Flash non-fiction

This week, Chuck Wendig challenged us to write, not fiction, but creative non-fiction. I certainly nailed the non-fiction, but this one is not so creative. It might even be a little flat. There's a reason for that.

In this story, I refer to my sons as Eldest Son (or ES) and Second Son (SS). From the beginning of my involvement in social media, I have declined to use their names, and it seems only fair that I give them that small token of privacy.


March, 2002

Spring break, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. We have come, as we do most years, with our two sons and my husband’s parents, to do some camping and hiking and look for spring wildflowers. This time, the first thing we do nearly changes our family forever.

Sunday, 10 a.m. We join a ranger-led hike to explore an area with Native American artifacts. Eldest Son (4 ½) is being a little difficult, and won’t put on his sun shirt or sweatshirt. To avoid holding things up, we let it go, insisting only on his sun hat. The first stop for the group is yards from the parking lot, and next to our son’s favorite kind of playground—a giant pile of boulders. He starts climbing around, and I decide that he needs his sun shirt, and run back to the car to get it, calling to him to come back down.

When I return, there is no sign of ES. Leaving our 3-year-old with his grandparents, my husband and I search all through the pile of rocks. Did ES fall into a gap somewhere and get stuck? It is completely not like him to wander off. After 10 minutes, we tell the ranger and get more help. Immediately, the ranger calls off the hike, collects our best guesses as to where our son might have gone, and asks hike participants to search if they are willing. Everyone searches, but we do not find our son. The wind is blowing hard, so that shouts cannot be heard more than a few feet away. It has been a fairly wet winter, and the plants are tall—taller than a petite 4-year-old.

Somewhere in the next two hours the ranger calls in reinforcements, and the S&R team asks all the amateurs to come back in. We thank them, and begin the really hard part: sitting and waiting. My mother-in-law puts aside her own worries, and makes sure we all eat lunch, including Second Son, who behaves incredibly well through the entire day. Then we wait some more.

The crowd in the parking lot grows, with us on the edges, more observers than part of it all. A volunteer S&R team comes in with horses. An airplane and chopper fly over, but high winds soon ground them. S&R brings in a giant RV to use as HQ, and sets up a tent to provide shelter for the searchers. I find myself standing at the edge of the desert, peering into the brush in hopes of seeing…something. Someone comes to offer me comfort. I think it might be the Park Superintendent. He says nothing, just offers silent comfort. There must a hundred people involved, many of them volunteers who dropped everything on a Sunday afternoon to come to our aid.

Various members of the team come to us from time to time, to ask questions. What is ES wearing? We all know it’s a t-shirt with stripes, but no one can agree on which shirt and what color the stripes are. The blue sun hat is easier. They ask about anyone who might have left the parking lot while we were all out. They are starting to wonder if he’s out there at all, or if someone snatched him. That seems too far-fetched to worry us. No, he’s out there somewhere.

It is fairly late in the day when the Border Patrol dog team arrives. They ask for something with our son’s scent, and we have to hunt a bit to come up with something he wears and his brother doesn’t, since the two are the same size and share clothing.

Later, they tell us that the dogs and the trackers found and lost the trail repeatedly. ES wandered in loops and circles and twists, searching in the tall grass (over his head) for the way back to us, and a small boy doesn’t leave a lot of spoor. Teams of dogs come and go, and it seems like they are making no progress.

It is nearly 5:00—almost 7 hours from when we lost track of our son—when my husband see a group of Border Patrol trackers coming towards us across the desert, a bundle in the arms of the leader—a bundle wearing a bright blue hat. We leap from the camper where we have been waiting, and sprint across the desert, dodging cacti and ignoring calls to be careful.

My husband is faster, so he reaches the searcher first, grabbing our son. When I reach the group, I snatch ES from his father (mothers can get rather possessive at such times, I find!). We are immediately hustled into the S&R ambulance, where an MD checks him over. I stay there, hanging onto my son, while my husband stays with the searchers, to learn more, and to thank everyone.

ES is dehydrated, and edging toward hypothermia, thanks to dropping temps and the chilling wind, but he perks up quickly as he sips rehydration fluids from his own sippy cup. Eventually, the doctor lets me carry ES outside, so that all the searchers can see that he really is okay. We have our pictures taken with the searchers, and with the dogs (I think I kissed the dogs. I may have kissed their handlers, too). Everyone needs to see him, to reassure themselves that this search has had the right outcome.

It is 7 p.m. before we return to our campsite and make dinner. We decide the next day to continue with our vacation as planned, since ES seems to have recovered fully. Over the next few days, we learn that he had tried to return to us, been unable to climb down the way he went up, and gotten lost in the tall brush, full of apparent trails that “went the wrong way.” He stopped to use a cat-hole, and tried to eat ants (which were NOT tasty). He rested a lot under bushes, out of the sun and wind. That made him harder to spot, but possibly saved him by slowing dehydration and chilling—as did the hat, which he never took off.

Some might wonder that we continued with the trip, and continued to let our sons test their limits and explore their world (though we kept a somewhat closer eye on them!). But to us, that was important. You prepare your child for the world, but you can’t keep them from the world. The incident left scars on us, but not on our sons. As it should be.

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

I have blotted the names of family members. I am happy to print the names of rescuers, who deserve all the praise and love we can give them!

Flash Fiction Friday: In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Chuck Wendig is not a nice man.  This week he gave us a list of random words, ten of them, and told us to use them all in a story.  All ten!  That's just mean.  I was doing pretty well with the list and my fantasy setting until I got to the last one.  You'll know when you reach it.  I'll give you the whole list at the end of the story, just for fun.  Feel free to see how many you can guess without cheating.  Then visit Chuck's blog and check out how some others used them (warning: other bloggers may not be suitable for youngsters, or work, or polite company.  I can't make any promises).  990ish words.

In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Gorg left the Iron Desert through a narrow canyon, a tight, stony gorge just too wide to be a slot.  Nothing grew there but stones.  After days crossing the unyielding iron of the desert, the stones represented life to Gorg the Troll.  Being stone himself, mostly, he grazed happily on chunks of granite and basalt as he strode along, with an occasional conglomerate for a relish.

The midday sun beat down, turning the canyon into an oven.  Had a human chosen that route, there wouldn't even have been a corpse left for the funeral.  They'd have been cooked to nothing and picked clean by the vultures that waited on the high cliffs.  Though even the vultures might have waited for night to cool things down a bit.  The troll just kept moving, even humming a little--a sound like a cross between a rockfall and an elephant in distress.

The canyon broadened and straightened just a bit.  In the distance Gorg could now see a lone willow--sure sign of water.  He didn't need water; trolls didn't drink except for fun.  But it told him he was nearing the end of his journey, and he picked up the pace.  He had a date to keep with Duke Bale the Artichoke-Hearted, and he didn’t want to be late.  Duke Bale had been responsible for several members of Gorg's family being turned back into the stone from which they'd been born, and his Uncle Grk had, in the next heavy rain, been dissolved back into the clay of his home mountains. Gorg had vowed that the Duke would pay.

A league beyond the lone willow, Gorg found the road to the Valley of Baleful Stones, Duke Bale's family holding.  The name held a charm that would captivate the ordinary troll, but Gorg knew that all he would find in the land of Bale would be deceit and disappointment.  Probably even the stones would be untrustworthy.  He turned west on the road, and switched his giant stone war hammer from his left shoulder to his right.

He knew he grew close when he began to smell rotten eggs.  The Baleful Stones of the valley's fame were the disfigured sulfurous mounds deposited by a volcanic vent that ran length of the north side, and the entire valley stunk of it.  Gorg thought it only fit, for the heart of Duke Bale stunk still worse.

Now he could see the castle in the distance, and he shifted his war hammer back to his left shoulder, and tried not to breathe too deeply.  Even trolls disliked the sulfurous brimstone, and would neither eat it nor live near the volcanic vents that produced it.  Only Duke Bale, banished nephew of King Celery the Half-Wit, would do so, and he, Gorg thought, only because he'd been sent there by royal decree.
#

In the depths of the ugly castle that crouched as far as it could from the sulfur vents, the Duke studied his plans for the thousandth time.  Soon, his fool of an uncle would know that Bale was plotting to dethrone him.  But by then, it would be too late.  He studied the device that the sorcerer Stenrick the Brilliant had made for him.  Soon, he would have Stenrick go out to meet the pesky troll, that persistent annoyance of a Gorg.

Bale hadn't meant it to work this way when he'd sent Mergle to kill the group of trolls that had stumbled into his secret mines.  But Gorg had proved useful.  Mergle thought too much of himself, and had attracted the attention of the swordswoman--what was her name?  And what had become of her?  She hadn't caught Mergle.  Gorg took care of that one.  But Mergle had drawn the attention of the King, and so had become a liability.  Gorg, poor stupid troll, had done him a favor, Bale reflected.

Now Gorg was coming here, and would meet with Stenrick.  One or both would be killed, and Bale rather hoped it would be both.  He would have to take care of whoever was left before he could take care of the King.  Ordinarily, Bale would have been no match for either a sorcerer or a troll, but Stenrick, the fool, had given Bale all he needed, and now Bale no longer needed Stenrick.

Near the edge of the valley, in a cleft well hidden from the road, the half-magical balloon swayed gently, its silk bag filled with the gasses from the vent it covered.  Bale would be high in the basket suspended below the balloon when Stenrick blasted Gorg into a pile of rubble with the spell he called the "Atomic Blaster," whatever he meant by that.
#

Gorg came on into the valley, and didn't falter when he saw the billowing robes of the sorcerer approaching.  Stenrick was a far greater sorcerer than Mergle had been on his best day, but Gorg knew what he could do.  Shifting the war hammer once again to his right shoulder, so as to leave his more powerful left hand free, Gorg scooped up a selection of stones.

The first stone to leave the sling struck the wand from Stenrick's hand.  The second slew the sorcerer as he stooped to retrieve it.  Gorg came on, stepping on the man just to be sure.  No one survived a troll walking over them.

Gorg's remaining stones were flung after the balloon which suddenly rose from the rocks nearby and soared into the sky, Bale leaning over the edge and jeering.  Those that hit the balloon bounced uselessly off.  Only one stone struck something solid, and Gorg didn't know of that.  The wind carried Bale out of sight before the Duke discovered that Gorg had put out of action the magical appliance that controlled the balloon's flight.

He was at the mercy of the winds.  Gorg had won another round.

#####

Okay, here's the list: 

Funeral, Captivate, Deceit, Brimstone, Canyon, Balloon, Clay, Disfigured, Willow, and (I'm sure you guessed this one) Atomic

H: House of Rain (book review)

 

 

For H-day: a review of House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest, by Craig Childs.

Craig Childs is well known in certain circles for his almost poetic meditations on the land, water, and creatures of the southwestern U.S.  His books resonate deeply with those of us who also love the land of little rain (that's another obscure literary reference.  Go ahead and go look it up).

In House of Rain, Childs takes on the great mystery and fascination of the region: the ancient culture(s) that built the silent ruins preserved in Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon, as well as those that you may stumble on unexpectedly in a cave or overhang in any canyon or wash.  Half travelogue, half archaeological discussion, and half fantastical recreation of a world that is--and isn't--vanished, at one point while reading I jotted in my journal that the book is "the work of archaeologists filtered through the mind of a poet."

And that pretty well sums up both the strength and the weakness of the book.  Childs has a vivid imagination, a boot-soles-and-spirit knowledge of the region, and enough knowledge of archaeology to present the science cogently--and then to draw his own conclusions.  Many of his conclusions do not bear the stamp of approval from the archaeological community.  They may be no less valid for that.  He is a powerful proponent of the idea that a gut feeling might be the final tool needed to put the story together.  And he is willing to walk through country that would not only daunt but kill many of us, in order to string together the story.

Chapter by chapter, mile by mile of walking in blazing summer heat and blowing winter snow (yes, the region is extreme in both seasons, though the snow is never deep--it is, after all, desert), Childs tracks the movements of the ancient people around the Colorado Plateau, down into Arizona, and finally into northern Mexico.  Sometimes he travels alone.  Sometimes with others who share his interest, amateurs or experts.  Sometimes he travels with his wife and infant son.  Always he travels with the ghosts of those who went before.

This is by far the most thorough and most brutally honest account of what archaeology tells us--or implies to us--of the people who inhabited the southwest before Europeans arrived.  Childs is not afraid to tell of the evidence of violence, nor of the evidence that drought and possibly mismanagement of resources drove people from place to place.  In the end, he also reminds us that the cycle of drought and uninhabitability (if that's a word) isn't a thing of the past.

Five stars, for great literary non-fiction and an education in 500 pages.

As a bonus: a sampling of my own photos from just a few places on the Colorado Plateau.

 

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon National Historic Park

 

A lone wall, Wijiji, Chaco Canyon

Stone dwellings and caves in the rhyolite cliffs of Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument

Hovenweep National Monument.  I particularly like this picture, as it was the last trip we took with my Dad.