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“Heh, you awake?” whispers Nikki. Her dark silhouette emerges from the bunkhouse door into my consciousness.
“Uhh unnhh,” I mumble, wallowing in the cozy warmth of my raggedy blue sleeping bag on the narrow wooden bunk.
“Get up, “she urges. “Come on outside.”
“What time is it?”
“Around four. You gotta see this.”
A couple hours earlier, I had finally dozed off after tossing about. A triumph over tricky sleep that often outwitted me. But I recognize an insistence in her voice as I hover between shut eye and awake.
Rolling over. Flopping my legs across the two-by-four bed frame. Whacking my foot! These bunks were not designed for adults. Still, after my full day of fresh air and hot sun, the bunk serves its purpose. Shoving into jeans. Slipping on a flannel shirt. Pulling on my Fatboys.
I tiptoe outside, not wanting to wake those sleeping on the other side of the bunkhouse.
Sweet November night air chills. Goosebumps rise across the bare skin at the back of my neck. I fill my lungs with a deep breath of desert night calm. Comforting like Jeremiah’s revelation, “I know the plans I have for you… plans to give you hope…”
I feel grateful for overcoming my hesitancy and venturing out on this weekend retreat with a bunch of strangers.
***
Earlier that day, Nikki and I had discovered we both served in the Army. Makes sense since we are at a veteran’s “Western Experience.” The weekend retreat advertised horseback rides and ATV exploring in the desert, campfires, western cooking, and good ol’ sober bunkhouse fun. Of the dozen or so vets who showed up, three of us are females. Same deal at most of my Army assignments. Standing in formation, few women stood next to me, and none stood in front of me until I had been in uniform many years. Most women I encountered stood in the ranks I led, where regrettably, they endured my lack of empathy and bad decisions—characteristics born of my callow by-the-book approach coupled with the wall I had built around me. A few, perhaps, found their confidence and tenacity from the example I set.
I had waited until the last minute to sign up for the retreat. The flyer said veterans, not combat veterans, or male veterans, just veterans. Yet, even after spending most of my life in the Army, I didn’t think of myself as a veteran. Veterans are older guys who fought in Korea or Vietnam, or younger guys who deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, or guys who hang out at the VFW or the VA. Then again, I belong to the VFW. I had also walked the corridors of many a VA hospital—as a patient and volunteer. Almost seems I had to convince myself I am a veteran.
As the dawn sun crested the horizon, I had driven alone to the dude ranch northwest of Wickenburg, Arizona, at the edge of the Sonoran Desert. “What’s next” echoing as I traversed this stage of ripeness in my life. Until now, I had hungered for the hunt, tested my physical limits, and explored the world while scaling the ladder of accomplishment. I chose goals I thought would fulfill me, then doggedly pursued them, similar to the philosophy expressed by the Stoic, Epictetus.
Often, I taunted life, setting off on my own trail, taking chances, especially when I joined the Army—rebelling from family and society’s expectations for a young woman. I survived, even shined a time or two. My journey revealed that life blinks and ends too soon, for some, for many, for those I cared about.
Middle age brought me to my knees. I declared faith in the “way, the truth and the life.” Now with more years behind me than ahead, I was at a loss as to what I wanted to be, what I should be. My achy bones lurched towards old age. I might fall any time into the beyond.
Prayer, introspection, and that gentle whisper inspired me to walk side by side with others, listening when they needed an ear, lending a hand when they needed help. A curious calling since I am uncomfortable around people and tend to be a loner. Such thoughts roughhouse in my mind, too frequently at one in the morning, pushing sleep beyond reach.
Turning off the main highway, I girded up for the eight miles of unpaved road ahead. From the moment my truck started chawing through gravel on the up-and-down route with hairpin turns, I sensed bygone souls catching my eye.
A desperate nod from a grizzly prospector balancing a pan empty of gold.
A trapper in a coon cap lowering his muzzle loader to get a better look.
A Yavapai hunter listening as a shaman sings to bring him luck in the deer hunt.
Two vaqueros whooping it up on horseback along the berm, showing me the way.
I am an interloper in unfamiliar territory. Their greetings suggested I am accepted as one who will do no harm, much like how men in the Army accepted me. Most of the time.
About halfway to the ranch, I stopped, got out of the truck, and walked into the desert, enjoying the satisfaction of steady ground beneath my feet, volcanic rock hundreds of millions of years in the making. I dropped my jeans, squatted, and savored the release underneath the unending sky amid the vast wildness—a natural habit for me, further engrained by field duty in the Army and an aversion to port-a-potties. In uniform though, I had to be quick, while here I took my time. Surveying the vista before me, I was but a grain of sand. Cottonwood, palo verde, and mesquite trees congregated in folds of the earth that hid underground water. Irregular granite peaks haunted the horizon to the north. Decades-old noble saguaro guarded the rolling crests at uneven intervals—prickly sentries soaring against azure sky, like this sojourn in the southwest, interrupting my life that had been shifting before my eyes. Inevitable. Relentless.
***
Outside the bunkhouse, our boots crunch on rocky sand not far from the Hassayampa River. The ranch sits in land where the Yavapai, “people of the sun,” part of the Apache nation, roamed, lived, and hunted. Here south of the Bradford range, the Yavapai were known as wikenichapa, “people of the rough, black mountain ridge.”
The river traces through the dude ranch, much of it dry wash until the summer monsoons rage. The Yavapai named the river “Haseyamo—following the water as far as it goes.” The one hundred miles of stream with headwaters at Prescott runs south to the Gila River. Folklore claims the water flows upside down as most of the water runs underground. I don’t understand water flowing upside down, but the idea intrigues me. Legend warns anyone who drinks from the river can never again speak Truth.
Does anyone ever speak truth?
Do I speak truth?
I like to believe I do. I tell myself I do. It only took a time or two to learn that honesty, even if sincere, comes at a stiff price, one that stings. Most folks don’t care to hear a truth they don’t agree with. Many latch onto their own truth. Sometimes others, even family and friends, turn away when they hear my belief in God. I, too, am slow to acknowledge others whose truth I cannot understand, cannot accept. I listen, forcing myself not to recoil, to see another side.
***
Turns out Nikki and I both marched into the 1980s “Be All You Can Be” Army. Little did I understand what I had signed up for. In unprecedented change, the military had opened almost all branches to women, and then integrated them into the same ranks with men. Only combat arms (infantry, armor, and brigade or lower field artillery) remained off-limits. For the first time in West Point’s 178-year existence, sixty-two women cadets graduated in the class of 1980. The following year I raised my right hand and accepted a commission in the Signal Corps, trekking headlong into the turbulence that ensued all around… for the institution, the men who controlled it, and the women who encroached. With vague awareness of these historic legislative and policy shifts, equal pay and adventure had attracted me, and maybe Nikki. Olive-drab green and black combat boots. Girls of grit and gold. Keeping up with the guys, and even taking charge. Busted trails had led us separately to this ranch retreat in the Sonoran Desert.
Her a singer and a songwriter.
Me a writer, a scribbler of lost thoughts.
Both prospecting to get our groove back. The promise of galloping horses lured me to the weekend, but truthfully, I needed to connect with other humans. Despite mining my insides for feel, similar to that natural instinct of a herd of horses galloping together across a plain, not touching but headed as one in the same direction, I am still a lope away. Despite many a try, I can’t seem to get in line.
And Nikki. She mentions not drinking and pursuing that next big single. I like her right off.
Nikki’s wavy auburn hair shines with brown, black, and blonde highlights. Prominent features. Straight white teeth. Her welcome brings a smile to others. She connects. She makes me feel as though I matter. Black cowboy hat. Turquoise earrings. Her designer thigh-length blue jean coat with painted horses catches everyone’s eye. She looks like she should be on stage.
She exudes an “I am me—take it or leave it” attitude. Nikki is opposite in looks and temperament from me and my isolated self. In her, I discover a toughness wrought from years of disappointment and wrong turns. We both keep a journal. We have things in common.
***
Over BBQ and salad, she told tales of jamming with famous singers and well-known rock ‘n roll bands. After dinner, we gathered around the campfire. Nikki sang a couple songs while one of the guys accompanied her on his guitar. Her voice ranged across the scale from delicate accents to hearty inflections, moving the audience with her to other times and places.
“Do you know ‘Mercedes Benz?’” I asked.
“Sure do.”
She soothed the bluesy tune as the campfire crackled and the stars above glittered. After several stanzas, I joined her, and we soared a cappella. Giggling. Crowded with spirit. Me off key. Nikki holding the melody. Last song Janis Joplin recorded before she died at twenty-seven. So young she was. Had Janis been seeking truth?
Oh Lord, here I am.
Blowing changes in broken time, Nikki and I tossed poems and songs into the mood, drifting through our pasts long after the others trailed off to bed and the fire died out and the generator shut off.
***
Now at four in the morning, I shiver as we stand in shadows between the bunkhouses.
“Look,” Nikki says, gazing overhead, waiting to see my reaction.
I follow her stare upwards towards a full moon resting low in the blue-grey blackness of never-ending sky.
“See that?” she says. “Do you see that?”
Cricking my neck, I focus, breaking through the trance that follows the jolt of stirring from a deep sleep.
Overhead, a mysterious phenomenon radiates in the darkness. Twenty thousand feet or more above our footprints, I distinctly see a white halo forming a complete circle around the bright, full moon. The ring shimmers and undulates yet remains round. Later I learned ice crystals at certain angles catch the moonlight and refract against a thin layer of cirrus clouds, creating the lunar halo.
Surely God’s hand fashioned this miracle I witness… just as He formed me from the dust of the ground and breathed life into me. And on this night, He singles me out to view this glorious creation, nudging me to… to what?
The answer to truth rises inside and fills me with reverence.
I have never seen anything like this. An unexpected gift, like meeting Nikki and sharing memories, singing songs, and reciting poems. After returning home, I will read that some Native American tribes considered the halo a sign of God’s presence and they called it a “moon dog.” A white moon dog meant a connection with a higher power.
At this moment though, mesmerized and humbled by the magnificent lunar halo, I accept it as a sign that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, where He wants me.
Silence encircles us as we stare up.
I soak in the moment of extraordinary. In the space of a twinkle, truth unveils itself before me. Truth is time and time suspends the moment, offering me a shot at joining the migration across cirrus clouds to a peace inside.
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Beth Liechti is a scribbler of lost thoughts, seasoned editor, and US. Army veteran (28 years). Currently, she serves as a Director with Veterans Heritage Project and as an Ambassador representing Arizona for the Military Women’s Memorial. Her stories have been published in the Mighty Pen Project Anthology hosted by VCU Scholars Compass and the Cactus Wren-dition. Her news articles have appeared in LegionTown U.S.A., Defense Acquisition University News, Air Force Magazine, and Military Officer.