The Art of War

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – The Book of Darwin”

Chapter 11: The Art of War

The intensity of winter far exceeds Darwin’s expectations; it’s rougher than the one before or even the one before that. In fact, one must reach all the way back to Darwin’s first winter on Marquez Mountain to find one as bad. There was something ominous about this cycle, it wasn’t that it started sooner or lingered longer, it was the way clear sunny days abruptly and dramatically transitioned into raging storms of such intensity even the thought of having to be outside sent frostbite tingles to the tips of your toes. A debate’s been raging in Taos cafés about whether darkness surrounds light as a pre-cursed messenger for a storm’s intensity or if darkness chases light to the very edge of tranquility because that’s where it most desires to unleash its rage. East coast transplants argue it’s the latter, but locals confidently know what’s what. Darwin’s not the only one to notice this winter’s ominous signs, Victor keeps complaining that if this is how things are going to be he’ll need to get a newer truck.

Darwin wisely spends last summer amassing a surplus supply of firewood so, even though he doesn’t anticipate winter’s harshness with almanac certainty, there’s never a risk of running out. What has been disconcerting is that with usable daylight diminished or in some intervals nonexistent, his solar battery-bank hovers near empty all winter and there are stretches lasting days and in some cases weeks where he has to rely exclusively on his generator.

While still addressing minor aspects of his hacienda restoration, it is 98.5% complete. There will always be something but as an engineer, he can live with functional over finished. The war on rats lasts longer than expected but the losing side eventually capitulates to an unconditional surrender, however, fleeing refugees engage in a guerilla warfare campaign lasting years. First, the rat bastards retreat to the festival tent where, due to lack of cover, they’re quickly routed. Then, the survivors migrate to Darwin’s massive firewood stack. There the rats make a gallant final futile stand but between Darwin constantly changing tactics, hungry hawks, and opportunistic coyotes, the rats can’t hold on and eventually the last remaining refugees flee deep into the forest to reestablish their colony in more hospitable territory. Every so often though, Darwin spots a returning rat running reconnaissance, but Murphy can be counted on to quickly run them off.

Once in a daring nighttime raid, the rat bastards attack his solar farm chewing through the cabling connecting his photovoltaic solar panels in series. It takes Darwin days to restore things back to operational before he can launch a new offensive that delivers a crippling blow to the colony’s aspirations. Through it all Victor keeps teasing Darwin that what he needs is a couple rat terriers to hunt the bastard vermin down. Darwin counters by wondering which of Victor’s infinite cousins he should contact.

Even though Murphy’s almost two, the puppy part of him is far from finished, which is normal for German Shorthair Pointers. He loves running around the place without restriction and can joyously chase an elk for miles around the mountain barking as he goes to keep Darwin appraised of progress. He has a quasi-stable truce with local coyotes, sometimes he runs them off and sometimes he doesn’t care if they hang around as long as they don’t get too close to the house. For his part, Darwin appreciates having the coyotes around because they’re outstanding mousers. Murphy’s more muscular than most GSPs, likely due to running all day over rough mountain terrain. His color is mostly speckled gray with patches of liver on the top and sides and an all-liver face with a solid liver star on his chest. His tail’s cropped, his paws are huge, and he has a way of looking at you so that you’d swear he’s laughing, or at least in a damn good mood. At night he sleeps near the fireplace in Darwin’s bedroom, unless Darwin gets up to work on his computer, then Murphy’s right by his side.

Murphy tags along no matter where Darwin might go and Taos cafés and restaurants that have a problem with that don’t get Darwin’s patronage. At first the postmaster in Questa doesn’t allow Darwin to come into the post office with Murphy but Skyler files the paperwork to designate Murphy as Darwin’s support animal. Regardless of the weather, Darwin’s had to get used to driving with the passenger window down because Murphy insists on having his head out the window. Darwin tries training Murphy to ride in the back bed of the truck but with the rough roads they travel and, given Murphy’s propensity to put his front paws on the bed rail so he lean around the cab to see where they’re going, it was just a matter of time before he’d fall out. Traveling with a high-strung dog in the cab of a truck who needs to be constantly moving if the window’s not down is enough to drive anyone into accommodating an open window regardless of whether it’s raining, snowing, bitterly cold, or unbearably hot.

Darwin installs a doggie-door along the back wall of the utility closet addition but obsessively worries that the rats may use it one night to launch a surprise counterattack. Every evening before bed, he locks access to the dog door and every morning at dawn Murphy stands in front of the door barking to go out because while he may not know what’s out there, he definitely knows with all his heart and all his soul there’s something on the other side that needs chasing.

Murphy and the Appaloosa stallion in charge of the wild mustang herd have come to an understanding; Murphy agrees to not harass his mares and in return the Appaloosa won’t care if Murphy chases satellite stallions. It’s a win-win arrangement really but was only negotiated after the stallion impresses upon Murphy, how miserable he can make life if he insists on chasing his mares. Each spring and all summer while Darwin’s in the high mountain meadow either writing in his journal or listening to a Cubs game on his satellite radio, Murphy hangs out with the newborn colts, playfully chasing them around or rolling in the grass trying to get them to chase him. Since it’s controlled playground fun and the Appaloosa knows as long as Murphy’s with his colts the coyotes and wolves are kept at bay, he permits it. Needless to say, Murphy loves going up to the mountain meadow; between the adventurous ride up with its wonderment of sights and smells, and the playground meadow, it’s like a day at Doggie Disney Land.

Darwin still has the large vinyl tent he set up his first winter and still keeps his RV parked inside. He’s constantly vowing to replace it with a more permanent metal structure but then never does, mostly because the tent skin is holding up remarkably well and why scrap a perfectly good tent simply to replace it with something that doesn’t improve anything.

The three tank water system Darwin implements his first winter on Marquez Mountain is functioning flawlessly. For the two winters he lives in his RV the tanks never freeze; occasionally the tops do but pressure on the water at the bottom of the tank keep them from freezing. He still fetches drinking water from Questa, or Red River if he’s in the mood for ice cream. Usually, a 300-gallon tank can last weeks, unless he has guests, then it goes surprisingly fast. Last fall he starts constructing a cistern system since it rains almost every day in the Mountains, especially during summer monsoons, so why not capture rainwater flowing off the hacienda roof and store it in an underground tank. He’s gotten as far as buying a thousand-gallon holding-tank and having Victor’s cousin Manny bury it but winter sets in before he can build a water capture system on the roof which is unfortunate given all the snow that accumulates up there.

Over winter Darwin designs a solar water purification system he can install on his non-potable water line to render Kismet Creek water safe for drinking. If successful it eliminates his need to fetch water from town, which means he won’t have to leave his hacienda as often. He considers multiple ways to remove harmful bacteria and impurities and settles on a method deployed in the wine industry to stabilize organic wines since chemical treatment is not an option. The method uses energy generated by his solar system to run ultraviolet lights that the water passes through. The UV rays kill harmful bacteria in the water while the filtration system he earlier installed removes impurities. He’s been anxiously waiting for spring so he can build and test his design.

Addison drops by when she can; she accepts Darwin’s emotionally unavailable for a serious relationship but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy each other’s company on occasion. Skyler comes by more often although it’s not to hang out with Darwin anymore because he was foolish enough to introduce her to Mateo. Darwin hasn’t seen much of Constance lately but during spring and summer she’s often around. As an employee of the County Extension Bureau in their agricultural division, she helps Darwin decide what crops to grow and how to grow them in his arid high elevation environment having a minimal growing season. This year she’s committed to helping Darwin build a solar greenhouse so he can cultivate crops year-round. While her visits are always official, she usually stays for sunset and happy hour and perhaps even dinner if Darwin’s being exceptionally debonair.

Lately Darwin’s been finding excuses to buy groceries in Red River because it provides an opportunity to visit Anna, who he momentarily met last spring when he needs help figuring out how to pay for groceries using the store’s new automated checkout system. They tacitly re-met last fall while he’s eating ice cream in the park. Red River is a very small former gold mining town that’s now a popular tourist destination for West Texans escaping heat in summer and to hunt in fall. Because it’s a tourist town it’s stocked with bars, restaurants, knickknack shops, and the occasional specialty store; including one that makes the best damn ice cream Darwin’s ever tasted. On a mild early afternoon last fall, Darwin’s in town for a scoop of pistachio praline in a waffle cone with an additional scoop of butternut pecan on top. He’s sitting on a park bench in the center of town enjoying his ice cream that he occasionally lets Murphy sample when suddenly, three Texas hunters burst out of the Gold Rush Saloon and onto the sidewalk just up the street. It’s clear from their camouflage clothes and mud-caked boots they’ve decided that in between their morning and afternoon hunts they’ll drink and they are drunk. As they’re stumbling toward their pickup they pass Anna Valdez, who Darwin recognizes from the grocery store. Anna lives in Questa and commutes to Red River because there are no jobs in Questa since the molybdenum mine closed. As the Texans pass Anna, one grabs her and starts hooten and hollering as he tries to dance her about. Anna is of course startled and pushes him off but quickly another Texan tries the same maneuver. Before long the three Texans have Anna trapped and are taking way too many liberties with the frightened grocery store clerk.

If you ask Darwin why he did what he does next, he couldn’t tell you other than it just needed to be done. He rushes up the sidewalk and yanks the Texan currently grabbing Anna away from her. To free up his hand, he jams what’s left of his pistachio praline waffle cone into the Texan’s face then shoves him as hard as he can against a parked pickup. As Darwin waits with clenched fists for the stunned Texan to regain his footing so they can finish their dance, his buddies decide to jump Darwin from behind, only first, they’ll have to get past an aggressively snarling Murphy whose exposed fangs remove all doubt that like the pact between Darwin and Vincent, he’ll always have Darwin’s back.

It’s around then sheriff Tyler Hernandez rolls up not sure what to make of the situation, from his vantage point, there’s the unsteady Texas hunter wiping melted ice cream from his face, his two buddies backed against a wall by the dog everyone in town knows belongs to the eccentric mountain man wildly standing beside Anna with fists drawn, and then there’s Anna in the center of it all looking like he remembers she did back in grade school when the boys would tease her. Sheriff Hernandez slowly walks up to Anna unsure who he has to be weary of to ask if everything’s okay. Not wanting trouble for herself or Darwin, she tells Tyler that the Texans just need a little help remembering where their hunt’s at. Tyler’s been sheriff long enough to know two things; Anna’s lying and busting Texans is bad for tourism. His solution is to escort the hooligans to their pickup and oversee their exit from town pointing out his preference they relocate to Taos.

Anna knows who Darwin is even though they’ve never been formally introduced because everyone in the valley knows about the eccentric engineer/hermit living on Marquez Mountain trying to eke out an off-grid self-sustaining life. In addition to that, she mostly believes the stories about him that get repeated up and down the Rio Grande gorge by Victor’s relatives who have been to his hacienda and helped him over the years with his various projects. She’s deeply grateful for Darwin’s chivalry and now makes a point of talking to him whenever he comes to the store for groceries. One afternoon Darwin’s picking up items the manager special ordered for him and Anna asks what they’re for, one thing leads to another and before she knows it, she agreeing to join Darwin at his hacienda for a traditional Polish meal he’s preparing.

From there, one thing leads to another and now Darwin doesn’t really spend time with Addison anymore. Victor, who’s never one to miss an opportunity to screw with Darwin, enjoys pointing out which of Anna’s past boyfriends going all the way back to middle school have worked on Darwin’s various projects at one time or another. He revels in warning Darwin that Hispanic men are not to be trifled with when it comes to romance and the women they love; that each of Anna’s past boyfriends, going all the way back to middle school, have never fallen out of love with her because that’s the magic of her charm. Victor tells Darwin if he’s going to persist in spending time with Anna, he better invest in a security system, and it just so happens, he has a cousin who can help with such things.

While Victor won’t admit anything to Darwin, he greatly admires him for his bravado; a west coast intellectual taking on three Texans at once is the stuff of legends; it’s the kind of cojones every man up and down the Rio Grande valley has to respect. That singular act embeds Darwin deeper into the community faster than multiple lifetimes of an East Coast transplant living in Taos could ever come close to achieving.

The reason Anna works in Red River’s only grocery store is because she recently had a falling out with her father, Roberto Valdez, the famous valley artist who’s amassed considerable wealth selling southwest paintings to tourists in his Taos gallery. For years Anna’s done such a good job managing the gallery, curating Roberto’s paintings, and building an active client list, Roberto insists she move to New York to manage the gallery he’s opening there. Anna refuses, she’s been to New York and has no interest in living in that shit hole. Her life is here in Northern New Mexico, a place she can’t imagine ever leaving. As it becomes increasingly clear both sides are entrenched in their positions, things get said and emotions escalate until Anna quits her job at the gallery, moves out of Roberto’s hacienda, and hasn’t spoken to her father since.

The penance part of Darwin’s life, the reason he came to the Northern New Mexico wilderness in the first place, is pretty much hit and miss these days. As part of his penance he goes to Chicago often to not only hang out with Vincent but to be a positive part of young Issac’s life. Once every two months or so, he flies home, unless it’s summer, then he rides the Harley. Skyler usually agrees to house sit so someone’s looking after Murphy. If she’s unavailable, he leaves Murphy outside and either Victor or Mateo check on him every day. Vincent and Ilene started flying down a couple times a year after they bought their Mooney M20M Bravo with sufficient range to get from Chicago to Taos with just one refueling. Victor has a cousin who has a landing strip on his place because he guides elk hunts for rich Texans who like to fly in. His cousin lets Darwin occasionally use his runway, which is very convenient when the Taos airport gets crowded. Of course, the quid pro quo expectation is that Vincent will purchase aviation fuel that has a Texas-sized convenience surcharge.

Darwin and Gwen are in an odd place. Since that Thanksgiving visit his first year in New Mexico, she’s been distant, even seeming somewhat afraid. He’s noticed she never allows herself to be alone with him but he doesn’t really care one way or the other, he just thinks it’s weird and it creates an uncomfortable awkwardness when everyone’s together. He asks Ilene about it once and she gives him a vaguely strange response. But he’s also noticed a slight distance in Ilene’s attitude toward him as well and has decided that his long hair and bushy beard present an intimidating mountain man persona city girls of refinement can’t relate to.

Little Issac though, loves his Uncle Darwin and gets uber excited every time he visits. Issac came to Marquez Mountain once but he was too young to understand or appreciate the wonders of Northern New Mexico or Darwin’s self-sustaining ranch. The other times Vincent and Ilene visit, Issac stays with his Aunt Gwen who he’s also very close to. Vincent’s doing an admirable job raising his son, having learned from the mistakes of his father. He makes a point of being present and engaged while also teaching Issac the value of discipline and the always optimistic belief that this is the year the Cubbies make the playoffs. It was the funniest damn thing the time Darwin visited after the all-star break the summer Issac was two; Issac rushes to the door when he sees Darwin shouting “Uncle Darwin! Uncle Darwin! Guess what?”

“What?” Darwin asks as he scoops Issac into his arms and twirls them both around.

When the twirling stops, Issac enthusiastically looks into his uncle’s eyes with an exuberance reserved for innocence that’s yet to be tested and with huge grin says, “This year the exciting Chicago Cubs are making the play grounds!”

“Well,” Darwin laughs “that is exciting little man, did your dad teach you that?”

“Un huh.”

“Does he take you to Wriggly?”

“Un huh.”

“Do you want me to take you to Wriggly?”

“Can I have a hot dog?”

“It wouldn’t be exciting Chicago Cubs baseball without a hot dog.” Little Issac smiles and gives his beloved uncle a giant bear hug.

While time with Vincent is good and with Issac precious; and absolutely an essential part of Darwin’s life, it doesn’t address what he’s been doing for the past four years to deal with his penance. Baby steps, that’s really all that can be said about that. He’s journaling regularly now; in fact, he’s already completed three of the fourteen books he purchased from that clerk on Telegraph Avenue the day his life went to shit. His writing still predominately involves detailing the this and that’s of his self-sustaining ranch, but lately, he’s also been allowing himself to be more expressive, even dabbling in poetry and philosophy.

He still carries enormous burden for what he broke and an overwhelming obligation to fix it. He’s decided living in New Mexico partly accomplishes that because being here means he’s not in California, which means he’s at least no longer part of the problem. He also recognizes that does not automatically mean he’s part of the solution. As far as atoning for his sins, he’s not sure. He did reach out to his previous team to see if anyone embedded some kind of back door in their technology that could be used to sabotage it. They’ve all come to realize that creators of innovative technology should always embed a self-destruct mechanism but that does them little good now. He considers taking his technology to the US defense department but wavers on whether that fixes the mess he’s made or makes it worse. It’s a philosophical quandary he spends a lot of time journaling about.

One aspect of his penance he’s deeply devout about is spending time each day scouring available on-line sources to stay abreast of technology; including what tech companies are announcing, how the masses are consuming technology, and technology’s impact on society. He’s convinced that no one is stepping up to own the stewardship he and his fellow Shadow Dancers once demanded; so, it has to be him. He still believes virtual reality is very sexy in its promise and potential but after years of languishing development it’s failed to make a splash in any society alternating way. It seems the only applications early innovators have found are in the gaming industry and who cares about that. He recently stumbled on some government requests for information (RFIs), from the defense department around tactical ways VR can be used to provide live battlefield imagery for war planners but so far that’s all speculative. Artificial Intelligence, though less sexy is potentiality more impactful but so far, it remains in the realm of rule-based programing and academic hype.

He’s been chatting with a chess grand master on-line as to whether there’s a successful strategy around sacrificing all of a player’s pawns to clear the field so other pathways to victory can be pursued. If autonomous nonhuman soldiers render traditional boots on the ground warfare obsolescent, does it not just lead to other pathways to pursue conflict and does that elevate or decimate the cost of war? The grand master is unaware of how the deliberate decimation of a player’s pawns can lead to a successful outcome, which leads Darwin to conclude he should provide the defense department covert access to his technology.

Then again, recent firsthand lessons learned from his war on rats suggest that forcing an adversary onto different pathways does escalate the cost of war. Darwin starts his war on rats using live traps because they’re the most humane, but it doesn’t take the rat bastards long to figure out to avoid them. Besides, capturing a rat and transporting it miles from the colony where they likely die a certain death on their own in the wild is not humane, it’s just provides the illusion of empathy, which really is the art of war. This causes Darwin to escalate his weaponry to snap traps that instantly kill whatever it ensnares.

While that does decimate the colony at a faster and more convenient rate, Darwin’s convinced he’s operating below the colony’s replenishment rate and it doesn’t take long before the rats figure out to avoid snap traps so, while the replenishment rate continues to rise his decimation rate falls to zero. This prompts an escalation to poison, which is not only fast but highly effective; that is until the rat bastards figure out not to eat the poison. Darwin’s response is to switch to a slower-killing better-tasting poison, so they won’t connect the causal relationship between eating poison and painful death. At first, they take all the poison pellets he sets out back to their nests for later consumption but eventually they stop, which can only mean they’re on to him.

It’s not until Darwin recruits a squad of assassin cats he acquires from another one of Victor’s cousins that the conflict escalates to its final conclusion leaving Darwin little doubt that his namesake was right, in the battle between opposing forces in nature, it truly is survival of the fittest. While this outcome is well and good for him and his war on rats, the lessons remain elusive for his penance problem and what can be done to fix what he broke. That is unless, Charles Darwin’s assertions can’t be altered, which foreshadows future conflicts between man versus man not ending well for man.