Staring into the mid-winter campfire

Sometimes I look at the pill box and it’s 13 pills per day and get depressed.  “What would you have done 500 years ago?” I ask myself.  Truthfully I imagine other people judging me in that voice.  Let’s take a look at that question and take an inventory of what my life would have looked like at various ages if I was born in, say, 1824 and came of age in the heyday of the “Wild West”.

Age 0: I wouldn’t have made it to day one.  I have real doubts that my mother would have made it through the pregnancy, and infant mortality was over 10%.

 

Age 10: I might have made it this far.  Being born with a seemingly small yet major heart defect meant that I was small and underweight for most of my childhood, and was susceptible to fatal cardiac infections from cuts unless I was given antibiotics.  Lacking penicillin it’s likely that I would have died before this age, or not long after.  Child mortality rates at this time were 25%.

 

Age 30: On the remote chance that I wasn’t killed by a minor infection by now, 1854 would have been an interesting time.  Mid-30’s is where the periodic mental health issues started to become more regular.  In the 21^st century I was able to manage them with time by myself and time outside, which turned into six years as a long distance runner.  In the 19^th century I would have joined the migration west to get away from the crowds and maybe would have found something similar, but certainly not had the farm and giant passel of free labor / children, and the odds of death through infection would be that much more.  I would also have been more likely to self-medicate with alcohol or opium, and possibly soiled doves. 

 

Age 36: If infection, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases, overdose or suicide hadn’t gotten to me by now, 36 is where it would have ended.  This is the year my heart stopped working, and I had to have my chest opened up, some original equipment taken out, and some new equipment installed.  This surgery wasn’t invented until 1952 and wasn’t common for a few more decades.  If I was born 150 years early in 1824 I would have died of heart failure or an aneurysm as the Civil War was starting.

 

Age 45: Let’s imagine that the heart problem never existed and I managed to not die of infection, this would have been a breaking point.  Even with a healthy diet, plenty of exercise, and clean living I still started to deal with levels of anxiety (and to some extent depression) that were inhibiting daily life.  Some of that is personality, some of that is personal history, and most of it is chemical and treatable today with select serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRIs).  By 1869 I would likely have either self-medicated my way to the grave, self-harmed my way off this mortal world, or died violently in an anxiety driven outburst.

 

Age 48:  If I made it this far, this is the year that I learned all the diet and exercise in the world wouldn’t keep my cholesterol from increasing exponentially every year.  My story would, inevitably, have ended in a few years, just before the Centennial.

 

Staring into the Campfire

At the end of the summer this year I spent almost eight days camping in a patch of desert called Salt Flat, TX.  Every morning Mrs. Slap and I got up just after sunrise and cooked breakfast; when it started to get hot we went up into the Guadalupe Mountains to hike; towards sunset we found some shade, made dinner, then watched the nightly dance.  Sunset in the mountains to the west, Milky Way spiraling overhead, full blood red moon rising over the mountains in the east.  On a busy day we might see five other people.

What passes for reality set in with work, crowds, politics, inflation, family, war, plague all crushing in as we got back to civilization.  I wasn’t right for days.  Weeks.  Months.  I miss it.

I think often about a pair of conversations in the film Jeremiah Johnson:

Bear Claw Chris Lapp: [Seeing the striped military trousers Jeremiah's wearing] Missed another war down there, hmm?

…and later…

Jeremiah Johnson: How does the war go?

Lt. Mulvey: Which war?

Jeremiah Johnson: The war against the President of Mexico.

Lt. Mulvey: Why, it's over.

Jeremiah Johnson: Who won?

No one wins.  The war in Ukraine is going to drag on into another attritional trench war for years, or someone is going to have to decide to cede the East to Russia.  The war in Gaza is… I have no idea where that was going.  Anyone with sense can tell that Iran pushed Hamas into attacking with a bunch a crazy “hail mary”s hoping to provoke an over-response from Israel that would pause or cancel the impending Saudi-Israel formal alliance that was in the works.  I doubt anyone thought Hamas would get as far or do as much damage as it did, or that Israel would have to save face with an endless shock & campaign followed by a ground invasion.  This is the Iran-Saudi cold war turned very hot, and it’s bringing in resources from all over.  Including every American’s tax dollars which are going to munitions fired into Gaza.  All because someone in Tehran got a smart idea.  And people are going to forget about the 1,200 deaths and innumerable attrocities in Israel as the body count goes well into the tens of thousands in Gaza.  No one wins.

And then there’s Trump, who might still be President again despite it all.  The average life expectancy for a male in the US is 77.28 years.  Maybe nature will play the odds and clear the slate.  I’m still holding out for a Romney-Manchin 3^rd party run. 

Via con dios, pards.