Profession #54: This Is NOT How I Was Raised

“Are you there?” read the subject line of a recent email from a friend.

“Yikes,” I thought, and took the question much more to heart than she likely intended.  “Am I here?” I asked myself…meaning, am I really showing up, front and center; awake, aware, connected to and grateful for, not only my life, but for the lives of those who love me?  “Yes and no,” was the answer. Embodying being here is my primary focus right now AND I get way distracted… a lot ... and thus lose touch with loved ones.

My friend’s inquiry reinforced a thought that has occurred to me again and again:  to keep up my travelogues (i.e. write) could free several caged birds through one door.  Free bird #1, I was born with an affinity for language and to allow that gift expression would, I assume, please the Source that gave it to me.  Free bird # 2, playing with words and facilitating connections gives me joy. Birdie #3, and super-dooper important, it takes a village to keep this stone gathering no moss. If I were sponsoring a youngster in Africa, I would appreciate some periodic updates on how my investment is benefiting the kid. Obviously, my needs are nowhere near that of a helpless babe in an impoverished country; I employ the comparison trusting you get my point.

In case you don’t, I’ll be specific…there are the friends that let me use their mailing address and keep my few remaining possessions at their house so I don’t have to pay for storage… and the friends who tote me to and from the airport every time I come through base camp (Dallas), and the friends that let me borrow a car so I don’t have to rent one… and the loved ones that let me stay with them between work gigs. And then there are those of you who may not offer regular, tangible assistance, but just as importantly, care. You ask; you listen/read and, if your mind does conjure up fear-based what-if’s that could happen to a single woman exposing herself to all sorts of unfamiliar people, precarious circumstances and treacherous bacteria in foreign lands, you keep them to yourself. That’s helpful.

Bottomline is, I am grateful for all the support I receive and sharing updates is one way I could express it, if I weren’t so cowardly and uncommitted when it comes to writing. I’m working on it…..

Anyway! Back on the surface… the direct answer to my friend’s question is, “Yes, I am ‘here’ and ‘here’ refers to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.”   Isn’t that the same place I was last time I posted a travelogue just over a year ago? Yep, it sure is. Have I been here the whole time? Nope, I haven’t…I left and ran a jagged configuration of migratory routes between Cuba,  East Coast-West Coast- Central U.S.,  and Central America, with a new destination, Tanzania, thrown in for freshness.  Of course, there are a zillion tales to be told from those adventures, but that’s not what’s on my mind and heart.

Here-now I'm back at the Lake in Guatemala for a very specific reason: to learn what, if I had my life to do over again, my community would have begun teaching me the day I busted out of Mom’s womb.  I’m talking about the basics of what it means for a soul to suit up in flesh and take up residence on a planet whirling through a galaxy with no end in sight.  I want to know what this whole business of inhabiting a body, experiencing emotions, mitigating a mind and stewarding a spirit is about. At age 47 a colossal Duh has flattened me to the floor:  why would I expect to feel fabulous and fulfilled when those 4 aspects of being a human are not kept in perfect balance and in a state of constant collaboration?  Is it any surprise, really, that physically I don’t enjoy radiant health when I don’t treat my body like Cuban men treat their 57 Chevy’s? (i.e. still purring and glistening in the new millennium as if they just rolled out of the factory yesterday) 

I know it's not a Chevy...work with me.

 How could I not suffer from anxiety and depression when I “should” all over my own emotions, denying them or stuffing them rather than trusting them? Why wouldn’t my brain be foggy and my memory flailing when I judge and doubt my own brilliant thoughts and intuitive hits because I fear they won’t be embraced? How can I expect my spirit to soar to its highest potential when I don’t allow time, space and nourishment daily for activities that would do for it what a thundershower does for an August afternoon? And, finally, the big momma question of them all:  Why wasn’t the hunka, hunka burnin’ truth behind my colossal Duh ever conveyed to me by the institutions in charge of my formation? the schools, the churches, the sports teams, the clubs, my family, the sororities, the professional organizations, the government? Ignorance is the short answer. Lack of consciousness and/or a desire for external power is the more complicated one.  So, here I am, age 47, starting over at a retreat center in the mountains of Guatemala, learning how to take care of my four aspects of being human and training in how to share that knowledge with others.

The hiccup...the glitch… is that this TRUTH to which I am arriving is NOT how I was raised and it throws a monkey wrench in the works.

Sitting cross-leg on a cushion and chanting OM is NOT how I was raised. I was raised to nail my butt to the church pew and hold as still as that limp Jesus in front of me...lest I want a similar fate to befall me. 

Honoring my body, calming my mind and centering my being the first hour of every morning with yoga and meditation is NOT how I was raised.  I was raised to slug a mug of coffee and rush off to heart-deadening obligations.

Sharing bathrooms, kitchens, and everything but my underwear with a bunch of strangers from all corners of the world is NOT how I was raised. I was raised to work hard to make enough money so I can buy MY OWN, hoard MY OWN and maybe share...or better yet, loan MY STUFF to approved brethren, if they promise to give it back or return the favor.

This clash of raising and reality came to a head the other Sunday at Ecstatic Dance. I was in the altered state allowing my body uninhibited movement can produce when my being asked me to pause and write. The following is from my journal:

If my momma could see me now, she would shit…shit her britches brown. Sorry, Mom, I know you wouldn’t approve of that language anymore than you would approve of this bunch of hoodlums I’m shaking my booty off with. I know it’s not how you raised me, AND at 47, I’m realizing that, in the end, how strictly I and others adhere to social norms is not what is going to save me. How this tattooed, pierced and ill-dressed bunch of barefooted hippies with hair past their asses appear on the outside is not my concern.  What matters to me is if they found my lost wallet between bus seats, would something on their insides move them to go out of their way to get it back to me? If enlarging a loop the size of a tuna can in their ear lobes makes them somehow kinder to my cat, have at…plug a Michelin tire in that hole for all I care. If covering every ounce of their hides with mermaids, snakes, anchors and baby’s daddy’s names keeps them scooping their dogs’ poop out of my yard, they can tattoo the undersides of their eyelids for all I care. What’s it to me, if piercing their private parts moves them to wave kindly rather than shoot me the finger (or something more deadly) when I accidentally cut them off in traffic? By all means poke a hole in every piece of dangling flesh God gave you, if it helps you be understanding.

And as for these jeans I dance in, Mom, I know what you are thinking. No, I was not attacked by a pack of starving hyenas.  All of these holes were already in these pants when I found them under a bush on the side of the street in an Oakland neighborhood.  That’s right, Mom, I am wearing homeless jeans that may have been worn by a homeless person, and no, I did not boil them before putting them on, and yes, I know they are a size 8 and I wear a size 2, and yes, I know the waistline bunches up like old lady elastic under my belt and I know rolling the bottoms up four turns makes me look like I’m wearing toddler arm floaties around my ankles…AND, Mom, …I don’t care. I like these jeans and I will wear them. They have a story. I have a story. I feel free when I wear them, free enough to dance as if I were raised to love everyone as your Jesus asked us to, unconditionally.

The jeans not dancing

So, dear friend who ask a three word question that provoked a 1,499 word answer, you now know where I am. For the friend who asked on Facebook, “What are you doing?”  I’ll be brief: I just spent a month training to be a yoga and meditation teacher for Las Piramides del Ka.  I am now a student in their three month Sun Course at their secluded retreat center in the mountains. I am sharing the space and the process with a Brit, an Aussie, a Belgian, a Mexican, two Israelis and two U.S. Americans ranging in age from 28-42. Our Mon-Sat schedule is 7a.m. yoga, 10 a.m metaphysics and 5 p.m. meditation. Between those we practice…practice living in community (which requires peaceful resolution of who moved my cheese?), listening to the teacher within, nourishing our bodies, accepting emotions that come up, taking responsibility for our own happiness and tutoring local kids in their English studies. Sundays we rest, as the Good Lord suggests. We will take a vow of silence for the last 40 days of our retreat that ends on the summer equinox to go deep within to the only place where true fulfillment resides. After that, the plan is, that I will assume the role of the Guardian of Silence here, and facilitate for the next group the experience I will have just completed. I will teach yoga and meditation, assist the foundress and senior teachers of the center and take care of the students.   

  This is the first time in seven years that I will be in the one place for more than a few months. My nomadic spirit welcomes the reststop.

I feel so much better now that I have acted on the call to write this. Thanks for reading…really, it means much. I will be periodically checking email until the vow of silence. Always love hearing from you.

For pics of the place click www.laspiramidesdelka.com 

Much love and many blessings from the highlands of Lago Atitlan,

Gigi

Profession #53, Why I Do What I Do, part II (San Marcos, Guatemala)

Holy Smokes! Has it really been three months, six months, nine months... A YEAR AND TWO MONTHS since I last posted? That’s time enough for me to have gotten pregnant, had a baby and started on a second!  Making kids is not what I have been up to since last December.  I did, however, help raise a whole herd of them May-August at the ranch in Glen Rose, Texas. 

        I got a good start on a travelogue in late August, but chicken shit that I am, didn't finish it. That feels harsh to say, AND sumthin's gotta give. I continue to torture myself by feeling the call to write and then refusing to do it. In keeping with how I roll, I am going to do something about it. I greet you at this very second from AA flight 2283 in route to Las Piramides (www.laspiramidesdelka.com), a retreat center in Guatemala, where I hope to get a spin on “the issue.” 
   
      When I was there last fall with my LeapNow students, the foundress of the center facilitated a guided meditation that was intended to lead us toward clarity of purpose. After 30 minutes of wandering through a desert landscape that we populated with symbols from our subconscious minds, we were asked to open the box waiting for us at the end of the path. It was to hold a clue to our destinies. Any guesses as to what was in my box? That’s right, a g.d. book…not just any book, but an open book displaying an unfinished text with an abandoned pen resting on the page. “Damn it!” I whispered to myself when I saw it. Is there no escape from this? Why not a monkey wrench or a fishing pole? Something I can get a handle on? Can’t I have a concrete calling in life like study mechanics and fix cars or arrange flowers and decorate graves, you know, something that doesn’t pull your pants down in front of God and everybody. It would be nice if it didn't require a gabazillion hours of sitting still, too. 

            As if that meditation experience wasn’t enough, the following happened just a few days ago:  A new lecturer was added to the itinerary of my last Cuba tour. She was absolutely fabulous….stunning, brilliant, over-the-top. She struck me as a woman who had fulfilled her highest potential.  Afterwards, when I expressed to her how much she inspired me, she said, “We have a belief here in Cuba that for a woman to say that she has lived a full life, she must do three things: raise a kid, plant a tree and WRITE A BOOK.  I have done them all, so I feel complete.”

 If we count the baby goats, I can check off number one. As for number two, I have credit to spare, but number three…that bloody number three….her comment shook a shaker of salt into an open wound.

I’m at my wits’ end with the pull and tug of it, so I’m off to see what thirty days of yoga, metaphysics, meditation and communal living might lend to the cause. I figured another step might be to get back into the swing of my blog, so, to follow you have what I wrote last summer and never posted. Even though it’s not current, it seems important to share. You’ll understand why.          

High Hope Ranch, summer 2015

        What in the world has become of Gigi? Why hasn’t she written? Some of you have asked. I've asked myself many times since posting # 52 last December, which I just reread. "I am the happiest I have ever been," it boasts in closing. 

       “Really?”  I respond now in disbelief. Who the hell wrote that? To where did she disappear? Why did ‘happy’ cease to be an accurate declaration of her reality?

       Truth is, late winter/early spring my whole soul went into a cramp...I'm talking one of those Charley horses that jerks your ass straight up out of the bed in the middle of the night and makes you scream the f-word (or whatever equivalent expletive your filters allow). A dank, dark, wicked mental/emotional space is what I’m talking about. I know the sensation  like the back of my hand, because I’ve been through it so many times and each time it’s over I beg, please, please, please can that, PLEASE, be the last one? 

      Depression remains a colossal mystery to me.  Every time it comes I cycle through the same set of questions: what have I done to bring this on myself?  is it genetic? biological? a chemical imbalance? diet related? conditioning? a character flaw? circumstantial? a punishment from God? None of that? All of that? Some of that? No clear answers. My only recourse is accept that it happens, keep trying to minimize it and work to find some purpose for it, which brings me to the subject of this travelogue, the most recent headline to shatter our hearts: 

“Ex-broadcaster Kills 2 On Air in Virginia Shooting; Takes Own Life” (New York Times August 26, 2015)

          Of course, all atrocities to hit the news impact me negatively, but this one in particular has fouled me to the marrow and lingers. First, it literally “hits home,” given that WDBJ in Roanoke was the station I grew up watching. Second, the rejection Vester Flanagan suffered because he was gay resonates. Third, and most importantly, given the emotional and psychological state in which I have spent most of this summer, I get why he did what he did.

       I do not justify it. I don't condone it. It's not the route I would take to try to alleviate my own suffering, but I understand it. I get what it is to feel on the brink of drastic measures, of doing whatever to make the painful, crazy crap churning through your head, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week stop. Vester turned his violence outward; I (and millions of others) turn mine (ours) inward.

       It’s like this:  when darkness comes, dismal, obsessive thoughts start cycling through my head and my mind feels like a windshield that’s been smashed with a hammer. Tracing the cracks never leads to anything but desperation, yet I do it compulsively.  Emotionally, nothing matters and simultaneously, every miniscule detail is so important that if I don’t attend to it, the world will end.  And all the while, Gigi has to keep showing up…showing up to work, showing up for people, showing up for commitments, acting like everything is fine. Why has to? Because ninety-eight percent of the people I encounter do not have the emotional tools to allow a person in pain to be authentically present. Mainstream institutions in our society (schools, churches, social organizations, etc) have not trained us in how to stay our ground while holding a loving space for others.  To the contrary, if another’s state of being makes us uncomfortable, we are taught to either judge and reject the person or try to fix him/her.

The only reason I am still here and have not cracked beyond repair (which in my case would have meant suicide and in Vester’s meant murder) is a gifted psychotherapist allowed me to experience unconditional, unwavering acceptance of my authentic state of being. Session after session, I’d show up in all  manner of a mess…mad, sad, furious, self-deprecating, manic, glad, hopeful, desperate…it didn’t matter; each time I, and ALL of my emotions, were met with the same nonjudgemental welcome. All she asked is that I be honest with myself and her about what was really going on inside.  She modeled for me how to witness another’s suffering with compassion and love, and eventually I learned to do it for myself and that is what saved me.  It could have saved Vester and his victims.

A fear is rising in me at this moment that some of you will not believe that mental illness hurts as much as I claim it does.  “How can this be?” you might be thinking. “How can it really be as bad as she says it is when I know that since last December she has led 6 trips to Cuba, worked on the ranch, hosted her girlfriend from Spain, visited family and friends, and apprenticed as a Dream Quest guide. How could she possibly do all that and be in the depths of despair to the degree described?”  All I know to tell you is that I have learned to hold two realities at once. What you don't know is, if a depression is on me, while it seems I am looking you in the eyes and participating in our conversation, another part of me sees myself hanging from the tree out the window behind you, or stepping in front of the car rushing by us or jumping off the balcony where we are having lunch.  Yes, I'm responding to your questions, and I'm smiling and I'm making sense AND simultaneously a clip of a scene that will stop the suffering is playing over and over somewhere in the vicinity.

         So, what is the difference between Vester and me? Why did he act on the scene in his head and I don’t?

Love and Maya Angelou.

        Even though I cannot feel it when I am in a depression, I know that I am very loved. If I can just hang in there until an experience turns me back toward the light, eventually the cramp in my soul will ease and I can begin to crawl out of the hole.  In the instance of this summer, it happened like this:  I was sitting cross-legged in a sand pile in the backyard of the house where I spent the first 18 years of my life.  Smack dab in the middle of assisting Batman in his urgent rescue of Robin (who had been buried alive in a jar of dirt!), my four-year-old nephew pauses a narration of  “Oh No!... K-whash!... Boom!...Hewelp!” to whisper,

"Aunt Gigi, I wuv it when you play wiff me...". 

       He's got no ulterior motive. An unadulterated heart had expressed an appreciation for my being. It was enough. Grace swept down to a sandbox that afternoon to save two buried birds with one little boy.

       As for Maya Angelou…spring semester of my sophomore year of college, my English professor offered extra credit for attending a lecture by some visiting black, female author. I had never heard of her and never would have attended was I not an extra credit whore in those days.  Maya glided out onto the stage in a flowing, angelic dress, paused before the podium, gripped both sides of it, leveled her chin so as to meet the gaze of the audience and belted out in song, "I SHALL NOT BE MOVED." She was reciting a line from her poem “Our Grandmothers,” which is about the resilience of black women. (http://www.ctadams.com/mayaangelou25.html)

Twenty-eight years later I can trace that memory with pinpoint precision to the place where Maya laid out a blanket and broke bread with my soul. When darkness comes and I am tempted to give up, I dredge up that image of Maya and belt out my own version of, "I shall not be moved!" 

        To bring this overdue T-logue to a close, I pose the question, why would I share this intimate, intimate stuff with you? Why would I make myself so incredibly transparent and vulnerable? 

        As I said before, the primary reason is to find a purpose for my suffering. “Be the change you want to see,” said Ghandi. I want to see the Vester Flanagan’s of the world (and we know there are thousands more out there) have the courage to say, “I am in pain, I am in trouble and I need help,” and have it met with, “Thank you for your honesty; thank you for the courage to take responsibility for your own suffering before it leads you to commit acts of harm. Let’s find an unconditionally loving space and the support you need for you to face your demons.”  

And so it. 

Travelogue 52, High Hope Ranch, TX: Why I Do What I Do

Greetings My Dearest Friends and Family,

Let’s do a spearmint! It’s 8:21 a.m. on December 19, 2014. The Miami flight from which I am writing you is due to land at 9:44 a.m. Dallas time, which gives me a window of two hours, more or less, if we factor in the time change and subtract out the turn-off-and- store-all-electronic-devices dead air space. I’m going to challenge myself to crank out a travelogue, salga como salga, (however it might turn out) before the wheels of this Boeing 326 hit the tarmac.

 

It seems eons since I chased that snake around the henhouse (or it chased me, depending on how you look at it) in travelogue #  51. A lengthy list of transformative experiences has transpired during the past six months, the most significant of which, I will start with:

In the most unsuspecting circumstances, I experienced a nano-second of enlightenment and realized WHY THE HELL I DO WHAT I DO. Decades of anguish over feeling confused as to why exactly I exist dissolved into a rush of peace with one fierce lurch of a chicken bus rolling down a Nicaraguan mountainside. 

The story goes like this: We (10 Leapnow students, my co-leader and I) were staying on a coffee plantation 40 minutes from any place civilized enough to have internet and I needed to go into town to take care of logistics and “stuff.”  After a day of getting the to-do’s done, I missed the first bus back and was forced to take the one that everyone and their uncle who has a job jumps on when the work day is over. Typical Latin America public transport situation-- a 1970’s, U.S.A retired school bus resuscitated from the junkyard, driven to Central America, packed 30 people over capacity and called “better than hoofin’ it”. That wasn’t a complete sentence and I know it, but I’m under a time constraint here. Anyway, the space was so packed that not only was there no place to sit on the bus, there was no room to have both feet flat on the floor. I had one resting on top of the other so the lady beside me had somewhere to set her sack of carrots.

Let me interject a few details here so this story will have at least as much momentum as the bus on which it took place. It was dark. The windows were fogged up, which is bound to happen when 80 sweaty bodies are crammed into a space made for 50 in a tropical climate on a rainy night. I was near the back of the bus. I had told the money taker where I wanted off, but that was over 40 minutes and 20 stops ago. Even if he did remember, I don’t know how he’d ever relay the message back to me, so I thought it in my best interest to be proactive and make my way to the front. There are situations when I’m happier than a hog in hippy doo doo to be abnormally small; overcrowded buses is one of them. Like a snake gliding through dense jungle, I slithered my way up 25 rows and popped out in the open space by the gear shift.

“Will you let me off at Santa Emilia, please?” I asked politely, just as the bus rolled to a stop.

“Santa Emilia? Where in Santa Emilia? Santa Emilia is 10 km long and has 5 stops, two of which we already passed.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “At the farm they just told me to tell you, the hacienda called  Santa Emilia. It’s a coffee plantation.”

“Honey, there is nothing in Santa Emilia except haciendas and coffee plantations. Lots of them. I don’t know where you are talking about,” he responded and closed the folding door.

Well, hell. Now what? Should I stay on in hopes that we haven’t indeed already passed it? Or should I risk getting off, ask for help and start walking down the road where I’ve seen gangs of young men with machetes traversing from coffee farm to coffee farm?  Over and over I’ve been warned that Nicaragua can be one of the most dangerous countries in Central America, if one doesn’t stay in a group. Indecision. Get off? Stay On? The driver’s loyalty, with reason, was with his exhausted countrymen, eager to get home to their families. Without announcement, he let off the brake and stepped on the gas. Now, given that, first, I was front heavy with my sundries-bulging backpack hanging off my chest, AND my right hand was buried deep in my pocket to protect my wallet AND my other hand was carrying a sack of apples, AND I was free standing from the crowd….given all of that, when he made his move, there was nothing to stop me from a full-force face plant on the front windshield…

…nothing that is, except for blind human kindness…in the form of a benevolent, anonymous knee-jerk hand unrestrained by differentness. Just as I was about to eat glass, I felt a force from behind grab a fistful of my raincoat and pull me back to steady. 

“Tell me more about the place where you are staying,” says a woman’s voice.

“Well, it’s a coffee plantation that is owned by a Turkish man and lots of people work there and there is library project for the kids.”

“Do the workers live in  casas ecologicas?”

“Yes! The bioconstruction houses!”

“We’ve still got a way to go,” she assured me and told the driver, “She’s at La Cazona. Drop her off at the entrance.”

Here’s what touched me so deeply: the whole rest of the way she never let go of my coat. With each lurch forward and roll back she adjusted her grip to keep me steady on my feet. This  woman, a complete stranger, who given the condition of her teeth and clothes, has much greater things to worry about than some lost gringa on a chicken bus, made my wellbeing her priority. Dang, I thought, when walking up the dirt road to the coffee plantation, THAT is why I do what I do. I nomad around, detached, confused, vulnerable, riding the edges of uncertainty and discomfort, so I can experience humans rising to their highest potential. I expose myself to strangers, often in harsh conditions to cultivate contrast, so that we, both they and I, can show up in our human glory. It is enough. Her simple act of loving kindness is enough. Me appreciating it is enough.  Giving and gratitude are enough. I can let go of the rest.

***************

New Year’s Eve, 2014


I’d be a big, fat liar if I said I adhered to “salga como salga”. I've spent this afternoon finishing and grooming the above story, my belated holiday gift to you. I really must get into the kitchen to prepare a Spanish tortilla for this evening's potluck. I will be bringing in the New Year at the ranch with my loved High Hope family and friends. I'm leaving a huge gap between chasing the snake in the henhouse and undergoing an epiphany on a chickenbus. TBF! (To be filled!)

In the meantime, know that I am the happiest I have ever been and wish you the same for 2015!

Much love, G

Travleogue 51, High Hope Ranch, TX: Loose with a Snake in the Hen House

If I had a nickel for every travelogue I’ve started since the last….well, I’d have about 35₡, but you get the idea. As so often happens, I start and stop, and then end up greeting you from an airport gate after the fact. This time it’s A13 at DFW, awaiting a flight to La Guardia, NY to connect with a twin engine to Mangus Holler, VA. Actually, the plane will land at Roanoke Regional Airport and my cousins will ferry me on up to their house in the Holler in their Ford Taurus station wagon.

So much has happened at the ranch this summer, the most amusing of which I will begin with.  I had originally named this t-logue, “So Way Very Woo Woo on the Ranch,” because that better encompasses the past two months, but I know “Loose with a Snake in the Hen House” will draw the fair weather readers out of the woodwork like “Blessing the Prostate” did.  Is that manipulative? Doesn’t matter. Why lie? I like for people to read my stuff after I invest hours and soul in grooming it.

Before I get into the details of the story, there’s something you’ve got to understand: I have SUFFERED from an abnormally severe fear of snakes most of my life. It’s not that I hate snakes. I don’t have anything against them personally; I’ve just been absolutely petrified of them since I was a child. I’m talking night sweats, daymares and hallucinations about them. People think I’m this tough mountain girl adventure traveler, but truth is, I’ve denied myself many a pleasurable experience due to the mere possibility of a snake on a trail making me turn back….   

 Anyway, my fear is quite explainable given that where I come from, when you go to visit the neighbors, even before they ask how your momma’s been, they want to know, “Seen any snakes?” And if you have, well, it’s a sure thing that they, or someone they know, have killed one that was bigger-n-meaner.  From diapers to death, every time you walk out the door somebody’s warning you, “Now, you watch yourself for snakes, ya hear?!” There might be three inches of snow on the ground, but when you go out to the woodpile to get some logs—“Watch for snakes!” So, on top of the “normal” ophidiophobia that most people suffer, I’ve been brainwashed into believing…..believing what? I don’t know exactly, other than I should check under my plane seat before sitting down because a black mamba might be lurking there, escaped from the carry-on of an African traveler. 

      As a final bit of evidence to prove my point, just last week when I was telling my oldest brother about clearing trails on the ranch, did he respond with curiosity, enthusiasm or some sort of interest beyond a stern warning?  No. “Watch out for snakes! They’ve got some mighty big rattlers down there in Texas I hear,” was what he said.

The depths of my fear now well established for my reader, I move on with the story: When the ranch manager, Chandler, went on vacation, I took over the chicken duties, which I was thrilled about, because I like the routine of their care: open up the hen house at dawn, periodically collect the eggs during the day, feed and water in late afternoon and then close them up for safekeeping at dusk. Silly as it sounds, it just fills my bucket to find a white oval or two waiting on me in a nest. Well, about two days into my taking over the guard, I ducked in for the noonday egg check, started to stick my hand in one of the cubby holes and saw the hay move. That’s not normal. 

        It’s dark in the hen house, perhaps for ambiance, but I’m not sure. The closest I’ve ever come to laying an egg is ovulation, and I get grumpy, as do the hens, I gather, having heard how they cackle and raise a ruckus when they are on the roost. I imagine some soft lighting could be comforting to one working so hard to produce, so maybe Chandler keeps it dim on purpose, but then again, it might just be due to the building materials at hand at the time of construction. Anyway! Of importance is that I couldn’t half see in the box, until my face was inches from the entrance and my pupils adjusted enough to make out a scaly, tan and dark brown pattern doubled up on itself amongst the straw. 

I just about shit my britches! Snake! It’s a snake! I knew this was eventually going to happen.  It’s not uncommon that a snake gets in the henhouse. What’s never happened before is that I’ve had to deal with it. Somebody else has always been around to handle the situation while I wallflowered by the door. Here was my chance to face my fear and I wasn’t going to wimp out.

         That decided, while I’m standing there,

1.   trying to shoo away the hens that are prancing around my feet waiting their turn at a laying box like a bunch of college girls outside the portapotties at a beerfest

2.    trying to get my heart rate down to under 120 and my courage up to full throttle

3.   trying to get a picture on my iphone, because this IS going on Facebook!

4.   trying to figure out how/where exactly it is that I am to clamp down on the snake with this fancy trashpickerupper snake stick I’ve seen them use...
 
a serpent head peeks out of the middle box, turns a quick left and starts into the adjacent box.  

Time’s up. It is making a move, and so must I. Using the snake stick, I grab hold of what has made it out of the first box, but not into the second, and pull. I swear, it was like trying to slurp in that infinite spaghetti noodle that spans from your tonsils to the bowl and ends up dangling down past your bellybutton. I know I looked like a six-year-old landing her first fifteen pound catfish on a surf rod. I had about the first 1/3 of the serpent stuffed into the trashcan, when the other 2/3 finally flopped out of the box, and wouldn’t you know, wedged down between the wall and the guinea cage on the floor. I pulled and pulled until my hand gave out, the pressure on the stick eased and dang! before I could bat an eye it was on the loose and racing around the henhouse looking for a way out.

       “Holy Fuck,” were the exact words that came out of my mouth. The snake started up a wall, I clamped down on it again, this time with a death grip, and yellow shit came spurting out of his mouth. “Oh, geezus, I’m hurting it!” I thought and let go…and then realized those were egg yolks, not snake guts. Too late.  Hysterical hens flailing about. Gigi prancing around like she’s barefoot on hot coals. Startled snake slithering laps around the baseboard. It was an ice pageant of chaos in Hell.

          I had it trapped though, you see, because a rat snake is skinny enough to get in through the holes in the chicken wire, but after it eats an egg or chick, it’s too fat to get back out. We were stuck with each other; a 5’ woman with a 5’ snake in a 10’x10’ chicken coop. I suppose I could have opened the door and let us both run like hell, but I had set my sights on facing a fear and I wasn’t chickening out.

         Exhausted in sync, everybody paused to breathe and I grabbed him again, 12 inches behind the head. I was craning him over to the can, when the dangling four feet of tail slap-wrapped around a roosting pole. Dag-nab-it! I pulled and pulled, but I didn’t have a chance in hell of out muscling this rascal.

        Now, math and measurements have never been my strong suit, but I do have enough of a grasp on the subject to know that if I grabbed him further down his body he would have less tail to wrap and I’d have a better chance of getting all of him into the can. So, I let go, he relaxed, I grabbed for the midsection and had him! …for the five seconds it took that snake to take advantage the shortsightedness of my mathematical calculations. Five foot snake ÷2=2.5. A 3.5 snake stick-2.5=1. The first time that tongue-flickering head came careening around to within an arm’s length of my face, I threw the whole kittenkabootel—snake, stick and all.  The snake went up one wall and I went up the other.

       “Holy Geezus me cago en la puta madre quien me parió Fuck!” For the non-Spanish speakers, that’s the strongest cursing in my second language vocabulary inserted in a statement of blasphemy and obscenity in my first language that would have gotten my tongue amputated right out of my mouth, if uttered when I was a child.

       This time the snake was high enough off the ground that I basically  raked the middle of it into the can, tucked in the two ends and slammed on the lid. Then I marched my trembling ass over to the cabin stairs, sat down and cried. I needed to take in what I had just accomplished.  “Handling” that snake is one of the scariest things I have ever done. The easier route would have been to grab a hoe and chop its head off. That’s not the way at the ranch and I’m glad. If at all possible, we catch and translocate, even the copperheads and rattlers. 

Look to my left and you'll see the copperhead

That degree of seemingly illogical respect for something so potentially harmful is woo woo, I know, but it resonates with me. 

The perfect conclusion for this anecdote just arrived via email from Chandler. It's from the book about animal signs called Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams.

“Scared little Rabbit…

Please drop your fright!

Running doesn’t stop the pain

Or turn the dark to light”  
          It would be a big fat lie to say I'm ready to crawl in a sleeping bag with a rattler, but I can tell you that my fright is greatly reduced from giving the snakes a chance to show me that they intend no harm. They strike at humans only when they feel threatened. Can't say as I don't do the same in those circumstances.

         As for what I am “up to,” somehow or another, my whole next year has fallen into place and looks like this:

Today –Aug 5 Virginia for family matters

Aug 5-7 Road trip from Sacramento to Medford, Oregon with two Quest buddies

Aug 7-18 Vision Quest at Moondance Ranch in Oregon

Aug 18-24 Wake Up Festival, Estes Park, CO

Aug 24-26 visit with friend in Denver

Aug 26-Sep 2 visit with friend in Oakland

Sep 2-23 Calistoga, CA for training with LeapNow trip to Central America

Sep 24- Dec 5 Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras with LeapNow kids

Dec 5-Jan 9   down time-- Uruguay?

Jan 9-May 2 trips to Cuba with Road Scholar,

which brings me to some of you saying you would like to go to Cuba with me. A bit of news is that Grand Circle Foundation is no longer using U.S. reps, so I will be exclusively working for Road Scholar, which for me means, lower pay, fewer tips, but more guaranteed trips. Here’s the schedule they have given me, should you want to think about joining a tour:

Program #	Start Date	End Date	Group Leader	#Pax as of July 10
20612 (SCU)	Friday, January 09, 2015	Saturday, January 24, 2015	Gigi Austin	22
20612 (SCU)	Friday, January 30, 2015	Saturday, February 14, 2015	Gigi Austin	7
20612 (SCU)	Friday, February 20, 2015	Saturday, March 07, 2015	Gigi Austin	0
20612 (SCU)	Friday, March 13, 2015	Saturday, March 28, 2015	Gigi Austin	8
0437 (HAV)	Monday, April 07, 2014	Tuesday, April 15, 2014	Gigi Austin	0
20612 (SCU)	Friday, April 17, 2015	Saturday, May 02, 2015	Gigi Austin	1

Go to http://www.roadscholar.org/programs/search_res.asp?CountryCode=Cuba    for details.

OK! I’m ready to hit publish and get back to experiencing life instead of writing about it.

Much love, G