CK's Journal

Christmas Eve

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:28:00 +0000

Last Friday, after we were finished with patients (it happens now and then) Christina, one of our volunteer physicians and I were sitting in the pharmacy talking. She is associated with the Children’s Medical Center REACH Clinic, where children who have been physically or sexually abused are treated. If you think about it in any detail, it’s just unimaginable – a pelvic exam on a 5 year old – how do you process doing that? Having it done? I just don’t know.

We were talking about faith and work. It was one of those conversations that reverberate in one well after it seems to be over. Talking with Christina I mentioned, for the first time in years, our work with Jonathan’s Place, a shelter for battered, abused, and neglected children. Photo: Chris from Jonathan's Place and me.

What happened was that someone I knew called and asked if we could help with the children at Jonathan’s Place. They had lost their pediatrician and needed someone to do admission physical exams on the children in the first 24 hours after they were removed from their parent(s) and to treat any acute illnesses. I said sure. The way it worked was that someone would call to say they had two or five or however many children needing exams and they would bring them to the clinic at the end of our regular day. We (my students and I) would be set up for them so when they got to us we could move them as quickly and calmly and kindly as possible through the process. I’ll tell you truly it wasn’t easy, mapping out the bruises, lacerations, etc., and trying to be supportive to these frightened children.

I remember two girls, ages about 7 and 10, both raped by their father and the older child comforting the younger.

After we’d been doing these exams for a few months I called Chris, the young man who was our main contact at Jonathan’s Place and told him I was committing to do this as long as they needed it. He could call anytime and I would come anytime. And that’s the way it went for the next about 1 ½ years. Most weeks there were 1-3 children, sometimes less, sometimes more. That was one of my last commitments beyond my family, and in terms of how much energy I had it was really more than I should have made. But it was just a few hours a week.

I was thinking about how my students were involved in this and what a good job they did with the children. I was thinking what a great blessing it was that they were a part of something so much greater than school. And with that blessing, “A sword will pierce your own soul too” Luke 2:35.

So now that I’m leaving,
I’m weary as hell.
The confusion I’m feeling,
Ain’t no tongue can tell.

Photo: Sophea and science project in Phnom Penh (she's in middle, looking at the camera, to the left of the girl flashing peace sign). She sent this photo today and it gave me such great joy I wanted to post it - strangely, here in this painful post. So take a break, click the photo to make it larger and say hi to Sophea.

Vietnam, 1966-67 - Part 1, Landing Force & DMZ

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:37:00 +0000

(Posted from Berkeley during Thanksgiving week)

I’ll write this as best I can and to the best of my recollection. Dates and those sorts of facts may be off, but the heart of what I’m writing will be accurate. I’m pasting in writing I’ve done at other times as well as a few things other people have written, and I won’t spend much effort on flow and structure, so if something seems to just appear, well, that’s probably about right. I took some of the photos, but most are captured from the internet. I was too busy fighting to be snapping pictures. There are three parts to this account. Photo: Charles Kemp at the DMZ

Summary: I started at MCRD San Diego, then Infantry Training Regiment & Machine Gun School; Camp Pendleton & las Pulgas for Special Landing Force training. On to Subic Bay & Olongapo in the Philippines (oh, how we partied, like doomed youth); first landing southern South Vietnam (1st casualties); second landing Deckhouse & Prairie for serious battles; Hill 55 & Dodge City (snipers daily, mines, weekly firefights more or less & a few battles); Dong Ha & Hill Fights (168 KIA, but it took awhile); also at Con Thien, Gio Linh, and Khe Sanh, though mostly I was in the boondocks around these places. If there was a sound track to this section it would be Sympathy for the Devil, maybe Gimme Shelter. We won every battle and beat back very attack, but America lost its will and lost the war. All told, 13 months in combat (well, you know, not every day) mostly in the province (Thua Thien) accounting for the greatest number of US casualties; Danang (in our last formation there were less than 40 men left of the original company of about 180 men - I guess we were doomed youth). The World. God. I'm alive.

Battalion Landing Team, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment

When we finished Infantry Training Regiment and weapons schools we were sent to a holding company at Camp Pendleton. My mates Jeff and Mike Noumov and I were doing the light duty scam, inventing maladies serious enough to avoid PT and marching around like idiots but not serious enough to keep us confined to barracks. In the morning we’d hang out in the upstairs head, smoking, talking, watching the others doing PT and marching around like idiots. Then, after noon chow, we’d be free like everyone else to hang around the PX, eating pogie bait and drinking cokes.

After 3 or 4 weeks we were sent to Las Pulgas, a small satellite base of Camp Pendleton. We became the 1st of the newly reactivated 26th Marines. I was in C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment. The 26th Marines were deactivated after heroic service on Iwo Jima and reactivated in 1966. Our Commanding Officer was Captain Kappleman – very tough, strong, together, distant – a classic Old Man.

We trained as a special landing force or battalion landing team – forced marches through the California scrub, war games, but nobody that I knew thought in terms of a game – it was serious stuff with live ammo, grenades and so on. We made landings on the Cali beaches, clambering down the ropes with all our gear and the landing craft bobbing up and down and somehow I don’t think anyone was badly hurt. We ran up the mountain (Sheep Shit) near the barracks, down and then back up again. We cleaned and re-cleaned our weapons and practiced and practiced in the ways Marines practice their craft.

For liberty we’d go to Oceanside, sometimes to the beach, usually drinking Red Mountain vin rosy we called it, cheap red jug wine. Sometimes we’d go to Mexico, eating tacos ricos with lots of cilantro and onion on the Tijuana streets, headed to the bars, the girls. When nobody had any money we’d scrape together enough to send someone to Oceanside to buy a couple of jugs of vin rosy and we’d sit on the roof of the barracks or in a deserted handball court and do some serious drinking.

At some point I got word that I’d been transferred to headquarters company to work in supply. I went straight to battalion and talked with the Sergeant Major, who, in typical Marine fashion asked me if I thought I knew better than the Marine Corps about where I should be sent. Of course I said, “No sir.” But then I started getting teary eyed and he told me to get out. When I got back to the company I learned that (1) I was in trouble for going outside the chain of command and (2) I was going to stay with C Company.

The battalion shipped out together on three ships, the carrier Iwo Jima and the Thomaston, and Vancouver. C Company was on the Vancouver, a landing platform dock (LPD). The aft half of the ship had a platform for helicopters to land and take off from and beneath that, there was a cavernous space where the amtracks (amphibious landing vehicles) were parked. When we made a landing, the stern of the ship would open and the amtracks would drive down a ramp and into the water.

We stopped at Pearl Harbor for several days. On the way in to the harbor we were mustered on deck to stand in formation and saluting as we passed the Pearl Harbor Memorial which was set over the sunken hulk of the USS Arizona.

We had some good liberty in Honolulu. I remember eating at a cheap Chinese restaurant; spending time at a taxi-dance hall where you paid a dollar to dance with a girl; seeing the first transgender person (“female impersonator”) I’d ever seen; and partying in a bar where we made the bartender lock the door so one of the guys could take his trousers off because the tattoo he’d just gotten was hurting (on one buttock a devil shoveling coals into his ass and flames coming out on the other buttock). Somewhere in all this we saw Holcomb hit someone so fast the other person couldn’t even get his hands up.

From Hawaii we went to the Navy base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. From there we participated in some intense training exercises, including landings and forced marches through the jungles. The landings were interesting in that there were people near the beach who were trading us orange sodas and knives in exchange for ammunition. Now I understand we were playing a part in the Muslim insurgency in the southern PIs. Photo: USS Vancouver

From the troops’ perspective, the main thing that happened was liberty in Olongapo City, which was right outside the base. The way it worked was we would take landing boats from the ship to the base, where we’d sometimes stop off long enough to have something to eat, and then across the bridge from the base into Olongapo. Except for one long main street the entire city was off-limits to US personnel. On that street, however, was everything we could ever want: it was all bars, cafes, night clubs, and women everywhere. There were men along the way, selling whatever, and best of all, grilled “monkey meat” (really pork) on a stick. There was cold San Miguel beer, bands playing American hits, all your buddies, and women.

Deckhouse Operations, the DMZ

Here is a brief history (Wikipedia) of the ship at that time:

During the first week in July, Vancouver embarked tracked landing vehicles (LVTs) and Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 1/26 (1st Battalion, 26th Marines) in preparation for her second Seventh Fleet assignment. On 9 July, she put to sea and after a two-day stop at Pearl Harbor from 14 July to 16 July, arrived at Subic Bay on 28 July. There, she became a unit of the newly constituted Seventh Fleet Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), Task Group (TG) 76.5—a self-contained mobile amphibious assault team made up of a Special Landing Force (SLF), marines and support units, and the ships which served as their transportation and mobile bases. In a series of training exercises held in the Philippines, the Navy-Marine Corps teammates honed their skills for an almost instant response to any need for amphibious support or reinforcement in the Seventh Fleet's zone of operations.

Between 16 August and 29 August, Vancouver participated in her first combat action during Operation Deckhouse III which consisted of two landings at a point some 60 miles (100 km) east of Saigon. The first phase, from 16 August to 20 August, saw BLT 1/26 move ashore in both waterborne and airborne modes against minor opposition and later destroy a fortified Viet-Cong-held village. During the second set of landings, 22 August to 29 August, the marines sent ashore changed operational control from the ARG to the authorities ashore to assist in Operation Toledo a search-and-destroy mission to deprive the enemy of valuable caches of arms and supplies. At the conclusion of "Deckhouse III," Vancouver returned to Subic Bay for ten days of upkeep.

Departing the Philippines on 12 September, the ship began her second amphibious assault, Operation Deckhouse IV, on 15 September in the vicinity of the Cua Viet River in Quang Tri province just south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The landings constituted a seaward arm of the larger Operation Prairie being conducted by American and South Vietnamese forces ashore to destroy North Vietnamese Army fortifications, bunkers, and supply caches in the area and to stem intensified infiltration across the DMZ. During their ten days ashore, the marines of the SLF encountered heavy resistance and accounted for 254 of the enemy killed before they reembarked on 25 September. At the conclusion of the operation, Vancouver disembarked her portion of BLT 1/26 troops at Danang.

(End Vancouver history)

We started out down south with a couple of relatively uneventful operations. I remember making the first landings in the amtracks - armored tracked vehicles also known as LVTs. They were basically steel boxes with benches running along the long walls and double benches down the center. The entire front was a door that opened down so that it was like a short bridge from the inside to the beach. Actually, they often opened up in the water so that we stepped off the door into one or three or whatever feet of water – not a small issue for someone in a flack jacket and carrying a full pack, machine gun (23.5 pounds unloaded), and 200 + linked rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition.

We rode from the ship to the beach sitting on the benches so jammed together that our knees interlocked. When the vomiting started, it was bad, because there was nowhere to vomit except in one’s own lap and on the other men. A few men vomited in their helmets, a mistake never made twice. But the really bad part was that the tracks rode down low in the water and water spilled inside so the first thought was that if it sank, it would go straight to the bottom and we would all die trapped inside. The second thought was that if the thing got to the beach, if the enemy was shooting and sighted in on the track, the bullets would ricochet and fragment inside. How could they miss?

We neither sank nor caught more than a little harassing fire. The next issue was whether to oil the gun enough that it wouldn’t rust from the salt water (which takes place with amazing quickness or to have it dry enough that sand wouldn’t clog the works (which happened if there was enough oil to prevent rust. There was no good answer.

The first night in VN we were down south in the forest. Went on-line in the dark and just kind of hunkered down. Didn’t sleep much that night! In the morning realized there were Marines maybe 50 feet right in front of us. Glad we didn’t fire.

The first time I was shot at (bullets make a very loud Pop! when they go past close) there was instant full realization of an important truth of war. There is no turning back. No half measures. The other guys mean to kill you and death is forever. I didn’t really start with any moral questions and I knew I would pull the trigger. (In WW II apparently many men did not actually shoot at the enemy – they needed a serious ass-kicking.) But everything became instantly crystal clear that day. Kill them or they kill me. We were walking on a trail in the woods (not the deep rain forest) and someone fired straight up the trail. I went off the trail and my arm went right through a log full of ants. They were biters for sure and got me moving pretty brisk. That time was no big deal. Nobody hit that I recall. Later in the operation three of our men were killed.

When it was over we were on the beach waiting to be ferried back to the ship. The Navy had brought us some C-Rats and warm beer (Carling Black Label) in partially rusted cans. I gave my two cans to someone else. Some of the men who drank ended up vomiting once we were in the landing craft headed back to the ship. I’m not sure if it at this time (maybe earlier?) that one of the men (L----- from New Orleans) made a spectacle of himself threatening suicide and putting the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth. Someone saying, “Pull the trigger, L----- you chicken-shit mother-fucker.” That was the last we saw of that coward.

***
I pasted the following on D/1/26 from a 26th Marines site (khesanhvets.org). I'm using what someone else wrote to try to put what I'm writing into context. There's not much context in combat - it's just the battle you're in and not much else.

August 16-29, 1966
BLT 1/26 makes its first combat landings in Vietnam during Deckhouse III, Parts I and II. The area of operations is The Vung Tau Peninsula, 60 miles southeast of Saigon. The landings are made in conjunction with the 173rd Airborne Brigade and Australian units. The target area is the coastal lowland of Binh Tuy and Phuoc provinces, generally an uncultivated plain covered with one and two canopy jungle and swamps. The rifle companies operate over widely separated areas, relying on small unit patrolling to adequately search the area. The enemy forces targeted are the Headquarters VC 5th Division, 274 and 275 Main-Force Regiments, which are seeking to avoid engagement. General Westmoreland visits the CP for BLT 1/26.

Deckhouse III, Phase I, is the first combat landing in Vietnam for BLT 1/26. The 1/26 Battalion CP is located at grid YS 829714. There is no significant contact on this landing during the sweep of this plantation territory.

Deckhouse III, Phase 2, Operation Toledo, is the second combat landing in Vietnam for BLT 1/26 (August 22 to 29). The 1/26 Battalion CP is located at grid YS 645700. The operation locates and then attacks a VC base camp and bunker complex. The VC do not stand and fight; instead, they abandon the base prior to the Marine attack. However, the results of the sweep are good, as tons of rice are captured along with ammunition and other supplies.

Three C/1/26 Marines were killed on August 28, 1966 and they are the first combat deaths for 1/26 Marines. CK writing: Madden was one of the KIA. It was all pretty unreal.

Mid-September 1966
3/4 Marines attack the elaborate fortifications being constructed by 324B along a ridge near the razorback as part of Operation Prairie. Hills 400 and 484 are the Marines’ objectives in the battle for Mutter Ridge. In related actions, BLT 1/26 is OpCon to the 4th Marines and conducts Deckhouse IV/Prairie at the same time.

September 15, 1966
Deckhouse IV/Prairie starts when BLT 1/26 Marines makes its third combat landing as a reconnaissance in force sweep in the area north of Dong Ha. The target is the northwestern portion of the Gio Linh District, and the mission is to screen the northern approaches in support of Operation Prairie. During this operation, BLT 1/26 engages in a series of fights with units of the NVA 324B Division northeast of Con Thien.

September 17, 1966
In the early AM hours a large firefight starts not far away and continues for quite a while. The firing is from the Alpha Co. position as they are being attacked by NVA with heavy small arms fire and mortars. Delta Co. moves out in the morning in a westerly direction through rolling terrain towards the village of Gia Binh. This village is northeast of Con Thien (Hill 158), which is then an ARVN outpost. Photo: Mutter’s Ridge, Operation Prairie

At midday there is occasional gunfire in the distance. In the afternoon, the company goes through what is basically a large bamboo forest, which takes a while to traverse. The north end opens up on a small rice paddy the village on the other side was Gia Binh. The point of 2nd platoon sees NVA soldiers and heavy fire erupts. Delta Co. advances and the surprised NVA pulls back.

The 1st Platoon draws the point next, and Delta Co. moves out in a northerly direction along the cart path, which runs through Gia Binh. After a short advance, the NVA strikes back with heavy fire from fortified positions on both sides of the road (YD 146730). The company returns fire, and air strikes and artillery are called in. The company recovers casualties and pulls back to set up a LZ. Late in the afternoon, a medevac helicopter is shot down while trying to land. The company digs in for the night.

September 18, 1966
The physical setting is tough, with hedgerows limiting movement; the previous day's probe towards the center of the village revealed a series of trenches, tank traps, and fighting positions.

Late in the morning, the company makes heavy contact and receives automatic weapons fire from both sides of the road and the front (YD 146730). The enemy fights from prepared positions and the 2nd Platoon takes very heavy casualties. Several Marines are killed in the initial exchange of fire, including the 2nd Platoon Commander, 1stLt. Geoghegan. There is a lot of confusion on both sides, with the NVA calling out to each other and Marines doing the same. Delta Co is pinned down for quite a while; supporting arms, along with the eight-inch guns of the Navy cruiser St. Paul, are called in to cover its withdrawal.

September 20, 1966
Delta Co. receives early AM sniper fire. The company holds its position waiting for Charlie Co., accompanied by tanks, to approach from the west. One of the tanks hits an AT mine during this advance.

September 21, 1966
An attack by three companies is initiated against An Dinh. In the morning, Charlie Co. and the tanks attack from the west and meet strong resistance from automatic weapons and AT rockets. Air strikes and artillery are called and Delta Co. maneuvers to linkup with Charlie Co. on the left and Bravo Co. on the right. That afternoon, Companies B, C, & D, supported by tanks, attack the village from three directions. An Dinh is secured when the NVA force break contact at the end of the day and pull back to the north.

September 24, 1966
The Marines of BLT 1/26 reembark aboard the ships of the SLF. As September ends, the total NVA killed in Operation Prairie are 943. The number of NVA killed during the ten days of Deckhouse IV/Prairie fighting is 254.

BLT 1/26 casualties are 36 KIA and 200 WIA.

September 26, 1966
The battalion goes ashore at Da Nang to replace 1/9 at Hill 55 TAOR south of Da Nang. 1/26 is placed under the operational control of the 9th Marine regiment.

After completion of Operation Deckhouse IV/Prairie, the decision is made to strengthen the Marine presence on the DMZ. In October 1966, the Marines of 2/5 take over Con Thien from the ARVN.

End khesanhvets.org Hx.

The way I experienced the battles described above was as a series of battles and marches. My memories:

At the DMZ, Charlie Parker, my A gunner and I dug a huge fighting hole the first night (9/15). A few days later, after being mortared we were digging much smaller and narrower holes. The next day we moved out toward the sound of fighting. We went down into a swale and when we came up the other side we were facing an open area with the enemy dug in in the opposite tree line. I remember Jeff running out into the open area and firing his rocket at an enemy machine gun bunker. He lit it up and we were across the field into a trench line, fighting up and down the trenches. At some point I remember being on the deck with a heavy volume of fire coming in and just a few feet from me the 3rd platoon radio man was lying on his back. I was wondering how he could be doing that with so much incoming, but then realized he was dead, lying still, on his back with bullets snapping close above and his freckles and his pale skin. I had this instant and clear understanding of our bodies as clay. I knew he was gone and all that was left was the clay, the vessel. Photo: Mutters Ridge

We battled through the trenches and the next thing I remember was digging in somewhere near the battlefield. Where my squad was there were some old trenches with steel barbs sticking up out of the bottom. We took out the traps and there we were, set for the night. Sometime in the night while I was asleep (we were always 2 hours on watch, 2 off), we were hit with a very accurate mortar barrage. I thought I levitated really fast into the trench and was on my gun in zero seconds (that’s what it seemed like) and as soon as I was up, I saw a flash from the mortars being fired and I cut loose with a 200 round burst and though I could hear someone shouting for me to cease fire I knew I had them and cranked all 200 rounds into the enemy. That was the end of the mortar barrage. Later we realized that the NVA probably had our position registered for mortar fire. Photo: One guy resting, another enjoying something tasty

The next days were a blur to me – then and now. I remember …

Bullets zapping through banana trees and shreds of leaves falling.

Seeing men in a tree line and I opened fire only to later learn that they were Marines. I wounded two of them, but they survived.

We linked up with the rest of the battalion, lines of men sprawled exhausted in the dirt. There were some reporters there and one of them asked Buddero Craze a question and he answered, “Fuck you.” Several of us overheard an old reporter say something like, “I didn’t expect anything like this. Goddam, I was on Tarawa and this is just like it.” (I think he was exaggerating, but still, it was definitely balls-to-the-wall.)

The seams to my trousers split. Our utilities were greasy with dirt and sweat, but mine gave way all the way and I had to tie around the legs to keep them kind of on.

Carver and I (don’t know where Parker was) dug in along a tree line in a wet misty area, digging a primo slit trench just barely big enough for both of us to crouch in or for one, the man on watch, to make a cup of coffee or whatever and have a smoke while the other one racked it on the ground next to the hole. But we aren’t to the night just yet. We were resupplied by chopper and included was a “Sunday box” – a box full of random treats like candy, playing cards, shaving gear (like anyone was going to shave), and so on. My share was a little restaurant package of 2 saltine crackers and on the side package it said, Eating Out is Fun! Several of us reconned a few hundred meters to the front of our line and found a lot of NVA. We crept back toward our line, but somehow were spotted by I guess one of their recon patrols which opened fire and we fired back and then ran (there being many of them and 3 of us). Our guys were starting to shoot and one of the men in our patrol was racing along shouting, “WOOP WOOP WOOOOP WOOP WOOP WOOOOP” which got me started laughing and I was laughing my ass off and running so fast my feet were outrunning my body. Basically, we’d surprised them before they surprised us. Artillery did the rest of the work.

We fought our way through some pretty fierce action. For about a day (it seems) we were marching in a long column with fire fights raging now at the front, now the rear, now a flank. We finally broke out of that and linked up with a platoon of tanks, maybe 6? And we were finally out of it and everyone climbed on the tanks to ride the rest of the way into Dong Ha.

I was lying on the back of a tank, half asleep and it seemed like something flashed across my vision and in the tank behind us the driver’s head exploded and then we exploded and I was just laying there stunned and something hit me in the shoulder – it was a glancing blow from the cannon of tank behind us running into our tank and I was trying to get my gun to get off but the gun strap was pinned. Rockets and small arms fire were intense, but I got it loose. I was on the left side of the tank column and not much fire was coming in from that side. I went to the rear where we were also being attacked and put down some fire. We fought through that, but no more riding for the weary. I helped pull the driver up out of the tank. His head was gone from the jaw up – you could see his lower teeth.

We got into Dong Ha around dark and the tanks lagered and we crashed. In the morning I was awake and I could see men sleeping wherever they lay or fell down. All that was left of first squad weapons was asleep spooned together, all 3 of the men under one poncho.

I remember seeing someone go through the pockets of one of the dead men we’d hauled out and in the man’s chest pocket found a Bible with a hole through it left by the bullet that killed him. He looked at the Bible, showed it to a couple of other Marines, and threw it away, left it in the dirt with the blood of its owner.

36 KIA and 200 WIA in 9 days. For C Company it was about 10 (more) dead and 60 wounded. On the other side of things >250 NVA killed.

I don’t remember an excess of emotion over the casualties. We knew it would happen and it was sad, but we were hard men. Warriors. Later you feel it all, but not then.

VN 66-67 - Part 2: Hill 55, Dodge City

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:27:00 +0000

.
Back on the ship we went back to Subic Bay for one of the ships to get maintenance. It was like magic to us – instead of Vietnam we were going back Olongapo! Unfortunately, I had almost no money. So, when J-------- said he’d pay me to break his finger it was just a matter of how much. I think in the end I got $7 and some change and he put his trigger finger over a step on one of the steel ladders and I hit it with a small iron bar. At first he thought I hadn’t hit him hard enough and then he saw his finger, which was wrecked and so he was gone too. Good riddance to another coward + Olongapo here I come. We’re all winners here. I was actually in a relationship with a girl, Delia, and so it was all pretty intense. Then we were headed back to Vietnam.

We landed unopposed near Danang and got to a base there. My only memory of the base was going to a head and this peasant woman came in and squatted next to me and did her business and I was at a loss because I’d rather do my eliminations in private (tough luck being in the Corps), and next to a woman was even less private than I was used to. She left, so it was cool.

Photo: Near our company position close to Hill 55 - photo taken in 2005. Hard to believe walking here with ambushes, mines, etc. happening

Ordinarily at a forward Marine base (like at Hill 55), they have shitters and pissers, with former being like an outhouse and the latter being tubes (maybe rocket tubes) sunk into the ground with a screen over the opening. Periodically they’d move them. They would move the shitter to another place and pour gas or whatever in the hole full of feces and set it ablaze. I never had to do that. For the pisser it was just dig a new hole, put the tube in, and fill in the old hole.

Our understanding was that we were going to be guarding Danang and I had this picture of comfy little block houses set along a trench line surrounding the city and at least several days a week I would go into Danang and I’d have like a little room somewhere in a cool neighborhood and of course a girlfriend. Maybe I’d gotten this idea from The Quiet American or maybe I’d made it up on my own.

We had an uneventful ride to Hill 55 and there we were. From Wikipedia: “Hill 55 was a hill in Vietnam that was used during the Vietnam war as a base of operations for the United States Marine Corps. It has been described as "the most notorious area in I Corps. In the Indochina War, two battalions of the French forces were wiped out on Hill 55. Famous Marine sniper Major Jim Land operated a sniper school on the hill.”

C company moved off the hill to our new home – some mounds of dirt and vegetation surrounded by untended padi (padi = rice field). We were taking this area over from 1/9 (the “Walking Dead” – and this was where they got their name) so there were positions already dug. My recollection is that this was when I realized just how many casualties we’d taken, though I don’t know why it would have taken so long for me to understand. Photo: My gun

My gun was at post 1, which was closest the dirt road that curved around part of our perimeter. The post included a sandbagged position with ~4 foot high sandbagged walls and thatched roof where we hung out, stood watch, heated C-Rations, smoked, and whatnot. Off that there was a place to sleep – sandbagged walls 2-3 feet high and a plastic sheet roof, Part of the time we slept on the ground and later we had cots, I think. That’s the Marine Corps way: away from the rear, pay little attention to fortifications. We were there to fight.

Our first patrol in our AOR we hit a main force VC unit and were in a huge fire-fight and were basically outgunned. I remember Holcomb backing away, firing his M14 tilted so that it tracked sideways recoiling on auto. I was on my knees laying down an excellent field of fire – like about 12” off the ground at the highest. Holcomb’s buddy, the man who had the devil shoveling coals into his ass, stepped on a mine that blew his legs off. He sat up and looked at the stumps and groaned and fell over dead.

Yeah, it was a fierce area and we took the fight to the VC. They put a lot of mines out and harassed us with sniper fire. We hunted them and killed them when we found them. Photo: A beautiful sight

The basic plan was patrol for ~3 days/nights. Back in for a night off – still standing watch, but with less frequency than the 2 on, 2 off on patrol. Out for night ambush. Back in for a night. Patrol for ~3 days/nights. Back …

The ambushes were my favorite part because -----, my assistant gunner was pretty nervous about everything and he’d always take liquor on these ambushes. He was a heavy drinker, so he could drink and function. He’d sit awake all night sipping his whiskey and I’d sleep, secure in his anxiety. He’d wake me up now and then, whispering, “I think I hear something.” I’d lie there, listening, watching, and finally going back to sleep.

By now my helmet had a picture of the Grim Reaper on one side and on the other, "morituri te salutamus" - Latin for we who are about to die salute you.

Mostly it was boring and hot. Talk, play solitare, read, smoke, sleep. Post 1 was kind of stuck out on a corner of the perimeter, so we were a little bit by ourselves, a good thing. Everyone who came to or left C Company’s position passed through Post 1, but the actual position was a few feet from where they went, so no problem there. All supplies came through Post 1 and so we did a lot of unloading and also skimmed some of the cream of what was coming in.

***
We had ended a patrol at Battalion one day and were laying around outside the crappy little mess hall they had up there. A visiting general happened on us and was talking to the lieutenant about the situation and the lieutenant started telling him about using civilians to walk point (them knowing exactly where all the mines were) and the general got pissed, so we were supposed to not do that anymore. Everybody play fair now.

I remember so little about specific patrols. It was hot, often raining. I carried my gun and 200 rounds, helmet, flack jacket, lightest possible load of C-Rats, 4 canteens water (2 more than most men), .45 & an extra clip, knife, cigarettes, sheet of plastic to sleep on, raincoat. I could almost always find banana tree leaves to sleep under, so really I was fairly comfortable.

Waking one morning to sit smoking
Watching the day begin through misty green
Slow, soft, green and mist
I could sit here for a thousand years.

Photo: Children near Dodge City

I don’t remember being afraid. I was focused, intense, but not feeling afraid. People say all kinds of things, like, “There’s no atheists in foxholes.” Well I never thought about God. Why would anyone believe in a merciful loving God in a war? People say things like, “God’s in charge.” Oh yeah, sure. “God don’t give you nothin’ you can’t handle.” You don’t know much, do you. And people say things like, “Who wouldn’t be afraid?” or “Anyone with any intelligence would be afraid.” Whatever. I didn’t feel it. Later, sometimes I’d get the shakes.

***
Gunny Evans was beyond words. He had what seemed like supernatural powers – utterly fearless, able to see in the dark, needing no sleep, physically overpowering, and dangerous to everyone. Once at the DMZ I was on the right flank point in a balls-to-the-wall gunfight with an NVA machine gun emplacement when out of the woods to the left of the enemy gun came Gunny Evans, carrying a wounded Marine! How in hell did he get there? The other Gunny I had was Gunny White, who was weapons platoon commander for much of my time with C/1/26. Gunny White was loved as much as Gunny Evans was feared. Fearless, squared away, a true warrior, but not dangerous (to us, anyway). Both of these men would have given their lives in a heartbeat for me or any other Marine. Certainly they risked their lives on a regular basis for us – as we did for them.

***
About once a month I’d get up to battalion for a night. I’d stay in the C Company tent with Jeff and others. Cots, wood pallet floors, maybe I’d have a shower. Sometimes Gunny White would dig up some beer for us and we’d have a party. There were some 105s and 155s on the hill and when the arty would fire it would blow our candle out. They had some electric up there and there was a record player in the tent. Man, them guys had it made. But I was still glad I wasn’t back up there working in supply.

Day after day, week after week, month after month. It’s weird when you think about it – never a day without someone shooting at you, never a day when someone wasn’t wounded. One by one the old guys disappearing. Sometimes bad wounded, sometimes a 3rd wound, sometimes killed, a few lucky ones with malaria. If you count each wound or even each person wounded or killed and then FNGs (replacements) coming in and they were wounded at an even greater rate, you realize we took over 100% casualties.

Much of the countryside where we were was deserted. There were people living to the northeast of us and in the west where Dodge City was. Otherwise, deserted, ghostly. On patrol in the north we came across a partially intact temple. Sitting inside, dry, having a smoke, happy, comfortable. That’s a stellar memory. I’m writing a lot about smoking. We had C-Ration cigs, Lucky Strikes – “Toasted” – Salems, Winstons; and whenever someone went up to Hill 55 they’d bring back some cartons of Winys or Marlys or best of all, Viceroys. Cigarettes and war go together really well. Smoking cigarettes was about the best thing we did. That and being not dead.

***
Most patrols were from squad to platoon sized, anywhere from 10 to 30 men. One day during monsoon we went on a company sized operation toward Dodge City. As with so much else, time clouds my memory, so I’ll write what I remember. There was a huge and sustained volume of gun fire to my right. We started forward and engaged the enemy so that there was a broad front (in front of me and to the right). To my horror I discovered that the person I’d loaned the gun to the night before had put the piston in backwards, so what I had was a 23.5 pound single-shot rifle – an awkward one at that. So in the midst of a battle I had to take the gun apart to turn the piston around and the thing was, it took me a few minutes to figure things out and in the meantime there was this screaming and someone firing 100 round bursts – screaming and charging the enemy. He got into their position and killed several and then everyone else caught up with him. What had happened was that Zamora had been killed and the gunner (Ray Escalera, who had loved him) went a little crazy. Zamora was one of those world-class good guys – there was nobody more solid than he was. The battle raged on for awhile, who could even guess how long.

There were three helicopters shot down that day. I was close to one of them. I was hosing down the tree line while other guys ran to the chopper to see if they could get anyone out. They pulled one man out, still alive, but completely burned and they said his skin came off, but I always thought it was probably his flight suit. There were 13 KIA and 66 WIA in that that operation.

We’d been in water for several days and after the battle I made the mistake of taking my boots off (my feet were hurting and itching – with the itching driving me crazy) and my feet swelled up in just moments. I knew better than to do that, but the itching! There was no way I could have gotten my boots back on and I ended up crawling for quite a ways on the way away from the battle.

***

We were on a patrol and got word to stop and wait for helicopters to take us to another area to look for a missing (dead) Marine. What happened was some REMFs had gone on a patrol out of battalion. They’d been hit and somehow (because of inexperience) one of the Marines was separated from the others. The VC got him and tortured him to death, stabbing him 100s of times (“death by a 1000 cuts”) while he screamed in the night and every time the Mariners in that patrol tried to get to him they were driven back, taking more casualties and finally giving up.

So we got there and it didn’t take long to find him dead in padi water, right next to a dike, so completely white and stabbed so many times.

***
It never occured to me that I would write this. It was something to keep secret and inside me forever; something to take out now and then, turning it over in my mind like the treasure it is (to me, anyway). I told Jeff a few years ago, but he already knew about it, even though he was not on that patrol.

We were on a long patrol - past even Dodge City. It had been raining for several days or maybe several weeks. I had this raincoat that was far superior to a poncho (I doubt many people ever wore a poncho past their first gunfight with one of those awkward things in the way of everything - I loved my raincoat). We were 3-4 days out, in an area we'd not seen before. We came to a ville and moved around and through it. The plan was to round up everyone in the ville and search the place and people for weapons.

I came to a hooch with a bunker (all the hooches had bunkers in that neighborhood) and inside the bunker were several women and some children. The interesting thing was that one of the women was wet - even her hair, which told me pretty clearly that she had been doing something in a hurry before we got into the ville, i.e., she was most definitely VC. The other woman was holding a baby and the baby was crying, the thin, weak cry of a very sick baby. I was standing there looking at them and it was like I could see myself as they saw me. I was death - unshaven, dirty death. The only clean thing about me was my machine-gun and it was immaculate. The gun oiled, every round in the 200 round belt perfectly cleaned, inspected - all truly perfect. I was looking at them and they were looking at me.

I was thinking, screw this. I'm not going to jack with these people. So I just stayed there, watching them (I had decided not to force them out, but not wanting to be killed, would never have taken my eyes off them). So we're there, they, no doubt wondering what is going to happen and me, just very comfortable with my decision. At some point I tossed a couple of cans of C-rat ham or whatever into the bunker. They probably thought I was tossing grenades - they never touched the cans.

Then trouble. The lieutenant running the patrol came over and the conversation went something like this: "Get these people out of there." "There's a sick baby in there." "I don't give a shit. Get them out of there." "There's a sick baby in there." "I said, get them out, now." I was thinking, I guess I'm going to have to kill him, but he read my eyes and saw what I was thinking before I could act and he pointed his rifle in my direction (he always carried an M1 carbine, a silly weapon for which I had only contempt - but, an M1 pointed at someone trumps an M60 in the other direction, if you know what I mean) and there was nothing I could do because my weapon was already pointed pretty much down and to the left. Even though I was a lot better gunfight-wise than this guy, there was just no way I could get to him faster than he could get to me. "I'm giving you an order, Marine. Get those goddam mother-fucking people out of there right now." Then two things happened.

The Big Hair (Harris) was off to the side and he put his weapon on the lieutenant and said something like, "Be careful, lieutenant." Whew, what a relief. Then, the people in the bunker started coming out! The lieutenant walked off muttering threats. Harris smiled at me. "Yeah, man - fuckin'-A." When the woman carrying the baby came out in the rain I stopped her and I took off my raincoat and gave it to her. She had no clue what that was about so I had to drape it over her. It was like the coat of a giant to her. Ridiculous.

I remember leaving the ville with all those people standing there in the rain and that sad-sack woman with her sick baby standing there with my raincoat dragging the ground.

Redemption song. Making a choice. I chose Life.

***

We were set up in an ambush. I was lying in a dry padi, in the sun, for a day, a night, and into the next day. Someone opened up on some VC coming up the trail and there was a firefight and I jumped up and ran toward them. I remember running up a trail, firing and then being dizzy. From there we headed up to battalion. Along the way I was getting sick (dehydration and heatstroke) and for the first time ever, I fell out. I remember sitting against a tree trying to talk the others into leaving me behind, saying something like, "I'll come along later" (clear thinking there!). They poured water over me and someone carried my gun while I staggered along,

worthless.

***
Jeff articulated how things were. He said, and I agreed, that we were the only ones that mattered, the only ones who understood war. Tanks mattered too and of course the choppers and fast movers (except that the latter two went home at night to showers, racks, hot food, and all that good stuff – but that was just their good fortune and a reason to envy them, not a reason to downgrade them). We appreciated artillery, but they were in the rear most of the time, so they weren’t really the same as infantry and tanks. You could see that the pilots who flew C-130s into Khe Sanh were okay. Everyone else was just a rear echelon mother-fucker.

The fast movers were F4 phantom fighter bomber jets and they provided close air support, coming in extraordinarily close to the ground to put bombs and napalm right on target. If you weren’t close to where they were dropping their ordnance, you could actually see the pilots’ helmets as they screamed past and then the explosions with the earth shaking or crumping in a ball of flame. I was on an operation with an Army unit and saw the Air Force version of close air support – they stayed waaay up in the air and as a consequence dropped their ordnance kind of wherever. I’d appreciated the Marine pilots before and anyone could see they were taking some pretty serious risks, and after seeing the Air Force pilots, well, Semper Fidelis!

The helicopters were always right there, taking enormous chances to bring in ammunition and take out casualties. At that time, Marines mostly flew the older Sikorsky UH-34 vs. the Hueys. I – and everyone else – loved the men who flew them and the crew chiefs/door gunners. I never saw anything those guys wouldn’t fly into.

***
Here's some interesting stuff on what was in the C-Rations we had in Vietnam. My favorites were beans & wieners, meatballs & beans, & boned chicken, though I ate a lot of eggs, water added with ham because I could tolerate it and people would just give it away, so I could use other stuff to trade for the coveted fruit cocktail, pears (mmmmmm, pears), and pecan roll. Sometimes you could get together some pears and pound cake for a true feast. Crackers with peanut butter were okay, but even I wouldn't eat the "candy disc, chocolate" - or the ham & lima beans ("ham & mother-fuckers" as everyone called them). Beef steak (it was a steak, alright), ham, turkey loaf, beef/potatoes/gravy were okay if you were really hungry. I don't remember meat loaf (lol - are you kidding me. How bad would that have been?) or spiced beef. The caraway cheese always irritated me - who eats caraway seeds? But I liked the pimento cheese. I loved the cocoa and jam & cookies. The bread was lame. I ate a lot of fruitcake because I was one of the only ones who would, so there was always plenty of it. I almost always had a bottle of Tabasco. (Writing this journal is sufficient unto itself, but if it turns out that someone reads this to me when I'm old, please read all the ingredients below - Thanks.)

B-1 Units
Meat Choices (in small cans): Beef Steak, Ham and Eggs, Chopped Ham Slices, Turkey Loaf,

Fruit: Applesauce, Fruit Cocktail, Peaches, Pears

Crackers, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Candy Disc, Chocolate Cream Coconut, Accessory Pack*

B-2 Units
Meat Choices (in larger cans): Beans and Wieners, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Beefsteak & Potatoes & Gravy, Ham and Lima Beans (AKA ham & motherfuckers), Meatballs and Beans

Crackers, Processed Cheese Spread with either Caraway or Pimento

Fruit Cake, Pecan Roll, Pound Cake, Accessory Pack*

B-3 Units
Meat Choices (in small cans): Boned Chicken, Chicken and Noodles, Meat Loaf, Spiced Beef

Bread, Cookies, Cocoa Beverage Powder, Jam (Apple, Berry, Grape, Mixed Fruit, Strawberry, Accessory Pack*

The Accessory Pack had a plastic spoon, salt & pepper, instant coffee, sugar, creamer, 2 Chiclets, cigarettes - 4 smokes/pack like Winston, Marlboro, Lucky Strike (my favorite three), Salem, Pall Mall, Camel, Chesterfield, Kent (nasty things), Kool (Winnie the Penguin says, "Smoke Kooool!"), matches, & Toilet Paper. We all carried a "P-38" can opener and usually had heat tabs or C-4 to heat things.

***
… going back to the rear, leaving helmet, pack, flack jacket, webbing, weapons, ammo in a pile (weapon always handy – and never going more than about 30 feet from the weapon). It always felt so good taking it all off, so you were wearing just utilities, boots, etc.

***
My best friends were Jeff and Noumov. Hermanson and I were also very close. We were together from ITR on and though he went to recon, we still stayed in touch. Jeff and Noumov and I were together throughout, forming the nucleus of a kind of sub-culture in 1/26 – men with education or from middle-class (vs. working class or poor) backgrounds. In other ways we were classic Marine infantrymen: squared away, hard, strong, very aggressive, good shooters, disciplined when we needed to be, serious about partying. Jeff and I have stayed in touch and lived together from time to time since Vietnam. We went back to VN (along with my son, David) in 2005.

Deleted section on lessons from Korea – too violent.

***
We were on a patrol, I don’t remember where and it seems like it was a peaceful patrol. We stopped for an hour or so close to a farmer’s hooch on a little bit of a rise and it worked out that I was right in front of the hooch, sitting under a thatched awning, kind of like a small dirt-floored veranda. There was a little girl there, chopping vegetables and it seemed to me she was so tiny to be wielding that big knife, but she knew what she was doing and I was sitting there, enjoying the cool and just the whole scene and I was about as happy then as I was in all my time in Vietnam.

VN was and still is beautiful, green – it has a green all its own. I think at least some people could see it even then.

***
At Christmas Leslie sent me a little artificial Christmas tree, even though we were not really in a relationship anymore. She also wrote me regularly. I carried a photo of her that eventually faded just to a dark smudge where her eye was - but I could see her face clearly. And here we are, 43 years later, married.

***
The following is from my first web page – it was important to me to write it. It was dedicated

To Dwight Laws, KIA 10/30/66 inside the company perimeter near Hill 55
To Lurch Donohue, KIA 3/1/67 in a deserted ville near Route 4
To Jerry Georges, KIA 3/23/67 at the Hill 55 bridge
They were good men. We were young. They could have lived a long time.
3/2007

Photo: me, Mike Noumov, Jeff Wiseman at the rear on Hill 55 on my return (bearing gifts) from R&R. Over and over again we were playing the Byrds album with Turn! Turn! Turn! on it - "a time to be born, a time to die; a time to kill, a time to heal; a time to laugh, a time to weep; a time for peace, I swear it's not too late." Do you think that wasn't blowing our minds?

Here is the whole story of how Donohue was killed. For the first 10 or so years after I came home, there was never a day that I didn't run this through my mind at least once - like some kind of video. I gave my compulsive rumination a name: How Donohue Got It. Then in 1978 I spent a week in a retreat with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Stephen Levine, and others. That was the first time I told this aloud. The second time was with my brother, Jeff (who identified Donohue's body back at battalion). I seldom think of this now.

We were on patrol north of the bend in Route 4, the dirt road that went by C Company's position. There were no civilians left in this area (where 1/9 got its name, The Walking Dead) - a ghostly overgrown area of deserted villes, fields, and woods. Donohue was my A-gunner. We were digging in the first night of the patrol and he wasn't doing his part of the digging. I asked him what was going on and he had trouble answering, but finally said he wasn't going to make it. He was really sad. I said something like, "Bullshit, man - we've been here too long to not make it." I dug us in and gave him a smoke (though I don't remember that he smoked - I'm not sure about this - maybe I just wish I'd given him a cigarette). But he was inconsolable. He knew.

The next day we saddled up and I gave him my machine-gun. Not too much greater love than to give up your gun for another man - because my gun was my hope, my friend, my ticket home. I loved that gun; and I was pretty good with it. Please allow me to introduce myself ... We moved out, into a deserted ville. I was walking left flank point and came to a hedgerow of bamboo with a closed gate the only way through. Going through that gate was death - no question about it, there was a mine somewhere with the gate. I was crouched down, trying to figure out a way to stay on line and not be killed when there was a powerful explosion off to my right and someone started yelling, "Corpsman up! Corpsman up!" In a heartbeat I knew Donohue was the explosion.

I took off up the trail to the right and there was a man standing frozen in the trail still shouting for a corpsman and my recollection is that I ran literally up and over him (though how could that be?) and there was Donohue. He was on the ground with both legs blown off. I was beside him and saw that one stump was left with shattered bone sticking out and his guts were spilled out of where the other one had been. He was still alive! He was moaning and moving around a little. I was on my knees beside him and we were receiving fire by then. I was struggling with whether to go ahead and finish him off, because he was definitely going to die and even if he didn't die, what was the use of going on like that. Then life went out of him. I'm grateful I didn't kill him. I joined in on the firefight and then it was quiet; and then I had to find my gun as it wasn't by the body. I remember walking through the bushes and trees looking for the gun and there were little pink/grey gobbets of Donohue everywhere and on my face and hands too. The smell. I found one of his feet before I found my gun. The foot was heavy and the gun was out of commission. For some reason this whole deal was the last straw - just too much. I mean, what for?

I pretty much lost hope after that. We had been in the field for about eight months: out on patrol 3-4 days, back to company for a day, out for a night ambush, another day in, and back out on patrol 3-4 days - week after week, month after month and every day, at least one casualty. I realized there were hardly any of the original men left. By then it was a company of mostly fucking new guys and there was nobody I wanted to even talk to.

I was also having weird thoughts. Like maybe I could just walk out of the perimeter a couple of klicks to a ville we'd been through a few times where a one-legged girl lived (lotta one-legged people in them parts) and I could take her an adjustable crutch so she wouldn't have to walk in the bent and twisted way she walked with her too-short stick of a crutch. A time to heal. Or maybe I could slip out and maybe run across a VC or two and instead of killing each other we could sit down in a clearing somewhere and drink a bottle of whiskey together and have some smokes and talk about our girlfriends. You know, have a good time. Be normal. A time to laugh. These sounded like really good ideas to me and I was thinking about them a lot - all the time. Now I realize that I've spent much of the past 40 years taking a crutch to that girl - and I have miles to go before I sleep.

A few weeks after Donohue was killed we were out on a night ambush and ran into another patrol from our company. The word had not been passed that we were going to meet. I was on point and when I saw the first man in the dark - like about 10 feet away, man - I started shooting. I shot the point man of the other patrol in the leg, hip, and chest (lucky for him I was carrying an M-14 instead of the 60); and the man behind me shot him in the chest with a grenade launcher. I remember watching one of my rounds (tracer) hit him and fly off at an angle - which was pretty far out. We were so close that the M-79 round didn't spin enough to arm, hence didn't explode and ended up lodged in his neck. Incredibly, he lived. There was an article in Stars and Stripes about the surgery to remove the M-79 round. I don't remember the name of the man I shot, except that we called him the Red-Headed Mexican and he was a good guy. I remember (before I shot him) him going crazy in Dodge City (Thuy Bo) and charging a VC position right after Zamora was killed. Three helicopters shot down right there that day. 13 KIA and 66 WIA that operation. Keep on rockin' in the free world. And now I know his name because a few weeks ago I read a copy of the article about the incident! Raymond Escalera. The article said I shot him only once. There was an investigation and not long after I was transferred out of 1/26.

Thank you Jeff. To everything, Turn! Turn! Turn! there is a season, Turn! Turn! Turn! And a time to every purpose under heaven, Turn! Turn! Turn!

Sometimes, in a dream
You appear

Not long after I shot Escalera I was sent back to Hill 55 to be interviewed by a lawyer. He wanted me to say it was my fault. He was one of those cold-eyed types, but there I was, a true gunfighter, so he couldn’t very well put the evil eye on me.

Coincidentally, there was a call for a few Marines to be sent on temporary assigned duty (TAD) to an Army psychological operations unit. The call went through Jeff, back at battalion, and he arranged for me to be sent. Once again, Everyone is a Winner!

VN 66-67, Part 3: Psyops and the Hill Fights

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:42:00 +0000

So in (I think) March I went to Danang, to the weird world of the rear, where you couldn’t carry a loaded weapon! Where people saluted, wore rank, urinated inside! But it was the greatest thing (except for the unloaded weapon part, which made me a little nervous). There was this little psychological operations (psyops) base somewhere in Danang and a few miles away from that was an old hotel – very, basic – where we stayed, two racks to a room, ceiling fan. Mind-boggling when you think about it. Needless to say, we had some good parties there.

We were in the hotel at least 3 days a month. The rest of the time we were on operations or staying in a hooch in Dong Ha or Phu Bai. We had to go to Danang every month to get paid. That shouldn’t take more than 2 days, if that, but we squeezed all the extra time we could. Being in Phu Bai between operations and under no control at all from our nervous English major Michigan State Army lieutenant meant that we had a lot of freedom. I went to Quang Tri, a really neat provincial town, several times and also to Hue. It’s hard to believe I was walking alone around the deserted palaces and forbidden city with just a .45. But I had great confidence and paid attention – still … I walked along a street, trees, everything green, colonial buildings all along both sides – an image that was to stay with me the rest of my life. Photo: At Con Thien

The main thing we did was hump big, powerful loudspeakers to wherever, haul them up in trees and play tapes that were supposed to affect the enemy psychologically. We had some Buddhist funeral music, nostalgic love songs, and verbal harangues – all designed to get the other guys to surrender – and if they did, they were supposed to be met with “chieu hoi” (i.e., open arms). We also had some Rolling Stones. It was fun to play the funeral music and propaganda and then Paint it Black, Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadows, and so on. The troops dug it and the officers always got agitated.

The way it worked mainly was that the Marines on TAD to the Army psyops unit would be sent on big operations with Marine units. We were also sent to Marine “civic action platoons” which were about 15 men living in or next to a village. Potentially it was fairly dangerous duty for the troops who stayed in these places, though I don’t know of any those units being overrun. With the civic action units I remember …

Going on a night patrol out of one of those units, except we only went about 200 meters to an elevated railroad track and laid around for several hours drinking warm tiger piss beer (333 brand).

The men in a unit taking me to see a Marine who’d “gone native” – living in an isolated ville in a little hooch with his Vietnamese wife.

Hearing a gunshot and running toward it and finding a woman and her daughter moaning and crying with the husband dead on the floor, killed by VC for supporting the government.

Staying in an old stucco school that served as barracks for the unit.

Accompanying medical and dental units to villes as part of convincing the people to support the government. At the time, in the rural villes (20-100 families) people lived in traditional peasant houses, chickens and pigs around, water buffalo if the family had money and I’d be there, in the richness of the smells of food and people and all. Someone would bring a generator and there’d be a movie and the people sitting there watching, entranced, wondering if someone was going to toss a grenade into crowd. Map: Lang Vei - see below

I liked Vietnam a lot. Beautiful, green, rich, dangerous. I liked when I would go to Danang and walk the streets, getting coffee at a stand under the huge trees in the wide median with soup, coffee, noodle, bread stands selling food and bicycles, motos, cyclos, trucks passing.

And there was the DMZ and the Hill Fights.

I spent a few days at Lang Vei, at the Special Forces unit 8 klicks west of Khe Sanh (a few months later Lang Vei was overrun). I went on patrol with the SF troops and thought on patrol and back at their camp that they were not squared away, for example they walked too close together (Marines call it “cluster-fucking”) on patrol and depended too much on ARVN and tribal fighters. They had a room with a refrigerator and cold cokes and beer. I was in there having a coke (aahhhh) and an American woman walked in! I was stunned. She was an older woman with a toothy grin, pretty nice, and said her name was Martha Ray. Of course I had no idea who she was. She had a drink and we talked a little and she left to walk around talking to the troops. She flew out on a helicopter in the afternoon. At night I slept in a bunker where a lot of supplies were stored and a lot of rats lived. That’s the only time I know of that rats have ever run across my body. Photo: Hill Fights

We were based mostly out of Dong Ha, in a hooch behind the aid station with Danny, my mate from Houston and some others. Later we moved away from the aid station to a hooch next to a trench (a good thing) and near an air force NCO club in a shack, which we burgled for liquor at the first opportunity (so a very good thing). Photo: Air strip at Khe Sanh - you can barely see the German shephard

We were in the Hill Fights (the “First Battle of Khe Sanh”) with 1/9 and 3/3. Though what I was sent there to do was a joke (the loudspeaker doo-dah), I fought with the 1/9 and 3/3 Marines and that was no joke. I was (slightly) wounded up there – the 2nd time and this one I reported. It was just a piece of shrapnel in my wrist. Here is a post from my journal:

It's a challenge to talk about being in the Corps - it's really easy to say the wrong thing, something gross or inappropriate. Someone saw the Purple Heart license plates yesterday and a conversation ensued that included the idea of a million dollar wound (which I did not have) and ended with something that was maybe a little out of place ... I came in on a helicopter with another man to link up with 1/9 on an operation at the DMZ. 1/9 (1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment) was the same unit we'd replaced in Dodge City - where they got their name, the walking Dead. When the helicopter came in to where they were in those dry hills the LZ was getting hit with mortars. I didn't know what was happening and it was a complete surprise when the chopper was about 10 feet off the ground and the crew chief put his boot in my back and pushed me out, followed by a rain of ammo, C-rations, etc. and there were a lot of mortars coming in and I made it to a little hole that was full of Marines. When I dove in on top of them some lieutenant was telling me to get the hell out and I was just burrowing into the pile. I was in on an operation in the Hill Fights and I wasn't actually part of a unit with a job to do. And that's how it came to be that I could take photographs. What I said to two students was ...

I was at the DMZ once and there was this guy with a true million dollar wound and he was lying on the ground waiting to be put on a chopper out of there and he says "Hey man, take my picture." So I took a photograph of him lying there, covered in blood, grinning, shooting me the finger.

I was telling it as humorous and I'm not sure they got the joke. I guess you had to be there. Photo: at the Hill Fights

What I saw of the Hill Fights was something like when we landed at the DMZ 8 months earlier. With 1/9 we battled through the same sere hills and misty forests further in, being mortared and running down and killing the mortar teams. 1/9 was a hard-charging, bad luck battalion. They fought well and hard and destroyed all opponents, but took really a lot of casualties. They were good guys, machine gun teams always welcoming me to a fighting hole, happy for me to stand watch with them (“as long as you don’t turn them mfing speakers on”).

That one series of battles (above) was pretty horrific. We were after them, fighting through the hills and they were ready, except it was too much for them and they broke.

I don’t know if it’s anywhere close to accepted definitions, but to me a firefight has always been a fairly short and brisk exchange of fire. A battle to me is protracted, with any number of firefights or maybe just a protracted firefight, and usually some kind of ordnance.

I went on a river operation, on the Cua Viet River near Dong Ha. There were 4 or 5 Vietnamese boats with a couple of .30 cal machine guns (!!!) mounted on each boat. It was interesting, a little worrisome, and in the end, uneventful. Then when it was over we were taken to the Vietnamese commander’s home where we were treated to a huge feast at a long table outside their home. I don’t remember what we had except there were countless little bowls and many things were pretty fishy and it was good. It was a supreme time, relaxed, beautiful, friendly.

I was with 3/3 in a more jungley area than when with 1/9. I came in on a helicopter at dusk on a dark, misty day and they told me, go over there. Stay out of the way. They’d been fighting all day and so I was just hanging near the CP and it was later and I rolled up in my plastic near where some other Marines were sleeping and slept all night. In the morning I realized I was sleeping among 3/3’s KIA. I found some C-rats, notably a cinnamon roll (they came in cans) and I’d just gotten the can open when some Marines came over to carry the corpses, so I lent a hand and we were lifting a dead man up to the back of a tracked vehicle with twin .20 cal AA cannon and I had the cinnamon roll in my mouth and as we were lifting him up (men on the back of the vehicle pulling him up and men below pushing and I was below) and he was tilted and water and blood were running out of the poncho he was wrapped in and down my uplifted arm and even down my side. I couldn’t eat any more of the cinnamon roll. Photo: Near Danang

So we had bodies on the back of the vehicles and were moving to a place where helicopters could come in to bring ammo and take out casualties. The vents on the back of the vehicles were too hot and they started to burn the ponchos and bodies and you know, how can it be? Is this shit really happening?

I was flying out of an operation, in a chopper with a lot of weapons and several bodies. We were flying low, coming up on any enemy too fast for them to hit us except they did, bullets banging into the chopper and it started spinning except the pilot flared it some and though we slammed hard into the ground, it wasn’t a disaster – except for the fact that we had just been shot down by people who were undoubtedly headed our way from not very far away. We set up some guns and in just a few minutes the bullets and another chopper got there. My impression was that they were going to leave the bodies, but I wasn’t going back without them so in the end we dragged the bodies to the other chopper and got out of there (calling in arty on the downed chopper).

***
I saw a photograph today, taken at Khe Sanh – showed the Witch’s Tit – one of the (better shaped) mountains rising up above the base to the west and north. It wasn’t cold (as witches’ tits are reputed to be). It was hot, hot and extraordinarily dangerous (There’s no place in Iraq as dangerous as that place) – death in the mountains – when I hear, “these mist-covered mountains …” it sends chills through me. I was with 1/9 and we were in the hills around Con Thien northwest of Khe Sanh. But I hung out some at Khe Sanh and I was in them forests and mountains. Photo: Con Thien - thanks to Vets With A Mission

I was at Dong Ha and was wanting to go to Khe Sanh to hang out with Jeff and whoever was left of 1/26. I was at the airstrip (or was it Phu Bai?) looking for a plane or chopper into the base and someone told me that a C-123 starting to taxi away was going to Khe Sanh. So I ran up to the side door to get on and the guy pulled me up into the plane. Whew! It stunk of aviation fuel and that's exactly what it was full of in 55 gallon barrels and I'm flashing on the fact that there is always someone using a heavy AA machine gun to shoot at planes landing at Khe Sanh (guns set up to fire at planes coming in from either way). You know, it's not really a major deal for bullets to go through a plane - but if they hit a person or engine or something explosive or flammable, well that's bad and of course this whole plane was flammable. But we were already taking off - it ain't enough that I'm hiking around in these bleeding bloody hills literally from one gunfight to another and now I'm riding in a giant torch just waiting for a match. As I recall we did some pretty serious juking coming in - Hold On!

***
9th Marines history, Wikipedia: In April and May 1967, elements of the regiment defeated two NVA Regiments in the Hills north of Khe Sanh. In Operation Buffalo, elements of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines made contact north of Con Thien with regimental-size NVA forces in an engagement that lasted through May, accounting for over 1300 enemy dead.

***

Another random post: I was in and out of Dong Ha, the furthest north big base in South Vietnam. This was before Dong Ha was built up. From there we would go to places like Gio Linh and Khe Sanh and out in the hills to the Hill Fights. I’d been in the Hill Fights for several weeks with 1/9 and some of my gear was lost or damaged, like someone had bled all over my flak jacket and it stunk. So one evening I was going through the discarded gear outside the aid station, which consisted of several shacks with sand-bag walls and stretchers with wounded men lined up inside on something like saw horses. I was shuffling around in piles of bloody flak jackets, helmets, web gear, bayonets, ammo and so on and it was dark and misty and evil with the guys inside and the smells and the mud and I felt like a ghost or ghoul or something and was pretty freaked out. I found what I was looking for though.

Leaving

I remember coming home from VN in 1967. We flew from Danang to Okinawa, where we stayed for a couple of days. One night Carver and I were in a little house where there were some women. There were also 5 or 6 other Marines there - we were sitting in a circle passing a bottle around. I remember looking at the other men, every one of them rear-echelon types, sergeants and staff sergeants, some of them tanned or muscled up or chubby, and I was hating them. I hated them for being in the rear, for being jovial, for being muscled up, for being chubby, for being tanned, for being. One of them noticed me staring at him and said something, and I answered (I remember clearly), “Well, fuck you then.” In one of the great moments of my life I hit him in the face with everything I had, perfectly, and he went right through the wall. A melee followed and the Shore Patrol was there in what seemed like moments. Carver and I got away, but the next morning they lined all the VN returnees up to look at our hands to see who was involved. I slipped into the already-inspected group for a clean getaway. Photo: Marines doing what they do

We flew into California where we stood in our final formation. That was the saddest thing - 30-something men left from the 180 who started out in C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment 18 months before. The rest were dead, wounded badly enough that they were sent home, wounded three times (automatic go home), or (the truly lucky) sick with malaria and hence guard duty at Subic Bay, and so on.

I remember so clearly sitting in a huge mess hall (I think at Camp Pendleton) full of other men home from the war. Every time I was there I loaded my tray with a ton of food, then all I would eat was chocolate cake and glass after glass of cold milk. Unlike all other Marine Corps mess halls, this one had a juke box and the song they kept playing over and over was Groovin' by the Young Rascals "... couldn't get away too soon ... doing, anything we'd like to do ... all the happy people we could meet ... we'll keep on spending sunny days this way ... we're gonna talk and laugh our time away ..."Mostly it was all a blur.

What did we look like? The ones who weren't "in Vietnam" - but the ones who fought in Vietnam? We were the skinny ones, the pale ones, the nervous ones, the sick ones, the ones who didn’t want to look at you and who you didn’t want to look at.

War, Our Way of Life & Death

One night we went into L.A., drinking in a Filipino bar close to a freeway. At some point we were running across a bridge over the freeway, a couple of us running balanced on the handrail (it was a wide oval handrail) and a couple of the other guys stuffed into a grocery store basket rolling down the street. Somewhere along the way I was thinking, "At this stage of the game it doesn't make sense to be killed falling off a bridge onto an LA freeway." It was a good time.

Photo: Our Proud Heritage

I flew from California to Dallas Love Field. Nobody said anything to me - it seemed like nobody would look at me. There were already stories going around about people saying things to men coming home. I can't imagine anyone saying anything to me. How crazy would that have been? My father picked me up. I had nothing to say to him or anyone else.

Moving through these trying times

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:09:00 +0000

I received this message the other day: Your words were very poignant, moving and pardon the slight selfishness, validating. I will remember them as I move through the rest of these trying times. I also hope to carry them with me as I go forward in life.

Then this evening, reading something by Eric Andersen, writing about Ginsberg, Dylan, others: Their lives and writings have sustained me and given me confidence. Their words are my treasures. They are the eyes of the jewel. I am lucky to have gotten to meet and know some of them. They are spirits who illuminated my path, who provided the lantern I carry within, in the hope that one day a light will shine for others, as these great souls have shown for me.

That’s not to compare myself with Dylan(!), but to say that all around are people who can sustain us, give us treasures, illuminate our paths and so help us to sustain others, give others treasures, illuminate … In other posts I’ve named some who have done this for me: Dan Foster, Leslie Kemp, Stephen Gaskin, Stephen Levine, Nora Avila, Lay Rith, and others. Photo: people who sustain me; also see 1st paragraph in this post for a person who helps sustain me.

I’ve started working on an account of my 13 months in Vietnam.

Angry post

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Dallas Morning News (10/21/2009): “Texans had less access to the (H1N1) flu vaccine last week than residents of all but one other state, according to the (CDC). Federal officials said the explanation is simple: Texas got fewer doses because it asked for less than other states.” Of course Texas officials are shuckin’ and jivin’ about this, but the fact is, Texas is in the bottom 3 states on virtually every measure of human services and has been for many years. When I first posted this I had a good bit more to say about vicious hypocrites, but discretion ...

Oink Oink pas de deux: dancing with Miss Piggy, dreaming of the alpine

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:35:00 +0000

See links at right/down for backpacking and Asia travel entries
Oink

It’s the year of H1N1. Irma, Pat, and I work the fever and cough hall (Photo at left). Yesterday I was thinking, well, ____, every day is a lot of exposure for us; and two of us at some degree of >risk, due to age. But it seems like a reasonable risk, given whatever and all. If I get it bad, I’m guessing I won’t be as cavalier, but in the meantime, here we go again. And don't believe that BS about "First responders are first to get the vaccine" - at least these first responders. Pas de deux.

2009 – Oh what a year this is! (copied from something I wrote)

2009 – When a secluded hallway at Grace UMC is lined with people with H1N1 influenza (photo); when our regular patients with diabetes, hypertension, depression, etc. keep coming; when people who never imagined that they would seek healthcare in the basement of a church started coming; when the nurse practitioner knelt in front of the woman with kidney failure and at least one gangrenous toe, cleaning the wounds, asking,
“Does it hurt?’
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I have to get it clean.”
“God bless you.”

2009 – When Eagle Scout candidates painted and decorated exam rooms and the back work area in ways that only 16 year old boys/young men would; when new volunteers included two pediatricians, a gynecologist, an ENT specialist, and two RNs; when ______ said they would continue to provide lab services at no cost; when several churches renewed their commitment to financial support for Agape; when the NP asked, “Does anyone want to work in the cough and fever hall with me?”
The young promotora said, “I’ll go.”
And Pat, the pediatric nurse practitioner said, “I’ll take care of the children.”

Photo at left above is a spacer for young patients with asthma - Nora makes them and they cost pennies vs. >$20 for manufactured. Photo below is Jackie, someone who always elevates us

2009 – When we received this email from a graduating medical student who volunteered at Agape for several years: “I'm very excited about starting a new chapter in my life and wanted to thank you for the opportunity you gave us to work at Agape. To me, it was the constant reminder that beyond all the books and the tests and (other stuff) there were people in need, people we wanted to help.”
***
2009 – When we looked back and saw that in the 1st three quarters of 2008 we treated 2,382 patients; and in the 1st three quarters of 2009 we treated 3,476 patients; when donations decreased; when commitments to keep serving were renewed.

The Wind Rivers
The Winds reverberate in me. I’m still processing the 2 weeks on the trail. The need to go into the high alpine even greater now than before. What I wrote yesterday: Where I went was not fun - it was harsh and challenging, beautiful beyond my imagination, there were several days of mild altitude sickness, there was some danger, and ultimately it was a true peak experience. That wasn’t my goal. My goals were to be in the alpine and to make it over the col.

One thing that’s helping as I consider where next in the Winds is to realize that all Winds treks start in a forest and that it always takes at least a day to get to the alpine. So, if I have to go through the same forest more than once, well, okay, after the first mile, trees in one place aren’t all that different from trees in another place. Photo above is along the Highline Trail. After I got home, I was in touch with the person who took it. Photo below was taken at Island Lake, looking back to the place I was, far away in the misty peaks.

All that to say, I may head back up the Pole Creek Trail (camp 1) to Seneca Lake Trail past Island Lake (2) to somewhere on the Indian Pass Trail (3) across the Continental Divide to Knife Point Glacier (4) and see where I might go; also up Freemont Peak (13,745),* a 3rd and 4th class scramble (5), back down, up Titcomb Basin (6) and over Knapsack Col to Mammoth Glacier (7) and then past Peak Lake to Glacier Trail NW and maybe camp at Dale Lake (8) and around to Highline south to Summit Lake (8) to Elbow Lake (9) to Big Water Slide (9) to Lost Lake and on to Seneca Lake Trail (10) and then one more night on the trail, maybe Eklund Lake or Miller Park (11) and out.

*From peakware.com: “Sitting in the center of the vast and remote Wind River Range, Fremont Peak represents a fine climbing challenge in arguably the most beautiful alpine environment in the United States.” What more could I ask?

Wind Rivers 2009 - North

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:34:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right. For backpacking, see links at right: Wind Rivers 9-20-09, Grand Canyon 4-7-09, Winds 9-12-08, Maroon Bells 7-21-08, Bandelier 5-23-08, Big Bend 3-12-08)

Friday, 8/21 (More Wind Rivers photos here)
I left the clinic at 11:15, had lunch with Leslie at Whole Foods, home, packed car, and on the road about 1:15. Driving along, having all these sad feelings and after Wichita Falls, feelings of dread. I was out of cell range, but near Clarendon checked phone and was able to call home. What an enormous relief to talk with Leslie. Photo: clouds and rain in the trees

With a happier heart I drove on through Amarillo with Texas seeming endless. I stopped near Clayton New Mexico and slept fitfully for a couple of hours. I was dreaming something about Rabbit in the Moon and then heard this big noise and awoke as a train rumbled by. Back on the road ~3am and drove to Walsenburg and pulled off again at 5 to sleep soundly until 7 and drove on into Denver. Photo: chipmunk

Saturday, 8/22
I stopped at the big Denver REI in an upscale “old town” sort of area where waiting at Starbucks for REI to open I was surrounded by outdoor-type people – fit and tanned with bike and climbing stuff all around. I heard at a conference a month or so ago that Colorado has the highest level of health in the US. I was inspired to (plan on) ramping it up when I get home. I bought an ice axe and drove on to Fort Collins – one of the places of my dreams – a place where people look like me vs. Dallas, where I always feel a little like a minority. I went to a food fest where there were easily more than a hundred artisan food producers (chocolates, breads, salsas, soups, etc., etc.), musicians, and other entertainment. It was the best sampling ever. Got a decent room at Motel 6, thanks to Leslie’s Trip Advisor search. Pored over maps, read, watched CNN and Cops, went to sleep early, and slept well. I had planned on getting up at 4:30 so I could be on the trail around 1pm, but fortunately came to my senses and slept until 7:15. Photo: camp site 1 in trees to left of pond

Sunday, 8/23
Had a leisurely drive into Wyoming, through Laramie, across the high desert, and finally the mountains coming into view. Big! Got into Pinedale around 3pm, glad that I hadn’t pushed it to get on the trail today. The sky was heavy with steel grey clouds and by the time I got to then trailhead, rain … and here I sit, in my Campry, dry and warm as can be. Slept fitfully, dreaming of Judo climbing a wall and going after something and someone asked, “How does he do that?” I answered, “That’s just what he does.” What a great dog. It rained all night and I was cozy and semi-comfortable. Photo right: junction Seneca Lake & Highline Trails - classic Winds topography

Monday, 8/24 (day 1 on the trail)
Woke early and slowly got my stuff together in the misty morning. Basically I had a sense of dread about the whole thing – and anger at Jeff for leaving me hanging and then alone on this trip. Yesterday, talking with Leslie I committed to being cautious and not going forward regardless of risk (is not going forward really an option?). Photo: hawk catching fish from Freemont Creek

Today was hard – as 1st days always are, because, of course, it’s all uphill, even if not steep – and I just drove here from Dallas @ 500 feet above sea level and now I’m at 10,000 feet and I’m 5 days from having 65 years and I’m carrying 12 days of food and it’s raining all day, with a little sleet now and then, and I’ve been nauseated most of the day and forcing myself to drink, grumble, mumble, groan, blah blah blah. By the time I got to my goal campsite up the hill from a tiny pond past Eklund Lake it had stopped raining. It took more than an hour to get the tent up and filter water. I felt really bad. Many mosquitoes. I lay on a piece of blue tarp outside the tent for about 30 minutes and finally felt some better. It’s 6:10pm and I still have no desire to eat. I think I’ll force the granola bar I didn’t have for lunch. And at last I’m completely set up and cozy in the tent. Photo right: camp at Lower Jean Lake; Left: Lower Jean Lake

People I met today: 77 year old man from Wyoming who passed me by – sheesh – and a serious talker; man from San Diego; medical student from Seattle; group of 4 men from Pittsburgh.

Tuesday, 8/25 (2)
Slept okay. Got up a few times and the stars were out, but many trees so the stars partially obscured. In the morning it took forever to fix breakfast (splurged on dehydrated eggs, cheese, and tortillas – too much food) and break camp. The tent was really wet and though I shook and shook, packed up wet. On the trail about 8:30, grateful that I got the Spot tracker to check in with Leslie and call for help in emergency. Photo right: Lower Jean Lake in the morning

The trail still mostly up – trudge trudge trudge, past Hobbs Lake, past Seneca Lake, Little Seneca, unnamed tarns, up switchbacks and I’m sucking air and not getting all I need. Basically wasted. Finally over the last little saddle at 10,600 feet and I’m where I want to be: alpine country, above the treeline, glacier-scoured granite domes, tarns, creeks. The Highline Trail cuts off to the northwest and I walk about ½ mile on the Highline and go off trail for a little way to find a good campsite next to a boulder about 10’ high and 20’ long and between several tarns with a few twisted alpine pine trees. I set up the tent and lay the rain fly over a rock to dry. I’m tired, but not sick like yesterday – just lounging around on a rock, enjoying the place, the breeze. The mosquitoes are still swarming – flying to within about ¼ inch before repelled by the DEET. Photo: Elbow Lake in the distance

After I filtered water I came back to the campsite and kind of went through the motions of cooking. Despite no enthusiasm, I ended up with a tasty dinner of pasta with chipotle cream sauce (Wagner’s, from Central Market), cheese and tortillas. After dinner I walked up the hill a ways and enjoyed the view. Back at camp I fixed a cup of orange tea, which wasn’t very good. The DEET started wearing off and so here I am, in my cozy little home away from home. Photo: icy tarn along the trail

People: the only people I talked with today were a father and son from Duluth. They have exactly the same plan as mine – Peak Lake, maybe Mammoth Glacier, Knapsack Col. I took their photo, thinking about what a treasure a photo like that is. The man told me about two people who were caught by weather at Knapsack Col and had to be rescued by helicopter.

I’m sticking with my original plan to camp as high as I can above Peak Lake and if the weather is good, make a dash (haha) over the col. If weather is bad, maybe head to Mammoth Glacier and try the col the next day. Photo left: Peak Lake

Wednesday 8/26 (3)
Everything remains just this HUGE effort. I’ve made it to the lower end of Lower Jean Lake and though that’s only a few miles from where I started, I’m still happy – happy to be here by this lake, in the raw alpine. There’s a snowfield ~100 meters from the tent and the lake less than 100 meters the other direction. One of the factors that decided me to take this route is the presence of Upper and Lower Jean Lakes. That was my mother-in-law’s name: Jean. She was a good person, a good m-i-l, and a great mother. Her last several years were unhappy and her mind slipping away, but those aren’t the years that mattered. They are the years that cloud memories of her, but what really matters is the other 60+ years. Anyway, I’m dedicating this trek to Jean Shirley. Photo: camp at Peak Lake

I always think of the Corps when I’m on these hikes – especially the 20-30 mile forced marches in landing force training with full gear (flak jacket, helmet, food, water, weapons, etc .– for me, a 23.5 pound machinegun). And I always think about Gunny Evans, a superman, a bad man, a good man, an ultimate Marine, a warrior. He had super strength, abnormally long arms, and he could see in the dark. We made a landing up near the DMZ where we were in about 5 days of off and on true battles (vs, firefights). At one point me and Charlie Parker were getting it on with some automatic weapons at the right flank point when like some kind of hallucination Gunny Evans comes charging toward us from the front carrying a wounded Marine. How he got there I have no idea, but there he was, Gunnery Sergeant Ernest Evans, USMC. Photo: from tent, Stroud Peak

People I met today: man from Wisconsin, a prodigious hiker; man from Utah, another strong one. Animals: eagle catching a fish out of Freemont Creek, marmot, chipmunks, squirrels, mosquitoes. Photo: a great dinner

I just realized that on this trek my legs hurt less than on previous ones. Later I awoke with my legs hurting enough to take an ibuprofen.

Thursday, 8/27 (4)
A good day – hiked from Lower Jean Lake past Upper Jean, past the trail to Elbow Lake, on to Shannon Pass Trail, over the pass, up to Cube Rock Pass, and off-trail to Peak Lake where I discover that the reports of a rock slide over the trail on the north side of the lake are true. It looked unstable and like a slide into the icy water was possible. So tomorrow I’ll head around to the south into a most amazing boulder field.
My campsite is on the south of Peak Lake in a tiny space among boulders and directly below Stroud Peak. Dinner tonight was great: mashed potatoes, bacon, cheese, and three cheese toast. Excellent!

Leslie, you’ve been deep in me this trip. I think about this and that hiking along and resting, but the steady stream is you. Even in this grandeur I miss you – sometimes thinking of being in Hong Kong with you (of all places). What a time we’ve had. Traveling, working together, David, still working together! And of course the whole thing of being married to you – in love for so many years.

People: saw the father and son again – they decided not to try Peak Lake Basin; man from Boulder – just getting back to backpacking and this hike the big one for him. Later I thought I should have asked him if he’s on BP forum. After passing trail to Elbow Lake I saw a three people off in the distance and that’s all. Photo: THE boulder field

Friday, 8/28 (5)
This has been a tough day. The trail around the north of Peak Lake is covered for about 50-70 feet from a fresh rock/earth slide, which is likely to be unstable, so rather than risk a slide into the icy lake, I went through the boulders south of the lake. It’s a huge maze of piled up rocks ranging in size from cottage on down (some shifting, even a few big ones). Quite a challenge, with my backpack creating balance and space issues. At one point I was resting and smelled a chemical. Uh-oh, denatured alcohol, my cooking fuel leaking from the newly cracked Nalgene bottle. I chugged my small water bottle and poured what alky was left into that. Hmmm. Think I’ll start carrying 2 small Gatorade bottles of alky. There were a few patches of dirt up high in the boulder field and I made my way that way, only to find that the dirt was completely unstable and I was better off in the rocks. Probably also should have stayed lower in the field as well.

Finally I got through the rocks and into a pretty meadow with scattered boulders and rock alongside a rushing mountain stream and on up into the basin to a waterfall with a milky blue/white pond (color from glacier ground rock) and a sheltered campsite above. It was ~2pm – good enough!

Clouds were gathering and I got the tent up faster than usual. Then the clouds blew on by and I’m resting in the shade on a rock platform with the waterfall cascading down a few feet from my feet and between the rock I’m sitting on and the rock I’m leaning against is a smaller rivulet running into the main fall. Quite a day.

I’m guessing I’m at about 11,000 feet with Sulphur Peak above me and the back sides of Bow Mountain and Mount Arrowhead on the south. Across the basin are Mount Whitecap, G-4, Split Mountain, and then Twin Peaks on the north side of Knapsack Col and Winnifred Peak on the south side. I had thought I might go up between Split Mountain and G-4 to Mammoth Glacier. LOL! I don’t think so! It’s doable, but I want to get over the col while the getting is good.

Doing this solo really changes my mindset. What would be a challenge with a companion seems a major challenge alone. There is also a lack of mutual motivation. Instead of hiking all over the place at the end of the day, I’m staying close to camp. Basically, I’m in a risk reduction mode all the time. Photo: alpine flowers, late season color

I can see four waterfalls from my campsite and there was a nice little water slide on the way up to here – all are glacier run-off. I’m thinking that not that many people have been in this place and seen what I’m seeing.
I like my little tent. It’s an REI ¼ dome UL 2 person tent. I could have saved a pound by getting a one person tent, but I sure like the extra room. I’ve slept in some pretty bad places in my day: pool halls, troop ship, cars, Garden Guest House in Rangoon, rice padi, VN cave with rats – the first 7 months in VN I slept on the ground, usually without air mattress (we called them rubber ladies).
It’s raining, windy, colder, and I’m worried about tomorrow. If the weather is too bad to try the col, it’s not like I can easily go back through the boulder field if it’s iced or wet. Hmmm. People today: none.

Saturday 8/29 (6)
I got an early start, dehydrated eggs ham & cheese for breakfast, and hiking a little after 8am. Contoured an easy start and then up, up, ever up. There was no trail except from time to time I’d come across a faint one, then lose it in the rocks and snow. I stayed to the right and it got steeper, with a few stretches of clambering. I took my gloves off for a better grip on the rocks, which felt good since when I’m at the clinic I wash my hands 30 or 40 times a day. The steep, unstable scree was most challenging for me. Getting close to the top I used the ice axe on a steep snow field – chunk, kick, chunk, kick, chunk, kick … I was really working and had to rest more than I’d like (even more than usual!) – especially considering the lowering clouds. Finally, Knapsack Col at >12,000 feet. Photo: Peak Lake Basin, Stroud Glacier in distance

Now the descent. There was a kind of rounded cornice at the top, so I went around to the north on a talus slope, then to the snow-covered glacier for a long, beautiful glissade. Made an arrest, then down again, then on my butt (but who was there to see?) – snow in my pants via the tear in the seat gotten from an ignominious fall in the rocks above. Altogether a long and fun slide. Then the long trudge through scree, water, and so on. I fell again somewhere along the way, from fatigue and loss of focus. Man, am I happy.

At the very head of the Titcomb Basin, I found what I guess is a climber’s camp – who else would be there long enough to build a 1-2 foot wall/windbreak on 2 sides of the site right beneath the big walls of either Forked Tongue or Mt. Helen? Looks like home to me!

I don’t want to overstate things, but this was a crux day for me – the most challenging day of the trek. I’m really glad to be here. Photo: challenge to cross this snow field

As always, thinking about Leslie. Having been to the moon today, Standing on the Moon comes to mind. Standing on the moon
With nothing left to do
A lovely view of heaven
But I’d rather be with you
Somewhere in San Francisco
On a back porch in July
Just looking up at heaven
At this crescent in the sky.

These backpacking trips are, in part, vision quests and you’d think I’d get the picture/vision – because it’s always the same. Like in the Dedication to my terminal illness book: I lay dreaming and there was a band setting up to play, tuning, and then in a beautiful clear voice a woman sang, “Who knows where the time goes” and in that moment I awoke and said aloud, “To Leslie.” People today: none. Photo at left: looking waaay back down Peak Lake Basin

Sunday, 8/30 (7)
Slept in to 7:30 or so. Sleet on the ground. Leisurely breakfast, leisurely packing, and head on down the Titcomb Basin, past the lakes. At the 2nd lake I encountered the first person I’d seen in several days. The hiking was easy, mostly level and downhill alongside the Titcomb Lakes and then around the south side of Island Lake, my planned stop. I found a nice, sheltered place to camp with Titcomb off in the distance. Happy 65th, CK. Photo right: Twins Glacier; left: looking down the glacier into Titcomb

A storm was developing out to the west and here it comes: big wind, lightening, thunder, rain sprinkling, splattering, now sleet, hail, BIG wind. Glad I’m a little sheltered. Much cooler now, rain steady and lightening and thunder passing. Rain slacking, wind rising. Hongry.

Storm on past and I jumped out to fix dinner – chili with pasta, cheese, and the whole $.99 bag of Doritos (at home I stuck a pinhole in the bag and squeezed the air out and smashed the chips some to end up with a small bag). Mmmm, Doritos. My appetite is returning – the last few bites not a chore.

People: young man from Oregon filtering water, down from mountaineering with his uncle – “on the front (crampon) points. Awesome.” Yeah, awesome all right. A man back from 20 years in France. And at Island Lake, probably 15-20 people. Photo right: happy man in Titcomb Basin

Monday, 8/31 (8)
Hike today took me from Island Lake, where the trees begin again, through sub alpine meadows and basins, and on into the forest and through the meadows. Even though the trend is downhill, I still hiked tired. Some would be “trail hardened;” I’m trail worn. I got a little past my objective and am camped in a meadow at the junction of trails to Sweeney Lakes and Pole Creek. I started out in the woods, but couldn’t hack it in there and moved to the edge of the meadow next to a big patch of salvia. Dinner was alfredo, pasta, basil, pepper, Italian toast. Yeah! Photo left: Island Lake

Tuesday, 9/1 (9)
I’m tired. Thinking that you don’t know your limits until you find them.
There’s much more wildlife in this lower area. In the evening yesterday birds singing and screeching and this morning a cacophony of birds. Carnivore scat on the trail. Got to trailhead about 1pm. Sitting on a planter in front of the general store in Pinedale, talking with Leslie (she was in Central Market) – happy day, talking with my wife.

Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri
Had a fantastic cheeseburger & fries at Wind River Brewing Company. Got a room for two nights at the Sundance Motel, an unremarkable, but fairly cheap place. Showered. Showered. Ate. Sorted gear. Watched TV. Washed clothes. The next two nights I stayed at the Signal Mountain campsites in the Grand Tetons. Some people had travel trailers, campers, RVs, and some had tents. I was thinking, these are my people – my tribe. Quiet, friendly, respectful, families, couples, retired people – no urine on the toilet seat – just your basic nice WASP scene. I’m enjoying it. Last night man at next camp site brought over some cornbread and honey. We hung out, talking – somewhere in middle America. Photo: taken from my last camp site

(More Wind Rivers photos here)

Wind Rivers 2009 - Cirque of the Towers

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:00:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right. For backpacking, see links at right: Wind Rivers 9-20-09, Grand Canyon 4-7-09, Winds 9-12-08, Maroon Bells 7-21-08, Bandelier 5-23-08, Big Bend 3-12-08)

Saturday, 9/5 (1) - more Cirque of the Towers photos here

Headed to Jackson to pick up Mike H, my trekking partner for the Cirque of the Towers in the southern Winds. I was early to the airport and got some completely wrong information from the woman at the Frontier Airlines. Thanks a lot. Picked up Mike, drove to Pinedale, sorted food, stopped by outfitter, and headed to Big Sandy. It’s a long drive through Wyoming high desert over a steadily worsening road and finally into aspen and then pine forests where the road was pretty bad, at least for a Camry. Saw several herds of pronghorns, some up very close, and actually had to slow for two bucks in the road. Photo above: Along Big Sandy Trail; below: badger

We were finally on the trail about 3pm. It was a lovely slightly uphill walk along the Big Sandy River. Uneventful except for seeing a badger. We made it to the junction of the V Lake trail, about 3 miles. Found a nice camp site in the woods next to a huge low granite dome.

Sunday, 9/6 (2)

Back on the pretty forest trail until we got to Big Sandy Lake about 11am. Then the fun started with switchbacks up, up, up and after a lovely park-like section of trail, the trail pretty much quit being a trail and we ascended through well-cairned steep rocky shelves, gaps, boulders with first Sundance Pinnacle, then the mighty Warbonnet Peak looming over us. Around 3pm we’d made about 3.5 hard miles and huge clouds were blowing in, so we found a decent camp site right under Warbonnet. We had a good 15-20 minute rain just as we got our tents up. Photo: Mike on the "surprisingly awkward" trail to Jackass Pass

Monday, 9/7 (3)

The trudging scramble upward continued. On this, as on previous days we met some nice people. I’d say I’d like to know at least 90% of these people. Most were young (younger overall than I met in the northern Winds), all strong, ready to hear about our trek and ready to tell about theirs. The women reminded me of when my mother realized Leslie and I were going to marry. “None of her friends,” my mother said disapprovingly, “wear makeup.” Everyone we saw – women, men, dogs – looking good. Trudge, trudge, pant, pant. We’re at about 10,500 feet – a 10,000 foot gain in 24 hours for Mike, gasp, pant and finally the last descent to Arrowhead Lake and then the long ascent to – at last Jackass Pass. Being as how donkeys, etc. can’t get to the pass, I wonder which jackasses they named it after. I gave a raspy, sorry yodel, unappreciated by my partner, and then we were over the pass, over the Continental Divide and down into the awesome Cirque of the Towers – from Pingora Peak to Warrior 1, the most amazing array of big walls in the Rockies and we are here! Photo above: Jackass Pass; right: The Cirque of the Towers

We headed down the trail, then west toward Hidden Lake, through (what else?) more boulders. It’s important to understand when I say boulder field, I’m not talking about a field with some boulders, but great jumbles of boulders of all sizes – but not as taxing as the Peak Lake boulders. We got through these, stopped to filter water, headed up a small ridge pretty far above Lonesome Lake, and stopped for the night at about 10,400 feet (just inside tree line). Warrior 1, Warrior 2, and Pylon Peak are close above us, but we still haven’t gotten to Hidden Lake.

I feel good about our progress. One full day of hiking plus two half days have gotten us well into the Cirque – not bad for a combined total of 126 years of age! I can see myself returning, making a wider loop, Jackass into the Cirque, Lizard Head Trail north out of the Cirque, Bears Ear, Washakie, and south, past Marm’s & Dad’s Lakes or over Texas Pass for a smaller loop. On the other hand, the northern Winds are higher and I love the alpine … Photo: Warbonnet, Warriors

Tuesday, 9/8 (4)

Today was a rest day. We got a late start and hiked for less than 2 hours, mostly downhill (through a few boulders, of course), to a dell in a grove of old pine trees above Lizard Head Meadows at about 10,200 feet. Leisurely set-up, hung out talking for an hour or so, wandered down to Lonesome Lake where we watched 12” trout swimming in the shallows. Mike caught 3 cuttthroats and threw them back in. He taught me some about fishing, but I caught none. Photo: trout in the shallows

Found myself thinking about the Drop Inn on Sukhumvit Soi 20, coffee on the patio, the pad see eu place around the corner, hanging out in the aircon … Got back to the camp site about 4, fixed Thai noodles with lemon grass, chilis, and chicken. Ate in a sunny place on the side of a hill. Ahhh, the wilderness ain’t all harsh.

Yesterday a girl told us about seeing a moose cow and calf in the meadow, and we found fresh tracks close to our camp site, so we have high hopes for that. Now that Labor Day has passed, this prime Wind Rivers area is almost deserted. A couple hiked past us earlier today and we saw three men across the lake while we were fishing and that’s all. Photo: Pingora

Wednesday, 9/9 (5)

We headed back up to Jackass Pass. As we walked (up, of course) we looked back and saw three moose (bull and 2 cows) standing in a marshy area of the lake. Getting up to the pass from this side is much easier than from the other side. We were resting at the top when who should appear but the man from France who I’d met at Island Lake a week ago. Had a nice time talking, then down, down, down, up, up, up, so on and so forth, clambering down the rocky areas. Dedicating this hike to the cairn makers – Thank You! Pretty tired by the time we got to a camp site at the bottom of the switchbacks. Set up tents, filtered water, dinner. I walked a way up the hill to pee and out of nowhere some people appeared. What? Oh, I forgot that there were switchbacks, so I’d walked almost to the trail. Oops. Photo: morning in the Cirque

Saw an eagle soaring across the lake toward us. Photo: Mitchell Peak

Thursday, 9/10 (6)

I got up early with a song in my mind. Sat on a granite dome and wrote:

In the early morning sun,
Wishing you were here with me
Knowing we’re together soon
Knowing that’s forever more

I’ve loved you for these many years
I’ll love you many more
We’ll be together now
And forever more

Sun coming up (now) over foothills
Like it’s come up these past days
Over mountains stark and grey
How can I be here
In this place so high and wild

All these years passing by
Not like a dream, not like a mist
Like treasures one by one
Passing through my life enriched

Working hard to make it so
Lucky that it’s turned out like this.

When I finished writing I cried, for the beauty, for life. My life.

The hike out along Big Sandy River was beautiful: the river, meadows, forests, dells, mountains, and sky. And finally the trailhead and now we’re on a cheeseburger and fries mission. The Wind Rivers Brewery did not disappoint. Back to the Sundance for a shower, another shower, and sleep in a big bed. Then on the road to Dallas, through huge storms in Kansas, rain in Oklahoma, and home.

More Cirque of the Towers photos here

Video

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:44:00 +0000

It's been more than 6 months since this video was done. I guess by now I'm comfortable enough with it to post it.

John Muir Trail

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:10:00 +0000

David called a few days ago – from the summit of Mount Whitney at the end of the John Muir Trail. So he’s completed the 220 mile JMT, from Yosemite Valley through the Ansel Adams Wilderness, the John Muir Wilderness, the Evolution Valley, Kings Canyon National Park, and to the top of Mount Whitney. What an achievement! It’s a good window into David’s nature that he didn’t complete the JMT last year and went back this year and did it. Congratulations son! Photo: with David in Kampot

JMT photos are here.

There is a bird feeder right outside our bedroom window and about 10 feet further into the yard is a bird bath, both in a line so that lying in our bed we can see them and Leslie and I were lying in bed this morning watching the birds and squirrel excitement and I was looking to the right of the window where Leslie has photographs sitting on top of the cedar chest and there is a photo of David and me standing in front of Becky and Mike’s house, like the photo of us in front of the Cosmic Guesthouse, at Arc en Ceil, in the Grand Canyon, at a sidewalk café in Kampot, and so on and I was thinking, the best I can recall there was never a photograph like these of my father and me. So glad the pattern was broken.

Photo: the view from our bed - actually I took the photo from right by the window. This squirrel's name is Chubby; all the squirrels that visit us are named Chubby, except when two of them are together, then we have Chubby and the Other Chubby.

Four days from now, I’m headed northwest, through west Texas into New Mexico and up through Colorado (stop in Boulder or Fort Collins) and into Wyoming to Pinedale and on to Elkhart Trailhead and from there, a 10-12 day trek into the northern Wind Rivers, out for a night then to the southern Winds for a 6 day trek with Mike Haney.

There are heroic people

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:14:00 +0000

I ran into an old acquaintance a couple of days ago, Juan (identity shielded), a Dallas Police officer. We used to hang out in the East Dallas Police Community Storefront, talking about our respective callings, fighting, good & evil, and so on. He is the cop you want to answer your call, the cop you want as a neighbor, the good cop (from a citizen’s perspective, that is). He told me he’s working as part of a team, going after serious felons (robbers, rapists, etc.) in our part of Dallas. “I’m the first one in the door,” he says, with the satisfaction of a man who’s where he needs to be. Photo: some guy playing with the siren.

Here is a true story that tells you everything you need to know to know the essential nature of this man: his partner (a good guy who I’d talked with) was killed a number of years ago in downtown Dallas, beaten down in the street and shot with his own gun while the crowd shouted to the killers, “Shoot the motherfucker. Kill that white motherfucker.” And the person who had the gun pulled the trigger and shot him dead and the crowd cheered. Juan and his partner weren’t working together that day and his partner died alone. When they took him in for the autopsy Juan stayed with the body, throughout the autopsy – which, as you might imagine, is a hard thing to do. And knowing this man, I know he didn’t look away for the cutting and weighing and so on.

I’ve thought many, many times, if I had another life, I’d love to come back as a cop, going after exactly who this man is going after, and especially I’d like to bring to justice the people who hurt children. Photo: A Karen family in Dallas. Photo by Aaron
______
Found these notes from earlier this year: Sleeping at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico, dreaming a Latin couple with a baby and someone after them, shooting with accuracy and skill and still we got away and were in this room of tapestries, old Khmer women in the shadows, wood floors and walls dark with age. I need to remember.
______
Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down. I was driving down Peak Street yesterday and I saw a morbidly obese woman in a wheelchair French-kissing the Chihuahua she had on her lap.

Food for Wyoming

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:29:00 +0000

I added links to all backpacking trips in this journal to the my links section on the right. The last Asia trip is also linked there. Also updated and fixed photos in the Old East Dallas Restaurants guide. Photo: front room, where I write, work, read, hang out ...

So here's the plan on food for the Wind Rivers. Basically I have 10-12 days on the trail, rest a day or so, then 6 days on the trail. So I'm dividing everything into 6 day increments - 6 days of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in a package and so on. It's all freezer bag cooking (FBC), which means each of the hot meals is dehydrated and carried individually in a freezer bag, to which I'll add boiling water and put the bag into a cozy (insulated bag) and 10-15 minutes later, it's ready to eat.

I use a super-cat alky stove to boil the water. A super-cat is a cat food can with holes in specific places. 25ml of denatured alcohol will boil 2 cups of water at 10000-11000 feet, which is where I'll be most of the time, at least when cooking. OO stands for olive oil. I carry olive oil, different salsas, peppers, herbs (all from our garden - basil, rosemary, lemongrass, etc.), teas (for evening), hot chocolate, miso, etc.

Photo at left: dehydrator trays, one with 14 oz baby onion and the other with 3 large peppers, dehydrated. See below for what these went into.

Photos below (1st 2): where the Santa Fe tracks used to be; where David and I walked for many years (the trains were running then), first with him riding my shoulders, later with us truckin' along side by side; where I walk now, trying stay in (more or less) shape.

Day 1
PB&J sandwich or leftover from day before, coffee.
Trail mix
Mash pot, OO, veggies, Spam or bacon, chz, salsa
2
Oatmeal, fruit, pecans, milk, coffee
Trail mix
Pasta, chix, olives, peppers, artichoke hearts, onions, etc. OO (photo is below - is this good or what!)
3
Eggs, flat bread, coffee
Bagel & chz
Chili mac, burger, chz, Fritos
4
Ebar, fruit, hot choc, coffee
Trail mix, Candy bar
Tom ka, rice, chicken, peanuts
5
Oatmeal, pecans, milk, sugar, coffee
Ebar, fruit
Spag, burger, veggies, OO, chz, flatbread
6
Eggs, flat bread, coffee
Ebar, Candy bar
Mash pts, OO, or bacon , miso soup

1
Ebar, fruit, hot choc, coffee
Trail mix, Candy bar
Alfredo, noodles, OO, chix, veggies
2
Eggs, flat bread, coffee
Ebar, fruit
Chinese food (freeze-dry)
3
Cheese toast, coffee
Trail mix or leftovers
Chili mac, burger, OO, chz, Fritos
4
Oatmeal, milk, fruit, nuts, coffee
Ebars, Candy bar
Thai noodle soup, chix
5
Eggs, flat bread, coffee
Jerky, Ebar, dry fruit
Chipotle gravy, beef or chix, noodles, veggies
6
Ebar, hot choc, coffee
Ebar, dry fruit, Candy bar
Tom ka, rice, chix

1
Trail mix, hot choc, coffee
Jerky, Trail mix
Mash pots, OO, Spam or bacon, chz
2
Eggs, flatbread, coffee
Candy, dry fruit
Thai noodle soup, chix
3
Oatmeal, fruit, sugar, coffee
Jerky, Trail mix
Spag, burger, parm cheese, veggies, flatbread
4
Eggs, flat bread, coffee
Trail mix, Candy bar
Mash pot, chix, veggies, flatbread
5
Trail mix, hot choc, coffee
Ebar, dry fruit
Pasta fresca, like in the photo, chix, peppers, etc.
6
Eggs, bagel, coffee
Jerky, Ebar
Tom ka, rice, chix

I'm glad you came here today

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:48:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right; backpacking: Grand Canyon 4-7-2009, Winds 9-12-2008, Maroon Bells 7-21-2008, Bandelier 5-23-2008, Big Bend 3-12-2008)

A middle-aged woman came into the clinic today (her identity is masked here). Her chief complaints were diabetes and asthma. The promotora who saw her in intake asked two depression screening questions and on the basis of the woman’s answers then administered a more complete depression screen, which also was positive. When I saw her she said that “something happened” when she was 8 and 9 years old. Of course it turned out that she had been systematically molested when she was a child. She had not told anyone other than her mother until today. One of her children has been asking her, “Mommy, why don’t you ever hug me?” The answer, which she hasn’t been able to say, is that she cannot. There is something about physical affection between family members…because, naturally, it was a family member who molested her. She and I talked for awhile and it was intense there in exam room 4. When we were done, I told her I was glad she came in and that she had come to the right place. I gave her medications for the diabetes, asthma, and depression (or more accurately, PTSD). She’ll see our psychiatrist next week. I put a note in the chart that she should see our lead promotora when she comes back in and that she should tell her if she wants to see me or Mary (the other NP, my colleague, my friend), because (once again, of course) it was a male that did it to her. Photo: spacer, a device that helps people get much more of their inhaled medication in. They cost $20+ from medical supply places; we make them for pennies.

I’m grateful for the person who saw her at intake; for the other person who helped her in room 4; for our psychiatrist; for Mary; for the promotoras (all involved here); for Estevan, who taught me a lot about how to do these things; for the lady.

And I’m grateful that she came in and that our clinic is a place where people can come, bringing whatever they have – come in, there is room at the inn, bring it on in, whatever, we’ll do the best we can.

Wind Rivers plans

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:50:00 +0000

OK, I think I have it. I’ll drive more or less straight through (stopping a few times to sleep in the Campry (photos forthcoming eventually) to either Boulder or Fort Collins and meet Jeff. Hopefully there’ll be a fest of some kind, so maybe spend a day or so there. Photo: Early morning at camp 2, along Seneca Lakes Trail

Then on to Wyoming, probably spending the night at Elkhart Park Trailhead near Pinedale. In the morning take the Pole Creek Trail, then bear off to the north on Seneca Lakes Trail and camp around Barbara Lake (about where we camped the first night last year). The next day hike past Seneca Lakes and bear off NNW on the Highline Trail, possibly camping before or maybe at the Big Water Slide. It looks like the next campsite maybe near Lake 10935 (the number signifies that many feet above sea level), although I’d like to get to Elbow Lake. I think this is about where I’ll celebrate my 65th birthday.

The next day is short distance-wise, but takes us over Shannon and Cube Rock Passes, so it looks like a lot of steep hiking. We go north of Peak Lake and past long, narrow Lake 10740 to some waterfalls where there are some recommended places to camp (recommended by my internet buddies, offtrail and swimswithtrout). The next day, rest in the valley between Split Mountain and G-4 on the one side and Mount Arrowhead, Bow Mountain, Stroud Peak and Stroud Glacier on the other. Maybe hike up between Split Mountain and G-4 to Mammoth Glacier. I figure if I put one foot on that Glacier I can say (casually), “Yeah, I’ve been on Mammoth Glacier.” Offtrail says I can make it out on and probably across the glacier, but I don’t know. I need to limit my risk-taking. Photo: Island Lake

The next day we walk up the valley (off-trail) to Knapsack Col (the saddle between Twin Peaks and Winifrid Peak) and then down past or across a narrow part of Twins Glacier and down alongside the glacier to the stream that drains into the Titcomb Lakes and there we’ll be, in the Titcomb Basin, “a place that will haunt you forevermore” (from The World’s Great Adventure Treks). Last year we were in the Titcomb, but there was a lot of snow and wind coming down well before the col, so we broke it off there. From Titcomb, hike to our first camping spot near Barbara Lake, have a campfire (can’t have them above timberline where we’ll spend almost all our time), spend the night and head on into Pineland or somewhere where we can feast, take a shower, wash our stuff, and sleep in a bed. Photo: Titcomb Basin

In a day or so I’ll pick up Mike H in Jackson and we’ll head for the Cirque of the Towers. Spend the night at Big Sandy trailhead, or maybe hike up the Big Sandy trail a few miles and camp part way to Big Sandy Lake. In either case, end up at Big Sandy Lake. Next day up and over Jackass Pass (and the Continental Divide) and into the Cirque of the Towers. I’m thinking head west off-trail to Hidden Lake, though surely there is a trail, just not on the map. Spend another day in the Cirque. The next day go over Texas Pass (back across the Continental Divide) to Texas, Barren, Billys, and Shadow Lakes. I think there’s some campsites along there. Next day pick up the Shadow Lake Trail to the Fremont Trail headed south and on to Dad’s or Mirror Lake. Hike on out the next day.

Here are some good pieces on the Winds. The first, by swimswithtrout, is a compilation of many years in the Winds. It is transcendental. As Kesey said, he “is in deep relation to” these high and wild mountains. The second, by the inimitable “dorf” is a trip report on almost exactly the same route we’ll be taking. A very good report (be sure to click on past the map).

A nice thing

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:28:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right; backpacking: Grand Canyon 4-7-2009, Winds 9-12-2008, Maroon Bells 7-21-2008, Bandelier 5-23-2008, Big Bend 3-12-2008)

I wasn’t going to post on this, but when I awoke this morning it flashed across my mind and I realized it had already pretty much slipped my mind. So, from the summer 2009 Baylor Line (Baylor University’s magazine): “Since Baylor’s first graduate in 1854, more than 140,000 men and women have earned degrees from Texas’ oldest university. (Leading up to the sesquicentennial anniversary) The Line is profiling 150 of Baylor’s most remarkable alumni …” I was one of the first 10 profiled. Here is the illustration from the profile. I'm not posting the profile because they got a lot of it wrong or incomplete, e.g., "CK's medical philosophy is simple: 'People at least deserve to have their illnesses treated, to at least have them looked at.'" Just their illnesses? Just looked at? Not hardly. How about, "As you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto me" OR I am my brother's keeper OR sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all OR yes, there is room at the inn OR all that really matters is what you do and what/who you be.

And I will see you

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:15:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right; backpacking: Grand Canyon 4-7-2009, Winds 9-12-2008, Maroon Bells 7-21-2008, Bandelier 5-23-2008, Big Bend 3-12-2008)

I was in and out of Dong Ha, the furthest north big base in South Vietnam. This was before Dong Ha was built up. From there we would go to places like Gio Linh and Khe Sanh and out in the hills to the Hill Fights. I’d been in the Hill Fights for several weeks with 1/9 and some of my gear was lost or damaged, like someone had bled all over my flak jacket and it stunk. So one evening I was going through the discarded gear outside the aid station, which consisted of several shacks with sand-bag walls and stretchers with wounded men lined up inside on something like saw horses. I was shuffling around in piles of bloody flak jackets, helmets, web gear, bayonets, ammo and so on and it was dark and misty and evil with the guys inside and the smells and the mud and I felt like a ghost or ghoul or something and was pretty freaked out. I found what I was looking for, though. Photo (above left): Karen people waiting in hallway outside the clinic

So let it go, uh-huh
And so fade away
Let it go, uh-huh
And so fade away
Walk away, walk away (from Bad, U2)

I worked for several years in home health care – the early days, before it was a business. One of the areas I worked was the Cedar Springs Housing Project and one of my patients there was a man living alone with head and neck (oropharynx) cancer with extensive regional involvement, pronounced lymphadenopathy, and cachexia. He had pain, of course, and he treated it with morphine and Vick’s Vapor Rub. He was very sick. Mostly he crawled from his pallet on the floor by the door to the kitchen and bathroom of his small apartment.

Some of the people I worked with thought he should be put in a nursing home or wherever, “so he could get better care.” He knew better and was committed to staying in his apartment. The only food he could take was liquid and he really like eggnog (Ensure was a rare commodity then). The eggnog was a challenge because it wasn’t Christmas time. So I went on ever-widening quests to find the eggnog and discovered that if you look hard enough, it’s there. Photo (above right): father & daughter

So he stayed home for several months and finally went to Parkland where he died.

Some of the details

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:19:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009 & see link below right; backpacking: Grand Canyon 4-7-2009, Winds 9-12-2008, Maroon Bells 7-21-2008, Bandelier 5-23-2008, Big Bend 3-12-2008)

Sorry no photos. The storm last week fried my computer and some other things at the same time. As I wrote in the intro to this journal, I hope when I get old(er) someone will read these to me and I can remember some of the details of how life was.

How life is: I’m writing today sitting in the front room where all the books and many of the artifacts are (thangkas, images, betel gear, textiles, photos, etc.). It’s about the rainiest day I can remember, in the US, anyway. Electricity is still off. Leslie tells me it rained most of last night, while I slept.

David has my car and Nora picked me up to go to the clinic. When we got there, there was water in the pharmacy, work area and rooms 4 & 5. Soon it started raining again. I mopped for awhile, and then the 1st patient was ready and I started working my way quickly through the 2nd and 3rd and on and the water was rising despite several people (the usual type crew – children of two of the promatoras, several students, a volunteer) bailing and mopping and then the electric went out, but then came back in a few minutes. We were sloshing through water about an inch deep in the pharmacy and hallway and now exam rooms 2, 3, 4, and 5 and someone pointed out when we had power we were in some degree of danger of shock. Of course. So we closed the clinic, finished getting meds together for the last patients and Aaron and his students finished with the Burmese people in the hallway.

(Every time there is a big rain the water comes up through the floor into the clinic. We’re in the basement of a 104 year old church (it’s beautiful) and the drainage system doesn’t work very well. For several years we had “sewer gas” in the clinic in the mornings. That wasn’t very pleasant. Now the gas is gone, but the water is still an issue. It’s always interesting.)

So we piled into Nora’s little red car – Nora, me, Julio, Fabi, and Roxana – and started to my house. Columbia flooded and cars stalled in water up to their windows. Same for Gaston, Swiss, and not as bad on Live Oak and when Nora started slowing as the water deepened I’m saying, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.” (You say stop, I say go. You say why. I say I don’t know.) We got to my house and everybody dashed in through sheets of rain and there we were, more or less all piled up in the front room except now Leslie was there and that’s good.

Making me crazy: a few days ago someone asked me for help with psych meds (probably Symbyax or lithium SR) for a homeless person with bipolar. I told him we’re short on these meds and in fact, are switching some of our patients from more effective to less effective because we’re running out and cannot afford to buy them. I also told him that since the person he was advocating for is homeless, he could get care and meds from Parkland or from the Homes (homeless healthcare) van that actually comes to the Stewpot, where the man in need of meds is often found. And I also told him that we only care for people who cannot get services from Parkland and that our energy and resources are finite: if we care for Parkland-eligible patients, we won’t be able to serve those people with nowhere else to turn.

After this conversation he and I and others heard a talk from a well-known physician, including a brief discussion of the shortage of meds for poor people world-wide.

After the talk, the man who had approached me for meds again approached me to say that the patient’s doctor would call me – well, he says, the doctor won’t have time to call, but someone else will (assuming, I guess, that I have time to talk). I again explained our situation and my friend Shirin (who works with the Homes team one day/week) explained about services for homeless people. At some point I kind of lost it and said with some degree of passion, “We’re fuckin’ dyin’ out here, man.” That kind of closed it down, but what can I say.

Starts with a B: my first patient of the day was a woman asking that we help her with meds from an unusual set of Rxs and no distinctive set of signs and symptoms and no papers indicating a diagnosis. She had no money and had been sick with no meds for more than a month. Her diagnosis started with a B and we finally got it: brucellosis! Yes, she said, that’s it.

That’s interesting. Less than 100 cases/year in the US every year and here she was with scripts for 6 meds. We did the best we could, substituting TMP/SMX for rifampin and extending the course of treatment from 2 weeks (what was up with that!) to 6 weeks. So she didn’t get the optimum medications, but at least treatment is now for the proper length of time.

Ballin’ that jack: 52 year old man, complaining of elbow pain. Denies injury. Works digging with a shovel and pick; runs a jackhammer. Oh, right, a jackhammer. I gave him the strongest NSAID we have and some ideas re other measures, but I’m not very optimistic. So I’m making a point of really looking whenever I see someone running a jackhammer in the hot Texas sun and thinking about a 52 year old man doing that and no options. No other jobs out there. Just that. Grateful for it.

I been ballin’ a shiny black steel jack hammer
Been chippin’ up rocks for the great highway.

Doctor say I better stop ballin’ that jack.
If I live 5 years gonna bust my back, yes I will.

I hadn’t seen her in awhile: a woman came in with her two children. She used to come to the clinic and help, read to children and so on. Last time I saw her, her sister-in-law had beaten her up and she was traumatized a little physically and a lot mentally and spiritually. She moved and now was back 4 or 6 years later and her daughter, 5 or 6 years old then is now 10 or 11 and is like a Mexican Valley Girl, with all her gear and clothes and make-up and what not and still a sweet and innocent smile.

A Great Dog, Sadness

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:35:00 +0000

13 or 14 years ago Leslie saw a stray dog running free on our street with the dog-catchers after him. He got away from the dog-catchers and Leslie brought him home and he immediately ran from our home. I saw him later that day and thought, what a great looking dog and I brought him home. And so Judo (AKA Buddy) came to live with David, Leslie, and me. His first night with us it was snowing or sleeting and we tried to keep him inside, but he was going kind of crazy, howling and throwing himself about, so around 1am, I let him out in the back yard. I had some straw for the garden and I piled some up close to the back door, made a kind of hole in the top, got him in there and put some more straw over him. He slept all night, curled up, warm and cozy. As our friend Jay put it, he was saved.

David named him Judo, meaning “divine wind.” For months and months he would escape the back yard and at the end of the day turn up on the front porch. He would bring stuff home, like a horrible turkey carcass or a big piece of moldy cheese or most notably, a deer leg – and then another deer leg. He was always a little or a lot wild. It was several years before anyone would put their face close to his. We tried for awhile to find another home for him, but he was a tough sell – fortunately for us.

Judo was half golden retriever and half pit bull. His fur was gold and his head was big and his jaws were impressive. He was a warrior. He loved to fight and every male dog (especially the uncastrated ones) he caught out was sent running and crying or ended up on its back in abject surrender – except for Mr. G, an equally bad boy (chow) that Buddy hated and was hated right back with equal fervor. Their fight was epic and bloody and though Buddy got the best of Mr. G, the fight wasn’t over until Leslie soaked them both down with pepper spray. He was the King of our street.

Except where other male dogs were concerned Judo was a sweet dog. Well, he wasn’t sweet to cats, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and rats. But he was sweet with humans and female dogs, especially our good old Goldy. Maybe he wasn’t all that sweet. He never tried to get people to play (except for David and me). He never, ever played rough with us – too much of a warrior for that, I always thought. Maybe the best words for me to use to describe him are warrior and dignified.

See him jumping up on the trunk of the car, to the roof, across the hood, to the ground and away. See him leap at the black lab barking, running at him (Buddy never barked as a threat - he always went in silently or with come kind of roar) and see him take the lab down to complete capitulation and whirling in the air (literally) to race up the driveway after the cat that apparently thought he could just walk around any old time. Hear him talk, "Heelllooooo." See him leap up and then over the 5 foot high wall of the Christmas tree fort. See the greatest yawn and stretch, stretching. And every morning, beside my side of the bed - Good Morning to you too. Ahhh, Buddy.

Here is a journal entry 7/2006: Buddy went down for a long count. He hurt himself lunging trying attack two other dogs. For a couple of days he could barely stand until he'd had at least an hour of aspirin on-board. Even with the aspirin, he would fall over when he tried to lift his leg to urinate. Today he's eliminating in every way and able to get up and down without much difficulty. And, when he came inside this afternoon he was helicoptering. AV (Always Violent) Buddy.

Over the years he became uncannily skilled at predicting where we would walk and he would lie down in our path. Door-lying we called it, and he got really, really good at it. It made things interesting going to the bathroom or down the hall in the middle of the night - "Dammit Judo!" Here is another journal entry (3/2009): Door-lying (see photo above), teetering, friendly, earish, innocent (see photo below), perfesser, helicoptering, sensitive nose Buddy, awww, just plain sensitive, donutting, truck-stopping, cute, annoying, always violent, sincere, tufted, awkward-lying, hopeful, appealing, publicity pooping, handsome, noble (see 1st photo) Buddy!

The back injuries happened several more times, and each time recovery was a little slower. His hips were somewhat dysplased and this became more pronounced over time. He’s been on daily aspirin for more than a year and for about the same length of time, unable to negotiate more than a few stair-steps. For the past several months, he’s stumbled 1-2 times every time we walk (which is every morning and every night). His right foot drags when he walks. He has had increasing difficulty lying down and getting up. He has also lost about 90% of his hearing and has cataracts.

The day before yesterday, David and I were working on Judo’s dog house and while we were doing that Judo took one of his trademark giant leaps. It was his last one. Since then he had terrible difficulty lying down and getting up. He cried when he tried to lie down and again when he got up. He could barely walk, but spent too much time pacing restlessly.

So today we took him to the vet, who offered to try a glucosamine and prednisone, the latter requiring 4-5 days off aspirin – and since for a year, missing aspirin caused him pain and because his back and hips were pretty much wrecked on the inside, we said no. So the vet gave him a sedative and within 1-2 minutes he was resting for the first time in days. He was lying on Leslie’s feet and I was sitting on the floor. Oh, what a relief to see him relax. Buddy licked my hand twice. About 10 minutes after the first shot, the vet came in and gave him an IV and he died so quietly.

Buddy died with his balls on and his dignity intact. He was a magnificent dog and he had a great life.

En la clinica

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:26:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009)

Random thoughts in this last week of May, 2009. There were three Burmese (Karen) patients in the clinic today. Diagnoses included depression x 2, anxiety, insomnia, hypertension x 2, diabetes, nodules of unknown etiology, and so on. Two of the patients came in with our outreach worker and one with a woman involved in several Baptist-sponsored orphanages in Burma and on the border. So when Diana, the Grace pastor came down to the clinic for her weekly prayer with patients and staff in the waiting room, we all gathered (since swine flu, no longer holding hands) and Diana began her prayer (translated by Nora), with, “Dear God, our father and mother …” and meanwhile several of the Cristianas were muttering accompanying prayers and babies fussing and a toddler trying to get her mother’s attention, “Ma! Ma!” And there we all were, Mexican, Salvadoran, Karen, Mexican-American, Anglo – hearing and praying a prayer for healing, understanding, acceptance, and gratitude.

Photo above is borrowed from the Smithsonian Magazine article on Amerasians (June 2009). The older man at the table is Thao D (Uncle Thao), who came out of prison dedicated to liberating all people, including Amerasians. Uncle Thao is a Great Man, a manifestation of the beauty we all can be. See the upside down photo of the pretty girl with the checked dress on? I knew her too. Photo below: Pat B and one of her patients in the pharmacy. What a life we lead!

Later I wondered what people thought about the prayer to “God, our father and mother…”

I was saying to one Karen person, that when we were in Burma we were treated with kindness and that the country was beautiful. I didn’t say (and should have) that overall, it seems to me that people in & from Burma have a gravitas, a sense of dignity and substance. Back in the 1970s someone said, like royalty in tatters.

As part of her masters in social work, Erika R spent more than a semester in the Agape Clinic examining mental health disparities among Hispanics. Her most startling finding was that the main barrier to mental health services was that people were unaware of a mental health concern (72%).

(The following are conclusions drawn by me.) In other words, most patients who receive mental health care at Agape did not realize or acknowledge that they had a problem; they thought being depressed was just the way life goes. During the course of care for chronic or acute physical illnesses, patients are often asked questions like, “On most days are you mostly happy or mostly sad?” A positive response elicits further assessment questions and sometimes leads to the conclusion that the patient is experiencing depression and/or an anxiety disorder. Treatment is offered and provided when appropriate – in many cases, including further evaluation and treatment through Dr. K. Photo: in exam room 1.

Memorial Day 2009

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:38:00 +0000

I got the below email yesterday. My response follows. Photo taken at Con Thien, by someone else.

Charles,
I'd like to express my appreciation for your articles and photographs. They first caught my attention last year when I tried to find info on some of the guys from Santa Barbara County, especially Jerry Georges. I went to jr. and senior high school with Jerry. I wonder if you would like to see a couple of pages about Jerry from our 1964 yearbook? He was student body president that year.

On my tour I passed very close to your area on my way to Vandegrift and other places up north. I was with an engineer battalion in III Corps.

Let me know and I will be glad to email the yearbook pages. I think you will find them interesting, especially in light of the kind comments you made about Jerry.
Randy

Randy,
Thank you – yes, I’d like to see those pages about Jerry. Don’t know if you came across what I said about an older friend of mine bringing his close friend to our Bible study group a couple of years ago. The friend was from Santa Barbara and as it turned out, was a leader in (I think I have the organization name right) Young Life. Jerry was involved in that organization and my friend’s friend remembered Jerry with great warmth and respect. In my experience, Jerry was a good guy; I’ve come to realize that had he lived, he probably would have been a great man. What a loss. And here we are on Memorial Day.
Charles

"I'll go"

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:32:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009)

Last week I spoke at the main service at my church. The idea was that I would speak to the help given our clinic (Agape Clinic) by the First Presbyterian Foundation. During the service I sat next to Dan F, my spiritual teacher for these past 15 or so years and that was a great honor for me. Here is what I prepared for the talk and pretty much what I said:

A front page feature article in the Morning News today is titled, “Facing an Ailing System – North Texans figure out ways to cope as they find limited remedies for affordable care.”

The Texas Medical Association website reports 16% of people in America are uninsured and Texas is in (where else) last place with 25% of the population uninsured.

At Agape – with wonderful help from this church – we serve the uninsured, the working poor, the people who process the chicken we eat, who mow our lawns, who clean our offices and hospital rooms – we serve the people who cannot get Medicaid, who cannot access services at Parkland or Project Access or Homes or anywhere else.

We serve our patients and families and community with:

Primary care for acute illness
Specialty care, including psychiatry, dermatology, gynecology, pediatrics, asthma
Spiritual care (with help from our wonderful new Grace pastor, Diana Holbert)
Community education
Follow-up for patients with chronic illness
Health screening
Service learning site students from Baylor, UTSW, UTA and others

We are unique among community-based clinics in that we do all the above AND we are a medical home for people with chronic illness – the Morning News article gives some insight into how hard that is to find.

The FPC Foundation invests in the Agape Promotoras de Salud – the lay health promoters, women from the community (clinic patients) who triage and teach our patients, who teach in the community, who assist doctors and nurses, who provide spiritual care, who are the connections among patients, clinic, and community. When the swine flu thing started nobody knew how it would go – a disaster or just another variation on influenza (pretty bad in itself!). I asked the promotoras if anyone would work the fever, cough and congestion hall with me and Irma said, “I’ll go.”

A moment ago I said, “with wonderful help from this church” – I was referring to monetary help. But I also mean other sorts of help – the support from the men in G5 Men’s Bible Study – and especially I meant the support, when I have nothing left to give, of a church where we’re taught that practicing mercy is a spiritual practice. And it’s not a theoretical teaching – it’s reality here, in the lives of teachers, at the Stewpot, in hospital visits, in support for incarcerated youth, in people’s homes when Cynthia brings communion to the sick and the dying. It’s a good church.

So, on a personal note, it’s good to have a church home and I thank you.

Oink!

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:03:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009)

May 1st & 5th - Here we are in the time of swine flu, nobody knowing how it will play out and the way we’re addressing it at Agape is to triage patients at the door and send everyone with flu-like symptoms one way and everyone else through the waiting room and on into the clinic. Irma, Pat and I are seeing the patients in the fever, cough, etc. area. I’m thinking, well, here I am again.

But what prompts me to write (now that the swine flu crisis seems to have passed) is that I saw this photograph of a young woman named Thao (one of my favorite names) studying in her dorm room in medical school in Haiphong. Check out that desk, and the closet at the head of the bed, and how about the mattress (we're thinking the bottom bunk is the same). An Australian woman we know - Alison - created this extraordinary opportunity for Thao to go to medical school. Thao's family is very very poor (single mother, seriously ill, forages in trash to survive) and there is no chance she would have made it without Alison and you, Alison, are the salt of the earth.

As I think about being back in the mountains, looking at photos of the Beartooths and Wind Rivers, the swelling in my chest feels almost physical. What a great thing it is to contemplate the (likely) reality that I will again stand in the cold alpine wind in the high mountains, surrounded by raw and sublime beauty. What a thing to be here! Alone on a high mountain meadow in August; by icy tarn waters, looking up at the night sky with stars by the millions right here/now, sitting among a million tiny alpine flowers, scrambling across rocky domes, and here come the clouds and soon the snow – first flecks of sleet, more, now the snow – ahhh.

The things that helped me get going into the mountains again include:

The Sierra Club took me on my 1st return trip – Big Bend for a wonderful time.
The backpackers.com forum has been immensely helpful in giving me knowledge and inspiration. Hikerjer (words) and swimswithtrout (photos) show the true heart of the matter and I’m grateful to them.
Always, of course, Leslie, my beautiful understanding and supportive wife (and partner in the back roads and alleys of Southeast Asia).

Clarification on no “I” “to be” – not here, of course; and it’s incomprehensible to think that this “I” would endure beyond death. I mean, what a disappointment to still be regular old me with my weaknesses and faults and lies hopefully (even if still just barely) outweighed by my strengths and goods and truths. AND an infinitely higher I (and of course, thou) seems certain.

When you find out who you are, beautiful beyond your dreams.

In the Garden

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:40:00 +0000

(For travel in Asia, go to 11/2008-1/2009)

I was talking with Chris H, who asked what I have planned after Grand Canyon. I told him probably a festival in late spring or early summer, then the Beartooths about 8/15-8/30 and Wind Rivers 9/1-9/15. Part of the Beartooths and Winds will be with other people (Mike H and Jeff, so far) and part alone. Chris expressed concern for my safety when I’m alone in the wilderness, “What if something happens … it’s the suffering you might go through that worries me.” (Mara?) Okay, what if something does happen? All garden photos taken April 2009.

Like anyone else, I’ve gone through various stages in life: the usual (which is not nothing!), then war, then healing, love, being a husband, momentary glimpses of enlightenment that led me up the path of service for 40 years (hospice, refugees, immigrants – life as a quest), working with Leslie, travel, being a father and my/our relationship with David, getting tired, and now this partial retirement, backpacking and through it all, since the war and all the killing, a deep awareness of mortality – thinking about the fragility of life and considering my own dying and being dead (I’m not sure how I can be dead, since when I’m dead there’ll be no “I” “to be” anything at all, except gone). I’ve studied dying and death and I’ve worked in and written on hospice. So I’m no stranger and I really do know that death don’t have no mercy in this land.

I haven’t written about this all that much, but truly, since Leslie said in 2004, “Why don’t you and David and Jeff go to Vietnam?” it’s been as if my life is complete, though it’s been complete for quite awhile. The trip itself brought several things full circle (war, Cambodians, my relationship with Leslie, David), but her saying that, right then, right there was where I went over the line.

And all this with no intimation of imminent death; but who knows except for people with cancer and like situations? I’m just trying to say, whatever comes, comes and I think about these things. As for the grief, I’m sorry. On some level, at some time, knowing these things may put things into perspective and thus be helpful.

I hope to have a long time left, but if I die before I wake, it’s okay. I’m not looking for it and I don’t embrace it, but I know, having faced this thing before, it’ll be like, okay. Kind of funny when you think about it – all this drama, loving, striving, suffering, joy, dreaming, risk, living, and … okay.

What if there is suffering? What if I have a heart attack and take 2 or 3 days to die alone in the wilderness? Far out, that’s what. I’m sure I’ll be saying, “Oh man, not this much suffering!” But when there’s no place else to go, you can bet it all that I’ll surrender and at worst, it will be, “Okay.” More likely, at this stage of life, it’s, Into the Light.

And I bid you good-night (a little further up the road).

Photo above right, from the right: Chuck, my chair, Julius, Jim, Dave, Bryce, Chris - G5 men's Bible study at Bryce's ranch. We sang (or mostly Jim sang) In the Garden, Old Shep, White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation), Crazy, Streets of Laredo, You Win Again, Ghost Riders in the Sky, Your Cheatin' Heart, St. James Infirmary, Amazing Grace (and so it was).

Grand Canyon

noreply@blogger.com (CK) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:20:00 +0000

More photos are here.

Departure: it was a light day at la clinica and plenty of people working (Pat B, Vuong D, Joe C., Aaron M), so I got out at 1100. Leslie and I went to lunch at Whole Foods and then home to put in the ice chest, fix the front seat for traveling and take off. Photo below: New Mexico

West on I20 past Fort Worth, Abilene, Midland/Odessa with oil wells and windmills stretching off into the distance (all that money and all those fools got was bigger pick-up trucks and good football teams) and on to Pecos, my objective for the day. I pulled into one of the new rest stops (clean restrooms, wireless, “watch for snakes”) and set up the Campry for sleeping. It was a little early (8:30) and I couldn’t sleep, so got back on the road and got to Van Horn and another good rest stop. I slept fairly well with the cool wind and occasional splatting rain and the big rigs rumbling past and winding it up in low out of the rest area. Got up to use the restroom in the middle of the starry night and then slept hard for another couple of hours. In the morning I drove on into El Paso, had a taco for breakfast and kept on going.

Across the lazy river,
Across the Rio Grande-O

4-5 days ago I wrecked my bike and sustained some fairly deep road rash. So my drill is after breakfast and dinner I go to the restroom and peel off the serosanguinously-soaked 4x4s, wash the scrapes ouch ouch ouch and then to the car trunk to apply new dressings. A couple of times already people have walked into the restroom while I’m cleaning the scrapes and they always do a double take and I can’t say that I blame them. Photo: Starting down the South Kaibab Trail

Into New Mexico – always a wonderful feeling, with changes in topography and vibe. Stayed on I10 through Las Cruces and on to Deming, then cut off on 180 toward Silver City. My original plan was to stop for the night at City of Rocks State Park, but with the early start from Dallas and stopping in Van Horn vs. Pecos I was making good time, so kept on going, figuring I’d find a good place to camp in the Gila Wilderness or Apache National Forest.

Left 180 on State Highway 78 west (trailers not recommended) and followed the narrow winding up and down road with very few other vehicles into Arizona and the Apache National Forest. I found a good campsite and set up the tent for a nap in the forest with the wind and birds and pine forest smells. But it was early and the direction is forward, so when I awoke, struck camp and headed west on 191 toward Safford. Photo: S. Kaibab trailhead

This is odd – there is a 20-30 mile stretch of 191 where the side of the road is almost carpeted in broken glass. It’s as if generations of louts have made a point of coming to this road to throw their empty beer wine liquor bottles into the sand and underbrush. I’ve never seen anything like it. Down the road a piece I spotted the first roadrunner I’ve seen in many a year – run you little roadrunner – run your little roadrunner heart out!

On the outskirts of Safford I caught phone service and talked with Leslie, who told me that a little while ago she was on Paulus, a few blocks from our house and saw what looked like a hawk on the ground. She stopped to see if what she was seeing was what she was seeing and and the hawk turned its head and looked at her. It stared for a moment and then took flight, with a squirrel in its talons. A good many people would say this was a sign – I’d think so, too. Photo: David & me on S. Kaibab Trail

I followed Highway 70 NW through Safford, a seemingly prosperous town, on into a huge (and down) Apache reservation – lots of trailers, TV antennas, dishes, pick-ups, junk laying around in the dust. After the reservation was Globe in the Pinal Mountains. I stopped at a gas station/fast food place to do the dressing change and when I was standing by the trunk putting the new 4x4s on a youndg woman walked over and asked, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yes, fine.” And she said, “I saw the medical stuff and wondered if you needed help.” We talked for a moment and I thanked her and she walked back to her pick-up. I was left wondering, when I help or offer to help, how many of those people feel as good as I felt with the woman’s offer. Photo: Grand Canyon from S. Kaibab Trail

I stopped a few miles past Globe in a rest area in a town named Miami. There was a continuously yapping dog there, so I gave it up and moved to a parking lot across the highway. Sound asleep in the night I heard wheels on gravel, a dispatcher’s voice and then tap tap on the window. The police officer checked me out and told me I had to move on. Easy enough. I drove back across the highway and with the dog long gone, slept until the maintenance person awakened me banging stuff around. Perfect.

I was on the road out of the mountains and into the desert with cactus and scrub and sunrise. I pulled off down a side road to watch the sun come up and then big highway into Phoenix. Photo: Tonto Platform

Huge breakfast, lingering, writing and then to a mall to hang out at a B&N until time for David’s flight in. I waited at the cell phone lot and when he called me I applauded, pulled around and away we went to Flagstaff with me remembering when Leslie and I drove past there on our way to Nevada and how pretty it looked then and still does, among the pines and foothills. We caught some sleet along the way and got into Flagstaff around 8pm. Got a room at the EconoLodge which was okay at first, but there was no hot water in the morning. Dinner at Chili’s and then the final organizing and packing.

Up at 4:45 and had breakfast burritos in the car driving along 180, which was a beautiful drive, forested with snow on the side of the road and then the road snowy and then icy and the forest mixed aspen and pine and then breaking out onto the main highway with RV parks, fake teepees, souvenir shops, motels and then into Grand Canyon National Park. Photo: Tonto Platform, storm coming

We parked in the backcountry lot and went in to the office and weighed our packs: 39# each, with full load of water (4 liters each). We caught the shuttle bus to the South Kaibab TH. On the bus a girl around 10 or 11 sat next to me, kind of bent over in the way people who are blind do – which she was. The bus took us right to the TH and over a little rise & there is the canyon in all its deep, deep glory & we were walking down, down, down into the canyons. The trail was very steep and scenic, taking us along ridgelines and switchbacks deeper and deeper into the mystic. There were many people on the trail, but the deeper we went the fewer of them there were. Can anyone tell me why people feel free to shout at one another as they venture along a trail. Anyway, thank goodness they fell away as we descended. Photo: sunset from Tonto Platform (storm over)

About three miles into it my right knee began hurting a little. David suggested I step down on my left foot, which helped some, but the pain continued to increase, except for the rare stretches of level trail. Finally, at the Tipoff, about 6 miles down and with the river in sight I couldn’t go any farther – which is when I discovered that going uphill was as painful as going down. Uh-oh. I dropped my pack and crept upward to a level area whil David carried his pack to there and went back for mine. We talked about what to do, but there weren’t many options. David found a good place to pitch the tent and we set up camp in a very strong wind, with me mostly just clinging to the tent with visions of it sailing up and over the precipice.

We saw the girl from the bus, coming down the trail with her parents, so that was a real up for us. Championship parents and daughter. Photo: campsite visitor

A young man (a guide) came over to the tent to find out why we were camping in a no camping area. He suggested we use the emergency phone down the trail a ways to arrange to catch a mule train out. David went to the phone and came back with “good news and bad news.” The bad news was that we would not be able to catch a mule train out and the good news was that my problem is called “canyon knee” and I needed to wrap it, rest it, elevate it and take some take ibuprofen (I already had taken 200mg Celebrex) and then we could take the relatively level Tonto Trail West to Indian Gardens and from there, hike out on the Bright Angel Trail. I was having intrusive thoughts of orthopedists, exercises, maybe surgery, rehab and so on, so this sounded pretty good to me. Photo: campsite Tonto Platform

David asked, “Is rain hitting the tent?” I said, “No” and he said, “I think so” and yes it was. So we hung out in the tent – nice and warm – and after about 45 minutes the rain and sleet stopped. I fixed chili with noodles (both home cooked and dehydrated) with Fritos and cheese for dinner. I took the ace bandage off my arm & elbow where it had been holding the 4x4s on the road rash and tight-wrapped my knee. Asleep by 8:30 or 9:00. The wind died completely in the night and when I got up, it was completely quiet with a billion stars sparkling in the dark vault.

The next morning I was amazed to feel a lot better. We had breakfast and took off along Tonto West, contouring around the cliffs and mesas above the deepest canyon and though a twisty, looping trail, it was relatively flat and I made good time. What a relief! I had been mortified that my infirmity was aborting the trip and to be able to have a Grand Canyon experience (if not the GC experience) was a huge relief and pretty grand. David had taken good care of me throughout and was a golden sport throughout. Photo: hiking out on Tonto Trail

We were low on water and filled up at Pipe Creek about half way to Indian Garden. The water was excellent for a desert and we drank our fill. The hike was easy and beautiful, with sandstone cliffs towering over us and sometimes walking at the edge of steep canyons. We encountered one other person the whole way – a very nice change from the crowded South Kaibab Trail. Photo: along the Tonto Trail

We stopped right before Indian Garden and had lunch under cottonwoods on soft green grass by a rushing stream.

Then it was a quarter mile to IG. We found a campsite, hung out talking and then pitched our tent. Dinner was mashed potatoes, bacon, flatbread, cheese – tasty! IG is the most developed campground I’ve stayed in – people close enough together that you can hear them talking. On the other hand there was a (clean) water hydrant less than 100 feet from our tent. Farther away, fortunately, was a latrine with an ammonia smell so strong it (as one camper said) makes your eyes water. All the waste is composted and I guess that particular latrine was earlier in the process. Photo: along Tonto Trail

Up around 6am. Leisurely breakfast of dehydrated eggs & bacon & hot chocolate for David and granola bar and coffee with a lot of hot chocolate added for me. And then up that dusty trail again. I think it’s about 6 miles from IG to the rim – all uphill, but not too steep. We leap-frogged several times with a couple we talked with at IG for a moment – on the trail, stopping, talking for longer (David talking longer than I because, of course, he had time while waiting for me) – a family practice resident and his public health partner – nice.

The farther we went up the trail, the more people there were (day-hiking) and the less informed some were about common courtesy, like yielding to the person coming uphill, not yelling, not purposely kicking up dust (I’m not kidding). One guy kept yelling up to someone ahead of him, “Mercedes! Hey Mercedes! Slow down!” Sheesh. On the other hand one young couple I’d seen several times saw me plodding uphill and the woman said, “You again – you just keep on going.” And her friend said, “Awesome.” That buoyed me for about 5 steps and trudge, trudge, trudge. Photo: where we had lunch near Indian Garden

The trail became actually crowded close to the top and then I was out at one of the viewing areas in throngs of peeps. Weird. I couldn’t find David, so caught a shuttle to the backcountry lot expecting to find him there because he had the car keys, but he wasn’t, so I sat on a bench to doze for awhile, but here came another bus and this had DK on it.

Grand Canyon was over. My thighs and calves were sore, but my knee was fine. Even Dave’s were sore. I had planned beyond my ability. Would I have made it with a 2 hour rest part way down or going down the less steep Bright Angel Trail. Maybe find out next spring. Here are some of the things I learned (again) – do I have to learn everything 3-4-5 times? Photo: hiking out on Bright Angel Trail

My son really is a golden sport. He hikes much faster than I, but waits with aplomb. Still, I question inflicting the disparity in strength and stamina on him. Bottom line – a great backpacking buddy.
I’m a slow hiker – my natural bent is to stop and enjoy the scenery and that + my puff-puff-puff sketchy musculoskeletal & cardiovascular strength means 5-7 miles with a full backpack is a good day’s hike for me and I just have to plan that way.
I like alpine environments (above timberline) more than sub-alpine or desert. But what am I to do in late fall and early spring? So desert it is.
I have freezer-bag cooking down. Good to bring some little Snickers along as well.

We drove to Phoenix. Got a decent hotel and traditional post-hike meal (cheeseburger). The next day hung out in Starbucks for a few hours, then to airport where we talked for awhile and then DK to plane and I was on the road again, headed east (bad thing) and home (very good thing). I slept at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico and again in Texas. Driving into the west Texas sunrise with clouds scattered across the lightening sky. Driving down the old hippie highway with Dylan like an Old Testament prophet: I saw gunshot swords in the hands of young children

I slept again outside Fort Stockton and when I started up again it was cold and windy and grey and I was down. Onward. 60 miles past Fort Stockton the sun was coming out and I noticed in the rear view mirror that the little door over the gas cap was open. I stopped and found the gas cap wedged into the opening – a sign! Yucca blooming, sun coming out and then Hello! Beep beep! Another roadrunner. Alright. Photo above: enchanted forest in Big Bend

Finally in to Big Bend around noon. While I waited for the backcountry permit office to open, I got my pack and gear in order.

I had a permit for Boulder Meadow by 1:30 and took off up the trail. I found an excellent campsite and was set up by 4. Unfortunately there were a good many large black flies buzzing around, so I ended up in my tent earlier than I’d planned. I walked around in the enchanted forest several times, but the tent was the main place. Photo: highway out of Big Bend

The next day I fired down the trail and up the highway to Dallas. Home around 8pm, tired and feeling good and very glad to be home. When I walked up to the front porch, the fragrance from the roses ...