Feb

19

 When I was a 28-year-old retired veterinarian, I spent the year sleeping in a coffin. It was simple, pine and lined with electric blankets against the icy Michigan winter nights. It was also the logical progression from an on-and-off career riding boxcars around America. Before that, I built a hermetic crate in a garage to shield the light from sensitive eyes. In a prior nightmare power shortage in an Auckland House of Mirrors, the doors kicked open one-by-one until a janitor bashed the real one. Early on, beloved mother opened my Xmas boxes-inside- boxes to a final love passage. Bless her understanding heart for allowing me to keep a pet pocket worm.

The recent idea of digging a burrow, moving in, and observing my fellow creatures evolved from a besotted visit to an Anchorage bar where drunks gradually became aware that in place of the usual bar mirror stood a wall-to-wall glass window. It permitted a menagerie of rhesus monkeys to cavort on spruce branches, and every few minutes bemuse us drinkers. We were each others' floorshows.

I just put the finishing touches on my burrow at Sand Valley, and urge visitors. I meditate and type six-feet beneath the desert floor with a western diamondback doorman named Sir. It's cool, quiet and airy with one side open and a stair to the surface. No mammal near the tri-section of California, Arizona and old Mexico digs a deeper burrow. I like to think Captain Nemo turns in his grave. The twist is an open wall of ¼" hardware mesh flush with the vertical dirt. A half-dozen species of reptiles, rodents, scorpions and my fetching trader rat, Band-Aid, so far, scuttle in auxiliary tunnels off my main bore, and peek in.

Sand Valley, California is a 10-mile round sandbox crosscut by dry washes and ringed by 600-foot Mountains. A single track from the town of Blythe leads an hour pursuit to the pristine circle where seven residents survived the '06 summer that decimated 30% of the population. The blistering heat, and adjacent Chocolate Mountain Bombing Range where daily jets pepper 1000-pound bombs leaving gaping craters, are the other reasons I built the hideaway.

Too far-flung for a backhoe, imitators do well to start with a pick and shovel. Stake with string a 8'x12' plot, and don thick gloves. Toss the initial 4' layer of dirt far from the burgeoning hole to make space for deeper gravel… One hundred hours later, come-along a 10' trailer over the cavity, and gently drop it. Install the tires as vertical retaining walls, add 4'' well pipe as a retaining roof, pile on mattresses, a foot dirt tier, and plant a cactus garden for camouflage and tweeting birds. The annual fixed expense is $30 property tax because the county plane camera can't see the land improvement.

The virgin den is equipped with a computer, solar, bookshelves, and a desert waterbed as emergency storage. A 55-gallon drum air vent is too small to access large bosoms, and I prefer slim girls dating back to the coffin. The creatures lurking outside the view screen think me no queerer than I them.

The lessons from living six-feet under are: Never laugh at anyone else; Laugh at yourself; and Jump at life like a Jack-in-the-Box.


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1 Comment so far

  1. T. V. on February 21, 2011 4:46 am

    wonderful posts, Bo!

    would you have any photographs to share?

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