JOURNAL / ESSAYS / NEW STORIES – No. 2083
Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Third week of April 2011
Saturday before Easter – chilly, with rain

After re-reading this I think I should give you a heads-up.
For one thing, it’s somewhat long. Not the usual short, focused essay I usually write. It’s also weirder in places than usual. And it wanders all over the map, with ingredients ranging from small goofy ideas to serious concepts, and from superficial observations to deep issues.
But it’s the direction my mind has taken over the past few days, and if you had been a weekend guest, all of this would have come up in conversation.
It begins with Jeeps but doesn’t stay there . . . yet, that’s where it will end.

OUTRAGEOUS THOUGHTS ON EARTH DAY WEEKEND

Easter Week is Jeep Week in Moab, Utah.
For several decades devotees of hopped-up, four-wheel-drive, off-road doodle-bug vehicles have converged on our little town during Holy Week to assault the slick rock canyon-lands back country.
As many as 4,000 vehicles and 10,000 people are in the area for the event.
Coming from all over the U.S., Canada, and even Europe.

Locals like me try to stay home, out of town, and out of the way.
Like locust plagues and migrating Wildebeests, the Jeepers will pass on through, leaving their crap and garbage and ruts and tire marks behind.
Meanwhile, the town is a macho-mad scene, enduring more human and vehicular traffic than it can bear.

I tell you that as a context for what comes next.

Friday I made an emergency run into town for food while there was any left. And witnessed a Jeep Family having an all-out screaming fight in the City Market parking lot.

They had pulled in driving a motor home and pulling a trailer on behind – with two souped-up Jeeps and two dirt bikes lashed onboard. All were slathered with red mud. It has been a rainy week, but if you’ve come to Jeep, then you get out there and Jeep, no matter what. And so the hard core gets on with it, come rain, hail, sleet, snow or dust-storm – and we’ve had all that.

The combatants poured out of the motor home, screeching and yelling.
A mother, a father, two teenage girls, two younger boys, a grandmother, a grandfather, and two big dogs. The dogs crawled under the motor home.

I was far enough away to miss the details of the fracas, but these feuds are carried on in code that has deep roots in previous family history, and I probably wouldn’t have understood everything they said if I was up close.

But their venomous vibes were clear enough.
I can’t blame the dogs for hiding under the motor home.

From what I could gather the fight had to do with the four women – young and old - being sick and tired of being hauled down here every year to ride around in the dirt and the mud while getting their brains beat out.
The two boys were upset because they were not allowed to play with their electronic toys at all times or watch basketball on TV.
And the two older men were sick and tired of all the whining and bitching and complaining.

You can ALL bygod stay home next year.
Bygod, we will, too.

Worse, it seems that the two older women wanted to go to Arches National Park on Sunday for the Easter Sunday Sunrise service.
No, bygod, N. O. - no.
The men of the family had not come down here to go to church.
No goddamn way! Jeezus ain’t coming to Arches National Park!

My father always refused to go to Easter Sunrise Service with my mother when it was a stormy morning. He said Jesus wasn’t going to come in the rain. He stayed home.
And my mother would reply that God knows what He’s doing.
And she went. And my father went off to play poker with friends.
His chances were not any better than my mother’s, but still, they placed their bets on the odds that maybe . . . maybe . . . this time . . .

The domestic violence in the City Market parking lot was still going on when I drove away. They all wanted to have the last word.

Family vacations . . . Happy Easter . . .
What can I say?

Family is such a confusing concept.
At its heart is a fundamental flaw – thinking you’ll get what you want.

Your parents did not want you. Think about it.
By that I mean they wanted a baby – one to raise in their loving care – with the expectation that you would grow up in such a way as to be compatible with them, their values, their religion, and their life style.
Be a genuine Jeeper, for example.
But it doesn’t usually work out that way.

And you did not want your parents, either. Think about that.
You didn’t know what you wanted in the way of parents until you began growing up and started becoming aware of who you are.
Which may not mean being a Jeeper.

What your parents imagined is rarely what you turned out to be.
What you want in parents is rarely what you think you would prefer.
With compromise and time and distance and some wisdom, the final match is at least workable, but not what you think you might have ordered if you had a menu to select from in the first place.
But. We get used to it.

I can’t prove it, of course, but I suspect that there are more visitors in Moab this week who came to get away from their families for Easter than those who came to be with their families. And some locals left Moab for the same reason. It wasn’t the Jeepers that caused them to go elsewhere for Easter.

As I drove out of town through bumper-to-bumper Jeeper traffic, the larger human situation came to mind and I had these thoughts:

1. The truth is that there are way too many of us now; and we are making more of us and keeping as many of us alive as long as possible. It’s hard for a lot of us to be useful and keep occupied.
This can’t go on.

2. The resources of the world are finite and we have used most of them up and are well on our way to bringing our planet to the point of unviable pollution in the process.
This can’t go on.

3. We are not going to retreat to another planet. The distance from here to the next possible one is measured in light years. By and large our space program has been self-defeating. Only showing us that where we are is where it’s at. Besides, the aliens most likely have already come, taken a look at what we’ve done and have left. They don’t want us. That’s my opinion.
Going to another planet is not going to happen.

4. On the other hand, a majority of the people on the Earth hold deep religious convictions that there is a life after this one.
Eternal Life with the Creator of the Universe.
Whatever name it is called, wherever it may be, whatever it may be like, most people believe they are going there.
They will exist in peaceful bliss forever.
No pain, no sorrow, no taxes, no debts, no wars, no worries, no laundry, no illness or troubles or family fights.
Everlasting happiness.

5. So, then. Perhaps it’s time those who believe that should go.
Now. All together. All at once.
The Great Rapture is prophesied in the Bible.
Maybe it’s due.

6. And that will leave behind the heathens, atheists, agnostics, the befuddled, and the tree huggers and dirt lovers. Those of us who think that This is It. That this life and this planet is all there is ever going to be.
All there is of Heaven or Hell we’ll ever experience.
And we can and must make the best of it.
It’s a choice.

7. Even so, we cannot save the planet.
The planet does not need saving.
It was here long before we showed up, and will be here long after we have disappeared. Earth will continue through as many more evolutionary stages as it has gone through before – ice and fire and flood and tectonic movement and meteor strikes and rejuvenations and a final melting into the sun.
Despite what we think, we’re not really a terribly important part of that.

8. But we might save ourselves a great deal of pain and sorrow if those who love it and think of it as Home for the Human Family for Awhile had a chance to treat Earth and ourselves with more respect.
And those who don’t . . . well, get on the bus to the better place.
The Earth.
Love it, or leave it.

__________________________

Now that’s a whack-a-doodle raving, ranting blog for sure.
Not usually my style.
But it’s not always easy to keep a tight, gentle rein on my mind.

Want more?

1. National budget? A 5 cent tax on every e-mail, twit, and cell phone call.

2. War? The military can only consist of people over 75 years of age; all military equipment must be painted day-glo pink, with sparkles. Soldiers must fight in their underwear.

3. Rage and Stress? The essence of cannabis in the drinking water.

4. Gasoline Prices? $100 a gallon, with no engines more than 25 horsepower. (There goes your Jeep, Jack.)

5. Education? Cut class sizes in half, double teacher’s salaries, require 12 years of music and art and stand-up comedy training as basics.

7. And instead of having cats and dogs for pets, adopt the homeless.

____________________

See, it’s not true that Captain Kindergarten is way out here in the bushes messing around looking at insects and stars and wasting time.
There’s some heavy thinking going on . . .
____________________________

Ah well.
In a more sane and rational state of mind on the porch late at night . . .

“Stochastics” is a word I found in the writings of David Quammen.
A summary term for everything that is unpredictable and out of our control.
The weather is an example.
Evolution is another.
Human nature, too.
We live, survive, and even thrive on hazard and chance and luck.

I think the reason nobody wants to get on the Big Bus Out is that the afterlife we have imagined and say we believe in is not really where we would want to be if we thought about it carefully.
It would be boring beyond belief.

I once got a taste of this while living in an ashram in India where we were all nice to each other, ate righteous food, and kept a hymn chanting going 24 hours a day for a week.
Bored dizzy, I left.

It’s the very unpredictability of life on earth that we are suited for.
The risk, the gamble, the challenge in the face of the unknown drives us.

This is why a planned civic skateboard park is usually a failure.
It’s predictable. A place for rookies, maybe, but not for real boarders.
It’s why a humongous Jeeper Park would be just as unwelcome.
No real challenge for serious off-roaders.
That’s why some wing-nuts come to ride the slick rock on unicycles.

And even when a challenging situation has been pretty well maxed out, we shift to an amazing concept: Personal Best.
It may have all been done before, but you haven’t tried it and you can always improve your time, your distance, your luck – if not today, then next time.
Six out of ten Jeepers don’t make it up Potato Salad Hill – but next year . . .

It’s why we keep on going despite knowing our ultimate fate.
It’s why most people who are finished with life think, “One more day . . .”

It’s why we die every night and come back to life in the morning, get up and take another whack at this life, no matter how awful yesterday was.

Jeeping is just one manifestation of the basic drive to prevail over the odds.
To rise up, get out there, confront the risk, survive, and go out again.

Nothing is more essential to human nature than that.

It’s the same thing that fuels the permanently disabled you see alone out on the streets in a city driving their high-tech electric wheel chairs with one finger or the movements of their eyelids.
Onward! One more day . . .

Stochastic variables – the unpredictable and the unknown.
The possibility that Murphy’s Law will be suspended for a moment;
that what seemed like a good idea at the time, sometimes is;
that the horse you bet on wins;
that the sun will shine tomorrow;
that you can make a marriage work or a job last or that your children will finally get it, at least enough to enjoy being with you at Easter, at least this once – or maybe next year.
Incurable hopefulness.

Jesus didn’t come again this Sunday to Arches National Park, either.
It rained like hell all day.
But many Jeepers were out there anyhow, just in case.

And their mud-spattered vehicles passed by on the road near my house in the late afternoon – when the sun did finally shine.
I was out walking, and waved to them as they went by.
Most of them seemed pleased to be out in the rain and wind and muck.

They may be mis-guided in what they do – who am I to say? – but even they carry within them some terribly essential germ of being human.
Embrace the suck. Accept the challenge and take it.
And that’s why, if they can’t take their Jeeps with them, they aren’t going to go get on the bus and go Heaven.
That’s why they’ll come back next year.
And why their families will probably come, too.