Love Letter to Heroes From the Village of the Dark Spring

"...as a friend of mine once said, If I regret anything, it is my good behavior.  What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

A month or so ago I loaded the U-Haul truck with my worldly possessions and drove the potholed, busy stretch of Interstate 10 about 130 miles south by southeast, via the 101 and 202, into the foothills of the Tucson Range, and within spitting distance of the Mexican border with Nogales, Sonora (if you can spit seventy miles).  Last year was a bit of a bitch for me.  Buried my mom in New Mexico and my whole family erupted into irreconcilable feud.  A few months later my wife of forty years succumbed to a nightmarish combination of dementia and lung cancer as I tended to her insatiable and delusional needs, finally dying with the aid of hospice and morphine, as I watched helplessly.  So with little left to lose, I decided to make every effort to patch up some serious damage wrought to the most innocent of victims in my careless youth, hoping to make right my one huge, inexcusable regret and mistake thus far in my seventy years of existence.  And that is what my recent migration to Chuk-son was all about.  A last shot at redemption and golden opportunity to die wearing a smile of peace, ease, and contentment.
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Soul brother and confidant Jim Parker recently told me that I'm on a hero's journey, and it wasn't until this morning when I stumbled upon the works of Joseph Campbell that I understood what he meant.  Evidently I was the last living, semi-literate person on earth unfamiliar with Joe Campbell.  Whether or not my personal trials and tribulations, atonement and triumphs have amounted to a hero's journey is of little consequence here.  But it did get me to thinking about the relative strengths of the pen and the sword (or the HP Laptop and the nuclear missile), and all the true heroes I've met since I began writing for such upstanding bastions of truth and justice as The Greanville Post and Dissident Voice.  In the depths of despair during the deaths of loved ones, I abandoned my own true hero's journey, ceased writing, discontinued paying any attention to the crimes of Empire, the deep state, the military/industrial complex, and all the usual suspects, turning my back on the very issues I cared about most deeply.  In retrospect this may have been my second inexcusable regret and mistake.  The decision didn't even give me any peace of mind, didn't stop the anger and rage, didn't ease the pain of knowing that the crimes against humanity and the assault of Pachamama continued unabated and with growing acceleration.
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Back in 1971, in the preface to his true life wilderness adventure book, "Beyond the Wall", Ed Abbey wrote these words that have become more urgent each year since then:  "What we need now are heroes.  And heroines.  About a million of them.  One brave deed is worth a thousand books.  Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.  Or as a friend of mine once said, If I regret anything, it is my good behavior.  What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"  The true heroes I've met during my tenure as an untrained (gonzo) journalist are the best of the best.  They publish and write far outside the acceptable limits of the deep state, and know well that they are vulnerable as potential victims if their voices are too widely heard and heeded.  They all know too well that if the decision is made to silence them, they'd damn well better summon some super powers and learn to fly at the speed of light.  Those of whom I speak are fearless, for they'd each rather live free than die as slaves.  'Tis an act of true bravery to shine lights where they are officially prohibited.
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