Life On Mars
By Ryan Gossen
Branches that held naked, empty space a week ago crowd the air with pale new leaves. I can hardly see my neighbors now, which is how we like it. Shade thickens in the backyard, green light on overgrown grass, tips brush the underside of the hammock. Once it reaches a certain length, the grass produces chiggers. Merely walking through will mean two weeks of welts on ankles and thighs. A thorough exploration of the yard will get me welts in places I can’t politely scratch. They get worse, the hotter it gets.
The baby leaf breath is oxygen and pheromones and a million things that evolved to be inhaled into ape nostrils. When we smell it in early Spring, it causes us to disrobe and vault over fences. Flotillas of twenty-somethings on inflatable SUP boards congregate at the intersection of Ladybird Lake and Barton Creek, where sediment has built up enough to stand waist deep. Toes search for anchorage in the silt, reaching down through viscous leaves and dust suspended in rotten water, and send up bubbles of methane that mix with aerosolized sunscreen and Bluetooth speakers.
Upstream at Barton Springs, topless women confuse visitors from out of town: Is this a protest, or the normal mode for these ladies? Should I be aroused? How do these specific breasts fit into the standard breast formats I'm accustomed to imagining? How can I see them without being seen looking? How can I avoid looking? If we get used to seeing bare breasts, then what is the point of swimsuits?
Austin in Summer is a place where people reconsider choices they may have not been aware of when they were made. There is in fact no Texas law prohibiting bare breastedness, only the “anus and genitals” are specifically proscribed. But don’t try it in Fort Worth, it's Disorderly Conduct there. In Barton, somehow, the disorder is tolerable and violence is avoided. You will also notice people being senselessly friendly, striking up conversations on flimsy pretenses.
Behind the gentle welcome of Spring, Summer looms. Summer usually arrives in May but it can punch Spring in the back of the head and shove it out of the way as early as March.
I know it's Summer because the AC runs at night. Mosquitoes come as their own season, roughly overlapping with heat, even in drought. Once I am made a prisoner indoors, I must bide my time, trying to make good preparations for when I can live outside again. Were I a feral human, I would find a cave. There are plenty of caves in the hill country, and alcoves under escarpments formed by drainages in the limestone. The rock is contiguous and deep, and touches the water table, staying cold, smelling of centipedes and maidenhair fern. If you go for a hike, you may find yourself sheltering in one.
There have been two times when I felt truly adapted to this planet. Most recently, when I began the practice of leaving town in May and not coming back until absolutely necessary. The other time was when I was semi-employed and lived in a house with a menagerie of slackers who kept odd hours. I lived in a tiny room with a small window unit AC that shocked me if I touched its aluminum frame while it was plugged in. It had a dial that implied it could be adjusted, but really it was either on or off. Because of the tiny size of my room, it cooled down fast and I actually got too cold at night. From the mattress on the floor, I could unplug it with my toes, which I learned to do without completely waking up. Such was my ability to adapt.
Residents of my house were night people. The strippers by profession, the rest of us through raw, biological imperative.
If you don’t have a job that insists you get up and run around while the sun is hating you, you drift into a nocturnal pattern like a feral hog. Interactions with people at night are different from the day. They are less structured, open to strange turns. The surreal is close by. Without the threat of an alarm clock, the night was expansive and there was time to do anything. I might get tired but I would never run out of night. I remember at least one Summer as mostly darkness.
The sun comes like a bulldozer to scrape us off the road into the arroyos of night on either side. Those who must remain in the road include students and people with normal jobs. We are tethered to a non-local clock, The One Clock, which first grew along the railroad lines. We tell ourselves this clock is more real than the sun. I know that I must be creating more heat with my car’s AC than is being removed from the air inside, and I hate to think about the world getting hotter, but the freeway at 6:00 pm is a boiling river. I turn the dial all the way to the right and it's not enough.
Transitions between structures and vehicles are like space-walks. We are astronauts on our own planet.
I was locked into this pattern for a couple decades. Strangely, I found a way to re-connect to the planet’s mood through the practice of climbing, even though this is a heat generating activity. All you really need is one whole day to cleanse yourself of the insanity of heat and time.
How to Climb in Austin in the Summer:
Go early Saturday morning, beat the crowds, and be amazed at how bearable the weather is.
Once you are warmed up, remove all clothing not necessary for safety and decency.
When the sun can see you over the edge of the cliff, you are done. Go to the river and wash off, you are filthy.
Drive to lunch and eat a large meal with beer. You “deserve” it because you got up early and did something.
Go directly home, turn on the AC, close the curtains. You are about to have a one to two hour nap. This nap will extend your life. Or, maybe that climbing window was “you time,” and it's your turn to watch the kids now. Or you made commitments that were entirely avoidable. Or maybe now you can have sex, then have a nap. If you can do this after that lunch, you have my admiration.
Wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 pm. This counts as an entirely new day, a great time to plan to go to a party or a show. Don’t leave the house until it cools down, unless you have it in you to get to Barton Springs, which is where many adapted people discover what they will do in the evening.
Ryan Gossen is a writer living in Austin, Texas, where he also pursues dance, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and climbing, and is an active member of Texas Search and Rescue. He has had many vocations, including user experience (UX) designer, experimental psychologist, construction worker, arborist, and ski bum. He writes mostly about man’s interaction with nature. More of his writing can be found on his website.
