The Eagle and the Dragon

by Chris Duffin

  If the snake was coiled, this tactic wouldn’t work. Instead, I had to tease the snake a little, enticing it to strike. I needed a long stick—rattlesnakes can strike about twice as far as you might imagine. My job was to irritate the snake until it struck at the stick, while staying a safe distance away so it couldn’t reach me. After it had struck and was uncoiled, I could capture it by pinning it to the ground with the stick, right behind the neck.

  I never got bitten, but we had some close calls. When I was six, my first sister, Melissa, was a year old. On one occasion as we sat together in camp, my mom sat near a bush, feeding Melissa. Suddenly, Pat began waving frantically at my mom. When she asked him what was wrong, he signaled anxiously to her to be quiet.

  We soon realized that there was a rattlesnake in the bush directly behind her, coiled and ready to strike. Pat was trying to signal to my mom not to move, while simultaneously managing not to startle it. When she realized what his gestures meant, she managed to move slowly away from danger, avoiding sudden movements.

  Living in that environment, learning how to fend off and manage rattlesnakes was an essential skill. Pat and I, along with the rest of our family, were far out in the mountains and we didn’t have a vehicle at the time. If I suffered a venomous bite, there was no chance of reaching an emergency room.

  Young as I was, I knew it was important to learn how to protect myself. There was at least one rattlesnake den close to our camp, possibly more. I needed to know how to handle them. They hid in the bushes and if we came too close to them, flicked their tail in warning.

  The rattlesnake dens also affected the way we designed our camp. Rattlesnakes don’t climb, so we lashed beams into trees, creating a rudimentary tree house, with our beds hanging among the branches.

  Me and my brother, three years younger than me, played in the field next to our camp. Right by the campground there was a small stream, narrow enough to jump over. Ferns grew along the banks of the stream, while dragonflies and alligator lizards swarmed around us. When we needed entertainment my brother and I used to catch dragonflies, tie playing cards to them, and release them to race against each other. The one that made it the furthest was the winner.

  When we weren’t racing dragonflies, we were usually out in the meadow chasing alligator lizards. They were hard to catch, because they could shed their tails when they sensed danger. Most of the time, we grabbed hold of them only for them to take off, leaving us holding their tails in our hands. Their tails regrew, so we knew we weren’t causing them any long-term harm.

  Rattlesnakes were a very different deal. Pat enjoyed catching them. He skinned the snakes and pinned their skins to a board to dry them out. He planned to sell them to people who wanted to make them into boots, belts, or knife sheath covers. Rattlesnakes in that area were particularly large, so we got some excellent specimens.

  We also ate the flesh. Pat told us that rattlesnake was a prized delicacy at fine dining restaurants, and that we were lucky to eat it so regularly. When we killed the snakes, we had to make sure we cut the head off below the venom sacs; otherwise the snake’s venom would taint the meat.

  We only ate snakes we had caught out in the open, never those that had struck out at us after hiding in a bush. If a rattlesnake thinks it’s about to die, it may bite its own tail, making its meat poisonous.

  Theme: Embracing Fear

  Holding a rattlesnake in my hand was an intense experience. I looked into its eyes and all I saw was its desire to end my life. The snake wanted to bite, to kill, and to escape. It had no other aims.

  Every impulse in my body told me to get as far away as possible, but I knew that the safest thing to do was to stay calm, control my fear, and take charge of my destiny. Any movement I made from fear would have only one outcome: losing control of the snake and giving it the opportunity to strike a deadly blow. The only way to stay alive was to remain calm, regulate my breathing, and take specific steps to ensure that I, not the snake, remained in control.

  The stories in this chapter come from the earliest years of my life. While some of my recollections of that time are hazy, many continue to stand out vividly, even decades later. These experiences shaped who I am and still have an influence on the way I live my life today.

  I’ve collected them together under the theme of embracing fear. Embracing fear isn’t about being fearless. That leads to recklessness and complacency. It’s about learning how to mitigate risk. I’ve faced death many times, and I suspect I will do so again. The potential for disaster always exists. We master it not by ignoring our fears, but by refusing to let them dictate the course of our lives. Instead of running, we must meet our fears head-on. We cannot allow fear to control our lives. We must control fear.

  A Childhood in the Mountains

  Ganya’s parents, Sue and Tom, met my parents in the early 1970s in a place called The Flats in Santa Rosa. My parents happened to meet here, too. The Flats was an old army base that had been converted into low-income housing, and which was occupied by a collection of hippies and beatniks. My father lived in a barn, along with Sue, Tom, Pat, and my mother, Cindy. By the time I was born, my mother and father lived together in the barn.

  Mom, Dad, and me in Santa Rosa outside The Flats, the low-income housing projects where we lived.

  My father, whose name was Daniel, was a very intelligent man with a broad range of interests and passions. For example, he loved to travel and had spent three years exploring the world. One of those years was spent living in the monasteries of Tibet. He loved railroads and ham radio. He was a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society.

  Like the rest of his family however, my father struggled with depression. His mother had committed suicide, as did her two brothers. I believe some members of his grandparents’ generation did the same, although I’m uncertain of the details. According to my mother, he was never the same man after he returned from his year in the monasteries of Tibet. She put the transformation down to drug use, although I don’t think she ever really understood what happened. My father’s depression was fueled by alcoholism, and he battled against both until the day he died.

  Pat, my stepfather, was equally brilliant, as was my mother. I believe all three of them—my father, my mother, and my stepfather—were geniuses. Pat, however, adopted an anti-intellectual stance. He laughed at my father’s membership in Mensa, preferring to express himself through music, poetry, and art.

  Where my father was deeply intellectual, my stepfather lived for the moment. No matter the circumstances in which he found himself, he always maintained a positive outlook. He was an incredibly gifted musician and singer. He played with a number of famous bands from the era. Sadly, he was addicted to heroin, which prevented him from reaching his full potential. Instead of becoming a rock star, he remained a bar singer. For all his genius, Pat was incredibly impractical and struggled to manage the most basic aspects of daily life.

  If my father embodied passion and Pat spontaneity, my mother remains the strongest person I’ve ever known. An athlete and a scholar, she was selected to receive an award for her academic and athletic prowess from a class of 1,500. As a young woman, she was on the path toward graduating as a chemical engineer. This was until she decided that she didn’t wish to participate in the society she saw around her and began to forge her own path. To some she looked like a dropout, but my mother was no slacker. She was an incredibly hard worker who simply refused to conform to the roles that society deemed acceptable. She always had a plan to improve her life and no one who knew her ever doubted her genius.

  About a year after I was born, my mother dropped out of school and left my father. She came home one day to see him and me covered in something red, viscous, and sticky. Fortunately, the substance was ketchup, not blood. My father had had some kind of breakdown and sprayed his home, himself, and me with the condiment. Nonetheless, my mother decided it was time to move on. She picked me up and left.


  For a short time she was married to someone else. That short-lived union led to the birth of my brother, Mark, before she left that relationship and moved to Sue and Tom’s Mountain. She brought Pat with her, on the condition that he quit heroin. She was extremely against the use of hard drugs and wasn’t prepared to tolerate his addiction.

  My dad lived for a time in this trailer at the top of Sue and Tom’s mountain, outside Ukiah, California.

  From the age of three, I lived with Pat and my mother on the mountain, in the house Sue and Tom were gradually erecting. For a brief period, my father lived on the property as well. He had a small camper trailer which he brought up the mountain as far as the roads would allow. This still left him some distance from the house, which was situated beyond the end of the roads into the mountain. Sometimes I put on my boots and hiked out to see him.

  Many nights, Sue and Tom sat around smoking weed by lantern light and engaged in philosophical discussion with Pat and my mom. They were all very smart, so there was usually something interesting for Ganya and me to listen to, whether the topic was politics, religion, or something else.

  My mother dug a fire pit out of the side of the mountain and built an underground brick pizza oven. Tom dug a hole in the back garden, channeling a spring that flowed through the property into a muddy pond. During the summer, Ganya and I occasionally used it for playing and swimming. Its primary purpose, however, was to irrigate the weed my mother was learning to grow. Between them, the adults had purchased some plants and my mother took ownership of the operation. Although she enjoyed it, her intention was to learn the trade of commercial weed growing to fund her dream off-grid lifestyle.

  The hills in the area were so steep that they were almost ravines. To reach our home was perhaps a quarter-mile hike straight up a hill so steep that it was difficult to walk. We carved stairs into the hillside to make the journey easier. Eventually, the adults hired a tractor to lay a road joining our house to the winding gravel track that led out of the mountains. Ganya and I were lucky to escape that day with our lives.

  The plan was to start the road from the bottom of the meadow where Ganya and I liked to play. With the adults at work, we were free to roam wherever we wished. Despite the fact that the tractor was running, none of the adults thought to warn us that we could be in danger. As the tractor turned around and headed toward us, we were playing in the berm—the giant mound of dirt that would soon be smoothed into the surface of a road. From the driver’s perspective, we were on the far side of the berm, so he didn’t see us. My mom tells me that she suddenly noticed what was happening from across the meadow and began screaming frantically in an effort to get our attention. Meanwhile, the tractor was pushing the pile of dirt directly toward us, seconds from burying us alive. At the last moment, I looked up and saw what was happening. I grabbed Ganya’s hand, yanked him off the berm, and we narrowly escaped.

  Living up on Sue and Tom’s Mountain, we had a lot of freedom and connection with nature. On the other hand, we were exposed to a lot of dangerous situations. We would go out into the forest and build forts, where we often encountered poison oak. Poison oak is a low-lying shrub that causes a painful rash on contact. If we stumbled into a patch of it, we would return from our adventures covered in blisters.

  It was a wild existence, uninsulated from the dangers of accidents, weather, poisonous plants, and dangerous animals. On one occasion, Pat was working with Tom in town when snow hit. With snow on the mountain, it was impossible to traverse. No one was getting on or off. The snow lasted for two weeks and my mother, me, Sue, and Ganya were trapped in the house on the mountain, while Tom and Pat were stuck in town. Every day my mother left the house to kick up the snow and find some wood to burn. She brought her haul into the house and let it sit for a day, while the previous day’s wood fueled the fire. When the new wood was sufficiently dry, she added it to the fire and went out again in search of a fresh supply.

  Another time, my mother pointed at the side of the mountain and told us about a mother and her two kids whose car had gone off the road and over the edge, killing all three of them. Similar incidents happened about once per year. At the time, the road was poorly maintained and very dangerous (I visited recently and discovered that it’s now in much better shape).

  Leaving Sue and Tom’s Mountain

  For all her strength, my mother was highly adept at controlling men. She tended to choose men who would do what she said. Later, I found out that she was abused sexually at a young age, an experience that surely shaped her attitude both to society and her relationships.

  In her relationship with Pat, she was very much the one who called the shots. It was at her insistence that we moved off Sue and Tom’s Mountain, initially to another nearby peak. It was on this mountain that I learned to handle rattlesnakes. This peripatetic existence was part of a constant quest for the ideal grow site.

  We now had a road up to the house, but we still had no electricity or running water. Another family lived near us, and once or twice a week we hiked up to their place to hang out while our parents drank beer and chatted. My brother and I never wore shoes as we hiked from our place to theirs along a gravel road, so our feet became incredibly tough.

  This was also where we took our baths. Outside their house sat a gigantic cauldron, raised off the ground, perhaps eight feet across and two feet deep. We filled the cauldron with water from the spring and lit a fire underneath it. When the fire had burned all day and the water was hot, we jumped in and bathed. Our soap came from the aptly named soaproot, a plant that grew on the mountain. As the name suggests, the soaproot bulb is a naturally occurring cleanser. We dug it from the ground and used it to wash our bodies.

  I don’t remember much about the other family on the mountain, but I do remember playing with a kid about my age. Like all young children, we liked running around and often got ourselves into trouble. One of our favorite games was finding nests of bees, knocking them from the trees, and trying to escape before the bees emerged and attacked us. Sometimes we got away in time, other times we limped home covered in bee stings.

  It was during this period that my mother became pregnant with my second sister, Janis. When the time came for her to give birth, we didn’t have a vehicle so she hiked out to the main road and hitchhiked into town. Unfortunately, the first vehicle to pass by was a dump truck. For some reason, the driver of the truck didn’t invite my mother into the cab. Instead, she climbed onto the bed of the truck, where she lay while she was driven into town and deposited at the hospital. She promptly climbed out the back of the truck, entered the hospital, and gave birth to my sister.

  Many of the stories I remember or have been told from around this time seem funny in retrospect. For example, I did two typically childlike things, unaware of the consequences. The first came from watching a cartoon in which I saw the goodies throw nails onto the road to pop the tires of the baddies’ car. In an effort to imitate what I saw, I threw nails across the driveway of our home.

  With money tight, we went through periods of having a vehicle and periods when we couldn’t afford to maintain one. This was during a time when we did have a vehicle. When one of my parents drove the car over the nails, they burst all four of the car’s tires. With no money to replace the tires, we couldn’t fix the car. I had sabotaged our only form of transport. Until Pat and my mother figured out a way to purchase new tires, which took several weeks, we hiked on and off the mountain whenever we needed to go into town or come back.

  Another story I laugh at today was when Pat and my mom gave me some new Tonka toys. For people in our financial situation, these toys were a big investment. As a child, I did not understand this. Pat and my mom weren’t thrilled with me when I decided to play a game called “trash compactor,” smashing my brand-new Tonka toys with a hammer. The consequence of this action was that I didn’t receive any new toys the following year.

  Both of these experiences were good
lessons for me about the realities of my life. I came to understand that we didn’t have enough money to replace things that got broken. Buying new toys—or new tires—was a big deal.

  Some of the snapshots I remember from my childhood remind me how unusual my upbringing was. I used to go behind the grocery store and dig through the dumpsters in search of discarded food, such as wilted lettuce. I peeled off the outer layers to reach an edible center. Looking through dump sites for items other people had thrown away was part of my upbringing until high school—I even referred to it as “shopping.” Nowadays, this thrifty approach to recycling could be considered fashionable, so perhaps we were ahead of the times. An afternoon at a dump site was a family outing for us, much as a trip to the mall was for most other families.

  A few episodes from my early childhood, however, appear even more sinister today than they did at the time. One in particular stands out in my mind. Pat found a drinking buddy whose camp was about a mile from our place in the mountains. This drinking buddy had been living in the mountains for decades. His shelter was covered in tarpaulins and he had fully embraced the off-grid, mountain-man lifestyle. On many occasions, I went and hung out with Pat when he visited his buddy. We hiked over to his camp and I amused myself while the grown-ups spent the evening together, drinking and shooting the breeze.

  One day, Pat headed out to see him, so I geared up to tag along as usual. This time however, Pat adamantly told me that I wasn’t allowed to join. Pat’s visits became less frequent afterward, and I was banned from going with him each time. I didn’t understand what was happening, or why I was no longer permitted to take part in the visits.