Years ago a buddy and I went down to the Gila Wilderness with this quote in mind and proceeded to embark on a 3 day journey with 13 pounds on our backs. Of course, we eschewed the use of both sleeping bags and fire, so we spent a frigid night leaning against a tree shivering. The next day we found ourselves in the midst of a forest fire, ironically enough, and had to hoof it out of there. Running on empty, we threw our packs into my Honda Civic and high-tailed it out of the forest, nearly running out of gas in Magdalena, New Mexico and arriving back in Albuquerque after 1 am. It was a real lesson in going too light. I am neither John Muir nor Bear Grylls.

With the explosion of “ultra-light backpacking,” there has been a symbiotic explosion of ultra-light gear available to those who want to liberate themselves from what I like to refer to as the astronaut approach to backpacking, insulating yourself from a “hostile” environment and bringing enough gear to effectively cut yourself off from the very experience you wish engage in.

I think what really fired me up about going lighter was my experience doing all 54 of Colorado’s 14ers. For the vast majority of them, I shouldered a CamelBack pack that was actually designed to be used on mountain bike rides. It weighed little, held even less, and was absolutely perfect. In fact, I still have it to this day; it is a faded bluish/purple and is rife with holes. It’s permanently stained with the salt of countless hours of sweat, yet I have found nothing that rivals its simplicity, comfort or ability to move in harmony with my body. I’ve rigged an ice-ax and crampons to it and even used it on several rock climbs.

So last year I decided to take this whole light weight deal to the next level and get “stupid light.” I shaved my “base pack weight” (all gear less consumables: food, water, stove fuel) to about 12 pounds. Pretty respectable, but not in the realm of a true ultra-lighter. I headed out to the Pecos Wilderness and had a grand time. By day three, I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until I met Champion (I shit you not; that’s his real name. Oh, the irony!). This guy was carrying 8 pounds as his base pack weight. The freaking shoulder straps on his pack were padded with his socks! I was truly humbled. Something had to be done. Krusty would not cotton to some Texan making his pack look like an albatross around his neck.

I came home with a new goal in mind. 8 pounds! 8 pound of light weight bliss. It had to be done. It would be done. After much research, trial and error, and a grip of cash, it is done. I have a spreadsheet (for those of you who know me, this in itself is a monumental accomplishment) with all my gear weights categorized and weighed down to the tenth of an ounce and to the gram, I have options for different predicted conditions, I have a stove that weighs 16 grams, I have a shelter that weights 4.4 ounces, and I’m still tweaking it all. In fact, I’m pondering the possibility of putting together a SUL (super ultralight) kit together. My goal is a base pack weight of not more than 6 pounds. Crazy? Maybe. But how great would it fee to traipse around the mountains with 6 pounds plus food and water on your back? Pretty great, I say.

I plan to use this site to review some of my choices and to hopefully convince a few people that going light is not only more fun, it’s safer, cheaper, and way more inspiring. Ok, maybe not that much cheaper…

On the other hand, I sometimes think my students have placed themselves in a self-inflicted mortal purgatory of sorts. There is a tremendous amount of guilt and shame associated with not only the acts they’ve committed, but also in the awful things that happened to them as children. It’s like they are on a carousel of crime, constantly circling through a life filled with shameful and shocking acts and landing back in jail and/or prison over and over. And this self-fulfilling prophecy goes on and on through generation after generation. 

I’m not certain how my colleagues feel, but this grim reality often forces me to reflect on some of my own life choices and to consider how I’ve attempted to alter my behavior and outlook in spite of some rough circumstances from my childhood. (Those of you who know me more personally will know exactly what I’m talking about on both fronts!) I find these days that I’m loathe to judge other’s actions, and I tend toward a view of life that acknowledges the complexity of factors which make up our inputs and outputs. I’ve always felt like this job, working with people who’ve made terrible choices but who’ve also suffered tragic lives, requires a deep and abiding faith in redemption, and I’d like to believe that I qualify on that front.

With that said, today in class, the same two guys I was talking about last week came rollin’ into my room, chatting it up. The one who I really thought I made an impact on last week was talking about his mother and his childhood, and though I didn’t catch every word, what I did hear was, “Yeah, it was great living with my mom. Everyday I’d wake up to a Dr. Pepper and a bag of weed on the kitchen table.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and said, “Really?! After our discussion of last week, you think it was great to start the day with a sugar and caffeine bomb and drugs provided by your mother!? Good Lord, I feel like Sisyphus!”

“Who?”

“Sisyphus. You know the Greek who angered the Gods by being a greedy and avaricious person, and whose consequence was to eternally push a huge boulder up a hill. Just when he’d get to the top, it would roll back down, and he’d have to start all over again. It’s like a parable for eternally frustrating and futile endeavors in life or I guess in Einstein’s parlance the very definition of insanity.”

“Huh?”

“Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

“I’m lost, Pauls.”

“Nevermind. I guess after last week’s conversation I thought you might consider that it might not be the best thing for you to be provided drugs by your parent.”

“Oh, yeah, well I know that, but as a kid, it was great.”

And really how could I argue with him? It probably was great.

But then I got to thinking about how maybe we are all just a bit like Sisyphus, dragging our boulders around in a futile effort to overcome life’s tragedies both big and small. But how? Do we ask God for forgiveness? Do we accept that life is suffering and deal with it? Do we try to trick the god(s) into thinking we’ve done their bidding when we really haven’t? Do we try to create meaning out of life’s seemingly meaningless randomness? Do we delve into our pasts and attempt to confront the inner demons that lock us all into a self-imposed prison of neurosis? Do we try a combination?

I say neither liberation nor redemption comes from playing the victim card. Neither comes from living out this mortal coil in some Sisyphean purgatory. Neither comes from a court mandated punishment, and surely neither comes from the belief that starting the day with a Dr. Pepper and a dime bag is some sort of grace.

Just sayin’.

Anyway, these two guys were chatting with me and with one another, and one of them mentioned that he was facing 10 years in prison with a 4 year cap. I was curious, so I asked him what that meant, and he said that his sentence would be 10 years, but he would only serve 4, and if he screwed up once he was released, he would have to return and serve the entire 10 years.

Now, I normally don’t do this, but I did ask him what he was in for, and he said DV (domestic violence). The other guy pipes in, “Yeah, I’m in for DV, too.” I figured the first guy had to do something pretty heinous to get 10 years for DV, so I sort of prodded him a bit. “Shit, man, New Mexico doesn’t fuck around with DV, but I’m not gonna lie, I beat the shit out of that crazy bitch!” One thing led to another, and the guy ended up telling me about how his girlfriend had already been married 6 times, how she once tried to cut off his testicles, how she was actually in jail right now on trafficking charges, and how if he had known his plea was going to go south, he never would have taken it in the first place. So I’m thinking to myself, ‘she sounds like a real catch!’

Both guys were really playing up the victim card, “Man, I grew up around a lot of violence. Murder and shit. Plus, I was fucked up at the time, so I wasn’t really in control of my actions.”

I said, “Listen, I would never attempt to play down the circumstances of your childhood, and I’m sure you have a heavy burden to bear, but on the other hand, at some point you have to ask yourself if you’re going to allow those circumstances to run your life, or if you’re going to act in spite of them.”

Then it hit me. The “teachable moment.” What popped into my head? Romeo and Juliet!

“You know. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. From the very beginning of that play, you know they are going to die. Their relationship is ‘star-crossed.’ It’s ill-fated, but Romeo and Juliet let their passions drive them, and in spite of the circumstances of their births, they marry, and guess what happens? They die, along with several other characters, so it’s a lose-lose for Romeo and Juliet and their families. But hey, they were just a couple of stupid, horny kids. What’s your excuse?”

Both of them looked at me like I was a lunatic!

Then, I start thinking about Friar Lawrence’s soliloquy at the beginning of Act II Scene 3 when he’s talking about how plants have healing and killing powers, so I give them a brief synopsis, and I tell them, “It’s like some plants work great with other plants or by themselves, but when you make the wrong combination, you end up with ‘the canker death’!”

“Huh?”

“You know, ‘For nought so vile that on the earth doth live/But to the earth some special good doth give,/Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use/Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.’ Have you ever thought that the combination of you and your girlfriends is just a toxic potion?”

“Damn, that makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does. You should think about it.”

Do I really think Shakespeare is going to change their lives? I don’t know, but I printed the soliloquy off and gave it to them.

What do you think?

 ”How the hell am I supposed to know how this relates to me? I’m a guy. The main character is a woman!”

 ”Man, this shit never happened to me, so how am I supposed to relate this to my life.”

 ”This shit ain’t about me,” all are typical responses. But I just calmly tell the guys that 50% of your experience of a novel is what the novel brings to you and 50% is what you bring to the novel. Writers rely on shared experiences to make their books come alive. Otherwise you’d have no reference point, and the whole thing wouldn’t make any sense, so be patient and think about it.

Recently, I’ve been getting some pretty poignant responses to this requirement, and it got me to thinking about how much of my own moral base comes from what I’ve read. The Grapes of Wrath taught me about the dignity inherent to all people. The Old Man and the Sea taught me about perseverance even when the chips were down. Othello taught me about loyalties, love and lies. But what about “lesser” works of literature. Can we really learn something from Stephen King? From James Patterson? Apparently, yes.

Once again, I think the guys’ words speak for themselves, so here they are in all their uncensored glory. In response to Stephen King’s story “Big Driver” one student wrote, “The story that I just read is about a woman who got raped and instead of calling the cops she took care of herself. The way this story ties into mine is not because I’ve been raped but what did happen to me was that my father used to beat me up badly… and I never spoke up about it til I got older, and the way I got my revenge towards my dad was not by hurting him. It was by talking to someone about it and sharing the pain that was inside me. When I did that, I felt a relief, so when I read this story, I had something to relate to this woman.” 

Or here’s one about King’s “1922.” “This story relates to me because I once had a family, house and career, and I lost it all because I was too selfish and stubborn. I made the wrong decisions like Wilfred in the story, and that ultimately cost me everything I loved.”

Finally, a student read James Patterson’s Midnight Club and had this to say, “I think this story relates to my past life, as in selling drugs, being homeless, losing my parents and many other fucked phases in my life. but at the end of the tunnel there is light, and I continue to march forward and give life my fullest.”

I’m not so naive as to think that reading has somehow “fixed” all these guys’ moral issues, but I do believe that reading has got them thinking about their lives in a way that perhaps they seldom have in the past. At least that’s my hope.

Oh, and incidentally, I had a guy come in today and tell me he read 300 pages of The Stand last night in 3 hours. He fell asleep with the book on his chest. Eat your heart out John Steinbeck, or Stephen King will send one of his minions to do it for him!

You know, it’s not always singing whales and half broke horses and visions of inspiration out at the jail. Sometimes it’s visions of a more hilarious nature, but in a slightly disturbing way. For instance, last year one of my students received a “love” letter from one of his girlfriends. He was so excited, he rushed into class and threw it down on my desk. “Read that, Pauls!” My initial impression was that the penmanship was straight out of mid-school (yet this woman was apparently in her 30′s) replete with all the swirly and curly loops you can imagine, but the content was downright pornographic, so much so that I can’t even quote it. Suffice to say there was bondage, bizarre positions, extremely naughty language and images I prefer not to recreate. Yes, it was that bad. For me the best part was that this student was perfectly willing to share the letter with me, his ‘teacher.’

He asked me what I thought, and my response was that she was very skilled at creating imagery, but that her mechanics needed work, so I corrected them and handed it back to him. What else could I do? Of course, he thought this was equally hilarious, and claimed he was going to send it back to her with the corrections as a joke. Go figure.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues told me that a student left his work folder in her class. She fished through it, hoping to find a name somewhere, but instead she found yet another infamous love letter. It’s unclear whether this letter came from the outs or was written by someone inside the jail and was simply a kite that floated its way back to this guy. Anyway, when she (the teacher) picked it up, this line jumped out at her, “I can cook my ass off from dope to enchiladas.” Put that on your Match.com profile! Or better yet, include it in your next rap song.

Another thing that just slays me about the guys is that they are completely open about their various bodily functions. Some euphemisms for going #2: “I gotta drop a deuce.” “I need to break one off” (as if their sphincters are some wacked out form of the guillotine?”); if we are at command call and someone isn’t out of his cell and lined up, I ask, ”Where’s so-and-so?” His celly invariably will yell out in front of 90+ guys, “He’s takin’ a shit!” No qualms about that one. This, by the way, is a daily occurrence during command call.

I won’t disgust you with a complete low-down of their lovely sexual quotes, but they are utterly forthcoming about that topic as well! This one, however, is too good to pass up. The other day I was in the sally port with a bunch of guys. One of them said, “Man, some of you guys need to take a shower!” One of the other guys told him to mind his own business. The first guy responded, “I’ll throw you in the fucking shower!”

“That’s gay.”

“It’s not gay if your bodies don’t touch!” I have to admit I’m intrigued and utterly amused by the concept that it’s not gay sex if there’s no intimacy; it’s just sex. Honestly, it sounds gratuitous, but the unabashed openness of this particular population is like a no holds barred breath of not-so-fresh air.

Just my random thoughts on a Friday.

The Backstory

I’m going to keep this relatively short for those of you who have heard this more than once. I’ve been struggling with injuries since April of this year. I had to abandon an attempt at a 100 mile ultra as a result, and I haven’t been able to run like I’d like to since hurting both my back and my knee. Both of these issues have plagued me for decades, but they have become chronic and debilitating this year. I finally found a physical therapist just this week who seems to know what the hell he’s talking about, and he is having me work on my bio-mechanics.  Hopefully, I’m on the right track and on the mend.

As a result of this lengthy rehabilitation process, I’ve been trying different types of footwear. What started as a movement toward minimalism, has turned a full 180 degrees. A few weeks ago I stumbled across Hoka One One (pronounced Onay, Onay), and I think this company is on to something. In a nutshell, these shoes provide mega cushion but promote a natural mid-foot strike by having very little heel-to-toe drop. They also provide excellent support and awesome traction by providing 30% more contact with the ground. For more information on how they work, check out their website.

I got really intrigued by these concepts, which seem valid and well thought out, so I decided to bite the bullet on the super pricey price-tag and try a pair. Unlike shoes from major brands, my local running shop does not allow me to try these shoes for 2 weeks to see if I like them, so I’m stuck with them whether I dig them or not. Fortunately, my first impressions are extremely favorable, and I’m hoping this is the beginning of a beautiful love affair.

My First “Run”

Because I’m still technically injured, I haven’t been truly running per-se, but I’ve been power hiking steeps and sort of trotting the more gentle downhills. Today I decided to hike up the CCC trail in the Sandias and jog down the South Crest Trail back to my car. For a profile of that effort click here.

As you can see, the bulk of the 2,700ft of climbing occurred in just 2 miles, so this is a seriously steep hike followed by a more mellow, but still significant, downhill trot.

Yes, they really do have that much cushion!

My initial impressions were that my feet were definitely going to have to get used to these shoes! They were a bit bumpy and lumpy underfoot, but I was trying to remain open and allow them to “break in,” as I’ve heard that they do require some getting used to. Many people have commented in other reviews I’ve read that the built in rocker in these shoes really helps on climbs, and I have to concur. These shoes are total mountain goats. Aside from my aerobic system, the hills felt almost effortless. Another thing I’ve read about the Hokas is that they are like riding a full suspension mountain bike; that is, rocks and other inconsistencies virtually disappear under your feet. Again, I’d have to whole-heartedly agree. At first I thought this might be a detriment; I mean, don’t we want to feel “connected” to the environment when we are out in a natural setting pushing our bodies to their limits? But honestly, about 45 minutes into the uphill, I had a complete about face on this point. I actually felt MORE connected to the environment because my feet didn’t hurt (by then the bumps and lumps in the shoes had all but disappeared, and I was feeling pretty comfortable in the Hokas). I was looking around at trees, rocks, the sky and just enjoying the hell out of a beautiful fall day, not worrying about my next misstep or fretting over how sore I already was.

They look a bit more "normal" from above.

Another concern I’ve read about with these shoes is the possibility of rolling an ankle because they are so tall, but I didn’t find this to be an issue at all. You sit really low in the shoes, and they are mega wide underfoot, so in actuality, they feel very sure-footed and stable. They don’t bend and flex like a regular running shoe, and certainly not at all like a minimalist shoe, so that does take some getting used to, but basically the floaty feeling was really enjoyable. Again, I think the full suspension mountain bike analogy works here.

I arrived at the crest of the Sandias about an hour and a half after starting and stopped to take a quick pic of my gear:

The tools of my trade today.

Now, came the downhill, my bodily curse! I decided that no matter how good I felt, I would take it easy and keep my pace light and easy. I began a comfortable jog down the crest trail. I could tell immediately that these shoes were going to be superb downhill companions. For those of you who know this trail, it’s rocky and rough, but I could barely feel the rocks as I cruised the 6 miles back to the car. One negative is that because the shoes are so tall, you really need to relearn your stride. Thank God I had my trekking poles because they saved me numerous times when I probably would have taken a serious digger otherwise. You really have to pick up your feet with these shoes and think about placement. I’m sure I’ll get accustomed to it, but for now it’s a bit of a detriment that I have to think so much about how high I lift my feet. One thing I didn’t mention earlier is that these shoes are absurdly light! I think they weigh as much if not less than some of my minimalist products, so you really don’t feel like you’re lugging around giant Frankenstein shoes. In fact, they feel very light and lithe.

OK, now for the other negative. Yes, they do look a bit ridiculous. As Natalie says, they look like “marshmallows.” But hey, people thought that Vibram Five Fingers looked ridiculous, too, and now every other employee is trundling around the local REI outlet in what I think make your feet look like gorilla feet, so I guess it’s a matter of perspective.

Post Run Impressions

So how do I feel now? I’m a little stiff and sore in the back, but my knee feels great! I hope that with my current physical therapy program and the Hokas, I’m actually on the mend. Am I ready to start training for 100 miles? Definitely not, but I’m thinking about it…

Usually the guys love these anecdotes, but one guy in particular seemed especially smitten with the whole concept of whales, so I decided to bring in Roger Payne’s book Among Whales and read a bit of it for them to see if I’d have as much success with it as I did reading Half Broke Horses. (For those of you who missed my blog The Dugout, it might shed some light on their reading tastes.) Anyway, I brought it in today and read a bit. Yeah, they were mesmerized! Again! Of course, Payne is an incredible writer. His blend of science and art is nothing short of poetry, and his descriptions of the ocean and life in it are so eloquently and beautifully constructed that you are absolutely transported into every scene he creates, so I guess it was an easy sell.

After I was done, the guy who was enamored with the whales in the first place came up to me and said, “I think my granddaughter would love that book. I wish I could read it to her.” This guy is in his 50′s, he has barely reached the 2nd grade level in his reading, and he has a tumor in his chest the size of a softball. We have been trying to get him into medical for weeks. He finally got taken to UNM’s cancer center where they did some tests. That was 2 weeks ago, and he has yet to hear any results back from them. Meanwhile this “lump” is growing, and he is vomiting and defecating blood, so the chances that he will ever get to read this or any other book to his granddaughter are slim to none.

It really pulled on my heartstrings, so I looked up from my computer and asked him if he’d ever heard a humpback whale sing. “No. What does it sound like?” I Googled humpback whale song, plugged in my external speakers, cranked the volume and hit “play.” When the plaintive sound of that whale singing hit my jail classroom in the middle of this desert, I kid you not, you could have heard a pin drop.

This dying inmate looked at me and said, “Mr. Pauls, that sounds just like a baby crying!”

Singing whales, crying babies, dying grandfathers, half broke horses. The jail’s got a little something for everyone.

Turns out pretty hard! I did respectably overall and in my age group, just missing 3rd, but the run left me limping rather badly and basically set me back on my road to “recovery.” I have, however, decided that it’s time to see a knee surgeon and try to get this thing addressed. Ibuprofen, ice, ART therapy, yoga, being barefoot, and steroidal injections are not cutting (pun intended) it. I think it’s time for some real cutting.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I came down with a cold on Friday. At the time, I thought it might be allergies, but as I progress into a week of coughing and being congested, I’m again forced to resign myself to the fact that I’m actually sick!

To top it all off, Natalie and I harvested honey on Sunday after the half marathon. We went over to another bee keeper’s house because he has an extractor with an electric motor attached. We met up with 5 other bee keepers and figured that splitting the labor up would cut our work time. In fact, there were so many people there extracting honey that I think it actually slowed us down. Of course, the resident bees were super attracted to the honey, which wasn’t a big problem until we started packing up our honey frames to leave. At that point the bees went berserk and started stinging everyone! Turns out I’m allergic!

This was my face Monday morning. I’m still a little swollen. Still limping. Still sick. Yeah, it’s been a hell of a week!

To say that my father was dysfunctional would be an understatement of mammoth proportions. He was diagnosed bipolar; in those days (the 1970′s) they called it manic depression. For much of his adult life, Fred took lithium for this terrible illness. Lithium was and is a pretty poor drug with lots of side effects, which included massive withdrawal symptoms. However, it was effective in treating his disease (when he took it), and he was a better person when he stayed on it regularly. Unfortunately, lithium’s relative success often led my father to believe that he didn’t need it any longer, and he would stop taking it, thus leading to wild and massive swings from crazy states of mania to long-term depressive episodes.

He was also openly gay in an age when that wasn’t really the safest way to live one’s life. I’ll never forget the first time the dangers inherent in my father’s lifestyle became clear to me. My parents divorced when I was 3, and I spent Saturdays first and then weekends later with him and his lover, Tom. The following happened when I was 8 or 9. He had dropped me off at my mother’s house after one of our weekend visits and had stopped at a pay phone on the way home to call his lover and let him know he was running late. While he was on the phone, a group of young teenage boys noticed his attire: tight tank-top and tight bell-bottom jeans, shaggy but well-groomed hair and mustache. They started yelling “faggot” and throwing rocks at him. At first, as the rocks were pelting the glass of the phone booth, my father thought he was being shot at, and this is what he communicated to Tom. In fact, these were the last words Tom heard before one of the projectiles hit my father in the head, temporarily knocking him senseless. Seven stitches later, he was physically as good as new, but this attack could/should have left him with little faith in humanity. Fortunately, it did not.

My father had a deep and abiding faith in human beings and their inherent goodness. I remember at a young age being told by him and by Tom that people were basically good and full of love and compassion. If a person was acting hatefully, he/she was clearly ignorant (a word very different from stupid in my father’s lexicon) and had been taught to hate. I, on the other hand,  was taught to deal with such ignorance with tolerance and understanding, and I was always to treat others with dignity and respect. I’m not sure I could have treated my father’s “ignorant” assailants with dignity and respect, but I can say that only once in his life did my father advocate the use of violence on my part.

Near the end of my mother’s battle with cancer, a battle she was losing swiftly, she would take to having long and torturous coughing fits. These painful episodes sometimes lasted several minutes. Arleen was frail and tired of putting on pretenses; thus, she frequently wore a head scarf instead of her usual wig. It was clear that she was ill and probably dying, and most people were kind and understanding of her obvious condition.

She liked to go see Broadway musicals at Fords Theater; Fred and I would take here to performances regularly as she and my father rekindled their deep but platonic love for one another near the end of her life, and during one of the big numbers in ”Cats” she succumbed to a particularly nasty bout of coughing. The “man” sitting in front of the 3 of us kept glaring over his shoulder at her as if she had any say in the matter of disturbing his enjoyment of the show. I was so insulted and furious that I wanted to ask him to step outside, but remembering my father’s disdain of violence, I held my tongue. Later, Fred told me he wished I would have taken the guy outside and “beat the snot out of the bastard.” So though this flew in the face of my father’s general principles of tolerance and understanding, I think what he was trying to say was, “Christopher, be strong and protect your loved ones.”

Aside from this particular incident, however, my father eschewed violence in all forms and generally taught me to be kind to other people and to stand up for those who could not stand up for themselves. So yes, my father was dysfunctional; he was a total pain in the ass to deal with at times, especially when he was swinging at the very edges of his emotional pendulum. And yes, he frequently neglected me to the point of putting me in dangerous and sometimes ridiculous situations. But he was also a man of great principles, deep love, and an unwavering respect for all individuals’ humanity. He was the living embodiment of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” So what did I learn from my gay, bipolar, dysfunctional father? I learned the real meaning of the word love.

He asked, “Like in baseball?”

 I said, “No. A real dugout. Poor people used to live in them back in the day. They were dug out of a hillside to save lumber because all you needed was a front, and the rest of the house was dirt.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, no shit. I learned about them from this book, Half Broke Horses. It’s good. You should check it out when you get a chance. Oh, actually, I have a copy right here.” (We purchased a bunch of books for the students to read when they get to a certain level in the reading program we use. The principal and I figured Half Broke Horses would be a good read for the women’s program, but I personally figured most of the guys wouldn’t be all that interested in it, given that it has a female protagonist.)

So anyway, I picked up the book and read the chapter aloud about this girl growing up in West Texas and New Mexico and living in a dugout. Of course, I was reading, so I couldn’t tell if any of the guys were paying attention, and I figured they weren’t, but when I finished the chapter and looked up, they were all staring at me, wide-eyed and silent.

“Read some more,” was all I heard after a brief pause.

I read another chapter, this one about a flash-flood the main character and her younger brother and sister had survived while stranded in a cottonwood tree. As I was moving along through the chapter, I was reminded of reading portions of the book to my friends’ children last year when I visited them in Connecticut. The kids loved the book and couldn’t get enough of our bed time reading sessions, so in the back of my mind, I was thinking these hardened criminals had probably already lost interest and given up on me and Half Broke Horses.

I looked up after finishing the chapter.

“Read more.”

“Ok.”

One more chapter, and one of the guys broke out with, “That’s a cool book!” This coming from a guy with tattoos on his face and a record as long as my left arm.

Hmmm. I guess you never know.