There are things that you should keep to yourself

There are things that you should keep to yourself and this is probably one of them.  After years of exclusion, of silent rejections, of denial, of conflicts with teachers and fellow parents, you wake up. Not everyone understands. Not everyone cares. Not everyone sees diversity as a good thing. But, the ones who do are gems in a mountain of clay. Are lights in darkness. Are lighthouses on a foggy night. Are messages from Jesus that everything will be alright. When the Trump-voting parent is the one who reaches out. Who loves when it is not easy to love. You know life is not black and white. That sometimes the least expected is what makes you cry tears of joy in the absence of light.  Don’t underestimate the power of your outreach, of your prayers for those who don’t matter, of your touch of the untouchables...you are God’s breath on those who feel nothing but pain and rejection. You thaw the freeze of human nature.  Nothing is warmer than someone who risks loving when loving is difficult.

Thank you. You know who you are. You will be rewarded at the Pearly Gates with the love that you've extended. XOXO

Geoffery, Geoffery the Giraffe

Holidays are powerful.  They conjure up memories good and bad in all of us. They bring out the best in our lives and the worst.

Tonight on the eve of the Fourth of July, a day set aside to celebrate our country's establishment of a free place to live, think and contribute, I think about my adopted brother Jeff and how he changed my life for better and for worse. I think about my family and how it was changed by Jeff's life and death.

Jeff died on the Fourth of July in 1985, exactly 30 years ago. I was camping in Tahoe with my mom at D.L. Bliss State Park when we learned from the ranger and a call to the ER doctor that Jeff drove his friend's motorcycle into an oncoming car.  He later died on the operating table at Alta Bates Hospital, while my Grandma Marge prayed fervently in the waiting room.

My dad recently wrote a book about Jeff called Dear Jeff Link to book. It's his version of how Jeff impacted him as a father and a civil rights advocate.  It's a good, honest read. No romanticizing and self-reflective.

But, this post is not an ad for my dad's book. It's a commentary about how my brother changed my life. He opened my eyes to a world that I could have been oblivious of and sheltered from. The real world. Right?   I saw the impacts of Jeff's mother's choice to give him and his sister up. I experienced secondhand the awfulness of abuse that he  endured in some of the foster homes he stayed in. I saw hatred in certain people's eyes when they saw our black and white family coming their way.  I heard comments made about me as a white person who "wanted to be black" and about my adopted siblings as "oreos" or black on the outside and white on the inside.

Many of you knew my brother Jeff and about the problems he had. But, maybe you don't know how it changed me to be a better person. My brother as troubled as he was made a huge difference in this teacher's life and by doing that he has made a difference in thousands of my students' lives. My brother opened my eyes and heart to the world he faced which was very different from mine allowing me to be more understanding of my students throughout my career.

Tonight on the eve of our great country's birthday, let's recognize that we don't know everything and talk shows don't know much at all.  Not everyone has the same privileges in our country, but should. We all need to make sure that we keep working towards seeing and valuing the human in each other. It's tough to do and easy to fall into the blame game, fear and prejudice trap. We are better than that.

A good memory: Jeff and I would tease each other with silly name-related songs. He would sing "Oh Susannah..." and I would sing that old Toys R'Us jingle "Geoffrey, Geoffrey Giraffe, He can make you laugh, wind him up and up he pops, get him at Toys R Us."   We would belly laugh uncontrollably as we tried to out sing each other.

RIP Jeffrey Ricardo Gough 1963-1985

Running For My Life

During my run in the canyon this morning, I decided to start a blog rather than submit my Facebook friends to my long posts about my life. Now you can choose to click on my blog or not. Hopefully, you do, but if you choose not to because you're as busy as I am, then you don't have to Like it or not Like it. It's just there to read or not.  I enjoy writing. It runs in my family.

Running for my Life is the title of my very first blog. Running for my life. Have you ever run for your life? Some of you run for health. Maybe you've had a serious health issue, physical or mental, and running has saved your life. Maybe running has kept you grounded and successful, moving forward. Running might give you spiritual renewal. It might be where you worship God.  For me running is all these things. However, Running for my Life was also something I actually did to save my life.

Some of you have literally run for your lives in war as soldiers or in places like Sudan to escape people who are trying to kill or rape you (you never know who is reading this).  For me, it was not quite as bad as that. But every time I go on the trail. I remember, I look behind me, I startle a bit at noises...

As many of you know, I spent three summers in Yosemite National Park during college to make money for expenses and to just enjoy the gorgeous landscape of the Park.  Two of those summers were spent in the High Sierra Camps called May Lake and Sunrise accessible only by trail. Tourists paid lots of money to backpack or ride mules to those camps, spend the night, and get a family style dinner and breakfast before going to the next HS camp.  During those blissful summers I was hired by and worked for the Italian-French Canadian Nic Fiore who managed all of the High Sierra Camps as well as in the winters served as the director of Badger Pass Ski School. Actually, he did lots more than that and if you are interested you can learn all about him from a series of youtube videos capturing his tribute to his life here.



Ferdinand Castillo, Carl Sharsmith, and Nic Fiore

I can still remember Nic calling me by name as he came hiking up the trail, "Suuuuuzaaaaannnnnna..."  He was bald, short and fit. But, ageless.  His bald head had been the target of goshawks one year. He was an amazing person as many of you on Facebook know because you also worked for him. Above is a photo of Nic Fiore (right), Carl Sharsmith (middle) who taught me how to eat grubs in front of tourists (great attention getting trick) and Ferdinand Castillo (left) who managed the Tioga Pass gate into Yosemite (East side). This photo comes from the I am a Friend of Nic Fiore Facebook Page.  I am birdwalking about Nic because it leads up to the time that I had to run for my life.  Nic was fit and such a great example for living. He was so full of life, warm but funny as hell.

For extra money, I ran tourists backpacks from camp to camp because they signed up for something beyond their physical capabilities. For fun, I hiked up peaks and ran down them. I ran out on a moonlit trail and across the granite right after our dinner shift ended to the trailhead, jumped in cars with my co-workers and wranglers and headed to hot springs 45 minutes away near Mammoth for a night of hot tubbing until early morning when we would run back in and have breakfast on the table just in time for the High Sierra Camp guests. One of the guys I worked with at Sunrise named "Jim" would carry a boom box as we ran blasting The Talking Heads into the wilderness. Ferdinand was the gatekeeper who let us in and out on those late nights and early morning..I think he said "Crazy kids" a few times as we passed through.

Nic died at age 88 in 2009 of a stroke. He had a huge impact on me. We were born a day and a few years apart. His birthday was Dec. 1st and mine is Nov. 30th. Because he hired me, I experienced Yosemite National Park high country like only a few have. I thank him for that experience. Many of my siblings and friends followed me like I followed my neighbors who initially helped me get the coveted job. I know that they all appreciate the time that Nic gave us in the high country. 

 

Fast forward to my third summer in Yosemite. While at UC Davis studying Zoology and English, I decided to apply for a National Park Service internship where I would be a Park Naturalist under the supervision of NPS. I got hired and was placed in Wawona, the southern part of the park closest to Fresno and home of the big Sequoias. My job was to ride the trams and give educational talks about the trees. I also did walking tours and campfire programs. It was not the High Sierra job and I realized that being an interpreter was not all that it was cracked up to be. I had some good adventures though. I golfed in my first tournament in Wawona. One weekend, the bears decided to break into all the rangers' houses...no joke. We had a bear climb through an open window in the middle of the night and it was sitting on our couch yoga style. My two roommates and I carefully shooed it back out the window. Another bear opened a sliding glass door of a fellow ranger who had just cooked a bunch of cookies for his girlfriend scheduled to visit the next day. She never saw a crumb. The tourists would bait bears onto their porches. One regular offender got drunk and ended up getting mauled by the bear she tried to pet while it ate her bait on the porch.

 

I saw all kinds during that summer in Wawona.

 

As a normal activity for me, I often took to the trails to run. On one day off, I ran up the Merced River trail to sunbath in a quiet spot, read my book and then return to my car at the trailhead.  As I ran up the trail, I saw people hiking with their families and I saw a few fishermen. One fisherman with longer hair and a recognizable gait, walked up the river across from me. I soon lost all sight of all people as I put the miles behind me, something I had done many, many times before. I found a giant rock by the river and opened my running backpack to lay out my towel and grab my book. I took my top off except for my job bra because it was so hot in Wawona...100 degrees or so. I put suntan lotion on and began to read. I think I fell asleep for a bit and then woke realizing I needed to head back before dark. So, I packed up, put on my headphones connected to my old Walkman and began a run/hike home.  I decided to hike after awhile, feeling lazy after being in the sun all afternoon.

 

Listening to music as I hiked, I moved along the trail at a fast walk enjoying nature. And then, Boom. My throat. Pressure...couldn't breathe. I felt someone against my back pulling me with something around my neck. My headphones slid off my ears. Instant fear. Confusion.

 

"I cannot breathe," I told myself.

 

I was going to lose consciousness. I grabbed at the thing around my neck and tried to pull. He told me to be quiet. He told me lots of nasty things not worth repeating. I was going to die.

 

"I am not going to die like this, dammit," I told myself.

 

I got angry. Rage not just anger flowed out from deep within me and somehow I knew to elbow whomever was doing this as hard as I could and pull with the other hand on the thing that was keeping me from breathing. It worked. I sucked in life-giving Oxygen. The person was surprised and high (I could smell it on him). He let go and then yelled at me as I ran. I ran with the wound up t-shirt that this monster had used to try and make me pass out with. He yelled at me again. I turned around a safe distance from him and he told me to throw the shirt down or he would track me down and kill me.

 

I threw the shirt down and I ran as hard as I could.

 

I ran for over a mile maybe more faster than I had ever run before. I was heaving when I finally found a cabin that looked occupied. It was the middle of the week so there were not many tourists at their cabins. I pounded on the door, weeping. An older couple cracked the door open, I begged them to call 911 and to help me. They were scared but bless them they took me in.

 

Thank God I was in running shape.

 

Thank God that I had been through some hard times and was tough enough with a strong will to live.

 

Thank God for the Federal Law Enforcement agents who swarmed the park and finally got him. They took hairs off of me, made molds of our footprints on the trail where it happened, counseled me, interrogated him, and forgave me when I could not identify him until after I saw him walking away to be set free!

 

Thank God for my Dad and Mom who were there for me. Dad did a lot of legal work to make sure he could not hurt other people as much as possible.

 

I ran for my life.

 

After some time working in the desert where another man tried to get me into his truck while I was doing a rare plant survey for an environmental consulting firm and getting my teaching credential at UC Berkeley, I ran all the way to Alaska where there were less people and more chance of being eaten by a Grizzly Bear than being raped by a stranger.  Or, at least in my mind that is how I saw it. I stayed there for 7 solid years plus a few summers.

 

It took me a long time to get comfortable running on trails alone again. I still won't walk on a remote trail (out near Foresthill or beyond) with Marie alone while Carl runs ahead on the trail. The fear is too much. But, here in Auburn, I run alone. I look behind. I never wear headphones or listen to music. I startle at noises in the bushes. It's a healthy awareness when running alone. Running for your life is not something I ever wish for you. Many of you run alone on trails. If you are young and a possible target, please take the head phones off, look behind you once in awhile and keep a healthy awareness around you.

 

I will never stop running. I run for my life in a different way now. It's the preferable way and I am truly grateful to God for giving me the gift of running.