Ocala Forest, Florida
February 2002
The key thing to remember here is that I had burned a hole in the tarp floor of my one-person tent. That had been back in New Mexico at my campsite outside of Santa Fe. I had tipped a candle, and while I had quickly put out the flame, the wax that had poured onto the floor had melted a hole through the plastic, about three inches across.
It was wonderful to go from the snow and ice of the Rocky Mountains to the swamps and trees of the Ocala woods. I was at a Rainbow Gathering, so there were lots of people around, including a drum circle that I enjoyed until late into the night. I was ready to go right to sleep when I returned to my sweet little tent/home. Travelers, the world over, will know the phenomenon about unpacking, whether it is a suit case or a backpack, and the mess that results with clothing strewn everywhere, bags spilling out of bags, etc. My tent was no different, and being designed for one person, it was probably a bit messier than most.
With flash light in hand, I had to step over a small pile of clothes to get to my sleeping bag, and once in I reached over to zip up the tent’s door. That was when I saw it.
Nothing in the world glistens in a light the way a reptile does, especially in a dark tent. It was under a pile of socks, which I realized with additional horror, was directly over that melted hole in the floor. I had only seen about an inch of the creature but I had no doubt that it was a snake, and even worse, it was a snake that was between me and the door of my tent. Bracing myself, I dived over the pile of clothes and through the open door of the tent. Looking back I could see more of the form and while the snake looked small, it was long and grey and had what seemed to me to be diamonds. Growing up in New Mexico I knew about diamond back rattlesnakes, but I couldn’t believe I was seeing one in Florida. Unsure what to do next, I returned to the drum circle.
Most of the people had already turned in for the night, but there were still a few left, and I asked around for someone local. A young man in his twenties raised his hand and I told him about the snake. The way he smiled and rolled his eyes told me everything…he thought I was some kind of city-slicker who was new to camping. He assured me that he was sure it was nothing dangerous, and told me to just pick the snake up behind its head and toss it away.
I wanted to believe him, really I did, but I just could not get over how much like a rattlesnake that little creature resembled. I asked him if he would only look at it, and I promised that if he told me it was safe I would do just as he had told me and toss it away. Sighing, he agreed and followed me to my camp. He had a stronger flashlight than me, so he did not need to get very close before he too saw the snake, now actually entwined in my socks.
The young man did not say a word to me but immediately ran back to the campfire exclaiming. pygmy rattler! pygmy rattler!
He had gone back to his camp to rouse his friends and soon there were half a dozen, then a dozen, then I stopped counting, people gathered around my tent. It was then that I learned that, while not usually deadly, the bite of a pygmy rattler will send a person to the hospital for a few days.
If you are not familiar with Rainbow Gatherings, they are worth checking out, if only on the internet. One of the things I like best about them is the “no-killing anything” rule. So never once did anyone consider dispatching the snake. Instead, they needed to find a way to relocated it out of harms way…harm to us and harm to the snake.
I was an honor to watch these guys, for I was no longer a factor in the endeavor, and was politely asked to step back and leave it to the local. I was more than happy to comply, and enjoyed observing the care and love they showed to this creature. Eventually they got the snake out of the gathering and to another, less accessible part of the Ocala Forest.

Roswell, New Mexico 1980
I was at the Roswell Job Corps, which was, and is, located at the old Air Force base at the edge of town. Besides being re purposed for a training center for 500 youth, and the University of New Mexico-Roswell campus, the old military runway had been turned into a public airport. All airports have a revolving light to mark its position at night and this small airport was no exception. Pretty much right between the Job Corps barracks and the control tower was a beautiful, 100 foot high, red and white water tower, the kind that is very round on the top, so that when you climb the ladder, you are for a moment, crawling upside down. I know this because a few friends and I would sometimes sneak away from the Residential Advisers, who thought we were asleep, and climb this water tower. It had a wonderful catwalk around the circumference of the giant globe of a water tank and we would sit out of the wind, for it is always windy that high up, and smoke pot, and talk about Dungeons and Dragons or what we thought the universe meant. Sometimes we would climb to the very top and ride the giant spinning light, but that was pushing it, even for us.
One evening a few other corps members, maybe three, went with us, mostly because they did not believe that we were so crazy. Once we got there, they all refused, but stayed at the bottom and watched as Joseph, then Dana, then I began the long climb in the darkness. What I did not know is that Joseph had stepped to the side, onto one of the girders, and to play a prank of Dana, he whispered to him, “Hello Dana”. This startled my friend so much that he let go of the ladder and fell straight down, his feet slamming into the top of my head. While that slowed Dana enough that he grabbed the ladder and stopped his fall, it had the opposite effect on me. I was hit so hard that my hands were ripped from the ladder and i plummeted. I was moving so fast that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop in time. I also knew that below me was a concrete pad, and right at that moment I realized that I was going to die. How I came to all these conclusions still bugs me; it was just that I was falling faster than just me letting go, I had been thrown down.
It was then that I heard the man behind me, maybe just a few inches from my ear, and he yelled, “Grab the ladder, now!”
It was clearly a command, and it terrified me. It was so impossibly close and falling at the same rate as me, that I reached out to the ladder with both hands just to get way from it. When my fingers made contact the pain brought my focus back to my fall and I did everything I could to slow myself down. I came to a fair stop at about ten feet from the concrete pad and my hands would not hold be any longer, because of the punishment they had taken in slowing me. I fell the rest of the way.
One of the teenage girls witnessing from the ground had fainted, and I could hear both Dana and Joseph yelling hysterically from the darkness above. The others had fled and were no where to be seen. I yelled to my friends that all was ok, but we all got into trouble for our evenings efforts, losing our town privileges for two weeks. Although my hands were bruised and swollen for months, nothing was permanently damaged.

The boulders west of Prescott, Arizona, 2002.
This story actually begins in the Ocala Forest in central Florida during a regional Rainbow Gathering. These gatherings can get large, but being held in the National Forest, there was always room to find just the right size crowd. This particular gathering is always held in February, and while the days were nice, the nights can be surprisingly cold. I would have to break in the ice in my little German shepherd’s water bowl each morning we were there. It was this chill in the evening that kept the campers sticking close to the campfires. It was nice to walk along the trail from fire to fire, stopping at each one to warm up before the next leg of the journey. I had come to such a campfire, with about twenty people circled around it, trading stories about where they were from and what the where going to do, or talking about philosophy or religion, or politics, or dreams…seriously, walk around a Rainbow Gathering long enough and you will hear something about everything. On this particular night, at this particular campfire, I came into a conversation about a creature called a Javalina. It was more of a debate really; some thought that it was a giant rat, or possum, as big as a dog – bigger even than my two month old German shepherd puppy, someone gestured to my dog. Someone else said that it was a wild pig. Either way, all sides agreed that it was edible. I did not know what to think, since I had never heard of this creature, but just the idea that there might be a rat as big as a dog made me want to never meet one.
A few weeks later I found myself, and puppy, on the road headed for Southern New Mexico. I was traveling on a friend’s converted bus, and the owner, a Christian Preacher, would pick up hitchhikers; they got a free ride and he talked about Jesus along the way – no one ever turned down the ride.
As I had mentioned, it was winter time, and so no needy person was turned away; the bus was very full and it was so cold outside that we all sleep inside the vehicle at the rest stops, much like a can of sardines, but very grateful sardines. Then, one evening as we were bedding down, I overheard two people talking about javalina, having the exact same discussion as that by the campfire; was the creature a rat or a pig? Each person was steadfast in their own belief, and just like before, both agreed that either way, it was edible.
I was taken by the strange odds that I would know nothing of this creature, and now I was hearing about it from people unknown to me or each other, hundreds of miles apart. I promised myself that as soon as I got to a public library I was going to get to the bottom of this.
A few weeks later I am in the rocks outside of Prescott, Arizona. Some friends and I are having the pleasure of camping in a lodge, or what I knew as a child as a classic teepee. These are extraordinary structures, and this one was large; eight of us slept with room to spare. We had found a lovely spot over looking the city, and after setting up camp we called it a night and turned in.
When I woke I could tell from the opening at the pointed top of the lodge that it was early dawn, but I knew that I had not woken naturally – I had heard something. I remained still and listened, expecting that it was humans, maybe taking an early hike. I strained to hear, but it was silent; not even the birds had stirred yet. Then I heard a noise right next to me on the other side of the lodge’s curved canvas wall. I was shocked that it was so close, but also I knew exactly what the sound was because there is nothing on earth known to man that makes that sound except one thing…it was the undeniable, unmistakable grunt of a pig. My heart raced as I wondered if this was really a javalina. Moving as slowly as I could, yet still moving, I got up. My puppy was still sleeping with the rest, and I crept ever so slowly to the flap that marked the doorway. With all the surgical precision I could muster I slipped through to the outside. My plan was to sneak around the teepee and observe the animal from behind, and to avoid making noise I kept my focus on my feet, dodging twigs and leaves that might rustle and give away my position. But I had only gone a few steps when a movement caught my eye; I looked up and my body froze with equal portions of fear and wonder. Me, and the lodge, were surrounded by a herd of javalina, for I was sure that this is what I was seeing. There must have been thirty of them, of all sizes, from the size of a cat to the size of a dog, but a very big dog. They were all covered in a dense coat of long silver fur that that stood straight from their bodies and could only be called ‘beautiful’. Their fur shimmered in the morning light, and it was wonderful to see, but the fear I was experiencing came from two things; one, they were all motionless, and looking at me, and most have them clearly had tusks. I wasn’t sure whether to run, or yell, or do both when I suddenly heard my baby German shepherd behind me. She must have finally noticed I was gone and now that she had found me, and this heard of wild pigs, she barked madly, furiously, bravely taking a few steps forward, then retreating, then moving forward again, but always behind me. At the first sound of her high pitched puppy bark, the javalina had all started, as though they were going to turn and run, but not one of them took even one step, so unafraid they were. My dog could not believe it, and increased her barking rage, but to no avail. She did however, awaken the rest of the party, and they were coming out now, each expressing their surprise at the vision that met them. Some were familiar with the species and did indeed verify that this was the javalina…pig related, and edible, though no one in the group had ever seen a sight such as this. All the while that we are discussing this, the puppy is barking and javalina are staring. No matter where you looked, except the mountain’s edge behind us, there was a javalina of some size watching us. None of us wanted to break the magical moment, but finally someone said, apologetically,that they had to relieve themselves. We agreed that the moment had to end sometime, and we said our goodbyes to the creatures, waving and speaking in normal tones. We fully expected them to run off, but they did nothing of the sort. If anything, they looked even more interested in us. Someone picked up a rock and tossed it toward them, but instead of frightening them, they ran toward the stone. Then, after a sniff, they turned back toward us.
A few people admitted that they were getting scared, and I think that we all felt that way…this was not how wild animals were suppose to act. We wondered if they were going to attack us. And then the preacher’s dog came outside.
This was an old dog, big and black, and deaf with age. He had not heard the noise we were making outside, and he had just woke up. Seeing the herd of javalina around him and his camp, he let out one great, loud bark. What resulted was a stampede; the javalina were surprisingly agile, leaping over the rock and disappearing into the forest within seconds.
We found out later that the people of Prescott are very good to their javalina, feeding them regularly, and in some cases practically domesticating them. Although we were not camping nearing any houses, it was clear that these creatures were not scared us, so if they were not domesticated they certainly wanted to be.

Honolulu, Hawaii 1987
This story took only seconds to happen, and therefore the telling of it will be short, but it was quite interesting to me. I do not recall the exact road my friend and I were walking on, but the sidewalks on both sides were crowded with pedestrians, local and tourist. My friend and I were discussing something – who knows what – and I was facing him when it happened. An enormous streak of green light passed by, high enough above the horizon that it was easily seen, but still very low in the sky. It was faster than anything I had ever seen, thicker than it was long, and it was so long that it took up a quarter of the sky. I have no idea how long it actually took to cross the sky but I am guessing that it was no more than three seconds, though it seemed to take thirty.
Immediately my friend knew that something had happened to me; I had stopped moving, or speaking, and maybe even breathing and when he asked me what was wrong all I could say was, “Did you see that?” and point over his shoulder. Of course he had not seen it, he had been facing me. I could not hide my excitement as I described the incredible green streak of light and he could not hide his disappointment at having missed it. Then I did what most humans do when they are faced with the incredible, I looked around and asked others if they had seen it. What I saw on the sidewalks was almost as amazing as the event itself.
Up and down the road the same thing had happened to dozens of others, those who happened to be facing one way saw it and those looking elsewhere had not. I could see the same sad story play out over and over again, one person smiling and excitedly describing the celestial event, dumbly gesturing over their friends shoulders as I had done, while the others were frowning and sadly shaking their heads and their bad luck.
Those near to me who had seen it approached in solidarity, and we happily compared our memories as to its enormous size and emerald color. Many saw blue within the green. This did nothing to improve the mood of the others and us, the special ones, realized that we should stop already and get about our days.
I was many years later that I saw a video of a meteor skimming the earth without hitting it, and it looked exactly like what we had seen that day. It was magnificent and beautiful and mind boggling and all the more so because only half of us saw it.

South of Odessa, Texas 1982
This is oil country, and if you have any doubt of that just look at any map…the tanks and roads show up like the biggest of cities, all spread out in hundreds of square miles. All of the major oil companies were represented then, Shell, and Mobile being the main concerns. Every where you looked pumps could be seen moving slowly up and down as they pumped oil through underground pipes. In my more morose days these sights of mosquitoes, sipping the Earth’s blood. Dotted among these extensive fields were white storage tanks, about fifteen feet high and about fifteen feet in diameter and each of these tanks had a ladder that gave access to the roof. It was to these tanks that the little pump-jacks, as the mosquitoes are known, pumped their share of oil, and the fact that there were thousands of them in this area of West Texas shows how much oil was laying below the surface. Each dirt road ended at a storage tank.
All the towns of this, the Permian Basin, were places where oil workers lived, and most people went to Odessa for excitement. But if you were broke, as me and my two coworkers were this night, then you might go cruising around the oil field roads, look at the stars. There was no better place for this then the top of the oil storage tanks, away from the dangerous desert crawlers, and high enough to be in the breeze. We drove around until we picked one randomly, but far enough from the highway to make certain that the car’s headlights would not interfere with our stargazing. It was late at night, and very, very dark; we could see the cars on Highway 385 in the distance. We had not been gazing for very long when someone saw the light in the distance.
At first we assumed that there was another car out in the fields, on a different road, headed to a different tank, perhaps even filled with stargazers, like ourselves. Even still, we kept an eye on it; while I had never seen anyone punished for what we were doing, it was technically trespassing, and illegal. Even still, this light was far away, maybe even a mile, and we had no thought that we should move from our comfortable perch.
I do not recall who first noticed that the light had not turned, but seemed to be going in a straight line toward us and that there was only one light, not two like on a car. We decided now that it had to be a dirt bike, though we agreed that it was strange that we could not hear it’s motor yet. We knew about a ravine, about six feet deep, that ran between us the and the motorcycle’s light, and we knew the driver would have to stop or turn to avoid it. But the then the light did not stop and it did not turn; instead it fell into the ravine.
I believe we all yelled aloud at that point, so sure we were that a motorcyclist had just fell head first into a deep ditch. I was on my feet, horrified at what I just saw, and ready to race back to town to notify the police and ambulance, but I had no time to move into action, because the light was suddenly there again, jumping out of the ravine and continuing along its path…straight towards us.
This upset me greatly, because it seemed so impossible, but my two friends were thrilled and cheering. It’s not that I was unhappy that the driver had survived, it was that I did not, could not, believe that there was a driver. This was no craft build by a human being. Now that this light had my complete attention I could tell that it was moving fast; I could see the glow of the light shining on the ground below it…the closer it got the more sure we were…it was floating! About a foot in the air, I could see the ground clearly for the light was that bright. I could discern no structure, just an intense glow of light, and the more I watched the more I began to panic. The thing was headed directly for us, and I estimated that it was the size of our car.
I told my friends that we should move, get out of the way, but they were not frightened in the least, insisting they wanted to wait to see what it was, but I was having none of it. I was completely convince that the light was dangerous and I began to yell at them. They ignored me and I began to beg – if they would not leave for their sake would they leave for mine?
These were my coworkers and friends, and they would normally have obliged any request I asked of them, but not this time…they just stood there, on the top of the oil storage tank smiling at the approaching light like they were hypnotized. My body insisted that I move, and as I crawled down the ladder, I continued to yell to them to follow. I got to the car and could see their silhouette on top of the tank, standing still. Then I threatened them, I was going to drive away without them. The car was not mine and except for a few fun trips on dirt roads, I had never driven at all. But there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to do exactly as I had said…I had to get away from that light. I started the car, and spun it around, honking the horn. I heard yelling, and was relieved with they came down the ladder. From the glow of the headlights I could see that now they were scared, and they jumped in, both shouting for me to drive.
As I mentioned before, each of these roads ends at a storage tank, and leads to the highway so I was able to speed away safely. By the time we got to a place where we could see the light, and the tank we had been on, the light was gone. We went later, in the daylight, to the ravine where we thought the light must have crossed, but there were no tracks, or disruption of any kind. I asked my friends why they had not been frightened at all by the impossible light, and they both agreed it was because it was so beautiful. To this day their reaction on the tank that night was just as startling to me as the strange light itself.
Years later an oil worker told me that he thought the light could have been ball lightning, following an underground pipe of moving oil, which was being pumped directly to our tank. He added that while those storage tanks have multiple devices to dampen sparks and the such, our three bodies on top of that tank may have been enough for that ball lightning to jump past the dampener and onto us.

San Francisco, 2000
I’ve been through San Francisco a few times, usually stopping for a few hours at most for the driver’s purpose, but most of the time just passing through. Regardless of reason, or time of year, or time of day for that matter, what ever ride I was with would be in some sort of traffic jam while in this beautiful city. This time was no different, except that it was a June afternoon in the year 2000, and I was in a converted, brightly colored bus that was so old that I doubt that it had ever seen air conditioning.
Even with these ingredients for a bad day, I could not be irritated – this was San Francisco! We were moving at less than a snails pace, since there were periods of five minutes and maybe even more that we did not move at all, but that just gave me more time to take in the view. We were on one of those famous hilly streets…the bus’ straining breaks reminded us of that constantly, headed for the Golden Gate Park where a police man with a nice smile told us we could park the bus and spend the night. We would head north at daybreak.
We estimated later that we had spend forty minutes going two miles on this road…it seemed much longer in the heat and noise of traffic all around us. But as I mentioned I kept my gaze on the town. The bus was crowded, with people and things, so I could only see well out of my window, which opened to the left side of the road, which was lined with those colorful little houses that sit side by side that you see on TV. Each one was completely unique and as we inched along I carefully took note of each detail…the shapes, shades of paint, doors, etc…and of course, the window treatments. Many had luxurious velvet draperies of red and gold, and some had only slatted blinds, but everyone had sort of curtains, except one house.
Many of these houses had a bay window, and so did this house. As careful as I was to observe details at this time, I could not tell you anything about this house because as soon as we came to it, as we crawled along the street, I was offended by the structure. To be more precise, I was upset by what I saw in the bay window; clearly a prop from Halloween, more than seven months past, I saw a shape of a woman hanging by her neck.
She had long brown hair that covered her bent head and face and she was wearing a printed dress that reached down to just below her knees, and she wore no shoes. She swayed slightly.
I was appalled, at both the house owner and the City for allowing such a display, especially in June. I had been impressed with San Francisco for its friendliness and cleanliness but as I sat on the bus that day I considered whether I should change my mind. And then the bus moved forward and the woman turned toward me, as though by someone’s hand. The original sight of the woman was a shock but this was more of a fright and I’m sure my heart skipped a beat, when, in the next moment, as the bus’s wheels moved another inch forward, the image of the woman turned again, but warped in an impossible way. My brain struggled for a second and then I realized that I had been looking at a reflection in that window. The window was so old that it was not flat and so did not give a true reflection.The entire image had been made up of dozens of small reflections, when put together, had appeared as something that had never been…or had it?
All that I can really say is that the window did not truly reflect what it showed on the outside, which was a stuffy crowd of cars, buses and trucks trying to get through a traffic jam. It might have been the heat, or the automobile fumes, or my shock from what I thought I had seen, but as the bus made its way to the Golden Gate Park I was plagued by the notion that the window had reflected something that had happened on the inside, maybe long ago, and it was still looking to share its secret.

Central Texas, November, 1983.
Hiking in Texas is not easy, no matter which part of this enormous state the hiking is done. Texas has it all; majestic mountains in the Big Bend, deserts in the west, damp, deciduous forest in the east and scrub land in the interior. My friend and I was in such scrub land. We had begun our journey in Austin, and after some days we were near the Lady Bird Johnson Park Dam, outside of Fredericksburg. We were very happy with the time we were making, but then the weather changed, bringing a bitter cold with it. We had all the gear we could hope to have, but even still we found ourselves moving more slowly with the extra layers of clothing we were bundled in. My friend was from Austin and I had lived in the state two years, but neither of us had experienced such cold here. We were very pleased when we saw that we were coming up on the Park, especially since evening was approaching; we had just enough time to set up camp before darkness fell.
Lady Bird Johnson Park Dam is along a bend in the Colorado River, and without discussion we made our way to a campsite for tents near the water. We always set up our tent first, before anything else, and we wasted no time, what with the sunset quickly approaching. We had the old-fashioned kind of tent that needed to be staked to the ground, and it was then that we realized our mistake – the ground was frozen. Even if we could have forced a stake into the ground, we did not have the protection needed to sleep on ice. We hurriedly packed up the tent and left the park.
We walked for a ways, until we could no longer see the river, and found a place to pitch the tent. To our surprise, the ground was just as frozen here as it was next to the water. In the light of dusk we repacked, saddened that we would have no day light by which to prepare our evening meal, we had no choice but to continue on. We did this a few more times, each time finding the ground just as frozen as it was when we were next to the river. I cannot say how long we walked, attempting to escape what was quickly becoming for us a frozen hell. We had walked all day with our backpacks and we had been tired and hungry when we had first arrived, now we were exhausted and starving. Finally we decided to give up. We would find our later that we were in a bend in the Colorado, in effect creating a frozen lake through out the park.
We found a couple trees to tie the tent to, and used our gear to secure the flaps to the cold ground. Then we took our coats and every scrap of clothing we had and put them under us with our sleeping bags and ground covers. We ate a cold meal and went to sleep. We actually did sleep for a while, we were so tired, but only about an hour. That is how long it took for the cold to seep upward, into our tent. While the coldness of the air around us was bad enough, the cold below us was startling – it was ice. We tossed and turned and shivered all night, and as soon as there was light enough to see by, we packed up and headed back to the park. Now that we knew what we were dealing with we knew what to do.
Our original plan had been to spend one night and half a day at this place, but our harsh night had really taken its toll on us. We were achy and sick and we felt three nights might be in order. We dealt with the frozen ground by pitching our tent over a picnic table and sleeping on the concrete pad; still cold, yes, but nothing like the ice of the night before. We enjoyed ourselves and recovered. Perhaps it had been cold night, or the beauty of this park, but by staying these extra days we had inadvertently depleted our food stores. We could only carry so much in our packs and we were careful to plan the legs our journey so that we would reach a town in time to get food. We knew we had no choice, we had to leave at first light.
It was still cold, and we were still sore, but we managed to get far enough from the river to avoid the frozen ground, and as usual, it felt good to be walking again. We ate sparingly but it finally happened that we were out of food. We knew we were only a day and a half from the next town, so we would die or anything, but it just so happened that it was Thanksgiving day. We both felt stupid for our predicament, and simultaneously blamed each other and ourselves. And then we noticed that we were coming up on some pecan trees.
We had seen a lot of pecan trees since leaving Austin and we had passed many people selling the nuts; clearly it had been a good year for the trees. But we had not seen them next to the road like this. Usually there was nothing growing along the side of the road except low weeds and bushes, but suddenly in the middle of nowhere there where these line of about a dozen towering trees. Elated, we were able to find a few good nuts on the ground, and we quickly found rocks and sticks to throw at the lower branches, rewarding us with a few more. Of course they were delicious to us, and though we only managed about fifteen nuts altogether, be felt better. We had gone a few more miles when we saw another small collection of pecan trees a long the road, and we were able to collects a few more nuts.
This continued for many miles…small groves of pecan trees dotting the roadside, all the way to the next town. For Thanksgiving we had all the pecans we could eat, and then more. We became convinced that these plantings had been done on purpose, maybe even by pioneers, to keep them alive on the trail. Regardless of how or why those pecan trees were on this road on this day we cannot say for certain, but we could not have been more thankful.

Onekahakaha Beach Park, Hilo, Hawaii 1989
Along this stretch of coast there are few beaches and those are small and made of black sand; the remaining coast line consists of dark lava cliffs. This is pahoehoe lave, the kind that flows slowly and when it cools it resembles taffy; this makes the land uneven, with small ridges and depressions which, in certain places, became tide pools when the ocean tide was low.
There are a lot of fish in the ocean surrounding the Hawaiian Islands, many of which are delicious. One fish that was desirable is the rock fish, so named because it likes feeding near the coast, especially cliffs. It stayed deep in the water, below the turbulence of the surf, but you knew it was there. A lot of people knew it was there; fishing is very popular in Hawaii and the locals are experts at it; any day of the week you could find someone fishing or setting traps for crab or the such. This also meant that you could always find what you needed to fish with.
Carrying nothing but drinking water, I would head out to the rocky coastline, looking carefully at the bamboo stands that I passed for a fallen pole that was both long and strong enough. I always found one by the time I reached the ocean. Then, as I made my way to a good fishing spot I would keep my eyes open for hooks and line and sinkers…they were usually together, tangled in the lava where they were abandoned by their original owner. Carefully unwinding the precious line from the crevices and cracks of the black stone, the line sometimes broke, or was too far entangles for extraction, but with patience I was able to find what I needed to tie to that bamboo pole. Now I needed bait.
Opihi is a limpet creature, about the size of a quarter, and at low tide you can see them sticking to the rocks. These oval shaped mollusks extract nutrients from the surf, and so cliffs within the inter tidal zone is perfect for their needs, and that is exactly the sort of place I was at.
The surf of any ocean can be dangerous, but surf along a cliff an be deadly. I am no expert opihi picker, (and yes, those do exist), but I could, with care, find enough for my needs without using ropes or tackle. The trick is to “pick” the limpet off of the rock before it senses you and clamps its oval shell down with a suction force that none can penetrate. I learned from locals that the best tool to use to pry an opihi from its perch is the shell of another opihi; you have to be quick and it does take practice, but I was usually able to gather bait and be on my way with in thirty minutes, once I knew where to look.
I was having a good day…I had already caught a rock fish and I was getting plenty of bites. The fish I had caught had swallowed the hook and so I simply broke the line with the idea of removing it later. I placed it in a tide pool, which lay about fifteen feet behind me, and continued fishing.
I dropped my line into the water, carefully feeling the vibrations through the pole; if I lowered it too much the crabs would grab my opihi within minutes – sometimes seconds – snipping the line as they did so. I also had to account for the surf, and not allow the line to get snagged as it had been when I found it. And, of course, I had to keep an eye on the Pacific Ocean.
Such was my attention taken when I noticed a small dark shape move to my left. It was about the size of a cat, and my mind immediately thought of one of the millions of mongoose that litter the island. I never knew them to leave the coolness of the jungle to come out on lava cliffs, and my reaction was that it was going to still that fish I had just caught. Pulling up my line, I turned to yell at the animal, but there was nothing there. True, the ground was not flat here, but there were no ridges or the like big enough to hide a mongoose. Deciding it had to have been my imagination, I turned back to fishing. But before the bait hit the water I noticed the dark shadow of movement again. Since I was somewhat ready for it my mind caught how the movement was quick and short and also that it was closer.
My body leaped up before I noticed, my focus fully on the movement to my left. I stood completely still, waiting to see movement again and I was not disappointed; what I thought had been the shadow of the creature was in fact the creature itself – it was maybe four inches high and two feet long and undulated like a snake, as it pushed itself across the pahoehoe, But this was no snake, this was a moray eel.
By the time that my brain was willing to except the fact that this ocean creature was clearly on a mission to steal my fish, it had crossed a good eight feet. It saw me an to my amazement moved faster; it was like a side winder, covering much more land in each propulsion than I ever would have thought possible. Not thinking, except that I wanted to eat my fish, I ran to intercept the would be thief, which seemed to only give the thing, still glistening unnaturally with seawater, the motivation to move even more quickly. It not only made it to the tide pool before me, it managed to grab my fish and snap the line I had tied to a rock, then retrace its steps exactly, allowing itself to drop off of the cliff and back into its normal environment. I had lost my fish and going back to where I had caught it, I realized I had lost my pole.

Kirkland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1977
My friend had just gotten her driver’s liscense and she had borrowed her mother’s car. We were ditching school so we had to be careful where we went; in those days police approached teenagers out and about when school was in session. So Karen and I did what most young people did in these circumstances, we cruised the country side. Sometimes we went into the beautiful Sandia mountains that dominate Albuquerque’s eastern skyline, and sometimes we went to the ranches that dominated the Rio Grande river to the north (now it is a town of its own called Rio Rancho). It was only a matter of time and opportunity before we thought to explore the Kirkland Air Force Base.
Our country’s idea of security was very different in the Seventies, and a person could get well into a military base before special identification was required. But this was also the home of the Atomic Museum, and Sandia Laboratories, where parts of nuclear bombs are made. I do not know what was going on in our minds this day but we gave ourselves a goal…a dare really; we decided to see just how far into the base we could go before we were stopped.
The military base was enormous. Looking now at Google maps, one can see how the area south of Albquerque is developed with dirt roads that dead end in the desert and great complexes of barracks and buildings. We made our way, and when we came to a check point we explained that we were meeting our father. To our amazement, this worked every time, and never once did anyone ask for our father’s name. Since our goal was to see how far south we could get, we did not really pay attention to where we were going and soon we found ourselves out of sight of any structure and heading toward the Mazano stretch of mountains. The dirt road was not wide enough to turn arournd, so with no other choice, we continued on, happy with our incredible luck and success, but in all honesty quite bored. And then we saw it, in the distance.
It was a small twinkling of light on one of the foothills in front of us. We guessed it was the window of a stucture of some kind, but as we drove closer we soon realized that it could not be, unless the entire building was a window; the light was just too intense. As we approached the foothills and began climbing we could see that there were edges to the brightness and after a few more minutes we could make out that this was a giant mirror, the size of maybe four billboards, tilted slightly up to the sky. The thing was beautiful in its own way; the surface was highly polished and even out here in the desert it looked fresh and new. This is where the road ended. Getting out, we could see that this mirror was mounted on a movable frame and there was a small locked shed behind it. Otherwise, there was nothing to mark this area. We speculated on what it might be for; maybe to guide satillites, we thought. Then we waved our arms in front of the giant mirror, wondering if that might be noticeable to a satillite.
From here we also had a wonderful view of Albuquerque. We had gained a little elevation and we could see almost the entire city. It was then that we noticed a jeep coming on the road towards us. We sighed – it had been nice but now we were busted. We weren’t scared, we would just tell them we got lost and be on our way; after all, it was them who had let us through. We were smiling and waving hello when the jeep pulled up, but I never got to see the if the two uniformed soldiers inside smiled back. From behind us exploded about a dozen men, screaming and waving weapons. Within a heart beat they had surrounded us and shouting, demanded that we lay on the ground.
These soldiers were serious – I could see by the look on their faces that they had not known what to expect, and they had thought that we could have been a real threat. But I could also see their relief after we convinced them that there were were other people beside us two teenage girls. We admitted that we were ditching school to cruise in her mother’s car, but we never told them our alterior motive. An officer explained to us that this mirror was highly sensitive, and very expensive, and if it had been active, it could have hurt us with mircowaves. The soldiers dissappeared back into the mountains and the jeep excorted off of the base with a warning to never return.
We felt genuinely sorry for the drama; just the thought of all these men crawling through the area, sneaking up on us like that…it was years later that I realized that they probably really enjoyed it.

Oahu, Hawaii 1984.
This was at a beautiful lookout on Oahu called the Halona Blowhole, which is a underwater cave and tunnel system that forces great amount of seawater through a very narrow exit, causing the water to shoot high into the air, maybe one hundred feet. It is a wonderful, thunderously loud sight, so it is no surprise that the State of Hawaii built a nice pull out for traffic to park and an observation platform for tourist and photographers. This part of the island’s coast consists of lava cliffs and the observation deck was perhaps thirty feet above the surf and the blowhole.
I spent some time watching this natural exhibit, thrilled with this display of the Pacific Ocean’s power. It was then that I noticed, down near the surf and surrounding the blowhole area, some clearly man-made structures. My mind could not make sense of them…about six feet tall they looked like sticks standing straight up, stuck in the lava. I think that there might have been a dozen of these, maybe even more. As closely as I looked I could not see anything to identify these things. Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to climb down for a better look.
While it was true that the Blowhole was working nicely this day, shooting high into the sky in a rainbow spray, where I was going was inland some distance. Even still, I descended quickly to avoid getting wet and made it to the nearest pylon. They were made of wood and pointed at the top and as closely as I looked I could not see any writing or marking on them. I was dumbfounded as to why anyone would go to the trouble to secure these wooden posts to such an unusual spot. And then I heard a man screaming.
I looked up to the voice, just because that is what a person does when they suddenly hear this kind of loud, hysterical yelling from another person. It was coming from a Japanese man up on the observation platform. I knew he was Japanese because of his language, I understood none of it. He was clearly upset, panicked even, and he was gesturing wildly over my head, pointing at something behind me. Again, my head turned and I looked only out of instinct; my mind had not yet had a chance to formulate any kind of thoughts or judgement. And then I knew what these pylons were for; these were grave markers.
The Japanese man had been pointing straight out from his location, over my head because that is how high the wave was that was bearing down upon the rocky coast. I had just enough time to wrap my arms and legs around the post when it hit. It felt as though someone was pounding the top of my head and I could feel the rock below cut into my skin, through my blue jeans. The downward push lasted only a few seconds and then the wave pulled back out to the ocean with a force that I would not have thought possible. I don’t know why this seemed to take so long, but it did. I had time to think of, and thank, the person who owned this pylon, who had last been seen standing in this spot and it was their grave marker that was saving me now.
The Japanese man had been the only one on the platform when this had happened; I had run to safety as soon as the wave receded, and scurried back up to the platform, and he ran to meet me, surprising me with a genuine hug. He had tears in his eyes, and I am not sure who was more upset. He spoke quickly, and gestured to his camera, and back to the sea, letting me know that he had gotten it all on film. I wished I could have seen those pictures.

Garden of the Gods, Colorado 1984
Hiking with my friend, Mike. We had been through this beautiful maze of natural sandstone formations before, following each of the trails that were carefully marked by the government. This time we had decided to explore a bit deeper, and while that was not illegal it was considered dangerous; besides the fact that this was the Rocky Mountains, with all that the name implied, there were also snakes and scorpions, cactus and dehydration to contend with. But hiking through the Four Corner states; Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico had more than majestic natural beauty to offer. This area of the world had been home to the same tribes of natives for thousands of years, and while they were not known for residing in this place (they were the ones who had named it, after all), they did pass through. We were hiking with an eye looking to find something. Maybe it was this focus of curiosity that led us to find something, though certainly nothing like what we had expected.
At one point we decided to find a place to relieve ourselves and we moved into a tighter grouping of the towering formations to do so. It was Mike who saw the hole in the ground; he called to me from behind a large rock.
This hole seemed natural, about a foot and a half in diameter, and a good six feet deep. We had not seen any like it in this park, and while it was too narrow to fall into, a person could easily break a leg if they tripped into it. I do not know what might have made this whole and I wonder that we did not look more closely to see how it might have been formed, but our attention was completely taken by what we saw at the bottom of this hole. Resting at the very bottom was a metal box, with a little lock on the front, and propped on top of this box was a rifle. The weapon’s butt was placed against the box and the barrel leaned against the side of the marrow hole, pointed straight up, and from where we stood it pointed directly at us. A moment more of looking and we could see that there was a string going from the little metal wire handle of the box to the metal ring that cirlced the trigger of the rifle.
The box was about half the size of a fishing tackle box, and it was dented in places, while the gun was dark and therefore hard to see any details. Our minds raced with thoughts that this weapon was guarding something of extreme value in that box and we knew we would not be able to leave without it. But time was not on our side; we were not prepared to spend the night in this mile-high desert park. Because of these factors we probably used much less caution than what was called for. After some searching we found a stick both long and strong enough to reach the bottom of the hole. We had no idea how old this weapon was; for all we knew it could blow up in our face at any time. Mike was the bravest and he laid on his belly next to the hole as he lower the stick into it. As planned, he tapped the rifle. Nothing happened so he tapped it harder. This time the long weapon moved against the side of the hole; even I could hear it from my distance vantage point, and we both felt a jolt of fear, but again, nothing more happened. I moved closer and Mike allowed himself a look over the edge, quickly snagging the gun and hoisting both it and the box free from the deep hole. He gingerly laid our prize onto the ground.
After we carefully cut what might have been a shoe lace, we separated the box and rifle, moving the box a distance away from the weapon. The silver box was clearly not too old, but it was locked and seemed to be empty when we shook it. Finally prying it open, we were disappointed to find that it was empty. As for the rifle, it did seem older; the wood of the thing was in bad shape, but truly neither of us new a thing about it.
Disappointed, we decided in the end to sell out rifle and we were very pleased to get some money for it, though we never found out what kind or how old it was.
It was not until I was recording this story, all these years later that it occurred to me that the box and rifle might have been used in a robbery, or worse.