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The Pandemic Please, With a Side of Vertigo

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The seasons have finally turned here in the Cascades, which mostly means a ton of work.  Spring in the mountains is a cranky bitch, like the old flatbed Studebaker I drove when chasing cows on the Fish Creek Ranch out of Eureka, Nevada.  It took a full can of starting fluid every morning to get that motor to run but she would eventually cough and snort and whine and then finally crank over in a cloud of black and blue smoke.  I’d let her warm for a while and sit in the cab sleepy eyed, freezing, drinking coffee from my thermos with a border collie pup named Gus on my lap.  Gus was a good dog and some days I miss him terribly.  I fed a couple of tons of hay every morning off that truck and it was sometimes cold enough that the cows were covered in blankets of ice.

Winters here on the Figure 8 can be long and sometimes brutal but this year we were given a break from the massive storms and super subzero temps that have pounded us in the past.  I’m grateful for the layoff but the truth is we always need the water.  This time last year we still had snow on the ground from a late storm that kept the bunchgrass green well into summer and, most importantly, greatly reduced our chances of catching on fire.

Spring here means getting the garden turned over, cleaning out the henhouse, burning acres worth of pine-needles, fixing this or that thing that broke in the wind and the weather, getting the irrigation up and running, re-staining the barn and the greenhouse, installing a new hive of Saskatraz bees, and best of all knocking the rust off the horses.  This is all good work – next to writing and reading the kind of work a man wants — but I’m doing it this year in a pandemic and with an acute case of vertigo I’ve been hauling around for almost three months.

As far as the virus goes, from where I sit much of America seems lodged between the Bargaining and Acceptance phases in the Kübler-Ross grief cycle.  I’m starting to see and hear a tremendous amount of “Struggling to find meaning”, mixed in equal measure with  “Exploring options” — which is at least encouraging as a necessary to step toward “Moving on,” a thing we will finally have to do one way or another.

Buckaroo tack room, Fish Creek Ranch, Eureka, Nevada

We are, it seems – at least most of us — now beyond the Denial phase which was really a few months ago when Trump and DeBlasio were both shrugging the virus off with contempt and encouraging people to attend mass gatherings — even as Covid-19 was clearly killing people and hopping continents.  I have zero expectations of greatness from either man, and as a general rule I don’t get worked up over anything a couple of obnoxious New Yorkers say or do.  For a kid from the Great Basin Manhattan might as well be on Mars.

Down at the bottom of the well Joe Biden has made a few desperate attempts to sound relevant but there is something altogether sad in his candidacy.

Elsewhere, a sudden proliferation of couch-bound epidemiologists are declaring the virus no big deal and finding conspiracies in every government decree, posting their revelations in mostly unwatchable and entirely self-indulgent BookFace rants or YouTube videos.  They are homebound and mostly nervous so maybe we can forgive them, but the effort is wasted and unhelpful.  The conspiracy theories are mostly dumb, although like any good conspiracy if we pan through them carefully we can still find a few gold flakes – which is precisely what drives conspiracies onward and is also behind the phenomenon of Gold Fever.  In this case the flakes look like the requirement for extended vigilance.

Today I am more concerned with the long-term behavior of our government than I am with contracting Covid-19.  Bad politicians and corrupted political bodies which, if you haven’t noticed, is the state of American government, like nothing more than control – especially without meaningful opposition.  There seems to be precious little questioning — constitutionally — of some of the measures and decrees around the country, some of them both bizarre and wildly ironic.  Ticketing paddle boarders or banning the sale of garden seeds is just plain stupid though I can see an argument for dragging an unmasked guy off a crowded city bus.

A little raking here, a little chainsawing there…

Here’s the rub:  this virus kills people dead and each of us is charged with a high level of personal responsibility if we are to eventually win out.  It would be far better to win with, ironically, some Gung Ho spirit and mass compliance rather than mass enforcement — but Americans have a deeply rooted suspicion of compliance and generally struggle to get beyond an inherited Senior Ditch Day mentality.

Some of that spirit is what makes us uniquely American, although it seems most of the hyper-suspicion I’m reading about and hearing from various corners is from the unfounded “lance-corporal network” of rumor and innuendo.

Whatever the case, playing with matches can start forest fires, and now more than ever we need caution over miscalculation from the various levels of “authorities” stacked overhead.  I’m not ready to man any barricades or move underground but I am a trained and experienced observer, so I’m parked in the alley with my lights off and my windows down, watching and listening.

And I can say with both certainty and sincerity that one thing I will never consent to do is carry around an “Immunity Card”.

The Official Running Iron Report “Immunity Card”

Many of our fellow citizens seem mired in the Anger phase, as if being pissed at insert public official here is going to help anything.  Personally, I seem to have skipped over anger altogether.  For a while, watching my investment odometer spin wildly backwards, I felt something akin to deeply involuntary concern because the prospect of becoming a late term greeter at Wal-Mart doesn’t hold much appeal.  Most of the sell-off was panic-driven which has never been an engine for my decision-making, and so doing nothing ended up being a wise move.

My natural inclination is to fight something, anything, that comes growling at me out of the dark but one weird aspect of this whole pandemic is that doing nothing at all is the best way most of us – who aren’t tasked with essential services or mired in hot zone hospital emergency rooms — can fight it.

None of this has really helped my vertigo situation, which came out of nowhere.  I’ve tried a course of antibiotics on the chance it was a bacterial infection of the inner ear, I’ve been to a physical therapist who performed a weird ritual called the Epley Maneuver – which is an exercise in helping middle-aged men feel helpless and spastic – but neither of those things fixed it.  I’ve tried a chiropractor whose efforts relieved some badly pinched nerves in my neck and shoulder but didn’t stop the vertigo.  At this point I’m something of a clinical trial with feet but I won’t bother any real doctors until the virus vanishes.  Sometimes we’ve just got to play hurt, and not adding my little problem to the giant medical shitshow seems prudent.

I’m halfway through re-staining the barn which creates its own kind of wisdom, a thing Mr. Miagi tried to teach the Karate Kid in a movie my grandfather refused to watch.  He went to-to-toe with the Imperial Japanese Army and thirty years later was still in no mood for the eastern wisdom of an Okinawan and his world-beating Crane Technique.  For the barn I’m using some leftover Chinese paintbrushes I had in my supplies and the first one of those brushes actually fell apart after about five minutes.  And yes, I’m using a goddamn paintbrush because I hate sprayers and also because I’ve read a lot of Wendell Berry whose piece “A Good Scythe” should be required reading for anyone claiming citizenship.

At any rate, I was standing at the top of the ladder, holding a bucket in one hand when the whole bristle end of the brush just fell off.  I watched it fall 20 feet down in a kind of cartwheeling slow-motion.  Through the anger and dismay I discerned an unavoidable lesson and that’s when I vowed that I won’t be buying Chinese any more.  At least not where I have an alternative.  This is another way I can fight and its not even abstract.  Millions of my countrymen are now out of work and another row in my victory garden will be demanding American made products.  That’s going to be a tall, tall, order, but I figure the louder and more insistent I get the more people might hear me.  Maybe some will even join me.  I’m okay if nobody joins me because, like I said, I’ve read a lot of The Mad Farmer.

Here’s some vulgar jingoism for a Monday Morning:  Fuck China.

Blue tit brings food to begging chicks in nest.  Don’t be a begging chick in a nest.

I’ve been thinking about the Fish Creek Ranch a lot lately, because I loved that desert country.  When I worked out there the ranch was owned by a fellow named Luke Wise, out of Billings, Montana.  Luke was born in Miles City, in 1920, and grew up trapping furs to help his family survive hard times.  He went to high school in Lodge Grass.  At the start of WW2 he joined the Army Air Corps and ended up in China with Chenault and the Flying Tigers.  He knew Chenault intimately.  After the war he went back to Montana and made a fortune buying and selling war surplus.  Then, because there was money to be made there, he bought four Cattle Stations in the Australian Outback:  Delamere, Benmara, Upstart, and Willeroo/Scott Creek.  In 1997 he bought the Fish Creek Ranch in Nevada which covered portions of Eureka, Nye, and White Pine counties, which is about as outback as you can still find in north America.  That’s where I met him.

Luke died in June, 2010, but I just found out yesterday when I stumbled over his obituary in an old post from the Billings Gazette.

Anyhoo, today I’ll be back out on the ladder, staining the barn one brushstroke at a time, working hard in some glorious spring sunshine.  When I’m done with that I’ll get to cleaning out the stalls, and if I have time I’ll get to the irrigation which usually needs a replacement sprinkler or three.  From time to time I’ll stop everything and just sit drinking coffee from my thermos, petting the dogs, and watching the birds in the ponderosas.  And I’ll be thinking about Luther Wise who asked that any donations in his memory be given to his alma mater: The School of Hard Knocks.  That joke from his obit is a perfect reflection of the man I knew.  Luke was a good man and a great boss.  He was a Flying Tiger for Pete’s sake, and here’s something else that I love:  for as long as I punched cows for him I never knew he was a Flying Tiger until yesterday.

Those are the kind of men that win wars.  And since we find ourselves in so many wars at once, just now, America needs every man of that caliber we can muster.

Craig Rullman

Craig Rullman

Craig Rullman is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and occasional buckaroo. He is the author of The Bunkhouse Chronicles: Field Notes from the Figure 8 Ranch, and Director and Producer of a forthcoming documentary film -- The Outside Circle: A Movie of the Modern West.

Comments

  1. Steve Erickson says

    I hate to ask the obvious but, is it a good idea to be standing two and a half stories up in a ladder when you have bouts of vertigo? Juuuust askin

    Reply

  2. Greg Walker says

    Nice piece of writing, amigo.

    Watch the vertigo thing. Had a bit of that a few years ago. Got some diagnostics done and figured out what was going on and got it taken care of. Remember: Heights + Vertigo = Fall.

    Communist China is just that. Communist. Mao…the Red Guard…T. Square…Hong Kong…religious persecution (e.g. re-education camps)… Of course there is a difference between the Chinese People and the Communist Chinese government — but their government rules by political terror (“All power comes from the barrel of a gun” — Mao) and herein lies the rub. They are the source…playing with bugs and bats in their bio warfare lab…it got away from them…they lied and they are still lying.

    With that, I think I will watch “The Sand Pebbles” again today.

    Reply

    • lane batot says

      Indeed, regarding China–the GUVMINT, NOT the people so much, to direct one’s Ire towards! Ditto for Russia. North Korea? Not so sure, they are brainwashed from such an early age, but let’s hope there is some sensible humanity buried somewhere(however deep) in there–we KNOW it’s NOT because they are Korean, because of all those Korean examples just South of North Korea’s nearly impassable border! China is showing more and more hopeful characteristics, I think, in many ways. When a book like “Wolf Totem” is even allowed to be published in China by a Chinese author, and then becomes a National bestseller, as well as going onto become popular in many other countries; and then a popular film is made from it, utilizing a French Director formerly BANNED FOREVER by former Chinese officials(Jean-Jacques Annaud for his movie that did not favor the Chinese in a very positive light in “Seven Years In Tibet”) because of his success filming movies heavily utilizing real animals–then you havta realize things ARE changing and progressing in China! However, they have the same problem all us under large human guvmints have–greedy, power-mongering IDIOTS for political leaders! Anyway, if anyone read into this comment a plug for the book and the film by the same title, “Wolf Totem”, your interpretation would be spot on! A book AND film I’ve re-read and re-watched, in fact! I also have the SPLENDID soundtrack by James Horner(his last, alas.…)

      Reply

  3. Matthew says

    You are lucky to have work to do. I’m non-essential so I’m not. While I’m not in a financial bind over it I spend much of my time stuck at home fending of boredom. 

    I spend much of my time reading well actually rereading. I figure this a perfect time to reacquaint myself with some of my favorite books. C.S. Lewis was big on the love of rereading. (Interestingly, his friend J. R. R. Tolkien almost never reread.)

    I also spent a lot of time writing, though if it ever gets published I don’t know.

    Reply

    • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

      We can never be certain how much luck is an actual factor in life but I can say with confidence that much of this is by conscious design. This was the life I wanted for exactly this kind of scenario…I’m a rereader too. Some books deserve an annual dip. Hang in there bud, we will grind through this.

      Reply

      • Matthew says

        I don’t reread as much as I probably should, but there is so much out there to read. The great thing about rereading is that you know you already like the book. You also get more out of it multiple times. Though you can reread a book to death. I read a certain horror novel every year around Halloween. It was a good book but after awhile I just got tired of it. So this time I’ve chosen books I haven’t read in a long while.

        Reply

        • J.F. Bell says

          Time has an interesting way of bring out the truth of things. I can’t tell you how many books I liked at eighteen that I loved at thirty. 

          Same book. Different reader.

          Reply

          • Matthew says

            My mother if she likes the book will almost invariably read it immediately after finishing it. She did this with Conrad Richter.

            Science fiction (who happens to be what I am reading now) once said.

            “My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”

          • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

            “Same book. Different reader.” Boy Howdy. There is pure joy in that, and the great books are like those art installations that look at you no matter what angle you approach from.

        • Paul McNameePaul McNamee says

          I have a hard time with rereading. Not because I already know the story but because–as you said–there is so much out there to read. I do reread occasionally but not as often as some folks I know.

          Reply

      • John Cornelius says

        I am 500 pages into a re-read of Willocks’ The Religion. Damn, what a fine and finely written tale. I re-read REH’s Almuric a couple of weeks ago. To me, re-reading is like visiting with a friend you haven’t seen in a long while. Jack London is another author that I love to re-read. Jim sent me a link to a preview of a new Dune movie they are planning, and now I want to dig up my Herbert box ‘o books. 

        Good and timely post, Craig. I hope that your vertigo gets resolved, and soon.

        Reply

    • lane batot says

      Re-reading.…I don’t think you can really know a book(or movie!) well without re-reading or re-watching. Of course some are not worth the repeated attention, but those that are become more like old friends you pay a visit to.….Since my ability to utilize Amazon(the ONLY reason I finally broke down and acquired my first and only credit card, which is all I use it for, with rare, rare exceptions), I have been looking up and ordering books I have wanted to read since I was a young kid(now I’m just an old kid.…)–playing catch-up as it were. Plus ordering books I always wanted to RE-read since I was a kid–simply AMAZING how much I actually remembered from such beloved stories when I re-read them again as an older adult, not to mention the flood of memories from times long past that come unbidden, as well as entirely new perspectives on things after so much water has passed under the bridge.…

      Reply

  4. Paul McNameePaul McNamee says

    “this year we were given a break from the massive storms and super subzero temps”

    We had an extremely mild winter here in New England. At least, in Massachusetts–my friend in Maine just got socked with 10″ of snow over the weekend. Hereabouts we hardly had a major storm. As you say, that water is needed. Along with the stay-at-home increase in water user, my town has already banned outside watering, just in time for me to have the sprinkler system tuneup and hiring a new lawn guy. (I’d tried to let the lawn go natural last year … and did it ever …)

    “It would be far better to win with, ironically, some Gung Ho spirit and mass compliance rather than mass enforcement — but Americans have a deeply rooted suspicion of compliance and generally struggle to get beyond an inherited Senior Ditch Day mentality.”

    So sadly true.

    Reply

  5. Matthew says

    In my last post, that should be science fiction writer Gene Wolfe said, “My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.”

    Reply

  6. Ugly Hombre says

    Fook the Chicom’s not the Chinese people.

    My old mentor now 90 years old was taking a bath in his family home when the Chicom’s busted into the compound and hustled him off to a gulog in a bath towel for “thinkers of the three old’s” A recent grad M.D. they shipped him to a leper colony in the North East where he worked without any medications or medical equipment for years.

    Sumvitches.. If he did not know chi kung taught to him by a Shaolin monk his families spiritual adviser he would have croaked, and as a M.D, he knew how to avoid the leprosy and help best as he could the afflicted.

    He still has nightmares about what happened to him and his family.

    Fook the GD “Insect Religion”

    I worked with a Flying Tiger/ Civil Air Transport gent for a couple of years actually with his wife, met him through her, he was a photo bug and took many pictures of Flying Tiger and Civil Air Transport operations for decades. Many of the books on Flying Tiger CAT used his photos with and without credit.

    Flew over Tibet when we were supplying the Tibetan freedom fighters in the 50’s. To little and to late.

    Once again.

    Reply

  7. John Cornelius says

    And thanks for rocking the Mechanix Wear Multicam M‑Pacts for your Immunity Card picture. I sent it off to our marketing team.

    Reply

  9. TJ says

    Love the NET hat. Wonder how long the “How About a Nice Cup of Shut the F**k Up” poster stayed on the wall after we left. Been assessing the same my friend; am currently unemployed and somewhere between the old retired guy at Costco and fire team security, or “contract work” in/outside the states. The love of movie nights, dinners at home, gardening, mountain biking, tinkering on 5TH Gen Bronco’s and feeling the call to the next dangerous mission simultaneously — in my 50’s. Interesting head space for an institutionalized first-responder. Just waiting for God’s direction and trying not to push things into reality outside of his plan and timing this next chapter. Been good for us. 

    Add the plague (significant financial suffering for many, political toxicity); home-schooling (did it up to high school, so not an issue for us) and three teenage wrestlers stuck at home. Our Governor just extended our stay-at-home until the end of April. The boys are doing two and three a days, grappling every day and there have been a few death matches involving dad, teenagers and a 110 pound bulldog in the basement wrestling / fitness center. The value of three brothers at home. 

    Been a system check for many and sadness and loss aside, I hope we carry useful need versus want assessments well into our future. On a selfish note, I am abundantly grateful for my current state of residence and cultural shift. I receive weekly texts from solid professionals regarding our old organization and the mean streets of California. Grateful. 

    Trying to keep in prayer and pay it forward for those less fortunate than us when we can. 

    Hope everyone is healthy

    TJ

    Reply

    • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

      It won’t surprise you to learn that I have the “Cup of Coffee” poster in my study. So the answer is…it left with me 🙂 Gratitude remains the best response…not many folks live in a country whose government even considers the idea of a stimulus check…

      Reply

  10. lane batot says

    Regarding Vertigo.…Not sure that’s what I had once(and hopefully not again!), but definitely a symptom of what I DID experience(which I think was a major ear infection of some sort). I had no previous symptoms or pain of any sort, when one Winter day, when I was out–REALLY out, miles from my home shack on the border of Tennessee/N.C., deep in the mountains far from any human habitations(just like I like it), clearing some foot-trails I(and ONLY I) utilized regularly, I SUDDENLY just COULD NOT stand up! I went down, and every time I tried to get bipedal, I’d just roll over! Most BIZARRE thing I’ve ever felt! And it was a real problem, as I was miles from home, in very rough country(steep,rocky, and thickly brushed), in very cold Winter weather. Since I had been concentrating on working on trails–very slow, methodical work, which my canine pack at the time(including several very independent wolf crosses) had zero patience waiting for me during such activity, I had brought no dogs that might have given me a sense of protection and support. Nothing for it but to try and CRAWL back to my shack–a rather daunting prospect! “Well”, I said to myself, “At least it’s not raining!”.…Whereupon, almost immediately, it started to rain–cold, icy rain! To make a lllooonnnggg arduous story short, I did(obviously) make it back to my cabin–crawling on my fours a little ways, rolling over with absolutely no ability to balance myself or stay upright for long, and several lengthy stops under thick rhododendron bushes trying to shelter awhile from the INCESSANT rain(I got SOAKED!). At home, it never occurred to me to even call a doctor–NO WAY could I even hope to afford even the slightest doctor care in those days–plus, all I could think about was getting dry and warm again! Sometime in the wee hours buried under the blankets on my bed, I woke up and felt something “POP!” in my head, and felt something draining–after which I was completely fine! No more vertigo–had my balance back, and there never was any kind of pain involved. Just another example(of which I experienced many in my peasant/no-health-insurance existence for so many years) of the body’s amazing ability to heal itself–given the chance.….

    Reply

    • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

      Its a damnable mystery. I’m hoping something will go POP and give me some relief. I now know how I would torture an enemy — it would be by casting a spell of vertigo on them. A fate far worse than most punishments.

      Reply

      • Matthew says

        My dad also had vertigo so bad that he had to spend the day in bed because he couldn’t stand up. This happen twice. He would just lay on his side because that was the only position that didn’t make him nauseous. I don’t think he ever found the reason for either.

        Reply

      • lane batot says

        Here’s hoping something does “POP!” for you. I always thought I had some sort of abscess in my ear canal–or some such–usually any form of imbalance has something to do with your inner ear. I would try really heating up the body–a bath as hot as you can stand, baking in the blazing sun–something to try and heat the body up and soften any swelling or kill any infection that might be causing it. Just a suggestion.….

        Reply

        • Craig RullmanCraig Rullman says

          In James Galvin’s masterwork “The Meadow” he describes an old cowboy who healed a badly busted up leg by packing it in horse shit and sitting in his cabin threshold sunning the whole thing for days on end. That is a book worth reading several times. 🙂

          Reply

          • lane batot says

            Ha! Maybe you should try that horseshit cure! It would certainly make Social Distancing easier!

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