Making a move.

• Author: Baca, Jimmy Santiago
• Position: Household moving

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I HAD THE CHRONIC SOUL-sickness called complacency, and I was desperate to get away from zombie capitalism.

Ya basra! Enough, and one morning in early 2011, I packed my boxes. My wife prepared to pepper-spray me to shake me out of my madness. My kids wondered, "Now what?" They watched me with bemusement, expecting yet another of my high-wire performances, while I hoped a morning-after shot of Patron tequila would cure me.

But mea culpas were not forthcoming--no, with an unshakable will, I was determined to free myself and my family from the decadent malaise that depletes one's integrity. Sinking deeper into the rut of rusting convenience, I had to liberate myself from the choke hold of the 1 percenters. And rather than prolong a standoff to see who blinks first, I made a move.

I boxed up cartons, hefted mattresses and furniture, and hauled multiple truckloads of useless shit acquired over the years. People from the canyon driving south who saw me heading north on the interstate later noted, "O yeah, we saw you. You looked like some crazy hillbilly drunk on white lightning--your truck stacked way up going down the highway like some kind of nut." And they would later add that they never thought I would make one winter in the canyon, and after I did, they were amazed and wary--I mean, any man who would attempt such a stunt couldn't be sane.

But I did, and soon found myself wrapped in a sweater and woolly cap, my breath steamy, running my laptop off a generator, cabin unchinked and uncaulked, icy wind blowing through gaps and cracks, low as 10 above zero inside sometimes, my gloved fingers tapping away through the cold. I was a Russian prisoner in a gulag--albeit in ecstasy--writing the first drafts of two books, pausing only to put more logs in the woodstove and shovel more snow into a pot on the stovetop to melt for drinking water. Reading by candlelight, writing by daylight, frost on my toes and ice in my beard, I was feeling alive again.

Spiritually refreshed, I felt like a muscled bull elk crashing through dry brush. I was sweating profusely outside when laboring, hiking deep into the mountain forest where I discovered springs, encountered elk, deer, owls, hawks, and eagles.

Every afternoon, with my three dogs, I'd go walking in foot-deep snow and on my return shove pinon logs in the woodstove and feel my cheeks and lips and ears unthaw as I wrote, or read books I'd wanted to read for years, and then napped deeply.

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