Category: Nonfiction

Anatomy of a SAR Mission–Iowa Gulch

On September 14, 2022

Anatomy of a SAR Mission--Iowa Gulch

GULCH: a deep or precipitous cleft. Especially: one occupied by a torrent

After I retired from the Air Force, I found my niche in our local Search & Rescue unit. I was a tad concerned when I showed up—dangling from cliffs, setting splints, and river rescues aren’t really in my wheelhouse. But I figured I’ve done enough trotting/hiking/walking over the last five years to be of use carrying all the crap that’s required for the missions.

Turns out the number one asset I brought to the organization was not having a Mon-Fri job. Who knew?

I used my packhorse skills last week on a mission over in Iowa Gulch. The map below shows what was happening. Day 1 of Bighorn Sheep (Rifle) season. Three hunters took the Missouri Gulch trail up (see red line) above 13K’ and scoped out a herd. The next morning, they crested the ridge north of Missouri Mountain and bagged a sheep. The successful shooter had felt like ass all day and by the time they butchered their kill, he had puked forty times with blood spotting his vomit. They picked the first downhill stretch in the direction of their parked truck—Iowa Gulch (the marker between the red line and our SAR route blue line)—and called 911.

Three of us dispatched to the Missouri Gulch Trailhead, planning to hike west to Iowa Gulch and then up to the hunters with oxygen in case the helicopter with our team doctor failed to find a suitable landing site near the subjects. Over the next several hours, we watched the helo circle above, searching for both the hunters and a landing site. They spotted the subjects but couldn’t put the bird down. Eventually, the chopper landed on the Missouri Ridge at about 13K’ and our doc began hiking down the gulch.

We kept hiking up.

Our ground team left one member at about 10.3K to act as a visual and radio relay with our trailhead radio operator down on the road while myself and the other team member continued up the gulch. We rendezvoused with the subjects just above 11K at the same time our doctor caught up with them on his descent. It was dark. Doc evaluated the still-puking subject and gave him a choice: we spend the night on the mountain, then climb back up to the ridge in daylight for a helo extraction, or attempt a night-time descent. Funny how no one in trouble relishes the thought of going back uphill. The subject chose the descent.

My toting talents continued to be of use. After hooking our patient up to the oxygen. I carried the bottle and tubes and tucked in close behind the subject for the 4-hour descent. Of course, the alternative was to help the subject’s fellow hunters pack out 150lbs of sheep meat…baaaaa-d idea.

It was slow. Traction was an issue. Just when we thought we were out of the rocky gulch and had nothing but forest and a river in front of us, one hunter tripped over a bee’s nest. That took a while to straighten out and left a few welts. Forded a knee-high river around midnight and climbed up to the road and the ambulance, where the EMTs treated our sick subject and admired our bee stings.

Decent story with a good ending. No serious injuries. What the subjects didn’t realize is that in the Rockies, if your map doesn’t show a trail near the gulch you are considering, you shouldn’t use it for a climb or descent. Many of the gulches cliff-out with impassable waterfalls. These hunters got lucky, and the safer alternative would have been the shorter climb back to the established trail.

Under Where?

By Cam Torrens

On August 6, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

My kid (any of them): Papa, have you seen my water bottle?

Me (pointing): Yeah, it’s under there…

My kid: Under where?

Me (laughing): You said “underwear!”

My kid: (silence)

Underwear is funny.

Some might disagree, but they’re likely the same hi-falutin’ snobs who probably wouldn’t appreciate the humor found in the unexpected release of trapped gas.

We’ve got a hard drive around the house somewhere with a picture of my oldest boys when they were two and three with tighty-whities pulled over their heads as part of the superhero game they were playing. Always a good photo to pull up at Christmas—especially if they’ve brought home a girlfriend.

When I was four, I tried to smuggle Fig Newtons into my bedroom by hiding them in the back of my own tighty-whities. My dad wasn’t fooled by the strange droop in my drawers, and rather than multiple spankings, I only endured one swat and some smushing which rendered the cookies inedible. Got to stay up late for a second bath, though!

A few close calls in the venerable C-130 (4 Fans of Freedom, Hero of the Skies) where bad food in Africa, small arms fire in Afghanistan, and one specific Iraqi SAM in early March 2003 may or may not have resulted in underwear checks at the end of the mission.

These are the stories of youth and probably explain why those of us who haven’t quite grown up still laugh at them. But it doesn’t explain why my best underwear story happened in middle age.

It’s 2011 and I’m only six months away from a move to Beijing, China, to take a job in the US Embassy. In the lead up to this assignment, I spent over a year learning Mandarin Chinese, several months diving into Chinese culture and a couple of weeks learning social skills (I know. I know.) The Chinese course’s capstone event is a four-week language immersion in Beijing. Courses in the morning. Exploring Beijing in the afternoon. And the rest of the time living with a host family that speaks no English.

I arrive at my host family’s apartment late in the evening after getting snowed in at Chicago for an extra day. I’ve rehearsed my apologies in Chinese on the taxi ride into the city, but when I explain, Shushu (Uncle) just gives me a blank stare and

turns to his wife Ayi (Aunt) who returns the blank stare. They both start talking and my gut sinks as realize I must have got off in the wrong country. I arrived so proud of my 15-month progression in Mandarin, and I haven’t understood a word so far. And from the looks on my host family’s faces, the Chinese I am speaking is also unrecognizable.

Fortunately, Shushu has the universal translator stored under the sink. He pops the bottle open and we share a couple shots of erguotou, a sorghum-based liquor popular with Chinese workers—kind of like PBR, but with five times the alcohol content. By the time we hit the sack, I still don’t understand Shushu’s Chinese, and he doesn’t understand mine. But we’re communicating perfectly. Ayi just shakes her head.

Over the next few days, I’ll sort out the language issues in class. My instructors teach me how to understand the nuances of the Beijing accent, and at home with Shushu and Ayi, I begin to understand most of what they are saying. Mostly I nod my head, because they still give me that “deer in the headlights” look every time I open my mouth.

Shushu and Ayi live in tight quarters like most Chinese city dwellers. The table folds out from the wall, an alcove with a curtain serves as their bedroom (and a nursery for their granddaughter who spends the day with Ayi,) It’s clear they gave up their real bedroom—the only other room in the house—for my stay.

But wait—I failed to mention one more room. The bathroom measures approximately four feet wide and seven feet deep. Never have I seen so little space multipurposed in so many ways. The sink empties through a hose leading to a drain near the toilet. Above the toilet is the showerhead and the entire bathroom floor slopes toward this central drain. You shower by closing the lid of the toilet and standing with your feet on each side while spraying yourself. A washer dominates the rear of the bathroom, so close to the toilet you could switch the clothes to the dryer (if they had one) without getting up from the toilet. And criss-crossed on the ceiling are nylon lines with clothes hung up to dry. Everything is clean—but the tight quarters make me nervous. My first shower feels like bathing in a phone booth.

It’s day three at Shushu and Ayi’s house, and they are starting to nod when I speak to them. I told them I was going to shower, and they even pointed toward the bathroom. My language skills are improving! I’m sure the towel and soap in my hands has no bearing on their comprehension.

At the sink, I test the luke-warm water and decide to just shave my face rather than the patches of hair that stubbornly try to grow from my bald head. In and out is my bathroom strategy tonight. I lather up and after I rinse the shaving cream from my hand, I reach above me for my towel I’ve hung on one of the drying lines. As I pull, it catches on the rope and when I tug harder, the rope bows toward me like a rubber band, then springs back, causing the remaining drying clothes to jerk toward the ceiling.

I’m unsure whether the ensuing time period allowed me to utter “Oh, shit” or whether I just thought it—it’s hard to remember because time suddenly slowed. I stare at the ceiling as the clothes fall back on the line, but as soon as I let my breath out, one article of clothing slips off the line and falls. I drop my towel and reach up but cannot snag the white material before it falls between my arms and settles on the surface of the water in the toilet. I bend over and recognize (OK—obviously I don’t recognize…but there’s no way Shushu would wear these…) Ayi’s underwear.

My first instinct is to pull them out, wring the water, and hang them back up to dry—I mean, if my dog can drink out of my toilet at home, how dirty can the water be? I stare in the mirror, my heart pounding, and remind myself I’m a grown-up. The “pretend it never happened” strategy is not a grown-up move. I reach for the underwear, then stop. If I pull them out and take them to Ayi, I’m not sure my Chinese will adequately convey the gravity of the situation. She might just nod and say, “Yes, they haven’t dried yet. Please put them back.” And trade concerned glances with Shushu about the strange 老外laowai*.

I decide to man-up. After cleaning the shaving cream from my face and putting my shirt back on, I step out of the bathroom, turn the corner, and face Shushu and Ayi, who wear questioning looks on their faces. I take a deep breath, bow my head toward Ayi, and announce: 你的内裤掉了厕所Ni de neiku diaole cesuo **(Your panties fell toilet.) Ayi’s eyes widen, and she rises from the table and walks past me into the bathroom. I’m mortified. I follow behind her and watch as she looks in the toilet, cranes her head up to the nylon ropes on the ceiling, then fishes her underwear from the water. I hear Shushu laughing behind me and I don’t have to know much Mandarin to know Ayi’s telling him to shut up.

Fortunately, Ayi would never insult a guest, and our relationship quickly recovers from my initial buffoonery. I’ll always remember that day as a turning point, when I began communicating in another language.

And underwear is still funny.

*non-Asian foreigner

**It was only after I returned to the US and told this story to my Chinese instructor that she reminded me I forgot to use the directional word “进jin (in)” in my sentence. I’m sure Ayi was quite unsure what actually “fell” in the bathroom until she entered.

A Small, Small World

By Cam Torrens

On May 9, 2022

In Blog, Nonfiction, Ruminating

There is nothing more cliché than Disney’s song “It’s a Small World” *

The parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, probably made the actor more famous than fighting sand worms or getting his shoelace caught on a tractor.

But isn’t coincidence amazing? It’s like an affirmation that the impossible is actually…possible.

1989. I am stationed in Zweibrucken, Germany flying the mighty C-23A twin-engine Sherpa, a plane also known during its brief seven-year Air Force tenure as “the slowest, ugliest plane in our fleet.” I’ve just graduated from flight school and moved from a shared apartment with a twin mattress on the floor and a giant Orca pool toy hanging from my ceiling. I’m confident I’ll decorate my new abode in Germany differently, now that I’m an Air Force officer and a qualified pilot.

But single occupancy apartments are scarce in the villages surrounding our base near the French border. I end up living on the second floor of an old farmhouse in the 500-person village of Rosenkopf, about five miles east of the base. The first floor has been modified—the foundation split into a series of stalls for the pigs my landlord raises. The smell of dank hay and the livestock reminds me of the couple years we lived on a farm in Oregon along the Columbia Gorge. Good memories.

I bring a couple of my squadron mates over to check out my new digs the day after I move in. I ask if they smell the hay. I see them look at each other before one of them, a blond-haired Captain who’s been in the squadron for two years already, speaks up. “It smells like shit.”

But I love it. The house. The village. There’s only one other American family in the town and only a handful of German families with any English skills. A great opportunity to learn the language.

Six months later and I’m best friends with the elderly German couple two houses up the hill. The husband, a bed-ridden World War II vet who spent most of the war as a POW in America, and his gregarious non-English speaking wife who makes it her personal mission to feed me. Two of their three daughters also live in the old farmhouse and before long, I’m spending holidays with them—an amateur Thanksgiving effort on my part, and them folding me into a memorable Christmas picnic in the woods with sleds, schnapps, and sausage. We become good friends.

That spring, I’m sitting next to the husband’s bed and he’s helping me through a conversation in German while we both drink beer. With each gulp of Parkbrau, I feel my German language skills improving. He’s describing his third daughter—the one who lives in the US—and her family. She had married a GI some twenty years before and she and her husband and grown boys live in northern Idaho. I switch to English.

“I used to live close to there—a little town west of there in Washington called Kettle Falls.” I have no idea why I’m telling him this. I was in 7th grade when I lived there, and the population was less than 1,500. I don’t remember a stoplight.

My friend’s eyes flash. “That’s where they lived before. In Kettle Falls!”

I shake my head. “Are you sure? It’s a very small town.”

“Yes, Kettle Falls. When did you live there?”

I do some mental math. “Around 1976.”

“That’s when my daughter and her family were there. They lived there for about five years.” He calls for his wife and rattles off our discovery in German. I understand enough to recognize he’s asked her to go get a picture.

She comes back and thrusts the picture in front of me. Her husband is staring at my face over the back of the photograph to see if I recognize his daughter.

I’ve never seen their daughter or her husband in my life. They’re posed for a family picture with their two boys sitting in front of them. I stare closer.

“That’s Chase and Del…Sanborn,” I stab at the photo with my finger. “From Boy Scouts!”

I hear a “Mein Gott” behind me from my friend’s wife and he utters something—also in German—I don’t understand. I explain to them that their
grandsons and I went on camp-outs together, built snow caves, and cooked with Dutch ovens. I leave out the stories of lighting farts, a stolen Playboy, and a wedgie gone bad. Because I’m a mature Air Force officer now…and I don’t know how to say “wedgie” in German.

They insist I call their grandkids on the phone right away until we calculate the time difference and realize it’s midnight in Idaho. The next morning, I’m back at their house and they are holding the phone to my ear. Del, the younger of the brothers, is on the line and we both marvel at the odds that I’m standing in his grandparents’ house. We catch up on each other’s lives. After ten minutes, we run out of things to talk about, and I hand the phone back to his grandmother. We’ve never spoken since.

But it’s a story that I’ve never tired of telling. Ask a hundred random Germans if they’ve heard of the farming village of Rosenkopf and ninety-nine will say “nein.” (did I just do an English-German homonymic alliteration? Is that a thing?) Ask a hundred Americans what state has a town named Kettle Falls and ninety-nine will have no idea. But there I stood, in a German farmer’s kitchen on the phone with his grandchildren, my childhood Boy Scout buddies.

Impossible? Obviously not.

God. Fate. Karma. You believe in what you believe, and I’ll stick with my beliefs. But I think we can agree it’s a small world out there. And all things are possible.

* “It’s a Small World” is also the third most annoying family road trip song behind “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and “This Is the Song That Never Ends…”

Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine

By Cam Torrens

On March 1, 2022

In Blog, Book Reviews, Nonfiction, Reading

BY anne applebaum

Non sequitur: a statement (such as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said.

I used a non sequitur several weeks ago. Not that I would have self-identified my error through the use of the Latin term—wouldn’t want to pile pretentiousness on top of ignorance, right?

The topic was Ukraine and the potential Russian invasion and the appropriate international response. I believe my input to the dilemma was something along the lines of, ‘not that I condone Putin’s actions, but it’s worth considering Ukraine, as a country, has only existed for 30 years. Sure, there is a long history of Ukrainian culture, but the reality is that Russians have lived in eastern Ukraine for much longer than the country has survived as an independent nation-state.’

I guess I threw out my remark to show an inkling of knowledge about Ukraine and Russia. Who knows, maybe it worked because I didn’t get much of a reply from the person to whom I was talking. But something felt off about my comment. It might have been factually true, but it was neither insightful nor relevant.

So, I did what I always do when I realize I’m behind the power curve on an issue. I hit the books.

I started with Tim Judah’s In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine, a 2016 book of interviews and descriptions from pro-Ukrainians following the 2014 Maidan Revolution and pro-Russian rebels manning fortifications in eastern Ukraine. Judah traveled the corners of the country pulling tales and opinions from everyday people on the streets while giving his unfamiliar readers a geography and history lesson (I’d never heard of Bessarabia in Ukraine’s southwest—600K people speaking primarily Russian but ethnically Bulgarian, Moldovan, Albanian, Gagauz and Roma. You travel through the country of Moldova just to get to this part of Ukraine.) I finished the book knowing much more about modern Ukraine than I did before.

In February, I took a seminar on Putin’s Russia and listened to a lecture by the Foreign Policy Association on Russia as a nuclear state in decline. The presentation was online and recorded and presented on the day Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, many of the discussion questions were obsolete.

But the mother lode of Ukraine background proved to be Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. As the title suggests, the book focuses on the 1932-33 Ukraine famine—or in Ukrainian, the Holodomor. Pulling from primary sources, including diaries and recordings, the description of the tragedy is heart-wrenching and serves as both a reminder of man’s capacity for cruelty and a harbinger of future atrocities in the impending World War.

I recommend the book, not solely for Applebaum’s characterization of Stalin’s reasoning (collectivize the farms to increase grain exports and finance his economic plans, mobilize poor peasants against richer peasants—kulaks—to provide scapegoats in crisis) or his execution (refuse to lower grain quotas during the famine, take food from farmers’ homes, bar starving peasants from entering cities in search of food, relocate Russians to the eastern Ukraine to make up for the 13% of the population who were deported or starved to death,) but also for the excellent history she provides of Ukraine before and after Russia’s February Revolution of 1917. She wraps up the book with an epilogue summarizing the period from the famine to modern day Ukraine.

This book opened my eyes. How can you discuss a country’s history of sovereignty if they’ve never been given a chance? Ukraine sits at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, the second largest country on the European continent with some of the least defensible borders. Ukrainian culture reached its peak over a thousand years ago, before being invaded by the Mongols, dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and taken over by the Soviets.

The international community won’t tolerate Italy reclaiming Great Britain just because they used to be part of the Roman Empire. They won’t put up with Great Britain trying to force India back into the British Empire. The list goes on—and I recognize there’s probably another fancy Latin phrase that describes a logic fallacy in my argument.

So, two points:

Ukraine deserves to have its sovereignty supported (for all of you asking about the military option…that’s a different essay for a different day)

Check out Applebaum’s book from your local library or buy it. Especially if you need a refresher (or a primer, in my case) on Ukraine history.

Note: Amazon links are for reference only. Recommend using your local library!