Into the Desert

"She was standing at the periphery of her own life, sharing a fridge and a toilet, a shallow intimacy, with people she did not know at all.  People who lived in exclamation points. "Great!" they said often.  "That's great!"  People who did not scrub in the shower; their shampoos and conditioners and gels were cluttered in the bathroom, but there was not a single sponge, and this, the absence of a sponge, made them seem unreachably alien to her (p.156).... There was something unquestioning about her roommates' lives, an assumption of certainty that fascinated her, so that they often said, 'Let's go get some," about whatever it was they needed - more beer, pizza, buffalo wings, liquor - as though this getting was not an act of money (p.157)... The world was wrapped in gauze; she could see the shapes of things but not clearly enough, never enough (p.160)."  - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

Going out into nature feels like venturing into the "real world" and unwrapping the gauze of the everyday luxuries.  This gauze can hold me hostage from experiencing how life really operates, causing me to feel an empty kind of captivity by that white noise of routine and sense of expectation of the present and future.  With the students out in the desert, it seems that substance abuse is a response to feeling like they couldn't meet parents' expectations, coping with a divorce, a death, and wanting to escape their own memories and thoughts.  Going into the desert is like going into the deep end, sharing emotions, digging up realizations, and working out who you are within the backdrop of the natural, unpredictable forces surrounding you.  It is sobering to me; it is my therapy.

***

In the desert, there is so much sage surrounding us all the time.  We walk over it, step on it, smell it, use it's branches to make wooden spindles and fire boards to bust a fire.  To bust a fire, you need a bow (a juniper branch with cordage tied from top to bottom) which you lodge a spindle (thin, long, piece of sage wood) into by twisting it in the cordage.  Then you carve a small hole in the fire board (a larger, round trunk of sage wood) in which you lodge the spindle and slowly move your bow bow back and forth, back and forth, backandforth, backnforth - faster, faster, faster - until, your spindle starts driving out smoke from the fireboard - more and more smoke!  Faster and faster, until, you create and ember.  You then place this ember into a little nest of dried sage bark and pieces.  You move your hand, holding the smoldering nesting (with a fire glove on), in a figure eight motion, allowing the wind to potentially ignite that nesting, eventually blowing into it, until you finally see a flame.  There you have it: you have made fire, without a match or a lighter, but with force, and with the help of some sage and juniper.

It's hard.  It doesn't happen right away for most people and I don't even like the process very much!  When a student gets a fire, they begin to tally them.  If they get 15 fires, they can earn a flashlight.  During introductions, students often include the number of fires they've made and miles they've walked.  I've busted just one, with the coaching of two students.  But this serves as a key metaphor out there for hard work and success - turning embers into flames.

"Ah, a Juniper berry....  Let the gin-making begin!" said one of the boys, imitating some kind of British-type accent, making me laugh, as he looked at one tiny periwinkle Juniper berry on a branch in front of him.  He's been out there for 6 or 7 weeks, sitting with his thoughts, entertaining the group with his stories - choosing to identify himself as a drug addict, to his own surprise.  Despite regular use and selling, he had never thought to identify himself as an addict, but more as just a high school kid and then college freshman.  He took Honors Philosophy in high school and read the 1500 pages of Atlas Shrugged, similar to another one of the group members.  Yet drugs had been taking over his brain and he has only now realized that he can digest more words of a book than he has been able to in years.

We walked through the sage to a dried-up lake bed to play Ultimate Frisbee and then Capture the Flag.  The earth out there is so cracked, stepped on by herds of cows - and baby cows! - drinking from the small puddle of a lake in the middle, into which dried up cow patties and rocks are thrown.  Afterwards, we sit under a Juniper tree where one of the boys begins to lead a group surrounding one of his therapy assignments to write a letter of accountability for everything he's done.  Some of the others checked in, sharing their feelings, thanking us staff for the games, saying, "I forgot I could have fun while sober."  Then the student begins to read aloud his letter, where he states everything that he's done that has brought him to this place - DUIs, lying, drinking, etc.  Everyone listens and everyone gives feedback, noting areas where he could say more and areas where we all can relate.  As we speak, we play with the earth, the cow shit, and the plants that surround us.  We thank him for sharing and the group is closed; we head back to camp.

On the way back, I converse with another student - about his family, how he was bullied from a young age, how he owns three cars and crashed one in a suicide attempt, how he began drinking when he lost his sports scholarship.  We get into camp and the dinner cycle begins.  We begin by washing our hands and feet - I sit on a log using my pocketknife to clean up the backs of my heals which have layer upon layer of dried skin.  I walk back to the fire, sit back in my crazy creek (outdoor chair) and watch and listen around me of busting of fire, boiling of water, cutting of vegetables - joking, reading, frustration, laughing - carving of spoons, writing, drawing... whatever it is that they are working on around me.  I feel like life is fresh again - reduced to its most basic parts: relationships, surviving, and growing.

We are then left with the fire, as the night sky moves into a navy blue tone.  We acknowledge the people and things that we love (family, yoga pants, the ocean), share resentments (the cold, addiction), people who need our amends, say what we did well today and what we could do better tomorrow - we share how we're feeling.  Then we put our packs back on, walk out to the tarps in the sage and tied to Juniper trees that are serving as shelters.  My co-leader picks up the guitar and starts singing Johnny Cash, Radiohead, Phantom of the Opera, and ends with a Cowboy tune that incorporates Coyote sounds.  Four of the boys join us in the center of the sage stage, in the middle of the desert, and begin to do "ballet" - throwing their arms up in the arm, resembling a quartet of syncronized swimmers out of the water, finding themselves on the land - no longer drowning - high on life.  I laugh and smile and laugh and smile, but don't sing - just take in the growing night sky and the shadows of the mountains and the sounds of play.

"Goodnight!  And remember... Oregon....

(and this is where there is disagreement)

HATES (some yell)
LOVES (some yell)

YOU!"

I seal myself up in my sleeping bag, take one final look up at the big dipper, and bury my head inside.  Goodnight, goodnight and goodnight to this crazy unpredictable world.