Well, that was a short fall, I told myself.

Fourteen degrees all of sudden was quite a shock, and I’d been burning wood all day. Most of the trees still had their leaves, but not for long. Fourteen degrees, my God. I’d never even checked the radiator fluid in the Ford, though I did cut off water to the outside spigot. All the potted patio plants were presumably dead. Oddly, we weren’t sweating it at the moment. There was just too much going on, and staying loose was more important.

I’d awakened that morning to sun on frozen ground and Cheney’s snarling face online: more squealing from the war pigs, Iran was going to kill us all. Iran?? No, he was going to kill us all. The smirking faces of the goons put me in a staggering funk, and soon I was hitting half a dozen blogs in search of more abuse. The more links I followed, the worse it got: I felt myself go numb but couldn’t stop cycling through the sites, looking now for smoking guns, silver bullets, lightning bolts, crucifixes and garlic. My favorite blog didn’t update for a whole hour and I actually got mad. How could they, dammit, didn’t they know the country was going down and I wanted to know how fast?

I couldn’t concentrate on my work. The truth is, I couldn’t start on my work, but kept jumping back onto the Internet, looking for word that Gandhi, John the Baptist, and the Continental Army had arrested the administration and shipped everyone off to The Hague. (Guess what, it wasn’t there.) Then I started focusing on things I didn’t want, not good! Bombs. Death. Police state. No gas for the car. Millions dead. Currency worthless. No food. Cold. Dark.

All for naught, why struggle, I thought. Surrendering, I sat in a comfortable chair and let myself be. Not happy, mind you, just not fighting. If the bastards were going to kill us anyway, so be it then, invoke the asteroid! Flip the poles! Pimp the pandemics! Get it over with and cleanse the planet, only — only I was still here, and why did I have to pay the price when I’d voted for peace? It was all too insane to bear and made me drowsy. I slept a little and dreamed a lot, hovering in the twilight zone. Nothing stirred. The sun went down, the walls turned gray, and I was still there in the chair. For over an hour, I sat and never moved. When I did stand up, I felt better, not so numb, remembering goose bumps and joy and that lump in the throat you get when the good guys finally show up. The feeling has to come from somewhere, right?

A few days later I decided I needed a break and took off for the Rio Chiquito in a 20-year-old truck. I’d never gone all the way over the mountain from Talpa to Valle Escondido, and Tuesday morning was the time. It certainly was an adventure. I was so excited, I did at least six really stupid things in the first two miles, like backing up into a ditch to take a picture and driving off with gear on the roof.

The road was better than I expected at first, and the Ford rumbled on through curves, rocks, and dust up into the canyon. About eight miles in, I found a big open meadow and stopped. When I got out of the truck and looked around, I couldn’t believe how blue the sky was. The trees were much taller than I’d seen in ages. Their tops were flexible and dancing in the wind like aquatic plants waving in the current, tall pines moving in an ocean of air. Farther along, there was a breathtakingly primitive stretch that looked like it had been cleared by a team of wooly mammoths dragging a semi. That led to a hairpin curve in the fold of an actual cliff, several hideous dips, a mud hole the size of a hippo wallow on the other side of the summit, and a cold, clear breeze at 10,000 feet. Everywhere I stopped, I heard wind or water and paid attention.

It doesn’t get more real, and this is why I came here. Nature will take its course. We will either own up, become aware, and change — by accident or grace — or be waterboarded in blood until we confess.

I pledge allegiance to the Earth. All those others can go to hell.