Nature, in all its forms,  is abjectly terrifying, but never more so than when it assumes the form of weather. Except bears.

Climate is the granddaddy of all weather. And,  the desert climate is his estranged brother, which makes it your pervy old uncle, once removed.  No one in there right mind goes to visit, and when you do,  weren’t you kind of asking for whatever happens while you’re there?

But,  I had something to prove. Not content to sit atop the food chain eating peanut butter and jelly sammiches with the crusts cut off (smooch to Trixie), I needed to go out into that harsh and unforgiving terrain,  blow past Les Stroud and go full-on Jeramiah Johnson.

Not just survive, but flourish.

I drove deep past the bowels of Slab City, through the makeshift tenements constructed of scrap plywood, to where the wild things are.

When I could no longer see any signs of those who had long ago abandoned civilization,  I made camp.

Out here,  the sun is more than punishing,  more than unforgiving – out here the sun is not trying to teach you a lesson,  but to make an example out of you.

You see, that is the problem with the desert. It lacks compromise.  It is out of balance with the very nature it claims to be. Days and nights out here are like night and day.

The days are brutally hot, the nights are bitterly cold. Neither will budge.

I decided to tackle this bitch.

About 15 minutes into setting up, I decided a break was in order. Since the nearest shade was 45 miles away at Archie’s Bar & Grill in Calipatria, I elected to crawl into the EM-50 Phantom Rambler, stretch out, and turn my powerful floor fan all the way up to HIGH.

When I awoke, I wasn’t so much refreshed, per se, as I was completely sapped of energy from the mild exertion.  But,  the Old Man had ducked behind the ridge of Chocolate Mountain and provided an artifical dusk. I needed to work quickly.

(Editors note: In the above paragraph,  the author intentional used the word “ducked”. Auto-correct changed it to”fucked”. So, it goes both ways.  Just thought you should know).

The three Fs of survival are: Food, Fun, and Trixie. (Trust me – she begins with an F).

I kept her in my thoughts as I focused on having fun, and planned my evening meal.

Prepare yourselves,  I am about to regale you with culinary delights that will tweak your appetite and send you running for the break room vending machine.

Let’s start with chicken snausages. Not much, you say?  You’ll pass, you say?

Well how about perfectly seasoned, sun-dried tomato, chicken snausages made from only the finest cuts, with no artificial flavors, no preservatives, no filler, no GMOs?

…and, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on the package for some reason

Trust me – they are a gourmand’s delight.

And, though they are fully cooked, nothing so accentuates the rich flavor as grilling in the great outdoors over mesquite charcoal.

It’s boy meets grill

I temporarily suspended setting up camp while I grilled. I hovered over those snausages in much the same way the sun had unblinkingly stared me down only hours earlier. I don’t mind the hypocrisy,  for I was taking no chances.  I studied the meat with the concentration of a diamond cutter before making his first calving. Anything short of perfection would not do. And…I NAILED IT!

When I sliced the meat into bite-sized chunks, it dribbled with juicy flavor.

I’m not much of a cook, but, I have to say that I was so pleased with my attention to detail that I decided to reward myself with some comfort food as a side dish.

In retrospect, part of me wishes that I had saved some intellectual energy for the choosing of my main course’s running mate. In the end I went with generic, microwavable, packaged, mac & cheez, with a “cheese” powder so orange that it carried a faint hint of tangerine.

I shit you not

Then with an absolute minimum of forethought and consequence consideration, I dumped my wonderful and perfectly grilled meat into this glop

I call it Yin Yang Stew

As I stirred my meal, you know, to make sure all the meat was completely covered by the chiz sauce, it occurred to me what I had done.

As I continued stirring it dawned on me further that this meal was a perfect metaphor for the desert. If I could bridge the rift between these two opposites, it would be a harbinger of what I could do with nature.

I sat there staring at my dinner…pondering.  It would come down to the beverage.  What could I pair this mess with that would not only complement both ingredients, but get them to hug it out and be friends?

I had on hand:

Cold water, warm water, coffee, hot tea, iced tea, Diets 7Up, root beer, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew and Hawaiian Punch.

Hmmm. Each had its merits, but seemed to appeal to only one ingredient.  Being exclusionary is what got us into this mess.

Hmmm.

I needed to think outside the bun.  There are only two things that could make this meal, not only edible,  but amazing.

The first, of course, is ravenous hunger.  Get hungry enough and this combo becomes the stuff minstrels pen tales about. But, the food was already prepared and cooling, so…

The other, also of course, is being high as fuck. But, being a licensed commercial driver, federal regulations prohibit me from using marijuana, no matter which state of the union I am in.

It does not, however, hinder me in anyway from drinking alcohol to excess.

And, that is what you call an “Aha!” moment.

Several apertifs is all that I would need to bring about the desired state to make it all work.

I chose a full-bodied Irish Whiskey.

It had a chemical bouquet that was bold to the point of arrogance without being presumptive.  The bouquet was consistent with the flavor and took me back to the days of my youth – specifically, NBC gas chamber training in the Army.

It was effective. The meal was a success. PM for the recipe.

Now, satiated and pleasantly detached,  I decided that I needed to do more naturey type stuff to validate my mission.  To build a fire, that’s it!  Nothing is more fundamental in the conquering of nature than building a fire from scratch.

I was a tad rusty at this, so I allowed myself the slight cheat of using my tinder kit.  This consisted of a full-sized DuraFlame log, a shrink-wrapped bundle of dried firewood, a bottle of lighter fluid and a half a box of Strike Anywhere matches.  And…piano (because no one noticed when I said viola)! A camp fire!

I sat in my camp chair, sipping more of that amazing elixir that bridged the meal so nicely and admitted to myself that this was all too easy. Nature was laying down and letting me roll all over it. I needed a challenge to prove my worth.

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.

As I gazed into the fire,  I saw a vicious pack of feral predators approach from the other side.  Coyotes. In point of fact, I only saw one coyote. A baby. But, this is the untamed wild. Niceties don’t apply.  I was convinced the rest of the pack had surrounded me then pushed the youngster into the light to gauge my threat level.

Last year, I discovered and came to grips with my dread fear of chipmunks all in one fell swoop. This was something all together different.

He was as cute and as cuddly-looking as a dingo – and we know how ferocious they are.  He (and they…probably) must be driven off.

Most folks would have been too scared to think straight. Not me.  I acted without thinking. It was such a rush! When confronted by a blood-thirsty pack of wild animals, I resorted to my own animal state and instinct just took over.

I supposed if I had had celly service I could have Googled what to do when coyotes attack, but the results would not have been better than what I came up with and employed in the blink of an eye.

For those of you softies out there, I will walk you through it.

Coyotes are a species of canine. Probably. They have definite dog-like features.  And, as we all know, dogs are big about using their scent to mark territory. They do this on the form of peeing on stuff.

So, what the internet would have eventually advised me to do, I’m guessing, would be to mark the boundaries of the claim I was staking by pouring some of my urine all around.

Research would have taken forever and been my undoing.  I’m pretty sure that I can take a 6 month old coyote pup in a fair fight – and, besides,  I fight dirty – advantage T-Moose. But, win or lose, I’m the only one who has to undergo the rabies spectrum after the scrape. Best to avoid it altogether.

So, buried in the rarely accessed depths of my brains, covered by all this useless book larnin’ is my survival instincts and they came rocketing to the top!

I was so proud of myself. As soon as I saw that wild animal, instinct became action and I just started urinating all over my campsite without fully processing what the situation was.

The coyote stopped, pricked up his large ears and just kind of looked at me. Then he started backing away.

I saw him again a moment later when he darted through camp and practically across my feet.

Then once again as he made a mad dash from behind with a discarded hamburger bun in his jaws. He was really booking that time. He knew he was stealing.

Pleased with my victory, I stretched, checked the time – 6:30 already! Where does the time go?

I decided to repair to, and button up the Rambler and attempt a deep but fitful slumber.

Thinking about contacting The Acme Co for some mail-order Trixie action.