Chapter 22.5 - Love Thy Neighbor (Jack Cransten Personal Journal)

“In these times we can only turn to The One Teaching. The thesis must pervade our every act, "Love thy neighbor as you love yourself."

 Even now, I look across the fire to see his weathered face, and I love that man. Through the last forty years our friendship has endured. I would not have thought that possible after what he has done to the world. Still, his eyes hold some warmth and humor like the dreary glow of a burned out camp fire. The world has entered the late night stage of the campfire and no one knows if it will survive the coming years.

 His name is Leonard Mahoney. He is tall, lanky, brazen. His humor lit up my life during the times when I thought there would be no end to the sadness I was experiencing.

 We grew up in a beautiful small town in the mountains of New Mexico during the 1950's and the 1960's. Our town was sheltered between mountains overlooking the Rio Grande Valley. Across from my childhood home the cliffs turned purple at sunset. I remember the mountains turning colors as we walked between mesas out of the shadows.

 I met Len when we were both four years old. My parents moved next door to his. We shared a common breezeway that was the joy of our childhood. Our front yards were covered by a flat grassy area that rolled uphill into a small copse of trees that was considered a forest by children. Our backyards sloped downhill into sand pits and chain link fences.

 Len had a dog called Sherry and a sister named Jen. Sherry went where Len went. They were an inseparable team, just as Len and I were. Jack, Len and Jen, children discovering the world of nature. Imagined bears, bobcats, and bogeymen waiting everyday in the small canyon down the street from our houses.

 Our parents worked for the Atomic Energy Commission. They were the product of an extensive search by the government to find people capable of creating an atomic weapon during World War II. They built bombs, and devices that could be used for massive destruction. They believed in their efforts with all their hearts. The parents of Los Alamos were encased by secrecy and isolated from reality by their idealism. Their children were protected from racism, poverty, hunger, violence, and government suppression. The government needed our parents and would care for them. That's the society our parents created for their children. The world today is a product of their ideals and protectionism.

 The campfire is almost out and Len is starting to shake a little from the cold. He is not careful about taking care of his health.

 "Len, why don't you put this jacket on?" We've only been in the mountains a couple of days. Our hiding out here is the first time I can remember that Len hasn't come alive when we've been here. To us, these mountains are our homes, our friends. They deliver us from the outside world into a world of tranquil thoughts and cool breezes. These mountains belong to us and our childhood. The distance of the trees from each other, the pine needles matting the ground, the waterfalls, the swimming holes, the crows that cry out our names are all as familiar to us as the hamburger hangouts of those who grow up in the city.

 "Jack, do you remember the time we went camping on Easter weekend at the old reservoir and it got so cold Knute woke up with a frozen ring around his neck?"

 "Yeah. That was the time you put your frozen boots too close to the fire and one of them burned up. It was pretty funny watching you walk out of there, one boot on, one boot off."

 "If there hadn't been the snow I don't think it would have been so bad. You’re right Jack I'm worn out. I'm going to turn in. Goodnight."

 "Goodnight Len. I think I'll stay up for awhile and keep watch."

 When we were very young children Len and I played in a small canyon behind our houses. In the canyon was a crevice formed by two large rocks lying side by side. It was probably less than six feet high and three feet wide. To us as children it was huge. I remember when Len and I filled that crevice with old sticks and all the wood around the area we could find. Len took out the matchbook, lit a match and tossed it into the wood. We stared expecting roaring flames to instantly consume the pile of wood. Nothing. Len took another match, lit it and threw it into the pile of wood. Again nothing. We both sat down and looked at each other. I said, “Len, do you think we need to try smaller wood?" Len got up and started collecting the smallest twigs he could find. I did the same. We gathered a large pile together and placed it under the larger wood. Len handed me the matches. We stood back and I tossed the match into the small pile of wood. When it hit the ground the match went out. We both got down on the ground close to the very small twigs. I lit the match and held it gently under the twigs. A small fire started to burn. It burned larger and larger until the whole pile of wood was raging. We were forced to stand far back from the cleft, our faces lit in fear. The blaze we made was uncontrollable. I remember the fear in my heart when I realized that the fire we could not start had become the fire we could not control. I remember the need to run from that fear knowing that we couldn't leave without the possibility of our play world being destroyed. That's how I feel now. Len has let a fire loose on mankind and lost control. As children we were standing in front of the blaze when the firemen arrived and put it out. As adults we are standing in the flames as they wash over our lives and can only hope that the fire can be extinguished. The kind and gentle firemen have been replaced by scores of mankind screaming the anguish that we have delivered to them.

 Every day from the time Len and I were four until the time we were eleven we woke up and looked out our windows at Burnt Mountain. It stood, bare faced, smiling with a big LA written across its face in front of our second story bedroom windows. We both had rooms on the second floor of our houses. Between Len’s room and mine stretched a phone line consisting of two cans tied together with a string. Every night before we fell asleep Len and I would lean out our windows in front of Burnt Mountain and scream out the days activities over the can line until our parents would yell at us to shut up.

 Our childhood was measured by the seasons of the year. Because it was a mountain town, the summers were short and the winters long. Fall brought a panorama of color to the area, leaving dead leaves in high piles for us to jump into and kick around. Spring melted frozen streams into running brooks and children’s dreams into reality. For the children wedded to the mountains, the world was their playground consisting of the animals and flora of the season.

 During the winter we slid down canyon walls, along frozen streams, and into the silence of snow laden forests. We stalked the tracks of unknown animals, dug underground forts, piled snow high into shelters, collected snowballs for team wars, bulldogged each other on sleds, and ran saucer runs that felt comparable to Olympic bobsledding. Bears frequented our garbage cans in the morning, deer gathered together on our front lawns, birds sought sanctuary in our awnings, and silence fell from the snow laden limbs of the forest trees upon the tracks of children on yet another adventure. As winter ebbed and spring sang of its coming, the afternoons burned bright and warm on a world growing underneath the white silence.

 Spring brought the advent of mud, the ultimate source of pleasure. In mud there was texture, smell, slick ugly games of tackle. We knew that the mud signaled the beginning of longer days. They were days when we could stay out until 9 at night playing kick the can or sitting frozen behind a neighbor’s shed. Mud brought the running streams, fishing at 5:00 in the morning at the reservoir, kite flying in the park, baseball, football, and basketball. Mud was the precursor to life. Any mountain child knows this fact. Our mothers feared the end of winter. They saw mud on everything, everywhere. To them mud was the end of existence. So much for point of view.

 Summer brought the lessons of golf, tennis, and swimming. Diligently we showed up at 9:00 am every day at the golf course to play 18 holes. At 12:30 tennis lessons started at Urban park. At 5:30 swimming began at the high school pool. Summer was the time of the crows cawing from the tops of trees and telephone poles. We knew what trees had the crows and where they would be from year to year. That is the way of nature, to hold its form from year to year.

 A bright glow grows in the distance and dies down like the campfire. Len shivers in his sleep, less from the cold and more from the emotional exhaustion. The chill of this winter night is slowly finding its way to my bones. Perhaps tomorrow will bring to us and the world a quiet peace.