Cabin Life. Chapter One. Introducing the reader to Carl Johnson 'of course'

XII. The Mingus Cabin: Homo sapiens

XII. The Mingus Cabin: Homo sapiens

Last among the fauna on the mountain, Homo sapiens. In the first years, the cabin filled with the four of that species. Let me sentimentally and sincerely, recall it. Louisa is four, red mouth and white teeth in concert as she laughed in peals, peals of a new bell, shaking her hair with happiness, small arm poking a stick into the dirt to roust the tarantulas she admired. Thomas sits in the porch swing, his skin still fairer than hers, a ray of the mountain sun striking his curly black hair, brown eyes swimming with intelligence. He is wrapped in the fraying red stadium blanket from Western State in Gunnison, 80 years in the family. It warms the latest boy on that line.

At first the kids sat on the couch, expecting a tv to turn on. A you-must-go-outside rule emerged. Louisa became our resident entomologist, willing, indeed eager, to dissect insects or to parade those still living as brooches on her sweaters. Like human children will, the two responded well to the harsh elements of nature: in hailstorms, they ran around that old place with metal pots on their heads loving the clang echoing around the cranium. In the teen years interest faded, but at times they would bring up their friends. Imagine co-existing with three thirteen-year-old girls in the cabin for two or three days. They rummaged into the childhood that was slipping away by carving pumpkins and making Smores. Then, they traveled the other direction, huddled in the loft, gazing intently at their devices, forming a conspiratorial adolescent clique to complain about conspiratorial adolescent cliques. In this strange new world, these girls, not unlike most in the short human history of adolescence, conversed about choosing a sexual identity. Yet more possibilities than two had become a thing, kinda like long hair and weed and revolution back in the day. Whichever stage they were in, 'smores or Instagram, bursts of girlish laughter came rocketing out of the conjoined enterprise, music to my ears. Louisa was judged by the others as "all mountainy," meaning that she had the boots, the clothing, the hat, the pocketknife, and the attitude of a trekker. I hope she takes that mildly censorious remark as the compliment it is. I have high hopes that she will be just that girl. She has already beaten me out of the Grand Canyon, so my hopes may be realized.

My wife delights in offering the cabin to her colleagues, especially those with children. The artwork of these kids lines the walls, thank you's done up in exuberant colors and exotic spellings. After these visits, childish creations wait to be discovered on the grounds, slingshots, and dolls' shoes. Canadians, Westerners, and Germans are the best guests; they find the adversities and deficiencies of a rough cabin the point of the damn enterprise. I am sorry to say that most other Americans have become right soft. They seldom come, and when they do, soon realize they have made a mistake.

Some companions are virtual. On the Eyebrow Trail, I make a final stop before the steep ascent up the north face. A rock provides good seating and its resident oak grants welcome shade. I dial up my friends, describe the Verde Valley below me and bemoan the ascent before me. To my patent sorrow, one of my companions in conversation from Eyebrow Rock, Arturo Rosales, died a few years ago. He had been a colleague in the Department of History for three decades, teaching and writing Mexican American history. Our friendship sprang up despite our common profession. It was grounded not in the aery of academia but in the ground: we had been brought up in the same town, just 450 miles and one set of railroad tracks apart. We were Southwesterners to the core, working in an academy dominated by an effete core of impudent coastal snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

On the Eyebrow Rock, Arturo and I talked in Spanish and English as old men will, of the salad days, our careers, his alcoholism and my tendency toward it, the women who had betrayed us, those we had betrayed. Always contested, it was as true a friendship as I have had. One of us was a Mexican American from Arizona, the other a gringo kid from New Mexico. I loved this man for our shared experience yet loved him more for the independence of his thinking, always costly in the university, and more costly for him in his politically correct field. For Arturo, each and every assertion made by a scholar required evidence. His intellectual gifts, skepticism, empiricism and objection to partisanship marked him as a son of the Enlightenment.