Blog 47 “I have a Responsibility to Make a Difference” (Gary)
Mark took off a couple days ago for Germany. He said he was spending a few days in New York with his niece and nephew before going to Europe. According to his plan he must be in Germany by now.
I drove home after work and changed clothes to do the hike up The Hill by myself. I was overdue and had to go. I don’t like to have moe than four days between hikes. I was a little concerned about the air quality as I hiked but it seemed to be ok. I checked Spare the Air and it said the air quality was good. I was still suspicious. I found myself making pretty good time and I passed the Hill of Cruelty quite easily.
Here I am again with feelings coming up. I thought again of all those people who died in the concentration camps, for what? Somehow I feel I have a responsibility to make a difference. I just know I felt bad for a brief moment and felt a responsibility. The rest of the hike was a joy and I exchanged appreciation of the day with a group of bikers on their way up The Hill.
I look at myself and think of the sacrifices my ancestors made that have made my world just a little bit better than theirs. What sacrifices will I make and have I made that will make life just a little better for those I love and the generation to follow?
I advise you to look beyond yourself. How or what sacrifices did your ancestors make that helped make your world just a little bit better? What sacrifices will you make for the sake of the generation after you?
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Blog 46 “Don’t let those people have died for nothing” (Gary)
Mark and I were supposed to walk The Hill today. He called and said he couldn't make it. That was a big disappointment for both of us. However, he just moved, and was down because he had to downsize into a marginal neighborhood. His wife is suffering from anxiety, and he is clearly stressed. He is packing for Germany to speak at a conference on forgiveness. His presentation is based on his dissertation about the unique posttraumatic stress of the grandchildren of survivors of the Holocaust. Heavy shit.
I grab the picture of The Respite off my office wall to give to Mark. I am very attached to the picture but I know its better service at this time. It is also a token of my affection for him, and a sign of support for his mission. I drive to his house to send him off. He pulls up to my truck and I take out the picture. We both admire the detail offered in the watercolor paper I used to reprint the picture. He seemed detached, but I understood and allowed it to be.
We hug, I wish him well, and am motivated to say as I choke back emotions, "Don't let those people have died for nothing”. I didn't expect that to come up. I will think of him and his journey for his twelve days. It will be a strenuous trip to do alone with a wife who is in the middle of setting up a new house after a tough move. I tell him I will check in with her.
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Blog 45 A Different Hill Today (Gary)
This one I climb by myself, and wind through the dry blond grass to the top of a small mountain a short distance away from a major mountain artery. There is some traffic noise but I enjoy this piece of isolation. I am sitting amongst old oaks in a barren space. The ocean breeze whips around me. I can look toward the ocean, but smoke from a forest fire keeps me from seeing beyond a distant ridge. It's warm, about 72°, and few bugs to bother me, although they usually don't anyway. I find the more you relax in places like this the more they leave you alone.
I am here early, waiting for the men in our Men of Fire group. What a gift to be able to do my work here. It's a dream fulfilled to be able to meet on a mountain. Usually we meet in my garage (although I call it my barn for another desire). We have been meeting here once a week for about a month. Life is good.
Today I wear my new wedding ring (I have lost two). I am determined to keep this one. My wife gave it to me for our thirtieth wedding anniversary. I guess I am a keeper. I asked for this design—an elk in front of a mountain. The name given to me in a Native American Naming Ceremony is Quiet Elk, which I changed after my New Warrior Weekend to Wild Elk. Maybe it should be Crazy Elk. You can decide that.
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Blog 44 Silence (Gary)
So often I forget that my creative juices moisten in the quiet rather than the business of life. Somehow I have been brought to believe that I am more creative if I am busy. In that state of being busy, thoughts and ideas come up and they only occasionally stick. But in the quiet, when I am still, I create an idea and act on it. It becomes substantial in the stillness. It's like most of these words. They have made it to the paper because I have been quiet enough to hear them. So the truth is that I am more liable to implement a change or creative idea if I spend time in silence. I certainly like the idea of more silent time. The author Carlos Castenada called it the "do nothing" time. Most importantly, it is a time to feel. The one time I saw him, his departing words to everyone were, “Remember the most important thing you can do is to be quiet for one second a day.”
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BLOG 43 Connection (Gary)
When I walk The Hill I am often taken back to distant memories, fond memories of walking the logging roads in Oregon as a kid or walking the sand dunes in North Bay, Oregon, with my brother. When we cross a sandy part of the trail I always think of the time my brother and I walked a great distance until the sand dunes seemed to run out and we turned around. It was warm, it was an adventure, and my brother was leading the way. When I was walking the lumber roads it was with my buddies. We borrowed single-shot .22 rifles, bought a box of fifty rounds for fifty cents, and were off to explore and see what we could hit. My friend David Zimmerman (where are you David?) was a great shot. I watched him shoot the cigarette out of our friend Thorold Simpson's mouth. Those two were tight buddies and now I can't find them. Anyway, this is just one reminiscence out of many when I walk this trail.
Sometimes I want to smell those logging-camp smells of fresh cut wood and chain saw oil again. Sometimes I want to recapture the moment with my brother and my friends. This is about connection. I feel most alive when I am connected.
Find the energy that makes you feel most connected and that is the best medicine. What from your history fuels you? Uncover what it is. Pay attention to what has meaning to you. No judgment; just the truth of what is.
For me it’s like the moment at this morning’s coffee meeting (tea, for me, actually) when my friend Barry taps me on the shoulder and says evenly, “Shut your mouth.” I used to be a mouth breather and he knows I am trying to break the habit. His simple act of caring means a lot to me.
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Blog 42 Why Can’t People Love One Another ? (Gary)
My liver (I guess it's my liver) is hurting (or at least my right side is) so I slept in today and have hung around the house doing simple chores. I noticed a thought that I simply wanted to know why people couldn't love one another and I felt very sad. I think that was a twelve-year-old’s voice. I think that has been my quest for most of my life. Why can't people simply love each other? Why not?
Again, in the quiet I find much revealed. I know I must fully love my wife and risk trusting her without fear, resentment, judgment, or reservation in order to do it. I am also aware that the ego is the enemy of relationship.
Do you allow yourself to love? I mean really love someone. What would be the cost? Are you afraid that would mean you would be responsible for them? What stops you from loving fully? Fear? Judgment? What are your stops?
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Blog 41 The Bond with Nature and Pain (Gary)
Time to round up my equipment; Mark is on his way. Got my heat socks on, my water with Emergen-C, stop watch, camera, StingKill, sun screen, sunglasses, knife, note pad and waterproof pen, cross training shoes that I have to replace every three months, and lastly my special pack for minimal gear. This is part of the fun, having the right equipment is de rigueur. I grab it and head for the door. It's uncool to be late so I am in Mark’s old BMW convertible within a minute of his arrival. It gives me a sense of relief to know that I am ready. It’s a warrior and leader mentality and it also serves the magician part of me that makes things happen (see King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore, 2013).
This day we talk about why we process so much and come to realize both of us were restricted as children. Mark's mother was always afraid he would get hurt so kept him from many normal childhood adventures. He, like me, spent many hours watching others go and do things from the window of his home. We each recognize a large part of the source of our bond: a bond with isolation, frustration, and pain.
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Blog 40 Home (Gary)
I have decided today to stay at “home” and spend most of my time in the back yard. I have watched the ants, played with my dog, had my wife take a couple pictures of me for an application, helped her bathe her dog, cooked a fresh organic vegetable dish for myself, read, worked for ten minutes in the yard, and I am now laying in the sun with my shirt off writing this.
I observe that I am not waiting for anything nor am I anxious to do something. I am not missing anything nor forgetting something I "should" be doing. I am at home. My mind is blank and that is okay. Am I home yet? I don't know. Let me just "sit a spell," as they said in the old west.
Sadly this isn't Essie and Alan's. My mother used to board me with them during the week because of her work. They had a wonderful place with more of a country feel. It was about four acres with apple trees and a swing between two giant redwoods, a dog, and great cooking. I fondly remember the after-school date nut bread and the tapioca pudding, the essence of which I cannot put on the page. Yes, I feel the sadness.
The part I didn’t want to write was that they initially scared me with their fights over Alan’s drinking. I had nightmares and developed a stutter. I remember Essie finding a bottle of Four Roses bourbon under my mattress. Then one day all the fighting and drinking stopped. I am grateful. God knows what I would have been like if that had continued.
Now I am really sad. I remember digging a hole in the ground there just to see what I could find. It was my hole and my sacred adventure no one else knew. I also found interesting old stuff in their old burn pile. Why do I cry about that? I have to guess it's because I felt I had something that was mine and in my aloneness I found cool things to do and adventures I could create. I no longer have that. Was it a sense of home? Can I create it here? Maybe what I most miss is allowing that kid the freedom to adventure.
I have to recognize that The Hill is a large part for my child. My fantasy of bushwhacking through the brush and sitting under a tree no one else can reach, or has even considered getting to from the trail, really appeals to me. I often look off the trail and toy with my desire to cross the high brush to get to an old tree at the top of a hill, to a place where, maybe, no one has ever ventured. Maybe there will be a relic from the past there: a mountain lion’s lair; a drug dealer’s pot farm; the skeleton of an ancient mountain man.
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Blog 39 Just to BE Where I am (Gary)
Just to Be Where I Am (Gary)
I find a lot of my writing happens before I get to the page. So this morning I find myself writing. In absence of myself I go somewhere else in my imagination. Where is that? Can I not just be here? I don’t accept or like where I am, so I travel outside myself. It’s an example of my old childhood habit. I struggle to be here. It’s actually very sweet when I allow myself to just be where I am. I relax and meld into this place. I am present. I find it so difficult to just be still yet my creative mind is at its best when it is free of distraction.
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Blog 38 The Hungry Kid Within (Gary)
As we walk I am aware that I am processing out loud. I talk about my deprived inner child, and how he watched and listened to other children describe their trips to the beach, Hawaii, New York, skiing with their families or trips to Europe. I always felt deprived, and perhaps never knowing what it meant to have “fun.” Now that I have the fortune to allow me to do almost anything I want, I find my little kid often dragging me around the world.
When I was a teenager I also spent a great deal of time looking at magazines and fantasizing. My world of fantasy was helped along by movies, Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs, eventually TV, men’s magazines describing wonderful places, and most certainly Playboy. (I was interested to learn that part of Hugh Hefner’s journey was stimulated by being left by a woman during his time in the military.)
It didn't help that my first friend in high school was enthralled with Hillsborough, California, and what money could buy. He was also into stocks and educated me on the "possibilities" in the market. My little kid's fantasies went wild. The fantasy train was not only running but reinforced.
Now I find that the kid frequently takes me away from reality. I have to stop him and I think that is already in process, as sometimes I don't want to do anything or look at anything. I rarely watch TV or movies anymore because I find them so loaded with bullshit fantasy.
So what is real? I am escaping my child's fantasies more easily every day. Now, in the moment, I am desireless. I wonder if it is okay to be desireless. Of course I have to watch out for that little kid who is always waiting to go for a ride (yeah, maybe like the Sunday car rides my aunt and uncle would take with me when I was three years old). It doesn't take much stimulation from outside or inside to activate his unfulfilled desires or “hunger.”
What if life was as simple as helping people, working on the house, playing with my dog, reading, and spending time with family and friends along with an occasional fun activity, or an adventure? What would it take to be still, to be present? I believe it will just take practice.
Tomorrow is another day of not walking The Hill and yet The Hill is with me wherever I go. It maintains me.
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Blog 37 Examining What’s In The Balance (Gary)
It’s easy to convince ourselves that spending time in excitement is the answer. If we can feel really alive then we must be alive. It’s how we define this feeling of being alive that starts things off. We can get excited about possessions, expensive toys, and that is not where our relaxation lives. We appreciate the way the world goes away when we truly relax. Somehow we need to pay for this relaxation. It often comes to us after a day of strenuous labor, or a challenging day on The Hill, a good sweat, a hot shower, a moment to regard the outcome of the effort. We ask if that’s what it takes to make material desires leave our minds. Monks of every persuasion doing the work of a sacred place come to mind. It makes us wonder if there is a “stressless” desire, and if that is what it means to be without desires. Apparently not, as we can easily find the word stressful and yet stressless is not in our dictionary. How can we hold on to this “desirelessness” (also not in the dictionary), this basic concept of Buddhism.
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Blog 36 The Echo of the Hill (Gary)
Here I am at an ocean bluff vacation home and continuing to think about The Hill and what it means to me. It's amazing what it continues to stir up. I just finished reading the touching story of Skip Conrad in the October 2007 issue of Backpacker Magazine (“Vanishing Act,” p. 68), and how Nature touched a lost man's soul. I know that feeling. I can understand how, when his life was at an end, he hiked to the place he loved, where he was totally accepted, and died without a trace. He was a victim of alcoholism and the resulting pain. Generational wounding can leave you lonely no matter what you do to try and fill the space. When you aren't given love and acceptance you can be lonely no matter what. I know for me (yes, there was alcoholism in my family history as well), the mountain—The Hill—feels like a friendly spirit that is always there.
Maybe it's the dirt we all come from and return to. It always feels like home. It feels safe. That is why I go back again and again. I feel I belong there. It is safe because there is no judgment. It is totally accepting. I don't feel alone.
If you feel lonely give this a try. Find a place in nature you love, truly love, not too far from home, and go there as often as you can. The place can become a friend.
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BLOG 35 Being Alone and Belonging (Gary)
Alone.
Learning a way of being.
Just being.
I ask what is natural?
What is real?
Questions that have been a part of my life for so long.
The hardest thing in the world for me sometimes is to just be where I am.
When alone as a child I always kept my set of toy army men in a special corner of the living room and I would spend hours playing with them around the room. My mother was okay with that as long as I always put them back in that special spot. It turns out another man in our men’s group has pretty much the same story, and he tells me how he had collected over a thousand pieces of an army set similar to mine. It makes me sad writing this, but so it was. The army we wish we had so we wouldn’t feel alone. The sense of belonging to something larger than our selves is sometimes comforting even if the belonging is an illusion of love and connection.
What have you joined that you project the fantasy of belonging onto? What sports team or corporate identity have you taken on belonging to out of a need to belong?
I have seen a number of men who drink together in a work or after-work situation as a way to self-medicate and feel connected. One of my favorite stories is of a high level corporate guy and ex-special ops academy graduate. He was in sales where drinking was part of the protocol. He got a DUI and it woke him up. I coached him and he began his recovery process for himself and for the sake of his family. He was a drinking buddy to a lot of other men. One of his first concerns was how he was going to tell them. How was he going to not drink in front of them or not join them in drinking? I supported him to man up and lead those men. I suggested that he and he alone had the courage and balls to do that—and he did. Last I heard he was doing very well in sobriety and had gotten a number of his colleagues to either stop drinking or at a minimum brought them into a greater awareness of the damage it was creating. “How do I quit? Everyone I know drinks like I do.” I have probably heard that one a thousand times. It was extremely gratifying to have him call me over a year later, as traffic to his work diverted him by my office, and he thought to call. I had been thinking about him and he called just to let me know things were great for him and he was continuing his life of sobriety. What a gift!
Our culture is so very fucked up due to shame and guilt and too many medications to deal with it.
This Walk, This Journey, This Process (Gary)
I know now that I had to do this walk, this journey, this process. (I always say therapy is a process, not a product). Before I could go on to the next chapter of my life I had to come home. I had to grow my values. I had to learn them the hard way. I am thankful for the people around me who gave me a new meaning. These include the quality people I worked with in law enforcement, the Sterling Men's Weekend, my men's teams, my professors, and my new wife who would not settle for a lack of value. I also give credit to Native American wisdom, my children, and the men’s and women's spirits I worked with in therapy. They all helped me create new values. They gave me a foundation of hope and a sense of belonging and self. They brought me closer to home.
But I hadn’t come home yet.
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Blog 37 Leading (Gary)
You know, as I truly relax the external world goes away. Stuff is unimportant, as in possessions. I am just here sitting on my bed in the comfort of my bedroom; I am warm, comfortable, and relaxed after having worked hard in my yard today. Was it the strenuous exercise? Is that what it takes to make everything okay and material desires go away?
What if I could just relax without the strenuous exercise, without walking The Hill for two hours? Less stress = less desire. Ah, to be in a state wherein stress and desire are dispelled. I've been here before. I know how good it feels. How do I hold on to it? Maybe this goes back to less is more? Part of me thinks of toys: Porsches, iPods, swimming pools. These thoughts are in the back corner of my mind, so now I let them seep in a little just to see what I do with them.
The first thing I detect is an energy, an excitement. It's tantalizing and seductive. It's not the fun, it’s more the high, adrenalin, excitement. What if I didn't need excitement? But I have to have some, don't I? Doesn't everyone? “Everyone I know . . .”
Sounds a lot like an alcoholic. “Everyone I know drinks like I do. All my friends . . .” How much excitement do I really need? What does it take the place of now? Or what did it take the place of then? My first reaction as I write this is longing. That's quite a contrast. Desire less vs. excitement now. When I was a kid it was longing vs. excitement. It was an emptiness created by a lack of love and connection. I was hungry. That’s a good word for it. I remember a beautiful Colombian hooker in Costa Rica approaching me and saying, “You are hungry for me, aren’t you?”
That’s in some ways the same. Desire that can take you to places you really shouldn’t go. I said no to that desire back then, but my mind can take me other places. I know excitement can make me a little crazy, like out of control, anticipating the big “WHOOOPEEE!” Is this the Love vs. Fear equation? Physiologically it’s a short shift from excitement to fear. I had a lot of fear and anxiety as a child in an unstable world: My parents’ separation, divorce, and my father's death when I was three or four is a good start. If I could turn that dial just a little I would have excitement instead of emptiness. Do I still want to do that? It’s a quiet slip into loneliness, loneliness slips into fear, anxiety, and longing, thus the desire for excitement comes up so I don't have to feel lonely. So the less I feel lonely, the less I will need excitement. I start desiring when I feel empty.
I realize that my little kid is resentful because he hasn’t been getting what he needs. He is waiting for and expecting what my supervisor in clinical practice used to call “the giant tit in the sky.” Thanks, Maria.
If you are resentful (it’s very common by the way) in relationship, change course. Reverse what you are doing. Lead by loving her and she will open to you. Take the risk. Quit being a brat. I have witnessed this working for my clients far more times than not.
Could I fill up in relationship? I did before, but I was too needy and almost lost the relationship. Thus, I sealed off my deepest needs. I am scared to be that needy again. Am I just practicing not needing, not feeling, and it catches up to me? Am I scared to reveal how needy I am? How needy am I anyway? Shit! What is it I need? Well, based on my story, I need love and stability. I have that, so what's the problem? My wife spends a lot of time trying to make me happy, but it only helps, it is not a healing. The open wound is still there. Maybe if I loved more, rather than waiting; if I took an active role in getting it. I always say, “Lead!” Maybe that's the answer—lead. Better yet, Lead in the Relationship. Lead in loving and “being.” That has worked.
If you grow up being deprived of love this will be hard. Take the risk of giving more rather than expecting more. Join me in having learned a valuable and contrary lesson that is well worth the risk.
It’s also about taking action. Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger, 1997) would say that healing from trauma is running from the tiger rather than staying frozen in fear (fight, flight, or freeze). The way to heal any trauma is to get the energy of it out of the body. Mark and I are healing our trauma by taking charge of it, talking and walking, moving the energy out of the body instead of being stuck or frozen. It’s our long way of healing from complex trauma but it has served us.
Lead in a loving way rather than suffering hurt and being resentful. Create what you need by giving it. Yes, by giving what you want to receive.
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Blog 33 Belief and Distrust (Gary)
page 47
Today I was confronted by my wife’s awakening to the realization that my fantasy life and need for excitement are a substitute for not having a family full of rituals and traditions, that my fantasies are a substitute set of rituals that fill up the space for me. Today when I walked I brought that up The Hill for me to process and shared it with Mark. It struck me when she said it, and I know that it is true.
Beliefs are a big part of the story. When I was a child my beliefs seemed to float. My ground was so unstable I wasn't sure what to believe in. Before I left for the military I had decided to believe in monogamy, the Holy Catholic Church, the sacredness of our bodies, family, the support of friends, John F. Kennedy, my country, family, and friends. That was my game board at the age of nineteen. Before I left for Vietnam I saw hope in being part of a large Irish Catholic family that my future wife offered, a religion that I could belong to, and a woman who could offer me the love I so desperately needed as I was an orphan of sorts. I thought I had found my place, my ground, my missing family home.
I so wanted to believe in something. I believed I was doing the right thing by serving my country and going to Vietnam. I was committed to my duties in the Air Force as an Airman First Class and felt valued. I went to church to be part of this new family, studied my catechism and was learning what it meant to be in relationship with a woman and part of a family. By the time I came back from Vietnam a year later all of it had lost its meaning.
I was thinking today life was like a game board and back then I thought I had accumulated all the right pieces. By the time I returned home it was like someone had swept their hand across the board, wiping it clean. I was bereft of any meaning in life. I felt I had lost all moral stability. I turned myself over to desire and fantasy like my elder colleagues in Vietnam had done. Whatever I desired I would attempt to do. I was in the abyss. If that meant alcohol or women I would go for it. If I thought marrying her would give me something I would go for it. I became a selfish (or more selfish), self-indulgent, dishonest prick: A true prick. At least I was most certainly a man without a ground and a compass.
Choose carefully whom you follow and don’t let numbers choose you.
You see, I needed something to come back to or it wouldn't work. Everything I knew and wanted to believe in was destroyed. Even my culture, my country was not the same. No regard for loyalty to country, despised instead of respected, no one to listen, no one to care. Can you even imagine coming back from risking your life for a year, for your country, for American idealism and past heroic wars, to see kids your age running up a major street, blocks from your home, with the black North Vietnamese Army flag—the flag of an enemy that was killing your brothers, young Americans just like yourself? Strip clubs, drugs, and acid rock had become normal for my generation. That wasn't what I remembered. Where could I go? I was lost big time.
I have to admit that I had a fantasy of being welcomed home by people happy to see me, and pleased that I had returned. In my fantasy people would acknowledge that I had fulfilled some kind of patriotic duty, and they would all want to hear my stories, see my pictures, greet me with hugs and invites to celebrate my return. Virtually everything, save a couple friends in Vietnam, had dissolved. I felt left with nothing. My fiancée, my country, my friends and family had abandoned me. Even the culture I had known was no longer here. Everything had evaporated and I wanted desperately to come home.
I came back but I didn't come back to a home. There was no longer a home here. Everything I thought I could value was gone. My president was assassinated, my fiancé was no longer mine, my enemy’s flag was being carried down my street, my "friends" were clearly more concerned with their little dramas than my experience of war, my music had been replaced, drugs and naked bodies on stage was the style. Miniskirts, hot-pants, and see-through tops were certainly seductive and exciting to see. No matter, I was lost but I was alive and looking with a jaded mind and a fogged lens. I couldn't go back and I didn't see a way forward so I took, and I mean took, what I could. I said okay to the new culture, I said okay to marrying, I said okay to the people who said they wanted to hear my story but then ignored me. I made the best of what I had. I was a lost child again, and I knew how to do that. I would get fed wherever I could. There is a greedy, angry tone to that. I searched for a place to belong. I was raised on chaos and disruption. So, I am back, but am I really?
God bless my fellow soldiers who never came home, who never had the chance.
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Blog 32 Vietnam in Half Moon Bay (Gary)
Well, we have to stop at the nurseries. So here I sit. Actually I am enjoying the spot in which I sit. Cars are zooming by, but the air is clean. Across the road is a thick forest of bushes. I imagine trying to push my way into them and go anywhere. It would be like hiding in the jungles of Vietnam. Yes, I can still go there. How would I hide from the enemy? Thank God I enlisted in the Air Force instead of being drafted by the Army. Good decision, Plep. But what are you going to do when you have lost your driver's license? I couldn't chase girls and I was tired of digging ditches. Three years, eleven months, seventeen days, and a wake up (until discharge, but who was counting?). I can't walk The Hill today but at least I am still here to walk it. I am grateful for fate’s subtle shifts in direction.
The Long Journey Home (Gary)
No doubt my most direct contact with the ghosts of war happened to me while leading a Vision Quest wilderness experience. We had a base camp at the top of a ridge in the Ventana Wilderness of Big Sur, California. I picked this particular location to be removed from civilization.
I was milling around camp with my co-leader on a damp and quiet morning. I remember it as being slightly foggy and misty. I looked down the mountain simply to take in the always-gorgeous view. I was stunned and taken aback as I saw five Vietnamese carrying rifles on their shoulders and wearing the same garb as the Viet Cong, the traditional black pajamas and cone hats. My immediate thoughts were dark, and I was suddenly caught between two worlds. One I knew from being in a war in Vietnam, and the one in the present moment. I had to keep asking myself the question, “Are they here to kill me, or are they just civilians hunting for food?” Back and forth, back and forth, past to present, present to past. I wanted my gun and I didn't have it.
I watched them walk through the back of our campsite, and felt myself between two worlds of anticipation, trying to sort out reality. That was a scene I will never forget. I kept thinking, “How many of them can I get before they get me?”
Big breath.
The darkness stayed for a long time.
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Blog 31 The Echo of the Hill
Page 42
The Echo of the Hill (Gary)
Here I am at an ocean bluff vacation home and continuing to think about The Hill and what it means to me. It's amazing what it continues to stir up. I just finished reading the touching story of Skip Conrad in the October 2007 issue of Backpacker Magazine (“Vanishing Act,” p. 68), and how Nature touched a lost man's soul. I know that feeling. I can understand how, when his life was at an end, he hiked to the place he loved, where he was totally accepted, and died without a trace. He was a victim of alcoholism and the resulting pain. Generational wounding can leave you lonely no matter what you do to try and fill the space. When you aren't given love and acceptance you can be lonely no matter what. I know for me (yes, there was alcoholism in my family history as well), the mountain—The Hill—feels like a friendly spirit that is always there.
Maybe it's the dirt we all come from and return to. It always feels like home. It feels safe. That is why I go back again and again. I feel I belong there. It is safe because there is no judgment. It is totally accepting. I don't feel alone.
If you feel lonely give this a try. Find a place in nature you love, truly love, not too far from home, and go there as often as you can. The place can become a friend.
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Blog 30 My Body and the Hill (Gary)
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My Body and The Hill (Gary)
I continue to battle a glitch in my side. I have been trying to unravel the cause for about five years. I am sitting here hoping (a word I don't like because most people hope rather than do) that the chiropractor I saw this morning has the answer. I am taking a pill once a day to activate some facet or part of my liver that has not been working properly. At least that is the conclusion I have come to. Some years ago I suspected that when I do therapy I restrict my breathing with my intention to listen. Later I realized it was probably more the result of living in a combat zone and staying clenched. When we are in fear one of the primary reactions to stress is to clench our muscles and organs. My restricted diaphragm has locked the muscles next to it and caused digestive and muscular problems. My sit-ups have further tightened those muscles by putting even more pressure on the diaphragm. Now, today that is all resolved, but for seven years I have been somewhat disabled due to my PTS and restriction. If the pill continues to work, it will definitely change my life. I can be hopeful.
I now understand what my mother used to say: “If you have your health, you have everything." HO to that. It has taken a great deal of my energy. So many times I have felt depleted because of it. I value my body having learned to use it doing construction at age sixteen and digging ditches for the utility company when I was eighteen. Now I have to exercise in some strenuous manner at least three to four times a week.
My foreman gave me this gift by example. He, in his late forties, led his crew by working ahead of them. We would try to keep up. Thank you, George Wettach. I would have to say I am continuing to follow your lead and my health is far better than most men my age because of it. I can easily do 9-mile walks, bench 135, press 60lb. dumbbells for 12 reps, and do 40 pushups, all with relative ease. (Note: Gary loves to brag when he’s being humble. — M.Y.)
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Blog 29 Being Alone and Belonging Continued (Gary)
Foxe kits looking fo their mother and responding to my call.
Page 42 (Fox kits coming down the hill to see me- priceless)
I have seen a number of men who drink together in a work or after-work situation as a way to self-medicate and feel connected. One of my favorite stories is of a high level corporate guy and ex-special ops academy graduate. He was in sales where drinking was part of the protocol. He got a DUI and it woke him up. I coached him and he began his recovery process for himself and for the sake of his family. He was a drinking buddy to a lot of other men. One of his first concerns was how he was going to tell them. How was he going to not drink in front of them or not join them in drinking? I supported him to man up and lead those men. I suggested that he and he alone had the courage and balls to do that—and he did. Last I heard he was doing very well in sobriety and had gotten a number of his colleagues and veterans to either stop drinking or at a minimum brought them into a greater awareness of the damage it was creating. “How do I quit? Everyone I know drinks like I do.” I have probably heard that one a thousand times. It was extremely gratifying to have him call me over a year later, as traffic to his work diverted him by my office, and he thought to call. I had been thinking about him and he called just to let me know things were great for him and he was continuing his life of sobriety. What a gift!
Our culture is so very _______ due to shame and guilt and too many medications to deal with it. Let’s risk opening our hearts and go much deeper than beers and a ball game.
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Blog 28 Today I simply celebrate the week with Gratitude (Gary)…………AHO!
I just returned from the hike and celebrate the week with this picture from today. The week has included abundance, a meeting with Bessel van den Kolk MD, “The Body keeps The Score” and being able to gift him a copy of our book, a visit with my friend Susan Hennings MFT who escorted my fellow veterans back home from Vietnam as a flight attendant, recovering my physical ability to do the walk, and research into walking sticks only to discover one off trail just prior to the gate up the hill. I am grateful for this beautiful day.
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