I loved sitting by the trees there and watching the dawn come up. It began at 630 ish and the sun was up with the sky brightening by 7. Prayers meditation, enjoying the dessert air.
When I did the laundry I could wait with Madigan in the dog park. From there too we would take the long walk around the park. I’d get my $6000 steps routinely. When I went outside the fence and walked along the border wall off the grid we’d get 10,000 steps. When I left Vancouver some 6 weeks ago I was only walking 3000 steps a day.
I feel revived leaving the northern coastal rain forest and coming to this hot sunny dry climbate at the border of Mexico, California and Arizona.
I enjoyed my trips across to Los Algodones, a short walk from the par. I loved the folk providing such good care at St. Thomas Dental Centre. I’d come for one root canal and a crown only to have a couple of root canals done, a wisdom tooth pull and upper and lower crowns giving me a Hollywood smile. It certainly has caused me to look at other’s teeth and appreciate how mine look so much better than they did. I’m chewing more evenly on both sides of my face and won’t be carrying metal tools and flashlights or up the mast in my teeth. I just remember I carried a Luger 22 pistol in my teeth up a tree after midnight chasing a raccoon that had wrecked havoc in my henhouse. I will definitely take better care of these teeth.
I’m glad too I was able to get jewelry and purses to send to the relatives out east and Laura and the God family. The Vespa had done very well taking Madigan and I back and forth to Yuma for church and shopping at Walmart. I’ve really enjoyed having the microwave and remembered when I finally got one for the sailboat realizing how much they are apart of my cooking routine. I’ve had great barbecues here of steak and pork and chicken and microwaves frozen vegetables while using the stove to boil potatoes to make mashed. Madigan has insisted on sharing everything especially the vanilla ice cream at the end of a meal. A couple of scoops of that really top off a steak meal for dog and man.
The blue sky and sand and red brown bare hills are definitely a bit Mars like. Unusually khaki green shrubbery. Covey’s of bushy scattering quail. Mourning doves cooing from the occasional tree tops.
I’ve met some fellow travellers and enjoyed them immensely. I talked frequently with the finest man with a dog Annie who liked to bump and chase Madigan who had a time with this bigger older woman he simply could not keep up with. Annie loved to run and chase. With her long models legs she was certainly out of the athletic league of stout little cockapoo Madigan. He did try to keep up on occasion. When the little terrier in heat came to the park it was his undoing . All that night he was pining and whining at the door of the camper.
He had a bout of diarrhea while here and we had a great find of a terrific Mexican veterinary.
I loved doing the laundry here too. Having clean sheets and clean clothes was a treat. I like the idea of boon docking but conveniences like coin lanundry in the camp can’t be understated. The store here was great too for milk and drinks and some microwave dishes I enjoyed trying when I brought by my microwave on the front the Vespa with the back box full of groceries and Madigan on his black box in the passenger seat after one of our trips to Walmart.
It’s been great.
As a family physician in the country I learn the adage ‘pneumonia is an old man’s friend’. It was a common way of dying in the hospital and nursing homes for the elderly men. I thought I had a bit of a close call with Covid that first year coming home from the Delhi Addiction Medicine Conference and becoming so ill in Bombay. The feeling that I couldn’t get air and if I panicked I would surely die affected me with the tiring cough of the disease. We didn’t have the tests at the time. It was just what patients described. And during that time I had the closest friends die of the disease and was thankful to be sent home by my colleagues. It was quite terrifying to go into the Royal Columbia and Docside Medical Clinis. I so admired Dr. Lydia Waterson and Belinda and Karen. They were there on those rare occasions I’d stop by to pick up or deliver reports. I thought what courageous and beautiful women they were to work there in the clinic that had been partially turned into a testing zone. We really thought it was a novel man made Wuhan Lab biological warfare virus and no one really knew what was going to come. Yet these women were heroically facing the unknown and coming into that clinic day and day and week after week.
Being told I was too old and to go home was life saver. Dr. Gary Horvath was as understanding .He’s always been a friend of the old and caring and supportive. I like that about him. An amazing doctor but we all worked in the DTES rife with ill health and multiple risks. It was just another layer of danger there and Gary’s Catholicism was deeply meaningful to him. I ve felt in Limbo. When my brother was diagnosed with cancer I began to close down here and move to be near him. Beaurocratcy was a nightmare . Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons was simply callous and despicable. Ontario itself had a history for corruption and arrogance. Ottawa and Toronto so close to Montreal. A triangle of influence peddling and power brokering so different from the freedom and wilds of western Canada. I never did go because he died prematurely and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was all set to move, planning a time of travel in an RV until I found my next place to put down roots. My favourite doctors doing the abstinence based addiction medicine I most embraced were all in Calgary. BC was pushing better living through chemistry and ‘safe supply’ but not really following the wisdom of the great clinicians like Gary Horvath but rather into a political agenda more akin to debauchery and orgy. The poor and sick suffered while the rich got richer and frankly I didn’t know what to do. I was carrying on. One day at a time took new meaning. I continued to be of service but clearly knew there were more years behind me than a head but I really didn’t know what to do. Limbo , purgatory. I just did the next right thing and odd life was very good. I was working virtual and in person but half the hours I once did. I continued to ask to know gods will and be given the power to carry it out. I was living and having a good time. it seemed to some extent we were all on borrowed time and life carried on. I became a great great uncle time and again and a god father . Laura and I travelled and visited and ate pop corn and watched Netflix Madigan grew older and was a character. I began travelling south to escape the cold and wet and my fear of death by pneumonia. I really was afraid and wasn’t. God was in charge. God is loving and kind and good all the time.
I’d acquired tuberculosis working as fly in doctor in northern Canada working with so many who had TB. For two years Dr. Hilda’s of the Northern Medical Unit had tried to get doctors from all over the world to go but the fear of TB and other risks made recruitment near impossible. I was the only Canadian doctor working then they could get to fill the gap then an Irish and an English Doctor. Churchill where I served as well had better coverage, possibly because there were nurses and a hospital and it wasn’t so remote and isolated as Wasagamach and other reserves I flew into. Dr. Ron Mundy followed me into Island Lake and years later we’d have fun sharing reminisces.
But I didn’t like testing positive for TB when I took the American Northern Mariana’s Islands job and had to take a year of antibiotic treatment which seemed to contribute to my hearing loss. I liked to claim my deafness was caused by Guns and Rock and ex wives. But antibiotics contributed. I’d also had a couple of times scuba diving when I’d had no air and had to resist panic.
Airlessness and imminent death have scared me. I’ve felt the overwhelming panic and the feeling this is it and there’s nothing I can do except not panic. My friend John Christiansen when he had his horse back jumping accident and broke his neck described to me so touchingly the feeling of realizing he was now in God’s hands. It was comforting and terrifying but ultimately peaceful because he was beyond struggle. I miss John. When my friends John and George died and my brother died I was devastated. Stiff upper lip and all. I’d learned that a man in Vancouver couldn’t show weakness. It was cruel place and there’s really no time for weakness in the ranks. A cruel place.
I cried alone. I had a few friends who understood. It was a lot of grieving then and now older it’s common. I remember my father at 90 telling me he didn’t know anyone anymore because all his family and friends had died save for his children and grand children.
I felt very lonely in Covid . My dog and cat died that year too. Madigan came a few months later and was a god send walking me along the river bank where I took pictures of birds and waited. We all waited. And Fauci and Xi Jinping and the WHO lied and lied and lied. The Rolling Stones wrote and sang the greatest song of the times, Living in a Ghost Town. And then we were mopping on and the war or experiment or whatever it was simmered.
I became closer with God. Prayer and Meditation. On line AA meetings. Terry and Hugh and Dave all becoming more meaningful. Another George appeared . A wonderful George with similiar sense of humor. Laura was there. She had her children and grand children, her sister and cousins and brother in law and Neice .
Life is good. Now I’m about to turn back and begin to head home slowly. I had thought to go to Mexico thinking I’d like to stay at Rosaritta south of Ensenada. Maybe next year. This has been enough of an adventure and I’m looking forward to starting the return journey rather than pushing onward and outward. I would have to get more Mexican insurance and I have a concern with the camper needing a repair that isn’t an issue but also my eyes need asssessment. I’m always having to convince myself to stop even though I have no clear plan to keep on going. I have another trip to Hay Bay to make this year and feel a conservative approach to challenges is uncharacteristic but reasonable. I’ve a Vespa to load on the truck , a dog to walk and this cabin to be stowed and ready for the road. Time to get moving.
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