Judging Love

When I was younger I decided one day that the best way to judge how much someone loves you is to find out how much poo they are willing to carry for you. It was around this same time in my life that I started to try to measure everything in butt cracks. At Subway I'd ask for the sandwich that was about 2 butt cracks long, and I would sit around and try to calculate how tall Mt Everest would be in butt cracks. It took a shit ton of complicated math that I won't confuse you with right now, but let's just say that Mt Everest is a lot of butt cracks tall.

Once when I was younger I went on a short back packing trip with a few of my closest friends. The desert, we always went to the desert. There is a certain group of narrows in Escalante called Peekaboo and Spooky. These two ladies are an easy and amazing day hike (though not quite as easy when you are pushing a full backpack through them) and just a half days hike or so beyond them is a place we have become intimate with. It's an additional narrow that is long and phenomenally thin. They named it Brimstone.

The definitive guide book on Escalante speaks briefly of Brimstone. Just after the author talks about Peekaboo and Spooky he says that Brimstone is basically untraversable. We have done the un-doable. There have been mishaps, sure. There was the time that Danielle got her 'butt stuck'. At certain points in the canyon you are forced (because it is SO narrow) to chimney about 50 feet of the floor of the canyon. Danielle had been trying to shimmy over a tight spot just a few feet off the ground when she slipped. And yes, in essence her butt was stuck. She was only about 1/10th of a butt crack from being able to touch the ground. We couldn't reach her from the sides - the walls were too thin. Adam and I climbed out and up and pulled her out from the top. We laugh about it now, in fact we even laughed then. As one of the toughest people I know it was shattering to see her so vulnerable and frightened. And through her genuine tears were bursts of laughter and she just kept repeating "My butt is stuck, my butt is stuck". She was always insecure about her butt, and let's just say that this experience didn't help.

As one of my closest friends she asked me once if I would write her eulogy. "I want you to write it now", she said, "I don't want you to write it when I die. I want people to remember me as I am now, in your words". She had always told me that I taught her more about writing than any of her teachers. I know I wrote it. I can vaguely remember coming to the realization that there are some people, some relationships, some experiences that words will never be able to convey. There are some things that are bigger then we are, some things that have a life of their own. Somethings can only be imagined as existing in infinite exponentials of infinite butt cracks. Maybe, just maybe, we are sometimes lucky enough to catch a glimpse of that big butt crack in the sky. That is if we are smart enough to pay attention.

One year after the incident at Brimstone we decided to go back. One year later there were new friends and lovers in our group and one or two new people who we felt were worthy of taking a tour through our own private butt country. Even the very slot canyons we were growing to know so well, were really just the butt cracks of the desert. Danielle, in one of the bravest moves ever, decided to come along. It was as though the thought of being left out, or missing us, was worse then the possibility of losing her life to the cold hands of the sandstone cliff deciding to grab hold of her bum cheeks and never letting go.

She told me her biggest fear was ending up alone in a trailer somewhere with 12 kids. I promised her that would never happen. I promised her that I would come and I would help wipe her kids noses and change their diapers. "One butt crack at a time", I told her. I know that what I really promised her that day was that even when her butt was stuck in some random slot canyon in the middle of nowhere in the center of nothing, I would never give up on her. I might have to wander off a bit, get a better angle, gather some equipment, but that no matter what I would never leave her there stuck, exposed, alone, and just off the ground. I promised her that day that there was no such thing as alone when you have people who love you.

When we returned to the base of Brimstone that second year we stopped to set up camp for the night. We had gone early in the season and before the sun had even left us to warm other butt cracks on other oceans it began to freeze. When you need to make a fire in Escalante you don't look for wood. Instead you look for poo. Cow pies burn long and hot and they are never in short supply. Without even asking, before people had even gotten their tents out of the bags I started to collect poo. I slowly wandered, collecting a piece of poo at a time and placing it in a little pile by a spot I had tendered as a perfect place for the fire.

I must have watched her begin to walk away from the campground. I didn't think anything of it, there would have been no reason. The silence and the space in the desert can make anyone need some room to think. There is no where else in the world where your thoughts have so much quiet and space and solitude to roam. They could wander for days in any direction before coming across any thoughts that belonged to someone else. Moments later I saw her walking back. I remember it so clearly in my mind. Her hair was still long then, and at the time she never wore jeans. She was wearing tan shorts and even though winter had just ended her gorgeous olive toned Chilean skinned legs were a perfect shade of bronze. She was wearing that huge, thickly knitted purple sweater with the white banding around the neck line. It was the kind of sweater that looked like it came straight from Central America and it was so long it was hard to tell she was even wearing shorts.

As she got closer I realized that in her arms she was carrying poo. She hadn't been picking up single pieces and piling them together like I had. She had walked toward the slot canyon where the cattle would have been forced to stop and turn around, and then whole time she had been picking up poop. She picked up the big pieces and the small ones. She picked them up with no discrimination as to how dry they were, or more appropriately how dry they weren't. Both her arms were full to the brim with poo. As she got closer to where I was standing I wasn't even laughing. Instead I started to cry. She dropped the poo she had so lovingly cradled to camp and ran over and flung her smelly arms around me. "What's wrong?", she asked. As she was walking toward me, smiling, with her arms full of dozens of cow pies I had realized how lucky I was to have someone willing to carry around arm fulls of cow poo just for me. "No one has ever brought me poo before", I told her.

You can tell, really tell, if someone loves you if they are willing to carry poo for you. Anyone with a few dollars can buy you flowers, or take you to dinner. Any one can say "I'm sorry" even if they have no plans to amend their mournful behavior. Anyone can tell you that you look pretty or that are cool. But I believe that each of us will only get to meet a handful of people who are willing to go out on a limb, leave their comfort zone, and do something that is, well, pretty fucking gross, just to make us happy. If you are lucky enough in this lifetime to meet someone willing to carry poo of any variety or size just to make you happy, then do whatever, absolutely whatever it takes to keep them around.