Ocatillo Wells

 

Henry David Thoreau had Walden Pond and I had Occatillo Wells. The only two similarities of these, to my way of thinking was isolation and the silence that goes with it. You don’t plan to go there, you just find yourself there. Once there you either connect with it, or you go crazy. It’s better if you lose your mind in Ocatillo because nobody will notice and people who end up there are mostly isolationists which pretty much means they tend to isolate themselves. You have to have lost everything to qualify for residency, and in that respect, I could have been the mayor of Ocatillo.

Ocatillo is south of Death Valley which I suppose means you’d last a little longer if you get lost away from the camp. Death Valley will kill you in about two days, and Ocatillo will take you in a week or so. But you will have lost your mind long before that and won’t know you’re dead. I was fortunate for I left my mind in Austin. 

Camps are arranged in a circle. There’s protocol. Bikers in the outer ring, those hiding from the past closer in with families and tourists sitting next to the fire. As the desert air cools at night all huddle around the fire. Liquor flows freely. Those who prefer to smoke sit downwind so as not to intrude on the political beliefs of the drunks upwind.

My first morning I went out where I saw an old biker cooking. He had a grill over the hole in the sand left by the previous night. He’d enticed the coals into a nice healthy red glow. He was making bacon and eggs in an iron skillet positioned on the grill and had a blue steel coffee pot cooking next to it.

“You like coffee?” He inquired as I approached.

“Yes!” I answered, surprised that he spoke at all and offered a cup of coffee.

He took a metal coffee cup and poured and filled it. As I took it from him, I asked if the pot was a perculator. “Naw,” He said, and opening to pot he took hold of a short string tied to a sock sitting in the hot water.

“Works better than a Mr. Coffee, and you don’t have to measure anything but the water.”

“How do you know when it’s done?”

“You taste it you durn fool.” He poured his cup and as an after thought asked, “You like cream and sugar?”

“Yes!” I answered enthusiastically.

Taking a sip from his cup, with a longing look in his eye he said, “Yeah, me too.”

So, there we sat, drinking coffee together, with fond memories of cream and sugar.

He was like most in the outter ring. The old bikers were hiding from the used to be, the youngsters generally hid from warrants. I was hiding from myself. Three large homes in Austin, a wife (My sixth) four sons and around eight or so grandkids and a Mercedes Benz, I arrived at the Wells with the clothes on my back. I’d stayed at my son’s house, but they didn’t like me, so I ended up at Ocatillo more often than not. Oh, yeah, and I was a drunk.

When you have money nobody notices if you’re a drunk because they hope you drink yourself to death and leave them something. When you’re broke, and no longer an accredited alcoholic they just want you out without it being their fault. That’s important. That’s how you end up drinking black coffee from an old biker’s sock.

Days are tedious. At night it’s mostly quiet, save the conversation around the fire, but in the morning the tourists get their “toys” out and commence scaring the Gila Monsters out from beneath the trailers. After you acclimate and get used to quiet you will discover that noise bothers you. A car horn, a slamming door, barking dog, flatulence. And you can feel as well as hear the sound. At night, when there is almost perfect silence the quiet becomes so loud that you can discover all the things that are wrong with you, real or imagined, tangible or psychological. Mostly psychological because if you weren’t crazy you wouldn’t be there in the first place.

And after you get good at sitting alone, away from the camp the desert wind begins to form words. Whiskey helps but not mixed. Gotta be straight up. You have to accept that everyone “back home” went on without you. You had this coming. There are no innocent people in Ocatillo. You earned this. God doesn’t like you right now and you are smack in the middle of purgatory. Now you know where it’s at. Lucky you!

After a few days you begin to answer the wind. At first it’s everybody else’s fault, but by and by that Ben Franklin list leans heavily to your side. You ask for forgiveness, but God isn’t there. Only the wind. Then you surrender. This is the way it’s gonna be for the rest of your life. Then, for the first time you feel sadness. And remorse. Then it dawns on you that you wouldn’t feel remorse if not at least part of this was brought on by you. Yes, others reacted to you but you started it and you fueled it and you will pay for it. You really don’t want to take responsibility, but the wind won’t STFU!

You don’t come upon the idea of going home in an “Aha” moment. You just know. Somehow you got an answer and it’s kinda organic. Bits and pieces here and there, until all that foolish pride works itself out. You don’t form a plan, the plan forms you. God’s back! He was waiting on you back home.  Even after you get back there are ups and downs. You fall, get up and fall again. Each time the fall is easier. Then one day you will have most of the pieces. Your broken life that took you there will always be broken, and now and then in the still of the night the wind will remind you as you watch your wife remarry, as those grandchildren forget who you are, and you remember who you were, and who and what you are now. And try to not make the mistakes again. You try to communicate these life lessons to your kids, those that still talk to you, but they won’t listen. They are somewhere way down their own road. One day you’re in a small café, sitting at the counter having morning coffee. A trucker reaches across to get the sugar shaker and you hand it to him saying, “You like cream and sugar? Yeah, me too.”