I couldn't resist.

She was raised on the desert and mountain trails in and around Tucson. We'd been in the city for years. Its good to be back out where we were both happiest. When she is gone, I don't know what I'll do. All these years, I've had to take care of myself and remain free so I could take care of her.

The Redemption of Shattsworth

A year to the day from the time the mysterious van pulled in and parked, I found myself back at Bear Canyon. This time I was camped to the west of Forest Road 89, tucked way back in a little used part of the forest at the end of a fire road. This made for a longer hike to the lake, but also hid me from the prying eyes of the Feds.

This year, I had no forest closures to blame for staying in one region beyond the fourteen day limit. I had to avoid the scrutiny of not only the Law Enforcement Officers (LEO's) but of the Rangers, Toilet Rangers, Game and Fish Wardens, and Wildlife Rangers.

I maintained contact with the Fire Rangers, known as Hot Shots, because they didn't care how long I stayed in the forest. They said they saw a difference between recreating and residing in the forest and even though I overstayed the regulations, I was obviously recreating and that was cool with them. I fished and explored and always had adventures to share with them. They often told me they wished they could do what I was doing. They had become friends and often provided me with useful information on the state of the forests, fire bans, and forest fires. I met these guys the previous year. They were all in their twenties and expressed appreciation for my continued journeys.

So I was cutting through the main camp area toward my hiding spot with a stringer of fish when I saw a maroon Dodge van pull up behind the shitter. The driver got out, opened the hood, and checked the radiator. This couldn't be Shattsworth, could it? I thought maybe it was just the color of the van and the location he pulled into that reminded me of him. I circled along the ridge and came up from the other side for a better look. It was him. I stole out from the cover of the trees and silently moved up behind him without being noticed.

From about a foot away, I said “Don't tell me you have a hole in your Radiator!” loud enough to startle him. He turned and smiled and said he was hoping to find me here. He suggested we go to my camp and talk. Having learned my lesson from previous experiences, I told him I was camped a few miles away, in a spot where he probably couldn't get his van. There were some fallen logs nearby where the Forest Service had recently downed some trees that were victim to the Bark Beetles. We could sit and talk there. I hung my fish in a tree and he brought out his bong.

As we smoked, his story unfolded.

Shattsworth had a girlfriend once, and a house and a job. He lost them all. The girlfriend got hooked on Meth and hooked up with a friend of his. His birthday was approaching and he got an idea from watching a movie. That movie was “The Life of David Gale”. He was always talking about Kevin Spacey movies. The David Gale film, and “American Beauty”. I had not seen either. Apparently, in the movie, Somebody kills themselves by taping a bag over their head and handcuffing themselves behind their back after swallowing the handcuff key.

He said he came to the woods to do this, once his supplies ran out, but then he met me. He said he wanted to thank me and invited me to stay with him, should I find myself in Phoenix. He gave me his extension number at work and said he had a present for me in the van. I felt bad for having judged him so harshly. Still, I found it hard not to do so.

His bong had a huge bowl, and after he would load it and each of us would take a hit, he would dump the rest out. The first three times he did this, I kept quiet. It was killing me to see such waste. It was just regular Mexican, but still. I jonesed on the rim. Grass is hard to come by up in Mormon Country. It's not like the river, where pot is plentiful.

Finally I said something to him. It was along the lines of “What the hell are you doing, grinding good buds in the dirt?” He replied that he had plenty, and only wanted the green hits. I was flabbergasted. I had never seen such behavior. I told him so in vivid and voluminous detail. I entreated with him to at least dump the bowls on a plate or a rock as I could smoke a week or more on what he had wasted. He said nah, if he was going to smoke green hits, he wasn't going to make me smoke the remainder. “Remember” he stated, “I told you I was sorry I didn't share with you before, and promised to take care of you if I ever saw you again”.

I thanked him as humbly as I could, but damn! He didn't have to throw Marijuana away right in front of me! He demanded that we change the subject, which is quite assertive for that guy, and asked me if I liked creamer in my coffee. “Sure” I said, “but I'm out of coffee right now”. He went to his van and returned with a number 10 can of Creamora and asked if I wanted it. Sure, I said. I was thinking I might use it like I did powdered milk and add water and sugar and pour it over greens. “If you don't want it”, he teased, “you don't have to take it”.

“I want it.” I replied, “Thank you”. He tossed it to me and I pulled back the lid to check the seal and left it at that. I wasn't about to accept food from Shattsworth that wasn't sealed for my safety. I thanked him again and sat it down on my right side. With a sly look, he asked “Aren't you going to open it?” “Why?” I queried in return, “Is this a joke? Are snakes going to jump out when I open it?” “It's no joke”, he said, “Maybe you should give it back if you don't like it.” “I like it! I thanked you twice.”

He appeared not to be convinced and said I'd better just give it back. He said he was sorry he didn't have anything better for me. I handed it back to him, wondering what kind of sick Shattsworth game he was playing. First he was throwing away grass that he KNEW I was dying for, now he was making a weird issue of my not opening the Cremora.

He stood there examining the canister, removed the plastic lid and showed me the unbroken foil seal. He put the lid back on and turned the can over and over in his hands, muttering things like “mmm, let me see...how does this work”. Finally he unscrewed the bottom a quarter turn and tossed it back to me. As he did so he said “I'll need the empty can back.”

I opened it and inside was a quarter pound of the Mexican buds we'd been smoking. That magnificent twisted bastard! “Did you really think I'd drive all the way up here to bring you four pounds of creamer? How weird do you think I am?” “Pretty weird, Jeff, but wow! Man, thanks!”

We chatted a while about my adventures since he had last seen me. He told me he still carried the Bear shit (dog crap) he found in his camp. I asked if the ranger had arrested him or threw him out and he said “No, I left because you said I poisoned you. I didn't know what you might do.” I still think he poisoned me, just to see what would happen. I'd love to get my hands on his juvenile records.

We didn't discuss the poisoning much further than for me to express my conclusion that he fed me something that made me sick. In the end, We thanked each other, and before he headed back to the city, he extracted my promise that if I needed to come to town for any reason, I'd look him up.

God help me, a year later I did just that.

Getting Rid of Shattsworth...The First Time

I wasn't really very nice when I confronted Shattsworth about making me feed him while he sat on a stockpile of tasty grub. He was apologetic and offered to cook dinner. He said he'd bring it to my camp, a statement I found suspicious in the following days. I took Maya back to my camp and fed her the fish. If I gave her two fish, she would eat them whole. When I gave her more than that, she would only eat the heads, saving the rest for later. This led me to believe there is something good in fish heads that dogs know about.

We had beef stew, mashed potatoes, green beans, and red cool aid. Ah, flavors. Jeff kept yammering about the beans and the correct way to accent the words. “Do you say GREEN beans, of green BEANS.” Throughout the meal he kept saying it in different ways. After dinner he tossed me a twinkie. It had been a long time since I had eaten like that and it was almost worth it to have been fishing for him.

Then he started asking if I'd eat Maya if I was hungry, or if I'd eat people. Then he told me he had a 14 year old girl tied up in his van, and quickly said he was kidding. I made him show me. There was something really wrong with this dude. There was a story here, lurking behind his weaselly persona. I was very curious to learn what his deal was. Was he hiding like me? Was he dangerous, or just damaged?

I asked if he'd ever been to jail. He said he spent the last couple of years until he was eighteen in kiddie prison in Indiana. He related that when he got out, he split for Arizona. We shared jail stories. His were mostly about smearing shit on the walls of his cell and throwing balls of it at the guards. He refused to tell me what he had done to get locked up.

He pulled out a bong and while I scraped the resin out to smoke he told me again how he would make it up to me someday for helping him and for smoking all his stash alone in the van. He said without me he'd probably be dead. While he was being amenable, I enlisted an agreement from him to help me move camp the next morning. Alone, I would have to make two trips.

My plan was to move to the south end of the lake temporarily, to organize and prepare to continue my journey and ditch the nutcase. The Tonto Forest had reopened when the rain came. I had no more excuses to remain at Bear Canyon. West on the rim road, just past the fire tower, was a little known path dropping down to Tonto Creek called the See Canyon Trail. Mike, the watcher in the tower, had told me it was the best kept secret on the Rim and the fastest way down. It would save me a long waterless hike back to the Washington Trail I had originally planned to use to descend.

I figured I'd ditch Shatts for the south of the lake for a day or two, then move to the trail head. From there, I would move to the Highline Trail halfway down, and on to Tonto Creek and southward. It would be warmer on the Tonto, and I could kill some time there on the way down to Roosevelt Lake. It would be a couple of months before it cooled off to a comfortable temperature at Roosevelt. The creek was known to be a good trout stream in the north, hopefully it would provide other options in the south. Where there is water, there is food.

As we were discussing my plans, a guy drove up and asked if we could give him a hand with his camper. He had a hard sided pop up, and the gears had stripped and he needed help holding it up while he released the supports so It wouldn't jam crashing down. We happily complied and he gave us a few beers and a tub of macaroni salad. He said to eat the salad soon, as it had been in his cooler a few days. He said by soon he meant now.

He was another odd one, and from Indiana like myself and Jeff. He kept remarking on the size of Maya's genitals and teats. Jeff asked him for a ride to Payson and back, which he of course declined, but was able to use a pair of needle nose pliers I had and crimp the leak in Jeff's radiator. It was while he was doing this that I learned how the radiator was damaged.

Shattsworth had chosen to replace the mechanical fan on his water pump with an electric fan mounted to the radiator. He scavenged the fan at a junk yard and it didn't fit right so he held it in place with zip ties. On the way up the highway, the zip ties melted and the fan cut his radiator. With the temporary mend, Jeff should be able to make it to Payson. He opted to stick around, fearful to drive with the jankity repair.

The next morning I packed up my camp and true to his word, he helped me move to the south of the lake. On the way there I was startled by a snake I almost stepped on that had two heads and let out a girlie scream that Shattswell thought was tremendously funny. He kept saying he couldn't believe that Mike West, the great outdoorsman was scared of a little snake. I wasn't scared, it startled me. AND IT HAD TWO HEADS! It was just a garter snake. It had a red stripe along it's side and the two heads forked out from the body about three or four inches back. It was probably only about sixteen or eighteen inches long.

Shattsworth left me at my new camp, and I was relieved to be rid of him. That evening, after I had set up, four high school aged boys came and camped right across from me. They were up all night hollering and drinking and playing poker. They had a sex doll propped up at a camp table where they played. Occasionally, they shouted rude things at me across from their camp. They were naked and I couldn't tell if they were simulating sex acts with the doll or actually doing it. I didn't sleep until they left in the morning, and of course they left a mess for me to clean up. They also left an oil lamp hanging in a tree. Score!

I woke that afternoon with gut wrenching cramps. I threw up until I was empty and then dry heaved for a while. I tried to drink some water but repeated the cycle of vomiting and heaving. I thought I would turn myself inside out. The spasms didn't subside for days and I had a splitting headache. I thought I might die. It was a good thing I had water and dog food, because I couldn't have fished or fetched water.  I wondered if the macaroni salad was bad, but thought it more likely that Shattsworth poisoned me with bad water or shit in the stew. Looking back, I wasn't there when he cooked the meal and plated it. I remembered how he sent me away while he cooked and that remark about "hamburger" in his cooler, and all those other stories he had told me about his vengeful and fecal loving nature.

On the morning of the second day I heard somebody poking through my camp and looked out to see him there. I asked if he was sick, and he wasn't. That ruled out the macaroni salad. I asked if he fed me untreated water in the Kool Aid and he denied that too. I told him I knew he did something and he should be glad I was doubled over in agony, or I'd kick his ass. In my delirium I may have told him I'd kill him if he was still in the forest when I got better. He looked guilty, but he always looked guilty.

After he left, I was lucid enough to remember the benadryl in my first aid stash. The next day I was able to keep some water down. By evening I felt much better, but weak. On the fourth day after I fell ill, Maya and I hiked to the north side of the lake to interrogate Shattsworth some more and see if he needed his ass kicked.

We crested the hill above the lake just in time to see an LEO truck, with the cop lights flashing, disappear down Forest road 89. Shattsworth was gone. I wondered if he was arrested. I didn't figure I would ever know, I couldn't really just walk up to a ranger and ask. I returned to camp relieved, but I didn't know I hadn't seen the last of Shattsworth.

Journal Excerpts Day 3

Day 3

Woke up late today. The sun is high. There is nothing below my bed but a canvas tarp and my old wool poncho from Mexico and the cold seeps right through to my bones. I only have a Mexican blanket to cover us and even with the heat of the dog, I wake cold and clenched several times throughout the night.

At the library, I learned how to judge hiking distances by sliding beads on a string. I've devised such a cord to measure the trip to the lake and to help me know where I am on the trail. The cord I used is tight in the beads, so when I slide them they stay slid.

Here's how it works. There are 1,760 yards to a mile. My typical stride, being 6'1' tall, is just over a yard. For every 100 steps I take I slide a bead. When all 17 beads have been moved, I should have traveled a mile. I don't plan to hike so many miles that I cannot remember which one I am on, but if I did I could just string up some more beads.

I left the Maya dog at camp because of her feet and hiked to the lake for water. I removed the tarp from the rope and fastened her lead to it so she could move along the length between the trees.

When Darl and I drove to the lake, we went south on the track where I'm camped and then turned to the east. The road wound around to the left fairly constantly. I estimated that if I hiked north along the trail past my camp and down the hill, then turned east, It would bring me to the road and shorten the hike by about 15%.

A few hundred yards up the trail from my camp I crested a hill and a few feet further was a tree growing in the middle of it. The dirt around the tree was powdery and loose and I saw my first bear tracks. The hind feet were easily as big as mine. I don't know enough about bears to guess how big this would make it. Big enough that I looked around warily, but saw no sign of the animal. I worried for Maya, alone and tethered back at Onion camp. I saw my first bear scat. Each turd was connected to the next by a network of animal hair. It was dry so I picked it up using a leaf and it hung like a chain.

Just past the tree, the trail narrowed again and descended into a heavily wooded area thickly carpeted with ferns. A few hundred yards further along, the woods ended in a clearing and a fire road. I followed the fire road and came out on the forest road just as I had hoped. I followed the several curves to the left and counted three more dirt roads on the left and one large meadow with dry a stream bed before I came to the longer road that leads back to the lake.

At the lake, I filled my 6 water jugs from a depth of about eighteen inches to avoid any contaminants on the surface, I left them with my pack on the west bank of the lake and hiked the perimeter. It's a small lake. On my way around, I saw several minnows but no crawdads. There were elk tracks in abundance, but no sign of bear. On the way back, I stopped at a large fallen tree and climbed up to sit, rest, and survey the area before returning to camp.

My bead count estimated the distance I traveled at three point two miles. My water weight in the pack was just over twenty five pounds. A gallon of water weighs 8 pounds.

I returned the way I came, again counting the jeep trails before I left the forest road. The third one had a culvert that ran below the road and dropped of into a slight ravine. I noticed a Mountain Dew bottle and Bud Light can at the bottom of the ditch. I found the forest road through the meadow and encouraged by the success of my shortcut, tried another overland and off trail. It was a failure and led to deeper forest rather than coming out where I had hoped.

Everything looked alike in the thick trees, and they obscured any landmarks. I panicked a little, as the sun was below the trees and I had no conception of time and needed to get back to Maya before dark when the predators roam. I was able to retrace my steps and return to the trail I needed. Back at camp, Maya was fine. The whole adventure took about four and a half hours.

I took Maya off the lead and replaced the tarp on the rope in a pretty strong wind. I had to orient just right to accomplish this. We crawled into the shelter and napped until just before dusk. I was feeling the altitude.

When we awoke, I boiled drinking water and cooked a can of chicken noodle soup. All day I had seen no sign of any people on the road or at the lake. It was an awesome feeling, being alone in the woods with Maya and the bears and the elk. I felt good. I was starting to unwind. I loaded a bowl and got out the guitar. When darkness came, the wind stopped. I was fearful of being caught with a fire, but it was too perfect so I kept it going, even after all the water was boiled and we were fed. I kept it very small, just a six inch twig or two at a time.

I had twelve liters of water and treated six. Maya can take hers straight. With Maya sticking close and resting her pads, it should last us two days, three if I conserve my share and drink water from the canned goods. I'm using the canned stuff first to drop pack weight rapidly in case we need to move on earlier than excpected.

.

Excerpts from the Diaries: Day 2; Potato Lake

5:00 pm, Day 2

We set up camp yesterday. I'm calling it the Onion Camp. The plan is that while I'm here I'm going to peel off the layers of society like an onion. Its been a long ten years and it has injured me. I need some healing time before I start this adventure. This being Potato Lake, the Onion reference seems apropo. Friday, I moved my car to Roni's house with all my possessions in it, not knowing why I couldn't reach her or if it would be towed and I would never see those things again. Then I had to walk up Cave Creek to Cactus Boulevard and a few miles East to Darl's house to catch a ride up here. It was over a hundred degrees in Phoenix and the sidewalks damaged Maya's foot pads. The limestone up here is brutal on her poor burnt paws. We're taking it easy today to get our heads right and give her time to rest.

I built a fire pit last night. There's a ban on fires up here right now. When we rolled in, we saw two different camps with fires anyway. Nice for them, if they get caught they might get a stern talking to or a ticket. I can't tolerate the scrutiny. So I built my fire pit so it's two feet high 7/8ths of the way around. I've taken care to seal the holes so the only light that escapes is facing toward me. There is little glow to draw attention. I keep the fires small. Just enough to boil my water and cook my dinner. I feed small Ponderosa twigs in, and I'll only use the fire for cooking and water purification. I don't dare risk it for heat or entertainment.

Tomorrow I have to find the trail to the lake for water. Darl and I drove it, but there were switchbacks and curves and I'll bet there's a shorter way. We have a two liter of agua left, plus whatever is in the canned vegetables that I figure will do in dire times. There's a lot of salt in canned veggie water, but hiking in the dry Arizona climate, I need to keep well salted for water retention anyway. Usually, I get most of my salt from meat but I have very little meat now and don't know when I will.

I'm hoping to trade my guitar for a tent since Roni wasn't there to hook me up. My tarp probably isn't very water resistant because it's tiny.  I have two tarps, that I cut from the floor of an old army tent. The top tarp is pretty small. The floor tarp is smaller. Each is about 5'x8' give or take. Fortunately there hasn't been a cloud in the sky.

There are two very important tools missing from my pack. One was a bone handled hunting knife that I found in a median on 75^th avenue by the mall (I don't want to know), the other is my can opener. I'll have to use the machete for both. It'll be interesting to see how well I can clean a fish with such a large blade. When I was fixing dinner last night, I found a way to open my cans.

I put the point of the machete in the middle of the can and strike the end of the handle with the heel of my hand. Then I turn the blade and do it again. This cuts two three inch slits in the top of the can in a cross pattern. I used my needle nose pliers to bend the corners back. Dinner last night was a can of that fake chinese food with the water chestnut can taped to the top. I have tied some bailing wire to the large can for a handle, and am using it for a coffee pot and to boil my water. 

I've made shelter with a tarp and rope, used a machete to open cans, and built a coffee pot. I'm excited to see what else I learn to fashion from materials at hand. Maybe some day I'll write a book about the adventure if it ever gets off the ground. Where I'm probably going, it'll be good to have something to do to pass the time.

The shelter I made is about thirty inches wide at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. It's like a Boonie Sack, really. There is no room to move and just enough for me and Maya. The small quarters kept us warm. Sometime after we went to sleep, I was awakened by Maya grunting somewhat quietly. That's something she does when she is alerting, but doesn't want to alert whatever she's alerting to. I quickly hushed her, as I didn't want her drawing the attention of bears, wolves, or other predators.

A few moments later I heard a strange noise I had never heard before. It was loud, loud enough to be big. I searched my inventory of animal sounds and came up flat. It wasn't a big cat, wolf, coyote, or any other predator I had ever met. It was loud enough to be big and it was crunching in the limestone just feet from our flimsy little shelter. I'd never seen a bear, but I saw them on TV and they didn't sound like this. Honestly though, my experience is limited to "The life and Times of Judge Roy Bean", episodes of Grizzly Adams, and a few old Marlin Perkins or Disney films. Again, I cautioned Maya to be quiet.

If I had to describe it, I'd call it a bark, with a kind of a squeak at the end. It was obvious that whatever it was, it had something to say about our being there. It was close. I began to regret camping off the beaten path. I worried that an instinctual response from Miss Maya would result in our being eaten. It seemed like hours that we listened to the crunching around and occasional “barking”.

I was worn out and didn't really give a shit (or I wouldn't have been here, right?) so I went to sleep half expecting to wake up in some carnivorous disaster. I slept the night and heard no more complaints from Miss Maya.

This morning I looked around and found some hoofed tracks within ten feet of our tarp. I consulted with Clyde Ormond's “Complete Book of Outdoor Lore” and identified the tracks as Elk. Turns out the book was right and I was camped right on an Elk path.

I've read a lot of survival books, and subscribe to several websites. I even watched a few TV shows and they all disappointed me. I have no desire to learn from those “Survivalists” that I have seen drinking their own urine while camping in the snow. Like Don Juan told Carlos: “They are just indulging in being masters”. Or maybe they just like drinking urine.

Mister Ormond lays it down. Its the most comprehensive collection of actually useful material I've ever found. Get on Amazon right now and order a copy. If you like it send me one, as I gave mine away years ago. Better yet, send one to a ten year old kid; a nephew or somebody. Seriously. If you are interested in the subject, you need to have this in your collection. This book is why I'm writing stories from the forest instead of a survival guide: I don't think it would be possible to do any better than Mr. Ormond. 

Fear, Feces, and Fecundity part II

It wasn't the first time I had returned from the lake to find groceries. When I would meet people while fishing or in line at the shitter or on the trail, I would tell them a little about my trip. People fear what they don't understand, and I wasn't quite normal with my tarp and chair and no vehicle, carrying water and fish from the lake each evening. To keep people from speculating too closely about my circumstances, I would conversationally volunteer how I took the summer off work and was backpacking the Rim Country.

I didn't ask for charity, or rely on it. Shattsworth didn't get it. He never would. The weeks he followed me around, he kept saying he was going to figure out what my scam was. The funny thing is, I was being myself for the first time in years. My “scam” was telling it like it is. I omitted the part about the felony warrants. Most people appreciated my adventure, and wished they could do the same. I was doing something most people only dream of. I told them the hardest part was making the decision to do it. Every couple of weeks, I'd get an invitation to dinner where my hosts pried me for stories, or I would find a sack at my chair.

People wanted to be a part of my journey even if only by leaving me some food they didn't want to take home anyway. They wanted to help me to succeed. They wanted to think I could make it because then maybe, just maybe, it was possible to have their own dream someday. Whatever it may be. This is how I quit hiding after all those years, using my very freedom as an example of the possibilities you can encounter if you let go of your fears and pursue your dreams. I had a purpose and a goal and something good in my life. On top of it all, look at my front yard!

Of those two sacks, one was full of hot dog buns. I learned that people bring WAY to many hot dog buns camping for some reason. The other sack held a pack of partially frozen hot dogs, potato chips, mustard, pickles, and an apple. I tied a rope between two trees, hung the bags on the line, and covered them with a tarp. We retired to Shattsworth's camp to cook the fish on his stove. He was like a sponge. A deformed little sponge who required me to explain everything I did. He wanted to learn and I wanted to share what I learned. He left no stone unturned in his search for my “scam”. He was continually disappointed to learn that hard labor and good citizenship were the main principles of my success. He learned how to clean and cook a trout though, even if he couldn't catch one.

We cooked and ate on the side of his van opposite my camp. After dinner, he reassured me that he felt bad that he hadn't shared his grass. I told him not to sweat it and returned to my camp. When I got there, I found that my pots and pans were smashed flat and my journals and maps were missing. The groceries were camouflaged in the darkness under the tarp. Pots and maps, even hand drawn maps, can be replaced. The loss of the journals was a blow. Then I heard the explosion.

The loud bang came from about three hundred yards away. I looked and saw four teenage boys rapidly backing away from their fire. Likely suspects. I hurried to their camp and found them dripping with scalding hot Dinty Moore stew. I was feeling no sympathy for morons in the woods at this point and immediately launched into my own concerns. “You boys know anything about somebody trashing my camp over yonder?” I pointed.

The guy who looked like he'd been burnt the worst spoke up as he was toweling himself off. “Mister, I'll be honest with you. We saw a chair and some pots and pans and papers over there and thought since there wasn't a tent or car or anything, that it was an abandoned camp. When we were walking over to check it out, a guy in a camouflaged bronco drove over your gear and started poking around. Some old bald guy chased him off. We didn't take anything, honest. If anything's missing, it was the guy in the bronco. You can ask the bald guy. He;s camped down that way” and he indicated a jeep trail that led through some Aspen trees. It turns out they didn't know enough to open the can of stew so it wouldn't explode. They had no other food, so I took them the hot dogs and a pack of buns. The dogs might not be good in the morning, and I was full of fish.

It was late, and there was no sense in looking for bald Samaritans or camouflaged Fords in the dark. I went back to camp and rolled up in the remaining tarp with Maya. In the morning the sight of my flattened cookware depressed me. I had no clipboard to start my day. I set out looking for the Bronco.

I found the miscreants I was looking for about a mile and a half up Forest Road 89 by the power lines. There was a guy heating a pot of coffee on a gas burner. In addition to the bronco there was a red Ford Ranger. There were two tents. “Is that your Bronco?” I asked in the most menacing voice I could muster. “Nope” he said. “Why?”

“That truck has been identified as one that destroyed my camp last night. I need to settle with the driver.” He nodded as if he knew what I was talking about and walked over to one of the tents and stuck his head in. After a minute he came back and said “He said he's not going to get up yet.”

I pulled a lawn chair alongside his cooler, felt around for a beer, opened it, took a drink, and said “I can wait.” Even I was surprised at my bravado, but I intended to get my journals back. I was thankful for the chair. It kept him from seeing me shake. He went over and stuck his head in the tent again. After a few minutes of mumbling back and forth, I heard him say “You get rid of him then!” Neither of them wanted to face the wild man in the forest. This gave me hope of getting out of there intact.I finished the beer.

Shortly, a small round man with a black beard emerged from the tent looking sheepish. I explained that I understood that mistakes happen and told him about my trip, I stressed how I depended on the gear I had to survive and couldn't just run to the store for pots and pans. I requested he return the journals and maps. Afraid my entreaty showed weakness that he might take advantage of, I punctuated it by helping myself to another of his beers. I tipped my head back and downed most of it in one draught. I leveled my gaze at him and awaited his reply. His friend busied himself at the burner. It was obvious that he blamed this intrusion on his bearded buddy's bad behavior.

He was apologetic to say the least. He explained that he was drunk and that was no excuse. He said that once the old bald guy straightened him out, he put the papers behind a tree with a rock on them so they wouldn't get scattered (I found them later). He was genuinely remorseful and gave me a two quart pot, a small skillet, a two liter of soda, and a sixer of Coors light. I thanked him and told him he was a stand up dude.The next day I took the lid off the two quart for the first time and found a fifty dollar bill.

After leaving my new gear and supplies at camp and ignoring Shattsworth's curiosity as to my latest “scam”, I found the Samaritan and thanked him. He invited me to visit later, as he was interested in hearing about my journey. We became friends and bumped into each other in the woods for years to come. He was in charge of security at the Palo Verde Nuclear plant.

Shattsworth hung around for weeks. I fished for him and fed him and tried to teach him as best I could. He was looking for shortcuts though, and I didn't know any. One day I came back from fishing earlier than usual and found him behind his van with three crates full of canned goods and tinned meat. When I asked him where he got the food, he said he always had it. I was flabbergasted. I'd been fishing and feeding him for weeks and he was well supplied. His response was “I have to conserve, I can't do things like you.” That was Jefferson Shattsworth's scam.

There was something that had been nagging at the back of my mind for months, and before we parted company, I had to have an answer. I asked him how he got back and forth to the shitter without ever being seen that first month. He said he didn't. He took me to the side door of his van and showed me a piece of hose that ran out his passenger door through which he peed. Then he opened a cooler and revealed to me newspapers wrapped in freezer bags. “I thought about offering you some hamburger from my cooler” he told me, “Then watching your face when you unwrapped it”. The possibility that he was a deranged cannibal began to creep back into my mind. “I think it's time I was moving on” I said.

His name was seriously Shattsworth. Honestly, I couldn't make this shit up.

Fear, Feces, and Fecundity in the Piney Forest part I

My years in exile afforded me the opportunity to meet a wide variety of interesting and unusual characters. I became a junkie to the parade of personality rolling through the paradise of “My front yard”. One of the strangest cats I came across showed up on the eighteenth of July.

I awoke that day to the sound of my most recent crop of neighbors packing up and heading out. By ten o'clock they were all gone. It was the first time I had Bear Canyon to myself and I was looking forward to the solitude.

I walked around the general camping area above the lake, pulling lengths of rope out of the trees and bagging up other people's garbage to leave for the Toilet Rangers. Among the debris, I found a Leathernan tool on a rock by a fire pit and a canvas chair that was in need of repair. One of the plastic fittings had broken and the owners just abandoned it. In the next few years I would be surprised at the amount of gear and garbage that folks abandon or discard when they leave.

I once chased a caravan of church people a quarter mile and made them return and clean up their campsite. It was one of those hip congregations that targets young people. The leader of this particular cult played stupid with me, claiming he thought it was okay to leave their paper plates, coke cans, and chicken bones everywhere. He said he thought people worked on site picking up after campers.

The chair was a boon though, and I was happy to finally justify the heavy roll of bailing wire in my pack by wiring the chair together. Back at camp, and proud of my ingenuity, I sat in comfort for the first time in months. With the Maya dog at my feet, I reclined upon my new throne. I surveyed my kingdom.

Surveying one's kingdom gives pause for much introspection, so I retrieved my clipboard from my bag and documented the recent events leading up to my current position. As I was writing these few paragraphs, I heard the rumble of an approaching truck. It turned out to be two vehicles, a new Nissan Xterra and an old Dodge van. The Xterra pulled in about twenty five feet to the north of me. The van parked about a hundred yards to the south. Surrounded. So much for solitude.

The Xterra guy was a GenX-er. He was maybe 21 and wore shoulder length blond hair and surf shorts. He wasn't there long before he walked over to my camp and introduced himself as Jason. He was on a day trip, sightseeing on the Rim and he had forgotten to bring a can opener. I offered him the use of my new Leatherman and he returned to his truck and prepared his lunch on a propane stove. After eating, he invited me to join him for a couple of beers.

Jason was curious about me, as most people were. I was certainly an oddity, up here without a vehicle with just a tarp, dog, duffel, and now a chair. I told him about my original plan to hike Tonto Creek and the fires that had me cornered in this part of the forest. He looked at me appraisingly, with a glint in his eye, and produced a blue padded cloth bag from his back seat. Much to my delight, he drew a heavy glass bong from the bag.

As we smoked he questioned me about my journey. I told him the worst thing was that I didn't have a stove and there was a fire ban in effect that I was too paranoid to violate. Tired of eating raw trout, I offered to trade the Leatherman for whatever spare food he may be carrying. It took some negotiating on m y part, but I managed to end up with a few pounds of dog food, two beers, a hunk of colby cheese, and a can of beanie weenies. It was like Thanksgiving dinner to me. Before he left, we had a laugh at the guy in the Dodge. He'd parked right behind the shitter.

It was a full sized conversion van and it had come to a stop and that was it. Nobody stirred. I kept an eye on the thing late into the night, but there was no activity at all. I found this strange, but easily explained it by convincing myself that the driver had been on the road a long time and had sacked out upon arrival. The next day there was still no movement from the Dodge. By nightfall I concluded the occupants must have assembled their gear while I slept and hiked further into the forest.

After two weeks there was still no sign of life from the vehicle. I remembered the news stories I had heard about Robert Fisher, who had murdered his family and disappeared near the Rim. Having opened the door to thoughts of morbidity, I began to concoct scenarios of violence and serial cannibalism.

My sense of civic duty called for me to investigate or alert the rangers to a possible missing person or mouldering corpse. I wrestled with this dilemma for days. Then again, I thought, maybe this dude wasn't a bad guy. Maybe, like myself, he just needed to get out of town and lay low for a while. Rather than draw attention to myself, I chose a course of immediate inaction.

Meanwhile, on the weekends, campers came and went. Most of the time I was alone with the mystery van. By the eighteenth of August, I was beside myself with curiosity and fear. I caught myself testing the air for the odor of death.

I was writing how the van had been there for a month to the day when Jason rolled back into camp. I barely gave him a chance to get out of the SUV before I sprung the story of how the damned thing had been there all this time and nobody came or went. He said, “They must get out to go to the shitter, you must just be missing them”. I told him that wasn't likely, during the fire ban I would often forgo the unpleasant raw trout, instead subsisting on salads I scavenged within sight of the area. I spent entire days without ever leaving camp: foraging for greens, writing in my journals, and tending to housekeeping chores.

Jason removed a couple of chairs and a cooler from his Nissan. As he loaded that magnificent bong, he said we should just walk up and bang on the door and demand that anybody inside the van come out and explain themselves. I thought him naïve and that line of action a bit dangerous. I recounted the news stories about Fisher and elucidated with the scenarios of violence and serial cannibalism I had cooked up. Jason asked the obvious question: “What kind of person would come to such a beautiful spot and not get out of their vehicle for a whole month?”

“Somebody who goes to extremes not to be bothered, that's who”.

“There could be a dead guy” Jason exhorted, 'We have to check it out”.

After several drinks and bong rips to muster up our courage, we devised a plan. We would act like we were going to the shitter and swing wide in a broad arc that would carry us close to the van for a better look. As we neared the driver's door, it suddenly sprang open and the mysterious occupant leaped out like a demented Jack-in-the-Box.

At first glance, I thought he was just a kid, maybe kidnapped and his attacker was lurking nearby. He was small and thin, maybe five foot five. He couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds. He wore a polyester leisure suit and had his name tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand. With his slight stature, baby face, and sparse mustache, only his thinning hair betrayed his adulthood. “Do you guys know anybody who could give me a ride to Payson and back? I have a hole in my radiator”.

I was incredulous. “You're telling me,” I said, “That you've been here and haven't gotten out of your van for a month because you have a hole in your radiator?”

“I just ran out of food and pot” he said. By now I was nearly raving. “What?” I ranted, “You've been here for a month and had food and pot? Why didn't you say anything?”

Apparently I wasn't the only one keeping an eye out for Robert Fisher. The kid told me he thought I might be him, or I might be a Ranger. I wore all green, slept on a green canvas tarp, and began and ended everyday writing on a clipboard. He'd seen a uniformed ranger in camp one day and noticed him writing on a clipboard like mine. Even though I laughed with him at our mutual paranoia, things didn't quite add up to my satisfaction. I asked to see his radiator and it was indeed damaged. I figured maybe he was too. I didn't recognize the degree of his pathology, but soon would.

We found several people willing to give him a ride to Payson, but none willing to haul him back. In spite of my assurances that a fellow walking in the mountains with a radiator will get a ride, he refused to try. He was fearful he wouldn't be able to get back. Fear was a big thing in this little dude's life. He was afraid to leave and afraid to stay. He had no business in the forest. I worried he would bring heat if not handled right.

He was traveling under the ironic moniker of Jefferson Shattsworth. I asked for ID which he provided. Having already contemplated the scatological humor of his name, I lost it when he walked into my camp the next morning and informed me he was an avid collector of animal excrement. What's more, he claimed to find a prize specimen of bear dung right outside his van. I was skeptical. I had seen no sign of bear nearer than three or four miles. Jeff proudly produced a sandwich baggie with his trophy inside. It was from Maya. The erstwhile Marlin Perkins had mistaken it for bear droppings because of the squirrel fur and fish bones. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. He could not be persuaded that what he had was a sack of dog shit.

Shattsworth spent the morning hanging around my camp and whining about his food supply and radiator. He kept mumbling “I'm going to die”. I couldn't make up my mind if he was serious or begging or looking for sympathy. Some people wig out when they get too far from their comfort system. I asked him what kind of gear he was carrying. They guy had fishing gear and a camp stove. All he was lacking was know how and confidence.

I took him to my favorite spot and taught him everything I had learned about trout fishing at Bear Canyon Lake. I was stymied that even though he appeared to be doing everything exactly as I did, in two hours he hadn't got a nibble, while I had caught my limit of six nice trout. I'd seen this kind of thing before, and I swear, some people just can't catch a fish. While I was hauling one after another in to shore, he just sat there looking dejected. I suppose when it comes to angling, like everything else in life, attitude is important. You gotta believe.

I tried to explain this as I cleaned the fish. On the hike back to camp I told him my favorite story to illustrate my point.

In 1992, I was on an extended camping trip in the Colorado Rockies for the Rainbow Gathering with my ex wife. We had hiked the five miles from our camp to our car at Electric Mountain Reservoir to retrieve supplies. It was a tough hike. Being at about 9,000 feet elevation, the air was thin. About halfway to our camp, was a fallen tree where we liked to rest in the sun and have a smoke.

We hadn't been there long enough for me to finish rolling a joint when we were interrupted by a fellow in his twenties who asked if he could join us for a rest. He told us he'd read in the local paper that the hippies were out there eating al the groundhogs and crapping behind every tree. He introduced himself as Bill, a Evangelical seminary student. He had come to save the heathens. I suppressed a smile and concealed the reefer.

He said “How long have you been here?” I told him about 45 days and his eyes got real big. “What?” he responded, “How much longer do you plan to stay?” Tory told him we might stay another month. Again his eyes grew wide and he said “What!? Don't you work?”

I told him “Certainly I work, but its important for us to be here. If my boss didn't let me off, I'd just find another job”. This really blew his programming and he asked “How do you live? How do you eat?” He began to breathe hard and stood up, clutching his Bible to his chest.

I think this was the moment where he realized that despite our clean cut appearance and collared shirts, we were probably some of the heathens he was there to save. I saw an excellent opportunity to speak to the guy in his own language, put him at ease, and maybe even make a friend AND a point.

I asked him if I could see his bible a minute. He handed it over and I stood up and turned to Luke and read: “Therefore I say unto you. Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat...Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap and God feedeth them. The least of God's creatures are taken care of: how much more are ye better than them?”

Then, at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, high atop the continental divide, we were distracted by a rustling sound on the hill above us on the opposite side of the trail. We all turned and saw the weeds and grasses moving as something made it's way down the hill toward us. It broke through the brush on the edge of the path, crossed the trail, and stopped right between my feet. It was a grapefruit.

We just stared for a long silent minute. Bill the evangelist was pale. Finally, Tory picked it up and held it out to him. “You see that?” she said. “That's Magic”.

Well, you don't say “Magic” to an evangelist. He stumbled backward a few steps, promised to pray for us, declined our invitation to dinner, turned, and we never saw him again.

I like to think that someday, eventually, it dawned on him and he got the message. I'm not saying God manifested a piece of fruit and rolled it at me or anything. Obviously, some hippie on a higher trail had lost his grapefruit and it followed the designs of gravity. But when I think of everything that had to be in line for that particular event at that particular time, I have to believe the Universe was in agreement with my message.

W          As Jeff and I rounded the hill to my camp, we noticed two grocery sacks sitting beside my chair. I was beaming with the satisfaction of a point well delivered. A grapefruit wouldn't have been better. Jeff turned to me and for the first of many times asked “What's your scam?” 

                           

                           Evangelists aren't the only ones afraid of Magic.