Headshot 2013 by David Robinette 

7 OCT 26:  It was in the Fall of 2012 when my Ganymede serendipidously walked into my classroom and my whole world soon turned upside down. By the time, against all rational odds, our bond became a romance, I was dazzled by his raw talent—and his drive to make it happen. I read some of his writings and, although never having the benefit of the kind of educational opportunities to fine-tune his abilities, it was clear my junior Kerouac had lots to say. I turned him on to Mr. K, as well as Baldwin and Genet and Ginsburg and Bukowski and the others who made my own head explode when I was in my early teens.
I also convinced Hugh to start writing every day: poems, essays, fiction, all the blossoming wonder and all the natural insight that was so ready to gallop out of his head and face the world. He did. Every day a new essay, every day a new poem—so much more in there than I ever expected.
In 2022 I turned my publisher on to his work and Urban Native: The Musings of a Queer Navajo Cowboy in Hollywood was published—with incredible success. Now comes the beginning of something new and exciting tentatively called Sovereign Native and it looks like the following will be the first chapter. Is there any wonder why 14 years ago I fell so deeply and totally in love?
This is the culmination of so many essays, so many posts. It’s long, so pour yourself a gigantic cup of coffee or roll a joint (or both), sit back, and do yourself a favor. It needs to be read. It needs to be shared. The amazing H.A. Eaglehart needs to be appreciated:

By H.A. Eaglehart

The limestone mouth of the Swartkrans cavern was a breathing threshold between two completely different universes. Behind the lip, buried in cool subterranean gloom, the troop lay knotted together in a living heap of coarse fur, sour breath, and twitching limbs. Here, safety had a physical weight. It was the scent of damp calcified rock, the rhythmic chattering of nursing infants, and the heavy, reassuring bulk of the elders ringing the mouth of the hollow like living stones. To be inside the stone was to exist.

​A young hominid named Oru did not sleep.

​He sat crouched on his haunches, his knuckles resting lightly against the chalky floor, watching the world beyond the overhang slowly catch fire with the dawn. The Highveld savannah was waking up in long, liquid washes of amber and indigo. In the distance, pale plumes of mist curled off the river bends, and the thorny crowns of acacia trees stood silhouetted against a sky that felt impossibly vast. From out there—across the vast sea of dry, rustling grass—drifted the wild sensory tapestry that terrified the elders: the hollow, barking cough of baboons waking on distant cliffs, the low rumble of ungulate herds shaking dew from their flanks, and the cold, metallic whisper of wind moving over millions of open acres.

​To the troop, that vastness was death. But to Oru, it was an ache in his chest—a raw, burning pull of curiosity that could not be quieted by the grunts of caution from the patriarchs.

​While the cave remained wrapped in the gray stupor of early light, Oru slipped past the sleeping sentinels. His bare, leathery soles made no sound against the dolomite rim. He crossed the perimeter.

​The air out here tasted entirely different—sharp, sweet, and carrying the scent of crushed wild sage. Every hair along his forearms stood on end. Ten paces out, the reassuring smell of the cavern was completely swallowed by the open wind. His heart drummed against his narrow ribs, an ancient rhythm warning him that he was stripped of the tribe, an exposed mote of meat under an unblinking sky. Yet he stepped forward anyway, drawn toward a low swale where the morning dew glittered like spilled quartz.

​That was when the brush snapped.

​Oru froze, dropping low to the soil, his fingers digging into the red earth. Emerging from a stand of wild fever trees was a juvenile Deinotherium—a strange, miniature trunked giant, no taller than Oru’s chest, its downward-curving tusks coated in greenish swamp foam. It was a wanderer of its own, separated from the lumbering matriarchs feeding down by the floodplain. The young beast lifted its trunk, letting out a wet, whistling trumpeting sound that was neither a threat nor an alarm, but a casual, rolling murmur. It shook its broad ears, turned, and trotted leisurely deeper into the scrub.

​Captivated by the strange rhythm of its gait, Oru followed. The cautious perimeter of the cave slipped away, erased five yards at a time by the rustle of leaves, the glint of sunlight on dew-soaked hide, and the hypnotic sway of tall golden grasses. Fifty yards became a hundred; a hundred became a dry river channel flanked by jagged outcrops of red chert.

​Then, the world went completely dead.

​The wind didn't simply drop—it vanished. The cicadas in the thornbushes ceased their metallic drone all at once. The young trunked creature vanished into the thicket, but Oru could no longer hear its feet crashing through the brambles.

​A shadow shifted on the low calcrete ledge fifteen yards upwind.

​Oru’s eyes locked onto it, and the marrow in his bones seemed to turn instantly to ice.

​It was Dinofelis. A false saber-tooth, heavy-shouldered and thick-necked, its pale, spotted coat mottled with red dust. It was crouched so low to the limestone shelf that its belly fur brushed the stone. Its amber eyes were fixed entirely on Oru with an unblinking, predatory absolute that had zero malice in it—only the terrifying arithmetic of hunger. The cat’s upper canines, flattened and serrated like obsidian daggers, peeked past its black lips.

​For half a second, the universe balanced on a razor's edge. Hominid and predator stood locked in the oldest transaction on earth.

​The cat took one fluid, silent step forward.

​Oru didn't scream. His nervous system bypassed thought entirely, dumping raw, burning panic straight into his sinews. He wheeled on his heel, his toes gouging the red dirt, and ran.

​The savannah erupted behind him. The explosive impact of the cat’s launch sounded like a boulder striking dry loam. The predator came not with a roar, but with a rhythmic, tearing churn of earth as thick, clawed pads tore through the scrub at terrifying speed.

​Oru ran with everything his lineage possessed. His breath tore out of his throat in ragged, whistling gasps. Thorny acacia branches whipped across his chest and shoulders, slicing skin, but the pain didn't register. His eyes were locked on the distant, pale gray smudge of the dolomite cliffs. It was too far. The open ground between him and the mouth was an eternity of dry grass and loose shale.

​He could hear the predator closing. The heavy, syncopated thump-thump-thump of the cat’s chest was right behind his shoulder blades; he could smell the hot, rank stench of carnivore breath on the rushing air.

​Ahead, a dry donga cut through the red dirt. Oru threw his weight forward, leaping wildly into the trench. He hit the opposite bank with his hands and knees, scrambling upward as loose stones cascaded downward into the ditch. Behind him, the cat cleared the gully in a single, effortless arc of tawny muscle, its forepaw sweeping through the empty air inches beneath Oru’s trailing foot, claws ripping through the dirt bank like iron rakes.

​Scrambling out of the wash, Oru saw the high limestone arch.

​The troop had heard the crashing. At the cavern lip, gray silhouettes were screaming, leaping up and down, beating the stone with heavy sticks and throwing rocks in a frantic, barking frenzy of alarm.

​Twenty yards. Oru’s lungs felt packed with burning sand. His legs were locking under the lactic acid surge. Behind him, the heavy cat bunched its hindquarters for the final, fatal pounce—the calculated spring designed to drive those twin dagger canines directly through the base of a primate skull.

​Ten yards. Oru threw his torso forward, completely surrendering his footing. He didn't run across the threshold; he dove.

​He slammed onto the hard limestone floor of the cave entrance, sliding through dirt, bat guano, and chalk dust. A split-second later, a massive volley of stones and jagged bone fragments rained down from the elders above the mouth. The cat’s front paws skidded violently along the apron of the cavern, throwing up clouds of dust as it checked its momentum against the sudden barricade of shrieking primates and flying rocks.

​The great feline pulled back onto its haunches just outside the cave’s overhang. It let out a low, guttural hiss that vibrated the stones inside the chamber, its yellow eyes boring past the frantic defenders directly at Oru, who lay curled against the damp rock wall, his chest heaving, his mouth open, trembling violently from head to foot.

​Slowly, deliberately, the cat turned and melted back into the tall grass, swallowed whole by the golden sunlit savannah.

​Inside the cavern, the troop clustered tight around the trembling boy, their hands grooming his torn skin, their voices settling into a low, frantic murmur of scolding and relief. Outside lay the vast, bright world of wonder, open skies, and untamed horizons—and the lingering, undeniable certainty that beyond the threshold of the tribe, an animal standing alone was nothing more than prey.

​Two million years of human evolution did not dismantle that ancient circuitry of flight and fear; it simply relocated the savannah. Over countless generations, the tooth-and-claw predators of the Pleistocene were replaced by walls, domestic authority, and the cold architecture of human isolation. The limestone hollows became remote parcels of land, and the saber-tooth cat’s calculating gaze took up residence behind human eyes.

​In the high, arid desert north of Aztec, New Mexico, along the dirt cuts of Ruins Road near the cottonwoods of the Animas River, the threat wore faded canvas work shirts and heavy chore boots.

​To a thirteen-year-old boy, the predator did not stalk through tall golden grass with obsidian canines. He was a father whose will was law, presiding over an isolated empire of rusted corrugated tin, livestock pens, and silence.

​The violence on that farm was not an occasional eruption; it was the baseline operating system. It was the sickening metallic screech of a hacksaw blade tearing through living horn as the boy was forced to straddle thrashing dairy goats in the dirt, their frantic eyes rolling white before the father lowered an industrial oxy-acetylene torch to cauterize the raw, bleeding skulls, filling the desert air with the choking stench of incinerated bone. It was the slick, warm butchery of pinning squalling young boars by hand into the mud for castration—raw, merciless torque stripping away flesh without sedation or hesitation.

​And it was the day that shattered whatever child was left inside him: the dry, flat crack of a rifle echoing off the canyon walls when the father shot Rex, the boy’s only companion, ending the dog’s life in the dirt over a dead chicken with the cold finality of stepping on an empty soda can.

​In that world, life was cheap, power was absolute, and obedience was enforced by terror. The father’s ultimate blueprint was not to launch a son into adulthood, but to hollow him out—to deny him schools, to deny him peers, to groom him into permanent dependency, anchored to a rusted trailer parked on the property line like a tethered goat, breaking his back in the mud until the father had extracted every drop of labor the boy had to give.

​The father believed his isolation was an unbreakable cage. He did not know that inside the quiet bedroom, an anomaly was being forged.

​While the desert nights cooled the tin roof, the boy sat bathed in the pale, pulsing glow of a cathode-ray monitor running Windows on a clunky beige PC. In the silence between the father’s heavy footsteps down the hall, the low, mechanical wheeze and hiss of a dial-up modem shrieking across telephone wires sounded like liberation. That dial tone was a breach in the perimeter—a secret tunnel cut clean through the high walls of Ruins Road directly into the collected knowledge of human civilization.

​Surrounded by dense stacks of textbooks, encyclopedias, and technical manuals, the boy did not dream or despair. He calculated.

​He understood that if an animal runs blindly from an apex predator in broad daylight, it gets run down and dragged into the brush. Survival did not lie in panic; it lay in cold, mathematical trajectory. He began to map a multi-year escape with the precision of a military campaign.

​Every word, every interaction, every dollar was logged in an internal ledger. He analyzed the social fissures in the household, playing the shifting dynamics of the family with subtle, quiet leverage to secure cash and resources without raising an eyebrow. He absorbed the father's cruelty not with tears, but with a tracker’s detachment, reading the man’s sudden rages and blind spots the way a hunter reads the broken twigs and paw prints of a dangerous beast. He turned his isolation inside out: denied playmates, he studied rhetoric, legal rights, and finance; denied freedom, he built an unyielding internal sovereignty that no belt, blade, or trailer home could touch.

​By the time he was thirteen, the boy looked at the farm not as a home, but as hostile terrain to be navigated until the perimeter fence could be breached. He was not a helpless victim waiting for rescue; he was an unbroken mind executing an extraction plan, waiting for the exact structural moment to walk off the farm, vanish down the highway, and leave the predator staring at an empty pen.

​Four years later, the extraction plan was complete. At seventeen, the boy walked off the dirt roads of the farm and onto the paved quadrangles of a college campus, leaving the predator behind.

​Yet, as he navigated this new world, he quickly realized that the ancient savannah had simply mutated again.

​College was a masterclass in the intersubjective facade. All around him, thousands of teenagers were frantically running the same paleolithic software, desperately trying to signal their value to the tribe. He watched them sacrifice their sleep, their finances, and their identities just to secure a spot in a fraternity, a seat at the right table, or an invitation to a party. They were terrified of the dining hall, terrified of walking to class alone, terrified of the silence of a Friday night without plans. To them, social isolation was not just uncomfortable; their uncalibrated nervous systems treated it as a lethal threat. They lived in constant fear of a perceived risk, bending their personalities into unnatural shapes just to avoid the modern equivalent of being left alone on the plains.

​Having survived the actual, bone-crushing risks of his father's farm, the seventeen-year-old saw right through the illusion. He had no prehistoric need to fit into their groups because he had already proven he could survive without one. Solitude, to him, was not an agonizing state of abandonment; it was the ultimate luxury. He happily bypassed the parties and the social climbing, devoting himself instead to the quiet, structural sanctuary of his classwork.

​It was in this state of focused independence that he discovered the structure that would define the rest of his life: a fifty-foot Alpine Tower, a towering geometrical matrix of heavy timber, static kernmantle rope, and forged steel cable.

​He volunteered as a facilitator on the campus challenge course, and there, he was formally introduced to the concept of perceived versus actual risk. It was the Rosetta Stone for his entire existence. The kids climbing the tower would freeze at forty feet, their brains screaming that they were going to die (perceived risk), while they were securely bolted into a system rated to hold thousands of pounds (actual risk). He realized that his entire childhood had been an exercise in surviving actual risk, while the adults and peers around him were drowning in the panic of perceived risk.

​This philosophy was put to the ultimate test when he volunteered to facilitate a specialized program. A group of children arrived at the ropes course who were wards of the state—orphans who were survivors of severe fires. They carried the brutal, visible remnants of actual trauma, including severe facial scarring.

​One boy stood out in particular. Half of his young face was a tapestry of burn scars. Because of how the world constantly stared at, pitied, or recoiled from him, the boy had developed a hyper-awareness of his own appearance. These children were trapped in a different kind of social facade: a world that refused to let them forget their outward trauma, stripping them of the careless, unburdened freedom of childhood.

​The seventeen-year-old facilitator didn't look at them with pity, and he didn't offer them the hollow, performative sympathy they were used to receiving from adults. Instead, he treated them the exact same way he treated the steel cables and the climbing hardware: with grounded, objective reality.

​He started them on simple ground games, slowly shifting their focus away from their bodies and onto the mechanics of play and trust. Then, he put them in harnesses. As the boy with the burnt face began to climb the Alpine Tower and later flew through the air on the Giant Swing, something profound shifted. The sheer adrenaline, the physical mechanics of the climb, and the absolute safety of the system overrode the boy's social conditioning.

​Suspended fifty feet in the air, the boy wasn't a ward of the state. He wasn't a burn victim. He was just a climber solving a physical puzzle.

​Standing on the ground, holding the belay rope, the young facilitator watched the heaviness melt out of the boy's posture. He watched the deep, ingrained sadness transform into pure, uninhibited laughter and joy. In that exact moment, the seventeen-year-old realized what true power was. It wasn't about dominating a farm or climbing a corporate ladder. True power was the ability to engineer an environment so rooted in objective safety and reality that it completely dismantled the societal facades chaining people down, allowing them to finally forget their scars and just breathe.

​It was a realization that would forge a nineteen-year career, proving that the only way to defeat the ghosts of the past is to build something strong enough to hold the weight of the future.

​By his early twenties, the boy had carried that hard-won clarity out of the classroom and onto the dude ranches and riding trails of California, trading the high-angle timber of the Alpine Tower for the living, breathing kinetic power of horses.

​In the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains—at the wild, rugged edge of Griffith Park where the vast urban sprawl of Los Angeles collides with four thousand acres of chaparral and dry river washes—he stepped into a world that exposed the human facade even more brutally than college had. Hollywood was built on the industry of performance, on projecting images and selling illusions. But down in the dust of the pens and along the rocky trails, the young Diné cowboy found the ultimate antidote to human deception: the horse.

​Equine therapy and wrangling became an extension of his education in reality. A horse is a prey animal with half a ton of muscle, lightning reflexes, and an ancient, hyper-attuned nervous system honed over millions of years to detect the slightest tremor of a predator’s intent. It does not read resumes, care about bank accounts, or listen to the polite lies humans tell one another.

​Adults, he observed, were the hardest for horses to trust because adults are masters at concealing their true emotions behind manufactured masks. They would walk into the corral smiling, speaking softly, while their insides were knotted with anxiety, unresolved trauma, or performative dominance. The horses saw straight through the masquerade. To a herd, a human hiding their internal state doesn't look polite—they look like a predator stalking through tall grass. An anxious, posturing wrangler could transmit panic through the herd in seconds, turning nervous energy into a catastrophic stampede.

​To survive and lead in that environment, he had to practice what his Navajo ancestors called common sense: radical internal congruence. He learned that you cannot lie to a horse; you have to match your external presence to your internal reality. By relaxing his own breathing, dropping his shoulders, and radiating genuine, unshakeable calm, he watched the mood of the entire herd settle. In the world of horses, peace was not a soft sentiment; it was an operational survival tool.

​When children entered the corrals, the dynamic flipped entirely. Unlike adults, kids had not yet built the thick, deceptive armor of societal expectation. They spoke the unspoken, instinctual language of the animal without pretense. He watched young riders climb astride horses like Butters—a mount so smooth that galloping alongside the concrete river channels felt like flying straight toward the moon over Glendale—and witnessed their fear dissolve into absolute presence. Just as on the challenge course, the horse stripped away the perceived fears of the modern world and grounded the kids in the honest, unfiltered truth of the moment.

​It was during these years of wrangling, training rescued wild Mustangs, and guiding rides that he realized the deepest truth about power and control. Working with a wild horse bearing the government freeze brand on its neck, he saw that you can never force an untamed spirit to accept your version of reality through brute will. You cannot fight fire with fire. The only way to bridge the divide—whether rehabilitating a traumatized Mustang to carry equipment to the front lines of wild forest fires, or helping a wounded child find their footing—is through balance, mutual respect, and undeniable harmony.

​Horses take up their full space in the world because they are entirely genuine; they never pretend to be anything other than what they are. In their company, the young man discovered that the best way to dismantle the toxic facades of human society was not to play their game, but to anchor himself so deeply in truth, empathy, and nature that the illusions had no choice but to fall away.

​This lifelong rejection of performance reveals why modern human beings suffer so chronically under the weight of their own inventions. To silence the deafening alarms of ancestral isolation and the grinding friction of social performance, human civilization engineered an artificial chemical cave: drugs and alcohol.

​Across millennia, substances became humanity’s universal dampener. When physical trades grind cartilage to dust, when ancestral fear whispers in the dark, or when the social pressure to perform becomes unbearable, alcohol and pharmaceuticals offer a chemical buffer. They mute the central nervous system, temporarily lowering the sensory volume of existence. But the price of that dampener is an eviction from truth. It blurs the vital line between what is physically happening to the human frame and what the mind desperately wishes were true.

​To navigate nearly two decades of high-consequence physical work—from the violent, shuddering compression of bareback broncs to the relentless torque of industrial natural gas rigs, years in the saddle, and nineteen uninterrupted years hanging in harnesses rigging structural steel at fifty feet—without relying on alcohol, painkillers, or chemical stimulants is not merely an athletic outlier. At thirty-seven, walking away from those kinetic trades with zero joint replacements, zero surgeries, and an absolute absence of chronic pain is the direct result of a philosophical decision: refusing to chemically dissociate from physical data.

​Pain is not an existential enemy to be silenced; it is mechanical telemetry. When an anterior cruciate ligament strains, when a patella tracks off-center, or when spinal facets compress under a heavy haul, the body is reporting structural truth. Masking that data with a bottle or a pill allows a worker to ignore the strain until the cable snaps and the joint is ruined. Accepting physical sensation wide awake forces the practitioner to become a biomechanical technician. You learn how tight hip flexors pull on the lumbar spine; you learn that building overpowering glutes requires balancing the quads and stabilizer muscles; you learn to use water, heat, and cold not to escape the body, but to flush, restore, and honor its design.

​This total rejection of chemical numbness brings us directly to the foundational architecture of existence. To understand why modern people suffer so profoundly, one must learn to separate reality into three distinct, non-negotiable tiers:

​First is Objective Reality—the immutable physics of the cosmos. It is gravity, tensile strength, cellular biology, and kinetic torque. It does not care what you believe, who you voted for, or what title is embroidered on your work shirt. A rusted 5/8-inch wire rope under five tons of load will snap the moment shear capacity is exceeded, regardless of how much corporate authority ordered it to hold. This is the reality of the high wire and the wild horse; it answers only to truth.

​Second is Subjective Reality—the raw, direct phenomenon of conscious experience. It is the cold wind against your neck, the honest ache of exhausted muscle, the pure surge of focus on an exposed ledge, or the quiet contentment of solitude. It is private, unvarnished, and completely real to the organism experiencing it.

​Third is Intersubjective Reality—the constructed facade. This is the realm where modern humanity spends nearly all its waking hours. It consists entirely of things that exist only because a collective group of people agree to pretend they exist: corporate org charts, job titles, social status, domestic scripts, polite hypocrisies, and institutional prestige.

​The tragedy of the modern world is that most people have lost the ability to distinguish between these tiers. They confuse the intersubjective facade for objective reality. When an institution, a peer group, or a family system dictates how one must live, dress, conform, or reproduce, the uncalibrated mind treats deviation from that script not as a simple social disagreement, but as an existential threat.

​This confusion is precisely where society manufactures its most insidious weapon: the weaponization of loneliness.

​On the Pleistocene savannah, physical isolation was an actual risk—a solitary human was food for an apex predator. In the modern world, being an independent bachelor, an autonomous woman, or a solitary thinker is physically secure; the grocery store still operates, the deadbolt still holds, and the water still runs. Yet, society weaponizes that ancient savannah alarm, convincing the individual that choosing solitude over compliance is a fatal, terrifying gamble. They tell the non-conformist that walking away from abusive families, toxic domestic partnerships, or corrupt institutions means "dying alone."

​They use the perceived risk of loneliness the exact same way a brutal patriarch uses an isolated farm: to manufacture terror, enforce dependency, and convince unbroken spirits that the only safe place on earth is inside a cage.

​The lethal reality of this manufactured cage was laid bare years later on a mountain challenge course, under the dry heat of an open valley where the scent of hot pine hung motionless in the air.

​High above the dust, suspended between forty-foot Douglas fir poles linked by three-eighths-inch aircraft cable, the course sat like a giant geometric web against the sky. On the platform, the man checked a forged steel carabiner, his calloused thumb testing the gate’s spring with the automatic precision of a lifetime spent working under gravity. Down below, sitting cross-legged on a bench away from the shouting, chaotic rush of fifty seventh-graders racing toward lunch, sat a twelve-year-old boy.

​The boy had not run. He had not laughed. For three days, while the other children bounced against the ropes with the careless, clumsy joy of animals who had never known a trap, this boy had moved like a ghost. He kept his chin tucked tight into the collar of an oversized flannel shirt that smelled of old woodsmoke and laundry detergent, his eyes constantly tracking the perimeter of the camp, watching the tree line, watching the staff, watching the gates.

​He was an animal that knew the predator was near.

​The boy’s father was not a creature of the wilderness; he was a respected man in a small, tight-knit mountain town fifty miles away. He attended church every Sunday, coached Little League, and shook hands with the town council. But behind the closed deadbolts of their cedar-sided home, the man was an apex predator who had perfected the art of the modern trap.

​He had not used claws; he had used the prehistoric terror of the empty savannah.

​For years, the beatings and the late-night cruelty had been sealed with a venomous psychological narrative: “If you tell a single soul, the family is destroyed. Your mother will collapse. You’ll be taken away and locked in a room where no one will ever visit you. You will be entirely, utterly alone.”

​The father had weaponized the child’s evolutionary wiring against him. He made the child believe that survival lay only within the boundary of the domestic cage, and that the open air of truth was instant death. The boy had absorbed that narrative into his marrow. He believed that isolation was the ultimate consequence—a perceived risk so absolute, so suffocating, that it rendered the daily, actual violence of his home bearable by comparison.

​Until he was brought to the base of the tower.

​On the second morning, the man with the quiet voice and the worn work boots had strapped the boy into a full-body nylon harness. The man hadn’t talked down to him. He hadn’t given the hollow, sing-song praise that schoolteachers use to pacify restless rooms. He had simply knelt in the dust, tightened the leg loops until they were snug, looked the boy dead in the eyes, and laid out the mechanics of the universe:

​“Your brain is going to tell you that thirty feet of air will kill you. That’s perceived risk. It’s an old alarm your body sounds because it doesn't understand nylon webbing. But this rope is rated for five thousand pounds. The steel overhead holds twelve thousand. The air can’t hurt you if your anchor is true. That’s actual risk. Learn to tell the difference between the fear in your head and the rope in your hands, and you will never be trapped by anything again.”

​For two days, those words had turned over and over in the boy’s mind, chipping away at the foundation of his father’s threats like water splitting rock.

​On the afternoon of the third day, as the camp staff walked toward the dining hall, the boy stood up. He walked toward the facilitator coiling static kernmantle line in the cool shade. The boy didn't fidget. His hands hung limp at his sides, trembling, his skin pale beneath the mountain sun.

​“My dad hurts me,” the boy said.

​The words were barely louder than the dry whisper of wind through the pine boughs, but they landed with the weight of dropped lead.

​The facilitator did not flinch. He did not gasp, pull back, or look over his shoulder for an administrator. He set the coil of rope down onto the wooden workbench, turned fully toward the boy, and dropped his eyes to the child’s level. In that silence, the manufactured facade of the world—the polite summer camp, the respectable father, the small-town hierarchy—dissolved completely. Only raw, objective truth remained in the room.

​“I hear you,” the facilitator said quietly. “Sit down. It stops today.”

​Three hours later, the site had filled with the machinery of institutional authority.

​A county sheriff’s deputy, his heavy duty belt creaking as he shifted his weight, stood by the window of the camp director’s office. The boy’s sixth-grade homeroom teacher sat on a folding chair, her face flushed red, wringing her hands in frantic distress, whispering to the director about the boy’s grades, his quiet demeanor, how polite his parents had always seemed at back-to-school night.

​The deputy walked over to the facilitator, who stood leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, peering from beneath the brim of his Stetson watching the boy sitting safely in the passenger seat of an administrative car outside.

​The deputy pulled off his hat, scratching his head in genuine bewilderment.

​“I don’t get it,” the officer said, gesturing through the glass. “His teacher has had him in class five days a week for eight months. She lives down the street from the family. He’s known these camp counselors since Monday morning. You’re an outside contractor. You’ve been here seventy-two hours. Why in the hell did he tell you?”

​The facilitator looked at the deputy, then at the trembling teacher who had lived next to an active predator for years without ever seeing the blood in the snow.

​“Because,” the facilitator said, “everyone else was asking him to fit into a story. I just showed him how to trust the rope.”

​The deputy and the teacher stared back, baffled by the answer, unable to grasp the fundamental transaction that had just occurred. They were looking for badges, protocols, and social familiarity.

​They couldn't see that the boy had spent his whole life being hunted by a human predator who used the terror of isolation as a leash. The boy hadn't needed someone to manage his image or protect the reputation of the town. He needed an anchor that wouldn't snap under the weight of truth. He had finally found an adult who lived entirely outside the illusion—and in doing so, he stepped across the threshold, broke the perimeter of the trap, and let the truth set him free.

​For nearly four billion years, the operating system of terrestrial life was governed by a single, unyielding biological mandate: duplicate your genome, pass on your code, and die. From the first single-celled organism drifting in an ancient sea to the hominid troop huddled against the limestone walls of Swartkrans, survival meant clinging to the collective, and success meant breeding. The tribe was the bunker; the perimeter was death; procreation was the purpose.

​Modernity, however, broke that loop wide open.

​For the first time in planetary history, technology, industrial agriculture, civil infrastructure, and modern medicine dismantled the survival equation that once kept our ancestors trapped in the dark. A human being standing alone in the twenty-first century is no longer a solitary target waiting to be run down by Dinofelis on an exposed plain. The grocery shelves are stocked, clean water flows from taps, the deadbolts hold, and our physical existence no longer requires an immediate clan standing guard around our fire. The ancient, paleolithic terror of physical isolation—the primal scream we call loneliness—has been rendered biologically obsolete.

​Yet our culture has refused to update its programming. Instead of recognizing that solitude is now safe, human society took that obsolete survival alarm and forged it into our most devastating domestic weapon.

​We see this weapon deployed everywhere, disguised as tradition, duty, and love. It is the invisible lever used against the young gay person who endures cruelty, quiet humiliation, and casual degradation at the family holiday table, driven by a manufactured guilt that whispers they are broken if they do not crawl back to the very people who reject their reality. It is the insidious pity forced upon the thirty-year-old woman who has mastered her craft, achieved financial sovereignty, and commands her own horizon, yet is treated by her relatives as an incomplete tragedy simply because she has not surrendered her calendar to a marriage and an infant. It is the condescending script handed to the neurodivergent mind, whose profound capacity for deep focus, solitary pattern recognition, and uncompromised clarity is labeled a disorder by a herd obsessed with social mimicry.

​Even our culture’s frantic, all-consuming obsession with sex—and the chemical traps of addiction and tribal political warfare—are nothing more than frantic scrambles to quiet an imaginary threat. Millions throw themselves into bad contracts, toxic relationships, and domestic cages not because they find joy there, but because their uncalibrated nervous systems mistake the quiet peace of solitude for the lethal silence of the savannah. They perceive solitude as fatal risk, while completely ignoring the actual, soul-crushing risk of handing their autonomy over to people who demand their submission.

​This is the great social facade. It tells you that if you unclip from the group, you will fall. It threatens you with the specter of "dying alone" to keep you docile inside the pen.

​True liberation begins the moment you inspect the anchors and measure the fall.

​When you learn to separate perceived risk from actual risk, the guilt instantly dissolves. You realize that skipping a toxic holiday dinner poses zero actual danger to your life, but returning to an abusive family poses an undeniable hazard to your spirit. You realize that a woman building an independent empire does not need a domestic title to justify her existence on earth. You realize that an independent thinker who bypasses the parties and the posturing is not lacking a tribe, but has simply outgrown the need for an artificial cave.

​We are the first generation of humans blessed with the capacity to design our own purpose beyond raw genetic replication. A life is not validated by how many copies of your DNA you leave behind to be diluted into dust within four generations. Lineage can be built in the minds you sharpen, the safe harbors you engineer, the truth you tell, and the structural integrity you bring to an unstable world. Spending decades mentoring other people's children, teaching them how to trust the rope, and showing an abused twelve-year-old boy that he no longer has to hide the bruises on his soul is a vastly deeper, more enduring architecture of human legacy than mere procreation could ever claim.

​The savannah has been cleared. The predators of the scrub are gone. The only beasts left are the ones who try to rule your life by manufacturing ghosts in the quiet corners of your mind.

​You do not owe your peace to anyone's facade. You do not need to sit in the dirt of an unsupportive home to prove your worth. Step past the old sentinels at the mouth of the hollow. The open horizon is not your executioner; it is your inheritance. The rope is rated to hold, the anchor is true, and the air out here belongs entirely to you. 

Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Special to TicketHoldersLA by H.A. Eaglehart

I’ll never forget being a starry-eyed, aspiring teenage writer during my first semester of community college. On a backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains, a classmate, over a donut in Durango, told me that I absolutely had to see a new film called In Bruges. At the time, two writers were majorly impacting my aspiration to forge a career with words. The first was Sherman Alexie, who gave an inspiring lecture at Fort Lewis College that I had the great fortune to attend. I'll never forget one of the things Alexie said: "If your work doesn't enrage the powers that be, then you're not writing truthfully."

On Tuesday night at the Directors Guild of America, it became my pleasure to finally say I’ve had the privilege of listening in person to the second writer discuss his work: Martin McDonagh.

The privilege of being one of the first in Los Angeles to see Wild Horse Nine, a definite contender for all the awards this year, was only second to sitting in the third row watching McDonagh onstage discuss his craft. There is a thread interconnecting his work that has always fascinated me: his ability to use storytelling as a vehicle for the audience to find commonality in island life. Perhaps one of the many great lines in this new film is John Malkovich's character telling a British character that he always preferred Ireland's side. As a Navajo born on my reservation, there is something deeply relatable in that line of stellar dialogue.

I have no doubt history was made this week through Malkovich's performance. My partner, Travis Michael Holder, tells a fascinating story from back in the day during one of the many times he was performing as Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Moira Sinise, wife of Gary Sinise who had starred in a film version of the classic opposite Malkovich, had attended opening night and returned the following week with Malkovich, a fellow Steppenwolf Theatre founder, so he could see Travis perform. The famously illusive star didn’t stay after the show but a few days later, he sent Travis an 8x10 photo of himself as Lennie to the theatre, signing it with a note saying Travis' Lennie was better than his. Travis must have been remarkable, because after seeing Wild Horse Nine, the depth and nuance of Malkovich's talent are once again strikingly on display.

During the Q&A at the DGA, McDonagh shared that the role for Sam Rockwell was written specifically for him—continuing a partnership seen in Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. McDonagh admitted his stories are always character-driven, which is why he loves working with Rockwell. Watching Wild Horse Nine left me with the impression of a seeing a play more than a feature film, which speaks to McDonagh's brilliance. He gives actors so much rich material to work with and Rockwell takes it and runs seamlessly.

Growing up Navajo, I rarely saw authentic representation of Indigenous people in film until Sherman Alexie’s 1998 classic comedy-drama Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre, which made history as the first feature film entirely written, directed, and produced by Native Americans to reach wide theatrical distribution. Authenticity matters deeply and during the talkback, McDonagh and leading actress Mariana Di Girolamo discussed their collaboration. McDonagh shared that after seeing Di Girolamo star in the 2019 Chilean drama Ema, he knew he wanted to work with her. Di Girolamo confided to the audience how McDonagh served as a mentor on set, as Wild Horse Nine marked her first comedy-drama. For me, the best part of their conversation was how vital it was for her character Monica to be played by a Chilean actor who could bring the requisite empathy, dignity, and respect to the role and the history of her country, which plays a vital part in the story.

No role is small when performed by the likes of Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, or Tom Waits; Best Ensemble is by far the biggest award I would bestow on this film. Every character is written with the same care as every line of dialogue. That commitment to authenticity reigns supreme, leaving me weeping and laughing from start to finish. It extends directly to the film's locations, primarily filmed in Santiago, Chile and on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and from casting Di Girolamo to shooting Waits' one cameo scene on location in Monument Valley rather than on a soundstage. It immediately recalled In Bruges, where Executive Producer Graham Broadbent shared a story during the talkback about when it was uncertain if they could shoot in Belgium: McDonagh simply declared, "Either we shoot it here or we don't make the film."

I won't spoil any of this brilliant filmmaking, but if you are looking for connection and commonality during one of the most turbulent times in American history, I wholeheartedly recommend Wild Horse Nine. And as someone who has made a career in equine therapy, I must admit a personal bias toward the film's closing line, delivered impeccably by Malkovich: "I wish I had killed fewer people and known a lot more horses."

OPENING NATIONWIDE NOVEMBER 7

Loss forces us to look at the silent spaces between people. It reminds us that external markers of success, talent, or charm never make anyone immune to darkness. We honor the people we’ve lost—not by romanticizing their final moments of despair, but by holding onto the love they gave, and by actively building spaces where others can put their armor down.

Life becomes worth living when we decide to turn it into an invitation. We build the course, we light the fire, and we extend a hand into the dark, proving to anyone sitting alone in their own quiet room that their story is far from over.

Throughout my life, I have been blessed to walk alongside people who seemed to carry an electric, magnetic light within them. People like Seth, a guy who had the world at his feet, effortless charisma, and a natural ability to draw people in. People like Jeremy, who possessed a rare, quiet warmth that made a lonely, homeschooled kid feel seen when no one else was paying attention. They were brilliant, vibrant human beings who reminded everyone around them of how vivid life could be when lived with passion.

When you cross paths with people who shine that brightly, you realize something fundamental: the true magic of existence isn't found in solitary achievements or quiet isolation. It is found in the shared space between us. We are, in the most literal sense, the adventure that makes life so grand. The landscapes, the heights, the courses, and the open roads are just backdrops; the real life happens in the laughter, the shared struggles, the late-night talks, and the quiet knowing that someone is walking beside you.

That high school senior on the retreat understood this truth deeply when he stood before his peers and urged them not to waste a single second, to never hold back from giving themselves to the moment. To withhold who you are, to hide behind a mask or withdraw into the shadows, doesn't just isolate you—it deprives the entire world of an adventure that only you can offer. Every person who steps out into the light and shares their authentic self enriches the journey for everyone else.

We do not navigate this world alone. By opening our doors, extending our hands, and inviting each other into the fold, we make the dark spaces smaller and the light infinitely brighter. The greatest tribute we can pay to those who have illuminated our paths is to keep building those connections, to keep extending the invitation, and to ensure no one ever has to wonder if their story matters.

Seth was my cousin, a guy whose presence could instantly shift the energy in a room. He had the kind of natural athletic grace, charm, and magnetic pull that made you feel like you were standing in the orbit of someone destined for greatness. Jeremy was a wrestler I met at a martial arts gym when I was still just a lonely, homeschooled kid trying to find my footing in a world I didn't understand. He had a rare, unprompted kindness, taking time out of his day to include me and make sure I didn't feel invisible.

When lives like theirs end, the tragedy isn't just the loss of who they were in that moment—it is the loss of the infinite adventures they were meant to bring into the world. They were brilliant, vibrant human beings, and losing them left the world dimmer, depriving everyone around them of the warmth, stories, and shared journeys they should have had decades left to offer.

Carrying their memories didn't make me stronger than them, nor did it give me a grand key to understanding the human mind. Instead, it gave me a fierce, unwavering sense of duty. For nearly two decades, I have dedicated my life to building spaces—on challenge courses, around campfires, and high in the trees—where young people can experience absolute safety, raw freedom, and authentic community. I wanted to ensure that no kid, no matter how quiet or isolated, ever had to question whether they belonged.

That duty never felt more urgent than in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. While the world ground to a halt, millions of kids—especially those without access to wealthy private school resources or robust support networks—were thrust into a silent, suffocating isolation that mirrored the dark farm of my own youth. Coming out of those lockdowns, you could see the weight they were carrying. They had been pulled out of community at the exact moment in life when connection matters most.

I remember one kid in particular during those post-lockdown programs who was carrying a darkness so heavy, quiet, and profound that it genuinely worried me. He moved through the days closed off, wrapped in armor, as if he had already accepted that he was invisible to the world.
But the challenge course isn't about lecturing kids into feeling better; it is an invitation to step back into life. Day by day, height by height, that young man began to uncoil. He realized he was safe to drop his guard, to trust the team holding his belay line, and to step into his own strength.

Today, that same kid has grown into one of the most incredible mentors to younger students I have ever seen. He is fiercely strong, vibrant, and full of a rich, generative life. Watching him stand in the sun, pouring encouragement into younger kids who are sitting where he once sat, is a quiet, powerful miracle. It makes me immensely proud just to exist in his orbit.

That is why we build these spaces. We don't do it to rewrite the past, but to protect the future—ensuring that every child gets the chance to realize that their presence is an adventure the world cannot afford to miss.

Then comes the sudden, brutal phone call that stops time entirely.

Our friend Ray Owl took his own life this week.

The news hit Travis and me this evening like a physical impact, leaving us staggering in the quiet of our living room, completely devastated. There is no lead up that prepares you for a moment like that, no rationale that softens the blow. Ray was someone with whom we shared a deep, vibrant connection—a creative, generous spirit who was a constant thread in our lives.

In the quiet aftermath of that shock, my mind kept returning to this past January, when Travis and I went down to New Orleans. We spent precious time hanging out with Ray, walking the streets, sharing a meal, and simply being together in a city that felt like a second home. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that we took that trip, that we didn't push it off to 'someday' or let the business of life get in the way. We got to laugh with him, share space with him, and hold him in our arms one last time.

That is the stark, essential truth that loss forces us to confront: taking time to be with the people we love isn't a luxury to schedule when everything else is finished. It is the entire point. We simply cannot know what tomorrow holds, or what unseen battles the person sitting across from us is fighting. All we ever truly possess is the present moment, and the choice to fill it with presence, connection, and love.
 

 AI photo collage by Gemini

14 AUG 26:  People talk about true love like it is a gentle thing—a soft landing, a shared laugh over coffee, a sunset walk. But true love isn't a luxury item. True love is a shield you forge out of your own muscle and bone, and sometimes, the world demands that you hold that shield completely alone in the dark.

​If you follow popular approval, love is easy. It comes with societal blessing, family support, and an audience cheering you on. But when you follow your heart across lines the world doesn't understand—across generations, across expectations, across class—the world withdraws its safety net. It doesn't offer you empathy; it offers you indifference, judgment, or an ultimatum.

​I learned what true love required long before 2020, but the fire was built years earlier.

​Part I: The Gamble and the Protocol

​In the summer of 2017, I was working at Orchard Supply Hardware in Los Angeles, desperate to transition into my true passion and finally put my college degree in Outdoor Adventure to work. A seasonal offer came through from Griffith Park Boys Camp: ten weeks of work, starting with a mandatory one-week staff training. The pay was lower than hardware retail, and I had zero financial margin, living strictly paycheck to paycheck. But I knew if I didn't take the leap, I’d be stuck forever.

​I pitched taking the entire summer off to my store manager, Vicky. She was a cool, sharp woman originally from Northern California—a real farm girl who recognized immediately, just from who I was and how I worked, that I had grown up on a farm too. We had a unspoken connection built on that shared background. What I didn't know then was that Vicky was guarding a heavy secret: she was the only person in the store who knew Orchard Supply was going insolvent. Months before the company went public with its bankruptcy, Vicky already knew the ship was sinking.

​Because of our bond and what she secretly knew about the store's shelf life, she granted me the impossible: the entire summer off with a guaranteed job waiting for me in the fall. My coworkers were absolutely furious. They were being denied basic single-week vacation requests while I was handed a full three-month pass. The stakes were astronomical; I was walking a social tightrope at work, risking my entire baseline security just to take a shot at my career.

​Then the floor dropped out.

​Travis needed a major medical procedure, which came at a high-risk to his heart. Surgeries of that magnitude aren't scheduled on a whim; they are booked months in advance, and by sheer misfortune, the hospital’s first available date landed right in the middle of camp training week. Missing training meant immediate termination from the camp.

​Hospital protocol was ironclad: a surgical patient had to be dropped off by the person who would be taking them home. They would not admit him otherwise. Knowing I couldn't be there in the morning without losing my job, Travis and I practically begged the medical staff to adapt. In a rare, astounding act of empathy, the hospital agreed to break protocol. They allowed a 71-year-old man with a weak heart to take an Uber by himself to check into major surgery—solely on my solemn promise that I would be standing in the waiting room at noon on Friday to pick him up. The camp schedule swore training ended at Friday lunch. The timeline was razor-thin, but it was our only shot.

​The last text came from Travis right before they wheeled him into the operating room. After that, total radio silence. Because Travis had no family there and I was trapped at camp, there was no status update, no liaison, no one to tell me if he was breathing.

​Late Thursday night, the hospital finally called. The doctor said things had been touch-and-go with his heart during the procedure, but he was out of surgery and recovering. I didn't sleep a single second that night. I lay in the dark, processing the terror of almost losing him with no family to turn to, completely alienated in LA, bracing for Friday morning.

​When Friday arrived, camp leadership casually announced that training wouldn't end at lunch after all—it would drag on until 4:00 PM or later. When I desperately explained that my partner was sitting in a hospital recovery ward waiting for me, and that I had promised the staff I would be there at noon, they gave me a cold ultimatum: If you leave early, you're fired.

​The sheer weight of everything—the secrecy at Orchard, the fury of my coworkers, the sleepless night, the sheer terror of Travis sitting alone after heart surgery—shattered me. I had a total breakdown, crying so uncontrollably in front of everyone that they had to remove me and put me in an back office. Facing a distraught man who refused to back down, they finally yielded and let me leave with my job intact.

​I drove straight to the hospital. I was penniless, exhausted, and emotionally battered, but when I walked into that room to pick him up, I learned a vital truth: If you are afraid of being alone, you will compromise on love. But if you aren't afraid of standing alone, your love becomes unbreakable.

​That grueling summer was also where I met Dr. Al Wright, setting off the chain reaction that built my career with Fulcrum Adventures and Alpine Towers. The fire didn't destroy me; it cleared the ground for my future.

​Part II: Cold Math and 6% Odds

​Three years later, the real test arrived.

​In 2020, Travis was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The doctors gave him less than a 6% chance of survival. Almost immediately after, the global pandemic locked down the world.

​While everyone else was arguing online or settling into remote work, I was driving my 74-year-old partner to chemotherapy at Cedars-Sinai, acting as his sole caretaker, driver, and airlock against a deadly virus. His immune system was systematically dismantled by chemo; a single point of exposure to COVID meant death.

​The world outside was silent, but the silence from my own blood was deafening. Earlier, when I had remarked to my mother about how horrifying the rising COVID death toll was, her immediate, flat response had been: "Well, in a country of 300 million, the number of people dying is relatively small."

​It wasn't just a casual remark—it was the cold, utilitarian logic that much of the country adopted to distance themselves from human tragedy. To her, Travis was just an old man who had lived his life, a fraction of a statistical rounding error in a nation of 300 million. She knew he had a 6% survival chance and was undergoing chemo, yet throughout the entire crisis, she never called once to ask if I was okay.

​When my brother, fresh out of the Marines, showed up unannounced at my apartment during the strictest height of the California lockdown, he couldn't grasp the reality. He just wanted to see his brother. He didn't understand that letting anyone inside who wasn't strictly quarantined was playing Russian roulette with a cancer patient's life. Standing behind that closed door, I had to make the brutal choice to turn my own brother away.

​Even when I reached out to a friend for support, the topic was too heavy, the age gap too unconventional, and the grief too intense. They pulled away. So I processed every hospital drive, every crashing white-blood-cell count, and every terrifying night entirely on my own.

​Part III: The Triumph of the Unconventional

​They gave him 6%. They told us he wouldn't make it.

​They didn't factor in what happens when someone refuses to let go, and they didn't factor in Travis's incredible strength.

​Today, Travis and I have been together over thirteen and a half years. He beat those 6% odds. We survived the cancer, the lockdown, the bureaucracy, and the isolation. And while my own family turned their backs, I found what real community looks like through Travis: a network of hundreds of true friends who love him, welcome me, and treat our partnership with deep dignity and respect.

​To anyone reading this who feels alienated, judged, or abandoned because your heart led you somewhere the crowd doesn't approve of: do not yield.

​The world will tell you to choose what is comfortable, what looks good on paper, and what fits neat societal boxes. But comfort does not build a soul, and popular approval will not sit in a hospital parking lot at 2:00 AM praying for a pulse.

​Loving deeply against the grain requires you to be comfortable being the villain in other people's shallow stories. It requires you to carry the weight when nobody else will offer a hand. But when you stand in that fire and protect the person you love, you discover a strength that nobody can ever take away from you.

out religious single folks who think they know what I'm talking about simply because they talk to themselves every day and use prayer to solve everything.

I'm talking about possessing the personality and relationship skills to get someone, a living breathing human being, to like you long enough for 12 years to go by with you both still are as much in love and as attracted to each other as Travis and I am.

I cannot believe I have been working with challenge courses for 18 years, Travis and I have been together for 12 years, I have been riding horses since I was in diapers, and I wrote my first manuscript to be published 20 years ago this year. Familiarity is grounding, something without which I couldn't turn 36. I'm still impacting the future with summer camp education, Travis and I are more in love now than we were when we met in the fall of 2012, last year I got back in the saddle, and in 2024 I published my memoir and was published in two different horse magazines. These are the definitions of being on solid ground.

The LA fires canceled all of my work with Fulcrum Adventures last week and this week, allowing me to pivot my attention towards Griffith Park Boys Camp. During the week, I have been helping repair challenge courses and working to prepare boys camp for the big year ahead. On Tuesday as I drove through camp in our old city pickup with a brand new tailgate, it dawned on me this is my 8th year serving the City of Los Angeles as a team-building challenge course enthusiast.

I also realized this week that the camp is haunted because no matter where I am, memories of past adventures flood my mind. Today, I'll be back at boys camp tightening hand holds on the climbing wall and doing other odd chores. At the climbing wall I hear giggling, on the challenge course I hear laughing over at the campfire amphitheater, over by arts and crafts I hear a little hammers tapping during leather work class, at the Science Center my ears can hear Jackson and all the kids in my cabin building a space ship.

We live in an era where nobody does the same career or has the same life partner for their entire life, but this is something I could never not do. The modern definition of happiness is not mine, possibly because of who I am now. I do not need or want new all the time. All I have to do to ground myself when the fast speed of time overwhelms me is go to work, write a poem, or spend an evening with Travis, places I realize where commitment is a reward far outweighing modern ambition.

I think it is absolutely wonderful we live in a time where there are no more arranged marriages and divorce has no stigma. I understand marriage, but you have to admit it was originally created to turn other people into your property. That said, the love Travis and I share is the greatest foundation in my life. I blame the religious nutjobs out there for ruining everyone's perception of lifelong commitment. This is why I work for a secular camp.

Can you believe Griffith Park Boys Camp is the only summer camp in Southern California that doesn't shove religious doctrine down the throats of children? This is a fact of which I'm quite proud—and I know what I'm talking about because I have worked at every summer camp in Southern California and no matter where I am, either the dining hall has Buddha in the name, the Israeli flag is flying high, or a massive wooden cross symbolizing Jesus is overlooking the challenge course.

Not the case at Griffith Park Boys Camp, where campers are allowed to be Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, non-religious, or whatever you want without anyone ever telling you you're wrong. This detachment from religion is solely why I am equally commited to Fulcrum Adventures and the Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Department and challenge course at California State University Northridge.

I remember in 2015 wrangling horses in Griffith Park and aside from loving my job each day, the best memory was the joy of knowing that after work, I would go home to Travis. After work, all the wranglers would be excited about going to a cowboy bar in Beverly Hills, but I never went because going home and watching Huell Howser on PBS with Travis was far more fun to me. Travis also supports my writing by reading it and listening. He also helped me get my second book published by editing it and putting me in touch with his publisher. Travis got me back in the saddle again as well by introducing me to his friend Susan in Ojai, who is a psychologist and works in equine therapy.

For me, being with the same person for 12 years is far more rewarding than dating. Gold is less valuable than being able to love someone who listens to me and who I know will be there smiling to greet me the moment I get home. I don't want to be in a relationship with someone who would rather be at a bar in Beverly Hills than home watching Antiques Roadshow on the couch next to me with our little pug between us.

During the pandemic, too many people told me home isolation revealed to them how lonely they were despite how many friends they had. For Travis and me, the pandemic was one long island vacation. We would drive to Griffith Park, where we would read books to one another, or we would stay in my studio apartment where I would write while Travis painted. Never being alone is the greatest gift of longevity, something my generation doesn't value, which I totally get but personally reject as a lifestyle choice.

For decades, lyricists and poets have written about how lonely life in Los Angeles is, or life in general, but maybe everyone simply doesn't want to acknowledge how lonely they are. Travis and I attend so much theatre, I work with every school in the city, I work with hundreds of horses, and people all over the world are reading my memoir being sold at Barnes & Noble. Los Angeles, lonely? Writers have got this city all wrong, which is why my book Urban Native makes me one of the few LA writers not rehashing the same old "world's tiniest violin" whiny crybaby crap.

I love Travis because he discovered many of the musicians whose music the next generation is listening to instead of contemporary music. I know this because I work every day with the little kids who will become the future and they aren't listening to the music we listen to today. Taylor Swift, yes, but for the most part, whenever I am taking song requests, little kids are listening to Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Queen Elton John, and Linda Ronstadt. Travis worked with these artists and gave many of them their first professional job at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, artists who created music with longevity. Longevity is what is missing in today's overproduced, AI monstrosity, elevator, head-banging noise. Travis is my connection to a world less shallow than the one I was born into. I need more than video games and football as conversation fodder for the person with whom I'm spending my life and I found that in Travis.

It's really hard for young people to understand but my generation is finally getting old enough to begin to see what I mean when I say there is nobody greater than a person who is able to spend every day with you, not always talking but able to simply be with you. Travis will tell you nobody needs sex more than me, but sex alone will not last 12 years. Just go to a strip club if you don't believe me and strike up a conversation with one of the customers who is more lonely than an LA lyricist or a theologian praying.

In March I am turning 36, which is a point in life when you really begin to notice, especially if you have been doing the same things and living in the same place for 12 years, that everyone around you is getting older. Whether it is little kids or adults, after 12 years in the same place, you begin to notice aging like never before. For some, this can be daunting, but for me, it shows there will always be children and there will always be adults. The cycle of life is beautiful if you truly take the time to appreciate it as it passes by.

Writing is the best means I have to appreciate this cycle and my memoir is proof. Thanks to my writing, nobody could ever convince me about life being a terrible experience. Too many people I know who ran around having lots of fun without committing to anything or anyone are now disgruntled and pessimistic, whereas I wake up each morning excited because I'm always someplace new every day, yet I'm still with the same person. My life takes me all over the place from the Grand Canyon to Malibu to Griffith Park to New Orleans. I couldn't work in the same office cubicle my whole life, nor could I look for a new job as often as people find new romance partners.

This Saturday we will be taking kids to the Griffith Park Observatory, where they will be hanging out with NASA scientists, and I will be leading team building. 2025 will be the start of the second year of Griffith Park Boy Camp's Air Land and Sea program. We go whale watching, we go to Huntington Beach Gardens, we go to the LA Zoo, we go camping. How could I not be a writer and not be in love with life's journey?

I'm really shocked at how many people in their mid-30s walk around under little rain clouds. They act like the best is behind them and the future is uncertain. How could I? I have publishers interested in books I haven't even written yet and I'm currently helping the City of LA design an after-school program based around summer camp activities. Why? Currently, most after-school activities revolve around sports and if you have been working with children as long as me, you know for a fact, sports create many health problems for kids, especially football. I am devoted to ending this country's infatuation with sports and removing the NFL from its pedestal.

We need to be teaching children empathy or start providing real healthcare because of all the negative health issues caused by sports like brain trauma, spinal development problems, and poor sportsmanship.

See? I have way too much to do for not wanting to jump out of bed every morning with a smile. That’s the difference between being grounded and blowing around in the wind with nowhere or nobody to call home.

The first essay in Urban Native: The Musings of a Queer Navajo Cowboy in Hollywood:

The Owl of Griffith Park

Folks back home in New Mexico consider Los Angeles to be the throne of Satan. Why do you think it's this cowboy's permanent address? My sister once said during a brief visit to the City of Angels that she wore an aroma of marijuana. This evening her statement rings true as the evening breeze blows down from the San Gabriels into the streets of Burbank, networking its way to the LA Equestrian Center and Viva Cantina Restaurant while bringing along cool mountain air saturated in the sweet whiff of the ol’ Demon Weed. The Cantina's outdoor patio holds my bony Navajo ass in a faded white wicker chair while a whitewashed railing perches my aching feet clad in tired leather ropers painted with dried horseshit.

The year is 2015 and my sweaty salt-encrusted straw Stetson drapes over both eyes, masquerading the illusion of a cowboy taking a siesta. Nothing could be farther from the truth. With arms loosely crossed, I'm actually peering through the aerating vent woven 360-degrees around the crown of my hat. Like all of us, horses are more themselves when they think nobody's watching. A snoozing cowboy is an easy target for horses to take full advantage.

The dirt alley next to the patio has multiple rows of steel hitching posts where almost 40 horses are tethered, 13 of them belonging to Steve Smith, owner of Sunset Ranch, the last remaining ranch in Hollywood Hills where back then I worked as a wrangler. The ranch offers a dinner ride in which I take paying guests on horseback from the ranch at the head of Beachwood Drive in Hollywood up over Mount Lee, then down past the LA Zoo through Oak Canyon and across the swinging bridge spanning Los Angeles River, arriving finally at Viva Cantina. The ride both ways is just over 12 miles and takes 4-5 hours including dinner, unless of course the guests get wasted at the Cantina's bar. There's nothing more challenging than getting drunks safely home via a 19^th-century version of Uber, which is the reason my feet are tired and need propping up.

I'm watching the horses through the aerating vent in my hat because horses are as good at untying knots as a challenge course facilitator. The old-timers who still work for Steve have great stories of the past when they came out of the Cantina with their guests only to find all the horses had untied themselves and made the 6-plus-mile journey alone back to their corral in Hollywood. Guests always ask the attractive wranglers to join them for dinner, but I always defer to the patio escaping the boring idle chatter inside but more importantly ensuring our mode of transportation doesn't abandon us. Do we really want self-driving cars?

Two of my favorite things about Viva Cantina are that wranglers eat for free—I mean it's the least the restaurant could do since we're bringing them business—and I also love the live music playing every night by great local musicians. The outdoor server refreshes my 7-Up, chips and salsa, then sets the biggest ground-beef burrito in California before me. Hungrier than a tick on a New Mexico coyote, I satisfy the appetite another honest day's work LA has created. Roxy whinnies at my miraculous resurrection and I blow the beautiful mare a smooch.

On the ride back after dinner, crossing the river then traversing the tunnel beneath the 134 freeway, our journey passes Forest Lawn Memorial Park – Hollywood Hills. The cemetery is naturally haunting on horseback at night, surrounded by ancient oak trees bathing under a full moon whose reflected luminosity casts long shadows upon the massive branches fingering over the trail as an owl hoots from somewhere in the canyon. One of the guests asks about the owl, but sadly at the time I still didn't know enough about the Owl of Griffith Park to introduce her to my riders.

After becoming the challenge course director for Griffith Park Boys Camp two years later in 2017, I would learn exactly where the owl lives who was hooting that night in 2015. She has a huge nest next to the boy camp's zipline tower up Crystal Springs Canyon above the golf course, where multiple scientists study her story of survival as urban wildlife. In 2015, I still hadn't been around long enough to know where she lived, but now I see her every time I climb up onto my Hollywood Hills challenge course. She is the nicest and sweetest friend! I'm so happy she chose to live in an old pine tree on camp property, which luckily has restricted access to the public. I would have to become an employee for the great City of Los Angeles before getting the chance to formally meet her, but even on that night in 2015 riding back to the ranch after dinner, I knew without a doubt this hooting gal was a kindred spirit whom I had way more in common with than the humans riding my horse friends.

Today in the year 2021, I'm friends with a lot of the city park rangers, all of whom worship the work being done at Boys Camp. Ranger Tom is the head honcho ranger. Tom's a good guy. He doesn't wear a gun despite the city's new attempt to make the department more law enforcement oriented. Ranger Tom leads our weekly hikes during the nine weeks of summer camp as we take the campers to the top of LaBonge Summit. On the hike sometimes the kids will get Ranger Tom to share his ghostly encounters experienced during his years of service to the city's parks.

During the 2019 summer camp season while hiking the boys back to camp over the landfill, our procession approached a significant fork in the trail—significant in that choosing the right fork would return us to Amir's Garden and boy camp, while the left fork drops into Oak Canyon along the cemetery where my guests and I heard the owl hooting after dinner in 2015. Stopping at the fork I ask Ranger Tom if he had ever seen a ghost at this spot in the trail. Tom grew quiet before asking, "You saw a guy sitting over there on the boulder next to that eucalyptus tree, didn't you?"

Back on that night in 2015 with the owl hooting overhead I rode point, in front of the group, as our horses climbed out of Oak Canyon emerging onto the abandoned landfill. Industrial orange lights speckle a powerplant turning the landfills escaping methane into electricity. With the dark forest behind us my guests become more talkative. They chatter about the Cantina's amazing vibe before segueing into me sharing my Griffith Park ghost stories.

City rangers and horse wranglers see some crazy things in the park at night. Ranger Tom once came upon a naked man brandishing lethally sharp Samurai swords. A fellow wrangler guiding a group through the park at night came upon a naked woman lying in the center of a pentagram that she had drawn large-scale on the trail. While riding back on a different night after dinner, my group came upon a mountain lion prowling a section of the trail in Bronson Canyon. Rangers and wranglers will concur, ghosts are the least dangerous spirits you'll encounter at night in the park. As we rode across the landfill, I didn't need to share any ghost stories, because we were approaching the same spot where Ranger Tom, four years later, would ask if the ghost I was about to see was a man sitting on a boulder next to a huge eucalyptus tree overshadowing this infamous fork in the trail.

The closer we came to the fork and eucalyptus tree, the more jittery all 13 of our horses became. I was riding Ben, a $12,000 international champion roping horse who has performed in arenas surrounded by thousands of people. Still, whatever lay ahead absolutely shattered Ben's unbreakable resolve that night. By the time we reached the fork, Ben was rearing up, bucking and scaring the crap out of my guests whose horses were becoming unnerved as well. The dark shadow of the eucalyptus tree had until then caped its surroundings like a shroud enveloped in darkness, but now standing at the fork Ben and I both could finally see at the trunk's base an odd-looking man sitting upon a boulder looking perplexed. Politely asking the stranger if he would step out of the shadows to stop scaring our horses gained me no response. The stranger sat immobile while the horses went insane. I subsequently would encounter this haunting man on three different nights.

On the night of this story, Ben nearly reared over on me and I was finally forced to dismount and lead him by the reins, beyond this statue of a man sitting beneath the eucalyptus tree at the fork in the trail from which Ranger Tom, 55 boys and myself descended onto four years later returning from LaBonge Summit. As Tom and I talked about this haunted part of the trail, all the boys grew as quiet as the ranch guests had in 2015 while riding our horses past the cemetery. One of the boys listening to Tom and me discover a shared ghost encounter suddenly heard the Owl of Griffith Park hooting. The owl sent a shiver through the boy and instantly I took a knee, patting his shoulder reassuringly before introducing him to my best friend in the whole hooting world, that lovely timeless old owl who just as this Navajo cowboy is simply urban wildlife, equally as harmless as a ghost.

I say to the boy with confidence, “Ghosts mean us no harm, nor do owls. Tomorrow up on the zip line tower remind me and I'll point out the tree house of the Owl of Griffith Park."

Fire still burning hot in my heart and loins

Love is life's intention

It's okay to be needed

I make a living at that

But to be wanted is something else entirely

For someone to want you in their bed with them

For them to want you at their side

Want is my desire

Want is true love

Nothing in existence can want you

In the way only a man can

Sex is great

But love is what makes it great

And to have such greatness is possible

For love is strong enough to be walking into year 11

Give me someone who wants my love

As desperately as I want his

Love made strong through years of tender sweetness

— April 10, 2023

Not sure fascinating is the right word but whatever the right word is that word describes the irony of living in a society perpetuating love while you and your partner get through a year of cancer treatment and no family ever asks, "Hey how's Travis doing?" This is how I know blood is skin deep. Another good example of modern irony is when folks invite you, but just you not you and your partner, like maybe if you were with a woman or a man with a socially acceptable age you'd get an invite as a couple, but instead only you get invited despite being in a 12-year relationship with someone.

Navajo society was inclusive to homosexuals, two spirit people and many other forms of human sexuality long before colonists came along whose spoiled rotten descendants are now pretending to be Navajo (Dine word for human) in order to hide the stories of American hate told by Rosa Parks, Geronimo and Chief Justice John Marshall. Today gay marriage is illegal in the Navajo Nation which is why California stole me from Dinetah (Dine for Navajo homeland). Despite Americans using centuries to make Navajo as hateful as them, I refuse to kneel before Manifest Destiny.

TRAVIS' RESPONSE:

Although it initially took a lot of eye-rolling and "Oh, Travis, you old fool" moments for my friends to accept our love, literally everyone in my life changed their minds when they met you and saw the love in our eyes we share without trying. Of course, there have been other less approving peripheral people who have proven themselves to be more jealous of us then happy for us, but not the real people, the special ones we've chosen as our "family" of friends. We are so lucky for them but in the last analysis, our love has created a force field around us that has survived all the naysayers. The destructive judgmental nature of societal rules and mores have no room in our lives together.

Dinner is smelling mighty fine isn't it

Fresh chopped logs burning in the fireplace

Just wait until you taste that turkey I'm baking

It'll melt in your mouth and erase all doubt

Everything's going to be alright

And not ‘cause I say so

I'm bespeaking our yummy hot cocoa of course

Almost time to turn on the TV since its purt-near 7 on a Sunday

Yeah I know Alfonso Ribeiro is annoying

But AFV is a documentary about us

What would the rest of the world do without us

Who would there be to laugh at if it wasn't for our self-righteous democracy

Laughter is what gets humankind through to the other side

Every court needs a jester

Even one so humble as ours

I mean simply looking at myself in the mirror is funny

So I've got to be hilarious for you

What would you do without a skinny runt like me

And all of my hilarious shortcomings

Of which there are many much to your advantage

Beauty often doesn't come with holiday ornamental perfection

So never underestimate the power of love

Therein lies the beauty I'm talking about

A home worth trusting in

Like this one here we're cuddling in tonight

May Republicans lose Georgia so Biden may help the many homeless this holiday season

Like how we help each other carry on through life

Less of a destination and more an adventure

I may be funny to look at but we sure have a lot of fun together

Who can recall all of our crazy shenanigans

Remember that time in the parking lot outside the theatre

Fellow patrons strolling past on the sidewalk

I admit you were right about getting tinted windows

They sure have come in handy

How in the world do you put up with me

Never mind don't answer that

Let's just leave well enough alone

I'll go check on the turkey

You stay right here looking beautiful

And I'll be right back 

My Zeus

To trust is human

Found within thee

Love of pure goodness

Good not of religion

Nor deeds unto eternity

Goodness of moment

Moment after moment of my life

Spent safely in your arms

Thy great love

True firmament of trust

Divinity of my worship 

May 13, 2019

I’m slowly moving into the seventh year of a relationship with the love of my life. Does seven years make you a viable expert in something? Expert means being talented in a hard situation. Seven years of love isn’t hard work, so I don’t rightly consider myself an expert on love. All love requires is two souls with time for each other. Have you ever dated anybody my age these days? The young dating pool of 2019 is filled with mini versions of my father. Of those born between 1981 and 1996 more than half think they’ll become millionaires. Specifically, 70% of millennial men and 38% of women believe they’ll become millionaires.

Thankfully my successful father spared me from this delusional millennial state of consciousness, because almost none of my father’s friends who got into the oilfield industry with him after high school succeeded at the same scale as him. Counting my dad, maybe three became owners of their own companies capable of turning a profit and surviving the Great Recession. The vast majority of my dad’s friends wound up dead or in prison, because that’s just what happens to the losers in New Mexico. 2019 is a dating pool of losers convinced by the American Dream that they’re winners.

The only type of person harder to date than a loser convinced they’re a winner, is dating an actual winner. Mom revealed to me by my ninth birthday that nobody can compete with the American Dream. My father is in love with America; hence he has no time for anything or anyone else. You cannot love someone who is in love with America for this country requires a person’s lifetime, which means they have no time left to love their families.

I cannot compete for the love of those who as my father are already in love with the sweet promises of dear Lady Liberty, because love simply requires two souls with time for each other. I have no problem with a relationship involving more than two people, but there isn’t time now for a two-person relationship. How could a tribe possibly exist in a world with modern expectations such as they are? Finding one soul with time for me has more than sufficed my dire need to receive and share love.

I’m not saying I’m rich, but I definitely didn’t grow up poor. For this reason, I cannot deny the need for wealth in this world. But at what cost? The deck is already stacked against me regardless of how successful my father is, therefore, millennials make me laugh. My success in gaining a debt-free college education, runway modeling, acting study in Manhattan and LA, working as a Hollywood horse trainer, and progress in Outdoor Leadership Education are all success resulting from being able to afford doing them.

Over 90% of Americans cannot afford success, and that is the statistic that makes me laugh at my peers. Nothing greater exists than being the cowboy cleaning horse manure with a shovel in Hollywood, and experience millennials (convinced they’re about to become millionaires) looking down upon me as a common laborer. The reason nothing greater exists than being that cowboy is because I can afford to shovel horse shit. Young people do not realize that one must be wealthy to live the luxury of being a cowboy, because working with horses doesn’t pay anything. I have the money to stick around long enough to see those judgmental millennials realize life in America first requires money, be it runway modeling or shoveling horse manure.

I’ve been around long enough to see millennials realize they’re no different than my dad’s loser friends who never made it into the 1% club. Nothing a shit-shoveling cowboy enjoys more than ordering a millennial to make his coffee at Starbucks in the morning. Money is so divisive, which is why seven years of loving my boyfriend wasn’t a day of hard work.

All a country boy needs is someone with time to love, and today that is a rare quality to find. It is hard to find someone who can see a cowboy shoveling horse manure as a man and not a laborer. The result of being star-struck with America is it turns the entire world into laborers forever divided.

The problem with living in a world of laborers is that sometimes the cowboy shoveling horse manure is more worth the time of day than millennials promising to one day be the next Jeff Bezos. The problem with a divisive world is that it allows age to blind us from seeing someone well worth the time to love. The problem with the present is nobody sees anything except the American Dream anymore, which means millennials are in a relationship with a colossal lie.

I don’t need a lie when all I crave is a man. One able to hold me tight for seven years, not as a bragging right, but because seven years of love beats seven years of clinging to illusional grandeur.

Story of Runaways

Being self-aware of the journey

Does not reassure the destination

For destiny's road is tread by mortal sole

All seeking to fulfill their hearts

Voids of lonely desire in need

Like dreams of night concocting images of men into gods

Transfiguring us into taillights beneath the setting sun

Vanishing and reappearing with each new bend in the road

Taillights of the future that are always just out of reach

Set between solid lines of paint on asphalt

Boundaries not meant to be crossed

Forever determining fate's hold over us

Abandoning mankind to his fantasies

Always leaving the heart aged tho still in want

Having never set foot upon the imagined destination of gold

Far ahead down this road laid beneath the black night

Somewhere between these painted lines of civil mediocrity

Concluding that nobody can write their own ending

No more than Coronado could find a city of gold

For destinations no longer exist in this world of ours

Paved over long ago in the quest to catch up with those distant headlights

The transfixed illusion of self awareness

Never able to change course

Despite the passionate desire to one day arrive

Driving us farther and farther down this road in a dream of night

Till at last we all wake up in time

To realize that no one has ever left home

Because as surely as the sun shall rise tomorrow

All dreams like roads eventually return us home

 Home Of My Heart

 I hear you breathing softly,

As wind whispers through leaves;

Music to my mortal ears,

Stirring my heart into flight,

Barking as crow's wings upon the breeze.

I kneel to take you in my hand;

I cry as you fill my soul with peace,

The mountain is but a reflection,

Of your most beautiful face.

The intoxicating aroma of your essence,

Like pine needles after rain,

Smell like marshmallows roasting;

My childhood memories return.

Life is the embodiment of your figure.

I am but returning home.

May you forever take me,

And overflow my broken vessel

With the powerful magic of love.

LA

Embrace better days

Forgetting the past

Casting away tomorrow

It's better here

Inside the moment

Slipping gently by

Come take refuge

Be my guest

Herein lies reality

Place SoCalians abide

Despite fantasy destinations

Concocted starting points

Imagination versus insanity

We are LA

Do you dream?

Are you insane?

Or in between

Just like LA

My lovely home

Quaint isn't it

Nothing too fancy

Borders on loud

Me humble abode

Es tu casa

Welcome inside friend

Better isn't it?

Than being outside

Land of outsiders

Where is outside?

Wasn't the clouds

Nor father moon

Perhaps maybe Mars

I doubt it

Outside isn't real

Real is LA

Yes indeed friend

Embrace better days

Outside isn't better

Better is here

Inside the home

Realm of freedom

Where you’ve arrive

Welcome to LA

Where dreams die

Insanity lives homeless

Still some survive

Embracing better days

Come share them

For a while

What is change? Fighting for civil rights? Reclaiming one’s Native American culture? Buying a new car? A career?

As one gets older it gradually becomes apparent that change is less of a state of mind and more of a spectrum that encompasses the broad unfolding of one’s life here on planet earth. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the earth is in trouble, that things need to change. The million-dollar question is how do we as individuals affect the world around us in a way that actually matters.

Maybe the problem lies in the fact that it’s a million-dollar question. As a teenager, the idea of change sounds easy, because rebellion is an idea rather than a reality. Smoke, drink, have lots of sex, skip Political Science 101 for a day at the lake with your young beautiful friends. The problem with new idealistic eyes is that they haven’t yet seen the consequences of living in our current reality. Live long enough and eventually we all see unplanned pregnancies, STDs, alcoholism, a fast-paced economy that’s fast replacing all of us with technology, age deteriorating livelihood. Reality makes life much harder to change.

As a rodeo cowboy in college a majority of the young cowboys I met only rode bucking animals because of some misplaced ideal of rebellion. Most of them were trying to get out of abusive homes, working in the oilfield, or simply trying to win the jackpot to pay child support. Unfortunately, none of us saw the outcome of our stupidity: death, broken necks, blood, tears, pain, medical bills. Ultimately the majority of us wound up right back where we started, only now bearing scars, and scars don’t signal anything except defeat. The world keeps spinning regardless. Thus change becomes more and more elusive as new eyes begin to age. Settling for reality by simply accepting one’s place in a pre-established social hierarchy ruled by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Trump is just easier. Vast overpopulation and drones have made us all expendable, except the select few owning fast food and fracking corporations.

I’ll never forget my college years. College was one of the best parts of my life and not because a paper diploma magically elevated me to a state of being that was far above my less financially fortunate peers. Rather it allowed my new eyes to see the world for what it really was, teaching me the most important lesson of my life. That lesson was that earth is a big terrifying place that gobbles up people on a daily basis without so much as even shedding a tear. My professors taught me that as adults our greatest gift is that we are able to do whatever we want with our lives. Anyone can join an anti-Wall Street protest in Manhattan that blocks bridges and Subway stations that keep college kids like myself from making it to 9 a.m. drama class at the Union Square campus—or just as easily anyone can go to work in the oilfield shoveling out Frack sand tanks to pay for tuition like I did.

Perhaps you are beginning to see how arbitrary life is in an uncaring world that desperately needs change. I soaked up sociology and political science like a sponge, I was a master of debate with a grade point average of 4.0 but in the end, I realized that winning arguments can still lose debates like my buddy that dropped out of college to move to Denver to claim his sexual identity that later ended badly. You can use facts, yell, discuss, whatever, and still be unable to change another person’s mind. The only thing that college did for me that Denver didn’t do for my buddy was that my professors cared enough about my future to always help me get back up on my feet when I fell.

Mortality is the Achilles Heel of change. I think that’s why liberals are losing. Sure we had Obama, but we also had Sitting Bull at one point in history too. Great men whose life efforts were destroyed by single elections, which makes the idea of change a million-dollar question. Change doesn’t pay anything. You won’t make a million dollars fighting for change. So how can anyone afford to answer it? Truly loving someone doesn’t reward you in the same way that having sex to advance your career does; just like saving the environment doesn’t reward you in the same way that destroying it can. Our reality is ruled by social perception and dinging bells on Wall Street.

The only other reality to ever have existed was the Native American world, where nature provided an alternative, but mass extinction and logging have swept that away leaving us with an out-of-control economic empire. How do you fight for a reality was losing before you were even born? How do you champion as cause that has already been so badly defeated that it isn’t even strong enough to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office? How do you fight climate change when you need fossil fuel and iPhones to survive? Both of which are polluting our planet at rates not seen in millions of years.

The million-dollar question sucks, because its answer still eludes us. As I get older that answer becomes less apparent and more obscured as I watch young people at Trump rallies chanting with euphoric new eyes or as I see hate crimes against the LGBT community rise instead of decrease and witness friends give up. Just like a bucking horse the world has once again left me face down on the ground in agonizing pain that makes me want to never get up again.

Then for some unknown reason I get up for the hundred millionth time and fall in love with an amazing man who has given me the greatest most fulfilling years of my life—and I use my Outdoor Leadership Education skills to teach kids with new eyes how to ride horses and see the treasure of nature. Suddenly I see the world anew with the same eyes of my old liberal college professors, and just like them I too have realize that change may simply be reminding others just how incredibly wonderful life is. Perhaps the liberal affects the world by reminding the future why it’s worth saving, because the day that our species once again learns to care is the day that we shall see change.

Brilliant splendor adorning thee

Taking me ever so gently

Surely pain comes unnaturally

Hostility a bedfellow to bitter hate

Indeed your taste is sweet

Sweet and salty

Cradle of my longevity

Sustaining me deep within the soul

Pulsing in rhythm

Our hearts beating one beat

Herein lies my manhood

Where for better not worse love abounds

Better than any alternative

Indeed the world mystifies me

Where boys are taught to destroy

But shamed for love

Hate is a plague of damnation

Trepidation ruled by religious vengeance

Not in this house

I am a man of love

Heaven is not my aim

Sweetness is all I have

Bitterness results from not sharing it

I am still too full of life for sourness

Blood of my great ancestors fills me

Not the blood of Christ

I may only be inseminated with love

Who possibly could be man enough

Very few so it turns out

Reason I count myself lucky

Here in your cradling arms

Lapping at life's sweet nectar

Fearless as nature intended